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.I’m about to make a sharp, motherlike remark when she yells excitedly at us to stop.Sonny parks the car illegally on a narrow embankment and we scramble up the scrubby hillside, heads lowered against a strong wind that has started up.At the cliff edge, the ground falls away dizzyingly.Below, the Pacific hurls itself against black, gleaming rocks.My eyes are drawn to the sloping red cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond it, to the silver city, glowing against the day’s late grayness.If I’d died, I, too, would want my remains to become part of this land, this water, because there’s a way in which the geography of one’s childhood makes its way into one’s bones.Then I think, perhaps this is how my mother felt about the landscape in which she grew into girl, woman, dream decipherer.Would she have wanted us to take her ashes there?I don’t even know where she was born.Jona unscrews the lid of the urn and throws out the first handful.Sonny follows.There are tears in his eyes.I’m surprised and envious.When I’d left him, he’d shouted and threatened, begged and sulked.But he hadn’t cried.What had my mother meant to him that he should cry now? And stitched into that, another question: what did my mother mean to me that I cannot?Then it’s my turn.Gingerly, I put in my hand and touch the rough, gritty dust.I can’t stop a small shiver from going through me.Less than a month ago, she had cupped my face in her hands and told me how beautiful I looked.Lives and cars—how quickly they can flip over.I throw the handful of ashes out as far as I can, but the wind blows most of it back at my face.Dust in my nostrils, making me cough.At least now some of her is in me.We drive back to Oakland in silence.Jona has fallen asleep in the back seat.I feel drained, though when I try to figure out why, I come up only with unsatisfying clichés.Sonny stares ahead into the dusk, chewing on his lower lip, an old habit.Hosts of unspoken longings hang in the air, invisible as stars in daytime.I can’t quite grasp them, can’t say, This is what I want for my life.In the driveway, he invites me to stay and have dinner with them, but I say no.I start toward my old Taurus, waiting in the driveway, then hear footsteps running behind.Jona catches hold of my sleeve.Mom, she says, I want you to see my paintings.I haven’t been inside the house—his house now—since the night I left, carrying her in my arms.To anyone else I would have said no.She tows me behind her like a rudderless boat.There are dried streaks of tears on her cheeks.Who has she been crying for?This is the only house I ever loved.There’s something I want to show you, Sonny had said as he drove very fast along the temperamental roads that lead into the Oakland hills.But you have to close your eyes.What are you up to now, you crazy man? I’d said, laughing.But I did as he said.We liked playing such games then.When I opened my eyes, the house was in front of me, like a woman kneeling with her arms open.There was a weathered wooden gate with a metal bell hanging from it that you had to ring.When you entered the courtyard, you smelled sage and lavender.Moss, cobblestones and a front door with a small stained glass window set in it.You could open the window from inside to see who had come to visit.I fell in love even before I walked in and saw the scarred rafters, the large window through which San Francisco glittered on the northwest horizon, the wisteria draping the balcony.Living beside the interstate in Fremont, I’d never believed that houses like this existed.No.What I hadn’t believed was that people like me could live in them.Sonny smiled when he saw my face.It’s yours if you want it.You’re joking, I said.We can’t afford a place like this.Don’t worry about it, Riks, he said, and kissed me.I let the kiss enchant me, I let the house wrap me in its charm.I had questions, but I told myself they weren’t important.I obeyed him and made myself forget.All these mistakes I made on that day, which I believed to be the happiest in my life
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