California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  A dry cool breeze picked up from the east and the meteors were everywhere now, crisscrossing the darkness in sudden arcs, boring into the sky.

  “It’s almost scary how many of them there are,” she said.

  “I lost track.”

  “I wonder what would make her do that,” said Meredith. “They seemed like a nice enough family.”

  “Dad said trouble would find them anywhere.”

  “Like Jean Valjean.”

  “The Vonns are more complicated than a novel.”

  “Oh.”

  She stood and looked down at him. Her long red coat showed up clearly in the dark and Andy would never forget that color. Like there was some special light on it. Behind her the sky was dizzy with silent meteors.

  “Don’t hold it against me,” she said.

  “Hold what?”

  “That I’m not ready and you are.”

  “I know it’s different for you.”

  “How?”

  “You lose something.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly and the breeze lifted her fine golden hair. One wing of her red overcoat collar had come up and stayed up, which gave her a slightly disorganized look. Her hair shined more brightly than it should have. More of that special light. Andy felt his breath catch in his throat.

  “Then don’t bully me, Andy.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t.”

  “I love the falling stars. I made a wish on every one. A whole lot of them for us.”

  “I made some for us, too.”

  5

  THE BECKER BROTHERS all made it home the day before Thanksgiving. David flew into L.A. from San Anselmo’s School of Divinity near San Francisco. Nick and Katy drove over from their place in Santa Ana near the jail, where Nick worked. Clay and a new friend, Eileen, came down from the Army Language School in Monterey.

  David had the idea to invite the Vonns to Thanksgiving dinner. Because it was the Christian thing to do, he said. Because he had visited and ministered to them and they were in shock and pain. David had changed since San Anselmo’s. A new confidence in himself and his calling, a neat new mustache.

  Clay said with a smile that Alma Vonn was lucky she’d never have to see the rest of her family and he didn’t want to, either.

  Monika Becker said Clay had the face of a movie star and the soul of a devil and Clay smiled.

  Nick said why not—the Vonn brothers had all moved out. It was just the girls and the dad.

  Andy thought it was a great idea but he didn’t say why.

  “Decided,” said Mr. Becker. “David, you make the call. Do it in person, not over the phone.”

  Half an hour later the Studebaker rolled back into the Becker driveway. David strode into the house to say that Karl Vonn and he had prayed together. To David’s great relief and surprise Mr. Vonn had then accepted the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. He and the girls would come early afternoon, because the Beckers liked their turkey early.

  “Don’t you say one word,” Mrs. Becker said to Clay.

  ANDY WAS thrilled to silence at being seated across from Karl Vonn. Andy could feel the heat of life and death and heartbreak and suicide coming off the man. Like he’d just come back from a spectacular battle. But Andy couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem impolite or just dumb, so he studied Karl Vonn’s ears and outdated clothing while Meredith made easy conversation with him. Karl told her about the “seemingly never-endin’” ride on the Sunset Limited that had brought his family of seven across the state of Texas to California.

  “I love Union Station in Los Angeles,” said Meredith.

  “Oh, the tile on that floor’s nice,” said Karl Vonn.

  Andy drank another glass of wine while Nick talked a little about the Orange County jail, where he worked days. Nick still wasn’t much of a talker, but he said the jail was getting too small. The way the county was growing they’d need a bigger one soon. Either that or you let inmates out early to make room for new ones, which wasn’t exactly what the people expected when they sent somebody to jail. To Andy, Nick wasn’t God anymore, but Andy still liked his big brother’s good face and muscles and the calm sarcasm of his mind.

  Nick’s wife, Katy, blue-eyed and blond and eight months pregnant with their first, watched her husband with what looked like reverence. Andy couldn’t figure if she was rationally impressed by Nick or maybe a little simple.

  “I’m so happy to see him walk in from work and put that gun away,” said Katy. “I know for the rest of the day nothing bad can happen to him.”

