ANN PACKER.

MENDOCINO.

Ninety.

BLISS IS DRIVING north on Highway 1, looking at the crashing Pacific. She would like to pull the car over and walk along the water"s edge, but there is no beach here, only cliffs jutting out over the ocean. The mountains, the road, the water-it"s so gorgeous it"s getting monotonous. So she begins to make small promises to herself. If Gerald starts in on the beauty of the self-sufficient life, she will allow herself a solitary one-hour walk. If Marisa invites her to join in the baking of bread or the pickling of cuc.u.mbers or the gathering of fresh-laid eggs, she will invent a friend who lives nearby with whom she has promised to have a drink. These people-her younger brother, Gerald, and his girlfriend, Marisa (his R.F.L., as he calls her, his Reason For Living, and, really, this irks Bliss as much as anything else)-live in Mendocino County, two and a half hours north of San Francisco, a mile from the coast, in a small, isolated house of their own design. It is, Bliss remembers, a nice enough house, made tacky by a pair of stained gla.s.s windows that flank the front door-windows that Marisa made. She is, Gerald has said more than once, an artisan. Life for Marisa-and, now, for Ger-ald-is about using your hands whenever you can. Bliss has been tempted in the past to point out that your brain must contribute something to this equation, but she is determined to keep all snide remarks to herself on this visit. After all, it will be the first time she has seen them in over a year. And, too, today is the tenth anniversary of their father"s suicide. She wants to be on her best behavior.

Bliss would like to think that this reunion was Gerald"s idea-a peace offering of sorts-but she is sure that Marisa is behind it. Even the way Gerald asked her sounded like Marisa: didn"t she think it would be nice if they could "be together" for a weekend. Until a couple of years ago-until Marisa-Gerald was a sensible man. Stodgy even, with his job working for a big accounting firm, with his careful haircuts and his fuel-efficient cars. They had a nice relationship; every four or five months Bliss would fly up from L.A. and Gerald would squire her around San Francisco, surprising her with tickets to chamber music concerts, with out-of-the-way Asian restaurants. They would exchange work stories, and, into a second bottle of wine, confide in each other the news of their most recent failures at love. It amazes Bliss that until this moment she never once realized it was because they were failures that they talked about them. Now Gerald has his success, and it is as if the two of them had never been anything but what they are now: wary, cordial.

As Bliss turns from the coastal highway onto the road to Gerald and Marisa"s property, she realizes that she has come empty-handed: no bottle of wine, no flowers, nothing. It would be worse if this were her first visit-she has been here once before, a year ago June, when Gerald and Marisa threw a housewarming party and she flew up for the day with Jason-but still, she ought to have something. So she makes a U-turn on the narrow road and heads back to the little store she pa.s.sed a few miles back.

She didn"t get a very good look at the place when she drove by, and it"s a disappointment. She was hoping for a little country fruit and vegetable stand; she could have bought a dozen dusty peaches and offered them as coals to Newcastle-Gerald, at least, would have gotten it. She"ll be lucky if this place has a head of iceberg; it might as well be a 7-Eleven.

She walks up and down the aisles, looking for something halfway suitable. The only beer they have isn"t expensive enough to give someone as a gift, and when she looks at the refrigerator section, thinking she might find some cheese, there"s next to nothing there, either-just Velveeta and the kind of cream cheese that"s whipped and has things added to it. She is drifting through the store, ordering herself to buy something, when she comes to the packaged cookies. She puts her hand out to a package, retracts it, then reaches again and picks the cookies up. They are Ideal bars-Gerald"s favorite cookies when they were children. She"s surprised they still make them; she hasn"t seen or thought of them in years. The packaging hasn"t changed a bit, though, and now she remembers Gerald h.o.a.rding whole packages of them in his room, eating them in bed at night. Their rooms shared a wall, and sometimes when she"d turned off her light and was lying wide awake in bed she could hear the cellophane crinkling.

She buys six packages. It seems a ridiculous number, as she tosses them onto the seat of the car and heads back up the road. One, maybe, or two, but six? She doesn"t want to think of what Marisa will say.

IT IS ALMOST dusk when Bliss turns down the long driveway leading to their house. She left L.A. at six this morning, and her shoulders ache. She should have flown and rented a car at the airport, as she and Jason did last summer, but she"d convinced herself it would be fun to drive. She thinks now that the real reason she drove was to put off this moment for as long as she could.

She gets out of the car and stretches her arms over her head, bending from side to side; she hopes they have a decent bed. Then the front door opens and there is Gerald, in shorts and hiking boots and with-she can"t believe it-a beard.

