In the end, the conversation went on so long that Joe’s cell phone was hot and out of bars by the time he hung up. Yvonne had gone from calm to angry to controlled and then finally to a contained sort of panic. She and Joe had agreed on a coordinated plan: She would talk to all of Diana’s friends in Las Vegas in case she had called any of them or, with any luck, had gone to stay with one of them, and Joe would talk to the police, the neighbors, anyone who Diana might have confided in.
“She’s a headstrong girl,” Yvonne said. “I’ve never been able to tell her anything about anything. But she isn’t stupid. She’s never been stupid.”
Joe didn’t know what to add to that, so he just agreed that he didn’t think Diana was stupid at all. And then he said, “I’m sure she’s okay,” but he didn’t sound convincing, even to himself, and he was sure that Yvonne heard him wavering as well. They made a plan to speak again the next day—or sooner if either one of them discovered anything—and take it from there.
It wasn’t until they disconnected that Joe realized they’d only barely mentioned Zoë and that Allison hadn’t come up at all. She had to know he was married, he thought. Certainly, Diana had said something to her about Allison. But no, it was as if everyone else in their lives—including their own grandchild—had disappeared for the length of that awful conversation, leaving just the two of them, their mutual history, and the missing child they’d created together.
Traffic slowed, as it always did, at the split between the 805 and 5 freeways going south. As Joe crawled through the bottleneck, he tried to remember whose idea it had been for him to pick up Yvonne at the airport, why she wasn’t renting a car, and why he’d invited her to stay at his house. It was a ridiculous plan, and when Allison came home (and she was going to have to come home eventually, if only to talk to the damn police and pick up her stuff) things were really going to get insane. But he hadn’t really been in a position to say no or even to suggest an alternate plan. Any way you looked at this scenario, he was the bad guy.
Diana hadn’t turned up anywhere Yvonne could find in Las Vegas. She told him that none of Diana’s friends knew where she was or had even heard from her, in most cases, since she’d left for San Diego. On the other hand, Yvonne said, it wasn’t a very big list. Diana really had only one good friend, Sasha, and they’d had some kind of falling out recently. Joe was no closer to finding Diana either, although he’d gone into a sort of overdrive after he spoke to Yvonne the first time. That was when Yvonne said she was going to come out as soon as she could gather some things together and get the time off. She needed to be there, she said, and yes, of course you do, Joe said. Of course. And now here he was, the sunlight sparkling off Mission Bay to his right, the airport only minutes away, and the reality of Yvonne—in his increasingly surreal life—finally sinking in.
Joe had always thought he possessed a deep, instinctive understanding of women—ironic, considering the shambles all his relationships were in now. He’d grown up with two sisters, who were close to him in both age and temperament and from whom he’d gleaned much about how women truly felt about themselves and about men, especially when they’d all been in high school at the same time. Then his sisters freely shared with Joe what they thought “worked” and what didn’t when it came to guys, what they liked to hear and what they liked to talk about. He watched them struggle too with body image—both of them regularly dieting and despairing over the shapes they’d been born with. Ultimately, he’d decided that women were simply nicer than men, although capable of being just as shallow when it came to judging the opposite sex on looks and image. Both of his sisters lived in Washington State now and he’d drifted into a much more distant relationship with them, but until recently Joe felt what he’d learned from them was still just as relevant as it had been when they were kids. It had helped him so many times at work, dealing with waitresses and female patrons alike. All the girls on staff liked him because he was sensitive to their needs, he complimented them but never hit on them, always knew where to draw the line. You could ask anyone at Luna Piena—they’d all tell you Joe was a stand-up guy.
But now, faced with his missing daughter, the imminent arrival of his ex, and his angry, disturbed wife, Joe had to admit that he knew far less about what women thought or felt than he’d believed. And then there was Jessalyn. It was she who had convinced him that what little he did know was complete bullshit. There was nothing about her that followed a straight line, from the first encounter they’d had to the most recent—when he’d come to pick up Zoë after asking her to watch the baby for a few hours while he worked.
