“You made a mistake, boy,” Woody says to James, icy. “This is my home.”
James releases his grip and quickly pushes Woody backward, separating the knife from his body, but Woody launches toward Marilyn.
James intercepts, throws Woody to the floor. He tries to pin Woody, but Woody slashes the knife at the air, flailing in a desperate bid to regain control. Marilyn hears sirens in the distance. Hurry, she prays.
James finally wrestles the blade from Woody’s hand.
And then the policemen, two of them, storm through the door, guns drawn. Marilyn turns to James—the sweat on his perfect face glistening in the dim apartment, his breath ragged, the rage, the adrenaline not yet drained from him, the knife still hanging in his grip.
Before he even registers their presence.
The sound of the shot splits the world open, and splits it again. Marilyn launches herself onto James’s body, collapsed to the floor. She wraps her arms around him, pulls him toward her. He does not sit up. He does not make a sound. His body is the dead weight he’d playfully get her to try to pull up from the couch. “James!” She screams too loud, and not loud enough. He is dead.
ANGIE
Angie can feel her mom’s panic, the fear that cuts into her center, the feeling of not being able to get enough air. She watches Marilyn fold into herself, head bent onto the steering wheel, breaths shallow, rapid.
“Mom,” Angie says—the voice of a child. She rests her hand on Marilyn’s, laces their fingers together, desperate to grab hold of her, to pull her back.
Marilyn sucks in another breath, this time longer. She exhales, and Angie feels her grip tighten.
“Angie. I’m so sorry, Angie. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry I called the cops that night.”
The weight of what her mother has told her settles in Angie like a boulder that will not break down, that insists only on its own absolute gravity.
“Mom,” Angie says again, and doesn’t know what else to say.
Across the street a man pumps gas into a green Range Rover at an Arco station. A line of cars wait at a Carl’s Jr. drive-through. A man at the corner holds a sign: HOMELESS, HUNGRY, ANYTHING HELPS, GOD BLESS.
* * *
Learning the truth of her father’s death has not changed the fact that Angie will never know what it’s like to feel the scratch of his beard on her face, to eat Chinese food for dinner together, to run beside him, to feel him grip her hand, to see the shape of her own eyes when she looks back at his. To hear him tell her, “I love you.”
The fact is the same as it’s always been. He’s gone.
And Angie still does not know where her story begins. With the invisible ancestors, whose ghosts she cannot see? With a Los Angeles love story, between the boy and the girl in the photograph? With a murder. With a single mother, working impossible hours, singing her to sleep. With a gesture, a dream, a whisper.
Angie thinks of that piece of the poem Sam had read—what did it say? You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard …
That’s the truth, isn’t it? Her father’s life, the history that led to his death—it’s stored within her.
This then: a place to begin. With anger, with devastation, with heartbreak. At least it’s real.
MARILYN
Her body understands before her brain will. She’s sick to her stomach, dizzy and weak, but she’s listening for his music, she’s waiting for him to come home. No matter that she’s now in a stiff motel bed, the only sounds the sterile hum of cars on the freeway, the tumble of the ice machine. It’s been three weeks.
Sylvie had gathered their belongings and checked them into a Motel 6 in Orange, as if she thought they could go back in time, simply erasing the seven months since they’d left the OC. She treats Marilyn like porcelain, like she could shatter (she already has—can’t her mother see?), turning her pillows, stroking her forehead, leaving Marilyn alone only to go to work or, on her days off, to look at apartments. When she returns she tells Marilyn cheerfully about the places she’s seen that day, describing the pools, the pale yellow walls, the kitchen islands.
Neither Sylvie nor Marilyn have any interest in the idea that she should return to school; though there are only three months left, graduation seems irrelevant. Marilyn wishes she’d already died with James. The grief is unbearable; there are no words for the pain.
