The Year She Left Us (18 page)

The streets of downtown Juneau rose steeply from the water; my legs got strong from walking up and down the hills. The lowest point was the harbor where the cruise ships docked in the summer. In the wintertime, that end of town was practically deserted. I wandered the sidewalks, checking out all the bars and tourist shops, some closed until summer, and studying the totems in front of buildings for Alaska Natives. In a run-down section of town, I saw more Natives than I did anywhere else, and in that way Juneau wasn't different from any other American city that shunted its poor to the shadows. I was ashamed to admit to myself that though I'd run away from home, I was still living in a house on a hill. If I didn't have real problems, why did it feel as if I did? As long as I asked that question, the black ditch gaped open, ready to suck me in.

Above town, the blocks were stitched together with lanes and staircases like a game of Chutes and Ladders. I walked the residential streets, taking in the painted wooden houses that probably looked festive to summer tourists but in October wept gray. Gardens were sodden and side yards full of fishing tackle and boating equipment and humped, plastic-sheeting-covered parts of machinery. Even the prettiest house was crisscrossed with pipes and drains and gutters. The whole place was surrounded by ice fields and water, and everybody went about their business as teachers and cooks and line repairmen and legislators in rubber boots and parkas, always dressed for the rain.

Steve was right. The weather turned colder and the daylight seeped away, as if drawn toward darkness and slumber. I kept close to town on my walks. Like most Alaskans, Steve and Peg owned ice axes and trekking poles and guns, but I didn't know enough about how to take care of myself in wilderness or weather to venture out for a real hike. Every week in Alaska somebody died in a crevasse or a boat or a floatplane. Once again, I was an outsider, though this time I didn't try to fit in. It was enough to be there, to be far away and on my own. I walked through the days, putting one foot in front of the other.

I asked Steve where Aaron had died.

“The Perseverance Trail,” he said.

I was surprised. “It's on tourist maps. I thought he died doing something really dangerous.”

His brow squinched. “I pegged you for smarter. You should have noticed by now that if you make a mistake here, anything is dangerous.” He rubbed his eyes, put his red glasses back on. “Don't ask me about it yet.”

“I know you weren't to blame,” I said in a rush.

The red glasses stared at me. His eyes glinted.

“Hold up your left hand,” he said.

I didn't want to, but I was living in his house, eating at his table. I held up my hand. The stump of my little finger had healed over with pink flesh. There was a little ridge at the top that I sometimes worried with my thumb, though it hurt like hell if I accidentally banged it, and it tingled at the slightest touch.

“Want to tell me how that happened?”

I shook my head no. I hadn't told anyone, not even exactly A.J.

“Then you know how it is,” Steve said. His face softened. “I'll tell you about Aaron, though. He was a good man.”

I wasn't sure anymore that I wanted to hear about Aaron, but now that he'd begun, Steve didn't want to stop.

“We met in college,” Steve said. “BU. Then we both went to law school and became environmental lawyers. Aaron was good at it, better than me by a long shot. He had the passion you need to keep fighting the good fight. He went after everybody—corporations, local districts, state governments, even the Feds. He never met a lawsuit he didn't like. He went for their jugular on a fraction of their budgets; if he couldn't get to their throats, he'd shoot for their kneecaps. The man was fearless. The most creative lawyer I ever met. But I'll tell you what”—he shook his head—“he could be exhausting.”

He didn't have to explain. I knew Charlie and Les.

“Was he planning to marry Charlie?” I asked.

“He was, when he was in San Francisco. He and his wife, Wendy, were on the rocks almost from the beginning. He called me, told me he'd met your mother. The three of us had dinner when I was there on business. They were great together; I could see how happy he was. He called again and said your mother had brought you home. Her name is Ari, he said; she named her after me. I hoped he was joking.” Steve shifted in his lumpy chair. “He said he was going to adopt you after he and your mother got married. He sent me a picture of the three of you. You were a cute kid. You had a whole lot of hair. I remember that.”

I fetched my backpack and took out the photograph to show him.
Aaron practicing to be a father.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Like I said, he was happy.” He got up to feed the wood-burning stove. It was late afternoon; Peg was at school, and Steve and I had dinner duty. We went into the kitchen to make a fish stew with halibut that Steve had caught and frozen.

