by Lucia Berlin
“Happy you got rid of Grandma? How will you like it when I get your kids?”
Hal made boilermakers for Myron and Greg. They watched “Real Crime Stories” for a while, one of those programs where all the people have wavery grids instead of faces so you know it is all true.
“So how’s our new sweetheart?” Hal asked them.
“She’s a sweetheart, that’s the truth. Doesn’t talk too much, doesn’t drink more’n two glasses of wine, gets sleepy at eight.”
“Got her figured yet?”
“Not yet,” Myron said. He fanned for another shot, like a gambler asking for another card.
“All we know is she says she’s from Montana, but has no idea where Butte is. Everything she wears is brand new and she never mentions a word about her life.”
“Running from the law?”
“Naw, she’s a lady. Some other sort of problem.”
“That’s where we come in. We’ll help her take care of her problems.” Greg gave one of his wheezy laughs. “Our specialty, right, Hal?”
“Yeah, you guys will take care of the poor old broad.”
“She’s not poor. I know that much.”
I spent a lovely day at the De Young Museum and the Botanical Gardens. It was exhausting though, so I took a nap when I got back, went later than usual to the Beachcomber. Everyone was watching the six o’clock news. My boys were on it! Jason and Miles looked so handsome and worried. Even my boss, Mr. Harding, looked sad. He said it must be foul play because I hadn’t called. That I was the most responsible employee he ever had. Then they showed a photograph of me.
“Check out the car trunk!” Myron said. “Her sons did that old biddy in for sure.”
I couldn’t even finish my wine. I told them I was feeling sick and ran out and back to the hotel.
For the next three or four days all I did was watch the news and read the papers. Lord, Lord, what a mess I had made. They were worried that I’d been kidnapped by somebody Miles had arrested or Jason had prosecuted. They were worried about harm to the children, to those dear babies. I couldn’t think of how to get out of this mess. I was so ashamed. I knew that I should just call and tell them I was all right. I didn’t have the courage. They’d hate me so much. They would make me go home.
They arrested a nice-looking Hispanic boy who was an ex-con. Someone said they had seen him in my neighborhood. He was in an orange suit and handcuffs. Then on Channel Four Jason was at his back door saying they were offering a reward of twenty thousand dollars. Oh Lord, Lord.
All I did was call room service and watch the news and soaps and talk shows and more news and crime shows and the late news for days.
There was a knock at my door. Oh Lord, Lord. The police. I didn’t answer. They knocked again, louder.
“Jennie, it’s us! Myron and Greg. Let us in.”
I opened the door.
“Jennie, you look awful. You sick? We were worried about you.”
“Yes, I’ve had some kind of flu.”
“Looks like more’n that to me,” Myron said. “You’ve been crying. We brought some cans of daiquiris and some cheese and crackers. Let us just sit down here, Greg, and see if there’s anything we can do to help this little lady.”
At first all I wanted was to get them out of my room. But I had some cheese and crackers and some daiquiris. Then it seemed so good to have somebody to talk to and the drinks made me so calm after those terrible past days and nights. I found myself blurting out the whole shameful story, about what suffering and worry I was causing everybody and how I didn’t know how to get out of it.
Myron and Greg listened and were so understanding, especially the part about having a new life. They said they both had done the very same thing, only they hadn’t family to think they’d been kidnapped. Then they said they needed to go get us more to drink and some takeout Chinese and we’d have it all figured out by that night.
Seemed like while they were gone they planned the whole thing. The next day we would go to a pay phone and call Jason or Miles. Myron would ask for a hundred thousand dollars for my safe return. He would say that they’d call the next day with instructions. I’d get on the phone and say I was fine and not to worry, but that they’d kill me if they didn’t get the money.
That afternoon they’d tape up my hands and mouth, then rip the tape off so there would be marks. Maybe hit me just a little so I’d have a bruise on one cheek. At night they’d let me out of a cab south of Market. As soon as the cab was gone, I’d run and run screaming bloody murder until I found a policeman. I would tell them I escaped from my kidnappers. Since I had been blindfolded I wouldn’t know where I had been. I’d say they had disguised me, and they always wore ski masks so I didn’t know what they looked like.
