The Lost & Found (9 page)

“Y
ou want to go where? And why?”

My mother was knee-deep in linen. She had bolts of fabric around her, laid out on the floor, one on top of the other like she was building herself a fort.

“Mom, can I help you find something?” I asked.

“The cerulean, Louis. This is sky. This is powder. I can't find the cerulean. Did you sell the rest of the cerulean?”

“No, Mom. I didn't sell any linen.”

“And where did you say you wanted to go? Anaheim? Like Disneyland?”

“Austin. I want to go to Austin.”

“Austin? Like Texas? What's in Texas?”

“Can you stop moving around for a minute? You're making me nervous.”

“I'm making you nervous? How about I'm making myself nervous because I can't find the cerulean.” She paused, put her hands on her hips. Glared at me. “Wait a minute. Did you have the cerulean last?”

“I didn't have the cerulean.”

“Because you know you have a tendency to—”

“I didn't have it! I haven't seen it. Mom, lemme talk to you for a minute.”

“Fine, Louis. What do you want? You want to go to Texas?”

“Yeah, Austin. I want to go to Austin.”

“Okay, what's in Austin?”

I couldn't tell her the truth (which was that Frannie and I had talked for hours on the phone and decided that yes—we were both going to do it. She was going to find Wallace Green and I was going to tour the University of Texas and decide whether I wanted to spend four years of my life playing tennis for them) so I'd spent the morning coming up with the perfect lie. If I said I was going to a tennis tournament, she'd do some research. She and my father both loved being involved in my tennis career. They'd want to know who I was playing, where I was playing. Everything.

“A music festival,” I said.

My parents didn't care about any music that had been produced after the 1970s, so that was the perfect answer.

“You want to go all the way to Texas to see a concert?” she asked.

“Well, it's a music festival, Mom. It's a lot of concerts.”

“Like Woodstock?”

“I guess kind of like Woodstock. Except less drugs. Is that okay? I mean, I know it's short notice.”

“When is it?”

“I was kind of hoping to leave tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow as in the day after today?”

“Yeah, I was hoping.”

She sat down on a wobbling tower of fabric. “That's short notice, Louis.”

“I know, Mom. I wasn't expecting to get tickets. It was kind of a sudden thing.”

“Are you going by yourself?”

“I'm going to take Zach.”

“I don't love Zach,” she said. She ran her hands through her hair. She looked tired.

“Zach's fine.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Louis. Is everything okay? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No! Everything's fine. It's just a music festival, Mom.”

“You're a terrible liar, Louis.”

“I'm not lying,” I said, but I'd lost what little steam I'd
had to begin with; it didn't even sound convincing to me.

I waited for some kind of reaction. She looked tired. She spun around in a slow circle, still looking for the missing ream of cerulean linen. Finally she straightened up and looked at me.

“You're supposed to work at the store.”

“It will only be a few days. I could get Willa to cover my shifts.”

“I don't like the idea of this. Texas is so far away.”

“I'll be safe. I'll text you all the time.”

“A music festival?” she asked. “With Zach?”

“He's responsible. We're both responsible!”

“There's no music festival, is there? You've always been such a terrible liar. Are you sure you're not in trouble?”

“I'm not in trouble, I promise.”

She was quiet for a long time. I could practically feel her going back and forth, trying to balance the fact that I was an adult with the fact that she was overprotective, one of many by-products of my sister's accident.

“I know you should be able to make your own decisions. I know it's your car, and you have your own money.”

“So I can go?”

“You can go,” she said, exhaling. “But you're not taking Zach. You're taking Willa.”

“Willa? I can't take Willa.”

“Why not?”

“Because she . . .”

Because she was legless? Because she had never been away from home without my parents before? Because if I put her wheelchair in my trunk, where would the suitcases go? Because I was terrified she was going to find out I was thinking of leaving?

“Because you're taking your sister or you're not going.”

“What if she doesn't want to go?”

“She'll want to go. Now don't make me regret whatever this is. Okay? Let me go, I need to find that cerulean.”

She wouldn't find it.

I had lied to her.

