Tijuana Straits (43 page)

“Then he meant not to stay,” Magdalena said. She spoke softly and just about half to herself.

“Mr. Fahey?” the worm woman asked.

“Yes, Mr. Fahey.”

“Oh no, I believe not. He said he was going to Mexico and would forward an address, so we could reach him, to arrange some modest price for the sale of his land . . .”

Magdalena looked away.

The woman continued, her speech halting. “We’re not sure now
just how to proceed with all of this . . . It doesn’t look as if there were any heirs . . .”

“No,” Magdalena said. “No heirs.”

The woman accepted this news in silence then added that she had not expected any. “I suppose we’ll need an attorney,” she said finally, “someone who specializes in these sorts of things . . .”

Magdalena nodded. She supposed they would.

The woman sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “Yes, well . . . Roy, my husband . . . He’s very good with these sorts of things. Legal things,” she said.

Magdalena assumed that she was speaking of the man in the truck. She was trying to imagine Roy as a legal sophisticate when she caught sight of one more visitor to this obscure celebration, a man of perhaps eighty, dressed in a tattered suit. He stood stiff as a carved effigy, the wind riffling his dark gray hair, which appeared thick and unruly. His skin was lined and deeply tanned, like wood treated to endure the sun. She turned to the woman for the last time. “Well,” she said. “You were the ones he contacted. I hope that it will all work out. I wish you the best.”

The woman nodded. She was on again about Roy and his considerable achievements as Magdalena turned away. She did not wish to appear rude but she was afraid the old man was going to leave and she wanted to say something to him because, well . . . there was really no one else it could have been.

He was staring at the ground when she walked up. His eyes were blue and a little cloudy and seemed to have tears in them. Magdalena touched his arm and he looked up at her somewhat startled. “I’m sorry . . .” she began, then stopped and started over. “I’d like to thank you for saving my life.”

The old man studied her, then nodded and began to walk away. The workers were preparing to lower the plaque into the freshly poured concrete. There was a middle-aged man there from the
Surfrider Foundation and he had begun to read a few words. Magdalena hesitated then hurried to catch up to the old man. She spoke to him by name. He stopped and looked back.

“I was wondering,” she said. “If we might walk together, a little ways.”

The old man nodded. He executed this maneuver in a rather formal way but then she seemed to remember Fahey telling her that Hoddy Younger could go days at a time without a word even then, back in the day. She also remembered his saying that if Hoddy liked you, he would give you the shirt off his back, and if he didn’t, he wouldn’t piss on you to put out the fire. “He was going to come,” Magdalena said, finally. “He was selling the farm.”

The old man looked toward the sea, or at least toward that part of it that might be seen beyond the reach of sand, a band of blue, dappled in light. “I guess it was about time,” he said. He watched as a formation of pelicans passed above the pier then turned and began to walk once more.

Magdalena walked with him. He seemed content in her presence and she was willing to take this as a good thing. She imagined Fahey, looking on . . . They went along Ocean Boulevard, in the direction of the Tijuana Straits, as at their backs, in the harsh slant of light falling among the gaily colored arches, a new plaque was lowered into the wet concrete, at the foot of an absurd bench few will ever contort themselves to sit upon, bearing a name that fewer yet will ever stoop to read. Surfhenge is, after all, hardly a destination. In fact it is little more than an eyesore, in a landscape steeped in such, two miles from the Mexican border, where the sewage meets the sea, yet the names of the immortals are written there, Sam the Gull Fahey now among them. And one could say it was everything for which he might have asked.

Enjoy this excerpt from Kem Nunn’s new novel

CHANCE

Coming in February 2014…

Chance 1.
The absence of any cause or series of causes of events as they actually happen that can be predicted, understood, or controlled. Sometimes granted agency, as in:

Chance
governs all.

