People Who Knew Me (2 page)

JT had deep lines in his face, evidence of six decades of life. A long gray ponytail trailed down his back, likely growing nonstop since his hippie days. He was missing a front tooth.

“Is there some kind of catch?” I asked him. It was only $1,100 a month—half the price it should have been, at least. It was—still is—perfect: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a small living space, and a possibly rotting back deck, complete with a fraying hammock.

“No catch,” he said. “I just don't want to sell it. Need someone good to look after it.”

We stood there on the deck, the wind chimes doing their musical thing. Claire was dead asleep on me, drooling on my shoulder. JT squinted in the setting sun. I wanted to hug him.

“You're my savior,” I said.

He laughed and said, “I've been told I look like Jesus.”

Maybe that's what the
J
stood for.

In addition to offering me a place to live, JT suggested I check out his friend's bar for a job. I'd been working part-time at a day-care center, mostly because I could bring Claire with me and leave her there when I worked my other job—waitressing at a fancy steakhouse in Malibu. I ventured to Malibu with the hope that rich people would leave me decent tips. Turns out most rich people aren't generous; maybe that's how they became rich.

“It's close to home,” he said. “I bet he'd let you bring the baby, let her sleep in the back room with some whiskey on her lips.”

I couldn't tell if he was joking—about the job or the whiskey. But I went to check it out anyway. It was called just Al's Place. Al himself was a large man—six and a half feet tall with a big belly and hundreds of tattoos, but gentle as could be. He said he needed someone who would “basically run the place” with him. I was honest, told him I had no bartending experience. He said, “If JT sent you, I'm willing to give you a shot.” Because it was more of a managerial role, it was well-paying. Eighteen bucks an hour. When I asked about health insurance for Claire and me, he said, “I suppose I could look into that if you stick around.”

Al didn't ask for references. He didn't do any kind of background check. He had to assume that people who want to work in a dimly lit shithole don't want to talk about their past. He had a southern drawl and once mentioned that he used to live in Tennessee, but got into “some trouble” out there. I've never asked him questions because I don't want him to take any reciprocal interest in me. We have an unspoken truce.

Shortly after I showed up at his bar, he called me from across the room: “Connie.” Then again: “Connie.” This happened a lot the first couple years—when I forgot my new name. Eventually, he came right up to me and said, “You deaf or somethin'?” When I shook my head, he looked at me strangely. But he didn't say anything more, in accordance with the truce, I guess. There are times, still, when I forget my name—like when the receptionist at the dentist's office calls me back for my teeth-cleaning, or when I'm introducing myself at a PTA meeting. I'm not always sure who I am.

JT was right when he said Al wouldn't mind if I brought Claire to work. In fact, Al made part of his back office her play area, stocked with blocks and stuffed animals when she was a baby, then coloring books and Barbie dolls when she was in elementary school. It's cans of Coke and DVDs now. Al adores Claire, which is amusing, since Al looks like the type who doesn't adore anyone. Sometimes I wonder if he pines for his own family, his own children. He would never say as much.

The bar has been Claire's second home since she was a baby. She's never minded coming along with me—never whines or asks when we're leaving. Even as an infant, she rarely fussed. It's like she knew I had to make money for the two of us. When she got older, she just did her homework back there, quietly. I meet her teachers every year, listen to the accolades they give her. They think I must have something to do with her straight A's, her curiosity, her obedience. They don't know that she just came to me that way. It's like the universe knew I couldn't handle a difficult kid.

Now, at thirteen, Claire comes to the bar sometimes, but she doesn't have to; she can stay home alone. This fact still startles me. I comfort myself with the knowledge that I am less than ten minutes away. Claire says I worry too much. She still believes the world is truly kind. I dread the day she realizes it's not.

*   *   *

It turns out I'm a pretty good bartender. As the stereotype goes, I listen to other people's problems to make me feel better about my own. Divorces, affairs, job losses, broken hearts—there's a different story with every drink. Al's Place has no pretense; people know their secrets are safe here. And with all that's happened in my life, I don't judge. I nod along, never truly surprised by any of the stories. People take comfort in the fact that I accept their poor choices, their sob stories. I have to, because mine are worse.

