The Year of Fog

by Michelle Richmond

  “Any good news yet?” he asks, punching up my purchase.

  I shake my head. “I have more flyers,” I say, setting them on the counter. It’s the ninth stack of flyers I’ve brought to Java Beach—one a week for the past two and a half months.

  I follow Forty-eighth Avenue down the alphabetized streets—Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, Noriega, Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago. I’ve always loved the streets of the Sunset district, the elegant procession of names that roll easily off the tongue. I turn left on Taraval and walk up the avenues toward Dean’s Foggy Surf Shop, fingering the manila envelope tucked inside my jacket. I used to come here with my surfer friend what seems like ages ago—he came not to shop so much as to chat, run his hands over the custom boards, see the old-timers and listen to their stories about surfing in nothing but swimming trunks back in the fifties and sixties. There’s something vaguely frightening about the young guys who are always lurking out front in blue jeans and flip-flops. They speak their own language, they don’t meet your eyes, they look out of place on land. Even in this foggy outback they manage to stay sleek and sun-tanned, their hair saltwater stiff with a kind of Jon Bon Jovi flair. A quarter of them look like off-duty models, and 97 percent of them look like they have rowdy sex on a regular basis.

  Inside, behind the counter, there’s a petite girl with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a Chicks Who Rip T-shirt, the neck stretched wide. Her nose is pierced with a tiny blue stud. She puts her hands on her hips and smiles at me when I approach. “Hey.”

  I wonder how old she is. Eighteen? Nineteen? I’ve never been good with age, have always judged incorrectly, maybe basing it on size rather than years. This girl’s punky and compact.

  “Hi.”

  I take the manila envelope out of my jacket, slide the two sketches out, and lay them side by side on the counter. “I was wondering if you’d seen these folks.”

  “Wow,” she says. “Are you some kind of special agent?”

  “Not exactly. Do they look familiar?”

  She looks at the sketches for several seconds. “No. Who are they?”

  “The guy’s a surfer, he was at Ocean Beach a little over two months ago. He’s traveling with this woman. I was hoping maybe you could post these in the store, ask around.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” she says. She’s not eighteen, I realize. She’s more like twenty-three or twenty-four. When she smiles, she has the slightest beginning of crow’s feet. She has a little mole on the tip of her ring finger, just above the nail.

  “I’m Tina, by the way,” she says. “But people just call me Goofy.”

  I smile as if I understand, but she can tell I don’t.

  “’Cause I surf goofy foot,” she says.

  I nod, and she laughs. “You don’t have a clue, do you?” She holds her arms out like she’s surfing and squares her legs, leading with the right. “You know, right foot first, like Frieda Zamba, my idol.”

  “Oh.”

  Goofy is pretty in an unnerving way, with this one front tooth that’s a little crooked, situated at a weird angle to the others.

  “So what’s all this detective shit?” she says.

  “I’m looking for a little girl.”

  I tell her about Emma. I tell her about the day at the beach, how I got distracted and looked away—not for long, but long enough.

  “God,” Goofy says. “That’s awful.” She pauses, then says, “I remember that day.”

  “Pardon?”

  “That day. I remember. I saw the news that night, and I remember thinking how weird it was, them saying that the little girl probably drowned.”

  “Weird why?”

  “Because the water was calm, just these little mushy waves. Barely an undertow. That never happens at Ocean Beach.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that it seemed strange for a kid to drown on that day. That morning I went down to the beach with Tina D. from the shop,” Goofy says. “We call her Tina D. on account of my name being Tina, too, even though I go by Goofy. Go figure. So Tina D. and me, we went out into the water for a while, and we just sat there on our boards waiting for a wave that never came. We must’ve sat there for a couple of hours. Summer’s not prime surfing season around here. Occasionally, you know, you get out there and you know your chance of catching a wave is slim. The thing is, that happens all the time at places like Rockaway and Año Nuevo, but not so much at Ocean Beach. So we’re just sitting there, not talking, letting the waves lift us up and down, up and down, and it’s this strange, calm day, and I was thinking about the water at my apartment, which had just been cut off because I hadn’t paid the bill, and I was about to ask Tina D. if I could come over later and take a shower.

