by Bruce Wagner
He let that sink in, then grew imperceptibly settled, because four months was “better” than whatever he’d been thinking. It was still insane but less insane.
“I can’t believe this. We have a kid—or had a kid!—and you knew about it and never told me . . .”
“I was sixteen, Ronny.”
“And now you’re fifty-three. And you kept this a secret? For forty fuckin’ years? Why, Dusty? What is that? You didn’t want people to know? Because you thought it’d hurt your fuckin’ career?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Bullshit.” He started back to the truck, muttering, “Yeah, it’s complicated. It’s fuckin’ complicated.”
She chased after. “Wait! Ronny, wait . . . please. Just—please wait. Can you please just listen?”
There wasn’t much of a choice—he’d been thrown down a dark well and she was the only one with a lantern, weak as it was. Grudgingly, he followed her back to the bank, where she asked him to sit. The onshore angler had vanished during the argument. On their return, the remaining one threw them a look of reproof and reluctantly kept fishing.
“Do you know about those women whose babies die in their wombs and the doctors say they still have to carry them to term? That’s what it’s felt like every day since she’s been gone. Except she was alive, and I held her and nursed her and loved her. And I’m sorry I never—if I had kept her—if I’d been allowed to keep her, I—I know I would have found you, Ronny. I would never have deprived you of that. But when I lost her . . . I was—it just, it destroyed me and I—I was ashamed, and . . . it took all those years until now to even begin to look for her. And I feel horrible about that too, that it took me so long! So please don’t judge me! Because I’ve judged me every day! And it’s not about me, Ronny, I know that, but that’s how I feel! When that bitch died last month—Reina, my mother, I . . . it—I guess I couldn’t, until she—even though I’d already kind of started putting things in motion before, something was stopping me—”
She broke. The angler looked over and shook his head with disdain then waded to the opposite shore and left. They sat and listened to the sporadic plashing of trout. With the river as their stage and the embankment their proscenium, they began an operatic duet, a fearful, star-crossed give-and-take without promise of grandeur or resolution. Tenuously, Ronny’s rage subsided.
“My parents sent me to my uncle’s,” he said. “In Ogden.” Each sentence was marked with a sigh. “A few weeks after you disappeared. Suddenly I was in fucking Ogden, away from my friends, and I didn’t know why. None of it made sense. I never went back to Tustin, either. A month or so later they sold the place. Then we moved to Provo and I’ve been here ever since.” He threw a rock into the water. “I kept in touch with some buddies back home. A few guys from the team. For a little while, when I first got to Ogden. No one knew what happened to you. Now I’m wondering if my parents knew. They must have. Or who else in the family did.”
“Reina took me to L.A. for the abortion. I was super-cooperative—I think I even told her I was glad to be getting rid of it. We were at a motel and I went down the hall for ice and never came back. Stuck out my thumb and climbed in the first car that stopped, a guy going to Arizona. So I went to Arizona. My daddy used to give me spending money that Reina never knew about. I saved it and probably had a few hundred dollars on me. Got a job waitressing in Wickenburg—that’s a big rehab town now. Might have even been one back then. It’s, like, the hottest fucking place in the world, it was a hundred and twenty when I got there, but I was so, so happy . . . to be away from her and still have my baby. I knew Reina was going to do everything she could to find me but I was safe there. I felt safe in the desert . . . My little girl was safe and that was the only thing that mattered.
“I was kind of taken in by these . . . lesbians. They were sort of wiccans—you know, hippy-dippy witches—but to me they were saints and angels. I could tell them anything, and I did. And they just loved me, like big sisters, and they listened. I told them all about Miranda—remember Miranda?—and all about you and my cunt mother and poor, sweet Daddy . . . and they totally got it. They were on my side, a hundred percent. It was like I’d stepped into a dream, a paradise. You know: Honesty World. No Secrets World. Unconditional Love World. They mothered me, I never had that, I didn’t even know what that was. I tried to seduce them but they weren’t going for it. They were righteous! I was terrible. But they knew I was just a child, wanting to be loved. When I was seven months, they made me stop working at the restaurant and took care of me. They took such good care of me. And—they knew a bunch of midwives, and I had Aurora at home in a tiny swimming pool. They cried as much as I did when she was born.
