Rundown (13 page)

“Hal and I both agree that therapy is extremely useful,” said Mrs. Emmit. She called her husband Hal, my father called him Harold. “A good therapist can do so much.” This was Mom-propaganda. I could hear Mom telling her old friend,
Convince her to see Dr. Yellin
.

Mr. Emmit nodded in an overeager way, stepping on the accelerator to pass a truckload of tomatoes.

“Remember that time we all went to see the family therapist?” Mrs. Emmit sang out, over the whine of the engine.

“A nice guy,” said Mr. Emmit, doing his part.

A road crew worked a hillside, beyond a sign:
CONTROLLED BURN.
Black patches seethed blue smoke. Cars backed up, a half hour delay, everyone wanting a look at the few remaining flutters of fire. Devil's Slide, where the highway dips and swerves over land that is always sinking, caving away. Mr. Emmit drove fast, maybe his medication wearing off, the van pitching hard on the curves.

Marta chattered. She wanted to buy an Aqua-Strobe, an underwater flashlight. She said when she had the money and the time she would dive the world, the Solomon Islands, Truk Lagoon. She and her parents tossed the conversational ball back and forth, and although I chimed in with travel stories of my own, Marta did not look my way as she talked.

They refrained from turning on an all-news station, their favorite kind. The Emmits were delaying on my behalf, back to acting with extreme consideration, wanting to know if I wanted to have a taco—we could stop in the Mission District. Or drive over to Oscar's on Shattuck Avenue for a hamburger.

“Sure,” said Marta, not the first time I had sensed envy or jealousy in her voice, “give Wonder Woman whatever she wants.”

A code opens the front gate. You push the numerals, Cassandra's birthday and mine, 2/5 and 1/11, and the iron barrier robots open, a motor making a high-pitched whir like an electric pencil sharpener.

The Emmits were already caught up in their own rush to get sheets of masonite for a stage set, and then to Office Depot for some black indelible markers; they had not expected to be back so early in the day.

Already, just taking my time up the driveway, I could see the changes. The fountain had been scrubbed, bleached, or blasted, the tiles that had always been prettily moss green and old world now bright sky blue. Weeds had been cleared from the ivy, and new blue-gray pea gravel tamped around the stepping stones.

I carry my house key on a lime-green coil. The green is supposed to glow in the dark. The door handle had been cleaned, the Marley's-ghost knocker polished bright.

New rugs were in place, deep magentas and iron blues. I could tell it had taken my parents a long time—here, no here—to get the rugs to look casual.

As Mrs. Emmit waved good-bye she had said, “I'll call Ruthie about the interview.”

Chapter 26

My bedroom was still a vacant lot with a bed in it, but pages of paint swatches were fanned out on the bedspread, along with a furniture catalog and samples of fabric, a book with various shades and textures of cloth.

My dad loves leaving notes. When he can't find anything to write on he uses one of his old business cards, with teeny writing. His note said we could replace the crumby curtains. “How about Tuscan Dawn?” he had written, in such scrunched writing it took a long moment to make it out.

Beside the fat volume of curtain fabrics was an envelope, addressed in Quinn's neat printing. Quinn never writes letters and sometimes doesn't like to exchange even spoken words. People who don't know him think he's either unfriendly or shy.

I was careful with the envelope, because even the plain white business-size envelope meant something, if only I could understand. Quinn had picked it out.

It was a short letter, but when I had read it I sat down and read it again. Then I folded it and put it in my night-stand. I couldn't let myself think about what it said.

“They arrested him,” said Bernice. She said the words with a little denying shake of her head. She didn't like discussing it.

She was in the kitchen, in a big canvas apron, sturdy, like the apron a carpenter might wear.

Sometimes even when you aren't that surprised you stop still for a second.

She said, “It was on the news last night.”

She made me a glorious sandwich, smoked trout fillet, Maui onions, and fat slices of tomato. She was packing herbs and spices she bought wholesale in plastic bags into smaller, airtight jars. Cloves, cinnamon sticks, sage.

It wasn't an easy question. “Did they show what he looked like?”