Sure, maybe it was a little presumptuous of him to ask such a thing considering the status of their relationship, but it was only because he was desperate and didn’t want to leave the baby with Sam again. And she could have said no; it wasn’t as if he just dropped Zoë off, expecting her to help. Besides, after the two nights they’d spent together in that little bed-and-breakfast, Joe believed that they’d developed a level of intimacy that went beyond a garden-variety affair. He felt indescribably bad about those nights now, of course, because somewhere in between them Diana had gone missing and Allison had abandoned him, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret them. Not yet. And he’d gotten the distinct feeling from Jessalyn that she’d felt the same way. Nothing had been decided, and they hadn’t even discussed where their relationship was headed or even if they had a relationship, but it didn’t seem like they needed to. Between lovemaking sessions that were alternately deeply passionate and exhaustingly athletic, they had talked—no, he had talked and she had mostly listened—about incidentals, the little parts of life that you only discussed with someone you were just getting to know when it was just the two of you, alone. Things like what music you listened to and what kinds of crazy requests people made when they went out to eat in a restaurant or how long it took you to complete a Sudoku puzzle. He was touched and impressed by how intently she’d listened to him, how she’d paid attention and seemed genuinely interested. If she wasn’t, it was one of the best acts in the world—which in itself was a testament to her interest in him.
Even later, after that lovely bubble had burst, and he’d had to tell her about how both Diana and Allison were gone, she seemed sympathetic, in tune with him somehow. And she hadn’t objected to watching Zoë, at least not that he could tell. But when he’d returned to pick up the baby, she seemed to have transformed into an entirely different person: cold, rattled, even a little hostile toward him.
“This was a really bad idea, Joe,” she’d said. “I don’t know why you thought it wouldn’t be, even though it’s my fault for saying yes.” She was holding the baby, rocking her back and forth a little frantically, even though Zoë was asleep.
“Did something happen?” Joe asked. “Is she okay?”
“Of course she’s okay,” Jessalyn snapped at him. “But I’m not a nanny or … or a wife. That’s not who I am.” Joe noticed then that she looked wrung out and somehow wrong. She was wearing a bathrobe, her hair hanging loose and limp, and her makeup was smudged, showing the dark circles under her eyes. “I don’t do babies, Joe. Okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Joe said, wishing he knew what was really bothering her, “I just thought—”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, going through a lightning-quick change of emotion and becoming suddenly contrite. “I shouldn’t have barked at you and she’s fine—the baby’s fine, I just don’t think we … this …” She ran a hand through her hair, which looked like it was sticking together in clumps, and sighed. “I think maybe we should just cool it for a minute, you know? There’s so much going on and maybe … I don’t know, Joe.”
Like an idiot, he asked, “What do you mean by ‘cool it’?” and immediately regretted the words, more so when he saw how hard her face got after she heard them.
“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t do this. I think you should go now.”
As he gathered up Zoë and walked across the street to his des
erted house, Joe thought about that phrase, I think you should go now, and how rarely it was used in real life. You heard it all the time in movies, but real people just didn’t speak like that. And in any case, it was never followed by absolute silence and a man slinking off with a baby. He hadn’t spoken to Jessalyn since then, although it hadn’t been that long. He’d noticed that she’d made herself pretty scarce, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that yet. What he did know was that she wasn’t who he’d thought she was. And the immediate corollary to that realization was that he wasn’t even sure who he’d thought she was in the first place. All of which led him right back to the fact that he had completely lost his ability (if he had ever had it) to understand or deal with the women in his life. At least Zoë was too small yet to speak or else he was sure she’d be reading him the riot act too.
