“Look, Rita, as I’ve told you before, it’s no crime to go away on vacation without telling anybody. I just thought you’d like to know your mom’s okay.”
“She’s not okay!”
“Okay enough to go shopping for sneakers.”
“That doesn’t mean shit!”
“I can pass along her photo to the local police so they’ll be on the lookout. We’re not swimming in taxpayers’ dollars here. Of course, if you want to drive out west, nice time of year for a road trip.”
A canned line about keeping everyone posted. Just like that, the call had ended. So that was it. No one was going looking for Lily.
Rita had an image of her wandering along the edge of the highway, face caked with dust, thumb pointed upward. A hopeful, coquettish glance thrown up at some truck driver. Why had she gone out there? Did Lily herself even know? Or had she regressed to some confused, little-girl state in which the laws of reason didn’t apply?
Rita called Gerald. No answer. She wondered whether Davis had told him the news already. He’d take it as a sure sign that Lily had left him and was now blithely shopping for new sneakers. Hopefully, he’d have the sense to go to an AA meeting or call his sponsor. She had no time to worry about him now.
Her old black backpack had disappeared in the move. Rifling through her bedroom closet, she unearthed the duffle bag she used for the gym. She dumped in a mass of Kristen’s T-shirts and shorts, along with some bottles from the bathroom, and grabbed a pair of her own jeans off a chair. Heart pounding, hands spastic, a toothbrush clattered to the floor. She had no idea what the weather would be like in the desert — might as well throw in sweatshirts.
“What’s going on, Mommy?” Kristen poked her head into the hallway, her upper lip rimmed with milk.
“We’re going on a trip. To California.”
“But I just got back!”
“Well, lucky you. Two trips on an airplane in one month. You’ll be a world traveller.”
“Why are we going to California?”
“Your grandmother’s out there. That’s where she … got lost.”
Rita raked her hands through her hair, secured it in a sloppy ponytail. The whole thing sounded so absurd. Were they actually going to do this? She felt like she wasn’t thinking straight, but what choice did she have? The longer they waited, the less likely that anyone would ever find Lily.
“Come on, Kristen. Help me, please. Grab your pyjamas and at least three pairs of clean socks and underwear.”
The doorbell rang. Rita’s first thought was that Davis had come to her senses. She was here to interview Rita before heading out to California to continue the investigation.
“Mark! What’re you doing here?”
His hair was a mess. He looked so relaxed and happy and wholesome. She was the last thing he needed in his life. To go from Tess to her would be like jumping straight into a frying pan.
“I was in the ’hood, thought I’d drop by. Gorgeous day.” He looked up at the bright, cloudless sky, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “How about brunch on a patio somewhere?”
“I’d love to, but I have to get to the airport.”
“The airport?”
“They’ve found Lily.”
“What? Where is she?”
She gave him a capsule version of her conversation with Davis.
“You’re trekking out to Matanzas to find her?” He looked astonished.
“Yup.”
She thought he was going to try to talk her out of it. Convince her how insane it was to head to the middle of the desert with no plan, no map, nothing.
Just then, Kristen appeared in the doorway.
Heat rushed up Rita’s neck. “Pumpkin, this is my new friend, Mark.”
Smiling, he crouched down to shake her little hand. “So I hear you guys are going off on a big adventure in the desert.”
“Yup. I like flying on the big plane.”
Looking up at Rita, Mark’s face opened up with that all too familiar look of camp counsellor vigour. “Don’t suppose you guys would want some company?”
“You can’t be serious. Why would you want to?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve always wanted to see the Sierra Nevada.”
“To tour an internment camp? To go on a wild goose chase looking for someone’s crazy mother?”
“Hey. I’m an archaeologist. This kind of thing’s right up my alley.”
“You guys go searching for the remains of extinct peoples. My mother is not extinct.”
Twenty-Eight
At the beginning of the flight, they played a few rounds of fish. Even though Kristen kept winning, she said, “I’m bored. Doesn’t anyone know any other games?”