“But something happened . . . when she was about three months old. I started getting homesick. I missed my daddy, I mean, really missed him. He was such a gentle, tortured soul! And he couldn’t defend himself against her . . . I loved him so much. I just wanted to protect him. And I guess I missed ‘home’ too, no matter how fucked up it was. It’s pathetic but that’s how I felt. So I started secretly thinking about going back. To Tustin. It just totally started to preoccupy me, to you know, go back with my baby—and part of it was a Fuck you. A fuck you to Reina. I am woman, watch me roar. I mean, like, what could she do? What could Reina do? What was done was done. That’s what I was thinking: What could she or anyone do? The sickest thing is that part of the fantasy was that Reina would welcome me! I know that was in there somewhere . . . that she’d welcome us. You know, that once she saw Aurora, she’d be able to see the error of her ways. How twisted is that? I guess I kinda brainwashed myself—and they warned me, my angel-witches warned me. A leopard does not change its spots, they said. But I was young and hardheaded, and one day I just split. Got on the bus to Cali, I was finally going home. And Aurora was so beautiful. That’s what I named her, after the Northern Lights. Oh my God, Ronny, she was so, so beautiful. Madonna and child were going home. Supergirl and Superbaby—in matching capes. I had a lot of strength but too much innocence.
“And she did welcome us. But Reina was only doing what I did that time we went for the abortion. Playing a role. One morning—I’d only been back a week, hadn’t even taken a step outside the house—I went to her crib to feed her and Aurora was gone. Like that. Can you imagine? She wouldn’t tell me where she was, all she’d said was I’d never see her again. And I know it doesn’t make sense, that I didn’t go to the police or just tell someone—”
“What happened?”
“She said she ‘arranged’ for a family to take her—a couple who already had kids but really wanted to adopt a baby and could care for her and give her a ‘proper’ life. She said it had all gone through the county and was totally legal and there was nothing I could do, that it was the only way and to just shut up about it. Shut up about it! Of course with my adult brain, I know her story was bullshit. ‘The county’! And the woman who’s helping me . . . find her . . . thinks there’s a—possibility . . . that Reina may have caused her harm. And I know she was absolutely capable of that.”
“Jesus.”
“The morning after she ‘went missing,’ I took an overdose. My father did the same thing a few weeks later! They pumped my stomach and Reina said that was further evidence I was unfit to be a mother, that she always knew I was unstable and that was why the baby couldn’t—”
“I’m so sorry, Dusty.”
“—she said Daddy overdosed because of me! Because of the baby, that I bullied him so much about keeping the baby and made him feel so worthless that he wanted to take his life! That was like putting a knife in my heart! But now I think he did that because—because he might have known what Reina—that he knew what she did . . .” Ronny put a hand on her shoulder while she cried. “That was when we sold the house and moved to Carlsbad. And I never forgave myself for continuing to live with that woman—for three more years! Three more years before
I got the balls to run away to New York! I told myself I stayed because of my dad but that wasn’t really why. I stayed because of Reina. I guess I still wanted her to love me, as sick as that fucking sounds. I’ve spent a thousand years in therapy trying to figure it out. It was like I was married to her and was the battered wife.”
Neither spoke for a while.
“I thought about you,” said Ronny. “Did you think about me?”
“Of course I did.”
“I’ve seen all your movies. Even the awful ones,” he smiled. “Sam was all over me for never mentioning you. She was flattered too—you know, that she got the man who got Dusty Wilding.”
“The man who turned me gay?” They laughed.
“I told her that we had a little thing. She pried it out of me.”
“She’s pretty amazing, your wife. She’s beautiful.”
“Hey, don’t make a move on her. She might go for it.”
“Ha.”