They said we’d work out all the details the next day. I couldn’t thank them enough, and when they left I slept like a baby for the first night in a long time.
Jason answered the phone in his office. A menacing voice asked if this was Millie’s son, and he said yes, frantically gesturing to the policeman across the desk to trace the call.
“I’m calling from a phone booth in the Haight-Ashbury. I know where your mother is. I know her kidnappers, but don’t want them to know I snitched. I want the reward money, the twenty thousand, no questions asked. I can get you to her before the kidnappers get back. But I don’t want to be involved in any way.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come to the phone booth on the corner of Haight and Cole. There will be a piece of paper taped above the phone with her address and phone. Call her phone number once and hang up, then call it again. This is how you’ll know she’s fine. Don’t say a word to her, that will blow the whole deal. You got that? Just go to that address and she’ll be there under the name Jennie Wilson. That is, she’ll be there if, one: You leave an envelope with the money in the phone booth. And if, Two: you don’t bring anyone with you. If you do then the arrangement is off. The guys who snatched her will be back tomorrow, and you’ll have to pay them. It’s a simple choice between twenty and one hundred thousand.”
Myron and Greg watched from the window of the laundromat on Haight Street.
“There he is. It’s the D.A. son, in the phone booth.”
“Yeah, and look who’s across the street with two other guys. The cop son, in an unmarked car.”
“So what do you think?”
“We wait. Our clothes aren’t even in the rinse cycle anyway.”
“I’ll tell you what I think. Kidnapping is a felony.”
“Tell you what else. He’s gone. He left an envelope, but the brother’s still sitting there. Four cops. Look, have we committed an actual crime, yet?”
“I don’t think so. But I think they could get us for intent to do something.”
“What say we catch the next bus downtown and get on a Greyhound for Reno?”
“I don’t know. I never have abandoned my laundry before, Myron.”
“I think she’s on drugs, or drunk,” Jason said, standing above me. “God, she looks awful, like a bar-maid.”
“I think she looks great!” Amanda said.
“She’s in some kind of shock. She must have been mistreated.” Alexis patted my arm.
“You two still don’t get it. She was not kidnapped. She’s been gallivanting out there while we’ve been worried sick. Threatened, in a fucking state of siege,” Miles said. “God, Ma, you look disgusting with that kinky red hair. Do you know the trouble and anguish and expense you caused? Have you any idea?”
“Don’t attack her!” Alexis said. “She’s had some kind of post-menopausal breakdown, that’s all. I don’t think she realized how we might be feeling.”
I nodded, grateful to her, my eyes filling with tears.
“I just wanted to run away,” I said. “If I had told anybody it wouldn’t have been running away.”
“Run away from what?” Jason said. “I mean, your life is not so bad. I could tell you about some bad liv
es if you want. Chees, we all want to run away, every day. Everybody in the whole world would like to run away. What stops them is some consideration for other people’s feelings.”
Alexis put her arm around my shoulder. “Opium?” she sniffed. “Mama, I hope you never thought we wouldn’t care terribly if you weren’t a part of our lives. We are all glad you’re safe and are back with us.”
“Glad? I feel like I’m welcoming a boa constrictor.”
Alexis glared at Jason, who glared back at her. He and Miles were getting madder and madder. I don’t understand really why the women weren’t mad at me too, since they had been so frightened about their children and all. But they were kind to me, warmer than they had ever been before, really.
Miles went on, “To think of my mother, dressed like a tramp, picking up some sleazeballs in a place called the Beachcomber Bar. Least they didn’t get our money.”
“Well, be grateful for that. They didn’t,” Amanda said.
“Thanks for offering that money,” I said. I wished I knew if my friends had really meant to take it, and just got scared off.
