Chapter 10
Cecilia
I stared blankly out the rounded window at the lights disappearing below me. Alex was down there. The look on his face when I left him at the airport had almost broken my heart. If I had stayed a second longer I wouldn’t have been able to leave him.
Something dripped on my hand, and I saw it was a tear. They were streaming down my face and I lifted my cuffs to my cheeks to stop them. It was useless.
I thought I was probably in some kind of state of shock, because I couldn’t believe at all what was happening. My mom had gotten arrested. She had to be bailed out of jail. She hadn’t called me, even though Paulo told me he had given her my number. I had packed a bag with almost all my clothes and was now on a plane, for the third time in my life, going to San Francisco. I had left Nina behind. I had left Alex behind. I felt an actual pain in my chest thinking about him, right where I thought my heart was.
The flight seemed endless. The lady in the middle seat had a baby, which usually I would have loved, but I could only look at her and feel a jealous pit grow in my stomach. What was the matter with me? When the baby cried and cried, I didn’t even help the mom. I didn’t want to read, even. I rested my forehead against the window, and just when I thought the crying was over, I would find myself doing it again.
The pilot came on to say that there were weather delays in San Francisco due to a pineapple express, which sounded really interesting but turned out to be a terrible rain storm. We circled endlessly, bumping around through the clouds. The baby just cried harder. I felt sick. It reminded me of sailing around St. Kitts in November during hurricane season, with a terrible storm bearing down on us. I had put on my lifejacket and tied down everything we owned, and huddled in my bunk, waiting for the water to overtake us. I felt like it was overtaking me now. Especially when the plane dipped down and it looked like we were landing right in the bay we had been circling, until suddenly the wheels hit the runway hard and we started to screech to a stop. Everyone on the plane clapped. I just closed my eyes.
I followed the herd through the terminal at SFO and down to the pit where we would collect our bags. I pulled out my phone to call Alex, but then thought how late it was in Michigan. I would let him sleep. I leaned against a pillar, knowing I had to get it together. If my mom’s friend Kaito was here he would definitely be putting his round magnet thing on my forehead. I needed all the healing vibes I could get.
But by the time the bags finally got offloaded, soaked and dripping, I had gotten myself under control. There was no reason to fall apart. I could handle this. I was the one who put out the fire in the galley when my mom forgot about the teapot on the burner. I was the one who talked us into new passports, even though she had lost my birth certificate. I was the one who convinced the high school in Miami to take me, even though I didn’t have one transcript to give them. I got myself, and my wet bag, onto the dirty aboveground train to head into the city, the last one of the night. A lady was standing in the corner, rocking herself, and a man told me to get my fucking bag off the seat, then wedged himself in next to me.
When I got to the 16 th Street station, I pushed past the mean man and headed up to street level. My mom’s old friend Ema lived near there, and I had called her from Alex’s house to ask her if she minded if I bunked with her. Alex. I shook my head to get him out of it. Ema had sounded a little weird, but said that yes, I was welcome. I trudged through the dark streets. It was well after midnight, California time, and three something AM in Michigan. I was exhausted. The streets were scary. And people made fun of Detroit? I was running by the time I got to Ema’s building. I hugged Ema, and after a little hesitation, she hugged me back.
“I’m so sorry for disturbing you, and making you stay up so late,” I told her. “I didn’t know who else to call. It seems like everyone else we knew has gotten priced out of San Francisco and moved out! And I can’t stay in a hotel because I have to save all the money I can to pay Paulo back for the bail and my friend in Detroit for the plane ticket.”
Ema finally smiled at me a little. “Always the responsible one. Even when you were a little girl, you were. Come on in, I’ll make you some chai.” When I asked about my mom, Ema just shook her head. “Let’s talk in the morning.” She made me go to bed on the couch with a smoky quartz crystal under my pillow. The bump annoyed me but I was too tired not to fall asleep.
When I woke up I immediately reached for Alex, then sat up straight, calling to him. Where was he? I looked around, confused. I was on Ema’s couch. She was at the stove across from me in her studio apartment, watching me with concern.
