“That’s super cool,” Angie says.
“Here, I wanted to show you something,” Justin tells her, and he takes Angie into another, smaller gallery room. On the walls is a collection of photos mounted against black backgrounds—Justin sitting on a beach wearing a hoodie over his head, Justin on a hiking trail, Justin drinking a beer at a dining table, Justin floating on his back in a pool, Justin leaning against a streetlamp. They’re all perfectly lit, enchanting, but from each there’s been the shape of another person cut out of the picture. Something about the crude simplicity of the absence feels acute—a gaping hole in the center of an otherwise normal moment.
“Wow,” Angie says. “These are so beautiful.”
Justin smiles, and she can see her opinion matters to him. “Thanks. I did this series way back when—it was my senior thesis in college. I called it Brother.”
* * *
After he gives her the rest of the tour—including his office where he’s working on storyboards for his movie, and a pretty garden in the back—Justin declares it’s time for lunch, and he and Angie walk several blocks through downtown LA, crowded with tall buildings and traffic, tiny shops selling cheap leggings, the occasional upscale restaurant tucked haphazardly into the bustle.
“I talked to my nana last night and told her about you,” Justin says. “She was so excited she practically had a heart attack … I said I’d bring you by for lunch tomorrow so she can meet you, if you’re free?”
“Of course!” Angie says. “Are there more people to meet?”
“Our mom died when I was just a baby, and our granddad a couple years ago … Our dad lives in Texas. I’m sure you could meet him eventually. You’ll love Nana Rose, though.”
Angie’s never really had a grandma before. She feels a tiny bit guilty about how excited she is by the idea that her family’s becoming so much bigger than just her and her mother.
They arrive at Grand Central Market, a space with open-air entrances, filled with smells of Chinese, barbecue, pizza, Mexican food. People gather at little tables to eat their lunches near stalls selling fruits, vegetables, and spices. They sit at the counter at Justin’s favorite spot—Belcampo Meat Co. He orders them both burgers.
“This is delicious,” Angie manages, her mouth full.
“They sing to the cows before they slaughter them, like whisper in their ears and shit. That’s what makes their meat so good.”
Angie cracks up.
“God, you sound just like him,” Justin says. “You have the same laugh. It’s crazy.”
This makes Angie go quiet. “Do you—believe in heaven, or anything like that?” she asks after a moment, over the din of the crowd.
“I do believe that there’s so much beyond our understanding. If there is a heaven, I don’t think it’s like anything we can imagine. But I guess what I hope is that the people we’ve lost are somehow part of things now—the air and sky and all the way out to the stars—and that one day James and I will be part of the same stuff…”
Angie smiles. “Yeah. I like that.”
“James used to tell me that our mom was watching over us. Whenever a hummingbird would come by our window, he used to say it was her, sending them to look in on us. He was so into those birds—always filling up the feeder for them and all.”
Angie thinks of the day the hummingbird appeared when they were moving into their new house. She can still hear her mom’s voice—It’s a sign.
“I think what I believe in is ghosts,” Angie says. “I don’t mean like haunted-house ghosts, but ghosts like the idea that all the lives that’ve been lost are still part of the world we live in—almost like traces of energy. I mean, we inherit everything—our language, our countries, even our DNA … But also things that are harder to name. I think we all carry the ghosts of people who came before us…”
Justin studies her for a moment. “You’re such a smart girl. Hard to believe you’re only seventeen.”
Angie grins down at her plate. “Thank you.”
“Maybe you don’t know what you wanna do, but there’s a start—what you’re saying is that history matters. Why not make it a project, to find out all you can about what you’ve inherited from this country, from your ancestors, from the centuries of humanity? Make the invisible things visible. Tell the ghost stories. We need them.”
“Like what you do through your art.”
“Yeah, I mean, I guess that is what I try to do.”
“You’re easy to talk to,” Angie says. In fact, she hasn’t been able to talk to anyone else the way she can talk to Justin.
“You’re easy to talk to too,” Justin replies. “There are too many horrors in this world for me to believe things happen for a reason, but if I did, I’d say you came here because I was meant to meet you.”
Angie smiles.
“Anyway,” Justin goes on, “that’s what your dad wanted to study, you know. In college.”
“History? Really?”
“Yep. Let’s go back to my place after this. I have a few books I want you to borrow.”
“Okay.”
“Where are you staying, anyway?” he asks.
“Um, I was staying with my ex-boyfriend and his cousin, but we fought, and so I guess tonight I’m gonna stay at his cousin’s girlfriend’s place.”
“Aw, hell no. Why would you do that? You can stay with me.”
“Really?”
“Of course, silly. You’re family.”
“Ta-Nehisi Coates is a dude you should definitely read,” Justin tells Angie as they walk up the block to his apartment. “He does an amazing job of showing how history is key to understanding our present. He published this article a few years ago called ‘The Case for Reparations.’ It’s about how to heal as a country, we’ve got to finally address the truth of our collective biography. Not just slavery, but Jim Crow, red-lining—”
Suddenly, Angie stops. Justin turns back, to find her staring down the street.