  “Then all of the sudden I heard sirens, and I looked back at the beach and saw cruiser lights spinning in the fog. It was weird. I figured maybe it was a drug bust or something, just some kids caught holding in the parking lot. But before long the Coast Guard boat showed up, and that’s when Tina D. and me paddled back in. A cop asked us if we’d seen anything, and we told him we hadn’t, and then he asked Tina D. out for a date, which was pretty tasteless, considering.” Goofy tugs her hair out of her ponytail, then pulls it back again and says, “Of course, I’m no expert.”

  “But you know the water.”

  She looks down at my hands. I realize I’ve been picking at my cuticles, and now my thumb is bleeding. She plucks a tissue out of a box behind the counter, reaches over, and presses it against my thumb. “You’re hurting yourself.”

  “Nervous habit.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “I know the water. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s not the most likely scenario. I mean, sure, Ocean Beach is always hairy, but usually when you hear about a drowning, there’s been a wicked rip current. Usually, it makes sense. That day, I remember sitting on Tina D.’s couch and thinking it didn’t.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in so long,” I say. “I’ve never believed that she drowned, but I can’t seem to convince anyone that I’m right. Maybe this will help.”

  “I hope you find her,” she says. She smiles, exposing that errant tooth. “Hey, where are you headed now?”

  “Toward the park.”

  “I’ll walk with you. My lunch break started five minutes ago, and I’m going to the Bashful Bull 2. You ever been there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, you’d remember. Let me grab my jacket and I’ll meet you outside.”

  It feels good not to be alone, just to have someone next to me, walking. These days, I do everything alone, and I wonder whether I’m slowly losing the ability to have normal conversations. My tunnel vision has made me into the kind of person I hate to be around. “How long have you been surfing?” I ask, and it feels good to ask it, to engage in a give-and-take with someone like Goofy, who doesn’t judge me at all, who doesn’t look at me and automatically see someone who made a fatal, unforgivable error.

  “Since I was eight,” she says. “My dad taught me, before he ran off.” She looks me up and down. “You should let me teach you. I bet you could learn. You’ve got a good surfer’s body—strong legs, small on top. But you better not wait too long. There’s a statute of limitations on this offer. I’m going to college.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I’m not, like, enrolled or anything. But it has to be soon.” She moves with a little dance in her step, like there’s some tune playing in her head that only she can hear. “I woke up a few weeks ago and realized I’m pushing twenty-five.”

  “What do you want to study?”

  “Marine biology. I’d like to go to the University of Hawaii. I figure I can put myself through school teaching tourists how to surf.” Then we reach Noriega, and she’s patting me on the shoulder, saying, “This is my stop. Want to join me for lunch?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got some stuff to do. You’ll call me if you hear anything?”

&nbs
p; “Sure. And you’ll have to drop by again. Next time, come before noon. The Bashful Bull 2 has a breakfast special. Eggs, bacon, hash browns, and coffee for three-fifty.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  In the park, I follow the winding path past the lake where Emma and I used to feed the ducks, past the casting pools and the bison corral and the golf course, past a second lake where the mossy trees are draped with mosquito traps tracking West Nile virus. By the time I emerge on Fulton, the sky has gone dark. The young driver of a black Mercedes catches my eye before gunning through the yellow light. Across the road, an elderly man is leaning on a stick, watching the light as it changes from red to green to red again. I head left on Balboa, toward the beach. For years I’ve been meaning to bring my camera out here and photograph the odd businesses that make their home in the Richmond: the Archery Store, Scissor Man, the typewriter and vacuum cleaner repair shop, Hockey Haven, Gus’s Bait & Tackle. Out here, it’s like a different city, no hip nightclubs or bookstores, no clothing boutiques or trendy restaurants.

