Pacific Avenue

by Watson, Anne L.

  I got moved from Angola to Jackson about six months ago. Jackson is a prison, but it’s a hospital, too. I got into a program here for veterans with problems. They’ve been concentrating on helping me make some memories conscious so I at least know what happened.

  The reason I’m telling you is that it has to do with the night Jamie died. I’m sure you remember my nightmares. I don’t know if I ever said anything understandable in my sleep, but the dreams were usually about being trapped.

  I’ll tell you what it goes back to:

  One night during the war, we came under fire, and a buddy and I got separated from our unit. We hid in an old building. It was deserted—dark and damp, with boarded-up windows. Some wooden crates were stacked against the back wall, and I sheltered by them. They probably saved my life.

  The building didn’t get a direct hit, but a round came close enough that the roof collapsed. I was trapped in the wreckage, and so was Ben, my buddy. He was badly injured. I couldn’t move to help him, and I spent most of the night listening to him as he groaned and gasped and finally died.

  In the morning, they pulled us out of the ruins, but of course it was too late for Ben. I had a broken arm and some other injuries. It was about the end of my tour of duty anyway. They sent me home, and that was the last I saw of the army.

  I didn’t remember that night, not in detail. It was too awful. But I’ve had the horrors about it ever since. It doesn’t take much to make me feel trapped.

  Oh, God, that’s what he meant that night when I came back from Tex’s class, when he was screaming he was trapped. But why did he have to be so secretive? Why didn’t he tell me about the war? How was I to know?

  Of course, claustrophobia is a bad problem to have in prison. I got so out of it for a while that they couldn’t put up with me in Angola any more, and that’s how I got sent to Jackson.

  I remembered something else in treatment. It’s about the night Jamie died. I woke up and heard her gasping for breath. If I’d known how to save her, maybe I could have, but I didn’t even know it was her. It was dark and hot—humid like nights in Vietnam. I was back there, trapped in that goddamned building, hearing Ben gasp for breath.

  I wish like hell I’d known what was going on. Sam says that premature babies often have breathing problems and that crib deaths are more common with them. I wish I could take comfort in statistics, but I can’t. I still cry sometimes, remembering her.

  It means a lot to me for you to know I didn’t hurt Jamie. I pled guilty because I felt guilty—about Vietnam and Ben and about Jamie too, and because I was confused and scared at the time. I wish I hadn’t.

  I wish he hadn’t too. I wish he’d trusted me enough to let me in on what was going on. I gave up plenty for Richard—got terrorized by Green Coat, got put down every time I had to deal with strangers. I even lost most of my family. I’m sick and tired of being a one-woman Civil Rights Movement. Dad was right—it’s too soon for this kind of relationship to have a chance.

  I’m probably going to get either parole or an outright pardon before long, because I have a real lawyer now and he’s working on it. When I get out, I’m going back to work for Martin and Thu. And I’m staying in treatment until I get a handle on my problems. Maybe you want to stay in California, and maybe if you do come back, you won’t want to see me. I won’t blame you, if that’s how you feel.

  But I wish you’d try to forgive me and let me know if we could at least talk. I’ve changed a lot, and it’s my dream to get back together with you someday and show you how much I still love you.

  Richard

  By the time I was through reading, I was sobbing. I didn’t bother going to bed—I was sure I wouldn’t sleep anyway. Toward morning, I fell asleep sitting up. I woke with hardly enough time to get to work. I had stewed about it for most of the night, but I had made my decision.

  I won’t even answer him. I won’t go back to New Orleans, if that’s what he’s doing. I need a better job, and I’ll start looking for one soon—here in California. Maybe I can do scenery or costumes for a TV or movie studio. I’ll get to know Daniel and live the way everyone else does. I’ve had enough of trying to be a hero. I’m not cut out for it.

  I went to work, but I felt hollow and headachy from not sleeping. Almost as soon as I got there, I dropped the coffeepot and cut my hand on the broken glass as I tried to pick up a shard. Lacey brought me the first aid kit and cleaned up the rest herself.

