When he couldn’t get a driving job, there was other night work: busboy, dishwasher, janitor for one of the services that specialized in cleaning offices and stores after they closed. Plenty of day jobs, too, driving and nondriving. Deliveryman, handyman’s helper, trash hauler, pickup driver for Goodwill and the Sally Ann; farmhand, day laborer, fast-food worker, supermarket stockboy. He’d done all of those and others he couldn’t even remember. Honest work for honest pay, every job he’d held in his life.
First thing he did when he left Animal Lifeline was buy a Paloma paper. Two possibilities in the help-wanted listings, but one turned out to be already filled and he didn’t get the other. He walked around town looking for window signs in eating places and shops, checking a bulletin board in a supermarket. Nothing. So then he drove back over to Los Alegres, figuring bigger town, more opportunities.
Three large thrift stores on the main drag. Second one he tried, a Goodwill, had a Help Wanted sign in the front window. Two jobs open, stockboy and pickup driver. All he had to do to get the driving job was tell the store manager he’d done that kind of work before, show his commercial driver’s license, fill out a form. Five days a week, eight to four. Little better than minimum wage, but that was all right for now. Manager told him he could start Monday morning, they didn’t do pickups on Saturday.
After he left the Goodwill he drove around for a while, until he spotted a run-down auto court on the south end of town near the freeway. Part hotsheet motel, part long-term transient housing, from the look of it. Twelve units, little white stucco boxes in a three-quarter square around a courtyard, nothing growing in the courtyard except cars. Units rented by day, week, or month, and they had a vacancy. He took it, handing over a hundred and a quarter for one week.
His unit was one of those in back, one room and bath. Beat-up furniture, board-hard bed, waterstained wallpaper, cheap portable TV, no phone. Bed wasn’t too bad, the TV worked all right, and the bath had a chipped tub in it.
He took the two framed photographs out of his suitcase, always the first thing he did when he took a room someplace. Head-and-shoulders color portrait of Annalisa, smiling, her corn-silk hair brushed out long over her shoulders. And their wedding photo, two of them all slicked up, smiling and happy, getting ready to cut the pink-and-white cake. He set the photos on the nightstand, the one of Annalisa alone closest to the bed and turned so he could look right at it when he was lying down.
He hadn’t had a bath in so long he couldn’t remember the last time. Showers but not a real soak. He ran hot water into the tub, as much as he could get from the tap, shucked out of his clothes, and lowered himself into the steamy water. Man! Washed all over, twice, then lay back with the water up to his chin and his eyes shut, thinking about Annalisa and Gallagher. He didn’t even care when he couldn’t coax any more hot out of the pipes and the bathwater turned cold.
He felt good. Hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time.
14
Saturday morning, a little before nine, Cam drove to Sebastopol to see Caitlin. Reluctantly. He’d called first, to make sure she’d be home, and the conversation had been brief and unenthusiastic on her part. At least she hadn’t told him not to come. The way things were between Cat and him, a lukewarm reception was the best he could hope for.
It was fourteen miles from Los Alegres to Sebastopol, a mile or so more than his one-way, five-days-a-week commute to Paloma, but he seldom made the trip. He’d been there three times in the past year, twice on business—one of the local apple processors had branched out into winemaking—and once on a Sunday outing with Hallie and the girls; he hadn’t stopped to see Caitlin on any of those occasions, hadn’t been to her home in … what? Three years? At least that. Nor had she come down to Los Alegres to see him in at least that long, despite repeated invitations—not since Gus walked out on her. The only times he’d seen Cat in recent memory had been on neutral restaurant territory, a couple of quick lunches and one family dinner in Occidental that’d been a chore for all of them, Teddy acting out, Caitlin drinking too much of the cheap wine she preferred, Leah and Shannon cranky and uncomfortable because neither of them cared for their aunt. Shannon had said later, “Aunt Cat looks like a witch,” and even though he’d scolded her for the comment, he’d thought privately that she was right. Caitlin, his once sweet-faced little sister—a broomstick refugee from Oz.
Dealing with her had become too painful. Rose’s other legacy: They didn’t even have each other for comfort. He loved Caitlin, he thought that down deep she still loved him, but there was no connection left between them. They couldn’t agree on anything, much less the causes and events of the night of January 4, 1974. Familiar strangers was what they’d become. No, worse than that. Tolerant enemies.
Her house was beginning to fit the witch image, too. Once it had been an attractive five-room bungalow, but years of neglect had turned it into an eyesore with broken shutters, peeling paint, a yard choked with weeds and unmowed grass. The rest of the neighborhood, one of the small town’s older residential sections, was the domain of determinedly civic-minded, lower-middle-class families: All the other houses and yards along the block were well maintained. Caitlin couldn’t be popular with her neighbors—not that it would bother her. A woman who didn’t give a damn about herself would hardly care about others’ opinions of her.
Cam went up onto the creaky porch. The morning was warmish, tag end of the spell of Indian summer weather. (Perfect day for cruising. If it was like this tomorrow he’d take the Hallie Too down to San Pablo Bay, maybe San Francisco Bay.) The door stood open—welcome mat for flies, since there was no screen door. From somewhere at the rear he could hear the blaring percussion and obscene lyrics of bad gangsta rap. Little Teddy, all grown up too fast.