She’d made her statement to the investigating officers through sobs: James wasn’t doing anything, he’d had the knife only because he was protecting me from Woody, he didn’t pose any threat. But the cop who shot him was cleared after a three-week leave. Woody was brought in on a domestic battery charge the last she knew; a no-contact order had been issued at the arraignment. Sylvie had not called the Bells for details about the service; Marilyn had not, either, had not felt capable of facing them. The guilt weighs more than she does; she can’t keep herself afloat.
During the days, the sound of the television fills the silence of the dim room with the soap operas from her childhood. Perhaps Sylvie hopes that they will be an antidote to her daughter’s despair, as they had once been to her own, but Marilyn only stares at the images, uncomprehending.
She throw ups in the mornings, in the afternoons, at night. The sound of James’s voice is everywhere, already distant, the way an echo fades and softens, comes back to you changed. She doesn’t notice when her period doesn’t come, not right away, but finally a couple weeks after the fact she has a premonition. When Sylvie leaves for work, she dresses herself and steps out of the hotel room.
The sun outside is too bright, filling her with sudden fury. Why should it shine on, indifferent, as if nothing had happened? She manages to walk across two parking lots until she finds a Walgreens. She buys a pregnancy test, not caring about the eyes of the other shoppers in line behind her.
“That’ll be seven eighty-five,” the cashier says.
She wants to cry out—he’s dead.
The cashier stares back at her. “Honey?”
Marilyn pushes the money across the counter without a word and carries the test back to the hotel.
It is positive.
She had not considered whether she’d hoped it would or wouldn’t be, but the sight of the pink plus sign ignites a spark in her chest—light piercing the heaviest fog.
When Sylvie comes back that evening, Marilyn tells her without preamble. “I’m pregnant.”
Sylvie momentarily freezes—thin lips parted, eyes peeled open too wide. Marilyn expects her to scream, but then she fixes her face, sits beside her daughter on the bed, strokes her head. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll get it taken care of. It’s okay.”
Marilyn’s jaw clenches. For the first time since his death, the fight begins to return to her body; she now has something to protect.
Sylvie sees the look on her face. “Oh, Marilyn, you can’t possibly—you can’t keep it, honey. You can’t. I know you’re hurting now, but you’re going to put all of this behind you. It’s not too late.”
“I want the baby, Mom.”
Sylvie’s eyes are frantic. “Marilyn, sweetie, I didn’t want to tell you until you were feeling better, but I’ve spoken to Ellen and there’s a lot of excitement about you, after the Levi’s commercial. There’s lots of new opportunities. You’re still so young, there’s so much life ahead. The future we always wanted, it’s here. You’re going to be okay.”
Marilyn turns away, lies back against the pillow.
“If only you listened to me,” Sylvie’s saying now. “If only you listened to me and stayed away … this all could have been avoided. Listen to me now, honey. You’re in no state to make these kinds of choices.”
Marilyn shuts her eyes and lets her racing mind leave the room. What will she do? Where will she go? She can’t stay with her mom, that much seems clear. No, she can’t stay in this city at all. She will have to start over. She and her baby.
* * *
Marilyn pacifies her mot
her by agreeing to let her set up a consultation. The following day, when Sylvie is at work, Marilyn asks the hotel manager—a greasy-haired man who lets his eyes wander over her—for directions to the nearest Chase. She walks the mile and a quarter. The Levi’s money has been safely deposited into the new account she’d set up, residuals to follow. She gets a cashier’s check for half of the amount, made out to Sylvie. Marilyn’s half will be enough to get her out of here, to allow her to survive until she finds a job.
On the way back to the motel, she sees an old Dodge with a for sale card in the back window, not red like James’s, but white. Still, she takes it as a sign. An hour later, she pays cash to a kind older couple from Mexico in exchange for the keys, and drives to the Walgreens, silently thanking James for her lessons.
She drops off the roll of film from Justin’s birthday, pays the extra five dollars for one-hour processing, and mills the cold, air-conditioned aisles aimlessly until the photos are ready. In the car, she opens the envelope and looks through. She arrives, finally, at the photograph of her and James, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her, both of them smiling.
