Reef Dance Page 16

  Nervous breakdowns probably start like this. I’d lost it in front of Jackie and Phoebe at the party. “Marielena Shepard!” I’d shouted, as if she mattered to anyone but me. And Carmen Manriquez, she hardly knew me, but she seemed to sense an uneasy disconnection. I took in my immediate surroundings: remnants, no real heritage to speak of anymore, only an attic full of junk. I had stopped looking for Marielena Shepard many years ago when I never should have desisted, and just now, I despised myself for my failure.

  I turned my self-hatred on my mother, how she could leave me like she did. I closed my eyes and prayed for a sign that she was dead, dead and gone for what she’d done to me. But I couldn’t wish her out of my mind, not for a single, self-pitying minute. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  I was fucked.

  I lacked the courage to go forward, but hadn’t a reason in the world to turn back. There was nothing more to do but find out what had become of Marielena Shepard.

  I swept the flashlight from left to right and settled on an old metal file cabinet my mother had once used to keep her accounting records. I remembered removing the drawers so that I could shove the cabinet up the hatch without breaking my back under the weight of it. It was beige and frosted with dust, a gold key protruding from the top drawer. I’d laid some of my mother’s personal things in that top drawer and turned the key back in December of ’79, a few short days after the infamous Jackie Pace found me on the reef at Holy Rollers.

  The key clicked over easily, but the rollers groaned as I jerked the drawer open and poked the flashlight in. The drawer was filled with an assortment of items: a folded shawl, a few silk scarves, a black ring binder stuffed with loose papers, some thin manila folders in hanging files. I took my time, removing the contents one at a time and placing them on the floor next to me.

  Many of the objects were religious. A tiny, gilt-edged black pocket Bible, the one she used to bring to mass. A larger, hardbound King James version. A stack of holy cards bound by a single rubberband, some in Spanish; one commemorating my first communion, another the death of my father. Two display candles, the kind that burn their way down a large, colored-glass cylinder. The kind you use for prayer vigils. Both candles were adorned with decals showing the benevolent face of Christ, eyes raised slightly, a gold halo behind his tilted head. Inside his chest his ruby heart was ringed by a wreath of thorns and glowed at the edges with spears of yellow light. Beneath his robe was a scroll bearing the words Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, Sacred Heart of Jesus. Three sets of black rosary beads, one white. A withered string of bleached white garlic bulbs—my mother’s method of warding off demons. Marielena Shepard could not have been a prude to have married a free spirit like my father, but she was spiritually grounded in a way that, through practice and ritual, probably made her life feel safer and more predictable.

  She was also very superstitious. Devoted to God but fearing Satan with equal intensity, my mother believed the two were in constant combat over her soul. Her nature was low-key and peaceful, but in times of adversity she would strain to see signs in ordinary occurrences, signs that she hoped might signify that the Lord was indeed winning the battle. The signs she saw were not always encouraging. One omen she never bothered to explain kept us off a rather important bridge in the L.A. Harbor for two years—until, that is, a sizeable earthquake caused enough structural damage to close it for two more years for repairs.

  Another bad sign had led her to distrust doctors. My dad’s old friend Grog Baker told me of the omen my mother thought she received the day my father’s heart gave out on him. Grog and my father had been surfing more or less together that day but were lining up two or three sandbars apart to wait for the swells. Grog was the first one there to see my father go down, and he acted fast, dragging him from the water and administering CPR while he listened for a heartbeat. But nothing worked. A lifeguard-paramedic appeared a few minutes later and took charge in a blur of motion, shouting directions at Grog while he alternately pumped my father’s chest and blew air deep into his lungs. According to Grog, the paramedic had that gunfighter’s cockiness some doctors seem born with and really believed he was going to save my father. But his jump-starts failed. The guy took it hard, pacing and cursing and taking the Lord’s name in vain several times. Later, at the hospital, Grog was still reeling from the ordeal and unthinkingly told my mother everything, even the part about the paramedic’s frustrated rant. Those blasphemous words probably assured my father’s death, my mother told Grog. Not so Marielena, Grog pleaded, the doc did everything he could to save a life. But her mind was made up. It was a sign.

