Once Upon a Day (37 page)

“I guess there’s no way to ease into this,” Mrs. Fowler said, sitting down. She took a big gulp from her drink. “Your dad kind of stuck it to me when he gave me this job.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I’d learned from my time in St. Louis that waiting was usually better than asking for an explanation. The meaning almost always became clear soon enough.

“I know Charles told you that Lucy died.” Mrs. Fowler was tapping her fingers on the rim of her glass. “Did he tell you how?”

“No. It upset him too much to discuss.”

Mrs. Fowler laughed harshly. “I’ll bet it did.”

“I’d be far more comfortable if you left my father out of this. Perhaps his feelings are funny to you, but not to me.”

“Unfortunately, kiddo, your father is the topic here. He’s the one who told you Lucy died, but the thing is . . . the thing is, Lucy’s still alive.”

My response was immediate. “I don’t believe you.”

“I had a feeling you might not. Hell, I’m not sure I’d believe me if I were you. I told Al, that’s Lucy’s husband, not to tell her yet that you’d arrived. This way we can go into the club and let you take a look. If you want to meet her tonight, fine. If not, I’ll take you to my house and give you a chance to sleep on it and adjust.”

“I have to use the ladies’ room myself.”

“Go on then,” she said. “I’ll get the check and pay. Meet you at the door.”

I forced myself not to run. Once I was in a stall, I put my head between my knees. My heart wasn’t racing, but I did feel the strongest urge to vomit, even though I hadn’t eaten anything except a yogurt at the airport.

By the time I rejoined Mrs. Fowler, I’d decided that even if it was true, there had to be an explanation. The key, I thought, was this Al person, Lucy’s husband. What if Lucy had left Father for Al nineteen years ago? Then he would have been as heartbroken as if she were dead. She might as well have been dead, since she’d never sought out her children during all this time.

Now I wished I hadn’t seen the photographs. I felt like I’d fallen in love with her picture only to discover that she hadn’t really loved me.

Fifteen minutes later, we were in Mrs. Fowler’s automobile, inching our way down a street that was so filled with cars I couldn’t imagine where all these people were going, unless they were trying to get to the ocean. I’d been looking around for it ever since I arrived, but I’d seen nothing yet. So far the real California was dirty and crowded and nothing like the beautiful pictures in my book.

“I have all Lucy’s movies. Most of your dad’s too. Some DVDs, some the old-fashioned kind. I got them out when Charles called, thinking it might be fun for you to watch some of them, but then I realized you’d probably seen them already.”

“No. We didn’t have a television.”

“Jeez, that’s different. My kids couldn’t live without a TV.” She glanced over. “Didn’t Charles have a screening room? I remember Lucy telling me the original prints of all his movies were one of the only things he took when he left L.A.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘screening room.’”

“Well, I’ve only seen one myself. It’s like a movie theater, but in a house. Your mom and dad had one in Malibu. Lucy and Al turned it into a workshop-type thing instead. Al makes these cute little mailboxes out of wood. They look like miniature houses, with doors and shutters and even chimneys. It’s just a hobby; Lucy says it
helps him work off the stress from his work at the software company. He gives them away to people at work, friends, thrift stores. He made a two-story mailbox for my family because my daughter gets a lot of mail now that she’s applying to colleges. And Kyle, my fourteen-year-old, gets a ton of magazines about cars.” She paused. “Where did you go to college, Dorothea?”

“I didn’t.”

“Really? How about Jimmy?”

“He didn’t either.”

“I’m surprised. Why not? Your dad could obviously afford it.”

“We were taught at home.”

“Homeschooled? You can’t do that for college, can you?”

“I think I need to rest for a moment,” I said, knowing I was being a little rude, but afraid I would become a lot ruder if I continued to try to talk. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the door of her car, trying to adjust to all this. If our mother was alive, I thought, at least it would help Jimmy. Even if she didn’t care enough about us to send one letter in nineteen years, she would have to write to her son now. If I had to, I would tell her about his condition. Surely any mother would feel sorry for a child who was suffering as much as Jimmy.

