THE CANYON

It seemed obscene, these brown men in white trucks, carting away the old tree I had always thought of as our neighborhood patriarch.  Its fragments had sprouted green tendrils just since they portioned it up with their clattery Cherokee chainsaws a couple of weeks earlier.  I turned to finish shaving and tell Natalie to get a move-on but she was right behind me, engrossed in her reflection in the hallway mirror.  “Will you get some fucking clothes on please!” I said, trying to shield her from the window and the men in the street.

            “Take a pill,” she said.  She claimed to be nursing a baby migraine and she gave me one of those “big-deal” looks and stomped back to the master-bath whose mirror, she claimed, was too small to get a good look in.  She was naked from the waist up, wearing just a pair of pale-pink panties that would look nude from the street.  She’s got this distaste for the binding feel of clothes, she says, that goes back before our time.

            We had only dated a week before she undressed in front of me the first time, even though we hadn’t done it yet.  It was sexy to see her naked all the time, the implicit promise that we would eventually do it a lot.  But after a while I could tell she walked around naked just to get a rise or get me to squirm.

            As we got in the car a storm cloud passed over, but declined to break.  Natalie had the keys and took the driver’s side, and with her headache I didn’t want to argue over who was driving.  “I just don’t know why you have to walk around like that when you know people might see in,” I said.  Natalie smelled like shampoo and I was trying to make myself understood.

            “Fine,” Natalie pronounced.

            “You know there’s a lot of Mexicans walking around here,” I said and knew I had made one comment too many when I saw her purse her lips.

            “Basta! Basta! Do you always have to mention a person’s nationality?”

            I sulked down in my seat and I pretended not to hear her quietly articulate fah-von-coo-low and a few other choice phrases she hauls out.  We had long since abandoned arguing about her Italian epithets.  It was a no-win situation, worse than arguing about who-said-what last time.  She could feign infuriating innocence and reinvent her words.  After all, what the fuck did I know?

            I had often felt the urge to learn some real Italian -- beyond Buon Giorno and Come si chaima il padre? -- that I wouldn’t have to hear three times at half speed to understand.  But my sole motivation seemed to be knowing exactly what it was Natalie was saying under her breath, and that seemed like a lousy reason to learn a language.

            At the end of our block we drove past a couple of work men sitting in the bed of a white pick-up truck drinking from tall beer cans in paper bags.  They stopped to stare at us, at Natalie, as we drove past.  I stared back, as big and mean behind the glass of the passenger window as I could be.  But Hispanics don’t mind that the way Anglos do.  They just watched us drive off and then, I’m sure, returned to their beer and conversation.

            There had been a deluge of these staring men after the hailstorm.  I was home when the hail hit -- talking on the phone to a friend I hadn’t seen in years.  I stopped talking only to open the sliding-glass door onto the front porch.  But when the hail grew from harmless white peas, too weak to knock the leaves off the trees, into the much-heralded “golf-ball” I let out a yell.  Or at least a “Holy shit” before I hung up.

            I heard a window break in the back bedroom as I stood akimbo surveying the growing carpet of white stones and green leaves.  After the clouds parted the sun came through the nude trees as if the weather had an agenda, I made my way onto the porch to assess the effects.

            The hail was white, not transparent like ice cubes, and nestled in amongst the fallen leaves like melting eggs.  It was beautiful, and painful (thinking ahead to trying to squeeze money out of our insurance company for our car we parked at the curb).  I walked out into the street, crunching ice and twigs beneath my shoes, and waved at smiling neighbors who I had never met.

            Just past our property lay the most terrible fatality; the hundred-year-old elm tree.  It was a great, sprawling tree, which had been perched on the lip of a storm grate.  Natalie and I had noticed it as soon as we drove into our neighborhood.  The tree had shielded our house from the neighbors’ and as I turned around to look at our bedroom window, impaled by a lesser tree branch, I saw we were exposed.  The window, with its pane busted out, its screen lying in the dirt at the foot of the house, was like a television waiting for the neighbors to tune in: Natalie’s show. 

            Sure enough, a few days after the storm the neighborhood came alive with shirtless men scurrying over rooftops like shiny squirrels.  They were nailing and prying and listening to radios, which ran to the roofs with orange extension cords and played Led Zeppelin or Tejano music.  I watched them from the windows by the front door telling Natalie which ones I thought were illegals.  And wondering how it would be, like an ant-farm, hauling tile after tile across the hot, bare roofs.   I had the window replaced in the bedroom and bought Levelor blinds.

