Invasion of Privacy

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Nina called her father in Monterey. Harlan Reilly said he’d be on the lookout and distribute the flyers she was making. Then she called Paul at his office in Carmel.

  "Van Wagoner Investigations," said his voice, gruffer and deeper than she remembered. She took a breath to speak. "We’re unavailable at the moment. Please leave your message after the tone."

  What could Paul do from so far away anyway? Bobby would turn up any minute. Feeling unable to leave a message, she hung up.

  "Community Hospital," the bus driver said. Bob stood in front of the long white building shaded by Monterey pines. People bustled in and out, some dressed all in white, some with red coats.

  He had slept most of the way from Tahoe to Monterey, and, up early, stopped for breakfast at the McDonald’s near Fisherman’s Wharf. Then he returned to the bus station and found out how to get to the hospital.

  He turned right after going through the automatic doors, heading for the volunteer information desk. A lady with stiff white hair and a peach-colored dress sat behind bunches of flowers. These ladies didn’t get paid, so they were always very cheerful, really cheerful, not fake-o cheerful like people who were paid for it.

  "I need my birth certificate. I was born here," he said to the lady. In a quavering voice she said, "Oh. Well. Let’s see what we can find out. Alma? Alma!" A girl came over, maybe even a teenager, wearing a uniform just like the girls at Boulder Hospital at Tahoe, where his mom had been.

  "This young man wants a birth certificate," she said to the girl, who looked at Bob with a lot of doubt in her eyes.

  Lots of gray-speckled, shiny floors later, they turned into a room with a tall counter that he had trouble seeing over. Alma left him there. The man behind the counter didn’t notice Bob. "Excuse me," Bob said. About a century later, after some other people came and went, Bob said "Excuse me" again. No reaction. Was he deaf?

  "Hey!" Bob said loudly. The man turned. Bob had never seen anyone so bald, but he had a dark tan all over his head and the neck coming out of his shirt looked as thick as a boxer’s. "Sir," he added.

  "What do you want, kid?" he said.

  "My birth certificate. I was born here."

  "That’s a legal record. We don’t have it here." He looked at a list for a minute, saying, "You have to go over to the Salinas courthouse. West wing, third floor. County health department. Unless you want an original. Then you have to write to Sacramento."

  "Where’s Salinas?"

  "You trying to be funny?"

  "No, sir," Bob said. He could see the man liked that. "I just meant, how do we get there?" He used "we" to keep the man from getting too interested in a kid all alone.

  He looked at Bob and shrugged. "Take the Highway 68 bus outside. That takes you to the Salinas Transit Plaza, and you get a transfer, or walk from there. It’s just a few blocks."

  "Do you know if birth certificates have the father’s names on them?"

  "Usually."

  "Do they have to have the father’s name?"

  "No. But they usually do."

  At dinnertime, an exhausted Nina suggested dinner out for Matt’s family. At first they refused. They would sit with her. They would wait together. "Please, go," she insisted. "I’ll stay here." Matt tried and failed to convince Nina to come along. She didn’t want to leave the house. He wanted to bring food home, but she said she’d make some soup.

  "Go to a movie," she suggested at the door in a low voice. "This is just awful for the kids."

  "Are you sure you’ll be all right?"

  "I’m fine. I expect to hear from someone any minute."

  "We won’t be late." Matt and Andrea hugged her, and even the kids each gave her a kiss on the way out. "They’ll find him, Nina," Andrea whispered. "I know he’s all right."

  "Want to grab your keys and move your car? Andrea and I parked in the garage," Matt asked.

  She reached into her pocket and tossed him her keys. "Take the Bronco, Matt. Everybody fits better in there anyway."

  After they left she went into the kitchen to make herself some soup. She hadn’t eaten all day, and the aggravating needs of the body called to her according to their own clock. Dinner, they said. Eat. She ate the tomato soup with the morning newspaper in front of her.

  From the living room she watched the evening cast its shadow over the snow outside the picture window, then stoked the fire, ready to leap to the phone or the door, whichever rang first. She sat on the round hooked rug by the hearth, looking into the orange and blue flames, thinking about what Mrs. Polk had said.

