A Thousand Steps

11

Monday morning, as Matt browns a scrawny peanut butter and jelly burrito in a skillet for breakfast, his father calls.

Bruce Anthony’s voice is soft and clear and he’s developed a drawl over the years.

“How’s my son?”

“Good, Dad.”

Matt’s mind still swarms with memories of Saturday night, and his knees and elbows are still raw and fiery. His palm heels are now showing bruises from breaking the fall. Other than that, the rest of his body and soul are starting to feel about half-right again, and the ding in his head from the bong barely hurts. But the images of that party agitate him greatly.

With the phone clamped between his head and one shoulder, and the long cord uncoiling out behind him, Matt pours the burrito onto a plate, gets a fork, and heads for the tiny breakfast nook by the window. The PB&J burrito is his invention, probably the cheapest way to fill an empty stomach, depending on how much peanut butter you’ve got left, and how much milk to chase it down.

“And your mother?” asks his dad.

“The same. But Jasmine hasn’t been home for four days. We filed a police report.”

Matt gives his father a general account of Jasmine’s disappearance from home, and some of what little he knows about where she was and who she was with. No way he’s going to mention Austin Overton or the water polo muscleman or anything about Sapphire Cove. Bruce Anthony has a short fuse and he doesn’t take bad news well.

“It’s what she gets for staying in that evil town,” he says. “I’ll make some calls. I’ve still got friends with the sheriffs. Tell me what happened again. I’m going to take some notes.”

Matt repeats the story, hears the flap of paper and tap of pen.

When he’s finished, Matt says he’s worried about Kyle, and Kyle’s idea that short-timers have a higher chance of dying the closer they are to coming home.

“That’s nonsense,” says Bruce. “But fear can get into a soldier’s head and make bad things happen. A self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Bruce was Air Force in Korea. Military police, at just nineteen. He’s never talked about it to Matt like he did with Kyle when Kyle joined up.

“I’m unhappy about your sister. I’m tempted to come back and put things right. Tear that rotting town apart and get my girl. I’ve seen the hippies on TV in Laguna and San Francisco. You can practically smell them. The Summer of Love. Christ, what an abomination that was. Now Laguna’s got the overflow, from what I read in the papers.”

“It’s not so bad here. The fishing is still good.”

“Those were great times, you and Kyle and me. The best hours of my life. Those, and shooting doves out in Juan Acuna’s groves with you boys.”

Matt pictures the three of them fishing off the rocks in Laguna, or catching bass and perch and halibut off the sandy beaches when the tide was right. He was one hundred percent happy. Even had some aptitude for it that Kyle didn’t. His dad called him “fishy.” Juan Acuna managed an endless grove of navel oranges in Tustin, just inland from Laguna Canyon, and for a case of beer and a few dollars he’d let the Anthonys shoot doves in September. Matt was one hundred percent happy doing that, too.

Now as his mother pours coffee, he sees from her dark look that she knows who’s on the line. She takes the coffee back to her bedroom and he hears the door close. His burrito is long gone but there’s no tortillas left. Milk.

“I’m still willing to send money to you kids,” says Bruce.

Six years ago, Julie had torn Bruce’s first check to pieces and washed it and the letter down the garbage disposal as Matt, Kyle, and Jasmine watched. And done the same with the next few, until they stopped coming. For a year after that, each of the Anthony children got occasional notes containing five-dollar bills but these ran out too, due to Bruce’s financial setbacks. His stated main reason for leaving Laguna and his family was a sheriff’s position in Clay County, Texas. But there was more, Matt came to learn. Such as his father’s belief that Laguna Beach was not reality, that it was tempting his wife and children with a way of life they could never afford. There was also his affair, and the deputy job that had “gone to hell in a hurry.” Since then, there have been yearlong spans of time when Bruce Anthony hasn’t been heard from at all.

“I don’t think she’ll take money,” Matt says quietly, thinking his dad probably doesn’t have any to spare anyway.

“Too much thickheaded Irish in that woman,” says Bruce.

But Matt wishes she would take it. He rarely sides with his father against his mother but he can’t help himself now.

“It’s embarrassing at the Food Exchange,” he says. “Getting looks from people you know.”

“They’re spoiled, thankless people.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry you have to put up with that. But hang in there. Keep a sharp eye out for Jazz. Knowing her, she’s spending time with people with money. She always liked nice things. The most expensive things. Exactly like her mother.”

“She was twelve when you left, Dad.”

“What do you mean by that? I know my own daughter like I know my ex-wife. They’re both women who want better things than my money could ever buy.”

Matt has heard it before but can never understand this pretzel-shaped logic from his father. Who defines his family as something they aren’t, then attacks what he’s created? Who says he can’t afford life in a town where he was affording life just fine?

“Okay.”

“Saying ‘okay’ doesn’t mean that things are okay, Matt. It’s about time for you to stand up and become a man.”

This is the first time his father has said this. It has always been when you grow up. Now it’s become a man.

“Stand up how?”

“Don’t be a wiseass, son.”

“I’ll find Jazz,” says Matt. “Don’t worry.”

“Stay out of trouble, Matt. Say no to the drug pushers and the queers and girls who only want shiny objects and oceanfront homes.”

