Thing was, I didn’t actually glow. I was just some random dude standing at a JFK airline counter too early in the morning, trying to buy a ticket for the next flight to Los Angeles. Nobody cheered me on.
“We have a flight departing at twelve noon and arriving at LAX at 2 p.m. local time,” the flight attendant in her blue polyester uniform said.
“Is that the first flight?”
“There’s one at 6:45 a.m., but it goes to Long Beach.”
“Perfect.”
“And for your return?”
“I need to be back in New York by two.”
“Today?”
“No, tomorrow morning.”
I could tell the flight attendant wanted to give me the Annoying Customer of the Month Award. For whatever reason, she seemed entirely convinced I was a worthy recipient of such an honor. Attitude plus some, she tapped her long nails against the keyboard and came up with this compromise: “We have a flight leaving at 5 p.m. local time. Out of Los Angeles International.”
“Arrive in Long Beach and leave from LAX?”
“You would get back in New York at 1:45 a.m.”
“Nothing earlier?”
“No.”
Couldn’t she see I had no time for such delightful flirtation? Bitch.
“I’ll take it.”
“How would you like to pay?”
I took my wallet from my pocket to get my trusty plastic. And that was when I noticed that the photograph of the flapper girl, the one I’d found at the estate sale in Bushwick, was missing. If this disappearance strikes you as rather unremarkable, allow me to clarify that my wallet was designed in a way that would have absolutely disallowed the possibility of that photo sliding out accidentally. And neither the sturdy canvas of the wallet nor the plastic photo-display-pocket were torn. It just didn’t make sense for the flapper to be missing unless someone had intentionally opened my wallet and taken the photo out. Evening television news exposés of thieving hospital orderlies came to mind. Was that why Sally the nurse had been so friendly? Was it a front? But why would anyone go through my wallet, take the photo, and then leave all the cash and credit cards? Besides, I’d seen the photo plenty of times in the two weeks since I’d gotten back from D.C. Or at least I thought I had. Regardless, the photo was no longer there.
And then I understood: The flapper Nahui-wannabe going missing from the sweetheart display in my wallet was just the beginning of everything coming together perfectly.
I handed the flight attendant my credit card.
I was on my way.
O
ne quick look out the airplane window as we descended into Long Beach and I remembered how much I hated Southern California. Concrete glittered under the sun for miles and miles where desert tumbleweeds should have been, buildings sprawled squat and too scared to reach high into the sky, pickled people ran around in tank tops and shorts with sunglasses and cell phones as permanent appendages. Gag me with a spoon. Like, totally.
The only thing that kept me from lashing out and hitting people over the head with my cast was the fact that traveling light was one of the most pure intoxications the world has to offer. Carrying only a single grocery-store paper bag, I pitied everyone else as they schlepped their overstuffed carry-on luggage down the cramped aisle and to the airport’s one baggage claim area—to the jammed conveyor belt where they then huddled around and retrieved even heavier bags. If they’d known what was good for them, they would have insisted their suitcases be lost.
All other arriving passengers busy jockeying for prime positions at the luggage conveyor belt, I walked right up to the airport’s car rental kiosk. Standing there, I thought of my Thanksgiving Day drive in the woods with Nathalie and the pretty little tree I’d hauled to our rented station wagon; I thought of how I’d planted the tree for her and hung a love letter from its scraggly branch. I’d been so stupid to think I could ground her with the roots of that clunky romantic gesture.
My self-annoyed reminiscing was interrupted when the car rental employee sang out cheerily, “Reservation number, please?”
Reservation number
? Wasn’t Southern California the land of endless cars?
“Sorry, I didn’t know I needed a reservation.”
“It’s your lucky day,” the car rental guy said with studied customer-service enthusiasm as he typed something into his computer. “We have a Cadillac Escalade available. Fully loaded.”
Like I needed a vehicle that could seat seven and suck the planet dry of all its oil? There was no reason the guy should have known, but my solo drive would total a quick hundred miles, tops. There were no foreseeable dirt roads en route, and therefore I most definitely didn’t need four-wheel drive, let alone a carriage and tires so tall that driver-side stepladders were common accessories. Added displeasure, I was certain an Escalade could jam up a train track even better than the Jeep Cherokee had back in Newark. I really, really didn’t want to drive an SUV.
