Pasadena (9 page)

“Tomorrow. I can call you when it's ready.”

“Perfect.” I rummage around in my bag. “That reminds me, Maggie's mom gave me the funeral info.” I find the Post-it note in my purse. The details are already in my phone, so I hand it to him. Any confidence he was feeling shatters and he breaks down again. I feel bad, but it's getting late and grief is private, so I hand him a few more tissues and Joey and I leave him to it. We've got a mall to shop.

• • •

Paseo Colorado is more the idea of a mall than the real thing. Here in Southern California, where malls are outdoor temples for sun worshippers with discretionary incomes, the Paseo is a soulless construct. Except for the classy ArcLight theater and a couple of oddities like the
antique mall, it's your grandmother's shopping center: a big anchor store and a few bland chains.

We come up the escalator from the creamy white parking lot and out into the sun.

“Joe, grab a coffee,” I say, and take the long walk into Macy's. I haven't shopped here since junior high. This is the kind of place mothers go to clothe their families for holiday parties and special occasions. Funerals count as special.

I flip through three sales racks and a few designer clotheshorses before I find a suitable match. Another fifteen minutes in the dressing room and I've settled on a sleeveless sheath dress with a lace overlay, black on black. I pull Maggie's pillbox hat out of my bag and check myself in the mirror. Jackie O all the way.

On the way out, I stop at the costume jewelry counter and buy a twenty-dollar strand of pearls.

• • •

“Ready?” Joey asks, shoving an iced mocha toward me. He's soaking up the sun at a café table for two. I drop my purchases and sit beside him.

“Yep.” I suck down a dram of mocha and feel myself relaxing for the first time since I got home.

“Where next?” he asks.

I pull out the necklace and let the luminous beads spill across the palm of my hand. “Edina's, of course.”

• • •

Edina lives in a small apartment building just north of the 210 at the edge of Altadena. As the name implies, Altadena sits above Pasadena, with its back up against the towering San Gabriel Mountains. Once a genteel place of bungalows and Italian firs, now the city is just Pasadena's homely little sister.

Edina's mother smiles at us from the front doorway of their three-unit cottage apartment and shakes her head. “Eddie's not home,” she says in accented English. “YMCA.”

Joey and I get back in the car.

Apparently Edina's got a summer job. She's a lifeguard at the community pool. Imagine that.

We walk out onto the deck of the Olympic-sized swimming pool surrounded by a fifteen-foot chain-link fence. A stern guy in a pair of regulation red-orange trunks and a white Y camp T-shirt tells us to sign in and take off our shoes. We sign the clipboard, kick off our flops, and march across the pebbled ground to Edina, sitting at the end of the pool.

Maggie could pull off a one-piece suit, but Edina has
the added challenge of the Y's color—she looks like a misshapen tomato and she knows it. She catches sight of us and wraps a thin towel around her waist. It doesn't help.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Maggie's necklace. Her mom wants it back.”

Edina scowls. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

I sigh. Joey looks bored. “Little pearl number. The choker from the other night. Family heirloom, sentimental value,” I tell her.

Edina's scowl falters. “But . . . Maggie gave it to me. She knew I loved it. She said it was mine.”

“When was that?” I ask.

Edina looks lost. Her fingers go to her throat, to a choker that isn't there.

“The . . . the day she died. I went over to pick up some stuff she was donating to the camp—old beach towels and whatnot.” Her face hardens. “Bet you didn't know that. She was charitable, your bestie. Even volunteered with the toddlers sometimes.”

I shrug. “I wasn't her keeper, Edina. Just her friend.”

“I feel sorry for you, Jude,” she says. Her eyes flick from me to Joey and back again. “For both of you.”

If that's bait, I don't take it.

“Can we have the necklace, or do you want to tell her
mother no? Funeral's tomorrow at noon. I'm sure she'd love to meet you and hear all about it in person.”

Edina opens her mouth, then shuts it again.

We turn and walk away. I smirk and Joey nudges my arm. “Don't,” he says.

