Love in the Present Tense (14 page)

LEONARD,
age
5:
that which is caesar's

The day I went to kindergarten, everything changed.

I was standing at the window in my new classroom, watching Mitch walk away down the street. And just for a minute, I thought I might cry. But I thought about Pearl, and that changed the subject. That kept me busy just long enough for another boy to cry. And for the teacher to make an example out of him. She made him go to the coatroom, which had suddenly become “the crying room,” even though I'm pretty sure it was the coatroom before that, and I know for sure it was the coatroom later on. She told us he could come out when he could be a big boy, like the rest of us.

I decided not to cry at all.

Then the teacher gave us beads to string. The girl next to me found exactly three of each color, and strung them three matching ones at a time. I wondered who taught her to do that. I mean, I couldn't imagine she had been born wanting to do it that way. I picked whatever colors I felt like picking. I tried to string it so when it was done it would be like Pearl.

The teacher came around behind our backs, stood over us with that big shadow, and told the girl next to me that she had done it “right.” And she told me my beads were “messy.”

“Wrong,” I said. “Bull,” I said. “If there was a rule, you have to tell it before we start. You can't just come later and say there was a rule.” How dare she call Pearl messy?

“This is my classroom,” she said. “You will not talk to me that way. Who put those ideas in your head?”

“Pearl told me,” I said. “Just now.” I pointed to the last place I'd seen Pearl. The beads.

I got sent to the principal's office. And Mitch was called. Fortunately he hadn't left for his office yet, because he was told to come get me and take me home for the day. My very first day and I got suspended.

I sat on the bench outside the office and waited for Mitch to come. I could feel Pearl tucked into a little spot just below my ribs.

Mitch came, and he took me by the hand and asked to talk to my teacher. The principal went in and sat with her class, and then the teacher came out into the hall like she owned it. She looked at Mitch, and then at me, and then at Mitch, and then at me. Like she was trying to work something out in her head.

“What seems to be the problem?” Mitch asked.

“The problem,” she said, talking real slow like an actress on a stage, “is that this little boy has a rude mouth and a bad attitude.”

Mitch's face totally swam, like he'd just been thrown into a pool and hadn't gotten back to the air again.
“Leonard?”

“That boy,” she said. “Right there.” She pointed at me. “And another thing. I think he's just a little bit too old for that imaginary playmate. Don't you?”

Mitch just stood there with his mouth open, and then she stormed back into her room.

We began the walk home together, still hand in hand.

“Do I have to go back tomorrow, Mitch?” I waited until we were out on the street to ask.

“I'm afraid so. What happened in there, Leonard?”

“It's totally bogus,” I said. “It's bull. And she's wrong. She's just plain wrong.”

“Okay,” he said. We stood waiting to cross the street because the crossing guard had gone home for the morning. “Here's a strategy for tomorrow,” he said.

“What's a strategy?”

“A plan. You think she's wrong. But no matter what you say to her, she'll never think she's wrong. Never. The more you try to convince her, the harder your life will get. So try just knowing she's wrong, but protecting yourself by keeping that a secret.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll try. Why did she keep looking at us like that?”

“I think she was trying to figure out how I could be your father.”

“Why? Why couldn't you be?”

“Well, I can be,” he said. “I am. But I think she was wondering about it because you're Asian, and maybe some other things, and I'm not any of those things.”

“That sucks. You can be my father if we want.”

“I agree,” he said. “But get used to it. What was the bit about the imaginary playmate?”

“I just said something about Pearl is all.”

“Oh.”

“Bad idea, huh?”

“Probably. Just try it my way. If it still doesn't work, and she gives you a hard time again, you tell me, and I'll go down there and kick her butt for you.”

“Thanks, Mitch,” I said. “You're a pal.”

LEONARD,
age
18:
that which is caesar's

The day I went to kindergarten, everything changed. I learned the real opposite of love. That strange ringer love I saw in Mitch's kitchen may have been the opposite of the forever in forever love. But on my first day of kindergarten, I learned the opposite of the love. I became two people that day. Began to exist in the world without being any real part of it. As they say, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Render unto God that which is God's.

After the nasty coatroom incident, I looked up at my teacher, and I was filled with the strangest sense of warring hatred and pity. I thought about Pearl's face, looking down at me with all that joyful, welcoming love. And I knew this mean, angry woman never got any of that.

