The Goodbye Look

chapter 11

Louise Swain lived on a poor street off Fair Oaks, between Old Town and the ghetto. A few children of various shades were playing under the light at the corner, islanded in the surrounding darkness.

There was a smaller light on the front porch of Mrs. Swain’s stucco cottage, and a Ford sedan standing at the curb in front of it. The Ford was locked. I shone my flashlight into it. It was registered to George Trask, 4545 Bayview Avenue, San Diego.

I made a note of the address, got out my contact mike, and went around to the side of the stucco cottage, following two strips of concrete which made an exigent driveway. An old black Volkswagen with a crumpled fender stood under a rusty carport. I moved into its shadow and leaned on the wall beside a blinded window.

I didn’t need my microphone. Inside the house, Jean’s voice was raised in anger: “I’m not going back to George–”

An older woman spoke in a more controlled voice: “You better take my advice and go back to him. George still cares about you and he was asking for you early this morning – but it won’t last forever.”

“Who cares?”

“You ought to care. If you lose him you won’t have anybody, and you don’t know how that feels until you’ve tried it. Don’t think you’re coming back to live with me.”

“I wouldn’t stay if you begged me on your knees.”

“That won’t happen,” the older woman said dryly. “I’ve got just enough room and enough money and enough energy left for myself.”

“You’re a cold woman, Mother.”

“Am I? I wasn’t always. You and your father made me that way.”

“You’re jealous!” Jean’s voice had changed. A hiss of pleasure underlay her anger and distress. “Jealous of your own daughter and your own husband. It all comes clear. No wonder you gave him Rita Shepherd.”

“I didn’t give him Rita. She threw herself at his head.”

“With a good strong assist from you, Mother. You probably planned the whole thing.”

The older woman said: “I suggest you leave here before you say any more. You’re nearly forty years old and you’re not my responsibility. You’re lucky to have a husband willing and able to look after you.”

“I can’t stand him,” Jean said. “Let me stay here with you. I’m scared.”

“So am I,” her mother said. “I’m afraid for you. You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?”

“I did a little celebrating.”

“What have you got to celebrate?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Mother?” Jean paused. “I’ll tell you if you ask me pretty please.”

“If you have something to tell me, then tell me. Don’t fool around.”

“Now I’m not going to tell you.” Jean sounded like a child playing a teasing game. “You can find out for yourself.”

“There’s nothing to find out,” her mother said.

“Is that a fact? What would you say if I told you that Daddy’s alive?”

“Really alive?”

“You bet he is,” Jean said.

“Have you seen him?”

“I soon will. I’ve picked up his trail.”

“Where?”

“That’s my little secret, Mother.”

“Augh, you’ve been imagining things again. I’d be crazy to believe you.”

Jean made no answer that I could hear. I suspected the two women had exhausted the conversation and each other. I moved from the shadow of the carport into the dim street.

Jean came out onto the lighted porch. The door was slammed behind her. The light went out. I waited for her beside her car.

She backed away from me, stumbling on the broken sidewalk. “What do you want?”

“Give me the gold box, Jean. It isn’t yours.”

“Yes it is. It’s an old family heirloom.”

“Come off it.”

“It’s true,” she said. “The box belonged to my Grandmother Rawlinson. She said it would come down to me. And now it has.”

I half believed her. “Could we talk a little in your car?”

“That never does any good. The more you talk the more it hurts.”

Her face was mournful and her body dragged. She gave off a peculiar feeling, that she was a ghost or cloudy emanation of the actual Jean Trask; her sense of herself was a vacuum, a cold emptiness.

“What’s hurting, Jean?”

“My whole life.” She spread both hands on her breasts as if the pain was overflowing her fingers. “Daddy ran off to Mexico with Rita. He didn’t even send me a birthday card.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. I never had any fun after that.”

“Is your father alive?”

“I think he is. Nick Chalmers said he saw him in Pacific Point.”

“Where in Pacific Point?”

“Down by the railroad yards. That was a long time ago, when Nick was just a child. But he identified Daddy by his picture.”

“How did Nick get into this?”

“He’s my witness that Daddy is alive.” Her voice rose in pitch and amplitude, as if she was speaking to the woman in the house instead of me: “Why shouldn’t he be alive? He’d only be – let’s see, I’m thirty-nine and Daddy was twenty-four when I was born. That makes him sixty-three, doesn’t it?”

“Thirty-nine and twenty-four makes sixty-three.”

“And sixty-three isn’t old, especially not nowadays. He was always very youthful for his age. He could dive and dance and spin like a top,” she said. “He bounced me on his knee.”

It sounded like something repeated from her childhood. Her mind was being carried down the stream of memory, swept willy-nilly through subterranean passages toward roaring falls.

“I’m going to find my Daddy,” she said. “I’ll find him dead or alive. If he’s alive I’ll cook and keep house for him. And I’ll be happier than I ever was in my born days. If he’s dead I’ll find his grave and do you know what I’ll do then? I’ll crawl in with him and go to sleep.”

She unlocked her car and drove away, turning south onto the boulevard. Perhaps I should have followed her, but I didn’t.