by Holly Brown
“Good morning.” Rob swoops into the room, placing his hand on my shoulder. I look upward, at his freshly shaven chin. He asks my mother, “Could I borrow Dawn for a minute?” as if she should have any say in the matter.
I follow him into the bedroom, shutting the door behind us. It’s all white in here: the canopy bed, the comforter, the end tables, no TV. Not a hint of color, not even on the throw pillows. Life, in here, is pristine. That’s why it’s so galling that Miranda would accuse me of staining anything. I’ve tried so hard to get clean after what my father did to me.
“Did you overhear my mother’s big confession?” I say. “She never legally married my father, and there’s no common-law marriage in California. She might not even be able to claim the body. Can you believe her?”
“She’s grieving.”
“What does that have to do with anything? This was years ago! She couldn’t even manage to get married right.”
“I feel sorry for her, that’s all. She was old school, relying on your dad completely. She just wasn’t very competent.”
“I spent my whole childhood feeling sorry for her. Enough is enough.” When he doesn’t respond, I add, “Old-school moms were very competent. They worked. In the home. What was she doing?”
He comes toward me, arms outstretched.
“No, I’m okay. I don’t need a hug. I need her out, ASAP.”
He drops his arms. “ASAP might be a while. We can’t just send her back.”
“You make it sound like we’re deporting her.”
“I just mean, she’s got no job. We have to help her.”
“She should have gotten a job years ago. Now she has no choice. Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“If she’s never worked, how’s she going to start now? Her husband just died. She’s got to be depressed.”
Laziness is not a disability. Sucking at life is not a disability, and it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not a mooch-off-your-grown-daughter card. But I’m not about to say any of that. Rob’s full of compassion toward her, and he wants me to feel the same. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well, first, we need to get your dad. I did some quick research. If we don’t claim his body, they’re going to cremate him.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Fire and brimstone, a day of reckoning. That doesn’t sound so bad at all.
“He’s your father, Dawn.”
For Rob, it’s simple: You don’t leave your dad to be burned up. For me, it’s simple, too: Yes, you do, if you had that kind of dad. The gulf between our life experiences is rearing its head, prominently. But Rob thinks neglect is the whole story when it comes to my father. I was too ashamed to tell him the truth; I didn’t want him to see me in that light. I’ve tried so hard to forget any of it ever happened—to forget that I was just the sort of girl something like that would happen to.
“You’ve been working your ass off to support us while I finish school,” I say. It never occurred to me until just then that I’ve been mooching. Like mother, like daughter. But I’m going to earn it all back soon enough. I’m going to outearn Rob. Professor Myerson recognizes my potential, and he sees loads of students. “We don’t have extra cash lying around for a funeral.” Not the gift money from the wedding. Not our savings. Not for that man.
“It’s not the funeral I’m talking about; it’s the burial. It’s having a final resting place for him, someplace your mother can visit. Someplace you can visit.”
“Is this about religion?” I say. “Because you know I don’t believe like you do.” I thought he’d accepted that about me. “I wasn’t raised in a church like you were.”
“This is about doing what’s right for your family. We have savings for important things like this.”
I can’t get him to see what I see, not without telling him what my father did. He doesn’t see my mother as I do either: a woman who didn’t need to choose her husband over everything else in life. She didn’t need to choose him over solvency, or happiness, or her only child. It’s her fault—what my father did, what I let him do—all in the name of protecting her. It’s her fault, even though she never knew about it.
My mother’s lost, all right, but it shouldn’t be my job to find her. When I’ve been lost, she never came looking.
Now that she’s shown up here, I’m stuck with a terrible choice. I can allow my husband to think badly of me for not wanting to take care of my mother and bury my father, or I can tell him the truth and he can think badly of me for another reason. I’ll be dirty in his eyes, the same as I was in my own for so long.
It’s a terrible choice, all right, but an easy one.
22
Miranda
Sorry for being MIA. I was on an art binge.
To use that word so casually . . . Is he just torturing me? There’s only one kind of binge as far as I’m concerned, and he must know that. He has to know that I’ve been on edge the past two days. Going from all that contact to nothing made me understand what withdrawal symptoms must be like. The Tucson police were as unhelpful as I’d feared, and while I tried to listen to Officer Llewellyn’s advice about staying busy and assuming Thad’s fine, my nerves were jangling nonstop.
I dig my toes deeper into the sand. It’s nine A.M., and I managed only a few hours of fitful sleep last night. I imagine Thad’s been awake just as long, bingeing.
There are plenty of people running and biking along the path, but I’ve got the sand to myself. Blue skies, blue water, as far as the eye can see. I wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could believe that art’s the reason he disappeared.
I’m glad to hear from you, I choose my words with care, but I have to tell you, it’s been rough on me.
What has?
Not hearing from you.
I have a life, too.
I’ve tried to give him so much, and yet he feels he owes me nothing. If I insist on more, I could end up back where I was, checking his whereabouts on social media.
Just a text, that’s all I’m asking. It can just say “OK.”
And if I’m not okay? Do you want me to lie?
Have you been using again?
