Pasadena (10 page)

“I am sorry,” I say.

He gives me a small smile, and I know he's thinking of Maggie when he says, “Yeah, me too.”

T
his is unacceptable!” Joey bellows into his home phone. The number is unlisted. No chance of being called back.

Joey lives in a nice house—well, nice for 1963. My mom's little multi-lot cottage is no dream home, but Joey's place is strictly Brady Bunch, from the orange and avocado curtains to the mustard-colored sofa set in the wood-paneled living room. When your single parent is a dad, I guess redecorating falls by the wayside.

Joey's bedroom is a different story. White walls, black furniture, a glass desk. It's a New York City loft trapped inside a split ranch time bubble. It also has its own AC unit cranked to deep freeze.

I collapse on the black duvet and spread out, willing the hundred-plus-degree heat to leave my body while he rattles the folks at the home health agency. We've just caught them, fifteen minutes to closing. It's been a very long day.

“Taking advantage of my family while I'm away on business is the kind of shenanigan that will get you reported to the licensing board!”

I raise an eyebrow at “shenanigan.”

Joey shrugs. He nods to the person on the phone. “No, I do not have a copy. Who's to say it wasn't falsified . . . signed by my wife, you say? Yes, you can fax it over and I'll take it up with her. This is why the account fell behind. The man that pays the bills is always the last to know. Yes. Certainly. One moment.” He rattles off his fax number and hangs up. We stare at each other in the silence of the ticking house.

“Congratulations, Joey. In the history of crank calls, you win the Oscar for Most Eclectic Use of the Word ‘Shenanigan.'”

Joey groans. “I choked. But it worked. And I found out something else—the bill's past due for the second time this year. You think the Kims are having money problems?”

I think about it—that great big house, but with the AC
turned off. Mrs. Kim always dressed like a country-club doyenne, complete with jewelry. Always the same jewelry, but always the best. And Maggie, with her imported cigarettes and massive wardrobe. She never seemed to hurt for spending money. “I don't know. Maggie never mentioned it, and I think she would have, if she'd known.”

“Well, it's hardly the kind of thing her folks would advertise, especially to their kids.” Joey shrugs. “Maybe it's a fluke. Some bills just fall through the cracks.”

“But medical bills? Parker's their baby. They would never let anything get in the way of his care.”

“Violetta's still on the payroll,” he points out. “So it can't be the end of the world.”

I frown. “It was for Maggie.”

He scowls at me. “An elephant was born at the zoo last week. Does that have something to do with Maggie too? You're chasing shadows.”

“And you're helping me.”

He looks heavenward, shaking his head. “I'll get the fax.”

Joey ducks down the shag-carpeted hallway to his father's office and returns with the home health agency's report. I half expect it to be printed on that flimsy ancient thermal paper, given the rest of the house, but the sheaf he holds up is crisp and modern.

“Got it.” He pushes me to one side of the bed, sitting
down so we can look at it together. “Time sheet,” he says, flipping past the first page. Violetta worked a long twelve hours the day Maggie died. Eleven a.m. to eleven p.m., with four of those hours being overtime.

The second page is an hourly log written in Violetta's tidy cursive.

11 a.m.—Patient returned home from PT session. Gave bath and massage.

12 p.m.—Patient napped.

1 p.m.—Patient ate lunch.

2 p.m.—Delivered afternoon meds.

The list went on.

“Flip,” I say, and Joey turns to the third page. Parker eats dinner, gets his chair wheeled around the block for fresh air, and does his homework with a tutor.

“Even on a Saturday in the summer? That sucks,” Joey says.

“No wonder he's such a prick.”

Joey laughs and we turn to the last page, the final three entries:

9 p.m.—Patient in distressed mood. Argued with parents. Needs rest.

10 p.m.—Patient unable to sleep. Read book, watched TV. Still distressed.

10:30 p.m.—Patient requested anxiety meds. Calm, resting when I took leave.

The last page is a list of Parker's prescriptions. Vicodin and Valium are on the list, along with a few other words that read like sneezes—flunitrazepam, methylprednisolone, topiramate.

But no Rohypnol.

Parker was drugged and calm by 11:00 p.m. And Maggie was dead.

“That lets Parker off the hook,” Joey says. “If he was sedated, there was nothing he could have done.”

“It
is
a coincidence, though.” I flip through the log. “He didn't need medication any other night of the week.” I stare at the pages in my hands as if they can give me answers. But there are none that I can see.

“So, what do you think they fought about?” Joey asks.

“Money? School? Maggie? No idea.”

“Violetta knows,” Joey says.

