The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (33 page)

The answer makes me cry so hard that my bed shakes. Then I think about the other words she said and I breathe them into my room.
Good luck.
Does she really think that’s possible for me? Maybe even something I deserve? The possibility would make the life I live in the Castle no longer feasible. I say the words louder. I say them over and over until I fall asleep and they become the very best dream I ever had.
Goodluckgoodluckgoodluck.

Chapter 35

dear mommy (did i ever call u that?),

i don’t know how long i can go on keeping our secrets. when no one is home, i wander around kafka’s castle looking for a way to escape. even my yellow walls don’t make me happy anymore & Frida is no longer inscrutable when she looks down at me from the posters on the wall. she glares! that’s right. my hero despises me, mommy. but not as much as i despise myself.

sometimes i still go into yr old room for comfort, and when i look in the mirror, i still see yr face, but that is where the similarity ends. i used to think i was like u (esp. since the alternative was taking after the bug) but now that i’ve met gus silva, i no longer believe that. admittedly, i don’t have a lot of experience with good men, but even i know one when i see one. i hate to admit this, and believe me, i wouldn’t tell anyone except u, but i’m starting to believe gus’s only crime was his decency.

he still doesn’t know how thoroughly u betrayed him, mommy, how thoroughly u betrayed all of us. but soon he will know. soon, mommy, everyone will know—even the bug, and i for one don’t care anymore.

the only way u can stop me is to come back to “life” and do the dirty work yrself.

mila

As usual, after I write to dead mom, I feel kind of crazy. A couple of years ago I even went to see a therapist about it. It was after a particularly nasty little “episode” here. An episode so bad that Eileen turned against the man who signs her paycheck every week and agreed to drive me.

Eileen hates me. Sure, she feeds me and makes sure my clothes are clean, but I know. I even understand. Hating me is the only way Eileen can live with the secrets she’s kept, the things she’s seen since she came here. She survives by blaming everything on my mother, the faithless wife who drove my father to his current state of insanity. Ava’s sins are etched on my face, as far as Eileen is concerned.

But this time was different. This time the Bug went a little too far. After it happened, Eileen came into my room, her face distorted with emotion. She even attempted an awkward hug. And since I was in a pretty vulnerable state, I let her do it.

“If there’s anything I can do to help you, Mila . . .” The usual generic words. But I pounced on them.

“I really need to talk to someone, Eileen. You know, like a therapist or something . . .”

Of course she hesitated. “Are you planning to report—” she began, the little furrow opening up in her forehead.

But I quickly shook my head. “No, definitely not. Do you think I want to end up in some horrible foster home? I just want to talk to someone privately, someone who can never tell anyone what I say.”

She’d made a call the next day.

By the time the appointment rolled around, however, Eileen was back to normal. She looked at me with mistrust as we pulled up in front of the office. “I could lose my job for this, Mila.” She looked at me like I was Ava. “You better not say anything that could get your father in—well, in any kind of
difficulty.
”

“Don’t worry.” I smiled politely, though I couldn’t help thinking that Eileen was one of the most pathetic people I’d ever met in my life.

Truthfully, though, she had nothing to worry about. I barely mentioned the Bug. It was my own sanity that was on my mind. Sometimes I had hallucinations. A couple of times I even believed I’d seen the mother who died when I was six. I tried to giggle to make the therapist realize that deep down I knew none of this was
real.
But the truth was, I was no longer sure what was real and what wasn’t. I mean, they never found Ava’s body. But then, if she was actually alive and walking around town, other people would have seen her, too.
Wouldn’t they?

The therapist listened attentively. At first, I even thought she was taking my questions seriously, that there was a possibility my mother was not an apparition or a sign of psychosis. Maybe I really
had
seen her.

But then, Señora
psiquiatra
took off her glasses and made serious eye contact (which they must teach them to do in therapist school). “It can’t have been easy losing your mother at such a young age, Mila, and, well, in such a traumatic way.”

