The Fading (46 page)

‘Can I help you?’

‘It’s me, Dad. Noel.’

John Shaker lowered his hand. ‘What do you want?’

Noel walked up onto the porch and stopped a few feet from his father. ‘I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes.’

‘Julie’s not here.’

‘All right. Does that mean you and I can’t have a conversation?’

‘You disappear for four years, doing God knows what in Las Vegas. You take our daughter to Las Vegas?’

‘Julie’s an adult, Dad. I didn’t kidnap her.’

John’s face was filling with pressure as if air were being pumped into it. ‘Yes, and she’s finally sorted you out. She’s trying
to get herself back on track, and I have no intention of allowing you to—’

‘Stop it, both of you,’ Julie said. She was standing in the doorway.

At the sound of her voice, Noel’s heart skipped and then churned double-time. He looked past his father to her and began to
smile, but she wasn’t smiling at him.

John did not turn around, only glared at his son.

Noel said, ‘I didn’t come here to create a problem or argue with either of you.’

‘And yet you always do,’ John said. ‘Please, Noel. Lisa’s not well. This is not a good time.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Noel said, watching Julie. ‘I have something that belongs to Julie, that’s all. I want to give it
to her, then I’ll leave.’

She stared at him for a moment, then stepped down onto the porch.

John turned on her. ‘You have to be at work in an hour.’

‘I won’t be late,’ she told him as she walked by, taking Noel by the arm. ‘Come on. I need to eat before my shift.’

She walked him to a used Honda sedan parked on the street. She got in and Noel opened his door, set the bag on the floor.

‘Give me one second,’ he told her.

‘Don’t push it,’ she said.

‘I won’t.’

He walked back up the driveway. John was still staring at him, lips compressed into a flat seam, hands on his hips, gut sucked
in, chest inflated.

‘I’m sorry for all of the problems I’ve caused you and our family, Dad. I don’t expect you to forgive me.’

John allowed no quarter.

‘But whatever you think of me, of Mom, it’s important for you to know that we may be a lot of things, a lot of things you
don’t like. But we’re not liars.’

John shook his head. ‘I’m way past this, Noel.’

‘No, not yet. But you will be. Look at me, Dad. Look at me, now.’

John stared at his son. With contempt. With disappointment.

‘Watch me now, Dad. Don’t blink. Are you watching me now?’

‘For chrissakes.’

‘Are you watching me?’

‘God knows why, but yes, I am watching you, Noel.’

‘Thank you.’

He faded over a period of ten seconds, until he was all the way inside. He stepped forward. He hugged his father tightly,
holding him for a while. John did not move. Noel released him, stepped back, and showed
himself, coloring in a smooth incoming tide. He turned his hands over, craned his neck this way and that. He smiled.

John blinked several times.

‘Thank you for being my dad,’ Noel said. ‘That’s all I wanted to say.’

John frowned, looked at Julie’s car, the houses across the street. He looked at Noel and opened his mouth, but the words didn’t
come.

‘It’s okay, Dad.’

John coughed and pulled himself together. ‘Well, don’t keep her late. She has a job, and homework after.’

‘I won’t.’

John turned and stepped back inside.

In the car Julie said, ‘How’d it go?’

‘You weren’t watching?’

‘I thought it was between the two of you.’

‘Yeah, it was.’

‘So? Is everything all right?’

‘Maybe,’ Noel said. ‘Maybe not.’

They sat on the hood of her car, a loaded cardboard carton of Double-Doubles and fries between them. Noel was sucking on a
strawberry shake, Julie a chocolate. In front of them were the main runways to LAX. Every few minutes another jet floated
down, wings tilting this way and that, flaps braking against the air as the engines roared and shook the palm trees lining
the In N Out Burger parking lot off Sepulveda Avenue.

‘How far away is work?’ Noel said.

‘Back in Studio City, on the Valley side.’

‘I’m sorry I brought you all the way down here,’ Noel said, plucking a clump of melted cheese and grilled onions from the
paper wrapper and cleaning his fingers. ‘You’re going to be late.’