But Rita wasn’t about to teach her old maid; some games were best left as memories of a bygone era. The next thing she knew, Mark was shuffling the deck, the cards flowing like a waterfall between his hands.
“Choose a card, any card, look at it, and put it back.”
Kristen’s cheeks glowed with awe when he magically retrieved her card from deep within the pile. More tricks followed, cards turning cartwheels over Mark’s agile fingers. It was cute to see him trying to impress. As Rita lay back, her eyelids began to feel sluggish.
When she woke up, the cabin was dark and a movie was on, some adventure flick in which Kathleen Turner runs around the jungle to find her kidnapped sister.
“Are we going to the jungle, too, Mommy?”
“No, we’re going to the desert.”
“Can we take the Mystery Machine?”
“Mystery Machine?”
“You know, like they do in Scooby-Doo!”
Scooby-Doo. It was Kristen’s favourite show, how could anyone forget? Rita smiled at the thought of the three of them running from monsters and ghosts, getting locked in wax museums, and unmasking criminals. Everything solved within half an hour. If only finding Lily could be so easy.
They made it out to arrivals quickly since they hadn’t checked any luggage. Such drama, being immersed in crowds of these rowdy, sunburnt Americans. They weren’t the least bit embarrassed about displaying their family reunions, complete with bear hugs that could knock down a house. Yet if Lily were to step forward, Rita would put them all to shame.
Watching Mark from the corner of her eye was rather calming: red backpack slung over his shoulder, green baseball cap shading his eyes. Sturdy hiking boots. Must be what he wore when he went on digs. Her canvas sneakers felt flimsy in comparison.
It was nice of him, no doubt, to drop everything to come with them on this hare-brained trip.
“So what now?” he said. “Sleep or rent a car?”
It was midnight, local time. Three in the morning back in Toronto. Kristen rubbed at her eyes, exhausted.
“Let’s get a room somewhere,” Rita said.
Upon discovering what a rip-off hotels in the airport were, they ended up on a ramshackle shuttle bus headed to a Super 8. It was a far cry from the Mystery Machine, that was for sure. Humid night air streamed through the open windows, a waxy, gritty haze settling all over Rita’s skin. The palm trees on the side of the road looked as dejected as upside-down mops.
The motel turned out to be a taupe stucco job, right beneath one of the runways. As they waited at the front desk, the walls began to shake under the blast of an engine. But hey, she could sleep through an earthquake right now.
A small, cramped room, with two double beds covered in orange flowered duvets, greeted them. Everything reeked of menthol cigarettes.
“Classy.” Mark flopped down.
After Rita had helped Kristen into her pyjamas and tucked her into the other bed, she wasn’t sure what to do, which bed to climb into. This was all such new territory. Would Kristen feel weird and grossed out if she woke up tomorrow morning and found Rita next to someone other
than her father? Yet Cal and Jodi had no doubt shared a bedroom during Kristen’s visit. That’s what couples did, right? Was that what she and Mark were — a couple?
Before long, the room was full of soft, stuttering snores. Rita lay down on the edge of her daughter’s bed simply to rest her head — or so she told herself — and soon she, too, was overtaken by waves of fatigue.
She awoke to a crack of light scissoring through the curtains and a drone that sounded like someone vacuuming the inside of her brain. Mark was awake. He was lazing on a pillow, his face turned toward her, and it was unnerving to know he’d observed her sleeping. The two beds were so close together that she could see the lines around his eyes pucker with the skin’s memory of hot summer days and some sad, solitary times, too. She wanted to lean forward and kiss him, but she was too aware of her daughter’s presence on the sheets behind her.
As planes kept landing and taking off, Rita felt like her body was falling through time, lost in some place that had no representation on any map, but was always adrift on the margins of her consciousness.
“Mommy, where are we?” A pair of pudgy arms looped around her neck from behind and woke her up fully.
“We’re in LA, at a hotel near the airport. Remember?”
“But I thought it’s all a dream.”
