All Wheel Drive

by Z. A. Maxfield

  He couldn’t quite . . . remember.

  “Healey.”

  “Hmm?” Opening his eyes, he saw his brother had stopped the car. “What?”

  “You’re going to the doctor, right fucking now.”

  With that, Nash whipped the car around, probably heading for the ferry, and Seattle, and another fine mess.

  “Oh come on,” Healey said tiredly as he glanced behind them. “There’s no emergency. I’ll make an appointment. I promise.”

  Nash kept driving, head down, jaw working like he wanted to say something but was holding himself back.

  “What?” asked Healey.

  “You were somewhere else for like . . . three minutes, man. You didn’t even look my way when I called your name.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “I know.” Nash’s jaw was still going, teeth grinding.

  “So what?”

  “What do you mean what? You were gone. The lights were on, but nobody was home.”

  “And? Didn’t I answer your question fast enough? I’m sorry, Nash. Sometimes it takes me a minute to process—”

  “No.” Nash pulled over again. “You did that exact same thing before. Don’t you remember?”

  Healey balled his fist. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “After Mom died? You didn’t talk for like . . . a week. Didn’t look up. Didn’t interact. It was like you were— I dunno, man, but it scared the fuck out of me.”

  “I—” Healey thought back. “I don’t remember much about when Mom died.”

  “Ask Pop.” Nash eyed him. “You were a ghost for a long, long time. I thought I lost you too.” His fingers opened and closed on the shift knob while he met Healey’s gaze.

  Healey winced at the pain in his brother’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “A doctor might be able to help you process what’s happening to you. They know more about emotional stuff now.”

  Healey’s heart filled with fondness for his brother. He couldn’t possibly understand the awful quagmire that was the pursuit of mental health. “The hospital gave me my paperwork and some referrals for doctors here. I haven’t had time to contact anyone just yet.”

  “So? Let’s get that ball rolling instead of moving boxes.”

  Healey groaned. Just the thought of making calls, of filling out paperwork, and waiting, and elevator music, and hushed voices, was exhausting.

  “Tomorrow?” he whined. “Can’t we spend today without thinking of any of that?”

  While he gave the idea some thought, Nash’s foot jiggled, rocking the vehicle. “You have twenty-four hours. By then Pop and Fjóla will be here, and it won’t be up to you anymore.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  Nash’s smile was wry. “You have no idea.”

  The twilight before dawn was Diego’s favorite time. No matter where he was, no matter what the weather, he always found something fascinating in the transformation of darkness by the subtle, gradual addition of light.

  He’d never learned to appreciate sunsets, not the spectacular sunsets of the LA basin, not the many sunsets he’d filmed all over the globe. Morning had stillness. It had a peculiar, awakening scent. The air was different, the sky more vivid, more dramatic—even on days like this, when it was simply a vast gray expanse of light and shadow.

  And when there were colors? Dawn’s special rosiness, cold blues, and violets—the golden spears of first light through clouds—made even ordinary days magical, gilding the mountains and tall trees to the east, setting water droplets alight to hang on spider webs like tiny stars.

  It hurt his heart to see it, but he made himself watch. Rising before dawn was both old habit and preference. Daybreak was his touchstone. His ritual.

  “Light has something to teach us,” his mother had once said. “Even weak light, even filtered light, blocked light, travels at light speed.”

  Diego could take his bearings anywhere in the world at daybreak and feel right at home.

  So . . . what then, did that make this place? Bluewater Bay . . .

  He took his breakfast out to the covered deck, where he made a mental note about refilling the bird feeder. It was peaceful there, if a little cold. The day was every shade of gray. Rain came down, and he liked its musical noise. He ought to put in some kind of fountain, maybe the bamboo kind that filled and tipped and clunked. He could use some wind chimes too, maybe. Under the eaves where they wouldn’t get destroyed by the elements.

