The Girl of Sand & Fog

by Ward, Susan

  Crap, why did I say that? It’s not even close to reality and I’ve tapped into his anger when I didn’t want to.

  He stares at me with harshly penetrating green eyes. “Then you shouldn’t be here. You should go home or to Zoe’s or anywhere else. But not here, if that’s how you really feel.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He picks up the joint, takes a hit, and then another one before setting it aside. “You only think you’re in control, Kaley. I let you be in control. It is the submissive who is really in control. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”

  I stomp my feet into his UGG slippers until I have them on securely. “Well, fuck. I guess I’ll have to think about that one the rest of the night.”

  He grabs my wrist to stop me from leaving. “Kaley, listen. I get it. I know seeing Alan is going to have you all fucked up for a while. That you’re working through a lot of shit. It’s OK. I’d rather you let it out here. With me. Because I love you and I will love you through anything.”

  Now, on top of everything, he is doing it again, being a really great guy when I am being a total bitch.

  I sink my teeth into my lower lip to hold back the tears.

  “I’m glad that you’re here, Kaley. I’m glad that I’ve got your back through this. I don’t want you getting hurt before you resolve this junk with your dad.”

  The tears come this time. I can’t stop them. He doesn’t climb from the bed, doesn’t close the space between us, but somehow I am surrounded by the feel of him, comforted without being touched by him.

  He runs a hand through his hair and waits for me to look at him. “And don’t ever tell me to fuck off again when I tell you I love you. I love you, Kaley.”

  “How come you’re such a good guy?”

  “I don’t know that I am.”

  I slip out the door, leaving Bobby naked on the bed in a cloud of pot smoke that follows me outside. I make a careful trek from the pool house to the sliding glass patio door, stepping where Bobby showed so I won’t trigger the automatic floodlights, preserving his parents’ ability to continue in non-denial denial about what I am really doing every night here since they never see me after midnight.

  Carefully I close the door behind me, hear a sound and tense. After two months am I finally getting busted sneaking into the family room? Shit. I turn slowly to look into the room.

  The earth drops away beneath me as I spot Alan sleeping in a chair. The house is dark, and I would have missed him if he hadn’t done the lightest bit of snoring then.

  So my dad is still in Pacific Palisades. I didn’t expect that. He didn’t run off. I wonder if my mom told him about Khloe or if she lost her nerve.

  What the hell is he doing at the Rowans’?

  I sink down on my knees beside the chair, sitting there quietly, just studying him. Everything about me I can find in prototype on him, everything except my too-small nose and my crooked smile that I hate because it lends a flash of Chrissie’s sweetness to my features. Those are the only things I got from Chrissie’s gene set. The rest of me is him, down to the shape of our hands, the length of their fingernail beds and the shade and texture of our skin. Even our hair and eyes; the exact same shade.

  I run an angry hand across my face, disappointed in myself because I can feel dampness on my cheeks. Seeing my dad is like going to see the pyramids. I look, never touch, marvel and stare. I am fucking seventeen years old and that is the sum total of my relationship with the man who gave me life. Staring at a pyramid.

  I’m halfway to convincing myself to wake him up, to get the confrontation over here in the safety of the Rowan household, but Linda comes into the kitchen, sets a pair of keys on the counter, and locks me in her all-powerful stare. The look stops me cold in my tracks.

  Linda’s severely beautiful face slowly softens with a look of motherly sympathy and knowing. With her brown eyes still sharply fixed on me, she gestures with her hand to be silent and follow her.

  I am taken to the end of a long hallway I’ve never been down before, to a small day room that Linda has clearly appropriated for her own use. She points to the sofa and stands against the door almost in a way that suggests she is barring exit.

  After a long while of silence where Linda does one of her thorough Dr. Phil searches of my face, she says, “Aha. So that’s it. That’s the anger I feel inside of you these days. I thought it was. I wasn’t certain. I didn’t want to press.”