“Let’s act as if none of this ever happened,” Amanda said to Miles. “Only now we’ll be better about communicating. Millie, if we’d known how you felt, maybe we could have sent you on a Love Boat cruise.”
I began to weep. I couldn’t stop myself. “Love Boat cruise? Wwaa waaa waa.” I cried and cried. Love Boats were the kinds of things I wanted to run away from. I’d rather be in the Beachcomber Bar. I missed the Beachcomber Bar.
“Let’s leave her alone, come back tomorrow,” Amanda said.
“I don’t think she should be alone. She should stay at one of our houses.”
“Not mine!” Miles said.
Alexis patted my hand. “Pack what you need and come on home with us.”
We shoved through the crowds in front of their door to get inside. The phone rang every time the answering machine stopped.
“It’s been like this ever since you left,” Alexis said. And bless her, that was the closest she ever came to blaming me. I helped her get dinner while Jason spoke with reporters outside. The twins wouldn’t get near me but didn’t stop staring at me either.
Mr. H, my boss, and Marla were two of the calls. I didn’t know how I would ever be able to talk to either of them.
It occurred to me that nobody was ever really crazy. They just decided to go crazy so as not to accept responsibility. I considered acting catatonic or running amok so I could get locked up until this blew over. But somehow I knew that if I ever got locked up anywhere I would never get out.
Alexis made me comfortable with ironed sheets and a bouquet of tulips. Well, anyway, I was glad to be home.
502
502 was the clue for 1-Across in this morning’s Times. Easy. That’s the police code for Driving While Intoxicated, so I wrote in DWI. Wrong. I guess all those Connecticut commuters knew you were supposed to put in Roman numerals. I had a few moments of panic, as I always do when memories of my drinking days come up. But since I moved to Boulder I have learned to do deep breathing and meditation, which never fail to calm me.
I’m glad I got sober before I moved to Boulder. This is the first place I ever lived that didn’t have a liquor store on every corner. They don’t even sell alcohol in Safeway here and of course never on Sundays. They just have a few liquor stores mostly on the outskirts of town, so if you’re some poor wino with the shakes and it’s snowing, Lord have mercy. The liquor stores are gigantic Target-size nightmares. You could die from D.T.’s just trying to find the Jim Beam aisle.
The best town is Albuquerque where the liquor stores have drive-through windows, so you don’t even have to get out of your pajamas. They don’t sell on Sundays either though. So if I didn’t plan ahead there was always the problem of who in the world could I drop in on who wouldn’t offer a wine cooler.
Even though I had been sober for years before I moved here I had trouble at first. Whenever I looked in the rear view mirror I’d go “Oh no,” but it was just the ski racks everybody has on their cars. I have never actually even seen a police car in pursuit or seen anyone being arrested. I have seen policemen in shorts at the mall, eating Ben and Jerry’s frozen yogurt and a swat team in a pickup truck. Six men in camouflage with big tranquilizer rifles, chasing a baby bear down the middle of Mapleton.
This must be the healthiest town in the country. There is no drinking at frat parties or football games. No one smokes or eats red meat or glazed donuts. You can walk alone at night, leave your doors unlocked. There are no gangs here and no racism. There aren’t many races, actually.
That dumb 502. All these memories came flooding into my head, in spite of the breathing. The first day of my job at U——, the Safeway problem, the incident at San Anselmo, the scene with A——.
Everything is fine now. I love my job and the people I work with. I have good friends. I live in a beautiful apartment just beneath Mount Sanitas. Today a western tanager sat on a branch in my backyard. My cat Cosmo was asleep in the sun so he didn’t chase it. I am deeply grateful for my life today.
So God forgive me if I confess that once in a while I get a diabolical urge to, well, mess it all up. I can’t believe I’d even have this thought, after all those years of misery. Officer Wong either taking me to jail or to detox.
The Polite one, we all called Wong. We called all the other ones pigs, which would never have applied to Officer Wong, who was very nice, really. Methodical and formal. There were never any of the usual physical interchanges between you and him like with the others. He never slammed you against the car or twisted the cuffs into your wrist. You stood there for hours as he painstakingly wrote up his ticket and read you your rights. When he cuffed you he said, “Permit me,” and “Watch your head,” when you got into the car.