"The weary traveler," he says, coming down the walk to her car. "Are you dead?"

"Yes," she says. "I"m dead and I"ve gone to heaven and met this man who looks so familiar to me." She reaches up and touches his beard. "This is new," she says.

"Like it?"

He is darker than she, and with the beard his face has a slightly menacing look. "It makes you look older," she says.

"Than who?"

She is about to answer with some kind joke ("Than me, the aging spinster") when she realizes that he isn"t really paying atten-tion-he"s looking back at the house.

Marisa appears, and Bliss has to admit it: she"s beautiful. She is one of those tall, earthy women with frizzy hair-brown, in this case-but her size and strength are very feminine. She wears a flowered skirt and a man"s sleeveless undershirt, and her arms and legs are lean, golden. Bliss can understand why Gerald is attracted to her-and attracted he is. When she joins them at Bliss"s car, he puts an arm around her waist and squeezes her, as if she were the one who had just arrived.

"How are you?" Marisa asks. It sounds to Bliss like an invitation to make a long confession.

"OK," Bliss says. "You look great. Both of you-you look so healthy and fit."

"We are," says Marisa, and Bliss thinks, Well, the battle lines are drawn.

They go into the house, Gerald carrying her suitcase and Bliss holding the brown bag that contains the cookies. Gerald leads her to the guest room, which is in the back of the house, next to the kitchen. He sets the suitcase down and turns to her. For a moment she thinks he is going to tell her something-a secret, something he hasn"t told Marisa, even something about Marisa-but all he says is "The bathroom"s through there if you want to wash up. Come on into the kitchen whenever you"re ready."

He leaves, and she realizes she"s been hugging the cookies to her chest; and this would have been the perfect time to give them to him. She sits on the bed, and when she finds that it"s nice and firm, her relief is so great she"s surprised. She goes into the bathroom to splash some water on her face.

In the kitchen Marisa is chopping vegetables; Gerald is uncorking a bottle of wine. The windowsills are lined with jars of things, Bliss can"t tell what-they are murky and either red or purple or green. Marisa sees her looking at them and says, "I"m so far behind on my canning."

"Don"t listen to her," Gerald says. "You should see the cellar." He offers Bliss a gla.s.s of wine and she takes it, warning herself to be careful-the last thing she wants is to have to get through tomorrow with a hangover.

"Why don"t you show Bliss around while I get dinner ready?" Marisa says. "Before it gets too dark." It seems to Bliss that Marisa has this-has everything-all planned out.

"Blister?" Gerald says, and she blushes with pleasure; he hasn"t called her that in years.

"I"d love it."

"Bring your wine." He heads for the doorway, then turns back and looks at her feet. "Actually, do you have any other shoes? It"s a bit muddy in places."

She does, but they"re no more suitable for mud than these. She"s suddenly very embarra.s.sed-as if they could know what"s in her suitcase, or in her closet at home: nothing rugged. "Think I"m a prima donna, do you?" she says. "What"s a little mud?"

Gerald shrugs, but Marisa says, "You can"t go out in those, you"ll ruin them. We"ve had rain almost every day for the last two weeks." She goes to a closet and pulls out some rubber boots that remind Bliss of a pair she had in elementary school. "Here," Marisa says, "try these."

They"re huge, probably three or four sizes too big, but Bliss slips off her sandals and steps into the boots. "OK," she says. "Great. Thanks."

"They"re too big, aren"t they?" Marisa says. "Wait, I"ll get you some socks."

"Jesus, Mare, we"re only going to be gone for ten minutes," Gerald says, but this doesn"t seem to have any effect on Marisa; she disappears, then returns with two pairs of heavy socks for Bliss.

By the time they get outside, the light has nearly faded. Everything is a deep violet-the sky, the field behind the house, even Gerald"s face. Bliss wishes she could tell what his expression is; is he irritated at Marisa?

"This way," he says, setting off around the house. "We"ve done a lot since you were here."

First he shows her the herb garden, a fenced-off square with neat little rows of more herbs than Bliss can imagine anyone wanting. He points them out, one by one, and Bliss tries to make admiring sounds. Then he launches into an explanation of how great it is to grow your own herbs, how they"re useful for much more than just cooking. He bends and picks something, then holds it up to her nose. "Smell good?" he says.

It does, but she doesn"t know what it is. "Mmm."

"It"s rosemary," he says.

"Nice."

He looks down at the plants and scuffs at the earth with the toe of his boot. "We"ve been thinking," he says, but he doesn"t go on.

"I wouldn"t worry about it too much," Bliss says. "I do it, too, sometimes." Immediately she"s sorry.