“I will.”

“You still have the paper route?”

“Yes.”

“Still drawing in the sketchbooks and scrounging paint from Coast Hardware?”

“Yes, still.”

He thinks of telling his father about Bonnie Stratmeyer but decides against it, knowing it would make him angry.

“Just remember, when it’s time for college, pick a major that gets you into money. Life is about making money.”

“I’ll remember.”

“If Jasmine isn’t home in a week I’m coming back and taking over.”

More than once, his father has proposed “taking over” as a solution to the various misbehaviors of his children and ex-wife. Which he seems to think this is: misbehavior by Jasmine.

Matt’s guts tell him that Jasmine hasn’t vanished because of her own misbehavior, but he doesn’t have enough proof to make that argument.

“Okay, Dad. Good.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

When Matt hangs up, his mother is standing in the doorway dressed for work.

“You’re pretty banged up, Matt. I didn’t see all that damage before. Must really hurt.”

He’s got on his Jams trunks and a white T-shirt with a blue competition stripe across the chest. Looks down at his Band-Aided kneecaps, which feel like they’ve been worked over with a cheese grater. Elbows too.

“We need to talk,” she says.

She takes his fingers gently and turns his hand to see the bruised and gouged palm. Leads him into the living room trailing a wake of sweet hashish-opium smoke.

“Matt, we’ve had some bum trips at work,” she says. “Um, the summer tourists haven’t picked up because of the June gloom and all the hippies scaring them off. Of course, the hippies don’t eat out very much and hardly tip at all. So, my hours are getting cut back. Not completely. But back.”

“That’s terrible, Mom.”

“They’re a little mad because I was late twice last week. After missing those two shifts the week before. For the flu.”

Matt remembers those two “flu” days. She’d spent them alone in her room with the music on and the smoke thick enough to creep out under the door, the puka shell necklace over the beveled glass knob. It was the first time he’d smelled opium and hashish burning together and hadn’t realized what it was until she stashed the half-smoked dragon ball in the kitchen drawer and forgotten it was there.

“And so, if dear landlord Nelson comes around complaining about the rent being late again, tell him it’s coming soon. I’m doing all I can.”

“I can pick up a Times or a News-Post route to bring in more money,” says Matt.

“You did that once. It wore you out and wrecked your grades.”

“I was young.”

She smiles at this. Her expression is empty but dreamy, thinks Matt, my stoned mom dressed like a wench and on her way to work. She never seemed resigned and sad like this before. Part of it must be her daughter leaving home after an argument, he reasons.

“Weren’t we all?” she asks. A long pause. “I think your sister might be in trouble.”

About time, Matt thinks. “I do, too.”

“So many temptations. She’s a searcher. She follows things that call her. But she’s not experienced enough to spot trouble.”

Matt agrees with her assessment. Jazz is always the one to make the leap. Provoking him to do likewise. To catch up. Show some balls. Sapphire Cove images cross his mind in a tangled rush. Certainly, Jazz would have sensed trouble if she knew anything about what went on there. But what if she was in the mood for that kind of thing?

“Maybe the police posters will help,” says Julie. “Officer Darnell told me they’re ready and she’ll drop some off. Imagine, my little girl’s face all over town. Right after Bonnie’s face all over town, and now Bonnie dead on the beach. It terrifies me.”

Matt feels his mother’s worry on top of his own.

“How is your father?”

“The same. He threatened to come take over if Jazz isn’t back in a week.”

“He’s a broken record,” she says. She gets her beaded hippie bag from a dinette chair, slings it over her shoulder and heads for the door.

Matt knows he should tell her what happened in Sapphire Cove but there’s no way he could describe those things to his own mother. They may or may not relate to Jazz being gone. Plus he’d just be bringing those lurid, thrilling scenes back on himself.

He knows his mother knows he’s not telling the whole truth. Her way is to wait and pry, wait and pry, until she finally cracks whatever nut she’s working on.

“Sure you don’t want to tell me what happened Saturday night?”

“It’s what I said happened, Mom.”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready. Remember, if Nelson comes snooping around here, you tell him I’m out making the rent.”

So, twenty minutes later, as Matt is finishing up the dishes, the knock on the front door sounds like Nelson Pedley’s signature tap-t-tap-tap.

Instead, Officer Darnell is on the porch, hooking her sunglasses into the loop on her uniform blouse, not far from the B. Darnell nameplate.

She looks as she did before, but a little older and tougher in the sunlight. Hair braided like a rope again, and pinned up.

She gives Matt a flyer from the thick stack she’s holding. It’s black-and-white and the resolution is poor. They’ve used Jazz’s senior portrait and Matt’s drawing of her, side by side. Under them, her description and the LBPD number to call.

She asks for Julie and Matt says she’ll be home around five.

“I was hoping to see Jasmine’s room.”

Matt searches Darnell’s face for some indication of why she’s here right now, with no prior call and no mention of seeing Jasmine’s room two days ago at the interview.

“Have you learned something bad?” he asks.

“No, no, nothing like that, Matt. This is routine. Sometimes we’ll find something that points to where someone has gone.”

“Come in. We haven’t made the bed or anything.”

“Good, that’s best.”

“It would be cool to find a clue.”