Elsinore Canyon (29 page)

“Just perfect,” Dana said.

“Sorry it couldn’t be better,” he said as he sat.

“How about if you get to the point?” she said. “And by the way, I know you helped my Aunt Claudia try to disappear me.”

Oscar leaned back. “Let’s delay the point, then.”

“Do you have something to say?”

“Just this: Claudia is my boss. If she doesn’t tell me, I don’t ask. I’m not saying this to defend myself, but I didn’t know what the trip was all about and I still don’t. Just like I don’t know who shot Polly or why.”

“That’s some Golden Rule,” I said.

“Claudia took me in when I was your age, Horst—that was fourteen years ago—and she never judged me. I thought
you’d
been saved by the kindness of others.”

“I don’t follow. Does that mean there’s no right or wrong, just Claudia? And shit never catches up to you?”

“No. In fact, that brings me back to my point.” He turned to Dana. “You’ve got a birthday coming up.”

“I was planning to observe it by simply turning eighteen.”

“I’d like to observe it by turning eighteen,” he said with a murky smile. “Your father and your aunt and Laurie Polonius want to use it to do something for Phil. The scattering of his ashes didn’t go so well.”

The family tradition was to charter a fifty-foot sailing yacht with a small crew and throw a party for Dana. It was a noon-to-night affair with family and a few friends. I had gone out with them the last three years and crawled and rolled around the deck and done some diving.

Dana frowned quizzically. “Don’t tell me they want me at their do-over.”

“You know your father wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“What, is he going to be there?”

“It’s your birthday.”

“If Laurie wants to do something for Phil, why doesn’t she have her own Hamlet-free event?”

“She admits she may have over-reacted at her brother’s interment.”

Dana’s phone rang. “Daddy?” Her eyes and nose got syrupy. “I love you, too.” She glanced at Oscar. “Yes, he’s here now. I don’t know,” she said, struggling with a decision. “Okay, I’ll do my best. I love you, too. Oh, Dad? Can I see you first thing in the morning the day after? Just you and me, and”—she looked at me—“maybe Horst? I want to show you something. Okay.” She hung up and mumbled at Oscar. “We’ll see.”

“Laurie wants to sink a few of Phil’s belongings. She thought maybe you’d take his Christopher down.” Dana’s fingers wandered to her clavicle. “It was on him when he died. You and Laurie were always friends, weren’t you?”

“Yes, we were.”

Oscar shrugged. “They’re taking out the
Jadallah
from Cope Landing at five in the afternoon. Strictly family. Your dad and Marcellus and Miguel are going to crew. They’ll drop anchor when they’re at the house. I know it’s short notice, but…” Labor Day was the next day.

“I don’t want to sail with them all the way from Cope Landing.” She looked at me. “Will you take the four-seater out with me when they’re ready?” The Hamlets had a little motor-powered sport boat that could get us out to the yacht. The three of us agreed on the next day, with Dana reserving the right to change her mind. “In which case they should go ahead without me,” she said.

“Your call,” Oscar said. He picked up his keys.

“By the way,” I said to him as he got up, “is turning a year older your idea of shit catching up?”

“Oh no. I meant it in general, but I was thinking of Claudia.”

“What about Claudia?” said Dana.

Oscar cocked his head. “There seems to be a change coming over her. I get the sense she wants some sort of do-over herself.”

It was a very un-Oscar-like thing to say. Dana looked at him curiously. “Thanks for the message.”

And just like that, he was Oscar again. “Tally-ho.” He twirled his fingers and moved off. Wind in his hair, gas in his tank.

“Well?” I said.

“I don’t know. Only if you go.”

There was the accessibility thing. I could make my way down and back up the winding wooden stairs to the Hamlets’ dock, but Dana would have to carry my chair. “You seem to be hating on that all of a sudden,” she said.

“Yes. I’ll go, but let me have my hates.”

“And Tuesday morning when I talk to my dad? You’ll back me up?”

“Of course.”

