Things Unsaid: A Novel

by Diana Y. Paul

  She could hear Andrew closing down as he said good-bye. Jules would have to fly to Seattle before her father died. But first she would tend to Zoë. She prayed her daughter was safe.

  Jules was about to unlock her car door when she spotted a police cruiser pulling up in front of the building. She froze. No searching for a flight out to Seattle. Not now. She would fly to Seattle later.

  She looked at her phone. Dead.

  Another police car arrived, siren blaring. Jules jumped out of her car and, walking over, got the attention of the officer closest to her.

  “I’m the one who called. Jules Foster.”

  “Mrs. Foster,” the officer said. “I’m Sergeant Savage. We spoke on the phone. I’m going to need you to wait in your car, ma’am. Or, better yet, at the police station.”

  “But I have to be there when you arrest Zoë. She’ll be so scared and confused.”

  “It could be dangerous here, ma’am. I know you want to help your daughter, but the best thing you can do right now is wait for her at the station, where the booking procedure starts. You have the right to hire counsel for your daughter, and you can talk to her after we question her. But she is now an adult, and she will be treated as such.”

  Before Jules could find her voice, Sergeant Savage was gone. Along with six or seven other officers, he rushed the front door and broke it down.

  Jules collapsed in her car and sobbed. Fighting paroxysms of tears, she started her car so she could recharge her cell phone and call Mike.

  The second the phone came back on, she called him.

  “Hi,” Mike said. He sounded cautious. And why shouldn’t he be? But that was good. She and Zoë were going to need his circumspect counsel.

  “This is such bad news, Mike. But … Zoë is probably going to be arrested on a drug charge. I need you …” Jules couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I’ll meet you at the station,” was all Mike said.

  Joe Santini, a rotund, tanned attorney, slapped Mike on the back.

  “Good to see you, fella. You never call me … until you need me, apparently!”

  Mike attempted a smile as he shook his friend’s hand.

  “I know, I know … you don’t want to see my handsome face under such unhappy circumstances,” he said, jocular, “but don’t you worry. Me and Sergeant Savage go way back. Don’t we, Joe?” He winked at Savage.

  Jules tried not to look annoyed and impatient. She was relieved, though, that Mike had some connection to the attorney.

  “Now, Joe, these are good folks, you hear me? I can vouch for them. Can’t find better parents. And teenagers sometimes just feel like going astray. So, what can we do for Miss Zoë Foster? This would be a first-time offender. Straight A student. Ready for Stanford. All those good things. Can’t get much better. Not like the repeat offenders you usually have to book. And you’ve been trying to get Nagy for years now, haven’t you?”

  Jules relaxed, just a little, for the first time since she couldn’t quite remember. Santini was a good choice—friendly, easy to talk with, and he knew how to navigate the system for their daughter.

  “Well, yeah,” the sergeant admitted. “The guy moves around so much he is more difficult to apprehend than a conger eel, I’ll tell you that much. And we are booking him on multiple charges.”

  “Enough about that giant asshole,” Santini said. “For my client here”—he turned to Zoë, who had said nothing since she arrived at the police station—“I’m sure we can work something out, right?”

  Zoë had been looking at her feet for so long that Jules thought she might be sleeping standing up. She reached out and rubbed Zoë’s back. We’ll get through this.

  At the hearing, Judge Fielding, serious in a Hollywood-casting sort of way but with a kind face, looked down at Zoë and Santini from the bench.

  “I can see that Miss Foster is not a career criminal, but there are booking procedures and standard charges for drug possession, even for a first-time offense,” the judge said as she twiddled her pen over the forms before her.

  Jules chanted her mantra, trying to stop her quiet crying.

  “I have a daughter, too, and I know that sometimes young people get confused when they are in pain. Mr. Santini, if you speak with your client and she agrees to rehabilitation for at least three weeks, I will suspend the charges until I receive certification from a licensed facility that Miss Foster has successfully completed therapy. If she does not undergo therapy and finish rehab to the standards required by the facility, Miss Foster will be charged with drug possession. That is the best I can do.”

