Conundrum (21 page)

At summer’s end, Raff went off to college in Colorado, giddy with the promise of adventures and intellectual challenges and Rocky Mountain air. His initial letters and phone calls bragged of all the clubs he had joined, his newly acquired skills (skiing and Thai cooking), and his academic achievements. By Thanksgiving, the calls and letters had dwindled. And by Christmas break, it took all our urging to get him on a plane to come home. His lackluster countenance and short, choppy answers left us all worried and confused. We had no idea we were witnessing the first of Raff’s many downward tumbles into depression.

I’d tried to get Raff to go Christmas shopping with me, bowling, visiting Kyle and Anne, even ice skating up in Santa Rosa (which had been one of his favorite holiday pastimes despite his lack of coordination), but he wouldn’t leave his room. He wrote poetry—dark and enigmatic—and sometimes lapsed into French when mumbling to me while lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. I’d thought something had happened to him at school—a girl had dumped him or he got a B on a test for once in his life. I knew nothing of the storm raging in his mind, and he didn’t let on. When break ended, we saw him off at the airport, looking despondent and reluctant to leave. I remember my mother’s face as she watched him trudge down the ramp to board the plane. A mixture of worry and trepidation. Perhaps she
had seen
something of my father in Raff at that moment—the resignation in his walk
?
The past replaying to haunt her?

Kendra started making some excuses about needing to finish cleaning the house before she picked the girls up from school. Still standing on her front porch, I fumbled for something to say, but only asked if I could use her restroom before heading out. When I came into the hall, she politely offered me a cup of tea, but I knew I was supposed to say thank you but no. Which I did.

We exchanged good-byes and some empty promises of getting together soon. I really wanted to get Raff alone, to try talking with him without Kendra or Neal around. I asked Kendra to have Raff call me later, but I doubted she’d tell him. Or that he’d call me back
if she did
.

Anne’s office was on my way home,
a mile
off the freeway in San Rafael. Maybe I didn’t want to go home to an empty house, although a brisk walk with the dogs across the hills sounded appealing. I needed to do something with this restless energy. I had plenty of work waiting for me, and the weather was ideal for planting, but I had to talk with Ed’s daughter at noon. What if she insisted on meeting
with
me today? Clearly, what she had to tell me couldn’t be said over the phone. I pondered the mystery of her urgency as I walked up the stairs to Anne’s second
-
floor office of the drab county building for Health and Human Services.

Anne’s door was open, and as usual, her miniscule office looked like a whirlwind had just blown through. The file folders that wouldn’t fit on her desk spilled out onto piles on the floor. A large appointment book buried the phone, and since the bookshelves and filing cabinets were burgeoning, mountainous stacks of papers rose from the tops of surfaces, taller than I could reach. Anne’s most important piece of furniture in her office was her foldable stepladder.

I knew there was a chair underneath some of those piles, but while I was considering clearing a space on the floor to sit down to wait, Anne popped her head in the room.

“Oh, it’s you.” She looked at her watch and brushed some unruly curly hair from off her forehead. The old building lacked air conditioning, and the room was close to sweltering. “Sorry, I’m due in court as an advocate, like, in ten minutes. I wish we had time to chat, but I can’t. Now
,
where’s the file on Morales? Lisa, look over there.”

She pointed at a teetering stack of folders in the center of her desk while she shuffled through her bulging shoulder bag. “I could have sworn I stuck it in here
.
 
.
 
.
” She stomped her foot
,
and I stopped and looked at her. “Aha! Here it is—right under my nose.” Anne laughed with gusto and reorganized her bag
by
pulling
out
extraneous folders out and dropping them to the
carpeting
. “I feel like I’m bouncing off the walls—the way you used to act when you didn’t take those damned drugs your mother fed you. With the budget cut, I lost my best assistant. There, that’ll lighten my load considera—”

“Wait,” I said,
rewinding
her string of words back until I got to the line I nearly missed. I came over to her and
took her arm to stop her frenetic movement
. “My mother never put me on drugs. What are you talking about?
”

“No, Lisa, but she did.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “What, you don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “She told me she consulted a doctor
once
about giving me something for my hyperactivity. But she claimed the pills only made me worse, that I reacted funny to them. Where did you hear that?”

