Intrusion: A Novel (10 page)

She leaned back in her chair, sighing, then said, “Remember, years ago when we wanted another baby, a sibling for Chris, and I didn’t get pregnant again and the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong and we were going to have further tests done? Both of us. Why didn’t we? Ever? It seems like we just let it go.”

“Stop it, Kat,” Scott said softly, leaning across the table to take her hand. “Please. It’s too late, now. It doesn’t help to think like that. Stop it, please.”

She nodded, sipped her wine.

“Sorry,” she said.

TEN

O
n the morning of the day that would have been Chris’s eighteenth birthday, Kat woke before dawn. Scott rolled over onto his back, murmured something, then drifted back to sleep.
Chris’s birthday.
Her mind raced back through years of candles and cakes to the moment when they placed the baby in her arms for the first time: a little angry, red-faced boy. She had gazed down in wonderment, swamped by an avalanche of feelings that included both tenderness and terror. Scott was immediately entranced by the infant.

“He’s amazing,” Scott said. “He’s got way more character than the other babies. They look so bland. They all look the same.”

They agreed that their baby had perfect features, but he was also, they decided, clearly smart and
interesting
. They were charmed by his many facial expressions: his frowns; his damp, smirky smiles; the little sucky movement he made with his mouth when he slept; and his wide, unrestrained yawns. He studied his parents with an intense, thoughtful look, as if considering them as possibilities.

“He was hoping for movie stars,” Kat said to Scott.

“Or Nobel Prize winners.”

Scott leaned down to whisper to the infant.

“Hey there, son. You’ll be okay. We’ll be fine.”

And they had been fine, Kat thought now. They really had. Seventeen birthdays came after that day: with toy trucks and trains and parties with small, noisy friends, video games, Disneyland. Happy birthdays. And then this one.

Scott stirred. She snuggled against him.

“Don’t go to work, Scott,” she whispered.

He turned his head and studied her. Crease marks from the pillow lined one side of his face.

“I freed up the morning,” he said. “But I have to be there late afternoon for a client meeting. No way out of that.”

“That’s fine. Just the morning’s fine. I want to take flowers to Forest Lawn.”

It was already a hot day, the marine layer burning off slowly and the air oppressive.

“Like walking into a dog’s mouth,” Scott said as they left the house.

The morning commuter traffic was heavy on the drive to Forest Lawn; Scott cursed intermittently and turned the news radio on and then off again. It felt like a long drive to Kat, and despite the warmth of the day, she shivered as they arrived at the cemetery.

Scott turned to her. “You okay?”

She nodded, taking his arm as they walked up the steep slope of the long lawns. Kat placed her flowers on the gravestone, next to a florist’s bouquet and a tall sunflower in a glass bottle.

She studied the bouquet: an elegant selection of perfect white blooms—gardenias, freesias, orchids—professionally arranged in a curving crystal vase. Kat leaned down to look for a card. The sweet perfume of gardenias scented the air.

“These are classy,” she said. “Wonder who left these?”

“A teacher?”

Kat looked at them doubtfully.

“Bit expensive for a teacher.”

“Ben’s parents maybe. They look like the kind of flowers his mom might choose.”

“No clue. There’s no card.”

The message attached to the sunflower, however, was easily visible.

Love you, miss you—Chloe

“Who
is
this Chloe?” Kat asked Scott. “Don’t remember a Chloe.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. A girl from school? Vanessa’s friend?”

“She must care about him.”

“He used to chat to a bunch of girls after football games,” Scott said. “Vanessa and some of her friends. I know there was one girl he liked. I remember when I was giving his buddies a ride home, they were all kidding around in the back of the car, talking about it.”

“A girlfriend? Not Vanessa?”

“No, not Vanessa. She was always with that huge guy. The running back.”

“Teddy?”

“Yeah. Teddy. That’s him.”

“So this was a different girl? You should have told me!”

“You would have interrogated him,” Scott said.

