"U" is for Undertow (22 page)

By the end of the school year Cassie was pregnant and attended graduation in a robe that suggested she was hiding a basketball she’d stolen from the gym. Rebecca died that October in a fall from the third floor of a fraternity house back east. According to the gossip, the accident occurred while she and a Delta Upsilon pledge were having sex on the balcony, but surely he hadn’t propped her up on the rail. It was more likely she took a tumble while barfing over the side.

As for Walker, he smoked heavily, drank heavily, and bought dope from the very low-wallers I considered my pals. Later I’d heard he was dealing dope himself, though I never saw proof of it. I never even considered selling dope because I knew if I were caught, the penalties would be far more stringent than the shit that would rain down on his head if he was busted for doing the same thing. This didn’t strike me as unfair. It was just the way of the world.

So what was I going to do here, call the guy and reintroduce myself? What was the worst thing that could happen if I rang him up all these years later? I decided not to plague myself with the possibilities. Maybe the playing field was level now or, perhaps, at the very least, I wasn’t standing in the same deep hole. I picked up the phone and dialed.

A woman answered and I said, “May I speak to Walker?”

“He’s not here. You can contact him at Montebello Bank and Trust later in the week.” Her tone was abrupt.

“Thanks. I’ll try that. Is this Carolyn?” Little Miss Perky here.

“Yes.”

“Could I leave a message in case I miss him at work?”

“Fine.”

“Great. My name’s Kinsey Millhone. Walker and I were in the same graduating class at Santa Teresa High. I’m hoping to contact his father. He’s a veterinarian, isn’t he?”

“He was back then, yes, but he retired.”

“I gathered as much when I didn’t see him listed in the yellow pages. Is he still here in town?”

A silence and then she said, “What’s this about?”

“Look, I know this sounds odd, but I’d like to talk to him about a dog he put down.”

“Is Walter in trouble of some kind?”

“Not at all. I have a couple of questions for him.”

“Are you a telephone solicitor? Is that what this is? Because he’s not interested and neither are we.”

I laughed. “I’m not selling anything. I’m a private investigator—”

The line went dead.

My fault entirely. Usually I know better than to try to elicit information by phone. It’s too easy for the other party to duck, evade, and deflect. In a face-to-face conversation, social conventions come into play. People tend to smile and make eye contact, defusing any hint of aggression. I’m five foot six and at a hundred and eighteen pounds, I don’t appear dangerous to the average citizen. I smile a lot and talk nicely, conducting my business in a nonthreatening manner that usually nets me at least a
portion
of what I want.

All I’d garnered from my exchange with Carolyn was that her father-in-law was retired, which I’d suspected in the first place. She’d ignored my question about whether he was still in town, which led me to believe he was. If he were somewhere else—in another city or out of state—the easy way out would have been to say so. If he lived in Santa Teresa, I’d have a daunting job on my hands. Santa Teresa is chockablock with pricey retirement homes, nursing homes, and assisted-living facilities. If I tried a canvass on foot or by phone, I’d be at it for who knows how long, with no guarantee of success.

Once more, I weighed my need to know against the effort it would take. As usual, my fundamental nosiness won hands down. I knew that without much encouragement, I’d get into the spirit of the hunt and set aside all else until I prevailed. This is probably a form of mental illness, but over the years, it’s served me well. First chance I had, I’d make a run to Montebello Bank and Trust. Maybe I could sweet-talk Walker into giving me the information out of affection for the good old days.

 

 

When Jon was thirteen his mother died. She’d been asthmatic as a child and in later life suffered from countless pulmonary ills. Jon was aware that his mother often felt poorly. She was subject to coughs, colds, and various other upper-respiratory infections—pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy. She didn’t complain and she always seemed to bounce back, which he took as proof that she wasn’t seriously impaired.

In November she came down with the flu and her symptoms seemed to worsen as the days passed. By Friday morning, when she hadn’t improved, Jon asked if he should call someone, but she said she’d be fine. His dad was out of town. Jon couldn’t remember where he was and Lionel hadn’t left a contact number. Jon’s dad was an English professor, on sabbatical from the University of California, Santa Teresa. He’d recently published a biography of an important Irish poet whose name Jon had forgotten. Lionel was off giving a series of lectures on the subject, which is why Jon and his mother were on their own.