  She set me to boxing up files of some finished projects to take to storage. It was dusty work, but at least I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I spent the morning daydreaming.

  I work for a movie studio and make lots of money. I live in a nice apartment in Hollywood. On Saturday night, I put on a dress—not one I bought from the Sally Army, a brand new one. It’s Wedgwood blue to match my eyes. I put on makeup and stockings and diamond earrings. I know Daniel thinks I’m pretty when he comes over to take me to dinner.

  At lunchtime, Lacey stuck her head into the file room and told me she had a picnic lunch. I figured she wanted to ask what was wrong with me these days, and I almost refused to go. But then I changed my mind. I’d have to give her some kind of reason sooner or later.

  I was right about what she wanted. “What’s going on, Kathy?” she asked, unwrapping a couple of burgers. “You look like the wrath of God.”

  “I didn’t sleep well.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I got a letter from someone I used to know. It was a little upsetting.” My voice was dismissive.

  “From Richard?” she asked.

  I was sure I hadn’t heard her right. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, did you get a letter from Richard Johnson?”

  I thought I was going to faint. “How do you know about Richard?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  “Give me a break, Kathy. You came into Giannini’s last December looking like you were in bad trouble. I cared enough to find out what kind of trouble it was.”

  I felt a hot flush of anger. “What else do you know?” I asked.

  “Your friends in Gretna told me the whole story when I was back there in February. You and Richard, Jamie, your dad, and how your mother treated you.”

  “My friends in Gretna!” I could not believe what I was hearing. Lacey had looked up the Motleys, everyone I knew. “How did you find them?” I asked. This I had to hear.

  “Eddie phoned me. And before you ask how, your sister gave him my phone number.”

  I was dizzy with anger. I wanted to smack her so bad, my hand tingled. “Lacey, I don’t believe this. You went to my sister? How did you get her phone number? And how could you sneak and pry like that, and lie to me?”

  “You lied to me. From the first day.” She still wasn’t raising her voice. “You stole your résumé out of George’s office, and you lied about where you were from. You told me you were from Illinois. You have a southern accent, and you’re from Illinois?”

  I jumped off the bench, scattering napkins. “Yes, I am! I was born in Evanston. I don’t lie. I don’t sneak. And I don’t believe this. How in hell did you get my sister’s phone number?” I didn’t care if she got me fired—I was quitting anyway.

  “I must have gotten it from your employment application, wouldn’t you say? Since you don’t sneak, I mean.”

  I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach. All my fury went out of me like a bubble popping. There was nothing I could say. I had no right to call anyone else a sneak. I dropped back onto the bench. I was shaking with a tired, let-down feeling left over from the anger.

  “I thought you were my friend, Lacey,” I said. My voice was hoarse as an old beggar’s.

  “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done all your work for you the past two months. You needed someone to help you, and I decided to try. I hope someone would do the same for my daughter.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  “What did Richard say?” she asked again, still pleasant and patient.
<
br />   “He’s going to get out of prison.” There wasn’t any reason not to tell her, since she knew everything else. “He never did anything to Jamie. They’re going to let him out.”

  “How’s he holding up? That was some awful experience he had, going to prison when he hadn’t done anything.”

  “I don’t know how he’s doing—he said he was getting help. He asked me to come back.”

  “So, you’re going?”

  “No, I’m not. There’s a guy here asking me out, and he’s nice. I’m staying here.”

  It was her turn to be astonished. “Who is he? You never said anything about anyone.”

  “I just met him. He’s Marilu’s nephew. He moved into the apartment next door, and we went looking at the stars. He’s studying to be an oceanographer. I want to go out with him.”

  “Did you tell Richard all this?”

