Pacific Avenue (27 page)

Of course, claustrophobia is a bad problem to have in
prison. I got so out of it for a while that they couldn’t put up with me in
Angola any more, and that’s how I got sent to Jackson.

I remembered something else in treatment. It’s about the
night Jamie died. I woke up and heard her gasping for breath. If I’d known how
to save her, maybe I could have, but I didn’t even know it was her. It was dark
and hot—humid like nights in Vietnam. I was back there, trapped in that
goddamned building, hearing Ben gasp for breath.

I wish like hell I’d known what was going on. Sam says that
premature babies often have breathing problems and that crib deaths are more common
with them. I wish I could take comfort in statistics, but I can’t. I still cry
sometimes, remembering her.

It means a lot to me for you
to know I didn’t hurt Jamie. I pled guilty because I felt guilty—about Vietnam
and Ben and about Jamie too, and because I was confused and scared at the time.
I wish I hadn’t.

I’m probably going to get either parole or an outright
pardon before long, because I have a real lawyer now and he’s working on it.
When I get out, I’m going back to work for Martin and Thu. And I’m staying in
treatment until I get a handle on my problems. Maybe you want to stay in California,
and maybe if you do come back, you won’t want to see me. I won’t blame you, if
that’s how you feel.

But I wish you’d try to
forgive me and let me know if we could at least talk. I’ve changed a lot, and
it’s my dream to get back together with you someday and show you how much I
still love you.

Richard

By the time I was through reading, I was sobbing. I
didn’t bother going to bed—I was sure I wouldn’t sleep anyway. Toward morning,
I fell asleep sitting up. I woke with hardly enough time to get to work. I had
stewed about it for most of the night, but I had made my decision.

I went to work, but I felt hollow and headachy from not
sleeping. Almost as soon as I got there, I dropped the coffeepot and cut my
hand on the broken glass as I tried to pick up a shard. Lacey brought me the
first aid kit and cleaned up the rest herself.

She set me to boxing up files of some finished projects
to take to storage. It was dusty work, but at least I didn’t have to talk to
anyone. I spent the morning daydreaming.

At lunchtime, Lacey stuck her head into the file room
and told me she had a picnic lunch. I figured she wanted to ask what was wrong
with me these days, and I almost refused to go. But then I changed my mind. I’d
have to give her some kind of reason sooner or later.

I was right about what she wanted. “What’s going on,
Kathy?” she asked, unwrapping a couple of burgers. “You look like the wrath of
God.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I got a letter from someone I used to know. It was a
little upsetting.” My voice was dismissive.

“From Richard?” she asked.

I was sure I hadn’t heard her right. “Excuse me?”

“I said, did you get a letter from Richard Johnson?”

I thought I was going to faint. “How do you know about
Richard?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Give me a break, Kathy. You came into Giannini’s last
December looking like you were in bad trouble. I cared enough to find out what
kind of trouble it was.”

I felt a hot flush of anger. “What else do you know?” I
asked.

“Your friends in Gretna told me the whole story when I
was back there in February. You and Richard, Jamie, your dad, and how your
mother treated you.”

“Eddie phoned me. And before you ask how, your sister
gave him my phone number.”

I was dizzy with anger. I wanted to smack her so bad,
my hand tingled. “Lacey, I don’t believe this. You went to my
sister
? How did you get
her
phone number? And how could you sneak and pry like
that, and lie to me?”

“
You
lied to
me.
From the first day.” She still wasn’t raising her
voice. “You stole your résumé out of George’s office, and you lied about where
you were from. You told me you were from Illinois. You have a southern accent,
and you’re from Illinois?”

I jumped off the bench, scattering napkins. “Yes, I am!
I was born in Evanston.
I
don’t lie.
I
don’t sneak. And I don’t believe this.
How
in hell did you get my sister’s phone number?
”
I didn’t care if she got me fired—I was quitting anyway.

“I must have gotten it from your employment application,
wouldn’t you say? Since you don’t sneak, I mean.”

I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach. All my fury
went out of me like a bubble popping. There was nothing I could say. I had no
right to call anyone else a sneak. I dropped back onto the bench. I was shaking
with a tired, let-down feeling left over from the anger.

“I thought you were my friend, Lacey,” I said. My voice
was hoarse as an old beggar’s.

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done all your work for
you the past two months. You needed someone to help you, and I decided to try.
I hope someone would do the same for my daughter.”

I didn’t know how to answer that.

“What did Richard say?” she asked again, still pleasant
and patient.