He tried ringing the bell, but if it made any sound inside, he couldn’t hear it above the noise of the music. Probably broken, like so many other things here. Like Caitlin herself. He walked in, calling her name.
Pretty soon she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. He was in the middle of the living room by then, looking around at a clutter of newspapers and dirty wine and beer glasses and unemptied ashtrays and strewn articles of clothing. And taking note that more than half the butts in the trays were unfiltered, a grease-stained uniform shirt was draped over the arm of a recliner, and a pair of equally greasy work shoes had been tossed on the floor nearby. The name Hal was stitched over the shirt pocket.
Caitlin stopped a few feet away, making no move to embrace him. As a little girl she’d been a toucher, a hugger, but not anymore. Not with him, anyway. Whenever he put his arms around her after that night she’d gone rigid, and finally he’d given up on contact of any kind. She didn’t like to be touched, she’d told him, but it was obvious from one ex-husband and a long parade of lovers that she didn’t mind or at least tolerated being touched by other men. She had an almost pathological fear of being alone, yet the turnover rate in her relationships indicated dissatisfaction on her lovers’ part as well as on hers. She didn’t seem to take pleasure in anything, to be able to express her feelings or to let anyone else’s feelings reach her.
As damaged as he was, he’d still managed to build a decent life for himself, to form a lasting relationship with one person, and to make most of the right choices, while Caitlin, who hadn’t seen the horror he had, who should have had fewer scars and an easier time adjusting, had made all the wrong choices and completely screwed up her life. The irony in that was as bitter as gall.
“Finished, bro?”
“… What?”
“Examining me and how I live.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Sure you were. Both look like hell, right?”
He managed to restrain a wince as he looked at her. Right. Slat-thin except for the potbelly she was growing. Brown hair unwashed and uncombed, skin sallow and splotchy without makeup. Faded Levi’s raggedly cut off to expose bony knees, Grateful Dead T-shirt showing the sag of unbound brea
sts. Thirty-three years old. His little sister.
Her eyes snapped at him. Saying plainly, I don’t need your goddamn pity.
He cleared his throat. “New man in your life?” he asked, gesturing toward the greasy shirt.
“Hal Ullman. He’s a mechanic.”
“Serious?”
“He thinks it could be.”
“How long have you been living together?”
“Two months. He’s—Damn that music!”
They’d been talking in loud voices, to compete with the thud-and-pound of the gangsta rap, and now Teddy had raised the volume even higher. Caitlin stalked out of the room, and after a few seconds Cam could hear her screaming at her son. There was a defiant answering shout, then another shriek from Caitlin: “Turn that fucking thing off or I’ll break it with a hammer, I swear to God!” The music sheered off abruptly. The sudden silence seemed to tremble with afterechoes.
Caitlin came back and flopped onto the raggedy sofa. “He drives me crazy sometimes with that rap crap.” She lit a Marlboro, waved it vaguely at the other furniture. “Sit down, Cameron. You look uncomfortable standing there.”
He started to sit in the recliner, changed his mind because of Hal’s shirt, and put himself in a chair that matched the sofa in upholstery, stains, and frays. He watched her make sucking noises on her cigarette and said automatically, “You smoke too much.”
“My lungs. You come here to lecture me or what?”
“No. Just to talk.”
“Uh-huh. About the river house, I suppose.”
“It’s empty again, Cat.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
“It’s liable to stay that way all winter. Longer, if the river floods again this year.”
“I know that too. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How are you going to—”
He shut off the rest of the question because his nephew came stomping into the room, a boom box the size of a microwave under one skinny arm. Pimples and a ten-hair mustache. Baggy basketball shorts, tank top, Nike basketball shoes. Spiked hair with purple streaks, an earring in each ear and another hanging from a nostril. Gangsta look, complete with gangsta scowl, to go with the assault music he favored.
“Hello, Teddy.”
“Theodore, man. Theodore.”
“All right. How are you, Theodore?”
“Shitty.” He glared at his mother and kept on stomping out through the front door.
“No respect,” Caitlin said.
“He’s at that age.
“He’s a little shit. Hal says he needs a good boot in the ass. I’m beginning to think he’s right.”
“Child psychology must be one of Hal’s long suits.”
“Don’t start with me,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
“We are not going to sell the river house, if that’s why you’re here. I’ll never agree to sell it. I don’t know why you can’t get that through your head.”
“I’m only thinking of your best interests.”
“Sure. My best interests.”
“I mean it. Are you still working at the card shop?”
She finished her cigarette, immediately lit another. “So?”
“I know what your take-home pay is, and it—”
“They gave me a raise.”
“It’s still not much. With no more rent money coming in—”
“Rent money doesn’t matter right now. Hal makes good wages, pays his share. We’re doing okay.”
“Hal isn’t going to be a permanent fixture.”
“How do you know he isn’t?”
“You as much as said it isn’t serious.”
