The Day I Killed James (11 page)

FOUR

Grace

I woke up to find the juvenile delinquent sitting on the edge of her bed, fully dressed. Staring at me. She said, “It’s about time you woke up. It’s after eleven.”

“Well, excuse me. I didn’t get to sleep most of the way up in the car like you did. I also lay awake half the night listening to you snore.”

“I do
not
snore.”

“How would you know? You’re always asleep when it happens.”

“So where are we going today?”

“Grace Cathedral.”

“No, seriously.”

“I’m serious. Grace Cathedral.”

“How did that even get on the list? I thought it was either go to Bellingham or go see James’s mother.”

“I added a third option.”

“A church?”

“Not just any church. Grace Cathedral.”

“What’s so special about it?”

Truthfully, a great deal that I was not prepared to explain. But I had been going over it in my head during the many sleepless parts of the night.

The first—and, coincidentally, only—letter I got from my mother after she left was postmarked San Francisco. It had two photos in it from Grace Cathedral: one of the rosette-shaped stained-glass window in front, another of the labyrinth on the floor inside. She said she had taken off her shoes and walked the labyrinth slowly in her socks, like a meditation, and it had changed her whole perspective. Awakened something in her. I don’t remember much more than that, detail-wise, but I could read between the lines. It was a huge and fascinating and beautiful world, especially compared to the one she’d left behind. Someday I’d see that and I’d understand. Maybe even forgive her.

I think she ran off with another man, but it’s just a theory.

“It has a labyrinth.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Like a maze. Only you can’t get lost in it because it doesn’t have sides. It’s just like a maze on the floor. Like a rug that has this complicated path woven into it. You walk this complicated, twisty path to get to the center.”

“So you have to, like, pick the right path? Like a lab rat or something?”

“No. There’s just one path. It just winds around and it always leads you to the center.”

“And then what?”

“Then you walk out again.”

A predictable silence. Yes, we were becoming predictable.

“Why?”

“It’s like a meditation.”

“Sounds incredibly boring.”

“Yes. Well, be that as it may,” I said, “that’s where we’re going.”

“Is it in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“While we’re there…”

“Do
not
finish that sentence. Go brush your teeth.”

“I just brushed them last night!”

“Wow. Your dentist would be so proud. If you had one. Go brush them again.”

Parking in San Francisco is a challenge. To put it rather simply. We drove around block after block waiting for somebody to pull out. Unfortunately, by the time somebody did, we’d managed to get ourselves about eleven blocks from Grace Cathedral.

So we walked.

“That’s a big church,” she said when it came into view. “I don’t think I want to go inside. I don’t believe in God.”

“I didn’t ask if you believe in God. For that matter, I didn’t ask you to come in.”

We climbed the stone steps together. The closer we got to the church, the slower she climbed. She was acting like churches bite. “Do
you
believe in God?” she asked.

“Um. Probably not the same way as the people who built this church did.”

“Are you trying to decide about James’s mother? Is that why you’re going in?”

“No. I’m going in to walk the labyrinth.”

“But you’re trying to decide?”

“I’m trying to avoid answering questions about it.”

“I thought maybe you figured God would tell you if you had to do it or not.”

“No. I don’t figure that. I figure I have to figure it out for myself. Are you coming in or not? You scared of a little old church?”

“It’s a
big
church. And I don’t believe in God.”

“Then it can’t possibly hurt you to come inside.”

I held the door open for her. She followed me in. But she looked a little spooked. So maybe she believed in God just a little bit.

The church floor was cool, a cool I could feel right through my socks. And solid. Well, of course it was solid. I realize that sounds pretty basic. But it was an almost exaggerated solid. Like a message to ignore what was in my mind, because what was under my feet was real.

Then I looked up. And you know what? The kid was right. It was a
big
church. For a split second I understood why she was so intimidated. There was something about the place that drew your eyes up. The sheer height of it. The massive stone pillars. The several-stories-tall windows that looked like elongated tablets for the Ten Commandments. The sheer size of the indoor space it created gave it a weight, an importance. And some authority over me. Light shone through the many stained-glass windows and made me feel unimportant and small.

