I’m so late. I will add some Halloween stuff to this later. Promise. Remember, copyrighted material. Hope last night went, well, well.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN- PART ONE- MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969
Dr. Susan Peters and I were sitting on opposite sides of the table in treatment room. I had an unopened PeeChee folder in front of me. There were two stacks of manila folders in front of her. She was laughing. She wrote something on a legal pad inside the open top folder.
“Your father telling you to smile, or laugh rather than… punch someone or, um…” Dr. Peters pointed to another folder. “Slam someone’s head into the water fountain. Did you try his, that… technique?” I smiled. Big. Fake. The doctor returned a gritted-teeth smile. “Scary,” she said. We both laughed, her more than me.
“So, Dr. Peters if this neural feedback dude does show up with his own equipment; we… I’m assuming Dr. Dan will be here. Also. We, I’ll do the testing and all; then you three can decide if I’m, what, insane … or damaged?” She fluttered her hand and wrote something else. Two or three words. “Or, I mean…” She looked up. I smiled. Can’t I be both?”
“Of course.” She removed a legal pad from the folder, set it on a clean area on the table, and closed the folder. “Dr. Dan’ll do the, uh, testing… again. The neural feedback; it’s… therapy. As far as… you’re probably neither crazy nor damaged. Just…” She laughed for no obvious reason. “The drunk dad at the baseball game story. Love it.”
“Loving something; it’s neither clinical nor objective. You’re not that kind of… doctor.”
“No. I’m that kind of… person, Joey. Stories. Yes. Just tell me if I’m getting this right.” Dr. Peters was ready to write. “So, Freddy’s on third base, one drunk dad, from the other team’s drunk dads, is hanging on the outfield fence and giving your brother shit, another one jumps in your father’s patrol car. Unmarked, right?”
“Cop car. Instantly recognizable. My mom guilt-tripped my dad into going to the game. The game was in Vista, as is the substation. My dad showed up fifth inning.”
“Out of six.”
“Seven, I believe. Pony league.”
“Your father asked Drunk Dad to kindly get out of his car?”
“According to him. The ‘kindly’ part. I had heard yelling. Not my dad. He never… yelled.”
“You’re running over, outside the fence, your dad yanks Drunk Dad out of the car, and another drunk dad…”
“Handed the guy a baseball bat… with which Drunk Dad hit my father, breaking his arm. Left arm. Radius. Distal.”
“Okay. Technical. I love the ‘with which’ part. Your dad pulls the bat out of Drunk Dad One’s hand, jabs him in the sternum.”
“Below it.” I pointed to a spot just below my rib cage. “Xiphoid process. Straight shot.”
“Ow! Okay. Not trying to kill the drunk dad.” I shook my head. “But Joey; you’re running over, you call out, your dad looks over at you, and that’s when he got… hit.”
“It was.”
Dr. Peters slid her finger up the page. “My question is…” Dr. Peters stood up, walked to the door, opened it, leaned into the hallway. “He here, yet?” I couldn’t hear the answer. It took longer than yes or no. The Doctor pulled herself back into the room, closed the door. “Accident on the freeway. And Dr. Dan wants to wait. So, next time.”
I stood up. “Your actual question: Was my father distracted, and do I feel responsible for my father’s broken arm? He was. I do. Drunk Dad got some sort of settlement… from the County. Eventually. My father got a week off, went back to work with his arm in a cast.”
“Another chapter in the… the legend,” Dr. Peters said. I may have smiled. “Should I have said ‘myth?’”
“My father was everything anyone says he was.” She had purposefully and successfully provoked me. Shit. “Not, Dr. Susan, everything everyone says.”
Dr. Peters stepped toward the door; made a fist she probably didn’t think I saw. She opened her hand before she turned back around. “Then, Joey, next week; I would like to… revisit… the accident… Perhaps we can catch one of your… spells.”
“You think you caused, induced it, that you’re… responsible… for it?”
“No. Maybe. Sorry. Yes, but… maybe you allowed it, rather than you couldn’t control it. You try so hard to… Can you describe what it’s like? I mean, that kind of… self control, you with the impulsive… behavior.”