“I know the feeling.”
They bathed quickly and got dressed. As they were checking out, Kristen noticed a complimentary breakfast buffet in the corner of the lobby. It was all sugary crap, but what the hell? They needed energy and there wasn’t a diner in sight. Rita grabbed a handful of Twinkies and ripped open the packets.
Once outside, the watery-peach sunlight bleeding across the pale-blue sky helped revive them, along with the sweet-cream sugar rush. The palm trees looked less scraggy in the flush of dawn.
There was a car rental place on the other side of the highway, a bit of a trek down. Car Rental 4 Less, beamed the yellow sign.
The place looked cheap, that was for sure. Discarded receipts rustled in balls on the dirt-streaked floor. A cheery, bald guy informed them that summer vacation season wasn’t the best time to show up without a reservation. All their cars were booked up — all the “A” cars, he added. One or two older models remained available if they were interested.
What he showed them was a mint-green Triumph convertible, edged with rust and scratched up along both sides, long as a boat. The thing had to be twenty years old.
“I’ve always wanted to drive one of these clunkers,” Mark said.
He negotiated a sweet deal while Rita bought a map from the woman behind the counter. The route to Matanzas seemed pretty straightforward. The woman traced a nail-bitten finger along CA-14, followed by Highway 395.
“Going camping?” She raked a mound of bangs off her wide forehead, and they feathered back to exactly where they’d started.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Fly-fishing, roasting marshmallows, the whole nine yards.
The freeway wound through hilly desert dotted with clumps of scrub brush on both sides. No palm trees here. To protect themselves from the dust and sun, they stopped and pulled the top up over the old convertible; it wasn’t easy to get the old accordion to expand.
The sun flashed blindingly off the chrome parts of a pickup in front of them. Mark sped ahead. Rita fiddled with the radio: a raspy, discontinuous version of “Across the Universe” sputtered on then died a few seconds later.
“My number’s nine,” Kristen announced. “Nine’s my favourite number.” She promptly began scanning licence plates.
“And I’ll take three,” Rita said.
“What’s this?” Mark asked.
“We’re playing the licence-plate game.” Kristen explained the rules. “I wish Granny was here. She’s really good at this game. She’s lucky.”
Rita certainly hoped that was true. Lily needed all the luck she could get.
“Where is Granny?”
“I told you, honey. She came out here and … got lost.”
“But why did Granny come here?”
Rita had no idea how to answer this question. At some level, she was as much in the dark as anyone; she couldn’t decode the bizarre workings of her mother’s brain. That said, it seemed likely that Lily’s journey had something to do with the internment. But how could you explain that sort of thing to a six-year-old? Was it even appropriate to try? On the other hand, Rita remembered how confused and uneasy she’d always felt as a child when Lily would dodge her questions about the past. Kids could sense when something fishy was up.
“A long time ago, when Granny was a young woman, she had to come live out here with her family.” Had Lily come with her family? Rita knew so little about what had happened, she wasn’t even sure if this had been the case. “All people of Japanese background had to leave their homes and come live in camps. It wasn’t a very happy time for anyone.”
“But … why?”
The issues and emotions felt far too complex to explain. Rita couldn’t answer, a sob suddenly welling in her throat.
“Japan was at war with Canada and the United States,” Mark said softly. “When countries go to war, people do bad things.”
“Oh.” Silence, still full of confusion. “So why is Granny here now?”
“We don’t really know,” Rita said. It was the only honest thing she could say. “Hopefully, we’ll find her and she’ll be able to tell us.”
An hour later, the chatter from the back seat died down. Kristen had put on the new Walkman that Cal had given her. He was spoiling her rotten with gifts, gifts that weren’t even appropriate for a six-year-old. But now wasn’t the time to get distracted by grudges. Now was the time simply to be grateful that Kristen had something to keep herself entertained during a very long drive.
After a while Rita noticed that her daughter’s eyes had fallen shut.
