Lydia (38 page)

Loren opened his eyes. “I don’t know. We lost our baby when he was only five. That man’s presence”—meaning Leroy—“leads me to think you must be Fred. He certainly believes it.”

Roger sat back. It was too much for him to absorb. He’d planned on a
yes
-or-
no
answer.
I don’t know
was hard to swallow. But then, Loren was probably right about Leroy’s presence. Why had Leroy shown up when he did? Shannon’s basketball jersey proved Leroy had followed them here from Wyoming. It wasn’t just bizarre timing that brought them both to this house on the same day.

Lydia was right. He was Fred. “What was my mother like?”

Loren sighed. That was the question he feared most. “It was so long ago. I was a different person then.”

Shannon said, “It wasn’t that long ago.”

Loren looked at Shannon, glad for an excuse to break away from Roger. “We lost Fred in 1975. Ann died in ’77.”

Roger asked the question he’d wondered about for ten years: “When was my birthday?”

And Loren knew this one. “February fourteenth. You were a Valentine’s baby.”

Roger made a sigh-like squeak sound. This much alone made the trip worthwhile. “I’ve never had a birthday before.”

“You didn’t choose a day to celebrate?” Loren asked.

“There wasn’t much point.”

“Everyone deserves a birthday.”

Roger automatically started pulling down his bandanna, before he realized it wasn’t there. “That makes me twenty-three. My parents—the people who raised me—guessed I was eleven when I came to them. They think I’m twenty-one.”

Shannon did the math, comparing her age to Roger’s. This was closer to socially acceptable.

Roger said, “I couldn’t talk the first two years that I have memories.”

Loren blinked three times in succession. Guilt rose like gorge. All those years, he’d felt responsible for whatever happened to Fred after they lost him, and his imagination had come up with horrendous scenarios. In spite of that, the true pain had been the idea that reality might be worse than his imagination.

“Why couldn’t you talk?”

“Ask the asshole.”

Leroy cracked the spine and placed
Disappearance
on the hot tub lip beside the pistol, with his hands braced on either side of the book. He lifted himself into a crouch, obviously passing gas in the hot tub.

“Tell me about my mother,” Roger said.

Loren shrugged and looked down at his hands. Ann left no photos behind. He hadn’t realized that until her face started to fade, a year after her suicide, and he went looking for one. He found a few pictures of Fred in a drawer, but none of Ann. He couldn’t even locate her driver’s license. He suspected she had destroyed every trace of herself before she died.

“She was short, with dark brown hair.”

“In the book, she’s blonde,” Roger said.

“I had to change something.” Loren’s mind drifted back, searching for a memory he knew was true. The real Ann and the fictional Ann were intertwined in his head. He was uncertain where one left off and the other began.

“She had nice eyes. I remember her eyes being soft, but I can’t swear as to what color they were. She was thin, but not anorexic or anything. Just thin.”

Eyes and weight—Roger needed more. “What did she act like?”

Loren sighed again. This wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on. “You were Ann’s life. I don’t know why she married me. She was never interested in anyone but you. She had a day care when you were a toddler. Started teaching preschool when you went into preschool. Ann couldn’t relax around adults.”

Roger waited quietly while Loren searched the past. Loren hadn’t brooded over what went wrong with Ann in years. Even when he had been with her, he had been writing novels that were more immediate to him than she was. He mostly thought of her when he needed a trait for some character in one of his books.

“Ann was one of those women whose life matters during pregnancy and when the child is a baby. Nothing else felt quite real to her.” Loren twisted the loose ends of his bathrobe belt into a clockwise coil. He wasn’t looking at Roger anymore. “I’ve met men who survived wars who felt the same way, as if only one short period of their lives is relevant, and everything else is going through the motions.”

“Why did she kill herself?” Roger asked. “If she’d lived, I might have come back. I mean, I did, eventually. Wouldn’t it have been better if she’d waited?”

Loren’s attention came back to Roger. The young man reminded him of Fred. So serious. So earnest. Fred had been a five year old who rarely laughed or cried. “She couldn’t face another day without you.”

Roger hadn’t thought Lydia was listening, but she suddenly snapped out of her trance. Her eyes flew open. “What about you? You faced another day.”

“I wrote the book. It got made into a movie.”

“You took the tragedy of your wife and child and turned it into a career move,” Lydia said.

“Writing about Fred was the way I kept going. Ann didn’t have any defense.”