Bernice tilted her head and gave a smile, sheepish, not at all like her. A braid of garlic hung on the wall, beside a wreath of bay leaves.

“They showed a picture,” she said, too dignified to say
mug shot
.

How do they know it's him?

“They must have some kind of evidence,” I said.

“I'm sure they do,” she said, wiping the sink where it didn't need it. Sympathy kept Bernice intent, polishing, selecting a smaller sponge, her hands ever busy.

“What's he look like?” I asked again.

“Older than you would think,” she said.

Fat? Skinny? I stopped myself from asking. I guessed at something, needing to know. “Did anything like this ever happen to you?” I asked.

She did not meet my eyes, but it was like she could visualize me perfectly, no need to look. “Like what happened to you the other night?” she asked, although she knew perfectly well.

I told her yes, that's what I meant.

“We all know what it's like,” said Bernice.

I knew how the examiner has to ask the same question again, new words, so the interview squeezes out the truth.

But Bernice said, “My problem was medical.”

I suddenly didn't want to know any more, not now.

“No, I don't mind telling you.” Her emphasis on
you
made me look away.

It took her a moment to find a place on the sink for the sponge. “I used to own a restaurant, called Anisette.”

It was a famous eating place, renowned for its desserts. Dad used to take Cass and me there once in a great while for chocolate truffles. Crazily rich candies, black, moist cakes, curls of bittersweet, slabs of white chocolate. Bernice could tell by my eyes that I remembered.

“But one morning I woke up and I couldn't read a balance sheet. I'd go to sign my name on a paycheck, and my hand was making strange letters that didn't mean anything. I would read a book, and the words would fade out in my mind. I couldn't even watch television. Characters would talk, and I didn't hear the sounds as language. The screen was blank to me, except that it had some colored shadows.”

A tiny speck of oregano soiled the expanse of white marble where Bernice made pie crust. She cupped one hand and urged the tiny flake toward her palm with the other.

“There was nothing wrong with my eyes,” she continued, “or with my powers of perception. Every doctor agreed with the diagnosis that I was depressed.” She dusted her hands together, like someone briefly applauding.

A long silence told me that I had to inquire. “Did you get help?”

“I'm getting well. Because of your family.”

Dad reads the
Chronicle
inside out, taking it apart, food and sports first, world and East Bay afterward. The newspaper is usually folded, each section, on his desk, before it graduates to a paper bag stuffed with newsprint destined for recycling. But this was a new office, his old oak desk looking distinguished but careworn before a view of the back garden. Scripts for his TV pilot were stacked neatly, “The Ultimate Virgin,” all about olive oil, and “Safe-Sex Chocolate,” the story of the cocoa bean, from jungle to frosting. A basket held minicassettes, tapes full of ideas.

The newspaper was under the envelope opener, a silver-plated dagger. My hands were cold as I searched the pages. When I found the place where the story of the arrested suspect had been, there was nothing but a hole.

Mom says that silence talks. A prospective employee who never mentions her family or her previous boss is communicating more than she wants to. I could read my father's actions, how he studied the story, and how he took it to L.A. in his pocket.

I changed clothes, into new pants with a label still fluttering and a price tag attached by plastic that would not cut, no matter how I tried. Tuscan Dawn was a “superior latex,” the color of bad pancake makeup. I didn't really mind the curtains I had now, coffee-ice-cream off-white.

I put on my running shoes. I pulled the laces tightly through the eyes, tying show-no-mercy knots. I don't like to stop because a lace comes undone.

Quinn's letter said that his father would have trouble leaving the job at the casino, even though he hated it. “Because of a contract he signed long before he knew.” Quinn said he would do anything to come be with me, quit school, leave home.

That was the part I couldn't bear to think about, knowing how I had deceived even Quinn.

Mom encourages me to call her pager, “if there's ever a problem.” But my mother is someone who hates to be interrupted. I imagined confessing to my mother, shame shutting me up before I even began. I couldn't let myself imagine telling my father, the expression that would fill his eyes.

