Surviving Valencia (14 page)

“Promise me?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

I looked at his sweet, sad face. He was tired and the streetlights caught lines on his face I normally didn’t notice. The vulnerability I saw in him gave me power I rarely felt and I reached out for him, touching his arm, hit be an unexpected wave of love.

He could not have done it. Here he was, telling me all about the other letters. He’d only been hiding them to protect me. I needed to tell him I’d been intersecting the letters too and that what I had found was not the work of ‘bored kids.’ But my head pounded so ferociously I thought I might be sick. I could taste mint chocolate chip rising in the back of my throat. I pressed my hands to my face to keep my head from exploding.

We were approaching our house again. He turned into the driveway.

“Great. Now I’m afraid to go inside,” I whispered.

He rested his hand on my leg. “I’ll protect you.”

The next day while I was sewing some rickrack on an apron, I came up with a plan: I would hire a private investigator. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

Without too much trouble, I found one. His name was Jeb Wilde and I found him online. I told Adrian I needed to get my hair trimmed, and Jeb and I met at a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Dragon. I was surprised he could meet me immediately like that, but I decided to not overanalyze it. I brought both envelopes with the photographs and note inside and a stack of old clippings from 1986. I also had an envelope with $1500 to get the investigation started.

I was wearing dark sunglasses that undoubtedly drew attention to me but made me feel like I was unrecognizable, and a black hooded sweatshirt I had just purchased at a thrift store and planned to dispose of in the parking lot dumpster when I left. Jeb was sitting in a booth with his head down, doing a Sudoku puzzle. He had told me that was how I would recognize him. A thermos of coffee sat in front of him, open, the lid a convenient little cup. I slid in across from him. He flipped his puzzle over and looked up at me.

He looked like a Midwestern man, a farmer or something. Early sixties with thinning hair and an ordinary, round head. Wiry and small. Could this little guy solve mysteries? Could he put my life back together? I doubted it and suddenly found the $1500 in my handbag very hard to part with.

“Well…” he said, polishing his lined bifocals with the edge of his shirt, “tell me what you know.”

That was it. No formal introductions. Apparently we weren’t going to order food, which was fine, but seemed weird. Wouldn’t the people who worked here get mad at us if we just used their booth for a business meeting? I wondered if this might be the wrong guy. I looked around for someone else, some slick looking man in a fedora and a trench coat, head bent down over a Sudoku puzzle…

“Do you have the money?” he asked.

“Umm, yeah.” I handed him the envelope. What was to stop him from taking it and never saying another word to me? “Do I get some kind of receipt?”

He scribbled something illegible on the back of the Chinese calendar placemat and handed it to me.

Okay.

He cleared his throat and leaned in closer to me, “From what I understood on the phone, you need to know if your husband killed your sister. Hmm?” He raised his scraggly brows at me. Hearing these words spoken aloud made something inside me break, and I started to cry.

“I don’t think he did it,” I whispered.

Jeb just nodded and took a drink.

By Christmas of 1987 some of the novelty of being the girl with the dead twin siblings was wearing off. I’d gotten used to being unpopular, in the sense that I had stopped expecting to change it, but I still wasn’t immune to wanting to be liked. I overheard talk of boy-girl parties that I was not invited to. I briefly entertained the thought of trying to have one myself, but I knew no one would show up. Or worse, they would because they thought it was funny. There was a Christmas dance at our school, and I asked my dad if he would take me. He said he would, which I really wasn’t expecting. It was a “dress-up” dance, exclusively for seventh and eighth graders. I had nothing to wear to it. I was down to two pairs of jeans and a handful of tops I circulated between. Everything else was outgrown or worn out. My shoes and first bra I had purchased with change from my piggybank, but now the pig was almost empty.

The weekend before the dance, my younger cousins BobbieMae and TobiSue got dropped off at our house to visit while their parents went to a bowling tournament. They were nine and seven, freckly, red haired little pumpkin heads, and looked more like different aged twins than ordinary sisters. They both shrieked instead of talked, and TobiSue, the seven year old, still ate her boogers, but I was thrilled to have some company. On Friday night my mother took the three of us to the video rental store that had just opened up a few blocks away. TobiSue and BobbieMae were immediately drawn to
Pretty In Pink.

“She has red hair like us,” said TobiSue, waving the box above her head.

