The Nobodies Album (14 page)

That year, neither of my wishes came true.

Chapter Seven

A few minutes later we’re back in Chloe’s Checker, Lia’s empty car seat a benevolent presence behind us, like a sleeping pet.

“So what do you think of Roland?” Chloe asks.

I shake my head briefly; all my thoughts are on Milo. “He seems nice,” I say. “I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him.”

“Oh my God,” she says. “You should date him!” I turn to stare at her. She throws me a happy, teasing smile. “You totally should.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say. I honestly can’t tell if she’s a little bit strange, or if I’m just no longer used to being around young people. “Finding a boyfriend isn’t really at the top of my list right now.”

“Right,” she says, sobering a little. She comes to a stop sign, waits for a woman to cross. “So listen,” she continues. “I just want to let you know that I’m not going to say anything to anyone. About what Milo said when we first got there.”

My skin prickles. I suppose I had assumed that that should go without saying.

“I mean, I wouldn’t lie under oath or anything, if it comes to that. But I’m not going to go running to the police or the press or anyone and say that I heard him confess.” Right.
I won’t tell your mother about Lia unless we’re in the same room. I won’t point a finger at Milo unless I’m under oath
.

“Thank you,” I say. “I should probably clarify, since you weren’t there for the whole conversation, that Milo’s actually very confused about what happened. After hearing his side of the story, I think it’s unlikely that he had anything to do with it.”

She nods and stays quiet for a moment while she looks over her shoulder and changes lanes. “I keep going back and forth about whether it would surprise me or not. You know, to find out he did it. It was definitely a … passionate relationship. A lot of ups and downs.”

Her tone changes. “Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you—is there anything I should know about your family history? Like, for Lia’s medical records or whatever?”

Not a question I was expecting. “Um, let me think. Not really. My mother’s still alive. My dad died of lung cancer, but he was a lifelong smoker, so. Mitch’s parents both lived fairly long lives. He had a heart attack in his sixties, and she died during surgery a few years later.” I think some more. “One of my aunts was diabetic. Is that the kind of thing you mean?”

“Yeah, just the basics. They ask for all this information on the pediatric forms when your kid is born, and Milo didn’t seem to have many of the answers.” She smiles. “He wasn’t much help with the family tree in the baby book, either.”

I shake my head. “No, he wouldn’t be. If you remind me after I get back home, I can e-mail you some of that information.”

She pulls to a stop in front of my hotel. “That would be really great,” she says, turning to smile at me almost shyly. “There are times I’ve felt kind of alone in this, you know?”

I nod. “I can imagine.”

“When I first told my parents I was pregnant, my mom said something that really bothered me. She was telling me that it was going to be hard to be a single parent and that having a kid would make it harder to get involved with anyone down the line, and she said, ‘You only get one chance to make a family.’ But I don’t think that’s true at all. Do you?”

I think of the familial groups I’ve been a part of in my adult life—chaotic family of four, shell-shocked family of two, heartsick family of one—and I realize how much I’ve staked on my hope that those numbers will change again. “No,” I say. “I don’t. And it looks like you and Joe have proven your mother wrong.”

She smiles, though her expression is still wistful. “Yeah,” she says. “You’re nice to say that.”

I let a moment pass, feeling slightly awkward. “Well. Thank you for the ride.”

She looks up, her face snapping into more pleasant lines. “No problem at all,” she says. “It’s been really great meeting you. I hope we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Me too. Have a good night.”

•  •  •

Later, after going upstairs and studying the room service menu with more absorption than it really requires, I have a sandwich in my room and think of almost nothing at all. I feel as if my brain has shut down from the intensity of the day, the way an infant will sometimes fall asleep when you run a loud vacuum. Tomorrow, I think, but I don’t get much further. Eventually I get undressed and slip into bed, though it’s still early evening. It’s a long while before I finally sleep.

A year or two ago, during one of my Milo-intelligence-gathering missions, I came across a Web site that featured the backstage riders of various musical artists, the document that lists a band’s technical and hospitality requirements for before, during, and after a concert. There was one for Pareidolia, and I read it eagerly.

It was like discovering a cave painting. Here, in washed-out color, was a trace of a rich and unknown culture, an artifact that might provide exegesis of an entire way of life—but only if you knew how to interpret it the right way. Sifting through pages of notes about guitar stands and speaker cables, the amount of space needed to park a string of buses forty-eight feet long apiece, I felt as if I were close to discovering the secret of my son’s daily life. There were requirements for clean bath towels and Chopin vodka, a stated preference for lighting in shades of mauve and violet. Requests for ginger beer and vegan snacks, a kind of tea designed to soothe a sore throat. Here, a hunter following a stag; there, a tracing of a human hand.

He’s in here somewhere, I thought. These are the details of how he spends his days, he and the band of dozens he must travel with; somewhere in here are the foods he craves, the comfort he seeks. But in this roughly rendered form, rinsed of context and nuance, how was I to know what any of it meant? Black hand towels for use onstage. Full-length mirrors and “clean ice.” But nothing to tell me if my son was happy or how often he thought of me. Nothing to say that it’s only because of me, the family I created and raised, nurtured and destroyed, that any of this exists at all.

•  •  •

I wake up in the morning feeling determined and frightened, thinking about everything I have learned and everything I may yet lose. This new hope, this frail peace … it’s all very precarious. And as for my role here—in this disastrous situation, in the life of my only surviving child—it’s no clearer than it was yesterday.

