“I’m fine. But …” She shook her head as if she didn’t believe what she was looking at.
“But what?”
“I thought you were dead. We all did.”
I almost choked.
“What?”
“We heard you were shot, and you never came back to school … maybe a teacher said something …” She trailed off again.
Oh, my God! I thought to myself. Oh, my God!
“I
was
shot,” I confirmed, “but …” I spread my arms high and wide, like Moses parting the Red Sea. “I’m definitely not dead.” I dropped my arms. “I transferred to another school. It seemed like a good move at the time.”
I didn’t tell her about the Sturm und Drang with my mother. I didn’t like to talk or think about that, and it was none of her business, anyway. “I’m alive and well,” I said. “As you can see with your own eyes.”
She looked as if she was going to cry. “That is so fantastic!” she enthused. “Everyone is going to be freaked when I tell them.”
I didn’t know who everyone was, but the idea that there were kids who had been sorry about my demise gave me a good feeling.
“So, are you a student here?” she asked me. “I haven’t noticed you before.”
“No,” I said.
And then the lies started. Why, I don’t know. Wanting to belong, trying to recapture some of my lost years. Maybe some day, if I can ever afford it, I’ll go into analysis and figure it out. “But I’m going to enroll.” The lies rolled off my tongue like water flowing downstream. “For the next session. That’s why I’m here.”
Part of me was saying, Shut up, you fool, and another part was saying,
Yes!
“Great!” Cassie gushed. “Where are you transferring from?” Once you start that snowball tumbling, you can’t stop it. “Nowhere. I’ve been traveling,” I improvised. “Getting life experience.” That part was true. The rest, of course, wasn’t.
“Wow!” She exclaimed. Obviously, she was one of those people who gets excited about everything. Cutting her toenails would be a rapturous experience. “Like where?”
“Here and there. Europe. Australia. You know.”
“God, that’s so great!” she enthused. “I’ve never been out of California, except to Mexico. And Oregon. Well, Arizona,” she kept amending. “But, Europe! That is so cool.”
Me, neither, I didn’t say. I had been to Mexico, if you count Rosarito Beach, which is basically an extension of Southern California. But that was it.
“So, like, are you going to sign up for classes?”
“Yeah, I am. Can you tell me where you do that?”
“I’ll walk you over,” she volunteered. “I have time.”
We walked across the quad. “Jessica Thompson,” Cassie said again. She kept glancing over at me, as if to make sure I was actual flesh and blood. “Unbelievable.”
My feeling exactly, I thought.
The summer quarter was starting in two weeks. I signed up for three classes: Introduction to Biology, Spanish I, and Twentieth-century American Fiction. I wanted to take more, but three classes was the limit for first-time enrollees. I whipped my checkbook out of my purse and paid my fees, on the spot. I was now an official college student, community college division.
To this day, I don’t know the specific reason that prompted my detour. Destiny, fate, karma, all or none of the above. But whatever it was, that decision changed my life. Within two weeks, I had quit my waitressing job and plunged into college life. It was a tough transition—I hadn’t been in school for two years, so I had forgotten how to study, and losing my main source of income forced me to scramble to fill the financial void. During the next six years, which is how long it took me to amass the necessary credits at Santa Monica Community College to transfer to UCLA, then finish my bachelor’s degree there, I was a model (which I could keep doing because the hours were flexible), a file clerk, janitor, temp secretary, dog walker and groomer, babysitter for faculty members, and any other odd job I could fit into my schedule.
Between working, going to school, and studying, I had almost no social life, but I didn’t mind. I had a future. What it was going to be, exactly, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to be a waitress or some other dead-end worker for the rest of my life.
Despite having almost no free time, I did manage to get laid. The first time, with an instructor from an ethics class, wasn’t anything special, but I felt like I was shedding a giant albatross. After that, I slept with whomever I found attractive. I wasn’t promiscuous—I was never with more than one man at a time—but none of my encounters were serious love affairs. I took the proper precautions, rode the particular relationship until it ran its course, and moved on, like the other young women I befriended along the way.
