Coattail Karma

by Verlin Darrow

  The woman registered receiving it without a fuss. Perhaps it wasn’t her first experience of this phenomenon.

  She mouthed the words, “Thank you,” which seemed like cheating to me if you were supposed to be silent.

  Sam hugged her. “This is Anne,” she told me. “Anne, this is B-2—Andrea’s son.”

  Anne clasped her hands together and bowed. I bowed back.

  After an unusually short wait at the baggage carousel, Anne drove us for an hour and a quarter in a small station wagon to an upscale home on Escalona Drive on the west side of Santa Cruz. It was prime real estate, up a long driveway between two oversized Tudor-style homes, and halfway up the hill to the university, with spectacular bay and ocean views.

  The gleaming white house sprawled across the ample property in a single-story design, reminiscent of both Japanese and Danish architecture. A creek ran down the steep hillside alongside it. It was dammed at the top, forming a pond that turned out to hold koi. At the bottom, speckled trout swam in another pond under an arching wooden bridge that connected the carport to the house. Between the two, the creek fell over a series of steep, man-made waterfalls, lined with ferns and small ornamental trees. Japanese-style gardens filled in all the open spaces on the property, except for a small side lawn that overlooked the koi pond. A Mexican-style string hammock hung between two wooden posts across part of the lawn. It looked like a great spot for an afternoon nap.

  All in all, it was spectacular, one of the most beautiful homes and settings I’d ever seen. And from the street, no one would even know it was there.

  “Headquarters?” I asked. “This is quite a headquarters.”

  “A wealthy donor willed it to us,” Sam said. “We’ll be safe here.”

  After we’d carried our bags across the bridge and followed Anne up the stone walkway, my mother met us at the front door.

  “You’re free!” I said, hugging her enthusiastically. “I thought I might lose you again.” I felt joy, mixed with the remnants of the trepidation I’d been holding at bay while she’d been kidnapped.

  She looked much older than I remembered. And much more awake. My mother wasn’t particularly good-looking, but she’d never scared any babies, either. Her brown eyes were deep set in her long face, above a snub nose that didn’t go with the rest of her. Her white hair was cropped short. She wore a plain gray top over a long multicolored skirt. As usual, her oversized feet overflowed her black flip-flops.

  Her striking energy felt like a cross between Sam’s and Bhante’s, but milder, with more structure. I didn’t really have a vocabulary for all this.

  “I just got here,” my mother said when I let her go. “Your dad negotiated a deal. They were happy to take money instead of you, as it turned out. These are gangsters, after all.”

  “Were you mistreated?” Sam asked.

  “Far from it,” my mother said. “There was one Caucasian man and two Maoris—what a beautiful people they are. I could look at them all day long. When the Caucasian pushed me once—I guess I was moving too slowly to suit him—one of the Maoris knocked him flat and the other one sat on him. It was quite comical. They said I reminded them of their auntie.”

  “Did the white guy look like a rat?” I asked.

  “Very much so. Do you know him?” she asked.

  “Only too well,” I told her. “He seems to be quite fond of kidnapping people.”

  “He was with Jason Patariki back at Sid’s office,” Sam explained.

  “Ah. The infamous Frank. Come in, come in.” She gestured to the doorway behind her, and then to Anne, as though her acolyte’s silence meant she needed a separate invitation. “Can I get you anything to drink? Are you hungry?” She had switched to Mom mode; this was who I knew.

  The house was sparsely but elegantly decorated with Southeast Asian antiques. The ceilings were unusually high with an assortment of skylights, and each room was on a slightly different level. The white walls contrasted with the reddish-brown hardwood floors. It wasn’t a type of wood I’d ever seen before.

  As we settled into the spacious living room, with a view of the bay and the boardwalk down the hill, I asked my mother if we could talk in private.

  “Of course. Anne, could you check on our other guest? Sam, make yourself at home.”