“Shocking.”
“No, not even surprising. Your… pauses. I put them into two categories. Short ones, you’re doing the one step forward, two back thing, considering the previous moments. Six to ten seconds. The absences, where you visualize some event, and you can still be aware of… where you are, whatever else is… those are longer.”
“The double-exposure thing? Yeah, I’m still… there… in those. Present. Aware.”
“But the one I… witnessed. It was… intense. Whatever you were seeing, was everything else… gone?”
“Gone.” I put both hands up to my face, palms in, fingers tight.
Dr. Peters sat down, pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table. She pulled a second, empty legal pad closer. I didn’t sit down. “I talked, on the phone, to the professor at UCLA, the neural feedback… dude. I told him I thought you… you observe… everything. If you had an overload of… input. I mean, the absence thing, being gone. Maybe it’s…”
I sat down in the chair she had offered, slid the Pee-Chee folder over and in front of me. “These spells. The one you saw. They’re different than… when I had seizures. They’re like, like an 8-millimeter movie. Really, I couldn’t tell you if it was a dream or a memory.”
“Let’s call them… visions. Visions?” I nodded. “Are they in color?”
I had to laugh. “Oh, because men, supposedly, dream in black and white. So… no. But… what did the feedback dude say about your… theory?”
“Not total bullshit, actually. He said anyone, with that much… stimulation, be it from epilepsy or another neurological disorder, would be on the ground, most likely in a fetal position. Gone.”
“And I wasn’t… I mean, on the ground.”
“No, just… gone. As you said. Yourself.”
“I do… try to, to not react. Not have a spell, not end up… gone.”
Dr. Peters wrote a few more lines, slipped the notepad into a folder. I opened my Pee-Chee folder, opened the notebook, spun the enlargements Julia Cole had left on the Falcon around and toward her. “What do you believe being an actual witness to something like this would do to that person?”
“Holy fuck!” The doctor pushed away from the table. Too forceful a push, she had to grab the edge to keep from going over backwards. “Joey! Fu…uck! Where’d you get these?”
I shook my head and blew out whatever air I had in my lungs.
…
Dr. Peters followed me to where the Falcon was parked, still shaded by the overhanging eucalyptus trees. She looked back toward the building and pulled a single cigarette from the bottom left-hand pocket of her lab coat. I set my folders on the roof, lit her cigarette with my father’s lighter, took out a Marlboro, lit it.
“Our secret, Joey?”
“Client/Doctor… sure.” We both inhaled. Twice. Susan Peters inhaled deeper, held the smoke in longer, let it out more slowly. “My mother,” I said, “not sure you knew this; she works in the photo lab. Camp Pendleton. Secretary. I’ve been there… a few times. The photographers are Marines or ex-Marines. The older ones were at every landing, every battle. Most are… so… sad, so… damaged. Ruined.”
“Most, not… all?”
I leaned against the driver’s door of the Falcon. “Hard to say. People… hide it.” Dr. Peters raised the lower back of her lab coat and leaned against the bumper. “I’m hoping, since I do… I do remember images, do file them, rerun them; I do… maybe I’m just… weird, and not…”
“Next week, Joey; we’ll know more.” I shook my head and arms as if I was electrified. Dr. Peters dropped her cigarette butt, stepped on it, stepped away from the bumper. “It’s just like that. If your… friend, with the… photos, needs to talk…”
Dr. Peters pulled a business card from her coat, offered it to me. I took the card, stuck it into the Pee-Chee. “I know your number, Dr. Peters.”
“Susan. Please, Joey.” I looked at the cigarette butt until Dr. Peters picked it up, held it out toward me, and closed her hand around it.
“Susan,” I said as I unlocked the door, “In the parking lot… yes, Susan.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Susan, I’m not gone, but I am… going.” Dr. Peters didn’t respond. “It’s a joke. You’re supposed to… smile.” Dr. Peters smiled.
…
It was just after noon. I was on 101. I had seen decently sized waves at the various low spots. I could see, over the guard rail between Pipes and Swamis, unbroken sets. Still, I glanced several times to my right and up the hill. I passed Swamis, turned right at D Street. Cars were parked on both sides. The door to David Cole’s office was open. I couldn’t really see inside. I turned right again on Vulcan.
