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-17-
Outside the city, the sky turned clear blue. The 280 freeway acted as a pseudo fault line that separated the Bay Area’s notorious tectonic plates. To the west was a lush forest of laurel and oak fed by soil made rich by volcanic ash. The grasslands to the east were supported by sedimentary earth, where the rolling hills were green for too-brief a time after the rains. Now, in early June, the wildflowers had already gone to seed, and the meadow grass was turning the color of camel hair.
For much of the drive from San Francisco, some ineffable sense gnawed at me. I was unable to shake the image of the boulder poised overhead. On impulse, I detoured off the freeway and parked to overlook the Crystal Springs reservoir.
When was the last time I followed an impulse? When was the last time I had an impulse? I stared blankly at the glittering water and the forest beyond the far shore. Joggers passed along a bike trail that traced the edge of the reservoir. When did I lose myself? How had I become so tentative toward life? As a girl, I’d been fiercely unafraid, full of dare and impulse.
I tossed off my heels and stripped off my hose, leaving them on the seat of my Pathfinder. Barefoot, in my sleeveless hourglass dress, I hiked toward the trail. The meadow grass smelled sweet and pungent, the scent of things going to seed. I plucked a strand of grass and knotted it through my curls in a loose ponytail.
Jamison Wunderlund’s voice nagged at me, so self-assured. It wasn’t what she’d said—When I don’t like what I see, I make it a point to look especially hard. It was the way she said it. Jamison Wunderlund had something that I’d lost. Was it wonder? The word pierced my veneer and needled at my insides. If I hadn’t left my purse locked in the car, I would have popped a tranquilizer. Instead, I concentrated as I pressed my feet down hard on jagged bits of gravel. I veered right and left to seek the roughest shards along the path. I looked up, and in that instant, a breeze swept across the water, refracting color from cobalt to sunlight. It was in that one undistracted breath the word came to me. Hypocrite. In naming the emotion, I felt my tension ease.
Amanda was right. The message of my art had always been one of confrontation. Look at the whole. Don’t turn away. Yet all I had done since I’d learned about Jason Leroux’s death was turn away.
In truth, since I’d married Scott, much of my life was spent turning away through a cornucopia of pills that he prescribed and monitored. I immediately regretted the thought, wished I could unthink it. It was a rock I wasn’t ready to look under.
I brought my foot down on a point of gravel and eased into the pain. The sensation was insufficient to hold my attention. I needed the pills. Scott told me to trust him. These will make your life easier, he assured me. And they had. Life became miraculously easy when viewed in soft focus. It was just one more way my marriage was a strange fairy tale. Like the previous evening, when I refused the drugs, he’d become sullen and withdrawn.
“Don’t you trust me to do what’s best for you?” he’d say. “I love you, Chloe. I’d do anything for you. All I ask in return is that you trust me.” Scott was more than my husband. He was my doctor, my mentor, my guru…my best friend.
A pair of geese skidded across the surface of the water. I picked a strand of fox tail grass and brushed the furry end against my cheek. Even Scott’s lovemaking, it seemed to me, was about my submission to his authority. Scott demanded little of me and encouraged me to concentrate freely on my art. But now, I faced the intermittent questions that I’d always managed to push from my mind. What is he hiding? And are the pills to make my life easier, or to make my life easier to control?
