California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He would have appreciated a call from Nick on this one, even though the Tustin Times had a policy against incest stories. Unless teetotaling J. J. Overholt broke his own rule. He had similar policies against rape stories, suicide stories—unless it was a public figure—and sex crime stories. Against almost anything negative relating to churches or ministers. The press club wags said that the Tustin Times was allergic to anything alcoholic or interesting.

  Andy flipped through the log. The usual public disturbances, suspected prowlers, domestic quarrels, bar fights, false alarms. And drunken driving. Overholt’s bread and butter, he thought. Suspected drunken drivers were identified in the Tustin Times Law Enforcement Logbook by full name, age, and city of residence in boldface Helvetica twelve-point type. The press club line on that was, death to drunken drivers unless the driver was one of Overholt’s friends, but Overholt didn’t have any friends.

  Andy poked away on his Royal portable. Got four little stories they might use, mainly to fill space around last-minute ads. Made notes on the Vonn arrests.

  Later that day, after doing his interviewing, Andy tried to write the Vonn story. “Brothers Arrested on Morals, Drug Charges.” Top of the pyramid he stated the facts. Made it clear that Casey and Lenny Vonn, twenty-four and twenty-seven, of Tustin, were arrested on suspicion of morals and drug crimes.

  From David he had gotten Janelle’s black eye and intoxicated appearance at the Grove Drive-In Church of God. Barbara told him that Janelle had been barefoot in the chill morning and that the church had had sixty-two worshipers that day, best ever.

  From Nick he’d gotten some chase details and the crescent wrench and where the little white pills were found. He included the fact that vice investigator Nick Becker was all-county for Tustin High, 1955–56. Nick told him to be careful with the sex stuff. It was Janelle’s word against her brothers’. There was no way the crime lab could perform tests for forced oral cop done months ago, which is what Janelle was alleging. When she wasn’t looking at ceilings and having marijuana-induced visions.

  The Vonn brothers had refused to talk to him. Their public defenders had no comment.

  He had talked to Janelle briefly by phone. She said the whole thing was just a scary mess, what had Andy heard from Clay over in the jungle? He told her what he knew—next to nothing—and thanked her. He couldn’t use her name in the piece. Could not state that the victim of the sex allegations was the Vonn brothers’ own sister. Janelle was the center of it but she couldn’t be seen. Like wind in a windstorm. It was Overholt policy not to name minors as victims or perpetrators of crimes. One of the few of the old man’s editorial policies that Andy thought was good.

  Sharon in the DA’s office had told him they’d review the arrests by late afternoon and file, or not, tomorrow. She asked Andy to say hi to his cute detective brother.

  Andy had talked to Karl Vonn again, for the first time since that Thanksgiving dinner when he and Meredith had gone to the Serenade and made love. Karl wouldn’t comment on the arrests except to say that his boys were just like everyone else, innocent until proven guilty. In the silence between questions Andy still had trouble meeting the great black eyes of Karl Vonn, widower, father of five, killer of fourteen up close.

  But Andy couldn’t get more than two paragraphs. It was too big and too raw. No focus. No hook.

  He ripped it out of the typewriter, mashed the paper and carbons into a ball, and bounced it off the wall into his wastebasket.

  PRESS CLUB OFFICERS and invited members met Thursdays for dinner, drinks, and alleged business. This week it was at a new steak house, Lorenzo’s, up in the hills in Anaheim. Some of the Orange County Journal execs were part owners so the reporters figured on a deal at bill time. Recording secretary Becker got there early like most of them did, had a couple of cocktails in the bar with the other reporters.

  “So Andy, when you going to leave that crummy little paper?” asked Phil Liades. He was an editorial writer for the Journal. To Andy an old fart—forty, maybe even forty-five. He’d come out strong for Nixon in sixty and was already gearing up against Kennedy for sixty-four. The Journal had blamed the president for the Bay of Pigs failure. And said the Missile Crisis didn’t prove Kennedy was tough on Communists, just desperate for respect. Liades wore a little enamel U.S. flag pin on his lapel.