He was surprised by how much affection he felt for her, but Joe was by no means comfortable with Zoë. He had zero experience with infants, although over the last few weeks he had at least become acquainted with this one, and he was afraid that every time he handled her he was doing something wrong. The nights that he’d been alone with her had been some of the most difficult he’d ever experienced. Sam had been very decent about showing him the basics of feeding and changing, and in truth she had taken care of Zoë more than he had if you added up all the hours. But despite all of Sam’s help he felt his abilities were entirely inadequate. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for the little thing, because he found himself increasingly attached to her. She spent what seemed like a lot of time crying, but Sam told him that as infants went, Zoë was one of the calmest she’d ever seen. And there was a biological connection, something that Joe would have scoffed at only a few months ago, but now believed existed on a fundamental level. That tie was powerful and elemental and it bonded him to Zoë in a way he would never have anticipated. He wondered if he would have felt the same way with Diana if he’d known her as an infant. Even though he never doubted that Diana was his daughter, meeting her at seventeen—fully formed and carrying her own child—made a huge difference in how he felt about that relationship. It was the helplessness and total innocence of babies, he supposed, that appealed to you on a deep cellular level and compelled you to take care of them, protect them, and raise them so that your DNA could carry on into future generations. But as much as he was bonding with his granddaughter, Joe felt overwhelmed and unprepared to cope with her needs.
After claiming that Allison’s mother had been burned out of her home, he had asked for and received a few emergency days off from work. It was a total lie, of course, but he didn’t think it was necessary for corporate headquarters—or, for that matter, his staff—to know the details of his spinning-out-of-control life. He hoped against hope that by the time those days ran out Diana would come back, Yvonne could go home, Allison would return, and that they could all dial their lives back to where they were a few short months ago. Joe sighed. He could feel the muscle above his left eye twitching. He hadn’t told Allison that Yvonne was going to be staying at their house. He had barely spoken to Allison since the fires. But still.
Joe opened his window to let some air into the suddenly stifling car. A gust of smoky wind blew over him. The whole county still smelled like a barbecue gone wrong, he thought. It was going to take forever to get that charred odor out of the air. He was taking the Sassafras exit now, just minutes away from the airport, which was located squarely in the middle of the city. Overhead, planes flew so low over the freeway you could almost see the passengers inside.
It was a forty-five-minute flight from Las Vegas to San Diego, so casual that people flew it in their pajamas and flip-flops. Joe wondered if Yvonne had ever made this flight before and what she was thinking at this very moment. He snaked through the brief traffic jam at the airport entrance and headed to the Southwest Airlines terminal, slowed, and searched for Yvonne in the clumps of people waiting with their bags resting against their legs. He felt a small rush of panic when he realized that he might not recognize her. He felt hot, sweaty, and gritty. His T-shirt was sticking to his back. This was the most cursed fall ever—a season of heat and fire that felt as if it was never going to end. He swept the entrances once more and found nobody who could possibly be Yvonne. He advanced farther, still nothing. There was no place to stop so Joe moved up, preparing to make another loop around the terminal. But just as he was about to merge and disappear into traffic he saw her—completely different and yet somehow matching his memory exactly—and he swerved right so that he could pull up to the curb.
It took Yvonne a little longer to find him in the thick line of cars picking up and dropping off passengers outside the terminal, so he had a chance to study her a little, make all the internal adjustments he needed, and then compose his face so that he appeared casual and neutral when she finally saw him. The first thing Joe noticed was that she had gained a little weight around her hips and thighs, but not enough for anyone to classify her as overweight. She had been very slender—if not skinny—when he knew her, and now she just looked a little more solid. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a tight twist at the back of her head, which emphasized her high cheekbones but also gave her a severe, almost angry look. He could see the weight of seventeen years in her expression and behind her eyes, even from this distance. There was disappointment there and maybe discontent and worry in the turned-down corners of her mouth. But her skin and her features still looked youthful. You wouldn’t know she was over forty, he thought. Not at all. What surprised him—and it even surprised him that he would notice such a thing—was what she was wearing. Or at least how she was wearing it. She was dressed like a dowdy schoolmarm, a conservative matron much older than she was. He didn’t know which was least attractive—the old-lady brown polyester pants, the cream and tan mix-and-match chiffon blouse with the ruffle at the neck, or the sensible shoes. They all made him think of Geritol and mothballs. The worst thing was that she looked so dated and so absolutely opposite the stylish woman he’d known. It was so strange to him that he almost believed the clothes she wore now were a costume for her—some part she was playing in a reality show of someone else’s life.
