The Sun in Your Eyes (24 page)

Later in the night as the party thinned, she spotted Andy out in the stone courtyard. A hearty aunt in a black sequined dress that looked like jazzy mourning garb had just said goodbye. He was momentarily alone, standing by the dying flames of the fire pit. The cake cutting was over. He looked dazed and pleased.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

“This was all so wonderful.”

“I'm glad you could make it.” She knew it was late in a very long day and that he must have been tired of making conversation, but:
Glad she could make it?
The kind of thing you say to anyone. Wasn't she a
part
of it? She had cleared her calendar a year ago and flown in days early.

“I never knew that, what you said before, about standing by the door. I never thought of you as a standing-by-the-door type.”

“Sometimes you see things happening between two people. I don't know that you were falling in love then, but it was that thing where you think it's going to make you jealous to see it, but it actually makes you kind of hopeful. You know?” A revision. A lie, in other words.

“I mostly think of those days as me being hung up on you.” There was no melancholy in his voice, no hint of anything other than having so thoroughly moved beyond that time in his life that he now
considered it a youthful folly. How ridiculous he'd been, moping over her. How different he was now. She had no hold on him. Which was fine, totally how it should be. So why did it bring her up short?

“Jack seems cool.”

“He is. It's early, I guess, but I really like him.”

“I hope it works out for you guys.” He said it as if he knew it probably wouldn't but wanted to be charitable. As if he felt sorry for her. For whatever it was about her that made things not work out. The iridescent bubble she had floated over here on just popped.

“That's very nice of you, Andy.”

“I mean it. I hope it works out. I want that for you.”

“Because we're still such good friends.”

“The way I see it, you're the one who stopped being my friend. Not that you were even that great of a friend to begin with, but you know, I never minded that. Because in a way, you were never just my friend. And it's not like I expected we'd fuck and that would change everything and all of a sudden we'd be together, but I didn't think you would basically ignore me afterward. I thought that whatever it was, it had meant more than that. But you made it pretty clear that it didn't.”

“But it
did.
I was so stupid and messed up then. I made everything so weird between us and I didn't know what to do about it. I'm sorry. I really am sorry.” She couldn't tell him in full why it was never the same. Not on his wedding day. Not with Viv in her ivory gown, yards away, chatting with a guest but turning to see them, gratification on her face.

“Well, if it brought Viv and me closer together, it was a good thing,” Andy said. He looked in Viv's direction, looked at her the way he had at the bar that one New Year's Eve. Which had really
been the first time Lee recognized something going on between them. Not the laughter behind the apartment door, but that gaze. Lee realized she'd been wrong. She had thought she was giving Viv away, but the truth was Viv and Andy were giving
her
away. They'd already done it and she just hadn't known.

But now here she was, with Viv again, not wanting her friend to leave her. She thought of Flintwick, talking about Linda and the “freaky frisson” of the past and present dissolving into each other. Freaky Frisson sounded like a bad stage name.

“Let's see if Patti's information is still accurate,” said Viv. “But if it is, yeah, I would go with you to see Marion.”

Viv's offer was a relief but it came with some deflation. Maybe Viv couldn't face Andy yet and wanted more time. Maybe she wanted to meet Marion. For the sake of curiosity? For material, like Patti Driggs? A free trip to California, because of course it would be Lee's treat? Maybe she knew that Lee didn't want to do this alone. Maybe Viv thought:
If I do this, I will never owe her anything again.
There was something valedictory in the offer. As if they both knew this would be the last time. Andy would understand this when Viv called to tell him she would need a few more days. He wouldn't be upset because he would know where things stood. It had always been Viv going along with her, surrendering to her, but this didn't feel like surrender. It felt like a favor, and a bit like pity.