The rental desk kid mistook my hesitance, looked at my cast, on my
left
arm mind you, and added: “No worries, the Escalade’s automatic.”
Sweet but dim—it’s the weather; they can’t help it.
“Do you have any compacts?”
He typed more into his computer. “The only other car available today without a reservation is a Hyundai Accent.”
“I’ll take the Hyundai.”
Maybe I didn’t understand English? “I can give you a nice deal on the Escalade,” he said, very slowly.
“The Hyundai is perfect.”
Shaking his head slightly, he clicked the request into his computer. “I’m sorry, it seems the air conditioner is broken.”
It was early March in Southern California.
“That’s all right, thank you.”
It seemed to occur to the guy that I might be a terrorist. I mean, who else would want a Hyundai compact with broken air over a fully loaded Escalade on discount? Our transaction was nonetheless completed with deft efficiency, and next thing I knew, I was driving on the 405 southbound. It’s truly bizarre how you can so completely leave a place for over seven years and then seamlessly reenter its veins. The freeways and roads knew me. I arrived at my destination in no time at all. Car parked and paper grocery bag in hand, I walked to the front door, took a deep breath, and made my entrance.
Y
ou could have kidnapped and blindfolded me, dropped me in that lobby, and I would have known exactly where I was. From olfactory clues alone. The City of Orange’s Old Towne Wells Fargo Bank had a subtle but very specific wax floor polish and dirty money smell to it. That stink of manual labor and market economy collided into an unpleasant bouquet and greeted me as I walked across a long expanse of tiled floors to a carpeted area. The bank manager continued talking on the telephone as I stood at her desk. She put her hand over the receiver. Personal call.
“Yes?” she asked me.
“I need to access my safe deposit box, please.” I held out my driver’s license and keys.
A finger pointed skyward to indicate I should give her a minute, she shot me an insincere smile and slowly wrapped up her conversation with the “sugar” on the line. Eventually, she took my keys and driver’s license. She was clearly thrown by the name on my license, which was still the one I was born with.
“It’s me in the photo, right?” I said impatiently.
Fake smile now gone, she nodded but studied the cast on my arm as if it might correspond with identifying characteristics listed on an FBI criminal profile.
“I’ll need your Social Security number,” she said.
I hated Orange County.
I gave her my Social Security number, and she punched it into her computer along with information from my driver’s license. Eyebrows raised and lips pursed, she stood, made a failed attempt to tug the wrinkled jacket of her ill-fitting suit down over her ample ass, and then led me to a safe deposit cubicle. Keys and driver’s license in her possession, she walked away. What felt like at least ten minutes later, she returned with the small rectangular box, my ID, and keys. She placed these items on the viewing room’s narrow shelf, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind her. Once I could no longer hear her high heels clicking down the hallway, I took Nahui’s book and the framed retablo from the grocery bag I’d brought with me.
Maybe it was only a trick of refracted light in that entirely varnished-wood room, but I swear Nahui’s eyes suddenly took on an extra gleam. Once upon a time that glow would have given me shivers. For years, the raw angst Weston captured in Nahui’s portrait had thrilled me. Looking into her eyes had dared me onward. But, whereas before I’d found radical inspiration in Nahui’s stare, I now saw the deep suffering and loneliness written upon her features. And to be honest, I worried I’d begun to let her pain be mine.
She went through me like a pavement saw.
And how.
I didn’t want to inherit the bad with the good. The bad:
Both times Nathalie bailed I’d reacted the same as Nahui had when my father’s mother wouldn’t be her girl; I’d stewed in my hurt and waxed nostalgic (and, yes, this was also my father’s reaction when his young wife took off in Death Valley and when my mother left him in New Haven). And then there was the train wreck coming home from D.C.—I couldn’t help but imagine Nahui, little Ms. Earthquake Sun herself, gathering up all the Aztec gods to cause the crash. I mean, why not? Maybe the same unified cosmic forces had created the 1943 derailment in Chicago—the cursed train wreck that killed my father’s sister and that, perhaps a coincidence but maybe not, happened so soon after my father’s mother left Nahui broken-hearted. And—I know I’m going out on a limb with all of this, but whatever, I’m already hanging from a bough by my fingertips—what about little Ángel and all the unpleasant similarities between Nahui and my mother’s fundamentally misguided maternal instincts? Fuck if any of this was a legacy I wanted to embrace.
