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Chapter 10

When Mike picked Kat up from school the next day, she carried a jar containing a twig and a baby lizard. She climbed into the back, slid the headphones on, and clicked around the TV channels. He watched her in the rearview, figuring you know you’re doing a good job as a parent when they take you for granted.

‘Take those things off and say hello.’

‘Wireless,’ she said. ‘Noise-canceling. I’m just trying to get our money’s worth.’ She held the jar aloft, showing off the lizard. ‘Look! I caught him. And Ms Cooper helped me make a home for him.’

‘I’m not sure he can breathe in there, baby.’

She pulled off her red-frame glasses and folded them carefully in their case. ‘I poked holes in the lid. He’s fine.’

‘He needs more oxygen than that. He’ll die if you keep him.’

She shrugged. ‘I like him, though.’

The trapped lizard bothered Mike more than seemed rational. His irritation grew. Kat was so mature generally that it was easy to forget the ways in which she was age-appropriate. One of the hardest parts of parenting, he’d found, was keeping his mouth shut the times when he wanted to control her, to step into her brain and throw the levers.

‘Where we going?’ Kat asked.

‘I have to pick up some cabinet handles from the Restoration Hardware on the Promenade. Figured we’d walk around a little, grab a bite.’

In the backseat her face lifted with excitement and the sun caught her eyes – one amber, one brown, both vibrant with hidden hues. His anger dissipated instantly.

They drove for a while, and then she tugged off the headset and said, ‘Sorry I didn’t say hi when I got in the car.’

He noted the smart-ass set of her mouth – she was prompting him to play the Bad-Parenting Game – so he said, ‘It’s not your behavior that’s bad. It’s you.’

‘It is,’ she said, enjoying herself, ‘an innugral part of who I am.’

‘As your father I must grind the self-esteem out of you. Scour it from the corners-’

‘Of my black little heart.’ Her giggle caught fire.

By the time they reached Santa Monica, they’d been joking long enough that he’d forgotten about PVC pipes and baby monitors and Sunday’s dreaded award ceremony with the governor. They walked holding hands along the Promenade, except when he had to carry her past the headless mannequins in the Banana Republic display window. She hadn’t been scared of mannequins, he suspected, since she was four, but a ritual is a ritual.

He picked up the cabinet handles, and they bought some French bread and horseradish cheddar from a farmers’ market outpost and sat on a metal bench by the stegosaurus fountain and listened to a busker playing ‘Heart of Gold’ with genuine, street-burnished soul. A homeless man reclined opposite, lost in a heap of dirt-black clothes. Mike thought the guy was long gone but then noticed he was mouthing the lyrics, smiling to himself as if remembering an old lover. The man put his hand inside his ragged jacket and made his heart flutter, and Kat laughed, her mouth full of food.

The busker was wailing, blowing that harmonica on its hands-free brace, and the homeless guy shouted observations and facts at them, as if in argument. ‘This guy does Neil Young better’n Neil Young!’ ‘I had a little T-shirt shop in NYC.’ ‘My daughter’s a dental hygienist in Tempe, married that guy, said I can visit whenever I want.’

A woman in clown makeup twisted balloon animals – only two bucks a pop. Mike peeled a few dollars off his money clip and handed them to Kat. ‘You want to get one?’

Kat scooted off the bench, walked past the balloon lady, and handed the bills to the homeless guy, who stuffed them into his beggar’s cup with a wink.

She returned and slid up next to Mike, and he marveled a moment at her intuition. The busker had moved on to ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling,’ and the setting sun stayed warm across their faces. Mike’s thoughts for once were on nothing but the moment at hand.

He carried Kat on his shoulders back to his truck, both of them humming along to different songs. They’d stopped for french fries and milk shakes, and Kat, still munching, buckled into the backseat with a glazed expression of contentedness that made Mike smile. She said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Someday you’ll know.’

As he turned onto San Vicente, she piped up. ‘I lost Snowball the Last Dying Polar Bear.’

A glance at the rearview showed that she was upset. Mike asked, ‘Where’d you have him last?’

‘I don’t know. I realized at school. Ms Cooper had the whole class help me look for him. But we couldn’t find him anywhere. Then I remembered bringing him back home. I looked everywhere in my room, but…’ She gazed out the window, distressed, then shrugged. ‘I’m getting too old for stuffed animals anyways.’

‘Not Snowball,’ he protested.

She said, ‘Maybe it’s time,’ and a part of his heart cracked off and blew away.

