Love in the Present Tense (10 page)

He walked over to the couch and stuck his hand out to me and I shook it. Then Leonard stuck his hand out to Cahill and Cahill shook that, too. Then he let himself out.

Leonard said, “Are you guys friends?”

I said, “Yeah. We are.”

“Even when you yell at each other?”

“That's the best way,” I said. “If you can yell at each other and still be friends then you know that's a real friend.”

“Oh,” Leonard said. “I didn't know that. I don't have friends. Except my mom.”

“How can you say that, Leonard? You've got me. And Cahill, and Hannah and Graff. And Barb. And Zonker.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yuh. That's right. I got a lot of friends now. Don't I, Mitch?”

“You got 'em coming out of your ears,” I said.

The following morning I knocked on Mrs. Morales's door.

“Who is that?” she said through the peephole.

“Mitch Devereaux. Your next-door neighbor? I wanted to ask you about Pearl.”

“I think she lied to me about her name,” Mrs. Morales said. “I think she was in trouble. She got arrested. Driving my car. I didn't know she didn't have a license. They called me, asked if she had my permission to use the car. Pearl Somebody, they gave me her name, but the last name was not the same as she told me. I forget what they said. I backed her up. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did. She was a nice girl. Even if she was in trouble. She kept this place so clean. I wish she would come back. Already it's beginning to go to seed.”

We were standing in the upstairs room she rented to Pearl and Leonard.

“I'm sure she'll come back,” I said. “I just want to get some of Leonard's things.”

“I hope so. My dishes are stacking up. You could eat out of that sink when Pearl was here.” She fretted her way down the stairs and disappeared.

I made my way around. It was a tiny unit that I think had been two bedrooms once, now illegally converted to a studio with kitchenette. Spotless, like she said. The bathroom was only a half. She must've bathed Leonard in the sink. And herself? I didn't want to know. It was none of my business.

I still fully believed she would be back. At least I think I did. So I didn't want to snoop. But then I thought about what Leonard said. How they were going to move someplace new. A whole new state. Orrington, I think he called it. I got a sudden all-over chill. Maybe Pearl just moved on without him. But she wouldn't do that. Would she? She adored that kid. Then again, what did I really know about her?

I gathered up two pairs of pajamas with feet, three shirts, some tiny underwear and socks, a stuffed giraffe from the one small bed.

I opened the closet. I just had to see.

Hanging on a few of the bare, mostly abandoned metal hangers were two dresses, a faded blouse, and a pair of jeans. And it was impossible to guess if this was all Pearl had left behind, or if this was simply all she'd ever had.

LEONARD,
age
5:
the cuss jar

I remember I was at the kitchen window talking to a bird.

I was supposed to be eating my breakfast, but I took my toast to the open window, and crumbled up little bits of it and set them on the windowsill. This little sparrow was diving down to share my breakfast with me. If I just stepped back from the crumbs and very quietly said, “Come on, Pearl, it's okay, Pearl,” the little bird would come.

I never used to call my mother by her name. I always called her Mom or Mama, like any other kid. But after she left I started calling her Pearl, and I don't even know why. But the name Pearl is special. It sounds like a treasure, like a gem. Something you're all delighted and surprised to find, every time. Like when Mitch took me to the beach and the sun was going down, and the waves hit the rocks and threw splashes of ocean up into the air, right in front of the sun, and it looked like somebody—God maybe—took a big handful of diamonds and threw them up in the air, just to watch them sparkle. Except actually, that happened later, after I got my better glasses. But anyway. Like that.

And, by the way, I think that was Pearl, too.

Mitch came into the kitchen and asked what I was doing and I said I was talking to a bird.

“Good conversation so far?” he asked.

And I said, “Yuh.”

Just then Graff yelled, “Shit!” in the other room, and Mitch and I said it together at exactly the same time.

We said, “Cuss jar.”