“I want to show him everything about that Thailand trip, but he’s doubting my sanity these days.” She sighed. “If only there wasn’t tomorrow to get through. Here I was almost liking my life before that evil teddy bear showed up.”

“Don’t go if you don’t want.”

“I’m afraid it’ll nag me if I don’t do something for Phil. I’m kind of sorry I had that tantrum at the cottage. It’s not Laurie’s fault she’s crazy right now.” She struggled for a moment. “Do you think it would have worked with me and Phil? After those scenes we had, and those misunderstandings?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

Oscar’s news had put Dana off the setting, so we bagged the food, checked out, and got into my car. She wanted to get away, far from Elsinore Canyon and far from the inside of her head. It was the Sunday before Labor Day in Southern California and we had our pick of noisy, happy, distracting venues, so we chose the noisiest, happiest, distractingest of all. Disneyland.

Dana and I merged into a thick, jumbled crowd of families, couples, and clumps of friends pouring down a replica of old-time Main Street. The perfect gardens, the old melodies lilting through the hot air, the little fake businesses. “I always wanted to go in those buildings and see the real people,” Dana told me as she looked up and around. Clothiers and fishing tackle. Balconies, windows with gold lettering. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, what could be better? Jules Verne-style rockets, paths off to jungly “Lands,” underground boat rides. Dana’s heels got stepped on three times, and she got a blister. We ate churros and popcorn and felt sick. That took us into the afternoon, then came rides based on cartoons we hadn’t watched since we were tiny kids. Peter Pan’s Flight, brilliant! The Pinocchio ride—that annoying Jiminy Cricket appointing himself as Pinocchio’s conscience. Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, I’d never watched that cartoon but it made me want to travel back in time and live in an old English country house as a spoiled heir. We sampled more food and parades. Then interior and exterior roller coasters, always the long lines that we bypassed thanks to my wheelchair, me holding up all those poor bastards while I transferred into some accommodating form of a bobsled or buggy, more parades, more junk food, redoing our favorite rides, then fireworks, watery hot chocolate, and an all-too-early midnight. Dana didn’t want to leave. Neither did I. We found an insanely priced hotel room and rolled out of bed the next morning and went straight back into the park. I figured I had blown through my budget for the entire school year.

We were amazed; the two of us had never done this before. Friends all those years, and Disneyland, right there all along, and we had never gone romping on down. We clung to the remnants of the previous day’s chaotic joy as the hours seeped out into the late morning and then the early afternoon. Dana looked around as we ate ice cream. “It’s no fair to be here knowing that you have such a lousy evening ahead.” She wanted to come back down for her actual birthday, which was still three days away. We finally had to leave.

The freeway was traitorously clear. “Wish there would be a six-lane accident,” I grumbled.

Next to me, Dana rolled her eyes. “Central California,” she said. We had been talking about Stanford and UCSD for the first time in months. “What was I thinking? I only need to know enough to run the Foundation—I don’t need to be Condoleezza Fricking Rice. I could learn everything I need to know at Santa Monica City College.”

We reached the turnoff for Elsinore Canyon at four forty-five. I visualized the road buckling up and tossing my car into a ditch; it unwound methodically before me. What did this remind me of? The reliable charcoal line looped and curved through the gentle hills and parted the flora that leaned into the road from both sides as if to knit their fragile edges together across the air. My nervous system, that was it. Obeying the laws of nature, terminating in emptiness. Why did it explode that day on my motorcycle but not now? It would all be wild someday. I navigated up, down, and beneath oaks and pines, past crumbling drives that led to massive old homes, startled a deer, and then, finally, ground deliberately and reluctantly through the Hamlets’ gate and up to the front of the house.

Slam. Slam.

Dana and I went through the stone entryway and into the great hall. This was the room where three months before I had picked my way through shocked mourners; then, not long after, through marriage guests with uneasy smiles. Now it was only Dana and me among the walls and heavy furnishings. “Wonder if they’re out there.” Her heels clupped delicately as she walked towards the windows. I rolled over to join her in the frustum of early-evening sun. It felt like a giant pool of urine.