  Mike and Jules hugged, the first hug she’d had in almost a month. Zoë stared at them in wide-eyed disbelief. Then they group hugged. Mike let go before Jules wanted him to. But Zoë continued to hug her. Like a small child, not an eighteen-year-old young woman.

  Sergeant Savage and Santini filed their signatures and gave Jules and Mike a list of the approved rehabilitation facilities for the drug program. And they walked out together. Still a lot of healing ahead, Jules thought, but she was smiling.

  Palo Alto Addiction Recovery Services accepted Zoë immediately, thanks to Joe Santini, who had represented many of their patients. He confided to Jules that many Silicon Valley executives and Stanford faculty and students were alums. Palo Alto prided itself on its low crime rate—except for drugs, that is. The “recreational” crime of the privileged.

  The grounds of the rehab facility reminded Jules of SafeHarbour—the facade of an up-market hotel, faux–Cape Cod and resortlike. There was even a doorman.

  In the vestibule by the front door, Zoë was the first to speak. “Mom, I don’t want to be here. It’s scary.” There was no affect in her voice, as if she were still in an OxyContin haze. Was she? Jules didn’t know.

  “I’m planning to stay nearby, sweetheart,” Jules said. “I’ve booked a weekly rental nearby until I can take you back home.”

  “But how long do I have to stay here?” Zoë’s voice sounded plaintive.

  Santini interrupted Jules’s response and smiled, choosing his words carefully. “I’m afraid, as I’ve already told Mike”—he glanced at her husband as if for his approval—“there can be no outside contact with Zoë for three weeks. Until she successfully completes the initial stage of therapy.”

  Jules said nothing; she watched as Zoë crumpled, her eyes shiny and pooling.

  “Does that mean I can’t visit? Even though I’m right next door?” Jules asked.

  “Rules are rules, and I have to insist. Zoë will be thrown out of rehab here and instantly booked on drug charges if she fails to complete the treatments. Now, no one wants that, do they?” Santini asked. It didn’t seem like a question.

  Jules texted her brother and sister: “I’ll check to see when the next available flight is. After I take care of Zoë. She is very sick and I’m not the only one in our family who can be there for Daddy. I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

  Zoë had to come first. Once she knew she was okay, then she’d go to Tahoma. She shut down her phone.

  “I promise. I promise, Zoë. You may not be able to see me, but I’ll be here. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can tear me away from you. Not ever again,” she whispered, as much for her own sake as for her daughter’s. She would miss being at her father’s side if and when he passed. But she needed to be there for Zoë.

  LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE

  Aida stared at the medical devices strapped to her husband—the latest generation of equipment, not the vintage machines she had trained on many years ago at Montefiore Hospital—with clinical eyes. Bob lay there in intensive care.

  Their relationship had somehow been defanged: they had reached a truce. Twenty hours after his heart attack, her husband had asked her in shallow breaths, “Where are we? Who’s in our bedroom?”

  Aida had answered softly, taking his hand: “That’s Joanne, darling. Jules will fly out later, when you’re all better. Zoë is sick.”

  Bob was delirious.
He wouldn’t know about his number one daughter’s disgraceful behavior, not being there. Aida’s lips were pinched, calm eyes dry. Her body seemed reduced somehow, desiccated, starved. After twenty years of talking about Bob’s death, it was finally happening. She was quiet. She could hear Joanne sobbing, choking. Bob had fallen asleep, so she quietly bent over and kissed his hair. It smelled sweet and clean.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Aida whispered, still holding her husband’s hand. She wondered why her heart was racing. A symphony of cymbals and percussions in her head, almost shattering her eardrums. Where was she? She didn’t belong there. Neither did this man.

  “Where’s Andrew? Is he going to make me some chicken kebabs?” Bob had asked her earlier, delirious. How could she forget that story? About raising chickens. And eating them. His memory loss. Their world together had started to spin apart years ago, and rapidly. Bob seemed in a trance.