He was diligent and honest, an exceptional member of the Oakland police force. We were lucky to have him in our neighborhood. I am really sorry now about that one incident. One of the steps of AA is to make amends with people you have wronged. I think I have made most of the amends I could. I owe Officer Wong one. I wronged Wong for sure.
Back then I lived in Oakland, in that big turquoise apartment on the corner of Alcatraz and Telegraph. Right above Alcatel Liquors, just down from The White Horse, across the street from the 7–11. Good location.
The 7–11 was sort of a gathering place for old winos. Although, unlike them, I went to work every day, they ran into me in liquor stores on weekends. Lines at the Black and White that opened at six A.M. Late night haggling with the Pakistani sadist who worked at the 7–11.
They were all friendly with me. “How ya been, Miss Lu?” Sometimes they asked me for money, which I always gave them and several times when I had lost my job, I asked them. The group of them changed as they went to jails, hospitals, death. The regulars were Ace, Mo, Little Ripple and The Champ. These four old black guys would spend their mornings at the 7–11 and their afternoons snoozing or drinking in a faded aqua Chevrolet Corvair parked in Ace’s yard. His wife Clara wouldn’t let them smoke or drink in the house. Winter and summer, rain or shine, the four would be in that car. Sleeping like little kids on car trips, heads on folded hands, or looking straight ahead as if they were on a Sunday drive, commenting on everybody who drove or walked by, passing around a bottle of port.
When I’d come up the street from the bus stop I’d holler out, “How’s it going?” “Jes’ fine!” Mo would say. “I got my wine!” And Ace would say, “I feel so well, got my muscatel!” They’d ask about my boss, that fool Dr. B.
“Just quit that ole job! Get yourself on SSI where you belong! You come sit with us, sister, pass the time in comfort, don’t need no job!”
Once Mo said I didn’t look so good, maybe I needed detox.
“Detox?” the Champ scoffed. “Never detox. Retox! That’s the ticket!”
The Champ was short and fat, wore a shiny blue suit, a clean white shirt and a porkpie hat. He had a gold watch with a cha
in and he always had a cigar. The other three all wore plaid shirts, overalls and A’s baseball hats.
One Friday I didn’t go to work. I must have been drinking the night before. I don’t know where I had gone in the morning, but I remember coming back and that I had a bottle of Jim Beam. I parked my car behind a van across the street from my building. I went upstairs and fell asleep. I woke to loud knocking on my door.
“Open your door, Ms. Moran. This is Officer Wong.”
I stashed the bottle in the bookcase and opened the door.
“Hello, Officer Wong. How can I help you?”
“Do you own a Mazda 626?”
“You know I do, sir.”
“Where is that car, Miss Moran?”
“Well, it’s not in here.”
“Where did you park the vehicle?”
“Up across from the church.” I couldn’t remember.
“Think again.”
“I can’t remember.”
“Look out the window. What do you see?”
“Nothing. The 7–11. Telephones. Gas tanks.”
“Any parking places?”
“Yeah. Amazing. Two of them! Oh. I parked it there, behind a van.”
“You left the car in gear, without the parking brake on. When the van left, your vehicle followed it down Alcatraz during rush hour traffic, proceeded to cross into the other lane, narrowly missing cars and sped down the sidewalk, almost harming a man, his wife and a baby in a stroller.”
“Well. Then what?”
“I’m taking you to see then what. Come along.”
“I’ll be right out. I want to wash my face.”
“I’ll stay right here.”
“Please. Some privacy, sir. Wait outside the door.”
I took a big drink of whiskey. Brushed my teeth and combed my hair.
We walked silently down the street. Two long blocks. Damn.
“If you think about it, it’s pretty miraculous that my Mazda didn’t hit anything or hurt anybody. Don’t you think so, Officer Wong? A miracle!”