by James Siegel
“Yes… yes, of course,” she said. “Dennis had brown hair, olive eyes-just like you said. He had a little scar on his right cheek. He fell off the monkey bars when he was 5. Is it possible… Mr…?”
“Valle. Tom Valle.”
“Is it possible they’re wrong? It is, isn’t it? It’s not him? It’s someone else?”
She took down my address.
She told me she’d send me a picture of Dennis.
She rattled off a few particulars of Dennis’s sad travesty of a marriage.
She provided me with the phone number of Dennis’s ex-wife.
She told me Dennis had won five merit badges as a Boy Scout.
I had a hard time getting her off the phone.
When Hinch came in, he asked me what I was working on.
Hinch was big-boned, broad-shouldered, a largess that had lately migrated south to his stomach. Some mornings he arrived with gray stubble still clinging to his chin. I suspected Miss Azalea wasn’t doing well.
“Following up on the crash.”
“That crash on Highway 45? Old news, isn’t it?”
“There are a few things I’m trying to clean up.”
“Like?” Hinch had made his way to the coffee brewer, which I’d generously started percolating-usually Norma’s job.
“Like there was no definite ID. Except for the man’s wallet.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I don’t know exactly. But the ME thought…”
“The who?”
“Dr. Futillo. He was convinced…”
“Dr. Futillo?” Hinch snorted. “He’s no medical examiner. You know anything about Dr. Futillo?” As owner, editor in chief, and sole editorial columnist of the Littleton Journal, Hinch made it a point to know just about everything about everyone in town.
“He’s a good bowler.”
“He’s also good at prescribing OxyContin to patients who don’t actually need it. He relocated here under, let’s say, murky circumstances. I wouldn’t believe everything Dr. Futillo tells you. Especially about forensics.”
I thought Hinch was making a point. That there were two people who’d relocated to Littleton under murky circumstances, and neither one of them was remotely trustworthy.
Sheriff Swenson was right; Hinch was related to my probation officer, who’d asked me at our last meeting what I intended to do with my life, now that no paper within 3,000 miles would hire me. The answer was simple. Find a paper within 3,001 miles. Once my PO had a word with its editor in chief-Hinch, her cousin on her mother’s side. It wasn’t much of a paper, of course-one step up from the penny circular-but its desert location had appealed to my desire for isolation and self-scourging.
“I won’t write it unless it checks,” I said.
Which was pretty much word-for-word what Hinch had told me the day I arrived in my beat-up Miata. That he wouldn’t publish anything unless it checked.
Even if all we were talking about was the annual book sale down at the Littleton Library. It better be the right date, okay?
I’d promised I wouldn’t let him down.
Hinch stared at me for a long moment, as if credibility was something that could be visibly gauged.
“All right,” he said.
He retreated into his office and shut the door.
I’d gotten an ipod.
Norma had sold me on its myriad benefits. She’d recently begun performing lunchtime aerobics to the latest from Outkast, slipping into baggy pink Danskins and mouthing along to Andre 3000.
In a very short time, I’d fattened up my iPod with 1,032 songs. Mostly oldies-but-goodies.
The entire canon of Hendrix.
Some Jackson Browne.
Santana. Fleetwood Mac. Jethro Tull.
A few anomalies thrown in. Side by Side by Sondheim. Sinatra at Caesar’s. Judy Collins singing “Where or When.”
If you’ve never heard her rendition of that haunting Richard Rodgers tune, you’re really missing something.
I was listening to “Where or When” on the way to my car.
I was going to cover the opening of a new department store. And maybe something else.
I was focusing on the words.
Things that happened for the first time seem to be happening again…
Yes.