O
LD PICTURES OF
Marion Washington were all over the Internet, but only one image of Marion Morris lived online. Third from the left in a group of attendees at a mental health conference in 2002, she was obscured by a broad-shouldered man in a suit but her face was visible in profile. She would have been about forty-five then, and though she
seemed to have lost some of her vivaciousness, she had retained all of the grace from the Haseltine photographs on Carnahan's wall. She was clearly the woman they were looking for. It wasn't difficult to find an address for her office along with a phone number.

“My name is Vivian Feld,” Lee said to Marion's voicemail. “I was referred to you by a friend of mine. If you could call me back, I would really appreciate it. Thank you.”

“Why do I get the feeling this isn't the first time you've used my name like that?” Viv asked.

“I've never used your name like that.” Which was true even if it didn't feel true because it had come so naturally to her.

“So, what, you're going to set up a fake appointment under an assumed name and then head across the country and ambush her?”

“First, let's see if she calls back.”

Marion did, the next morning. She wasn't taking on new clients now but she could refer Vivian to an excellent colleague of hers. Marion had the same alto voice that Lee remembered, not from childhood, but from a few seconds of old footage repeatedly used in the various documentaries about Jesse: Marion answering the door to their hotel room while Jesse tunes his guitar in front of a cameraman. Marion is in the background, by the door, and you hear her say, “Excuse me?” and you can't make out what the man at the door says but she replies evenly, “No, not right now.” Nothing coy or breathy about her. She closes the door, turns around, folds her arms, maybe thinking,
This is what I want, but how many times do I have to listen to him tune his guitar?

“You're going to think this is crazy,” Lee said. Marion didn't laugh. She must have heard that lame line, in a professional capacity, who knows how often. She didn't hang up when Lee told her who she really was. Marion grew quiet and then Lee thought she heard a faint sniffle.

“Lee?”

“Yes.”

“My god. You were just a little girl the last time I saw you. You would be amazed, or maybe you wouldn't be, by the strange calls I've gotten over the years. People pretending to be other people in order to talk to me about Jesse. Nobody has called here yet pretending to be you. Only you, calling and pretending to be someone else. Although maybe you're not even really you.”

“I
am
me. I don't know how to prove it to you on the phone. I could send you a picture. I look like my father. My mother, too. We could video chat and you could see.”

“Video chat? I don't video chat. But why don't you go ahead and tell me why you're calling. We can take it from there.”

“It's about my father. I wanted to talk to you about him. I know you don't remember a lot from that time. But I'd really like to talk to you.”

“Where are you calling from? Could you come see me? I think we ought to talk in person.”

“D
O YOU REMEMBER
that guy we sat next to,” Lee asked, “the last time we flew to California together?”

“With the leather bag, and the book, and ‘
You laugh with your whole body
'?”

“Yes. That guy.”

“I remember thinking I ruined your chances with him, if you wanted a chance with him, but I couldn't tell if you wanted a chance with him. I'm sorry—did I ruin your chances?”

“No. I don't think I knew what I wanted. We were performing for him. What I remember most was his girlfriend, waiting for him, at
baggage claim. She was so, I don't know, she just looked so
substantive.
I don't know how else to put it. I couldn't stop looking at her. She made me feel out of my depth. Like she knew so much more, about how to go through life or something.”

“Well, how much could she have known? She was with a guy who hit on you for the greater part of the flight.”

“Was he hitting on me? I don't know if that's what it was. Maybe he was just a dick and she would figure that out sooner or later and move on. But maybe she was aware and she knew him in some more complex way that either justified his behavior or in some way accounted for it. I guess what I mean is that she made
him
more complex for me. It made me feel stupid. Thinking that I knew what it all meant.”

“Don't you think that maybe you've been that girlfriend? Not that you've always dated douche bags, but that you've been that woman for a girl who was like you? That some girl has seen you in a room and thought how substantive you were?”

“It's pretty to think so.”

She was waiting for Viv to correct her, almost as if she had laid a trap.
Isn't it. The line is “Isn't it pretty
. . .” But Viv didn't correct her. Viv just smiled.

