Casebook

  His speech had mollified me and shot me at the same time.

  I didn’t doubt that he loved her. But all of a sudden, love seemed a flimsy thing.

  Later, after the adults left and Charlie’s parents fell asleep, Hector sat up in the dark. He hugged his knees inside the sleeping bag, resting his chin on them. Boys around us breathed loudly. This must have been what it was like to be an animal in a barn.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I don’t know. The party seemed small. Like for a forty-fifth birthday.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess, like for Sare’s fortieth, Charlie’s dad made a slide show of her whole life, pictures of her as a little kid, in college, all that. There were different tables with flowers on each one. But the Mims probably wouldn’t want that. She’d say she wouldn’t.” My father wasn’t even here. I wondered where he was. They were always saying how they were friends, and they did seem close. I thought all of a sudden maybe he didn’t like Eli. I tried to think: I couldn’t remember ever seeing them in a room together. Maybe once, the day we moved into the new house. But even if my father and mother were still married, my dad wouldn’t have made a slide show. Philip wouldn’t have either, for that matter. Hector’s father couldn’t have, probably.

  “I know,” Hector said. “My parents are like that, too.”

  I nodded. His life honestly seemed even smaller.

  Does everyone want his mother honored? I understood that a lot of the other moms had qualities more credited by the world. My sister had said, “How’d I get you for a mother? A mathematician, a nerd.” The Mims had cracked up. “You shouldn’t laugh,” Boop One said. “It’s not a compliment.” But I valued her. I wished I could take what I knew was inside her and show it around, like a mineral you could bring to class. It had a romance once for my dad. I thought of the weird guys sitting in front of computers in the math building right now. They understood. I loved Marge, across the table, her large freckled shoulders exposed. But Eli’s speech. Hector was right: you would have thought he was talking about someone dead.

  Hector and I weren’t the only people up. On the other side of the room, Reed whispered on the phone, a slur of words, “Love-youtooyeahyeah wellyeah.”

  I thought of Ella, bent over puking, that guy with his hand on her silver belly, like the underside of a fish. I guessed that I loved her.

  51 • With the Naked Ear

  Sare gave me a ride home and all the way there I was hoping Eli would be gone. But when I banged in, my mom was serving coffee cake, and Eli sat there with Marge and Boop Two. Boop One stood on her hands, her feet wagging near Eli’s face. Then, one by one, my sisters and Marge left. Eli’s overnight bag waited, zipped up, by the door.

  I went to my room and fell asleep. The few times in my life I’ve slept during the day I’ve had incredible consoling dreams. Not that I remembered them; I just woke up knowing I’d been restored. I rose gradually through strands of reality, one blindfold dissolving at a time. From somewhere else in the house I heard the Mims laughing and him egging her on.

  This was happiness. I recognized it. Again. I felt sick before I even sat up in bed. I walked loudly into the living room, kicking a ball against the bookcases, in case they were embracing or worse. I pictured Eli’s chest hair. I’d seen it poke out from his white shirt. I wondered how far down it went on his belly. It was disgusting to think of him naked. But I found them in the kitchen, fully dressed, only his sleeves rolled up, working at a problem with a pencil. She showed him where she and Marge had gotten stuck. I’d heard about this before. They were using an earthquake model; crimes followed a similar pattern, with predictable aftershocks. “Crime is not completely random,” Marge had told me. But then, for mathematicians, or the wack religious, almost nothing was. Their idea of chaos was highly irregular behavior caused by laws.

  “Like what?” I’d once asked.

  Marge and the Mims had said in unison, “The weather.”

  Eli looked up when I came in. “Did you have a good rest?” he said.

  “I’m sorry about your cat,” I said. “How is it?”

  “Thank you for asking,” he said, and then told me there was almost no hope.

  I poured myself a glass of milk. After Eli left, I asked her, “What was so funny?”

  “Oh, he was teasing me about being in love with a woman who wears a dental splint. We woke up and discovered we were old.”

  I sure as hell didn’t know what love was.*

  Later, Boop One thundered in, loud even in ballet shoes. She looked like a princess—pink tights, pink slippers, hair in a tight bun with a pink snood—but she smelled … like whoa! We picked up Boop Two at the shelter, on the way to Charlie’s.

