But how? I’ve never been good at faking, and now I’m supposed to pretend to have fun at a pretend dance when everything in my actual, real life is falling apart?
Eventually, I curl up on my end, a mirror image of my mother. As I stare mindlessly at an infomercial for a wearable towel that I kind of don’t hate, a text from Imani pops on-screen.
Imani: You OK?
Max: Yeah I’m fine why?
Imani: Because Jonah said that you seemed like upset or something. He’s all worried and whatnot.
Imani: It’s kind of cute.
Max: Why are you talking to Jonah?
Imani: Why are you not talking to Jonah more like
Max: I’m not not talking to Jonah
Imani: Don’t be cute
Max: It’s a long story
Imani: Moby Dick is a long story. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess this one is like two text messages at most
Max: Tomorrow
Imani: Smh
Imani: OK but I’ll be up if you change your mind. I’ve got like two episodes left of this true crime podcast and like sleep, what sleep? And, hey, listen, we do need to talk. Not right now. I know you’ve got a bunch of your own stuff going on, but much as I hate to admit it, Dannie’s right.
Max: . . .
Max: . . .
My phone wakes me up—buzz, buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz. It’s slipped onto the floor and I feel around for it blindly. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
“Imani, I already . . .” I grumble as I heave myself into a sitting position. My neck feels like someone tried to twist me into human origami. The spot on the sofa beside me is vacant. The TV’s off. What time is it, anyway?
Morning light trickles in through the blinds. Footsteps clomp from the apartment above us. My stomach growls like a rabid dog.
The number on the screen isn’t Imani’s. My eyes are still trying to adjust. I rub the heel of my hand into one of them, then register the area code. 714. That’s Fountain Valley.
“Hello?” I scramble to get the phone up to my ear in time. I’m still wearing my crumpled formal dress. “Hello? This is Max.”
There’s a long pause. “Maxine . . . Oxley?” says a woman on the line with a Southern accent. “Am I speaking with Arlo Oxley’s daughter? I got your message.”
“Yes. Uh-huh. That’s definitely me.” I scoot to the edge of the couch and hold my forehead in my palm, trying to quickly calculate how old a daughter of Arlo’s might be. Fifty? Is that right? I should have figured this out sooner.
“I’m . . . sorry,” she says. “We’d tried to locate a next of kin but for some reason we didn’t find anyone on record.”
“That’s . . . weird,” I say, not exactly pulling off fifty.
“I’m Lucinda Welch calling from Orange Coast Memorial Patient Services.” Orange Coast, I mouth. Score. Orange Coast had been third on my list. It had been impossible to get through to a live person yesterday. I was constantly being asked whether I knew my party’s extension, whether I was a provider, if this was an emergency to hang up and dial 911. “Miss Oxley, I’m afraid I have difficult news.” My face falls. “Your father passed.”
“What? How?”
There’s rustling on the other end. “Were you not aware that he’d contracted COVID-19?”
“I—no, I didn’t know.”
“Oh. Again, I’m so sorry. But if you had any contact with him, you’ll need to be tested.”
“I—don’t have any symptoms. Can I still get tested?” I scour my memory. I was always careful. Wasn’t I always careful? All anyone has been able to talk about at work is how it’s nearly impossible to get their hands on a test and if they do, it takes like eight days to get back, which is next to useless. My eyes travel over the spot where my mother had slept beside me.
“When was the last time you saw your father?” the woman asks.
“A little over a week ago.”
“You could try asking a doctor. I don’t know. We’re due to get more tests in a couple weeks, I know, but for now . . .”
A couple weeks? That won’t do me any good.
“When did he . . . die?” I ask. “Was anyone with him?”
“Three nights ago.” I can only imagine what a terrible job Lucinda Welch must have and what a shitty year this must be for her. “Unfortunately, we’re not allowing any visitors right now. Hospital policy. Social services did leave a notice in the mailbox. I’m very sorry,” she repeats, and, though she could use that phrase as a shield, somehow I sense that she isn’t.