“Don't what?” Now I'm full-on smiling.

“Don't enjoy this too much,” he warns me. “When it's all over, you won't have any friends left.”

I wonder if that includes him.

M
rs. Kim calls me in the middle of lunch with Joey. They want me to help finalize the funeral plans.

She hopes I haven't already eaten. I lie around a mouthful of French fries and promise to be there by two o'clock.

“What was that?” Joey asks when I hang up.

I wash down my fries with a swig of soda and wipe my mouth. “Lunch at the Kims' in half an hour.”

He drops his burger onto the plate. “Are you kidding me?”

I shake my head. “We're going to talk funeral plans. Favorite music, flowers, and such. The final touches for the big day. Don't worry, you don't have to come.”

Joey looks relieved. “Seeing them at the funeral will be awkward enough,” he says. His worry passes and comes
back pointed in another direction. “You sure you're up for that?”

I look at my fingers on the table, and drum them against the laminate top. “What would Maggie do?”

He smiles and puts his hands in the air, index fingers pointing up. He spins them in circles and we both say, “It's a party!”

“What do you think happens when you die?”

Maggie was high on pot and introspection the night of her grandmother's funeral.

“Coroner picks you up, or a funeral home. Then there's a funeral and they bury you. Or cremate you.” I shrugged. “Then everybody eats.”

Maggie laughed coughingly. “Very spiritual. I mean, what happens to
you
, not your body. What happens to your
soul
.”

I blinked. We were on the back patio of her parents' place at two o'clock in the morning, long hours since her mother had cried herself to sleep in her husband's arms.

Parker had a procedure scheduled for the morning, something to reduce pressure on his brain. The tumor was growing, along with the strain on his family. It was
just rotten timing that his grandmother chose that week to die. The Kims always got circumspect and quiet before a Parker surgery. And Maggie always got high.

She and I were the only conscious people on the block that night. A perfect setting to talk about eternity.

“The Buddhists say you get recycled,” I told her. “And the Christians think you go to Heaven to hang with God. And Jesus.”

“Become an angel,” Maggie said dreamily.

“Yeah, maybe.”

She exhaled long and slow like she was still smoking, although her joint was finished before I even showed up.

“What do you think?” she asked. I shrugged again. “Is there a Hell?” she pressed.

I looked down at my feet, still in their flip-flops despite the cold, my robe tied tight over my pj's. “I hope so.”

Maggie laughed, a mad cackle. “That's a stupid thing to hope for. What if you end up there, frying like a fricking weenie roast on Satan's big old stick?”

We both laughed at the obscenity of the image, and I swatted her arm for good measure.

“That was blasphemy,” I said. She kept laughing, waggling her fingers and eyebrows in a Groucho Marx imitation.

“No,” she said. “That's entertainment.”

“Maybe that's all we can hope for.” I raised an imaginary glass to the cold, starless sky. “Whatever lies in the great beyond, may it be entertaining.”

Lunch
is
a virtual party at the Kims' place. A genuine catered affair. A chiseled twentysomething guy in a white shirt and black apron smiles at me from the depths of the kitchen as Maggie's father ushers me in.

“That's Bruce,” Mr. Kim says, introducing Apron Man. “From Sunset Café. They're catering the reception after the funeral. We're tasting the menu today.” He pauses, runs a hand through his clean-cut salt-and-pepper hair. “Thank you for coming. We should have asked sooner. We appreciate your input.”

“Not a problem,” I say, and follow him out back to the patio. Someone has turned on the misters and a fine spray of cooling water evaporates overhead, just shy of our sunbaked skin.

Mrs. Kim wears a pair of pearl earrings that, no doubt, were a matching set with Maggie's missing choker. The pearls complement her latest facial and the linen sheath dress she's wearing. Mr. Kim looks country-club sharp in pressed khakis and a pale pink polo. Sprawled in his
high-backed wheelchair, Parker glances at me from behind his black-rimmed glasses. He's dressed all in white: white polo, white shorts, buttoned up and proper.