It's not unusual for guys to ask me out on a date after they've confessed their sins and spilled their truths to me. I suppose that's what we all crave—sharing our darkest selves and having another human say with their eyes,
I understand
. My refrain is always the same: “I don't date.” They say, “Oh, come on.” They roll their eyes. They laugh nervously. They think I'm bluffing. I'm not.

Claire says I should date. She's at that age when dating seems glamorous and alluring. I'm a mystery to her. She's more social than me. She has friends. She goes to sleepovers at Heather's house. She hangs out with a girl named Riley. She mentions a boy—Tyler. She's more outgoing than I ever was, signs up for teams and clubs. It's because of her that I'm not a total recluse. I've taken her to all the classes that come with each passing interest—gymnastics, tap dancing, painting. She's into soccer now.

It's only a matter of time before she has her first boyfriend. She's a beautiful girl, and I think that's an objective assessment, though a parent never knows for sure. She has the long, wavy brown hair I used to have, until I got pregnant and the hormones shocked my system so much that my hair went forever straight. I dyed my hair blond when I moved to California, as a just-in-case disguise. Claire must assume it's my natural color. Sometimes it bothers me to think how little I've let her know me. She has my mouth—small, but with full lips. From the nose up, she looks like her father. It's been impossible to forget him because of her.

She asked me about him once, when she was six. I was surprised to hear the question:
Mom, who was my father?
I shouldn't have been, though. It was around the same time she was asking all kinds of questions I didn't know how to answer:
Why are there so many homeless people? If tomatoes are a fruit, why aren't they in a fruit salad? Why are tears salty like the ocean?

She wanted a good story, a love story. So I came up with one, long ago, in preparation for the day she asked me. When people lie, they tend to embellish and go on and on, so I kept it short and sweet. I told her he was my high school sweetheart. I told her we wanted to live happily ever after. I told her he died in a car accident when I was pregnant with her. I told her she had his eyes—big and blue. I told her his name was William.

Most of those things aren't true.

“Do you have a picture of him?” she asked me, those big eyes of his looking back at me.

“No, sweetie, I don't,” I said.

That was true.

I hated lying to her, I really did. But the guilt faded over time. Living with my lies has become easy. I don't even notice them anymore. They have become, in a sense, my truth.

She never asked about her father again. She never seemed bothered growing up with just me. Even now, in the midst of what's supposed to be a bratty adolescence, she still hugs me before she goes to bed, still kisses my cheek and says she loves me. But I never should have let myself think that I've done okay at all this. That somehow it will always be okay.

It was just a few weeks ago that I was thinking about the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and how I could finally relax in this life that still feels new. It's been fourteen years, I told myself.
Fourteen years and at last I can exhale.
But I can't, because the universe, or whatever it is that keeps track of these things, seized that moment to say,
Silly Connie, or Emily or whoever you are, did you really think it would be that easy?
See, last week, everything changed. Last week, the universe decided the karmic equilibrium had been off for too long. Last week, my doctor said, “It could be cancer.”

 

THREE

To understand how I ended up in California, you have to go back to 1992, to an autumn Saturday at New York University. I was just twenty years old, starting my senior year, majoring in literature because I thought I could have a life of just reading and talking about it. I lived in an apartment off La Guardia Place with Jenny, a girl I'd call my best friend for a few years, until we'd lose touch completely. One day, I'll tell Claire this is just what happens in life—people come and go.

Fate put Jenny and me together as roommates freshman year. When a girl in our dorm got mugged, Jenny's parents freaked out and bought the La Guardia Place apartment for her. They said it was a good investment opportunity for them and they liked that there was a gate with a security intercom. It would let them sleep at night, they said. Jenny was from a small town in Minnesota. She'd been homeschooled on a farm. She'd never seen a black person before coming to NYU. Her parents didn't want her to live alone, so she asked me to move in with her. I didn't have to pay rent, just half the utilities. My room was the size of a large closet, with just enough space for a twin bed, a small nightstand, and a dresser. I had a round window next to my bed, about a foot in diameter, like a porthole on a ship, and on winter mornings I'd watch the snow fall and write poems that I thought could rival Emily Dickinson's. It's that delusion that makes youth so sweet.