Mark’s hand inched forward. It was resting lightly on her thigh, such a casual, intimate gesture. Although it delighted her, it also made her recoil. She couldn’t help thinking this was all a big mistake.
“I’m not sure if friends touch each other’s thighs like that.”
“You’re the one who brought up the whole friends thing. I never had any such delusions.”
“But you still live with that woman, Tess —”
“Relax, Rita. She’s moving out.”
“Oh, really? When?” The anxiety — the patheticness — she heard in her own voice made her cringe.
“September first. I’ve given Tess a deadline. Even if she hasn’t found an apartment by then, she’s getting the boot.”
His words sank in, sending tingles over her scalp. She felt like an ass for being so possessive. So bourgeois, middle-aged, boring. But who was she trying to kid?
Lazy mornings in bed together, the Sunday paper crumpled on top of the sheets. Pet names too stupid to repeat. Painting the walls of her kitchen canary yellow, sunlight sluicing in like a waterfall. Long walks in the rain, the smell of earth and wet dog, his fingers wrapped around hers in the pocket of a parka. Lounging at opposite ends of the couch, feet touching. Her earthenware bowls next to his metal canisters, her hair dryer tangled up with the cord of his shaver, their socks balled up together in the dryer, everything covered in the same snowy down.
She wanted it all, yet it terrified and repulsed her a little.
And what if it wasn’t what he had in mind at all?
But maybe all that mattered was that Mark was here with her right now — flying into the desert in this souped-up jalopy. He must care about her, considering he’d dropped everything to go on this madcap trip. Although she had no idea where things were headed, for the time being maybe it was nice to coast in this adolescent buzz, like smoking a cigarette for the first time and getting a massive head rush. That she could deal with just fine.
Wavering mounds dotted with billboards. A
giant pina colada poured onto a sun-kissed beach. Mark reached for her hand and then grabbed at the wheel, as they lurched over a pothole.
“You’re not going to believe what I discovered about my dad. Turns out he never lived with us at all. I’d always assumed he hightailed it after I was born, but he was never around in the first place.”
“But … how can that be?”
She filled him in on what Tom had told her about the peculiar way their family had reunited in Toronto.
“That’s a lot for you to deal with. Are you … okay with it?”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
She didn’t know why she’d opened this can of worms. It was a relief to let him in, maybe. To an extent, anyway.
By the second orange cruller, Aunt Haruko had been talking her ear off. A lot of the things she’d disclosed Rita still hadn’t had time to get her head around. Davis’s phone call had pushed her into crisis mode.
Maybe one day she would tell Mark everything — the whole fucked-up enchilada. For now, however, there were limits to what she’d burden him with. She stared out at the brownish, mustardy landscape. Place looked lifeless beyond the rare tree struggling for a foothold.
“I was lucky my grandfather and I were close, at least.”
They lapsed into silence and her mind drifted. Grandpa’s dress shoes, so carefully polished, the toes shiny as apples. Those boxes of notebooks they’d discovered after his death. Small, black ledgers in which he’d kept track of his weekly lotto numbers, the vitamins and pills for his ever-growing array of aches and ailments, obituaries of people in the Japanese community. So many facets of his life, tallied up over the decades in his elegant, upright hand. When Rita was little, he’d tried to teach her proper penmanship. He’d guided her hand up and down in so many repetitive strokes, warmth emanating from his arm behind her.
They passed through towns, if you could call them that. Some were just clusters of dingy prefabs on the side of the highway. A motel. An aluminum-sided church. A town hall. A post office. A school. Mom-and-pop convenience stores with neon Marlboro signs. A stream of watery, sludgy coffee. The sequence repeated itself as Rita sat back and let it wash over her. Everything appeared to be losing particularity, blurring into the amorphous landscape that pulled them forward as though they were riding waves in the middle of a vast, murky ocean. Her ears felt funny with the change in air pressure. At some point, mountains bled through the sky: a faint, jagged stain hovering behind the layers of mist and haze.
After the Bloom Page 26
