The following day after hitting the swap meet and three garage sales (and landing a mint copy of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by Johnny Rhythm and the Audios, 1961 on MGM, worth about sixty bucks), I drove to the old shell shop that stood above the Clam. A bell announced my arrival. The place was empty. The windows were like grape-blue photographs of choppy sea. There was the usual gift shop assortment of nautical bric-a-brac, cards, stained glass, shells, jewelry, model ships, brass barometers and sextants, somnolent volumes of photographs. The store had a ship’s smell, canvas, old wood, varnish, and the faint rank of harbor seals. There were rental arrangements on various types of snorkel gear. A sign next to the register informed me that for five bucks I could navigate the old smuggler’s tunnel that led to the ocean below and through which the bodies of the dead and maimed who jumped from the cliffs were brought.
A birdlike woman of about sixty appeared. She reminded me of a tern, so white and smooth with a needle nose and quick black eyes. “Can I help you?” she said.
I picked up a sand dollar. “I’ve recently learned about a boy who died here,” I said, gesturing toward the cliff. “The brother of a friend of mine. And I wondered if you might remember him.”
She folded her hands in front of her. “I used to keep track of them all,” she said, tapping her famous book, “but I finally stopped. I thought for a time that if I stopped writing they’d stop coming.” Her lips formed a prim imitation of a smile. “How long ago was it?”
“Oh, he would’ve been roughly my age. He was eighteen at the time. Somewhere around twenty-two years ago.”
“What was his name?”
“Donald Hubbard. Donny Ray, they called him.”
Her mouth turned down. She had a beautiful shop, rich in history, extraordinary view, some of the most valuable real estate on earth, but it was haunted by the cries of bleeding, drowning souls.
“I’d have that one,” she said, opening the book. “Donny Ray . . .” She leafed through the pages, licking her thumb. There must’ve been thousands of names catalogued, her guestbook a gate book of children born suddenly into dark new worlds.
“Here he is,” she said. “Donald Raymond Hubbard, July 3. I remember that one.” She let out a withering sound, like the whinny of a horse. Her eyes rolled back and she closed the book. Her head seemed to float as she drifted to the southern windows. “I can see them jump from here.” She pointed as if someone were standing out there now, poised to dive. “Donald was slim and dark,” she said. “He looked like a dancer with his long legs and gleaming skin. He laughed before he jumped, I recall.” She looked to me expectantly, as if I might understand. “Most are terrified. Others pretend they aren’t. But Donny seemed to not be afraid. There were two with him, a young girl and an older, pale boy who sat up the bluff a ways. He was a bit of a sulker.”
“Shelly?”
“I don’t know their names. The pale boy was shouting and taunting, telling Donny to jump. He must’ve felt awful when he got his wish. The girl still comes from time to time, like so many, to throw flowers into the sea.”
“The girl?” I said
“Yes. It was Donny’s girlfriend, I believe. She came briefly when they brought Donny up through the tunnel into the ambulance. She was devastated, hysterical. To watch someone you love end up like that . . .” Her glasses had slid to the tip of her nose. She pushed them back. “It tears your heart out, doesn’t it?”
26.It Ain’t Goldilocks
WHEN I PULLED INTO THE COCO’S LOT RENEE WAS WALKING out the door. It was too early for her shift to be up. She looked tense, though she always moved as if a stiff wind were at her tail. I was pretty sure she had quit and this might be the last time I would see her. By the time I’d circled back around she was squealing out of the driveway in her red Nissan Sentra. I followed. She drove as if she were in a motor race, passing recklessly, jockeying and tailgating as she got bottled up in the left lane.
The air cooled as we moved west, the clouds disintegrating as they made their charge inland. My old Ford was a six cylinder and needed a tune-up. I had trouble staying up. I almost lost her several times.
She took the Old Town exit, swept away south around Presidio Park, driving as if she knew she were being followed. I lost her finally on Rosecrans. I felt like an inept television detective.