“I lured him away,” Steve said. “I was working on a huge case fighting logging in the Tongass National Forest. We had a coalition of local and national environmental groups going after the big pulp mills and we needed help planning and coordinating. Aaron was brilliant at that strategic sort of thing, plus he was good at getting the most bang for the buck. I asked him to come up for a few weeks, maybe longer; we'd have to see what we needed. He was dying to do it. He'd been asking me for years to get him up here on a case.”

Lured him away. “Were you trying to break them up?”

“No. Yeah. No, not really. I wanted him for the case. But once he got here, we started talking. He'd gone home to see Wendy before coming to Juneau, to settle some things. Give me that parsley.”

I handed it to him; he took far too long to wash and stem it. When I sat down to wait, he finally turned to look at me.

“He has a son,” Steve said. “His name is Noah.”

“After he died?” I couldn't do the calculation. Had a son been born after Aaron went to Juneau and died hiking the Perseverance Trail?

“Before. With Wendy. He's two years older than you. Noah was three when Aaron was killed.”

“I didn't know that.” A stupid remark. He knew it already by my colorless face, bleached clean by the simple fact of a baby. I was a fool for not thinking to ask the question myself. I felt the black ditch yaw open. “He was two?” I asked.

“Just turned three. Aaron had gone home to see him, and then he got here and hung out with Peg and me and saw our family with all the kids running around and knew—” He stopped again.

“What?”

“He'd been a shithead, he said. I said he was right. He'd thrown himself into you and Charlie like he threw himself into everything he did. He'd lied to Charlie. She didn't know about Noah. He didn't want to tell her too early, and then they fell in love and he had screwed the pooch. He said he'd go back in a couple of weeks and figure out what to do. Patch things up with Wendy, marry Charlie, who knows. Then the case got bigger, and he didn't go back like he said. I pushed him plenty to get things straightened out. We argued about it. He told me to leave it alone. He was going to do the right thing. Whatever that meant to Aaron.”

“He was three,” I said. I couldn't believe it. “Charlie didn't know?” She was a fool, like me, if she hadn't asked him.

“He was going to tell her,” Steve said, though he didn't sound convinced. But I didn't care to weigh what Aaron had done. I was thinking only of the awful fact of Noah. There had been a real biological child. I wasn't Aaron's daughter. I knew that, of course I did, but I had temporarily forgotten. Aaron had had a son. In no way was he my father. I wanted to run downstairs to my basement refuge, curl up on the bed, and bury my head in the pillow. I looked again at the photograph of Aaron holding me and would have torn it in two had Steve not been watching.

“I didn't know whether to tell you,” Steve said. “Aaron's dead. He fucked up for sure, but I shouldn't have gone around thinking that I knew better. You might even say that my lecturing on the subject was what got him killed. We were arguing about it right before he fell. After that, I learned to shut up about other people's choices. That's why I never told your mother about Noah. We spoke after Aaron's death, but the fact that he had a son—it wasn't my story to tell.”

I was still reeling. “Then why tell me?” I asked.

“Noah lives in Juneau. He goes to school at UAS. I've been looking out for him ever since Aaron died. When he applied to college, I got him to come up here. In a small town like this—” He spread his big arms. A hunk of thawed fish flopped in his hand. He looked like a bear standing beside a stream, at once comical and forbidding.

“I wanted to find Aaron, not his kid,” I said.

Steve looked taken aback. “I just thought you'd like to know. I didn't want there to be any nasty surprise later.”

It was too late for that. To find out Aaron was dead was nasty surprise plenty.

“Whew,” Steve said, wiping his hands on a towel. “I've been carrying that around since the day you showed up here. Peg's been pushing me to get it out in the open. I was worried you'd meet him before we had the chance to talk.”

I made myself go stony. I reminded myself that cold inside was the only way through it. Steve was done talking. He handed me a bunch of carrots to scrape. For a second, I couldn't move. Aaron had had a son. His name was Noah Streeter. I knew, but Charlie didn't. It was as if Steve had handed me his loaded gun, cocked and ready to fire. I skinned those carrots, afraid of what I might do.