            The old tree lay there still green, except for the root-claw crusted with dirt still clutching soil, as if it might stand back up. But they took it away the day Natalie’s cousin Giacomo called to invite us over for dinner.  Natalie and Giacomo grew up together in the back of an Italian provvista in Chicago’s Little Italy.  I watched the old tree depart on a trailer bed as I thought about how often I didn’t care for Giacomo and Marla’s banter.  Still, they were the kind of people we’d hang out with even if we weren’t related.

            It was a short drive to Giacomo’s.  But Natalie’s headaches always gave me remote helplessness; like someone uninvited.  It was as though she could summon them when she thought I was in the wrong, and then she could make them go away just as quickly when she’d gotten her way.  Used to be I would feel a sense of fury and fight when they came.  There was something put on about them that made me believe, sometimes, that they were an excuse.  I prided myself as never giving anybody the right to a bad mood.  After a while, though, our conflicts would go so painlessly in circles as I sulked and she swore in Italian.

            We arrived at Giacomo’s without so much as a word between us.  We had silently agreed to the volume on our one good tape and that was that.  I had turned it on and Natalie adjusted it.

            “Natalia! Ciao Bella!” Giacomo greeted as she got out of the car.  “And you too, Tom.  How’s it hanging, Dawg?”

            “Not bad,” I said.  “How’s it hanging with you paisano?”

            There were greetings, hugs and kisses all around, and then we went in.  Giacomo had cooked mussels and we were well into our third bottle of wine before we moved into the living room.

            Their house was beautiful.  The living room’s sliding-glass door was flanked by two huge bay windows which faced west, overlooking their pool and the sun setting behind the other side of Sunder canyon.  The pollen count had been high all week and the sun reflected extra-orange ellipses in the wind-pushed water.  Giacomo rolled a joint.

            Natalie seemed to have forgotten or forgiven our argument (I could never be sure) and snuggled up next to me.

            “Great fucking sunset,” Giacomo said.  He took the first drag and then passed it to Marla.  She inhaled and nodded emphatically before passing the joint.  It was strong, real strong, and I was somewhere in the ceiling before I faded back.

            “Air is ultra-violet. That’s why we can’t see it,” Marla was saying.

            “It’s green,” Giacomo insisted. “Like chlorophyll and plants and stuff. It’s just a shade we can’t see. That’s why blood turns brown.”

            I had to catch up. “What?”

            “Red and green make brown,” Marla answered.  She usually beat Giacomo to the punch.

            “It’s nice out,” Giacomo stood up and opened the glass-door to the pool. “We should go swimming.”  He meant skinny-dipping.

            He never saw it as skinny-dipping, (in Italia you don’t wear your swimming trunks on the beaches Tom! Everybody goes without clothes! It’s European!).  We must have skinny-dipped at Giacomo’s and Marla’s about twenty times.  Giacomo was great for getting naked.  A couple of hits and drinks and he’d be stripping and bumbling towards the pool like a little kid with a big, big dick.

            Marla was more dogged about taking off her clothes but seemed to assume we saw her skinny-dipping as some kind of charmingly uncharacteristic spontaneity, and she would coyly hesitate, and give Giacomo a few twist-my-arm looks, and then she’d be tipping into the pool.  She kept in a little better shape than Natalie, but always seemed the littlest bit conscious of the half-moon scar across her belly.

            Natalie, of course, didn’t need much prodding to take off her clothes, and I’d be the one with his socks pulled up watching his wife swim naked in a pool with another couple.  But tonight there was no way I was going to let my wife skinny-dip-sans-husband along side Mr. Horse Dick: cousin or not.

            “Gian . . .” Marla called her husband, “I don’t think anybody feels like it right now, honey.”  She seemed so deeply entrenched in their furry easy chair I couldn’t imagine her doing anything but drowning.

            “Where’s that coming from?” Giacomo walked out onto the patio, ignoring Marla.  There was the distant but distinct thump-thump-thump of music.  “Marla -- Get the telescope. Fa presto!”

            “Oh Geez-us!” Marla said, but managed to free herself from the chair.

            I walked out next to Giacomo, who was immersed.

            “I think it’s coming from across the canyon,” he said, pointing at a clump of red, yellow and white lights on the opposite side, which was higher than where Giacomo and Marla lived.  The houses there were layered in three tiers with the house maintaining Giacomo’s interest being on the top lip.

            “A party?” I asked.

