The White Bicycle Read online

  At the first rodeo, when I was almost twelve, there was a youth competition. I didn't understand exactly what it was all about, but Dad said something as he led me down the stairs about trying to pull the ribbon off the calf's tail. He said the winner would get a hundred dollars. I wanted that money, because I was too young to get a job and it was the amount of fifty weekly allowances, so I followed him. Before I knew it, I was in the ring with the other kids, and we were being given instructions by a cowboy with a starting pistol in his hand. There seemed to be no way out of the ring, and the gunshot nearly scared me to the death.

  "Stop and think," I could hear Shauna saying, and in a few moments I decided I'd better run. I tried to get as far away from the other kids as I could. I saw the calf bolting in front of the kids, and I figured that they would chase it away from me, which was what I was hoping for. I headed in the opposite direction. Suddenly there was the calf. It had circled around and was coming straight toward me. As it brushed by, I saw the ribbon on its tail and because the bow looked so unnatural hanging there I reached out and pulled it off.

  Dad was at the side of the ring, whooping and hollering. I ran over to him and he lifted me over the fence, and then the cowboy came riding up and handed me an envelope. I had won a hundred dollars. Dad was still smiling when we got back to the apartment, and he told Mom all about me being the fastest and smartest runner there.

  I didn't tell him it had been an accident. I was glad we had made him happy, the calf and I. Mom and I went to the motel room. Then we went to bed and in the morning we packed up for home. I offered to pay for the rodeo ticket but Mom said Dad had covered it. I wonder what he covered it with.

  Life is full of opposites. Adults think differently from children. When you are both the child and the adult, you can have different perspectives, even just within yourself. When I went to that rodeo last fall, it wasn't the same as the first time. Last fall my father wanted me to chase the calf again, and that made me mad. I am not a child who can play games like that. I am an adult who wants to go to university and keep a job. If I don't have a job I will not be independent and I will still be sharing a house with my mother when I am fifty. Each time I get an invitation, she will refuse to drive me there and I will have to stay in my room like Stanley in Harold Pinter's play.

  Reading the little gray book by Jean-Paul Sartre that I found on my bookshelf here in France has taught me to think of myself in parts, and to be content with each part that I can comprehend, because they're all connected. My childhood. My adolescence. And now, adulthood. Stories that hold my identity run from past to present, carrying the emotions that I have at last learned to name correctly. Anger, and loss, and joy. Stories that together shape a life, my life, such as it is.

  I am wondering what I should do about the invitation to Cassis, now that my mother has said I can't go. Stop and think, Shauna would say. Stop and think. But think about what? I do not know why we have different perspectives about the Cassis trip, my mother and I. Now that we are both adults, I would have guessed that we'd have the same perspective on more things, but this is not true. When I think about my mother, I see a picture in my head of the flowered handbag, and McIntosh apples, and a jar of Noxzema, and the pink quilt that we used to wrap ourselves in when we watched movies on Friday nights. These things do not help me understand her at all.

  The last movie we watched together was on the airplane. My mother and I haven't watched movies at home for a long time. I don't know why.

  Thinking About Cassis

  How can I get to Cassis, without running away? I have been asking myself this question over and over and now it is Monday, August 11, at 4 pm. My mother won't drive me there. Alan Phoenix won't drive me there. I did not ask Luke Phoenix because the rented car has no insurance for him and so he does not drive it at all. I can't run there and I can't walk there.

  Then suddenly the answer comes to me. I can take a bus. There is a bus stop at the end of our lane, and a schedule on the wall of the shelter. I can bike to the shelter, read the schedule, figure out the appropriate time to be there for the bus to Cassis, and then make a careful plan about what time I need to leave here if I am to be in Cassis for aperitifs. This is what a smart person would do if she wants to go to Cassis and her mother will not drive her.

  "What's wrong with your toenail?" I can hear Alan Phoenix asking my mother. They are in the living room and it is time I went down there and told them my plan. If I don't tell them, it is like running away—and I am finished with running away.