I had put it into the trunk of my car at my father's request. I'd taken it to a client's. Gave them what they wanted. Put the remaining fabric in my trunk and brought it back to the store.

The trunk was still warm where it had once been.

“This might not interest you at all,” I said to Willa later.

She was on our roof deck with a pair of binoculars. I didn't ask questions.

“What might not interest me at all?” she said.

“I'm driving to Austin tomorrow.”

“Like, Texas?” she asked, lowering the binoculars. “What's in Texas?”

“A music festival,” I said.

“What music festival?”

“Austin City Limits.”

“Huh. I think I've heard of it. Is Zach going with you? Isn't that who you usually do nerdy things with?”

“Zach can't go,” I said. “And music isn't nerdy.”

Zach also played tennis in the Pacific Palisades. We were friends because it was easy and we got along fine and we both liked music. And tennis, obviously. (I was better.)

“Huh,” she repeated.

“I mean, you probably don't want to go, and I get it. I just thought I'd offer.”

“I'll go,” she said, shrugging. “I've never been to Texas. I've never been on a road trip either. Ugh—am I lame? It feels like I'm lame. When did you say you're leaving?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? We're both supposed to work at the store.”

“Mom said we could go. You don't have to, if you don't want to.”

“Do you not want me to go? It feels like you're inviting me to go but you don't want me to go. Wait—did Mom make you ask me?”

“I want you to go. I mean, if you want.”

“It all seems rather suspicious,” she said. She turned her chair around. I wondered why she wasn't wearing her legs.

“There's nothing suspicious about it, weirdo.”

“I beg to differ. But if I keep your secrets for you, you
have to keep mine. And that might be valuable in the future. So yes, I'll go to Austin with you.”

“I don't have any secrets. You know, maybe we stopped your therapy too early? You seem a little unstable.”

“Well, unless the city of Austin has decided to do you a huge, personal favor and move ACL from October to June—which I guess we can't rule out, because you're so important and influential in the music community—you're lying to Mom and Dad about why you're going to Texas. And Mom knows you're lying, because everybody knows when you're lying, because you're a truly abysmal liar. And that's why she's making you bring me. Because I am more responsible than you, and so whatever drug trade you're getting yourself into, I might be able to save you when you are swiftly arrested from some nameless border town.”

“I think you have a very healthy, active imagination,” I said.

“Do I? Or do I just happen to know ACL isn't anytime soon? So you're fucking busted, and you owe me one.”

“I'm really that bad of a liar?”

“Literally the worst. Like you should never do anything remotely devious because it will be written all over your face.”

“What secrets do you need me to keep for you, anyway?”

“In time,” she said. “Everything will reveal itself in time.”

“Well that isn't cryptic at all,” I said. But she'd turned away from me again. She'd raised the binoculars to her eyes. She didn't listen to me anymore.

I texted Frannie:

   
Everything is falling into place.

G
randma Doris woke up at five in the morning and started baking. When I came down to the kitchen at eight, the kitchen counters were covered in loaves of bread. She was still wearing black. She was a very traditional mourner.

“Morning,” I said. (I only got the pun after I'd said it.)

“Morning, Frances. I'm making bread.”

“I see that. What are you making bread for?”

“For your trip, honey. Bread will keep well. I have some zucchini bread and some sprouted wheat bread and some banana nut bread.”

“You didn't have to do all this.”

“I couldn't sleep.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “Everything looks great.”

She removed her apron and draped it over a kitchen chair, then turned to me and leaned against the counter. “I never really thought it was a possibility that one of my daughters might go before me,” she said quietly. “You have kids, you know, you just take it for granted that they're going to outlive you. That's the way it's supposed to be.”

“Grandma,” I said, feeling my voice start to crack. My grandmother had always been such a pillar of strength, an old-fashioned society lady with never a hair out of place or a lipstick line smudged, and here she was, looking flawless in the morning even with flour on the tips of her fingers. But I could see her edges wavering. I could tell she was starting to lose it. “I'm sorry,” I added. It was the only thing I could think to say.