From then on the “session” went downhill—with her explaining that it was a common phenomenon for survivors to think they see the person they’ve lost. She described it this way: it’s like when you have a new car, and all of a sudden you start noticing that car all over the highways. Usually, though, people just do a double take and then realize it’s not their dead relative after all. But since I was so young when I lost my mother and probably couldn’t remember her very accurately, she continued, I actually believed I saw her.

Even though I didn’t much like the therapist, I wanted her to be right.

Obviously, Eileen was relieved when I said I wasn’t going back. Instead, I began researching my mother’s death, reading the newspaper accounts about the amount of blood loss, and the brutal nature of the crime. There seemed to be no doubts in the detectives’ minds about my mother’s fate.
She had to be
dead.

For almost a year my sanity seemed secure. No sightings. No obsessing. I didn’t even think of my mother again until my not so sweet sixteenth birthday a couple of months ago when I got this card in the mail. My name and address were typed on the envelope, and the postmark was Weatherwood, California, a place I’d never heard of. It was one of those HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAUGHTER cards, and though it was unsigned, various words were underlined and starred like
love
and
special.
All the corny stuff. Some of the letters were kind of blurry, too, like maybe someone had bawled all over the stupid card before they sent it. Or maybe that was just my imagination, too. That’s the thing about being crazy. The crazy person is always the last to know.

I put the card inside a pouch in my backpack (the only place safe from Eileen’s fanatical cleaning and snooping) and tried not to pull it out and look at it every day. Some days I succeeded and other days I pulled the card out at least eighteen times to make sure it was still there, with the same words and phrases underlined. Every time I open it up, my heart beats faster till finally I have no choice. I write back to the address that’s typed in the corner of the envelope:

General Delivery

Weatherwood, CA

Then I take a chance and scrawl the name that she would never dare to include on any mail the Bug or Eileen might see: AVA CILENTO. The next morning when it’s time for school, I check my backpack one more time. Both the card and my letter are still there, tucked inside a book my Spanish teacher gave me: Pablo Neruda’s
20 Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desperada.

“You ready?” Eileen calls from the bottom of the stairs the next morning. “It’s seven forty-three.”

That’s our Eileen, precise to the minute, but absolutely clueless about what actually makes a minute
matter.
“Be right down,” I say. “Just got to finish blow-drying my hair.”

Though Eileen hasn’t said anything else, I can feel her presence at the bottom of the stairs, her stolid stare, dimply thighs jammed into those pressed jeans.

And when I finally emerge from my room, there she is, holding my smoothie in one hand, and jangling the car keys with the other. “We’re going to be late, Mila,” she warns just like she does every day, even though we never are.

Maybe it’s just because I’m so giddy about my impending escape, but I get this weird urge to hug her. Fortunately, for both of us, it passes quickly.

A
s soon as Eileen’s car pulls
away from the academy, I turn around and head toward Route 28 before any nosy teacher sees me. It’s a long walk, and by the time I reach Dunky’s, my backpack feels heavier than E’s and I’m exhausted.

I
clunk!
my backpack to the floor and order a vanilla chai, wondering how I can make it last till school gets out. I pretend to be fascinated by the books in my backpack.
World History
,
Biology
,
Latin.
The only one I don’t bring out is the Neruda. Even though my trust fund is something like six figures, I don’t even have change in my purse to buy a Bavarian cream.

At exactly 2:30, I head back to the school. By then, I’m sure the secretary has already alerted the Bug about my absence, so I lurk behind a tree where I’m likely to
see
before
being seen
. If my plan works out, I’ll never have to enter that school again. Not that I dislike the place or anything—in fact, it’s been my refuge these past eleven years. But there’s no way I can go back to being the bitter misfit princess. Maybe I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight, but I do know what I have to do next.

Sometimes E’s mother’s rusted-out Escort is among the shiny Saabs and Mercedes that line the road, waiting to pick up students. But lately the spot where she usually parks has been empty. E says she’s been working lunch at the restaurant, but I suspect she’s just sleeping off whatever she did the night before.

When E emerges, he glances briefly at the empty parking place. Then he lowers his head and starts trudging toward home. Even though he refuses to take gym and lives on shit food, E stays healthy by carrying that heavy backpack miles every day.

