Fire and Rain (32 page)

“A couple of people?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember the details. Rob never really told me because he didn’t think it was important. His father had gone straight by the time they caught up with him, and I guess that was all that mattered to Rob. I never met his father. Rob used to write to him a lot. He’d hear back from him every once in a while.”

“Mommy.” Kelly looked up from her paper with its thick waxy brown and blue lines. “Breaked.” She held up the blue crayon which she had worked down to the paper wrapper.

“I’ll fix it for you, buttercup.” Janet peeled off an inch of wrapper and handed the crayon back to her daughter, and suddenly Carmen wanted to change the focus of this interview. How did you feel when she was born? she wanted to ask. Did you fall into a depression you thought you’d never get out of? Do you know why she was born that way? Is there someone—anyone— to blame?

“Anyhow,” Janet continued, “once Rob read me a letter he’d gotten from Jefferson. He wrote that Rob should work hard in school, that he had a lot of promise and could really make something of himself. He said Rob should live within the law and not make the kinds of mistakes he had made, and so on.”

“And did he? Live within the law?”

“Rob? Oh, God, yes.” Janet laughed, her glass halfway to her mouth. She set it on the table again. “He was very straight-arrow. It was always hard for me to believe he grew up with a criminal in the house.” She winced. “It would really have upset him to hear me talk about Jefferson that way.”

“How long did the two of you date?”

“Nearly three years. Our last three at MIT. I’m the one who ended it.” She stood to get another ice cube from the freezer and dropped it into her glass. “God, I felt so bad.” She took her seat again. “I got scared when he started talking about marriage and kids. Here I’d persuaded him to date me exclusively, to take our relationship seriously, and then when he did, I backed away.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, as I said before, Rob wasn’t a regular sort of guy. When I thought of actually settling down for a lifetime with someone so… out of the norm, it terrified me.” Janet knit her brows together. “He was so intense. Plus, he had no money. He was on a scholarship and working as a teaching assistant to be able to feed himself. I started thinking about raising kids with him, with no money and with his attachment to an old drug-dealing murderer and to this weird friend of his, Kent Reed.”

“He was still friends with Kent Reed when he was at MIT?”

“You know about Kent?” Janet asked.

“A little.” Carmen wondered if the librarian’s husband might have some idea where the peculiar Mr. Reed was living these days.

“God, what a weirdo.” Janet shuddered. “And yes, unfortunately Rob was still friends with him then. Kent followed him from their high school to MIT, where Rob thought it would be great fun for me to fix him up with my girlfriends. I told him to forget it—I valued my friends too much to do that to them.”

Kelly tapped her mother’s arm. “Dooce?” she asked.

“Apple or orange?” Janet stood again and opened the refrigerator.

“Appa.” Kelly put down her crayon and folded her hands neatly on top of her drawing, waiting while her mother poured the juice into a glass. Something about the gesture—those chunky little hands, folded, patient—touched Carmen in a way that was almost painful. She tried to tear her gaze away from the child, but the sheen of the little girl’s dark hair and the dimples, so much like her mother’s, were captivating.

I
don’t want to feel this,
she thought
. I don’t want to feel anything.

She watched Kelly take a long drink from the glass her mother handed her, then forced her attention once more to Janet. “What was Kent like?”

“Oh, wow.” Janet took her seat again and swept her bangs off her forehead. “He was very tall. Gangly, like Ichabod Crane. He’d make a point of shocking people with his deformed hand. And he whined. Complained from sunup to sundown, I swear. He’d get under your skin—or at least under my skin—real fast. And he could be mean, too.” She narrowed her eyes to make her point. “I remember he was president of the chess club and he got kicked out of a tournament for ‘poor sportsmanship’ after he threw the board in his opponent’s face.”

“Why on earth was Rob friends with him?”

“I used to wonder that myself. He’d deny it, but I think it was at least partly the hand.”

“You mean he felt sorry for Kent because of his hand?” That would make some sense. Jeff Cabrio and his underdogs.

“Well, no, I mean he felt guilty since he was the cause of it.”