CHAPTER 19

CHARLIE

S
he had forgotten how to fall asleep. Bed had become a place of suffering, not ease. Nothing helped, though she had tried every adjustment—more exercise, less caffeine, colder room, white noise. Blackout curtains that made the bedroom as dark as a witch's forest. She felt like a two-year-old, exhausted but wide awake. Her daughter's name rode every breath with the puff of an exhalation. When was she coming home?
Ari.

She began walking at night along the Marina Green. An empty path from one end to the other. Once in a while, a fellow traveler trailed or approached or passed her. It was usually someone from one of the boats tied up in the harbor. In the daytime, along that path, walkers and cyclists exchanged friendly greetings. In the dark, they didn't speak. Their heads were down, their shoulders narrow wickets.

She smoked at dawn, perched on the splintered landing, sitting as Ari had sat, staring ahead, knees tented. She rehearsed what she would say if Ari should call or appear. The words were empty, striving too hard to convince. She would
try
and
attempt
and
make an effort
and
promise
. Speeches that hadn't worked before. Her optimism bankrupt. Her solace defective.

In the afternoons, she napped at her desk or in a chair. On the living room sofa, which left an imprint on her cheek. Sometimes she bounced her head on the pillow in a rhythmic trance that dulled her thoughts to a mindless tapping.
Ari, Ari, Ari.
It wasn't breath anymore. It was only the beat of her head against the pillow.

Baby Bowns. Out there, somewhere.

Come home
, she thought.
I am waiting.

I
t was late November. Charlie reached over to take Joseph's hand as they boarded the Third Street line. They were going to the ballpark, where Reynold Low and Reverend Stanley Yeung had gotten a group of donors backstage passes to go onto the field. Reverend Stanley had called up Charlie to invite her as his guest. “How about your sister, too?”

“Nice try,” Charlie had said. She'd accepted, thinking he'd have the class not to bring up the Wilson Ng case. On her next visit to Va's place, she'd invited Joseph to come along.

The day was cold and windy. Charlie drew Joseph closer. He was in his favorite pair of shorts and a Buster Posey T-shirt. She had brought for him an old sweatshirt that she'd found at the back of a closet, but she knew he wouldn't wear it. He was a boy and never cold.

“Next year, I promise, you'll go to a game,” Charlie said. Joseph had never been. She had tried to get Va and Joseph tickets, but in a championship season, nobody was willing to give up a single seat. She'd badgered David for weeks until he'd scrounged up a couple of extras, feeling sorry for Charlie that Ari had bolted. Who knows what Robyn had said to shame him into sharing? In the end, the game hadn't been played. The Giants had rolled on to win the Series, and the city had gone wild.

“I told my friends that we went,” Joseph said.

“I hope you didn't!”

“They were jealous. Victor said his social worker never takes him places.”

Charlie let his words get lost in the streetcar noise. She wasn't his social worker or his lawyer or even a family friend. She wasn't breaking any rules except for the most basic: common sense, self-protection, smell test, Sandra Bullock. That last one was a term they threw around the office to ridicule rich women who thought they were doing good. In the movies, the rich woman was always changed for the better. In real life, she ended up fleeced or beaten.

The streetcar lurched. Joseph fell against her. He wasn't holding on to the pole because his hand was stuck in his glove. The doors opened, letting the riders off.

I'm not rich
, thought Charlie,
and Joseph and I are not going to change each other. This isn't the movies. My daughter has deserted me. I don't have heartstrings left to pull. He's just a boy with a baseball glove. There's no such thing as magic.

Joseph ran to the gate.

I need sleep
, thought Charlie.

I
n their first phone call, Charlie couldn't believe her ears.

“Aaron?” she said. “Aaron Streeter?”

“He was going to be my father!” Ari shouted.

“He was just an old boyfriend,” Charlie said. Ari told her about the photograph, a picture Charlie could barely remember. She had no memory of stashing it in her drawer, a claim that Ari, with her megabytes of memory and lightning recall, refused to credit. Charlie called the whole trip a wild-goose chase, and then the real fighting began.