“Social services?”
“Yes. The belongings he came in with will be kept in the hospital mortuary until they’re picked up, and the doctor will issue a medical certificate of death. We can recommend a funeral director if—”
“That won’t be necessary.” I feel terrible. Weighed down. But I can’t take on the responsibility of a funeral. I just can’t.
“Are you—”
“I really have to go. I’m sorry,” I say, and end the call.
The room spins. I feel light-headed. I can’t believe—I mean, I thought somehow—but what about—
I open FaceTime and call the only person I can imagine calling in a moment like this. It starts to ring—
“I was worried I was going to have to track you down and shake that story out of you, and fair warning, I have been listening to way too much Up and Vanished and I’m itching to interrogate someone,” she answers after the second one.
“Imani? I promise you can summarize that whole damn podcast, spoilers and all—” Imani loves relaying podcasts for me because she knows I won’t listen anyway and, honestly, she makes it super suspenseful. “But—” And I know I’m probably sounding desperate. “I need us to be in the judgment-free zone right now.”
She sucks in a breath. “Okay, okay,” she says, doing a sudden about-face in tone. “I’m stepping inside. Hang on.”
This is a thing we do. We’re too alike. And we have a tendency to go straight to tough love. So sometime in middle school, we invented the “judgment-free zone” and when either one of us asks to go there, we treat it like it’s a real place with real governing rules and soft, soundproof walls. It’s in the judgment-free zone that she first told me when some ignorant ass-wipe told her she should consider getting her hair chemically straightened. It was here I admitted that I’d finally worked up the courage to send my dad an email and he never bothered to respond. To an email. And here that Imani comes when she’s about to lose her temper with her mom because sometimes that lady can have sky-high expectations and it’s a whole lot better to vent to me than wind up grounded by her. Inside, we don’t call each other out for throwing a pity party. We don’t point out mistakes. We don’t tell each other how to act.
“All right, all right. I’m ready,” she says. “What’s up?”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get anything,” I tell her. “I’m trying so hard. I’m doing everything right, or at least I’m trying to. But instead of getting better, my life is actually getting worse. Worse! How is that even possible?”
I hardly ever cry, and that might sound like it’s a good thing, but it’s totally not. People go around thinking I’m not upset when I should be, like at a funeral, just because my face isn’t leaking. But I’m plenty upset. I just don’t cry. And that can be a liability, but I know Imani sees the tears that aren’t coming. I guess Dannie would say she’s “adding them in post.”
“So this isn’t about Jonah at all, then.” She skips straight to it.
“Imani, my mom asked for all the money I saved up from my job. Every dime of it. She needs it to keep the business open.”
“Ouch. Oh. Ouch.” And this sounds like it physically pains her.
“And Arlo died.”
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,”
she says softly.
“And we can’t find his dog and I loved that stupid dog.” My voice cracks.
“Okay, okay, I hear you. Deep breaths. You’ve got this.” Imani is a steady force on the other end.
“And I really like Jonah, but there are certain things about . . . about all this, that he just doesn’t get.”
“Well,” Imani says like it’s a whole sentence. But then adds, “I’m not sure that’s his fault.”
“I’m tired, Imani. I’m so freaking tired. And all of a sudden, I’m just like, why though? What’s the point?” I remember Winter’s famous line, “None of this matters anyway,” like—you know what?—I couldn’t have said it better myself.
“Yeah. That is some serious suck.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry. I know I sound like a brat. Telling you all this.” I have been in a store when the clerk accused Imani of trying to shoplift a tube of lipstick that she was fully ready to pay for, and so I know what it really looks like, to feel like what’s the point of trying to do right when things are always trying to go wrong. And I know that sometimes I show up sounding brand-new, acting worn-out after what’s like a quarter mile when Imani’s already run two marathons back to back.