“I didn’t so much hear as saw. You remember how you’d come sleep over? Your mom would pack a bottle in your overnight bag and instruct my
mother
to make sure you took your medicine. Now, my mom was no nurse, but she knew what Seconal was. She was horrified your mother had you on addictive barbiturates and scolded
Ruth
about it, refusing to give you the damn pills. By ten p.m., you went from mellow yellow to hell on wheels. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Pill
-
popping was all the rage in the sixties. Although
,
at that time, parents didn’t give downers to their kids like they do now. Do you know how many cases we get of parents drugging their kids to keep them quiet? I even read of a case where a daycare provider was spiking the toddlers’ bottles with allergy medication to make them take their naps. One two-year-old even died—”

“Anne!” I nearly yelled to get her to stop. She was almost out the door when she swung back around at me, exasperation on her face.

“What?” She tapped her watch and raised her eyebrows, telling me she was more than late. I searched my mind, trying to recall my stint of pill-popping, but nothing surfaced. I hated taking pills. It wasn’t likely I’d down them without a fight. Wouldn’t I have some memory of that?

I waved Anne on. “Go. I’ll catch up with you later. But we need to talk about this, okay?”

“Sure, call me. Tonight, whenever.”

I watched her tromp down the hallway, fussing with her skirt. When I exited the building, a breeze dried the sweat on my neck and sent a chill down my spine. I decided to walk over to a coffee shop I liked on C Street. I could relax, read the paper, then call Julie at noon from the pay
phone outside.

I ordered an iced tea and a bagel with cream cheese, then sat in a booth looking out on Fourth Street. San Rafael bustled with shoppers and the occasional guide dog in training draped with a green blanket. For some reason, talking to Anne had upset me. Maybe I was reacting defensively, primed by my mother opposing me on one hand and Jeremy on the other. Anne was a big sister and confidant. As often as we argued or disagreed, I
had
never
before
felt this sense of alienation or judgment. I couldn’t tell if it originated from her or my imagination, but her tone had seemed harsh and condemning. Was I stupid? Naïve? That’s how her words made me feel. Did everyone else see me one way—Anne, Jeremy, my mother, Neal—
a
way radically different
from
how I saw myself? How
had
I fall
en
into this sudden identity crisis?
And how in the world had I forgotten about those pills?

I stared vacantly out the window, mulling over my childhood memories. As I thought about my father’s face, I remembered a dream I had last night. I was three
or four, standi
ng next to my mother and father. Neal was a baby in my mother’s lap
,
and Raff stood behind me.
While sipping my tea, a
sense of great agitation came over me as I realized the image was the photograph my mother kept in a drawer
,
the last—and perhaps only—family portrait taken, in black
and
white, before my father died. But in my dream, we were riding in an elevator and it was
freefalling
fast. I knew we were about to crash and I wanted to scream.

No one else seemed concerned.
I pounded on the sealed doors until my knuckles bled.
A strain of muzak filtered in over staticky speakers—the Beatles’ tune “Helter Skelter.”
“
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide, where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride, till I get to the bottom and I see you agaaaiinnnn
.
 
.
 
.
”
Their faces stayed frozen, their smiles in place, their eyes fixated and vacant. Only I knew what awaited us, the horror we faced, the impending crash. I tried to open my mouth, but my lips remained glued together. Before the elevator reached the bottom, I had startled awake. I was Cassandra, powerless to warn my family of what was to come, knowing they wouldn’t believe me anyway. Why did I even bother?
Disaster
was inevitable.

A few minutes before noon, I called Julie. She refused to tell me what was so urgent, only saying it involved my father. I nearly dropped the receiver.

“What about my father
?
”

I waited and listened for a reply. Julie’s voice came out in a hush. “Lisa, I have so much to tell you. I never thought I would connect to you, but I’ve been looking for you—or rather, for someone in your family—for three years now. I only had one name: Nathan. I had no idea he was someone who worked at Penwell, with my father, or I could have pieced that together right away. My mom never gave me particulars, but I have to know. Know if it’s your father.”

