As she dresses for school, Tessa thinks that sometimes she envies Leo. She doesn’t think he ever worries about other people. She’s often asked herself if Leo loves her. If he’s capable. Sometimes she tells him, “I love you.” But he never answers.
She knows they could teach him to—just like they’ve taught him a whole bunch of other responses, like “you’re welcome” and “thank you” and even “I forgive you.” But it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn’t seem right, if you taught him to say, “I love you, too.”
At breakfast, Leo is difficult. He is upset that the milk is not the same brand her father always buys. They must have been out, because her dad knows better than to change anything. “Milk is milk, Leo,” she says firmly.
“It’s the wrong kind,” Leo insists.
Tessa is almost tempted to swear. She wonders if she should start swearing, if that would make boys like her more. “Darn it, Leo! Not this morning,” she says.
“Why not this morning?”
Tessa sighs. “Leo, would you like me to make you eggs instead? They’re the right kind, I’m sure.”
Leo considers. “No! I want my Rice Krispies.”
Tessa pours milk on her own cereal. “See, Leo? It’s exactly the same milk. The milk is the right white. That’s what matters, not the name on the carton.” She begins to take bites. “It tastes exactly the same.”
Leo pours the milk. Looks at it. Takes a bite. Tessa is relieved, because she didn’t want to make eggs.
* * *
—
DURING ART, THE teacher lets Leo’s class draw whatever they want. Today, Leo draws the strange building from Seattle called the Space Needle. In his mind he sees it from a car window. But he also sees it when he’s close and looking up at it. His mother from before asks, “Do you want to go to the top?”
Venus says that she wants to go up. He follows when they tell him to come. They go into a small room with windows. Other people are in the room, too. It jerks and starts moving up in a scary way. Leo cries and hits his head on the windows, and his mother says, “Stop, Leo! How embarrassing.” Leo doesn’t know embarrassing.
“What’s that, Leo?” asks his teacher. She is leaning over him. She is interrupting. He ignores her. He is unsure how many windows to draw in the part that is like an upside-down bowl at the top.
“Is that the Space Needle, Leo?” his teacher is interrupting again. But Leo knows those words. Space Needle. From before. He nods his head and hopes she will go away.
“Have you been to the Space Needle, Leo?”
He ignores her. He doesn’t want to talk. She is interrupting!
When he is finished with his drawing, he puts his pencils away. The teacher comes by and tries to take the drawing. Leo doesn’t want her to. He holds it away from her and says, “No!”
She finally passes by. He opens his science book. He finds the right page with the planets. He folds his drawing in half. He puts it in the book next to Venus.
Tony is glad that Everett is pretty much a straight shot up I-5. He makes good time until he hits snow in the Siskiyous. Then his driving slows to a crawl and he can no longer find a radio station. Alone with his thoughts, his mind goes to Maria and what she’d think of the mess he’s in.
Would she be angry that he’d compromised Tessa’s happiness by taking in Leo? Tony doubts it. There was no one more compassionate than Maria Delgado. He was convinced she’d have done the same.
Tony never could understand why such a wonderful girl would marry a bozo like him to begin with. He and Maria had met in high school, where she was a star student. And Tony…Apart from secretly loving art class, he excelled at nothing, except maybe baseball. Even there, he’d been an alternate pitcher, not the star. But he could run like the wind and he could hit, too. By his senior year, though, drugs and alcohol had started to get in the way.
It was Maria who helped him turn a corner. He still wonders where he’d be now—one of the strung-out addicts he sees on the street—if he hadn’t married her. And yet, falling in love with a Mexican girl brought challenges. Maria’s parents were strict Catholics and had immigrated to the United States when Maria was young. They vehemently opposed the match, perhaps because he was neither Catholic nor Mexican. But now he realizes it was more than an issue of religion or race. He had no plan, no real means of securing a future.
And yet, blinded by love, he’d felt no guilt marrying Maria. He was young enough to think life would naturally bring what a family needed to grow. Looking back, he’d been so in love that he couldn’t imagine a future without Maria—or a version of life that wouldn’t be kind to her.
Maria wasn’t perfect, of course. She had a tendency to overspend and she loved to gossip with her girlfriends. She hated housework, but she was always impeccably dressed—in fact, ironing her clothes had been the only housework she had the heart for. When someone would stop by the apartment unexpectedly, she’d race around the house, picking up. Once, he heard her actually scrubbing the toilet while he got their guest a drink.
And they had fought. They had had terrible fights about her family and about the fact that, no matter what Maria said or did, he was convinced that she felt embarrassed in front of them for marrying him; he also suspected she was grateful when he opted out of family gatherings.
Given that strict Catholics had raised Maria, she didn’t believe in birth control, and she became pregnant within months of their marriage. They’d both been delighted by the news, and apart from morning sickness during the first trimester, Maria’s pregnancy seemed to go smoothly.
Tony was in the delivery room to see Tessa born. But then he was alarmed to realize something wasn’t right with Maria. He was ushered from the room and told to wait in the hall. Shortly, their doctor returned to give him the bad news. “I’m so sorry, Tony,” he said. “Maria suffered a retained placenta and hemorrhaged….She lost too much blood. She didn’t make it, Mr. Herrera.”