“We have to get it then, Aunt Patricia,” said BobbieMae-the-bossy.

I could not tell you what other movies we got, because all I remember is
Pretty In Pink
. My cousins and I watched it twice, and then when they went home on Sunday afternoon, I watched it twice more by myself. It was the dress that got me. The dress that Andie sewed herself.  On Sunday evening I went upstairs and knocked on my mother’s door. Lately she was always in there resting. At first she didn’t answer, but then, the third time I knocked, she called out, softly, “Rewind those movies and leave them on the kitchen counter top so I remember to take them back.”

“I will. Can I come in?”

No answer. I tried to open the door but it was locked.

“Mom, do you have any material you don’t want? You know, like, fabric?”

“There’s a bag of scraps in the hall closet. Good night.”

My imitation Swatch watch told me it was 7:19.

I went to the hall closet and found a paper grocery sack filled with some cut up old curtains, small pieces from a patchwork quilt I’d seen my mom working on when I was very little, and an old burgundy tablecloth with brown gravy stains on it. I gathered up a needle and thread, some scissors, and a Capri-sun, and headed downstairs with the bag of fabric to get to work.

Right away, I knew I would use the curtain tiebacks for straps. They were perfect for that: hemmed with lace accents and thick but not
too
thick. The tablecloth’s gravy stains would probably be invisible at the dance, since it was half-dark in there, so that provided me with a huge piece of fabric. I wrapped it around me, toga-style, and used a long strip of curtain lace as a belt. I admired myself in the bathroom mirror. Not bad. Then I put
Pretty In Pink
in the VCR one more time and watched it while I started sewing.

The dress looked good enough to draw zero attention to me at the dance. That was the best I could hope for. I hadn’t entertained aspirations of pulling a Molly Ringwald. Walking in and having no one look at me was more than I had hoped for. My dad dropped me off, and even handed me a five-dollar bill on my way out of the car. I walked in and paid the $2.00 fee, got my hand stamped and hung up my coat, and sat on the bleachers most of the night playing Cat’s Cradle with one of the chaperones. A boy named Davis Neighbors asked me to dance to
The Way It Is
by Bruce Hornsby and the Range and I said yes. Then halfway through he took his hands off my waist and danced a little bit away from me. Then after another line or two of the song, he walked away entirely, leaving me standing there alone on the dance floor, smelling like his aftershave. I was just glad to have been asked to dance by anyone.

At ten the dance ended. I went outside and waited for my dad. Cars came and went while I sat on the bench by the school. I considered asking someone for a ride, but I didn’t see anyone who lived in my neighborhood. Besides, how angry would my dad be if he showed up and I wasn’t here? So I kept waiting. Soon it was still and quiet all around me, with everyone gone. I’d had this funny feeling he was going to nod off on the couch and sleep right through picking me up, and now it was happening.

The worst part was that I was wearing my mother’s shoes, a pair of impossibly high heels with velvet bows on the sides. They were a little too big, but I could no longer squeeze into any of my dress-up shoes, so I’d felt I had no other choice. I had always coveted these sassy, slutty shoes. She was much too old and frumpy for shoes like this. I had sneaked them out of her room a few days ago, thinking I would sneak them back into place sometime after the dance and she would never know. I was trapped. If I called home, I would risk waking her up and having her come to get me instead of my dad. She’d kill me if she saw me in these. And I doubted this handmade dress would go over well either. I couldn’t bear to be grounded again. I had just finally served my sentence for the night I’d accused her of having an affair when she was actually going to her support group.

I tried to get back in the school, but it was locked. I couldn’t walk home. It was too far even in nice weather with good shoes on. So I just sat there.

Soon the few houses that had been lit up became dark. I tried walking all the way around the school, in case one of the lesser-used doors was unlocked, but they were all firmly fixed in place. Through the tall window by a side door, I could peer in and see a row of payphones. I was starting to think being grounded wasn’t as bad as freezing to death. I considered going to one of the dark houses and asking to use their phone, but I couldn’t do it. When you’re twelve it sometimes feels like you will get in trouble for any decision you make. I went back to the bench and sat down again.

I listed the states and their capitals in an inaudible whisper that got lost in the winter night. I translated words from English to Spanish and then counted to one hundred in French. I tried to put the presidents in order but couldn’t get past Andrew Jackson.