“Who is Alex?” she asked. I rubbed my eyes.
“He’s somebody in Detroit.” I looked at the clock, and saw that I had slept in, even for this time zone. He would have been up for hours, gone rowing, headed to work. Maybe he had already gone down for coffee. My throat got tight.
“Come to the table and have some raw buckwheat groats,” Ema told me. I hadn’t had buckwheat groats in years, purposefully. I reluctantly joined her at the table, shoving my hair back. I wondered if I would be able to find someone who could tame it like Diana, Neveah’s mom. My throat got tighter.
She poured me a cup of tea. Smelled like jasmine, and I wrapped my hands around the cup. “Ok?” Ema asked, and when I nodded, she got right into it. “Let me tell you what I know about your mother.”
She did, and it was appalling. My mom had come out to San Francisco about six months before, when I had still been in Fort Wayne. Ema said they had gotten along well in the beginning, but that my mom had been acting strange. We had always paid our way when we visited people, either by buying groceries or supplements, paying some bills, things like that. At least, that’s what I had always done when we stayed with my mom’s friends. But Ema said that my mom was shirking everything. It got really uncomfortable, and expensive (my mom really never learned how to economize) as Ema had been paying for everything for her. Finally she asked my mom for some cash, and she told Ema that she didn’t have any. It appeared that the trust fund had finally run dry .
I sat with my mouth hanging open. Ms. Eubank would have told me I was going to catch flies in it. “So she was just living here, sponging off you?” I asked.
Ema shook her head at me, a little incredulous. “Cecilia, it’s as if you’ve never met your mother before! Of course she was, that’s what she does.”
“Wait a minute, I always tried to pay our way when we stayed with people! When we were with you for all that time, I remember going down to the PG&E office every month to pay your bill for you. And I bought groceries, and cooked dinner, almost every night! I’m sorry that wasn’t enough.” I could feel my cheeks heating with shame.
Ema patted my hand. “It was enough that a twelve-year-old girl did that. You did that. But you are not your mother. Katharine does not behave that way when you’re not there to force her to. She is a selfish, self-centered woman.”
“Ema!” I stood up angrily.
“Cecilia, you’re old enough to recognize that for yourself,” she said calmly.
Then she told me the rest. My mom had taken up with an acquaintance of Ema’s, a guy named Allen who owned a reiki studio. Reiki, Ema repeated, like it was a bad word. Anyway, the next thing Ema knew my mom had moved in with him into the apartment above his studio in the Sunset, without even saying goodbye. I should have known that a new boyfriend would be involved in all this. Then Paulo had called Ema from New York, telling her that my mom had been arrested and asking if she could help with bail money, which she had declined. She didn’t know why my mom had been arrested but assumed it had something to do with Allen, the reiki guy, because Ema had a very low opinion of him as he apparently also had a record, for something to do with minors. I choked on my mouthful of raw groats. At that point she patted my back and reached for some more tea for me to correct any qi deficiency I might be developing due to the shock, but I refused.
The upshot was that Ema had no idea where my mom had gone, but suggested that I ask Allen the creeper. I nodded mutely when she told me she was going to the farmers’ market, and left me with my congealed bowl of buckwheat and cold tea.
Alex
I texted Steve around three AM that I was going to be late for work. I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, and the valerian, lavender pillow, and chamomile tea hadn’t helped. I went first for a run, which left me breathless. It had been a while since I had run. Then I went to the river to scull. Then I went to the Y to swim. By the time I got to work, my body was exhausted. My left hand was shaking like crazy. Unfortunately my mind wouldn’t seem to turn off.
I woke up my computer, checked my voicemail, did all my usual morning tasks. I looked at my phone. Again. After dicking around for a couple of hours, successfully deflecting Steve, I went down to the coffee shop. Neveah and Jason were both there, looking depressed, but both of them brightened when they saw me.
“Hey, Alex!” Neveah said. “Have you heard from Cecilia? What’s going on? She left me a weird message that she had to go to San Francisco. ”
“Her mom needed her,” I explained.
