Bad Love (8 page)

The 405 freeway deposited me in a scramble of northbound traffic just beginning to clot, facing hills so smogged they were no more than shrouded, gray lumps on the horizon. I did the L.A. stop-and-go boogie for a while, listening to music and trying to be patient, finally made it to the 118 east, then the 210, and cruised into the high desert northeast of the city, picking up speed as both the road and the air got clearer.

Exiting at Sunland, I hooked north again and got onto a commercial stretch of Foothill Boulevard that ran parallel to the mountains: auto parts barns, body shops, unfinished furniture outlets, and more roofers than I’d ever seen in one area.

I spotted McVine a few minutes later and turned left. The street was narrow, with grass growing down to the curb instead of sidewalks, and planted haphazardly with eucalyptus and willow. The curb grass was dry and yellow. The houses behind it were small and low, some of them no more than trailers on raised foundations.

The Rodriguez residence was on a northwest corner, a boxcar of mocha stucco with a gutterless, black composition roof and a flat, porchless face broken by three metal-sashed windows. One of the windows was blocked by a tilting sheet of lattice. The squares were broken in spots, warped in others, and a few dead branches wormed around them. A high, pink block wall enveloped the rear of the property.

I got out and walked up a hardpack lawn stippled with blemishlike patches of some sort of low-growing succulent and split by a foot-worn rut. Evelyn’s plum-colored Chevy was parked to the left of the pathway, next to a red half-ton pickup with two stickers on the bumper. One sang the praises of the Raiders, the other dared me to keep kids off drugs. A stick-on sign on the door said
R AND R MASONRY.

I pressed the bell and a wasp-buzz sounded. A woman opened the door and looked at me through the smoke vining upward from a freshly lit Virginia Slim.

In her late twenties, five seven and lanky, she had dirty blond hair gathered in a high, streaked ponytail and pale skin. Slanted, dark eyes and broad cheekbones gave her a Slavic look. The rest of her features were sharp, beginning to pinch. Her shape was perfect for the hardbody era: sinewy arms, high breasts, straightedge tummy, long legs leading up to flaring hips just a little wider than a boy’s. She wore skintight, low-riding jeans and a baby-blue, sleeveless midriff top that showcased an apostrophe of a navel some obstetrician should have been mighty proud of. Her feet were bare. One of them tapped arrhythmically.

“You the doctor?” she said, in a husky voice, talking around the cigarette, just the way I’d seen Evelyn Rodriguez do.

“Dr. Delaware,” I said, and extended my hand.

She took it and smiled — amusement rather than friendliness — gave a hard squeeze, then dropped it.

“I’m Bonnie. They’re waiting for you. C’mon in.”

The living room was half the width of the boxcar and smelled like a drowned cigar. Carpeted in olive shag and paneled with knotty pine, it was darkened by drawn drapes. A long, brown corduroy sofa ran along the back wall. Above it hung a born-again fish symbol. To the left was a console TV topped with some sort of cable decoder and a VCR, and a beige velveteen recliner. On a hexagonal table, an ashtray brimmed over with butts.

The other half of the front space was a kitchen–dining area combo. Between the two rooms was an ochre-colored door. Bonnie pushed it open, letting in a lot of bright, western light, and took me down a short, shagged hall. At the end was a den, walled in grayish mock birch and backed by sliding glass doors that looked out to the backyard. More recliners, another TV, porcelain figurines on the mantel, below three mounted rifles.

Bonnie slid open a glass door. The yard was a small, flat square of scorched grass surrounded by the high pink walls. An avocado tree grew at the rear, huge and twisted. Barely out of its shade was an inflatable swimming pool, oval and bluer than anyone’s heaven. Chondra sat in it, splashing herself without enthusiasm. Tiffani was in a corner of the property, back to us, jumping rope.

Evelyn Rodriguez sat between them in a folding chair, working on her lanyard and smoking. She had on white shorts, a dark blue T-shirt, and rubber beach sandals. On the grass next to her was her purse.

Bonnie said, “Hey,” and all three of them looked up.

I waved. The girls stared.

Evelyn said, “Go get him a chair.”

Bonnie raised her eyebrows and went back into the house, putting some wiggle in her walk.

