China Lake (3 page)

Hinkel sat, but would be up again. He had two chances to win the case—vermin and hysterics. I knew, because I had done the legal research for him, and had told him so. He had taken my derision for strategic advice and run straight to the courthouse.

Taking an irritated breath, Rodriguez said, ‘‘It’s near the end of the day. We’ll adjourn until tomorrow morning, when I want everyone calmed down.’’ She clacked her gavel and stood up, gathering her black robe in her hands.

The bailiff said, ‘‘All rise,’’ and everyone in the courtroom rose to their feet, except Jesse. He sat in his wheelchair as Rodriguez left the courtroom.

Conversation clattered and echoed as the room began emptying. While I waited near the door, Gaul and Hinkel walked past. Skip nodded but didn’t greet me, knowing I wasn’t in his rooting section. Jesse remained at the defense table while his cocounsel, Bill Brandt, critiqued his performance.

It had been two years since a hit-and-run driver smashed into Jesse’s mountain bike, leaving him near death at the roadside, his spine shattered. He considered himself lucky. His best friend, riding next to him, had been killed. It took him a year of rehab and physical therapy to regain partial use of his legs. He could walk with crutches, but much of the time used a wheelchair, a lightweight model.

Setting his briefcase on his lap, he spun the chair and with two strokes propelled himself down the aisle. Spotting me, he told Brandt to go ahead without him. The older attorney eyed me quickly, with that knife flick of curiosity—
Are he and she . . . ?
—and slapped Jesse on the shoulder before pushing through the door.

Jesse said, ‘‘Another day defending truth, justice, and militant rodents. God, I love the law.’’

‘‘And a grateful nation salutes you for it,’’ I said. ‘‘What did Brandt think?’’

‘‘He wants me to rein in my mouth. No sassing the maimed. Other than that he’s thrilled. He’s got one crip ripping up the other, so the defense inflicts all the damage and he feels none of the liberal guilt.’’

I didn’t comment. I was used to his bluntness. ‘‘And what did you think?’’

‘‘Me, I’m riddled with guilt.’’

‘‘You were born missing the guilt gene.’’

‘‘Yeah, you got it instead. What are you blaming yourself for today?’’

Leaving the courtroom, I started to smile. ‘‘Third World debt.’’

Eyeing my black suit, he asked how the funeral was. I said, ‘‘An incitement to riot.’’ I handed him the Remnant’s flyer. He looked at it with disgust. When I pointed out the artist’s signature, he did the same double take as I had and said, ‘‘No way.’’

‘‘That church is local, Jesse. I’m afraid this means Tabitha’s in Santa Barbara.’’

He pointed at one of the drawings. ‘‘It means your brother should watch out.’’

Blatant as it was, I hadn’t noticed it. Orange tongues of fire licked the hills. Black cracks rent the earth, swallowing the Hollywood sign, the U.S. Capitol, and a naval officer in dress blues.

‘‘Reconciliation is definitely not on her agenda,’’ he said. ‘‘What are you going to do?’’

‘‘Warn Brian, then track her down and find out what’s going on. Maybe she isn’t involved with the church. Maybe she drew the comic strip on commission.’’

‘‘You don’t believe that. Not with her background.’’

Right again, Blackburn. I looked away, trying not to think about her real agenda. But he touched my wrist and said, ‘‘What if she’s come back for Luke?’’

Luke, Brian and Tabitha’s son, was six. For eight months he had been living with me—ever since Tabitha walked out and Brian was deployed overseas.

Jesse held up the flyer. ‘‘Evan, this is nasty stuff. I don’t mean fun nasty; I mean raving, psycho nasty.’’

‘‘You’d say that about church bingo.’’

‘‘Listen. If Tabitha has started believing this garbage—’’

‘‘I know, Luke.’’ I sighed. ‘‘I’ll find her.’’

The guilt gene had caused a throbbing in my chest when my brother’s marriage collapsed, a dull pain that insisted,
It’s my fault, my fault
. Because I had introduced Brian to Tabitha.

Tabitha Roebuck was twenty years old when I met her, a waitress at a café I frequented. Perky and enthusiastic, she was blessed with a curvy figure, auburn curls that fell languorously from her loose hair clip, and a ringing voice that always edged on loudness. At the time, I was practicing law and looking for a way to jump the fence. At the café I would hunch over a legal pad, scribbling fiction with an aspiration akin to craving. One night Tabitha lingered at my table. Hesitantly, as if telling me something shocking, she said, ‘‘I understand how you feel about writing. Really, because I’m an artist.’’