“He’s going to get out of prison.” There wasn’t any reason
not to tell her, since she knew everything else. “He never did anything to
Jamie. They’re going to let him out.”

“How’s he holding up? That was some awful experience he
had, going to prison when he hadn’t done anything.”

“I don’t know how he’s doing—he said he was getting
help. He asked me to come back.”

“So, you’re going?”

“No, I’m not. There’s a guy here asking me out, and
he’s nice. I’m staying here.”

It was her turn to be astonished. “Who is he? You never
said anything about anyone.”

“I just met him. He’s Marilu’s nephew. He moved into
the apartment next door, and we went looking at the stars. He’s studying to be
an oceanographer. I want to go out with him.”

“Did you tell Richard all this?”

“No, I’m not going to answer his letter.” I
concentrated on shredding the burger wrapper in my lap.

“Why not?”

“I’ve had enough. I want to live like other women do,
get married and have kids. Not worry about some guy acting crazy, or whether my
family likes him. Or whether we can find a place to live, or go to a
photographer’s, or even walk around together without getting insulted.” It was
all pouring out. I realized it was pretty incoherent. I wadded the paper into a
ball and threw it toward the trash barrel. I missed by a mile.

Lacey got up and retrieved the paper. She dropped it
into the can and came back to our table. “Tell me something, Kathy,” she said.
“What was the problem between you and your mother?”

“She’s a real witch. And she never cared about me. Just
her middle-class white friends and her middle-class white life.”

“What was her objection to Richard?”

“She said he was disturbed and no one would accept us.
And that we lived like hippies.”

“Is that different from what you just said yourself? Is
your mother the person in your family you want to be like?” Her voice was
polite, just asking, calm as if she were asking if I wanted ketchup on my
French fries.

“That’s not fair!” I snapped.
There must be some
difference. Except there’s not.
Tears spilled
down my face, and I didn’t even try to wipe them away.

She reached out and touched my arm.

I looked at her hand.
The brown back of it and the
white palm like Richard’s. Like Jamie’s little hands.
I started crying then for Richard and for Jamie, for
everything I’d had that last day at the zoo.
I didn’t even get to say
good-bye. But there’s no use pretending I can get any of it back.

“I don’t want to start up with him again,” I finally
said. “It’s too hard.”

“So, just letting him know you got the letter and have
some sympathy for him is starting up again? Look, Kathy, he’s getting treatment
for his problems. He didn’t do anything to your daughter. Why don’t you at
least let him know you’re not holding a grudge?”

“I’m afraid it might not stop there.”

“Listen to me, Kathy Woodbridge. You wouldn’t be afraid
of getting involved with Richard if you didn’t still love him. You know as well
as I do, that’s where you belong.”

“No, Lacey,” I said. “I am not going back to Richard.”

“You love this other guy?”

I tried to say I did, but I couldn’t.
When Martin
was shot, Thu didn’t run away and find another husband. Maybe a hero is just
someone who does what they can, someone who doesn’t run away. The way I’ve run
away, every single time. Like I want to do now, run to this dream about Daniel.
And when this fantasy wears out, another one, probably. What will I do when
they’re all worn out?

“Don’t love him, huh?” she said. “But this other guy
would be a lot easier, wouldn’t he? No one giving you hell for being with a
black man. No more thinking twice about holding hands in public, or having
waiters in restaurants seat you back by the kitchen. Hey, Kathy, you could even
join the country club.

“You’d just know for the rest of your nice white life
that you’d thrown away the man you loved when he needed you most. What kind of
future can you build on that, Kathy? And how will it feel to lie in another
man’s arms, wondering what happened to Richard?”

Mr. Giannini was put out that Kathy was leaving at such
short notice, but I told him it was a family emergency. I felt it was fitting
to round things out with one last misrepresentation.

I helped Kathy pack the stuff she wanted to take—it all
fit in a suitcase, if you don’t count the cat. Willis hauled the rest to the
Salvation Army. We drove her to the airport on the evening of September the
seventh. She sat in the backseat with her cat carrier. I didn’t see Henry, but
he howled so much, I had no doubt he was there.

Kathy leaned forward and stuck her head between the
front seats. “Lacey?”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“How
did
you
find out about Richard?”

“You didn’t do a good job of covering up, you know.”

She pulled back a little. “What do you mean?”

I turned to face her as much as the seat belt allowed.
“Oh, Kathy,” I said, “stay away from a life of crime—you’re no good at hiding
things. First you pick an apartment building with a landlady on the premises.
You’re the only tenant, so she has no one else to think about. To top it off,
she’s a psychic.”

