The Visitor Because this is Los Angeles, Michael rents a car when he arrives. Because this is Los Angeles he heads inland as fast as he can. Beyond the first layer of suburbs. Beyond the outer ring of suburbs. Beyond the borderland of planned retirement communities. Beyond. Soon he enters the quiet community that nurtured him towards adulthood. The radio station to which he is listening falters and fades. The once beautiful agricultural valley has become an unplanned retirement community with a median occupant age of 50. A sprawl of housing developments and mobile homes where shopping centers have replaced sweet smelling orange groves, and the last apricot ranches have given way to mortuaries. The nearby mountain ranges are invisible though the haze. A station wagon pulls up in the next lane. A middle aged woman is driving and a very old man is slumped sideways in the passenger seat. He is staring open mouthed at the ceiling and shaking slightly. Michael was brought here to grow, but most of the residents have come here to die. In this poor man's Palm Springs the two biggest occupations are geriatric medicine and embalming. His parents greet him with the story of the plumber who cleared the overflowing drains that very morning. They eat lunch and discuss bran muffin recipes. Then everyone takes a nap until dinner. Michael wanders into the kitchen. "Do you like asparagus?" Mother asks. "Sure." "I made a meat pie, do you want that?" "Ok." "And the mince pie for desert?" "Yup." "What do you want to drink?" "Um, water." "Oh, water?" she seems surprised. "Do you want ice in it?" "No, thanks." "No ice?" "Nope." "You're sure?" "No ice." "What kind of salad dressing do you use?" "Usually make my own." "What do you use?" "You know, oil, vinegar, lemon juice, whatever." "Lemon juice?" "Sometimes." "I wouldn't like that." "I won't make it for you, then." "Let me see if I can find the recipe for that, what was it, I called it Michaelroni, you made for us when you were in college. You were flying around the kitchen, putting in a little of this and that. I still remember it." "I was probably making it up as I went along." "I haven't used the recipe." "It's time for a drink," Father says. "Do you want scotch?" "Sure, and ice." "Water?" "No, thanks." Dinner is served. Mother's meat pie is a deep dish of tender steak pieces in thick gravy, covered with slices of hard-boiled egg and a flaky pie crust. A hearty meal that nearly killed one of Michael's friends after the third helping. There are bland mashed potatoes and an iceberg lettuce salad with those slices of canned beets he can never remember liking. The asparagus is grey-green and falls apart when touched. Michael gamely picks up a stalk and puts it in his mouth. There is no taste and the texture is very similar to Cream of Wheat. He swallows, suppresses a gag as other analogies occur to him, and forces a wan smile onto his face. "More asparagus?" Mother asks. "No. Thanks." He resists the urge to say, "It's over-cooked." It would be, he thinks, fair retribution because Mother, being English, once complained that his pasta wasn't cooked enough for her to eat. She had then explained her theory of food consistency, "It's got to be soft or it isn't cooked. If you're going to cook something, it should be cooked." Michael remembers the story of his grandmother, her mother, Fresh Off the Boat in America, and the corn on the cob. She asked the grocer in Ohio how to cook it. "Just boil it until it's soft," he said. An hour later it still wasn't soft all the way through so the family didn't eat it. And, of course, the recipe for Christmas Plum Pudding. Handed down from generation to generation, the condensed instructions are: 1. Mix ingredients (including one-half pound beef suet) in July. 2. Boil for three days. 3. Store in attic. 4. Retrieve from attic at Christmas time. 5. Boil for seven hours. 6. Eat. The dinner conversation reviews lunch, spars quickly with current events, makes a half-hearted feint at women priests (a sore point for Father), and then lands an unexpected body blow with visiting a 90 year old woman who has developed a fixation on Michael. "She asks about you every time we see her." "I don't remember her." "She was a friend of Marsha's" "I sort of remember Marsha." "She would love to see you." Michael's memories of these older women goes back into the darkest reaches of childhood and consists mainly of violet scented breath, voluminous crinkly dresses, and teary eyed endearments. He wants no part of it. "Are you playing the piano much?" he asks Mother. "Oh, my fingers don't work the way they used to." The matter finally comes to rest with dinner. Michael watches television until two a.m., wishing there were something else of interest, then retires. The next morning he stumbles into the kitchen to find the percolator just finishing his coffee. He has never understood how Mother does it. She must hover around until there is movement in the guest room and then immediately start the machine. "What kind of coffee do you use?" she asks. "Um." He tries to formulate an answer that will make sense to either of them. "Beans from a roaster nearby." "Oh right, your espresso, is that it?" "Umhmm." "It's too strong for us. Daddy said the coffee we had from the last time you were here tasted funny, so I got this one. Is it alright?" "Fine." "Strong enough? Daddy doesn't like it quite so strong." "It's