I knew it. I knew you didn’t really believe me.
Tread lightly.
I’m sorry. You said yourself you’ve been MIA. That used to mean you were using.
I told you, I was making art.
I’m glad you were.
No answer for minutes.
I’m sorry, Thad. I don’t want to go back to the way things were.
I’m moving forward, one way or another.
Tell me about your new work.
You really want to hear?
Of course.
I’m working on a series. These huge canvases, like painting inside a subway tunnel.
Has he painted inside a subway tunnel? I’ve wondered before if he’s done actual graffiti. Tagging, I believe it’s called. I like to think not, same as I like to think he hasn’t stolen from strangers or prostituted himself.
The problem is, I have to squat.
What does that mean?
I can’t exactly work on 20 foot canvases in my apartment.
So where do you work?
In an abandoned warehouse.
Is that safe?
Probably not. But what’s the alternative?
He wants me to be the one to say it: rent a workspace. Then he can say that he can’t afford it, and I can say . . .
Hopefully, you’ll get your gallery show soon.
There are a lot of steps between here and there. Paint ain’t cheap, and I need a whole lot of it. I need to hope no one fucks up my shit just for fun. I’m painting by candlelight so no one sees the light from outside.
He’s cursing again, though he knows I don’t like that. While he’s not asking directly, my heart sinks anyway. I’m feeling like I’ve been had, yet again.
Why don’t you give me your address? Maybe I can send you some art supplies.
You d
on’t know what I need.
I can send you a gift certificate to an art supply store.
Email it.
He doesn’t want me to know where he lives. He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t trust me. I’d laugh out loud if I weren’t on the verge of tears.
I want to believe that he hasn’t been bingeing on meth, just art, and that he isn’t angling for more money, and he’s not really hiding his address.
Trust but verify. That’s why I want his address. So that next time he goes MIA, as he put it, I’ll at least be able to enlist the police properly. I could even fly out there myself. I haven’t laid eyes on my son in going on three years, and I ache to see him.
The reason I do so many allnighters is because I don’t want my canvases there at prime squat time without me.
Maybe it’s safer to paint during the day, though.
Probably. But I can’t leave them unguarded.
I want to believe he’s just making conversation. But he knows that his safety is paramount, as far as I’m concerned. He’s asking for more money, without asking.
Fortunately or unfortunately, because of the Santa Monica house situation, I really can’t help him. I’m already paying one rent for him; I can’t pay two.
At any other time, I might have been tempted. As it is, I’ve put myself on the hook for a gift certificate for art supplies, and I didn’t get the information I was fishing for.
I probably would have paid for a workspace even though I know it’s a classic enabler move. He should get a job and pay for it himself. But I would have thought, What if he just needs a hand(out) right now and then he’ll get his gallery show and become self-supporting? I would have had to argue myself down, because a parent’s natural state is one of gullibility; we want to believe in the goodness of our children.
But now I don’t have that battle, so I tell him I’ll e-mail him a gift certificate, and he says thanks, he should get back to work. I notice that he doesn’t sign off with love this time.
I stare out at the ocean, the rise and the fall, the crest and the crash. I take a deep breath and remind myself that I just got good news. The best news. Thad is okay.
Now I have to get down to business.
“Hi, Vi!” I cringe a little, hearing my own false happy voice. “Just leaving you this voicemail because I didn’t get a response to my text, the one where I told you that I’d canceled all my reservations for the house and taken down the ad?” The upward lilt at the end of the sentence—does it make me sound like I’m lying? I am lying, after all. Do all liars spend their lives worrying like this? If so, why do they do it? The truth would be so much less stressful, in most cases.
“I’ll be turning in my resignation to the board. I know you’re right, it’s the best thing to do, but I’m really going to miss everyone.” I’ll wait to hear from her before I submit it. Maybe she’ll have mercy and tell me that I shouldn’t go through with it.
“Call or text back, okay? I want to make sure that this hasn’t damaged our friendship. That’s the most important thing. I wasn’t myself the day we met for lunch. There’s so much going on with my mother, with her—condition, it’s deteriorating rapidly.” Only a slight overstatement, she is deteriorating, absolutely, and “rapid” is a relative term. “I apologize if I didn’t handle the information you provided as graciously as I should have. I really appreciate you bringing it to me. You were looking out for me”—well, for the board—“and I can see that now, so clearly. Thank you, Vi. Let’s talk soon, okay? Again, thanks. Enjoy this beautiful day.”
My fingers tighten on the straps of my sandals. It is a beautiful day, flawless as my diamond engagement ring. I walk back toward the Santa Monica house, seeing my first pedestrian of the day, a toned woman in some sort of unitard walking a Bernese mountain dog. “Good morning!” she sings out, and I try to respond with equal enthusiasm. That’s only polite.
I’m across the street from my house, and I notice that there’s a tricycle on the front lawn. I told my guests in no uncertain terms that they could not leave anything around, anywhere. I can’t afford to have anyone turning me in when I’m this close to being law-abiding again.
Normally, I try not to issue too many rules to my houseguests; I want my home to feel like their home during their stay. But you give these people an inch, they take a mile.