  By late afternoon Bob had found the county buildings. He had gone with his mom once to watch her argue an appeal in the San Francisco courthouse, so once they arrived in Salinas he knew how to find the particular office he wanted. You looked at the directory, and stood by the elevator looking alert. He took the elevator to the third floor, going up with a red-headed lady with a heavy briefcase just like his mom’s. At the county health department office he put his things on a plastic chair, then waited in line for his birth certificate. The clerk told him it cost thirteen dollars, and Bob gave her a twenty from his birthday money. He told her his birthdate. She came back a few minutes later with a sheet of paper. He didn’t look at it until he got outside.

  Behind the courthouse, a large grassy yard held no people to bother him. He sat down and took off the pack. He held the paper, smoothing it, not opening it until he felt ready.

  A crow landed a few feet away and eyed him. He dug down in the pack for some bits of cheese. Soon many crows pecked around him. He examined a colony of ants wending their way into a clump of dirt near his feet. A sharp pang of fear made his hands shake. He felt like a chick scratching on the inside of its egg, about to pop into someplace completely new.

  He opened the paper and began puzzling it out.

  CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH, STATE OF CALIFORNIA, he read at the top. ROBERT BRENDAN REILLY, he read, shivering a little, though the sun shone. The crows flew up together, cawing. Waving his hand and squinting, he read on.

  Under Father of Child it said KURT GEOFFREY SCOTT. Blinking, he read it again.

  He wanted to tell somebody, jump up and say this is my father, look here, Kurt Geoffrey Scott. He did jump up, and ran around for a minute on the grass, kicking at the ants.

  His father was real and that made him real. Strange, half-formed ideas and doubts flew away, off into the cloudless sky.

  Mother of Child, Nina Fox Reilly. Father of Child, Kurt Geoffrey Scott.

  Nina was lying down, her head propped on a pillow on the floor. The fire, down to glowing embers, made the only light in the house. She had been sleeping. Something had awakened her. Bobby?

  Not Bobby. The sounds, at first just soft, shuffling sounds, made her train her ear to make sure she was not mistaking branches of trees scraping the roof in the wind. No, the floorboards were creaking somewhere in the house. What she heard was the sound of footsteps, stealthy and deliberate, moving across the floor.

  She sat up slowly, still maintaining a small emotional distance born of disbelief Could she trust herself to recognize reality in the dark like this? Could she be dreaming? But her bare toes felt cold. Her fingers, clenching and unclenching the blanket, responded to the texture of the fabric. Heat emanated from the embers at the bottom of the fireplace.

  A loud thump, the sound of something large crashing to the floor, convinced her. She jumped up, looking for a weapon. She found the shovel and brush among the fireplace tools, but no poker. Matt hid the poker from the children.

  Looking around the dark room, she spotted the ax. Wasn’t that just like Matt to leave his ax out and the poker hidden, she thought stupidly, her teeth chattering as she picked up the ax and made her way slowly through the room, trying not to run into furniture.

  She wanted to get to the kitchen, with an aim toward getting to the phone, but before she could, the atmosphere had subtly changed. The sounds stopped.

  Irresolute, she stood at the door to the hallway,
looking around. Was it possible whoever was here was waiting for her?

  The house, still and expectant as a waiting room, breathed along with her in response to the sighs of wind outside. She heard no other sound.

  Standing in the doorway, completely rattled by now, Nina reconsidered. She did not want to go down the hall. The hall had a public feel to it suddenly, like a room with eyes. But what alternatives did she have? The living room opened only onto this hall and the entry foyer.

  Should she try to open a window and climb out? That made her think of the storm windows. She could not get out that way. Not quickly enough.

  Moments passed. The Bavarian cuckoo clock ticked in the kitchen. She didn’t know how long she had been standing there, but she couldn’t remain still another minute. Her nose itched; she needed to sneeze. To top it off, she heard the mushy sound of tires easing up the road, approaching the driveway.