He was pondering the reasons for this transformation in Yvonne when she finally spied his car, then him, and caught his gaze with her own. There was the briefest look of startled surprise in her eyes, then a deeper recognition, then finally a small, tight smile as she wheeled her bag over to the car. Joe popped the trunk and got out of the driver’s seat, coming around to meet her, put her bag away, and open the passenger door for her. There was a moment of excruciating awkwardness as they met on the passenger side of the car; neither one of them knew whether to embrace, shake hands, or even touch at all. A warm wind whipped between them carrying the smell of jet fuel with it.
“Hi, Joe,” she said.
“Hello, Yvonne,” he said and gave her a clumsy half embrace with one arm as he reached for her bag with the other. “Let me get this for you. I’ll put it in the trunk.”
“Thanks.”
Joe loaded her suitcase—a flower-patterned cloth affair that made him as sad as the rest of her attire—into the trunk, realizing as he did that he had forgotten to tidy up the posters in the back of the car. He ushered her into the passenger seat, positioning his body so that she wouldn’t be able to see them, and felt like a moron when she had to sidle past him to get in. Finally, he got back in behind the wheel, pulled away from the curb, and merged with the traffic heading out. The inside of the car was full of the smell of gardenia, not mothballs, but also not a scent he’d associated with her. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it made him vaguely uneasy.
“It’s hot,” she said. “It’s like Vegas here.”
“It’s been really bad,” he said. “It just hasn’t let up.” He felt himself sweating again as he flicked quick glances in her direction. He wondered if she’d seen the posters. She couldn’t have or surely they would have skipped the weather altogether, their seventeen-year estrangement
notwithstanding.
“You look good, Joe.”
“So do you,” he said quickly. He smiled and looked over at her, longer this time, and realized that it was true. Aside from the clothes, she was still beautiful in that way that had hypnotized him so long ago. And now in her face he also saw Diana for the first time, and it pierced him sharply and unexpectedly. His eyes stung and watered, and for a horrified second he thought he might be crying. He blinked and quickly shifted his gaze back to the road.
They drove in hot, fraught silence for several minutes. Biting the inside of his lip, Joe stared straight ahead as he navigated back onto the freeway. The traffic was lighter heading north than it had been on the way down. He considered pointing out landmarks along the way, but stopped himself when he realized it would make him sound like a half-assed tour guide. Then he thought about asking Yvonne if she was hungry and wanted to stop somewhere for lunch, even though it was well into the afternoon, but the words and how to phrase them got tangled up in his brain. Something about her physical proximity after all this time was frying his neural circuits. Memories of their time together kept sliding through his mind unbidden: little flashing images of the night they met (at a party when he bummed a cigarette from her), a romantic but interrupted picnic dinner they had on the beach that washed away in a sudden high tide, watching her sleep in the gray light of early morning. These intimate pictures were strange and uncomfortable because at the same time the woman sitting next to him was a stranger.
They were approaching La Jolla when he finally turned to look at her again. He cleared his throat, about to tell her that they’d be home in a few minutes, but the words died in his throat. Yvonne was weeping. Her cheeks were wet and shiny with tears and her mouth trembled with held-back sobs. Her hands were clenched in her lap. Instinctively, he turned his head away as if he had been caught intruding on a moment of private grief, but then looked back at her again, searching for words—any words—that would soothe her. She met his glance, her eyes, the burnt amber color that he had remembered, full of water and sorrow.
The Neighbors Are Watching Page 20