Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

mother saying something similar when she left Brian and her little girl to launch her career in New York. She had found Brian’s mellow passivity intolerable, a serious obstacle to her own ambition. Shawna loves her father as is—down to the last tie-dyed T-shirt and Neil Young album—but she’s leaving town just the same; she must worry a little about reconstituting that earlier trauma.
    “He’ll be all right,” I told her. “He always is.”
    “I guess so,” she said, fiddling with a tassel on the pillow. “Will you and Ben come visit me once I’m settled?” She seemed almost waifish at that moment.
    “Of course, sweetie. Ben’s crazy about New York.”
    “I know you aren’t,” she said, “but I’ll make things fun for you.”
    “You always have.”
    I felt tearful all of a sudden, sitting there in that fuckless brothel while the apple of my eye laid out her dreams for my approval. She looked a little wistful herself.
    “Don’t let him grow a ponytail,” she said. “He always does that when he gets depressed.”
    I laughed. “Don’t worry.”
    “I hate ponytails on old dudes.”
    “I hear you.”
    “A guy was in here yesterday who had the greasiest ponytail and every time he—”
    “Can we talk about something else?” I said.
    “All right, Auntie,” she said with an impertinent grin.

5
    The Family Circle
    I t occurred to me recently that this is probably the last house I’ll ever own. (It was the first as well, come to think of it.) The endless possibilities of my youth have been whittled down to this little plot on a hillside, this view of the valley, this perfect lamp, this favorite chair, this flock of wild parrots breakfasting in the hawthorn tree. I’m still enough of a Southerner to love the notion of my own land, my own teacup Tara.
    It’s not unimaginable that Ben and I could one day pick up and move to a condo in Palm Springs or Hawaii, but I wouldn’t bank on it. This is my home on the deepest level; it comforts me in ways I’ve forgotten how to measure. And were we to leave for momentarily greener pastures, I know we’d harbor the fear of all San Franciscans who leave—that the real estate market, that cruelest of sentinels, would never let us back in.
    So I concentrate on what I have and where I am. I take pleasure, for instance, in the way the house is aging—the shingles in particular, which have moved so gracefully past tan and tarnished silver to a rich dark brown. Some of this is just dirt, of course, left there by the vagrant fog, but the effect is enchanting. The shingles have grown as rough and mossy as bark, so the house seems more organic, like something rooted in the earth that will have to return there, sooner or later. To my overly romanticizing eyes, shingles are most beautiful when they’re closest to collapse.
    On my better days, I try to see my own weathering this way. I rarely succeed. I’m not ready to discolor and rot, no matter how charming the process might seem to others. I’ll have to get over this, I know, since I’d rather not leave the planet in a state of panic and self-loathing. I’d rather there be peace and a sense of completion. And I’d like Ben there, of course, cuddling me into the void with the usual sweet assurances. I know that’s not original as fantasies go—and impossible to ordain—but a boy can dream.
    In the meantime, I tinker with our home in a way that Ben finds comical, if not a little pathetic. I arrange objects like talismans in a tomb, carefully balancing according to color, texture, and motif. I could show you, for instance, how the rivets on the bowl on the coffee table are repeated in the frame of the dining room mirror and the base of an Arts and Crafts candlestick. I know where every spot of Chinese red can be found in the living room. I never add anything to the decor without considering the metal-to-wood ratio and the need for the sheen and color of ceramics. “Have nothing in your houses,” William Morris decreed, “that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” and I can show you a wastebasket that fills that bill to a tee. I bought it off eBay for $385. This house will be perfect by the time I’m committed.
    A case in point: one night Ben and I were watching Six Feet Under when I sprang from the sofa and began rearranging the art pottery on the shelf above the TV tansu. Ben indulged me sweetly as I swapped the purple Fulper ginger jar for the light-green one and offset