Carmen glanced quickly at her recorder to make sure the tape was still running. “I didn’t know that,” she said, selecting her words with care. “I thought Kent lost his fingers in high school, when he planted a bomb in another boy’s locker.”

Janet hesitated. “Hmm,” she said. “I thought you knew. I feel kind of funny telling you.”

“Use your own judgment, Janet.” Carmen kept her voice even, but she was squeezing her glass between her fingers.

“Well, it’s true that Kent lost his fingers when he tried to plant the bomb, but it was Rob who made the bomb. He never intended it to be stuck in someone’s locker, and it went off before it was supposed to.”

“My God.” Carmen set her glass down, truly shaken.

“Right. So I think that’s part of why Rob hung out with Kent, but also, there’s no denying that Rob was simply fascinated by Kent’s mind. No one else liked Kent, but Rob was never the type to pick his friends based on their popularity. He was very secure that way.” Janet let out her breath as though she was exhausted by all she had revealed. “Anyway, while I could respect him for caring about his stepfather and Kent, I couldn’t see marrying into that mess and bringing my kids up with it.” She looked at Carmen, almost apologetically. “I couldn’t see having a future with him.”

Carmen nodded, noticing a mist of tears in Janet’s eyes.

“It was a very hard choice for me to make,” Janet said. “I was down for a long time after we broke up. Sometimes I still think about him, about how my life would be different. I wouldn’t have this one, for example.” She rested her hand on her daughter’s back, and Carmen nodded again in sympathy before realizing it wasn’t regret she heard in Janet’s voice. Janet was
glad
she had made the choices which resulted in her daughter. “I can’t imagine my life without her,” she said.

Carmen murmured something, something she hoped sounded appropriate and gracious, all the while wondering where Janet had found the strength, the depth of love, she’d needed to welcome this child into her life.

They spoke for a few more minutes, but Carmen was anxious to escape. As they walked to the door, Janet asked, “Someday can you let me know what this is all about?”

“Yes,” Carmen said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m free to talk about it.” She rested her hand on the doorknob and turned to look at Janet. “There must not have been too many women at MIT when you were there,” she said.

“Not many. I got my doctorate there, too.”

Carmen studied this pony-tailed woman with admiration. “You’ve accomplished a lot,” she said.

Janet laughed. “Well, I was ambitious back in those days. Right now a Ph.D. in physics seems a little unimportant. I worked for a few years after I got it. Then Kelly was born, and I knew she needed me more than my job did. So here I am.” She followed Carmen out into the sunny front yard. “Do you have kids?” she asked as they walked down the decrepit sidewalk.

Carmen shook her head, grateful she had reached her car. She walked around it to the driver’s side. “Thanks so much for your time,” she said, getting in behind the wheel.

“Hey!” Janet called after her. “Give Rob a hug for me!”

SHE DROVE TO A
7-Eleven where she eyed the beer. It would take a lot of beer to numb her at that moment, a lot of beer to block out little Kelly Safer’s face from her mind, a lot to block out Janet Safer’s loving touch on her daughter’s hair. And more alcohol than she could consume to block out the memory of her response to Janet’s question—that quick shake of her head. No
, I have no children
.

She bought a large coffee and sat in her car to drink it. If only she could crawl into bed and go to sleep. But she had a two- hour drive ahead of her. Two hours to think. Her eyes fell on the pay phone in the corner of the parking lot.

She rested the coffee on the floor of the car as she got out and began walking toward the phone. She seemed to be moving on automatic pilot, something trying to hold her back, something stronger pushing her forward.

Mia answered when she dialed the number for Chris’s office, and Carmen was relieved when she put her through without trying to make small talk.

“Where are you?” Chris asked. “I hear traffic.”

“Santa Monica. I just did an interview up here.” She spoke quietly, pressing the metal cord between her fingers.

“Carmen? Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Well… why are you calling?”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “I was wondering if you could tell me about Dustin.”

Chris hesitated. “About Dustin? Do you mean…”

“Just anything. Tell me anything about him. Whatever comes into your mind.”

“Hang on a second.”

She heard him walk across the room, heard the closing of his office door. Then he was back on the phone.

