Lemon Reef (18 page)

“I don't know.” I braced myself for one of her digs.

“Sad.” Norma said. I stood still, waiting for some expression of sarcasm to follow this unequivocally sympathetic remark. But all she said was, “I've often thought about Del.”

“It is sad.” I watched the water slowly forming into a drip off a hanging lemon's inverted pinnacle; it looked like a teardrop. It would be a bitter teardrop, I thought.

“Bitter,” Norma exclaimed.

“What?” I was starting to feel a little strange, wondered momentarily if I had said that thought out loud.

“Bitter like a lemon is bitter—that was her life. You think I don't know that, but I do. I remember picking you up from that house when you were in tears. I remember when she had bruises and you rode your bike to her house in the morning to help her try to cover them up so she could go to school. We never told you this, but your father and I talked about adopting her.”

I believed she'd had that impulse. I also believed it was one of many competing and conflicting impulses, and it lost big to the impulse to go to DEFCON 1 and batten down the hatches because her child was in a same-sex relationship.

“Good thing you didn't. Then we would have been violating two taboos.”

She ignored me. “Do you have a ride to the funeral? You can use my car if you want to.”

“I think Gail is gonna take me.”

“Oy! You're going in that lemon?” She heard herself this time and paused. “I don't know why I keep talking about lemons.”

I laughed in a way intended to comfort her. I decided to spare Norma from having to know she was reading my mind impressionistically. Maybe she was responding unconsciously to my acerbic tone, or the shortness of my replies. According to a psychologist friend of mine, people who are tuned in to one another—Freud referred to a radio frequency signal and receiver in describing this—can communicate thoughts and feelings without speaking. The hallmark of this idea, my friend said, is the human infant communicating to its parent all kinds of needs and experiences in ways other than through words. A critical aspect of good parenting, then, is one's ability to interpret accurately and respond sufficiently to nonverbal signals.

This channeling of lemon imagery was one of many examples of Norma's highly developed sensitivity in this regard. What confused me most about my mother was how a person capable of this kind of emotional resonance could simultaneously be so harsh. And how I could feel so close to the same person by whom I felt so consistently and brutally rejected.

Norma confused me, and I had long ago stopped believing in what I was feeling in relation to her in any given moment as the whole truth of us. I believed her when she said she thought about adopting Del, and I believed her when she said it didn't matter if Del was dead because “she was trash anyway.” I believed her when she sent my friends to look out for me with Del's family, and I believed her when she made it clear that she would rather I was dead than gay. I believed her when she said she was sorry for throwing away my short stories, and I believed her when she denied throwing away my short stories.

It was all true and it was none of it quite true and it didn't matter anyway. What one could hope for with Norma was a moment—such as the one I was having with her now on the phone. So I preserved it by not calling attention to it, carefully keeping the conversation simple in a way calculated to prevent her from feeling revealed, and let myself feel close to her for as long as it would last.

My phone call with Norma was interrupted by my cell phone ringing. When I answered, a woman's voice said, “This is Dirk Beasley returning your call.”

“Thanks.” Her voice surprised me. Dirk seemed like a man's name, so I had assumed the medical examiner was a man. “You're the medical examiner working on the Adeline Soto case?”

“That's correct. Who are you?” Beasley's voice was deep, slightly raspy, with an attenuated Southern drawl.

“I'm a friend of Del's—of Adeline's, I mean. We want to meet with you before you release her body.”

“Why?”

“I'd rather not discuss it on the phone. Can we come to your office?”

“I have a very busy schedule today.” She paused, and then she said, “What's your question?”

Again, I said, “I'd rather discuss it with you in person.” I had worked with dozens of forensic experts over the years. I knew if there was something more to Del's death, my relationship with this person mattered. I wanted to meet her.

Her reply was prickly. “You know, I have such a busy schedule. I can't do it today.”