She bursts into racking sobs.
A bird flies from a phone wire. A palm tree sways. Golden sun glints from the windshield. A mother exits the store holding her daughter’s hand. The world feels at once too empty and too full, everything overly bright, impossibly close. When she can breathe again, Marilyn gently, tentatively lays her hand on her belly. She is carrying his baby. The only part of James that will remain alive.
She looks through the negatives and finds the one for the picture of them. She carries it back inside and asks the woman behind the photo counter to make another copy, which she tucks into her purse, saving it, she imagines, for a future when she will be able to make sense of their faces.
* * *
The next day, after Sylvie leaves for work, Marilyn packs her belongings into the white Dodge in the early-morning fog. She places the cashier’s check on the dresser, along with a note. I’m sorry, Mom, I can’t stay here. Please leave an address with the motel desk once you find an apartment. I’ll call for it. I’ll write. I love you. Marilyn.
She gets onto the 405, driving back toward the apartments on Gramercy, barbed sunlight puncturing the layer of cloud. She pulls off the freeway, turns left on Washington. Cars honk. Her hands begin to shake. She turns right onto their block. But how could the streets be the same without him—the city, the sky?
Marilyn rests her hand on her stomach to remind herself of her purpose. She runs quickly up to the Bells’ door with a package containing the camera, Justin’s photographs, and a note:
Justin, I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am. This camera is yours now—please keep taking pictures. I have to go, and I’m sorry for that, too. Perhaps one day I’ll find your photos in a magazine, or read about your display in a gallery, and I will be so proud of you. I already am. I know your brother is too.
Love, Marilyn
She sets it below the mailbox. And that’s when she sees it, sticking out. An envelope from Columbia. Fat, thick. The kind that means you got in. He got in. Her heart beats into her head. She runs up to Woody’s mailbox, where weeks’ worth of mail has piled up, and sees the matching one for her. She touches its surface—the ticket to the future that belonged to her and James. The future they would have lived together.
Devastation chasing her, she rushes back to her car, starts the ignition, and drives away, through the sharp maze of the city, out into the land of strip malls and palm trees, and through the expanse of desert torn from her childhood.
ANGIE
Justin opens the door to Angie and Marilyn. “Looks like you guys had a rough afternoon.”
They only nod.
“You told her?” Justin asks Marilyn. Marilyn confirms with another nod.
“You guys hungry?” he asks. “I was thinking of making some food.” His voice sounds raspier than usual.
“That would be great, thanks so much,” Marilyn says in a near whisper. Angie follows as her mom carefully climbs the stairs into the apartment, tiptoeing over the creaky wood floors as if she wanted to make herself weightless, as if she didn’t want to take up space.
They’d never made it to wherever it was Marilyn had meant to take her. Instead, Angie had sent Justin a message, telling him she needed help, asking if her mom could stay with them tonight.
They both sit at Justin’s wooden table as he pulls steaks from the fridge, takes out onions, peppers, sweet potatoes. After a moment Marilyn goes to him, still stepping softly. She puts the palm of her hand on his shoulder. “Can I help?”
“Sure.” He moves aside, leaving her with the vegetables and cutting board, and goes into another room. When he returns, James Brown’s voice follows. Marilyn looks up and stares out the window, past the little cactus on the sill, past the crisscrossing phone wires and into the distant Hollywood sign set against the Santa Monica Mountains. Justin turns on the burner, gives Angie another cutting board and asks her to chop the potatoes. The space begins to warm, the air saturated by the smell of cooking and by the music: Try me, try me … Angie recognizes the song from the tape; she glances at her mom, but Marilyn is still somewhere else.
* * *
From where she is now, standing in Justin’s kitchen, onions burning tears from her eyes, Marilyn can hardly remember the Motel 6 where she and Sylvie once stayed, the Walgreens, the couple who sold her the white Dodge. What she remembers, clear as water, is the feeling of the child inside her, the child who would not have a father.
