by Sloane Tanen
Janine made a face. “What if she doesn’t find the letter? Maybe it should go somewhere more accessible.”
“Mm. Like your little poem in his wallet?” Amanda asked with a tilt of her head. But rather than dwell on it, as Janine might have anticipated, Amanda removed the wrinkled letter from the owner’s manual and slipped it inside the pocket on the driver’s-side sun visor. Janine could easily imagine Gail spending loads of time looking in that mirror—assuming she could stand the smell. She’d find the note.
Amanda got out and shut the car door. They stood outside together next to the hot, still-running Mercedes. Amanda looked at Janine and smiled. A tear ran down the side of her face. Janine hoped that getting each other back would be a consolation prize for both of them, considering all they’d lost.
Hailey
Hailey and Jaycee were sitting in the backseat of their mom’s car. The car thermometer said it was forty-four degrees outside. Their mom and Aunt Janine were down on the beach, huddled together under a big Pendleton blanket, pointing up at the occasional small plane overhead.
“This is weird,” Hailey said. She pulled her sweater up over her chin. “Grandpa never woke up this early when he was alive. What kind of funeral is this anyway?”
“It’s not a funeral, you idiot. His ashes are being scattered over the ocean. That’s what he wanted. That’s all he wanted.”
“It’s too foggy to see anything. How do they know what plane it even is?” Hailey looked out the window. “I don’t get it. Who wouldn’t want a real funeral or at least a nice memorial?” she asked. “Especially Grandpa. It would have been a big deal. I bet Steven Spielberg would have had it at his house. I bet a lot of famous people would have been there. Do you think he was just afraid nobody good would come?”
Jaycee rolled her eyes. Hailey looked away indifferently, still surprised that she was no longer preoccupied with her sister’s every move. She was equally stunned at how well she’d handled the transition from being almost famous to being just a regular high-school student. She did get checked out a lot more than Jaycee now. That was a positive. But the best part was that she knew that she most definitely did not want to be an actress. Jaycee could have that heartache. Hailey was thinking she’d be a producer now. She liked working with her mom. And Janine promised to ask Ransom Garcia if she could intern on set once filming started. Now that Janine was going to stay around, Hailey felt like things would be okay.
“When I die, I’m going to have a huge funeral,” Hailey said. “I want everyone who’s anyone to be there. You’ll be stoked about being my sister one day.”
“Yes,” Jaycee said, putting her earbuds in. “When you’re dead, I’ll be stoked about being your sister.”
“Hey, I think that’s the plane.” Hailey nudged Jaycee.
Down on the beach, Janine and their mom were pointing up at a small plane with one red blinking light. She could faintly hear them shouting for the girls to look up. The car was nice and warm now. Hailey could hear the song “I’m Alive” from Xanadu screaming out of Jaycee’s iPhone.
“That’s kind of an inappropriate song, considering,” Hailey said. She yanked the buds out of Jaycee’s ears. “Besides, it totally sucks. Those lyrics totally suck.”
“Give it to me,” Jaycee snapped. “You chose it. You’re the one helping Mom with your big ideas!”
“Jealous much?” Hailey asked. She snatched her sister’s phone and threw it over the backseat.
“Hey!” Amanda opened the car door. “Are you two fighting?”
“No,” they both said, resuming their funereal positions.
Amanda slipped into the driver’s seat, her eyes glassy. “Did you guys see the plane?”
They nodded. Janine got into the passenger seat, her face chapped and red. She looked miserable, and she silently rolled down the window as soon as Amanda turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Hailey didn’t dare complain about the cold air.
The phone rang about ten minutes into the drive back to the apartment.
Janine answered. “It’s the Neptune Society.” She put the call on speaker.
“Hello?” a man’s voice said. “Hello?” He sounded like he was standing in front of a fan. “Ms. Kessler?”
“Yes,” she said, yelling to be heard. “This is Janine Kessler.”
“Ms. Kessler?”
“Yes, I can hear you.”