Everything was quiet for a minute, and then we could see him through the kitchen doorway, standing at the fish-bowl, digging in his pocket. “Damn it,” he said. “This is getting expensive.”

Then everybody laughed at once except Graff and he had to put in two dollars. We made a lot of money off Graff. Every day. Everybody else got smart pretty fast and held on to most of their money.

When I looked up, the little sparrow had flown away. But that was okay. Pearl came to me all the time in all kinds of ways, all kinds of different things. Candle flames and rain and little birds. But when it stopped raining, or Mitch blew the candle out, or the bird flew away, I never felt that she was gone.

It was such a great thing. It just filled me up.

Mitch said there was a lady coming to talk to me that afternoon, to make sure I was okay.

What lady? I wanted to know, and why would she think I wasn't okay?

He said that any time a little boy is away from his mother there are these people who work with the government who come check on that little boy to make sure he's doing okay. He said it was up to this lady whether I stayed here or not, so if I was happy here, which he figured I was, I should tell her so.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll tell her. I'll tell her I got friends coming out of my ears.”

He said later, after she was gone, if I wanted, we could cash out the cuss jar and go do something fun. Whatever I wanted.

I could always use that money for anything I wanted. Toys or games, Mitch said. It was like an apology to me for bad language. I usually didn't buy toys. I liked to use it to take Mitch places, like out for lunch or an ice cream or to the movies. I didn't think Mitch was really all that happy, and I wanted him to have more fun.

“How did she know I was even here?” I wanted to know. I never talked to the government myself, and it was hard to picture Mitch having a conversation with it, either.

He said Mrs. Morales had talked to the police and asked them to look for Pearl.

“Oh,” I said. “I don't think they'll find her.”

Mitch seemed real interested and kind of worried that I said that. I had no idea why he was making such a big deal about it. He kept asking me why I would say that. Did I know something he didn't?

I wasn't sure how to answer that question. It seemed like a complicated question. I told him I might know some things he didn't, but I didn't really know all of what he knew, so it was hard to say for sure.

Then he spelled it out a little better and asked if Pearl had told me where she was going before she left, and I said, no, she hadn't said anything.

“Well,” he said, “then why do you think the police won't find her?”

I said, “I just don't think they'll look in the right places.”

I didn't know all that much about police, but I knew a little. I knew enough. When was the last time you saw them look for somebody in a raindrop or a candle flame or a splashy wave or a little sparrow?

MITCH,
age
25:
love my wife

Harold Stoller's house consisted of thirty-five rooms on four acres. It sat smugly on a hill overlooking the ocean on one side, the lights of the town on the other. The guy had made a killing in my chosen field, computer software, only sooner, and better, and it showed. A valet parked my ratty, rusting Volvo, and I made my way to the door in my only good suit, and the silk tie Barb had given me as a gift when I complained I didn't even own one to wear for the occasion. And with Leonard draped snoring over my shoulder. I'd dressed him in his newest, cleanest pajamas and wrapped him in a decent-looking blanket. Under the circumstances, what else could I do?

I knocked, and a maid in a black-and-white uniform opened the door. I was thinking, this place is so bizarrely surrealistic. Nobody really lives like this, right? Or, if so, why?

“Mitchell Devereaux,” I said.

“Yes, come in.”

I was standing in the foyer, wondering what to do next, when I saw her. Wondering whether to ask the maid what to do with the kid. Wondering whether it would be decent and proper to slip the maid a few bucks to find him an inconspicuous place to sleep. I couldn't just walk into the mayor's dinner party with Leonard on my shoulder. Could I? But what if he woke up in this strange place and got scared? Then Barb strode out of the kitchen and stood at the end of the long hall, looking at me. Her hair was done in a rather fetching, not-too-conservative style, and she was wearing a snug, fitted dress that looked almost like a long suit jacket. And she was wearing those legs. She started down the hall in my direction, and the maid disappeared, and I wondered if, when she got to me, I'd still be able to put ten intelligible words together into a sentence.