Evelyn shaded her face, looked at her watch, and smiled. “Forty-two minutes. Couldn’t ya have stopped for coffee or something?”

I forced a chuckle.

“Course,” she said, “don’t really matter what you actually do, you can always
say
you done it, right? Just like a lawyer. You can say anything you
please
.”

She stubbed her cigarette out on the grass.

I went over to the pool. Chondra returned my “Hi” with a small, silent smile. Some teeth this time: progress.

Tiffani said, “You write your book yet?”

“Not yet. I need more information from you.”

She nodded gravely. “I got lots of truth — we don’t want to ever see him.”

She grabbed hold of a branch and started swinging. Humming something.

I said, “Have fun,” but she didn’t answer.

Bonnie came out with a folded chair. I went and took it from her. She winked and went back into the house, rear twitching violently. Evelyn wrinkled her nose and said, “Well, does it?”

I unfolded the chair. “Does it what?”

“Does it matter? What actually happens? You’re just gonna do what you want to, write what you want to anyway, right?”

I sat down next to her, positioning myself so I could see the girls. Chondra was motionless in the pool, gazing at the trunk of the avocado.

Evelyn humphed. “You ready to come out?”

Chondra shook her head and began splashing herself again, doing it slowly, as if it were a chore. Her white pigtails were soaked the color of old brass. Above the pink walls the sky was static and blue, bottomed by a soot-colored cloud bank that hid the horizon. Someone in the neighborhood was barbecuing, and a mixture of scorching fat and lighter fluid spread its cheerful toxin through the autumn heat.

“You don’t think I’ll be honest, huh?” I said. “Been burned by other doctors, or is it something about me?”

She turned toward me slowly and put her lanyard in her lap.

“I think you do your job and go home,” she said. “Just like everyone else. I think you do what’s best for
you
, just like everyone else.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m some saint who’d work for free or that I really know what you’ve been going through, ’cause I don’t — thank God. But I think I understand your rage. If someone had done it to my child, I’d be ready to kill him, no question about it.”

She took her Winstons out of her pocket and knocked a cigarette loose. Sliding it out and taking it between two fingers, she said, “Oh you would, would you? Well that would be revenge, and the Bible says revenge is a negational action.”

She lit up with a pink disposable lighter, inhaled very deeply, and held it. When she let the smoke out, her nostrils twitched.

Tiffani began jumping very fast. I wondered if we were within her earshot.

Evelyn shook her head. “Gonna break her head one of these days.”

“Lots of energy,” I said.

“Apple don’t fall far.”

“Ruthanne was like that?”

She smoked, nodded, and started to cry, letting her tears drip down her face and wiping them with short, furious movements. Her torso pushed forward and for a moment I thought she was going to leave.

“Ruthanne was
just
like that when she was little. Always moving. I never felt I could . . . she had spirit, she was — she had . . . wonderful spirit.”

She tugged her shorts down and sniffed.

“Want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Wait right here.” She went into the house.

“Hey, girls,” I called out.

Tiffani kept jumping. Chondra looked up. Her mouth hung slightly open and water droplets bubbled her forehead, like oversized sweat.

I went over to her. “Swim a lot?”

She gave a very small nod and splashed one arm, turning away and facing the avocado tree. Young fruit hung from the branches, veiled by a cloud of whiteflies. Some of it was blackened with disease.

Tiffani waved at me. Then she began to chant in a loud voice:

“I went to the Chinese restaurant,
to get a loaf of bread bread bread,
a man was there with a big mustache,
and this is what he said said said.
El eye el eye chicholo beauty, pom-pom cutie . . .”

Evelyn came back holding a couple of mugs. Bonnie marched behind her carrying a small plate of sugar wafers. The look on her face said she’d been created for better things.

I walked back to the lawn chairs.

Bonnie said, “Here you go,” handed me the plate, and sashayed off.

Evelyn gave me a mug. “Black or cream?”

“Black.”

We sat and sipped. I balanced the cookie plate on my lap.

“Have one,” she said, “or are you one of those health-food types?”

I took a wafer and chewed on it. Lemon-flavored and slightly stale.