  Aida still could hear her husband slipping off his belt and chasing Andrew around and around the house, running upstairs until he caught him in his room. She remembered how he just kept beating him and beating him until he couldn’t lift his arm anymore. How she had wished her son were not too old for her to kiss his owies. He’d wanted so badly to be like his father. She shuddered at the memory.

  Horrible stories kept filling her head like dead fish surfacing in a polluted pond. This was the time to conjure nostalgic, Norman Rockwell–esque images of family life in Ohio. When the head of their family was near death. Instead, Aida thought of family photo albums. Photos of her grandson Adam at his Marine boot camp. Like Andrew, hardened, forged in a furnace of shared hardship and tough training. But she had survived her own form of boot camp. She hoped her kids had, too. Aida would endorse the check from Bob’s life insurance policy to Andrew once she received it; Bob would certainly want their only son to have the money, wouldn’t he? As a sign of approval? He owed Andrew that much. After all he had to bear. No one would be the wiser, least of all her two daughters. Jules and Mike had steady jobs and only one child to care for. Soon they would be empty nesters. Zoë—such a talented girl. Wished she could see more of her, but Jules kept her away. Why did she do that?

  She looked up at the machine, at the two slightly undulating horizontal lines that were slowly flattening. Going still. Bob’s ordinariness had been heartbreaking. She knew her husband had been a shadow father to Jules, who had told her—when was that? Jules was only a little girl then. She had told her that she wanted a star for a Daddy. Aida’s heart had stopped pumping as she listened to the words coming from that sweet little face. How she’d loved that pure, gentle first child of hers. Now there were only good-byes.

  Maybe food would make her feel better. Seeing someone die was horrifying. She had had to take a break, get away from the hospital for just a few hours. Aida sat stiffly, gnomelike, at the small bistro table on Joanne’s patio. Her younger daughter should really get a larger apartment. She wished she had more space—to lounge on soft pillows, for one, so she wouldn’t have to scrunch up her face on that narrow futon couch. Beauty enhancement was essential to the soul—the key to preserving your younger self, the one that had dreams.

  Joanne set out dishes and utensils buffet-style, along with a tray of condiments—cilantro she had diced, guacamole from Mexicali avocados, and two kinds of salsa. Aida didn’t like anything spicy, so Joanne always made two of everything—one spicy, one not. Probably begrudgingly, she thought. She wondered if Joanne knew anything about what was going on with Jules and Mike. Where was Mike these days, anyhow?

  “Mom, you have to eat something.”

  “Okay, but only if we sit down and talk about your sister. Surely you must know something? Julia would never miss seeing her father when asked to come immediately. I told her he was dying. And I haven’t talked to Mike or Zoë for what seems like forever. Something is definitely not right!”

  “No one ever seems to be home when I call. You know she is deferring college, Mother, right? Because of Mike and Jules’s financial situation. Zoë’s going to take some classes at a local community college near Palo Alto and then reapply in a year or so, I hear.”

  Well, perhaps no one was keeping anything from her. Family was family. And she loved them all, even Julia.

  “I didn’t get a good night’s sleep,” she said moving the entire plate of food in front of her. “I’m too old, you know. See—aging is no fun for me either.”

  Joanne dropped a spoon, and Aida repressed a smile. Seeing her groggy daughter fumbling in her bathrobe fixing Mexican food made her want to laugh.

  She’d told herself she was satisfied with Joanne’s answer, but she wasn’t. She tried again. “Where is Mike these days, anyway?” she asked, trying to make her voice light. “I miss my son-in-law. He came through for us, too. With a check, I mean.”

  She watched Joanne playing with her napkin, and saw her feet jittering through the holes of the wrought-iron bistro table. Joanne was hiding something. She just knew it.

  “Mom, I was thinking of trying to help Jules so Zoë wouldn’t have to give up Stanford. When you give me that topaz ring you promised, that is. I can sell it and give the money to Zoë. After all they have done for us, it seems like the right thing to do,” Joanne said.