  Everything about that observation only adds to my frustration. Shit, why doesn’t anyone just talk about it to me? It’s emotionally devastating to learn how obvious I am to everyone, that no one will approach me directly, but at least Linda eventually got around to it in her no-bullshit kind of way.

  I stare at her. “What makes you think he’s my dad?”

  “Christ, girl, it’s the worst-kept secret in the industry.” Linda sits down on the sofa close beside me. “Everyone knows. It is still talked about sporadically when he can’t hear.”

  “You’re not telling me anything,” I say in frustration.

  Linda rolls her eyes. “What do you want? Do you want me to say I was in the bedroom the night you were conceived? Well, I can’t say that. Do you want me to say that your mother told me? Well, I can’t say that either. But, Christ, it is so glaringly obvious just to look at you. Chrissie has loved Manny since the age of eighteen. That’s it. Married to Jesse. Married to Neil, but in love with Manny. Only him. It’s simple logic. Only him. No one else. Obvious.”

  I’m encouraged since Linda seems willing to talk about things that people in the know never talk about with me. I pull my legs up in front of me, hug them, and study Linda as I consider where to start to get the most out of this rare opportunity.

  Before I can frame my first question, Linda lights a cigarette and gives me a reproaching glare. “I’d feel a lot more comfortable talking to you if you’d put your legs down so I wouldn’t have to see that you forgot to put on panties, dear.”

  Oh fuck. My cheeks burn.

  I drop my legs and the matter-of-factness of that observation makes me feel for the first time as though my behavior of late is wrong. Linda is a superlative mother. Calm, matter-of-fact, all knowing, and strangely tolerant and reprimanding simultaneous. A Jewish mother’s power. That’s what Bobby calls it.

  “Was there ever a paternity test?”

  Linda shakes her head. “It wasn’t something Chrissie would do. Not for a lot of reasons.”

  “She’s spent most of her life hopping in and out of Alan Manzone’s bed. Why wouldn’t she need it? My mother is a slut who can’t keep her legs closed with him—”

  The pain shooting through my cheek is so overwhelming that it nearly takes a minute to realize that Linda just slapped me hard on the face.

  “Put a lid on that anger. It’s going to hurt you,” Linda says calmly. “You don’t believe that and I won’t listen to it. If you want to talk to me there will be no cheap shots at your mother. That was a really ugly thing to say.”

  That makes me cry, first softly and then harder. It is like a magical power Linda has to douse the anger first in shock and then in regret. I am ashamed of myself for the second time in less than five minutes, and as awful as it is, it feels realer and nearer to myself than I’ve felt at any other moment in the past year, except in those new moments of me and Bobby.

  Linda begins to slowly rock me in her arms. “Oh, Kaley. You’ve got a lot bottled up inside of you. Just don’t hurt yourself with it.”

  I nod.

  She brushes back my hair and smiles.

  “Is my boy good to you? Does he treat you the way he should?”

  My face burns darker.

  Linda is the weirdest mom I’ve ever known, but did she just ask me if her son treated me well in bed?

  “W-what? I’m not answering that,” I sputter.

  God, this is humiliating.

  Linda laughs quickly. “No. No. I’m not asking how my boy treats you sexually. God, Kaley, not that. Have I ra
ised a good man? Is he a good man with you?”

  Oh.

  I nod, feeling badly for Linda and not exactly sure why. “Bobby is wonderful,” I admit. “He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”

  Linda smiles, pleased, and nods.

  For a moment she seems lost in her own thoughts.

  “Why are you so certain Neil Stanton is not my father?” I ask.

  Linda takes a puff of her cigarette, seems to debate with herself her answer, and then says it bluntly. “It’s obvious.”

  “Does my dad know the truth?”

  Linda sighs. “I don’t know what Manny knows. He doesn’t talk about Chrissie with me. Not anymore. Not in a long time.”

  My temper flares, because I don’t believe that last comment. Everyone talks about everything with Linda. There is just something about her and I hate the suspicion that she is lying in an attempt to protect me.

