Everything Leads to You

by Nina LaCour

  And it’s only later, after watching Lowlands, with the warm breeze coming through the kitchen door and our glasses half full of Toby’s Ethiopian tea, that Charlotte says, “What was it Edie said? The drugs and the men and that baby? Could Ava be Clyde’s granddaughter?”

  Chapter Three

  Charlotte and I are perched on benches in the high school courtyard in our short shorts and tank tops, tapped into the school wireless connection, searching for Ava.

  We start by trying to find Caroline’s obituary, because we don’t know Ava’s last name, or even if Ava is really Caroline’s daughter. But we search the Los Angeles Times’s online archive, and the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s, and neither of them go back as far as the nineties.

  “Let’s just look up Ava Maddox,” I say.

  It doesn’t seem like Caroline was married, and from what Edie said—all those men—it doesn’t seem like she was in a serious relationship either.

  Charlotte types in the name, and a moment later we find that there are nine Ava Maddoxes listed in the country, one of whom happens to live in Los Angeles, on Waring Avenue, which is not super close but not too far either. Maybe a twenty-minute drive northeast across the city.

  “Should we drive out there?” I ask.

  She clicks on an icon that promises to tell us more about Ava, only to find that they want to charge us for it.

  “Forty dollars?” I say. “No thanks. Let’s just go.”

  “Okay,” Charlotte says. We stand up and she slips her laptop back into its case and then into her bag. We agree to meet back at my car after we’re finished with our respective finals—the last of the semester, the last of our high school lives.

  On the way to my math class for the last time, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around to see Laura Presley handing me her yearbook.

  “Sign it?” she asks, all flirty and cute and kind of nervous.

  I force a smile and say sure.

  “But how will I get it back from you?”

  Her best friend, who is in my math class, says, “Should Emi just give it to me when she’s done?”

  “Perfect!” Laura says, as though it’s a new idea and not a plan they made before coming up to me.

  I take the yearbook from her and walk into class, even though I’m not going to sign it. I’ve never been that into high school, so I don’t care much about these books made to commemorate it, and if Laura wants some kind of closure we can meet up and laugh about things one day. There was a time I wouldn’t have found anything to laugh about, but it’s been a long time since everything ended between us.

  Laura is who made me swear off high school girls. The short version is that I’ve always loved kissing. I kissed more boys in elementary school and junior high than I can count. (Purely innocent, by the way. It never went past that.) And then I kissed Tara Ryland behind the science building our freshman year. When our mouths parted she stood there, blinking at me, like, What the? And I blinked back at her, like, Oh my God. But we were reacting to different things. Tara was shocked because one moment we were collecting dirt samples to measure minerality and the next she was kissing a girl. But for me it was different. I skimmed over the girl part and just thought, Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Because it wasn’t only that she was a good kisser (which she was), it was that the kiss left me shaky, and by this time I had become almost immune to kissing. And then girls sort of started lining up to kiss me. It drove Charlotte crazy. She rolled her eyes for a year straight. In the midst of all of this, just for a couple months, I threw everyone off by dating Evan Haas. What can I say? There was just something about him.

  And then Laura descended from the heights of the popular crowd. She wanted to kiss and hold hands in the hallways. She wanted to leave her group to sit with Charlotte and me at lunch, but preferably just me. She wanted to make out with me at parties in hot tubs while other kids watched. And okay, yeah, that was fun for a little while, but I was starting to fall for her and I didn’t want it to be a show.

  So now, in between math problems, I give my hand a break from scribbling numbers and think of those nights and days with Laura. For the last few months, everyone has been getting all sentimental about leaving high school, and I guess this is my version of that. By the end of my exam, I’m replaying the afternoon when we were supposed to drive down to the beach and just hang out, and she said, “Or, we could go to Alex’s party. It’s going to be crazy.” She said it while grabbing my hip and pulling me close to her, right in view of Alex and all his friends. I pried her hand off me and stepped back.

  I told her, “Let’s just forget it.”

  Meaning our plans for that day. Meaning the rare moments when we actually seemed to be in a relationship. Meaning the utter hopelessness of high school girls who didn’t know what they wanted.

  This was junior year, and a few months later, when senior year started and Laura still smiled at me in this sad way every time we passed each other in the hallway, I told Charlotte, “I actually think she might have liked me.”

  “Of course she liked you,” Charlotte said. “She just didn’t know what to do with that.”

  By this time I had already met Morgan and was spending every waking moment trying to get her to notice me, so registering this about Laura felt like just a small thing, but something nonetheless.

  Two hours and sixty-five problems later, I walk up to the front and hand my teacher my exam. He’s hunched over his desk, watching silent videos on his laptop. Then, back at my desk, I surprise myself by finding a bright red pen in my backpack and opening Laura’s yearbook to a front page. I’m not going to write anything sentimental, but I can give her something for nostalgia’s sake. So I write in big, bright letters, Kissing you was really fun. I draw a heart by my name.