And she remembers the way Sylvie had said, “If only you’d listened to me…” as if Marilyn herself were to blame. She remembers how Sylvie’s words stuck with her across the stretches of open desert. She remembers thinking that if James had never met her, his grandparents would still have two grandsons, Justin would still have a brother. James would still have his life.
She remembers how the weight of the injustice, of the guilt, of the pain became something she believed she must bear alone.
* * *
But Angie has inherited her own legacy of injustice, of brutality, of children without fathers, of fathers robbed by violence. Marilyn had not wanted to give it to her, had wanted to shield her from it, but it is Angie’s right. She understands that now, even as it leaves her speechless, even as it leaves her lost.
Curled inside a sleeping bag on the couch in Justin’s living room, she begins counting the leaves on the sycamore tree out the window—an old trick she hopes will help her finally sleep.
Marilyn sits up on her air mattress beside Angie and starts fumbling through her suitcase. She takes out a tattered copy of The White Album, pulls a folded sheet from between the pages.
“I wanted you to have this.”
Angie recognizes her mother’s cursive—though it is slightly loopier, more girlish—written on a Motel 6 pad. She reads in the moonlight:
You have no name yet, no gender. You are as a big as a raspberry, moving your tiny arms and legs, growing taste buds. Inside of my broken body, you are all that is still alive in me.
Sometimes, when I wake in the mornings, there’s a split second when I’ve forgotten, when the sun is just the sun falling across my skin, when I know, without even thinking it, that he’s just downstairs sleeping. A moment when he’s still here and we’re still in love, going to college together.
And then, the sudden reality—the impossible blow all over again.
The tears rush to my eyes. I run to the bathroom to throw up, sick from grief or the pregnancy, I don’t know.
You are the part of him that will live on. I will carry you. We will leave behind all that is unspeakable, the quicksand I am sinking under; we will become new. Me like you. Both of us together. Tomorrow, I’m going to take you to the place from my memory, the place where I was a child. I’m going to retrace the highway across the desert, and bring you to the place I was born. Though it will only be us two, I promise to make you a home; together
we’ll be a family. I promise to teach you as much as I can, about what is still good in this world, about what is still beautiful. I promise to love you fiercely, with all of me.
He wanted a daughter one day. He wanted to name her after his mother. If you come out a girl, I will call you Angela.
People think ghosts are for the night, but the dead are haunting us, even on bright summer days. This is the feeling Angie has as she stares out the window from the back of Justin’s Mustang, turning onto Gramercy Place. Palm trees rise tall in the distance, bending in the breeze, as Justin pulls up to the end of the block, parks outside of 1814. Angie recognizes the steps from her mother’s photograph. An orange tree grows in the yard, a child’s tricycle beside it, casting its shadow onto the dried grass. One hundred and seven billion lives have passed from this earth, and traces of the dead are everywhere, even if they’re invisible to us.
“Here we are,” Justin says.
When they get out of the car and step into the air thick with heat, Marilyn’s eyes are wide, her skin pale. “We lived just above,” she murmurs as they walk up the path. “I could hear him. I used to listen to his music at night.”
As they arrive at the porch, Angie glances back to see her mom staring at a hummingbird feeder that hangs from a hook below the storm gutter, its faded red flower waiting.
* * *
Justin knocks and the door swings open. As Angie’s eyes adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim room beyond, she sees a face creased with wrinkles, dancing eyes, hair in braids. The old woman wears a flowered dress draped over her tiny frame, big gold earrings.
“Hi, Nana,” Justin says, and kisses her cheek. “I brought you a surprise.” He turns to Angie, his hand extended in a flourish.
“Hi,” Angie says, and before the syllable has left her lips, Rose pulls her into an embrace, the grip of her small arms surprisingly strong. She smells like rose water and more faintly of cooking oil, garlic, thyme.