  “Does he know I’m his daughter? Does he or doesn’t he? Is he part of this fucked-up pretense and lie? Does he know and pretends he isn’t?”

  Linda’s head shakes in an aggravated tempo in sync with the movements of her hand as she stomps out the cigarette.

  “Grow up, Kaley. Life doesn’t devolve into giant conspiracies. Life happens, sometimes quickly, and your mother was young. We make the wrong turn. It gets fucked up. It gets hard to correct. This is not a conspiracy against you, so knock that victim chip off your shoulder and be done with it. No, he doesn’t know. He is about the only one who doesn’t think it. I don’t know how things got so fucked up. But it’s not a conspiracy.”

  “That’s stupid. I don’t believe any of that.”

  Linda makes a face and then shrugs. “Fine. Don’t believe it. It is the truth. Love can make you see whatever you want to see. I’ve seen a lot of things with my eyes that my heart won’t let me believe. It’s how people cope, manage. You’re no different. We all muddle through believing what we want to believe.”

  OK, what a fucked-up group of people I’ve been born into. I give up, and watch Linda as she rises from the sofa in a silent announcement that this is through for tonight.

  I follow her back into the kitchen. In the silence we stand at the breakfast bar, picking at a bag of Oreos and staring at the sleeping pyramid in the chair. After wiping the crumbs from my face, I cross the room to the sliding door. Linda is watching me like a woman standing guard, not wanting anything to erupt in her house.

  I look at Alan. My dad. Linda says he is, I can feel it inside me, and yet it still isn’t real, would never be real, until I know for certain and he acknowledges me.

  As an afterthought I go back to my dad, prop his feet up on a stool and cover him with a throw blanket. Linda gives me an approving nod, clearly thinking she’s fixed everything, and quickly I slip through the door.

  When I return to the pool house it’s even more full of pot smoke than when I left and that really pisses me off. I hate the pot. Bobby smokes it every night, though not until after we’ve had sex because I won’t fuck him if he is stoned.

  His eyes are lazy and red when they fix on me and the silence has more to do with his ability to read my moods than how fucked up he is. I lift the joint from his fingers, take a hit, and then drop it into a half-finished beer. One hit is more than enough for me. It is dispensary quality—he got a script from a doctor downtown—and I can’t understand how he can smoke so much of it and still be coherent. Any more than one hit and I’m out for the night.

  I pull off the t-shirt and climb into bed, spooning against him so he can hold me while I sleep. “How can you get so fucked up every night and still have a perfect GPA? You really need to stop that shit.”

  He gently pulls my long black curls over my shoulder to tuck them behind me so they don’t cover his face. “What happened? You were gone a long time.”

  “My dad is sleeping in your parents’ house.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Just stared. Ran into Linda, though. She wanted to have a talk with me. No big deal. Didn’t tell me to go home. It’s cool.”

  Bobby eases up to look at my face. “Safe sex or guys are assholes. Which talk?”

  I laugh. “I didn’t realize that Linda had two talks. I thought she only had one. The only talk she ever has with me is about my anger issues.”

  “Oh, the anger issue talk. How did that go?”

  “I’m less angry.”

  “Really?”

  “No. But I’m tired. I want to go to sleep. I can’t even see in this room through the smoke. Try opening a window once in a while. I don’t know how you’re awake.”

  He lies back down behind me and pulls me more intimately up against him. “I waited for you.”

  I lie in the smoke-filled room, listening to Bobby breathe. “Do you know where my dad’s house is in Malibu?”

  Bobby leans up on an elbow and stares at me. “Of course.”

  That causes anger to flash upward with all the other junk in me. I’m grateful for the anger. It helps me keep an ‘I don’t give a shit’ tone of voice.

  “I want you to take me there tomorrow,” I command.

  “OK.” Bobby settles back down on the pillow behind me.

  I wait.

  Nothing.

  I look over my shoulder at him. “Aren’t you even going to ask me why I want to go to the Malibu house?”

  “Don’t need to. You know better than I do what you need to do to work through this.”

