Points of Departure Read Online Free PDF Page A

watching. They will take care of you.
    Just as you get back to the house, the landlord drives up in his pickuptruck. He has come to see that everything is okay. You are wearing a sleeveless shirt. He notices the bruises on your arms and asks about them. You shake your head, looking away so that he can’t see the lie in your eyes. “I’m so clumsy,” you say. “Always banging into cupboard doors and counters.” The cupboard doors are too high to bruise your arms and the counters are too low, but the landlordsays nothing more. People believe what they want to believe; people see what they want to see.
    You give him coffee to drink. Your husband would not like having this other man sit in his kitchen, even though the landlord is an older man, potbellied and unattractive.
    Your husband would not like it, but it seems harmless enough and you are lonely. You ask him about the oak trees. He tells you thatthey are California live oaks, tough trees that flourish under difficult conditions.
    “How long have they been there, so close to the house?” you ask him.
    “A long time,” he says, “a very long time.” They were old when his grandmother was growing up. His grandmother had lived in the house alone for many years, after his grandfather had died.
    You nod. You like the thought of a woman living alonein, this house, happy among the trees.
    “I offered to cut back the oaks for her,” the landlord says. “They need trimming, sure enough. But she didn’t want me to. Had a thing about them, she did.”
    You smile, understanding his grandmother across the years. She knew about the women in the oaks. You think you would have liked his grandmother.
    You have lived in the farmhouse for two weeks when yourhusband decides that you must celebrate the two-week anniversary of the move. He calls you from work and tells you not to make dinner. He brings home a pepperoni pizza; turns the lights low, and puts an old Elvis Presley album on the stereo. Together, you eat pizza from paper plates, and he talks and jokes. He tells you about his boss, imitating the way the man puffs out his cheeks when he talksand making you laugh.”
    When Elvis sings “Love Me Tender,” your husband takes your hand and pulls you up off the couch. He holds you close. As you dance, he sings along with Elvis, his voice deep and loving. When the song ends, he kisses you.
    In the sudden silence, you hear the wind rattling in the branches outside. You ignore the sound. Your bruises have faded and you are happy. You think rightnow that you will always be happy.
    When you were a child, your family moved a lot. Your father worked as a mechanic in a garage, and he could get work anywhere. When he didn’t like his boss or the house or a town, he moved. Sometimes you stayed in one place for six months; sometimes, for three; sometimes, only for two. You and your sister were jerked from school; you packed your things in thecardboard boxes that your mother never bothered to throwaway, and you drove to a new town, a new house, a new school. You had no choice.
    Sometimes, you would cry about leaving your friends.
    Once, you ran away and tried to stay at a friend’s house, reasoning that your parents might leave without you, they just might. But they didn’t. Your father found you, and you moved again.
    After that, yourparents never warned you before a move. You would notice an odd tension around the house, a peculiar feeling of activity even when everything was still. Then one morning, you would wake up and your mother would be wrapping the dishes in newspaper and packing them away in boxes.
    After a while, you stopped making friends. What was the use when you knew you would be moving in a month, in two months,in half a year? No use. No use at all.
    You swore that when you were grown-up you would live in one house. You would stay there with your husband who would take good care of you. You would live in the house all your life and never move. That’s why you like