After Maria died, Tony had been so shocked, overwrought, and inconsolable that her family had taken the baby, and he’d actually let them. For a few months, he couldn’t see a way to go on and he figured Tessa was better off with a rich, if snooty, family.
He was also ashamed. Clearly he hadn’t caused Maria’s death, but every time he thought of her family and their disdain for him, he was overcome by the certainty that if she’d only married someone Catholic, someone better, she’d still be alive.
It was his older brother, Marco, who saved him next. Marco once had aspirations of going to law school. He never went, but he did graduate from UCLA and he did have a corporate job where he made pretty good money. It was Marco who helped Tony find the will—and the finances—to fight hard to reclaim Tessa.
The law was on his side, thank God. By then Tony had opened his first tattoo shop—a hole-in-the-wall off Beacon Street. He no longer took drugs, though he did still drink on occasion. Once in a while, he smoked pot—which in retrospect seems an irresponsible thing for a father to do.
Once the Delgados were forced to return Tessa—she was five months at the time—they threatened further legal action to prove that Tony wasn’t a fit father.
But that never happened. Instead, Maria’s mother, Mary, must have finally talked some sense into Maria’s father, Gerardo—because they turned on a dime. Tony was pretty sure they realized if they wanted access to Tessa and a chance to act as grandparents, they had to be nice to Tony. Had to at least pretend to accept him.
At the time, it was in Tony’s interest to involve them. After all, what did he know about taking care of a baby? His own parents lived too far away to help. So Tony was grateful when Mary offered to babysit her granddaughter. Marco helped, too—and so did a neighbor Tony trusted.
Somehow, they made it through. As Tessa got older and she and Tony bonded more deeply, the Delgados loosened their grip. They had half a dozen other grandchildren to
focus on. And since they moved to L.A., the visits had dwindled to a few per year.
When Tony took in Leo, the Delgados had been his greatest concern. How to explain the sudden appearance of a blond, gray-eyed boy Tony claimed as family? In the end, he concocted a story wherein Tony had a cousin who had adopted the boy as a child but then the cousin died—and no one wanted Leo because he was developmentally disabled.
The ruse could never have worked if Leo hadn’t been Leo. At that age, he wasn’t interested in or able to contradict the convoluted tale of his origin. Tony knows Leo must have memories of his life before, but he gets angry when Tony or Tessa tries to probe the mystery.
Tony wishes he could say he has no regrets about Leo, but over the years the enormity of what he’s done by keeping Leo has kept him awake nights.
At one point, when he pulls off for gas, he decides to call home. Tessa would be home from school. After two rings, she picks up—only she won’t speak. There is simply silence on the other end. “Tessa? Is that you?” He can hear breathing. “Leo? Leo, did you answer the phone?”
Leo grunts yes in reply, and Tony starts to laugh. Leo has never picked up the phone before. When Tony and Tessa had tried to coax him to use the phone—they thought he should know how, for safety’s sake—he had refused.
Now Tony is shaking his head in wonder. “Where are you?” Leo asks.
“Remember? I went on a trip to Seattle,” Tony says. “Is Tessa home? Does she know you answered the phone?”
“She’s in the bathroom.”
“Oh,” says Tony. “How is everything going?” he asks Leo.
“Fine.” Fine is one of Leo’s favorite words.
“That’s great. How was school today?”
“Fine. Goodbye,” says Leo. And then he hangs up. Tony can’t stop laughing and shaking his head. God, he loves that kid. Hearing his voice just now gives him the boost he needs to keep hope alive. Hope for a miracle. Hope that whoever is looking for Leo isn’t fit to care for him. Or, better yet, doesn’t really want him back.
Tony spends Friday night in a ratty Motel 6 somewhere in northern Oregon, drives away before dawn, and arrives in Everett on Saturday by late morning.
The library is easy to find. But he feels conspicuous, especially with his tattoos and ponytail. A reference librarian leads him to a desk with a microfiche reader. Then she brings over film for the Everett Daily Herald newspaper for February 1980. She shows him how to load the film and press the right button to make it go one frame at a time; another button makes it go very fast. Sitting in the wooden chair taking directions makes Tony feel like he is back at school.
When the librarian leaves him alone, he begins to flip slowly through the pages for each day. Everett definitely has its share of crime. What is wrong with this world? Then he finds it, on the lower right corner of the front page for February 13.
SON OF SLAIN MAN MISSING.
And there, looking blankly up from the screen, is Leo. The same boy he’s come to love as his own. The same photograph that’s now plastered on milk cartons from here to California—and maybe the whole country.
Tony starts reading, barely breathing.
The son is identified as Leo Miller, seven years old. The paper reports that he is mentally disabled, small for his age, with cropped blond hair. Apparently, Leo went missing not from home but from the house of a friend of the family. It wasn’t known whether the boy was abducted or if he ran away.
At the end, the piece quotes his mother, Inez Miller of Everett, pleading for his safe return. The public is encouraged to join the search or report any tips.
