“Yeah, sure. Hold on a sec.”
The man retreated into the house—our house—to find a pen and paper, and I realized that a work number wouldn’t do me any good. It was Friday night. Unless I wanted to wait until Monday, I was screwed. On an impulse, I looked toward the wood frame house next door. The name on the burnt wood novelty shingle hanging from the lighted porch was CRAWFORD. The Crawfords! I should have thought of them before. If Mr. and Mrs. Crawford still lived next door, they would know what the hell had happened. They would know why my parents were not here, why this strange man and his wife were living in our house.
Without waiting for the man to return, I hopped off the porch and started across the lawn toward the Crawfords’. “Hey!” the man called out behind me. I heard his wife yell something.
I stepped over the low hedge that separated our house from the Crawfords’ and walked up their porch, ringing the doorbell. A moment later, I was gratified to see Mrs. Crawford open the door. I was afraid she’d be frightened by my mohawk, and I purposely tried to look as nonthreatening as possible, but she opened the door all the way, totally unafraid. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Crawford! Thank God you still live here. Where are my parents? I just went next door and there’s a strange man living in our house who said he’s never heard of us.”
Now there was fear in her eyes. She moved slightly behind the door, ready to slam it at the slightest provocation. “Who are you?” Her voice sounded older than I remembered, weaker.
“I’m Bob.”
“Bob?”
“Bob Jones. Don’t you remember?” I could see that she didn’t. “I’m Martin and Ella’s son!”
“Martin and Ella had no son.”
“You used to babysit me!”
She started to close the door. “I’m sorry—”
I was so frustrated that I felt like screaming at her, but I kept my voice even. “Just tell me where my parents are. Martin and Ella Jones. Where are they?”
She looked at me, squinting for a moment as thought she almost recognized me, then shook her head, obviously giving up her memory search.
“Where are they?”
“The Joneses died six months ago in an automobile accident. Drunk driver.”
My parents were dead.
I stood there as she closed the door on me, not moving, not reacting, not doing anything. The door clicked shut, followed by the snick of a dead bolt. In my peripheral vision, I could see the curtains move on the window to the right side of the door, could see Mrs. Crawford’s face peek through the opening. I was vaguely aware that the man living in my parents’ house—Taz—was calling to me, saying something.
My parents were dead.
I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. I had not had enough time to think about their lives to be able to react to their deaths. I had not had time to prepare for and cultivate a sense of loss. The shock had been too sudden. I wanted to feel sad, but I didn’t. I simply felt numb.
I turned slowly around, walked out to the sidewalk.
I hadn’t been invited to my own parents’ funeral.
I wished that my parents and I had been closer, but I’d always assumed there’d be time for that, that eventually it would happen, that age would provide common ground, that years would bring togetherness. It was not something I’d actively planned for or sought out, just a general feeling, but now those vague hopes had been permanently dashed. I should’ve made an effort, I thought. I should’ve known that something like this could happen to them, and I should’ve put aside the babyishness, the pettiness, and not let our disagreements divide us. I should’ve gotten closer to them while I’d had the chance.
Taz was still calling to me, but I ignored him and got in my car, turning the key in the ignition. I glanced back toward the Crawfords’ as I pulled out, and now both Mrs. and Mr. Crawford were looking openly through the parted curtains.
Six months ago. That would’ve been June. Jane and I had still been together then. I would’ve just gotten my job two months before.
Why hadn’t someone notified me? Why hadn’t I been called? Hadn’t someone found my name and address somewhere amidst their personal effects?
I had not really thought of myself as being ignored by my parents, but as I thought back to my childhood, I was surprised to find my memories slightly hazy. I could not recall any specific instances in which I’d done things with my mom or gone places with my dad. I remembered teachers, kids, pets, places, toys—and events related to each of them—but of my parents there was only a general sense that they’d done a good job of raising me. I’d had a fairly normal, happy childhood—at least I’d thought I had—but the warm, loving recollections I should’ve held, the remembrances of individual events I should’ve possessed, were nowhere to be found. There was no personalization to my parental memories.
Maybe that’s why we hadn’t been closer. Maybe I’d been merely a generic child to them, a personalityless blank they were obliged to feed, clothe, and raise.
Maybe I’d been Ignored since birth.
No, that couldn’t be true. I had not been ignored by my parents. They’d always bought me birthday and Christmas presents, for Christ’s sake. That proved that they thought about me. They’d always invited me home for Easter, for Thanksgiving. They cared about me.
Jane had cared about me, too, though. That didn’t mean I wasn’t Ignored.
Six months ago.
That was about the time I’d first started to notice my condition, that I’d first become aware of my true nature. Maybe it was connected. Maybe when my parents died, when the people who knew me and loved me best passed away, what had always been dormant within me had been activated. Maybe it was their knowledge of my existence that had kept me from being completely Ignored.
I’d been fading even faster since I’d lost Jane.
I pulled onto Harbor Drive, pushing the thought out of my mind, not wanting to think about it.