I feel underdressed for the spread before me, food and family alike.

Dropping my bag, I take the seat across from Parker, straightening my tie-dyed tank top as I go. “Hey, Parks. How's it rolling?”

Parker sneers at me, then turns it into a smile for his folks. “Terrific,” he says. “I'm finally an only child.”

“As nature intended, no doubt.”

Maggie's mom is staring hard at the cloth napkin twisted in her lap. She's never scolded Parker a day in his life—why start now? Mr. Kim clears his throat. “Try the salmon, everyone. I'm not sure fish is a good idea for a buffet on a hot day, but it looks delicious.”

“Maggie hated cold salmon,” Parker says, but his father isn't listening. He dishes out plates of the stuff—a whole poached fish on a platter surrounded by carved vegetables—then goes on doling out the other dishes as Bruce the Caterer whizzes in and out of the house, adding trays to the spread. Poor guy. Two misery meals for the price of one. I'd rather stick a toothpick in my eye than serve the Kims twice.

“So, Parker, were you home on Friday night?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Hmm, I don't recall having brain surgery that day, so either I
was
home, or I should fire that surgeon.”

“That's a good one, Parker.” His dad laughs and turns to me. “His therapist says humor is a good way to deal with his illness and emotional stress.”

I nod. I wonder if his therapist knows the difference between humor and sarcasm.

“What do you think?” Mr. Kim asks suddenly. “Of the food, I mean.”

“It's delicious. Go with the curried chicken salad and cold roast beef. The antipasti with extra mushrooms, and maybe that fruit spritzer. Maggie would approve. But Parker's right. Skip the fish.”

Parker gapes a little. Here I am, agreeing with him, and the sky hasn't fallen. I never imagined he and Maggie were close, but he obviously knew her better than his parents did. He catches my eye and, for a moment, I can't look away.

Mrs. Kim breaks the silence, looking both flustered and pleased. “Oh, thank you! She's so efficient, isn't she?” she asks no one in particular.

Parker yawns. “I'm not hungry,” he says. “I'm going
to my room.” He presses the joystick on the arm of his wheelchair and maneuvers himself away from the table, but Violetta isn't here and the doors aren't automatic.

“Good luck with that,” I say with a wink. The jab feels good after the weight of his eyes on me. Maggie's eyes.

“Why not take a swim?” Parker replies, rolling toward the doors regardless. “I hear the water's nice.”

As if summoned by an invisible bell, Violetta appears and pulls the sliding glass doors open for His Highness. He flips me the bird with a lopsided smirk and wheels past a flustered Bruce, laden with miniature brownies on a silver platter. Bruce deflates when he sees them leave. “No dessert?”

• • •

We finish lunch with Bruce's fudgy brownies and coffee to the sounds of Parker groaning his way through a physical therapy session with Violetta in his room.

Mrs. Kim selects “Amazing Grace” as the hymn and we agree on a casket spray of long-stemmed bloodred roses. The funeral plans finalized, I say good-bye to Maggie's folks and take the long way out through the yard.

I stop in front of the pool house, by the row of lounge chairs running from the door to the far end of the water. Parker's quiet upstairs. I look up at his bedroom window
on the second floor at the back of the house, tucked under the eaves of three-layered Spanish tile. I can just see Violetta folding a towel through the closed window. She turns around, sees me, and waves. I wave back and look at where I'm standing.

Joey found Maggie's body by standing here. Parker's room had a direct view of Maggie's demise.

I change my mind about walking out the long way and exit through the house.

By the door sit a few pairs of shoes, Mrs. Kim's small Coach purse, and a larger messenger bag. Violetta's. I take a look inside before slipping quietly out the front door.

W
hat's up?” Joey pulls up to my house just as I round the corner on the long, hot walk back from Maggie's.

“Hey, sidekick. Didn't think I'd see you so soon,” I say.

He climbs out of the car. “Tally's definitely not going to the funeral.”