I hadn't run for a couple of days, and already I felt a couple of phantom pounds around my hips. I found myself heading uphill without thinking, my body knowing exactly where to go. But the slope was punishing, my leg muscles taking a while to warm to the effort. If there is just the tiniest bit of air pollution you feel it center chest, and I forced myself, hard.

I ran, loving the way part of me hated the labor, trying to burn off my feelings like so many fatty calories, loping, long, rhythmic strides. The last of the two-car garages passed, the hillside began, poison oak already scarlet, showing off its color. I ran faster, arms pumping, sweat breaking all over my body.

The pace hurt. And then it stopped hurting, the pain barrier something you leave behind. I crested the hill, saw Sandalwood Ranch ahead, white buildings, dark blue trees. It was down slope just before the tree shade.

Later I would tell myself that I knew I was being followed.

Chapter 27

I breathed hard, hanging on to the rails of the corral. The upper half of Desert Flower's stable door was open, but the horse did not answer my whistle. I wasn't surprised. She had never heard it before, and my whistle is pathetic, an airy
thweet
.

The unmarked police car eased along under the eucalyptus.

Detective Margate was wearing a coffee-dark skirt with side pockets, a straw-brown blazer, and looked around at the horsey scenery with a pleasantly interested expression, like she was considering putting a down payment on the place. In this strong afternoon sun her dark hair had hints of auburn. She approached a fan of horse manure, green-gold, without seeing it, eyes on the roof lines and the trees. Sweeping me, too, with her falcon gaze, smiling, saying something.

It took me a moment to recognize the shape of my name on her lips. Detective Ronert stood beside the car, patting the roof as though it were a large drum, soundlessly, just passing time.

Detective Margate stepped easily over the bright manure, and her Rockports strode through the truck ruts cut into the earth months ago, when there was rain. She put one elbow on a rail.

Tommy Dixon stood on the back step of a freshly painted white office building. He wore a country gentleman outfit today, sports jacket and gray slacks, his thumb hitched in his belt.

I said, “Congratulations.”

“Oh, it wasn't our arrest,” Detective Margate said breezily.

“But it's over now.”

“It can be,” she said.

This was one of those statements my Mom calls “smoke.” It didn't mean anything, but it was confusing.

I gave myself time. Desert Flower was not making an appearance in the dark square of her stable door.

“Is this where your horse lives?” said the detective, all sweetness.

I had one of those quick certainties, a flash insight. “Did Bernice tell you I was here?” I felt that I should shield Bernice from these two cops, experts at getting information out of people. “Have you been bothering her?”

The detective answered by letting her smile turn thoughtful.

Detective Ronert paddled the car roof, just loud enough. He opened his hands like a catcher anticipating a pitch.

“Let's talk,” said Detective Margate.

Detective Ronert drove, and Detective Margate sat in back, tree shadows streaming across us. The car was traveling fast, all of us leaning as the car cornered, residential streets giving way to storefronts, places that sold fruit smoothies and foreign newspapers.

“That warning light is blinking again,” said Detective Ronert. “I'll have to have it checked.”

Detective Margate opened a briefcase, pulled out a manila folder, and licked her fingers, the way Dad does using a dictionary. She selected the page she wanted, a garish photo.

I didn't want to take it from her hands. She gave the color photo a shake,
Go on
.

It was a lurid, fleshy blow-up, mottled with blue and tattooed with ruby cuts.

“That's a very interesting picture,” the detective was saying. “It took me some time to understand what I was looking at.”

“It's my shoulder,” I said.

“Exactly. It's you, the night we began our investigation. I want you to look at the bruising.”

I gave the picture back to her. She looked at it with the gaze of a proud relative. “Here's another one, a view of your back.”

A close up of anyone's skin is surreal, pores like orange rind. The bramble tears were a series of beads, jewels of dried blood in an arc, diminishing to a subtle gash in the skin.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

She made a little
that depends
waft of her head, noncommittal, but implying that she would take me wherever she wanted. I could see her calculating, despite herself, the way she looked out the window to figure out the right way to express her next thought.