The Next Right Thing (20 page)

“Any other questions, Officer Chalmers?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Are you ready to settle the fuck down and become a regular A.A. member like the rest of us?”

AFTER WADE TOOK OFF
for the scuba shop, Troy and Emma learned how to make espresso the way I liked it. While I finished the crib, I gave them both the kind of meaningless but fun chores that Crash had grown out of: Emma sorted wood, and Troy swept the floor. My life was starting to feel like a clubhouse again, which was not the worst thing.

I told Troy and Emma it was time to help me transport the crib to Santa Ana. Ms. Acuña needed to pick the stain herself.

My sort-of sponsee Troy was, apparently, technically oriented. As we left the canyon, he explained to me what was so cool about the automatic shutoff on my table saw. Until that moment, I didn’t know I
had
an automatic shutoff on my table saw.

I made Emma sit shotgun, so I could grab her if she tried to jump out of the truck. I planned on keeping her close from now on.

On the way to Santa Ana, I asked Emma and Troy the same question Terry asked me eight years ago. “What would you guys do if anything were possible? If God, against all odds, actually loved you the way He/She/It is supposed to love you?”

“Him first,” Emma said. “Actually, him only. I don’t want to play.”

“I’m afraid my dad will hate it,” Troy said, “and because you and Wade are becoming surrogates for him, I’m afraid you’re going to hate it, too.”

“Did you just say ‘surrogates’?”

“Yeah. It means—”

“I know what it means, Troy. But it’s not a word you should use around me again. And
never
in this truck.”

“Okay. Jeez.”

Emma laughed. One of the most horrible moments in A.A. is when you decide to make someone else’s bullshit your own. That’s what Terry did for me at Corky’s when he explained how much he
didn’t
like me. That’s what I was doing for Troy, taking him with me to Santa Ana for no good reason but his company. It was more complicated with Emma, but not by much.

Before Troy could answer the question
—what do you want to be when you grow up?
—he took one last detour through the drama of his “criminal” family: “The culture of blame and revenge was the hardest thing to abandon. Being raised Catholic was tough, too. That Higher Power wasn’t—”

I wanted to shoot myself. “Troy,” I finally said. “Please shut the fuck up.”

Troy looked as though he’d misunderstood. I wasn’t fascinated?

“Listen,” I said. “We all come to A.A. feeling like punks, talking about how tough we are, pissing in everyone’s coffee, but I don’t believe you’re from a dangerously criminal family. Dangerous just doesn’t look like you.”

“I never said
I
was dangerous.”

“I don’t care. Okay? I’m going to hang out with you, I’ll even be your sponsor, but I don’t want to hear any more shit.”

“You’ll be my sponsor?”

“And you don’t have to be anyone special. You just have to be a still-breathing alcoholic.”

Troy’s face changed, like he had coughed up a spiritual hair-ball. “I’ll stop talking about it,” he said quietly.

Catalina Acuña was approaching forty, with a sharp nose and bright eyes. Her long hair was like the feathers of a swift black bird. There were strands of gray, too, but I liked them. When I buzzed at the wrought-iron security gate of her stucco apartment building, and she came out to meet me, she said that no one called her Catalina anymore—her name was Cathy. Her accent was less heavy when she wasn’t reporting her boyfriend’s death.

I pointed to the back of my truck, where Troy was standing like Vanna White beside the crib. Emma was in the truck, having asked if she could skip the whole “heartbreaking single mother rising from the ashes of her life” thing and stay in the car. I couldn’t believe I’d managed to get this feral reality-television star to ask for my permission to do anything.

“I had a free day,” I said to Cathy, “so I thought I would bring it over.”

“Who are you?” Cathy made it sound like her own failure to remember.

“We just need some decisions about paint and stain. I tried to contact Mr. Elias, but his cell phone isn’t working.” It occurred to me that I would be going to hell for this. But at least I wasn’t wearing a blue blazer.

Cathy looked down, closed her eyes, smiled. As she walked toward my truck, I had the pleasure of her first impression.

“Terry ordered this?” Cathy glanced at Troy.

“Designed it, too.”

“It’s too nice for this place,” Cathy said. “Can you keep it until we move?”

Troy nodded as though this were his department. I decided to lie some more.

“There’s a bit of, well … Mr. Elias didn’t pay for the whole thing.”

“I owe you some money?”

Making up a number that might tell me something, I said, “Five hundred dollars, ma’am.”

A teenage girl who had to be Cathy’s daughter pushed through the security gate. She was carrying a big-headed baby boy.

Just the fact of him stunned me. He belonged to Terry like my hand belonged to the end of my arm. The same narrow, permanently skeptical eyes, the same flat Irish nose. It was one of those moments—like the moment Crash was born or the day I met MP—when the wall between my world and all the other worlds became impossibly thin, and I had to admit to myself that I didn’t know anything about what was going on.

Cathy turned toward her children. “This is my daughter, Paloma. And my son, Danny.”