"Should I tell you this?" Gerald says. "Oh, why not. We"ve been thinking of having a baby."

Bliss is stunned. Not that it"s so hard to imagine Gerald as a father-she"s always thought he should have children. And Marisa was obviously born to have babies, the ultimate show of capability. But she realizes that in the back of her mind she"s been waiting for him to go back to San Francisco, to being who he was.

"Are you?" she says finally. "Wow."

He waves the rosemary in her face. "Marisa wants to have a girl and name her Rosemary."

"Nice," Bliss says. And if it"s a boy, Oregano?

They stand still in the herb garden for a little while longer, then Gerald says, "Come see the chicken coop. I built it myself."

WHEN GERALD"S TOUR is over it is truly dark, the kind of clear, chilly night that"s rare in Bliss"s part of the state. There are so many stars out it looks like there"s barely enough room for them all in the sky. She wonders whether Gerald can still identify the constellations; one winter when they were children, their father set up a telescope on the back porch, and after dinner on clear nights he"d tell them to put on their coats and they"d troop outside to look at the sky. Bliss remembers how impatient her father was with her: No, Bliss, he"d say, that"s Taurus; I"ve told you before. You"re not using your head. She"d look over and see her mother silhouetted in the doorway, and although she knew her mother would welcome her back inside-Let Gerald do it, her mother would say, then your father will be satisfied-Bliss would stay outside, fingers getting numb, and try to remember.

When they reach the front door, Gerald stops and says, "I hope you don"t mind vegetarian."

"Not at all," Bliss says. "It"ll do me good to be so wholesome."

Gerald bites his lip, and she sees that this time she has offended him. "Seed to table," he says. "I know you think it"s dumb or pretentious or something, but it"s really important to me. It makes me feel like I"m in control of my life. Or at least part of it."

He turns to open the door. To stop him she says, "I don"t think it"s dumb at all," and she"s surprised to find that this is true. It"s the way she sometimes feels about the bookstore: she and her partner order books and the books arrive and they put them on the shelves and people buy them. "It"s like the bookstore," she says.

"I"m not sure I get the connection," Gerald says. "But thanks. It matters to me that you don"t condemn my life."

The directness of this unsettles her; it has always unsettled her that he can say something so revealing, so personal, and not have the saying of it undo him. It"s the kind of confession that would choke her up. He stares at her for a moment, but the only reply she can think of is "Don"t you ever miss eating meat?"

He laughs. "Not much. And when I do I get in the truck and drive over to Santa Rosa to a place that makes a great meatball sub." He grins and opens the door, motioning her to go in ahead of him. Once they"re inside, he heads for the kitchen, but she stops to take off the muddy boots. It"s silly, really, but as she peels the socks down over her feet she"s filled with the strangest feeling of satisfaction: Marisa may not like it-she may not even know it-but when he wants to he still eats meat.

There"s a delicious, spicy smell coming from the kitchen as Bliss heads down the hall. When she gets there, though, she stops in the doorway; Gerald and Marisa are standing at the sink, talking in low tones. Marisa has pulled her hair into some kind of bun, and Gerald is running his finger up and down her neck.

"Hi," Bliss says.

They pull apart and turn to face her. "Hi," says Marisa.

"Hungry?" Gerald asks. "I"m starved."

Marisa pats his shoulder. "Lucky you," she says. "Dinner"s almost ready." She smiles at Bliss.

"Almost?" he says in mock outrage.

She laughs. "It will be as soon as you get the salad out."

Bliss stands in a corner and watches as they move around the kitchen, taking things from the refrigerator and stovetop and oven and putting them on the table. They don"t look at each other or touch, but they"re connected somehow-it"s as if they were performing some kind of dance they"d been rehearsing for months.

They all sit, and Marisa serves their plates with rice and some kind of vegetable mixture-ratatouille, Bliss decides. They talk for a while about the things Gerald showed her-the chickens, the last of the tomatoes, the woodshop-and then Gerald asks about the bookstore. Bliss tells a story about a guy, Walter, whom she hired a few weeks ago to be a cashier. He seemed perfect-he lived around the corner, said he could work extra hours whenever she wanted, even volunteered to open the store for her one morning when she had to go to the dentist. Then one night she was on her way home from having dinner with a friend and decided to stop at the store for a book. When she got there she found Walter and three of his friends sitting on the floor eating take-out pizza, pa.s.sing around a fifth of vodka, and paging through bookstore books with their greasy fingers. "The thing that really got me," Bliss says, "is that when I told them to get out, they just walked off and left the pizza lying in the middle of the floor."