I grin. “Think you can charm her the way you did Amanda?”

Joey cracks his knuckles. “They don't call me Casanova for nothing.”

I laugh and climb off the bed. “They don't call you Casanova. I'll ask her at the funeral. A little gossip is good for the soul.”

Joey deflates suddenly. His eyes grow bright. “We're burying her tomorrow,” he says. “She's going into the ground.”

It's like a water balloon in the face, a burst of cold, wet reality. I'm not ready for it yet. My body shivers. I've got to keep moving. “Come on. Let's go for a ride.”

It takes Joey's mouth a second to switch tracks, but his hands are already reaching for the keys. “Where to?”

“You'll see.”

• • •

The building is a low gray affair south of Colorado Boulevard that looks like an architect's representation of manic depression. The heavy block of metal and cement is highlighted by off-kilter windows with white sashes. They're supposed to make the place feel brighter on the inside. To me, it looks like a preschool for the criminally insane.

Dr. B's office is on the first floor, with a view of the parking lot.

Joey drops me off and keeps his questions to himself.

“I won't be long,” I tell him. He waits in the car.

I knock on the first door on the right, and Dr. B calls
out that it's open. There is no waiting room here, just the hallway, and a dimly lit gray office with the mandatory guest chairs, walnut desk, and ficus tree in the corner. I drop into my customary seat at the far end of the lone couch.

Dr. B smiles and comes around the desk to take the chair opposite mine. She hasn't changed in the past year and a half—short black hair crisply cut into a bob, beige blouse and gray lady pants, the kind that have a matching jacket somewhere and come from a store that sells exclusively to women over forty.

“Jude,” she says, and settles into her seat. “It's nice to see you again.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Wouldn't it be nicer not to see me? Doesn't a visit signify some sort of relapse?”

Dr. B shrugs. “Not necessarily. There are preventative visits. And then there are the visits we do to satisfy our loved ones. Your mother, in this case. This is more of a checkup than anything else.”

“Okay.” I don't dislike the good doctor. Ever since she stopped trying to bullshit me. After three sessions of “you're safe here,” she finally admitted bad things had to happen to good people, or she'd be out of a job.

“So, tell me about Maggie. I understand she was your best friend.”

“Yes.”

“And she killed herself.” It's not a question.

“Reportedly.”

“You have reason to doubt it?”

I like Dr. B, but I'm not sure I'm ready to tell all. So I shrug.

“When you were told it was suicide, how did it make you feel?”

Good old Dr. B. She's an ace at walking the middle path. She should have been a Buddhist.

That much, at least, I can share. “Like shit,” I say.

“A classmate of mine committed suicide my first year of college,” she says. Dr. B's pointless stories are meant to make it clear that you're not alone. But who's to say it's not just the two of you, then?

“I hear it's a stressful time.”

“I didn't know him,” she replies. “They held emergency meetings with the resident advisors and asked all of us how we felt. ‘Like shit' would have been a good answer. I wish I'd thought of it at the time. Instead, I told the truth. I was annoyed. I was being coddled because some imbalanced kid killed himself in his dingy little dorm room. If they'd spent a little more time talking to him and less time talking to me, maybe he'd still be alive.” Dr. B is tapping her pad with her pen now. She's looking through me,
thinking back. “I wonder how you'll see all this in thirty years, Jude.”

“Thirty years is an awfully long time,” I reply.

“Yes, it is. But I'm here to tell you that it will all look exactly the same.”

I shift in my seat and clear my throat. It's cool in the office, with the central air ghosting along silently, but I'm thirsty and the air is dry. “What do you mean?”

“That's what happens when people die. Time freezes around them. If you stand too close, you get caught, like a fly trapped in amber. It takes a certain amount of strength to pull away and leave it behind.”

“This kid in college, you said you didn't know him.”

She shrugs and leans back in her seat, intensity gone. “That's right. We had exactly one class together, a psych 101 symposium, ironically enough. There were two hundred and fifty of us in an auditorium every Monday for lectures.” She chuckles. “You see, I even remember the day of the week. I remember looking him up in the roster after the news came down, hoping it would jar my memory of him, but it didn't.

“Of course, the difference here is he was a stranger. Maggie Kim was your best friend.”

I feel a flutter in between my stomach and my chest. A sour taste hits the back of my tongue. “True,” I concede.

She looks at me for a long time before saying, “So, I'll ask again: How does it make you feel?”

I'm caught in a middle place, unable to look at her, my vision gone heavy with unshed tears. I didn't think I'd ever be here again, in this room, with this woman and her questions. With this same drowning feeling inside.