“Why not?”

He comes around the side of the car, scowling at me. “She and Dane broke up, just like Luke said. You still owe her an apology.”

I shrug. “Their breakup has nothing to do with me. All the sorrys in the world won't make Dane keep it in his pants.”

Joey folds his arms across his chest. “But it might make her feel better.”

I drop my bag to the sidewalk and look him over. “Why, Joe? What's it to you?”

He looks past me, avoiding eye contact. “When your parents split up, what did it feel like?”

I blink, taken aback. “What?”

Joey sits down on the hood of his car. “We've got one more year together. Just the eight of us, now Maggie's gone. I'd like to spend it with friends. There's time enough to be alone in college.”

I study his face, unable to tell if he's being honest or not. Joey's always been a bit sentimental. Maggie's death must have pushed him overboard.

“Fine,” I say. “On two conditions.”

He nods, listening.

“One, you also take me to see Dane.”

Joey laughs, but agrees. “Sure, he deserves an apology too.”

“And then, you listen to what I have to say, and you help me with one more thing.”

Joey gives me a look. “Sounds like three conditions, but fine. I take it you learned something at the Kims'?”

“Yeah. The Sunset Café makes fantastic brownies. And Parker was home the night Maggie died.”

“So?”

“So, his room gave him a front-row seat to her drowning.”

Joey's eyes widen. “What are you getting at?”

“I'm not sure. But did you know that nurses keep a log of patient activities while they're on duty? They have to share it with the supervising doctor and prove their billable hours to the home health agency.”

Joey nods slowly. “Fascinating,” he says in a way that means it's not.

“I got a look at Violetta's log from the day Maggie died and the day after,” I continue.

“And?”

“And they're missing. Skipped over or torn out, I couldn't tell. She's already keeping a new book, even though there's a week's worth of pages left in the old one.”

He hesitates. “And what does that mean?”

I smile. “It means that the health agency is about to get an angry call from Mr. Kim for being overbilled. He'll complain Violetta didn't work those days and they'll pull out the logs to prove it. He'll demand to see them for himself, of course. And then we'll know exactly what Parker was up to when his sister was drowning outside his bedroom window.” I tap a finger against Joey's chest. “You do have a fax machine at home, don't you, ‘Mr. Kim'?”

Joey grabs my hand, trapping the offending finger. He's
trying not to laugh. “You've really thought this through,” he says.

“I have.”

“Okay. Tally first, then the fax.”

I sigh. “Agreed.”

• • •

Tallulah stands at the top of the curving stairs in her parents' debutante ball of a house. She's wearing a bathrobe, too posh to be anything but designer, and there are tissues falling out of the pockets. Her nose is red.

“Don't come any closer,” she says down to Joey and me in the foyer. We loiter beneath a crystal chandelier and tuck our hands behind our backs so as not to frighten her off. When she sees we're not storming the castle, she relaxes a little.

“I'm sorry. I just have this awful cold and I'd hate to spread it to anyone.”

Joey and I successfully avoid looking at each other. If she and Dane are split, she's not sharing for some reason.

“Want us to bring you some soup?” I ask.

Tallulah hesitates, almost coming down the stairs a step. “Thanks, Jude. Really. That's nice.”

I shrug and look around. Tallulah's house is a contractor's idea of the antebellum South. In addition to the
chandelier and curving staircase, there's an honest-to-God Juliet balcony outside, running the entire facade of the house, covered in wisteria vines. Inside, the feeling is reflected, literally, in long paneled mirrors that face the tall windows on either side of the front door.
Posh
is too small a word to describe it.
Tacky
, however, is not.

“So . . . what's going on?” Tallulah asks. Awkward conversations can be made even more awkward by a flight of stairs, it would seem.

“We just came to see how you were doing. And . . .” I look at Joey and he nods me forward with a thrust of his chin. “And I wanted to apologize for the other night. I was out of line. Losing Maggie . . .” For a second, I have to choke back an honest sob. Saying the words makes the pain sharper. “I don't know. I guess I wanted everyone to hurt. But of course, you were her friend too. So, I'm sorry.”

