It had been a long, event-filled day, to say the least, and Nate was glad it was over—and he didn’t think he was alone. He was staying in the guest room, which was part catch-all space/part sewing center for Diane, with a surprisingly comfortable leatherette pull-out couch. Meanwhile, his mother was across the hall in her old bedroom, which, according to Amy, had been more or less preserved in amber since she moved out after college. All that had changed was her late-1980s-era “artwork”—apparently the Bon Jovi and Nirvana posters had to go—but the frilly twin bed, white lacquer furniture, shaggy area rugs, and pink patchwork curtains remained in all their retro glory.
Nate was in a T-shirt and boxers, getting ready for bed—or actually getting Cody’s bed ready—when Amy knocked on the open door. Nate waved her in as he placed a folded-over comforter atop two king-sized down pillows. Amy watched with a smile as the dog blissfully burrowed in.
“Now it’s my turn,” Nate said, matching Amy’s smile, as he went to tuck the sheets into the opened sofa bed.
“Sorry it’s a little … busy in here,” she said, gesturing around the cluttered room. “My mom’s always been a bit of a packrat.” She pointed to a spooky, torso-only mannequin perched by an older-model sewing machine. “I mean, that thing? Really? I swear it’s been there since I was in, like, first grade.”
“It’s alright, you don’t have to make excuses for your mom—or your dad. Or Robin, for that matter. Everyone’s got their shit. We all do.” Nate plumped a pair of pillows and stacked them on the left side of the foam mattress. Amy, looking pensive, removed a pile of fabric from Diane’s sewing chair and took a seat.
“I told Robin about you when she was in high school,” she began. “I’m not sure why, maybe as a cautionary tale for her—or a catharsis for me. But one day, I just wanted her to know.” Nate sat on the edge of the mattress across from Amy as she added, “She’s a good person, Nate. She’s doing the best she can with this.”
He stared at a framed needlepoint hanging on the opposite wall. It was of a striped cat playing with an unraveling ball of yarn. Nate assumed Diane sewed it, probably years ago based on its slightly faded colors. “What’s fucked up in a way,” he said, refocusing on Amy, “is that one of your children knew this big secret for years, while your other child had no idea.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“I know. And I’m sorry about that. But there’s something else.” Nate knew he owed Amy the truth. He swallowed and, voice laden with sadness, said, “It’s hard for me to think how much your parents must have hated my father. Because no matter what—I really loved him.”
“Oh, Nate …” Amy rose from the chair and sat on the mattress next to her son. She gently put an arm around his shoulder and he tentatively leaned into her.
They stayed like that for several moments until Amy pulled back. “They didn’t hate him. They didn’t even know him. All they knew was that some strange man got their teenage daughter pregnant. That’s what they hated. More than that, they hated having to lie—and they hated keeping secrets.” She stopped, looking lost in the reverie. “If they hated anyone back then, it was probably me.”
“I doubt that. You were still their only child.” Nate needed to get up, to move around: his head and legs suddenly ached.
“Whatever, we can’t change the past, we can only accept it.” She rose to face Nate. “I need you to accept it.”
Nate met her tender gaze. He’d do what he had to do. He’d find a way. Amy hugged him. “Sleep well, honey,” she said as she went for the door.
“You, too … Mom.” There was that word again. It just came out. Amy smiled at the sound of it, at the validation, and maybe at the luck that this strange, wish-fulfilling experiment might work out.
The next morning, Amy wanted to show Nate more of Fresno. So after a thankfully calm breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs, with a crescent roll redux—they were perfectly baked this time (cue Diane’s relieved smile)—Nate wrangled Cody and they took off in the Silverado for a guided tour.
It was barely nine o’clock, but it was already hotter than the day before, with the San Joaquin Valley humidity turning the air soupy. Nate cranked up the air conditioning as Amy directed him out of her parents’ neighborhood and back onto Shaw Avenue, which he now knew as one of several thoroughfares that linked the city from end to end. After driving by Amy’s neat but nondescript condo complex (not that far from her parents’ house after all), they hung a left on Palm and drove into Fig Garden, the shopping area they’d passed on the way into town. As they circled the well-maintained loop of shops and restaurants, Amy pointed out every place she’d worked, though most of the businesses—save a jauntily-named bar and grill called the Elbow Room—had become something else entirely. A popular movie theater was demolished a few decades earlier; not surprisingly, the specialty market where Amy had once packed groceries was replaced by a Whole Foods.
As Amy narrated her retail experience, Nate wondered if his father ever shopped or ate at this civilized mall. Did he go there with family? Friends? Dates? With Eileen? Did he ever cross paths with Amy—randomly or purposefully—in any of the places she’d worked?