When I speak, my voice is frogged and cracked. “She didn't do it.”

“You're saying it was an accident?”

I clear my throat. “I'm saying Maggie had every reason to live.”

Dr. B studies me quietly. This time, I hold her gaze. She jots a few more notes down.

“Plans for Christmas?” she asks, looking at her notes.

It's August. Summer suicides don't plan for the holidays. I tell her the truth. “Thinking about seeing my dad. Since it didn't work. This time.”

She looks up from her notes and gives me a half smile. “So I heard. Good.” She puts down her pen. “It's dry in here. Want some water?” She moves to the mini fridge behind her desk without waiting for an answer and hands me a bottle before swigging some herself.

“Tough room,” I say, taking a pull from the bottle.

She smiles at me, and there's a twinkle in her eye. “I bet you say that to all your shrinks.”

“Nope,” I promise, holding my fingers in a scout's swear. “Just you.”

Dr. B slides back behind her desk and opens the file cabinet, returning my folder to its proper place. “I'll tell your mom we talked. Don't kill yourself for the next ninety days, at least. It'll make me look bad.” She winks at me. Unlike my mother, Dr. B knows when I'm a danger to myself. Lord knows she saw it, once upon a time.

“Good luck, Jude. If you ever want to talk, don't wait for your mom to call me.”

I grab my bag and head for the door. “Oh, one thing,” I say, stopping at the threshold.

“What's that?”

“Rohypnol. What's the clinical usage for it?”

Dr. B gives me a considering look. “Flunitrazepam. It's like Valium to the tenth degree. Technically, it's used for short-term insomnia and pre-surgical anesthesia. Easy to OD on it, especially with alcohol or opiates in the mix. Is that bit of trivia for you, or your friend?”

“Both,” I say.

She looks at me for a long moment, and grabs a card from her desk.

“I want to see you again. When's the funeral?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She writes a date and time on the card. “Friday, you and me, Jude. This talk was for your mom. Friday is for you.”

I take the card slowly, and nod. Joey and Tallulah both said it straight. After tomorrow, I've got to find my way back to the land of the living. But not just yet.

“Flunitrazepam,” I repeat. “Thanks, Dr. B.”

To her credit, she doesn't ask the question that's clearly on her lips. “Watch yourself,” she says. I shut the door softly behind me.

R
oofies,” I tell Joey when I climb back into his car. He closes the paperback he's been reading and shoves it beneath his seat. “
Cyrano
?”

He nods. It's the book he took back from Maggie. “You were saying?”

The sun sinks into the west in a blur of red and purple. The whole world is room temperature. It feels like we're indoors.

I shut the door and rock my head against the seat. “The roofies in Maggie's system. They're also called flunitrazepam. One of the drugs on Parker's list.”

Joey stares at me and whistles low as it sinks in. “So she might have gotten the drugs from the house after all.”

I nod. “Or someone did.”

Mrs. Kim said Maggie was going to Hell. Who else had access to Parker's stash that might have helped her along?

“Violetta would have noticed the drugs missing,” Joey says. He's right. Missing meds could cost her her job. She'd keep watch over something like that.

“One more thing to ask Violetta.”

“
After
the funeral,” Joey insists.

“After.”

He nods, satisfied I won't make a scene in the middle of Maggie's service. “Where to next?”

“I don't care, as long as it's not here.” I blink, long and slow, trying to soothe the headache that's starting behind my left eye. Maybe I should have let Shasta read my tarot cards. They'd have made more sense than all this.

Joey starts the engine and maneuvers us back onto the street. “This is Southern California,” he says. “Let's go watch something burn.”

• • •

We are not the only ones on the side of the road overlooking Angeles Crest. Families come out like crowds in a monster movie, early evening picnics in view of the fire line.

Dull orange light marches across the hillside less than
a mile away. As the sun fades, the firelight brightens, like the slow burn of a cigarette transforming leaves and paper into ash. The difference is, the families all head home eventually. Joey and I have nowhere we want to be.

We sit there in the turnout, our backs to the scenic overlook, watching the array of firemen and helicopters attempt to control the burn. It looks like Mother Nature is winning.

The sun is completely gone when we get back into the car and sit facing the lights of the city. Up above, the sky is gray bleeding into black, the smoke a pale miasma over the darkness. Stars fight to be seen over the streetlights and windows of the city. The air is oven-hot. A breeze moves toward us, not cool, but at least it's in motion. There's a music in the sounds of the city, the rush of the freeway, the rumble of trucks, the distant honking of horns and shouts down below. The fire helicopter hovers over the mountaintop, then buzzes away, a water-laden bumblebee. It's a lullaby of life, sung all day and night. I lean back into my seat and listen.