I wanted to believe this anyway, though I’d read books with mothers who were unfeeling monsters who deserted their children and never looked back. If Mother was like this, no wonder Father couldn’t bring himself to tell us the true situation, especially if he was still in love with her, which I never doubted he was. Even in those newspaper articles, Father’s love for her shone through in everything he said. “My sweet bride,” he’d called her. “My Lucy.”

If I could forgive her for neglecting me, I could not forgive her for leaving Father and Jimmy. For the first and only time in my life, I could think of no reason whatsoever for optimism. It was dark now, and the flat, starless Los Angeles sky reflected the lack of any light inside myself, but I couldn’t take comfort in the connection. Mrs. Fowler said the sky was almost always like this, due to what she
called smog. So it wasn’t a pattern. There was no pattern to any of this that I could see.

Mrs. Fowler pulled her car into a parking lot next to what looked to be another restaurant. She told me it was a club though. When I asked what kind of club, she said, “You know, a bar. Let’s go in and find Al.”

I didn’t want to see this Al person, but I had no choice. I stood up very straight and reminded myself that whatever my legal name, I was Dorothea O’Brien, and I had a father and brother who loved me very much.

The club was a dark, smoky place with people standing everywhere in clusters of three and four, like acorns on a tree. Even to make our way to where Al was sitting in the back took several minutes, as we pushed through the small groups drinking and listening to the music, which was very loud but not unpleasant like so many of the songs on Stephen’s radio. The music cheered me a little as I knew the piece; it was one of Father’s favorite jazz songs, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” He used to play it on the piano while Grandma and Jimmy and I would sing. Then Father would laugh that it fit us perfectly, since we never left the Sanctuary.

“You made it,” Al said, taking my hand before I could stop him, shaking it enthusiastically. He turned to Mrs. Fowler. “I screwed up.”

“You told her?” Mrs. Fowler said.

“I had to. She was so low tonight. These last few days have been really hard on her. Sit down, Dorothea,” Al said, pointing at the chair next to him. I acted as if I didn’t notice and took the other seat, across the table.

Even though it was dark except for the candles flickering on every table, I could see this Al was not a handsome man as Father was. He was younger than Father, but he was short and balding, with a graying beard and a paunch that made the middle of his shirt seem wrinkled. He asked me how I was, how my flight was, what I thought of Los Angeles so far, and I answered as little as politeness would allow. Then I turned my head in the direction of the music and discovered
that it wasn’t a record, but a live pianist and singer. They were very good, and when the song was over, I clapped heartily.

Mrs. Fowler leaned over and whispered, “Can you guess who that is?”

“Who?” I said, but she didn’t hear me, and I didn’t repeat the question. The next song was another one I knew from Father, “My Funny Valentine.” I turned back to listen.

We were very far from the stage, with lots of people in front of us. I couldn’t see the faces of the singer or the piano player, which was why it took me so long to understand. They were up to the fifth tune; Mrs. Fowler and Al were almost finished with their drinks when I realized why I loved this singer’s voice. The fifth song was “Moondance.”

The effect it had on me was like a starving man discovering a feast is within his grasp. I had no thoughts when I stood up and started moving to the stage, so I could see her. I was almost there when Mrs. Fowler took my arm and told me to wait until the music stopped. But I couldn’t wait because now I could see her, and she was just as beautiful as in the pictures, maybe more beautiful because of the sorrow written on her face and in her movements and especially in the way she sang this song that she had taught me, sitting on the side of my bed at night. I couldn’t remember her doing this, but I didn’t need to. I knew it.

I climbed the steps to the stage like a girl in a trance, unaware of everything but the bright light over my mother, and the sound of her singing the same words that I had sung so many times over the past nineteen years. The expression on her face when she saw me standing in front of her was like looking into a mirror of my own feelings. The sorrow was still there, but it was mixed with a profound confusion; there was happiness, but even more, a desperate kind of relief.

She managed to finish the song, but she sang it to me. Then, after the clapping for the song died down, she said into her microphone, “This is my daughter.”

The applause that followed this announcement was very loud, and there was laughter too. The intrusive approval of these strangers seemed very wrong to me, but not as wrong as what Lucy had just said. Though I may have been her daughter in the literal sense, she’d shown no interest in my brother or me for nineteen years. My father was the only person in the world who could claim me as a daughter. The spell was broken, and I knew I didn’t belong in this place.