The firmness in Beasley's tone made me rethink my approach. I wasn't going to be able to talk her into an in-person meeting, and persisting was only going to irritate her. So I thanked her for returning my call and hung up. After I did, I felt frustrated, and I—well, I'm not good at taking no for an answer. I'm just not. I was going to see her anyway, I decided, as I realized Gail had asked me a question and was waiting for a response.

“What?”

Gail was sitting at her dining room table, coffee mug in hand, newspaper open and spread. “Do you think Bush could actually win?”

“Yes.” I went back to the Beasley problem. Even if I could convince her to talk to me, then what? What did I want from her? Either they had the evidence to implicate him or they didn't.

“But why would we go to war with Iraq?”

“To oust Hussein. Can I borrow your car? I wanna go talk to the medical examiner.”

*

Beasley was far more likely to meet with me if I was with a family member, so I decided to go by Pascale's and get Nicole. On my way there, I stopped at the Kinko's—the one we had been to the night before—to pick up the fax that had arrived for me.

There was a different clerk behind the counter, a young Cuban guy wearing a pro-Castro T-shirt, who spoke halting English.

“Can I help you?”

“I think there's a fax for me.”

He went off to find it.

As I waited, I noticed the sheer size of this space. Kinko's was a strange new creature emerging around the planet like the invasion of baobabs in the Little Prince's abandoned world, its huge roots careening through the center, threatening to crack open the earth. Copy machines cranked out pages in the background, emphasizing with each complete rotation the Clintonian shine placed on global production and efficiency. There was a second level to the store, dedicated to individual computers I assumed were available for people to rent. It was eight thirty in the morning, and there were already several computer stations occupied. One man, shoulders rounded over, head jutting, coffee in hand, met eyes only with his screen.

“Here you go.”

The fax cover sheet said my name, phone number, and indicated there were ten pages altogether. Sender: UNKNOWN. Included in the fax was the criminal history for a Larry Keller. The crimes had been committed in the state of Texas. The record had been sealed when this Larry Keller turned eighteen. Keller was Talon's last name. The birth date on the record was 1968, making Larry Keller thirty-one, which seemed about the age I assumed Talon to be. If Larry was the name given to Talon at his birth, then I was holding in my hand Talon Keller's juvenile criminal record.

I searched the cover sheet for some clue as to who had sent the fax to me—a return phone number, some fax machine identification information. There was nothing. I began to scan the pages. He had a conviction for car theft at age thirteen. There were some drug-related crimes between ages fourteen and sixteen. There was also a sexual offense committed against a twelve-year-old girl, involving oral copulation, when he was fifteen, which apparently had been reduced to misdemeanor assault. Finally, there was a felony conviction—age sixteen—for animal cruelty. The last page of the fax was a copy of the district attorney's Complaint:

“Larry Keller (‘Keller')—age sixteen—illegally entered the local SPCA at night, broke both of the back legs of six puppies, and then videotaped them as they writhed around on the floor in agony.” According to the district attorney's account, while the increasingly crazed mother tried to gather and comfort her crying four-week-old pups, Keller could be heard laughing on the recording. I read the Complaint more than once, unable at first to believe it. I was stunned, first by the cruelty of the act I'd just read about and then by its implications for Del and Khila. I took a few breaths, reminded myself not to jump to conclusions. Doing even this horrific a thing at sixteen certainly didn't mean Talon had murdered Del now. But, honestly, this information made the question of whether Talon had killed Del inconsequential to me, compared with what I was imagining it must have been like for her living day in and day out with someone who was capable of doing such a thing.

“How do we find out who sent this?” I asked the clerk.

There were very few people who had access to a juvenile record. My first thought was a family member of Talon's who was worried about Khila had sent it, and if so, I wanted to know who.

The clerk nodded and began looking at the cover sheet with me. After a moment he said, “I'll be right back.” He returned shaking his head. In a heavy Spanish accent he said, “There's no fax machine to link it to. It was sent by the Internet, but without an identifiable IP. I'm not sure how they did it.”