“Know what about him?”

Julie hesitated. “Please, can I come to you, so we can talk in person? It’s a long story
,
and I’m hoping maybe you can tell me more.”

From her tone, I knew I wouldn’t get any more information out of her. Just what could be so important that she’d been looking for my family for three years—twenty-
odd
years after my father died? Did she know something about his death?
The timing was too
uncanny
.
I had so many questions, but I restrained myself. We agreed to meet in Sausalito, at a small park not far off 101. That would cut down her drive time.

In the hour or so it took for Julie to arrive, I came up with plenty of scenarios. I reflected on the tension between Julie and her father and the little love between them. How Ed Hutchinson had only one photo on his desk.
How he had leer
ed
at me with such aplomb.

I watched cars
pass by
as I sat on a sun-drenched bench. Julie pulled into a spot and walked over to me as I waved. The sun lit up her gorgeous blond hair and caused her silky teal blouse to shimmer. I stood and said hello, and she took both my hands in hers, smiling as if
reuniting
with a long-lost friend.
Something in her face seemed familiar—the shape of her eyes, the Milky Way of freckles dotting her nose.
Maybe, like her father, her movie-star looks created some unconscious connection with someone famous. She could surely be Doris Day to his Rock Hudson.

“Thanks for meeting with me. I’m sorry for all the mystery. I just couldn’t talk
this morning
with my dad around.”

“That’s okay.”

She sat
on the bench
and turned to face me. “You probably noticed my dad and I don’t get along. But I had to come over when I heard him mention your name on the phone. Well, when he said
‘
Nathan’s daughter.
’
And then how you were the daughter of someone who used to work for him at Penwell in Los Angeles. I about fell over. It’s too strange to be a coincidence.”

I waited, afraid to move, wanting her to keep talking. “Go on.”

She blew out a breath and shook her head. “Okay, this may sound crazy to you, but I’ll just jump in. My mother died three years ago, but before she did, she confided in me. About a lot of things—some of which I knew and others, well, those came as quite a shock. I was very close to my mother—
I’m
an only child. My dad married her when she was barely eighteen. She was an aspiring magazine model, someone he met at a party. My dad was in his thirties at the time, much older than she was. He basically swept her off her feet and married her. He used to be pretty good-looking, my dad.”

I nodded. “I saw some of his photos. Of him and my father.”

“Well, the marriage didn’t last long. My dad was quite the swinger, and had affairs right out in the open, didn’t care how much it hurt my mother. Her name was Shirley. I was born a couple of years after they married, and two
or three
years later, my mother divorced him. It was a bitter fight, because my dad couldn’t bear to have her walk out on him. He was violent and abusive, and I thank God my mother had the good sense to get away from him while I was young.”

“So, did she raise you
alone
?”

Julie nodded. “I saw my dad on some weekends and holidays after they divorced, but he didn’t care about me. Which suited my mom just fine. She did a good job with me but never remarried.” Julie took a deep breath that shuddered as she exhaled. “I loved her deeply
,
and I miss her very much. When she got
breast cancer
, she wanted to fill in the blanks of her life for me. She never would talk about her past while I was growing up, but she
wanted me to
know some things before she passed away.”

Julie stopped abruptly and looked at me. “Just why did you come to see my father, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“My father died when he was thirty-three. He had contracted leukemia
,
and I think it had something to do with an experiment he volunteered for while working at Penwell.”

Julie leaned closer and narrowed her eyes.
“An experiment?”

“Something involving radiation.”

“But why now? Why are you looking into this so many years later?”

“Curiosity, I guess. I never knew my father
,
and my mother hardly ever spoke of him. I’m just trying to put some pieces together.”

I got quiet while Julie mulled over this. “Lisa, your father had an affair with my mother. He lived with her the last few months before he died.”

My breath caught. “Are you sure?”