I drove slowly past Julia Cole’s mother’s house. No Jesus Saves bus. The VW bus was in the driveway. Two houses down, I could see waves forming in the kelp beds, but I couldn’t see the actual lineup at Swamis. I could see the entrance to the lot, the gold bulbs on the white walls. I considered turning around and going past the house again. A car came toward me from the south. It may or may not have slowed down. Their neighborhood. I looked down, allowed the car to pass, pulled back out.
…
My remaining change, eighty-five cents, was arranged in three stacks on the little corner shelf in the phone booth, along with my keys and wallet and cigarettes and my father’s lighter. The handset was perched on my right shoulder. I was in my trunks and a t shirt; barefoot. I put the handset to my face. “No, I just want you to… tell Mr. Greenwald. Hello? Oh. Hi. I was trying to explain that it’s late and…” I took a step back, testing the length of the cord. One foot out of the booth, one in. “No Sir, they are not with me. No, I do not know where my surf friends would be.” I looked past the small parking lot to the larger lot. Two thirds full. Most were not surfer’s vehicles. Neither Gary’s nor Roger’s cars were among them.
“Am I going to surf? Possibly.” The Jesus Saves bus was at the far end of the lot, the door open. I didn’t see Portia. “You know, Mr. Greenwald, there’s this thing about doctor/patient confidentiality, but… Sir, I have to tell you…”
The operator interrupted. “Deposit thirty-five cents for the next three minutes, please.”
“I believe this doctor is the craziest one yet.” Click.
…
I went through the trees and the old outhouse and to the stairs. My board was leaned against the fence and my towel was draped over the top rail. There was a woman next to my board, sitting on the lower cross member of the fence, the top rail crossing her back, just below her shoulders. Her arms were outstretched, hands twisted, fingers on the top of the top rail. She waited until I got very close to her before pushing herself forward and standing up, moving between me and the surfboard. “This is Sid’s board.”
“It was.”
The woman moved close enough that I stepped back. Tall, thin, her hair quite long for a woman over thirty; very straight and very blonde. There was something solid, white, in her hair on where it went over her left ear. Solid. She noticed I had focused on it and reached for it with her left hand, a large diamond on the ring finger. “Might be paint, she said,” moving strands of hair against each other, slightly breaking up the gob.
“Paint. Yes.” The woman was wearing a dress, mid-knee length, and a sweater, connected near the neck with a short length of tiny beads. Another strand, with larger beads, was rather tight to her neck. Her sandals were on the concrete next to her. I had seen this woman before.
I closed my eyes. The grocery store. Customer. She was wearing a dress that time also, talking to Mrs. Tony between the middle and the south register. Mrs. Tony had three account cards, slightly splayed, in her left hand. Her pencil was out of her hair and in her right hand. The woman was placing bills, in three stacks, on the ledge on top of the rack. Mrs. Tony looked at me as I passed. She moved her head, quite sharply, toward the middle counter. The woman looked at me. I looked at the three cards and three stacks and kept walking.
That image faded.
“I see what they mean about you, Junior.” I opened my eyes. The woman’s eyes were blue, very light. “Judith.” She left room for my response. I didn’t. “Julie’s mother.” She didn’t move back. I didn’t move away. “You drove past my house. Yesterday… evening.” She looked up and in the direction of her house, a little to the right from straight across the highway. I didn’t follow her eyes. Her house wasn’t visible from where we were standing. “The Falcon wagon…” She looked toward the smaller lot where the Falcon was parked and partially visible through the trees. I didn’t look. I did nod. “Used to be your dads, then your mom’s. Ruth. I don’t know her, but everyone knows Joe DeFreines. Knew. She took you surfing. It’s your car now?”
I wanted to answer quickly. “Three more payments to my… No. Yes. Mine. Now.”
Julie’s mother backed away, flipped her right hand out and to her right, to the south. “Before they opened the state park.” She kept her eyes on mine. “Third stairway down. You were just learning. You and my younger girl, Julie; you both must have been around… eleven.”