“Do you remember my friend Dana? When her husband died, she sat shiva for him. Seven days, she didn't leave the house. I brought her bread. She told me, ‘I don't know what I would do without this.' Other people, they lose the ones they love and they have to get over it. Go back to work! Stop crying! But here, this is something more. This is time, Frannie. I just want time. It makes me wish we were religious—the idea of sitting shiva is very appealing to me.”

“You can still sit shiva if you want to,” I said.

“Do you think so? But are you allowed to bake during
shiva, Frannie? I wanted to bake. I wouldn't know how to do it.”

“You can do whatever you want. Sit shiva or don't. Bake or don't.”

“You don't think that's hypocritical?” she asked. “Picking and choosing like that?”

“I think a lot of people do that. I think you can do whatever you need to do, whatever helps.”

“Do you believe in God, Frances? Or—a god. I don't think I've ever asked you.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“How come?”

“I don't have a profound answer.”

“I think everything you say is profound,” she said, and winked.

I realized then that I forgave her, that I'd been waiting to forgive her because I hated being mad at her, and because I was glad they had lied to me. I think it felt better to have lived the last five years of my life thinking my mother was in Florida than it would have been thinking my mother was insane.

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“I won't be gone long. You don't have to be sad.”

“I'm not sad at all. You're almost a grown-up now. You want to drive sixteen hundred miles away from here? Okeydokey.”

“You're gonna miss me.”

“I'm going to be busy sitting shiva,” she said.

“I'll call you every day. I'll be back in a week and half. You'll be fine.”

“Oh, Frances. I'm so honored to know you.”

“Geez, Grandma, can you stop acting like I'm never going to see you again?” I crossed the kitchen and hugged her. She smelled like baking soda and yeast. “Thanks for all the bread.”

“Well, it was the least I could do.”

“Your least is greater than most people's most,” I said.

It took her a minute to work out, but when I pulled away, she was smiling.

The first month I spent in my grandparents' house, I was a monster.

I threw tantrums that lasted hours. I painted on the walls with lipstick. I put the stopper in the tub and let the water overflow. I ran away three times.

Finally, my grandfather installed a lock on my bedroom door.

“This is for your own good,” he said.

I pretended to be a prisoner in a castle.

They locked me in at night. I wasn't sleeping back then. I composed letters to my mother. I drew stamps on the envelopes and threw them out my bedroom window (which my grandfather had rigged so it only opened an inch. They were scared I would jump out and break a leg
in a foolhardy escape attempt). In the morning, Grandpa Dick collected them. I watched from the window and if he happened to look up at me I stuck my tongue out at him.

I wanted to see my cousin.

Arrow and I had always been close. Best friends since Aunt Florence and Uncle Irvine had flown to Vietnam to pick her up from the orphanage that had been her home since birth.

For the longest time, she had rattled on in baby-talk Vietnamese. We communicated in a kind of secret language, a mixture of words from both our languages.

Grandpa Dick said I couldn't see Arrow until I promised to stop running away. So I promised. And he said, “I mean, you have to promise it and mean it.”

“I do mean it!”

“I know you're lying, Frances, and it makes me uncomfortable. I'm very uncomfortable with liars.” (So said the man of the eventual black-widow-spider-in-the-mailbox yarn.)

“I'm not lying! I'm not going to run away!”

I was lying.

I had researched how many Peter Pan buses it would take me to get to Florida (surprisingly, only three) and I knew exactly how much cash I'd need to cover the fare and food until I reached my mother's house (three hundred). I did not know where my mother's house was, exactly, nor did I know where I was going to get the three hundred dollars, but I was working on the details.

“I know you're lying. When you stop lying, you can see Arrow again.”

My bedroom window faced Arrow's bedroom window. We didn't have cell phones yet, so we communicated at night by flicking a flashlight on and off. Mine was a heavy black thing that I'd taken a bright-pink permanent marker to:
Frannie
. We invented our own sort of Morse code, except I'm not sure either of us knew what the other was talking about. Then I lost my flashlight and we were forced to communicate during the day, by writing messages on construction paper. But the messages had to be pretty big in order for us to read them, so we couldn't fit too many words on the paper. Usually we said things like:

Hi.