Holding her baby brother, Paloma spread her feet, a bit dramatically, into a wary, athletic stance. Letting me know that she was prepared to kick my ass if need be, baby or no baby. Not yet as pretty as her mom, Paloma was a solid little tomboy. I liked her very much for not liking me at all.

My heart ached for Crash, my own child of trouble, tougher and smarter than any child was supposed to be, never allowing herself to be fooled by the world. Why hadn’t I gone to see my own daughter today?

“Come inside and I’ll write you a check.” Cathy didn’t seem concerned about the money; I definitely could have gone higher. “Paloma can pick the colors.”

With Danny still on her shoulder, Paloma gathered up the stain samples and followed us inside.

Stomping my feet on her mat like an honest workingman, I entered a room that hadn’t been painted in a decade. The furniture was worn, and not in a way that looked comfortable. Nothing that suggested Cathy’s quickness to write a five-hundred-dollar check.

As we sat down on the vinyl couch, Cathy asked if we’d like something to drink. Danny’s eyes, blue like his father’s, wouldn’t stop reminding me of the man who had died of a heroin overdose about a mile away.

Troy was polite enough not to ask for anything, but I smelled coffee. The next learning opportunity came right after Cathy returned with an Anaheim Angels mug. She pulled up her purse from the floor and asked what name she should put on the check. I just went for it.

“Randy Chalmers, please.”

I saw how my name stiffened Cathy, but I already liked her too much to continue playing detective. Instead, I turned to Paloma, who still seemed wary as hell. “Are those hands and feet registered as lethal weapons? I hear the Santa Ana Police Department takes a dim view of martial artists who use their skills recklessly.”

Paloma’s mouth made a surprised “O” until I pointed to a glass bookshelf across the room filled with tournament trophies.

As I squinted to read the words beneath the golden action figures, Paloma said, “Jeet Kune Do. My sensei trained with the man who invented it.”

“You don’t think I know who Bruce Lee was?” I said. “I saw
Enter the Dragon
sixteen times the summer he died. I hadn’t cried like that”—I paused—“for a long time.”

At a certain point, Cathy had abandoned writing my check. Paloma hoisted Danny back into her arms.

“Paloma says they killed him,” Cathy said.

“He was a threat to the establishment,” Paloma said. “He tried to bring the disciplines together.”

Typically, Troy had begun sniffing around something that I hadn’t yet noticed: a white box in the corner that had, until recently, held a new MacBook Pro. He looked from the box to Paloma. “You got the fifteen-inch? Sweet.”

Paloma nodded. I knew enough to know that Paloma’s nod had increased the price on an already expensive computer by about six hundred dollars.

Cathy caught my eye. Of course she knew who I was. And now I knew where my fifty thousand dollars had gone. But I was
without desire to get it back. Somehow I would extricate myself from my stupid trick and approach her like a friend. What I should have done in the first place. Maybe I would even let her make the first move. Yes, that was it: I would let her make the first move.

Drooling on Paloma’s shoulder, Danny made a sharp happy noise as if to approve my decision. Troy asked if he could buy the computer that the MacBook had replaced. Paloma produced a thick IBM laptop. “It’s a cheap piece of shit,” she said.

Cathy fixed her with eyes terrible enough to back down a black belt. “My boss gave it to us,” she explained.

“I’m good with crappy computers,” Troy said. “It’ll be perfect for me.”

Cathy wouldn’t take Troy’s money, which was fortunate, because he didn’t have any. She handed me a check for the imaginary balance on the crib. After Paloma picked the colors and we waved goodbye, Troy and I returned to my truck, where I grabbed a FedEx envelope without disturbing a napping Emma. Who knew she would look so peaceful? I addressed the envelope to Cathy Acuña and placed her check inside. Once the crib was installed, it could happily join the fifty thousand dollars. Of everything that bugged me about the last days of Terry’s life, there was nothing bigger than this: why had he felt the need to hide this woman from his friends?

We sat in the truck for a few minutes without speaking. Troy seemed to respect my mood. I was in the process of being vastly humbled by my own life. What could I say about Terry’s death if this was what he’d left behind, this lovely little family? What was I doing trying to avenge him when I should be helping the mother of his child? When I’d reached the end of my thinking,
I shoved my door back open and walked toward the apartment building.
Fuck this, I’m going to just talk to her
.

Cathy met me outside the security gate, where I removed the check from the sealed FedEx envelope. I gave it back to her. “You know who I am?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“It’s okay,” Cathy said. “I didn’t say anything, either.”

“How come we’ve never met?”

“He talked about you a lot,” Cathy said. “He was proud of you. Maybe he wasn’t so proud of me.”

That
was ridiculous. I shook my head. “I think maybe he wanted to protect something that was precious to him. I wish he hadn’t, but I understand the impulse.”

“It was a tough time,” Cathy said.

I told her what I knew about the hospital, about Terry freaking out. “Cathy,” I said, “what the hell happened?”

“I never saw him again after Danny was born. The doctor said he gave him something to calm down, I think, and he was gone. And then he did what he did the next day.”