  Then I leave school to find Ava.

  ~

  “What are we supposed to say when we get there?” I ask Charlotte.

  We’re just a couple miles away now, inching through traffic, hoping not to get caught in an intersection when the light turns red.

  “We’ll just ask if Ava’s home.”

  “And if she is?”

  She bites her lip, a familiar sign that she’s pondering. Usually something brilliant follows, so I just drive and let her think.

  “We know that she was a baby in ’95, so she should be around our age. If she’s older, we’ll just say we got the wrong Ava and head out. But if she is our age . . .”

  “What if she doesn’t know she’s adopted?”

  “I think she’ll know. Her last name is the same as her mom’s. And I don’t think people keep things like this a secret anymore.”

  “I hope not,” I say, “because that would be awkward. Here’s Waring; turn left.”

  We find the house, small and blue, with succulents growing in the front yard. We park and unbuckle our seat belts but neither of us makes any move to get out of the car. I lean back. The windshield reflects the tree above us: branches and leaves and the road through the glass.

  “If she’s our age,” Char says, “let’s just ask if her mother’s name was Caroline. If she says yes, then she knows more of the story than we do, and we can just tell her we have something that belongs to her, give her the envelope, and let her know that she can call us if she has any questions.”

  “Then just leave?” I ask.

  She nods. “And if she says no, that Caroline was not her mother’s name, then we should just thank her and go.”

  “But what if she says no because she doesn’t know about Caroline, or because she doesn’t know who we are or why we’re asking? What if we think we have the wrong Ava when really she’s the right one?”

  Charlotte bites her lip again.

  Finally, she says, “I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens today and go from there.”

  She opens her car door and then I o
pen mine, and I follow her up the walk to the door. Charlotte knocks and we both wait until we hear a kid’s voice from the other side, asking who is it.

  “Charlotte and Emi,” Charlotte says. She looks at me for help, but what else are we supposed to say?

  “We’re looking for Ava?” I try, but it comes out a question.

  The door cracks open and a little girl peers through before pushing it open wider. She has long dark hair in pigtails and a quizzical expression.

  “Here I am,” she says.

  “You’re Ava?” Charlotte asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight.”

  “Ten years too young,” Charlotte murmurs.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Looks like we have the wrong Ava.”

  The little Ava shrugs.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Bye.”

  The door shuts.

  “Okay,” Charlotte says, as we turn and head down the steps, back to the car waiting in the shade. “We have to go to the library.”

  “The library?”

  “There are things we just can’t find online, no matter how much money we waste.”

  “But really? You think we can find answers in the library?” I’m skeptical, but Charlotte has great faith in the collection and preservation of things, and if she wants to go to the library I will go with her.

  ~

  It turns out that 1995 is ancient history. So ancient, in fact, that we have to slide brown sheets of film displaying newspaper obituaries into a primitive machine, and then drop in quarters to make the screen light up. With the help of a cute, tattooed librarian named Joel who makes her blush as he leans over her to tinker with the machine, Charlotte starts with October 1 in the Los Angeles Times. Joel sets me up on a machine next to Charlotte and gives me the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which, I’m quick to point out, is obviously the inferior paper.

  “It’s not even a paper anymore,” I say once Joel is back behind the information desk. “I’m clearly the sidekick in this mystery. I’ll selflessly devote myself to the Herald-Examiner while you find the answer in the Times and get all the glory.”

  Charlotte smiles and changes slides.

  I’ve only gotten through October 5 by the time my first quarter runs out and the screen goes dark.

  “I thought libraries were supposed to provide information free of charge,” I whisper.

  Charlotte ignores me. I search and search forever. There should really be a more efficient way of doing this.

  “Why do we have to search by date? We should be able to search by name.”

  “Newspapers don’t work that way,” Charlotte says, and I can tell she’s getting tired of me.

  An hour later, she’s made it through October, and she sighs, defeated.

  “My mom wants me home tonight,” she says. “She’s been complaining about me staying at Toby’s all the time before leaving for college.”

  “That’s understandable,” I say. My parents haven’t been too worried about it, but I’m staying in LA for college, living at home to save money, while Charlotte’s really leaving. “I’ll see if my dad can help us out.”

  Charlotte appears skeptical. “I feel like we’re hitting a wall,” she says. “I don’t know if we’re going to find her.”

  “You feel that way because you just read through hundreds of obituaries. It’s depressing. But we’ll find her,” I say. “We just need to approach this from a new angle.”

  Charlotte’s mom picks her up, but I keep searching, loading film and popping quarters into the machine. I make it through September and then I am finished with nothing to show for my patience and Charlotte’s faith in antiquity. I still have my studio work to do, so I wander over to Joel and ask him for today’s paper, which, thankfully, is in its normal paper form. I take a seat at a long, shiny table and start the weekly task of mapping out my Saturday morning garage- and estate-sale schedule.