  “No, I’m not going to answer his letter.” I concentrated on shredding the burger wrapper in my lap.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve had enough. I want to live like other women do, get married and have kids. Not worry about some guy acting crazy, or whether my family likes him. Or whether we can find a place to live, or go to a photographer’s, or even walk around together without getting insulted.” It was all pouring out. I realized it was pretty incoherent. I wadded the paper into a ball and threw it toward the trash barrel. I missed by a mile.

  Lacey got up and retrieved the paper. She dropped it into the can and came back to our table. “Tell me something, Kathy,” she said. “What was the problem between you and your mother?”

  “She’s a real witch. And she never cared about me. Just her middle-class white friends and her middle-class white life.”

  “What was her objection to Richard?”

  “She said he was disturbed and no one would accept us. And that we lived like hippies.”

  “Is that different from what you just said yourself? Is your mother the person in your family you want to be like?” Her voice was polite, just asking, calm as if she were asking if I wanted ketchup on my French fries.

  “That’s not fair!” I snapped. There must be some difference. Except there’s not. Tears spilled down my face, and I didn’t even try to wipe them away.

  She reached out and touched my arm.

  I looked at her hand. The brown back of it and the white palm like Richard’s. Like Jamie’s little hands. I started crying then for Richard and for Jamie, for everything I’d had that last day at the zoo. I didn’t even get to say good-bye. But there’s no use pretending I can get any of it back.

  “I don’t want to start up with him again,” I finally said. “It’s too hard.”

  “So, just letting him know you got the letter and have some sympathy for him is starting up again? Look, Kathy, he’s getting treatment for his problems. He didn’t do anything to your daughter. Why don’t you at least let him know you’re not holding a grudge?”

  “I’m afraid it might not stop there.”

  “Listen to me, Kathy Woodbridge. You wouldn’t be afraid of getting involved with Richard if you didn’t still love him. You know as well as I do, that’s where you belong.”

  Richard’s hands, his eyes, the way he laughed—clear as a photo in an album. Richard shaking glitter from his clothes. Working a marionette. Reading a book. Holding Jamie. Don’t think about it anymore. Slam the album shut.

  “No, Lacey,” I said. “I am not going back to Richard.”

  “You love this other guy?”

  I tried to say I did, but I couldn’t. When Martin was shot, Thu didn’t run away and find another husband. Maybe a hero is just someone who does what they can, someone who doesn’t run away. The way I’ve run away, every single time. Like I want to do now, run to this dream about Daniel. And when this fantasy wears out, another one, probably. What will I do when they’re all worn out?

  “Don’t love him, huh?” she said. “But this other guy would be a lot easier, wouldn’t he? No one giving you hell for being with a black man. No more thinking twice about holding hands in public, or having waiters in restaurants seat you back by the kitchen. Hey, Kathy, you could even join the country club.

  “You’d just know for the rest of your nice white life that you’d thrown away the man you loved when he needed you most. What kind of future can you build on that, Kathy? And how will it feel to lie in another man’s arms, wondering what happened to Richard?”

  ~ 32 ~

  September 1975

  San Pedro

  Lacey

  Mr. Giannini was put out that Kathy was leaving at such short notice, but I told him it was a family emergency. I felt it was fitting to round things out with one last misrepresentation.

  I helped Kathy pack the stuff she wanted to take—it all fit in a suitcase, if you don’t count the cat. Willis hauled the rest to the Salvation Army. We drove her to the airport on the evening of September the seventh. She sat in the backseat with her cat carrier. I didn’t see Henry, but he howled so much, I had no doubt he was there.

  Kathy leaned forward and stuck her head between the front seats. “Lacey?”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “How did you find out about Richard?”

  “You didn’t do a good job of covering up, you know.”

  She pulled back a little. “What do you mean?”

  I turned to face her as much as the seat belt allowed. “Oh, Kathy,” I said, “stay away from a life of crime—you’re no good at hiding things. First you pick an apartment building with a landlady on the premises. You’re the only tenant, so she has no one else to think about. To top it off, she’s a psychic.”