“I dunno,” she said, “maybe
I
shoulda been a health fooder, too. I always gave my kids sugar and stuff, whatever they wanted — maybe I shouldn’ta. Got a boy went AWOL over in Germany two years ago, don’t even
know
where he is, the baby don’t know
zero
about what she wants to do with her life, and Ruthie . . .”

She shook her head and looked over at Tiffani. “Watch your head on that
branch
, you!”

“Bonnie’s the baby?” I said.

Nod. “She got all the brains and the looks. Just like her daddy — he coulda been a movie star. Only time I ever went gaga for the looks, and boy, what a mistake
that
was.”

She gave a full smile. “He cleaned me out thirteen months after we were married. Left me with the baby in diapers and went down to Louisiana to work the deep-sea rigs. Got killed soon after in a fall that they
said
was an accident. Never took out the right insurance for himself, so I got nothing.”

She smiled wider. “He had a temper on him. All my men do. Roddy’s got a fuse on him, too, though it takes a while to get it lit. He’s a Mexican, but he’s the best of the lot.”

She patted the T-shirt pocket that held the cigarette pack. “Sugar and bad tempers and cancer sticks. I really go for all the good things in life, huh?”

Her eyes watered again. She lit up.

“All the good things,” she said. “All the blessed good things.”

She kept the cigarette in her mouth, busied her hands by squeezing them together, letting go, repeating the motion. The lanyard lay on the grass, neglected.

“There’s no room for your guilt,” I said.

She yanked the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at me. “
What’d
you say?”

“There’s no room for your guilt. All the guilt belongs to Donald Dell. One hundred percent of it.”

She started to say something, but stopped.

I said, “No one else should carry that burden, Evelyn. Not Ruthanne for going with him that night, and certainly not you for the way you raised her. Junk food had nothing to do with what happened. Neither did anything but Donald Dell’s impulses. It’s
his
cross to bear now.”

Her eyes were on me, but wavering.

I said, “He’s a bad guy, he does bad things, no one knows why. And now you’re having to be a mom, all over again, when you weren’t planning on it. And you’re going to do it without complaining too much and you’re going to do your best. No one’s going to pay you or give you any credit, so at least give
yourself
some.”

“You talk sweet,” she said. “Telling me what I want to hear.” Wary, but not angry. “Sounds like you got a temper on you, too.”

“I talk straight. For my own sake — you’re right about that. All of us do what we think’s best for us. And I do like to make money — I went to school a long time to learn what I do. I’m worth a high fee, so I charge it. But I also like to sleep well at night.”

“Me, too. So what?” She smoked, coughed, ground out the cigarette with disgust. “Been a long time since I slept peacefully.”

“Takes time.”

“Yeah . . . how long?”

“I don’t know, Evelyn.”

“Least you’re honest.” Smile. “Maybe.”

“What about the girls?” I said. “How do they sleep?”

“Not good,” she said. “How could they? The little one wakes complaining she’s hungry — which is a laugh, ’cause she eats all day, though you wouldn’t know it to look at her, would you? I used to be like that, believe it or not.” Squeezing her thigh. “She gets up two, three times a night, wanting Hersheys and licorice and
ice
cream.”

“Does she ever get those things?”

“Hel — heck no. There’s a
limit
. I give her a piece of orange or something — maybe a half a cookie — and send her right back. Not that it stops her the next time.”

“What about Chondra?”

“
She
don’t get up, but I hear her crying in her bed — under the blanket.” She looked over at the older girl, who was sitting motionless in the center of the pool. “She’s the soft one. Soft as jelly.”

She sighed and looked down at her coffee with disdain. “Instant. Shoulda made real stuff.”

“It’s fine,” I said, and drank to prove it.

“It’s okay, but it’s not great — don’t see great around here too often. My second husband — Brian’s dad — owned a big place up near Fresno — table grapes and alfalfa, some quarter horses. We lived up there for a few years — that was
close
to great, all that space. Then he went back to his drinking — Brian, Senior — and it all went to — straight down the tubes. Ruthie used to love that place — especially the horses. There’s riding stables around here, too, out in Shadow Hills, but it’s expensive. We always said we’d get over there but we never did.”

The sun dropped behind the cloud bank, and the yard dimmed.