It had to be Doug. I'd faxed him the night before, so he had the number to this Kinko's store. Also, he had access to confidential information and the means and know-how to send it in a way that would be impossible to trace. And he wouldn't want it to be traceable, because it was illegal for law enforcement to access criminal information for personal matters. So if he was going to get such information to me, this is how he would do it. Or, I thought, maybe Bea had sent it. She was also in a position to deliver such information anonymously. Regardless of who'd sent it, if it was true, the thought of Khila going off to Texas alone with Talon made me queasier than ever. In fact, I didn't want her left alone with him at all.

As I pulled up in front of Pascale's house, the mostly gray sky threatened more rain, but there were also some breakthrough rays. Whereas the night before, it had seemed depressed and broken-down, in the morning light, Pascale's house, with its neatly clipped bushes and freshly mowed lawn, appeared peaceful, orderly, inviting.

I remembered watching with Nicole and Ida from the living room, as Del—fifteen years old—mowed that lawn. It was her least favorite chore. She was dirty and sweaty and swearing as she pushed the mower along in her halter top and shorts, her lopsided ponytail swinging dramatically with each oppositional head shake. Pascale was taskmastering from a chair in the shade on the porch. Beer in hand, she pointed out the places on the lawn Del had missed, unconcerned with Del's indignation.

I knocked once, then again. When nobody answered, I tried the door, remembering the Sotos never locked it. With people coming in and out at all hours of the night, or falling asleep in front of the television and not getting around to it, the usual closing up rituals that many families practiced weren't really on their radar. True to form, the door did open, and I entered. From the television, which I assumed had been on all night, emanated the voice of a talking head, pontificating about the impact of the Lewinsky scandal on Gore's campaign chances. Sunlight came in through the window over the television and through a crack in the drawn curtains.

Then I saw Pascale. She lifted her head from where she was sleeping on the couch.

“Hi,” I said. It was still hard to believe this was Del's house, and I was just walking in. I felt a rush of pleasure and reassurance—relief—that comes from having fixed something broken. Except Del was dead. That thought vanquished any sense of having repaired this rift, leaving me then with only missed opportunity and bottomless regret.

Pascale pulled herself up on one elbow and stared at me for a few moments with a confused look on her face, as if she didn't recognize me. The television remote appeared in her hand from under the blanket, and she pointed and clicked. The light emanating from the television vanished, like a genie disappearing into her bottle, and then the room was silent. Open beer cans lined the coffee table within her arm's reach. I was thinking she'd had a lot to drink and didn't remember we'd seen each other the night before. I was about to remind her when I saw her face wrinkle and then tears start to slip from her eyes.

She wrestled herself to sitting, wiped at the tears, and then reached immediately for a cigarette. I watched her light it with a shaky hand. After drawing on it, she said, “When I woke up and saw you coming in, I thought you must be looking for Del.” Her eyes were on a framed photo of Del—her high school photo—sitting on an end table beside the couch. Pascale pushed her skinny body back into the couch and pulled the blanket up around her waist. “Then I remembered.”

When I realized what she was saying, I had to blink back my own tears. I sat down beside her, glad to be near her.

“For just a second,” she said, “you were kids again.”

“I'm really sorry about Del.”

She used the blanket to clean her glasses and then put them on. “She was a good girl. She just got with a bad situation.”

“I believe that,” I said.

I wondered if I should tell Pascale what I had just read about Talon. I wanted to know if Del had known about this history, or if it was something Talon had kept a secret. Clearly he had moved out of Texas as soon as he could and changed his name.

“You want some eggs? I could make you some eggs.” I shook my head. “You got my message about the medical examiner?”

I nodded and again noticed the cans of beer. “I want to ask you a question.”

Pascale drew from her cigarette.

Gently, I asked, “Are you up for raising Khila now? Can you do it?”