Silent Joe

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Three days later I drove down to a town called Fallbrook, in San Diego County. It was green and hilly and hot. A sign said “Welcome to the Friendly Village.” I had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and read the local paper. The front-page news was that Fallbrook had been designated a “Point of Interest” in the new AAA guide to Southern California. It didn’t say why. Another article said that Fallbrook’s biggest industries were nurseries, citrus and avocados.

I followed a map out of town. The further you got, the bigger the houses were, most of them tucked into the shade of avocado or eucalyptus. There was white fencing, horses and barns, and magnolias with shiny leaves and huge white blossoms.

I found Julie Falbo’s last known address, drove past it, then turned around and parked fifty yards from the mailbox. I couldn’t see much of the house from where I was, just a swatch of white plaster and part of a chimney, lost in green trees. I drove around to the side and got a better view. There was a driveway leading up. The house looked old and well kept, with a clay tile roof and windows with happy blue trim. Bright violet bougainvillea climbed the columns of a portico that shaded the west side.

To the right of the driveway was a yard with a white post-and-rail fence around it. There was a swimming pool with huge Canary Island palm trees along one side and patio furniture along the other.

A woman sat on the pool deck with her back to me and her feet in the water. A small girl sat beside her. A boy rocketed off the diving board, flew with a squeal and landed with a distant splash.

I got out and pulled on my jacket and put on my hat, in spite of the heat. I walked to the gate. The boy climbed onto the diving board and spotted me and pointed. “Mom? Look!”

She turned and looked at me, then stood. She pulled on a white blouse and buttoned it while she walked toward the gate. Ten yards from me she stopped abruptly, as if an invisible hand had blocked her way. She looked mid-thirties, though I knew she was older than that. Nice figure, lovely face, thick dark hair with a red highlight in it. I could recognize her — just barely — from the one photograph I’d seen, when she was leaving the courthouse and lighting a cigarette.

She came closer, six feet away from me, and stopped again.

“I’m Joe Trona,” I said.

“I know.”

She stared at me and I saw some of the same hardness in her eyes that I’d seen in the photograph. For a moment the hardness disappeared, then came back again, like she could turn it on and off.

“I don’t mean to disturb you, but I wanted to ask you a question.”

“These are my children. This is my life. It doesn’t connect with yours.”

Her voice was soft and pleasant.

The girl came over and leaned against her mother’s leg. She studied me, then turned and ran back to the pool and jumped in. Her brother was in the water, looking at me, elbows locked over the deck. He screamed when she jumped over him.

“They’re happy,” said Julie Falbo. “I’m satisfied. My husband is caring and devoted. I’m a good wife.”

“I’m pleased for all of you.”

“What do you want?”

“Thor told me why he threw the acid. He told me about the money he was paid. I want to know who my father is.”

She looked at me for a long moment. I could hear the children whispering in the water. Something about a monster with a hat. My half brother and half sister peered at me over the edge of the deck. Julie looked past me toward the house, and called the name Maria. The three syllables came out loud, rough and throaty.

Almost instantly, a stout dark woman appeared, hustling down the steps toward us. She gave me one quick glance, then looked down.

“Maria, watch the children.”

Maria barreled past me and swung open the gate.

Julie stepped out and started down the driveway toward my car. The drive was lined with jacaranda trees that gave us a cool, mottled shade and littered the concrete in limp purple blossoms. We walked fairly far apart for people walking together. I looked at her and saw something in her face that I recognized beyond the photograph. I didn’t know what it was. It was familiar but I’d never seen it before.

“This conversation won’t last long,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to.”

“I was never a nice girl. That’s the most important thing you need to know about me. Never nice, always angry.”

“At what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I ran away from home when I was fifteen because I saw that I could manipulate my father for whatever I wanted. I will say no more about that. I became a meth freak because I always liked fast things and when my brain was racing I was happy. Ran with bikers until I was seventeen. Got popped for pot, pills, drunk in public. Committed an aggravated assault, once. The assault was against my man, Fastball, they called him. He deserved it. I hit him with a galvanized steel pipe. The trouble was it knocked him out and he was bleeding a lot. I panicked, called 911 and they came and got him. This was up off the Ortega Highw ay, by San Juan Capistrano. I told the cop that Fastball had fallen down drunk, hit his head on the bench vise out in the garage. The cop didn’t believe me. He came back a few hours later, asked me more questions. He still didn’t believe me. But he was cool and said he thought Fastball probably deserved it, no matter what happened. So they didn’t pop me for that.