Jason started filling up a to-go cup for me without being asked. He nodded sympathetically. “She told me about her mom. Did you know that she once left Cecilia on the boat alone so she could go to Florida to meet a guy? Cec was only thirteen and she ended up having to get emergency repairs done on the boat by herself and was really scared. That’s not how she described it, but I read between the lines.”
It didn’t surprise me. As she kept telling me, Cecilia was very self-sufficient. “I’ll let you guys know how she’s doing when I talk to her.”
“Yeah, let us know,” Neveah said. “Tell her we miss her, right, Jase? We’re taking care of Smokey. And Keri is freaking out already because she is just figuring out how much Cecilia actually did around here. It only took until about five minutes after she tried to open alone.”
Jason nodded, and they were both looking at me sympathetically. Cecilia had said that there was some tension between the two of them, but I didn’t see it. “I’ll tell her. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
When I was leaving the coffee shop, my phone rang, and in my rush to answer I dropped the full paper cup on the ground. “Hello?”
“Alex?”
I felt myself relax at the sound of her voice. Even my ears seemed to loosen up. “Hi there. How are you doing?”
There was a slight pause before Cecilia answered. “The flight was ok. It got delayed because it was really raining here. But it’s pretty sunny today.” I knew all that. Flight tracker, weather apps.
“But how are you?” I pressed.
“I’m ok, too. I’m staying with my mom’s friend, well, I guess she’s my friend. Anyway, her name is Ema Markowitz. Let me give you her number.” She recited it and I typed it into my phone. “I can’t really talk, because on this phone I’m roaming. I’m going to get a new phone today and I’ll call you later from that. Can you do me a favor? Can you call Ms. Eubank and tell her where I am? She didn’t answer last night and she doesn’t have voicemail.” She gave me that number too, then paused again. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“It’s a bad connection. You sound like you’re in a wind tunnel.”
“Yeah, I’m outside. I’m going to look for my mom today. Ema gave me an idea of where she might be.”
“Ceci, have you thought about what you’re going to do when you find her?” I asked.
“I’ll find out what’s happening with the criminal charges, if they haven’t been dismissed, make sure she has a lawyer. I’ll check where she’s living and see if it’s safe, make sure she has a plan for what’s next, stuff like that. Maybe I’ll try to get her to leave San Francisco, since she must not know a lot of people here anymore. I can get her settled somewhere less expensive, get a lease signed, turn on utilities. She’s not really good with practical stuff.”
“But it’s been months since you’ve seen her, right? She had to have survived without you.” I tried to sound reasonable. I had been trying to figure out how to say this to her so she would look at the situation rationally.
“Obviously she hasn’t been surviving very well, Alex!” Cecilia said angrily. “She got arrested and Ema said—”
“What?”
“I have to get going, ok? I’ll talk to you later.”
She had hung up before I said goodbye. I stared at my phone.
Then I went back up to my personality-free office, to wait until the end of day so I could return to my empty house. I thought back to before I knew Cecilia. What had I been doing with myself? Maybe my empty house, empty life, hadn’t bothered me before, but they were really bothering me now.
I picked up the phone again and dialed the number for Ms. Eubank.
“Hello?” an elderly voice answered.
“Ms. Eubank? Hello, my name is Alex Whitaker.”
“Cecilia’s Alex?” she asked.
“I guess I am. She had to go to California to visit her mother, and she asked me to call you to let you know where she was and why she wouldn’t be coming to visit. She called last night, but didn’t get through to you.” I had an idea. “I was also wondering if I could stop by and meet you in person.”
“Of course,” she told me. “I’d be glad to meet you in person too. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“As I have about you. What time will you be home? ”
“What time am I not at home? The only reason I missed Cecilia’s call was because I was asleep. But I’ll stay up, if you’re coming.”
We settled on 5:30, which I hoped wasn’t really her bedtime.
I preemptively visited Steve’s office before I left. “I’m heading out,” I told him. “I’ll be in at my usual time tomorrow.”
“How about dinner?” he asked, then looked anxiously at his screens.