Jon offered to stay home from school, but she didn’t want him to miss classes, so at 7:30 he rode his bike the two miles to Climping Academy. He was a husky kid, short for his age, and fifty pounds overweight. That fact, and the braces on his teeth, didn’t contribute much in the way of good looks. He’d overheard his father make a remark about his turning into a swan—“Please, God,” was the way he’d put it. Jon missed the first part of the sentence, but it didn’t take much to figure out his dad thought he was an ugly duckling. It was the first time Jon had been jolted into the awareness that others had opinions about him, some of which were unkind. His mother had promised him a growth spurt when he reached puberty, but so far there was no sign of it. His dad bought him the bicycle to encourage outdoor activities. Jon far preferred having his mother drive him to school, which she did when she was well.

At 3:30 that day, he bicycled home and found the house exactly as he’d left it. He was surprised she wasn’t up and waiting for him. Usually, even when his mother was sick, she managed to be showered and dressed by midafternoon when school let out. He’d find her sitting in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, making at least a pretense of being normal. Sometimes she even baked him a cake from a mix. Now the rooms felt cold and dark, even though interior lights were on and he could hear the low wind of the forced-air furnace at work.

He knocked on the bedroom door and then opened it. “Mom?”

Her coughing by then was loose and wet and thick. She motioned him into the room while she patted herself on the chest and put a tissue to her mouth, depositing a wad of something.

Jon stood in the doorway watching her. “Shouldn’t you call the doctor?”

She waved the suggestion aside, wracked by another bout of coughing that left her sweating and limp. “I’ve got some pills left from last time. See if you can find them in the medicine cabinet. And bring me a glass of water, if you would.”

He did as she asked. There were four bottles of prescription medication. He brought all of them to her bedside and let her choose what she thought was best. She took two pills with water and then lay back against the pillows, which she’d stacked almost upright to help her breathe.

He said, “Did you eat lunch?”

“Not yet. I’ll get something in a bit.”

“I can fix you a grilled cheese sandwich the way you showed me.”

He wanted to help. He wanted to be of service because once she was back on her feet, the world would right itself. He felt a responsibility since he was the only kid at home. His brother, Grant, five years his senior, had just gone off to Vanderbilt and wouldn’t be back until Christmas break.

Her smile was wan. “Grilled cheese would be nice, Jon. You’re so sweet to me.”

He went into the kitchen and put the sandwich together, making sure both sides of the bread were well buttered so they’d brown evenly. When he knocked on her door again, plate in hand, she said she thought she’d nap for a while before she ate. He set the plate on the bed table within reach, went into the den, and turned on the TV set.

When he looked in on her an hour later, she didn’t look right at all. He crossed to her bedside and put a hand on her forehead the way she did when she thought he was running a fever. Her skin was hot to the touch and her breathing was rapid and shallow. She was shivering uncontrollably, and when she opened her eyes, he said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m cold, that’s all. Bring me that quilt in the linen closet, please.”

“Sure.”

He found some blankets and piled them on, worried he wasn’t doing enough. “I think I should call an ambulance or something. Okay?” he asked.

When his mother didn’t answer, Jon called the paramedics, who arrived fifteen minutes later. He let them in, relieved to have someone else taking charge of her. One of the two men asked questions, while the other one took her temperature, checked her blood pressure, and listened to her chest. After a brief consultation and a phone call, they loaded her onto a gurney and put her in the rear of the ambulance. From the look that passed between them, Jon knew she was sicker than he’d thought.

When the paramedic told him he could follow them to St. Terry’s, he wanted to laugh. “I’m a kid. I can’t drive. My dad’s not even home. He’s out of town.”

After more murmured conversation, he was allowed to ride in the front of the ambulance, which he gathered was against the ambulance company’s policy.

In the emergency room, he sat in the reception area while the doctor examined his mom. The nurse told him he should call someone, but that only confused him. He didn’t know how to reach his brother in Nashville and who else was there? It wasn’t like he had his teacher’s home telephone number. The school would be closed by then anyway, so that was no help. There weren’t any other close relatives that he knew of. His parents didn’t go to church, so there wasn’t even a minister to call.

