Going to the Chapel (11 page)

I don’t know if anyone in a bureaucracy knows how much it would mean to Cassie to see her mother. At least I know what my mother looks like. I know what her voice sounds like. When I was younger, I used to
fall asleep with a picture of my mother in my head. Cassie was never able to do that. She doesn’t know if her mother is tall or short, dark-haired or blond, pretty or plain. She could be a bank president or a cleaning lady.

“Maybe we should try some other way to locate your mother,” I finally say. “Maybe there’s a way other than going through these organizations.”

Cassie doesn’t answer as she turns her car into the parking lot of her apartment building. The building she lives in is an older brick building and there is no underground parking as there is in newer apartment buildings. There are a couple of security lights in the parking lot, but the residents have learned to look out for any strange cars that aren’t parked in the designated visitor spaces.

Cassie and I both take a look around the parked cars before we unlock her car doors. It’s about eight-thirty and, even though that’s not so late, we’re always careful when we walk through the parking lot at night. Parking is one thing that is better in Blythe than here. Aunt Inga has a garage and a wide carport so she and I always park close to her house, well within the circle of light cast by the porch light. But even the public parking lots in Blythe are not this scary.

The back door to the apartment building is not locked until eleven o’clock each night so it opens when Cassie turns the knob. Her apartment is on the third floor so we climb the wooden stairs. There is a thin carpet on the hallway, but everyone can still hear when someone is walking down the hall. The residents were going to complain and send a petition off
to the building owner asking for new, thicker carpet, but then they decided it was good security to know when someone was walking down the hall.

Cassie and I are almost to her door when her across-the-hall neighbor, Mrs. Snyder, opens her own door and whispers at Cassie. Mrs. Snyder moved to the building shortly after Cassie did.

“There was someone at your place,” she says in a low voice, with a nervous look down the long hallway. “A man. About ten minutes ago. Knocking on your door.”

Cassie frowns and looks at me. “Do you suppose Doug took a cab over here?”

I frown also. “I don’t think he would be finished with his commitment stuff at the Bowl yet.”

I really don’t know what goes on when someone walks forward at one of those rallies, but, given the number of people who did that tonight, it would take twenty minutes just to get everyone organized.

“Are you sure he knocked on my door?” Cassie asks Mrs. Snyder. “Maybe it was Max’s door next to me.”

The older woman shakes her head. “It wasn’t Max’s. I could see pretty well through my peephole and he was knocking at your door. He was a mountain of a man.”

Cassie looks down the hall even though it is obvious no one is in the hall except the three of us. “It must have been someone who got the numbers wrong. I’m sure by now he’s found the place he wanted.”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Snyder says as she starts to close her door. “I just worry about the two of you living alone like you do with no man to take care of you.”

“I have a shovel,” Cassie says.

“That little shovel of yours wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Mrs. Snyder says. “It’s half plastic. But don’t worry. I’m a light sleeper and I keep my eye to the peephole if someone comes around.”

“I appreciate that,” Cassie says.

I am grateful, too, so I smile at Mrs. Snyder. Some people might not like a neighbor scrutinizing everyone who knocks at their door, but I feel safer knowing Mrs. Snyder does just that. At least she would be able to give the police a description if someone broke into Cassie’s place.

I didn’t ever worry about anyone breaking into Aunt Inga’s house when I was in Blythe. I miss that sense of security. When I decided to move to Hollywood, everyone in Blythe told me to be careful. And Hollywood does have a reputation for strangeness. But, I’m learning it also has people like Alice Green, who I met tonight, and Mrs. Snyder, who always looks out for us.

Cassie opens her door and turns the light on. She has some of her bags of potting soil on a piece of plastic on the floor so I assume tonight has been a plant night for her. The yellow light from the overhead bulb gives a warm look to the room. The heater has been on and it is cozy inside.

Cassie doesn’t have a lot of furniture yet, but she is adding something every week and I see a new magazine stand sitting beside her sofa. She got the sofa at a used furniture shop and it is well-worn, but it does have a foldout bed and I have slept on that as well as on the air mattress that Cassie has. I haven’t decided
which one is more comfortable yet, but it feels luxurious to have the choice of two places to sleep. Cassie, herself, has a twin bed in the small bedroom.