Tallulah backs away from the top of the stairs, terry-clothed arms folded across her chest, half hug, half disciplinarian.

“Yes. Well.” She might not have a cold, but her voice has turned downright icy. “I'm sure we're all very sorry. But news flash: actions have consequences. Maybe if Maggie knew that, she'd still be alive and Dane and I . . . and Dane.” She stops, holding back tears.

“You deserve better than Dane,” I say.

The look she gives me is pure venom. “Really? And you would know? Honestly, Joey, I don't know why you puppy-dog around this little tramp. She wouldn't know love if it hit her in the face.”

Joey steps forward, but I cut him off. “If it hits you in the face, it ain't love,” I say, echoing a conversation with Maggie from long ago.

Tallulah goes very still, and I wonder if Dane's been rough with her.

“God, Jude. You and Edina and your fucking hero worship. What? You think I don't recognize a Maggie impersonation when I see one?” She takes two steps down the stairs toward us, both hands clutching the railing like an invalid.

“Maggie killed herself, Jude,” she says emphatically. “And you're acting like she was better than that. She wasn't. Maggie Kim was a cliché. ‘She seemed so happy. Had everything to live for.'” She makes air quotes with one hand before gripping the banister again. “There is no prize for surviving, unless you have a life. And some of us do, Jude. We have lives. Something to get back to when our friend is in the ground. Dane and I . . .” Here she loses her cool. Tears edge into her tirade and her voice
cracks. “Dane and I had each other, until you went and pissed all over it.”

I start to respond, to tell her that one little snipe on my part does not a breakup make. They were together at Blue House, after all. But Joey squeezes my arm and I keep my mouth shut. This is Tallulah's close-up. I let her have it.

“Poor little Jude,” she says. “You're the only one who's ever been hurt.”

She sounds like my mother. Maybe they would get along.

I glance at Joey to make sure he's seeing this. I'm being good. I've bitten my tongue, but now it's starting to bleed.

On her high horse, Tallulah sighs. “Maybe . . . maybe Maggie had the right idea.”

“Tally,” Joey says, starting toward the stairs.

She holds up a hand to stop him. “I'm not suicidal, Joe. I'm tired. Don't you ever just want it all to stop?” She runs a hand through her long chestnut hair. “I'm going back to bed. Shut the door on your way out.”

“Will do,” I say.

Joey hesitates a second, but I'm already walking away. The front door and the door to Tallulah's room slam at the same time.

“Jesus,” Joey says, putting his sunglasses back on. “That went well.”

Suddenly, I wish I smoked. One of Maggie's cheap Ukrainian cigarettes might make me feel better right now. Like I didn't care.

“That, my young friend, is why a lady never apologizes,” I quip.

Joey raises an eyebrow over the dark lens of his shades. “Lesson learned,” he replies. “Um, what she said back there about me. I'm not puppy-dogging you.”

I don't look at him. “I know.”

“I'm just . . .” He loses momentum. I wait. “Holding on to the people I've got,” he finishes.

And now it makes sense. It's what Tallulah meant. When you bury someone you love, you need a life to return to, or you just might not make it back to the world of the living.

Joey found Maggie's body. He doesn't want to see any more death. Not even the death of a friendship. When Luke broke down in front of us, he cried like a baby and didn't care that we saw. But not Joey. He's just been holding it in for everyone.

I take his hand. “You've still got me.”

He smiles, just barely, and we head down the garden path back to his waiting car.

• • •

Dane lives on that part of the arroyo designated for old money. His mother is former Pasadena royalty, one of those girls on the Rose Parade floats waving with their flashing plastic smiles.

Joey pulls up. We're the only car on the street. Everything else is privacy hedges and towering trees.

“Be right back,” I say, and swing out of the car. I asked Joey not to come with me. Dane likes girls. He's comfortable around them. And stupid. Maybe he'll tell me something he wouldn't if Joey was there.

