Love Love (23 page)

“Do you want to go in?” Claudia asked.

Somehow, it seemed fitting that the place where his mother posed naked so many years ago was now a pawn shop.

“No,” Kevin said. “That's all right.”

They parked in front of a nondescript storefront without a sign. If it wasn't for the line of people snaking from the door, Kevin would've thought it was closed. When he opened the car door, he was welcomed by the yeasty scent of baking bread.

“I'm starving,” he told Claudia, and she nodded knowingly, as if this was how everyone who came to Tartine Bakery reacted.

The queue moved quickly, and once inside, Claudia surveyed the seating situation. All the communal tables were occupied, so she found them seats at the bar facing the window and asked Kevin to sit while she got them their lunch. When he tried to give her some cash, she ignored him.

The mysterious croque monsieur turned out to be a fancy grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich on a thick piece of crusty bread, and it was as exquisite as Claudia had promised. Chunks of roasted tomatoes were like tiny bright bursts, and the pickled carrot was an unexpected surprise, a sweet and vinegary chaser to the rich meal.

Alice would've been proud of him. Breaking down a dish to its component parts was something they both enjoyed doing. They'd either find restaurants in the Zagat guide or the local newspaper's food section and devote their gastronomical senses wholly to the experience. Even when things were bad between them, they still found solace in a plate of vodka penne or a seared filet mignon, talking only about what was on the table, what was on their tongues.

He told Claudia about the significance of the Mission Street address on their way to the funeral. And once he started telling her about his centerfold mother, it led to everything else he'd gone through these last few weeks.

“I like it,” Claudia said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your story.”

“I didn't make it up. It's real.”

“I know. Real or fake, our lives are just stories we tell ourselves. You'll be better off for it, believe me.”

Kevin didn't agree, but he didn't see the point in arguing.

Claudia turned onto Presidio Boulevard. The city fell away to a dense forest of straight, sky-pointing trees, and with less traffic, Claudia's driving became calmer.

“It's beautiful here,” he said.

“My favorite part of the city,” she said. “Mostly eucalyptus trees, here at the national park, and they're taking over. Every year the rangers plant pine and cypress to even out the numbers, though I think they're wasting their time, fighting nature.”

“But what if it makes them happy to fight nature?”

She smiled. “You already know all there is to know about me.”

A few curves of the road later, gray tombstones rose from the green grass behind a black wrought iron fence, carefully aligned into stately rows on the hill. Four stone pillars stood sentry at the entrance, the gate wide open for them to drive through. They parked in a lot next to the main building, which looked large enough to hold services indoors. A soldier directed them to a path, and they walked up a slope, the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge becoming visible. The cemetery seemed endless, one end fading into the horizon.

“I don't like funerals,” Kevin said.

“I find them invigorating,” Claudia said. “Makes me want to do more with my life while I'm still alive.”

“You sound like someone who hasn't lost anyone close.”

Claudia considered his words. “It's true, everybody in my family is alive, even my grandparents. It must've been tough to lose your mother.”

Even now, he could recall only slivers of that horrible day. They were like fractured bits of a movie: the heavy coat of lipstick around his dead mother's lips in the open casket, his sister's tears streaking down her cheeks, and worst of all, Judy and him at the crematorium after the service, huddled around the window that displayed the view into the basement facility where they incinerated the bodies. The director twice asked if they were sure they wanted to witness this, that while it was the last time they would see their mother, it was ultimately their choice. His father and their spouses had declined, but they were the children, and they didn't want to abandon their mother as she left
the world for good. Yet in retrospect, he wished he'd stayed with his father because what he saw was a mechanical procession of human death. Because his father opted for the cheaper plan, where the show casket was a rental used only for the service, the actual coffin was just a beige pine box, lying on a conveyor belt. A short distance away was a silver door. A large man wearing an orange hazard vest stood by a control panel.

“If you're ready,” the director said.

Kevin and Judy nodded.

He pressed on the intercom and gave the man below the go-ahead, and the bright green light above the silver door turned red. The door slid open, and flames danced against the coffin, which slowly, inexorably headed for its fiery destination, like a medieval sacrifice to appease an angry god.

Judy held his hand and clasped it tight, a tiny, involuntary sound like a chirp escaping from her clenched mouth, and just like that, they were motherless.

Except not for him, because apparently he now had a spare mother, like a tire in the trunk of a car. He had accepted the fact that the people who raised him had lied to him for all these years, but then he would imagine the moment of the transaction, his birth mother handing over a tiny, swaddled version of him, putting her baby into the arms of a stranger and then walking away. He hoped it had been a difficult moment for her.

Up ahead, people sat in white folding chairs, while seven armed soldiers stood by the oversized American flag draped over the casket. Kevin and Claudia were in black like everyone else, he in a suit, she in a dress, the uniform of the mourning.

At the ceremony, an army general in military regalia praised Vincent DeGuardi for his valor in the Korean Conflict. He held up a silver star with a sky-blue strap, the medal received for saving the lives of his platoon. After his speech, a woman introduced herself as Marilyn, a short, gray-haired lady in horn-rimmed glasses who looked nothing like what Kevin had envisioned on the telephone. From the way she'd given him directions to the cemetery, he'd expected a female drill sergeant who stood six feet tall. In fact, her immediate authority had prevented him from asking her about her father's photos, but now that he put the voice to the face, she seemed more approachable.

