In Search of Us

  “I think my dad could be there. He could be alive.”

  “What?”

  “You know the song you posted a couple weeks ago? ‘Some Dreamers’?”

  “You were looking at my Instagram?”

  “Yeah. But the point is—I saw the video, and it’s—I think my uncle made it. The video, not the song. My dad’s brother. My mom told me he died too, but he’s alive.”

  Angie waited for Sam to react. “Wow, Angie. That’s—that’s crazy,” he said finally. “I get why you’d want to find him, but I don’t know that you should just up and go to LA. I mean, how do you know it’s him? Have you talked to your mom?”

  Angie shook her head no.

  “Well, what’s your plan when you get there? You’re just gonna—go where? Find him how? You should at least get in touch with him first.”

  “If I can, will you bring me with you?”

  Sam was silent.

  “Please,” Angie said. She could hear the desperation in her own voice and tried to swallow it. “My mom lied about my uncle, which means she could have lied about my dad too.” She glanced at Sam. “He could be alive. I have to go. I have to find out.”

  Sam was looking away from her, still tearing at the label on the beer.

  “I know that there’s no reason for you to say yes,” Angie continued. “I know you don’t have to do this. And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t—if it wasn’t—important, but I—I need you.”

  Sam picked up the joint from the espresso cup and lit it.

  “Don’t say shit like that, Angie.” He exhaled. “You can come. But don’t give me that I-need-you bullshit. Don’t pretend it’s like that again. You need my fuckin’ car.”

  He looked at her. “And I suggest you come up with an actual plan. ’Cause LA is a big-ass city, so you’re not gonna just walk down the street and find this guy. I’m not getting involved. But my recommendation, for your sake, is that you don’t make this trip unless you know what you’re doing. And that you talk to Marilyn.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said, unsure how to respond.

  “I’m leaving Thursday. I’ll pick you up at ten.” He looked away, exhaling smoke in the direction of the white linen curtains that shuddered against the night breeze.

  “Okay. Thank you, again.”

  He nodded. She let herself out.

  She stepped onto the porch, her clothes still damp with sweat, and shivered against the warm night breeze. As she walked home, now taking in the sound of the crickets that felt as loud as engines, the rustle of summer-green leaves in the dark cottonwood trees, the innumerable stars in the sky, she thought of the last time she’d left Sam’s house, late at night, the year before. And in that moment, she had the sense that if she could find her dad, it could change her into the girl who’d know how to say “I love you” to Sam.

  Sam and Angie are just past a town called Needles, in the long, empty stretch of road that runs through the Mojave Desert, when the gathered clouds begin to pour. Angie holds her breath as the rain comes down in sheets; the patter on the metal roof of the car makes its own rushed music that plays over Alabama Shakes singing “Sound & Color.” The windshield wipers work overtime, but Angie can’t see more than a few feet ahead of them, and she knows that Sam, seemingly calm behind the wheel, can’t either. A semitruck zooms by, dousing them.

  Without breaking concentration, Sam carefully guides the car to the shoulder of the road.

  “Guess we’ll just wait it out,” he says, and Angie’s happy that he’s speaking to her now, at least sort of normally. He reaches over her lap to open the glove box, and pulls out a little tin meant for mints. He takes out a joint and lights it. Angie watches the desert getting drenched, the soft browns and yellows stretching outward as far as she can see.

  “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” the last song on Sam’s birthday CD begins. Angie looks over at Sam, his eyes now shut in the driver’s seat. Come on, save my soul … Nina Simone sings, as if she were pulling the notes up from deep water.

  Sam opens one eye and sees Angie watching him. A look of uncertain longing passes between them, before Sam shuts his eye again. Angie wants him; she can feel her body insisting on the truth of this fact. She wonders if she’s gotten a contact high. She read somewhere that the concept is just a myth, but she feels suddenly light-headed.

  “How’s your dad?” Angie asks. It’s the only thing she can think of.