“I would not!” Kat said, thought for a moment, and then added, “No, you’re right. I would.”

“I didn’t want them to know I was listening,” Scott said. “Used to make me laugh. You wouldn’t believe the things they’d say. Even years ago, when they were just, well, really little kids, they’d call each other these names: douche bag, dildo.”

“Dildo?” Kat said with a mix of shock and amusement. “I hope you said something.”

“Nah. Just between themselves? They were just kidding around. Playing the big man. I don’t think they had a clue what the words meant.”

“Even so.”

“I broke my invisible man cover and cautioned them once,” Scott said. “But that was—well, over something else.”

“What?”

“On a need-to-know basis,” Scott said, smiling. “You don’t need to know. It was the little skinny guy. Jake? He never said it again.”

He stopped, stared for a while at the gravestone.

“Damn,” he said.

Another stubby bunch of carnations lay on the ground. It had no note. Kat imagined these flowers were from Chris’s old friends; they were tied awkwardly with thick black ribbon and wrapped in smoky-black cellophane paper: the kind of packaging a group of boys might put together.

They must come occasionally,
Kat thought. Those friends who were with him the night of the accident. She noticed the cigarette butts around the stone. She could imagine the boys: slouching, uncomfortable, talking of their activities and parties and girls, smoking furiously, embarrassed.

Scott placed his arm around her shoulders, looked at the stone for a moment or two longer, letting out a long, sighing breath before he turned away.

“Do you want to look in the chapel?” he asked.

“If we can.”

But a service was in progress, a funeral mass, and the doors were closed. Kat could hear the choir singing
Agnus Dei
, and was transported back to the convent school. The incense and lavender scent of furniture polish that mingled with the gravy smells coming from the school cafeteria; the side chapel with the small altar of Mary, where the more devout girls—to Sarah Cherrington’s loud amusement—would say the rosary during their lunch break. Kat recalled Sarah, with much exaggeration, pretending to lift an imaginary hand grenade, remove the pin with her teeth, and then hurl it into the crowded chapel. Kat, shocked, had turned away and made a surreptitious sign of the cross. Just in case. She had believed in God then. For a time there, she had prayed fervently, confessed her sins, felt true repentance, and attended the endless Stations of the Cross that on a spring afternoon could feel as long as eternity. She had believed in sanctity once, and in sanctuary.

Kat, listening to the choir in the small chapel in Forest Lawn, tried to remember when her religion ceased to matter to her. When did it fail to comfort? As a child she had prayed often, had loved benediction, communion. As an adolescent, the formal sung mass in the old chapel at the convent had always moved her. But at some time during her teens, during those years at St. Theresa’s Convent School, she had lost her faith. For the first time, Kat was aware of the real meaning of this expression:
to lose one’s faith
. Something gone, possibly forever, misplaced, not to be found again.
Lost.
Kat thought,
It’s a shame that religion can no longer console us.
Scott had always claimed an agnostic view of the world, but he was not raised Catholic. To be able to find solace in the church, to find meaning now, surely that would help them both?

“Do you wish you believed in God, Scott?” she asked as they walked to the car.

He slowed his step, thinking.

“I guess it might help right now,” he said. “Maybe. If I really believed there was life afterwards. But—” He shook his head. “I imagine that grief is painful for anyone. Whether they have a god or not.”

They drove toward the exit of Forest Lawn, moving slowly down the wide access road. A number of funerals were in progress.
How did we get through that day?
Kat wondered.
How?
She had little memory of the graveside service. She remembered sitting in the limousine with her sister, waiting for Scott to thank the priest, and she retained snapshots in her mind of people standing around on the grass as she stared through the tinted glass of the car, thinking in a blank, disconnected way,
Oh, look who is here, how nice of them to come. How nice of them to come.