The view before us was impossibly huge, the ocean shining grey, perfectly calm and near-empty. With Elsinore Canyon bordered by the motorboat-unfriendly Malibu, yachts were a rare sight, cutting lonely wakes as they sailed from tiny Cope Landing. Dana and I looked northward. A single vessel was moving down our way. Dana lifted a pair of binoculars off a window ledge and peered through them. Her hand curved up to turn a dial.

“Well?” I said.

“I don’t know. The hell with it.” She handed the binoculars to me. “I’ll be right back.” She went off.

I tried the binoculars but I couldn’t identify the boat. Dana reappeared a minute later in a stretchy skirt and a sweater that slid off her shoulders, exposing the blue straps of her swimsuit. I felt stuffed in my clothes. I had wanted to leave Disneyland earlier so I could get up to Santa Barbara and get my wetsuit, but she asked me to skip it. She just wanted to do her thing for Phil and go.

“Look,” I said. I pointed out the window. The boat we had seen was anchored in the offing, dead even with the house. It was the
Jadallah,
alone and still. Waiting for us.

I followed her through a small door, and we were outside, standing against the western wall of the house like mole-people, exposed. It was a treacherous path only as wide as my wheelchair to the wooden stairs, where I ditched the chair and wrapped Dana’s wetsuit around my neck. She carried mine, I carried hers. “Maybe we should call them,” she said.

“They can see us coming.” We picked our way down. I wore my gloves so I could move faster. The amazing Super Disabled Man, impervious to splinters. At the foot of the stairs, Dana unfolded my chair and I rolled out with her onto the Hamlets’ tiny dock. She climbed into the bright yellow T2. I tossed my chair down and lowered myself from a line into the pilot’s seat and fired it up.

We skimmed and bounced across the water into the near-blinding sun. The
Jadallah
grew from a dot to a blot, and finally loomed in life size. Four silhouetted figures were gathered at the rail. I trained my hurting eyes up to the topside and identified the forms: Mr. Hamlet, Laurie, Dr. Claudia, and Rennie, inclining themselves towards us gravely as Dana moored the T2 to a chock. A few rungs on the ladder, a swing of my arm, and Mr. Hamlet had my chair. I pulled myself rhythmically up the rest of the ladder and twisted myself into my chair, held steady by Mr. Hamlet. The rest of the crowd was clumped near the bow: Oscar, Marcellus, Perla, and Miguel. Quiet greetings all around. Dana’s golden head appeared at the top of the ladder and she rose majestic and simple and stepped onto the deck. Her father gave her a solemn hug and spoke softly in her ear. “Thanks for being here, sweetie. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

She left her father’s arms and stepped over to face an icy Laurie, who was halfway inter a wetsuit; the empty body and arms hung down from her waist. “I just wanted to say, Laurie. I’m sorry. I haven’t been myself lately. I’d never deliberately hurt you.”

“Sure.”

The only sound was the slapping of the water on the sides of the boat. If Laurie was going to be this way, what was the point? Dana turned away. “I’ll put on my wetsuit.” She went below with her gear.

Laurie looped her hand through an air hose attached to a scuba tank. Another tank and another regulator were lying nearby. I remembered the last time she and I had talked, near the cottage. She’d stood and watched me roll up that sandy hill like a helpless cripple. “Anyone else going down?” I said to her.

She answered without looking at me. “Just me. I’ll go after Dana.”

I picked up Dana’s mask and spat into it. She sprang back up the ladder a minute later, embarrassingly beautiful in her bright blue, body-skimming wetsuit. Her hair blew around her face like a fiery crown.

With her free hand, Laurie took a medal from around her neck—the Christopher Dana had given Phil. “This was Phil’s.” She dangled it out to Dana.

Dana reached out, gathered her fingers around the chain, and rested the image of the saint in her hand. Her breath shook. “I gave it to him,” she said, “because I loved him.”

Low responses came from around the boat. “God bless him.” “He lives.” “Love lasts forever.”

She wound the medal around her neck and picked up her fins.