I walked the labyrinth slowly. I think you’re supposed to walk it slowly. It was supposed to be a meditation. Right? So I had to go slow and think what I was doing.

Except I really wasn’t thinking at all.

I looked up at the rose window once. It didn’t have my answers. I saw my mother’s face once in my head. Which is interesting. Because I haven’t seen her in so long. I usually can’t remember it that well. She had no answers for me, either.

When I got to the center an eternity later, I looked up to see the kid staring at me. She looked curious more than anything else. Hopeful. Like she couldn’t imagine how this could help, yet she was willing to believe it could.

That’s when I realized I had to have an answer. By the time I retraced my path out of there, I would have to know. But I still had very few thoughts during the trip out.

When I saw I was running out of labyrinth, I got in touch with my fear. It came up from my gut and froze me all over. I was terrified of James’s mother. It was just suddenly there. Which is amazing. Because most of the time I have no idea what I feel.

Just like that, I had my answer: it didn’t matter if I was afraid. If it was the right thing to do, I had to do it. Fear or no fear. My fear was irrelevant. It did not exempt me. It was the right thing or it wasn’t. Painfully simple. Emphasis on the pain.

I stepped back into my shoes and walked straight out the door. The sunshine seemed violently bright. It made me squint. I flipped my cell phone open and sat down on a stone step, peering at the numbers until my eyes adjusted to the light.

Then I called 411.

While it was ringing, I was struck with a powerful and potentially liberating thought. She might not be listed. If she had an unlisted number, I was off the hook.

On came the automated voice. “What city, please?”

“San Francisco.”

“What listing, please?”

“Bordatello. B-o-r-d-a-t-e-l-l-o. First name Lorraine.”

A brief silence. Then a different automated voice. My esteemed cellular provider was connecting me with: I heard 415. Then the start of another number. It could have been any one of them. The guy had barely opened his computer-generated mouth.

I snapped the phone shut. Looked up to see the kid standing over me.

“Did you call her?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, what exactly?”

“I called 411.”

“Did they have her number?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re
going
to call her?”

“Not exactly.” Guilty pause. “I didn’t have a pen to write it down.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Not exactly. I hadn’t heard quite all of it when I hung up.”

She sighed dramatically. More irritating role reversals. “Gimme that,” she said.

Like the whipped puppy I had temporarily become, I did.

She stepped up to two middle-aged women who were standing at the cathedral entrance, talking. “Excuse me,” I heard her say. “I’m sorry to bother you. But do either of you have a pen I could borrow?”

Note to self: the kid can be civilized if she knows it’s in her best interests. Remind her of that when we get to Grandma’s house.

I watched miserably as she made her way back to me, dialing my phone as she walked. “Bor-da-tell-o, right?”

“Right.”

“You’re not going to tell me what a bordello is, are you?”

“Not for several years, no.”

“San Francisco,” she said. But not to me. “Bordatello. Lorraine.” I watched her write the number down on the inside of her left hand. She closed up my phone and handed it back to me. “What now, boss?”

“Now you go give the nice lady her pen back.”

“She said I could keep it.”

“Are you telling the truth?” It was a cheap plastic ball-point, so she probably was.

“Does she look like she’s waiting to get it back?” We both turned to look, but the women had gone inside the church or otherwise disappeared. “You never trust me.”

“And you’re so damn trustworthy.”

“Stop ducking the question. What now?”

“Now I guess I call her.” Or maybe we should go get an ice cream first. Or lunch. Or a stiff drink. Or five. Or a pack of cigarettes. Or an overseas vacation.

But I knew it was better right here, right now. In the figurative shadow of Grace. If I didn’t do it now, I might never. I would have to turn off my thoughts and feelings and just dial. Like I’d promised I would on the labyrinth. I didn’t know anybody who’d ever lied to a labyrinth. I wasn’t sure what exactly would be the penalty involved. I just knew in my gut that it didn’t sound like a wise option.

I held the kid’s left hand out to the proper reading distance and dialed.