So, what do you do? What do you do when someone is deprived of the most basic birthright of every human child and then goes on to victimize others because of it? Do you hate her or pity her or both? I sensed the answer was probably both. This was the first moment I felt the two parts of me emerge and begin to do battle. This is when I learned I would not be spending my whole life playing computer games at my little desk and feeding toast crumbs to manifestations of Pearl. There were more layers to this life thing, and they were far less perfect than I could ever have imagined.

After the nasty bead-stringing incident, I stood up and turned to face her, and the hate was bigger than the pity. Now that the victim was me.

“Wrong,” I said. “Bull,” I said. “If there was a rule, you have to tell it before we start. You can't just come later and say there was a rule.”

“This is my classroom,” she said. Oh, so that's what this was about. Ownership. Power. Control. “You will not talk to me that way. Who put those ideas in your head?”

“Pearl told me,” I said. “Just now.” And for lack of a better direction, I pointed to the last place I'd seen Pearl. The beads. How dare she call Pearl messy?

Now I should interject here that I have never, since Pearl's death, actually heard her “say” anything to me. This is important, because I have many times been grilled as to whether or not I hear voices. I do not. I am not schizophrenic. Pearl doesn't talk to me. She doesn't have to. There is nothing more that needs saying.

It was more the chorus I heard when I looked at, and listened to, the colors of those beads. They resonated with something as real as the earth, as old as air. For a moment I felt sorry for that mean, angry teacher. Just for that moment the pity got bigger than the hate again.

It must be awful to be deaf and blind.

But, you know what? That was then.

Time to come back into the moment.

I coast up to the curb with the lights off. Gently pull on the hand brake.

I make sure I'm leaving the truck just the way I found it. I put the keys back on the hook in the hall, right where they always are. Then I go into the kitchen and take my note back. The truck is home, they know I love them, and besides, nothing will go wrong. I'm coming back.

Moon Pie is awake, and he wants to come with me, and I let him. I get my bike out of the garage and ride it back up to the bluff in the dark. I can hear the puffing of his breath as he runs along behind me. I feel the wind whipping in my face, flapping in my shirt. This is how it will feel to fly, I think.

Only better.

MITCH,
age
37
:
happy birthday from pearl

It's about two days after my talk with Leonard in Jake and Mona's garage, in the shadow of his big bird, about two days after he showed me his tattoo and promised to follow every glider safety rule known to man.

It's about midnight.

I'm standing at the door of my neighbor, Mrs. Morales. I'm thrown back through the years to the last time I knocked at her door. Shortly after Pearl disappeared. I don't think life was honestly all that simple then, but it may well have been simpler than it is now.

I'm thinking about this as I wait for Mrs. Morales to open her door. I know it's too late, and I know I'm waking her, but it's her own fault for what she said on my voice mail. She told me to come over the minute I got the message. What was I supposed to do?

In time I hear a voice from inside. “Mr. Devereaux?”

“Yes, it's me,” I say.

She opens the door and stands before me in her bathrobe, her hair flattened on one side by sleep.

“I apologize for the late hour,” I say, “but I just now got your message.”

“Come in, come in,” she says and leads me into her dining room. She turns on the overhead light, an old-fashioned cut-glass chandelier. On the table is a small manila envelope, maybe five by seven. It looks old. Faded. Dog-eared. “Open it,” she says. “Wait till you see.”

My hands shake, wondering what could be so important. What this could have to do with me. But in another way I know, because only one thread runs through both of our lives.

While I'm working the clasp, which breaks off in my fingers, I hear her say, “I had that whole apartment remodeled. The workmen came in and tore out all the old wainscoting. They found this behind one of the boards. I don't know if one was loose, or if you can just pry one out. You know. If you need to badly enough.”

I slide the contents of the envelope out into my hand.

Two birth certificates. One for Pearl Renee Sung, and one for Leonard Sung.

A strip of four black-and-white photographs of Pearl and Leonard, the kind you buy for a dollar or two at a carnival photo booth. Leonard is maybe three, with those heavy black glasses, smiling widely in all four shots, showing a complete absence of front teeth. Pearl is leaning her head on his in one. Kissing his temple in another. She looks worried and far away.

The last thing I shake out into my hand is a small pile of bills.

“Two hundred dollars in twenties,” Mrs. Morales says. “Now I ask you. If she were going to ditch her son and run away, would she take off without her birth certificate and her traveling cash?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I suppose not. I'm having a little trouble taking all this in.”

“I'm telling you, something happened to that girl.”