“Have you met the guy next door yet?” Jenny said, coming in the front door and taking off her boots. She threw her coat over the armchair and sat next to me on the couch—a hideous plaid thing from the seventies that came straight from her parents' garage. She was excitable like this at least three times a week, and it was almost always boy-related. Jenny was a virgin. She was determined not to be by year's end.

“I haven't,” I said, pulling my knees to my chest. “Cute?”

She took her book bag off her shoulder and set it on the coffee table with dramatic flair.

“
Cute
is an understatement,” she said. She put her hand to her heart as if it weren't there anymore, as if he'd already taken it from her.

“Did you introduce yourself?”

I wasn't boy-crazy. Not like Jenny. I'd had a boyfriend through most of high school. Danny stayed over, slept in my bed. My mom was hardly ever around. She was either working one of her many odd jobs or spending the night with one of her many odd boyfriends. Even when she was around, she didn't care. Danny and I had sex on my sixteenth birthday. We used condoms my mom kept in a Duane Reade bag in her nightstand drawer.

By the time I started college, I didn't want to be tied down by anyone. I still dated, but sporadically. In freshman year, there was the guy in my biology class—Lawrence, never Larry. He refused to dissect a frog—because of fear, not morals—and I lost all attraction for him. In sophomore year, I hooked up with Tony, a twenty-four-year-old wannabe-guitarist who worked the counter at a butcher shop. In junior year, I had an on-and-off “thing” with Alex, whose high-school-sweetheart-of-a-girlfriend went to Boston College. They broke up every other week and, as a testament to my stupidity, I thought it was somehow romantic to be “the other woman.” Then he told me it was over. I thought he meant with her, but he meant with me. I feigned apathy and committed myself to being alone and reading all the books by the Brontë sisters.

“I was way too shy to say anything but hello,” Jenny said. She hit herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand to express her regret. Jenny majored in theater.

“Well, if he lives next door, we'll see him again.”

“Let's make up a reason to go over there,” she said.

“Like what—‘Hey, do you have a cup of sugar?'”

Jenny shrugged and said, with all seriousness, “That could work.”

“Jen, seriously?”

She laughed, trying to play it off like she'd been joking. Jenny needed me, relied on me to call her out on her naïveté. As a young, still-insecure kid, I needed to feel smart and savvy. We were good for each other.

“Let's just ask if he wants to grab pizza with us,” I said, standing up, pushing down my rolled-up-to-the-calf sweatpants and gathering my hair in a loose bun.

“
Now?
” she said.

“Why not? It's almost dinnertime.”

She looked up to me from her cross-legged seated position on the couch, something like admiration and terror in her eyes.

“Are you even going to change first?” she said. It was like she was from the 1950s, when girls only presented themselves to boys while wearing poodle skirts.

“Jen, come on.”

I had my hand on the doorknob when I remembered:

“Shit, I have a date with Gabe tonight.”

I turned around and she was right there, on my heels.

“Ooh, Gabriel?” she said, with a trying-to-be-ethnic accent.

Gabriel—Gabe—Walters was one of those guys on campus almost everyone knew, and for that very reason he wasn't my type. He was handsome enough to make me feel self-conscious, and that was a turnoff. Jen assured me I was attractive, even “on his level.” I never saw myself that way, though. I was thin, “like a model” according to Jen, gangly and scrawny according to me (and the handful of boys who teased me in junior high). When I was thirteen, I resorted to supplementing my meals with those protein shakes created for elderly people who don't have the ability to chew anymore. I had long brown hair, wavy if I didn't blow-dry it, which I almost never did. I knew my big brown eyes were my best quality, so I accentuated them with too much eyeliner and multiple coats of mascara, hoping people would look there and not notice that my chest was flat, my legs were twiggy, and I wore the same pair of jeans every day because, truthfully, I was a poor kid on scholarship.