Golden State: A Novel

by Richmond, Michelle

  One afternoon, when he was going to the bathroom on his little plastic potty, I said, “I’ll close the door so you can have privacy.”

  “No,” he said. “Stay with me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Because I love you.”

  I sat down on the bathroom floor in front of him, and he clapped his hands on my cheeks, laughing. As I helped him pull up his pants and wash his hands, I thought about how these small ministrations, the daily acts of love, had become all-consuming. Caring for a small child was exhausting, but it also made life immeasurably sweeter. I had wanted so much from life, and I had gotten it; now what I wanted more than anything was this.

  On the day we took him to the family services offices to go home with Allison, he clung to me, screaming, “Mommy, Daddy, don’t make me go!” He was terrified, too young to understand why we were letting this strange woman take him away.

  Overseeing the entire thing was Marina, the stoic-faced social worker with her steadfast belief in rules and reports, her unwavering faith in the supremacy of blood ties. “Please,” I begged, as she pulled him out of my arms.

  “It’s out of my hands,” she said—seeming, for the first time, uncertain that she held the moral high ground.

  As Tom and I drove home that afternoon, I thought of a vacation we’d taken to Vieques, Puerto Rico, before we were married. On the fourth day of our trip, on a deserted beach near our small hotel, something had happened to jolt us out of the blissful state in which we had spent our first days there. We were walking hand in hand, talking about the impossible, otherworldly blue of the water, when Tom’s grip on my hand tightened, and as I stepped forward, he pulled me back. My eyes had been on the horizon, where a white boat was cutting elegantly through the blue, but now I turned my head and saw what had caused him to stop in his tracks—not ten feet from us, a bull.

  The animal was breathing heavily, looking straight at us, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard his wet, ragged breath before I saw him.

  We backed away very slowly, our eyes on the bull, his eyes on us. I couldn’t be sure whether the panting I heard was the bull’s or my own. My heart raced, and my hand in Tom’s was slippery with sweat. When we had put fifteen yards or so between us, there was a sound in the thicket, a breaking of twigs. The bull lost interest in us, turned toward the sound, and ambled away. As we walked back to our room in silence, I felt exhilarated and frightened, certain that we had just been spared some terrible incident. Our waiter that night confirmed my suspicions. The bulls on the beach had become a serious problem, he said. A tourist had been gored just two months before, and had died.

  My life, in many ways, was like the incident in Vieques. I’d grown up with nothing, and then, as it turned out, things had gone so well for me, better than I’d ever imagined they might. I often felt that I had just narrowly escaped some terrible fate, some metaphorical bull in the thicket that I hadn’t seen. My own father’s completely random and unexpected death had taught me at an early age that terrible things lurked just around the corner. For the longest time, I felt lucky but afraid. How long could this sort of luck hold out?

  Now, in the rearview mirror, I could see Ethan’s empty car seat. Thousands of times in the past two and a half years, I had glanced up and looked at his reflection. I had taken such joy in seeing him there, had felt such a sense of security and completeness, having him with me, knowing that he was safe. Seeing the empty seat, I understood that the dreaded thing had happened; the bull in the thicket had finally caught up with me.

  In the weeks after he was taken away, I fantasized about rescuing him. At night, unable to sleep, I came up with outlandish plots to whisk him away, back into the safe, loving life we had built for him. We could go into hiding, leave the country, start fresh. Crazy thoughts, but most of the time they seemed more sane than the alternative: life without him.

  Everything, during that time, was about Ethan and his absence. I hardly had room in my mind to consider Heather, much less forgive her or offer sound advice. For the first few weeks after the incident, she called repeatedly, always crying, always apologetic, but I didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to see her. A few days after we lost Ethan, she called to tell me she had joined the army.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “It’s done.”