She took the two steps up to the foyer, where I stood frozen. Talk, I thought. You have to.

“I'm really sorry about this. Hannah was supposed to babysit but something came up. She called me barely half an hour before I was supposed to leave. I couldn't get anybody else on that kind of notice. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just miss this. I didn't know what else to do.”

Talk, I thought. Don't babble. There's a difference.

She put her hand on my sleeve. “No worries,” she said. “We'll fix it. Come with me.”

I followed her up a carpeted staircase and along an upstairs hallway. She rapped quietly on a closed door, and we waited there for something to happen. I thought I could smell her shampoo from where I was standing and I wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but I didn't.

A heavy, middle-aged Hispanic woman opened the door. Over her shoulder I saw that her TV was on. She'd been watching something that looked like a soap opera on a Spanish-speaking station.

“Marta,” Barb said.
“Quiero que el niño duerme en tu cuarto. Vamos a pagar extra, no te preocupes. Si tienes problema, dime.”

“Sí,”
Marta said. “
Sí,
Missis, okay.”

Marta accepted the limp parcel off my shoulder and laid him out on a daybed, tucking the blanket around him and running the backs of her fingers over his cheek.

“Gracias,”
Barb said.

“
Por nada,
Missis. Is okay.”

Then we were standing out in the hall together, completely alone. She looked me up and down as though she'd never really seen me in the light.

“God, look at you. You're so handsome. I've never seen you in a suit before.”

I said, “It doesn't happen every day.”

“Nice tie.”

“
I
like it.”

She gave me a smile that made me want to pull her off into the upstairs bathroom and get her out of that great dress. Or just work around it, I didn't care. She reached out and removed the handkerchief from my breast pocket and brushed at the shoulder of my jacket with it.

“You had a little bit of drool,” she said. “It's okay now.” She refolded the handkerchief and tucked it back in my pocket.

“I'm sorry about this.” I gestured with my head in the direction of Marta's quarters.

“It's taken care of. Forget it. Slip Marta a twenty before you go.”

I made a mental note to slip her two twenties.

We turned and walked down the hall together. Back to the land of the guests. And Harry. It came back down on me like an anvil on a cartoon mouse. I felt like I was walking to the gallows for my own beheading.

On our way down the stairs I felt her hand run down my sleeve and touch my hand. She gave it a quick squeeze.

“Relax, Mitchell. It's going to be fine.”

Then we were downstairs and it was too late for any of that. No more room for the slightest touch or the most subtle aside.

It was time to be received by the mayor.

“There he is,” Harry said. Bellowed would be more like it. “Come here, you.”

He was standing out on the deck on the coastal side with three other people, all of whom were strangers to me. The sun set behind a sharp line of fogbank just under his left armpit as he held his arms outstretched. He had a drink in one hand, which, come to think, might be the only way I'd ever seen him. I thought he wanted to shake my hand, but he threw his arms around me and gave me this great smothering bear hug, which startled and embarrassed the hell out of me. I could feel a little of his drink slosh onto the back of my jacket.

Then he held me at arm's length and looked me over. “You look great,” he said. “You look like a young man on his way up. Which is exactly what you are.”

Harry was a fleshy, beefy man of fifty-something, with silver hair and leathery skin and a made-to-order political persona. When he smiled I could just see that face on an election poster. I wondered how much he had spent on those teeth. Nobody is born with anything that perfect. I pictured his dentist driving an imported luxury car.

“Let me introduce you around,” he said. “This is Martin Broad, my campaign manager. And a damn good one he is, too. And you've met Bruce Stagner.”

“Of course,” I said. “Mr. Stagner. Of course.” I had no memory of ever having met the man.

“And this,” Harry said with a great flourish, “is my daughter, Karen.” He reached out for her and swept her around by her elbow to face me.

“Your daughter,” I said.