  Aida’s lips thinned. “Can we talk about this later, dear? God, if I didn’t know better, I swear we’re in for a thunderstorm.” She wasn’t going to say anything about that ring. “I think I just saw a lightning flash, like a silver-white bolt shooting down the sky, or an illuminated vein in a CT scan. Must be some kind of heat lightning … it’s still so damn hot.” Aida could imagine Jules straining her neck to look high over the roof ridge at rain clouds, using a literary allusion or an art reference to describe them. “Julia would say, ‘Wow! That was scary … let’s see. One hundred fifty miles, I think. Ten miles for each second between.’ ” Julia had loved to solve math problems no one else could. Counting, always counting to see when the lightning would strike. She could almost see the ciphers Julia would add in her head. Almost the way she herself liked to conjure up new lyrics—word by word—for tunes she would have liked to have sung, if only she had had the chance. If luck had ever struck.

  Joanne’s apartment garage had a storage attic: raw wood beams with some nails curled over, others’ brutal jagged edges aiming straight down, ready to gouge out a person’s eyes. Aida peered up at the beams from the landing below the trapdoor as Joanne stooped over boxes, yanking at the untaped flaps crossed over each other.

  Joanne dragged six boxes over towards the ladder and handed them down, one at a time, to Aida. Then she gingerly climbed down to look at their past with her mother.

  Gently Aida coaxed open the ancient blue cover of what looked like a very old album, perhaps the oldest one they had. Memories. Tongue pressing into her teeth, opening the album and turning to the first page, Aida stared at an old black-and-white photo—at least four decades old. The five of them on a boat on Lake Tamsin, circa 1968 or 1969. Joanne was barely in her teens. Bob looked content or smug, hard to tell … he never could smile naturally. Aida smiled at her own image—holding her white straw hat, her white, Audrey Hepburn–style sunglasses masklike, obscuring half her face. The photo was terribly faded, sepia with gray tones.

  “What’re you going to do with all this anyway?” she asked Joanne.

  “Oh, just hobbling down memory lane, trying to recapture what happened to us when we were so young,” Joanne said. “What photo are you looking at?”

  Aida surrendered the album willingly. “Didn’t I look like a movie star? I was so glamorous! No wonder your father was so taken by me,” she said, reaching over and stroking the photo.

  “Hmm, the sunglasses certainly are theatrical.” Joanne seemed subdued. But as she continued to flip through the photos, most of them taken at Lake Tamsin, her mood changed visibly. “It would be so fun to spend a whole day reminiscing over them. That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it, Mother?”

  Aida sniffed. “Suit yours
elf. I threw away all of our movies from years ago. All of that old 16mm film. Your memories are only what you have made of them … all in your mind. Who wants to relive the past?”

  CLOSETS AND DRAWERS

  On the way to the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, two hours south of Mukilteo, Aida saw Mount Rainier when she looked southward. It was the end of turning-of-the-leaves time, but a few still remained scattered on the maples and oaks, autumn colored, reminding her of the Bronx botanical gardens of her youth. November weather. Just the way she liked it: sunny, crisp, and cold. She stuck her hand out the window to grab at the invigoration she felt.

  Aida didn’t feel like talking with her kids, or even her two granddaughters. Perhaps she was preoccupied, thinking of the memorial service and buffet scheduled after Bob’s urn had been placed in its mausoleum drawer. The five of them—Julia wasn’t there—rode together in a limousine. It was the first time her son and daughter and two granddaughters had been together for more than a day. But no Julia—how could she do such a thing! Telling her that Zoë was sick. Zoë’s a big girl now—she can be by herself for a day, Aida thought.

  Her husband had a reserved spot—actually a his-and-hers spot—because he had received military honors as a Korean War vet. The paperwork had taken some time, however. Bob’s discharge papers had been lost years ago. An airplane carrying thousands of documents on Korean War veterans had crashed in the Appalachian Mountains and nothing was ever retrieved.

  Now their small one-room efficiency at SafeHarbour was hers alone. She could do what she wanted with it. More room. She hoped that Joanne wouldn’t pressure her once again to move in with her. For Christmas.