ELEVEN
You always remember your first time. I overslept. I was supposed to be on a plane to Shreveport, Louisiana, to interview the family of a dead National Guardsman, one of the first casualties in Afghanistan. Back when the war on terror still had the imprimatur of a just revenge. Before we blew into Iraq after WMDs that weren’t there and unleashed holy hell. Maybe I was inherently dreading it. The knock at their door, my protestations about how sorry I was to be bothering them in their moment of grief. Their bewildered faces-because death is bewildering, a vanishing act of stunning skill; first they’re here, then they’re not. The lowered faces, the embarrassing tears, the snapshots brought out in dusty albums, opened for my respectful perusal. The childhood stories, the bedroom tour, the folded American flag sitting obtrusively on the living room mantelpiece. Maybe I was dreading it so much that I’d decided not to wake up. See. I knew the routine so well that I could write it from memory. That’s exactly what occurred to me as I gazed bleary-eyed at my alarm clock, which uncomprehendingly was hours past where it was supposed to be. Hours past where I could simply hop on a later plane, still get the interview, and make it into tomorrow’s Sunday edition. I’ll admit something. I’d fibbed before. All reporters do. Little things. Maybe I’d reconstructed a piece of dialogue that wasn’t exactly word-for-word what that political bagman had told me in that desolate downtown garage. It was close, sure, but it sounded so much better, so much more infinitely dramatic this way. Maybe, here and there, I’d described something that I hadn’t in actuality seen. I’d talked to that crack junkie outside his burned-out tenement, and yet a few particulars of his garbage-strewn, needle-littered apartment had somehow crept into the article. Why not? What was the harm? His apartment was probably garbage-strewn and needle-littered. Its inclusion in the article added texture. And if I hadn’t actually stepped inside and seen it with my own two eyes, who was to know? It hadn’t changed anything materially, had it? Of course, this would be different. This would be making something up in its entirety. Its very audacity glued me to the bed, caused me to keep staring at my clock as if the hour hand might miraculously crawl backward of its own volition. I think I wrote the article as a kind of exercise. At first I did. That’s, anyway, what I told myself. Write it for fun, I whispered, and see how it turns out. Imagine it, I told myself. Walking down a tree-lined sidewalk on a pleasantly mild Shreveport day, then up the rickety wooden steps to their front door. Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont stepping back to let me into the suffocating darkness of their living room. Imagine how they might’ve answered my questions. I had some actual info. A quick trip to Google had turned up two local articles from the Shreveport Journal. Sergeant First Class Lowell Beaumont was a high school athlete who would’ve gone on scholarship to LSU if not for those torn knee ligaments suffered in his senior year at Stonewall Jackson High. His bedroom remains filled with the echoes of the high school gridiron, with freshly polished trophies adorning both sides of his dresser bureau.
See, it wasn’t so hard. Odds are that’s exactly what his bedroom looked like. Lowell had two younger sisters, the articles said. Mary and Louise. Mary Beaumont clutched a picture of her fallen brother in both hands. “He was always looking out for us, making sure we were home on time, stuff like that.” What older brother wouldn’t keep a sharp eye on his sisters? And wouldn’t a grieving sister pick up his picture, if only to stare at the face she’d no longer see again? Lowell Beaumont had worked on an assembly line at the local tire factory. He’d joined the National Guard one week after 9/11. “He thought he had a duty to his country,” Mr. Beaumont said, shaking a white-haired head bent in grief. “He felt it was worth even his life.” Isn’t that the only r
eason someone would join the National Guard after the Twin Towers fell? Duty to country? Wouldn’t the father be wracked with an amorphous mixture of pride and sadness? If he hadn’t said those exact words to someone, he’d undoubtedly thought them. Once I got going, it was hard to stop. It was easier than having to refer back to my notes. Much easier. My fingers virtually flew across the keys. Speaking of notes. Let’s suppose I actually handed the story in. Let’s suppose this one time-never again of course, only this once-I saved my ass with a little creativity. If someone were to challenge something in the story, I could supply proof. Not tape-I was the traditionalist who famously abhorred the tape recorder. I would give them my notes. What notes? The ones I’d instantly conjure up if push came to shove. The simple brilliance of this deception comforted me and spurred me on. When I finished the story, I thought it read exactly like it would’ve if I had gotten on that plane and made it to that shuttered home in Shreveport. Still, I admit to the slightest trembling in my hands as I walked it over to the backfield editior that evening. As I stood and watched it make its way from copy desk to proof. The next morning, he called me into his office. My trembling increased geometrically. I quivered, consumed by the absolute dread you feel on your way to the principal when you’ve been caught red-handed with crib notes in your pocket. I rehearsed a story on the way to his office: “I missed the plane, so I called them and did the interview on the phone… It’ll never happen again… I should’ve told you… I’m so sorry…” When I made it through the door, the first thing I saw was the paper folded to my article. First page, lower left. A Soldier’s Sad Return He peered up over his old-fashioned bifocals, looking even more rumpled than usual. Ever since smoking was banned in New York City offices, he’d taken to chewing anything in arm’s reach. This morning it was a red pencil nearly bitten in half, which he carefully removed from his mouth and suspended over the article with the deliberateness of a firing hammer being squeezed back into position. “Nice writing,” he said. “Moving without being mawkish. Really, really good.” “Thanks,” I said. I might’ve even blushed.