I let him slip past before I pick up my own sack of rocks and begin my official stalking. Following about twenty paces behind, I feel the loneliness and anger and nobility that he has absorbed from all those books he reads. It rises off him like steam, and drifts toward me till I can’t be silent any longer.

“E. Washburne!” I call after him, but he’s far enough ahead, he doesn’t hear me. “
E!
E. Washburne!”

Then, all of a sudden, I’m tired of calling him by his newspaper name. Tired of pretending my house is Kafka’s Castle instead of just the miserable home it is, tired of the Bug and Frida and Mexico. All the lies E and I have created to pretend our lives are something other than what they are.

“
Ethan!
” I yell, louder this time. This time, the wind carries my voice, and he turns around.

At first, I’m not sure if he’s still pissed at me for telling him to fuck off. He just stands there, his backpack on one shoulder as I walk toward him, throwing off my Frida jewelry as I go. I refuse to let him break eye contact. By the time I reach him, my neck is absolutely naked. He sets his backpack on the ground, and for a minute I think he’s about to divest himself, too. But this is my nervous breakdown, not his, and he’s actually just waiting for me to catch up.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks. “And why’d you call me
Ethan
?”

“I’m throwing away my jewelry, that’s what I’m doing,” I say. “And I’m calling you Ethan because it’s your name.”

At that, E takes off his glasses, as if another (fuzzy) perspective might somehow clear things up. “You’re acting really strange, you know that?”

“I’ve been acting strange all my life. So have you,” I say, and the next thing you know we’re both laughing. The dust from the road is in my nostrils and the road is littered with abandoned jewelry.

When our laughter trickles away, E puts on his glasses, hoists his backpack, and looks back on the trail I left behind. “You probably should go back and get that stuff. You might want it later.”

“Yeah, I might.” But instead of looking back, I start walking toward E’s house, and soon he falls into step with me. “Your mom home?” I ask.

“It’s two-for-one happy hour at the bar. A good tip day.” He tries to sound sardonic, but just ends up sounding tired. Like me.

“Then she probably won’t be home for a few hours,” I calculate out loud. “Good, because I want to talk to you. There’s this, uh, well—there’s a secret I need to tell you.”

“Yeah? What kind of secret?” He sounds nervous—like he knows I could say anything in the state I’m in. And he’s right, I could. But what scares him even more is that the famous E. Washburne, who has fiery retorts for pundits all over the country, will have no clue what to say to me. Me—a gringa with dyed black hair and a pale white neck, unprotected by its usual armor.

E
’s kitchen is a total disaster.
Sink full of dishes, orange juice cartons and cereal boxes still on the counter from this morning. The living room is even worse. Every surface is littered with Lori Washburne’s halfhearted interests, unfinished craft projects, books about medicinal herbs and reincarnation, every page scrawled with vigorous notations and underlinings, magazines piled up from the last ten years:
Vegetarian Times
(though Lori has never been a vegetarian, as far as I know),
Us
,
Family Circle
,
Yoga Journal.
The coffee table is marked with the deepening rings left by her wineglasses. An archaeologist finding this house a hundred years from now might consider the scarlet rings a telltale clue as to why nothing was ever finished or put away.

I plop down in the middle of the couch—right on a book that is wedged between the cushions.
Is Law School for You?
I read aloud, before I toss it on the coffee table, where it dislodges a pile of magazines. You can’t brush against one item without subtly undermining the entire house.

“I think my mother has chai,” E says, watching me from the doorway that leads into the kitchen. He still looks wary—like he wishes I’d start acting like the fucked-up girl he’s always known.

“What I’d really like is a glass of wine.”

“
Wine?
” E repeats. We’re probably the only two high school kids alive who never drink—which is precisely why we don’t. Anything
they
do, we’re opposed to it. Being
anti-them
is our religion.

“You heard me. And please don’t try to tell me you don’t have any,” I say, in what is probably my first reference to his mother’s “problem.” Though E and I are often brutal in our judgments about people at school, part of our code is that I pretend not to notice his mother’s a drunk. In return, he never mentions that my dad’s a total whack job.