There’s her mom, sitting on the hood of her car under a sycamore tree, watching Angie and Justin as they come up the sidewalk. She wears her Montezuma Elementary T-shirt and jeans, her long blond hair pulled back into a girlish ponytail. Out of context, she looks suddenly young, too vulnerable. Almost like a kid who doesn’t know where to belong on her first day of school.
“Mom?” Angie hears the word come out, shaky. “What are you doing here?”
“I came for my girl,” Marilyn says.
And then Marilyn’s arms are around Angie, holding too tight. She smells like her Paul Mitchell Awapuhi shampoo, like laundry detergent, like Easter Sundays and Fourth of July and movie nights and mornings waking before sunrise. The child in Angie wants to burrow into her mother; the other half of her wants to push her away, to be Angie in her new world, Angie in LA.
When Marilyn finally releases her grasp, Angie turns to see Justin watching them. As he and Marilyn meet each other’s eyes, they become heavy storm clouds, barely able to contain their rain.
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Mari Mack.”
“Jus—you’re—you’re all grown up.”
“So are you.”
“You look—just like he would’ve…” Marilyn reaches out, as if she’ll brush her hand across his cheek, but he takes a step backward and she retreats.
“There’s not a day I haven’t thought of you,” Marilyn says in a whisper.
He stares back at her.
“I’m sorry,” Marilyn says. “I had to—I had to go.”
“Who am I to say. You’ve got a helluva daughter. Must’ve done something right.” His voice is taut like a bow, but the arrow goes unreleased. He tilts his head up to Angie, turns, and walks away.
Angie’s heart begins pounding its protest, her breath quickening as he disappears into his apartment. She wants to run after him, to beg him not to go. Justin was hers, her uncle. Now what if her mom’s scared him off?
Angie looks at Marilyn standing there on the sidewalk, her face naked as she stares at Justin’s back.
“How did you find us?” Angie asks.
“Your phone was off, so I called Sam. He gave me the address.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Get in the car.”
“I have Sam’s car. I know you’re probably mad at me, I get that, but I’m not ready to leave LA yet. I can’t.”
“Get in the car. I’m not asking you.” Angie doesn’t remember her mom ever sounding like this before, at least not since Angie was a little girl, refusing to go to bed.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do right now. Not after you’ve spent my whole life lying to me,” Angie says.
“Please, Angie. This isn’t easy for me, either.”
“So why did you even come, then?”
“Because you are my daughter and I love you. I didn’t want you to have to do this alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I was with Justin. My uncle. You know, the one you told me was dead?”
Marilyn pauses. “I’ve had a long drive, across that desert, thinking about the best way … I thought I’d take you to a place that your dad used to like—I thought—”
“Fine. Let’s go.” Angie gets in the car and pulls the door shut behind her.
Marilyn gets in after her, starts the engine, and drives off in silence.
As they turn into slow traffic moving down La Brea, Angie stares out the window at the coffee shops and sneaker shops, yoga studios and restaurants where people lounge with glasses of wine.
“The city’s changed,” Marilyn says, as if they could just have a normal conversation. “It has and it hasn’t. There’s something about the light here. And I see these palm trees in my dreams…”
Angie glances over to see her mom gripping the wheel too tightly.
“When you left, Angie, I was angry and scared. I missed you terribly … I went to look at the photos in my drawer, but they were gone. When I found the charges from the White Pages on your debit card, I put it together and realized you’d come looking for Justin. I just wish you would have told me the truth. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why do you think? I didn’t trust you.”
Marilyn brakes suddenly as an Audi makes a left turn, cutting them off. “I know it might be hard for you to understand, but I—I was trying to protect you,” Marilyn says.
“From what? Don’t you think it would’ve been good for me to know another black person in my family? Don’t you think it would’ve been good for me to have someone who could’ve been like, a father figure or whatever, since I didn’t have a dad? I could’ve grown up knowing Justin.”
Marilyn keeps her eyes on the road. Someone honks as she merges into the right lane. “Angie, I—”
“You lied! About one of the most important things in my whole life!”
“I may not be perfect, but I’ve done my best! I’m doing my best!” Marilyn pulls over against the curb, traffic rushing on around them, and wipes tears from her eyes.
“I can’t ask you anything or talk to you about anything ’cause you just start crying,” Angie blurts out.
Marilyn stares out the windshield for a long moment, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I wanted to make a world for you where you would feel safe, where the horrors of life would be distant. I didn’t want you to grow up with the pain that I felt, the rage. I thought if I could carry all the weight of it, you wouldn’t have to.”
Angie has to know the truth or she will forever be chasing ghosts.
“What happened?” she asks, and the words taste too hot in her mouth. “How did my dad die?”
* * *
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
* * *
Sitting by the entrance to the 10—the freeway to the ocean she used to drive with James—Marilyn remembers the quote from the Joan Didion book that she’d loved: the words that had led her, back then, to open the doors to herself, to eventually let him in.