“Balls!” Leroy sidearmed
Disappearance
across the patio, where it bounced once and slid under Oly’s chair, stopped by a wheel before it fell into the pool. “I should break your knees and elbows, you maggot.” He glared at Loren. “Not one sentence of that pile of stink is what really happened.”

“What do you expect?” Loren said. “It’s a novel.”

“That’s an awfully convenient fall-back position,” Lydia said. “The book is true when you want it true, and a novel when you don’t.”

Leroy wasn’t listening. “I am the father. Fred—pay no mind to the villain. Chuck claimed it was his jizz, but Ann knew better. She knew I lit the fire. She told this fool idiot of an author a lie and he put it on paper. Now the lie is taken for history. I won’t stand still for being cheated out of my due.”

Roger went over to Oly to retrieve the book. At the moment, he’d had it with men claiming to be his father. Leroy, Loren, Chuck the Dead Guy—hell, Pud Talbot brought him up. If anybody deserved his due, it was Pud.

“Did you kill Chuck?” Roger asked.

Leroy grinned. “What do you think?”

“In the book, he gets murdered in the hospital parking lot, the day I was born, but it doesn’t say who killed him.”

“Ann didn’t know who killed Chuck,” Loren said.

Leroy’s eyes narrowed into glittering lizard slits. “You think I could let that weasel live, claiming his sperm had been inside my property? Claiming he had bred with her? I have ethics. Justice must be served.”

“You think killing serves justice?” Lydia asked, which strikes me as a bit hypocritical, coming from a woman who sent a poison chew toy to a dog.

“Killing is justice when I say so, and I’m about to say so.”

The back door banged open, and Zelda’s cheerful voice came from the kitchen. “Look what I found.”

Maurey Pierce came out the back door, resplendent in Levi boot-cuts, a yoked shirt, and stitched black cowhide boots with inch-and-a-half heels.

Shannon said, “Mom.”

Roger said, “Mom.”

Lana Sue followed Maurey, carrying a tray pyramided by little triangular sandwiches and a plate of baby dill pickles. Zelda brought up the train, her rifle leveled properly on the other two women. Zelda was beginning to worry over the numbers of women in the yard. Without the rifle, she would have been the least memorable of the bunch, and she knew it.

Maurey said, “How’s it hanging, Leroy?”

Leroy said, “You’ve got the nerve.”

“Who’s Leroy?” Zelda asked.

Maurey nodded at Leroy in the hot tub. Leroy was almost, but not quite, abashed at the exposure of his lie.

“This one,” Maurey said.

Lana Sue brought the tray to the stone table and left it next to the CD player, which had gone on to Van Morrison. Leroy reached over, lifted a half dozen sandwiches, and stuffed one whole between his gums. He chewed with his mouth open. Lana Sue left the food for the others to serve themselves. She wasn’t about to circulate the tray.

“How many more are we expecting?” Lana Sue asked. “I’m not volunteering to feed an army.”

Zelda was so confused she pointed the rifle at Leroy instead of the hostages. “His name is Charley Manson.”

Oly spit into the pool. “My God, woman, you are stupider than you look.”

“I am not. He told me his name was Charley Manson. I had no reason to think he’s a liar.”

“You know he’s a killer and a kidnapper,” Lydia said, “but you saw no reason to think he might lie?”

Maurey picked up one of the sandwiches and examined it. The bread was dappled, like an Appaloosa. “His name is Leroy and he broke into my barn night before last.” Maurey lifted the tray and took it to Lydia and Shannon. She wasn’t above the role of serving wench. “He was in your kitchen yesterday, or it could have been Friday night, after he left my place. He broke your back window and threw milk around the counter.”

Shannon said, “Was she with him?”

“She gave Auburn dope and he told her how to find Roger.”

Shannon refused a sandwich but took a handful of pickles. “I knew that was my shirt. Lydia, you owe me an apology. The tramp stole my shirt, and I knew it, and you belittled me for saying so.”

Zelda held the rifle in her left hand and her sandwich in her right. “Who you calling a tramp, bitch?”

Shannon cupped her hand over her lips until she’d swallowed her mouthful of pickles. “Well, you. Nobody else here has a face full of iron and a strip of nylon up her butt crack. Nobody else has been stealing clothes but you.”

“One lousy shirt was all you owned worth taking. This woman”—Zelda nodded toward Lana Sue—“has a better wardrobe than you, and she’s ninety years old.”