“This is you and me.” Imani’s voice is even. “We don’t have to do that. I know. Okay?”
My throat feels like it could use a plunger. I nod. “It’s just, why am I running so hard if I’m not getting anywhere anyway, you know?”
She doesn’t say anything, not at first.
“So,” she breathes out at last, “what percentage honesty are you looking for?”
This is another thing we do because, yeah, you need friends who can be real with you, but maybe not all at once.
I consider the question carefully. “Eighty-five percent honesty.”
She makes a low humming noise, which tells me she’s thinking. “Okay. Well. First of all, your hard work is not for nothing.”
“How?”
“How? Because without your hard work, you and your mom might damn well lose that business. Your hard work is holding the line. You—Max Mauro—at seventeen years old, made a real impact. You saved the day. Now tell me how that’s nothing! That’s something.”
“We still could lose the business. It seems like”—I take a gulp of air—“like I lose everything and everyone.” Fine, it’s a full-blown pity party, now where’s my piñata?
“I heard. And I’m sorry about Arlo. That’s really sad. But I bet he felt his life was better by you being in it, and yours was too.”
I think about Arlo and me brainstorming my hero’s journey, like my life was one of his movies. All those visits with him and I never really returned the favor. I should have asked more questions, found more time. That’s hitting me hard now even as I try to listen to what Imani’s telling me. “Just because he’s gone,” she says, “well, it’s not like an Etch A Sketch, you know? He’s gone but he’s not erased.”
“I really believed that if you just worked hard—”
“Look—” Imani interjects. “I’ve never known how to tell you this because I know that’s some stuff that you needed to believe. But I’ve never been all about that whole hard-work-get-ahead shtick. In my experience that’s just as easily a load a B.S. as it is not—sorry, I think I just went to ninety-five percent honesty on that one. But I mean, maybe it’s not that if you work hard you always get ahead, it’s just that if you don’t give up, don’t give in, then things still have the chance of working out some way or another. Maybe you just have to still be hanging around when luck shows up. Right?”
I take a deep, heavy breath. I don’t know. I appreciate what she’s saying. But I also feel like it could be just as much a bunch of B.S. I hope not. And she’s usually right, we know this.
Things aren’t fixed, far from it, but maybe they’re a shade better. “Okay,” I say. “I don’t feel it yet, but okay, if you say so.”
“I do,” she says with Imani-level confidence.
“What did you want to talk to me about, anyway? What’s going on with you—this thing you and Dannie are doing every time I see you?”
“I—” She hesitates. “I think I better run, actually. I slept in and I’m going to get it if I don’t get that dishwasher unloaded. Are you good?”
Something hangs on the line between us, but I don’t trust myself to know what’s what right now, and maybe it’s just me reading into things. Or maybe not. “Imani?” I say, feeling my chest go all tight. “Is everything okay?”
She gives me a long look, and if we weren’t in the judgment-free zone I might give her a hard time for going mushy-eyed on me. “Love you, Max” is all she says.
“A hundred percent honesty,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
* * *
• • •
I call in sick from work and school, claiming that I have a family emergency. I figure if I’m going to lie, I can at least keep those lies consistent.
As far as I know, Arlo doesn’t have a daughter. As far as I know, Arlo doesn’t really have anyone. He would have wanted someone to check up on Chester, and I might be the only person who can. Still, it feels strange playing hooky from work just to drive the ten miles to the very neighborhood I usually work in, but it feels even stranger to consider that the last time I was here, Arlo Oxley was already dead.
I don’t think he would have liked that word much—dead. He probably would have preferred something like past tense. Or better yet, a not-so-living legend.
It’s at his house—his former house—that I find the slip from social services in the middle of a pile of magazines and junk brochures crammed into the mailbox. I hold the notice between my hands. What is it about paper that always makes things feel so official?
But there it is. Printed in black and white: Deceased.