  “Fine. Good. He’s got a girlfriend now. A proper one. They’ve been together almost six months.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “She’s alright. Young. And pretty. Of course. I think I make her nervous. Her voice goes up like two octaves when she talks to me.” He looks off and says eventually, “She’s Italian. A great cook. Sometimes I watch them together in the kitchen, chopping stuff, singing to my dad’s old LPs, him spinning her around, her dumping pasta in the strainer. I can’t remember my parents ever being happy like that.”

  He seems vulnerable, the same kid Angie once knew. She has the overwhelming desire to wrap her arms around him.

  He holds in the smoke before he exhales. “You want?”

  “No, I’m good,” Angie says.

  He takes a final hit, then puts it out. Nina keeps singing. Another truck rushes by, momentarily blinding them with its wake. Sam rubs at the fog on the window and peers into the rain.

  “A few weeks before my parents told me they were getting a divorce,” he says, “Mom was having these friends over for dinner. She’d spent all day preparing, and my dad started complaining about it—he hated guests. She cracked, saying how he never appreciated her, how he saved the best parts of himself for his students and had nothing left for her. Dad pointed to her enchiladas and guacamole, to the pitchers of drinks and flowers in vases, and he was like, ‘But, Camila, this isn’t for us. You’re trying, but you’re not trying for us.’ She was in the middle of setting the table and she rushed out of the dining room in a fury, so that a plate slipped from her hand. She just bent over the porcelain pieces and started sobbing. The plate had belonged to her mother, and to her grandmother before that. They were gifted to her, after she and Dad got married, and she’d brought them from Mexico. It was hand-painted, with a guy and a donkey on it. I was trying to make her feel better. I was like, ‘It’s just one. We have a bunch more.’

  “She didn’t look up. She just said, ‘But it’s not a full set anymore. There will always be something missing.’”

  Sam turns to Angie, but doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I don’t know why,” he says, “but I keep thinking about that plate lately. It seems like the saddest thing.”

  Angie doesn’t remind him that he’s told her the story of the plates before, but she thinks of the first time she heard it, the first time they’d been in bed in his room.

  “You know, when we were together,” he says, “I used to feel like it was proof that I didn’t have to be like them … I thought we could be different…”

  Angie watches him as he continues rubbing fog off the window. The rain stops as suddenly as it began. “You still can be,” she says. “I know—I know you’re mad at me. I know you have every right to be angry, and I know it was fucked up, the way I left. But I didn’t do it because I didn’t love you. It was just that I didn’t know how to say it. I guess I still don’t…”

  Sam’s now looking back at her, really looking, for the first time since she got in the car.

  “I would say I’m sorry—I am—but I know that it doesn’t make anything better. So I’ll just say thank you for letting me come to LA with you.”

  Sam nods back at her.

  “You’re welcome,” he finally says, and it feels like a gift. He rolls down the window, and Angie does the same. Light breaks through the cloud bank at the other end of the sky, as they lean their heads out into the desert air, still electric from the rain.

  “Okay, then,” Sam says. “Guess it’s time to get going.”

  He must be high, Angie worries. ?
??Why don’t you let me drive for a little? You’ve been driving for like eight hours.”

  “I’m used to it,” Sam says. “Made this trip a bunch of times on my own.”

  “Come on, I want to. I miss Mabel.” Mabel, the name of his Jeep.

  Sam looks at her for a long moment. “Alright,” he says finally, “you can drive for a couple hours, but we’ll switch again before we get close to the city. It’ll get a little hairy.”

  As Angie turns the ignition, Sam pushes his seat back. “So, what’s up with your uncle? You talk to him?” he asks.

  Angie focuses on merging back onto the freeway, reluctant to admit the truth to Sam.

  “Not yet,” she confesses. “But I’ve left messages … Actually, he may have called back already. My phone’s been off.” Angie hopes that when they arrive in LA tonight, she’ll turn it on and, like magic, there will be a voice mail from her dad’s brother, telling her he can’t wait to meet her.

  Sam studies her for a moment before asking, “What do you wanna hear?”