Lana Sue nibbled a bite of sandwich. “I have to be honest here, Zelda. You are a tramp.”

Maurey kept on task. One thing Maurey can do is focus on what matters and avoid peripheral catfights. “Leroy got the author’s name off a message Shannon left on your answering machine. Then he beat it here. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, it looks like he brought a horse.”

“That was an accident,” Zelda said. Leroy himself was stuffing more sandwiches down his gullet.

Lydia held hers on a dainty napkin. She nodded, putting together the two and twos. “I’ve been trying to figure out how he knew we would be here.”

Loren walked over with his left hand holding his bathrobe in place and his right hand extended. “Loren Paul. You look familiar.”

Maurey shook his hand. “I live up the Gros Ventre River. Fifteen years or so ago, back when you had that place on Ditch Creek, I helped after you’d gotten stuck.”

Lana Sue appeared at Loren’s side. “How is it you can’t remember what you wore yesterday, but you recall a woman you flirted with fifteen years ago?”

“The Toyota slid off the road,” Loren said. “She pulled me out of the snowbank.”

“Of course she did.”

Shannon said, “I can’t believe you’re jealous of my mother.”

“Mother?” Lana Sue compared Maurey to Shannon. They were fourteen years apart, but Maurey’s lived the healthy ranch life while Shannon’d let herself go a bit lately. It was a stretch to see them as different generations. “Is this mother real, or imaginary like the boyfriend-brother?”

“She’s real,” Shannon said. “Where’s Daddy?”

“We don’t talk about your father, Shannon. And what’s this about a boyfriend-brother?”

“Roger and I are a couple now. Isn’t that cool?”

Maurey gave Roger the look, and he concentrated on his pickle. He’d hoped to break the news to her in private. He wasn’t sure how pleased Maurey would be, and the whole public spectacle of being in a stranger’s backyard with guns and Van Morrison and stupid little wedge sandwiches struck him as outside his zone of comfort.

Oly more or less erupted. “You’re poisoning me with lawn clippings.”

“It’s olive tapenade on Pepperidge Farms Rye and Pump,” Lana Sue said. “I was fresh out of boloney and white bread.”

Lydia made a lemon-sucking face. “Would you call this a California fad or an upper-class affectation?”

“It’s food. And you can go back where you came from if you don’t like it.”

Leroy finally swallowed his last glob of sandwich paste. It was time to regain control. “You people shut up, or I’m going to shoot somebody just to get your attention.”

“It’s not so bad,” Roger said to Oly. “I’ll take yours.”

Zelda the Social Climber said, “Roger and myself just adore your sandwiches, Mrs. Paul. You must give me the recipe.”

“The ancient pervert is right,” Lana Sue said. “You are stupider than you look.”

Leroy said, “We’re all going to play a game.”

Zelda flounced. “They’re making fun of me, Charley or Leroy or whoever the heck you are, just because I trusted you. After everything we’ve been through, you lied to me.” She touched Lana Sue above the wrist. Lana Sue flinched.

Zelda said, “He burned up my brother’s car.”

Roger ignored Leroy. Everyone ignored Leroy. There were too many uncontained relationships crisscrossing back and forth across the yard for anyone to care what the naked freak with the gun had in mind.

Roger said, “I understand how he came from the TM barn to here, but how did he know to come looking for me at the ranch?”

Maurey looked at Leroy, which was more attention than anyone else was giving him. “I’d say he tracked me down through Mary Beth. She was his girlfriend a long time ago, in Oklahoma, and she’s the one who brought you to Wyoming in the first place.”

“Your friend Mary Beth was with this crazy man?”

“Mary Beth is sweet, but Leroy has a way of finding innocent teenagers and corrupting them.”

“Don’t look at me,” Zelda said. “I’m not corrupt.”

Leroy hissed an unpleasant laugh. “Mary Beth wasn’t innocent. Who do you think helped with the original rescue?”

Loren said, “Kidnapping.”

Maurey said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Mary Beth drove the van while I grabbed the kid.” Leroy’s toothless grin was reminiscent of a jack-o’-lantern a month after Halloween. “I’ll bet she didn’t tell you that part.”

Maurey was shocked. And hurt. She liked Mary Beth. Maurey had trusted her and helped her when she was in trouble. The idea that Mary Beth knew Roger was kidnapped and hadn’t told her was a terrible disillusionment.

Lana Sue said, “Are we expecting this Mary Beth person for lunch? I’ll have to make more sandwiches.”