I feel everything in me—my breath, my heart, my blood—go still.
I don’t know anyone who’s died before. Even my grandparents are alive. And, look, I know Arlo wasn’t like my grandpa or anything, but I can still stand here and feel the bigness and the smallness of the world just knowing that he’s not in it anymore. Something existed and now it doesn’t. Someone was here and now he’s not. And I don’t have the right words to explain the physics and philosophy of non-existence. I can only say that “hollow” doesn’t really feel like absence, and “gone” doesn’t feel like space, and “futures” don’t feel unwritten. They feel erased. So maybe Imani doesn’t know everything after all.
I fold the slip into a square and tuck it neatly in my pocket. I have no idea what will happen to Arlo’s house or to his art or his Oscar or his books or his old photographs. I guess there are lawyers who will deal with that. For now, all I’m worried about is Chester and the new address I’d read on the notice.
1 canine removed from property to Fountain Valley SPCA
Back at my car, I step on the gas and ten minutes later, I’m pulling up to the animal shelter where the parking lot is empty and the whole place has vaguely zombie apocalypse vibes. The cinder block side of the building has been painted with a bright mural of dogs, cats, and parakeets playing together in harmony. As for real dogs, I don’t see a single one roaming the fenced yard out front. The thin soles of my fake faded black Keds crunch through the gravel. A handwritten sign is tacked to the glass door: By appointment only. I knock.
And knock and knock and knock until finally I hear the lock on the door slide out of place and a set of cowbells dangling on the other side clang.
A sunburned guy with shoulder-length hair answers. “You have an appointment?” His question is muffled by a black fabric mask.
“I’m looking for a dog. He was brought in here a couple days ago, I think.”
“Yeah, but do you have an appointment?” He slouches against the door.
“No.”
“Well. Yo
u’re supposed to have an appointment.” He points to the sign.
“Okay then, I’d like to make an appointment.”
He brightens. “Hold on, let me get the calendar.” He slumps off like this is the only thing he has to do today and can therefore take all the time in the world. “Okay, when would you like to come in?” His pen hovers.
“How about today at eleven o’clock?”
“Let me check, let me check. Okay, yes, today, eleven o’clock. That’s available, I’ll mark you down. Your name?”
“Max Mauro.” I wait for him to scribble it down. “Great. Now I have an appointment.” I watch him check the clock on the wall behind him. Imagine that. It’s eleven. I shrug when he looks back at me. “I’m looking for a dog that was brought in. A big black poodle. Goes by the name of Chester.”
“I don’t know, man. I just got here.” He points me in the direction of a wire gate around the side of the building. I unlatch it and enter a courtyard of open-air kennels. As soon as I enter, the dogs start barking and pawing at their cages. I’m free to roam the yard, examining each of the dog runs, hopeful that I’ll see Chester.
I try not to linger at any one of the cages. A pregnant Chihuahua. An old cocker spaniel with wet ears. A pit bull mix lying sullenly with his nose in an empty bowl. Each one watches me with wet-ringed eyes and I steel myself. No one is coming for them.
The long-haired dude meanders outside. “You know they keep the newer ones over here.” I bite my tongue to keep from mentioning that no, there’s absolutely no way I would know that, and instead follow him to the far corner of the yard where a group of seven cages are clustered.
The stench is something terrible and I suspect it’d be much worse without the mask. “Chester?” I test out, not worried about sounding silly in front of Mr. Personality over here. “Chester? Here, boy.”
I look into each of the faces of the dogs I see. A Lab with one eye. A terrier with a shaved ear and stitches. Two puppies rolling on the concrete, pushing against each other with their paws. Then, huddled in the back of a shallow kennel, I see him. A black lump hiding his face in his hind quarters. His poufs have lost all their poof and he has never looked less fabulous. My heart squeezes. “Chester.” I kneel in front of the wire barrier. “Chester! It’s Max, buddy.”
Hello (From Here) Page 16