“Here’s what I know. She met someone named Nathan. Someone very smart and gentle. She never told me where he worked or how they had met. He was married and unhappy with his life. My mom, miserable and humiliated by my dad’s affairs and his blatant cruelty toward her, wanted someone to show her some kindness, some affection. I think at first she had an affair to get back at my dad, but the way she spoke about Nathan—well, she seemed quite fond of him. They moved in together for a short while—months at most. My mother said this man died tragically. It shook my mom up, but rather than go back to my dad, she filed for divorce and never returned home.”

“Well, where were you at the time? You must have been, what, two or three?”

“My mom said she took me with her, so I must have lived with her and your father for a time. I don’t remember at all.”

“Did she say anything about going to San Diego? Or where they lived when they moved in together?”

Julie paused. “San Diego? That sounds familiar. Why San Diego?”

“That’s where the experiment took place. I asked your dad, and he thought my father participated in that experiment. But he couldn’t name anyone else involved. Or what the experiment was about. There was nothing written up about it. But supposedly it was top secr
et, maybe covered up.” I stopped talking as a thought formed
. “Wait, did your father know about their affair?”

I watched a flush come across her face. She dropped her gaze to her feet, then looked back up at me. “He did. But would he have known if my mom
went with
your dad to San Diego? I don’t know. My mother didn’t elaborate, just said my dad was furious she walked out on him.”

“Maybe they went there to get away. Away from
.
 
.
 
.
” Maybe not just Ed, but also my mother. And us kids. Away from all of it. Maybe my dad didn’t participate in that experiment, but lied and used it as a cover. An excuse. My head spun at all the possibilities. Or had my mother claimed
Nathan
volunteered for the experiment to cover her husband’s obvious absence? But, if that were true, and my father hadn’t been exposed to radiation, just how did he contract leukemia so suddenly? A fate of nature? Bad timing?
I was back to
and
,
or
, or
not
.

“Interesting,” Julie said, interrupting my thoughts. She smoothed out her hair as a breeze kicked up.
A flock of seagulls wheeling overhead and squawking made her look up. The birds resembled my disparate thoughts, each vying for attention.
“I really don’t know anything about that. It’s possible your father went to San Diego for this experiment, and took my mom and me along.”

My father mentioned in that letter to his brother how he suffered from shame and guilt. Maybe this was what he had been intimating about. This affair. I tried to envision him getting up the nerve to leave my mother, to leave behind three small children. How horrible he must have felt, racked with guilt yet unable to stay a minute longer in his own home.

“It’s not like they were in love,” Julie said. “My mother knew that. They were both seeking something, some solace from their pain and unhappy marriages. If our fathers worked together, I can see how my mother would have met him somewhere—at a party or company picnic. Maybe they started talking and realized they shared a common misery.”

As Julie spoke about her mother, I pictured my father back then and imagined what transpired. I could see him at a company picnic—the men smoking under the oak trees at a park with the branches casting shadows over them. The wives filling the tables with food carried in Tupperware containers, laying out paper plates and cups, containers of Kool-Aid, Rice Crispy Treats cut in ragged squares for dessert. Children squealing and playing on the jungle gym and the monkey bars in the large sandbox. Spinning each other on the metal carousel. My father ambling away, frustrated, fed up. Wanting to feel the familial joy the others seemed
to
so easily experience, delighting in the antics of their children, the men teasing their wives in a carefree manner. My father feeling trapped, claustrophobic, wanting out. Pretending to be like everyone else, but silently suffering
.
 
.
 
.

Then he happens upon Shirley Hutchinson. Young, tall, gorgeous. Deep blue eyes that hold secrets and pain. She moves with grace and a model’s poise and stature. Elegant for her young years, but every gesture cries out for attention. My father picks up her need in the sway of her hips, the flash of her eyes. They make small talk by the water fountain, reminding each other they’ve met before, my father pointing to his two children playing on the swings. Shirley nodding
in polite acknowledgement
, oozing her unhappiness. She speaks of her marriage in couched terms, in generalities and pleasantries, but my father is not fooled or stupid. Yet, Shirley does not come on to him, not deliberately. The words move from hinted misery to outspoken anguish. Perhaps my father shares his beer
with her
.
The day is hot, suffocating. Their thirst is considerable, and not just for liquid
to soothe
their throats
.