  They both nodded their assents and departed quietly.

  I sat on a tufted red loveseat, and my mother—Andrea—sat across from me in a low rosewood chair. A black silk rug lay between us, and a white porcelain statue of a prone dog lay on that. The dog seemed to be laughing—or at least very happy.

  On the plane, I’d planned what I intended to say when I saw my mother, but instead I blurted out, “What the fuck?” And then I repeated it.

  “In hindsight,” she said, “we could have done things differently. But if you feel like a pawn in a chess game, welcome to the club. Welcome to reality. We’re all pawns in a chess game. And your father and I have suffered from losing you, too.”

  I shook my head. “I doubt that very much. At least you knew I was alive—that you’d see me again someday. And you instigated the suffering.”

  “Of course. You’re right, dear,” my mother conceded, waving her hand in a characteristic gesture. Growing up, it had meant, “Yes, yes, whatever. Let’s get on with things.”

  “Our behavior is indefensible,” she continued. “You have logic and the moral high ground here. But try to put yourself in our shoes. Is our family more important than the entire planet? Suppose we would have been ceding this world—this plane of existence—to Marco or someone like him if we proceeded in a normal, straightforward way. What then?”

  “That’s a lot of supposing, Mom. I’ll grant you there are always situations that call for an outside-the-box response. But who doesn’t have a bias when they try to determine if that’s the case? How could you be so sure of yourselves? By definition, it’s arrogant to act in a drastic fashion when it’s not possible to be sure about something.”

  My mother nodded. “Good point,” she said. “I can’t argue successfully with you about this, Sid. If we reduce the situation down to mere words, its essence is lost. All I can do is apologize. I’m sorry we felt it was necessary to put you through this. I love you very much.”

  “You say you’re sorry, but I’d be willing to bet you’d do the same thing over again. You think you’re right. You think you’ve got Buddha on your side or something, don’t you? I don’t hear what you said as a real apology. That’s what people say to appease someone.” I said this with some heat. “By the way,” I continued, “I love you, too, of course—and I mean more than I love Joe Q. Public, since I seem to love the whole damned world now.” I said this with an attitude. My tone certainly didn’t reflect much love.

  She smiled. Although my mother didn’t show her teeth when she smiled—it looked like a smirk in photographs—it was still a warm expression—a soft offering.

  “I imagine it’s all still new and hard to get used to,” she said. “But let’s go back sixteen years. You were twenty-one—and a young twenty-one, I think you’d admit—when we needed to act. You lacked the maturity to handle the truth.”

  “I’ll certainly agree that I was an even bigger idiot sixteen years ago,” I said.

  My mother held up her hand. “That’s not my word, Sid. You were just young. Imagine us trying to have a conversation like this back then. You weren’t even around enough for us to be in the same room, were you?”

  “No, you’re right about that,” I said.

  I watched her for a moment. Her head cocked to the side just a bit and her posture in the wooden chair was erect, but relaxed. She could’ve been chatting about what color hat to buy. This was not the same matriarch who had run our family on caffeine, nervous energy, and family therapy textbooks.

  “You look great,” she said to me, “except for that shirt. That’s the most horrible shirt I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what you were thinking. But otherwise, you look just like Buddha might have loo
ked if she’d been a man.”

  There it was. It hung in the air between us for a while. “Was she a lesbian, at least?” I asked.

  My mother laughed. “Maybe.”

  “How is it that the whole world is sure he was a man?” I asked.

  “They don’t have access to the same information we do. We have Buddha’s diary.”

  This was getting weirder every second. I pictured a thirteen-year-old Asian girl in an orange robe lying on a floral bedspread in her girlie bedroom, scribbling in a pink vinyl diary.

  Dear Diary, today I meditated for twelve hours and discovered impermanence. Also, I think Jimmy is way cute, but Suzy likes him, too.

  “Come on,” I said. “Buddha lived in 500 BC or something. How could anything like that still be around?”