  Andy saw Karl Vonn go extra quiet when Nick spoke, figured that Karl had seen some of that jail stuff from the other side.

  After a brief but elegant prayer of thanks, David leaned his tall thin body back in the chair and looked at the Vonns with a bright-eyed eagerness. Like everything he was about to hear would be interesting. Like he really cared. He sat across from Janelle and Lynette Vonn and listened to their stories from sixth and eighth grades, respectively. Heard about friends, snobs, boys, the plan to get a horse someday. Andy liked the strength in David. The strength it took to care about people. Thought his oldest brother had a kind of glow on him. Andy heard him tell the girls to start diaries as a way of understanding their lives.

  “And a diary is always a good place to keep a secret,” David said with a pleasant smile.

  “Do you young ladies have secrets already?” asked Katy.

  “When they develop secrets,” said David.

  “Janelle’s got a secret boyfriend,” said Lynette.

  “And you don’t,” said Janelle.

  “Girls,” said Karl. “Let’s not talk about all that right now.”

  Janelle smiled at David without embarrassment and Lynette looked down at her plate.

  “I know a secret,” said Clay. He looked at Karl Vonn. “Have you heard about the international Communist conspiracy to establish a one-world Soviet government?”

  “Some, in the papers,” said Karl Vonn. “I’m not really clear on how it works.”

  “Oh, it works,” said Clay. “Look at Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia. The Congo. French Indochina. Cuba. The pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place, just like Lenin said they would. It’s a war on two fronts—at home and abroad. Khrushchev said America will fall like overripe fruit into their hands. Have you read Das Kapital?”

  “Too busy at the tire shop,” said Karl.

  “Some of us work for a living,” said Nick.

  Clay shook his head as if he’d anticipated this answer. He turned to Eileen, his new friend from the language institute.

  “Clay’s gotten passionate about the Communist conspiracy,” she said. “He’s certainly informed. And I think there’s something to it.”

  “I do, too,” said Max Becker. “What language do you study, Eileen?”

  “I have French, German, and Spanish now,” she said. “What the government wants most is Russian and Arabic. I’m good at pronunciation and vocabulary but the rules of grammar throw me because they change by the language. Clay’s the one with a mind for lingual structures.”

  “And a tin ear for the music of them.”

  “No,” she said. “Really, Clay—your French and German are superb and your Russian is coming along beautifully.”

  “Russian for you, too, Clay?” asked Katy.

  Clay nodded, sipped his wine. “Mandatory.”

  “What will you do with it?” asked Meredith.

  “The government,” said Eileen. “You know—State Department, Foreign Service, Diplomatic Corps—even military. Wherever they might need you.”

  Andy knew that Clay was already being paid by the government to finish his studies at the language institute. The whole family knew, and it had been a day of quiet celebration when news of Clay’s acceptance to the institute arrived by special delivery. Roger Stoltz had helped expedite the application through his friendship with Dick Nixon.

  Later Clay had told Andy it was a CIA “s
cholarship.” He had no way of proving it but Andy believed him. Clay had told him he had applied to the agency. Wanted to do some undercover work, maybe fuck up the Communists without having to go to war or drop the big one on them. But first he had to finish school, and the agency was paying for it because he picked up languages like a dog picked up dirt. And because his grades for two years at UCLA were straight A’s, though he never studied more than fifteen minutes a week, tops. He’d taken some firearms training from this old marine instructor, and could outshoot Deputy Nick with both eyes closed. And learned some hand-to-hand stuff that would shrink your sphincter. And if Andy said one thing about it Clay would never tell him another secret as long as he lived.

  Andy had kept these secrets because he believed in secrets. They came naturally to him, like taking written words seriously or drinking alcohol or wanting Meredith Thornton, who now, out of sight under the tablecloth, placed a warm hand on his thigh.

  Then looked at him with the most puzzling and beautiful expression he’d ever seen.