  Soon thereafter, she left for training at Fort Bragg. In a way, it made sense. It was the ultimate act of turning one’s life around, the ultimate act of reinvention. And also, I knew, an act of self-punishment. Heather cherished nothing more than her freedom. She didn’t like being told what to do, where to be. The thought of her at basic training—rising before dawn, donning fatigues and heavy black boots, standing in line and subjecting herself to the whims of her commanding officer—was unfathomable. I understood that this was her attempt at contrition, her cry for atonement. And I have to admit—a part of me was relieved. I wouldn’t have to see her or hear her voice. I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes and pretend I wasn’t filled with rage.

  44

  “Why didn’t you try to find him?” Dennis wants to know.

  “I did, Dennis. You know that.”

  “Tell me again,” he insists.

  On the bed, Heather is lying on her side, her eyes shut tight against the pain. It’s getting so close; any minute I will have to put the phone down. But for now, Rajiv and Betty need whatever time I can buy. I think of all the codes I’ve run, how you quit whatever you’re doing, put everything else out of your mind, and concentrate on that single patient, on saving that one life. To be a physician is to be an expert in compartmentalization; every patient, every action, every feeling has its place.

  “One patient at a time,” Dr. Bariloche used to say.

  I don’t want to tell this story, I don’t want to share anything else with Dennis. But I will. Anything to stall for time. Lives depend on it. On me.

  “I went to Glendale a month after Allison took Ethan away,” I begin. “She had to let me see him.”

  “And what were you going to do if she didn’t?” I pause.

  “I was prepared to do anything.”

  “What about Tom?”

  “He stayed home. He said that if he saw Ethan, he wouldn’t be able to walk away.”

  “And you would?” Dennis asks.

  “I hadn’t planned that far ahead.”

  I found an address, made the drive to Glendale in six hours, walked up to the door, and, in a state of disbelief, not knowing what I would say, rang the doorbell. I had no idea how Allison would react, but I knew she wouldn’t be pleased.

  When an elderly Japanese man opened the door, I felt the beginning of panic. “I’m looking for Allison Rhodes,” I said.

  “She doesn’t live here anymore,” the man said. “They moved away.”

  “Where?” I asked, feeling as if the ground had shifted beneath me. I was too late.

  “Arizona?” the man said uncertainly.

  After that, I scoured the Internet for Allison Rhodes, but she was impossible to find. I couldn’t find her on LinkedIn or Facebook, or any of the other social networking sites, and the people who showed up on search engines bore no biographical resemblance to her. She seemed to have vanished. I paid an investigative service that promised to turn up addresses and all sorts of personal information, but even that led nowhere. How was it possible, in the digital age, for a person to leave no trace?

  I contacted our old caseworker, Terry. “How can she just take him away and not even leave a number or address?” I asked. “Is that even legal?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” she answered. “As Ethan’s former foster parents, unfortunately, you have no legal right to see him.”

  After I finish telling Dennis the story, he doesn’t say anything for several seconds, and I recall something else they taught us in the crisis course: if you leave a pause in the conversation, the hostage taker will fill the silence. But it’s not Dennis who fills the silence now. Once again, we fall in
to the old patterns.

  “Sometimes I think back to that day in Glendale and wonder what would have happened if I had found them,” I say.

  “We’re not so different,” Dennis replies.

  Maybe Dennis is right. You think of yourself as one kind of person, abiding by a certain set of rules. And then, something happens to shake that foundation to the core.

  45

  The summer before I left for college, I sometimes wandered the streets of Laurel for hours in the wet, sticky heat. It was something to do, a way to stave off the boredom. Heather, eight years old that summer, had a new best friend named Molly who lived in a big house with a swimming pool. Most mornings, I’d drop Heather off at Molly’s house, where Molly’s mom would spend the day doting on the girls, bringing them sandwiches and iced tea. My shift at the Piggly Wiggly didn’t start until afternoon. Freed from babysitting duty and school, I found that the day contained endless hours to do with as I pleased.