  “I love beets,” Sare said with absolute authority, opening the door. I didn’t see any sign of Dale. I’d had a hundred dinners in that kitchen and I didn’t remember Dale at more than a handful, but you never had the sense that he was missed exactly. Those tall boys and that mother—they didn’t need any more than themselves. We did need more. We still missed our dad. By ourselves, we weren’t enough. That night I learned that Eli didn’t give the Mims a birthday present. Only the expensive cheese platter, she joked. I’d heard her overthanking him for just that. He was mad at her, I gathered from what she and Sare were saying. So his not getting her a present was a takeawayment, as Boop One would call it. I stopped a moment, realizing how far they’d come from the beginning.

  “You’re never getting that suit.” Sare’s voice carried. That card with names of tailors was an IOU. It was shocking to hear her say never. “Dale’s not big on gifts either.”

  “Eli did buy me that dress,” the Mims said.

  “So there was the fantasy gift and the real one. The piece I’d be concerned about is why he needed the myth. There’s nothing wrong with a modest present or even no present. But that’s different from a fake promise. Did he offer to take you to London?”

  “I guess not really. He said he remembers my kids’ friends’ names. And he does.”

  “But that’s like saying, I made a promise I’m not going to keep, but you shouldn’t mind because I give you other things. He’s the one who brought up suits in London. He didn’t tell you that your present was him remembering your kids’ friends’ names. He could have said, I’m not giving you a material gift, I’m giving you my attention.”

  I thought of the suit again. He seemed to forget his promises. I remembered the silver forks and spoons he’d said he was going to buy us: they went shopping for them once and didn’t find what they wanted. That was the end of it. That wasn’t like the Mims.

  He’d told her he’d planned two vacations for her birthday: one for just them at an inn in Big Sur and another for all of us, camping. But she wouldn’t get them now, because he was mad at her. She thought she’d blown her longed-for family romance.

  “Well, maybe you would have gone camping,” Sare said, “but the Post Ranch Inn sounds like this year’s suit.”

  If he didn’t mean either, then why not offer two vacations? Why not five? My fear shot up in wild arcs, showering.

  My mom sighed. “But I luv him.” She was putting on that voice, that luv. But she felt a lot. I knew she did. And there was still that ex-wife—I’d seen her. The Victim, as I thought of her now.

  That afternoon, when I was finally alone, I texted Ella. Sorry you were sick. If you ever want to hang out, I’m around. Miles A-H.

  I didn’t expect her to answer, and she didn’t.

  My dad came over later that night. He’d sent flowers on the Mims’s real birthday. All the little buyable things, Eli had once said about my father’s gestures. But they worked, judging by the envelopes slipped under his glass doors! Eli probably hated Valentine’s Day. I flashed on the seven thousand dollars. I hoped that wasn’t a bogus offer. If it was, we were tanked. I thought of the Victim. What if he’d promised her money, too?

  “Your girlfriend glowered at me during Parent PE,
” the Mims said. A running joke between our parents: a divorced mom in the Boops’ class flirted with my dad. He said he’d seen a table of moms in a restaurant. When he went over, one said they’d all decided if they ever left their husbands, it would be for him. My mom asked me to put the Boops to bed; she was opening a bottle of wine. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. This was all light, far above danger. I realized I breathed easier since Eli had left to go to LAX.

  I told my sisters to brush their teeth.

  “What if Daddy fell in love with somebody else?” Boop One asked. “Would that lady move in?”

  So they’d been listening. It had never occurred to me that they could figure out how to eavesdrop! The Mims had to be more careful!

  “Not going to happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just don’t think Daddy’s going to remarry. Go to sleep now, my dear.” I’d heard our dad call the Mims that recently. I didn’t remember him using those words when they were married. I’d spent all this time thinking about the Mims and Eli, but meanwhile, life was streaming by, and the Boops wanted our father to stay their dad and nothing else.

  “Emma has a boyfriend,” Boop Two said in the dark.