  It’s after seven when I reach my car. There’s hardly anyone on the road fronting the park, just a young couple making out in a Honda Accord and a guy alone in a Jeep Cherokee eating a sandwich and listening to Johnny Cash. It’s that Kris Kristofferson song—“on the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday mornin’ coming down.”

  Driving home, I call Jake and tell him what Goofy said about the rip current.

  “You don’t know Ocean Beach,” he says. “That’s what I keep trying to make you understand. Even on its mildest day, Ocean Beach is a monster. When my dad was playing for the 49ers, one of the defensive linemen waded out a little too far and got pulled out to sea. I’m talking about a huge, strong guy. The only reason he survived was that he managed to swim for three miles with the current before a fishing boat picked him up.”

  “Can’t you see this is good news?” I ask.

  “I’m just trying to be realistic.”

  I call Detective Sherburne, and his reaction is even less enthusiastic than Jake’s. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” he says. “We know about the wave conditions that day. We covered that base with the Coast Guard at the very beginning.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it’s a red herring, Abby. You’ve got to look at the facts. We still don’t have a single solid piece of evidence to suggest a kidnapping.”

  He’s so convinced of Emma’s drowning, so certain his theory is correct. Add to that the fact that Lisbeth passed the polygraph, and everything about her story checked out. “Most kidnappings are by family members, and a huge percentage are noncustodial mothers,” he reminded me after the results of the polygraph came in. “Lisbeth was our best hope.”

  Sherburne would never admit it—neither would Jake—but I know that both of them are close to giving up.

  30

  NELL STOPS by with a new stack of books a few days later. She stands in the doorway, glancing over my shoulder, and I know she’s looking at the cello on its stand in the center of the room, the rich mahogany I’ve polished to a reddish gleam.

  “Emma only had four lessons,” I say.

  “Oh, hon,” Nell says, looking me up and down. She must be wondering about my blue sequined gown, my upswept hair, my costume jewelry. It’s ten o’clock on a Monday night; she must think I’m losing my mind. And maybe she’s right. I rarely sleep. I eat just enough to keep going. I spend hours alone, day and night, week after week, walking the streets like a vagrant, riding Muni, accosting strangers with my stacks of flyers. Often, I find myself talking aloud to no one, running through the possibilities.

  Before all this happened, I thought I was well prepared for traumatic situations. I believed I had some source of inner strength, some deep well of sanity from which to draw. If things got bad in my personal life, I always had my work to turn to. But I can’t concentrate on work. Although I’ve finally lined up a few jobs, my business is falling apart, and Annabel is still paying the rent.

  “Emma was planning to do a concert for me that weekend,” I say. “She insisted on packing her black velvet Christmas dress and patent leather shoes, and she wanted me to wear this old dress—it’s from Mardi Gras in Mobile ages ago.”

  Nell steps inside my door, lays the books on a table, and reaches out her arms in such a big and motherly way that I lean into her and fall apart.

  “You’re going to make it,” she says, stroking my back. Then she rearranges the straps of my ridiculous dress, as if I have some business wearing it. “That’s a real pretty fit.” She taps a pink fingernail on the stack of books. “Read these, hon. You never know what might surface.”

  “Thanks, Nell.”

  “You just come knock on my door, anytime, day or night, you hear?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with the overwhelming space of my loft, which once seemed airy and open and now just feels cavernous and drafty. And there, in the center of it, awash in lamplight and swirling dust motes, Emma’s cello. The absence of sound, those cracked, sweet notes that Emma coaxed so earnestly from the instrument, which hid her almost entirely from view when she sat behind it. Of all the instruments she could have chosen, she wanted the cello.

  Last spring, Jake and I took her to a San Francisco Symphony concert at Stern Grove. We sat on a big yellow sheet in the grass, and she sipped Coke and munched on pretzel sticks for a solid hour while the symphony played. Afterward, as we were walking to the car, she asked, “What’s the really big guitar called?”

