Golden State: A Novel

by Richmond, Michelle

  Another child bounced the ball hard. Miraculously, it came flying in my direction, and Ethan pivoted and started running toward me. He was within five feet of the fence when he caught it, and for a moment he glanced up at me and smiled. There was the slightest pause, a flicker of recognition, I thought. I opened my mouth to speak to him, but before I could decide what to say, he wheeled and ran back to the group. Of course, would he even remember my face? The last time he saw me, he was four years old. All those sweet days I’d spent with him, those days that formed the most vivid chapters of my own life, could only be, for him, blurry memories. Was it true what Allison Rhodes had said, just weeks before she took custody? “In a year,” she had told me, “he won’t even remember that he used to live somewhere else.”

  I stayed by the fence and watched until the bell rang and the kids lined up to go inside. Ethan was the last one in the line, and as the teacher gave instructions, he stood staring at the sky. I looked up. A blimp moved across the horizon, advertising some local circus. I remembered a circus Tom and I had taken Ethan to—a ramshackle affair in a shabby tent at the San Mateo County fairgrounds, featuring acrobats in awkwardly revealing clothes and a small dog dressed in a miniature elephant costume. It had been a perfect day.

  Ethan pointed, said something, and all the children looked up. The teacher clapped her hands and called them to attention, and the children began to file into the classroom. I was grateful that he stood at the end of the line. I willed the children to walk more slowly, so that I could watch him a second longer. I tried to drink in every detail. I knew I would never forget the little tag sticking out of his T-shirt, which I longed to tuck in. I would never forget what he looked like, pointing at the blimp in the sky. I would never forget that, on this day, he was happy.

  Back in the car, I rested my head against the seat, hardly able to believe what had just happened. “How did you find him?” I asked. “I’ve spent a million hours on the Internet.”

  “I told you I had friends in high places,” Heather said, winking. “His aunt remarried right after she got custody. She changed her name. Then she and the husband adopted Ethan and changed his name, too.”

  “What does he do, the husband?”

  “Pharmaceutical sales. Coaches Little League.”

  “Ethan’s in Little League?”

  Heather nodded. “Little League, band—”

  “What does he play?”

  “The trumpet.”

  “The trumpet,” I echoed in amazement.

  “Oh, and he’s in the Junior Beachcombers’ Club,” Heather added.

  “What’s that?”

  “They get together every couple of months to look for treasures on the beach. They’ve adopted a sea turtle named Boris. There’s a picture of the club on the school website. I got copies of the yearbook from the last three years. He’s well-represented. You said you didn’t have recent photos of him, so—”

  I leaned over the seat and put my arms around my sister. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you so much.”

  52

  2:07 p.m.

  “How’s your sister?” Dennis asks.

  “Not great.” I decide to take a risk. “What about Betty?” After his earlier outburst, I don’t dare ask about Rajiv.

  “She’s fine,” he says. Laughs. “Probably a bit bored of me.”

  I allow myself a shaky laugh, trying to mirror his mood.

  “I remember when Lucy had Isabel,” Dennis says. “I drove down Geary at three A.M., running every red light until we got to Kaiser. There was nowhere to park, so I pulled right up to the emergency room. I was in such a hurry, I forgot to turn off the engine, and when I came out later the car had run out of gas. When the nurse put Isabel in my arms, it was like the floor had dropped out from under me. She was so tiny, and I was instantly in love with her, but I was terrified, too. Like my whole life was suddenly about keeping her safe. For the first few weeks, I wouldn’t let Isabel out of my sight. When I had to go back to work, I couldn’t concentrate. I just kept thinking, What if something happens to her?”

  “But nothing did,” I said. “You took good care of her. You did what you were supposed to do.”

  For all his mistakes, I know this: Dennis always tried to be a good father. He loves Isabel more than anything.

  “I’m tired,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I just want it to all be over with.”

  My throat tightens. “That’s not the answer,” I say. And then I say the thing I should have said to Danielle years ago, the words I always wish I had spoken to her, the words I now know she so desperately needed to hear: “You have something to live for.”

  He snorts. “What would that be, exactly?”

  I don’t have an answer. He lost his wife. He lost his daughter. He has no job and no prospects, his parents want nothing to do with him, and any kind of decent relationship seems to entirely elude him. Now he has killed someone. When this is over, he will go to prison.

  “One day,” I say, “Isabel will want to know you.”

  “No. She won’t. She thinks I’m a monster.”

  “Prove her wrong.”

  He laughs quietly. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll get you help, Dennis. It’s not too late. Let them go. Please.”

  “That thing with Eleanor,” he sputters. “No one will believe she made me do it. It doesn’t matter what happens to the others, because she’s already dead.”

  “It matters,” I say gently. “Eleanor wasn’t premeditated. It was spur-of-the-moment, you lost it, there were extenuating circumstances, you were under severe mental stress.”

  “Supposing you’re right,” he points out bitterly. “Then I end up in a psychiatric hospital. That’s your big fix, Doc? I get to go live with the crazies?”