Glaring at the tricycle, I reach for my phone. “Hi, Tracy,” I say, my voice overlaid with thick syrup to mask the irritation. “It’s Miranda. I just wanted to check and see how your stay is going so far. Also, a quick reminder. The house is going on the market soon, and the Realtors might want to give potential buyers a quick look-see, just from the outside, so it’s VERY IMPORTANT that you keep the perimeter entirely picked up. No toys on the lawn, for example, nothing like that. I hope this isn’t too much of a hardship.” I don’t need their review, the listing is already down, and I’m doing them a favor by not having canceled their reservation at all. My voice sharpens. “Thank you.”
The living room shades are up, but I see no movement in the house. They must all be sleeping in. I also told them not to leave lights on when they’re out. I need as few signs of habitation as possible. Fortunately, there’s no driveway to park in as the entire house is boxed in by the white picket fence. I stare at the tricycle, on its side beneath the auspices of the Meyer lemon tree. What are these people, animals?
I push open the gate—it is my gate, after all—and pick up the tricycle, carrying it around to the back of the tree where it won’t be visible to a casual observer on the street. They’re lucky I don’t just take it. Teach them a lesson about where they leave their personal belongings. Santa Monica is beautiful, but it’s not Mayberry.
I quickly exit the yard and return to my car. I tell myself I’ve got every right to be here. I’m just delivering a bunch of dahlias to the sweet elderly neighbor couple. They’re actually younger than my parents, but retired. They’re very spry. It occurs to me that I’m fast approaching the age where “spry” would be a compliment.
They know I rent the house out. They’ve never said boo about it, though it’s possible they aren’t aware of the ordinance. This isn’t the first time I’m bringing Harriet flowers, but it is the first time I’m doing it with an ulterior motive, and that deepens the pit in my stomach.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m spying on my guests, I’m leaving them snippy voicemails and moving their children’s toys, I’m bribing my neighbors to keep my secret.
Dawn is destroying me. Not just taking away my rental income, but making me behave like another person, like someone sneaky and underhanded. She’s remaking me in her image, and I won’t have it. I’m a good person.
I walk up to Harriet’s house and I leave the flowers on the doorstep. No note, no request, just an anonymous gift. She might think they’re from Calvin, a bit of spontaneous romance after all their years together. My father used to do that for my mother sometimes after they moved to Santa Monica. He discovered his sentimental side, the happiness he derived from hers. He learned what it meant to be fully present.
I flash on an image: playing hide-and-seek with George, me in my father’s closet, breathing in the smell of him since I so rarely got to take him in given his long work hours, my foot kicking something surprising, discovering my father had a hiding place of his own . . .
Where did that even come from? I’m under too much stress, that’s what it is. It’s been so long since Larry and I have had a vacation. Clearly, I need one.
I feel the tears threatening, and I hurry back to my car. After the guests leave, this is over. I live honestly. I will not be Dawn, in her gutter in Oakland. Water finds its own level.
That was my mother’s expression. Rest in peace, Mommy.
She’s not dead! She’s still in there, somewhere. I need to try harder to draw her out. I’ll read her the books she used to love, and we’ll watch her old favorite movies. I’ll bring photo albums. I’ve gotten complacent, but there’s work to be done
. I’m going to bring her back to me, and she’ll help me recover myself.
I’m about to start my car when I notice a Mercedes SUV is tooling by, ever so slowly. The driver is a middle-aged man, and he seems to be looking carefully at each house. I think he slows even further in front of mine, but I could be imagining it. He doesn’t stop.
Someone from the city attorney’s office? No, Vi was supposed to have taken care of that. But she was also supposed to have answered my texts. Would someone from the city attorney’s office drive a Mercedes SUV, anyway? He could. This is Santa Monica.
Or it could be someone else, unrelated. Someone Dawn sent? Is she somewhere nearby?
A shiver goes through me. I wouldn’t know Dawn if I saw her. She could have been that woman with the Bernese mountain dog, who did seem awfully eager to make eye contact during a simple “Good morning” exchange.
Officer Llewellyn says geography is my greatest protection, and that Dawn’s going to burn out soon, and I hope he’s right. But I should know what she looks like, just in case.
I punch her name into my phone. There she is, the only Dawn Thiebold to pop up. I didn’t even need to add the “Oakland.” She’s on Facebook, Twitter, and something called LinkedIn. I’m exhorted to log in to find out what she “shares with her friends.” No, thank you. I am definitely not her friend.
Even her enemies can find out that she is currently a communications major at a lowly state school, that she used to work for Target and PetSmart, that she’s married, and that she’s beautiful.
I wouldn’t have guessed that last part. She doesn’t have a beautiful girl’s name, that’s for sure. A communications major, please! She’ll go far with that. Especially when you consider her distinguished resume.
Her husband must have money. So she can afford to go back to college at the only school that would let someone like her in, and they can go on expensive long weekends where she mistreats other people’s possessions and then thinks she doesn’t have to pay for it. That’s what beautiful women do, right? They expect things to be handed to them, and to get off scot-free.