I didn’t remember seeing this woman. I did remember waves so thin and clear that, walking out, pushing a surfboard, it seemed I could see through them. Transparent. I did remember the girl, laughing, standing, riding more than the soup. I remembered being surprised when a wave hit me, chest high, while I was watching this woman’s younger daughter. Julie.
“You know, Junior, I… we, we were there. That night. Chulo.”
I looked around, hoping something might keep me from having to respond. “Yes. Mrs. Cole. With… Julie. Julia. It must have been…”
“Horrible. Yes. Julie saw the fire. I saw the lights.” Mrs. Cole turned away for a moment, wiped her eyes. She turned back. “Chulo. I knew Chulo… most of his life.”
Realizing I had been squeezing coins in my left hand, I placed them into my wallet, already stuffed with little notes and receipts and twenty-three-dollars in bills. “Sorry.” I pulled my towel off the top rail, wrapped my keys and my wallet in the towel, put the bundle under my left arm. I nodded toward the water. “Surfing,” I said, looking toward the water. “Going. Mrs. Cole.”
“Ex Mrs. Cole. Or… first Mrs. Cole.” I looked back at the first Mrs. Cole. “Judith. Non-Jew Judith to David Cole’s… people. The current Mrs. Cole, Gloria… goes by Glor…” Judith swung her head around, pushed the hair away from her face with both hands. “Uppity. East Coast. Old money. Glor would prefer it if I went back to my maiden name.” Judith waited as if I was supposed to ask something. “Sweet. Judith Sweet. Fuck Glor, I’ve never been… sweet.” Judith looked to see if I was shocked. “Anyway, Junior; what do… you… know?”
“Joey.” Perhaps in response to Judith’s move, I used the fingers of my right hand to pull my hair forward, over my ears, right side, then, awkwardly, the left. “Nothing. What I know.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” I reached for my board with my right hand.
Judith put her left hand over mine. “Joey, your father understood how things… are. It was under control.” Judith caught me looking at the oversized diamond on an oversized ring. “Second husband.” Moving her lips side to side, the look she gave me was intended to say something like the second husband wasn’t her first choice. “Mooney. I pronounce it ‘money.’ Nice guy.” Her hand still over mine, she moved her face even closer. “Chulo; that was… so… wrong.”
“Wrong.”
“Your father and Chulo, Chulo’s family; there’s… history.”
“Yes. From the parades.”
Judith responded with an obvious scoff, moved her hand to my left forearm, looked at my clouded watch, smiled, and looked into my eyes. “And Chulo; he is another… surfer. Was.”
“And good. When I started… Chulo and Jumper… they ruled.”
Judith pulled her hand off my arm, looked away, stepped back. I followed her eyes. Portia was coming toward us along the bluff. I took the first three steps down the stairs.
“Portia wasn’t asleep, Joey.” I dropped down three more stairs. “And she spoke with your mother. Ruth.” I stopped. I turned fully around. Portia was next to Judith, nothing but sky above them. “I’m just trying to protect my friends and my… daughters.” Judith put her right arm around Portia’s shoulders. “Like your mother is trying to protect… you.”
I knew I had to look at Portia. She pushed back her shawl, put her hands on her belly, slid each hand away from the center, looked at her hands, and then at me. “Your mother calls you Atsushi.”
“Lately. Yes.” I moved back up my most recent three steps. “She, um, your real name… it’s… Patty?” Portia smiled. Perhaps because I had dared to look at her directly. Fully. She seemed more Patty than Portia.
“It was. Patty Long.” She waited a moment. “Back when I came… here, when I first… met your, um, daddy.” She twisted her lips into what was almost a kissing position. She twisted them back, sucked them in, possibly remembering some part of her real story she didn’t want to discuss on the stairs at Swamis. “Teenage runaway. Don’t know if you knew that.”
There was a delay before I answered. “No. Sorry. I mean…” I moved my hand around to try to suggest she had chosen the right place to run to, gave her an expression I hoped conveyed that I really knew nothing about her past. “You’re here… now. Portia Langworthy.”