“Well, do you remember his dark hair? How much he had when he was born?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful. Very thick, with a little wave to it. He has your coloring. He looks a lot like you, actually. He’s a handsome kid, except for his eyes.”

A truck squealed around the corner next to the phone booth, and she put her finger in her ear to block the sound. “Tell me about his eyes,” she said. “Tell me the worst.”

“His eyes have a milky sort of look to them. And they don’t track.”

“And they don’t see.”

“No. And you know he can’t hear, either, right?”

“Does he look… I mean, the rest of him. How… normal does he look?”

Chris hesitated again. “Carmen, why don’t we have this conversation in person instead of—”

“No. Please, Chris. Tell me.”

Chris sighed. “He looks much closer to normal than you’d expect, but he’s not. And his facial expressions aren’t what you’d usually see in a boy his age. I guess that’s something you learn socially, and he’s never had the chance.”

She began to cry and hoped he couldn’t tell. “What is his life like? Is he in terrible pain?”

“Carmen…”

“Please, Chris.”

“I don’t know if he’s in pain. He cries a lot, but there’s no way to know why. He gets angry and throws little tantrums, but when I visit him, he lets me hold him and rock him, and sometimes he gets very calm.”

She covered the mouthpiece of the phone to take in a shaky breath.

“Do you want me to come up there?”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t have told you all this over the phone. Are you depressed? I mean, things are looking up for you, Carmen. Keep that in mind, okay? Don’t dwell on—”

“I’m all right,” she interrupted him. He was afraid she would try to hurt herself again. She could hear the fear in his voice. The guilt. “I just wanted to know about Dustin.”

“I have a lot of pictures of him, and you’re welcome to look at them. With or without me. Whatever’s easier for—”

“No.” She didn’t want to see pictures. The image of Dustin forming in her head was torture enough. “I can’t do that.”

“All right. Are you on your way back to San Diego now?”

“Yes.”

“Call me when you get in, okay? Let me know you made it safely.”

CHRIS STOPPED THREE TIMES
on the way to the Children’s Home. The first time was when Jeff asked him to pull off the freeway so he could get a better look at a dry, cracked lake bed and the gaunt cows feeding on the barely existent grass at its rim. Then, as they were about to get back onto the freeway, Jeff spotted a stalled car on the ramp and ordered Chris to pull up behind it.

Chris watched while Jeff calmed the panicky teenaged boy at the wheel, peered under the hood and worked his usual magic on whatever he found there. In minutes, he had the car purring.

The third stop—the only one they had planned—was at an auto parts store in a strip mall on the northern outskirts of San Diego. The store was the closest outlet for some specialized equipment Jeff needed in the warehouse. Chris had suggested they drive to San Diego together, as long as Jeff didn’t mind waiting while he paid his usual Saturday visit to Dustin.

Once in the parking lot of the strip mall, Jeff eyed the customers walking in and out of the auto parts store and shook his head.

“Would you mind going in for me?” he asked. He pulled a pen from the pocket of his red-and-brown Hawaiian print shirt and a scrap of paper from his briefcase. “I’ll write down what I need. It’s sort of an unconventional assortment of goods. I’d rather not have to deal with anyone’s questions.”

“Fine.” Chris watched him make out the list, which covered both sides of the paper. Jeff handed it to him, and Chris shook his head as he read it. “If it hadn’t been for that experiment, Cabrio, I’d think you were off your rocker.” The list ranged from racing spark plugs and oil coolers to a hubcap.

“I’ll be in there.” Jeff pointed halfway down the strip to Caprice and Company, a chain of stores known for their silky and sexy lingerie. There was a time when Chris had depended on that store—he knew he could buy Carmen anything within its walls, and she would love it.

But Jeff in Caprice and Company? Something for Mia, no doubt.

It took him half an hour and a few glib explanations to the sales people before Chris managed to collect the items Jeff had requested. By the time he emerged from the store, Jeff was already in the car. He opened the back door to put in his three bags of purchases and saw the gift box wrapped in green paper lying on the seat.

“How’d it go?” Jeff asked.

“Got it all.”

“Great.” Jeff sounded relieved.

Chris got in behind the wheel. “The check-out guy thought I was pretty strange, but other than that it was no problem.”