“Are you happy?” I heard my mother say. “We’ve been worried sick.”
It surprised me to hear her voice; she had not stirred in hours. I stood up and crept closer, bracing myself for whatever fight was destined to come.
She said, “Oh, James. Can’t you see how this place has ruined you?”
“Do you remember what you said,” he asked, voice low and dangerous, “all those years ago, when Vivian threatened to cut you off? She said if you stayed with me, you would have nothing. Do you remember?”
Vivian—the name sparked in my mind before fizzling out. I recognized it, but could not remember who it belonged to.
“You said that you didn’t care. That money didn’t matter. That this”—he paused—“was bigger than any amount of zeros on a check. Your exact words.”
“This is our last chance. Don’t you realize that? And if you turn it down . . .”
My father was silent.
“Michael said he knows a great Realtor who will help us find a house. We could have a yard big enough for a pool. Can you imagine?”
“We live a half hour from the goddamn Pacific Ocean. Right there is a giant body of water we can access, free of charge. And we don’t need to buy supplies or pay to maintain it.”
“Well, if you consider our taxes—”
“You think Phoenix is going to be better, Diane? Phoenix has nothing. You may as well move us to fucking Antarctica.”
I pulled back from the door, a knot of dread expanding in my throat. Phoenix? Arizona? It was impossible. My father would never leave Los Angeles.
“I guess I’m the only one trying to do what’s best for our family, then,” my mother said. “For Susannah.”
“This is not about her! This is about your life not being good enough. About me not being good enough.”
There was a long pause—nothing but the sound of the Santa Anas as they kicked up dust and threw the smoldering cinders around the city. I was about to turn away, when my mother spoke again: “You’re right. It’s not. And you can’t keep doing this, James. You’re ruining any possibility of a future for this family.”
“And you’ve given up on me. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
“I’ve done nothing but sacrifice for you.”
He let out a sharp laugh. “Oh, now you want to talk about sacrifice?”
My mother started yelling something else but my father interrupted her. “You know what, Diane? I changed my mind. You win. I’m going to give you exactly what you want.”
As I stood there outside my parents’ bedroom door, I thought that was it.
I thought we were moving to Phoenix.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture it—a wide stretch of dehydrated brown land punctuated here and there by a cactus. It would be hot there all year. No occasional ocean breeze. No ocean. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe our house would be brand-new, two stories, like the homes in the Inland Empire but with an orange-shingled roof and a rock garden instead of grass, a blue tiled pool in the backyard. We could have a basement—a new studio. Maybe all we needed was a change of scenery, a place where there were no Santa Anas, where no one had ever heard of the Vital Spades.
Then a crash resounded inside the bedroom and my eyes flapped open.
“Where are you going?” my mother shouted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sit down, James. James.”
The door flung open and my father stormed past me, through the living room. I ran after him, outside to the driveway, but he refused to stop. Ash fluttered down from the sky, flakes so white you could mistake them for snow. Somewhere in the distance, flames paraded through the hillside, and though many miles still separated us, I could have sworn I felt the heat against my cheeks.
“Dad,” I yelled. “Wait.”
“I’m going for a drive,” he said.
“I’ll come with you.”
He put his hand out to stop me. “Go back inside, Susannah.”
It scared me to see him like that, his eyes wild, his voice rubbed threadbare. And yet I couldn’t turn away.
“But the fire,” I said. The words came out as a croak, unfinished.
“Everything’s going to be fine. Go back inside. You’re in charge.”
I stood paralyzed, uncomprehending. My father opened the door of his truck.
“You can’t go,” I said.
Not entirely sure of what to do but certain I had to do something, my body jolted forward. Whether I was going to wrap myself around his leg like an ankle monitor or buckle myself in the passenger seat and refuse to leave, I’m still not sure. Before I had even crossed in front of him, my father pushed me away. I staggered backward, lost my balance, and fell to the concrete.
His eyes widened while the rest of his face sank, pallid as the ash pooling around us. “Susie,” he said in a whisper. Inside my chest, something began to close. Neither of us moved. My hands stung from where they had scraped against the ground and my heart thrashed against my throat, rising like bile, blocking my speech. He reached toward me, just barely. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he ducked into the cab of his truck.
The headlights dazed me as he backed out of the driveway. I dropped my head and shut my eyes. Behind my lids I saw two yellow circles floating in an endless stretch of black nothing. When I opened them again, my father was gone.
I don’t know how long I stayed there in the driveway. Even as the minutes passed and the ash fell around me, I could not get up. I watched the white specks sifting over the street like a fine powder. I listened as the coyotes wailed, flushed down from the fiery ridge.
When I finally returned inside, anger spilled over. I wanted to scream, to break something. Instead, I took my father’s whiskey down from the top shelf and, hands throbbing with each movement, unscrewed the cap. Less than an inch of brown liquid flashed up at me from the bottom, and I drank all of it. I did not like the taste of whiskey yet, but once the liquid scraped its way down my throat, I started to feel better. When it was gone, I walked over to the records.