  “You mean the cello?”

  “The one you play with a stick.”

  “Yep, that’s the cello.”

  “I want to play that.”

  The next week Jake found a small version of the instrument, one-fourth the size of a regular cello, at the music store on Haight, and signed Emma up for lessons in Noe Valley. He brought the cello home and laid the case on her bed—a surprise. When she walked in and saw it, she got so excited she wet her pants.

  “That’s the great thing about kids,” he said, relating the story to me over the phone. “I mean, when was the last time you were so excited about something you actually wet your pants?”

  That’s one of the things that drew me to Jake—the sheer delight he took in fatherhood. His ability to see the world through Emma’s eyes made him seem almost innocent in a way that few men do. When I told Annabel about how good he was with Emma, she said, “Hold on to him. A happy kid is like a big stamp of approval across a guy’s forehead.”

  I was so flattered by the fact that he was willing to share her with me; it made his love seem bigger somehow, his commitment greater. He once told me that, after Lisbeth left, he worried he’d never find someone who was right for both him and Emma. “And then you came along,” he said. “I fell in love with you for a dozen reasons, and only one of them is that you’re so good with Emma.”

  “What are the other eleven?” I asked.

  “Number one is that trick you do with your tongue,” he teased. “Number two would have to be your biscuits and gravy. As for the other nine, I’ll just keep you guessing.”

  What I miss most, more than Jake’s hands and his chest and the taste of him, more than his generosity to waitresses and his rule of never sitting down on Muni if it meant someone else had to stand, more than his passion for the Giants and key lime pie, is the fun we had together. The way he’d come up to me in the bedroom, lift me off my feet, throw me on the bed, and tell dumb jokes until I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. His dead-on impersonations of Dwight Yoakam and Richard Nixon. Now, all that is gone, and I hate knowing that I’m responsible for this change.

  It’s close to midnight, and I’m still wearing my sequined gown. I’ve been thumbing through Emma’s My First Cello book. The book has scales, line drawings of children holding cellos, diagrams that tell you where to place your fingers. I have my dress hiked above my knees, the cello pressed between my thighs, and I’m trying to
find C major. There’s a bottle of Maker’s Mark on the coffee table. I opened the bottle after Nell left, and I’m halfway down the label. My fingers won’t work on the strings. I don’t know how to hold the bow. I try to make music, but all I can muster are painful sounds like a squawking seal, a dying whale. The phone rings.

  “Abby?” Jake says.

  “Hi.”

  “You sound strange. Have you been drinking?”

  “No.” My answer is too emphatic, like a cartoon drunk with a bubble over her head, a NO in capital letters.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I just had a little.”

  I’m embarrassed for him to hear me this way. I know this is no way to cope, that this is yet another test I’m failing.

  “You’ve got to stop this,” he says. “It isn’t helping.”

  “It helps a little.”

  Long pause. This is not a comfortable silence, not like the ones we used to have, when we could let a minute or two pass between us on the phone without a word, and I was comforted just to know he was there, on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry,” I say after a while, knowing that the words are inadequate, that this is more proof that I am not the woman he thought I was when he asked me to marry him. What does it matter that I could stage private cello concerts and make sock monkeys if I could lose Emma after a few minutes on the beach? Motherhood requires so much more than devotion, much more than simply love.

  31

  N. WAS THE man who could not remember.

  In December of 1960, while living in an Air Force dormitory, his roommate, practicing with a miniature fencing foil, accidentally stabbed N. through the right nostril; the tip of the foil lodged in the left side of his brain. What N. would recall in years to come were the details of his life before the accident. For example, he remembered a road trip across the U.S. in an old Cadillac, a trip he took two years before the accident occurred. But he would never again enjoy watching a movie, because halfway through he wouldn’t be able to remember the opening scenes.