by Peter Stone
“Can I ask what happened?” I said.
“Just saw Nani at Ariel’s funeral a few weeks ago.” He ignored my question. “I went up there and put my arm around her and told her our little angels are still cheering her on from heaven.”
Gerald looked down to pick at a hangnail, and a pair of loudly ticking clocks spoke to each other as we sat in silence. I could hear his wife pacing in the nearby kitchen and the screams of children playing with a hose across the street. The house was perfectly, almost uncomfortably, pristine. And silent.
“Well, it looks like their cheering is helping,” I said as Gerald dug away at his cuticle. “They say Nani could be the new face of the Democratic party.”
Gerald raised his eyebrows and hmphed to himself.
After another interminable few minutes of the clocks’ ticktocking, I offered an apologetic, “Look, I can leave. . . .”
Gerald fiercely ripped at his hangnail and sucked on the now-bleeding finger. “I think that photo was Caitlin’s last good summer.” He pointed to the campaign picture between sucks on his finger. “After that, she went dark. Not even really sad—just not really there. Ariel was the only one who she’d let in her room sometimes.”
“Depression?” I asked.
“And it was Ariel who told her about Thativan,” he continued. “Bless her heart, she just wanted her Caitlin back like we all did. So she did all this research. And she came in here”—he pointed to the entryway, as if Ariel’s ghost were floating through the house—“and she told us about this new drug. Instant remedy, no more barfing, no fatigue, none of that brain crackling. FDA-approved and all. So we ‘asked our doctor about Thativan’ ”—he imitated the pleasantly aggressive voices from TV pharmaceutical ads—“and put her on it.”
His words were more a confession than a story. An admission of guilt.
“Didn’t even ask her if she wanted to, we just put her on it,” he said. “And then we had Christmas.” He pointed to another photo of Ariel and Caitlin, proudly displaying an anemic snowman.
“Never snows here, but it did that year,” he mused. “And then she was gone before New Year’s. Those monsters killed our baby because they thought they were going to get rich. . . .”
Gerald’s wife stormed down the hallway and suddenly appeared at the entry to the living room. She didn’t acknowledge me and said, “Gerald, a moment, please.”
I tried not to listen to their hushed voices in the other room but couldn’t not. I could make out a few urgent phrases amidst the muffled words.
“We don’t want any more of this,” whispered Annette to Gerald. “Caitlin’s gone, now Ariel, too—haven’t you had enough?”
“You know there was always something questionable about . . .” I heard fragments of Gerald’s whispers to his wife. “. . . that what Ariel told . . . find who’s responsible . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. . . . It’s over. . . . You are so stubborn. . . .”
I could hear Gerald hug Annette before trudging back into the living room in his weathered slippers.
“Sorry about that.” He smiled. “Where were we?”
“Look, I think I’m opening up some wounds here, and the last thing I want to do is hurt you,” I said.
“No, no, don’t worry. Any friend of Ariel’s is a friend of ours.”
“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” I said. “My mom died when I was little. And I know what the absence feels like. It feels like a ticking clock that won’t shut up when you and the ones she left behind can’t think of anything else to say.”
I was telling the truth, but honestly, I was really just trying to find an angle. A connection. By using my mother’s death. It felt a little cathartic and a lot manipulative. But I could tell that it had worked when I saw Gerald’s left eye glisten. And heard Annette tiptoeing to the edge of the living room, just out of sight. Eavesdropping.
“Caitlin sounds like an amazing girl, and it’s not your fault that she died,” I went on. “And Ariel knew that too. And I don’t know why, but I am pretty sure she wanted me to come here. To see you. Maybe just to say good-bye on her behalf.”
“Cameron.” Gerald wiped his eye. “Ariel came down here for Easter with us. Just a few months ago. Said she was on to something about Caitlin. You see, after Caitlin died, Ariel felt responsible because she was the one who’d suggested that poison in the first place. We hugged and we cried and we looked at old cheerleading audition practice videos. . . .”
“Ariel was here?” I asked.
“She kind of became obsessed with the Thativan CEO’s death—I never really understood why,” he explained. “But now I know it was for Caitlin. It was always for Caitlin . . .” He trailed off and looked out the window at the playful antics of the neighborhood kids.
For Caitlin.
FOR C.
I wondered if that part of the note I found in her things was intended to address me, or simply a reminder of who she was doing it all for. The person she told Memo she was protecting. It was all for Caitlin.
“Will you be around for the Fourth of July?” He changed the subject. “They have this amazing fireworks show down by the water. Gets bigger every year.”
“I have to get back to DC,” I said.
“Well, we don’t even compare to what they do up there.”
I stood and thanked Gerald for his time.
“So soon?” he asked.
I heard Annette skitter away toward the kitchen, so I wouldn’t see that she had been listening all along. Gerald had nothing to share but grief and memories, and it felt respectful to leave him there with them. If the only purpose of this visit that Ariel had envisioned was a farewell by proxy, I was happy to oblige. As I said good-bye to Gerald, I caught another look at that mesmerizing photo of Ariel and her best friend, Caitlin.
