Tart. Jody Gehrman

morning.

      All the same, I can’t keep a tiny bit of warmth from my voice. “No, it’s me.”

      A little-boy smile takes over his face. “Oh. Ms. Claudia, I presume?” He wraps his arms around me, pulling me down against his chest, and for a second or two I’m so intoxicated by the hot-skin smell of this embrace I nearly forget that his better half is currently rifling through her sock drawer for a .38 special. Resist, Claudia. Resist.

      “Listen,” I say, extricating myself from his arms. “There’s been a little incident this morning.”

      “Did we wet the bed?”

      “Not that kind of incident. An angry-woman-bursts-into-room sort of incident.”

      He looks stunned. “Shit. Really?”

      “Would I make this up?”

      “How do I know?” he counters. “I hardly know you.”

      “Yes, well, ditto,” I say. “And obviously, there’s a few things I should have asked. Like, say, ‘Are you married?’” I’m sitting up now, hugging my knees.

      “Claudia,” he reaches out to touch my wild nest of hair. “Shit. I’m really sorry.” Not the oh-that-was-just-my-crazy-kid-sister explanation I was praying for.

      I stare at him incredulously. “So you are, then? Married, I mean?”

      “Well, divorced.” He pauses. “Practically.”

      “What does practically divorced mean?”

      “We’re legally separated.”

      “Is she the Friend in the cottage?” He hesitates before nodding. “Jesus, Clay, you had like nine hours of candid conversation to come clean with me, at least let me know what I’m getting—”

      “You never asked.”

      Indeed. What can I say? I never asked.

      CHAPTER 8

      It’s foggy and I’m shivering when Clay drops me and Medea at the Greyhound station downtown. His truck was warm and smelled like cocoa butter. I wanted nothing more than to curl up there before his heater and never leave, but my pride forced me to refuse his offers of a sweatshirt and breakfast. On the drive here, our conversation was limited but revealing.

      CLAY: I know this looks really bad.

      CLAUDIA: Uh-huh.

      CLAY: Really, really bad. I feel like such a shit.

      CLAUDIA: Okay…

      CLAY: Did you talk to her?

      CLAUDIA: Who?

      CLAY: Monica.

      CLAUDIA: No. It wasn’t exactly an ideal condition for conversation.

      CLAY: I’m not in love with her anymore. I want you to understand that.

      CLAUDIA: Right. You’re just married to her.

      CLAY: Not for very long.

      CLAUDIA: And you didn’t mention this earlier because…?

      CLAY: I know, I know. This looks really bad. (Repeat)

      So here I am, sitting at the Greyhound station with two homeless guys bundled into blankets, one of them reading GQ. Suddenly I’m living the lyrics of every old-timey down-and-out blues number. I’m still wearing this positively crusty-with-human-grime ensemble: orange sundress, sweat-drenched bra, bloodstained underwear, and I’ve little hope of changing into something “fresher” (as my mother would say) anytime soon, seeing as I now own no other clothing. In fact, I now own absolutely nothing.

      Oh, God. My favorite Levi’s, reduced to ash. Sea-green cashmere sweater: ditto. Everything—no—I mean everything I ever called my own is now dwelling on another plane of existence.

      I plod toward the ticket booth and realize I have no idea where I’m going. My original plan was to camp in the bus until I found a place to live—hopefully before school started. Now the bus is, for obvious reasons, not a reliable dwelling. So I’ve got to figure out where to crash until I can rent my own little shelter from the world. I tell myself this is all very Zen, very neo-Dharma bum and therefore cool (except I keep lugging my cat everywhere—did Kerouac do that?), but when I approach the glassed-in face of the ticket vendor and I look into her kind blue eyes, I find myself fighting off tears. I fumble for some dollars, pulling them from my bra, but they’re so wrinkled and wilted I can’t force them into any semblance of order.

      “Morning,” she says. “Where would you like to go?”

      “Um.”

      She smiles. “Let’s start with the basics—north, south, east or west?”

      I manage a weak chuckle. “Give me a second,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

      I sit down on one of the benches and mop at my tears with the back of my hand. I close my eyes and try to breathe. Medea squirms in her box. I open the flaps a crack. Her eyes are glow-in-the-dark as they peer up at me from within her shadowy little cardboard cage. “Shh,” I say. “I’ll get you a nice treat when we get home.” Home.

      “Excuse me,” I say to the ticket lady. “Do you have any buses that go to Calistoga?”

      She consults a thick directory. “Santa Rosa,” she says. “Is that close enough?”

      “I guess it’ll have to be.”

      “One way or round trip?”

      “One way, please.”

      “That’ll be eleven dollars.”

      I hand her a limp twenty and she counts me out my change.

      “You going to check out those mud baths?”

      “God, no,” I say. “Just going home.”

      Calistoga’s only about three or four hours from Santa Cruz by car, but by bus it’s a twelve-hour saga. I take the Greyhound to Santa Rosa, then another bus from there, and finally walk the last eight blocks to my father’s house. By the time Medea and I arrive on his doorstep we’re exhausted and snappish, having schlepped across three counties in raunchy-smelling clothes with a full cast of trying characters, including an ancient man in a wheelchair who, having mistaken me for his dead wife, wouldn’t stop trying to hold my hand, and a wiry little elf of a bus driver who threatened to kick us off when he heard Medea mewing.

      Over the course of the day I’ve developed a serious obsession with showering. That first blast of cool water on my chest, leaning in to soak my face, then my hair; the gentle massage of liquid needles against my scalp. The whole experience has become my nirvana—a longed-for state I can almost taste but never achieve.

      It would have been quicker to go to Mom’s in Mill Valley, but thinking of her latest husband and her spoiled, Britney Spears-clone stepdaughter makes me want to yuke, so I opt for Dad’s.

      “Claudia,” my father says, opening the door. “You’re—wow. You’re here.”

      “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call.” We just stand there awkwardly, surveying each other, and for an agonizing second I think he’s not going to ask me in. Then, as if reading my thoughts, he steps back and gestures toward the living room a little too eagerly, like a waiter in an empty restaurant. “Come in, come in,” he gushes. And then, his tone going puzzled again, “You’re really here.”

      “Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

      He just looks confused. “Oh, you know me—I haven’t really adjusted to all of this technology stuff.”

      “Dad, can I let Medea out? She’s been in this stupid box all day.”

      “Who?”

      But I’m already releasing the poor thing;