  “Do we have plays and philosophical tracts from the ancient Greeks?” She asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “Did they write on stone?” I asked. “Did the Romans pass it all on? I don’t know. But I get your point. The Greeks were BC folks, too, so I guess it’s possible for written material to survive that long.”

  “Yes. The main thing with surviving classical literature is that throughout history someone always valued it enough to recopy it—keep it alive—and even make it a part of their culture.”

  “But how do you keep something like that secret for so long? Isn’t the fact that something isn’t secret the very reason it stays alive? Isn’t that what you just said? People know about some text, so they kept passing it on. For that matter, why hide the truth in the first place? Did Buddha pretend to be a man when he—or she—was alive? Or did other people change the story afterward? The whole thing is crazy, Mom—and I know crazy. At this point, if anyone knows crazy, it’s me.”

  “Let’s go back to Buddha’s time,” she said.

  This reminded me of Bhante in the New Zealand cave library. It was time for a history lesson again. Oh boy.

  “It was, of course, a patriarchal world. Women were convenient receptacles. I know that’s a vulgarity, but it’s true. We were property. Baby makers. Now suppose you were a woman who became enlightened on her own. A woman who could teach the world how to suffer less—how to live. What would you do?”

  “Well, obviously you’re pulling for me to say, ‘Pretend to be a man,’ but I’ve also become an expert at how unspiritual means don’t justify a spiritual end. How could Buddha turn people on to the truth by role-modeling deception? How can you start a religion on a lie? Buddhism is about Buddha being Buddha—how any of us can be like him—or her—if we just see reality exactly as it is. Am I right? So if Buddha’s a fraud, the whole thing’s a house of cards, isn’t it?”

  “Sid, all religions are based on withholding information from the general public. Most people aren’t in a position to understand the core of a new philosophy or belief system. That doesn’t mean that a given message is any less true. Buddha was enlightened, and she really could tell others how she attained this—how they could get there, too. Jesus was a peace-loving man who knew a better way to live. Does it matter that he was just passing on things he learned in India? For that matter, when he spoke in metaphors and parables, was he lying? Do you think he’s really living in the house of his father now that he’s dead? It’s the same in all religions. Ironically, the Truth with a capital T needs to be disseminated by employing minor untruths. That’s just how it works. A female Buddha would have been ignored—or worse.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s assume that an androgynous-looking woman could pass for a man. Then what would be the point of writing a diary that might expose the impersonation?”

  “Buddha set up RGP and asked them to caretake the diary—which was written on hardened clay tablets, by the way. She told us that when her prophecies came true, we would need to reveal it. That time is almost here, Sid. You’re the first man to know Buddha’s secret. And we need your help to change the world—to create a level playing field for everyone.”

  “Mom, I’ve heard that rationale a lot lately.”

  “Listen, Sid. Here are the nuts and bolts. Until women gained sufficient equality—under the law and across a critical mass of cultures—the diary couldn’t tip the scales and create true, equal empowerment. But Buddha knew there would be a time when the irrefutable revelation of her gender could change everything. And she detailed what that era would look like.” My mother gazed calmly into my eyes. “It looks like this, Sid. Exactly like this.”

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “Men will never hand over the reins to women based on an ancient artifact. It doesn’t matter what it is. Greed, power, and control drive inequality—not an incorrect reckoning of historical facts. If you prove the Buddha was a woman, all you’d do is destabilize various institutions—Buddhist ones, for the most part. And those are much more on your side in the first place.”

  “There’s more to the plan,” my mother said. “Don’t you think others have addressed all these concerns over the years? But I think it’s time for dinner. Why don’t you go wash up? I’ll show you your room. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry about my hissy fit before. It’s really not like me,” I said.

  “I know, dear. Don’t worry.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Twenty minutes later, I was the last to convene in a colorfully tiled dining room, which overlooked the property’s upper pond—the koi pond. Floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a view of a dozen multicolored fish, swimming in remarkably distinct phalanxes.