  She ducked back into the living room to think about what to do. At the same moment, a thump near the hallway told her that someone was there. She hadn’t imagined anything. Someone was out there.

  Raising the ax in her right hand, she bolted toward the hall, her fear and rage exploding into one earsplitting, gut-spilling shriek.

  "What in holy hell happened?" Matt asked, once he had looked her over and reheated some coffee in the microwave, and Nina had assured him a number of times that she felt fine, aside from the large bump forming on the back of her head. "We go to the movies and come back to find you, lying on the floor, bleeding."

  She told him about her evening, starting at the beginning. "I guess somebody broke in while I was asleep. I heard your car coming up the driveway and I was scared—for everybody. I wanted to chase him off with the ax, I think. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do."

  "Could be he was just trying to get you out of the way so that he could escape," said Matt, his voice unusually hard-sounding. "Could be he intended to hurt you, but I interrupted. Why in God’s name did you have the ax? He could’ve used it on you."

  "I had to do something."

  "Anything missing?" Matt asked, working latches on the windows and doors.

  "Nothing I could see," said Andrea. "The police are on the way. Nina, when you feel up to it, you should check your room. Check your jewelry."

  "I’m really okay. I just wish I’d killed the bastard."

  She walked down the hall to her room. She let herself in, and stood gaping in the doorway at a scene of utter devastation.

  Her bedding lay strewn around the room. Something had slashed into the bed, dribbling her shampoos, creams, and makeup over the mattress. The contents of her room, her shoes, her clothing, her treasures, had all been shredded, cut, defaced.

  She moved slowly inside, toeing the remnants of her belongings, making a path for herself to the closet. Her clothes had been torn off hangers and flung to the floor. She checked her jewelry, which she kept in a silk bag on a shelf, now lying on the floor, one or two earrings smashed, but the full collection remained, as far as she could tell.

  Checking the dresser drawers didn’t take long, since they were empty—her bras and other underwear in blue, red, black, and beige ripped into confetti and thrown around the room as if in celebration.

  She backed into the hallway, slamming the door to her room, just as the front doorbell rang.

  The same two officers from the morning stood in the doorway. She invited them in to take a look.

  "Anything missing?" they asked, after picking their way around the room, making notes.

  "Nothing I can see except an old box full of souvenirs. The lid was pretty tight. He’s going to be disappointed when he gets a chance to check out his booty."

  "You keep saying ’he.’ Why?" the woman cop asked Nina. "Are you sure it was a man?"

  "Well, no, I guess I’m not. I guess I don’t know that."

  Back down the brightly lit street, back down to the wharf Bob walked, wearing his parka, his sweatshirt hood up. Fog had rolled in from the ocean, blurring the restaurant signs.

  He’d taken the bus back to Monterey, and found a public phone on a busy street near the waterfront. Because there was no listing for a Kurt Scott in the phone book, he’d spent an hour and several dollars in change phoning any Scotts that looked promising.

  He didn’t know what he’d say if he had found his father anyway.

  Still, he didn’t feel ready to give up, so instead of calling his grandfather in Monterey, he prepared to spend the night somewhere. He tried the post office, but a bum had already staked out that territory. He had lunged at Bob, laughing at his fear. Bob didn’t think it was funny at all.

  At the end of the wharf, about ready to fall over from sleepiness, he stepped down some ramshackle stairs off the main pier, to a landing that smelled like old fish, only a foot or so above the water. Some rusty sinks stood near him, but he found a spot that was only slightly damp. He slipped into his sleeping bag, put his other stuff in there with him, and curled up.

  Through the fence slats the ocean floated in the fog. His wooden floor creaked and swayed. Warm and comfortable, the watery scenery obliterated by fog, he swayed with the waves, cradled by the ocean.

  "Kurt Geoffrey Scott," he said to himself. Before long, he fell asleep.

  Late in the night, he woke up.

  He saw a face in the fog.

  It was looking curiously at him, a face that seemed to roll back into the mist without any shoulders. And its nose was black, with a whiskered smile below, chinless, and its black eyes were not human eyes.