            “You bet your ass a party!” Giacomo snapped back.  Marla appeared dragging the telescope.  Giacomo pounced on it, a frustrated pirate, attacking the legs and arms of the gaunt metallic-insect.  He tooled with a variety of knobs and hinges, focusing on the lights across the canyon through a small tube before looking into a larger tube.  I never did understand telescopes.

            “Ecco! Fiesta! Puo Lei indovinare a che cosa penso?” Giacomo said to himself.

            “Che?” Natalie asked. She was ignoring my obvious discomfort.

            “Is it a party, Gian?” Marla asked.

            “I knew it!” he said, not taking his eye from the tube.

            “Well let me see. I dragged that monster all the way out here.” Marla shoved Giacomo aside. “I don’t know how you can tell what’s going on over there, Gian. I can see some people and that’s it.”

            “We should drive over and crash it,” Giacomo said.

            “Ah-ha!” Natalie chipped in, as if they shared some secret.

            I cringed.  I was so stoned I could barely muster conversation.  “We can’t drive. We’re all fucked,” I said.

            “No. I’m okay,” Giacomo said. “It’s a party and if they’re broadcasting that fact all over the canyon it’s as good as an invitation. Besides . . . we’re neighbors.”

            Giacomo drug the spidery telescope back into the house and left it collapsed on the floor behind a bay window.  “C’mon. It’ll be fun.” 

            I’d been singled out as the party-pooper.  “Giacomo can drive, Tom,” Natalie said, as if that were the final word.

            It was dark out and the secluded streets we drove down were sporadically lit.  We drove past deer and scrub oak at incredible speeds swerving only once to avoid a toad.  Everything I saw registered ex-post-facto.

            After what seemed like an hour Giacomo slowed, lowered his window and turned down the CD player which had been blaring a selection from his ‘70’s album-rock collection.  “It’s around here somewhere.”

            “Roll down your window and watch for it,” Natalie commanded.

            I submitted, relieved to be moving slowly again.  Between the houses, which had become progressively larger and palatial, I could see across the canyon to where we had been and, beyond that, to the star-like constellation of houses and street lights that made up the city.  It was a moonless night and everything seemed inverted, as if the stars were buried in the ground and the shadows of the trees blotted out the sky.

            “This must be it,” Marla said, and as I looked out through the front seats I could see that street was lined with shiny, money cars and four-bys.  Not a heaper in view, I thought, and my gaze fell to my rumpled ten-dollar shirt and jeans.

            Giacomo parked behind a white Oldsmobile.  Marla had apparently located the house, and we paused across the street from the house while a couple of young kids walked inside followed by an older couple who threw us side-ways glances.  “What the hell kind of party is this?” Giacomo asked.  We watched a few other couples enter and leave, stumbling drunk, draped affectionately across one another, laughing, having a good time, which is apparently what we were after.  And none of them was dressed too nicely.  But other than that it seemed weird.  Old people don’t party with young people, and it was a party.  The music: thump-thump-thump.

            We huddled up to formulate a plan.  Marla suggested scouting it out, but there seemed to be people all over.  I suggested going home, which brought a nasty look from Natalie and no looks at all from Giacomo and Marla.

            The scouting idea took hold.  Giacomo suggested that we all sneak around the side.  I was still reeling and falling off the curb, but Natalie seemed to think I was faking and we headed between the houses.

            We bounded like polar bears into the shadows of the scrub-oak.  As we crept along I could hear voices over the din and just as Giacomo was about to get a view of the back yard a barking, snarling black mass threw itself against the chain-link fence.  “Shut up Herc!” came from somewhere in the party as we fled into the front yard, whispering “oh shit” under our breath and giggling like teenagers.

            “Next house,” Giacomo laughed.  We stopped on the sidewalk.  There was a smudge of blood on Natalie’s face where she’d scratched it in the ruckus.  She came over to hold my hand, but only long enough to empty something small and painful from her shoe.  When the dog quieted down and the street emptied, we tried the house on the other side: vacant and dark.

            There was no dog this time, but we were further from the party and had to move slowly through the scrub oak.  The trees seemed black, devoid of anything but trunk and branches: I got an occasional thwack in the face from an invisible twig.  I grabbed the trunks to keep my balance and could feel the thick, rough, flaky skin like dried out crust.

            When Giacomo got close to the light, which wormed its way deep into the woods, he stopped.  “Basta! Peee-ano, peee-ano.” He whispered.  We were still really no better off than we were across the canyon, next to the pool, looking through the telescope.

            Giacomo, Marla and Natalie were absorbed in trying to see something tangible, afraid to enter the light.  I hung onto a tree.