James’s mother answered on the fourth ring. Which was hard. You know? Because that was right around the time I was experiencing the overwhelming relief of thinking it was going to go to voice mail or a machine. That wonderful, soul-satisfying rush of comfort, like a drug. Like nicotine. But then she answered.

“Hello-o.” She made it into three syllables.

I loved her immediately. She sounded like a mother. Not like
my
mother exactly, but maybe like my mother should have been. Like all mothers should be. Her voice was open. Strong. Emotional, but in a positive way. Like the tooth fairy, if the tooth fairy were real. Like Christmas, if Christmas were somebody’s mother. Then I thought, Don’t love her. If you love her, you won’t be able to bring yourself to tell her the truth. My heart was pounding. I’m not sure how long this thought process took.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

“Um. Yes.”

“Who is this?” But still like Christmas. Not like I should have told her already. Even though I should have told her already.

I tried to focus off the fact that the kid was staring at me. “Um. My name is Theresa. You don’t know me.” A pause. As if it were her turn to say something. But of course it was still my turn. It took me a moment to accept that. “I was a friend of your son. James. Your late son. I’m sorry.”

For what, at this point, was unclear.

“Oh, Theresa. His next-door neighbor? Oh, how wonderful! James told me so much about you.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yes. Every time he called or wrote he talked about you. He thought quite highly of you.”

Silence. Dead silence on my end. I knew it was my turn, but that didn’t help. He shouldn’t have thought highly of me. He was wrong to have done that.

I wanted to say, I hope it’s okay that I called. But nothing came out.

“It’s wonderful of you to call me,” she said.

A jolt of terror. She reads minds. If she knows that, she knows everything.

“It is?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful. I don’t know many people who knew James. And even the ones who did, they knew him as a little boy. Or a teenager. I don’t know who his friends were after he left home. Except you.”

I wondered if there
was
anybody except me.

“I thought maybe it would be hard for you to talk about him.”

“A little,” she said. “But
not
talking about him is even harder. How far away are you? You should come for a visit sometime.”

Oh God. It’s not my imagination. She reads minds. “I’m at Grace Cathedral.”

“Oh, you’re in town! I had no idea. I thought you were calling from home.”

“No, I’m in San Francisco.”

“Well, you should come for a visit.”

“When?”

“Well, anytime, really. I’m retired. So I’m mostly home. How long are you going to be in town?”

“Not long. I need to take this friend of mine to her grandmother’s in Washington State. So we’ll need to get back on the road soon.”

“Come today, then.”

“Um.” Was there still any way out? No. There really never had been. I just hadn’t known it. Until now. “Okay. Yeah. That would be great. What’s your address?”

I grabbed the kid’s left hand again, but it was pretty full with numbers, so I wrote the address down on her arm.

“Okay, then. Thanks. Soon.”

As soon as I was off the phone the kid said, “I’m glad I come in so handy. I didn’t know I had a future as a notepad.”

“She sounded so happy I called.”

“Good.”

“Not really.”

She waited. We both waited. I watched people bustle up and down the street. Climb the stairs to the cathedral. Watched cars and cabs try to squeeze around double-parked vehicles. All these people had lives. I just didn’t imagine any of them could be as complicated and hard as the one I was living just in that moment.

But maybe that’s one of those things we think because we’re only on the inside of ourselves. Not anybody else.

“Maybe I should just let her stay happy.”

The kid said nothing. I said nothing.

I put my head in my hands and tried to create a dark space. A cave. Something that would cover me. Allow me to hide. If only for just a few minutes.

I’m not sure how long I sat like that. I thought it was maybe ten minutes. But when I opened my eyes, I could swear that the sun was on a noticeably different slant. And the right thing was still the right thing.

My hiding days were over.

FIVE

The Best I Can Do

I swear it must have been some kind of cosmic joke. When we found the address, it came complete with a parking space. Just sitting there. Open. Right in front of her house.

“Spooky,” the kid said. She’d been a little spooked since I dragged her into a big church.

“It’s unusual,” I said. Thinking it was spooky, but not wanting to commit.

“It’s a sign. Admit it.”

“Let’s not talk for a minute.”