“I got pregnant a few months later. It wasn’t Fastball. I was trying to stay clean, kicking the speed, staying low, waiting tables. I was eighteen. I met Thor. He was forty. He rode but he wasn’t ganged up, just a guy who liked bikes and drugs. He had a job for a while and he liked me a lot. It wasn’t like I had a lot of time to find someone better. I started up with him and a month later, told him I’d missed my period, was going to have his baby. He was happy and stupid. It wasn’t until after you were born that he started to get suspicious. I might have said something, I don’t know. We were always drunk and fighting. He checked the dates and the calendar and said I’d tricked him — you couldn’t have been his. I said, so what? Who cares? You’re changing his diapers and feeding him out of your lousy gas station job, so what’s the difference? That night it got bad. We drank and fought again and did some crank and the next thing I know there’s this coffee mug of sulfuric acid he got from one of his meth friends. You were in an orange crate in the kitchen. He tossed the stuff in and it went all over the side of your face. He saw what it did and freaked. Like he was surprised he’d done it, surprised how bad it was. He picked you up and stuck your head under the sink faucet to rinse it off. Didn’t work. Tried newspaper, but that didn’t work either. The stuff just kept eating away.”

I looked at her and she looked at me. Her eyes were dark brown, like mine. No amount of time or makeup or the natural beauty of her face could take away the coldness in them.

“What did you do?”

“I split. I didn’t want the next dose on my face.”

I looked at her, but she wouldn’t look back. Her eyes were turned downward and she was focusing in, not out. Something thick rose in her throat.

I could see the basic shape of my head in hers, the same fundamental structure of my face, the same angle and set of the ears and nose. And something of me in her posture too, the way she held herself.

“I called one of my cop friends from a pay phone down in Elsinore. I found out later he went to the house, but Thor had already taken you to the fire station. He rode you on his hog, tucked in his arm like a football. That’s because I’d taken the car. I never could figure how he shifted gears. Maybe he just used first or second. It wasn’t that far a drive. Anyway. That’s what happened. There’s worse things, worse stories. When I look back I think it was bad, but then I read the papers and realize it wasn’t such a big deal, compared to what happens today. I look around me and I realize you can change and improve yourself and get rid of the past. That’s what I did. I don’t think about it anymore.”

In her profile I saw again what I’d recognized but couldn’t define. Even in the photograph, a little of it had shown. I still couldn’t put a finger on it. But it was there and I knew it and I knew what it was. The Unknown Thing. Julie Falbo had it. Charlotte Wample had had it, too.

We walked through the fallen jacaranda blossoms. Through the trees the sky was blue and streaked with clouds. I looked at her and a purple blossom fell and stuck in her red-black hair. She carefully rolled it out then flicked it to the driveway like you would a cigarette butt. I realized she was beautiful. She’d become that way since her picture was taken twenty-three years ago. She had looked sharp and hungry back then. Now, she looked filled and strong. It was like some gentle carpenter had taken a sharp young stick and shaped a smooth, beautiful thing from it.

And I understood. Fastball had seen The Unknown Thing in her. Thor had seen it. Even the cop who’d answered Charlotte Wample’s 911 had seen it in her, too. He’d seen it very clearly and it had cost everyone.

“The cop who rolled on the 911,” I said. “He wasn’t a cop. He was a sheriff’s deputy.”

“He was ten years older than me, married, two kids. He was fabulous to look at. He could talk. Man, could he talk. Energy you wouldn’t believe. He made my speed jags look like naps. He loved me. Deputy-Two Will Trona, Orange County Sheriff’s, at your service, little missy.”

She stopped walking and turned to me. The hard eyes peered at me from the soft face and it was like two women were there.

“I thought it was good when he adopted you. I know he and his wife couldn’t conceive. I knew him well enough to know he could give you all the love I couldn’t. He kept paying Thor, to protect the rest of his family from his little indiscretion. I’m glad you had a decent place to grow up. And got to go to college and get on with the sheriff’s department. I’m sorry you didn’t get to know you were his until now.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

“Is that your car?”

“It was Will’s.”

“I drive the big Lexus. It’s the fastest production sedan in its class.”

“They say that on the commercials.”

“Please go.”

“Wait. If Thor’s payments stop, he’ll want to talk about what happened and why. It’s bothering his tiny soul. And he’ll realize it will make him famous all over again.”

“I’m taking over those payments. Good-bye.”

“I want to know one more thing. You said you couldn’t love me. Why?”

Her face was soft but her eyes were hard. “God didn’t put my heart in right. It only beats for my own benefit. Everything I do is to get something else.”

“Then why not abort me?”

“I thought you’d be worth some money from Will. After Thor did what he did, I didn’t think you were worth the trouble.”

I thought for a moment. She looked back toward the pool. I could see the boy arching through the air, arms out, legs pumping, a whirl of brown against the blue sky.

“I understand the emptiness in your heart,” I said. “I have some, too.”

“Not as much as I do, I hope.”

“No.”

“Will had a full heart. Maybe in you there’s the right amount of both.”

“I met someone and it feels full now.”

Her face went red and tears came to her pale eyes, but they didn’t melt the hardness. Her eyes looked cold and wet as quartz at nine thousand feet.

“Good-bye, son. Go.”

“Good-bye, Mother. I’m pleased to have met you.”