At the Edge of the Haight

by Katherine Seligman

  He grabbed for my arm, but I yanked it back. He dug into his waistband like he was going for the knife. Or worse.

  “You should know about burning in hell,” I screamed. Root started barking on full alert, every muscle stretched tight. Jeremiah took a step back and Root leaped and bit deep into his calf. Jeremiah looked startled, maybe because it was the first time he got what was coming to him. He yelled and punched down hard on Root’s head. Ash kicked his other leg, knocking him to the ground, where he curled up to protect himself from Root.

  “Root, off,” I yelled. He stopped, his eyes moving from me to Jeremiah, who was splattered in squashed fruit and blood. Root trotted over and sat down in front of me, growling but leaving Jeremiah, who held onto his leg, the centerpiece in our circle of gratitude.

  chapter 24

  It seemed like the park had settled into a funk of mud and leaves. Even the birds were quiet, except the seagulls that flew from the ocean before a storm, circling and screaming overhead. Jeremiah had gone to the hospital for stitches to sew up Root’s tattoo of teeth marks. Then they took him to jail, but only for two weeks, for breaking the order to stay away from me. They didn’t want him there either. Root got as much time as Jeremiah. He was locked up because he didn’t have tags or proof that he had all his shots. They could have checked with the animal control office, but they said it was my responsibility to get him licensed. The cops said he had to wear a muzzle, that if he bit anyone else they would take him away and destroy him, which sounded like a big reaction against a dog that was trying to protect me. But they said a dog in the city is not allowed to bite anyone, no matter what. You can’t have your own private guard dog. What you can do is keep a knife in your pocket and use it to take someone out. No one punishes you for that.

  Jeremiah had told the cops that Ash jumped him for no reason, and then I ordered Root to attack.

  “And you think that’s true?” I asked Officer Patz, who was doing foot patrol on the street.

  “I don’t think I’m in the business of truth,” he said. “We do the best we can. We could find a reason to lock up Jeremiah Wakefield, but I could say that about a lot of people.”

  “Maybe no one should call the cops, ever,” Ash said, “if they didn’t know what was true.”

  Patz said it was more complicated than that. Stories were hard to decipher because they were filtered through people.

  “Who you can’t trust,” said Ash.

  Patz took off his cap and rubbed his head. He turned to walk down the street, but then stopped and came back. “I don’t know sometimes, is all I’m saying. There are more sides than you think. Jeremiah came to the station one day last fall to tell us that Shane was hanging around with an underage girl. We did what we always do. We checked it out. We found him with a girl who was thirteen, but there was no evidence of any abuse or molestation. They were smoking marijuana, there was an open bottle. She agreed, not with enthusiasm, to go home. We didn’t have much of a case, but Wakefield was yelling at us, followed me all the way back to the station.”

  “Shane was creeping on little girls?” I said. “Why didn’t anyone say that at the hearing?”

  “We had no evidence of anything,” Patz said. “If we went out and arrested someone after a game of he-said, she-said, that’s all we’d do. Some cases we leave to the judge and jury in the sky.” He looked up at the gray clouds and the birds floating overhead in formation.

  I had to work off the fine for blocking the sidewalk, which they said had escalated because I never showed up in court to pay it. Everyone had told me I was free to sit where I wanted, but it turned out I wasn’t. They made me pay by wearing a yellow vest and cleaning trash off the street for two weeks. I didn’t mind the job, walking around with a long metal pincher and picking up needles, food cartons, bottles, piles of shit. It was people who bugged me. “You forgot this,” said one of the guys from ES EF, kicking over a jar of pee that someone had left by a pile of boxes on the sidewalk. Other people I knew on the street nodded, said what’s up, and I tried not to catch their eyes, because they would want to know what happened and I didn’t want to go over it all again. The worst was the ones who stopped and thanked me for taking care of the street, like I was some kid suddenly arriving on the right side of life. “No problem,” I said quickly, so they couldn’t see my face. You get what you pay for. Whatever happens, you asked for it, one way or another. At dinner, I tried to act normal, as if I hadn’t spent the day bending over on the street picking up what everyone left behind.