Where were my parents’ belongings? I wondered. Had they been auctioned off? Donated to a charity? There were no other relatives except me, and I hadn’t gotten anything. Where were all our pictures and photo albums?
The photo albums.
It was the photo albums that did it. It was the photo albums that were the trigger.
I started to cry.
I was driving toward the freeway, and suddenly I couldn’t see because of the tears in my eyes. Everything was runny, blurry, and I pulled to the side of the road and wiped my cheeks and eyes. I felt a sob in my throat, heard a sound come out of my mouth, and I forced myself to stop it, to knock it off. This was not the time to be maudlin and sentimental.
I took a deep breath. I had no one now. No girlfriend, no relatives, no friends. Nobody. I was all alone and on my own, and I was Ignored. I had only myself—and my job. As strange and ironic as it was, it was now only through my job that I had any sort of identity at all.
But that was going to change. I was going to find out who I was, what I was. I was through living in darkness and ignorance. And I was through with letting opportunities pass me by. I had learned from my mistakes, I had learned from my past, and my future was going to be different.
I put the car into gear and headed toward the freeway. It would be nearly midnight before I got back to Brea.
I stopped by a Burger King and got a Coke for the long trip home.
FIFTEEN
Monday.
I was ten minutes late for work due to a three-car pileup on the Costa Mesa Freeway, but I didn’t sweat it. No one would notice if I was late.
I’d spent the weekend calling my parents’ friends, the ones I remembered, asking if they knew what had happened to my parents’ personal effects. None of them had known. Several of them wouldn’t even talk to me.
None of them remembered me.
No one had known or was willing to tell me which mortuary had handled the arrangements and at which cemetery my parents were buried, so I went to the library, xeroxed the appropriate pages fr
om the San Diego Yellow Pages, and called every damn funeral home in the book. Of course, it turned out to be the last one. I asked the funeral director if he knew what had happened to my parents’ belongings, and he said no, he didn’t. I asked him who had paid for the funeral, and he said that information was confidential. He was understanding and apologetic and told me that if I could bring proof that Martin and Ella Jones were my parents he would be happy to divulge the information to me, but he could not tell me over the phone. Proof? I asked. Birth certificate, he told me.
My parents had kept my birth certificate.
He did tell me where my parents were buried, and I thanked him and wrote it down and hung up.
My past was gone, I realized. I had no roots, no history. I now existed entirely in the present.
David was hard at work on something when I walked into the office, and he did not even look up as I entered the room. I walked past him, took off my coat, and sat down at my desk. On top of the desk was a huge stack of papers. Adjacent to the papers was a hastily scrawled note on FROM THE DESK OF RON STEWART stationery that read: “Please document these procedures by 12/10.” It was initialed “RS.”
December 10. That was today.
The note was dated November 2.
I stared, read the note again. The bastard had deliberately done this to get me in trouble. I quickly shuffled through the pile of papers. There were memos from Banks and from Banks’ superiors dated several months back asking that this or that procedure be documented. I had never seen any of them before. I had never heard anything about these procedures.
Stewart had set me up.
I was furious, but I was so preconditioned that I actually got out a pen and began looking over the top page. There was no way I could complete even a third of these today, and after a few frustrating minutes I realized that I could not do this. I had to get out of here. I threw down my pen, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door.
At that point, I really didn’t care whether or not I got fired. I just had to get away from that office.
Outside, the early morning gloom was starting to lift, sunshine showing through the clouds, blue usurping the place of gray. I was parked out in the boonies of the Automated Interface parking lot, and by the time I reached my car I was already starting to sweat. I threw my coat on the passenger seat, rolled down the front windows, and backed out, leaving the lone open space amidst the endless rows of shiny cars. I pulled onto Emery, heading south. I turned right on the first cross street with a stoplight, then left on the next street. I did not know where I was going, had no definite destination in mind, was simply planning to lose myself in the comforting sameness of Irvine’s mazelike streets, but I found myself heading more or less in an westerly direction.
I ended up at South Coast Plaza.
I parked out by Sears and trekked across the asphalt to the main entrance. I walked into the mall, grateful for the relaxed coolness of air-conditioning after the humid heat outside.
Even though the Christmas season was here, there did not seem to be as many people in the mall as there should have been. The parking lot had been crowded, but inside South Coast Plaza the crowds were curiously sparse.
Muzak carols were playing over the mall’s speakers; elf figures and toy sleighs and fake snow adorned the window fronts. In front of Nordstrom, a huge flocked Christmas tree was festooned with garlands and tinsel and every type of ornament imaginable. Christmas had always been my favorite time of year. I’d always loved the feel of the season, the mood, everything from the nativity scenes to the festive fantasy trappings of Santa that had put a secular face on this sacred occasion. But this year it just didn’t feel like Christmas. I had no presents to buy; I was expecting no presents myself. Last year, Jane and I had spent almost every spare November and December moment shopping for gifts, planning our celebration, enjoying each other and the promise of the season. This year I was alone and lonely, with no plans, no purpose.