In that critical respect, I was no different from other young people my age. I wasn’t an outcast anymore.
My decision to apply to law school came as a fluke as well. I was going to college around the clock, including in the summer. My hectic, irregular schedule forced me to work nights, weekends, whenever I could squeeze in a few hours. One of my jobs, which I had the summer before I graduated, was at a Century City law firm. I worked Saturdays, Sundays, even holidays on occasion, filing, running errands, whatever they asked me to do, including mundane stuff like picking up dry cleaning. The work was boring and numbing, but they paid well, thirty dollars an hour. They had to, to get drones like me to give up their weekends. They were awash in money, so they could well afford it.
This particular Sunday night I worked until almost nine o’clock, organizing files for a lawyer who was about to start a major class-action case. He was in his thirties, attractive, self-assured. A rising star, he had recently made partner. When we were finally finished, he asked if he could buy me dinner, as compensation for keeping me so late.
He was single; I knew that much about him. I didn’t think he was putting the make on me. My assumption was that he didn’t want to eat alone, and I was presentable and handy. I was twenty-five years old. I could take care of myself. I said yes, that was thoughtful of him.
He took me to Michael’s, a famous restaurant on Third Street in Santa Monica, in his BMW M5, a rocket ship on wheels. We sat on the terrace under the tent and ate and drank like potentates. Warren Beatty and Annette Bening were at the table next to ours. I managed not to gawk. I don’t remember most of the specifics of the meal, but I clearly remember that we drank Château Latour with our entrées. The bill, with tip, came to over a thousand dollars. He dropped his credit card on the check without batting an eye.
A nightcap at his place? Why not? I wasn’t drunk, but I was comfortably mellow, and pliant. He lived nearby, in a penthouse apartment on Ocean Avenue that was perfectly decorated and included some killer works of art. After five years of modeling, I had learned enough about art to know what was good. And the views were fantastic. Even though it was dark out, I could see the lights of Catalina Island, twenty-six miles across the sea.
We drank some cognac, started necking, got all hot and bothered, and fumbled our way into his bedroom. He was a good lover. For the first time in my life, I had an orgasm that I didn’t induce myself.
We got dressed, made out some more, and then it was time for me to leave. My car was in the garage at his office. He offered to drive me back, but I declined. I didn’t want to drive, I was too out of it. I would cab it to my house, then take another taxi in the morning to retrieve my Honda.
Since I was half in my cups, my normal discretion was out of order, so as I looked around his impressive pad one last time, I couldn’t help asking him how much the rent for a place like this was. He laughed at my audacity, and told me he owned it. Then he told me how much it had cost.
I was dizzy, and that put me over the edge. I had to sit down. He got me a glass of water and held my hand while I drank it, so it wouldn’t spill. Looking up at him, I asked, “How much money do you make, Mark?” His name was Mark Levinson.
“A million a year.”
It was as if I were back in third grade. “Really?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “That sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. With all my different crummy jobs, I was making less than twenty thousand dollars a year, before taxes. “From being a lawyer?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.
“Some of my partners make more.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Jesus. I should become a lawyer,” I said.
He sat down next to me. “That’s a very good idea, Jessica,” he said. He wasn’t jerking me around; he was serious. “You’re smart. You’d make a good one.”
“You think?”
“I’m sure of it.”
And that is why I went to law school: to get rich. I stayed at UCLA. I got into Stanford and USC, but UCLA, being a public university, was less expensive, and being a poor girl, I was going to have to max out on student loans.
I knew early on that I didn’t want to practice Mark’s kind of law. Too boring. I liked the drama of the courtroom. I could still live large—defense lawyers make a lot of money, too. After graduating and taking the bar exam, I would work in the Public Defender’s office or the District Attorney’s office for a couple of years to get trial experience, then I would join a big firm that did criminal law, or find a couple of like-minded partners and set up our own shop.
Two days before I was scheduled to take my law exams, I got a call from Jill. I hadn’t heard from her in almost a year, and as soon as I heard her voice, I felt guilty. But before I could apologize for being a shitty, inattentive niece, she threw her thunderbolt.