The soldiers shot their rifles three times, the burnt smell of gunsmoke spicing the air, and after the casket was lowered into the plot, the ceremony was over.

“I'll hang back while you do your thing,” Claudia said. “Unless you want me to go with you.”

“You've fed and chauffeured me,” Kevin said. “You've done more than enough.”

“Good. Then I'll go say hi to General Atchison.”

“You know him?”

“He bought a painting of mine, years ago, when nobody wanted my paintings.”

As she walked away, the pleats of her dress swayed with each step. With her loose, silver-streaked dark curls cascading down her back, everything about her flowed. Like Alexa, she moved like silk, as if she were gliding on skates instead of walking.

People surrounded Marilyn to offer her their condolences, and he waited until the crowd dispersed.

“I'm Kevin Lee,” he said, offering his hand. “I'm sorry about your father.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Were you friendly with him?”

“I spoke to him a week before his death. He took a photograph of my mother.”

She brightened. “He loved taking pictures, especially of families. When was it?”

“A long while ago. 1973.”

It was as if her smile were a flame that had just extinguished.

Kevin continued, “He told me he had his old photos in storage and that I could look through them.”

“Yes, well,” she said, hitching up the strap of her purse high on her shoulder, “I don't think so.”

It seemed so desperate, confessing to yet another stranger about his recent discovery of his origins, but maybe this was something he would have to get used to if he wanted to arrive at the truth. He had to at least try after hauling his ass all the way over here to California. “I'm forty years old and I just found out I was adopted. Your father took a photo of my mother, the only picture I have of her.”

“So you want to get more naked shots of her? What would that accomplish?”

“Maybe there's information there in his files, I don't know, an address or something.”

Marilyn cleared her throat. “Do you really think the purveyors of smut would've kept copies of driver's licenses and birth certificates? Do you have any idea the kind of people my father consorted with?”

“Look,” Kevin said, trying to keep his composure. “What is the harm in having me check through boxes of his old photos? Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

“Is everything all right here?”

It was one of the soldiers who'd shot the volleys.

“I'm fine,” Marilyn said. “Wait for me at the car.”

The soldier left, but not before giving Kevin a lingering stare.

“He's my son,” Marilyn said.

“I am a son, too. Trying to find my mother.”

A heavy pocket of clouds muted the lush landscape of the cemetery. A field of headstones away, a red-tailed hawk floated down, its wings spread wide, the end feathers splayed out like fingers, landing on a white obelisk that resembled a miniature Washington Monument. Once again in the San Francisco shade, Kevin shivered. More than ever, it felt like weather fit for a funeral. Marilyn hugged herself as she spoke.

“Mr. Lee, you have no idea what that part of my father's life did to his family. So please don't lecture me about hard times. In any case, I don't mean to argue with you. My father does have an archive in storage, but none of those photographs are there because I got rid of them a long time ago. Everything from that time period, I burned. He trusted me to take care of his prized possessions, so I guess that makes me a bad daughter. I don't know. But I do know that I have nothing for you to see. I'm sorry.”

As he watched her go, Kevin wondered if she was lying. But why would she? Besides, even if the photos had survived, she was probably right. They wouldn't have yielded much more than another embarrassing glimpse of his mother.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Didn't go well, I take it,” Claudia said.

“Nope.”

In another part of the cemetery, far away from them, a tour was being conducted, a woman walking slowly backward while a crowd followed her at a short distance, their heads swiveling in unison as she
pointed out the famous graves. Claudia hooked her arm into his as they followed the path back to her car.

“I can introduce you to a PI,” she said.

“Magnum?”

“I wish. No, this guy looks like an accountant, but he's as good as they come.”

Kevin got into Claudia's Mercedes. He was about to strap on the seat belt when he caught a glimpse of something through his passenger-side window. A man had just gotten into the car parked next to Claudia's, a man whose hair was gray, whose wrinkles were carved deeper than his—

“Hold on,” Kevin said.

This can't be happening. This is not who I think it is.

He stepped out. The man's car reversed, was about to pull away. Kevin ran in front of it and held up both hands.

The man met Kevin's eyes. It was like looking into a magic mirror that added twenty years to his face.

17

A
day after Judy was discharged from the hospital, she got a phone call from Kevin, who prattled on about his San Francisco trip. She pushed the speakerphone button on the cordless and stood it up on the coffee table, then carefully lowered herself onto the couch, an involuntary yelp escaping from her lips when her bitten ankle nudged the arm of the sofa.

“Hey, you all right?” he'd asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Everything's good.”

He'd seen his birth father at a funeral of all places. Just amazing luck, as his father was paying tribute to the man who'd brought him and his future wife together, Kevin's mother. Judy told him how happy she was for him, and it wasn't a lie. Kevin had found his dad, and this was without a doubt just the beginning, the rest of his blood family waiting to love him.

“I'm gonna be out here longer than I thought, so I hope you can house-sit for another week or so?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Are you sure you're okay?” he asked again. “You sound exhausted.”

She almost told him, but she held back. He had enough going on, and she didn't want to burden him with her problems, too.

Now, she was sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen of Kevin's house with a calculator, a legal pad, and a pen. She stared at the numbers again.