  Filming was on hiatus. He had no other work that day. No urgent errands to run. His mother used to say, “It’s times like this I get bored and start something reckless.”

  She’d follow that up with a raised glass or a raised eyebrow.

  “What should we do next?” she’d ask.

  His mother had cared about her causes, and she’d never sat still. The way Cecil and Rachel pressured him about her photographs and papers, he could well believe she was still out there somewhere, fighting the good fight.

  He unrolled his napkin and set his place. Then he went back for his coffee.

  And it was exactly things like that which bugged him. He wouldn’t have to make two trips to set the table if he didn’t care how he ate, or what he ate, but his mother’s voice was so insistent he didn’t dare take shortcuts.

  Not insistent.

  Right.

  Persistent.

  Claro, Mami.

  Footsteps caught his attention.

  “Hello? It’s me.” His former tenant came around the corner of the house by the driveway. “Healey.”

  As if I wouldn’t remember your name.

  He rolled backward so he could turn and wave to his former tenant, who was being followed by someone who— “Pendejo. You multiplied.”

  “I’m Nash.”

  “I know.” Diego gave him a nod.

  “We’ve actually met, I think.”

  “Right.” Diego held his hand out. “I’m with the postproduction team.”

  “Editing. I remember.” Nash grinned and gave his hand a firm shake.

  “How’s Spencer?” Diego was absurdly pleased anyone would remember a tiny detail about him like that.

  “Crabby. He’s filming in Morocco, and the project is behind. They’ve had record-breaking temperatures for almost a week, and half the crew is sick with the flu.”

  “Sounds like most of the location shoots I’ve been on.” Diego extended his hand toward the empty seats at his patio table. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thanks.” With a scrape of his chair, Healey sat. “We ate at the B&B. I came by to introduce Nash and see if you still want me to bring your stuff down from the garage apartment.”

  Diego wasn’t as superstitious as his mother, for whom ghosts were a convenient way to explain away coincidences, but he gave a nervous glance around.

  He was neither lazy nor credulous, but the hair stood up on his neck.

  “Don’t even worry about it.”

  Healey gave a glance toward the garage, a slight frown marring his ordinarily affable expression. “Photographic mediums are sensitive to moisture and temperature change. You’d probably better go through those boxes carefully and put the more delicate things in the house. Neither the garage nor the garage apartment were prepared for long-term storage.”

  “Nope.” Nash snorted. “It was prepared to store me.”

  “But you’re indestructible. Old photos are not.” Healey gave his brother a friendly shove. “And anyway, you didn’t have to share your room with entitled overachievers.”

  “How can you say that?” Nash gasped. “I’d spent my entire childhood with you.” Nash gave him a gentle shove in return. “Anyway. I thought you liked your roommates.”

  “Not freshman year.” After that, he’d been with Ford.

  “As delightful as this homecoming is,” Diego almost hated to point out the obvious, “neither of you live here anymore.”

  Healey chuckled. “All right, then. One time only offer.
If you give me my cash back minus, I dunno, a few hundred bucks for the inconvenience, we’ll bring your shit down from the garage apartment gratis, and we’ll even stack it nicely in the garage so can still park your SUV.”

  “We will?” Nash nudged him hard. “No. He doesn’t even care if we bring the stuff down.”

  Diego shook his head. “You really don’t have to.”

  Healey disagreed. “It’s an honest-to-God apartment, and housing in Bluewater Bay can be tough to come by, especially when the show is filming. What if someone needs it, and it’s full of boxes? What if you need some extra cash one month? It’s a waste not to use it.”

  “Healey.” Nash obviously wanted to end the conversation and go. Healey was the stubborn one. Like a reporter and his producer, they were a seasoned team. But Healey was definitely the talent.

  Diego’s conscience sounded suspiciously like his mother: What if somebody needs that room and it’s full?

  Without trying, Healey’d hit on the one reason Diego might listen to. A reason his mother would approve: the apartment might help someone in need.