“Your mother is at Cedars,” she informed me. “Cancer. It’s terminal. She’s not going to last more than a few more days. It could be sooner.”
I was almost twenty-nine years old. I hadn’t had any contact with my mother for more than fourteen years.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I upbraided her unpleasantly.
Jill charitably ignored my rudeness. “I wanted to,” she answered, “but your mother insisted that I shouldn’t bother you. She’s been carrying that guilt inside for all these years. She knew that if you did come, it would be out of obligation, not love.”
Jill was right. But I was still in shock. “Then why are you calling me now?”
“Because she is your mother, your only living blood relative, and she is dying.”
“I’m going to see her,” I said without thinking.
“Good.” From the tone of Jill’s voice I knew that was the only answer she would accept from me. “Although she probably won’t know you’re there. She’s heavily sedated. I’m at the hospital now. How soon can you get here?”
My mother had shriveled up like a doll’s face carved from an apple. She was tiny in her hospital bed, with tubes like malignant snakes from the head of Medusa coming out of every orifice. She was out cold. The machines at her bedside graphed barely rippling slow lines.
Jill greeted me with a suffocating hug. She had the dry-eyed look of someone who was all cried out. “I’m glad you came.” She took my hand. “As much for you as her.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll leave you alone with her.”
The door closed behind her as I sat in the chair at my mother’s bedside. “I’m here,” I whispered. I didn’t want to wake her. I didn’t want to have to look into her eyes.
I had gotten to the hospital at four in the afternoon. Jill was with me when my mother died at one-thirty-six the following morning. We were the only visitors Claire Thompson had the entire time she was there.
A day later, I took the law exams. They were a piece of cake, I knew I had aced them before I turned in my book. I guess I did well because I was still numb, so I didn’t give a damn. My attitude going in was that if I passed, great. If not, I’d take them again.
The following day my mother was cremated, and a month later I went to her lawyer’s office in Santa Monica for the formal reading of her will. As had been the case at the hospital, Jill and I were the only ones present, because we were the only people my mother had named as beneficiaries. Claire Thompson’s life hadn’t merely been narrow, she had lived her final years in an emotional straitjacket.
My mother had $7,500 in her bank account. No stocks or bonds. Everything else she owned—her clothes, cheap jewelry, books, records, furniture, the debris of a small life—was in the house. Which she owned outright, she had paid the mortgage off three years earlier.
Jill and I split the cash. Jill got the clothing, most of which she would donate to Goodwill, the cheap trinkets, the movable things. I got the other half of the $7,500 and the house.
I very much did not want to move back into that house. Too many ghosts. I compromised with myself: I would move back in for just the length of time it took to get a job and get settled. Then I would leave. I could have used my share of the money my mother had left me to take a better apartment, but I wanted a nest egg. That was my only reason, or so I thought at the time.
When I started working for the Public Defender’s office, I set myself a timetable: two years maximum, then out. I remembered Mark Levinson’s apartment, and all the goodies in it. I wanted that for myself. But as I had learned a long time before, the hard way, life is messy and unpredictable. To my surprise, I love my job. Unlike a traditional practice, it is action all the time, and I make a difference. The people I represent really need me. So here I am, six years later, and I haven’t left. I still might. But for the foreseeable future, this is where I am. Where I want to be.
That decision, to stay in the public sector, is why I’m still living in my mother’s house. My monthly nut, which is the property taxes prorated and the utilities, comes to less than twelve hundred dollars a month. People living on welfare spend more than that.
The ghosts are still with me. They always will be. I’ve learned to manage them. I’ve also learned that it isn’t this physical house they live in. They live inside of me; so wherever I move to, I’ll still have them.
I own a house, I have a job I care about, I’m in a good relationship. Things could be worse. For most of my life, they have been.
I
HAVE A LOT OF
prep work to do for tomorrow and I want to get a good night’s sleep, so I cut my run short, but I increase my speed, really pushing myself. When I get back to the house, I’m panting for breath and my legs are tight. I stretch, take a shower, pop a Lean Cuisine into the microwave, and lay out on the kitchen table my material for Reggie’s examination.