“No, I can tell you have things to do here. I’m meeting Cecilia’s friend now, anyway.”
“Oh? Who is Cecilia’s friend?” He tried to sound nonchalant.
“An eighty-year-old woman. I think I’ll be safe with her, but if she gets rough with me, I’ll text you.” He still looked worried. “I talked to Cecilia. She made it out there ok.” Now he looked like he was going to burst and I shook my head at him. “Just spit it out. You have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s nothing really, I was just wondering if Cecilia said when she’ll be back. It’s a roundtrip ticket.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she has a specific plan to come back here. She took most of her clothes, it sounds like she’ll have a lot to do with her mom. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I took off fast.
I realized how tired I was on the drive over to Ms. Eubank’s house. My hand was shaking again, a lot. Her house was small, and looking a little worse for wear. I parked in her driveway, which needed weeding.
“My,” Ms. Eubank said when she answered my knock. “She was right, you are a tall one!” It would make sense if this really was Cecilia’s relative. She was equally tiny. “Come in, come in!” she told me, and hustled me into the living room. I sat uncomfortably on a plaid couch, which felt too small for me. I thought I might break it.
“Now, explain to me what happened with her crazy mother.”
Apparently we were all of one mind about Cecilia’s mom. I didn’t give her any details, just that Paulo from New York had called and Cecilia had run to the rescue.
Ms. Eubank looked pissed. “I’m not sure why a grown woman needs her daughter to go two thousand miles to help her out of trouble, but from what Cecilia has told me, they don’t have what you’d call a traditional relationship. Did you know that Cecilia worked during high school to pay rent to her mother’s friend, so she could stay with her to have residency to attend the local school?” That didn’t surprise me either. She wasn’t afraid of work, that was for sure. “While her mother has never held a job. Hmph.” The noise she made was between a disgusted snort and angry laugh.
“Cecilia feels like she has to do this. I hope someday she’ll be back.”
Ms. Eubank looked alarmed. “You think she won’t come back?”
“Well, she left her van, Nina, so she’ll probably want that. And I know she really cares about you, and finding her father. So maybe she’ll come home, I mean, back to Michigan, when she wraps this up with her mom. We’ll see.”
Ms. Eubank was watching me, and it made me want to squirm. I was already holding my left hand so that she wouldn’t see it shake. “I was just about to have some dinner,” she announced. “Would you like to join me? It isn’t much, some soup and crackers.”
I stood up. “Would you like to go out to dinner with me instead? I’m pretty hungry, and I know of a few good places we could go. How do you feel about Greek food?”
∞
Ms. Eubank had been a very nice dinner companion. She told me more about Cecilia’s purported father, who sounded even worse than her mom. If that was really her gene pool, it was amazing that she had come out so wonderful. The worst stories Ms. Eubank would preface with, “Now, I didn’t tell Cecilia this, but…” and give me a worried glance before launching into another story about Roger’s bad behavior. The guy was a crook. “I took the DNA test that she gave me, and I mailed it in, and the results will be here in a few weeks. I’ll be anxious to know what they say. I’m sure Cecilia is, too.”
When I dropped her off, I decided that I’d come back soon and do some yardwork. Her back yard had looked like a mess when I had seen it from my perch on the plaid couch.
Lying in bed, I tried to plan my days. I would do it the way I had when I had first left the rehab hospital, section by section. Morning section: I would row every day. Coffee, talk to the kids at the coffee shop. Middle section: Work, focus completely on that. No distractions. Evening section: I would run and swim on alternate days. One new recipe every night. I would read, if I could. The urge to draw had ebbed a bit, but maybe I would do that too. I would go to bed early, and get sufficient sleep. So that I would be ready to start it up all over again in the morning.
Cecilia hadn’t called, and no one had answered the number at the place she was staying. After about twenty rings, I hung up. She was probably pretty busy, cleaning up after her bat-shit crazy mom. I thought back to my conversation with Dr. Mavromatis about the worst possible outcome of my situation with Cecilia. I thought that maybe I was living it. Her leaving, losing her, was definitely the worst.