I watched the hands on my watch go round and round. I waited for a car to go past, but the street was dead silent. At 12:00 it started to snow. I opened my mouth to catch the big, fluffy flakes. At least it wasn’t windy. At 2:00 I heard yelling far off in the distance as some bars closed and people headed home. This made me a little scared, but after a moment it was silent again. The snow continued but got a little smaller and a little wetter. Now I was getting upset. I was crying and shaking from the cold. My nose was running endlessly, and the sleeves of my coat were covered with snot.

At 3:45 my dad pulled up. He looked groggy and did not utter a sound as he leaned over to open the door for me. The roads were slick and he gripped the steering wheel with a tired, furious look that had intensified since Valencia and Van’s deaths. Just a few blocks from the school a cat darted out in front of us. He hit it and I gasped, winced, looked back over my shoulder to see it lying still in the street, but he said nothing. We got halfway home in silence before he said, “You know, if you had some friends you would have been home in bed right now.”

May is my favorite time of year. It always has been. School’s almost over and my birthday is in May. Everything is blossoming and winter is behind us. I was looking forward to turning thirteen. There would be no party. Most likely no gifts, but usually relatives sent me cards with money. Mainly, I just wanted to know what it felt like to be a teenager.

I remember that the morning of my thirteenth birthday was hazy and hotter than normal. My mom had recently started working at a dental office at the front desk, I guess having admitted to herself she no longer lived up to the title “Stay at Home Mom.” To some degree, she had snapped out of the funk she’d been in for the past eighteen months, and was starting to exercise along with the ladies from
Super Abs
and
Ultimate Buns
. She had to dress up for her new job, or at least that’s what she told my dad and me when she showed up with five big shopping bags from TJ Maxx the day after she got hired.

Now she was rushing around the house, her new cordless curling iron in one hand and a toaster strudel in the other. No matter how busy she was, she always had time make a perfect crisscross trellis of icing on her toaster strudel. Even in her depths of depression, she got that right.

I was packing my backpack with books, getting ready for the bus to pick me up. I’d been reminding her for two weeks about my birthday, so we could both avoid the embarrassment of her forgetting it. I put my backpack on and when I craned my neck I could see the bus way down the block. Two more stops before it would pick me up.

“I better get going…” I called, testing her, giving her the chance to remember.

“Okay. Have a good day at school,” she yelled. The words were muffled by toaster strudel.

Umm. Should I say something?
The bus was getting closer. I opened the front door and stepped outside but didn’t yet close it behind me.

“Mom?” I yelled, but she didn’t hear me. I yelled it louder.

“What?”

The bus was approaching. I hesitated.

“It’s my birthday.”

“What?”

“It’s my birthday! I’m thirteen.”

Silence.

“I’m a teenager!”

The bus horn honked loudly and I looked up to see the mean old driver glaring at me. He honked again.

“Don’t miss that bus! I can’t drive you to school if you miss it,” my mother yelled.

So I got on.

When I got home there was a chocolate cake from the supermarket on the kitchen table alongside actual wrapped presents.

My mother was waiting for me. She had changed from her work clothes into jeans and a t-shirt, but her face was still made-up and her hair was teased and pulled back in a banana clip. She wore giant, shiny gold earrings that weighed on her lobes. She looked like a doll whose head had been popped off and put on the wrong body.

“Your dad will be home a little early tonight. Should we order some pizza?” she asked. I was in shock.

“Sure.” I set my backpack down and went to get a glass of water.

“Water? Have an RC instead, why don’t you.”

“Alright.” I poured out my glass of water and opened a can of soda.

I sat down at the kitchen table, across from her. The room was perfectly quiet except for the faint sizzling sound coming from the can of cola.

“How was work?” I asked her.

“Oh, I love it. It’s a lot of fun.”

“That’s good.”

She drummed her fingers on the table and spun the cake around so I could have a better look.

“What a nice cake,” I said.

“Chocolate,” she said. “These cakes from the Piggly Wiggly are the best.”

“Looks good.”

“There should be enough left over that you can take some with you in your lunch.”

“What a good idea.”

“So you’re thirteen now. Time sure flies.”

To me it didn’t.

My dad walked through the door then, a fistful of Mylar balloons in his hand. “Happy birthday! I picked these up for you,” he said, handing me the balloons. There was Garfield, Inspector Gadget, the Muppets, Barbie, even one with a rainbow that said
Hope You’re Feeling Better
. Had he stolen these?