  I knew Dave would be back because he always found his way. One night he walked in while we were eating dinner. I hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving, and I wondered if he was mad that I’d snuck out of the cabin while he and Marva were sleeping on the floor. He looked as washed out as when he stayed in the park. No one gave him a second glance. He knew where he was going, straight to me. The security guard who stood by the door didn’t say anything to him.

  “I wanted to see you before I leave for home,” Dave said. “Can we go somewhere one more time and talk?” Root wriggled out from under the table and jumped on him. Dave put his hand on Root’s head and we both followed him outside. I was shivering in my T-shirt and jeans, but I told him I didn’t want his coat.

  “Marva went back already, but she wants me to ask you something,” he said.

  There it was. He was going to ask if I’d found out anything new about Shane, like it was all I had to think about. No one was talking about Shane anymore, at least not here. A kid from Oregon fell off his board riding down Haight and survived after he split his brains open on the curb. Some dude was beaten up, then half drowned in the lake near us and now two cops parked their motorcycles next to the water all day. A coyote was living at the meth park a few blocks away so ES EF and everyone else moved out to the street, like that wild thing wanted their nasty asses. But Dave didn’t know any of that. The movie he had in his head was never going to stop. I understand how he couldn’t get rid of that. But the world, it was different.

  “Marva wants to know if you’d like to come and stay with us,” said Dave, his hands in his back pockets. “You can bring your boyfriend if you want. We have room.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Partner, boyfriend. I don’t know what you call it these days,” said Dave. “I’m sorry. Everything is more fluid with your generation. It seemed like you two are together. I’m thinking like a dad. I can’t help it.”

  “Not like my dad,” I said.

  Dave’s lips tightened into a line. He looked hurt, but we both knew it was true. My dad wasn’t thinking about me and he never would. Nothing was going to change that. Dave said he planned to go home, at least for Christmas, and after that he wasn’t sure. He said he wasn’t sure of anything anymore, even if he’d stay back east with Marva. Maybe they could find somewhere else to live that wouldn’t remind them of Shane. She wanted one thing and he wanted another after Shane died, he said. Then he apologized for telling me too much and I said it was TMI, which I had to explain to him, too much information. He smiled and thanked me for the translation, which he said I’d done more of than I realized. Why was he trying to get me to come with him if he was going to turn around and leave Marva? He told me he never had a daughter, but he always wanted one. He’d be lucky to have someone like me, he said. Then it looked like he was going to hug me, and part of me wanted to be there, against his chest, with his arms around me. But I scrunched up so he restrained himself.

  “I don’t know what to tell her,” he said, and we stood there like two kids at school who don’t have anything to say to each other.

  “At least walk with me for a bit?” said Dave.

  I went inside to get my sweatshirt and Ash wanted to know what was up. Did Dave offer me money? I should take it if he did, Ash said, and gave me the rap again about how people like it when you take a gift. It makes them feel important. The person who gave the gift actually got more than the person who took it. Do it for Dave, he said. I to
ld him I’d be back at 40 Hill later.

  The lights were already on inside stores on the street and up on Twin Peaks, where a giant radio tower glowed like a bright red tooth. Dave said he’d given up the cabin in Marin and was staying at some inn nearby called the Palace. Despite the name, it wasn’t fancy, he said, probably because he didn’t want me to think he was staying at a mansion. He told me how the Victorian bathroom was moldy and the floors sloped to one side. It made him dizzy. The man who owned it said it had once been a big flophouse, with padlocks on every door and a drug lab in the basement. He’d bought it for nothing, fixed it up, and slapped it with an aspirational name. The one thing Dave liked was the view. He could see the bay, the sailboats gliding by and the buildings trimmed like presents in green and red Christmas lights.