TWELVE
Once upon a time, Littleton had aspired to a kind of Palm Springs-hood. They’d broken ground for a Robert Trent Jones golf course and two sprawling resorts, ascribing to the build-it-and-they-will-come theory of urban development.
They didn’t come.
Maybe because Palm Springs had Bob Hope and Shecky Greene and a host of other aging Friars Club members, and Littleton had Sonny Rolph.
It didn’t help that Littleton’s major real estate developer went belly-up in the stock collapse of the early nineties, just as Vegas turned into a cheap ticket option for Los Angelenos looking to grab a weekend getaway.
The resorts were never finished-the golf course suspended at nine holes and counting.
Now mall openings were true cause for excitement.
This one was first-rate.
Rodeo clowns handed out balloons twisted into tiny pink dachshunds. Humming machines spun out glistening spools of cotton candy. Someone who looked like Billy Ray Cyrus sung a country song about his girlfriend leaving him red, white, and blue.
Which happened to be the color of the ceremonial ribbon deftly cut in two by Littleton’s three-term mayor. Patriotism was clearly in these days. The voracious crowd promptly surged through the massive doorway in search of bargains and air-conditioning. Not necessarily in that order.
Nate Cohen, my intern from Pepperdine, accompanied me to cover this earthshaking event. Nate the Skate his frat buddies called him, he informed me the day we met.
Why?
I don’t know, he said, looking puzzled at the question.
Nate tended to pepper me with journalism questions when he wasn’t gabbing to his girlfriend. They had matching cell phones, he stated proudly, both of which could take camera-quality pictures. He proved it by showing me his girlfriend, Rina, reclining nude on an outdoor chaise longue.
“Isn’t she cute?” he asked.
“You sure you want to be showing people that?” I asked him.
“You’re not people. You’re my mentor. Sort of.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t want your mentor seeing her naked?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t care. We go to Black’s Beach like all the time.”
Black’s Beach was a notorious clothing-optional cove just south of La Jolla.
We discharged our duties with perfunctory professionalism.
Somehow interviewing the middle-aged saleswoman who generously splashed me with Calvin Klein’s Eau de something failed to get my journalistic juices flowing. Same for the home-appliances manager-despite his flawless demonstration of a combination juicer-toaster, and hand vacuum with built-in computer chip.
I was preoccupied.
Belinda Washington had made it to her hundredth birthday and then suddenly passed away. I’d heard it on the radio this morning.
On a sad note, the local radio announcer had said, our very own centenarian kicked the bucket today. Belinda Washington has moved on to that great big nursing home in the sky.
We should all be so lucky, the show’s cohost had cheerily intoned.
After I dropped Nate off, I drove back to the home.
I’m not sure why.
When I entered the lobby, Mr. Birdwell was ushering a middle-aged couple out the door.
“So let us know,” he said to them. “Space is kind of limited.”
