BLOOD FLOATED ON top of the carpet as though hesitant to soak in, sorry for the mess. No war zone here. Here, a family room in northern California, 2009. A misty morning in redwood country, in a town where you could expect not to get killed if you minded your own business.
Someone tidied this little house neat as a church nave. Except for the knife gone from its block. Except for droplets of the boy’s blood flung on the couch cover, scattered up the breakfast bar. Except for the blood pooling under his neck.
He was a big kid. Around five-foot-eleven, two-forty. He lay on his belly, arms pulled back and bound, the back of his head and the soles of his shoes pulled toward each other by the ends of the rope that tied his hands. One end looped around his forehead like a bandana, knotted in back. The other stretched to his sturdy ankles to lash them together.
The gash across his throat nearly threw me out of consciousness.
I knew him. I’d watched him and my son wrestle in my front yard when they were both in middle school.
He could’ve been my boy.
Something kept the shock of the scene from completely washing over me. A prickle in the back of my mind, a thorn-tip of recognition trying to break through.
His concave shape. A rope pulling the head back, the feet up. Had I seen this before?
And where was my son?
CHAPTER1
seventeen hours earlier
THE COAST STRETCHED out under a low sky of thin milk and iron. I searched for a perfect sand dollar to give Jaral, my son. He was late again.
I walked around a flock of sandpipers playing tag with the rising waves. Beyond the skittering birds, the telltale white arc of a sand dollar shell, what scientists call the “test,” poked up from the tide line. When I picked it up, it was only a broken piece, less than half a shell. I needed an intact test. Currency I could exchange for my teen’s attention. Something to buy me a little goodwill.
He’d been acting tense, closed off, angry for no reason I could tell. And I wanted to talk about what he’d do after graduation, which was only a month away. I wanted to ask him about it. But I didn’t want to come across as controlling and clueless. Make no mistake, I was controlling and clueless. But I didn’t want to seem that way.
I guess I thought I’d lead with “Here’s a cool shell” before diving into “What is going on with you, and what’s your plan, anyway?”
We’d been tide pooling out here every month since I adopted him. Mucking around on the edge of the cold Pacific normally relaxed us both. But wondering where he was, and worrying about what I’d say, was anti-relaxing.
A few yards down from the broken test, I found another sand dollar, perfectly round. Barefoot, I walked into the surf to wash it off. When the ocean poured over my ankles, an icy pain detonated deep in my feet. The water played higher, licking the edges of the black suit pants I’d rolled up over my calves. Then it paused, swayed in place like a drunk, rushed to recede.
I rinsed my treasure in the tidal suction. Once clean, it showed the white of sun-struck concrete. Tiny holes stippled a perfect, five-petaled flower across the top.
Gorgeous. A small win.
I slid the sand dollar into a polyester pants pocket. The other pocket screamed once. Then twice. A barn owl call. Jaral’s ringtone.
“Hey, son! Didn’t you tell me no one under twenty-five makes phone calls?” Hiding my irritation that he was late, so I didn’t alienate him right off. I walked my sand-crusted feet toward my shoes, higher up the beach.
“Mrs. Marez?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you Mrs. Marez, mother of one Jaral Marez?”
Don’t panic, a voice said deep inside me. Don’t panic …
“I’m his mother, Ana Marez. What’s going on?”
The parchment voice of an old man told me he could either call the police or I could come down to his store and “retrieve my errant offspring.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Committed a crime that will cost you thirteen dollars and eighty-seven cents to rectify. The boy isn’t carrying any means of payment, yet he feels entitled to depart my premises with merchandise. How soon can you be here?”
“What merchandise? Is he okay? Why do you have his phone?”
I’d gotten calls about Jaral before. As a single mom, his trouble came straight at me and no one else. “Mrs.” Marez, your son is skipping school, shoplifting beef jerky, skipping school, riding his bike down the museum steps, skipping school, sneaking into movies, skipping school.
I adopted him when he was twelve, and we handled each call as it came. Me lecturing him or grounding him, sometimes banging kitchen cupboards, him suppressing a grin if he thought I was ridiculous, or tightening his arms against his sides if I stomped around too much.