  “Is that true?” I asked Boop One.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said, her one leg lifting in a right angle, toe pointed.

  The doorbell rang: Maude Stern. People had nominated Hector and me to run FLAGBTU in the fall, and we said we’d only do it if she would, too. We needed her organization. The petition for the ballot proposition to eliminate gay marriage was gaining momentum. Maude wanted to bring Cottonwoods kids who had two dads or two moms to conservative Mexican-immigrant churches to talk about family. She stood in the doorway telling me that, out of breath. I was about to ask, Why churches? when she said, “How come you’re in FLAGBTU? For me it’s not—”

  “Are you asking me if I’m gay?” I let her in and she followed me to my room.

  “No, I mean—” Then she stopped. She wasn’t really asking if I was gay—she was rooting around, trying to talk about feelings. She wanted to know if I liked her.

  “If you’re asking me, the answer is I don’t have really any sexuality yet, I’m fifteen. I don’t think I’m gay. Still, it’s probably not a great thing to go around asking people.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said, flustered. Scolded. “That’s not what I meant.” She stood in my small room for the first time, looking around. She was almost a foot taller than me.

  I wasn’t sure if I liked her. I mean I didn’t. There was no glow. But I could picture her, straight Maude Stern, sitting next to me on my bed, bending over and giving me a blow job, her hand cupped, the way she’d dutifully cup a candle flame. Her hand was small and fat. I couldn’t really see Ella in my room. Ella wouldn’t go down on me. But then I imagined a rush of things I didn’t want to know: Eli’s dick. I imagined it crooked, not straight-angled and circumcised like my dad’s. I could see my dad’s sex: physical and happy, the way he splashed in a swimming pool. Would I fuck like my dad? But I’d seen snapshots of my dad young. He’d never been fat. Boop One with her dancer legs. I could picture every single person in our family having sex, except me. Maybe not Boop Two either.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said to Maude. “You’re not the first person to wonder.” At the end of last year, the FLAGBTU faculty adviser called me in to say he was there if I ever wanted to talk. O-kay, I’d said, feeling like a fraud. I didn’t think I was gay. I just wanted to yank my dad’s chain.

  “I meant I’m not in FLAGBTU because of me. I’m here because of my father.”

  “Your dad?” I didn’t get it. Her father was one of those dads you rarely saw and when you did see him, even at Cottonwoods, he was in a suit.

  “My dad’s gay.”

  “Your dad? I didn’t know that.”

  “Nobody knew. My mom didn’t. I guess he didn’t. Until last year.”

  I heard my mom and dad in the living room, laughing. They might have been talking about Maude’s parents for all I knew. I could have told her about Eli, that would have been a fair trade, but instead I told her I started in FLAGBTU because of soup selling.

  “I remember your soup.” She laughed and I saw her a way I hadn’t before. Usually there were red patches on her face, but with her eyes like this, everything aligned, and she looked down, intent. If I kissed her now, her face would open, and I thought, This is easy. “So you didn’t join because of me?” I said.

  “Of course I joined because of you,” she answered.

  But I remembered Eli and the seven thousand dollars we needed. I was still fat. And I thought of Ella bent over, throwing up. Later, I thought, I can have these things but not now. And that seemed okay, a city waiting, still asleep, and Ella one spire. The moment passed, and Maude turned away, looking embarrassed.

  I hadn’t planned on seeing Eli again anytime soon, but when I walked in one day after playing tennis with Charlie I heard two voices in the kitchen singing off-key. How could such a dork be a liar?

  I heard her suggest that Eli invite a couple he knew along to dinner.

  “People have plans; they have kids. They can’t just drop everything because Irene Adler deigns to see them.”

  That wasn’t nice. He wasn’t always that nice. I must have looked at them strangely when I came in because my mom raised her eyebrows. But her voice stayed even. “Well, it doesn’t have to be this visit. Just sometime.”

  “Sure,” he said then, calm. Confident that he could shuffle sometime into never.

  I hated hearing her like that. That was the worst part of it. The talking him down and the overthanking frightened me. I turned to face Eli. “Are you coming back after dinner?”

