Back Story

22

Sitting in my office, Daryl was sort of hunched with her hands in her lap. "I never really think of it as lying," she said. I nodded. Nondirective.

"It's. " she looked at Paul, who sat quietly next to her, even more nondirective, if possible, than I was. "It's more, like, how it should have been. You know? How it could have been, if my parents. " "Sure," I said. Paul and I looked supportively at Daryl. Daryl looked at her hands.

"They embarrassed me," she said.

"Your parents."

"Yes."

"Because?"

"Because? Because they were fucking hippies, for God's sake. Were your parents hippies?"

I thought of my father and my two uncles.

"No," I said. "They weren't."

"Most people's weren't. And even if they were, they got over it."

"They were different times," I said, just to say something.

"I'm lucky they didn't name me Moonflower."

"You are," I said.

Paul smiled. It was as if Daryl didn't hear me.

"We didn't come here to visit my aunt," Daryl said. "We came here with some man my mother was fucking."

Paul and I looked at each other. We were thinking of Paul's mother.

I had swiveled my chair a little so I could see out my window. Although it was early afternoon, the sky outside my office was dark and getting darker. Rain was coming. Daryl sat without saying anything.

"Your father know about this man?"

"I don't know what he knew," Daryl said. "I think he was stoned for the first twelve years of my life."

"Were they separated?" I said.

She didn't answer for awhile. She had stopped looking at her lap and begun to look out through my window at the rain that hadn't come yet. I was about to ask again when she answered me.

"Separated?" she laughed. "Hell, I don't know if they were even married. I mean, maybe some long-haired freak in a tie-dyed shirt mumbled something and smoked hemp with them. But separated? From what?"

"Did your father know your mother, ah, fooled around?"

"Oh, yes."

"Did he object?"

"Maybe when he wasn't stoned. But she didn't care. She wasn't going to be somebody's chattel."

"Right on, sister," I said. "Your father fool around?"

"I don't think so. I think he was in love with Mistress Bong."

I could see why she had made up a story. Loosened, her rage was carnivorous.

"The man's name?" I said. "The one she came to Boston with."

"I don't know," Daryl said.

"Did you meet him?"

"Yes, but I don't know what his name was. I don't know anything about him. I hated him."

"Can you describe him?"

"No."

I nodded.

"When I was fifteen," Paul said, "my mother was bopping a guy named Stephen, with a ph. He was about six-one, slim, short hair, close-cropped beard, and mustache, always wore aviator glasses with pink lenses."

"So you remember, and I don't," Daryl said.

"I remember them all," Paul said. "Clearly."

"Well, I don't," Daryl said.

Neither of us said anything. Daryl looked out my window. The rain was just getting under way, a few spatters making isolated trickle paths down the pane.

"He was a black man," she said.

I waited.

"Not too big. I think he was only a little taller than my mother. He had a big afro."

"You remember his name?" I said.

She was quiet, watching the evolving rain through my window. Paul and I watched it, too. It was very dark outside.

"My mother called him Leon," she said.

"Last name?" I said.

She shook her head.

"Just Leon," she said. "I assume it was his first name."

I tried to get as much as I could while the faucet was on.

"Any gray in the afro?"

"No."

"Beard?"

"Mustache," she said. "A big Fu Manchu thing."

"You know what he did for a living?"

"No."

"You ever hear from him after she died?"

"No."

"You know where he is now?"

"No."

"You know anything else about him?"

"No."

"He treat you okay?"

"I didn't see much of him. My mother sort of kept him to herself."

"He didn't mistreat you," Paul said.

"No."

The rain arrived like an explosion against the window, flooding the window pane. There was some lightning and commensurate thunder.

I said, "After your mother died, you went to live with your father?"

"Yes."

"How was that?"

She shrugged. "He tried," she said. "But he wasn't much good at anything but rolling a joint. Mostly we were on welfare."

"How'd you get to be an actress?" I said.

"I always wanted to. From as long back as I can remember. I don't know why. I got in the drama club in high school, and the drama club teacher helped me get into an apprentice program at the La Jolla Playhouse and. " she spread her hands.

"So why are you so dead set on finding your mother's murderer?" I said.

"Well. I. she was my mother, for God's sake."

"And you want justice," I said.

"If I can get it," Daryl said.

"I can't promise it," I said.

"I'll settle for revenge," she said.

I looked out the window at the fully evolved thunderstorm. Blow, winds, I thought, and crack your cheeks.