“Does Marilu really know anything?”

“Occult, you mean? Probably not. But psychics are good
at reading people. And for all she knew, you’d be in the shop, buying advice
from her. So, she kept her eye on you. I don’t think she’d have gone so far as
to open your mail, but she looked at the envelopes and remembered the return
addresses. You even gave her a check with your Gretna address on it, for
goodness sake.”

I was afraid she’d be angry, but she laughed. “Knows
all, sees all, tells all, you mean?”

“Can’t say you weren’t warned.”

“How did you get my sister’s phone number?”

“Marilu gave me her name and told me she lived in Baton
Rouge. I looked in the phone book. The library has directories from all over
the country.”

“But how could I have known you’d go to Marilu? Why
would anyone have thought you’d go all the way to
Gretna
? How many people would have done that?”

“I know. I had some problems of my own, Kathy. My
daughter went off to college—I just felt so useless for a while, there. And I
apologize—in a way. But Kathy, do you wish I
had
minded my own business? I’ll let you be the one to decide. If you say
so, the next time someone needs help, I’ll just walk on by.”

She didn’t say I should have kept my nose out of her affairs.
So, I guess that was my answer. For a while, she didn’t say anything.

“You okay now?” she finally asked. “I mean, about your
daughter and all?”

“I’m okay. I’m applying to go back to college myself.”

“I’m glad. That office is a crummy place to work.”

Willis pulled into an airport parking garage and found
a spot. He hauled her suitcase and cat carrier out of the car. We took the cat
to the counter where we had to ship him, and went to sit with Kathy at the
gate.

“By the way,” I told her, “Francine has your thousand
dollars for you when you get back. I can’t believe you ran off and left that in
a piggy bank. And then turned up in San Pedro desperate enough to take a job at
Giannini’s.”

“What are you going to study when you go to school?”
she asked me.

“Sociology or social work. I like helping people.”

Kathy nodded. “I guess it’s that or the FBI.”

She sounded like Angela. I shot her a look to see if
she meant it seriously, but she grinned back at me. Wasn’t much I could say—she
was entitled. Willis gazed at the people walking by in the concourse, perfect
innocence in every line of his face. Kathy had no idea he’d been as nosy as me.
Men always get away with more than women do.

There was still one thing
I
wanted to know. “Kathy, how did you snitch your
résumé from George?”

“When I worked for Martin, I did scenery and special effects.
A lot of it is almost like magic tricks, making things appear and disappear.
And George is hardly the world’s smartest audience.”

“But what would you have done if you hadn’t had a
chance to take it?”

“Actually, it was all made up. Snitching it was just an
impulse.”

“Sneaky, sneaky,” I said fondly.

When it was time for Kathy to board, I gave her a big
hug and a kiss, like I always gave Angela when she went away. Willis stood
around, looking embarrassed and out of place.

“Don’t give us the tears, now, Kathy,” he said. “We’ll
see you in February.”

Kathy hugged him, too. His sheepish look made me wish I
had my camera.

On the way home, I drove. We listened to soft music on
the radio, not saying much. At the end of the freeway, I turned off onto
Pacific Avenue. I noticed an Apartment for Rent sign in the front window of The
Mystic Eye.

“I have to put an ad in the paper for another secretary
when I get to work in the morning,” I told Willis.

“Make that two secretaries,” Willis said.

“Well, Willis, I can’t just quit.”

“Why not? Why’d you take that job in the first place?”

“You know why. To save for Angela’s college. And so
she’d get to have pretty clothes and stuff while she was in high school.”

“And now she has her scholarship and her job. You know,
there are good points about not being needed so much. Like being able do a
little for yourself for a change. Think about it.”

The light at Ninth Street turned red just before we
reached it. I turned to Willis.

“You know what Angela said to me? She said ‘Mama, I
appreciate all you’ve done for me. But I’ve passed the point when you need to
change my diaper. What would you think if I called you in here to put my
underwear on me? Let’s move on, okay?’”

Willis howled with laughter. “That Angie is something
else.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand quickly before the
light changed. “You too, you know that, honey? I’m proud of what a good mother
you were for Angela, and for the way you helped Kathy, too.”

“Now they’re both on their own,” I said, a little
sadly. The empty feeling flitted through me—not the heavy thing it was when
Angela went away, almost transparent this time, almost just a memory.

“I can hardly wait to see what you’ll do next,” said
Willis. “Don’t waste any more time on Giannini. Make the ad for two
secretaries, okay?”

I put on the blinker, checked Pacific Avenue in the rearview
mirror, and made the last turn for home.