“Jude,” Joey says. “If it turns out somebody did this to Maggie, what then?”

“Then we find them, and make them pay.”

He hesitates. “And if it turns out it was an accident?”

I sigh and stretch, rolling out the ache in my shoulders. “Then I'm sorry I wasted your time.”

“It's not wasted,” he says. “It's just . . .”

“Just what?”

He shakes his head, and folds his hands behind his neck, eyes back on the night sky. “You're a hard girl to be around, Jude. This whole thing's been . . . hard.”

I fold back in on myself, feeling threadbare, worn through. “I know,” I tell him. “For you and me both.”

A siren sounds in the distance, fading into the night.

Joey reaches to turn on his iPod, but I lean forward to stop him, my hand on his. For just that moment, we are so close, with his boy sweat and my own scent of exhaustion and sorrow.

Joey. He's always right here. I want to lean into him. I want to rest my cheek against his T-shirt and breathe him in, let him put his arm around me and tell me everything will be okay.

But I'm not in tears. This wouldn't be just mourning or comfort for a friend. What's safe for grief in the daytime is dangerous at night in a car with the top down and the city spread out before you. In the movies, it's expected. The girl cries and the boy comforts her with a kiss. This isn't a movie.

A hot wind blows across the arroyo. I blink, unmoving except for that slow scrape of lid over cornea and back.

A bare six inches between us, then four. I blink again, unable to breathe.

What would Maggie do? She would tilt her head back for a kiss. I can imagine the movement, so slight, so simple. An invitation. Joey couldn't help but lean in and kiss me, and then it would be done. Whatever came next would be a new maze to navigate, but not impossible.

Just tilt your head,
I tell myself. Such a small move, from friend to female.

Maggie would have done it. She did it all the time, and made it look easy.

But I can't. I'm just not the tilting kind.

“What?” Maggie asked. It was September and we were lounging on a double-wide air mattress in the middle of the pool that would kill her by summer. Her hair was longer. Mine was exactly the same. “If it's not something Joey said, then what aren't you telling me?”

It was getting cloudy out and I was cold, but I didn't want to go inside just yet, so I sat there, forcing down the shiver rising inside me.

“I'm not telling you things I don't want you to know,” I said.

“Is somebody hurting you?” She waited, knowing that I'd fill up the silence eventually.

I shook my head. It wasn't Joey. Sweet, normal Joey. He was my Mr. Almost. No, the real problem lay closer to home.

I wrapped my arms around myself, holding on to the warmth of my own body. “Roy tried to come into my bedroom last night.”

“Son of a bitch,” Maggie spat, grabbing my arm. “Your mom's boyfriend? Did he hurt you? Did he try to . . .”

I shook my head. “I locked him out.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

I shrugged. “Not yet.”

Maggie was livid. She almost flipped the raft sitting up in her anger. We wobbled and caught our balance. She laughed nervously and lay back down, curving her body toward mine.

“Why not, honey? She should kick the bum out. Jesus. Cut his balls off.” She patted my arm, snuggling closer. “Too bad you guys don't have a pool house.”

I looked at her, my heart racing faster. “Is that why you moved out here?”

She laughed. “No. I moved out so I could get laid without my brother listening in and smoke without freaking out my parents. And skip the hit parade every time there's a hospital stay. Remember?” She hung her head. “Shit. Just the opposite of you. And I'm no virgin.”

It was my turn to sit up. I tucked my knees under my chin and looked down at my feet, deciding. “Well, neither am I.”

Maggie dropped her glasses. “No shit?”

“No. Not since I was nine.”

She sat up so fast I couldn't catch myself and we both flipped over into the deep end of the pool. Maggie sputtered to the surface and we paddled to the steps, hauling ourselves onto the deck.

“Another boyfriend?” she asked. “Another Roy?”

“Babysitter,” I told her. “My parents were out celebrating their tenth anniversary. I asked to go, but they wanted some romance. Someone at my dad's office recommended a sitter and that was that. I ran, I tried to lock myself in the bathroom, but the lock kept slipping.” I shrugged. “Bad locks. He didn't stick around afterward. Took off and left town.”

“Did they ever catch him?”

I hunched in on myself, and it had nothing to do with
the cold. “Yeah. Trial, jail, the whole bit. But, it didn't change anything. My mom blamed my dad for hiring the guy. They split a year later.” I chuckled. “I'm the only kid in history who really
is
to blame for my parents' divorce. So now Daddy lives in Vermont and we live out here.”