“She’s tough,” he said, admiringly. “Wouldn’t have got through half my crazy shit without her. You know, when I saw you on talk shows, and on the covers of magazines . . . I was actually really proud. Not just about your career but how you’ve conducted your life.” She laughed again at the irony of that, and cried some more too. He drew her close. “I used to trip on what things would have been like if we’d hooked up and got married. I mean, even with the gay thing. How my life would have been different. You know—Mr. Hollywood! Then I’d think, Naw, that wouldn’t have worked. ‘That ain’t me.’ Oh, I had the whole deal going on in my head though, for real. Even included a few kids.”
“Are you serious?” It touched her.
“Maybe my life wouldn’t have been so different after all. We’d probably have hung in there a while because of the . . . children, then split up. I’d have let you have custody—”
“How kind of you.”
“—even though the judge would have sided with me because of the, you know, the gay thing. Times were different then.”
“You’re too much.”
“Maybe you’d have thrown a little palimony my way . . . ho ho! Then I’d’ve probably walked into a bar somewhere and met my Sam. You know what’s funny? In my head, the kids we had were all boys, you gave me sons. And I was tripping on that before I had my girls. That was always the fantasy. It’s fuckin’ amazin’—these thoughts we have, and they’re all bullshit! ‘I think this, I think that. I’m fantasizing this, I’m fantasizing that.’ All these years I’m tripping on us having sons, but we made a little girl together, no lie. You know, I did think about trying to get in touch with you. Just to say hey. But you were rich and famous and I guess I thought it might be too weird. What would I say, anyway? What would I have said? I’d have felt like the world’s biggest loser. Which I was, for a lotta, lotta years. You had this big life and at the time, mine was kind of falling apart. I was a drinker. Bad drinker. But then I met Sam and got sober, got ‘in the middle’ of A.A. I have twenty-three years now—it’s crazy. There’s a guy I know in the program who walked out of his son’s life. Knocked a girl up and vamoosed. When he turned forty, he decided to find him so he could make amends. His sponsor said, Don’t do it. ‘Don’t you dare.’ What he meant was, you fucked up his life once and you don’t have the right to step in and maybe fuck it up again. Let him find you. Otherwise, let it go.”
Dusty wondered if that story was for her—or just a story. Then she said, “Hey, Ronny. Think we can fish?”
“I know I can,” he smiled. “Can you?”
They waded in. He caught one right away. He held it and stuck a small plastic siphon into its mouth.
“What are you doing?”
“Pumping its stomach.”
“Oh shit, it O.D.’d!”
“I want to see what’s on the menu today.” He pulled out the tube and squinted at the bugs in the see-through pump. “What they’re hungry for—sometimes it’s the usual, and sometimes it’s a little more exotic. You think they’re eatin’ hamburgers but they managed to find caviar. If they’re having caviar, they won’t bite if you’re baiting the hook with a Big Mac. You’ll be here all day and go home with nothin’.”
He reached into one of his boxes and pulled out a nymph. He put it on the line and showed her how to cast the lure. In less than a minute, he shouted that she had one (Dusty wouldn’t even have known), then talked her through as she reeled it in. She held the fish in her hand while he removed the hook.
“I’m going to find her, Ronny—dead or alive. I’m going to find out what happened to her. I owe her that.”
It sounded like a line she once said in a movie, and he responded in kind. “I believe you will, Dusty. I believe you will.”
He told her to put the fish back in the water and she watched it swim away. When they reached the truck, he helped her out of the waders. They sat in the cab and finished what was left in the thermos.
“Will you . . . be there?” she said plaintively. “If I need—to talk? If I need you?”
“You know I will.”
“I’m so sorry, Ronny.”
“It is what it is. I just hope she’s alive. That your mother didn’t do that terrible thing.”
“Thank you.”
“And that’s a beautiful name—‘Aurora.’ I didn’t tell you that.”
They drove off. Dusty got weepy again. “You were just a boy but you were so good to me. I think I even finally told you about being in love with Miranda! I was crying all the time when she left and you kept asking what was wrong, so I told you . . . I can’t believe I did that, but it shows how much I trusted you. You cared about me.”
“I loved you.”
“And you didn’t judge. You were like a man that way. Or how a man should be.”
It was cold and beautiful and the sky looked so heavy. He suggested they go for breakfast.