  She knows what she wants to hear; she wants him to hear it too.

  “I brought this old tape that my dad made for my mom. Maybe we could put that on?”

  “Where’s it at?” Sam asks.

  He fishes it out of Angie’s bag, and moments later the Fugees are singing “Ready or Not.” Sam smiles at the first chords, and Angie grins back at him, as they head into their last 210 miles toward the City of Angels.

  The day after Sam agreed to bring her to LA, Angie had scoured the internet for Justin. She tried Facebook and came up with nothing, nothing that looked liked it could have been him on Twitter or Instagram either—apparently he didn’t do social media. On the White Pages website, she found eight listings for Justin Bell between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five, or of unknown age, living in the Los Angeles area. She pulled out her debit card and paid the $1.99 each to see contact info. Only five out of eight had phone numbers listed, but she found addresses for all.

  As she prepared to dial the first number, her palms started sweating. What if he answered? What if it turned out to be him? What would she say? She put down the phone, deciding she needed to practice. After she’d rehearsed several times, pacing around her room, she called.

  It went right to voice mail. This Justin Bell had a British accent on his message, so she was pretty sure she could cross him off the list.

  The next Justin also went to voice mail, but it was automated. She left a stumbling message. “Hello, my name is Angie, and I’m calling for Justin Bell, to see if he may be related to a James Bell, who’s my dad. Call me back please, if so.” She gave her number and hung up.

  She left another message for the next Justin.

  The fourth one picked up. “Hello?” The deep male voice sounded suspicious.

  “Hi, I’m, um—my name is Angie, and I’m calling to see if you’re related to James Bell?”

  “Huh? No, sorry, kid, you got the wrong number.”

  The space of hope that had spread open in her chest collapsed.

  The fifth number yielded only a similar conversation. But she had two messages out for Justins who could be her Justin, she comforted herself, and three addresses with no numbers that she’d have to check out in LA. Something would pan out. She’d find him; she had to.

  * * *

  Luckily she’d saved plenty of money from last summer’s babysitting gig—more than enough to eat and chip in for gas during the trip. While Marilyn was always generous with her, Angie had hated having to ask for cash for new clothes or dinners with friends, considering she knew how hard her mom worked just to get by. So Angie had spent the first week of last year’s summer vacation riding her bike around, dropping into restaurants with her résumé. She’d worn her most professional-looking outfit—black slacks and a collared jacket—but she’d gotten only a bunch of noes and a couple indifferent shrugs from bored hostesses: “You can fill out an application if you want.” She began to wonder if the sweat stains, which seemed to be an inevitable result of biking in the June heat, were hindering her. So when her mom said someone from Chase was looking for a summer nanny, Angie immediately called Linda Bennet to set up a time to meet.

  Determined to impress her potential employer, she’d arrived fifteen minutes early. She walked up the drive: a terra-cotta birdbath placed awkwardly in the middle of a perfect green lawn, rows of pansies planted in brick flower beds, a white Range Rover. She smoothed her cardigan (god, it was already so hot at 9:15 a.m.), then rang the bell.

  A white woman with a perfect blond blowout opened the door. “I’m sorry, but we don’t accept solicitors.”

  Angie stood frozen on the BE HAPPY welcome mat, trying to find her voice.

  “I said”—the woman’s voice became sharper, shrill—“I said, we don’t accept solicitors.”

  “I’m not—” Angie tried.

  “Please, get off my property!” Her voice rose at the end into a high-pitched squeal.

  Angie could feel hot tears behind her eyes. “I’m here to interview for the nanny job,” she’d managed to get out.

  The woman turned nearly as red as her pansies. “Oh. Oh, of course. I—I’m so sorry. I, well, I just, I didn’t know you were—I mean, your mom, you and your mom don’t—”

  “Look alike.” Angie finished the sentence.

  The woman fixed her face into an overly bright smile. “Right. Okay! Let’s start over, then. I’m Mrs. Bennet. Please, come in.” But it took her a moment to move her body, which was blocking the door.