“Have a wonderful holiday,” I said.
The door shut behind me, and I walked toward the car, which appeared to be baking in the hot, humid sun. Heat waves distorted the thick air surrounding the outline of the Honda Civic. I stepped into the driver’s seat, and it felt like an inescapable oven blast.
As I started the car, I heard a knock from the passenger-side window. It was Annette Frye. I rolled down the window, and she started speaking before I could.
“Look . . .” Her stature was weak and her face apologetic as she searched for my first name.
“Cameron,” I said.
“Cameron. I’m sorry you didn’t exactly experience Southern hospitality in my home today. I hope you can understand, given the circumstances,” she continued.
“Mrs. Frye, I’m so sorry for your loss. I think Ariel just wanted me to come and say good-bye.”
“I think I know why Ariel told you to come,” she said as she put a manila envelope into my view. “We got this letter in the mail the day Ariel died. Never could get ahold of her to find out what it was or why she’d sent it. But now I think I know. I think she wanted us to give it to you.”
Annette carefully placed the envelope on the passenger seat.
“I opened it up—just a list of names, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But maybe you’ll be able to find something in there.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Frye,” I said as I pulled the stack of papers from the envelope. A simple handwritten list of names, just like she said. A quick scan revealed none of them to be remarkable or familiar.
“Anything for Ariel,” she said and turned to walk back toward her house. She stopped and returned to the car as I rolled up the passenger window to keep out the oppressive heat. I rolled the window back down.
“Just wanted to say that I bet your momma is proud of you,” she said and patted the passenger door with the lingering care of a mother whose mothering was cut short.
An unexpected lump in my throat prevented me from saying the thank-you I wanted to give her. By the time I gulped it down, Annette Frye had returned inside that happy-looking but sad butter-yellow house.
• • •
Ariel and Caitlin, I thought.
When I got to the beach, I rolled up my jeans and took off my shoes. The sand burned each footstep in the midafternoon heat. I pulled out my phone to call my dad, though I knew I couldn’t mention where I was. And how it reminded me of our very rare but very fun day trips to Monterey when I was younger. And how I didn’t miss home at all. It went to his voice mail. I hesitated before ending the call without leaving a message. Berto wasn’t around either.
I searched around the idyllic summer scene in vain for a familiar face—but this was someone else’s holiday, someone else’s coast. As I walked through the shallow, lapping water, I considered tagging along with one of the large groups of friends and families that departed the beach. How long would it take them to notice that this stranger was crashing their pizza-party dinner, and then their games of charades, and then their late-night donut run?
I was drawn to one such group that clustered at the water’s edge a few yards away. As I got closer, it became clear that they were trying to help someone. Something. A group of parents and kids and friends and strangers stood helpless—about ten feet away from a baby whale that had washed upon the shore in the middle of an otherwise perfect beach day. One dad tried to shield his kids, but they just stood there—intrigued, horrified. Before I could fully register the swarm of flies that pecked away at its rubbery skin and the sour, wrong stench that emanated from that patch of sand, I looked away. Hundreds of other beachgoers laughed and chatted and continued with their days, either oblivious or indifferent to the nearby death scene. I watched as the group dispersed and listened as new gawkers came and went.
“Must have gotten lost.”
“Should have left this area before it was too late.”
“Whales don’t belong around here in the summer.”
At one point, it was just me and this dead whale, which rocked lifelessly in the occasional swell. The comments from passersby echoed in my head. And for a half second, I wondered if they applied to me as well. If this errant whale was an omen, a warning. That’s ridiculous, I thought to myself. But half seconds of those thoughts multiplied and combined into two and four and ten seconds of those thoughts. I turned my back to the water and the whale and headed back to the car, hoping that those mutating musings would stay behind as well.
16
August 1, Seat 29J.
I lay on my back on the mattress in my room and stared up at a printout of my return ticket home. I envisioned that day—the In-N-Out Burger we’d grab on the way home from the airport, the welcome home party at Berto’s house, the steamy hot asphalt smell of August in the Central Valley . . .
I had lasted a little over thirty days in DC—surely I could handle another month, right?
But I was now somehow walking the same path that led a girl to her untimely death. And an accomplice to an aggressive FBI agent, sniffing out a six-year-old suicide that didn’t add up. And an instatherapist to grieving parents. And a boyfriend (I think?) to a girl who had better things to do on the Fourth of July than hang out with me.
And on top of everything, else, there was that dead whale on the beach. Just to make the situation a tad bit bleaker, in case it wasn’t ominous enough, a dead baby whale.
So that return flight—that ejector seat out of this town—seemed tauntingly far away. In a weak moment, I thought about going home early. And maybe I was on hold with the airline for forty minutes, so I could find out how much it would cost to change my flight. But ultimately, I couldn’t decide which was worse—the humiliation of telling everyone in Lagrima, Yeah, I couldn’t cut it out there! or the astonishing airline change fee that probably would have required a few hundred mowed lawns.