Sad.

Miss u.

Me too.

Ugh sucks.

OK bye.

It wasn't the most effective means of communication, but it was our only present option.

Weeks went by. Every day my grandfather asked me the same thing:

“If I leave this door unlocked tonight, are you going to try to run away?”

Every day I had the same reply:

“No.”

When he finally believed me, it felt like a religious miracle. He stopped locking my bedroom door at night, and he let Arrow come over whenever she wanted.

“Are you gonna run away, though?” she asked.

“Eventually, yeah,” I said.

I was lying.

Arrow came over lugging two suitcases. Aunt Florence and Uncle Irvine trailed behind her with Tupperware containers full of cookies and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and
thit kho
, a Vietnamese dish Aunt Florence made once a month because it had always been Arrow's favorite. The six of us loaded up the back of my 1993 Volvo 240 classic (named Kathy) and then stood on the front lawn in a misshapen circle.

“What an experience,” Aunt Florence said. She didn't really look like my mom except they had the same hair and the same hands, hands that always had to be doing something. Right now she was fussing around with Arrow's pinned-on lace collar. Arrow was slapping her away.

“I've never been to Texas myself,” Uncle Irvine said, and then he waited like he maybe wanted us to invite him.

“Never let her drop below a quarter tank,” Grandpa Dick advised, putting his hand on Kathy's hood. “You never know where the next gas station will be.”

Actually I had an app that listed the ten closest gas stations, but I didn't tell him this, because he didn't know what apps were.

“Call us once a day. No exceptions. You skip a day, I call the police and file a missing persons report. Got it?” Grandma said.

“Grandma, relax,” Arrow said. “I lived by myself in Vietnam for
three years
. I'll be fine in Texas.”

“You know this is different than that, Arrow,” Aunt Florence said, rolling her eyes.

“The orphanage was understaffed. I used to go get sticky rice by myself. I'd be gone for hours,” Arrow said. “I'm just saying. Frannie and I will be fine. We both have Mace.”

“Mace is illegal. You have Mace?” Grandpa Dick said.

“It isn't illegal,” I said.

“It's illegal if you're under eighteen. Why do you need Mace, anyway? I showed you those self-defense moves.”

“Arrow weighs ninety-five pounds,” I said. “Who is she going to defend herself against? An eight-year-old?”

“Offended,” Arrow said. “Timothy Banks is really big for an eight-year-old.”

“You used Mace on an eight-year-old?” Uncle Irvine said.

“No, she karate-chopped him in the neck,” I explained. “He was fine. We have to go. I don't think Grandma is even supposed to be outside.”

“Why is Grandma not supposed to be outside?” Aunt Florence asked.

“She's sitting shiva,” I said.

“Mom? We're not Jewish.”

“I liked the idea,” Grandma said. “You can bring over some casseroles.”

“I think that sounds like a great idea,” Uncle Irvine said. “Doris, I would love to sit shiva with you.”

“Honey, shiva lasts a week,” Aunt Florence whispered.

“I would love to sit shiva with you for this afternoon,” Uncle Irvine amended.

“All are welcome,” Grandma said, shrugging.

Arrow and I got into the car, leaving them to discuss the specifics of shiva and what kinds of casserole Grandma was partial to.

I was driving the first shift. Arrow settled back in her seat and put her feet up on the dashboard.

“I guess we're kind of sitting shiva too,” she said. “I mean, in a way. Like, we're sitting. And we're both in mourning.”

I felt like I'd been sitting shiva my whole life. First my father. Then my mother. And then, because the universe worked in strange ways, my mother again.

“A mobile shiva,” I said.

“You know, we have a kind of shiva too,” Arrow said. “In Vietnamese culture, the wake can last five or six days.”

“What do they do?”

“They mourn. They put coins in the dead person's mouth.”

“Coins? Why?”

“I don't know. They don't really need them anymore, right?”

I didn't answer. I imagined my mother with coins in her mouth. Then I imagined my mother buried. Then I imaged my mother alive and living in an over-fifty-five gated community in Florida. I preferred the latter.

That is how I chose to remember her.