  The last object I removed from the trunk was a brown leather portfolio with a sleek gold buckle and the letters MS engraved above the clasp and finished with gold paint. Marielena Shepard. It looked expensive and of fine quality, an extravagant accessory I could not picture my mother purchasing for herself, the engraving adding a special touch. This was a gift.

  There wasn’t much inside, just a gold pen and pencil set tucked into their leather holders and two rubberband-bound bundles of papers. I flipped through the first bundle, a dozen air-mail envelopes, all addressed to my mother, all previously opened and bearing a return address of Ritoque, Chile—my mother’s hometown—along with the name “M. Elizalde.” These were letters from my mother’s revered great aunt, Miluca Elizalde.

  Aunt Miluca had been the central adult figure in my mother’s life, raising her, sponsoring her education, and eventually paying her way to the United States with an entree to an accounting position at a Long Beach import-export company that traded in fine Chilean wines and produce. My mother’s father was one of many Chileans to die in the government-owned silver mines high in the Central Andes. Her mother was killed a few months later in a freak accident, returning from the central market in Puerto Montt in a public bus. The bus driver swerved to avoid a man lying in the road but lost control, the bus flipping over and rolling into the sea. The man in the road was drunk and attempting suicide, but when he saw the bus roll into the sea he ran away. My mother was orphaned at four. She relied solely on God’s grace to get through, she once told me, but at that age, she could not have comprehended much. Her Aunt Miluca took her in and raised her as her own. To my mother, Aunt Miluca was Luz Guidora, her guiding light.

  A few letters were brittle and yellow with postmarks from the mid-sixties, but the rest bore seventies postmarks, three with 1979 stamps. One was postmarked August 16, 1979, which meant my mother had read this letter a mere three weeks before she’d disappeared. I unfolded it and pored over the first few lines, but the text was in Spanish, stopping me cold. I’d have to find a translator—someone at the courthouse first thing Monday.

  The second bundle was a stack of faded fold-out brochures, the paper crackling at my touch. A sales brochure, some kind of real estate come-on for a place called Sea Pointe.

  A half dozen or so developments had been carved out of the low bluffs and sandy lots around Christianitos over the last twenty years. Puerto Mar, Maison de Rose, Sea Ridge, Christianitos del Mar, The Bluffs. A few more neighborhoods had corny seaside names that temporarily escaped me, but I was certain none were called Sea Pointe.

  I studied the artist’s rendering of a large, spacious home overlooking an inlet of water and rugged, unscathed bluffs. A fold-out page contained a map divided into grids and marked with tiny reference numbers. The brochure touted the “unparalleled ocean and city views” and “favorable zoning” that apparently made these parcels such a steal for building that dream home. I read on. “Priceless solitude,” they boasted. Priceless my ass. Another rich developer—“Provencal Ltd.” was the name above the call-for-info number—getting richer by carving up the last few open spaces along an already overpopulated stretch of coastline.

  I could think of no immediate connection between Provencal Limited and my mother. She could not afford a big lot or the price tag to build a custom home, to pay such an inflated ransom for a piece of priceless solitude. B
esides, she loved this house and her roses, the short walk—two blocks—to choir practice and Sunday mass at Saint Ann’s. She loved our close proximity to the shore, where she would stroll in the late afternoon, dropping rose petals into the foaming water down at the end of Twelfth Street, the place where my father had taken his last breath. As far as I knew she’d been perfectly content living here on Porpoise Way.

  She could have done some accounting work for the developer, Provencal. Once the Chilean import-export business folded (the market for Chilean wines grew smaller as the California vineyards came into their own), my mother had decided to go it alone. She picked up odd assignments here and there through a local business-networking group sponsored by the chamber of commerce. An ad she placed in the Saint Ann’s Sunday bulletin also brought assignments. If Provencal had needed help maintaining their books, they might have used her.

  I closed up the file cabinet, dropped the letters and brochures into the lighted hallway below, and eased back down the hole until I felt the top step of the ladder. Thinking about the expensive portfolio, Sea Pointe, whether my mother had a lover. The letters might explain a lot of things. I shut the hatch, remembering that I was still without a working dishwasher. What the hell—things like dishwashers you can replace.

