Losing Clementine (29 page)

I tried to smile but wasn't sure if I managed it.

The silence that followed must've seemed unbearably awkward and quiet to everyone else, but I couldn't hear it over my heartbeat.

Jerry stood there not so far from his chair and looked down at the candy bar in his hands. He tore it open, tore it until the wrapper was split halfway down, and then he broke it in two and offered the top end to me.

“I don't know if you like chocolate.”

I took it. “I like chocolate.”

“I was just about to go home,” he said. “I like to come in early, so I can beat the traffic.”

This was it, I thought, the part where he runs. Here's some candy. Have a nice life. My stomach spun like a washing machine, and I tried to prepare myself for it. I told myself it would be easier now that I was an adult, but I knew that wasn't true.

“Do you want to come home with me?” he asked.

I almost didn't hear him. I was so wrapped up in the script I was writing in my head. His deviation made me stutter.

“Yeah, okay, yeah.”

“Okay,” he agreed and nodded, looking at his chair. “I should call Charlene and tell her you're coming.”

Charlene. I tasted the name on my tongue.

He picked up his phone and pushed a button for a line before dialing. Charlene picked up quickly.

“We're going to have company for dinner,” he said. “Clementine is here… No, I don't… Yes… Don't worry about it. That's fine… I'll pick it up on the way home… Yes… Me, too… All right then.”

“Clementine is here,” he'd said. I wasn't a complete surprise. She knew of my existence, anyway, even if she hadn't been planning on dinner guests.

He hung up and looked at me for the first time since seeing me across the room. He didn't make eye contact. He hadn't worked his way north of my chin. I was still staring, though. He looked so much like Ramona. There she was: a little bit of my baby sister walking around in the body of an aging, balding IRS worker. If that didn't beat all hell.

“If you're ready,” he said to my chin, “my car is in the garage.”

“I'm ready,” I said.

I followed him out. He carried his lunch pail over his shoulder. The doors to all the offices were closed, and I never saw a giant calculating room like the one I'd imagined. We passed people in the hallways, other workers, none of whom said hello to Jerry, and Jerry said nothing to me. He walked with his hands in his pockets, and when we got belowground and walked out through a tunnel into the parking garage and the hot, wet air wrapped around me again, I stopped at the first trash can I saw and threw up.

I was glad I hadn't eaten much. The candy bar came up undigested, and I fished in my bag for what was left of my bottled Sprite. Jerry waited, not saying anything and not looking, either because it was disgusting or because he was giving me some privacy.

“Sorry,” I said, when I was ready to keep going.

He drove an American-made hybrid and listened to NPR. There was no trash on the floorboards or stuck in the door pockets. Nothing hung from the rearview mirror or was tossed in the backseat. It could've been a rental it was so impersonal. The radio station was on when he started the engine, and he left it on.

“How long have you worked here?” I asked.

“About thirty years,” he said. “I'm going to retire in twenty-two months.”

It was like having a conversation in an elevator with a complete stranger.

We wound our way through the surface streets toward the freeway, which was nearly vacant by L.A. standards. We got on and headed east.

“So,” he said, “what have you been up to?”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was such a casual question, so small, so inadequate. I laughed so hard my sides cramped and my cheeks ached and when I touched them they were wet. I had been so unaware that I was crying I thought for just a moment that maybe I'd been cut and had begun to bleed. I touched my cheeks again and looked at my fingers just to be sure.

Jerry gripped the steering wheel and leaned closer to the windshield as if willing us to get home faster.

“What have I been up to?” I said when my wind came back.

My nervousness had been pushed aside, replaced with incredulity and curiosity and indignation. It felt like being a teenager: wrong-footed, frightened, and cocky. Maybe I had to age all over again, I thought, go through all those stages again with him. It was a sobering thought. I didn't have time for that, and I sure as hell didn't want to die a mouthy brat with acne.

I took a breath and tried to grow up.

“I'm an artist. I live in L.A. I was married, and now I'm not. I don't have any children.”

“I'm married.”

“I heard.”

“She's a nice woman,” he said, “a nice, nice woman.”

“Mom was a good woman, too,” I said.

He said nothing. He said nothing long enough for us to listen to three-quarters of the hourly news brief on the radio. Roadside bombs in Qandahar. Unemployment rates increased. I waited. I wasn't going to fill the gulf. I wasn't going to let him off the hook. The traffic report came on.

“She tried hard,” he said, “your mother, she tried hard, and she was a good woman.”

“She shot Ramona. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew that. It's the worst thing that ever happened in my life.”

It should've been that one of those things could not have been true, that she was a good woman and that she'd shot her child, but they both were. It was one of the strange, scary, great truths of my life.

“They weren't really in your life anymore,” I said.

“Why…” He stopped and considered and went ahead anyway. “Why didn't she kill you, too?”

I looked out the window at the freeway going by. It was more billboards and exit signs, like there was nothing else in the damn place but billboards and exit signs.

“I was at school. Ramona was home sick that day.”

We were both quiet. Chance is hard to accept, the randomness of your existence or your death. Sometimes it's easier to believe greater forces are at work protecting or punishing you.

“Your mom,” he said, “she had bad days sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

“She'd just get really sad, and she couldn't function right.”

I wanted him to stop talking. I'd come all that way but not to hear what he had to say about this. But I didn't know how to make him stop.

“Sometimes when someone is that sad, they do things that don't make sense to other people.”