"That is terrible," Marisa says. Her forearms are resting on the edge of the table and she has tightened her hands into fists. When Bliss looks at her face, she thinks she sees tears in her eyes. "People like that have no consideration."

This seems self-evident to Bliss-obviously Walter is a jerk; that"s the point.

But Marisa goes on. "He"ll probably never learn, either. You know? He"ll probably go through life trespa.s.sing on people"s decency, never doing a single thing for anybody. Someday he"ll marry some poor woman and ruin her life. G.o.d, that kind of thing makes me sick!"

Bliss is embarra.s.sed. She looks away from Marisa"s red face at Gerald; he"s got such a worried look on his face that she wishes she could reach across the table and touch his arm. He looks the way he used to at the dinner table at home, toward the end, when her father was always angry at her mother. Is it not true, her father would say to her mother, that you told me you were going to finish that typing by dinner? Gerald, her father would say, what do you suppose could have happened? Do you suppose it just slipped your mother"s mind that she had twenty pages to type for me today? Or do you suppose she was too G.o.d-d.a.m.ned busy talking to her friends at the grocery store to think of anything else? Well? Well, Gerald? Well?

Gerald looks up at Bliss, and she can see that his mind is whirling. She smiles at him-she will say the first thing that she can think of. But he beats her to it. "What kind of pizza was it?" he asks.

Then he gets up and goes around behind Marisa"s chair and leans down low, and when his arms reach around her, tears begin to stream from her eyes. Bliss looks down at her plate and pokes at the remains of her dinner with her fork. If this doesn"t stop soon, she"ll have to leave the room. When he looks up again, Gerald is staring at her, his face hard and challenging.

Finally Marisa reaches for her napkin and dabs at her face. She looks up at Bliss and says, "Sorry."

Bliss smiles and shrugs.

Gerald gives Marisa"s shoulder a final pat and straightens up. Then Marisa pushes her chair back and stands, too. "Well," she says, as if nothing had happened, "are we done? I"ll get going on the dishes. Why don"t you two make a fire in the other room?" She carries a few things to the sink and begins to run the water. She turns back to Bliss. "I"m sorry we don"t have any dessert," she says.

"We"ve got fruit," says Gerald. "Want a plum?"

"I"m fine," says Bliss. "It was delicious." She takes her plate to the sink and sets it down. This is not the right moment for the cookies.

THE LIVING ROOM is spa.r.s.ely furnished-just two armchairs and several large pillows on the floor.

"Sit," Gerald says, coming up behind her. He pats one of the chairs.

"Don"t you guys want the chairs?" Bliss says. "I"ll sit on one of those."

"Nonsense," he says.

So she sits in one of the chairs and watches him build the fire. Marisa"s scene has disturbed her-does she do this kind of thing a lot?-but curious as Bliss is, she hopes Gerald won"t bring it up. She doesn"t really want to talk about it.

"That was a good dinner," she says.

"Thanks," he says, without turning around. He lights a match and touches the flame to some newspaper, then sits looking into the fireplace. Finally he turns to face her. "Listen," he says, "let"s just drop what happened in the kitchen, OK?"

"Of course," Bliss says. "I wasn"t going to-"

"She"s just a little on edge is all," Gerald says. "Having a visitor."

Bliss blushes. It wasn"t her idea to come up here.

"I don"t mean it like that," Gerald says. "She just wants you to like her."

He doesn"t seem to expect a response; he turns back to the fireplace and pokes at the logs with a piece of kindling. She should say, "Oh, I do like her," but it would sound so forced; her mother used to sit on the edge of her bed at night and say, "I love you, baby," and then, after the slightest pause, "Do you love me?"

"That should catch," Gerald says, standing up. He claps his hands together to get rid of the wood dust, then sits in the other chair. "We were thrilled when it started getting cooler again. There"s a guy up the road who lets me chop firewood for free."

"Just like that?"

"Well, I give him a hand when he needs it. I helped him build a new kitchen."

"How"d you learn how to do all this stuff, anyway?"

"I must have a natural apt.i.tude," Gerald says. They both laugh; he was the kind of child who, in art cla.s.s, used his Popsicle sticks for abstract sculpture when everyone else was making a birdhouse.

"No, really," Bliss says.

"I wanted to," Gerald says. "That"s really all it takes."

Marisa comes in from the kitchen carrying a tray. "I made some tea," she says. She offers the tray to Bliss, and Bliss thanks her and takes a mug. It smells strange, and she decides that it"s some kind of herbal tea, made from their herbs. She would give anything for a cup of coffee right now.

Gerald takes a mug, and Marisa sets the tray on the floor at Gerald"s feet. She pulls a pillow over and sits on it, leaning against his legs. No one says anything.