I put my notebook down on the table and remember the notes I took tonight. I turn to Cassie. “Could you take something over to the coffee shop tomorrow when you go to work? I told Doug I’d leave his notes there with his name on them.”

Cassie has walked over to her kitchenette, but she turns. “Don’t you want to talk to him? Returning the notes would make a good reason to call.”

“I think I’ll pass,” I say as I tear out the pages for Doug and fold them over. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m not sure congratulations are appropriate. Or sympathy. It’s all just a little awkward, you know?”

I dig in my purse for a pen and then sit at the table so I can write Doug’s name on his notes.

Cassie has walked over to the stove and nods as she lifts the teakettle off the burner. She turns the water on and starts to fill the kettle.

“Cocoa?” I ask as I set Doug’s notes on the counter beside the door.

Cassie and I have a long tradition of ending difficult days with cups of cocoa topped with handfuls of miniature marshmallows. We’ve had some of our best sad times with cocoa.

“I stopped and got macaroons today, too,” Cassie says as she nods toward the top of the refrigerator. Sure enough, there is a pink bakery box with a black sticker on it that means it comes from our favorite Jewish delicatessen. They make the best macaroons, moist and chewy. Perfect cocoa food.

I am reaching up into the cupboard to get a couple of small plates to go with the mugs when there is a knock at our door.

Cassie, who is opening a packet of cocoa mix, stops in midtear. She looks at me. Neither one of us knows anyone who would be dropping by for a visit, especially not at this time on a Tuesday night.

We don’t say anything in the hopes that whoever is knocking will go away if we don’t answer. It doesn’t work. The first knock is followed by a second knock. The second knock has a little bit of a desperate sound to it.

It’s good to know Mrs. Snyder is probably still up and looking out her peephole about now. Cassie’s peephole is so high that neither one of us can see out of it unless we pull a stool over to stand on. If we do that, we’ll make so much noise that the knocker will know we’re here. When the peepholes were put in the doors, a tall basketball player lived in this unit. Cassie asked the landlord for a new peephole, but he said if she wanted a different one, she’d have to put one in herself.

“Who’s there?” Cassie finally says, while stepping over to pick up the shovel she has leaning against the counter. Mrs. Snyder is right, the shovel is mostly plastic. It would be like defending yourself with a toy broom.

“Is that you, Cassie?” a man’s voice answers on the other side. The man is obviously trying to keep his voice low so it is hard to hear him. I wonder if he has a mask over his face.

“Don’t answer. He could have gotten your name from your mail,” I whisper to Cassie when she looks as if she’s going to step forward and open the door. The mailboxes
are at the front of the building and they are locked, but you never know who can pick a lock these days.

“Julie, let me in,” the man’s voice isn’t so soft anymore. “I can hear you two in there talking.”

The man’s voice is sounding very familiar to both of us.

Cassie goes to the door and opens it. “Jerry?”

There stands my cousin Jerry, looking rumpled and red-eyed. With his dark hair a little longer than usual and his smile a little more forced than I remember, he is over six feet tall and more muscular than I remember. I guess I will always picture him as a gangly boy, but it is obvious that he has developed muscles that were not as evident in his tuxedo as they are now in the brown T-shirt he’s wearing. He must have started going to a gym recently. No wonder Mrs. Snyder said he was a mountain of a man.

“I thought Aunt Inga said you ran away from home.” I cross my arms so he knows I mean business. “You have everyone worried.”

“I didn’t run away. I left a note saying I was leaving for a few days,” Jerry says as he stands in the hallway with a duffel bag over one shoulder. “I don’t know why people in our family can’t just leave well enough alone.”

Those thoughts sound too close to my own for comfort. What kind of a world would it be if Jerry and I agreed?

“But you’ve never left before,” I say just to give myself a minute or two to get used to seeing Jerry in a new light. “I’m sure your mother is worried.”

Jerry and his four brothers are the sons of my aunt Gladys. None of the boys live in her house anymore,
but they all have small apartments around Blythe. Jerry has lived in a small apartment behind the garage where he works ever since he moved out of Aunt Gladys’s house five or six years ago. Jerry is in the middle of the brother lineup, with two brothers older and two younger.