  When I go down there, Alan Phoenix is sorting through the art books and my mother is sitting on the couch with wine glass in her hand.

  "Don't ask," she says to him. I don't know why she would say that.

  "It happened because of the pedicure," I remind her. I don't look at Alan Phoenix when I tell her this. He has not been very helpful about Cassis, and so I just look at my mother. She has not been helpful either, but because we are related I have to talk to her now and then.

  "The damaged part caught inside my shoe today and part of it peeled off," she says to Alan Phoenix, after she inspects her foot. "Never mind. It'll be fine. That's why I've been sleeping with my socks on. Because I knew it would gross you out." To me she says, "You should try some of this supermarket Bordeaux. It's very good, and so cheap here!"

  "Your toenail looks like pictures of toenail fungus I found on the Internet," I say.

  "Never mind!" she says, and now her voice is in the red zone. I have noticed that on this trip the voice most often in the red zone is hers. "You could get busy around here and help out, Taylor, instead of not minding your own business."

  I take a deep breath and say the thing that I have been practicing to myself. It is better than running away, and it is better than doing nothing.

  "On Friday afternoon, I am going to Cassis. That is four days from now. I will go there on a bus and I will be back in the evening. I will be able to do my work with Martin in the morning, as usual."

  There is a sharp intake of breath and I think it is my mother's.

  "Don't be ridiculous. You can't just run off by yourself."

  "I won't be by myself and I'm not running. I am going on a bus with other people. I know that there will be at least one other person on the bus and that is the bus driver."

  "You cannot go there on your own, Taylor. Even if you got to Cassis, how would you find this old woman's house?"

  "What's her name again?" asks Alan Phoenix. He has not been paying good attention. I told him her name yesterday when I asked him to drive me. When he refused to drive me he explained that he did not want to get between me and my mother. I do not understand what he meant by that.

  "Adelaide. Her name is Adelaide. But it's ridiculous to go all that way for tea. Taylor can just give her a phone call."

  "It's not tea. It's aperitifs," I say. "And as long as they are not pigeon eggs I will eat them."

  "You're not going, Taylor, and that's final!" says my mother. She gets up from the couch and goes into the bedroom she shares with Alan Phoenix and slams the door. It is not good to slam doors; it is hard on the hinges. At least now her door is closed, so she will not be tempted to slam it again.

  I hear the bang of the oven door.

  "Suppertime!" calls Martin Phoenix with the voice from his Tango.

  "Come and get it before we eat it all!" says Luke Phoenix, carrying a casserole dish outside through the patio doors.

  "You shouldn't slam the oven door," I say. I also want to tell my mother not to slam doors, but she is having a meltdown in her bedroom and probably wouldn't hear me. If she learned to put her anger into the soles of her feet she would function better. I decide not to think about my trip to Cassis just now. Sometimes, it's better to not think about things all of the time when you can think about them only some of the time and be calmer.

  I watch Luke Phoenix carry more food out to the table. Luke Phoenix isn't hot but he does have nice red hair that is curly and wispy around the b
ack of his neck. He has stopped wearing corduroy pants and for the first time he is wearing shorts. His legs have a lot of hair sprouting out of them.

  It suddenly occurs to me what my mother meant when she told me I should hang around with other young people. What she meant was that I should not collect Luke Phoenix as my next boyfriend. This is embarrassing advice. Luke Phoenix is my friend. He is not someone I think of in that other way. I am glad my mother is in the bedroom having a meltdown. I wish she would stay in there.

  The table in the backyard has a lot of food on it. While I go out and count things, I hear Alan Phoenix going into the bedroom. First he closes their window, pulling in the shutters that open onto the table where we are going to have dinner. Then I hear quiet voices talking, but I can't hear what anyone is saying.

  In a little while, he and my mother come out and sit at the table.