Which way should I go? I asked Sweets.
Heck if I know. I just wish you’d slow down. Do you want me to puke?
I’ve got to find her. I need to know about Donny.
Turn down the radio, can you? And would you wind down the window? It’s hot in this cab.
I turned off the radio and rolled the window down, continuing to wander through the Point Loma neighborhoods under the shadow of Donny and Renee’s romance. What would it be like to watch your first love broken below on the rocks? Could you ever be the same again? Would you ever be able to love again?
I hung a left and a left and a left, imagining Donny and Renee at Baskin-Robbins. I imagined their first awkward kiss. I imagined the first time they made love. Over and over, I saw Donny Ray lying on the rocks and Renee throwing flowers into the sea. Then I saw Renee’s Sentra parked along the curb. I pulled in behind it and got out. I stood on the grass for a moment, arms akimbo, looking around.
“Hey!”
I looked up to see her on a balcony, scowling down at me. “Are you stalking me?”
“I tried to catch you at Coco’s,” I replied. “You left early.”
“Just because you rescue me from some old drunk doesn’t mean you get to follow me home.”
“I only want to ask you one question.”
“About what?”
“About Donny Hubbard.”
Her head jerked and she stared at me in profile through her fallen hair. The top button of her uniform was undone. “Donny?” She seemed suddenly out of breath. “Did you know him?”
“I know his brother.”
“Shelly?” She gripped the rail. “How do you know Shelly?”
“From the racetrack. I’m watching his business. Do you mind if I come up?”
“I don’t know.” She fastened the button. “Did you really escape from a mental hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you there?”
“I lost my wife, and then I lost my mind.”
She licked her lips. “I have to be at my second job in an hour.”
“It won’t take a minute.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“One question.”
She looked away. “I’m in apartment 21.”
Renee’s two-bedroom apartment had an old round brown couch, brown shag carpeting, a few bland seascapes in driftwood frames on the walls. There were two green-gold barrel recliners and an antique trunk with castors for a coffee table. The kitchen was small, bright, with a glass table inside. There were pictures of children all around, two boys, roughly as Shelly described. Their father was nowhere represented. Renee perched herself on the edge of a green recliner. “What do you want to know about Donny?” she demanded.
“Just one thing. Is he still alive?”
“No, he’s not.” Her lips tightened. She clutched her collar. She blinked rapidly and pressed together her knees. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m watching Shelly’s house and his business,” I explained. “Both his parents have died and he’s had to go back to Alabama.”
Renee, huddled, watched me through narrowed eyes. “I’m surprised he let you in,” she said.
“You know Donny’s room hasn’t changed in twenty years. But there are sounds from that room that I can’t explain. There is a tape marked ‘Donny’s Favorite Songs: 1986.’ Someone sleeps in his bed, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t Goldilocks. Whenever I’m in that house alone I don’t feel like I’m alone. Shelly is hiding something.”
She cast a glance to the side. “That’s Shelly for you.”
“I checked back through all the obituaries of that year and Donny is not listed.�
�
She relaxed a bit. Her arms unfolded from her chest. “That’s because he didn’t die here.”
“Where did he die?”
She shut her eyes and explored with her fingertip the cup of her throat. “He was in a coma for so long they finally took him back to Alabama.” Now she stood and began to pace. “It was a miracle that he lived at all. God.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I went to see him once before they took him back. They had him in Spring Valley at a convalescent hospital. His eyes were open. One arm had shrunk up into his chest.”
Her face was drawn now, and she shook her head for a good thirty seconds, eyes closed. “When I heard that he finally died, I hate to say it but it was a relief.” Moving to the window she looked out for a while before speaking again. “I know he’ll forgive me for saying that.”
“I’m sorry to bring it all up again.”
She took a deep breath. “I still dream about him. Sometimes I swear he’s still around, watching over me. Maybe he’s visiting you too.”
“Maybe so.”
She sat again at the edge of her chair. “How long has Shelly been your friend?”