“Do you ever see your dad?” Maggie asks.

“No. He's already got a replacement family. New wife. New daughter. New life. He keeps asking, though. Maybe next year. We've been talking about meeting up at my aunt's place in Jersey. It'd be better than being home all summer with Roy.”

Maggie and I were wrapped in a towel together on the edge of the pool. The sun was out, clouds moved away, and I was no longer shivering. Instead, I'd started to talk, in a way I'd never done outside of Dr. Bilanjian's dim little office. In a way I couldn't do even then.

A grown woman could never truly understand what it's like for a nine-year-old girl to turn eleven and vomit in the backyard of a boy-girl party, terrified at the thought of spinning the bottle for her first kiss. For that same girl to turn fifteen and like a boy, even a really decent one, and not be able to touch him for fear of what might come next, of not being able to say no, or yes.

But Maggie understood.

She held my hand and let me tell her why I was still a virgin even though I wasn't anymore. She listened, and when I was done, she didn't tell me I was safe, that things would be okay. She didn't say how strong I was. Instead, she let out a long loud breath of air, like she'd been holding it the entire time.

She let go of my hand and pressed her palm to my cheek, looked me in the eye, and said, “Jude.” She leaned in and rested her forehead against mine.

It was an intimacy that should have inspired terror, but it didn't. I was fixed in time. Like a photograph. She named me, and I felt whole.

The wind lapped at our towel and we pulled apart. Maggie sniffed and looked off across the yard, at the roses.

“My uncle felt me up once,” she said. “My dad's older brother. Kissed me full on the lips when I turned thirteen and told me I was ‘a woman now.'”

I rested my forehead on my arms, covering my eyes and blinking at the darkness. “What did you do?”

“Kicked him in the balls and told him he tasted like tuna.” She started to laugh. “Which is even grosser now that I think of it. Then I told my parents. My dad didn't believe me, but my mom did. So now we only see good old Uncle Han on special family occasions. Weddings, funerals, and the like.

“Shit, it's getting cold,” she said, although I was finally warm again. “Let's go inside.”

We stood up and shuffled to the door of the pool house like two contestants in a sack race.

“My mom has no idea how much I love her for that,” Maggie said, closing the door behind us. She stepped out of the towel and it slapped against me, cold and wet on my skin.

“Yeah,” I said. “Your mom stepped up.”

“So did yours,” Maggie said, putting a kettle of water on the mini stove.

“Not really.” I dropped the towel in exchange for a pair of sweatpants. “She didn't so much step up as run away.”

“But she took you with her.”

Only parts of me
, I thought, and shrugged again, not knowing what else to say.

With a sigh, I push myself off the dashboard and back, deep into my bucket seat.

Joey lingers, still leaning forward, fingers playing over the iPod. Like he's waiting for me. The same hopeless way I've been waiting for Maggie.

But she's gone, and she's not coming back.

“I don't want to go home tonight,” I tell him.

He looks at me. “Okay.”

“Can we just drive?”

Joey nods and starts the car. The freeway runs like a river of light over the city. We make our way down the crest and curve north toward La Cañada. The San Gabriel Mountains rise up all around us and the night grows quiet and still.

At some point, I fall asleep.

• • •

I wake up in Joey's arms. He's snoring softly and doesn't resist when I pull away from him.

We're parked in front of his house. The sky is a deep purple, the shade it turns just before dawn. The street is empty, the houses silent and dark. It's as if the world has ended, lain down, and closed its eyes for good.

I should go. I should wake Joey up and send him to bed. I should call my mother so she doesn't worry. I should go home.

But I feel safe here. The two of us draped together in the dark, the stars beginning to fade from the sky. I fumble for my cell phone to check the time. Four a.m. and I've missed a slew of texts from my mother. She has to go to the office before the funeral begins, but she'll come back for me at 11:30.

I shut the phone and study the boy beside me. He looks peaceful. Eyes shut, lashes dark against his skin. I put his arms back around me, exploring the sensation, and watch him sleeping. And then I kiss him.

I kiss his lips and fall against him, and he holds me and comes awake saying my name. He pulls me in close and tight and it doesn't make me feel trapped.

No more running or building walls. Tonight, it sets me free.

In a little while, I'll leave him, I'll promise to meet him at the funeral. In a minute or two, he'll take me home and I'll go inside to my bedroom. I'll lock the door and wait until it's time to bury Maggie.

But for now, it's just me and Joey and the stars and the empty street and that warm, sweet kiss in the dark.