“Your mother; she said her… real name is… was Moriko. I understand the biblical reference. Ruth. ‘Your people will be my people,’ all that. She told me she tried so hard… we all do; she wanted to… Portia inflated her cheeks and twisted her lips. “To blend in.”
Judith Cole-Mooney snickered and said, “Like, good fucking luck with that,” checking to see if I was offended. I wasn’t. I was, undoubtedly, moving my eyes between the two women at the top of the stairs. Still, I couldn’t help but overlay Julia Cole’s serious expression on her mother’s snicker. No. I wouldn’t allow it.
Judith put her right hand on Portia’s stomach. “So, Atsushi… Joey; are you going to help us sort this shit out, or what?”
I looked at Portia. “Because I am my father’s son?”
Portia gave a weak smile and mouthed something. “All will be revealed.” Possibly.
“My father said, ‘There are no real mysteries. You just have to ask the right person.’ Persons, maybe. That’s not… me.” Both women gave me quizzical looks. “When I don’t know what to say, I quote him. Sorry. Look, the detectives don’t want me involved. They’re…”
“Handling it? Dan and Larry?” Judith leapt down two stairs and stood directly over me. Her expression showed real anger, real frustration. “You don’t fucking get it, Junior. Langdon’s… not… going to stop.”
Looking into Judith’s eyes, equally as light as her daughter’s, blue rather than green, didn’t help me in maintaining any semblance of coolness. “You’re… right.” I took a step down, backwards. Losing my balance, I pulled my board closer, twisted my body, threw out my free hand, took two more steps. “He… won’t.” I was now facing down the stairway, toward the water. I didn’t turn around.
“All right,” Judith said. “Jumper’s getting better. Fuckin’ Gooks couldn’t kill him. He’ll… help.” Judith’s voice got louder. “It just got too big, too… too fast. David’s… we’re all getting out of this… shit. It’s… real estate. Glor’s got David all involved in it.” I did look around and up. “I mean, fuck, Joey, look around. People want to be part of this. California. Magic!”
Judith was almost dancing, up a stair, down, her hands moving around in the air, all rather unevenly. She stopped with her left foot on the stair tread Portia was on, her right foot on the tread below it. She kept her hands up as I went back up, stopping one tread below her She studied my eyes. I kept them open. “Magic,” I said. “We’re all looking for… the magic.”
“Yes,” Portia said, “We are.”
That Portia and Judith were studying me seemed to give me permission to study them. Portia had heavy black eyeliner and shadow around light gray eyes. There were freckles on her cheeks and forehead. The hair in front of her ears was blonde. The hair that framed her face and softened her cheekbones was one-tone black. Dyed. Artificial.
I looked several seconds too long. Portia blinked, self-consciously pulling at a section of her hair. “Disguise. Costume,” she said, moving her hands to the opposite shoulders. “Still playing dress-up.”
“it’s, hopefully, a forgivable sin… Portia.”
“Not the Portia I… imagine. Not yet.”
“God. Portia, Patty; just tell Joey here what you actually fucking saw.”
“I got there too late. I’d been… waiting.”
“No, Patty.” Judith took a step down, turned around, put her arms around Portia’s waist. “I meant… sorry, at the bridge.”
Portia looked over Judith and at me. “I saw… an accident.
“Fuck.”
I looked past Judith. Portia looked at Judith. “It’s what I saw. Cars made it past… us.” Portia looked at me. “There was room, there was… time.”
I turned and started back down the stairs. “Jumper. I heard… He’ll help you. I’m sure.”
Judith blurted out, “Julie gave you… the pictures!” It was more a plea than an argument. “She… we shouldn’t have gone down there. She shouldn’t have seen… that.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t turn around.
Too many questions, too many images bouncing around my head. Stopping at the platform, I tried to count the surfers in the water; eleven, one coming in, two going out. I looked at the diamond reflections on just one outside wave as it approached. Too many to count, they merged into one shimmering white line. I imagined the intensity of the light spots, the blackness of the shadows. Flash cards. Seven. “Waiting for you,” the note had said.
When I looked back up the stairs, the two women were gone.
Real Surfers 