Chance and the summer of love

Early on, before it had become apparent just how acrimonious, costly, and downright mean spirited the divorce would become, Chance had thought to find a place in or near the Presidio, a small house perhaps, with a view of the water, the proximity of redwood and cedar. The fantasy was short lived. The good places were expensive and hard to come by though nothing in the city was cheap anymore, that other Summer of Love a long time gone.

He’d settled finally for a modest one-bedroom apartment with a shared basement garage at the edge of the Sunset from whose frontmost windows he might on occasion glimpse the sea. The streets in his new neighborhood, though raked at a slight angle to run downward in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, were uniformly flat and treeless, bordered by long lines of gaily painted stucco and wooden structures. On sunny days he found these streets infused with such light as he’d come to associate with the deserts of the Southwest, their hopeful pastels bleached of meaningful distinctions. On foggy days the colors were made impotent as well, barely distinguishable from the damp concrete sidewalks, the asphalt streets, or the pale, slate gray sky. Analogies he might have drawn with his own life appeared tiresome even to him.

What he’d taken as the decline of things in general had coincided with a particularly disturbing case. It was not a complicated case. There were no legal or medical puzzles to be solved. There were only the facts, which he had summarized as follows:

At the time of my evaluation Mariella Franko was 34 months post a head-on motor vehicle accident in which her 68-year-old father was killed in gruesome fashion. (In an effort to avoid a wayward dairy cow that had wandered into his lane, her father had collided with an oncoming delivery truck. He was decapitated. His head rested in the rear seat. Mariella remained trapped next to her father’s body till freed by the Jaws of Life. She remembers shouting “Daddy!” many times while in the car.)

Review of emergency medical services indicates her Glasgow Coma Scale was 15 at the time of their arrival. Her chief complaint was listed as “My daddy . . . I want my daddy!” She was medicated with intravenous fentanyl and transferred by ambulance to a CalStar helicopter that carried her to Stanford. Upon arrival, she was crying and asking for her father. No fractures or internal injuries were found. She was monitored overnight and sent home with plans for follow-up by a primary care physician.

A psychiatric evaluation done one month later describes anxiety, depression, startled reactions, spells of tachycardia, tachypnea, and perspiration together with intrusive thoughts of her father. It was noted that she had spent three months off work and attempted to distract herself by trying to watch television. Her social life had become very constricted, with severe withdrawal and isolation. She described a predominant state of hopelessness and lack of motivation. Ms. Franko was found to be suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. A course of psychotherapy together with antidepressant medication was

Unfortunately, Ms. Franko went on to receive neither psychotherapy nor pharmacotherapy and remained, at the time of my evaluation, anxious, depressed and struggling to avoid any such thoughts, mental images, or feelings as might return her to the night of the accident. I agree that Ms. Franko suffers from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. She faced a life-threatening situation, believed she was going to die, was present at her father’s death, and was trapped in a vehicle with him under gruesome circumstances. The photographs I have been shown speak for themselves. It is unfortunate that a psychiatric consultation was not obtained until more than 2 years had passed following the accident. And while her avoidance of mental health care professionals is understandable, it is exactly this avoidance to which health care providers should have responded. . . .

Eldon J. Chance

Associate Clinical Professor

Department of Psychiatry

UCSF School of Medicine

There was more to the report but that was the gist of the thing. Someone’s insurance company had retained him to evaluate the nature and severity of her psychological trauma. Chance was a forensic neuropsychiatrist and made the better part of his living explaining often complicated neurological conditions to juries and or attorneys who would soon be standing in front of juries, in cases ranging from personal injury to elder abuse to undue influence. He was sometimes asked for evaluations by other doctors and sometimes retained by family members or estates. It was not the practice he’d once imagined but it was the practice he had. He rarely saw someone more than once or twice and rarely worked with them as patients. And so it had been with Mariella Franko. He had seen her only once, at the time of his evaluation. He did not know what had become of her, how her case had come out, or whether or not she had received any of the prescribed therapies or medications. Nor, it no doubt goes without saying, was she the only patient he saw that summer. It was a season in which any number of cases might have occupied his thoughts.