He was formulating a response when he spotted, three cars back, a black sedan. He’d noticed it before, pulling out after him when he’d exited the parking lot. He turned left. The sedan turned left. That pilot light of paranoia flared to life in his chest.

His eyes glued to the rearview, he signaled right but drove past the turn. The sedan neither signaled nor turned. Headphones on, Kat was lost in the TV screen, swaying with the truck’s movement. The air was grainy with dusk, pricked with headlights, so he couldn’t get a clear glimpse of make or plate. The muscles of his neck had contracted back to remembered form; how quickly it felt as though they’d never relaxed at all.

When Mike glanced down from the mirror, the stopped cars at the streetlight were zooming back at them fast – too fast. He hit the brakes hard, Kat’s milk shake flying from her grip onto the seat next to her. ‘Motherf-crap.’ They stopped inches from the bumper in front of them.

‘Motherfffcrap?’ she repeated, giggling.

He tore off his T-shirt, tossed it back to her. ‘Here, use this to mop it up.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘Not your fault, honey.’ He angled the mirror. The sedan was still there, idling behind a minivan, one headlight peeking into view. The edge of the hood looked dinged up, dust clouding the black paint.

‘-or the moon?’ Kat was asking.

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Which do you like better, Mars or the moon? I like Mars, because it’s all red and-’

The light changed, and Mike waited a moment before trickling off the line. The minivan changed lanes, and he caught a glimpse of the sedan’s tinted windshield and front grille – looked like a Grand Marquis – before a Jeep slotted in between them.

He turned off onto a residential street and gunned it.

‘Dad. Dad. Dad.’ Kat had a long french fry she needed to show him.

‘Cool, honey. That’s a big one, huh?’ In the band of reflection, just beyond her uplifted fry, he saw the Mercury turn off after them.

Kat adjusted the headset and sank back into her TV show.

Mike wheeled around the corner, accelerated, turned again, and reversed up an alley. He turned off the car, killed the lights.

‘What are we waiting for, Dad?’

‘Nothing, honey. Just need to think for a minute. Watch your show.’

She shrugged and complied.

Night had come on abruptly, dogs barking, security lights glaring, living-room windows lit with TV-blue flickers. Being shirtless made him feel oddly vulnerable, the vents blowing cool air across his torso. He looked down at his hands, white on the steering wheel, which brought him back to -

Headlights turned up the street. Prowling. Approaching.

Mike found a wrench in the center console. He cupped his fingers around the door handle, bracing himself. The headlights swept into direct view, blaring into his face, and just as he was about to leap out, the garage door next to them started shuddering open. The beams shifted, and he saw the car behind them – not a dark sedan but a white Mercedes. It pulled in to the driveway, the man at the wheel offering a suspicious glare.

Mike breathed. In the backseat Kat’s face glowed from the screen, her blinks growing longer. After another minute he eased out onto the empty street. Cautiously, he took the next turn. Nothing.

As his breathing returned to normal, he thought about the route he’d taken from Santa Monica – a major thoroughfare back to the freeway, save the final detour. What was that, really? Three turns? Had the Grand Marquis actually done anything out of the ordinary? Or was he jumping at imagined threats?

He gave a chuckle, palming sweat off the back of his neck. Officer, a Grand Marquis drove behind me for a few blocks. Made a couple turns, even. No, I didn’t catch a license plate, but maybe you could track it down using satellite imagery.

His guilt about the fraudulent green houses was working overtime, creating stalkers that weren’t there, making him cast a suspicious eye at everything from a baby monitor to traffic patterns. Besides, the only people who knew about the PVC pipes were complicit in one way or another, so who would come after him for that? And why? No one. No reason. No worries.

He watched the rearview the rest of the way home.

‘She’s scratching her head. All the time. Didn’t you notice?’

Mike watched Annabel picking through Kat’s hair. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘It’s been going around school, and she seems to be the first in line every time.’ Annabel firmed Kat’s head beneath her grip, angled her into the strong bathroom light. It was late, and they were all tired. ‘Stay still, monkey.’

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ Kat said. ‘It’s not like I said, “What can I do to bug Mom today? Oh – I know. I’ll get head lice.”’

Mike set down his keys on the kitchen counter – he’d just dashed out to the drugstore – and pulled the treatment bottle from the bag.

Kat eyed the ominous red label. ‘What’s in that stuff anyways?’

Mike held up the bottle, squinted at the ingredients: ‘Gasoline, skunk juice, battery acid-’

‘Mom.’