The gathering of people at the house afterward was now just a blur. Maggie and Brooke had set out food, made fresh drinks, moved busily in and out of the kitchen. Kat, feeling uncomfortably like a monarch, was urged to sit in the armchair, with Scott standing beside her, as Chris’s teachers, parents of his friends, her own work colleagues, and Scott’s partners and associates came forward, murmuring, to offer condolences. After two hours of this, when Kat desperately wanted everyone to leave, Brooke and Maggie, by the simple act of collecting glasses and removing plates, persuaded people to the door and ushered them out. Brooke, who hugged people as easily as she breathed, warmly kissed the cheeks of total strangers as they departed.
We couldn’t have managed without her on that day,
Kat thought as they drove out of Forest Lawn.
Nor without Maggie.

Now, as they reached the exit of the memorial park, she glanced out the window. “Where are we going?” she asked when Scott did not turn onto the freeway.

“North Hollywood,” he said.

“What?” asked Kat, astounded.

“The old building. We’ll pick up a meatball sub on the way. Have a picnic.”

Minutes later, they were at the fast-food drive-through window they used to visit with Chris years ago. Scott ordered the sandwiches and Cokes and handed them to Kat, then drove along Ventura. Soon, he turned off the boulevard and parked the car outside their old apartment building on Chandler Avenue. Kat understood then: Scott was making a formal pilgrimage to celebrate Chris’s birthday. This had been their son’s first home. They had driven the newborn straight from UCLA Medical Center to this place. Scott had carried him into this building when Chris was just two days old.

“I don’t believe it,” said Kat. “It looks exactly the same.”

Kat climbed out of the car and Scott joined her. They stood for a minute, looking at the two-story stucco building. Kat remembered a wicker bassinet and endless laundry and friends for supper and laughter. They had been short of money. Scott, waiting for bar results and working as a clerk in a small law firm, had not earned much then. But they had been happy.

“It’s changed a bit,” said Scott. “New coat of paint. You want to go around the back? Look at the pool?”

“It will be locked.”

“Not necessarily. Somebody always used to leave it open, remember?”

Sure enough, when Scott tapped the metal door, it opened easily.

“See?” Scott said, stepping inside the pool area.

“This is crazy, Scott. It is absolutely nuts.”

“Who cares if it is?”

She followed him to a small table on the shady side of the pool. Scott handed her the meatball sandwich, opened the Cokes, gave her one, then leaned to clink his can against hers.

“To Chris,” he said.

Kat, biting her lip, trying hard not to cry, raised her can in a toast, then sipped the drink.

“To Chris,” she said.

They ate in silence, lost in separate memories. A woman resident in a pink-flowered housedress with her hair in tight rollers emerged from the building, stared, and then went back inside. Two young black men studied them for a moment or two before clattering noisily up the stairs to the second level. Kat thought that she and Scott, sitting quietly with their picnic, obviously did not seem threatening or out of place here. They must look like they belonged.

“We swam in this pool. Can you imagine?” said Scott at one point.

“It was cleaner then,” Kat said, then looked at him, eyes widening. “Wasn’t it?”

He shook his head.

“I’m not sure.”

After a while, Scott gathered up the sandwich wrappings and Coke cans and put them in an overflowing trashcan at the side of the pool. Then, he held out his hand to his wife.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

He drove east toward the freeway, passing the park where, every Saturday morning, Scott would take Chris, just a toddler then, to play on the swings and the slide or dig in the sandbox. Sometimes, Kat would join them, though more often she would prefer to stay at home, doing laundry and other housework instead. She hated parks with high slides, monkey bars, dangers. Scott had slowed the car, was looking out at the sandbox where a few toddlers played.

“Remember when we used to come here? On Saturdays? Chris loved that big slide. And the monkey bars.”

“I know. He was totally fearless. God, I hated to come here.”

Scott looked at her, surprised.

“You did?”

“Yes, I was always so scared he would fall. I remember, years later, when he and Ben were going off somewhere and I was nagging about something, Chris said to me, quite seriously, that I was overprotective. Like it was a character defect. A serious parental flaw. Like crack addiction.”