“Why should I listen to you when you think I'm trivial and stupid?”

“He wasn't your father. You don't have a father. You have me. That's who you're stuck with.” By the end of the call, Charlie was weeping and Ari was telling her that she was never coming home.

I
n the second call, Charlie tried to apologize. It was true what Steve Ericsson had told her: she and Aaron had talked about getting married. He had wanted to adopt Ari—that was true, too. But things hadn't worked out that way. It had been very hard for her when Aaron died. But Charlie had gotten over it. Life moves on, and we move on with it. Couldn't Ari accept that?

“Why didn't you tell me about him?” Ari demanded.

And Charlie snapped, “Because it wasn't any of your goddamned business.”

B
efore the third call, Charlie wrote out what she wanted to say. She didn't know what it was like not to have a father. She didn't presume to understand everything Ari was feeling. But she did want her daughter to know how much she loved her and that she was trying very hard to both listen and be heard.

She practiced while pacing in her bedroom, hoping she wouldn't yell or cry. On her dresser she'd set out what she'd found in her drawer—a set of jade buttons from Gran and a gold ring and necklace from Aaron. The necklace had been for Ari, sent by Aaron after he'd left. She didn't remember that she'd kept the envelope it had come in, but Ari had somehow found it. When he had proposed, he had put the ring on her finger. It was set with a garnet, Ari's birthstone. She held it up and turned it under the light, tasting metal in her mouth the same as she'd tasted it when, a full month after he'd died, she had sucked at her ring finger to work the band off. A cry escaped; she threw the ring in the trash can, then snatched up the necklace, ready to throw it out, too. But did the necklace belong to her or to Ari? She gently laid it back down on the dresser. She didn't have to decide now what to do about that. She closed her eyes and grabbed the edge of the dresser until the room stopped swaying. A few minutes later, she picked up the trash can and marched it out to the garbage.

The third call didn't come from Ari. It was Steve Ericsson, calling to check in. He wanted to make sure that Ari had done as she promised and let her mother know that she was living with them in Juneau.

“Yes,” Charlie said in her deep humiliation, for of course Ari had lied, telling her that she was staying at the hostel. “I hope she'll come home soon, but in the meantime, thank you for looking out for her.” They talked at length, Steve telling Charlie how sorry he was that they had fallen out of touch and what a wonderful daughter she had. They were really enjoying getting to know Ari. She seemed to know what she needed—some time on her own terms, her independence. He and Peg had raised four kids and knew how tough they could be on their parents, but Charlie shouldn't worry. Ari was safe and she was healthy. If it were otherwise, Steve would have called sooner. Charlie was welcome if she wanted to visit.

“Do you think I should come?” Charlie asked.

“That's up to you,” he said. “Talk it over with Ari. See what she says.”

At that, Charlie colored, glad he wasn't there in the room. She couldn't admit to Steve—to Steve and Peg, whose own children had flourished—that Ari wouldn't talk and didn't want to see her. She uttered a final “Thank you.” Ari had found a better family to join.

That was two months ago. Winter was settling in.

A
t the ballpark, Reverend Stanley drew Charlie aside while Joseph ran the bases and had his picture taken with Lou Seal, the team mascot.

“I want to talk to you about Wilson Ng,” he said. Charlie mugged and pretended to look for the exit. But usually jovial Reverend Stanley didn't go along with the joke.

“You know your sister ruled that the case against Wilson can be tried as a hate crime,” he said.

“That was the preliminary hearing,” Charlie said. “There's no trial judge yet. It might not be assigned to my sister.”

“I'm not asking you to talk to your sister,” he said. “I'm interested in you. When was the last time you heard someone say that?”

“What a way to soften me up,” Charlie said.

“I'm trying to get your attention. I know you. I know what you believe in. Our community needs all our voices to speak out against injustice.”

“I can't help you,” Charlie said. “But maybe I can offer some assurance. My boss is a great lawyer. If the case goes to trial, he'll try circles around Patrick Riordan.”