It was Friday—a few days after my sick day/truth-seeking mission. A holiday, because the Fourth landed on Saturday. And I hadn’t responded to Memo’s eight increasingly intrusive and anxious text messages:
How was the beach?
Who is Frye?
???
Where is the car?
Okay, I’m outside your apartment, and I see the car. Where are the keys?
Hello?
Found the keys. On top of the back tire. Clever. Who is Frye?
I can see you have read all of these messages. Answer, please.
My lack of response wasn’t because I didn’t want to help him (well, maybe a little), but because I just wanted a normal summer internship. I found myself envying Zeph and Hillary’s endless debates about trade sanctions and office gossip—while I daydreamed about Wade Branson and killer prescription drugs and what really happened to Ariel that night. I put the itinerary down and held up the list of names Ariel had sent to me, care of the Fryes. About forty names were written out on lined paper—randomly ordered Susans and Walters and Richards and Russells and Barbaras. The list meant everything and nothing, all at once.
I heard a dull ding come from the phone—announcing Memo’s ninth text. This time, it was simply the URL for Central Valley State University—a not-so-subtle reminder of the carrot Memo dangled at the end of a very long and twisty stick in front of me. A carrot that wasn’t even for me. But it was enough to break my texting silence.
You know your audience, I texted.
Who. Is. Frye.
I texted him all about the parents, the dead daughter/best friend, and the Thativan connection. And the list. “Too many names to text,” I told him.
“Send pic,” he replied.
Apparently, this dinosaur phone could send pictures. I took a picture of the list and sent it back to Memo.
Two index finger taps at the door was the only warning Hillary gave me before barging in my room. I slammed the phone shut and threw it under the sheets of the bed. And looked very guilty as she stood above me.
“Caught you in a bad moment?” she asked, right eyebrow mischievously raised.
“No, no, just impressed by your respect for privacy. Are you sure you aren’t interning for the NSA?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes: the expected response. “Are you coming tomorrow?”
“What?” I replied, doing my best to look fine and not at all preoccupied by what Memo would text next.
“The Fourth of July. Party at Marcus’s . . . oh wait, you weren’t there. He announced it in the office the day of your little diarrhea dance back into the apartment.”
“Thanks for that, Hilly.”
“You’re lucky I told you about the party.”
A ding from under the covers signaled Memo’s reply. My hand instinctively reached for the phone, then stopped because of the audience in front of me.
“What is that?” she inquired.
“My phone,” I said. “Any other questions?”
“Yes. If your phone just made a noise from your bed, then why is it sitting on the desk?”
We both looked over at my own, non-FBI phone—sitting quietly on the table. My reply was more forceful than the amateur liar shade of red flushing my cheeks: “Shut up. Get out of here, Snowden!”
I mostly ignored her taunting laughter as she walked away and I carefully opened the flip phone. Memo had replied.
Let the digging begin.
• • •
The next day, I waited for a different text. The one where Lena invited me to whatever embassy thing she was doing instead of hanging out with me on the Fourth. Or when she
told me she was bailing on the embassy thing and said we should go back to the Washington Monument and watch the fireworks while we made a couple of our own in the observation deck. And when neither of those texts came, I settled for the Marcus party with Zeph and Hillary.
As we entered Marcus’s glorified frat house residence, we heard a disturbing yelping noise from the backyard. “Is that a dying goat?” asked Hillary.
“No, it’s Marcus,” I replied.
The poor guy was wearing board shorts and a red, white, and blue Hawaiian shirt—and now the better part of a chicken marinade that had spilled all over him. As troubling billows of gray smoke emanated from the barbecue, he let out another pathetic scream that was halfway between a desperate call for help and a self-deprecating, mock ahhhh!—I took it for the former and walked over to help him out. Zeph and Hillary made a beeline for the well-stocked cooler and the group of BIB staffers who had gathered nearby.
“Have you ever barbecued before?” I asked him.
“Look, this is a DEFCON 3 chicken crisis, and we don’t have time to make another run to the store,” he pleaded. “This is not the time to talk about my outdoor culinary résumé—just do something!”
I winced as I opened the top of the barbecue and a mushroom cloud of disregarded cooking instructions formed a black haze over our heads. The other party guests marveled at the sight, though this was a basic Lagrima summer dinner situation for me. I quickly went to work, turning down the heat on the barbecue and starting to turn over the almost-burned meat. Disaster averted.
“Just like that?” asked Marcus, exasperated.
“Who’s the intern now?” jeered Katie as she popped a potato chip in her mouth and passed by us. She was wearing blue-and-white-striped capri pants with a loose-fitting white blouse. She added, “So resourceful, Cameron.”
“Who’s the intern now?” parroted Marcus in a resentful, squished face, baby-voice kind of way. Followed by a sad whisper to me: “Do not leave me alone with this thing.”