  “When you leave your crummy big one,” said Andy. “Maybe I’ll take your place. But then I’d have to write all that glowing crap about Dick Nixon and Roger Stoltz.”

  “Pays the bills,” said Phil.

  “So can blow jobs,” said Andy.

  Phil laughed and Andy nudged him with an elbow. At twenty-one Andy was the youngster. Dropped out of Fullerton after two years but a full general-assignment reporter already. Even if it was just the Tustin Times. Andy liked popping off and making waves and seeing what he could get away with. He thought of Janelle Vonn just after this last comment. Of her being forced into things. That wasn’t funny. But he told himself that was different. There was real life and there was newspapers. In newspapers this was the way you talked.

  “What are you guys laughing about?” asked Teresa Dessinger, squeezing up to the bar beside Andy. She didn’t take a stool.

  “Jobs,” said Andy. “Phil wants me to take his. I told him I could write crap for a living but not right-wing crap.”

  “Lies from the drunk-driving monitor,” said Phil.

  “But the Journal is changing,” said Teresa brightly.

  The Dessingers had founded and still published the Orange County Journal. Teresa was a great-granddaughter of the founding couple and daughter of the current publisher. She was tall, auburn-haired, peach-skinned. One year back from Stanford with some fancy business degree, Andy had heard. Barely a year older than him and already editing the daily “Beach Cities” editions of the Journal. She made him nervous and eager to impress.

  “When you get to be publisher it’ll be perfect,” Andy said. “Until then, you guys should cover the crooks on the board of supervisors and leave Jack Kennedy alone.”

  Teresa Dessinger looked down at Andy. “I agree.”

  “To the new Journal,” said Phil Liades, raising his glass.

  Andy touched his drink to Teresa’s and nodded.

  “Would you sit with me at dinner?” she asked Andy. “I’d like to hear more.”

  “Don’t give my job away,” said Phil.

  “Already told you I don’t want it,” said Andy. “Another drink, Teresa?”

  THEN BACK to the bar after dinner. Phil and two others left early. The press club corresponding secretary staggered to the bathroom sick on scotch and sodas. The treasurer drove her home.

  By eleven it was Andy, Teresa, and two Los Angeles Times reporters in a booth arguing whether a newspaper should print what people want to read or what they need to read. Whether Nixon shaved twice or three times a day. Whether Castro had been morally right for publicly executing half a thousand Batista thugs or was just another Latin American cutthroat. Whether to put fluoride into California’s drinking water and, if so, what next?

  Andy gave as good as he got, maybe better. As Andy saw it, he had an advantage: he wasn’t really a newspaperman. Wasn’t going to be doing this very long. The last thing on earth he wanted was to end up old and drunk and bitter like half the reporters he saw. Sad. Humiliating.

  No, he was going to find a way to write that wasn’t for some paper that was in the litter box the next day. Some way to get it down fully and with some insight. Some understanding of what was going on under the surface of things. Maybe a book like The Grapes of Wrath, or Catch-22 or All the King’s Men. Or a movie like Citizen Kane or From Here to Eternity. Wouldn’t it be great to write something beautiful someday?

  All of which he spouted off to Teresa Dessinger as he walked her to her car around midnight.

  She stood next to her new Comet convertible, a red jewel twinkling in the parking lot light.

  “It would be great,” she said. “But not everybody h
as the talent to write like that.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  She put her key in the door and the lock snapped up. “Come to work for me while you write your book. I can use you on the ‘Beach Cities’ editions. You can have Laguna Beach. It would be all yours. And I can pay you better than Overholt by quite a bit.”

  “I disagree with your editorial policy.”

  “Fine. You disagree with Overholt’s, too. Just write me some news and some features. I’m a liberal editor. Laguna is an interesting town. More going on than in Tustin.”

  Andy felt as if someone had thrown open a window. Hell, knocked out a whole wall. More money. More liberty. Better beat. See Teresa Dessinger every day instead of J. J. Overholt?

  “Give me a few days to think about it,” he said.

  “The offer’s good until the middle of December. My writer is going to be leaving.”

  She dug a business card from her purse, scribbled something on the back, and handed it to him.