  "You fellows have done a good job," says Alan Phoenix, waving his hands over the table. "What kind of meat is this?"

  "Lapin," says Martin Phoenix, turning up the volume on his Tango so it sounds as if he is announcing to a large audience.

  We all look at the table. There are small bowls of salad. There is a casserole dish of macaroni and cheese. There is a plate of meat on its own bones. There are big bowls of croissants. I sit down and pick up a croissant. It is filled with chocolate.

  "What is lapin?" asks my mother.

  "Uh … it's rabbit," says Alan Phoenix. "Is that what you boys got at the Vaugines market?"

  "Yeah, lucky we got there before it shut down. They close at 1 pm, you know," says Luke Phoenix. "It was the last rabbit they had. There was this lady who had her eye on it, but we got there first."

  "Rabbit?" repeats my mother.

  "You didn't push into line with Martin's chair, did you?" asks Alan Phoenix, pushing his lips out into a puckered frown.

  "His chair has to be somewhere," Luke Phoenix says.

  "I don't want to hear about you using Martin's chair to your advantage," Alan Phoenix says. "That's wrong and sets him a bad example."

  I try to listen but I take a bite of the croissant. It is delicious.

  "Chocolate pain is the best," says Martin Phoenix with his Tango.

  "It's not pronounced 'pain,'" says Alan Phoenix, laughing.

  I take another bite of my croissant. I like it a lot.

  "It's a pain to see it and not eat it," says Martin Phoenix and he makes his laughing sounds.

  Luke Phoenix eats an olive and spits the pit at his brother.

  When the pit hits Martin Phoenix in the head, Martin Phoenix wiggles and Luke Phoenix says, "Hot cross buns!" and Martin Phoenix uses his Tango to say, "You are a poop." I still don't understand why Luke Phoenix talks about buns. Could this be a script that just means "Gotcha?" People should just say what they mean.

  I try a little of the sweet Bordeaux. It isn't bad. It isn't good, either, but at least it doesn't taste like fish. I am happy that it only cost three euros.

  I decide to keep not thinking about my trip to Cassis right now. Sometimes, it's better to postpone thinking of things until later. What I do think about is my mother and me. Who has responsibility for my existence? I wonder. I remember Jean-Paul Sartre's little gray book and think: How can I be free if I don't make any decisions for myself?

  I take another chocolaty bite. She can tell me not to go all she wants, but my mother isn't the boss of me. On Friday I am going to Cassis whether she likes it or not.

  Tuesday, August 12

  Today, I followed the schedule but my mother stayed in her bedroom with a headache. I do not know if she really had a headache or if she was just reading in there.

  I am thinking about Friday and wondering if I really should take the bus to Cassis on my own. I want to make this decision but my mother is on the other side of the argument trying to force me to make the opposite decision.

  Three more days until Friday.

  Wednesday, August 13

  It is Wednesday, two days before I might take the 2 pm bus to Cassis. It is a cooler day and I have finished my work with Martin Phoenix. The little red circles have covered his whole body, just like the French doctor said they would. Pityriasis Versicolor. The cornstarch hasn't helped. Clearly my mother does not know everything.

  The sky does not look as though it is going to rain, so I get the white bicycle and follow the red-and-white trail into the woods. I have been here before in real life and in dreams, but this time I am determined to get to the end of the path where there is a road, according to the map. If I do not find the road, I will not be able to go up the mountain and I think the view will be better from up there.

  When the path becomes too rough, I carry the bicycle over rocks, an old stream bed, huge tree roots, and a sharp ridge. A downward turn and the trail is scattered with horse manure, which I navigate around. Martin Phoenix would like this, I think. I continue, and in six minutes I see what I have been looking for. A road.

  The road winds around through vineyards and lavender fields. I stop when I see something glimmering in the ditch, and it is a broken mirror. It is a small one, maybe a rearview mirror from a motorbike. All the pieces are in the frame and it looks like some kind of puzzle. When I look into it, all I see are pieces of me.