I moved away from her and off the stage. Mrs. Fowler tried to stop me, but I shrugged off her hand and kept going until I’d made my way through the crowd of people and out the front door. The sidewalk was crowded too, and I was so confused I didn’t know which way to go. My plan was to find a taxicab and have the cab take me back to the airport, where I would wait until I could contact Dr. Humphrey to ask Father to arrange another plane to take me home. But the street was still thick with cars and I didn’t see a cab anywhere. My heart was pounding, though I hoped it was only because I’d been hurrying. I’d taken my miracle pill many hours earlier, but I was afraid to take another one because Stephen had told me only one per day.

I’d just made my way over to a bench a few buildings down from the club, when Mrs. Fowler appeared. “What happened to you?”

I sat down. “I’ve decided I don’t care to know Lucy.”

“Good Lord, why?”

I took a deep breath and then another, but still, my heart was getting worse. “She didn’t want to know me for most of my life, and I don’t want to know her now.”

“Wait a minute, kiddo. Lucy had no idea where you were. That father of yours took you and Jimmy while she was working in D.C. She came home and he hadn’t even left her a note to tell her what had happened. He vanished on November 28, 1984, and she’s been looking for you ever since, all over the country and the world.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, panting now, suddenly, horribly struggling for air.

“Why do you think Charles changed your last name? Why didn’t he put you in school, come to think of it? Why did he tell you Lucy was dead?”

“He must have had a good reason,” I whispered. My attack was coming on so quickly it made me even more afraid. My heart was already racing faster than I ever remembered; I thought it would burst and I would die right here, on this dirty street, surrounded only by strangers. I tried to think of Father’s face, but it wouldn’t come to me. I couldn’t hear his voice either. If I died here, I would never see him again.

“Yeah, he had a good reason. So Lucy wouldn’t find you and he wouldn’t be charged with kidnapping.”

“Untrue,” I gasped.

“It’s a felony. He could have gone to jail for what he did.”

No, I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t even speak. I dropped my head between my knees as the tears came too fast and hard for me to sing even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. Singing was a connection to her now.

Mrs. Fowler was cursing herself for not noticing what was happening to me. I held up my hand and waved in her direction, hoping she would go away and leave me alone. But she didn’t. I felt the bench move as she sat down next to me, and then slowly began to rub my back. I tried to shrug her off, but she persisted. Her touch was surprisingly gentle, and after a while, I managed to get one breath, and then another, but I was still sobbing.

“My father is a good person,” I cried.

“Yes, he is. He’s a very good person.” Then I realized it hadn’t been Mrs. Fowler rubbing my back, for the voice wasn’t hers, but Lucy’s.

“You shouldn’t tell her that,” Mrs. Fowler said. “She thinks you—”

“Charles loves you very much,” Lucy said firmly. “The day you were born was one of the happiest days of his life.”

I sniffed hard and gained control of myself, but Lucy kept rubbing
small circles on my back, even when I could sit up again. And she kept talking about my father. She told stories of him playing with Jimmy and me when we were small, and laughing with us, and taking us places, and always, she said, loving us more than anything in the world.

I don’t know how long we stayed on the street that way, but it felt like a very long time. I finally broke down and spoke to Lucy after she told me about Father teaching four-year-old Jimmy to play chess, and I couldn’t resist mentioning that Jimmy had continued to play chess for all these years. “He’s very good at it,” I said, turning to face her. “He’s also a wonderful painter. He’s really a brilliant person.”

“I’d love to hear more about him,” she said, and smiled a quiet, rather shy smile that made me think of Jimmy. Of course she was his mother. This was all so new, and very difficult to keep in my mind. “But right now,” Lucy said, “I think we need to get you some sleep. You look like you’ve been up for days.”

I noticed both Al and Mrs. Fowler were standing only a few feet down from us.

“You have several choices,” Lucy said. “We can drive you to whatever hotel you’d like. There are some wonderful hotels in L.A., as your father may have told you. You can stay with Janice, if you’d rather do that. She has a great family, three nice teenagers. Or you can stay with me. Of course I’d like that, but I don’t want to pressure you. It’s totally up to you.”