He pushed the thought down, and studied the marker.
“You ruined my childhood with your craziness. You made my mother live in fear. We were never free. We lived like outlaws, always running, always afraid, something behind us ready to attack, always catching up.”
He felt the vast emptiness, surrounded by the dead and his own dead hopes. Every boy without a father probably harbors a secret illusion that his father would have been one of the good guys, if only. He’d load up a camper with canned food for trips to Yosemite to climb to Glacier Peak or Alaska to catch halibut, waking his son at five in the morning. Or maybe he would be the guy who dragged his boy off to museums to study the dusty Indian exhibits, who went on and on about the tar pits, and all the groggy boy heard, all the boy had to hear, was his father’s voice, not what he said. All the boy heard was the love.
The time they had together would embed memories so deep, even if the man died, the boy could spend the rest of his lifetime savoring and honoring him.
When Ray had been very young, he had such fantasies. He knew it now because they rushed over him, threatening to drown him. He wondered what his own gravestone might say if Leigh had decided the words.
Ray didn’t even know what kind of work his father had done at the bank. Teller? CEO?
He leaned forward, clearing dust out of the engraved words with a finger. His mother, helped by a hundred scholarships large and small, along with student loans that ran into the tens of thousands, had managed to bring him up and educate him alone, with a baying hound at her heels, always on the lookout.
He owed her so much, everything that had turned out right in his life. Especially his work. Thank her and thank God for it. He loved what he did.
Now Ray had his fine education from Whittier College to fall back on, not to mention graduate school at Yale, which had forced his mother into working two jobs for many years. At least now, he could help her. At least now, she worked because she liked it, so she said, because she liked the people and needed the structure.
Somewhere inside, hadn’t he always suspected he had a bad father? His own badness had to come from somewhere, the fear and anger he had tried to hide from Leigh, from everyone.
“Good-bye, Henry Jackson,” he told his father, turning away. “You bastard.”
15
K at came home from the hospital before dawn, collapsed onto her couch, and fell asleep. Hours later she woke up ravenous, found some rigatoni, boiled it and added canned sauce, then wolfed down several bites standing at the counter like a pathetic, lonely person.
On the plus side, nobody was around to shame her into a normal breakfast.
Her phone rang. She checked the clock. “Kat here,” she said. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning and you better be calling with good news or else, Raoul.”
“Hiya, it’s me.”
“You’re up at the crack, Zak. I’m not sure I approve.”
“So are you. Or were you sleeping?”
“Well. No.”
“I work out before work. Did we have a date last night? Or was that just magical thinking on my part?”
“We did? We did!” She thought guiltily about also making arrangements with Ray. “But my sister had a baby instead.” She told him about her evening.
“Ah, good. Then it’s not my choice of movie. Or that I wore an ugly shirt or have hair growing on my neck.”
She detected a tentative note she found most gratifying.
“I like you, Zak, although now I’ll have to take a closer look at your neck next time we meet.”
“How are your ankles?”
“Totally recovered.”
“Ah, good. You need those to walk, I’m told. You’re beautiful on skates, by the way,” he said. “Graceful.”
“For someone who trips as much as she glides.”
“You’re just-beautiful.”
Oh, so now, at dawn, he was flirting. She heard a horn. “You’re on your way to work?”
“Yeah, and someone cut me off.”
“So you’re gonna show him?”
“Nah.” He paused. “I moved right and let him win.”
“His SUV’s bigger than your SUV?” she guessed.
“Right.”
“I bet Raoul’s gonna load you up with extra tasks because he has a new baby and you don’t.”
He laughed. “No doubt. So, how about tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? I could come to your place.”
“Probably not. Sorry.” She’d have to reschedule with Ray first.
“So you lied. You did notice the neck hair, didn’t you? You noticed, and now you’ve judged me. You’re thinking, he’s a man who needs a better barber, and that’s not good enough for me.”
“I’m sorry I have to pass on the dinner tonight, Zak. But I swear to God, I am enthusiastic. Soon, okay?”
Her phone getting warm in her hand, she called Jacki at the hospital.
“These places are for sick people, for dying people,” Jacki said. “I want to go home.”
“They’re taking excellent care of you, Jacki,” Kat said, scared at the thought of Jacki coming home with a baby, unable to walk for a couple of weeks.
“Raoul says he can only take a week off. He’s got some gigantic, important, earthshaking business he must attend to after that.”
“My job,” Raoul said faintly in the background.
“He wants to hire someone!” Jacki’s tone was scornful.
Kat said, “Sounds practical to me.”
“I don’t want a stranger in my home.”
Kat took this in, ate another spoonful of rigatoni, and felt a strong desire to hang up. “What are you saying?”
“I have alternatives. Family. You could move in, for example.”
Certainly, she could. She, who had no life to speak of would be absorbed by their vigorously alive family. It was the Buddhist thing to do. Take a leave from work, since Raoul couldn’t. Be good, saintly even. The Buddhists had lots of saints, but they had a hell realm, too.
“When hell freezes, Jacki.”
“Why not?”
“Put Raoul on.”
The phone thunked.
“Yes?”
“I’ll help you find someone,” Kat said.
“Oh, that’s great. I’ll be home all next week, so let’s try to set up some interviews.”
“Jacki’s going to be mad at me, so I’m going. Tell her I have a call on another line.”
“You don’t have another line.”
“Use your creativity, Daddy. You’re going to be needing it. Bye, now.”
She called Ray Jackson.
He didn’t answer his phone. He never answered his phone, and at his office she always got some hard-ass named Denise who wouldn’t leave him a message.
She dressed hurriedly, and drove to her own office.
That morning, still weary from her almost-all-nighter at the hospital, she soldiered through a court appearance that left everyone in the room chilled by the behavior of the disputing parties, a pair of senior-citizen brothers this time, sparring over their deceased parents’ homestead. The handicapped one wanted to continue living there but he wasn’t able to afford to buy out his brother. Unfortunately, you couldn’t fake comps; you couldn’t make a property in Pacific Palisades a property in La Habra, in spite of the similarity between buildings.
Hearing Kat’s figures, the currently resident brother emitted an actual sob, which earned him a frown from the judge and only made the situation worse. The hale brother, stoic up to now, jumped up suddenly. His attorney tugged at his arm while he stood, shaking, shouting, “Get over it. Get on with it!”
Kat sighed as she packed up her briefcase during the afternoon break and slunk out the courtroom doors. It wasn’t always like this. She loved her job. She enjoyed every new property. When first her father, and later his partner, had hired her, she had stuck to filing. Then, she helped compile lists of the houses, which included photographs. At her desk, sticking pictures onto pages that went into binders, she dreamed she lived in these homes. In one life, she drove the V10 truck in the driveway, had a view of the ocean from a top-floor Manhattan Beach condo, and enjoyed a Viking cooktop. In another life, she occupied a shabby thirties bungalow in downtown L.A. next door to screaming neighbors who beat up on each other.