That was my greatest fear, and more than twenty years of therapy hadn't been able to allay it. What if I got so sad I did something that didn't make sense to other people? What if I did what she did? What if I was dangerous?

I was crying again, but this time I knew it. I didn't try to explain, because it's normal to cry when talking about your dead victimized sister and your crazy dead mother. I let him believe the lie of the cry all the way to the restaurant where we stopped to pick up dinner.

The building had the look of having been something else before, without the remodeling budget to cover it up. The parking lot smelled liked smoked meat, and the inside looked like a Taco Bell. I followed Jerry up to the counter where he paid for two large white plastic sacks of food his wife had called ahead for. I picked them up. Each weighed at least five pounds, and it occurred to me that there could be more people waiting for us at his house than just his wife.

We only had a few hours of daylight left, but still the sticky, hot air hadn't relented. It was the sort of heat I'd have expected in the Deep South. It was the sort of heat that made people irritable, caused marital disputes and petty crime. I wished I'd worn shorts.

We made our way into the planned, looping residential streets full of cul-de-sacs and with no recognizable grid. Churches seemed to guard the middle ground between residential and commercial. Jerry lived behind a Baptist church of modest size with a blacktop basketball court in back and a parking lot in front, but I'd seen all kinds of churches as we drove, more denominations than I could have named. It felt oddly egalitarian, even for a nonbeliever like me.

The neighborhood wasn't new, and it wasn't old enough to be charming. The houses were all split-level and looked like school milk cartons. Each had a driveway that led to a double garage and a wrought-iron railing along the stairs to the front door. Jerry's house was dark green with black shutters and a cement planter full of flowers next to the mailbox. No other cars were in the driveway or parked in front.

Charlene must've been watching for the car because before I got my feet on the ground she had the front door open. She stood there, clasping her hands in front of her and waiting for us. She wore white pants and a blousy floral top that was long enough to cover her wide hips. Her hair was red but not a bright red. If it was natural once, it wasn't anymore. It had the faded quality of dye that has begun to wash out and show the white underneath.

As Jerry and I paused at the bottom of the stairs to negotiate who would go up first, she called down.

“I'm so sorry. If I'd known you were coming, I would've had a nice dinner planned.”

“It's okay,” I said, craning my neck to look up at her and trying not to fall down the narrow cement steps while holding enough food for a basketball team.

“If I'd known you were coming” was a nice way of putting what I'd done, which was to show up in the middle of their lives and demand to be seen.

Charlene was wearing coral-colored lipstick and blush and green eye shadow but not a lot of it. It was nicely applied, as if someone at the makeup counter at Macy's had helped. Her cheeks, like her bottom, were full, and as soon as I made it to the landing, she took the sacks from me.

“Oh, here, I'll take that. Come in. Come in. I'm sure you're tired. It's a long flight.”

“Not that tired,” I said.

“Oh, well, you're on California time. Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea?”

I followed her up the short flight of stairs inside that formed the split of the split-level. The carpet was such a light beige it looked white. Jerry stopped at the front door to take off his shoes. I took off mine when I saw him do it and left them by the sofa. Charlene was already barefoot. Her bright red toenails contrasted with her translucently fair skin. She walked into the kitchen, and I walked behind her down a clear plastic runner. I looked down the hall to the right. There was a runner there, too.

“Sure, iced tea is fine.”

I'd thought she would introduce herself: “Hello, I'm your home-wrecking stepmother. Nice to meet you.” Instead she set the bags on the counter and started pulling down plates. Only three. Silverware and napkins were already on the dining room table.

“Jerry, would you put the pie in the icebox, please? And get out the tea. I made a fresh jug this afternoon.”

Jerry did as he was told, and I stood in the middle with nothing to do.

Charlene took serving dishes out and started opening Styrofoam containers. Halfway through dumping out potato salad that didn't look as if it had nearly enough mustard in it, she turned and touched her bosom.

“It's just so funny seeing you here in person,” she said. “You're so much taller than you look in your photos.”

Everyone was acting like it wasn't at all strange that I was there, like I was a minor surprise, a neighbor who had popped over for dinner. I didn't know whether to play along or jump up and down screaming.

“Photos?”

“Oh yes, we have a scrapbook of all your newspaper articles. Jerry, show her.”

Jerry abandoned the iced tea jug and disappeared back into the living room. A dog barked outside. It was close by, but I couldn't tell if it was theirs or the neighbor's. It sounded small. I don't like dogs. I never have.

I walked up to the counter. There was sliced brisket and an entire pig worth of ribs. Along with the potato salad, there were macaroni and cheese, slaw, and baked beans floating in maple-colored gravy. Two whole containers were filled with nothing but barbecue sauce. Charlene got out the gravy boats.

“I feel like I know you from cutting out your articles and hearing about you and things, but of course I don't, so pardon me if I get overly familiar.” She talked to the brisket as she transferred it to a platter and fanned it out in neat rows. “And I hope you like barbecue. We're famous for it here. Is this your first time in Kansas City?”

“Yes,” I said. “I've never had to track down a fugitive parent before.”

There. I said it. It was out there.

“Some folks prefer Texas style. It has a thinner, more vinegary sauce, but here we use molasses. It's thicker and sweeter. Just coats the back of a spoon.”

She wiped her hands on a towel. They were shaking. At least she'd heard me.

Jerry came back in and set a black, leather-bound scrapbook on the kitchen table next to the salt and pepper shakers. I walked toward him, and he backed off, moving around me and heading for the safety of the iced tea.