I had to take three shots at the parallel parking thing, because at home I never got to practice. When I had pretty well snugged the car in, I asked the kid to open the door and see if I was close enough to the curb.

“Yeah,” she said. “We can probably hike to the curb from here.”

“You’re such a smart-ass.”

“Thank you.”

It struck me that anyone who met us would assume we were sisters. And not just because of the hair thing, either.

I turned off the engine. My hands were shaking again. I gripped the wheel tightly and we sat awhile.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“We’re getting ourselves together,” I said.

“Oh.”

But the more I sat, the more impossible it seemed to move. My lower body felt like hardening cement. Heavier and more inflexible with every passing second. I knew if I was going to do this, I’d better do it fast.

“Okay, I’m going in. I think you should wait here.”

“Okay.”

“I have no idea how long this will take.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s just something I need to do by myself, okay?”

“It’s okay. Will you just go?”

“Oh. Right. Okay.”

Something in my head was causing the world to take on a dreamlike quality. I felt floaty and too acutely aware of every tiny movement. I opened the door. A car blared its horn and swerved to avoid hitting my door, and I jumped. It had never occurred to me to look before I threw my door open into traffic.

James’s mother’s house was dark green and narrow. That classic San Francisco narrow. Three stories, but built straight up. And the street was steep. I was standing on the side of a hill, staring at the house, and the house was straight, but I wasn’t. It seemed too much like a metaphor. Or maybe I was still dreaming.

The door was white, with a brass knocker.

I’m not sure how long I stared at it before I walked back to the car. This time I checked traffic before opening my door and getting in.

“Now what are we doing? You’re not chickening out, are you?”

“No. I’m not. I just need another minute.”

A pause, which I expect lasted about a minute.

Then she said, “Want me to go in with you?”

That snapped me out of my dream state. Somewhat. “No. I can do this.”

I threw the door open, forgetting again to watch for traffic. This time I got lucky. No cars.

I walked, rather boldly I thought, up to James’s mother’s front door. I raised my hand to knock. I’m not sure what happened with the follow-through on that, but next thing I remember I was turned around, facing the car. Watching the look on the kid’s face. She looked scared. I saw the fear on her face and knew she must be feeling it for me. On my behalf. It brought up some feelings of my own. It reminded me to panic.

Something gave way inside my gut. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. Something in that normally solid area of my gut started to cave and slide like a rain-soaked hillside in Southern California. Houses that had stood for years began to slip, their foundations crumbling. I took two steps toward the safety of the car and then sat down. Right there in the middle of the sidewalk. I was in a full-on state of crumple.

A second or two later the kid was there, standing over me. “
Now
what are we doing?”

“I’m not sure. Falling apart, I think.”

“Want me to knock?”

“Yeah. I guess you better. You better knock for me.”

“Okay. You stay here. I’ll go knock.”

A few seconds later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I looked up into James’s mother’s face.

She looked a little different than I expected. She didn’t exactly look like Christmas. Or if she did, she looked like a pretty shopworn and threadbare version. She looked tired. She was a little overweight, and it showed a lot around her face and chin. She had crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and jowls that sagged. But under that was the something I’d heard on the phone. The Christmas tooth fairy. She looked like a bright shiny angel that had been baked too long, left out in the rain to rust, faded in the sun, and then developed a maze of cracks. But the cracks were a good thing, because they let the bright angel shine through.

I think I was still experiencing that dreamlike sense of everything.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was already deeply familiar to me. I knew it would haunt me, even thirty years from now, even if I never heard it again.

“Sort of. I think.”

“Are you sick?”

“No. Not exactly. I just got sort of dizzy. Well, not exactly dizzy, exactly. But something.”

“You look like you’ve been sick.”

It struck me that she might be referring to my near baldness, for which she was unprepared. “If you mean the hair, I didn’t have chemo. I shaved it myself. Hard to explain. It was stupid. Really stupid. I see that now.”

And I really did. Sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, meeting James’s mother for the first time, I could easily see how stupid that had been. I had a flash that a number of previously unseen truths could be revealed to me at any moment. And probably would be.

It was not a welcome feeling.

