My Lost and Found Life (10 page)

“True,” I agreed. I have never believed in false modesty. “But what if I had to wait on one of the girls from school? It would be so awful to have Mara or someone like her order me around. Besides, do you really think that some store is going to hire an embezzler's daughter to run their register and count their cash?”

Nic was taken aback at that thought. “But how would they know?”

“Oh, come on, around here? If the store manager didn't know, one of the girls who worked there would, and she'd blab the whole thing. I've got to get a job in San Francisco.”

“In the City!” Nicole said, shocked.

“It's not deepest, darkest Africa,” I said impatiently. “It's only fifteen miles away. A city is the only place you can be anonymous.”

“Why do you want to be anonymous?” she asked.

“Because if my whole life has to change, I don't want all my former friends looking down their noses and feeling sorry for me.” I grimaced. “I can hear Mara now. ‘Oh, poor Ashley, she can't go to college and has to shop at Target now. It's so sad—do you want some of my old clothes, Ashley, the ones I'm giving to the Salvation Army?'”

Nicole giggled. “She wouldn't do that.”

“The hell she wouldn't,” I snapped back. “Anyway, I'm not
going to give her or anyone else the chance. I need to create a whole new Ashley. I'm going to make a new life and new friends.”

“What about me?” she said sadly.

“Oh, Nic, you'll always be my best friend,” I said, and hugged her. “I don't want to do all this, I have no choice. I'm thinking a waitress job in the city would be good—you make all those tips and get free food. That has to be better than trying to squeeze some pathetic fat woman into a dress two sizes too small.”

“Right,” said Nicole, her voice trailing off in obvious doubt.

I longed to move far, far away to some new place where no one knew me, but I couldn't. How would I know when my mother turned up, unless I stuck around?

• • •

First, I thumbed through the newspaper want ads looking for a place to live. The listings were slim in number and expensive. So, I booted up the computer for the first time in weeks and started searching the Web for San Francisco rentals. I was shocked at the prices, which ranged from high to unbelievable.

I didn't even bother to write down the info on anything above $700 a month—and even that was stretching it. It was amazing to me that a room in a three-bedroom flat in North Beach could cost $1,100 a month. At first I thought it was a mistake and that was the cost of the whole apartment, but no, it was $1,100
for each roommate
.

Most of the affordable rentals were out of the city in Oakland, the East Bay, or San Jose. Finally, I found three I might qualify for, so I called and made appointments to see the
apartments. The next evening I dressed very carefully—trying to look good but not too good in black jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a tan suede jacket—and drove into the City.

•
$525. Small room but nice, live with two others. Female preferred
.

This room was inside a smallish white frame house in Glen Park, a working-class district perched on the south side of Twin Peaks. The location was near a BART subway station, and the neighborhood looked safe enough.

I was invited in and given a form to fill out by two unfriendly girls in their twenties. One was a skinny blonde with a bad complexion, and the other—a brunette with greasy hair—was a size 16 at least. Right away I knew it would only work if they were unattached. Unattractive girls without boyfriends like you because they think you'll attract guys and they can have the leftovers. But unattractive girls with boyfriends hate you because they always think you're trying to steal their dorky dates.

I tried to be extra nice and it seemed to be working, but then a guy showed up—the boyfriend of the skeletally thin blonde. He couldn't keep his eyes off me and said I looked like a great prospect. I saw the look the two girls exchanged at that remark and figured it was all over. It was.

•
$575 room with liberal-minded couple
.

This one looked promising as it was in one of those grand old Victorian houses in the Haight-Ashbury district. From the
street the colorfully painted house looked charming, with flowering vines growing up one side of the building.

Once inside, I felt like I had stumbled through a time warp and landed in 1965. The place reeked of incense, and some sort of weird snake-charmer music was playing. I expected to see a Buddhist monk or the Dalai Lama walk out of the kitchen. The two liberal-minded people turned out to be a fortyish couple who said they would need to prepare my astrological chart and do a tarot reading. Barrel-chested Carl gravely asked me if I was a Gemini, because Geminis tend to be duplicitous. When I said I was a Scorpio, Carl's eyes lit up.