  “By the way, Andy, I know what kind of jobs you and Phil were talking about when I walked up. You guys aren’t as cool as you think.”

  “I never wanted to be cool,” he said, wondering exactly what he meant. Trying to show her how determined he was? How cool?

  MEREDITH WAS not waiting for him in his bed, as he expected. It was one of her nights to stay at his place but the only trace of her he found in his darkened apartment was a note on the neatly made bed:

  Dear Andy,

  I decided to go home. Fourth or fifth night you’ve not come home by midnight, just in the last month. I know you need to do your job and experience life to write about, so I’m not upset with you at all. Just feel a little wrong here with no you, and no real commitment. I know how much you hate that word. Maybe we’re just wrong for each other. Maybe we just want different things. I told you once not long ago that I had picked out four names for our four beautiful children. I really didn’t mean it to be funny or to scare you. But you can’t talk to me about maybe settling down, even though you stopped with college. You’re out in the world doing what you want and I’m still learning how to teach other people’s children to read and write. I don’t want to bother or upset you but I think my heart is breaking.

  XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

  M.

  Andy stripped down and got into the bed. Looked up at the ceiling. Felt his heart racing inside his ribs.

  Meredith Thornton had left him.

  He wasn’t surprised but it still felt strange. He knew it was coming but not when or how. Thought it might involve that Alan teacher she worked with.

  He went out to the kitchen and sat by the phone. Picked up the earpiece, then put it back in its cradle. Looked at the manuscript piling up by the typewriter.

  He imagined Meredith in her apartment. Figured she’d be awake. Probably awake all night for this one. It puzzled him how much he could have loved her just three years ago. And how much less he loved her now. Back then she was all he could think about. All he wanted. She was everything good and desirable.

  Now she felt heavy to him. Stifling, unhappy, impatient. It hurt him to see the disappointment he caused. It angered him, too, because he thought he was doing what was right. A writer lives. A writer experiences. A writer doesn’t settle down with his high school sweetheart in the town they grew up in, raise four children named in advance, and end up with a damn thing worth writing about. James, Joseph, Jennifer, and Jacqueline? How could he support them on a reporter’s wages? A writer rises above these things. A writer goes to New York. Or the jungle, like Clay.

  He picked up the phone, heard the dial tone, put it back down.

  Still, it worried him. How his love had just gotten used up. Was love finite? Were the poets and songwriters in some kind of conspiracy to make love sound longer-lasting than it was? Or was there something missing inside him, some part that wasn’t there? Look at his mom and dad. Both sets of grandparents. Almost all the aunts and uncles. Nick and Katy. The Thorntons. J. J. and Mae Overholt. Those ancient Dessingers.

  He slid the manuscript over in front of him. Grabbed it and riffled the pages with his thumb. Three hundred and four pages. He’d stopped right in the middle of the scene where Tracy from California boards the train from Orly to Bordeaux. She steps over a pool of red wine from an old lady’s dropped bottle. Tracy’s boyfriend, Robert, waits for her in a little village, uncertain whether he really wants her to come or not. Because of Anne-Marie. And because he needs freedom to write. What neither knows is that in less than three hours the train will derail and Tracy will be decapitated.

  Andy had spent a summer in Europe after his freshman year of college and had lived every moment of this story. Kind of. He’d written Meredith a letter every day. Sometimes two. When she’d volunteered to quit her good summer job and come join him, he encouraged her to stay in Tustin.

  Last month, after she’d told him the four children’s names, he’d asked her to read the manuscript. She didn’t really like it. Said she liked the style. And the California part, where they were happy. But mostly it just made her quiet.

  Andy read the spilled wine section. Borrowed it from A Tale of Two Cities. He found Dickens sentimental but the wine was great symbolism. He pushed the manuscript away.

  Fall Wine, by Andrew James Becker.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Teresa Dessinger’s home phone off the back of the card she’d given him.

  “I’ll take the job,” he said.

  “Give me two weeks to get the reporter out.”

  “You said he was quitting.”

  “I said he was leaving. Good night, Andy. And good decision.”