  And though he’d looked into those dark brown eyes for what seemed like weeks at a time, he saw something new in them now, something delighted and determined and full of joy.

  “Meredith,” said Clay. “What are you thinking about over there?”

  “I hate it when Andy asks me that,” she said with a laugh. Max and Monika Becker laughed, too. Meredith’s face reddened and her hand eased off Andy’s leg.

  “You’re a lovely young lady,” said Clay. “You’re what, a senior now?”

  “Thank you. Yes.”

  She looked at Andy again. Bloomed into a smile that made his heart stumble.

  Then pumpkin pies.

  Max Becker talked more about the international Communist conspiracy, and this new organization called the John Birch Society. He’d heard about it from Roger Stoltz, who was starting up a local chapter. It was a group of conservative men and women who wanted to expose the Communists for what they were—subversives, atheists, and murderers intent on ruining the United States of America by undermining the freedoms that made it great.

  Monika added that she thought Roger Stoltz was a good man and a patriot and he had promised to come over later in the evening.

  Karl nodded agreeably but drifted off into a memory so clear and painful that Andy thought he saw Alma Vonn’s tiny image flickering in his black eyes.

  Nick put his arm around his pregnant wife and set a hand on her very large bulge.

  Clay and Eileen left the table early and changed shoes in the mudroom to take a walk around the property because Eileen was from Maine and had never been in an orange grove.

  David smiled through his mustache and helped his mother with the dishes.

  The Vonn girls helped Max and Meredith clear the table.

  Andy watched Meredith with a vague ache in his heart and a very specific and painful one in each of his nuts.

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” said Katy. “You’re lucky.”

  “I know.”

  AFTER THE FEAST Andy asked Karl Vonn if he could talk to him a second on the front porch.

  Vonn didn’t even hesitate. “Sure,” he said.

  Without asking, Andy poured Karl a glass of wine, then one for himself. They sat on rattan chairs with a round rattan table between them. It wasn’t quite dark yet but the porch light was already on. Andy wondered if Karl Vonn’s agreeability came from years in prison or jail.

  “I…I’m very sorry about your wife,” Andy managed.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, um-hm. Very.” He felt his words failing him. It was an entirely new experience, and terrifying.

  “I still can’t believe it,” said Mr. Vonn. He took a sip of the wine, but from the way he held the rim of the glass Andy could tell he wasn’t used to a wine goblet.

  “I’m supposed to write the obit.”

  “Obit? Well.”

  “May I?”

  Andy set his glass on the porch rail and brought a small notebook out of a back trouser pocket. Then a ballpoint from his jacket. He felt a gush of sweat break onto his face and back, and an odd tightness of vision.

  “I’m just going to—” He stood and freed himself from the sport coat. He took a deep breath, then sat down, gathered up his pad and pen, took another large gulp of wine. “Tell me about her, will you?”

  “Well, gosh,” said Karl Vonn. He shook his head and looked down, then back directly at Andy. “That I can’t really do, just sitting here with a boy and a notebook.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “I think the words would burn your fingers.”

  “All I want is a little truth.”

  “That’s what truth does.”

  Andy wrote the sentence, pen sliding off the edge of the little pad in his hurry.

  “When was she born, Mr. Vonn? What year were you married? Was she happy then?”

  He looked long and hard at Andy. Andy looked down from the black eyes to the tight lips and the big pores of the nose and the slightly receding and unhandsome chin of Karl Vonn.

  “Born nineteen-seventeen. She wasn’t a happy woman. Never was, except for maybe our first year.”

  “Why was that?” Andy asked. His heart was slowing down. He was getting a rhythm. Thought of J. J. Overholt always reminding him to get the why. The who and what and when and where, but don’t forget the why.

  Vonn studied him again and Andy looked away again. “Andy, I’m not going to do this. Someday, you want to know about Alma, then you can come by and we can talk some. I know you want something for the paper so I’ll write it up when I get home and send it to you at the Times. Facts about her. All right?”