My face felt flushed and I prayed it wasn't obvious. In front of me stood this stunning woman who looked maybe a year or two younger than me, with butt-length hair, a tight, off-the-shoulder dress, and cleavage that just wouldn't quit. I knew their daughters were grown and out of the house, but I'd been seriously wishing for a pouty college freshman.

Harry said, “Come on, gentlemen. Let's give the young people a chance to talk.” I hoped like hell he didn't mean that the way I knew damn well he did.

“Well,” Karen said. She looked down into her cocktail glass, absently twirling an ice cube with one long, red fingernail. “The famous Mitchell.”

“Why am I famous?”

“Mom and Dad think very highly of you. Dad says you're a talented young man. And he told me you were handsome, too. He didn't exaggerate. Hard to imagine somebody hasn't already snapped you up.”

If I had, at that moment, fallen through the redwood decking to my death, it would have come as a welcome alternative.

I didn't, though. I'm sorry to say I didn't.

Over dinner Harry dropped the news. Clinked his knife against his water glass until all eyes turned to him.

Then he said, “I suppose you're wondering why I called you all here.”

Barb was seated right across the table from me, and I shot her a look, which I had been trying to avoid doing.

Then he announced his intention to make a run for Congress. “It's a long shot,” he said. “I'm a one-term mayor, and not of the biggest city in California. But it needs to be done. There's been a three-term Republican stranglehold on that seat. Some good, middle-of-the-road Democrat has to come along and break it. Maybe I'm the guy who can do it and maybe I'm not. But I've got great people on my team, and that's what counts. That's where all you competent folks come in.”

He went on a good bit longer. Everyone stared with rapt attention, and so did I, but I wasn't listening. I was thinking, if he wins they'll move to Washington. Then I thought, no. If he wins he'll spend eighty percent of his time in Washington and she'll still be here. I wondered how long it would take me to find out.

I wondered if Leonard was sleeping peacefully.

I felt a foot bump against mine, a small woman's foot. I thought it was Barb, connecting with me under the table. But just at that moment Barb half-stood to move a floral arrangement, because it obstructed a guest's view of the mayor as he spoke. I knew her feet had to be underneath her.

As she leaned forward, the vee of her dress lapels spread slightly and I found myself looking down her dress. Move your eyes, I thought, but I couldn't. I couldn't look away. My body reacted to the sight of hers, and I couldn't convince it that this was not the moment. It wouldn't listen to reason.

Karen was, of course, seated next to me. So my search for the owner of the foot needed go no further.

The rest of the guests were long gone. I ached to be but had not succeeded in making my break. Instead I had been railroaded into the parlor for a private game of pool. I puffed lightly on the illegal Cuban cigar that my host had insisted I smoke. He'd also brought me a brandy from the wet bar in the corner of the parlor, and it sat on the rail of the pool table, mostly untouched. I was driving for two that night. But I sipped at it occasionally for his benefit.

“This is a real opportunity for you if you use it well,” he said. “There'll be expansion involved. You'll need new hardware, new employees. You'll work closely with Marty Broad, and also with Barbara. She'll be coordinating. We're talking Web promotion, direct mailing, publications, electronic communications, the whole nine yards. Everything computer related goes to you.”

He also said some other things I missed while I was thinking, how did I ever get into all this? I never intended to do software or Web design or have my own business. I wanted to teach grade school. It seemed weird to remember that, like it was decades ago. But really that dream was just a few years stale. I'd come to this town for college. Got my teaching degree and then got distracted by money. You don't exactly get rich teaching grade school. But I don't think money mattered at the time. And I couldn't remember when it started being about the money. Why it suddenly mattered.

But Harry was still talking, and I was missing it. Of course, drunk as he was, he was probably missing most of it, too.

“There'll be some late nights involved. You can't handle it all, delegate. But it's still your baby. Barbara, she knows how I want things run, and she can be places I can't. But I know you two can work together. She thinks highly of you. You know that, right?”