“Ooh, bacon!” she said. “But hey: we shoulda kept that ol’ trout and caught some more. Coulda fried ’em up.”
“In this part of the river, we throw them back.”
“Oh! That’s cool. I love that.”
“‘Catch and release.’”
—
Before Dusty left for Utah, Allegra told her about the nightmares she’d been having about the miscarriage. Her wife suggested a support group but Allegra was reticent. Then why don’t you try Skyping with Ginevra?
The therapist was in her early fifties, chicly Euro, kind of hot. (Allegra didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it wasn’t that.) At the beginning of the call, Ginevra informed the young woman that because Dusty was her client, this would have to be a one-off—but she was happy to help in any way she could. Allegra already knew the ethical drill and wasn’t looking for a shrink anyway.
“So how are you doing with everything that’s going on?”
“Oh! I think I’m actually doing okay. But there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on. I mean, man, the whole daughter thing with Dusty . . . she’s so amazing. She’s been through so much. And I know she likes to—not really minimize, that’s not the word, the right word—but diminish, or whatever, her mother—her mom’s death. I mean, even though she hated her, Reina was just so big in her life, and I think that her death, it just—oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
“You’re saying—what I think you’re saying—is that grief is complicated and it’s important to honor all of its aspects.”
“I guess . . . though it’s been so hard for me personally to get to that place. But the whole thing with her daughter—trying to find her—is more about—not more about, but—I think on some level she’s just so angry with herself—totally not that she should be! But you know she kind of pointed the finger at her mother all those years—and Reina was a total monster and I’m totally not judging Dusty—but I think she maybe knew her mom was going to die? Sensed it? And that if she di
dn’t try to find her kid, there wouldn’t be anyone left to blame but herself? So she finally put it all in motion to, you know, finally go looking for her. Because I think that was something she wished she would have done a long time ago. So what she’s doing now is so amazing and incredibly brave. I try to put myself in her place and just can’t imagine. I don’t think I would have had the courage.”
“You’d be surprised. But let’s talk about you. And your loss.”
“Yeah.”
“Does it upset you that Dusty has a daughter?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, preparing to be offended.
“Well, the two of you have been trying. And now you’re dealing with the grief and I’m wondering if you feel alone in that process. If you resent Dusty for going off and looking for that other little girl.”
“Not really. I don’t think so. And she’s been great. She’s been there for me. I just think because—maybe because she’s older, it maybe didn’t affect her in the same way. Or maybe it did and that’s even a part of what motivated her to—you know, go looking for her kid. I mean, along with Reina’s death, maybe the miscarriage gave her another . . . push.”
“Let’s talk about the nightmares.”
“Usually, it’s the same one. I’m in bed sleeping and there’s a baby crying somewhere in the house. Kinda obvious, huh. And I just lay there trying to figure out where it is . . . you know, is it in the library? Is it in the living room? The laundry room? The kitchen? And I sort of start mapping out the house in my mind—going through each room. And my ears are, like, aching from trying to pinpoint it. Then I start to think, well, maybe it’s outside . . . by the pool or in the cabana. And the only thing that gives me some little form of comfort is that I know at least Dusty is with it. You know, Dusty’s taking care of it. And that’s, like, the moment in the dream where I can actually breathe. But then it occurs to me—and this is the shock and the horrible part!—that Dusty isn’t even home, she’s on location somewhere in Havana or wherever . . . and that’s when I hear the baby again and now it’s, like, screaming, it’s totally screaming. I mean, shrieking, right at the foot of the bed! And all this is happening, you know, with the incredible speed that shit happens in a dream. Like, the dream could be a half hour or could be, you know, like, three seconds. And I try to get up but I’m paralyzed—of course I am! I mean, what would a nightmare be without total paralysis, right? And I totally can’t move my arms or legs and the screams are getting louder and louder and that’s when I realize—this is the second horrible part—that this is how it’s going to be—you know, the baby screaming and screaming and maybe probably dying, and me just laying there listening to it—with both of us not being able to drink or eat, and no one finding us. And that’s just how it’s going to be . . . until Dusty comes home.”