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, holding the balloons, unsure of what to do next.

“We were just about to order pizza,” my mom told him.

“Great. Get on the horn and order it. Extra meat. Onions. Jalapenos.”
Hallow peenos.

“Will do, Rog. Be right back,” said my mom.

My dad opened a can of RC and pulled up a chair. “So you’re a teenager now.”

“Uh-huh.” I took a sip of my soda.

“What’d you learn in school today?”

I hadn’t been asked that since I was a little kid. I racked my brain but somehow I couldn’t think of anything to tell him. So I made up something: “We learned about how people in South America live and stuff.”

“Pizza will be here in thirty-five minutes,” said my mom, hanging up the phone. She looked at me. “Do you want to open your presents?”

“Yeah!”

She sat back down and handed me the smallest one. My dad intercepted it and gave it a playful shake then pretended to hide it behind him. “Alright, alright, you can have it,” he said, handing it over to me. Was I in the
Twilight Zone
? Who were these cheerful, fun-loving people?

The present was wrapped in bright pink and yellow striped paper with a white bow on top. I took my time unwrapping it, wanting to make opening the gifts last until the pizza arrived.

Inside were barrettes, trendy ponytail holders, and two flavored roll-on lip-glosses. My mom was beaming. “Do you like those?” she asked.

I nodded. “These are great,” I said, and I meant it.

“How about this one next?” She passed me one that had to be clothes, judging by the shape of the box. Inside were jeans and an oversized thermo-knit sweatshirt in lavender with matching scrunchy socks. How did she even know about cool outfits like this?

“I love this outfit!” I said. I actually got up and hugged them.

“Now this one,” said my mom, passing another package to me. It was heavy and turned out to be board games: Scruples and Pictionary. I’d be playing these by myself, I figured, but it’s the thought that counts.

“How about this one?” asked my dad, handing me another that looked like more clothes. Inside were Ocean Pacific shorts, tank-tops, and t-shirts.

“Summer’s almost here!” said Mom.

I held up a top with a surfboard printed on it. Turquoise and peach were very big colors in 1988 and these mix-and-match sets put me right in style.

The doorbell rang. “That must be the pizza!” she exclaimed, hopping up and running to the door.

My dad raised his eyebrows and rubbed his belly.

“Don’t open any more presents without me,” hollered my mother.

She reappeared carrying not one pizza but three. “That was fast. Let’s take a break from presents and eat these while they’re hot.”

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I said.

“I’m on a diet so I got veggie,” she explained. She lined up the extra large boxes on the countertop and opened them all. First was the one for my dad, then her veggie pizza, and the last was plain mushroom: my favorite. I drew in a breath and exhaled, completely caught off guard. This was all too much. I didn’t know if I should feel better or worse that she knew things like my favorite kind of pizza. I mean, of course it was better if she knew, right?

“Should we take a picture?” I heard myself ask.

“Dig in!” said my dad, loading up a plate with five floppy slices of the heart attack special. My mom took three veggie slices and then threw another one on her plate for good measure. As hard as she tried, she had never quite grasped the definition of diet.

“Save room for cake and ice cream,” she reminded us between bites. She had a black olive stuck to her chin. Seeing it pasted there like a tiny tire filled me with sadness and guilt and love.

“Let’s take a picture,” I said again, scrambling through drawers in the kitchen, trying to find the camera.

“Take some pizza before it gets cold,” said my mom. The olive slice dropped to her lap. She noticed and popped it into her mouth. I gave up trying to find the camera and got a plate of pizza instead.

And so the evening went. After pizza they lit thirteen candles and I made a wish. We had chocolate cake with raspberry swirl ice cream, then I opened the rest of my presents: More clothes, an Esprit purse, and some sandals for summer. I wouldn’t look homeless anymore!
ALF
was on TV, and we sat down to watch it together, my parents patting the spot on the couch between them to indicate this was where I should sit. I conveniently let it slide that the only time either of them had ever commented on the show had been to voice their displeasure that it had ever been made.

Part of me was removed from the whole scenario, watching it as if it might actually be a dream. I kept trying to get that part to snap back inside my head, but it floated above me, cradling my soul and judging the evening as make-believe.