Oly said, “She can have mine.”

Roger said, “I’ll take it.”

We have now reached the point where I come back into the story. You no doubt think I’m the hero of my own life, or at least my own novels. You think I’ll take action, save the day, and find inner peace. If so, you haven’t read my other novels. In my actual real life, as in my novels, I play the part of comic relief. It isn’t by design. I don’t plan to be the man who farts in a crowded elevator. It just seems to happen.

What happened at Loren and Lana Sue Paul’s house was this: I had the opportunity to come to the rescue, and I flubbed. I’d never in my life seen broken glass embedded in concrete on top of a double-redwood fence. Nobody expects broken glass on top of a fence when they go vaulting over to save their loved ones from horrible danger. No one from Wyoming, anyway. Hank’s prison didn’t even have a fence lethal as the Pauls’.

So I cut my hand as I came across, caught my pants leg on a shard, and hung for a moment, suspended upside down, bleeding. Leroy snapped off a shot that splintered wood next to my ear.

I yelled, “I surrender.”

Lydia said, “I knew he would do that.”

Lana Sue said, “Oh fuck, another one,” and Roger came over to help me down.

Roger said, “Smooth move, Ex-Lax.”

“You’re the last one I expected to turn tacky.”

“Did you call the police before you jumped the fence?”

I squeezed my shirttail in my cut fist. It wasn’t a terrible cut, but like always, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot. I can’t ever remember how long it’s been since my last tetanus shot. I can’t even remember how many years they’re good for. Three, maybe. Or seven.

“Not exactly,” I said.

Roger guided me around the pool over to the waiting group.

Lydia was scornful. “What was your plan, Sam? Did you expect to fly over the fence and disarm the ruffian?”

I looked at Maurey, who was, of course, disappointed. She hadn’t fared any better than I did. I don’t see where she had room to criticize.

“I wasn’t expecting a gun,” I looked at the gash on my palm. It wasn’t deep enough to milk for sympathy from this bunch. “Maurey told me when he was in her barn, he didn’t have a gun. I figured if he had one, he would have shown it then.”

“You figured wrong, numb nuts,” Leroy said.

“I’m afraid so.”

The Wyoming contingent didn’t seem overly terrified at the nearness of death. Oly was staring angrily at something made out of bread on his lap. Roger and Shannon wore semi-goofy grins, as if me falling over the fence had been expected all along. Maurey stood beside Loren Paul and they seemed to be discussing old times, which didn’t make sense, but there you are.

Only Lydia had the face of one who’s lost their last friend. She wasn’t frightened, but she was depressed at a depth I’d never seen before, and I’ve seen Lydia depressed many times in my life. She’d never been a mother who hides despair from her son.

Her posture was so beat down, I asked, “What’s wrong?” which may sound stupid, considering Leroy, Zelda, and the firearms, but it wasn’t. Lydia had concerns beyond the immediate and obvious.

She said, “None of your damn business.”

I said, “That’s fair.”

***

Leroy stood up. Nobody wanted Leroy to stand; he was grotesque from sternum to head, which is what he showed sitting in the hot tub. Leroy from the knees up was worse than anyone I’d ever imagined, and I’m a professional imaginer. He looked oily, even though he’d been soaking in hot water for several hours. It was as if the grime had sealed off his skin, and not even Zelda could face his penis without queasiness. He would have commanded more authority if he’d stayed where he was.

It was evident, to me, anyway, that Leroy was set to make a pronouncement. The assembled crowd gradually grew quiet as his eyes strayed off, above the fence top I’d recently fallen over.

He spoke. “I have taken a sacred oath to God Almighty that I will have vengeance on the evil Ann for stealing my rights as the proper father to this child. Too bad, but the scheming slit offed herself before I was able to recalibrate the natural order. I cannot renege on my oath. While the Bible demands an eye for an eye, it doesn’t say whose eye I must pluck out. We are gathered here today to decide that question.”

He paused, waiting for more sick thoughts to flow through his head, or maybe waiting for comments. I don’t know why Leroy paused, but he drifted away there for a moment.

I expected one of the women to jump in with a scathing cut, and Lana Sue had that alert face like she wanted to, but surprisingly enough, she held back. I believe it had finally sunk in that this was for real and someone was likely to die in her backyard. She’d lived in Los Angeles before coming to Santa Barbara, so she knew what crazy looks like. She knew the danger of smart remarks or eye contact.