fine." He looks blearily through the stack of newspaper. "Where's the comics?" "What kind of cereal do you like? Do you want eggs too?" Michael grunts and shakes his head. Before him is an array of dry cereals, neatly preserved in jars and cans. He selects one, puts a little sugar on it and goes to the refrigerator for milk. "Have you tried the MocaMix? It's creamy like milk." "Nope." He picks up the open one of three quarts of low fat milk and pours. He lifts the spoon to his mouth. "What kind of sugar do you use?" She asks this at the first breakfast, every time he visits. "Sugar?" "I like this turbindo sugar." She is pulling cans and boxes out of the cabinet above his head. "What kind do you use?" "Brown usually." "This isn't as sticky." "Hmm." Father returns, "Ah, he's up. Remember we're going to Mass at noon." "Oh, yeah. Guess I'd better get on with it." Michael drives them to church in his rental car. This church is where he was raised, living next door in the rectory, which has now become the main entry way. Their kitchen is a chapel and Michael's old bedroom has become a nursery school. It is much smaller than it used to be. The new priest is unremarkable, as is his four year old son, William. Michael barely resists screaming, "Get out! Save yourself while you still can. Go. Now!" He is much too polite to embarase them with an outburst of this sort, which he knows would make no sense to them. At lunch afterward Father asks, "How do you get to work?" "Bike usually." They don't know he means the motorcycle he has been riding for three years. He hopes the subterfuge will work. "Do you have a ten speed?" "Yes." It is true, he does have a dysfunctional ten speed bicycle in the basement. He may slip past. Mother hasn't been attentive. "A bicycle or a motor bike?" Or has she? "Uh." He can't lie to her, "Motor." "Oh." Pause. "Is it big?" "Yup. Big." "Do you wear a helmet?" "Of course." "You ride the bicycle to work?" Now Father is lagging a bit. "Hmm." He starts lying by inflection. At one time he didn't want to get into trouble with them, now he doesn't want them to worry. "It seems to me a bicycle is more dangerous than a motorcycle, in traffic," Mother says. "Uh. Hmm." "What kind of helmet do you have?" she asks. After dinner that night they are lounging around in the family room. Earlier Father had picked up a special order, \fIBambi\fR, at the only real bookstore in the valley. "It was mentioned in an article about Christian symbolism in children's books, along with the Narnia tales and \fICharlotte's Web\fR," was his explanation. He is engrossed in the introduction. Michael has brought a book on the philosophy of structuralism because he is trying to impress a woman with a degree in Intellectual History. Mother has drifted off to sleep. "What are you reading?" Father asks. "Trying to catch up on my education." He hands over the book. When he was in school one of the few things they found they could do together was visit bookstores, when they were out of town where those things existed. Michael still wanders into the odd bookstore looking for his father. Father pages though the book, looks in the index, and checks certain pages. Michael recognizes this behavior. He was taught to look up something he knew in a strange book to see if it made sense, this would tell if the rest was of any use. Father is now looking up "religion" in a book on Levi-Strauss. He passes the book back and asks, "So, what's the Meaning of Life?" Michael has been worrying at this question since puberty, and the answer is right on the tip of his tongue. "There isn't any." "I suppose you're right." The easy acquiescence catches him off guard. "I mean, the search for meaning is an artifact of the way we're built," he backpedals. "We would be better off asking why we need meaning." "You remember Kazantzakis 'I hope for nothing, I desire nothing, I am free'?" Michael remembers this as the refrain from his childhood. He nods. "I guess I'm free now," Father says. Mother suddenly begins shaking her hands in front of her face, as if playing piano in her sleep. Her eyes are still closed. Then she jumps up and begins rhythmically rocking back and forth on her right foot. Now that she is awake she moves swiftly into the back of the house. Her hands and foot have cramped, waking her suddenly, and she has gone for her medication. The next morning it's time for pictures. "Take off your dark glasses," Mother says as she wanders around the front yard with the camera. "Are you ready to take the picture?" "Yes." She steps forward and then back. Pause. He takes off the glasses and squints into the sun. She feints with the shutter. "Oh darn." She looks at the front of the camera for a moment and then winds the film forward. "Get closer together." Fumble. Click. "Ok." He puts the shades back on. "Now I'll take one of you with him." He leaves for Los Angeles. On the way Michael stops in a 'Historical Museum' looking for postcards. Old tools, bottles, photographs, men, and women, are on display. The man behind the counter says, "I'll be with ya in jest a sec." He looks like the old man staring at the ceiling of the station wagon, but is self-locomotive. Michael walks quickly to the other end of the building and stares blankly at a shelf full of knick-knacks from the last century. 'Do they have any photographs with all of us in the frame?' he wonders. XXX (c) 1991 M. I. Smith