  “No, unfortunately, I have to leave tonight. But I’m going to be here more. I rented an apartment.”

  “Really?” That stopped my heart. “Where?”

  “On Wren Street. In Hancock Park.”

  “When are you moving?”

  “Soon.” He took out the key and showed us. For some reason, he handed it to my mother, and she passed it to me. We each felt its weight in our hand. We passed the thing back and forth. Then he worked it back onto his key ring, picking up a grocery bag of my old clothes, washed and neatly folded. “He loves that rainbow maker,” Eli told the Mims again as they walked out.

  My head reeled, as if the top inch would form a twister and spin off. I went to the medicine cabinet and shook out two Tylenols. I got headaches now.

  I called Hector to tell him we had to see the PI.

  * * *

  * You say you sure as hell didn’t know what love was. I sure as hell didn’t know what a dental splint was and I still don’t.

  52 • A Reconnaissance Mission

  We laid our bikes on the spongy grass and rang Ben Orion’s bell. He answered in socks. “Hey, how was camp? You guys look about ten years older.”

  Hector said, “Eli’s back.”

  “I didn’t know he left,” Ben said. He sat down, hands latched in front of him, in his office. “So tell me.”

  “Now he’s moving here. He got an apartment. He showed us the key.” That key felt like a seed stuck in my teeth, an irritant of hope.

  He sighed. “Well, I don’t know much, but I learned some.” He rolled in his chair over to a cabinet, extracted a file, and handed us a piece of paper.

  Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA)

  Case Search Results

  You searched for: Party Name Lee, Eli J.; Birth Date 11–10–1963

  Your search returned no results

  My first thought was, Maybe I got his birthday wrong. “What do you think this means?” I said.

  “If they did get a divorce, it wasn’t in Wisconsin. Either they got divorced in another state, or they’re not divorced.”

  What if they weren’t divorced? What if he and the Victim were just separated? I tried to picture the Victim in Wisconsin. I knew the shape of the state from the map. I’d learned from Wikipe
dia that Wisconsin made cheese and other dairy products. It was hard to imagine Eli there. Those suits! I pictured Wisconsin rural, with muddy fields and cows.

  “I found an article about the writer of The Other Woman.” Hector said. He unzipped his backpack and took out a folded paper. I was shocked that this was the first I was hearing about it. I took the paper and tried not to seem upset. But my hand was jumping without permission. It seemed to be an interview with the Victim on a blog called The Romance Reader. A librarian had interviewed her.

  She talked importantly about how she made her male character believable. I just asked my husband. As Ben Orion read, he highlighted a section: We recently bought a house because we got sick of having all our books in boxes in other people’s garages! Now we have seven walls of books!

  “She likes exclamation marks,” Hector said. We all sat there, quiet. Leaves fluttered outside the window.

  “So maybe he lied about being divorced.” The PI shrugged. “Or maybe he’s even Steven. Wouldn’t be the first ex-wife to say she’s still married. Why don’t you guys go visit that librarian. Says here she works in Glendale, California. You can take a bus. Ask her what she knows. She must have talked to the lady on the phone, at least.” Ben Orion printed out a map of bus routes. We waited on the couch. In this room, there was no clutter. There were neat stacks, and on the wall, he’d hung his framed diploma. My parents had both gone to colleges and graduate schools I’d heard of, but I’d never seen one framed diploma.

  Ben Orion was tracing his finger on a map now, explaining MTA routes and transfers, but my mind skittered around. I had no capacity to master the transit system. Almost any drawer in our house you opened, there’d be papers, keys, rubber bands, matches, a pencil, chewed on one end. I was like our house. Cluttered.

  Before we left, I complimented the picture in his living room, of a woman going over a bridge in rain.

  “It’s a woodblock print,” he said, lifting it down. “It’s art I can afford.” He told us about the artist. Kawase Hasui. He was farsighted, he said, so to sketch, he had to get just the right distance. He could not see clearly close-up. He’d traveled all around Japan, sketched outside, and then went back to his inn and added the color. He lost his home twice: An earthquake wrecked his print blocks, and he had to start all over. Then, during World War II, his house got hit during an air raid.