  CHAPTER 17

  We head out shortly after dawn and go to Malibu.

  Bobby pulls into a driveway, parks and turns off the engine. We sit there silently staring through the windshield.

  An enormous concrete and glass structure hugs the beach behind a twelve foot wall. I’d often wondered if it was as large as I remembered or if my memory played tricks on me because I’d been a little girl when last here or if I even remembered it clearly. But it looks exactly the same, every detail, exactly what I see in time-frozen pictures in my head.

  My pulse accelerates and my breathing grows shallow.

  I lived here. For five years. Long ago. With my mom and dad. And then I was gone, what I thought was my family gone, and I don’t really know why it happened.

  I push away the new memories that stir caused by seeing the house again. It’s too much to take, being here and having more flashing images. Having them be happy and clear and real. Not false memories, as I’ve often wondered, but true moments of my life.

  “Are you all right?” Bobby asks.

  I startle. For a moment I forgot he was in the car, the emotions crashing through me so powerful they blocked out all awareness of even his intense gaze studying me until he spoke.

  I unbuckle my seat belt. “I want to go in.”

  He shakes his head, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” I say, struggling to keep the emotion from my face. “I don’t think Alan’s here. No one will know. I just want to see inside.”

  He opens his door and comes around the car to open mine. We hurry up the walkway only to be stopped by a heavy locked gate.

  Bobby turns to me. “We’re going to have to ring, Kaley. We can’t get any farther than this. Maybe we should go.”

  I debate pressing the call button on the intercom and then see the wall panel for security codes. I rush toward it and stare at the numbered keys. Shit, what would the code be? Something he’d remember. I punch in Alan’s birthday. No bueno. It’s state-of-the-art security. I can see cameras everywhere. They probably advised Alan against anything obvious. Maybe this isn’t going to be easy.

  I start to punch again, frown, and then still my fingers above the panel. “How many times do you think I can get it wrong before the security company is notified?”

  Bobby rakes a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I don’t know. They might have already been called. Come on, Kaley. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What do you think
Alan would use as a code?”

  “Who knows? And we can’t stand here all morning with you trying anything without someone seeing us.”

  Crap, Bobby is right.

  I step back from the panel.

  I just want to go in.

  The damn place looks unchanged, so exact in every detail to my memories. There’s got to be things inside, familiar things, that might explain some of my questions.

  Fuck, I hope there is.

  I feel like I’m home, like I’m eight and this is where I should be. Nothing has changed…

  My eyes widen.

  Oh no, it wouldn’t be that simple.

  I punch in another code.

  A loud buzz and the gate slowly opens on its own.

  Bobby follows me into the atrium, frowning. “What did you do? How did you know the code?”

  I lift my brows. “Not exactly rocket science, Bobby. My mom’s birthday. It was a long shot but logical.”

  I cut through the large front patio crowded with potted plants, fire pits, fountains and stylish outdoor furniture, and stop at the tall, glass double doors to the main house. Code panel again. Perfect. I don’t need a key. I type in mom’s birthday. A click and the doors unlatch.

  Bingo.

  We’re in.

  The foyer is pristine white and polished marble floors, the high-ceiling walls speckled with large canvases protected by glass from the sea air. There is not a single unfamiliar item anywhere. Ten years. Alan hasn’t changed so much as the art.

  I falter at the edge of the giant living area overlooking the beach and Pacific Ocean. Black and white plush California-chic furnishings, natural wood tables, more floor-to-ceiling art, dark floors that look like stylized concrete, instruments everywhere, and framed pictures cluttering surfaces.

  This room is exactly the same.

  “It’s like this house has been sealed in Cryovac.”

  Bobby shrugs, wandering around, pausing occasionally to study something. “He hasn’t lived here in ten years. Why would he change the house?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s sort of creepy how not different it is.”

  My eyes lock on the pictures crowding a side table and I sink to sit on my knees. I lift one up, turning to smile at Bobby. “This is my mom. God, she must have been only in her twenties here. Wasn’t she beautiful when she was young?”