  Jackie and Max were back from their fishing expedition. Max was soaking wet and covered with sand, barking his head off. Jackie crooned “Light My Fire” as he fed the flames in the backyard barbecue pit with a long squirt from a can of lighter fluid. “Yo, J.-man the sha-man, I am starving,” he said. He eyed the bundles I’d brought down from the attic. “Whatcha got, some old love letters that need torching?”

  “Stuff for work,” I said. But Jackie seemed uninterested.

  “You’re working too hard,” he said. “Take a break for a few hours, boss.”

  Jackie would not be hearing about my discovery in the attic or my decision to look for some answers after all this time. Not tonight, at least. I knew I was breaking a very old promise to him and that sooner or later he’d catch on; when he did he’d be pissed and demand an explanation. I’d hear his “shit happens” speech, the timeworn platitudes about moving on. The guy meant well, but his counsel would do nothing but erode my tentative resolve.

  I went in through the open kitchen door and stuffed the bundle of letters into a side pouch of my briefcase, which was already overstuffed with files. The Sea Pointe brochures wouldn’t fit. I nearly jumped to see Jackie standing in the doorway behind me.

  “It’s Friday, says I,” he said. He raised the lighter fluid and pointed the spout at me as if I was next to be incinerated. “Party or die, says I, party or die.”

  A wicker basket full of the week’s discarded newspapers lay next to my briefcase on the floor. I casually dropped the brochures atop Wednesday’s front page. “Okay,” I told him, “you win. It’ll be twenty minutes at least before those coals get hot enough,” I said. “Let’s see what you caught, Ahab. I’ll do up a little tartar sauce and marinade.” To my relief, he didn’t seem to have noticed the drop I’d made. Or at least he hadn’t seen fit to comment.

  “Prepare to view the catch, mate,” Jackie said. We walked to the picnic table, where he hoisted two flat-faced halibut the size of serving platters. “You’re lookin’ at two of the best fish I’ve ever caught on a line, and get this, I snagged ’em on back-to-back casts.”

  “At dusk?”

  “Right after Max saw you. You were our good luck charm.”

  “I’d better get on the phone,” I said. “We’ll need Britt and a few of his delinquent buddies to help us out. There’s no way we’ll even eat half of it ourselves.”

  “In the bag, mate,” he said, waving me off. “I’ve already made a few arrangements. Hope you don’t mind,” he added when he saw the stress lines rise on my forehead. “Mondo good times in store for tonight. I give you the Pace guarantee.”

  I said nothing, not wishing to spoil his triumphant mood. I was wasted from court, tired of making argument for the day. Though the house had barely recovered from the last happening he’d commandeered, I didn’t much feel like playing the heavy.

  A short while later the back gate began to clatter open and shut. Max played the maitre d’ by ambling over to simultaneously greet and scare the holy crap out of each arriving guest. An unusual mix of people came to dine with us. Britt was in attendance, of course, with three surf-team pals who chowed down until towels had to be applied to their sweating foreheads. But Britt’s fourth guest was a quiet, exceedingly polite girl from the ladies squad with long, sun-streaked brown locks and unusual poise for a seventeen-year-old. Her name was Shannon, and her presence had a visible effect on Britt. When she arrived she quickly offered me an assist in the kitchen, dicing vegetables and tossing a salad while I scrubbed potatoes and cleaned the fish. We talked about surfing and school, her plans for college and a future surf trip to Costa Rica. Britt kept popping his head inside to see what was up, but we didn’t need his help. Yet each time Shannon sent him away, she did so ever so gently. The girl knew exactly what was up.

  A couple of Jackie’s Hawaiian friends—two brothers, both built like professional wrestlers, with long, wild black hair and necks as thick as tree stumps—drove up from Huntington Beach. A hush fell over the group when they pushed through the back gate looking like the party crashers from hell as they balanced cases of beer, pineapples, a guitar and a ukulele on their shoulders. Max didn’t hesitate to mob them with affection. It was as if Max, an awesome physical specimen himself, knew that he’d found two kindred spirits, and he stayed at their feet the rest of the night.