  “All right, sir.” Andy felt hugely relieved but he knew that he had failed. He took a large gulp of wine for courage and consolation, set the glass back on the porch rail.

  Karl Vonn stood and offered his hand and Andy slipped his pen into his pocket and shook it. “Shaking hands reminds me of something Alma told me,” said Vonn. “It was after I came back from the Pacific. We were talking about death because I’d seen some. She said she’d be ready to go when she couldn’t count her dead loved ones on two hands.”

  Andy rolled the words around in his mind. Made sure he had them straight. Eleven seemed like an odd number to come up with but he couldn’t help but ask the obvious. “Did she lose someone recently?”

  “Yeah, Irene. A sister back in Brownsville.”

  Janelle let the screen door slam shut behind her. She looked at Andy, then at her father. Climbed into one of the porch chairs. Pulled a footstool into place, crossed her bobby-socked ankles over the rattan.

  “Except Mom didn’t love Irene,” she said. “Didn’t love anybody, including herself. That’s why she killed herself. Put that in the newspaper if you want.”

  “That’s disrespectful and untrue,” said Karl Vonn. “He won’t print something like that.”

  “No sir, I won’t.”

  Janelle Vonn stared at Andy. Her nose was upturned and her cheeks lightly freckled and full. She was rounded. Not sharp. Antithetical to her father. Andy was convinced that in some illogical and maybe even miraculous way, Janelle’s face was never going to become the drawn, hopeless face of her mother.

  “It’s better to love everybody,” she said. “You can’t love too much. You can only not love enough. Says right in the Bible. Somewhere. I’m sure of it.”

  With this she hopped onto the footstool. Shook her curls for one blurred moment, spread her arms. Then fixed Andy with an unfathomable eye-to-eye look. She tried to make her voice rough and grown-up as she sang:

  Baby, time will pass you by

  But you can catch up if you try

  So be whatever you want to be

  And, baby, you can count on me.

  She jumped off and ran back into the house laughing, colliding with Meredith on her way in.

  Karl Vonn watched her go, then settled his black eyes back onto Andy. He sipped the wine with difficulty, still holding the glas
s by the rim.

  “So, you saw a lot of death in the Pacific, Mr. Vonn?”

  “I killed fourteen up close. That isn’t for the paper, boy.”

  “I understand.”

  “You absolutely do.”

  ROGER STOLTZ and his tiny pretty wife, Marie, came by later that afternoon. Everyone followed them to the living room with their wine and after-dinner drinks and cigarettes. The Stoltzes got the seats of honor, Andy noted—the nice leather recliners his father and mother usually sat in. Max’s was blue, Monika’s white. His parents and the others arranged themselves in a circle of respect. Karl Vonn and his two daughters were introduced to them. Stoltz smiled at the girls, hugged each one, and touched their arms consolingly. Marie looked into each girl’s eyes while she spoke to them.

  Andy noted David’s obeisance to Stoltz. Stoltz was eight years older than David. Stoltz had helped to arrange a position for David when he was finished with his Presbyterian education. David would be attached to First Presbyterian in Anaheim. This was no mean feat for a young minister. The presbytery in Southern California had too many young ministers as it was, David had told him. Something like three thousand too many.

  The room swam with voices and faces and the flames from the big fireplace. Andy couldn’t get Karl Vonn’s words out of his mind, or Alma’s words, or the expression on Meredith’s face earlier. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his tie loosened but he was still sweltering in a room that was apparently fine for everyone else.

  He stood next to Meredith and listened to Roger Stoltz hold forth about the Communist threat, how it was so obvious what the Bolsheviks had in mind with the United Nations, and watch Cuba he said, with Fidel and Raúl and Che Guevara down from the Sierra Maestra you’re going to have Russian puppets running a country ninety miles off our shore. Khrushchev will try to bring in all kinds of menace, he said—machine guns to missiles—you watch, you’ll see.