I stood next to the Christmas tree and scanned the faces of the passersby, but even the frank and open stares with which I greeted people did not phase them. Theoretically, the women and children in the mall should have noticed me. Shopkeepers should have eyed me with suspicion. Even during the height of the punk movement it had not been normal to see mohawked, Day-Glo-dressed men loitering around South Coast Plaza, and those days were long gone. Someone who looked like me definitely should have attracted attention.
But, of course, I didn’t.
Not everyone was ignoring me, though.
Standing next to one of the small benches between Rizzoli’s bookstore and the Garden Bistro restaurant was a sharp-eyed man a few years older than myself who was staring intently, watching my every move. I did not notice him at first, but I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye, unmoving, and I began to have the uncomfortable feeling that I was being observed, spied upon. I put the two together and casually looked to my left, toward the man. I caught his eye, and he looked away, pretending to be interested in the Garden Bistro’s menu. Now it was my turn to watch him. He was tall and thin, with short black hair that accentuated the hard, cold severity of his face. He stood stiffly, in a manner that was almost regal, but there was an indefinable air of the plebeian about him.
I wondered why he had been staring at me, how he had noticed me, and I started walking toward him, intending to ask, but he quickly moved away, making a beeline toward the center of the mall, hurriedly moving past two women and cutting in front of them to get away from me.
I considered following him, and I started to do so, but then he pushed through a small group of people and started up the stairs to the mall’s second level, and I knew that I would not be able to catch up. I watched him hurry up the steps. Strange. I had never seen the man before in my life. Why had he been looking at me? And why had he acted so guilty and suspicious when I caught him staring? It might have been my clothes and hair that caught his attention. That was a logical assumption. But then why had no one else noticed me?
I stared at the top step, where I had last seen the man before he’d hurried toward the Sears wing of the mall. It was probably nothing, probably just my imagination, an overreaction to the fact that someone had actually seen me.
But I felt uneasy as I walked into Nordstrom.
I stayed in the mall all day. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do; I didn’t feel like driving around and I certainly didn’t feel like going home. So I wandered in and out of the various stores, bought a lunch at Carl’s Jr., read some magazines at B. Dalton, looked through the CDs at Music Plus.
Business picked up in the late afternoon, after the schools let out. I was in Miller’s Outpost, had pretty much seen everything I wanted to see, and was about to leave, when I happened to glance behind me.
And saw the sharp-eyed man staring at me from between the racks.
This wasn’t just coincidence.
Our eyes locked for a second, and I felt a cold chill pass through me. Then he turned away, moving quickly up the aisle toward the front of the store. I headed after him, but by the time I reached the store’s open entrance he had already blended into the crowd, disappearing into the stream of package-carrying customers passing through the mall.
I wanted to stop him, but what could I do? Run after him? Yell?
I stood there for a moment, unmoving, watching as the man tried desperately to get away from me, thinking how frightened I’d been when I’d looked into his hard, cold eyes.
But why should I be frightened of him when he was obviously just as frightened of me?
But if he was so frightened of me, why was he stalking me?
Stalking.
Why had I thought of that word?
I started walking. Something about the man seemed familiar to me on a subconscious level. There was something almost, but not quite, recognizable in his features that I had not noticed until I’d seen him up close, and that something bothered me, nagged at me, all the way out to the parking lot and all the way home.
SIXTEEN
I expected to be quizzed on where I’d been, and I’d prepared an elaborate story to justify my absence. But none of it was necessary. No one asked about my day off. In fact, when I mentioned to David that I was feeling much better today, he looked at me with surprise. “You were sick?”
“I wasn’t here yesterday,” I told him.
“Huh,” he said. “Didn’t even notice.”
Stewart might not have noticed that I’d been gone, but he noticed that I’d missed his deadline and he called me into his office soon after lunch. He faced me from across the desk. “Jones? You’ve failed to complete an important assigned task, despite having had a very generous deadline to work with.”
Generous deadline? I stared straight at him. He and I both knew what he had pulled.
“This is going to be noted on your six-month review.”
I mustered my courage. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.
He stared at me innocently. “Doing what? Enforcing department standards?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Do I?”
I met his eyes. “You have it in for me, don’t you?”
He smiled that smug jock’s smile. “Yes,” he admitted. “I do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like you, Jones. I’ve never liked you. You represent everything I despise.”
“But why?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. Get back to work, Jones. I’m pretty dissatisfied with your performance so far. So is Mr. Banks. We all are.”
Fuck you, I wanted to say. But I said it only with my eyes and turned and left the office.
I was Ignored because I was average. It seemed the most logical answer, the most reasonable assumption. Having come of age in the latter half of the twentieth century, I was a product of the mass media standardization of culture, my thoughts and tastes and feelings shaped and determined by the same influences that were acting upon everyone else of my generation.
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