  Percy Wrightman, a local fisherman and boat-builder who still surfed whenever he could find time, brought wine, a half gallon of ice cream and two apple pies. Jackie phoned him primarily to boast about his catch, so Percy also had a camera and tape to record Jackie’s feat. When I told Percy I’d already filleted both fish without even weighing them, he rolled his eyes and chuckled, openly accusing Jackie of landing his big catch at the fish market.

  “J., get Percy a cold one,” Jackie groused as Percy dabbed tears from his eyes, the others roaring, “and don’t forget to spit in it first.”

  Our most unexpected guest was Marion Blume, a fiftyish widow from across the alley who had came over to ask the owner of the black panel van—the Hawaiians—to please move it, as it was blocking her “egress and ingress.” Her voice trembled but her tone remained firm, as if she expected a confrontation. She didn’t get one.

  Jackie charmed my lonely neighbor while the van was moved, engaging her in a spirited chat about horticulture and landscape design, two subjects of which he knows not a thing. I brought her a plate of food while they talked, Jackie nodding intently as she listed the virtues of homemade mulch. Though she was the first to go—just after nine—Marion took the time to shake hands with every guest before she ducked out. Ten minutes later she reappeared with a bunch of fresh-picked roses for my kitchen and a soup bone for Max. Jackie found the perfect gesture, as he is often wont to do, bowing to kiss Marion’s hand as the rest of us hooted.

  The night air warmed as a thick overcast floated in from the sea. I removed the grill from the barbecue pit and threw some logs on the smoldering embers. We sat in a close circle on lounge chairs turned sideways, eating pie and ice cream and clinking beers as the invigorated flames climbed higher. Britt and Shannon floated marshmallows out over the pit on the ends of trembling coat hangers, feeding them into our mouths as if we were baby birds. The Hawaiians broke out their instruments and began to play, prefacing each tune with brief explanations of the history involved, the hope and heartbreak betrayed by the soft strains of Island melody. We listened in rapt attention as they harmonized, their meaty fingers coaxing impossibly delicate sounds from the twinkling strings.

  Jackie smiled at me as if to say, not bad for back-to-back casts, eh? I was happy to share the vibe going around this circle and shot Jackie a grin in return. But the Island music was pulling me in another
direction, gnawing at a forgotten parcel of memory.

  They sang a traditional tune about the rape of the land, the trampling of Hawaiian culture by white missionaries, their peoples’ will to persevere. Mako, the older Hawaiian, laid down his guitar and described the jolt he’d taken on his last trip home when he four-wheeled out of town to surf a semi-remote secret spot and found a shopping center blocking his path to the beach. Jackie quickly commiserated, decrying the congestion that has all but throttled so many of the world’s most pristine coastlines. “Same old story everywhere,” Jackie said. “I’ve seen this place go from a quiet little town to a pimple on the ass of greater L.A.”

  “If we didn’t have Save the Back Bay,” Britt said, “it’d be a parking lot by now.”

  Britt’s remark reminded me of the brochures I’d found earlier in the attic, the ones I’d slipped onto the pile of old papers in the kitchen. Now would be a good time to slide them out of view. Like a good host, I took a few drink orders before slipping inside.

  The Wednesday front page stared up from the top of the pile. No brochures. I scanned the dining table and surrounding countertops, rifled through the trash basket near the door, then poked around under the sink and in the cupboards. The Sea Pointe brochures were gone. Quietly I checked my bedroom, the upstairs bath, the living room, the entry hall table, every conceivable place where they could have been mislaid. But I knew I hadn’t mislaid the brochures. Someone here had taken them.

  I handed out a few beers and sat down before the fire. The brochures were my mother’s, stashed in a private, forgotten place all this time. Why would anyone here even care? Hell, none of the faces sitting beside me had even known Marielena Shepard, not even my friends. Britt was a small boy when she disappeared, and Jackie and I didn’t first meet until three months after the fact. Jackie said he’d never known her before he saved me on the reef at Holy Rollers; I’d never questioned him on that. After all, what could a quiet, well-modulated single parent have shared in common with a surf star who openly cited Mick Jagger and P. T. Barnum as role models? Just one odd thing: years ago when he saved my life, I made a promise to him that I would end my search for my mother.