“I met him at the Del Mar Racetrack when I was seventeen.”
“You’re a record-collecting buddy?”
“Horseracing buddy, mainly.”
“You’d be the first friend of Shelly’s I ever met.” She flapped her lashes at me. “He keeps them all a secret.”
“Why does he come to see you every Tuesday?”
She snorted and her lip curled. “He used to tag along with Donny and me, I mean everywhere, movies, beach — four years older than Donny and he was more like the little brother. He was jealous of Donny because Donny had everything Shelly didn’t — good looks, confidence, athletic ability, girlfriends. Shelly loved music but Donny could play.”
“I see.”
She studied me a while, the lashes of her pale eyes flickering. She stretched out an ankle, lifted her hair from her neck and said after a minute: “When he came along with us that day to the Clam, Donny had no plans to jump. That was Shelly’s idea. Of course Shelly wasn’t going to jump. He used to taunt Donny sometimes — he liked to egg him on — and he started in with this little chant. Jump, boy, jump. Donny was athletic and could swim pretty well, and I think he wanted to show Shelly, to prove something or whatever, you know, like little brothers will do. Anyway, Donny could dive off a three-meter board, but he never went off anything high as the Clam, with rocks below and the waves going in and out.” She pulled her front lip under her bottom teeth and her eyebrows plunged. “I told him not to. He wasn’t turned right. Instead of just jumping he tried to dive. I thought he was dead the minute he went off.” She covered her face and let out a wail. “God, it was horrible.”
I let her cry. I wanted to leave, but Renee took a deep breath and continued. “Shelly’s always liked me,” she said, marking the word “liked” in quotes with her fingers. “After Donny died he kept calling me up, trying to get together. I’d change jobs and he’d find me again. When I got married he disappeared for a while, but now that I’m divorced he’s back again.”
It occurred to me that Shelly might’ve wanted on some level to be rid of his brother so he could have Renee to himself, the possibility might have seemed more than a fantasy to him then, but I took the high road. “Maybe he just wants to be forgiven.”
“I won’t ever forgive him.” She wrenched her head side to side, her makeup streaked from tears. “He killed Donny.”
27.My Boy Lollipop
ONE DAY AT A GARAGE SALE IN POWAY I FOUND A 78-FORMAT BEATLES single of “Please Please Me,” pressed in India on Parlophone Records. Several countries continued to press 78s long after the format was obsolete. The records were almost unheard of. The lady was liquidating the collection of her son, who was going to prison for four years on an embezzlement charge. Lucky lad, they weren’t sending him to Napa State. She understood that a Beatles record might be valuable and felt that ten dollars was a fair price. It might’ve been worth upwards of five thousand. I paid her the ten and hoped it wasn’t a counterfeit.
Immediately I drove to Shelly’s house to show him. His truck was not out front, but the lights were on and I heard music playing inside. As I got closer I recognized the song “My Boy Lollipop,” Millie Small (the Blue Beat Girl) on Smash Records, 1964, released in Europe on Fontana, one of the few ska hits in the history of early pop music, worth about ten bucks in good condition, and it was really blasting.
Curiosity aroused, I knocked. No answer. You make my heart gooo giddy-yup. “Shelly?”
You ah my one de-siah.
I knocked again.
The door opened a crack. It was that same single eye peering down on me. The hair bristled on the back of my neck.
“Shelly?” I shouted over the music. “Is that you?”
The door opened wider. The figure before me was thin and stooped and wore a rubber Ronald Reagan mask and a pin-striped, oversized New York Yankees jersey. There were several gold chains hanging from his neck. An elaborate gold watch had slid down his skinny arm to the back of his hand. His other arm was shrunken into his chest. For a moment I thought the rickety caricature before me must be a joke, Shelly in Halloween garb. “Shelly?”
“Come on in, negro,” said the hollow voice inside the mask.
I need ya I need ya I need ya soooo.