I go down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast and, steeling myself, open up my laptop to read the news. Milo’s case is lower on the page today, but still prominent. Some of the details from the coroner’s report have been made public, and I can see that journalists are working hard to piece together a narrative from the list of bald facts. I take a small notebook out of my purse—my obligatory writer’s “You never know when inspiration will strike!” notebook, which is filled mostly with grocery lists and calculations of how much of a tip to leave—and start to make a list. I need to keep track of what they think they have on him.

Some of it is not news. Cause of death: blunt-force trauma to the head and subsequent bleeding in the brain. Weapon: a ten-pound exercise weight that had been in the bedroom already. But some of it is new, and so terribly specific. Number of blows Bettina suffered: three. Places where investigators found traces of her blood: the soles of Milo’s shoes, the palm of one hand, the pillows on the couch where he slept. Such clear directionality. There’s practically a map drawn from the scene of the crime to the snoring body the police found on the sofa the next morning.

I sigh, take a sip of my coffee. Focus. At the time of Bettina’s death, her blood alcohol level was 0.03; she’d had something to drink, but she was barely even tipsy. Standard toxicology screens were negative for whatever substances they routinely test for. Blood was taken from Milo, too, and urine; here, in bold letters on my screen, discussion of my son’s urine. His blood alcohol at the time of his arrest was not high, but several hours had passed since the time of the murder, so police say that the result is not particularly significant. In addition, it’s been revealed that Xanax was present in his bloodstream, and every journalist who’s taken the time to spend five minutes on Wikipedia is pleased to report that in rare cases alprazolam can cause aggression, rage, and agitation. Combining it with alcohol, of course, may intensify these effects.

I close my computer and put down my pen. I’m not sure what I think I can do to help here; I’m not a detective or a lawyer. Like everyone else, I’ve read a few mystery novels and seen a few crime shows and I think that qualifies me to form an opinion. There was blood on the ceiling of the bedroom, the paper said, cast off from the surface of the dumbbell as it moved upward from Bettina’s skull to come down again after the initial blow. Blood on the ceiling. I don’t know a fucking thing.

I signal for the waitress. A few tables away from me, there’s a little girl sitting with her parents. I judge her to be younger than Lia, but not much, and I watch her with interest while I pretend to look at the screen of my cell phone. She’s sitting in a booster seat, and the table in front of her is littered with torn-up napkins and crusts of toast; she has jam on her shirt and on her cheek. Apparently done with her meal, she displays extreme concentration as she scribbles on her hand with a green marker. Her mother and father are sitting silently, gazing at nothing in particular. They look tired.

I remember that one of the other requests on that Pareidolia rider I saw was “one room to be designated as a Family Room.” It was to be stocked with, among other things, “one play yard (Pack ’n Play or similar) with two clean sheets” and “six jars of organic baby food, assorted vegetables and fruits.”

At the time I knew that Joe was dating a woman who had a child, and I had some idea that this might be the baby in question. I remember wondering rather snippily what kind of mother feeds her child organic baby food while dragging it all over the country and subjecting it to the decibel levels of nightly rock concerts.

Now I wonder something else: what kind of father knows his daughter, sees her often, even travels with her, but doesn’t acknowledge that she’s his? I picture the little family unit of Joe and Chloe and baby Lia, sitting cozily in a made-over room in the belly of a stadium, eating an evening meal together before Daddy goes to do his job onstage. And where’s Milo? Someplace else, filling a glass with Chopin vodka and clean ice.

•  •  •

After breakfast I go back to my room and try to call Chloe, but I get her voice mail. Joe’s not answering either, and somehow I left yesterday without getting Milo’s number, or Roland’s. I’m practically back where I started.

The morning passes slowly, and I spend it in a languorous panic, pacing my hotel room, refreshing news sites, calling people who don’t answer their phones. It’s all a spectacular waste of time, but what else am I supposed to do? I use hotel stationery to make timelines and lists of motives, as if I’m plotting a novel. On my computer, I shift between ten different tabs, all open to Google, skimming results for “gravestones, San Francisco,” and “posttraumatic memory loss.” Hoping that I just need to find the right search terms. Looking up “vending machine jewelry” and “locked room mystery” and “mother of the accused.”

Finally, at a time that feels like late afternoon but is only eleven a.m., I spot a news item that gives me focus. Something tangible for me to investigate, some action that is at least actually related to the matter at hand. I plug in the iron provided by the hotel and carefully press the wrinkles out of a dark brown skirt and cream-colored blouse, an outfit I packed because I thought it would fit any number of occasions where I might need to look respectable. On my way out of the hotel, I stop in the gift shop to buy sunglasses—my picture really is everywhere these days—and a small, soft item in a white paper bag that I stick into my purse for some unspecified later time. A present I hope I’ll have the opportunity to give while I’m in town. A half hour later I step off a city bus, disproportionately proud of myself for navigating an unfamiliar transportation system, and begin to walk down Arguello Boulevard. It’s sunny and warm; whether this is typical for November, I have no idea. I walk down a wide sidewalk, past a long stretch of houses and apartment buildings. The garages here all seem to be built on the bottom floor, with the rest of the house above them, and I wonder briefly if it has something to do with earthquakes.

I cross a wide street and go past a gas station and an animal hospital with a rainbow painted on the side. At first my steps are quick and agitated, my body humming with nervous energy, but eventually my pace and my breathing begin to slow. I remember that whenever Mitch and I had a fight, my first impulse was always to get out—out of the house, out of the car, wherever we were—and start walking. Sometimes I had a half plan, ridiculous when I thought of it later (I could go to a hotel, I could get on a bus), but most of the time I just wanted to be elsewhere, as if I might be able to leave my fury and hurt feelings behind me. And often by the time I’d charged around the block and arrived back at the house I’d stormed out of just a few moments before, I had.