  The other houseguest turned out to be Paul Arthur—Sam’s brother, who had interviewed me in my office.

  Side by side at the white linen-covered table, Paul and his sister’s resemblance was obvious. His face was slimmer than I remembered, and his eyes were a different shade of blue from Sam’s. But they both embodied the Nordic bone structure and facial features that I associated with Vikings and blond supermodels.

  Paul stood and greeted me warmly, offering his hand. I reached across the table to shake it and felt the same spark I’d been disconcerted by when I’d met him. Now, I could recognize that it was simply a poorly boundaried charge that Paul carried and didn’t know about. He had a fair amount of potential—energetically—but he hadn’t developed it much.

  “Paul’s here to stay safe, as well,” Sam said, once I’d seated myself between Anne and my mother, across the table from the siblings.

  “We’ll talk about all that after we eat,” my mother said.

  Instead, while we ate, my mother peppered me with questions. Why hadn’t things worked out with my last girlfriend Susan? Did I enjoy my work? How had I met Chris?

  “Here’s where I see myself ten years from now,” I finally reported after ten minutes of this. “And if I were an animal, I’d like to be a fuzzy little kitten. And I think I could be an asset to this company because I’m so damned cooperative when I’m being interrogated.”

  There was silence at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention.” And I’d never liked the controlling side of my mother, either. Who knows what might’ve emerged out of a free exchange of ideas between us? She was substituting what she wanted instead.

  “I know I’m your mother and I push your buttons, Sid. But you’d better get used to the attention part. You’ll be the center of all kinds of scrutiny soon.”

  The food was simple, vegetarian, and plentiful. Apparently, Anne had cooked, and now she served us, too. We drank water, not having been offered anything else.

  Sam picked up the conversational slack after I’d derailed my mother. While I scarfed down a roasted eggplant and kale salad—it was awful—she told the others about the cliff descent (the PG-rated version—sans toplessness), the parking lot fracas, the Mumbai taxi wreck, and the motorcycle chase. Strung together, her narration sounded like an action movie trailer.

  When the last bite had been eaten, I
turned to Paul. “So why do you need a safe haven?” I asked.

  “RGP hired me again—this time to deliver the ransom money for Andrea to Tommy T.’s men. It didn’t go as smoothly as it could’ve,” he said. His voice was much more familiar to me than it should’ve been. I briefly wondered what that was about.

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked. I’d assumed she’d had a chance to talk to Paul, but perhaps she hadn’t.

  “It might have turned very ugly,” he said. “The kidnappers were trying to intimidate me, and I wasn’t armed. My martial arts skills are nothing like Sam’s.”

  “Marco said you were a bad student,” I told him.

  He laughed. “I probably was, but he was a very impatient teacher, too.”

  I glanced at Sam. She nodded and smiled back.

  “This was out at the end of the city wharf,” Paul continued, “just past those nooks where all the sea lions congregate.”

  “I love the word ‘nook,’ ” Anne said and then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth.

  My mother raised an eyebrow; Anne lowered her head.

  “I like the word ‘congregate,’ ” I said, smiling at Anne, who looked up and brightened a bit.

  “So you were in the midst of all the tourists?” I asked Paul.

  “Yes. They were all freezing, as usual, in their shorts and T-shirts. The fog was in. So basically, four Maori men were about to take the bag of money away from me, with no guarantee that we’d see your mother again.”

  “Yikes,” Anne said. This time she shook her head ruefully, pushed back her chair, bowed, and left the room.

  “It’s only her second day of silence,” my mother explained.

  “So what happened?” Sam asked Paul.

  “Jason Patariki happened. He showed up at full speed from out of nowhere and threw two of the guys over the railing into the bay. That guy is amazingly strong. These weren’t small people. Anyway, after that, we followed the protocol we’d agreed on.”