No one had ever called me “negro” before, not even in the nuthouse. “Is Shelly here?” I pressed.
“No, Chuck ain’t here,” came the reply.
Bap Bap: my boy lollipop.
“I’m a friend of his,” I explained. “I’ve found a Beatles record on Parlophone. I was wondering . . . is he around?”
The figure tipped his head at me in what initially suggested curiosity until I realized he was inclined this way by the arrangement of his spine.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Any minute. Went to Gag in the Bag.”
You make my heart gooo giddy-yup.
He lifted the hand with the watch on it, then swung the door completely out and limped away, dragging his left leg behind him, his carriage popping up like the weasel in the children’s song every other step. I followed looking around for Shelly the mad scientist. Murdered probably. I had finally stumbled into one of his Taboo Zones. A glass eye peered up at me from Shelly’s work table, the iris in it brown. The arm of the record player kicked over, rested for a moment, then swung back and dropped again into the groove. Bap Bap: My boy lollipop.
“Do you mind?” I said, lifting the stylus from Millie Small and switching off the player.
I heard a car door slam outside, the gate creaking, now the sounds of footsteps up the walk, hard soles. Ronald Reagan retreated to the foot of the hall. The sun did its best to penetrate the grime of the ancient curtains. The front door clunked open. Expressionless, Shelly looked back and forth between us, two white Jack in the Box bags in his hand. His tone was plaintive. “Donny, I thought I told you not to answer the door.”
Donny’s head fell, which made him all the more hunched looking, the delicate paralyzed hand pressed into his body almost chin high.
“He didn’t,” I said. “I came in. I heard the record playing over and over. I thought something was wrong.”
“It’s cool, Chuck,” said Donny.
Shelly nodded, sighed, closed the door behind him with his right foot. He set the bags of food on the kitchen counter. The strong odor of hamburgers, onions, and French fries drifted to my nose. “Why don’t you go to your room, Donny?” Shelly said. “Go on. I need to talk to Eddie for a minute.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No, nothing like that.”
The mask nodded and Donny turned and dragged away, rising each time his weight shifted from the dead leg to the ball of his good foot.
Shelly drifted around idly picking things up and then took a chair at his work table with the glass eye looking up at him, crossed his arms over
his chest and said, “So now you’ve met my brother. Like I told you, I inherited everything.”
“Why did you tell me he was dead?”
“Long story.”
“And the mask?”
“If he took it off you’d understand.”
“He called me a negro.”
“He worked with black people.”
“He worked?”
“Yeah, until recently he was a janitor.”
“I heard he died in Alabama.”
“Who told you that?”
“Renee.”
His eyes widened. “Renee?”
“She said he was in a coma for two years.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck, then creaked back and forth in his chair, straining his neck up as if he were trying to swallow a nail. “From the beginning every last doctor said he wouldn’t live. After a year my father wanted to pull the plug. He finally got his wish.” Shelly cradled his head, appearing to weather a wave of migraine. “After they took him off life support everyone presumed he would die. But Donny lived. My mother took care of him. My father told everyone that Donny had died. It was just easier that way. When Donny got better, he got a job and moved into a little trailer not far from my folks.”
“I see.”
“You know he broke his skull in fifteen places. He can’t remember anything. He’s proof to me that there is no God.”
I looked up and Donny was standing in the hall.
“Hello, Donny Ray,” I said.
“Hello, negro,” he returned.
Shelly picked up the 78 copy of “Please Please Me” and held it to the light. His hands were shaking. “Never even saw one of these before. Where’d you find it?”
“Garage sale in Poway.”
“Helluva score. You want a beer?”
“No thanks. I gotta go. Dog’s in the car.”
“I’ll give you a call.”
28.KLIK in Canoga Park
SHELLY CALLED ME UP TWO DAYS LATER. “I GOTTA GO UP TO L. A. for an auction,” he said. “KLIK in Canoga Park went belly-up. You wanna come?”
Whirlaway Page 13