“This is Jeremy Lappin from the Neptune Society. I wanted to let you know we’re having delays due to the fog. Visibility is bad. We should be taking off in about an hour. I’ll call you when we’re over Pier Eighteen.”
“You haven’t left yet?” she asked. She sounded like she was about to cry. “We thought we just saw the plane.”
“Nope. I’ll call you back with an ETA,” he said.
“What a joke,” she said and hung up. A long silence.
“Do you want to go back?” Amanda asked Janine. Her cheeks were pink and still dry with tears and cold.
“I don’t want to go back,” Janine said, shaking her head. “Let’s get breakfast.”
Henry
Henry had driven by Carneys Express Limited hundreds of times. The thought of dining there had never occurred to him. Why would it? It was just another absurd tourist attraction on the Sunset Strip, a place one sped past en route to a more logical destination. What kind of person over the age of eight would choose to eat dinner inside a yellow Union Pacific passenger car? Not exactly what he had in mind, but he was too excited about the evening to object to Janine’s restaurant choice.
“Tell me again why we’re eating here?” he asked, walking up behind her in line after parking the car. She was wearing a black cotton dress that showed off her delicate pale legs.
She turned to look at him with a queer little smile. “Their chili fries are amazing.”
“Chili fries?”
She nodded. She looked very tired. She had dark circles beneath her eyes and she was too thin. If she wanted chili fries, so be it.
“Hey,” said a man behind them. Henry turned. The man was bearded, paunchy, and wearing a Cleveland Indians jersey.
“You can’t cut the line like that,” the man said.
Henry was unclear on queue etiquette in a train car where one orders food from a man in a paper hat who jots down what you want on a cardboard box. “I’m sorry. I was just parking the car.”
“I don’t care if you were fucking your sister, buddy. No cutting.”
“Pardon?”
“Pardon?” he repeated, mocking Henry’s accent and elbowing his slovenly little friend, an equally unsavory-looking fellow with a limp mustache and a tattoo of a deer’s head on his arm.
“Never mind,” Janine said. She took Henry’s hand. “We’ll go to the back. We’re not in a rush.”
“There you go,” the man said, looking Janine over. “Why don’t you behave and go to the back of the line with Olive Oyl.”
Henry cleared his throat and pointed at the man’s belly. “Looks as if skipping a meal might be just the ticket for you. Or might I suggest you rot in your Studebaker until the next time your team wins the World Series.”
The guy looked down at the Indians jersey he was wearing. “Is this prick fucking kidding?” he asked his friend as Henry watched his face turn the color of a beefsteak tomato. “Might I suggest,” he said, holding up his pinkie and imitating Henry again.
“Forget it, Henry,” Janine said. She pulled hard at his arm. “I’m not even hungry, okay?”
“Yes, you are hungry, and no, it’s not okay,” Henry said. Janine would have her chili fries. This was not a night on which he would be humiliated.
“Didn’t you hear her, Henry?” the man said, managing to make his name sound ridiculously effete. “She’s not hungry. So why don’t you and the skinny bitch get the fuck out of here before I turn your face into a—”
Henry was not a fighting man. He’d never hit anyone or anything in his life. So it was curious the way his hand balled up into
a fist and flew, as if in a practiced motion, directly at the enormous face of this stranger. Contact was made! The sound of Henry’s fist clubbing the man’s jaw was loud and enormously satisfying. It was less curious (in retrospect) that Henry missed him entirely on the second round, nearly dislocating his own shoulder, while the man retaliated with a series of hard punches to Henry’s stomach, ribs, chest, and face.
The pain was gutting. When the police arrived, Henry was curled up in a ball on the ground, condiments all around him. Not the evening he’d imagined at all. A crowd had gathered. He was covered in relish. He had a bloody nose. Janine was in tears. The police had gotten there fast, so they must have been nearby. Perhaps they had even been in a booth eating chili fries, watching the whole thing transpire.