“Scorpios are very sensual and adventurous.” He beamed with satisfaction.

Rhonda, who had a wild mass of wiry brown hair, informed me that they were trained in tantric sex and were looking for a roommate open to exploration and growth.

I put down the tarot cards and fled.

•
$680 room in 3-bedroom amazing flat with view
.

This room was located in an apartment out in the avenues in the heart of the city's fog zone. But there was a splendid view of the Pacific Ocean, even if only from a tiny kitchen window.

The two girls who lived in this apartment looked normal, and the place was neatly furnished in a blend of IKEA meets Pottery Barn. Both girls said they worked in the financial district and asked me where I worked.

I had to admit that I hadn't found a job yet and I had only
just graduated from high school. “I'm getting one right away,” I said. “As soon as I find a place to live.”

The short-haired brunette frowned and said, “I'm sorry, but we can't take a chance. We need someone who has a job and credit references.”

I tried to assure her that I would be dependable, but it was no use.

“We just can't take the chance,” repeated auburn-haired Annie. “Our last roommate said the same thing. She moved out while we were at work and still owes us money for rent plus a gigantic phone bill.”

After that, I was pretty discouraged, but I reasoned that maybe I was doing things in the wrong order. I decided I should get a job first and then a place to live.

Meanwhile, I busied myself deciding what I was going to keep and what I was going to sell at Saturday's garage sale. I was determined to hang on to a few antiques that my mother had treasured most—especially the china, crystal, and silver that had belonged to my Italian grandmother. I would sell all of the everyday dishes, pans, and other kitchen paraphernalia. I didn't know how to cook anyway.

I rolled up our beautiful Oriental rugs for storage. I also wanted to keep my mother's four-poster bed and its matching dresser, plus the rocking chair from my bedroom—the one my mother had used when I was a baby. All the rest of the furniture had to go. Naturally, I kept the computer and printer—both for my job hunt and for college when I finally made it there. As for the stereo, I had to keep it—you can't live without music, can you? I also kept a couple of boxes
with my dolls and other girlie stuff, plus three boxes of my favorite books.

The last thing I packed was a box of our family pictures. I got sidetracked thumbing through them, remembering the days when I was little and my mother had been my whole world. There weren't many photos of Jimmy, but there were lots of snapshots of my mother hugging me, smiling at me, or holding my hand at various ages. My heart ached remembering the days when she would cuddle with me and read to me from my favorite book,
Where the Wild Things Are.
At the part where the wild things begin to dance, together we would scream out the line, “I'll eat you up, I love you so.” Now I would give anything to have her hug me and call me her wild thing again.

One picture in particular caught my attention. It showed the two of us on a sandy beach. I couldn't have been more than two, and my mother must have been twenty-five or so. The two of us were standing together in the shallow waves, and I was stark naked except for a lacy white hat, fastened on my head with a chin strap. My mother was holding my hand and smiling down at me with shining eyes and a look of pure love and happiness. She looked so young and pretty at that moment, with her skirt swirling around her legs and her long dark hair ruffled by the wind.

“I'll eat you up, I love you so,” I whispered, and I tucked that snapshot into my wallet.

• • •

Once everything was boxed, I e-mailed Brain and asked for help. Thursday night, he showed up with Mike, a boy named
Moe, and a pickup. The three of them hauled my stuff over to Gloria's, and somehow we pushed it all into the back of her garage. To reward them for their heroic deed, Nicole and I grilled burgers and served them with potato chips and chocolate chip cookies. Brain provided some beer, and they hung out until midnight, listening to music and talking about their plans for fall. Everyone was leaving for somewhere.