  The den was decked out with framed, studio family portraits, matching floral cushions, and little signs over many of the room’s objects, in case one forgot what they were for, Angie supposed: keys written in cursive on the key hook, coats over the coat rack, and, in an offbeat gesture, harmony over the piano.

  “Can I get you some lemonade? Really, I’m so sorry about that—Angie, right? I just—you have to understand, your mom didn’t tell me you’re—I mean—I wasn’t expecting—”

  Mrs. Bennet was saved by the little girl who came bounding into the room, wearing Frozen pajamas.

  “Wanna see my little ponies?” she asked Angie, already tugging at her hand.

  It turned out Angie and Mrs. Bennet’s daughter, Riley, got along famously. When it was time for Angie to go, Riley threw a fit of protest.

  “Well, sounds like she likes you!” Mrs. Bennet said, and she asked how much Angie charged.

  “Twenty an hour,” Angie said after a moment. It was a lot of money, certainly more than she would’ve requested in a different circumstance. She figured Mrs. Bennet would never go for it.

  Mrs. Bennet’s face did register some alarm, but she fixed it into a smile. “Oh, okay, then! Well, you’re hired!”

  Half of Angie wanted to tell Mrs. Bennet to forget it anyway, but twenty an hour—that was way more than she could make doing anything else this summer. She thought of Beyoncé’s line: Best revenge is your paper.

  When she got home and Marilyn asked, “How did it go?” Angie answered only, “Good. I got the job.”

  “That’s great, honey!” Marilyn exclaimed, and hugged her. “I’m so proud of you!”

  Angie made herself smile and didn’t say anything more—maybe because she was afraid Marilyn wouldn’t understand. Maybe because although Marilyn had made an effort to point out African American heroism to Angie throughout her life, she’d avoided talking about racism, and Angie instinctively believed she had to protect her mom from such realities.

  * * *

  In the end, Angie grew to adore Riley, who was full of energy and curiosity. Mrs. Bennet, for her part, was perfectly, almost formally, polite to Angie and had asked her back this summer. Angie was due to start Monday.

  She picked up her phone to text Lana. Could you do me the hugest favor in the world? I need someone to cover my babysitting next week.

  Lana texted back, What’s up?

  Kind of a long story. I’ll tell you later…?

/>   Tell me now bitch! Or no dice.

  I’m going to LA with Sam?

  STFU. Sam, THE Sam?? You’re a thing again?

  Angie paused, purposely taking her finger off the cursor so her thought bubble graphic wouldn’t linger. The truth felt like too much to tell Lana. She didn’t want to submit the mission to her scrutiny, didn’t want to hear Lana muse about her uncle Justin, who Lana would undoubtedly judge to be “ridiculously cool” based on the video. It’s not that Angie didn’t love Lana, it’s just that she didn’t necessarily trust her to understand—Justin wasn’t just cool, he was her first chance to understand where she came from, her key to finding her father.

  Angie finally typed back, IDK, I ran into him at the 66 Diner, and … it sorta happened from there?

  She fell back onto her bed and tried to focus on breathing.

  Okay, I’ll cover you. Want all the deets please!

  Thank u ur the best.

  * * *

  The only question left, the biggest question, was how she could convince her mom to let her go. After Sam had agreed to bring her along, it took three full days to work up the nerve, but finally, when Marilyn came home in the evening, Angie followed her into her bedroom. (The first thing Marilyn always did, when she set foot in the door, was give Angie a kiss, then go immediately to her room to get out of her work clothes.)

  “How’s my girl?” her mom asked.

  “Really good.”

  “And why’s that?” Marilyn smiled.

  “I actually—I spent the day with Sam,” Angie lied. She needed her mom to believe they were rekindling their friendship, at the very least, if she had any hope of getting Marilyn to buy Sam as her reason for wanting to go on the trip.

  “Oh! Really? That’s great, baby. How was it?”

  “It was good. We just hung out and talked. I guess after I saw him at the diner, I thought we should get back in touch. Try to be friends. I don’t know. I missed him.”