If he’d expected compassion from Janine, he was sorely disappointed. She was furious with him. What was he trying to prove? she’d asked. Prove? He’d thought he was protecting her honor. Wasn’t that the protocol at a place like Carneys? And the police—had they even attempted to chase down his attackers? No. They were taking him in. Taking him in? For disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, they explained. Apparently he who throws the first punch is guilty. No wonder the justice system in America was in tatters, he thought.
Janine and Henry sat in a loaded silence in the backseat of the police car listening to the officer who was driving the car recount to his partner, scene by scene and in painstaking detail, the plot of a film he’d seen involving a narcoleptic nanny.
“I’m bleeding on your seat,” Henry said, knocking hard on the bulletproof divider to get the cop’s attention.
“Hey!” the officer shouted, not turning around. He was too engrossed in his film synopsis to be bothered. Janine pulled a wet wipe out of her bag and gave it to him. She always had the right things in her pocketbook: hand sanitizer, wet wipes, mints.
“What a stupid thing to do, Henry,” she said. She dabbed at his bloody face with a tissue. He winced. “Is your ear okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “He missed that side.”
“Missed?” she asked. “And what do you know about baseball, anyway? What the hell was that?”
“It was that jersey. A few years back, we had a fanatical professor on the faculty who’d come from Case Western. The man couldn’t grasp the fact that his team hadn’t won a World Series since before Warhol was a novelty. Every year leading up to the season, he’d walk into faculty meetings wearing a cap and that ridiculous jersey chanting, ‘This is the year! This is the year!’”
Janine laughed. Maybe her anger was thawing.
“And at the end of every season, he’d fly into a rage looking for someone to blame for his team’s ineptitude. He was very emotional for a John Copley scholar. Finally got fired for sleeping with an undergraduate. From Dayton.”
Henry noticed that the officer who was driving was looking at them in his rearview mirror. He’d stopped talking, and now he slid open the plastic screen. “Hey, you look familiar,” he said to Janine. “I know you?”
She shook her head.
“Do you have any water?” Henry asked Janine.
She went back to her bag to forage for liquids.
“Really,” the man said. “I’ve met you before.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. I don’t even live in LA.” As she handed Henry a bottle of water, she accidentally upended her purse, sending its contents across the floor of the car. “Shit.”
“Janine Kessler?” the officer asked. She looked up, startled, before she could collect her things. Henry gathered what he could into his lap. “It’s me, Teddy Volk.”
Janine shook her head. The name clearly didn’t mean anything to her.
“I was on Family Happens!” He turned all the way around so she could take in the beauty of his middle-aged face.
“Hey!” Henry shouted. “Watch the road.” The driver turned back and adjusted the rearview mirror so he was looking directly at Janine. “I played your cousin Archie. From Michigan?”
“Oh my God,” Janine said. “Archie! I mean, Teddy!”
“What happened to you, Janine? You were the bomb!”
“The usual. I wanted to get out of Hollywood. Live a regular life. You know how it is. What about you?” she asked. Henry could tell she was pretending more interest than she felt. She was focused on the articles from her purse collected neatly on Henry’s lap.
“Life,” he said. “Now I’m a cop.”
“I can see that,” she said, staring at the pack of prenatal vitamins Henry was turning over. “Listen, Teddy,” she said. “Can you drop the charges? As a favor? Henry didn’t do anything wrong. That guy was a total jerk.”
Teddy looked briefly at his partner, who nodded. “For you, Jenny B., why the hell not?” He made a U-turn and headed back to Carneys. “Who’s this guy, though? Your husband?”
“No.” She pulled her phone and the prenatal vitamins out of Henry’s paralyzed hands and looked at him. “He’s just my baby daddy.”
A yeti stepped on Henry’s chest.
“Whoa,” Teddy said, laughing. “How old are your kids?”
“Really, really young.”
“Those years are brutal. Mine are grown. Out of the house.”
“Wow,” Janine said. “Congratulations!” She was still looking at Henry.