“That
is
beginning to look like the more reasonable scenario. You know what? Now that we know her name, we should check with the police. Maybe they know—”

“Forget it,” she says. “I already tried. I've been on the phone all afternoon, ever since the workmen found that stuff. From the time I left that message for you to the time all the offices closed. There's no record she was ever arrested, and no record she ever died. It's weird. It's like she just disappeared off the face of the earth. It's like she just up and flew away, if you know what I mean. I'm giving you this stuff so you can give it to the little boy. You still know where the little boy is, right?”

“Of course,” I say. “But he's not so little anymore. He'll be eighteen tomorrow.” I glance at my watch and think, actually, he's eighteen now. And he'll be coming back to live with me. “He'll die when he sees this stuff. In a good way, I mean. The biggest regret of his life has been having no last name, no pictures of Pearl, and no way of knowing who his father was. Oh, by the way…”

I pick up Leonard's birth certificate. In the space for “Father” is typed, simply, “Mother refuses to state.”

That's an odd thing to put on a birth certificate, I think. Don't they usually put “unknown” if they can't fill that space in?

Then I'm struck by a sharp image, a suddenly remembered impression of Pearl. And I know that if she knew who the father was, she wouldn't let them say he was unknown. There is shame in unknown. Unknown means you had sex with so many men you can no longer narrow it down. No, I can picture her making that point rather clearly with the hospital personnel. I know who the father was. You just don't get to know.

It makes me shiver for a moment because it's so Pearl. It brings her back so clearly. It's as if she were looking over my shoulder.

“This is going to be a hell of a birthday present,” I say out loud. “A last name and pictures of Pearl. My God, that's two out of three of his life regrets wiped right off the map.”

“I'm glad he'll get these things,” Mrs. Morales says. “I feel so sorry for that boy. It's so awful to never know.”

“First thing in the morning,” I say. “As soon as I think he might be awake.”

On the way home I glance at my watch. It's after twelve-thirty, but I'm tempted to go over there and wake him up. Let me be the first to wish you a happy birthday, I could say. But they have so many other kids, and Jake has to get up at six. It doesn't seem fair.

I actually cruise by, thinking maybe someone's light will be on. But the house is dark, quiet. The garage is closed up. Jake's truck is sitting in front of the house, just the way it always is. A few bikes lie on their sides near the garage. They're always there, and no one ever seems to steal them. It's such a placid scene.

I'll just come back in the morning.

When I get home I open a beer and sit looking at the contents of that envelope.

And I think, something really must have happened to Pearl.

Will he feel validated, because he's been trying to tell me that all along? Or is there a certain comfort in thinking she might be out there somewhere, somehow okay? The pure joy of sharing this with him becomes complicated with all these perceived emotional reactions. It will stir a lot of feelings in him. It has to. It's done that to me, and she wasn't even my mother.

For one split second I consider leaving well enough alone, but I quickly abandon the idea again. He's a grown man. Young but grown. This is his truth. It isn't mine to keep from him.

Maybe I'll take him out shopping, and he can spend the two hundred dollars and it will be almost like an eighteenth birthday present from Pearl.

That girl did have an eerie way of seeing to it that Leonard was always cared for. I never go to bed because I know I won't sleep.

I knock on the door, and Mona answers. Fortunately, Mona gets up early.

“Wanted to be the first to wish him happy birthday, huh? He's not up. He must still be in bed.”

I go up to his room, knock. No answer. I push the door open. His room is empty, the bed perfectly made. No Leonard. No Moon Pie.

I find Mona in the kitchen, stirring a pot of oatmeal that looks as though it might serve twenty.

“He must be in the garage then. Working on that awful, dangerous thing we can't talk him out of.”

“I'll try that,” I say.

I walk into the garage, and it's empty. Really empty.

No giant dinosaur-bird craft.

No Leonard.

Just a shaft of early sun through the skylight, similar to the one that lit him so magically when I saw him last. This morning it illuminates nothing. A square of concrete floor.

How in God's name did he get that thing out of here?

One of my few comforts in the last couple of months was knowing that glider would be nearly impossible for him to move. He didn't build it to break down. What did he do, balance it on his back and ride off into the sunset with it on his bike? And no one was going to help him move it, because no one likes this idea one bit except him.

I sit on the concrete with my knees to my chest, my back to the garage wall, the envelope in my fingers. I close my eyes. I'm not sure why.

It seems like a thing with no real-world explanation.

It seems as though he's just disappeared.

It seems, for just a moment, that Leonard has simply up and flown away.