  “But it doesn’t seem like Christmas,” he said. “I wonder if I’d ever get used to that. No snow. I don’t know how you can tell the season is changing. I guess you don’t think about that, growing up in California.”

  “We can tell what time of the year it is,” I said. “We don’t need snow for that.”

  “Of course not,” said Dave. “And I like the idea of no snow, no days when it’s twenty below zero and your face feels numb.”

  I’d only seen snow once, when we’d had a cold snap in LA. It felt like it fell all at once from a trapdoor in the sky, turning the yard into a snow globe for about half an hour. Then it melted before we could play with it. I couldn’t remember if it was even near Christmas because it wasn’t what we used to tell time. Stores knew when to put out decorations, schools knew when to close. And my mom knew what to do. She’d put out a plastic tree a few days before Christmas, and stockings for both of us. It didn’t occur to me until I was older and living with Chip and Karen that she must have filled her own stocking and bought a neatly wrapped present for herself. She’d open it and say it was exactly what she wanted. I’d say the same thing.

  Two mannequins in Santa suits looked like they were kissing in a window of a used clothes store. Bottles of flavored vodka sat on top of mounds of fake snow in the liquor store window next to it. This was how you could be sure it was Christmas, I wanted to tell Dave, but he’d stopped next to a small group gathered outside the liquor store. He dropped change in a pot in front of one guy who had a sign, christmas here. A banjo player sat next to him, strumming. He looked expectantly at Dave, who fingered through the bills in his wallet for a few ones.

  “How about a Hamilton?” said the banjo player. His ears were dotted with silver loops and studs. “This isn’t going to buy anything.”

  “What do you want?” said Dave. “I can get you a sandwich or two.”

  “Sick,” he said. “How about extra cheese?”

  I followed him around, through the aisles of bottles to the deli counter. “Joy to the World” blasted on the store speakers. Dave ordered the sandwiches, extra-large, with everything. And heaven and nature sing. The counter guy layered on meat and cheese and then covered it all with slabs of mustard and mayonnaise. Dave paid, walked out and handed the sandwiches to the kid with the banjo. I wondered how we’d get down the street if he kept stopping to buy food. Could the guy not give it up?

  “I hate mustard,” said the banjo player, looking at one of the sandwiches as he slapped a red beanie up and down on his head. “Now what?”

  Dave laughed.

  “Sorry. I tried,” he said as we walked away.

  “I wonder if someone ever stopped to buy food for Shane. Did anyone try to help him or ask where he came from,” he said. “But Shane probably wouldn’t have told the truth. He didn’t want to be found.” Dave hunched over, wrapped his arms around his middle. “I spent so much time with my boys, taking them to soccer games, baseball practice, tossing a ball in the yard, making sure they knew how to say please and thank you. We had dinner every night. Marva sat with them if I was off at the firehouse and watched that they did their homework. I always thought everything was a phase. It would all work out the way it was supposed to. That’s what I told Marva because it was how my life had gone.”

  We kept walking and he was looking at me. When he was in high school, he said, he’d stolen a bottle of his father’s rum and driven around all night with his friends, one of them lying on top of the hood yelling directions on the windy roads.

  “I hate to say this, but I was so drunk I might have killed someone or ended up in jail,” he said. “But I made it through to the other side. Shane would too, I always thought. He was a normal kid doing what he had to in order to grow up. What should I have known? There must have been evidence of what was wrong and I missed it. We both did.”

  Down the street Sara Moon sat with her legs crossed, bright colored bracelets scattered around her. I raised a hand to say hi. Root nuzzled her thigh and then her pack. She looked up and I could see the bruise under her eye had disappeared. Merlin lay sprawled nearby, one arm overhead, like he’d been reaching for something before he passed out. The air around them was a fog of dirty clothes, weed and beer that worked its way through every breath.

  “They are five dollars each,” said Sara Moon, holding one up to Dave to take a closer look. “Maddy, tell him.”

  “He’s not here for that,” I said.

  “You could have them all for twenty,” said Sara Moon.