After a while, as neither my mother nor Ed Hutchinson notice their partners have wandered off, my father walks with Shirley, and at one point in their conversation their eyes catch on the other’s, lingering a little longer than is customary. What do they have to lose? Shirley has already lost her husband to more women than she can count. Ed all but ignores her, except when he wants her in bed. And my father has long since felt any stirring at all—in his heart or his loins. Shirley absently brushes against his hand, maybe even touches his arm in kindness, in commiseration
,
as they speak of things not considered proper. But my father is at his wit’s end. And he is beyond caring what consequences may now erupt from his desperate need to flee his marriage. Shirley mentions they should head back, before someone notices.

But before they part from each other, to return to the picnic from different directions, they have already joined in conspiracy. If not verbally, then by some other means of communication, shared pain that is palpably felt and exchanged. Maybe, in a fleeting moment of madness, my father grabs Shirley’s arm as they pass behind the baseball bleachers. Maybe he swings her around and before either of them have time to think, he kisses her in a passion he never
experienced
with Ruth before. But he is not fooled. He knows he is not in love, or even succumbing to lust. He just needs to feel—something, anything, again. Feel life flowing through his limbs. Shirley, perhaps, wants something altogether different. She just wants to be noticed and admired. And listened to. And maybe, beneath her
awareness
, she wants to hurt Ed, to repay him for the continual humiliation and betrayal. Maybe she toys with the idea of having an affair to get back at him. Or if she’s not that vengeful, just yearns for a chance to feel some
stimulation
—to taste the forbidden pleasure her husband indulges in
without remorse or concern for consequences
. Fairs fair, she thinks
.
 
.
 
.

When Julie finished talking, I let her words
linger
in the air. She turned to me
,
and I thought she had more to say. But the expression on her face shifted.

“I’m sorry I took up so much time,” she said. “Do you want to get some coffee?”

I looked at my watch. Nearly an hour had passed
,
and I felt sleepy and needing a nap. It was too late in the day to start any projects or run by any of my jobs. But I had plenty to do in the barn. The goats’ hooves
needed
trimming
,
and all the animals
were overdue on
their shots and worming. I hadn’t worked Shayla since her leg wound had healed. I
needed
take her on a walk with the dogs. I swept my mind of the lingering image of my father’s lips on a stunning young blonde’s mouth.

“I should get home. I have animals to tend to.
Thanks for seeing me, and talking to me. I hope I was able to fill in some of the blanks for you. About my father.”

Julie looked sorry for telling me about the affair.
She nodded
,
and I walked her over to her car. I dug in my purse, wrote my phone number on a piece of scrap paper, then handed it to her. “If you want to call me
.
 
.
 
.
to talk.”

Julie took the paper from my hand,
then stopped. “Are you also an only child?”

Her question hung on the air. She had blurted it out and then smiled, as if to cover some embarrassment.

“No, I have two brothers. One older and one younger.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “What are their names?”

I wondered why she brought this up all of a sudden. “Rafferty is four years older, and Neal is three years younger.” I waited to see if she wanted more information. Maybe she was trying to remember something her mother told her.

“Oh, okay.” She
looked at the scrap of paper with my phone number on it. A
s she said good-bye and started to get into her car, she seemed to avoid meeting my eyes. Had I said something that offended her? Disappointed her?

I mulled over the things she
had told me
as I watched her drive away. I thought of how tenderly she’d spoken about her mother. How this mystery man, Nathan, had intrigued Shirley, caused her to search for some connection to him.

Then
Julie’s
visit
struck me as odd.
H
er mother had an affair for a few months—so what? Julie admitted Shirley and Nathan were never in love, that theirs had been an affair of mutual consolation and solace. But why would that brief encounter make Julie express such an urgent need to talk with me? Just to meet the daughter of a man her mother slept with for a few months twenty-five years ago? It didn’t make sense.

I recalled the way Julie’s gaze had turned from me when we spoke, and how she avoided my eyes when she left. What had Shirley Hutchinson said to her daughter three years ago, before she
passed away
, that filled Julie with such a need?
“
I have to know. Know if it’s your father
,
”
she said
.