‘He’s kidding.’

‘But there’s bad stuff in it. It’ll give me skin burns. And mutation.’

‘It won’t make you mutate,’ Annabel said wearily.

But as usual their daughter outnegotiated them, so they wound up using a home remedy Annabel found online – mayonnaise combed through Kat’s hair, turban-sealed with Saran Wrap. The getup accentuated Kat’s smooth features, the smiling elf face. Mike went into the master bathroom to dig mayo out from under his nails and listened on the monitor to Annabel singing Kat to sleep, the lullaby sweet and soft and, as always, way off key. ‘Lay thee down now and rest, may thy slum-ber be blessed.’ He smiled to himself before remembering the dirty black Grand Marquis he’d managed to convince himself was a tail, and he pictured how the milk shake had flown from Kat’s hand when he’d hit the brakes at the streetlight and – Shit.

The lizard.

He rushed out to the truck, finding the peanut-butter jar wedged beneath the passenger seat. The baby lizard, dead inside, thin and curled like a feather.

He carried in the jar as Annabel emerged from Kat’s bedroom. She said, ‘I laid a hand towel over her pillow so-’ She caught sight of the jar.

‘She wanted to keep him,’ Mike said.

Annabel shrugged. ‘How else will she figure it out?’ She crossed her arms, leaned against the wall. ‘Do we tell her?’

They’d been through it with hamsters and goldfish and a frog, but as Kat had grown older and more aware, each time seemed to be worse.

‘Yes,’ Mike said. ‘Have to.’

‘I know. You’ll do it?’

‘Sure.’

Mike set the jar down in the hall, entered, and sat on the edge of Kat’s bed. She peered up at him, puckish and vaguely alien in her mayo wrap. He pressed his fingertips into the comforter. ‘I will never lie to you, right?’

She nodded, and immediately the image of those buried PVC pipes came at him, the lie of the cover-up, the lie of the houses, the lie of the coming award. But this was not the time for that. This was the time for an eight-year-old and a dead lizard.

‘Your lizard died.’

‘Dead?’ She blinked. ‘Like, lizard heaven?’ Despite the wise-crack, her bottom lip trembled ever so slightly. A flash of remorse moved across her face, but then she bit her lip, forced it still. ‘Well, you can say “told you so” now.’

He hated to see how well she could rein in her emotions. He looked down at his hands, trying to figure out a way in. The Bad-Parenting Game?

‘We don’t talk about feelings,’ he said. ‘We swallow them and cram ’em down inside of us so they turn into hidden resentments and fears.’

Kat half smiled, her eyes glassy, and then her face broke and tears fell at once, spotting her cheeks. ‘I want my baby lizard not to be dead.’

He hugged her, rubbed little circles on her back, and she sputtered a bit against his shoulder. Finally she pulled back. ‘Can I see him?’

He retrieved the jar, and she held it in her tiny hands, tilted it so the lizard slid stiffly around the twig. ‘What happens to his body?’

‘Well, we can bury him in the backyard and-’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Zach Henson.’

It took a moment for Mike to pluck the name from memory – fifth-grader, leukemia, last year. Mike and Annabel had gone to the funeral just to shake hands with the parents and helplessly say the only thing one could – ‘If you need anything.’ After, they’d sat in the truck in the church parking lot, awed into a muted sort of terror, Annabel weeping quietly, him gripping the wheel, watching the relatives trickle by, faces chapped, posture eroded. As usual, Annabel put words to his thoughts and said, ‘Anything else I think I could live through, but if something happened to her, I think I would die.’

Now, Mike cleared his throat, set his hand on Kat’s tiny knee, and said, ‘Zach’s body has probably gone back into the earth by now.’

Kat scratched at her head through the sheath of mayonnaise and cling wrap, her face somber and thoughtful, and asked, ‘What if you and Mom die?’

‘We’ll be fine. You have plenty of time to worry about stuff like that when you’re older. Your job right now is to be a kid and have fun. We will always protect you. Until you can protect yourself.’

Kat rolled over, poked the pillow in the spot where her polar bear used to sleep. ‘But what if you just disappear one day, like your parents did? What would happen to me?’

The question cut the breath off halfway down his throat, and it was a moment or two before he could reassure her and kiss her good night. Walking down the hall to bed, he could have sworn he heard the buzz of that blowfly, portending ill, but when he turned, there was nothing at the seams of the ceiling except darkness.