The girl of seventeen, the girl who fell in love with James Alan Bell, who took pictures with the camera he bought her, who lost her virginity to him at the top of Runyon Canyon, who planned their futures together … she’s been pounding down the door of Marilyn’s heart since the day Marilyn abandoned her in Los Angeles and drove off through the desert.
Marilyn looks into their daughter’s face, and for the first time sees her there—the self she left behind. For the first time she sees that to understand Angie the way she needs to be understood, Marilyn will have to let that girl back in, her own self at seventeen, ravaged as she ended up by grief, drowned as she was in guilt; she will have to learn to love that girl again as she loves her own daughter, or she may lose Angie along with her.
And so she begins to speak. She tells Angie the story that she’s told to no one, since the night that shattered her all those years ago.
MARILYN
James and Justin sing along to “Rosa Parks” on the radio as they turn onto Gramercy Place, on the way home from the beach. The music is effervescent, and Marilyn feels herself starting to bounce along with them, loosening, lightening, almost levitating. But when they park, she spots Woody getting out of his truck across the street, and she crashes back to the ground. James reaches over, puts his hand on her leg, looks into her eyes. It’s okay, he’s saying, without needing to speak. Justin jumps out of the car, not realizing what might be wrong.
Marilyn silently reminds herself that it doesn’t matter what Woody thinks. She only has a few more months here, anyway. What’s the worst he can do? She takes the camera—just a couple photos left on the roll that Justin shot—and follows James to his door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Woody comes up behind Marilyn and grabs hold of her arm, his face red with fury or booze or likely both. She hates that her voice is gone.
“We’re having dinner, for my brother’s birthday,” James says. She can see his muscles tensing, the fight gathering itself into his body. Justin, luckily, has already slipped inside.
“I need you to clean up upstairs,” Woody says to Marilyn. “Come on.”
“She’s not going upstairs right now.” James takes a step forward. “And if you ever hit her again,” he says, voice low, “you won’t survive it.”
Marilyn sees the wild fury flashing in Woody’s eyes, but she allows herself to feel sheltered by the certainty in James’s voice. James matters; their love matters; Woody doesn’t matter. Before Woody can respond, Marilyn yanks her arm back and follows James into his apartment.
She forces air into her lungs, promises herself that she won’t let the incident get in the way of Justin’s birthday night. James keeps his hand on her back, guides her to the couch, brings her water. She can smell the chocolate cake just out of the oven. They have mac and cheese casserole, Justin’s favorite. They sing happy birthday, and Justin blows out candles, opens presents. Marilyn gives him a photo book she made for him, where she’s pasted copies of her favorite pictures, with room for him to add his own. She hears her mother’s footsteps upstairs; she must be back from work. But she knows Sylvie won’t come looking for her, not now. Now she acts as if Marilyn’s just a shadow of herself, a Marilyn impersonator there only to remind her of the daughter she’s already lost. When it’s time to go home, James asks to walk her up, but she doesn’t want to provoke Woody further, or hear whatever Sylvie might have to say about it, under her breath. She’s hoping they’re both asleep or passed out from too much to drink, anyway.
The apartment is dark—not a single light left on—so she lets her eyes adjust, relieved as she makes her way to her bedroom. It is not until she’s beneath the covers, beginning to drift off, that she hears the door open. And there’s Woody, stepping—no—staggering—toward her.
“How dare you embarras
s me like that, after everything I’ve done for you.”
She tries to get up, but he pushes her back with a force she didn’t expect he had. It’s the look on his face that chills her most: as if somehow, all that he’s been unable to control has concentrated itself in her body.
“Mom!” she screams, but there’s nothing. “Mom!” she screams louder. Sylvie doesn’t come. Why doesn’t she come? Too drunk, too deep in sleep to be woken, or maybe she went out again, as she’s been prone to do lately. Maybe she’s not there at all.
“James!” she screams into the dark night, out the open window, the kind of scream that slices her chest open, before Woody puts the pillow over her face, faded My Little Ponies printed on its case. She tries to knee him, but it doesn’t land. She digs her nails into his skin, ready to draw blood.
“You won’t get away with what you’re doing. The party’s over. You’re going to learn some discipline, and I’ll teach it to you myself.”
He lets the pillow up and she gasps for air before he pushes it back down again. She tells herself to stay inside of her body, but she’s drifting, scattering into the night.
The pounding at the front door brings her back.
“Mari!” James’s voice calls out.
She knees Woody, successfully this time. As he falls back, she bursts up, runs to the door, and swings it open to James.
“Are you okay?” he asks, pulling her close.
But then Woody’s right behind her, grabbing her by the hair.
James punches Woody in the side of the face, causing him to loosen his grip. Marilyn runs for the phone. She dials 911. It’s pure instinct; the single move one is meant to make in the face of disaster, embedded into her mind by childhood training. She speaks quickly: 1814 Gramercy, number two, upstairs. Please, come as fast as you can.
When she hangs up and turns back, she sees James struggling to contain Woody. He gets Woody in a headlock. But then, with a free hand, Woody pulls his switchblade from his pocket, presses it to James’s stomach.
“Let him go!” Marilyn screams. She tears a lamp from its socket and runs toward them.