He was already trying to fill her bed. Old-age homes were like in restaurants these days; the good ones had waiting lists that were miles long.
Mr. Birdwell had no trouble remembering me.
“What brings you back, Mr. Valle?”
“I heard about Belinda. Just following up.”
He stared at me with a puzzled expression, as if he were waiting for a second part of the sentence.
“I was wondering what she died of,” I said.
“She was 100,” he answered, as if that provided all the reason necessary.
“She seemed pretty okay the day I was here.”
“Her heart,” he said. “It just gave out.”
“I see.” I remembered the chill of Belinda’s hand-the opposite of Anna’s hot-blooded grip. Cold extremities were a sign of pure blood circulation. Her heart, sure.
“Can I see her room?” I asked.
“What for?”
“For the story.”
There wasn’t a story. Even as the words passed my lips, I knew I was lying.
“There’s not a whole lot there,” Mr. Birdwell said. “But okay.”
He turned and motioned for me to follow him.
We passed the nurse’s station, where wheelchairs were lined up like shopping carts. The nurses seemed subdued today. Maybe they’d been fond of Belinda, too.
A bathrobed man was tortuously making his way down the hall with the aid of walker and oxygen mask. He looked up and squinted at me as if trying to focus. He had been in the rec room that day, I remembered, and briefly wondered if he might be Anna’s father, the one withering away from Alzheimer’s.
Belinda’s room was at the end of a long fluorescent-lit hall.
It was conspicuously empty.
She’d had it all to herself. Just one double bed. A TV screwed into a movable platform was tucked into the corner.
A small brown dresser supported a lone picture frame half turned to the wall.
I picked it up and peeked.
A mother and son.
It was unmistakably her-just sixty years younger.
The same smile she’d bestowed on me the day I interviewed her. She was sitting on a bench with a small boy nestled in her arms.
Just above her head was a sign suspended by chains: Littleton Flats Cafe.
“She grew up in Littleton Flats?” I asked Mr. Birdwell, trying to remember if she’d mentioned that to me.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Birdwell said. “Belinda was our homegrown celebrity. You know that weatherguy on NBC-Willard, what’s his name, Scott-who wishes h
appy birthday to 100-year-olds around the country? He put Belinda’s picture on a few weeks ago.”
I looked down at the boy sitting in her lap.
He passed on a long time ago…
“Her son. Did he die in the flood?”
“Uh-huh,” Mr. Birdwell nodded. “A real tragedy. Belinda worked as a live-in for a family here in Littleton. Apparently she always spent the weekends home. Not that weekend. She was asked to babysit the family kids. The flood happened on a Sunday morning when everyone in Littleton Flats was home. Including her son.”
I tried to imagine what that must’ve felt like-taking care of someone else’s children while your own drowned. And you not being there to hold him.
He say he forgive me, she’d said.
Now I knew why.
“Did she have any other children?” I asked.
Mr. Birdwell shook his head. “She had him kind of late in life. I’m pretty positive Benjamin was it.”
I miss things.
Yes. She’d missed Benjamin enough to conjure him up from time to time. A woman in the first throes of dementia, and the last throes of loneliness.
“Can I have it?” I asked Mr. Birdwell.
“The picture? What for?”
“The story,” I said, lying again.
He hesitated, evidently debating the ethical parameters of releasing personal property to a journalist.
“I’ll return it,” I said.
“Well, okay. Don’t see why not.”
I’d already slipped it into my pocket.
Later that night, after I’d downed two glasses of tequila while watching back-to-back episodes of Forensic Files, I lifted the phone and punched in some familiar digits.
I waited four rings until he picked up and said: Hello, hello…?
Sometimes I form the words back.
In my head I do.
I say I’m sorry, that I’ve been meaning to pick up the phone and tell him just how sorry I am, and that I apologize for taking so long. I hear the words in my head, and they sound genuine and contrite. I just don’t hear them coming out of my mouth. They get lost on the way from here to there.