            The band stopped playing and announced they’d be back in fifteen minutes and please-nobody-go-home.  The voices from the party began to travel into the trees, little bits and pieces that couldn’t attach themselves.

            She’s not that kind of girl… I don’t know what would make him do something like that... no, a pink dildo! You should have seen her face.  Well, she is pregnant.   I don’t want anybody to know.  It’s not the kind of thing you let get around.   Do you think I have a chance? I wonder what’ll they’ll be doing in twenty years . . . These things fall apart.  It’s nobody’s fault…

            “I think they’re nude,” Giacomo whispered.

            Natalie and Marla began bobbing their heads trying to see through the trees.  “Where? Where?”

            “Not all of them. Just . . . there!” Giacomo whispered.

            “Yeah,” Marla said. “Wow. Some party.”

            “I don’t see it,” Natalie said. “Are you sure? Is it a man or a woman?”

            “Why would it matter?” I replied, indignant.

            “They can’t be nude.” Marla had changed her mind.

            “No? Look . . . there! All skin!” Giacomo said, pointing at a fleshy colored mass obscured by tree trunks.

            “They don’t sound nude,” I implored. But right then someone screamed, water splashed, and laughter murmured through the trees.  Maybe they did sound nude.

            Natalie was too anxious, “Let’s go in.”

            “You just want to get naked in front of strangers,” I couldn’t believe it came out of my mouth.

            “What the hell’s your problem? You’re a snob.”

            “C’mon now, you kids. Keep it down,” Giacomo whispered.

            “Let’s see what’s going on,” Marla said. “It sounds fun.”

            I didn’t particularly think so and looked back across the canyon to our car.

            We made our way out of the bushes and back onto the lawn.  We looked like people who had been prowling around.  Natalie’s cut had congealed into a smudge, and she had leaves in her hair.  Giacomo’s shoes were covered in mud, and Marla and I had both snagged our shirts.

            I wanted to say, “Are you sure we want to do this?”  But I was already the bad guy.  We dusted off and followed Giacomo.

            The house smelled of cologne and potpourri.  There were paintings, real ones -- by nobody famous, I don’t think.  We garnered a few stares but the crowd in the front room didn’t seem perplexed, although I heard the word “pot” as we strolled by.

            Giacomo seemed to know exactly where he was going, which was no doubt the intended effect, and after opening a closet door, surveying it carefully and announcing “No, honey, you didn’t leave it here,” he found the stairs that lead into the backyard.

            Nobody was nude.  Probably out of respect for the woman in the bridal gown and the men in tuxedos who surrounded her.  “Jesus Christ,” I said, implicating the rest of the group.

            Giacomo didn’t seem fazed and approached the picked-over hors-d’oeuvres in front of the pool where children were swimming.  Natalie pointed out the bar and urged me to get her a drink while she chatted with Marla.  “Go on. . . go on,” she said.

            We had a pleasant enough time, but didn’t talk to anyone or congratulate the bride and groom.  It was apparent that everyone had tacitly assigned us to the other side of the family.  We mooched a couple of drinks and Giacomo made himself at home with the deviled eggs and I remembered, all-of-a-sudden, him doing the same thing at our wedding.  And I wondered what I would have done if a bunch of stoned-ass, drink-mooching, deviled-egg-eating weirdoes had wandered into our reception.  Probably nothing.  And then we left.  There’s something unbearable about going to a wedding uninvited.

            I was back in Natalie’s good graces for the return ride, and she leaned into me.  Everybody was mostly quiet, even in the house.

            Giacomo disappeared into the bathroom and Marla and Natalie collapsed on the couch.  They started to giggle.  I piddled around by the glass-door until I noticed Giacomo’s telescope beneath the window.

            It was difficult to maneuver, heavy and implicitly fragile.    I got the legs apart and screwed the bolt into the bottom and tried to remember how Giacomo had set it up.  The smaller tube had crosshairs like a gun and I aimed those at the wedding party across the canyon.  Then I messed with the doo-hickeys and it was, as it had been: too difficult to see anything besides shadows and shades.  But knowing, having been there, it was easier to picture a new beginning for an anonymous couple and their family and friends.  So anonymous I could have made their wedding into anything.  What?  A quiet, intimate, communion, like I’d hoped ours would be.

            Natalie came outside, squatted down and put her hand in the pool.  You could see all the way to the bottom, as if there weren’t any water at all. “It’s still warm,” she said.

            “I don’t want to,” I said.  I continued gazing across the canyon through Giacomo’s telescope, transfixed.  It was as if I was looking through the crosshairs, with a stranger’s eyes, at what could have been us.