  “Does Marilu really know anything?”

  “Occult, you mean? Probably not. But psychics are good at reading people. And for all she knew, you’d be in the shop, buying advice from her. So, she kept her eye on you. I don’t think she’d have gone so far as to open your mail, but she looked at the envelopes and remembered the return addresses. You even gave her a check with your Gretna address on it, for goodness sake.”

  I was afraid she’d be angry, but she laughed. “Knows all, sees all, tells all, you mean?”

  “Can’t say you weren’t warned.”

  “How did you get my sister’s phone number?”

  “Marilu gave me her name and told me she lived in Baton Rouge. I looked in the phone book. The library has directories from all over the country.”

  “But how could I have known you’d go to Marilu? Why would anyone have thought you’d go all the way to Gretna? How many people would have done that?”

  “I know. I had some problems of my own, Kathy. My daughter went off to college—I just felt so useless for a while, there. And I apologize—in a way. But Kathy, do you wish I had minded my own business? I’ll let you be the one to decide. If you say so, the next time someone needs help, I’ll just walk on by.”

  She didn’t say I should have kept my nose out of her affairs. So, I guess that was my answer. For a while, she didn’t say anything.

  “You okay now?” she finally asked. “I mean, about your daughter and all?”

  “I’m okay. I’m applying to go back to college myself.”

  “I’m glad. That office is a crummy place to work.”

  Willis pulled into an airport parking garage and found a spot. He hauled her suitcase and cat carrier out of the car. We took the cat to the counter where we had to ship him, and went to sit with Kathy at the gate.

  “By the way,” I told her, “Francine has your thousand dollars for you when you get back. I can’t believe you ran off and left that in a piggy bank. And then turned up in San Pedro desperate enough to take a job at Giannini’s.”

  “What are you going to study when you go to school?” she asked me.

  “Sociology or social work. I like helping people.”

  Kathy nodded. “I guess it’s that or the FBI.”

  She sounded like Angela. I shot her a look to see if she meant it seriously, but she grinned bac
k at me. Wasn’t much I could say—she was entitled. Willis gazed at the people walking by in the concourse, perfect innocence in every line of his face. Kathy had no idea he’d been as nosy as me. Men always get away with more than women do.

  There was still one thing I wanted to know. “Kathy, how did you snitch your résumé from George?”

  “When I worked for Martin, I did scenery and special effects. A lot of it is almost like magic tricks, making things appear and disappear. And George is hardly the world’s smartest audience.”

  “But what would you have done if you hadn’t had a chance to take it?”

  “Actually, it was all made up. Snitching it was just an impulse.”

  “Sneaky, sneaky,” I said fondly.

  When it was time for Kathy to board, I gave her a big hug and a kiss, like I always gave Angela when she went away. Willis stood around, looking embarrassed and out of place.

  “Don’t give us the tears, now, Kathy,” he said. “We’ll see you in February.”

  Kathy hugged him, too. His sheepish look made me wish I had my camera.

  On the way home, I drove. We listened to soft music on the radio, not saying much. At the end of the freeway, I turned off onto Pacific Avenue. I noticed an Apartment for Rent sign in the front window of The Mystic Eye.

  “I have to put an ad in the paper for another secretary when I get to work in the morning,” I told Willis.

  “Make that two secretaries,” Willis said.

  “Well, Willis, I can’t just quit.”

  “Why not? Why’d you take that job in the first place?”

  “You know why. To save for Angela’s college. And so she’d get to have pretty clothes and stuff while she was in high school.”

  “And now she has her scholarship and her job. You know, there are good points about not being needed so much. Like being able do a little for yourself for a change. Think about it.”

  The light at Ninth Street turned red just before we reached it. I turned to Willis.

  “You know what Angela said to me? She said ‘Mama, I appreciate all you’ve done for me. But I’ve passed the point when you need to change my diaper. What would you think if I called you in here to put my underwear on me? Let’s move on, okay?’”