She reached a hand down to help me to my feet.

I sat on the couch in the front room, my hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea. I was blowing on it as if trying to warm myself. But it wasn’t cold in the room. I wasn’t cold. But I was shivering. Uncontrollably. My teeth were even chattering.

But I wasn’t cold.

James’s mother was perched on the end of the couch, watching me as though I might evaporate or explode at any moment, and I was in no position to assure her otherwise. The kid was watching silently, almost invisible in a chair in the corner. I mean, I could see her. Of course. But she was doing her best imitation of an invisible girl. I figured she’d had a lot of practice.

When I looked at the kid, I got one of those moments of sudden access to a previously unseen truth. In a couple of days, she’d have to tell her own grandmother that she’d shot the woman’s other grandchild. And the phoneless grandmother might be hearing about it for the first time. I hadn’t even thought of that.

She looked back at me. Met my eyes and whatever they contained. “Do you want me to wait outside?”

“No. I changed my mind. I think you should be here.”

I looked back to James’s mother. She seemed to have gathered that this was not a happy little visit.

She said, “You don’t look the way I expected.”

“What did you expect?” It was hard to talk with chattering teeth. And it was only getting worse.

“James used to talk about you all the time. He said you were very confident. And strong and capable and funny.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before James…did what he did.”

Her eyes softened even more. As if such a thing were possible. “Oh, honey. Did he mean that much to you? I’m glad. I know he was in love with you. That was so obvious.”

“I came here to tell you something really hard.” My teeth chattered humiliatingly as I tried to form the words.

“Yes, I sensed that.”

“It was my fault.”

Silence. I squeezed my eyes shut. Trying to figure out which would be worse. Looking or not looking. I stole a quick glance at James’s mother. She didn’t look furious. She didn’t seem ready to scream at me. Instead she was smiling sadly.

“I used to feel the same way,” she said. “In some ways I suppose I still do. But I’m learning to try to get over it.”

“No, you don’t understand. It really was my fault. I hurt him. I broke his heart.”

“Well, then shame on you,” she said. “Shame on you for breaking his heart. We should all be much more careful with each other’s hearts. I broke a boy’s heart once. In college. John.” I watched the kid wince at the sound of the name. “I ran into his best friend almost twenty years later, and it turned out that in some small place in himself, John never entirely got over that. We take the treatment of someone else’s heart altogether too lightly. When someone gives you his heart, it’s a huge responsibility. I hope you’ll do better next time.”

“If there even
is
a next time. You don’t seem to understand.”

“Honey. Let me tell you what
you
don’t understand. James had been fighting on and off with depression since he was fourteen years old. I had to hospitalize him twice for depression. He refused to take his medication after he left home. And this was his third suicide attempt. And the other two were deadly serious, believe me. Not the old ‘cry for help’ syndrome. He really tried. It was just by luck that he failed.”

My eyes came up to hers and stayed there for the longest time. “I thought…”

“I know what you thought. You’re a young girl, and young people think they’re more powerful than they really are. You think you can make people do things. But when you get older you figure out that people only do what they had it in them to do anyway. You could have broken another boy’s heart, and it would have been a terrible thing to do, but he wouldn’t have killed himself. That doesn’t let you off the hook for being careless with James’s heart, or anybody else’s for that matter. We have to take charge of what’s really ours. I’ve spent these months blaming myself, too. If only I’d left his father sooner. His father was just awful to him. Oh, he never hit him or anything. If he had, I’d have been out the door in a second. He just was so impatient with James. He never praised him. He was so short-tempered. Nothing James did was ever good enough.”

My gut was still trembling, but now I could speak without my teeth knocking together. “He was careless with James’s heart.”

“And I was, too, by not leaving sooner. There’s plenty of blame to go around, honey, but nobody drove that motorcycle off that cliff except James. It’s so sad, really. I always wanted James to find love, because I thought love was the one thing that might nail him down to this earth. But now I see that was impossible. Because he couldn’t handle even the slightest disappointment. And no one will ever find love that doesn’t contain the slightest disappointment. It doesn’t exist, as far as I know.”