  He kept his eyes on Healey’s haunting blue ones. Those were some goddamn stellar eyes. He wanted to know the name for their color. The real name: Cyan. Marine. Prussian. Periwinkle.

  It wasn’t because of those eyes he was considering taking Healey up on his offer. But it wasn’t in spite of them, either.

  “Yes.” Before either brother realized he wasn’t answering the question they’d asked, he quickly added, “Sure, you can clean out my garage attic for free. See how those words sound like a crappy deal? There’s probably a reason for that.”

  “Awesome.” Healey stood.

  “You need to wait until it stops raining,” said Diego. “I don’t want my shit getting wet.”

  Now Nash was glaring at both of them. Diego was being such an ass, he half expected one of the brothers to slug him. Naturally, he added gasoline to the fire.

  “So I can pencil you in for tomorrow morning? Weather permitting. Don’t want to get wet while I sit on my porch and watch.”

  “We’ll be here.” Still smiling serenely, Healey started toward the driveway.

  Nash gave Diego a nod. “Right now, I’m taking my brother to have his head examined. If they keep him, we’ll reschedule. I assume he has your number?”

  Diego laughed. “He does.”

  Of course, Diego’s breakfast had gotten cold.

  He gathered his food from the table and went inside. The remote was on the coffee table where he’d left it, a half-eaten batch of cookies beside it. He picked it up and returned to the show he’d been watching the night before, a Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl.

  “That’s the golden ticket, right there, m’hijo,” his mother had said about Dorothea Lange’s photography. “Facilitating empathy creates change.”

  He retrieved his laptop from his backpack and opened it.

  As a photojournalist, as a former news correspondent, he knew his mother’s story was a powerful and—more important—a timely one.

  Before her death, she’d started to tell it her way, and he’d have honored her wishes, done whatever she asked of him, provided her with technical help and physical support.

  But how could he tell her story without her?

  He tried firing up his editing software, opening the files he’d kept—informally—for his mother’s projects.

  Picking a random clip from the first videos—the ones she’d made with the borrowed camera from her first film production classes at night school—he tried to see his mother through a detached lens. She’d been an artist, but her real role was teacher. She’d been a mentor and a friend to so many local artists in LA, part of his reason for moving was to avoid being a sort of living monument to his mother.

  He could never take her place among them.

  He clicked Play and there they were, at the end of a long day in a field of strawberries. Mami sitting on the tailgate of someone’s old blue El Camino. Him, laughing, clapping his hand to hers in a way-too-forceful high five. She mimed a broken hand for the camera. “Ow, papi . . .”

  Diego remembered the clip, but not the day itself. He’d been six maybe? Mami was picking up extra work on the weekends, and he’d gone along to help. Few of the workers were women, but his mother preferred to work alongside them. “The strawberry ladies” were mostly very young—a little group of weekend day laborers who laughed at tabloid newspapers and shared tips on the best way to make up a smoky eye. They looked out for him, kept him in line when his mother wasn’t around. They were all into some dude on General Hospital, and they talked about him constantly, like, what if he was in LA and what if they met him? What would he be like? What would they say to him, where they’d go out if they dated.

  Again, always: what if, what if, what if?

  If Diego was six, his mom had been not quite twenty-three, doing a work-study program at the college, going to school, and picking up odd jobs for cash on weekends with her friends—cleaning or farm work or yard work. Sometimes painting, whatever she could get.

  “C’mon, papi,” she called, “do that dance like MJ.”

  He could hardly watch himself leap lightly down from the truck to show off. At the time, Michael Jackson’s latest video “Dangerous” featured his slim, athletic body, backlit, dancing in a doorway.

  That was prime fodder for his earliest, most misunderstood fantasies. He’d been obsessed with Michael Jackson, imitating his dress, his walk, and his style, never leaving whichever crappy by-the-week motel they were crashing at without a black hat and aviator shades.