She sat down. She told me she liked science fiction, since that was what I wrote, but she loved fantasy— tales featuring wizards, swordsmen, and beleaguered princesses. Leaning forward, she said, ‘‘Do your stories have dragons in them? Dragons are awesome.’’

But if her fascination seemed childlike, it was because she was test-driving her imagination. She had grown up in a home where creativity and even whimsy had been suppressed by an anxious, astringent fundamentalism. No secular music had been permitted. No secular boyfriends. And no secular literature containing pagan mythological beasts. That equated to dabbling in the occult. To Tabitha’s mother, reading
Le Morte d’Arthur
was one step removed from conducting Black Masses around the kitchen table.

My story had no dragons, but the next time I came into the café Tabitha rushed toward me, eyes shiny, hands clutching illustrations she had drawn for the piece. The pictures were wild and romantic—the hero standing defiant against a heavy wind. I loved them. I was taken with her. When my older brother came to visit, I introduced them.

Everything about Brian stunned her: the raven hair and hot-coffee eyes, the cool-under-fire voice, and the confident, offhand manner. He was a fighter pilot and looked it, even out of uniform. She didn’t hesitate, not for a second.

A new strand of her personality uncoiled itself: the minx Tabitha. In Brian’s presence she became pert, impudent, flirtatious. She emanated a wholesome sexiness, as if her plaid Gap skirt covered a leopard-skin garter belt. Brian termed her ‘‘vivacious.’’ But she also saddened easily, and hungered for clarity, security, and purpose. He decided to play the rescuer, imagining that at his side she would grow strong—and grateful to him. Her white knight.

They married within six months, and they doted and clung to each other with a passion that was both pure and excruciatingly cute. Then Luke came along, a child like a jewel, the proof and seal of their fusion. It was perfect.

And it all fell apart.

Tabitha hated life as a navy wife. She hated the transient postings—San Diego, Pensacola, Lemoore, California: too big, too hot, too isolated. She hated the mediocre housing and elaborate protocol, hated Brian’s going to sea for months at a time. She must have been painfully lonely, but to my regret I did not sympathize. I was the daughter of a navy man, had grown up living the navy life, and had been a good little soldier. Brian had, too, and he expected his wife to be one. She wasn’t.

She was going crazy, she said. She couldn’t stand it, taking care of everything by herself, sleeping alone, being cooped up with a demanding child while he was away.
Quit the navy
, she said. And that, in the Delaney family, was the Wrong Thing to Say. That was asking him to cut out his own heart. After that he didn’t see her as innocent and sensitive, but as immature and needy. So when his squadron was assigned to a Pacific cruise, her whines and threats all misfired.

It’s not fair. I’m not going to be a single parent, not again—you try it and see how you like it. Why can’t you work for United Airlines?
He just looked at her as if she were nuts. Why in hell would he want to drive 737s? He was going to fly an F/A-18 out to the USS
Constellation
. He had the best damned job on planet Earth.

A week before Brian went to sea, she walked out. He called me, in tears, asking me to take his son for him.

Heading home from the courthouse, I stopped to see how Nikki was holding up after the funeral. Her house and mine share a property near Santa Barbara’s Old Mission. She and Carl live in the Victorian home that fronts the street, while I have the smaller guest-house at the rear of the deep garden. I arrived as the postfuneral gathering was winding down. Kids in dress-up clothes were playing basketball on the driveway, and reggae music was sauntering through the front door. Empty casserole trays sat on the dining room table. In the kitchen, cousins were washing dishes. Nikki was sitting on a black leather sofa in the living room, with her shoes off and her swollen feet propped on a coffee table. I gestured for her not to get up.

She patted the sofa. When I sat down she rested her hand on mine and said, ‘‘Heard you went back for a second round with the Holy Rollers. Mom would have liked your spirit.’’

I squeezed her hand, wanting to thank her but feeling vaguely embarrassed because Tabitha’s drawings had added to her grief.

‘‘You did the right thing,’’ she said. ‘‘I was wrong about ignoring those people. We have to stand up to groups like that, keep right in their face, or they’ll roll over us.’’

She laid her head back against the couch. Though pregnancy had generally given her a voluptuous glow, she looked drawn, and I asked if she was okay.

‘‘I will be. Claudine didn’t raise me to wilt.’’