Feeling a sudden need to leave, Nate leaned on the gas pedal, and they were back on Shaw before Amy seemed to realize they’d even exited. If she did notice, she conceded to her driver’s pace—if not his emotions—and then, with a mix of excitement and dread, asked if Nate wanted to see her old high school (read: her and Jim’s old high school). There was a moth-to-the-flame thing going on: Nate was surely a reluctant moth; the past was the flame. Yet wasn’t this whole trip supposed to be a kind of exorcism?
In short order, they were parked in front of Fresno High, a majestic, brick and plaster structure that, according to Amy, still looked largely the same as when she was a student. She gazed out the Silverado window at the imposing edifice, clearly lost in a mind’s eyeful of memories. Nate could only imagine the thoughts flickering through her head; he knew what he was thinking and he’d never even set foot in the place.
This being Sunday, the school was closed, so Amy walked Nate around the perimeter, Cody dutifully following alongside. She told him stories of football games and band practice (she played the flute and the French horn) and school plays and sneaking a smoke with her girlfriends (“Just to fit in—which I didn’t”) until they found themselves at a back entrance as a weathered, late-60ish guy wheeled a garbage pail out of the building.
“You folks lost?” he asked in a raspy, seen-it-all voice.
Amy eyed him, agape. “Eddie?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” He peered back at Amy, trying to place her. “Wait, do I know you?”
It turned out that Eddie was the school’s longtime janitor; he was around even before Amy’s time there. He certainly must have known Nate’s dad but Amy thankfully didn’t bring him up. She simply told him that she and her son were visiting from L.A. and, well, she knew it must be against the rules, especially these days, but could they ple-e-eze take a peek inside—for old time’s sake? Given that Nate and Amy hardly looked like Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie not only told them they could enter (“Just make it quick, okay?”) but that he would watch Cody, because a dog really wasn’t allowed inside.
Once they were through the doors, it looked and felt like pretty much any other well-kept high school, evoking for Nate his days at Eagle Rock High, a largely happy time of life that, like most adults, he probably appreciated more in retrospect. He found himself smiling at the familiar banners, posters, and trophy cases that filled the vaulted entryway; a vibrant, hand-painted mural promoting inclusivity was sprawled along one entire wall. “Wow, all of a sudden I feel like it’s my first day of school again,” Nate told Amy, who, from her faraway look, had been catapulted back more than three decades.
“So why do I have butterflies?” she turned and asked him with a smile.
Nate stopped, took her arm. “We don’t have to do this, y’know.”
Amy considered his protective words and decided, “No, I think we do.”
They meandered along the echoey hallways, past rows of lockers and bulletin boards and classroom doors until Amy slowed in front of one. She gazed through the window, then took Nate by surprise when she told him that it was his father’s classroom. Her classroom.
“Room 115,” she confirmed. “Third period English.”
Nate peered in the window as if Jim might still be in there. He felt weirdly frozen in place, wondering how many times his dad had turned that doorknob and entered room 115. With an expectant look, Amy opened the unlocked door, took a step inside, and waved Nate in. She turned on the overhead lights, illuminating a neat and shiny classroom. The walls looked older but the desks seemed newish, as did the signs of technology that certainly didn’t exist when Amy sat in third period English. Algebra problems covered the erasable whiteboard where a dusty blackboard surely once hung.
“Someone’s teaching math in the English room,” Amy joked, turning from the whiteboard. “Think we should tell them?”
But Nate was silent, pensive as he stood at the head of the classroom, maybe in the exact spot where Jim had addressed his students. He gazed out at the empty, melamine-topped desks and envisioned what his father saw as he talked about, what—Wuthering Heights, Invisible Man, The Catcher in the Rye? Nate watched as Amy drifted toward the back of the room and took a seat in the second-to-last row of desks. His eye caught a bright purple poster that read “Never argue with a ninety-degree angle—it’s always right.” Math humor.
“My old seat,” she called to Nate as she ran a hand over the desk’s smooth finish.
“How do you remember that?” he asked, crossing toward her.
Amy smiled. “I remember everything about this room. Where I sat, who sat around me …” She pointed to each neighboring desk as she ticked off names like it was yesterday: “Martina Flores, Brad Hartounian, Tanya Spector, Joey Lee, Lisa DiNapoli.” She paused. “The posters on the wall, what the clock looked like.” She gestured toward a contemporary clock hanging above the whiteboard. “Not like that.”
“And the smell,” she continued, “like chalk and old paint … until your father would walk in and fill the room with his spicy aftershave.” She called up the brand: “Polo. Do they still even make that?”
“They must, Dad wore it every day of his life—whether he shaved or not.” Nate sat on a desktop (Tanya Spector’s?) next to Amy, who was staring vacantly at the busy whiteboard. He pictured what she must be dredging up about her time in that classroom; how her life had changed in such irrevocable ways as a result. If she were being honest—really honest—would she do it all over again if she had the chance? Perhaps more importantly: would Jim have stopped the affair before it even started? And, Nate thought darkly, where would those decisions have left him? Talk about a mindfuck.