Julie shrugged. ‘I’m a waitress at the Mexacali Cafe. I can always find another one of those. It’s a job, not a career.’

‘Is there something else you’re working on?’ Julie threw a fry out onto the grass where a pigeon treated it like a worm. ‘I’m
finishing my degree in art
history at UCLA I only have a year and a half to go, then we’ll see.’

‘Maybe the MBA and travel,’ Noel said. ‘Combine the two, live in London and work in the art world.’

Julie laughed. ‘I don’t think I can leave my mom again. I want to be close, I need a home.’

‘And this feels like home.’

‘Some days. More than anything else ever did,’ she said.

‘That’s good. I’m glad.’ He wasn’t even sure what he’d brought her here for. If he’d had a speech prepared, it had been rewritten
so many times it was now just a mess of disappearing ink.

Julie elbowed him in the ribs. ‘What’d you bring me?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing special.’

‘Come on.’

‘I’m not sure if it matters any more,’ he said. ‘Everything’s different. It was just some dumb thing.’

‘It’s not dumb if you thought it was important. Give it to me, or else I’m going to be pissed.’

He looked at her, in her black dress shirt and the jean skirt and her black wedge heels. Her hair was shorter. Her skin was
brown and looked as smooth as a seal’s. He could tell she had been sober for weeks, probably from the first night she left
Las Vegas.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. You look like an angel.’

She groaned and shoved him away. Noel walked around to the car door and leaned in for the bag. He
came back and used the hood as a stage. He set up the traveling show, with the caged boxcars, the safari jeep, the lions and
elephants and rhinos, the monkeys and the red canvas pop-tent. When he had arranged them all, he removed the mustached man
in his hat and macho boots and placed him beside the tent. Lastly, he took the brave woman with her sexy khaki shorts and
her plastic whip raised in one arm, and set her on the other side of the tent.

Watching Julie, he shifted the woman closer to the man. ‘There?’ he asked.

Julie laughed.

‘Maybe too close,’ he said, and moved the woman a few paces away from the tent. ‘I don’t think they’re ready to share a tent
yet.’

‘Aw, Noel.’ Julie slid down from the hood and hugged him, holding him with her small arms until he was against her and with
her from knees to shoulders. She set her cheek against his chest and he ran his palm down the back of her hair, slowly, making
it last as long as he could.

She looked up, searching his eyes. ‘What happened to you out there?’

Noel shook his head. ‘Nothing important.’

She knew better. ‘I don’t want to know. Except for one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Did it come back? It did, didn’t it?’ She held his face in her hands, staring into his eyes. ‘I can see it in you.’

‘I’m the same,’ he said with no strength.

‘No. Not at all. I’ve never seen you like this.’ She released him and stepped back, crossing her arms. ‘You got control of
it. I know you did.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Julie looked at her feet. ‘Are you going to stay?’

‘Do you want me to?’

Another plane fluttered down, tearing the sky in half with sound.

‘I want you to do what you want to do,’ Julie said. ‘Because anything else won’t work.’

‘Yeah. I don’t think I’m welcome here.’

‘Your dad misses you, Noel. He always has. He just needs some time to get to know you.’

‘Do you miss me?’

Julie thought it over, grinning. ‘Sometimes. Sometimes not.’

‘I miss you every day, Julie.’

‘No, you don’t. Besides, I’m not that hard to find.’

‘Then I will find you again,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

Julie looked frightened, and he saw her guard going up. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The important thing,’ Noel said, closing the distance, taking her hands, raising them, kissing her fingers, ‘is that you
know. Whatever we do next, wherever we go, whoever you’re with, whoever we are to each other. If you need anything, anything
in the world, I will help you get it. I will do anything for you, Jules. I promise.’

She seemed confused, trying to smile but sad despite it all.

He kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

She was crying. Whispered back. ‘I’m sorry I left you there. I’m sorry, Noel. It was the worst thing I could have done to
you and I hate myself for it.’

He clutched her, held her face and looked into her watering eyes.

‘You saved my life, Julie Wagner. Believe it.’