My skin felt hot as I slid my finger across the soft, tattered spines. The Doobie Brothers, Emitt Rhodes, Little Feat—these were the people my father called family, but none of them knew a thing about him. Maybe I didn’t, either.
I put the Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround: Part One on the record player—side two. “This Time Tomorrow” began playing. I sat back on the sofa. My eyes grew heavy.
The next thing I remember is waking. The sun radiated through the glass window above the couch where I had fallen asleep, illuminating the specks of dust in the air. A moment passed before I recognized a woman’s doughy voice floating through the still room. I searched for the source of the sound, but was alone.
“After a full night of battle, firefighters can finally sigh with relief as the Santa Ana winds show a drastic decrease in speed. Were it not for Mother Nature’s mercy in the early hours of the morning, many residents of Eagle Rock would have faced a mandatory evacuation as their homes became directly threatened by the fire.”
The TV was off, the record player open but not spinning. I felt a pounding in my temples as I turned toward the kitchen where a bulky black boombox sat on the counter.
“The fire department has confirmed that the flames are now under control,” the woman continued, her voice trained and unaffected. I stopped listening. My father was right—the fire did not jump the freeway. Of course it didn’t. He would not have left us if that were even a possibility. Somehow, I felt certain of this, and as I headed into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, I decided I would forgive him. After all, I’d been selfish and stubborn too. If I had to be the one to bow down, make a compromise—fine. I just wanted our lives to go back to normal. I wanted to return to the studio, finish “Don’t Look Back.” And I didn’t even care whether any of that happened here, or in Arizona.
As I scoured the shelves of the mostly empty refrigerator, the cuts on my hands burned. The woman on the radio said something about po
wer outages, and I realized that the fridge was dark. Oh well, I thought. I sat at the table, picking individual Os out of the Cheerios box, wondering where everyone had gone.
“ . . . winds will likely keep up through the winter, so we urge all of our listeners to be prepared for the worst. In other news, a black Ford pickup was found overturned on the eastbound side of the 134 Freeway this morning, just before the Fair Oaks Avenue exit.”
I stopped eating and looked toward the radio.
“The police have yet to release any information regarding the cause of accident or the identity of the deceased, but it appears at this time that no others cars were—”
“Morning, honey,” my mother interrupted, nudging the front door closed with her hip. She had a big red cooler in her hands. We used to take it to the beach when I was a child. Now, it was covered in a fine fur of dust, one of the handles broken. It must have been buried somewhere in the garage.
My heart began thudding in my chest. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Not sure,” she said. “Probably down at Joe’s.”
Dread coursed outward, numbing my hands. My mother walked toward the refrigerator. The radio continued: “The traffic on the eastbound 134 will likely remain backed up throughout the morning as rescue crews try to clear the scene of the smashed vehicle. Alternate routes to the eastbound 210 are suggested.”
“Mom,” I said, voice wavering.
My mother switched off the radio. “I’m sure everything is fine.” She put the cooler down and began transferring perishables from the fridge.
Outside, a car pulled into the driveway.
“See?” she said.
I nodded as she moved apples, cheese, a head of lettuce, and half a package of baloney into the cooler, methodically placing each item so everything would fit. By the time she reached the orange juice, my father still had not come inside. I saw her hands quaking as she considered the best spot for the large carton. Someone knocked at the door.
“Probably just the Murphys looking to borrow some matches,” she said, but I already knew the Murphys were gone, and I remember, even then, detecting the truth wash over her with each slow step. Regardless of whether or not she actually knew, I have come to believe that my mother was trying to elongate that last moment before our world imploded. Until she opened the door and saw the two police officers standing there, she continued clinging to our last shard of hope. Then one of the officers said her name and looked over her shoulder at me before bowing his head, and I wondered if they were the same men who patrolled our neighborhood the previous night, but I couldn’t recall their faces. My breath caught in my throat, and all I remember thinking in that instant was that my mother’s skin had turned such a miraculous color—the color of moonlight.
Five
THERE WOULD BE no funeral.
“We don’t have the money,” my mother told Detective Melendez when he asked us whether or not we needed a recommendation for help with the arrangements. Her voice was strange and flat, with an inflection that made each statement sound unfinished. Or maybe I just thought this because of the way all noise and movement seemed to occur apart from me, on the other side of a thick fog.
“There are special loans you can take out,” he said, and told us about our options. Periodically, he cast me split-second glances, as though my presence in his office made him anxious, but I refused to leave the room.
That afternoon, one of the officers—a young man who wore blue-tinted sunglasses even though the sky was a dense layer of black and soot clouds—drove us to the station. I can’t recall what happened before we left, or even how much time had passed. All I remember is that the squad car smelled like sweat and stale coffee, and that all the way to the Pasadena Police Department, I couldn’t help but feel that we had done something wrong. That we were the convicts of a crime, being delivered into the custody of the state. And now, as Detective Melendez eyed me like some rogue weapon he worried would start firing spontaneously, I knew it was true. In the blackness behind my eyelids, I saw a burst of headlights and flaky white ash, yellow orbs floating in the dark, the gasp of an apology in the distorted O of my father’s mouth. The cuts on my palms had burned too much to push my body up, to stop him. I didn’t even try.