  I loved walking, the way it calmed me, gave me space to think. My new identity—the one I hoped to forge on campus, among people who did not know me—did not come without a sense of guilt. Putting my feet on familiar paths, stepping in the same spots I’d stepped along hundreds of times, took my mind off the fact that I was leaving my mother and sister behind.

  At the intersection of two roads—one paved, one a simple country affair of packed red earth—a car pulled up beside me. It was a red Camaro with the top pulled down and, in the driver’s seat, a man in mirrored sunglasses.

  “Do you need a ride?” the man said. He must have been about twenty-five—which seemed very old to me.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s a long way to anywhere from here.”

  “Not really.”

  I was on guard, but not exactly afraid. After all, I’d just finished my senior year of high school. By then, I knew a few things about boys. I also knew the neighborhood. Just a few yards behind me was a thick stand of pine trees. If I cut through the trees and started running, it would take me less than a minute to arrive at the home of Martin Dilts, who’d been a friend of my mother’s since their grade school days, had even proposed to her once. Martin was fiercely protective of my mother, and of me and Heather. In his house, he kept a closet full of guns. Every year at the beginning of deer season, he’d arrive at our house with dozens of pounds of meat, wrapped neatly in white paper, labeled with the date and the cut. He’d pack it carefully in our freezer, then sit with my mother in the kitchen, drinking Coca-Cola and talking. She used to tell me, “If anything ever happens to me, there are two people you girls can count on, no matter what: your uncle Curtis and Martin Dilts.”

  The guy in the red convertible was good-looking, though I couldn’t see his eyes. Clean-shaven, slender, wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He had pale skin and a funny accent.

  “Where are you from?” I asked. I stayed a good ways back from the car, which idled there at the dirt intersection, the radio playing softly, engine humming.

  “Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut?” I repeated, dumbfounded. “Why on earth are you here?”

  “I’m visiting family.”

  “What family?”

  “The Keymans.”

  “I know them,” I said. “Harry went to my school.”

  Tall, skinny, towheaded Harry, whose parents owned a store that sold ribbons in every imaginable color and fabric, had never struck me as the sort of guy who might have a cousin in Connecticut. It might as well have been Europe, it seemed so exotic.

  “Small world,” the man said.

  “Small town’s more like it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. In fact, I knew exactly where I was going: right on Old Bay Springs Road, right on Twelfth Street, then I’d follow the road past the cemetery, past the Burns place, a big horse property with a grand old house and an elaborate ironwork sign that said THE PONDEROSA, all the way to the west side of town. Eventually, I’d end up at the Piggly Wiggly, where I’d spend the next five hours ringing up bread and milk and Pampers and reduced-for-quick-sale ground beef, counting down the minutes. Back home that night, I’d mark off one more square on my calendar, one day closer to getting out.

  “What grade are you in?”

  I found the question insulting. I’d graduated, after all. “I’m in college.”

  “Oh!” He was genuinely surprised, perhaps disappointed. “Where do you go?”

  “Mississippi State.”

  “You live in the dorm?”

  “Yes,”

  “Which one?”

  “McKee.” In truth, I had no idea whether I would get a spot in McKee, but I had marked it down as my first choice on the forms I’d mailed in weeks before.

  “I’ll be damned. That’s where my ex-girlfriend lived. Room 215. Whatever you do, don’t eat in the cafeteria.”

  “If you live in Connecticut, why’d you have a girlfriend at Mississippi State?”

  “Harry’s big brother introduced us. What can I say? I like southern girls.” His gaze traveled from my face, down to my breasts, my hips, my legs. I felt my cheeks turning red. “I like the way you walk, like you’ve got nowhere you need to be. The girls I know back home are always in a hurry.”

  “Maybe I’m in a hurry,” I said.

  “You sure don’t look like it.”

  He shut off the engine. His hands were small, his nails manicured. In his left ear he wore a tiny gold stud. From his rearview mirror hung an air freshener shaped like a star.