  I think of Jean-Paul Sartre's little book. Who am I? Am I someone, anyone, or no one? Last fall, when I read Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, I thought about spending your life waiting. What if I was waiting for no one, and the no one was me? I don't want to be waiting for anyone, but the trouble is that I don't know whom to stop waiting for. I used to be waiting for boyfriends, but now I know that I don't need a boyfriend to be an adult. Then I waited for a job, but now I know that just having a job doesn't make you independent. I also know that it's hard to stop waiting when you don't have all the facts.

  Near the broken mirror is a French cigarette package. Smoking is bad and whoever left this here is double bad— once for smoking, and once for littering. I take photographs of the cigarette pack, the broken mirror, and the red-andwhite trail. These will be important pictures to store in the album that I will make to show other people the details of my trip. I can keep the images in my head, like frozen pictures or movies, but it's hard to show these to other people without a photo album. Photo albums are kind of like rearview mirrors for family and friends. They let people look behind you at things that have already happened.

  When I pause on the hillside and look toward the village, I am surprised and pleased. I am looking at the scene in the painting on the wall of my bedroom. I stand for a long time and look. I try to really see what is there. At the same time, I am also seeing things that the painter missed. I see the view in layers just like the painter created in the watercolor, but I also see pieces that are missing. When I get back to the villa I will do a sketch of my own. It will show all of this and so I do not need to use any more words about it here.

  As I turn back toward home, I see a different road connecting to the one I'm on. I discover that it leads closer to the villa than the trail through the woods, and I am glad to take it. One way carrying the white bicycle was enough. I am glad to be done for now with the forest.

  "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep," I have heard Luke Phoenix quote from a poem by Robert Frost. "But I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep/and miles to go before I sleep. Robert Frost, 1923." The woods here are not exactly lovely. They are just a place that you have to forge through in order to get somewhere else. I wonder if sometimes life is like that, with places you just have to get through in order to be anywhere at all.

  Thursday, August 14

  It is the night before I take the 2 pm bus to Cassis and my mother is still trying to convince me not to go. She has just left my bedroom in an angry mood and slammed the door. I have locked the door so that no one can slam it again. Slamming doors is very damaging to their hinges.

  Before I came to my room, I helped Luke Phoenix and Martin Phoenix with the dishes. Martin Phoenix s
till has the ring rash all over his body. Pityriasis Versicolor. The French doctor was completely right and it is not diaper rash. My mother will have to think of something else to do with the cornstarch.

  "'Do not go gentle into that good night,'" Luke Phoenix is singing from the hall. I think this is a line from a poem he has been studying.

  "Is that William Shakespeare, 1609?" I ask.

  "Nope, Dylan Thomas, 1951," he says, coming into my room and flopping down on the couch by the bookshelf.

  " 'Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rage at close of day … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.' Or something like that."

  "What does it mean?" I ask.

  "Don't give up without a fight," says Luke Phoenix.

  "Are you talking about me taking the bus to Cassis?" I ask.

  "I'm talking about life," he says. Then he stands up and heads over to the window. I look at his wispy red hair from the back and wish that he were my brother. But not until the summer is over and I have finished my job with Martin Phoenix.

  "Are you waiting for someone?" I ask.

  "You could say that," he answers, without turning around. "Or maybe I'm just trying not to fall off."

  "Fall off what?"

  "The world," he says, and laughs. I don't know what is funny until I remember that last year I told him that same thing when I was having a meltdown. You can get kind of dizzy when you're confused about something.

  "I understand," I say.

  "Well, join the club," he says, and laughs again but he doesn't sound happy.

  "What kind of club?" I ask.

  "It's just a saying," he says, and sighs. "Join the club—it means we are both sharing the same feeling."

  "Okay," I say, and then when he doesn't answer, I say, "I get it. I get …" I stop and then I remember something I have heard before. "I get the picture."