D
RIVING ALONG
H
IGHWAY
1, Lee recalled the beige leather seats and the chrome ashtrays of the white Mercedes convertible Linda used to drive, with Roy or Stephen or Monty sitting shotgun (Monty—she had almost forgotten about Monty, with the spurs on his boots because he was a cowboy or because he was an actor, she wasn't sure.
When
was Monty? Pretty early on. Maybe he
was
a cowboy. He never landed any roles). Linda always drove, and Linda's boyfriends always
came along for the windblown ride. Sometimes the boyfriend sat in back, and Lee got to sit up front with Linda. As she grew older, she was kind of embarrassed that she was in front and there was a man back there where there should have been a child or a dog.

It was easy to feel you were in a car commercial as you drove along this coast, maybe even the one set to Jesse's “Whatever You Want.” The young couple who keeps driving, past the party they had set out for, because what party could compare to the air through an open window, climate, time, and fuel efficiency on your side? But no ad could capture the mythic drama of mountains pushing up into cliffs that sheared off into the Pacific, dark and vast beneath the rolling whitecaps. Looming, indifferent redwoods that dwarfed you and your tiny car. Marion had the right idea. To live by the ocean amid giant, primeval trees. Marion, it would seem, knew how to disappear into a different life.

Bixby Bridge. 1932. Linda used to yell, “1932!” as if it was a very significant year. “What do you think Big Mort and Bubbe were doing in 1932?” They were still children, though Big Mort was already working as a stock boy, on the other side of the country, in apartments in the Bronx and Brooklyn. They went to sleep with their brothers and sisters, four to a bed, and they shined their worn shoes and saved up for a piece of penny candy or a potato chip. Jesse's parents were alive then, too, his father the son of an ambitious grocer, his mother a future debutante. Jesse's great-grandfather had been alive during the Civil War, his childhood home destroyed in Sherman's March. Meanwhile Linda's great-grandparents were in Russia, where their homes were also destroyed. Different story.

Lee remembered being on the beach here with Linda and Monty—yes, it was Monty. “Seals!” Linda cried, pointing to a rocky outcropping in the water, and Monty made barking noises. Seals were a
good omen, Linda said. But those were sea lions, Lee pointed out, not seals. Were sea lions also a good omen? she asked. Linda said, “You are so much your father sometimes.” Before Linda could say anything else, before Lee could comprehend the look in her eyes, Monty rushed Linda, threw her over his shoulder, and ran with her along the dark sand.

The road began to curve away from the ocean, out of the sun and into the wooded coolness. They were getting closer to the turn-off that would take them to Marion's place. Lee wasn't going to turn back, but if something had gotten in their way, a roadblock, a rockslide, a rabid mountain lion frothing on their hood, she might have been secretly relieved. She hadn't felt this urgent toggling on the way to Flintwick's or to see the Carnahans or Patti Driggs.

With Bill Carnahan she'd dreaded the return to a certain way of interacting with men that made her feel ashamed. She had actually tried to pretend she was undercover, like in one of Roy's old procedurals, when you got to see the hot actress in a dress instead of her usual street cop clothes, putting herself in danger for the sake of some greater civic purpose. But Lee was putting herself in danger only for the sake of putting herself in danger. Carnahan hadn't made much of a physical advance on her, though. When he got her alone, he had merely brushed her cheek with the back of his manicured fingers and likened her skin to the soft inside of a flower petal, asked if she knew what the Japanese expression
mono no aware
meant. In retrospect, it was absurd, but in the moment, she'd felt stripped. As though footage of every past humiliation were being played on a screen behind her and Carnahan was watching it all. She'd tried to think what Viv might do in her place, but Viv wouldn't be in her place. So then Lee thought:
What would my mother, my inviolable, indefatigable mother, do?
Keep him
talking by pretending you're slightly interested in what he says. Give him something, but not too much. Be like the photographs of your father. When this worked, Lee felt as though Linda had been with her. She was grateful, and even unnervingly proud.