  “Isn’t that redundant in a convertible?” I pointed at the air freshener.

  “You’re funny.”

  He seemed harmless. His skinny good looks were growing on me. I couldn’t imagine him ever throwing a football, much less quoting the Bible, and I liked that. In Laurel, even the bad boys could recite John 3:16 in their sleep. I took a step toward the car.

  “Take off your sunglasses,” I said.

  “It’s too bright,” he replied.

  “Take them off,” I insisted. “I can’t see your eyes.”

  I imagined myself in another body, another person altogether, the person I surely would be by the time I came home from college the following summer: confident, self-assured, adept at carrying on witty conversations with men who didn’t know a thing about me.

  He relented. As soon as the glasses came off, I realized why he’d been so eager to keep them on. He was cross-eyed. The right eye looked straight at me, dark green and strangely beautiful, while the left eye pointed down toward his nose. I hoped the surprise didn’t register on my face. He put the glasses back on hastily, blushing, and I realized that in that brief moment, with that revelation, I’d gained the upper hand. Everyone has something to hide. Once that thing is exposed, a person is at a disadvantage. The trick I learned at that moment is to discover the other person’s secret before he discovers yours.

  “How about that ride?” he said. “We can take a little detour through town, have a burger at the Barnette Dairyette.”

  I thought about what it would be like to ride slowly down Oak Street in the red Camaro next to the handsome out-of-towner. Everyone would wonder who he was, and how we’d met, and whether he was my boyfriend. For a few minutes I’d be someone else.

  But something stopped me. My better instincts, maybe. My sense of self-preservation. “I have to go,” I blurted.

  “Suit yourself.” He started the car and peeled away, the star-shaped air freshener spinning in the breeze.

  When I told the story that night at the supper table, Heather chewed her butter beans thoughtfully and said, “He sounds nice. Why didn’t you get in the car? I would. It would be an adventure!”

  Mom reached across the table and slapped Heather’s hand. “You most certainly would not get in a car with him or anybody else. Never accept a ride from a stranger, young lady, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Heather said. But even then, I could see so
mething in her eyes. I knew we were two very different people.

  46

  11:09 a.m.

  One bit of advice I sometimes give my patients who are in acute pain: concentrate on small details around you, the sights and sounds and smells. Focus on something external to distract your mind from the pain. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Now I put my advice into practice and notice a small cardboard contraption hanging from a tree, beneath a sign that says, DO NOT TOUCH. SUDDEN OAK DEATH STUDY IN PROGRESS. A plastic Coke bottle is nestled beneath a bush, filled with yellow liquid—most likely someone’s urine. A black squirrel scampers so close that the thought of rabies crosses my mind.

  All of my body’s energy seems to be concentrated at the excruciating intersection of the fibula and the talus. By the time I make it to Crossover Drive, I’m biting my lip so hard I can taste blood. The road, which runs the width of the park north to south, connecting the Richmond District with the slightly bleaker and grittier Sunset District, is free of cars. A few protestors are on the road, making their way who knows where. I exit the park at Fulton. There’s no crowd here, but there’s something uneasy, not quite right, about the silence. I remember a hurricane in Biloxi, Mississippi, where we’d gone to visit a friend of my father’s when I was very small. My parents and I huddled with my father’s friend in the tiny closet while the storm raged outside, and suddenly, the wind subsided. “The eye is passing over us,” my father explained to me. We stepped into the front yard, into an eerie calm. The yard was strewn with tree limbs, and the front porch swing had been torn off its hinges. My father pulled me closer. The air was still and hot, and smelled beautiful and green. We stood there for a few minutes, feeling awed and fearful, until the wind picked up again, and we rushed inside, back into the closet, to wait out the other side of the storm.

  It’s like that now. It feels as if I’ve stepped into the unpredictable eye of the storm, and I don’t know what to expect on the other side.