  He’d had every move the singer made memorized, and now, even though the women obviously enjoyed his little performance, he winced, because he could see how earnest he’d been. How forthright and naive and completely ignorant.

  Also, because he was the gayest kid ever, even then, and not because he swished—no. A man didn’t navigate the uber-macho Latinx culture with a swish in his step. He became a pirate or a ninja. He developed untouchable swagger, or he hid and lied.

  Diego had gone both ways—the swagger route, fighting with his fists, arming himself with whatever homemade weapons he could, and the lying route, because you can never be too safe.

  He’d lied, and he’d lied, until one day, he simply couldn’t lie anymore.

  He’d kept his fists ready and his weapons handy, but he’d come out to his mother and Cecil and his stepsiblings.

  By that time, even he had realized he had nothing to worry about from his large, loving family.

  He didn’t give a fuck about anyone else.

  Finally, inevitably, the video ended. And for all the discomfort it caused, it made him smile.

  They’d all been delusional: Mami, coming to the USA to claim her birthright, plus a better life for her unborn child. Those other ladies, who worked hard and lived pragmatic lives, but still cherished the hope they had a chance with a gay singer on a mainstream soap opera. And Diego, who’d converted from Catholicism to the church of Michael Jackson, never to return.

  His mother’s lens had captured one particular outsider’s life in America as no one else’s ever had—possibly, as no one else’s could.

  He picked up his laptop and rolled to his desk.

  Cecil and Rachel had no idea what they were asking of him. It was painful, still, to see how they’d lived. How poor they’d been.

  To remember people who’d treated them like garbage.

  He sighed.

  For his mother, then. Out of love and respect and to honor her memory, he made himself turn on his desktop. He’d transferred most of her videos and slides before he’d moved to Bluewater Bay. He needed to scan and upload her still prints and double-check the negatives were stored safely.

  The first step in chronicling his mother’s life, of course, would be to create an archive of the materials. The video recordings, photos, and diaries would have to be scanned and uploaded before he could begin. And since what he hadn’t gotten
to yet had been left in the garage apartment, he’d had the perfect excuse to put it off.

  Until now.

  Healey and his brother had come along at exactly the right time—or exactly the wrong time, depending. Finishing the work his mother started was the right thing to do. But he’d have to relive hard times and accept the painful reminder of a future he could no longer have.

  He took a screen cap of his mother’s face—she’d been younger than he was now, a single mom, wearing men’s clothes, playing down her good looks so she wouldn’t get hassled. Her smile was radiant. Despite the separation of death, he felt its warmth suffuse him gently, and that’s what eventually made up his mind.

  He wasn’t superstitious, and he didn’t believe in ghosts, but on the off chance . . .

  Okay. He sighed. “All right, Mami. I’m on it.”

  As soon as they were back in the car, Nash turned to Healey angrily.

  “So I guess I’ll be moving boxes tomorrow. Your generosity knows no bounds.”

  “We’ll open the trap door and set up the pulleys. No big. Did I tell you? I found the picture you left behind the footboard.”

  “Yeah?” He grinned. “You drink the whiskey?”

  “Yeah,” Healey admitted. “I’m kind of a mess.”

  “I know.” The smile dropped off Nash’s face. “What happened to you? Last time we talked, you and Ford were solid. Everything was going great. You defended! What the hell, man?”

  Healey palmed his face, but it hurt too much to give it a good scrub, which was what he really wanted.

  “C’mon. Talk to me.” Nash’s hand landed on his upper arm. It was one of the few places that didn’t hurt. “What happened that night with Ford?”

  Healey swallowed hard. “I can’t talk about that. My attorney said—”

  “Wait, you hired an attorney?”

  “I—” There was a gag order in place where Ford’s case was concerned. “Ford’s family sent their attorney to represent me.”

  “Okay.” Nash pulled out, creeping slowly along the street they’d grown up on. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “What do you mean?”