  ~

  My parents have gotten delivery from Garlic Flower, so I kiss my mother’s cheek while she talks on the phone to a colleague, then grab a plate and a fork and heap rice and garlic chicken on my plate. My dad is watching a reality show about rich women. This is the kind of ridiculous thing you get to do for money if you are a professor of popular culture.

  “Dad?” I say. “I need to vent. Mom’s on the phone.”

  He turns the TV on mute. “Your mother has just finished reading a New Yorker article on emerging African American filmmakers and is now trying to coax them all into speaking to her graduate seminar,” Dad says. “So try me.”

  My mother is also a professor, of black studies and gender studies, which basically means that while Dad observes all things pop culture with palpable glee, my mother observes and then obliterates them with whichever theory best suits the subject. Which, considering the subject I’m about to raise—perhaps the whitest, straightest, most gender-normative American icon in all of cinema—makes my dad the far-better sounding board anyway.

  “Okay,” I say. “It starts with Clyde Jones.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  I tell him the story from the beginning: Charlotte’s phone call, which came at the perfect time because it meant I didn’t go to see Morgan; all the cool stuff in his house, Toby’s belt buckle and Patsy Cline; and then, finally, the letter; and Frank and Edie; and the library and all of those obituaries from all of the papers.

  “Do you know how many newspapers there are in Los Angeles?” I say.

  “I know of quite a few,” he says. Then, “So Clyde Jones had a daughter named Caroline who died in an apartment on Ruby Avenue. And you need to learn more about her in order to find someone named Ava who may or may not be her daughter.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “And, really, why is it so difficult? Why can’t I just search ‘Caroline Maddox’ and have an obituary pop up?”

  My dad strokes his beard in a way that’s so cinematically thoughtful that I have to try not to laugh.

  “Why do you want to find her daughter?”

  “There might still be money in that account that belongs to her.”

  He raises an eyebrow, so I try again.

  “It seemed to really matter to Clyde.”

  Still, he is unconvinced.

  “Okay,” I say. “Look. It’s just important to me. I just feel like it’s important.”

  He seems satisfied by this answer.

  “And how do you know that Caroline died in September or October of ’95?” he asks.

  “Edie said something about the Dodgers losing in the playoffs.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “Three–nothing.”

  “You should hear this woman talk,” I say. “She’s really great. ‘I said I wanted plain,’” I imitate. He laughs, so I keep going. “‘Do you shop at the Vons on Wilshire? Nice deli section. Too crowded, though.’” He laughs harder. “‘Those Braves beat them three to nothing. Three to zip. Terrible!’”

  “Wait,” he says. “The Braves?”

  I take a bite of my dinner and nod while chewing.

  “They lost to the Braves in the playoffs in ’96. Not ’95.”

  I swallow. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. The Dodgers lost three–nothing in the playoffs in ’95 to the Reds, and then again, three–nothing, to the Braves in ’96. Sounds like Edie got her years mixed up.”

  I stop chewing. Stare at him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Emi,” he says, tapping his head. “There is a world of Los Angeles history in here. I am absolutely sure.”

  But I still run to the computer to make sure. And moments later, I find it on the Major League Baseball site. The Dodgers and the Braves. 3–0. 1996.

  I groan, head in hands. “Why didn’t we check this before we spent all day in the library?” />
  “Hey, at least you have a new direction,” Dad says.

  “Easy for you to say. You like this research stuff.”

  “True,” he says.

  I take out my phone and text Charlotte.

  Braves beat Dodgers in 96. Back 2 library. 2 p.m.?

  Chapter Four

  After seven weeks, fifty-two garage sales, and sixteen estates, the impossible happens: I find the sofa.

  It’s upstairs in a Pasadena house, my fourth and farthest stop of the morning, in a dressing room adjoining the master bedroom.

  I push through the hoards of people to get to the woman who is clearly in charge and tell her I’ll take it.

  “The one in the dressing room?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Hm,” she scrunches up her face. “That one’s on hold.”

  I laugh because the universe must be playing a trick on me. But she doesn’t crack a smile, so I get serious.

  “Nothing said it was on hold,” I say.

  “I know but one of my clients expressed interest at the preview.”

  “Expressed interest? That’s hardly putting something on hold. Did she pay a deposit?”

  “No.”

  “Then I should be able to buy it. I can pay you right now.”

  “Why don’t you check back this afternoon?”

  “I’ll pay you double,” I say.

  “Fine,” she says. “But I need it out of here immediately. I don’t want it here when she comes later. This way I can blame it on someone else. You have a truck?”

  I scoff like that’s a ridiculous question. It’s a scoff that says Of course.

  While her assistants lug the sofa downstairs, I madly call all the buyers whose numbers are programmed into my phone. But all I get is voice mail after voice mail and I start to panic. The assistants ask me where the truck is and I tell them someone’s pulling it around. “You can just set it down here,” I say, and they set it on the dried-up grass of the front yard, bordering the sidewalk.