The driveway is like a private country road hemmed in with boxwood on both sides. I follow the curve until I see an eye-catching sight up ahead: Dane washing his car. It's the little sportster in Luke's pictures from the night Maggie died. Dane's dad gave it to him when he turned sixteen. Cherry red, a German import from the '60s. It's his baby.

He's standing over it with a garden hose in one hand, a chamois in the other. He's shirtless, tan, and toned. Behind him the house rises out of a bed of roses, ornate and Spanish. The terra-cotta roof shingles are stacked five thick, and rococo flourishes surround the peaked windows and wrought iron balconies.

“You look like the centerfold in a dirty magazine,” I say by way of greeting.

Dane catches sight of me and smirks. He cuts off the hose, and continues to soap up his car.

“Ah. Hello. Come to snipe at me some more?”

I close the last few yards between us, standing just outside the puddle of water surrounding his pride and joy.

“Actually, I came to apologize.”

Dane stops soaping. He tosses his sun-bleached hair out of his eyes. “Seriously? Can you say ‘too little, too late'?”

I take a step closer. “I was sorry to hear about you and Tallulah.”

Dane laughs bitterly. “Right, that's why you brought up gonorrhea. If I'd known you wanted me for yourself so badly, I would have complied. Tally wouldn't have needed to know.” He leans back against the car and gives me a lascivious look, nailing his pinup pose. I laugh.

“Poor, poor little Jude,” Dane says, uncannily echoing his ex. “You're so fucking miserable, and you want to drag the rest of us down too.”

I've stopped laughing. “Fuck you, Dane.”

“No, thank you.” He smirks. “Haven't you heard? I like them younger.”

“I thought you liked them on roofies,” I counter. “Like Maggie.”

Dane spits and goes back to washing his car. “Where did you hear that? I've done a lot of things, even some unforgivable ones. Maybe I've hurt Tally, sure. But not Maggie.” He stops and faces me again. “As for the rest . . .” He spreads his arms, shedding soap foam as he indicates his body, his car, his house. “I'm Dane Hanover. I don't
need
roofies.”

“Sarcastic clap,” I say. “So, why'd you dump Tally?”

He shrugs, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “Who's to say she didn't dump me?”

“Tally's face, for one thing. She still wants you. And then there's Maggie. You went to see her the night she died.”

Dane sighs and turns the hose back on, running a stream of water down the hood of the car. It gleams like candy-apple-red nail polish in the sun. “Yeah, I did.”

“And you asked her for advice.”

Dane gives me a sharp look. “How do you know that?”

“What did you want from her?”

Dane finishes rinsing the car before he answers. “Maggie kept me honest. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have told Tally about the other girls. If she'd found out some
other way, she'd never have forgiven me. But I 'fessed up and she actually appreciated my honesty.” He laughs self-consciously. “And here we are, coming up on senior year and I know, I just know, I'm not a one-woman guy these days. I didn't want Tally hurting, so I asked Maggie what to do. She'd been right the last time. She said, ‘If you love her, but you can't be good to her, let her go.' I thought that was bullshit. You know, that ‘If you love something set it free, if it comes back it's yours' BS that camp counselors used to say? I didn't listen. Then Maggie turned up dead, and you came home. Your . . . comment at dinner just underlined it. I love Tally, and I'm hurting her, so there. Finito, as they say.”

I look at Dane, with his cosmetically perfect good looks, the studied boyish charm. The shallow jackass with the perfect life. He looks wounded. Not the sort of practiced look that makes gullible girls want to mother or make out with him. The tired sort that comes from a broken heart. I wonder if I'm seeing what Maggie used to see.

“I'll leave you to it,” I say after a moment. I start to head back down the driveway when something makes me stop. There were reasons we called him and Tallulah perfect. In a lot of ways, they had been. For a while, anyway. “Dane?”

“Yo,” he says nonchalantly, the armor already settling back into place. He's nothing if not resilient.