But I thought those days were in the rearview. When he turned sixteen, it was like a switch flipped. Maybe he realized he needed material things from me to ease his social life, like a car, and he decided to play nicer with me to get them. Or maybe he got a zap of maturity. Whatever it was, it was great for us. We rowed along with attempts to push the other into a good
mood when one of us needed something from the other. Not the healthiest dynamic, maybe, but it beat trying to enforce house arrest by grounding him three out of four weeks a month.
Now that he recently turned eighteen, I was expecting to exert good-mood pressure with a nice seashell and a big meal at his favorite restaurant, so I could ask him to start talking about options for his adult future. He’d turned around his academics enough to be on track to graduate, thank goodness, but then what?
I was not expecting to hear from a local business owner calling him “errant.”
“Is he okay?” I said again. “Where is he?”
“He’s right here at my establishment, Broadway Drug, 1824 Broadway on the north side of town. He wisely chose to dial your number so that I could speak to you after I told him the alternative. Using my own equipment to telephone the authorities.”
“But he’s okay?”
“Morally, no. Physically, the boy appears sound.”
“What are you saying he did?”
“Ma’am, I cannot spend all day providing parental guidance. We can settle the details when you arrive. If I don’t see you in ten minutes, I will notify the police.”
“I’m on the north jetty. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Hello?”
The screen on my phone at least had the decency to tell me the call ended.
I put the phone back in the dry pocket.
As I finished pulling on my shoes, my cell broke into the Thompson Twins, “Hold Me Now.” Jaral programmed my general ringtone, for all non-Jaral callers, with an ’80s music shuffle. He assumed I loved ’80s pop because my age fit the profile. He personally couldn’t get enough of ’80s top-40 tunes and knew all the words to the biggest hits.
I picked up the call. A robot claiming to be the. Eureka. High School. Attendance Office. Told me Jaral missed hours 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 today.
When I reached my car, I saw a brown juvenile pelican circling the parking lot.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said to the bird.
I set the sand dollar on the shotgun seat, slammed the door, and peeled out across the bridge over Humboldt Bay. The mainland town of Eureka waited to catch me on the other side.
CHAPTER2
JARAL, HEART-SHAPED FACE and whip-thin. Skin that glowed like a smooth tan-oak acorn, and a mind made for shaping the world around him. When he decided to give school a try at sixteen, he found a home in the high school’s theater program, where it didn’t matter that he was just tuning back in after years of apathy. Never a very verbal kid, except when singing to himself, set design became his passion. Spice canisters and napkins at home became mock-up materials. He loved to draw and redraw layouts, triple-checking his figures on height and square footage.
As eighteen-year-olds go, he seemed solid enough. More so considering how different the Jaral of today was from the boy who became my son six years ago. At twelve, he’d come out of two years in foster care suspicious of everyone, skilled at folding his smarts behind sidelong glances and a bouncing leg, a tapping hand. Now he’d sing to himself in front of me, laugh with friends, and show at least some of his teachers what he could do if he tried.
With his diploma four weeks away, why mess up now? What thirteen-dollar treasure had he tried to lift?
I crossed the bridge and merged onto Broadway, heading south. Just past Drive-Thru Donuts, I hit the first light. Beyond that sat Broadway Drug.
I parked my ancient Toyota beside Jaral’s ancient Honda and went in.
Jaral leaned against the photo counter with one leg crossed over the other, next to a hunched little man with large ears and a comb-over about seven hairs strong. My five-feet-nine towered over the man. Instead of peering up at me, he addressed my salt-spangled pantlegs.
“I understand congratulations are in order.”
“Excuse me?”
Jaral rattled a light-green bottle of pills. “He means these.” He pushed off from the counter and handed me the bottle. A stork with a bouquet of pastel balloons in its beak perched on a corner of the label.
“Prenatal vitamins?” I turned the label around to face the owner. “There must be some mistake. This kid has no girlfriend. You think a brown boy by himself in a store must be shoplifting? Check your bias, sir.”
“Moms! I had them on me. I took them.”
I looked at my boy as though he’d stepped into a spotlight. He tilted his chin up higher than normal. Tensed his jaw. His gaze floated past the two adults in front of him. He flicked a glance at me, to measure something in my face.
“Why?” I said. “Why would you need these?”
A gnarled hand on my sleeve. “Aurmmm …” A wordless, gravelly hum warned me that Father Time would explain the facts of life to me, if he had to.
“Yeah, okay.” I pulled my arm back. “I get it.”
But I didn’t get it. I wanted out, so I could berate my kid in the comfort of my own home.
“What do I owe you? Thirteen something?”
I caught a whiff of jasmine. A susurration of pastel linens materialized at my side.
“Well, Boots Marez! I wanted to catch you before the parent meeting tomorrow! Hmm-hm.”
Lusanne Bewley, one of the parents at the school I ran, had the body of a volleyball champ and the voice of a fifth-grade girl. She also had a verbal tic that scattered little hums throughout her conversations. They underscored her usual self-satisfied and judgy tone quite nicely.
She saw the vitamins in my hand. “Oh my! Hm. What a surprise! Hm. I mean, aren’t you a
little …”
I cut her off before she could say “old” or “single.”
“Here!” I handed the bottle back to Jaral. Then I turned to Lusanne.
“It’s not what you think!” Heat rose through my neck and face. “Or hell. Maybe it is!”
She gawked at Jaral. Everyone at my school knew Jaral.
“This is …” I started, but found myself tonque-tied. “What is …” Having a jury of three weigh my cluelessness made my fingers curl into claws. I attempted a big, bold laugh. Jaral frowned at me and took a step back.
“Ta-da!” I shot my arms out to present the boy, like I made him appear from thin air. “This! Is the guy with all the answers.”
I took out the last of my cash, a twenty, slapped it on the glass. Without glancing at the owner or Lusanne, I got out of there. Jaral knew enough to follow.
We walked to my car.
“Get in,” I said. “I’ll bring you back here to get your car later.”
He opened the passenger door and saw the sand dollar.
“Aw, nice!” he said. “Thanks, Moms.” Gone was the tension of the last few weeks. He seemed suspiciously calm.
I got in and slammed my door shut as hard as I could. Jaral flinched in his seat and turned away from me.
I tried counting back from ten to let my anger settle. It felt more like a countdown to launch. I slammed the door one more time. That felt a little better. Jaral’s shoulders curled inward, just slightly, after that second slam. I wished it didn’t give me some satisfaction to see that. But it did.
Those were the ingredients of an ugly brew that simmered in me. A lifelong rage that boiled over on those closest to me and a sick contentment when I saw it had an impact. I fought against these poisons, but sometimes my head and chest filled with such pressure I worried I’d burst like a putrid whale corpse washed ashore.
“So,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Are you a teen dad? Are you going to be?” I wanted to shout this so loud the windows shook, but that was against my rules. Absolutely no shouting. I could bang and slam things to let off steam. But no shouting.
Jaral put the pills in a cupholder between us. I squeezed the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking. Jaral put one of his hands over one of mine. I loved the paradox of those hands. He had a man’s voice, but a youthful roundness softened his knuckles. Some childhood still remained in him.
“Nope.” He squeezed my hand once, then crossed his arms. “Not a teen dad. A kid trying to help a friend.”
“Well. But. Stealing, Jaral?”
He shrugged. Was thieving a native talent of his that I only now uncovered? A survival skill from years with his drug-addicted birth mom?
“I’m sorry I messed up mother-son time.” He pulled the seat belt over him.
“Yeah.”
“You were gonna take me to Lumberjack Cookhouse after we walked around on the beach.”
“Yup.”
“Because you know how much I love all-you-can-eat-oysters on that crackly wax paper.”
“Because I wanted to ask you what’s wrong. You’ve been so strange lately. So quiet.” I let out breath I’d been holding since my phone rang. His deep brown eyes shone. “That’s what the dinner would’ve been all about. What is really up
with you?”
“Got big boy problems,” he said. Then shrugged.
I started the car, backed out of the parking space, unsure where to drive.
“You’re not going to freak out? I mean, like, legit massacre me?”
“For this?” I waved my hand over the green plastic bottle as though to make it disappear. “Or for cutting school? You’re only four weeks from graduation. But you’re not going to make it if you stop going to class.”
“Moms. Missing one day of school ain’t no thing. Graduation’s all buttoned up. I got this.”
I braked too hard at stop signs, revved too fast to get back up to speed.
“I know you’re not using, or buying, or selling. I know you’re not.”
“You know I’m not.”
“I know you don’t even think about mind-altering substances. You hate what they did to your bio mom. But check this out. What if now is the time you’ve been waiting for? This moment you’ve got graduation All. Buttoned. Up. You think, ‘Screw it,’ and decide it’s okay to just see what it’s like. Get loaded. Is that what you did this morning instead of going to class?”
“I went to class!”
The effort not to yell made my teeth rattle. Yelling meant someone about to get hit, when I was a kid. I’d let anger ricochet around inside me before risking that.
“I got a call from the school. You ditched.”
“These are just vitamins! Not even prescription drugs. Just let me take care of my own business. Stop the crazy. Shiiiii …”
I hadn’t even started the crazy. But the sweetness of the half-cuss pierced me. Maybe he still cared what I thought.
“You know my mother would have smacked me if I ever cut school,” I said to him.
“You want to smack me?”
I reminded him that after my mother disappeared, I went to live with my Uncle Max and Honey.
“I got this whole ramble memorized, Moms. You loved them, they loved you, but Max had his hands full taking care of Honey, who was dying of AIDS, in and out of the hospital all the time. So your uncle let you do whatever you wanted, you made bad choices, now you’re trying to be the guiding force you didn’t have when you were a teen. But I do not make it easy. Did I forget any parts?”
I would not let him get me more worked up than I already was. So what if I’d gone over this story before? At least now I knew he’d been listening.
“I know where we’ll go,” I said, turning toward the south end of town. “It’s too late to go back to the beach, but Sequoia Park is close. Still up for a walk?”
When he didn’t answer, I glanced over. Under a furrowed brow, Jaral’s eyes snapped with a secret excitement. He leaned forward, back straight, staring into the distance.
Because he’d never been a big talker, I’d learned to examine Jaral’s face, the angles in his back and neck, the small muscles in his hands, for giveaways, little signals of fear, unease, nervousness, or the expression that calmed my mother’s heart most, relaxation. Right now, the kid cabled nothing but self-assurance, top to toe.
Part of me worried this confidence hid something risky, something that made him afraid. I wanted to scoop away Jaral’s surface, pull out whatever he hid.
But just as intensely, I wanted not to become my own mother. She would bang things, yell, hit, to get real and made-up confessions out of me. Yes, I had left the back gate open so the dog got loose. But he came back, so what was the big deal? No, I hadn’t stuck a fork in the blender or done something else to mess up the blades. It just stopped working because machines stop working sometimes. But whatever she thought was my fault, I had to own as my doing.
I carried my mother’s violence like a blood-borne disease. Harmless when dormant, but when stirred awake, it had an energy, a trajectory, a will to live all its own, separate from me. I was afraid of its power in me.
Fear had roused it this time. Fear about whatever Jaral wasn’t telling me, fear that I couldn’t protect him if he cut me out of his life. I felt the heat of my fear-turned-violence all the way to my fingertips.
We had a jerky drive over to the park as my right foot punished each pedal. Brake. Gas. Brake. Gas. Brake.
The playground at Sequoia Park held a Monday evening peace. Two sweethearts perched on swings. A set of parents who spoke an easy-rolling stream of Spanish pushed three kids on a merry-go-round, a squeaky metal disk with bent pipes for handles. The kids shut their eyes and hung on, laughing. A solemn redwood forest rose behind the playground.
I loved walking out here. The soft give of woodsy earth under my feet felt like a gentle welcome. When my mother was in calmer moods, she’d take me and my little brother on walks in the state park near where we lived. We’d compare the smells of different leaves while she told us about the oils and odors plants use to defend themselves. We’d turn over rocks to hunt for lizards, laugh as we tried to bound like jackrabbits. Southern Colorado was an arid place to learn to love the earth, but the junipers and chamisa on the state park trails held plenty of life if you knew where to look.
Later, when I lived in California, Uncle Max took me to the redwoods after Honey died, saying the two of us needed some majesty and mystery to heal. He said the mystery of a forest is that a thousand forests exist beyond the one you can perceive. At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant, but even so, the redwood forests were magical to me. From the spongy bark on the tall trees to the big banana slugs sliding over broad leaves in the undergrowth, the redwoods were a marvel. That set me on track for college up here. Then I’d just never left.
“We’ll take one of the forest trails,” I said.
Jaral settled into a state of excessive cheer. “Great! I love this place!”
We passed a stump higher than my head and big around as my kitchen, a remnant from those first lumber-boom years in Eureka. Younger trees sprouted all around the big stump.
What I said to him at the start of our hike? “You either tell me what’s going on or I take your phone, your car keys, maybe your skin.”
“Thing is, Moms …” It took him a while to finish the thought. The trail was too narrow for us to walk side by side. He shuffled ahead in a teenaged amble. I crowded him at one shoulder, trying to read his face. He kept his eyes on the trail and shrank away from me.
“Thing is, there’s just one reason you want me to tell you what’s up. It’s so you can dig in with
questions, scrape more details of my business out of me, then shove in a heavy pile of what you think I should do. That’s how you always are. But I don’t care what you think I should do. I don’t need your help. No point even telling you anything. Don’t you get that?”
“Don’t I get that?” I echoed. Then I looked up at the treetops and yelled, “No!” Technically, I wasn’t yelling directly at him. That still seemed to matter.
Then I got after it. Where had he really been, and who had he really been with? I asked. And who was the father of the pregnant friend’s child, and did her parents know, and was this why he’d been so tense lately?
With too much momentum to wait for answers, I went on and schooled the back of his head as he kept down the path. Told him how he should know any friend who needed him to steal was no friend at all, and how he should get some adult help with this, there were medical clinics offering free prenatal care if that’s what this friend needed, how he should show his best student-self these last weeks, finish strong instead of skipping class, he’d need good recommendations from teachers for whatever came next, and he should work on deciding what that was.
By the time I realized I’d just done what he said I always did—choked the space between us with questions and shoulds—it was too late. I’d shut Jaral down. He’d lost interest in his fake good mood, and just muttered “There it is,” after I burned through my fear-fed fire of parental panic.
But in the end, I still let him have his phone, his car keys, and his skin that night.
Blame the pond at the bottom of the trail, lively with frogs. Blame the heavy-blossom fog of azalea perfume we walked through on the way back.
A redwood forest can decompose mistrust and fear, the hard metals of negativity, into just another decaying layer underfoot.
Plus, I felt guilty for going off. Maybe he was just trying to help someone.
By the time Jaral spoke again, I had no appetite for conflict.
“I actually need my car tonight. I’m handling something, Moms. Start grounding me tomorrow.”
“When are you planning on telling me what this something is that you’re handling?”
“Tomorrow, Moms. I swear.”
“Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m trying to trust you, here.”
“That’s good, that’s real good.”
“God, I don’t know if I’m stupid or what, but you say you’re handling something? Fine. Have your car tonight. But you will be back by eight PM. I’m sure you have homework. Or you can study for finals. Eight PM and then hit the books. Got it?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
I smiled. I couldn’t help
it. He was being goofy, and I was relieved I didn’t want to kill him anymore.
He turned to head back up the trail.
“No, wait. I want you to turn around and hear the rest of this.”
He spun back around on one foot and flashed jazz hands.
“I’m serious,” I said, laughing.
He dropped his arms and said “Yeah, you are,” pleased with himself.
“Starting tomorrow, the only thing you use your car for is to get to and from school.” I forced my face back into an expression of earnest agitation. ...
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