When everyone finally went home, Stella and I were alone in the half-empty house. That was when it all sunk in. With everyone gone, I couldn't keep busy anymore and pretend that everything was normal. I felt disoriented as I walked through the rooms, remembering happier times. All the familiar objects and talismans of my life were disappearing, and I had an eerie feeling that at any moment, I might vanish too.

Stella was no better. She stalked through the vacant rooms, her tail held high in an affronted manner.

“I'm not too happy about this myself,” I told her.

To tell the truth, I felt like bawling again. Where was my mother? Was she punishing me? Did she hate me? This was all so totally out of character for her. I had begun to imagine the worst sort of scenario—my mother murdered by a serial killer. Maybe she was chained up in some dank basement, hoping that someone would come to rescue her. Maybe she had amnesia and couldn't remember who she was and where she came from.

Disappearing like this just wasn't the kind of thing my mother would do, even if she had become involved in some nasty embezzlement scheme. This was real life, not some stupid screenplay where the heroine never suspected that her cupcake-frosting mother was a vampire. There had to be a perfectly logical
explanation, but I didn't know what it was, and the not knowing was making me crazy.

My brain whirled around and around like a hamster on an exercise wheel, but I never came any closer to finding an answer. I didn't even know where to begin looking for one.

In my heart, there was always an ache now along with the still unanswered plea:
Oh, Momma, please come home.

Nicole slept over so we could spend the evening pricing everything for the sale. Then we stupidly stayed up late, watching a video. We didn't realize that a tribe of garage-sale fanatics would pound on the door at 6:30 in the morning. Eyes half-closed, I staggered to the front door and told them to come back at nine. One old prune with yellow teeth was so rude that I slammed the door in her face.

While a few bargain-hunters hovered on the sidewalk, we pulled, pushed, and dragged stuff onto the driveway and lawn. To set the right businesslike tone, I wore a pair of baggy painter's jeans with lots of big pockets, a blue T-shirt that said
Fashionista
, and running shoes.

We were busy from the minute I signaled that the sale was open. I was glad, because it kept me from noticing who took what and how quickly my possessions were disappearing.

What surprised me most was the number of tightwads who tried to bargain with us. This is California, after all, not Tijuana.

I had anticipated that some of my nosy neighbors would
stop by, and they did. So I wasn't surprised when Cindy showed up, although I thought it was in poor taste. Nicole handled her mother for me. I didn't want to know which of our things ended up in Cindy's clutches.

Around noon, Officer Strobel stopped by to survey the scene and give everything his badass cop stare. He paused long enough to tell me that a woman fitting my mother's description had been arrested in New Mexico as an accessory to some con scheme.

Hope flared up in me for a moment, only to disappear as I realized how ridiculous his statement was.

“What do you mean by ‘fitting my mother's description'?” I jeered. “White, brunette, and over forty? You're going to be very busy if you investigate everyone fitting that description. Diane isn't some con artist or an accessory to some criminal gang.”

“We have to follow up every lead,” he said defensively.

“If you're looking for leads, why don't you find her car? Did it ever occur to you that she may be the victim of a crime? Maybe my mother's been kidnapped.”

“We're looking for her
and
her car. But we have no reason to think she's the victim of a crime. Do you?”

I walked away without answering. The police weren't interested in what I thought. They had already made up their minds that my mother was guilty.

• • •

For most of the day we were busy. By three o'clock there were only a handful of shoppers still pawing through my stuff, and my pockets were bulging with cash. Exhausted, I flopped down onto an unsold chair while Nicole went to the kitchen in search of
a snack and bottled water. That's when I noticed a silver Porsche Boxster pulling up to the curb on the other side of the street.

A handsome, tanned older man stepped out of the Porsche and crossed the street toward my house. From the tips of his tasseled Italian loafers to his expensively styled silver-tipped hair, this man exuded confidence and money. In fact, he looked more like someone who would have a personal shopper than someone who frequented garage sales.

He walked past everything for sale and stopped in front of my chair.