J.C. is a 36-year-old, right-handed white woman with a long and complicated medical history. The product of an attempted abortion (born prematurely at 7 months) she suffers a mild form of mental retardation, the result of oxygen deprivation at the time of the botched procedure and premature birth. The patient admits to a long-standing incestuous relationship with her father and after 7 miscarriages gave birth to a son with numerous congenital anomalies. . . .

M.J. is a 42-year-old, right-handed black woman with several years of college education. The patient relates that at the age of 36, while walking from her job in a bookstore to her home in the South Market District, she was assaulted by an Hispanic male standing over six feet tall and weighing more than two hundred pounds. She has only partial recollections of the assault but remembers having her head struck repeatedly against a fire hydrant after trying to run from her attacker. M.J. states that over the next year she was extremely depressed and spent 12 months watching television or staying drunk. During this time she acquired a handgun and would occasionally discharge it in frustration and rage. Her closest friend was a pet rat, which she says would come over and put its paw on her hand to console her. M.J. currently lives alone in low-budget housing for the homeless and mentally disabled in San Francisco. . . .

L.S. is a 46-year-old woman who grew up with an abusive alcoholic mother. The identity of her father has never been made known to her. L.S. is at pains to present herself as an individual with learning disabilities. She states that as a young child she seemed to learn everything “backward.” She would read not only individual words but also pages backward. If she is forced to read a book beginning at the front, she seems to have little sense of the story until she is able to read it again from the end to the front. Although the bulk of L.S.’s time is spent caring for the 104 exotic birds she owns, her second greatest passion is reading about mental illness and learning disabilities. The patient states that for as long as she can remember she has felt depressed, empty, and uncertain as to who she is. . . .

D.K. is a 30-year-old right handed white male last employed as a graphic artist in San Jose, now four years status post a pedestrian vs. truck injury at the Port of Oakland with resulting head injury. The patient states that while he is unaware of changes in his personality, he is also aware that others, including his wife, say that his personality has changed completely. His wife further states the patient has confided toher that he believes he will someday play a major role in a battle between Satan, Yahweh, and Jesus. Six months ago, in the context of believing it necessary to cleanse his body in preparation for the coming conflict, the patient ingested a range of household cleaners, including Hexol and Clorox. . . .

Still, it was Mariella Franko who came along for the ride on those first dreary days of an unusually hot and early summer, hunting apartments in the City by the Bay, fielding papers from opposing attorneys, seeing patients, writing reports, watching as the money melted away like a late snow, departing with a good deal more rapidity and in greater amounts than it had ever arrived, watching as the life he’d so carefully arranged for himself, his wife, and daughter broke apart upon the rocks of a heretofore scarcely imagined reality.

His soon-to-be ex-wife, an aspiring photographer, was not self-supporting. Sales of her work could not be counted upon even for the rent of her studio. Her lover, with whom she had so recently taken up, a dyslexic personal trainer ten years her junior, worked only part time at a gym in Sausalito, and there would be little in the way of financial support from that quarter. Her attorney had already acquired a writ from a judge. Chance would be paying for both attorneys, his
and
hers. The house would be going on the market in the worst of markets. His daughter’s much beloved private school with its Monterey pines and views of the bay was appearing less likely by the day. The public school nearest their current home was the stuff of nightmare.

As for Miss Franko in this time of drought and ash—the skies were so often thick with it of late, the result of fires sparked by some mishap in the Richmond refinery east of the bay, complicated by the unseasonable weather and dry, accompanying winds—she lived with her eighty-nine-year-old paternal grandmother in an apartment building on the south end of Palo Alto. At one point in his evaluation he had inquired as to how her grandmother had responded to the death of her only son. Mariella had said that her grandmother was very sad. She said her grandmother took medication on a daily basis but did not recall its name. She did not know if the older woman shared any of her recurring nightmares or intrusive recollections of the event that had claimed the life of their father and son.