  “I can’t predict what’s going to happen,” I admit after a moment. “But I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “You like Betty. You said it yourself.”

  “True, but I don’t give a shit about Rajiv.”

  I freeze, afraid to say anything, afraid not to say something.

  “Come over here,” he says. “To your office. Come over right now, and I’ll let them both go. A simple trade: you for them.” I can’t be sure, but it sounds as though he is crying.

  “I can’t leave my sister, not yet.”

  “Afterward?” he asks. “Will you come over after?”

  “Yes. I promise, Dennis. As soon as I deliver the baby, I’ll come over.”

  “We can talk face-to-face?”

  “Yes, we can talk face-to-face. I promise.”

  I go over to the bed and hold Heather’s hand. The contractions are so close now, the pain must be unbearable. “You’re almost there,” I say to her. “I’m so proud of you.”

  And I am. How could I not be? To see my sister, engaged in this most basic struggle, this ancient, life-giving thing, is awe-inspiring. I know she’s been to war. I know she’s seen things that would horrify me. I know that, in many ways, she has moved beyond me, into a realm of experience I can only imagine—and yet, at this moment, she is above all my baby sister.

  “Fuck Eve,” she growls.

  It comes back in times of crisis: all that religion we soaked in during our formative years, Brother Ray’s dogma like a swarm of mosquitoes you can’t shake from your skin. “It was woman who committed original sin,” he must have said a hundred times. “Woman who led the entire human race down the path of unrighteousness.”

  “No,” I reply. “Fuck Adam.”

  Heather lets out half a laugh.

  “What’s funny?” Dennis says.

  “It was a joke about Adam and Eve.” I try to explain, but something is lost in translation.

  Another contraction comes. Heather lifts up on her elbows, groaning.

  “Time to push,” I say.

  She does so, tears streaming d
own her face. She’s just come off a minute-long contraction and is catching her breath when the building starts to quiver. Instinctively, I brace myself.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I look up at the ceiling. “Is this a joke? An earthquake?”

  Heather motions toward the phone and puts a finger to her lips. I don’t dare mute the phone. Instead, I take it into the bathroom, set it down beside the sink, turn the water on, and quickly return to Heather’s side.

  She spins her index finger. I still don’t get it. “Chopper,” she whispers. The vibrations increase. “I’d know that sound anywhere. They must be landing in Lincoln Park.”

  “Who?”

  “SWAT.”

  I go back into the bathroom, turn off the water, and pick up the phone. “How you doing, Dennis?”

  “Where’ve you been, Julie?” he demands. His voice crackles: he’s angry.

  “I had to go to the bathroom. I turned the water on for privacy.”

  “What was that noise?”

  “News chopper,” I say, hoping I’m wrong.

  And then, there are footsteps on the roof.

  I give Heather a questioning look.

  She gestures furiously toward a pen and notepad on the desk. I hand them to her. She writes a single word: Sniper.

  Her face contorts. But Heather doesn’t yell—she just makes these intense, keening moans. It occurs to me that she knows exactly what she’s doing, knows how to keep her head low and choose the safest possible action in an unpredictable situation.

  “Push,” I urge. “You can do it, push.”

  After the contraction ends, she grabs the pen and scribbles furiously. Get him 2 window.

  “Why?” I whisper, but I think I understand.

  She stabs at the words on the pad: Get him 2 window.

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  Ys! U can!

  I think of all the times I sat in the cafeteria with Dennis, chatting over coffee. I think of the confidences we shared. Of the night we spent together at his apartment, his utter tenderness. At that moment, all those years ago, when I was alone in San Francisco, unsure of my decision to leave everything I knew behind and try to make an entirely new life for myself, he was exactly what I needed. There’s one thing I learned in church that still holds some ring of truth today: when you sleep with someone, you give him a little part of yourself. It was intended as an admonishment, a call to celibacy until marriage, but for me it has always meant something very different. There are certain people in this world with whom I share a unique and somehow unbreakable bond. Over the years, each time I have chosen a partner, even if it was only for a single night or a few weeks, I have been aware that I was entering into a kind of contract. Each time, upon making the decision to sleep with someone, I vowed to myself that I would always remember him; I hoped he would remember me as well.

  Whatever Dennis has become, however our paths have diverged, there was a moment in time when I chose him. A moment when I looked at him and felt the full force of this possibility. And there were many afternoons after that when I said so much, when I looked into his eyes and saw a friend.

  The footsteps on the roof again, a shuffling sound.

  “Now,” Heather whispers.

  I think of the oath I recited with my fellow students at the white-coat ceremony during my first week of medical school. There were many families in attendance, but mine was not among them. The night before, I had lain awake in my studio apartment, turning the words over in my mind until they were seared into my memory, especially one strange, unsettling passage: “If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.”

  It may also be within my power to take a life. As I’d stood in front of the audience of strangers, feeling somewhat lost in the short white coat, I had stumbled over the words. What did they mean, exactly? And would I be able to fulfill that part of the oath, if and when I was called upon to do so?