The nurse went back down the hall and pretty soon the hospital social worker showed up and talked to him. She wasn’t much help, asking him the same series of questions he couldn’t answer. She finally contacted a neighbor, a couple his parents barely knew. Jon spent that night and the next night with them. He left notes on the front and back doors so his father would know where he was.

His mother survived for a day and a half and then she was gone. The last time he saw her—the night his father finally showed up—she had IV lines in both ankles. There was a blood-pressure cuff on one arm, and a clamp on her finger to measure her pulse, a catheter, an arterial line in one wrist, and tubing taped over her face. He knew the exact moment the rise and fall of her chest ceased, but he watched her anyway, thinking he could still see movement. Finally, his father told him it was time to go.

Lionel drove them home and spent the next two hours on the phone, notifying friends and relatives, the insurance company, and Jon wasn’t sure who else. While his father was occupied, Jon went into his mother’s room. Lionel’s side of the bed was untouched and still neatly made, while on his mother’s side the sheets were rumpled, with pillows still stacked against the headboard. There were the same wadded tissues on the floor.

The plate with the grilled cheese sandwich was on the table. It was cold and the bread had dried out, but he sat on the edge of the bed and ate it anyway while his body warmth brought up his mother’s scent from the sheets. Because of his braces, he couldn’t bite down on a sandwich without getting bread sludge stuck in the wires, so he broke off bites one at a time and chewed them, thinking of her.

At ten that night, his father found him, sitting there in the dark. Lionel turned the light on and sat down beside him, putting an arm around Jon’s shoulder.

“You weren’t at fault, Jon. I don’t want you to think anyone blames you for not getting help to her soon enough . . .”

Jon made no move. He felt the cold descend, moving from his chest to the soles of his feet. His cheeks flamed and he looked up at his father blankly. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that any action on his part might have saved her life. He was only thirteen. His mother had reassured him, saying she was fine, and he’d taken her at her word. In the absence of adult counsel, he’d waited for a cue. In a flash, he saw how pathetic his ministrations had been, how immature and ineffectual he was in making the grilled cheese sandwich, as though that might heal her or prolong her life.

It wasn’t until years later that it dawned on Jon his father had made the statement to assuage his own guilt about his failure to leave a contact number. In truth—and Jon wouldn’t learn this until later still—Lionel had been in a hotel room, frolicking with a grad student he’d met while he was giving a talk at Boston College.

His brother came home for the funeral, but then he was gone again. The remainder of the school year was strange. Jon and his dad fashioned a life for themselves, like two old bachelors. His dad paid the bills and kept their world, more or less, on track. The house was a mess. For meals, they ate out, brought home fast food, or ordered in from any restaurant that would deliver. Lionel went back to teaching freshman English and two sections of literary history, spending long hours at UCST. Jon pretty much did as he pleased. Nobody seemed to recognize that he was grieving. He knew something black had settled over him like a veil. He spent a lot of his free time in his room. As a fat boy, he had no friends to speak of, so he was comfortable in isolation. His grades were mixed—good in English and art, bad in everything else. A cleaning lady came in twice a week, but that was about as much contact as Jon had with other people. His teachers gave him sympathetic looks, but his demeanor was so dark they didn’t have the nerve to console him.

In the spring, without any discussion at all, Jon found out his father had signed him up for two monthlong sessions of summer camp, back to back. Lionel had committed to a series of speaking engagements that would have him zigzagging across the country nonstop during June and July. The day after school was out, Jon was shipped off to Michigan. This was a so-called sports program, meaning an intense boot camp for fat boys, during which they were weighed daily, lectured about nutrition, berated for their eating habits, and forced into long sessions of exercise, during which the occasional boy collapsed. Oddly enough, Jon enjoyed himself. His loneliness, his guilt, the silence of the house, even the yawning loss of his mother, all of that was set aside for two months, and he needed the relief. The boys were encouraged to choose a sport—basketball, football, soccer, hockey, lacrosse, or track.