A few minutes later I headed across the lawn to my house, an adobe cottage shaded by live oaks and surrounded with hibiscus and star jasmine. I moved Luke’s bike from where it lay on the flagstone path, and opened the French doors. A cartoon sound track rolled over me. On television, Wile E. Coyote was chasing the Road Runner across a painted desert. From the far side of the sofa a small head popped up to see who was home.

‘‘Hi, Aunt Evan.’’

I kicked off my heels. ‘‘Hey, tiger. Can you turn down the TV?’’

Holding the remote two-fisted, like a ray gun, Luke lowered the volume and hopped to his feet. The babysitter, a college sophomore who moved with tropical lassitude, began tidying up juice boxes and popcorn detritus. My bachelorette pad had been turned into an adventure playground: The Navajo rugs, Ansel Adams prints, and Scandinavian furniture had been overlaid with home decor by Mattel and entertainment by Chuck Jones. Child rearing had fallen on me unexpectedly, but I knew enough to insist that my nephew watch classic television.

As the sitter was leaving, Luke said, ‘‘Guess who called on the phone?’’

Anxiety nicked me. Please, not Tabitha.

‘‘Dad!’’ The word infused him with energy. He followed me into the kitchen, bouncing on pogo-stick legs, black hair ruffling up and down. ‘‘He’s going to our new house today and he’ll get my room all ready for me.’’

My brother had just transferred to a new posting, the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, California. He needed a few days before I brought Luke to him.

I said, ‘‘He can’t wait for you to get there, bud.’’

He smiled. He had dimples and a missing bottom tooth, a Tom Sawyer smile that just knocked me out. His hands pressed against the sleeves of my white blouse. His fingers were grubby, slivers of playground dirt under the nails. I knew I’d have to wash the blouse, but those hands—the fidgety fingers, the light touch—so enchanted me that I said nothing to him.

He said, ‘‘I packed my bag.’’

‘‘Already?’’

‘‘I could have packed yours too, but I didn’t know where to put your special stuff, like sunglasses and vitamins. And, the custody papers.’’

His knowing about that gave me an electric ache. I told him he was right to let me take care of it. He asked if he could pack a cooler for the drive. ‘‘Next week,’’ I said.

I took a soda from the refrigerator. Stuck to the door with magnets were a dozen snapshots of Brian— in his flight suit, next to his F/A-18 Hornet, with Luke perched on his shoulders. Jesse called it the Shrine. I had put them up so Luke would see his dad’s face every day. So he wouldn’t forget him.

In the display were photos I had taken a week earlier in San Diego, when the
Constellation
returned to port. The carrier’s homecoming had been magnificent: sailors lining the edge of the deck, flags snapping in the wind, and families waiting on shore, thousands of people ready to burst. I looked at the photo I had taken as my brother reached us: Brian wrapping Luke in his arms, his face buried in his son’s neck. The moment was glorious. It always is.

Luke squeezed my arms. His dark eyes were wide and shiny. They were Tabitha’s eyes. He said, ‘‘How many hours is it until we go to my new house? I mean,
exactly
.’’

‘‘
Exactly?
I currently estimate one hundred eighty-two. ’’

Would he forget me?

Eight months earlier, Brian had flown out with his squadron. I cannot imagine his hand wavering on the stick as he swung into the wind for the carrier landing. But divorce is a buzz saw. It slices and mutilates, and I know that despite his cool mien he felt shredded. His commanding officer knew it too, telling him to suck it up, not to let a woman give him a case of the snivels. Understandably, the CO disliked the idea of Brian Delaney dropping a fifty-million-dollar fighter jet onto the deck while wondering where the hell his wife had gone.

Tabitha had disappeared. She emptied the checking account, withdrew the maximum advance on their credit cards, and took off. Traveling on cash, leaving no paper trail. We couldn’t find her.

A month later the letters started coming. Addressed to Luke and mailed to my house, they bore neither return address nor apology.
Mommy wishes she could be with you, but she felt too sad and had to go away
, she wrote.
Maybe if Daddy would come home and take care of us, things could be okay.

They were messages from Self-pity Land, that theme park beyond the reality horizon where mirrors magnify all complaints and ‘‘Who’s Sorry Now’’ plays on an endless loop. They kept me awake at night. Did she think the letters made things better? That Luke would understand her? Intervene on her behalf with Brian, for God’s sake? The kid was having night terrors, fighting at school, and hiding in his closet for hours on end. I had shelved the book I was writing so that I could take care of him. His face crumpled when he read,
Mommy loves you
.