  “Seriously,” I said. I wanted to say he was only there for me, because he wanted me to be his kid, that he didn’t have any use for bracelets. He’d throw them away. That’s how pointless they were. Merlin stretched and rolled over but didn’t open his eyes.

  “It’s okay,” said Dave. “Here.” He pulled out a twenty and handed it to her.

  “Cool,” she said, and gave him the handful of bracelets.

  Dave took them and stuffed them in his pocket. The grass at the edge of the park was empty except for a drum circle tatting on an overturned plastic container, a pair of bongos, a metal barrel topped with cowhide, banged up congas. The drumming got louder and then softer, the beats chasing one another. We sat on a bench and Dave tossed a pinecone for Root, who ran after it and pounced, bringing it back for more until it broke into pieces. He rested his chin on the remains and closed his eyes. No one would know how we were related, me in a dirty blue hooded sweatshirt and Dave in his sagging jeans and feathery gray hair. I wondered if Shane had ever sat here, listening to the drummers. Maybe Jeremiah was right and he came there to watch girls at the playground.

  “I don’t think you’ll ever know what it was like for us,” said Dave. “But since we found you, it’s like we have a way to go forward. Maybe it’s meant to be.”

  I moved away from him on the bench because I could just as easily have climbed closer.

  “And there is one more thing I should tell you,” Dave said. “I should have said it earlier, but I’m not perfect. You already know that.”

  I stared at the drummers and promised myself not to look at him.

  “Marva and I, we found your father,” he said. “But we couldn’t figure out how to locate your mother, and we couldn’t give up on it. On you. So we hired someone.”

  I felt heat rising into my face. My mom was no one else’s business. My dad, he was out there living in his house and he didn’t know anything about me. But my mom still knew more about me than Dave ever would.

  “She is in a small boarding home near Venice Beach,” he said. “The door was locked and no one answered when we knocked. We never got to see her.” He stared out at the drummers, along with me, so at least I didn’t have to look in his eyes.

  “The thing is, we’d like to have you live with us. Back east or wherever we wind up, for as long as you want.”

  “Like I’d be some replacement?” I said.

  “No,” said Dave. “That’s not it. But we would like to give you what you need to move on with your life. We’re not asking to adopt you formally or change your name. You don’t have to change anything. You’re an adult and it’s your decision to make.”

  I couldn’t answer
. All I could think about was that he’d gone to where my mom was. How could he have done that? At least he hadn’t seen her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if she was better or if she still sat there all day, staring.

  “Don’t you want to know what I found out?” I said. “Why didn’t you even ask me? You wanted me to talk to people about Shane. I spent weeks walking through the park, all the way down to the beach. You don’t know how many people I asked.”

  “I thought you’d tell us if you heard something,” said Dave. “I know you showed Shane’s picture around here and looked up the court records. I should have paid you for all that work. That’s what Marva said.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, getting up off the bench. “You think I wanted money? You think I did it to get something off you, while you were out there secretly tracking down my parents?”

  I was going to tell him, how Shane was perverted, how he followed little girls around in the park, while Marva was home washing his clothes over and over. Who knows what he did in the bushes. Maybe Jeremiah was saving those girls when he went after Shane. Dave needed to know who his kid was before he tried to make me his daughter. I started to talk, but the drums got louder, a jumble of banging, all of it moving together in a growing wave.

  “I guess it’s not possible to ask them to pipe it down a little?” Dave said.

  A guy with the metal barrel threw his drumsticks in the air and caught them with a single hand, nodded at the others, one by one, and then each took a turn playing solo until they all joined in. It was an earsplitting clanging catfight of noise, but it fit together like the weird random way I had ended up where I was.

  “Did you say something?” said Dave. I stared at him and he looked so uncomfortable and sad. I swallowed what I was about to tell him and listened to the drums. They drowned out whatever I could say that was true. My mom was locked in a boarding house and my dad was useless, but that didn’t mean I needed Dave. Shane was more of a mess than I ever was. I would never be Dave’s kid.