He backed away from her. She watched him go, shaking her head, reaching a hand out, then letting it fall. When he got to the
curb near the street, he turned and trotted across the road, onto the median, and further, looking back every few steps.

She waited, watching him, arms crossed as another plane screamed down to earth.

Noel jogged across the field for a few hundred feet and looked back. Julie was climbing onto the hood to watch him. She stood
up and shouted something but he couldn’t make out her words.

He jumped and caught the fence, digging the toes of his crocodile-skin shoes into the chain link, and when he was straddling
the top, he paused, looking back at her. Julie had a hand over her mouth and she was standing on her toes.

He made it last for her, the coming sunset over the Pacific lighting him like a torch before he gathered the rays into himself
and quenched the flame with a final burst of color going black as nuclear ash, then only his silhouette, and then nothing
more than a blown kiss he hoped would reach her in due time.

When he hit the ground, his ankle held. He jogged toward the terminals as another plane thundered down and caressed him with
its jet wash, and this time he did not look back.

At a bank of payphones inside the international terminal, Noel used a calling card from the newsstand to dial a number he
had never written down but had committed to memory. The line rang through eight times and he didn’t think she was going to
answer until she did.

‘Hello?’ She sounded somehow annoyed and aloof at the same time.

‘Rebecca?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hey, Mom.’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me, your son. Noel.’

The line was quiet for a few seconds and he thought she was going to hang up.

‘Noel? Is that you?’

‘It’s me, Mom. I’m sorry to bother you. I was just thinking about you and it’s been a long time. Too long. How are you?’

‘Well, for Pete’s sake, Noel. Where are you?’

‘I’m in Los Angeles, Mom.’

‘How old are you now?’

Noel laughed. ‘Depends on how you count it. I think I’ve only had five or six birthdays, so I guess I’m still just a kid.’

This made her happy. He knew her sigh. ‘Honey, are you okay? Do you need money? Are you in jail?’

‘I’m fine, Mom. Safe. I’m happy.’

‘I miss your face,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that funny? Sometimes I think I miss your face more than I miss you. What a terrible
mother I turned out to be.’

‘No, Mom. Don’t ever think that. That’s what I wanted to tell you. You were right. You did everything right and you were never
wrong. Do you understand?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You believed in me when no one else did. You always knew, and you never let go of that. You weren’t wrong about any of it.
Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise, okay?’

‘Oh, Noel.’ Her voice changed. When she spoke again she sounded like an enchanted girl in a fairy tale, not at all like any
mother should sound. ‘Always going away. Where no one can find you. Hm, my boy? Where do you go? What do you do?’

‘I’m here. I’m right here, Mom.’ Noel swallowed, closing his eyes. ‘You just can’t see me when it happens. No one can. But
I’m always here, and you’re always with me.’

She giggled and began to hum with delight.

Noel wiped his eyes with his thumb.

‘What it’s like?’ she said with dreamy longing. ‘Tell me, Noeller Coaster. What’s it like to disappear?’

Noel swallowed. ‘It’s beautiful, Mom.’ He bit his fist. ‘The most beautiful thing in the world.’

‘Yeeessssss. I’m so proud of you. My miracle boy.’

‘Thank you, Mom. I’m proud of you, too. I love you. I have to go now, okay?’

‘Be careful, Noel. There’s monsters out there, and in here, too.’

‘I know. I will.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘You know, for such a tall drink of water you’re a good kid.’

‘You should know,’ he said. ‘You made me.’

She sighed again, breathed heavily for a few seconds, then was quiet. Noel held the receiver until the monotone beeping signaled
for him to put it down.

Behind him, in one of the gate lounges, dozens of people were staring up at the two televisions where one of the twenty-four-hour
news channels was reporting on an escalation in the situation that had ‘captivated the nation’. A blonde reporter was standing
on a ridge near a canopy of foliage with rolling emerald hills in the background. The sky was a tropical heavy gray and a
slight breeze was forcing her to hold her adorable black felt beret under a sheaf of papers to keep it from flying away.

Noel walked closer to hear, but the sound was off and he could only read the scrolling, descending captions of white text
for the hearing impaired.

It said: