Pasadena Page 15

  It’s my mother’s post-partum ritual. When something ends, you clean house and wait for the next thing to begin. When I was born, my father said, she even polished the silverware.

  I go to my room and change out of my black dress and fake pearls. It feels like a costume coming off, like a layer of pretense being torn away. I’d shower if the bath mats weren’t hanging. Instead, I go into the bathroom and wash my face.

  In the mirror, I look twelve years old again. The denim shorts and faded T-shirt remind me of summers back east, when there were three of us in my family. When family was more than just a word.

  I turn away from the mirror and go sit outside.

  On the front steps, I watch Roy’s belongings become a part of the landscape, and wonder if my mother kicked him out, or begged him to stay. And how long it’ll be before he, or some opportunistic Dumpster diver, comes along to claim his junk.

  A warm breeze rustles across the grass, bringing the scent of baked hay and ash.

  I’m still sitting there when the music stops and my mother comes out to join me.

  “Roy’s gone,” she says by way of greeting. My mother looks different when she’s single. Cleaner, somehow. Whole-grain bread instead of brioche.

  “Good riddance,” I say.

  “It’s just you and me now.”

  We sit for a moment in silence, watching the grass die in the heat of the sun. “I’m so sorry about Maggie,” she says. “And about Roy.”

  I take a deep breath and let her have her piece.

  “I didn’t see it, or I’d have stopped it,” she promises.

  I could say the same about Maggie’s suicide. I would have stopped it, but I chose not to see.

  “I want you to know,” she tells me, “I’m going to keep trying. I want to be a better mother to you.”

  The way I want to be a better daughter, a better girlfriend. A better friend.

  “Sure,” I say. “You’ll try. I’ll try. We’ll all try.” It’s a familiar tune. I dance the steps without even counting. Because some of us don’t get second chances.

  It’s my mother’s turn to sigh, and she does so, exhaustedly. “Why do you blame me for everything?” she asks in a thin, weary voice.

  “Not everything, Mom. Just the one thing. Isn’t that enough?” I don’t know why I say it. I can lay blame at my mother’s feet, at my father’s. At Maggie’s, at Parker’s. At mine. But I’m angry, and she’s an old familiar target for the blow.

  This cues her exit. Every time, my mother stands up, looks out into the middle distance, and walks away. But not today.

  Maybe because a girl my age is dead, someone my mother knew. Someone I loved.

  Maybe because it’s a Thursday and the yard is full of trash.

  But she doesn’t leave. She just leans back with her elbows on the top step, her back wedged against the cracked concrete between the bottom and middle stair. “I wonder,” she says. “I wonder if you’ll ever forgive me for not protecting you.”

  It’s a new note in the old song, and for once, I have to think of my line. “That depends,” I say.

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not I can forgive myself.”

  One dark night long ago, a bad man did a bad thing to a little girl who’s been bad inside ever since. Nobody saved me the way Maggie tried to save her family.

  Even I fought for my friend more than I ever fought for that little girl. Maggie meant the world to me. Why should I be worth any less?

  I feel that Ferris wheel again, and I’m tumbling out of it, fingers slipping, wondering if I can let it all go.

  Then the record skips and gets back on course.

  “You were just a kid, hon,” my mother says. “Just a child.”

  “I know.”

  We’re all just little kids in the big wide world. Making choices every day. Right or wrong. Skinning our knees and getting back up again until the day we simply cannot rise.

  I pull the photograph from my pocket and give it to her. The last picture of her innocent little girl.

  My mother gasps, staring at the photo in her hands. I can feel her heartache, homesick for that child’s smile.

  She puts an arm around me, and I let her pull me into a small half hug.

  We sit on the steps, our shoulders pressed together, her head leaning against mine. I can feel it through my bones when she echoes my words. “Yeah,” she says. “You know.”

  August in Pasadena. Fire, heat, and ash as the Santa Ana winds blow out of the west, scouring the dead fronds from palm trees, igniting the manzanita and chaparral. It’s the song of Southern California, fire, mud, and earthquake; tear it down, build it up.

  The earth shakes, the houses burn, and people die, damned and unforgiven, or saved. But the rest of us remain.

  Maggie Kim is gone.

  I’m the one who must endure.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A book has many midwives and Pasadena is no exception. Many thanks: To Rahna Reiko Rizzuto—the first person to read what I thought was my “perfect” fifty-page draft and tell me that it could be more. To the amazing Evie Lindbloom, whose librarian superpowers helped me understand the details behind Maggie’s demise. To Kirby Kim, my agent, who saw beauty in the book and championed it. To my editor, Shauna Rossano, who stuck by the story even while starting her new family. To Katherine Perkins, who rode shotgun while Shauna was creating a masterpiece of her own. To Danielle Calotta, who gave the book its amazing cover, one that captures the smudged glamour of Southern California perfectly. To the soul of Raymond Chandler and all of the great noir storytellers of film and page who drew shadows out of sunshine and studied the darker side of the human condition. To Hedgebrook writing retreat for giving me shelter while I breathed more life into those first fifty pages. To the beautiful city of Pasadena for being an inspiration. And especially to my husband, Kelvin. This book is for him. Without his love of noir, I would have never attempted it in the first place.

  Thank you, one and all.

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