  I think of a phrase Dr. Bariloche taught us in our very first class: primum non nocere—first, do no harm.

  “The modern manifestation of this,” Dr. Bariloche explained, “is non-maleficence. Given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good.”

  What I want more than anything at this moment is to do nothing. To pretend I didn’t hear what Heather asked of me, her utterly logical and unthinkable solution. To pretend there were no footsteps on the roof.

  And then I think of Rajiv. His bride-to-be. His mother. The years he’s spent getting to where he is now. I think of Betty, and I remember her pride when she told me about one of her grandkids not long ago, valedictorian of Lowell High School, on her way to a scholarship at U.C. Irvine. I think of Eleanor.

  I limp over to the window. “Dennis?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to set the phone down for a minute so I can move everything away from the window.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can see you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he says.

  “Listen.”

  I set the phone down, take the duffel bag from atop the bureau, lean my back against the heavy furniture, and push. The extra weight on my foot is excruciating. How did Heather have the strength to put it here in the first place? When the bureau is clear of the window, I pick up the phone, push the curtain aside, and peer out.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes. You’re at the window now?”

  “I’m right here. But I can’t see you. Where are you?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Of course not. Why would you say that?”

  “Who’s feeding you orders? Who told you to tell me to come to the window?”

  “No one, Dennis. I swear. It’s just me and my sister here. No one gives me orders in my own hospital. I want to see you. We’ve been talking, how long—”

  The hand I’m holding the phone with is shaking.

  “One hour, twelve minutes, nineteen seconds—give or take,” he says, with a slight laugh.

  “Okay.” I’m at a loss for what to say. “You remember how much I hate talking on the phone, don’t you?”

  Silence. What is he thinking?

  “I remember. You always preferred face-to-face.”

  “That’s right. Face-to-face. Just me and you, Dennis.”

  Across the way, the curtain flutters. His face peeks out, a flicker of white.

  “That’s better, Dennis, much better.” My heart is hammering. Should I continue? Will it anger him if I press further? I look over at Heather. She gives me the thumbs-up.

  I turn back to the window. “I still can’t see you, Dennis. You’ve got to stand where I can see you.”

  “Maybe I will,” he says. “If you do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  It’s quiet for a few seconds. I can hear Dennis breathing.

  “Go out on the balcony and lift your shirt.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Lift your shirt.”

  “Lift my shirt?”

  “I want to really see you. All the way. Out on the balcony.”

  It’s about control, I remind myself. Control and loyalty. He wants to show that he’s calling the shots, and he wants to see how far I’m willing to go for him.

  “Okay, Dennis. But you have to promise me that if I do it, you’ll stand where I can see you. I want to see your face. You’ll give me that, won’t you?”

  I can hear the smile in Dennis’s voice. “Scout’s honor,” he says.

  I move in front of the window, my heart beating wildly. I try the latch, but it won’t budge.

  “You’re stalling,” Dennis says.

  “No, I’m not. This window probably hasn’t been opened in ages. It’s stuck.”

  “Hurry up,” he says, sounding agitate
d. I bang on the latch with my fist, and I’m almost dizzy with relief when it won’t open. Still, I push once more and, finally, it gives. I open the window. Terrified, I limp out onto the flimsy platform, which shudders beneath me. My chest seizes up with fear. He has a clear shot. If he wants to pull the trigger, he can.

  “Now,” he says. “Your shirt.”

  A sudden gust of wind lifts the flags on the pole. I shiver in the cold. The foghorns bleat in the distance.

  I begin to lift my sweater. The humiliation is almost too much, but I do it. The curtain moves on the window of my office. Down in the parking lot, the young policeman is still crouched beside his car. His gaze travels from my office window, over to me. And then I see someone in full-on SWAT gear, coming up behind the cafeteria. On the roof above me, shuffling sounds.

  “Higher,” Dennis says.

  I lift it higher.

  “Take off your bra.”

  “Dennis.”

  “We made a deal, didn’t we?”

  I don’t dare look back at Heather. I’m on my own now. It feels, in some strange way, as if it really is just the two of us, Dennis and me.

  I set the phone down, lift my sweater over my head, and drape it over the balcony railing. I reach behind my back and find the hooks of the bra. I close my eyes and, in one fumbling motion, release the hooks. A memory comes to me: the way he laid me down on the bed and moved over my body so slowly, so gently, the way he kissed my breasts. Slowly, I bring the straps forward and, for a moment, I hold on to an illusion of privacy, my arms folded in front of my chest, before letting the bra fall to my feet.

  I pick up the phone and bring it to my ear. On the other end, silence. I glance left, where the avenues of the Outer Richmond slope down toward the sea.

  Here I am, on the eve of forty, soon to be divorced, possibly jobless, entirely alone, standing half-naked on the balcony of a run-down hotel room, looking out over my adopted city, my home. There is no room left for humiliation or remorse. Here I am.

  For several seconds, my mind simply goes blank. And then I feel the warmth of the sun, a gust of wind blows across my bare skin, and I smell the briny smell of the ocean, taste salt on my tongue.