Then, without moving, her head stone-still, tears began to stream from Amy’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but it was no use. They needed to escape—and she needed to rid herself of whatever their cause. Maybe that was happening right then and there in Room 115 or maybe it would happen months from that sticky Fresno morning. But something told Nate he was witnessing the start of the next phase of their journey.
Amy snapped to, wiped her wet cheeks with her opened hands, and looked rattled.
“Are you okay?” Nate asked as he hopped off the desk.
“I don’t know what came over me.” She sniffled loudly as she swallowed what was left of her tears.
“The Ghost of Eleventh Grade Past,” Nate said lightly.
Amy settled herself and took a deep breath. “And here I was worried about you. How you’d react being here. How embarrassing.”
“Trust me, another five minutes and I would’ve lost it too.” Whether that was true or not, Nate was glad that it seemed to make Amy feel better. Misery loves company and all.
“Let’s get the hell out of here, okay, kiddo?” But she was already halfway out the door.
They collected Cody from Eddie, who’d taken the amenable pooch for a walk around the football field. (From the janitor’s smoky scent, he’d also snuck in a cigarette or two.) “Superb animal you got there, pal,” he told Nate, who couldn’t disagree. They said their goodbyes and mother, son, and dog piled back into the Silverado and left Fresno High behind.
Amy wouldn’t tell Nate where they were going as she directed him south on Echo Avenue then east onto Olive, but he had a feeling there was another gut punch in store. That was okay, he felt he could handle it (besides: morbid curiosity), but could she? So he asked.
“I’m fine, really,” she answered, lighter now. “If I didn’t think this was good for us—healing for us—I would’ve taken you to the zoo and called it a morning.” She flashed a warm smile. “Trust me?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” That came out less jaunty than planned, but Amy looked undeterred.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “And a sign of progress.”
They soon reached an eclectic cluster of shops, eateries, and clubs. They passed a few tattoo parlors and weed dispensaries and a dive bar called, of all things, Goldstein’s Mortuary & Delicatessen. There was something both welcoming and funky about the stretch, its sidewalks filled with a younger and more diverse clientele than at the tonier Fig Garden.
“Welcome to the Arts District,” Amy said in her best tour guide voice. “It used to be cool. I don’t know, maybe it still is.” She looked out at the laid-back street trying to decide.
But when they drove past the striking Tower Theatre, with its wraparound, art-deco, neon-etched marquee, Nate immediately recognized it as the spot where Jim and Eileen had taken that old photo—and somehow knew just where Amy was leading him.
A few blocks away, they pulled up to a small, squarish, one-story home with Craftsman-style aspirations. The yard was tidy but spare, save a collection of kids’ toys strewn by the front door. Nate stared out the truck window at the house.
“Don’t tell me, this is where my Dad and Eileen lived.”
Amy eyed him, impressed. “Wow, very good. How did you know?”
Nate shrugged. “I may have seen pictures.”
“Well, it may not look like much now, but it was a cute little place back then. Especially on a teacher’s salary.” She reached for the door handle, then looked at Nate. “Shall we?”
They leaned against the Silverado studying the house as Cody sniffed around a patch of grass. “Did he ever … bring you here?” Nate had to ask.
“Oh, God, no—this was Jim and Eileen’s home. Even then, I knew I didn’t want any part of that. And neither did your father.” Amy’s expression shifted. “Not that I didn’t spend my share of nights hiding behind trees, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the window.”
“Okay, that’s weird,” Nate said, wondering which of the few trees around them she used.
“It didn’t seem so at the time.” Amy paused. “Later, I’d try to catch glimpses of you through the window.”
The movie version of that scene flickered through Nate’s head. He couldn’t help but be moved by her memory; there was so much he’d had no way of knowing. Then he told Amy something she couldn’t possibly have known: “That’s funny, because when I was a kid I’d sometimes look into people’s windows to see if my mother was actually living with another family. Of course, I was looking for Eileen, not you.” Cody sat at Nate’s side, watching the house along with them.
“You wanted a mother. What child wouldn’t?” She reached out to hug Nate. The timing was too perfect, the moment too wanting, for him to refuse.
“I’m so sorry.” Amy pulled back and beheld her son. “I feel like I’ll be saying that for the rest of my life.” Nate couldn’t respond except with a small nod that implied: Maybe you will. And maybe that was okay.
The front door of the house swung open and a young couple and their two small children barreled out. The kids were in colorful party costumes; the parents held wrapped gifts. Cody jumped up and barked merrily as the family crossed the small lawn to an older model SUV parked in the driveway. Nate pulled the dog back as the quartet turned as one toward their sidewalk observers.
“We should go—before we’re arrested for trespassing or something,” Nate quietly told Amy, only half-joking.
“Don’t worry, you can always play the ‘I was born here’ card,” she said with a wry smile as the family piled into the SUV. She followed Nate and Cody into the Silverado and they made their way across town, passing the impressive estates along Van Ness Boulevard until they were back at Gene and Diane’s.