my piano performance at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens? It’s also on YouTube. And how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t want to get married.
These battles never ended in a clear victory. The best I could hope for was a return to the status quo, which usually happened right before I had to leave again. Now my father’s will had opened a new front in the conflict with my mother, and this time Salma was involved in the hostilities as well. But I felt too weak to fight. I couldn’t bear to spend another day in the house. Before going to bed that night, I filled up my car with gas, packed my bag, and zipped my laptop into its case. I would leave for Oakland first thing in the morning, I decided.
And yet when it was time to go, I couldn’t face the thought of returning to my apartment, either. Going back to that life meant I had put my father’s death behind me, that I had moved past it somehow, and I hadn’t. So I asked my mother for the key to the cabin in Joshua Tree. Maybe “cabin” was too fancy a term for it. Though it sat on an acre of land, it was a simple one-room shack, with large windows and a slanted roof, built by a homesteader in the 1940s. One day, driving back from the national park, my father had seen a FOR SALE sign on the side of the road and called to make an offer—without consulting my mother. He said it was a steal at $25,000 and a fantastic investment; she called it a dump and a waste of money. He said he’d renovate it and rent it out; she retorted that no tourists would ever want to stay there. Every time the two of them talked they quarreled, and the cabin gave them a fresh subject of contention. My mother handed me the key reluctantly, all the while trying to talk me out of it. The cabin was too small. The swamp cooler didn’t work well. It might be too hot there during the day. And it could get cold at night. Sometimes there were coyotes.
I didn’t care. It was just for a few days, I told her. All the way to the cabin, I thought about my father. He had driven on this stretch of the 62 every day. Here was the gas station where he stopped for refills, the used books store where he picked out his paperbacks, the liquor store where he bought his beer. Already, life went on without him.
When I got to the cabin, I found that the front door wouldn’t open. The key got stuck. With some effort, I pulled it out and went back to the car. Remembering a trick my father had taught me, I rummaged through the glove compartment for a pencil, with which I colored the teeth of the key until they were dark with graphite. Then I tried the lock again. This time, the door creaked open. The smell of dust and musk immediately made me sneeze.
The place was barely furnished. Under the window sat a gray sofa, its cushions stained and pilling. There was a small kitchen, with two stools at the counter, and a Formica-topped table with an unsteady leg. A stone fireplace separated the living area from the queen-size bed. The bathroom was the only private space. I opened the kitchen door and stepped into the backyard. There were several yuccas, a Joshua tree, and two garden chairs, caked with dust and weighted with stones to prevent their tumbling over in the desert wind. Here and there were tools my father had bought with the intent of landscaping, but by the looks of the yard he had never used.
I walked back through the house to the front porch, where the swamp cooler hung. A turtledove had built its nest on top of it and now the bird turned its head toward me, as if daring me to disturb its peace. We stared at each other for a moment. “All right, little mama,” I told her, palms raised in defense. “We can share.” Slowly, I slid my hand behind the metal box and turned on the water valve. All the while the turtledove kept watching me. I