Jerry sighs. “I don’t know what the big deal is. So I want to spend a few days someplace other than Blythe. People are entitled to see the world a little.”

“I can understand that, but what are you doing
here?
” I can’t help but ask. It hasn’t escaped my notice that Jerry hasn’t looked me in the eye once since Cassie opened the door. I have a feeling something more is going on here than that Jerry has decided to broaden his travel horizons. He hasn’t insulted me once while he’s been standing there and that isn’t like Jerry.

“I don’t know anybody else who doesn’t live in Blythe,” Jerry says with a shrug that moves the duffel bag and the brown T-shirt beneath it. “Okay? I’m desperate.”

“Everyone thought you ran off to be with the wedding planner,” I say.

Bingo. Jerry’s face flushes and he looks me in the eye for the first time. “People need to mind their own business. She seemed very nice when I fixed her car that day it was stalled in Aunt Ruth’s driveway.”

“Did you do something to her car so you could meet her?” I ask.

“Of course not.” Jerry is indignant. “I could have just gone inside Aunt Ruth’s place for a glass of water if I was that desperate to meet Mona. Besides, I’d never mess with her car.” Jerry’s eyes look a little
glazed. “Man, you should see that car. It’s a 1966 Thunderbird convertible in a light baby blue—completely restored right down to the hubcaps. Mona had a little problem with the starter, but I charged up the battery for her and that got her going. That’s all.”

I’m beginning to think maybe Jerry is smitten with the car and not with Mona.

“Someone takes really good care of that car because of the shine on it,” Jerry says. “All the chrome is buffed out. You can tell when someone is really into their car—and I thought a good-looking woman like that and her mechanic, well, who knows what could happen.”

“Jerry, she’s a criminal,” I say as my heart softens toward him a little. Jerry teased me all the time when we were kids, but he does sound a little pathetic now. Imagine weaving fantasies about a criminal. Even I haven’t done that.

“But she needs a new part. Parts for those old cars aren’t easy to find. And they’re expensive. When I told her what the problem was with her car, she told me she couldn’t afford to buy a new starter—so I offered to have one of my buddies look in the junkyard to see if he could find one for free. He got it to me yesterday,” Jerry says.

Then he looks at me as if he’s making an important point. “Now, how do you figure a woman who can’t afford a hundred-dollar part for her car is a criminal?”

“Please, the facts speak for themselves,” I say. “Besides, she can probably afford the part now that she has Aunt Ruth’s nineteen thousand dollars.”

Jerry doesn’t respond to me and we all just stand there.

“And she probably had a hundred dollars before,”
I add. “She just didn’t figure there was any reason to spend it when some guy would probably come by and get a starter for her for free.”

There’s some more silence.

Finally, Jerry clears this throat. “Look, I just need a place to stay for a few days while I figure things out. I can’t go back to Blythe right now and I’m hoping I can stay here. I can’t pay much, but I’ll pay what I can and I’ll do chores.”

Cassie looks at me and I nod my okay. I guess family ties do mean something. Still, I’m going to keep my eye on him.

“I could use some help with my plants,” Cassie says as she gestures for Jerry to come inside. “If I had someone to help me lift, I could bring some of the bigger plants home.”

“I have my pickup truck out back in your parking lot,” Jerry says. “I was here and left for a bit and then came back so I parked it.”

“In one of the spaces marked Visitor?” Cassie asks.

Jerry nods.

“That’s good then,” Cassie says as she steps around Jerry and walks across the hall to Mrs. Synder’s door.

Before Cassie even gets a chance to knock, Mrs. Snyder answers the door with a towel around her head and her robe on.

“It’s all right. He’s Julie’s cousin,” Cassie says.

“Good,” Mrs. Snyder says as she squints up at Jerry. “You need a man around.”

“He’s not staying for long,” I step out in the hall and say just so Mrs. Snyder doesn’t give up her peephole defense. “Just a few days.”

“A week,” Jerry agrees. “Ten days max.”

I wait for Mrs. Snyder to close her door and then I look Jerry square in the eyes. “You’re just trying to avoid all the wedding stuff, aren’t you?”