“It’s serious enough for now. Besides, somebody’ll rent the river house eventually. Somebody always does.”
“You’ve been lucky, Cat. Keeping tenants for any length of time is getting harder, you know that as well as I do. The place is falling apart—”
“Oh, bullshit. When was the last time you took a good look at it? Or even drove by?”
He couldn’t remember the last time. Years—before the last big flood.
“Yeah,” Caitlin said, “I thought so.”
“I talked to John Lacey when that hippie bunch moved out last month. And before that, when the complaints began piling up. He said it took a bad beating in the last flood. It might withstand another without major foundation work, but he wouldn’t want to bet on it. He has no reason to exaggerate.”
“So we’ll shore up the foundation.”
“We will?”
She just looked at him.
“All right. I’m willing to pay for it, if it means putting the house on the market.”
“But not to keep it in the family.”
“It should’ve been sold years ago, when river property was at its peak. As things are now, we’d be lucky to realize a hundred thousand for it. You can have all the money, Cat. Every penny.”
“I don’t want money, I want to keep the property.”
“It’s a drain on both of us, can’t you see that? And I don’t just mean a financial drain.”
“No, I don’t see that.”
“I won’t put any more of my capital into the house. Let it collapse, let the next flood carry the bloody place out to sea for all I care.”
“That won’t happen, no matter what the Realtor says. That house has been standing for sixty years, and it’ll stand another twenty or thirty, what do you want to bet?”
Exasperation was making him edgy, restless. And the smoke from her cigarettes, the residue of tens of thousands of others that permeated the room and its furnishings, had aggravated his sinuses, giving him a dull headache. He leaned forward, the palms of his hands making dry, raspy sounds as he rubbed them over his knees.
“Cat, listen to me. That house… I don’t want it in my life anymore. I don’t want to have to think about it. I simply want it gone.”
“Why?”
“For God’s sake, you know why.”
“Guilt wouldn’t have something to do with it?”
“Guilt?” The accusation shocked him. “What would I have to feel guilty about?”
“You’re the only one who can answer that. You were the survivor that night.”
“What does that have to—Jesus! You don’t think there was anything I could’ve done to prevent what happened?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I’d been there instead of you.”
“You couldn’t have done anything, either. What’s the matter with you? You were eight, I was ten … kids, little kids.”
Nothing from Caitlin.
“I was in bed when Pa came and the yelling started. I didn’t know he’d brought a gun with him. How could I know he’d bring one of his guns?”
“You told him about Ma and Fatso the time before. What’d you think he’d do if it happened again?”
“Not what he did.”
“Then why’d you tell on her?”
“I couldn’t stand what she was doing to him. I didn’t want her to hurt him or us anymore.”
“But you didn’t care if he hurt her.”
“That’s not true. You can’t put the blame on me. Or on Pa, for that matter.”
“The hell I can’t. He killed her, didn’t he? The dirty son of a bitch killed my mother, and you, all you did was run away and hide.” She was yelling now, red-faced, her eyes sparking. Quick to tantrum, as always. Keep going down this same worn-out, potholed road with her and she’d have hysterics.
“I did not run away and hide,” he said.
“What else do you call it? They found you in the attic, didn’t they? For all I know you were hiding up there the whole time he was killing her and himself.”
“Dammit, that’s not so. I went to the attic after I found them dead. I hardly remember it, I was so sick and scared—you’d have been sick and scared too if you’d seen what I saw.”
“I wouldn’t have hidden in the attic.”<
br />
“How do you know what you’d have done? You can’t know from an adult perspective.”
She drew a couple of ragged breaths, coughed, then filled her lungs with more carcinogens and coughed again. The break in their heated exchange seemed to calm her somewhat. “Okay,” she said, “there wasn’t anything you could’ve done, and you don’t feel any guilt. Then why’re you so afraid of the river house after all these years?”
“Afraid of it?”
“You haven’t been inside since that night. You wouldn’t go back in there if your life depended on it.”
“Oh, come on—”
“It’s true. You won’t go near the property, you keep nagging me to sell it, you want it out of your life, you don’t want to think about it. Isn’t that right?”
He could no longer sit still. He stood and paced the room, the smoke and dust burning in his nostrils and making his head pound.
“I won’t sell,” Caitlin said. “Not now, not ever. If the house collapses, gets swept away, fine, there’s nothing I can do about that. But the property is going to stay in my hands as long as I’m above ground. I mean that, Cameron.”
“Why? Why does it mean so much to you?”
“It’s all I have left of Ma. Every time I look at a picture of her, it’s like looking at a stranger.”
“A monument, for Christ’s sake?”
“You shut up with that kind of talk.”
“The house means so much to you, why don’t you go live there?” He stopped pacing to stare down at her. “Why stay here? Sell this place instead.”
Bleak and painful things moved beneath the surfaces of her face. She sucked hard on her cigarette, jabbed it out in the nearest tray, pinched another out of the pack.
“You’ve never lived there, not one single day,” he said. “You couldn’t stand it any more than I could. Why don’t you admit it to yourself, if not to me?”
Nothing but the Night Page 5