Reverend Stanley gripped her forearm harder than was polite.
Even a reverend
, Charlie thought as she loosed herself from his hold,
shows his temper like a man.
She smelled his wintergreen breath as he railed against the bullshit media storm that was raining down on Wilson Ng. “That guy Porter, Wilson's boss, abused him for years.”

She couldn't help herself. The lawyer in her kicked in. “When you say ‘abused,' do you mean actually, physically abused? Or emotionally abused, or verbally?”

“You're splitting hairs,” Reverend Stanley said harshly. “I'm not asking for your legal opinion. I want you to stand up, as a member of our community, and join us in telling the D.A. that if he goes forward on the hate-crime charge, we're going to make sure he doesn't get reelected.”

His tone stung her. Her forearm smarted. “It's not my role,” she said, “and you shouldn't be asking. But just for the record, I believe in the judicial process. If you were a lawyer, you'd understand that.”

“If you were from Chinatown, you'd get why this is important.”

“Oh, that's helpful,” Charlie retorted.

“We need your voice. People respect you. If you speak out, people will listen.”

“You're not to use my name,” Charlie said. “I can't be seen—”

“I know, I know.” He waved her away. “Tell the judge I said ‘hi.' We're all very interested in her career advancement.”

C
harlie took Joseph home on the streetcar. She had parked her car at Va's place. Now that she was a regular visitor, she had learned her way from the freeway to their street. They lived on the second floor of a sagging apartment building strung with twinkling lights on a hill between Visitation Valley and the Portola District, two neighborhoods where Charlie had never been before knowing Va. She was surprised at all the Asian businesses she saw: produce markets, car-repair shops, beauty salons, churches. Black families had used to live there. Now it was Asian and Latino.

Va wasn't home, and she hadn't left a note.
This is not my problem
, Charlie thought.
My duty is to Va, not Joseph. I shouldn't be here. I've done a nice thing, but this is my final visit. I can't come back again.

“I'm okay by myself,” Joseph said, though he didn't sound convinced.

“I've got time. Let's wait for her together.”

She looked around the hallway. There were no family photographs or pictures on the wall. Everything looked temporary, as if Va had just moved in. A jumble of plastic sandals sat by the front door. Music leaked from a neighbor's apartment. When Ari was twelve, the same age as Joseph, she had begged to be left alone.
I should have left her alone more often
, thought Charlie,
so she didn't feel overprotected. Or maybe not so often because it gave her too much freedom, or made her feel isolated, or—
She stopped. There were too many pathways to remorse to choose from.

“Is Manu coming home?” Joseph asked. “He doesn't like Auntie's house.”

She didn't meet his eyes. “Your mother is trying to make that happen.”

“Can I show him this?” He held up the photograph of himself standing next to Lou Seal. “I don't want him to feel bad that I went without him.” His eyes filled; his mouth opened wide. Before she could say anything, he was bent over, bawling.

“Joseph! What's the matter?”

“I left my glove there. I took it off and forgot it.” He held up his left hand, gloveless.

She would see him again. A tiny beam of gladness struck her in the heart.

“I'll bring it next time I come,” Charlie promised the boy.

S
he tried not to call A.J. more than once a week, usually Sunday nights, when the weekend partying was over and A.J. was in her room, reading. She always asked, “Have you heard from her?” And A.J. always answered, “Not yet.”

As soon as I get home, I'll call her
, Charlie thought.

Instead, she got on the freeway and drove straight to Berkeley.

“N
o warning. I'm sorry.” Charlie gave her a weak smile.

“It's okay,” A.J. said. She glanced over her shoulder. A boy standing behind her muttered a few words and slipped out of the room. “He lives down the hall,” A.J. said. “He's in my econ class.”
She's sharing
, Charlie thought, and heard envy for Robyn rattle in her head like stones thrown down a grate.

They went for coffee, A.J. leading Charlie and greeting friends among the students traveling in boisterous packs. She carried her laptop in a drawstring bag that she dumped at her feet when they sat. Charlie feasted on the sight of her—long hair, clear eyes, bright smile. She was wearing an old jacket of Robyn's that Charlie remembered, gray tweed with a Peter Pan collar. It had buttons covered in velvet. White headphone wires trailed from her pocket.