“You call me if you need anything while you’re in town, all right?” he said, slipping his card through the partition with a hint of flirtation despite Henry’s presence. “Janine fucking Kessler. Small fucking world.” Teddy turned back around and started saying something to his partner.
“You are pregnant?” Henry asked quietly, pointing at the vitamins.
“Shh!” Janine nodded. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I wasn’t sure I was going to keep it,” she said. “But then, after my dad—”
“Oh God,” he said, licking a trickle of blood that was dripping into his mouth. “You can’t do that.”
“I didn’t.” She handed him another wipe. “Are you mad?” she asked.
The car stopped in the parking lot at Carneys. Teddy got out and opened the door for Janine. He took a selfie with her as Henry crawled out awkwardly, clutching his aching torso. Teddy gave Janine such a hard, loving hug that she made a little squeaking noise. “You take care, now,” he said, giving Henry a look before getting back into his car. Two former child stars, Henry thought. Dimmed but still shining.
“Thanks, Teddy. I will. You too.”
The patrol car pulled away.
“You have any idea who he is?” Henry asked her.
“Not really.”
“Brilliant.”
“He seems happy,” she said, waving.
“Why are we talking about Teddy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to talk about.”
“How about our wedding?”
“Wedding?”
“Let’s get married.”
“That’s funny. Are you concussed?”
“Perhaps,” he said, touching his head. “But I’m quite certain I want to marry you. I love you.”
“Jesus, Henry.”
“I don’t believe you would have kissed me like you did the other night if you didn’t feel the same way.”
“You kissed me,” she said and took a small step toward him.
“No. You kissed me,” he said sternly.
“Okay.” She blushed. “I kissed you.”
“And I don’t believe you would have done that or let me help you write that letter…I just don’t think you’re the sort of person who would have let me help you at all after I hurt you if you didn’t love me.”
“But I don’t want to get married.”
“Why not?” he asked, his voice strident. “I thought all women wanted to get married.”
“How very sexist of you. What gave you that impression?”
“All the women I’ve dated,” he said, realizing how offensive the words sounded. He was an idiot. He had no polish. Of course Janine didn’t
want to marry him. “I don’t mean that they all wanted to marry me. It’s just that people want to couple up, don’t they? Being alone is, well, it’s lonely. I never realized how very much I didn’t want to be alone until you left.” He’d never sounded so daft, even to his own ears. He was more nervous than he’d ever been in his life. “But it’s more than that,” he went on before Janine could interrupt him, before the phantom lump in his throat clogged his airway. “I adore you, Janine. I love the way you smile when you’re actually sad, I love your white skin all mottled up with freckles, and I love the way your hair sticks up in the morning or when you get upset. It just pops up, like antennas.”
“You don’t have to marry me because I’m pregnant. You can help, you know, if you want. But you don’t have to do that either, if you don’t want. I’ll have enough money to buy an apartment. Amanda can help. You and I really barely know each other.”
“Don’t talk rubbish. I’m not finished,” he said. “Mostly I think, and don’t correct me if I’m wrong, that we sort of complement each other.” He took a deep breath. “I love you. I want to marry you. It has nothing to do with whether or not you’re pregnant.”
“But I am pregnant.”
“All the better.” He got down on one knee and fished the black ring box out of his pocket. He was grateful it hadn’t gotten lost in the fight. The inanity of proposing in the parking lot of Carneys wasn’t lost on him.
“I don’t understand,” she said. She took the box and looked around. “Get up, would you?”
“You see? I was going to ask you to marry me anyway,” he said, embarrassed, standing up and wiping off his pants. “I was thinking a posh café with a good Cabernet but this is fine too. Life is short! One day you’re eating a gelato and the next day—” He stopped himself, realizing his mother’s epiphany might come off as tactless.
She opened the box. “Jesus! It’s the size of Texas. I can’t wear this.”
“It was my mother’s.”
“Your mother’s?” she asked, staring at the large cushion-cut diamond ring with emerald side stones. “Well, that explains the size.”