  Bob sat up too quickly, thumping his head against the rail, and the seal jerked his head back, remaining a few feet away on the landing. Now Bob could see where its flippers made puddles on the deck.

  Neither moved for a while. The harbor seal seemed to be trying to decide whether to slide back off the deck into the ocean. Bob was wondering if he should jiggle up and down and holler, chasing the seal off. He must look like a seal himself, in his long black sleeping bag. The animal twitched his nose, but made no other move.

  Bob wasn’t afraid. He had never heard of a seal biting anyone, though if it rolled over on him it would certainly hurt. He felt like he was the one out of place. He was sleeping in the seal’s spot.

  The mists drifted overhead; the deck moved. Green water lapped at the pilings.

  The seal began backing up, using its flippers to push itself Leaving a wet trail, it retreated to the far edge of the deck. Its mouth opened in a huge yawn. It sighed just like a human, put its head down, and rolled over, so Bob could see only its roly-poly, long gray back.

  Bob joined it in another yawn, pulling the edge of the bag over his head, lodging himself a little farther into his cubbyhole, and fell back to sleep.

  6

  SITTING IN HER CAR AT TERRY’S GATE THE DAY AFTER Bobby disappeared, Nina put the heel of her hand on the horn and let it stay there.

  Terry threw open the door of the house at the top of the hill and stood on the porch, her hair flying out from her head like something alive in the wild March wind. She’d thrown the lynx coat on. "What do you want?" she called.

  "Come on down here and I’ll tell you."

  Terry picked her way down. Already taller than Nina, she looked larger than usual in her baggy clothing, with the effect of an animal bunching up its fur to look menacing to an enemy. When she got to the gate, she stood there, arms folded, and said, "So?"

  "Just returning the visit."

  A small smile curled around Terry’s lips. "I don’t know what you mean."

  "I want to talk to you."

  "I’m busy."

  "If you don’t let me in, I’m going to talk to the police. They’ll get a search warrant. You broke into my house. And my son’s missing. I’m not here to play around."

  Terry looked surprised, but Nina didn’t know whether or not to credit the raised eyebrows or slightly open mouth. "Have it your way," she said.

  Once again she opened the gate and Nina followed he
r up the hill, but this time they took the main trail to the house. Rivulets of melting snow ran down it, making the walking harder.

  Up close, the A-frame needed a paint job, and the porch needed new supports.

  A man sat at the oak table near the window, smoking. Young, blond, and strapping, wearing a blue baseball cap, a dirty plaid jacket, and muddy boots, he looked a lot like the man Nina had met on her last trip here, Jerry but with a stubble instead of a beard. This must be his son.

  "Go home, Ralphie," Terry said. "I’m busy now."

  "I got here first," the young man said. "You promised."

  "Get lost."

  "Is she the lawyer lady?" He talked deliberately, with slight pauses between words, as if the language made sluggish progress from his mind, only to get stuck in his throat.

  "None of your business," Terry said, but he got up to stand by her, reeking of gasoline and oil. He reached a hand out absentmindedly to pat Terry’s arm. She pulled her coat away, making a face. "You’re filthy."

  "Pleased to meet you," he said to Nina. "I like your coat collar. Is it mink?"

  "It’s fake," Nina said. "I don’t wear real fur."

  "But you wear leather shoes, I bet," he said with a laugh.

  Terry, who had had enough, said loudly, "Ralphie, I said get going!" She herded him to the door, opened it, and invited him out.

  "I’m going, I’m going." He stubbed out the cigarette on the hardwood floor and stomped out in his heavy boots.

  "Jerk-off," Terry said contemptuously, watching his retreat down the path. If Ralph was her lover, the relationship was definitely doomed. She made sure the door closed behind him, then turned to Nina, who was wondering at the heavy furniture, the Early American oils on the walls.

  "My parents’ stuff. I never bothered to take any of it down. I basically live in my studio," Terry said. "Let’s get this over with quickly. I know nothing about your kid being missing."

  "You broke into the house and trashed my room," Nina said. "I saw you."