  He lay in bed for a little while. Just before sleep he felt a very small smile trying to get onto his lips. Too tired to move. Thought about what had happened. Felt free. Unweighted. Ready to live. Smithy of his soul and all that.

  He slept better than he’d slept for weeks.

  THE NEXT MORNING Andy got to the sheriff’s station an hour later than usual. Slight hangover. No promising stories. He stayed late to jawbone with the other reporters, fill them in on all the important press club business of the night before.

  Back in Tustin, he found J. J. Overholt in his office. Roger Stoltz was with him so Andy went to his desk and thought about last night.

  Stoltz came by a few minutes later on his way out. He was a man who never seemed to age. Same suntanned face and crisp mustache and cheerful brown eyes Andy remembered from nearly ten years ago. Same thick black hair, unruly like a boy’s. Andy instinctively disliked him.

  Stoltz asked about Clay. When Andy said he hadn’t heard from his brother in months, Stoltz said he was doing an important and dangerous thing over in Vietnam.

  “I’ll be glad when he’s back,” said Andy.

  “Me, too. I’ll be glad when all our men are back.”

  “You really think those Commies are a danger to us?” Andy asked.

  “They want this country, Andy.”

  Andy looked for zeal or imbalance in Stoltz’s eyes. Saw what looked like good cheer and conviction.

  “Your father’s really doing some fine things with the Tustin Birch Society chapter,” said Stoltz.

  Andy had seen the cars parked in front of the Becker home on meeting nights. And the Santa Ana Police Department motorcycles lined up at the curb because Max had managed to recruit some motor patrol officers over to the society.

  Andy had lingered for a few minutes at a couple of the meetings. Listened to the JBS party lines: “Get the U.S. out of the UN,” “Support Your Local Police,” “Goldwater in ’64,” “No on Fluoridation,” “Better Dead Than Red.” They showed films documenting Communist takeovers and atrocities, some of them gory and disturbing. Something about black-and-white film, Andy had thought, the way it captured body bloat and bullet-riddled corpses and blood. And films on the growing use of drugs—how to spot a heroin addict, what marijuana cigarettes looked like, how to tell if your teenager was u
nder the influence of drugs.

  The Birch Society members were local men and women—small business owners, a savings and loan officer, a pharmacist, some defense engineers, a teacher, a dentist, a pilot. They were serious about the Communist conspiracy and seemed happy to have a newspaperman around. Roger and Marie Stoltz were there both times. They owned a small chemical company, RoMar Industries. Solvents and industrial cleaners.

  Max Becker had given a speech one night. Andy had never seen him speak before. It surprised him how passionate and eloquent his father was. His topic was the way the Communist conspiracy worked inside a free country. How they used drugs and music and subversive textbooks and ignorant politicians to brainwash the youth. The youth were the most valuable members of a free republic, Max said, and the most vulnerable.

  “Mom buys that JBS stuff, too,” said Andy. Though she’d remarked to him once that Roger Stoltz and the JBS were taking over Max Becker’s life.

  “She’s very well informed,” said Stoltz. “Well, say hello to them for me.”

  ANDY THANKED Old Man Overholt for six years of employment and gave his two-week notice. The publisher talked for a while about writing and papers and marriage and self-control but Andy hardly heard a word of it. He sat in Overholt’s office, nodding occasionally.

  Then he went back to his desk and wrote the Vonn brothers arrest story.

  It came fast and he put in a lot. It wasn’t really straight reporting. Not really an editorial or think piece, either. Just a story about a family and it was true. He got Karl’s cold black stare, and Alma’s saying she’d die when she couldn’t count her dead loved ones on two hands anymore, and Janelle’s guitar and Lenny’s shining flame orange and red chopped Harley Panhead. And the notion that these poor people had come halfway across the country to find a better life and had instead found ugliness, misery, ruined innocence, and death. That we owed them respect for trying. That they had borne a specific burden so that we would not have to bear it. This last idea was something Andy had talked about with David. Wasn’t sure how to write it but felt it very strongly in his heart. Andy changed all the names and places and some smaller things so nobody would know who it was about. Wrote it the best he could.