But what about “Slain Man”? A related article reveals that less than a week earlier, a thirteen-year-old female related to the missing child was arrested for the murder of Raymond F. Miller, the missing boy’s father.
What? Tony scrolls back carefully through the pages until he finds the first mention of the crime. The headline is blazoned in all caps across the top of the February 4 edition: TEEN ARRESTED IN DEATH OF STEPFATHER.
Tony shakes his head in surprised disbelief as he reads about the crime and its aftermath. He plunges ahead, following the trail through February. Almost every day, there’s news coverage of the crime and its investigation. Apparently, it was a shooting. Often, it takes top billing over the mysterious disappearance of the boy. Clearly the double tragedies had put the family’s story in the full glare of media attention.
After a couple hours hunched over at the machine, bleary with eyestrain, Tony finally quits. He has printed out a small stack of articles.
By now he’s starving, so he finds a McDonald’s and orders two Big Macs and a large coffee with cream. Seated at a small table by a window, he lays the photocopies in front of him and tries to sort it all out before he finds a phone and calls Marco.
It doesn’t take Tony long to realize that “Phil Brown” was actually Leo’s uncle, and his name wasn’t Phil. According to one of the articles and an accompanying photo, his name was Thomas Miller, a.k.a. Tinker Miller. Tinker was an ex-convict and a person of interest in Leo’s abduction, but at the time of these news reports, his whereabouts remained unknown.
But why would this guy abduct his own nephew, only to abandon him in California? That part still makes no sense. The other question is the status of Leo’s family. What happened to the girl, and where is the mother, Inez Miller? The paper lists an address on Rockefeller as the scene of the crime, but Tony can’t imagine the mom would still live there. At some point, he’ll drive by and scope it out.
He’s guessing the thirteen-year-old was Leo’s sister. Had she been convicted of the crime? If so, where was she locked up? By now, she must be nineteen. Tony had been too exhausted to read all the way through to the conclusion of her case—he was more interested in the mother. Surely it was the mother, Inez Miller, who was looking for Leo. She had lost so much—her husband, most likely her daughter, and her son in the space of a week. He can’t even imagine such a thing.
The more he pieces together what must have happened, the more awful it seems. He thinks of Leo back home in Oakland, playing his cello or maybe watching TV in that absent way he has. All his protective instincts rise to the surface. Where was the mother when the sister pulled the trigger? Where was Leo? How could a thirteen-year-old girl do such a thing?
* * *
—
AFTER HE LEAVES McDonald’s, Tony drives by the address on Rockefeller. It’s an ordinary house on a corner lot, painted blue. There’s obviously a basement level, where the garage sits. And then if you turn and drive up the alley, there’s a carport, too, and a back-door entrance.
There’s no car visible and it appears no one is home.
It’s not until he circles the block and drives by the front that he notices the COMING SOON sign in the yard. Whoever lives here now is moving. If it’s not Inez Miller, maybe the seller could tell him about the previous owner. How would you go about that? Knock on the door and start asking? Wouldn’t that raise red flags?
It’s raining as he drives up to Broadway Avenue, a busy, non-residential street, and searches until he finds a small market with a pay phone. Why can’t they put the damn things inside instead of outside?
It takes Tony twenty minutes to update Marco and make a plan. In the meantime, his fingers are frozen stiff. It’s stopped raining, but a hellacious wind has picked up, and he keeps losing pages of photocopies. Each time, he drops the phone and chases them down, because what could be more suspicious than his obvious interest in this case?
Marco suggests that Tony look up all the Millers in the Everett phone book and try to find Inez. Standing there with the open Everett phone book, he sees pages and pages of Millers—but no I or Inez to speak of. “I can’t possibly call all these Millers,” he tells Marco. “And even if I find her, then what am I supposed to say? I think I have your kid, by the way?”
The idea of a warm bar sounds like heaven to Tony, and the plan is worth a shot.
Before they hang up, Marco has another good idea. “Pretend to be looking for this Tinker Miller—and you’ll have a better shot at talking about the family without mentioning Leo directly.”
Tony gets back in his truck and scours his messy glove box for his work gloves—which of course aren’t there. The atlas back home had said nothing of this kind of cold in Everett. He begins to drive down Broadway slowly, looking for a bar that seems crowded but not new. He doesn’t want to find a bunch of young people too interested in one another to notice him. He’s after geezers and barflies, the kind who love a story and like to gossip.
It takes some driving around to find a bar that looks like a fit. The Pine Tavern smells like a mix of musty carpet, beer, and sweaty men. There are maybe twelve people in the place, mostly men, sitting up at the bar. Tony takes a seat at the bar near the middle. The bartender is male, pasty-faced, thirties. He’s already working on a beer gut.
Tony immediately overhears a customer call him Gary.
“Want a menu?” Gary asks. Tony can tell he hopes not.
“No thanks,” says Tony. “Let’s just start with a beer. Budweiser. Damn, it’s cold out there…so make it a warm one,” he adds.
Gary doesn’t even smile.
Tony decides he should be direct. “Can I ask you something?” he says when Gary places his beer in front of him.
“I suppose,” the guy replies, like he’s already bored.
My Name Is Venus Black Page 19