Suddenly, all the what-ifs flooded me, shoving the air from my lungs. I forced my hands into fists. My palms pounded like heartbeats.
“And a lot of the local funeral homes have payment plans,” Detective Melendez was saying, but what I heard was: This is all your fault.
“Susannah?” he said suddenly. “Can I get you something? How about some water?” His eyes darted to my mother, then landed again, uneasily, on me. “It’s important to stay hydrated when the air is smoky like this.”
I could feel my head getting light from the pain. I released my fists and motioned toward the crumpled copy of that morning’s Los Angeles Times lying on his desk. “Is he in that?” I whispered.
“Not today’s issue.” The detective cleared his throat and turned his body back to my mother. “What I’m trying to say, Mrs. Hayes, is that they are very accommodating for folks in your situation.”
“That’s kind of you to suggest, Detective,” my mother said, “but a simple cremation will be fine.”
At the time my mother’s decision seemed like the right one. No burial, no grave, no giant hole in the ground to remind us of the giant hole we were left with. I turned to the window. Out on the busy street, wind roamed through the traffic. A grocery bag got caught on someone’s windshield. The driver turned on his wipers, but the bag just swayed back and forth with the motion.
“I don’t understand,” I said, interrupting the detective. “I don’t understand how . . .” I looked down at the cuts on my hands, unable to say the words out loud. “How it happened.”
“Based on what we know so far,” he said slowly, “it appears that Mr. Hayes—your father—lost control of his vehicle going what we’d guess to be about eighty-five miles per hour. The truck hit the guardrail and flipped onto its side before finally crashing into the telephone pole.”
“The power outage,” I said.
“I thought the wind knocked a wire loose,” my mother said, her eyebrows pinching together.
“That’s what the electric company thought at first,” Detective Melendez said, “but once they were able to identify the source of the outage, they discovered the crash was, in fact, the cause. However, if it weren’t for that pole, his car would have plunged through the barrier, down onto the westbound on-ramp beneath.”
He offered this last part as a consolation, as if what mattered were the circumstances of death rather than the death itself.
“So that makes it all better?” I said.
“Susannah, please,” my mother said, but her voice was too tired to sustain any authority.
Detective Melendez sighed, studying a framed photograph on his desk. “Sometimes,” he said, and stopped. The thick bristles of his moustache curled over his top lip as he frowned. “Sometimes, families have to bury empty boxes.”
For a moment we sat in silence, as though in vigil for the families whose situations were worse than our own. But I couldn’t imagine them.
My mother pushed herself out of her chair. “Are we done, Detective?”
He stood, the worn leather of his own chair groaning. “There’s one more thing,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I’d really prefer to speak to you privately.”
My mother sighed and said, “She’s old enough.”
Detective Melendez glanced at me once more, and I made my face hard and blank to show that I could handle whatever he had to say. “We uncovered some evidence of alcohol in the car. We’re not sure yet whether the crash is alcohol-related, but it is being investigated.”
“Do what you must,” my mother said. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” He breathed heavily. The sour scent of coffee wafted on his breath, and I realized how humid it was in the office, how flushed I felt. He said, “The
re were no skid marks on the pavement leading up to where he hit the railing.”
I shook my head. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that the driver didn’t slam on the brakes when he lost control. Right now, the information could still point to a number of different explanations. We haven’t yet ruled out the possibility of a coyote running in front of the vehicle, causing him to swerve off the road. We know a whole pack of them were forced out of the hillside last night and have been showing up all over the area. He also could have fallen asleep at the wheel. Or, well . . .”
“Or what?” I asked. My heart contracted. I thought about all the nights my father and I spent in the studio, building songs out of silence until morning snuck up over California. I knew what those midnights meant to him. He would not have fallen asleep in the hours when he felt most alive.
Detective Melendez said, “There is a chance he had intended . . .”
“Thank you, Detective,” my mother said, cutting him off. She put one hand on my arm. “I think we’ve heard enough for today. You have my number, should you need anything else.”
The coolness of her skin startled me as she steered us into the hall, and all at once I remembered the fight. Phoenix. The unwavering resignation in my father’s voice as he said, I’m going to give you exactly what you want.
But no. No one wanted that. He wouldn’t have left us. There had to be another explanation.
“What about the headaches?”
“Headaches?” Melendez echoed.
“What if he got a headache while he was driving, and he leaned over to try to get his pills out of the glove compartment or something. Maybe he didn’t even realize he was swerving.” For the first time, I wondered if he had been wearing a seat belt or if he had shot through the windshield like a cannonball, the way dummies do in those videos shown during driver’s ed.
Detective Melendez gazed at my mother. She said nothing, her eyes locked on his, her expression unreadable.
The Midnights Page 6