Time to get a reality check, Frank—that’s what you’re thinking, right? Point taken, but wouldn’t you freak out a little too if you suddenly realized you were necrophilic? Personally, I’d never thought that particular perversion was my cup of tea, but really, when it comes down to it, isn’t retrospection, sentimental or otherwise, ultimately romancing the dead? I mean, of course it’s important to learn from the past … but I’d spent far too much time coddling what once was and wasn’t and what might have been. I’d done this in regards to my father, my mother, the life I’d been born into, Nahui, my relationship with Nathalie, everything. Hell, it was probably this very devotion to the past that led me to open my shop. I mean, really, who but a nostalgic fool wants to buy and sell dead people’s things for a living? Point is, I was tired of feeling alternately depleted and sustained by the memories I kept pulsing alive with each breath I took in. I’d had enough. I wanted to get on with my life, unhindered by all the things I’d never be able to recapture or change.
First plan of action on my agenda was to put as much physical distance as possible between Nahui and me. I totally needed to let go of my one-sided adoration. Nahui was a projection, a false promise, a desert mirage, an ancient myth she herself had appropriated and that I had then dutifully continued elaborating and editing in her honor. Nahui Olin. The Earthquake Sun. All I’d ever really known about her was a construct—some parts historically substantiated, some not. The illusion of her had accompanied me through times I hadn’t wanted to experience alone, but the demands of wellbeing and longevity finally necessitated I untangle myself from the lovely chaos I associated with her. Out of respect, I wanted to return her to the place I’d originally found her. And so I retraced my steps, and walked backward in the very footprints I’d left when we met, with hopes that I would now be able to walk away with a renewed and uncluttered stride.
Obviously, I couldn’t actually leave the retablo and book back in my father’s old living room. So, as gently as possible, I locked Nahui in the safe deposit box my father had purchased—but not before I retrieved the bundle of love letters contained therein.
Ready to continue on, I returned the safe deposit box to the bank manager, certain I’d never come back again. And then, naturally, with no hope of actually finding the woman in the love letters, I drove to Laguna Hills.
S
ame as seven years before, when I arrived at my mother’s property, I worried the shoddy little car I was driving wouldn’t make it up her ski-slope fortress driveway. So I parked at the bottom of the private hill, grabbed the bundle of letters, and walked up. A fancy car—not the one my mother had owned the last time I was there, but, from a quick look at the mess of trash, junk mail, and office files cluttering the seats, clearly her new car—was parked in the carport. She was home.
I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. I waited a couple minutes. When my mother didn’t answer, I knocked.
“Mom? I know you’re home,” I called at the door.
No reply.
“I have something for you.”
Silence.
“Mom?”
Still she didn’t open the door.
I placed the letters on her doormat. And then I walked back down the driveway.
As I drove away from the hilly labyrinth neighborhood, I was sure my mother was still staring out her front door peephole. Her falsely polite
Who is it
? would eventually echo into the foyer through the intercom system several times— this, her way to determine if I was still waiting but standing beyond the peephole’s scope of vision—before she’d finally, hesitantly, open the door. Scared, lonely, disquieted woman, she’d find the letters. Maybe, just maybe, she’d then remember that once, long ago, she’d led with her heart. Regardless, the letters and the history they narrated were hers to take charge of. They were no longer mine.
N
o emotion overwhelmed me. But it wasn’t that I felt numb. Rather, and this is an important distinction, I knew I was simply where I needed to be. In fact, I felt like I was walking through a process already completed. There I was, alone on a desolate stretch of Pacific Ocean beach, presenting myself to the specter of a man I’d failed to bury properly when he died. I was ashamed that I’d left my father’s ashes for his lawyer to scatter impersonally in the ocean. But that had been several lives ago. I had grown up. And I wanted my father to see me now, to really see me, to look at me more clearly than he’d ever been able to in life. I wanted to say a respectful goodbye, son to father, man to man.