thirteen
I SENT LULA EMAILS EVERY DAY. I don’t know whether she got them or not. Maybe the only person reading them was Detective Addison. Or maybe even he’d given up.
To: BloomOrphan
From: SpookyKid
Subject: Family Reunion
Tallulah dearest,
I think you should know about the startling plot twist from yesterday’s episode. A long lost visitor has made a surprise reappearance. Your mother’s back at Janet and Leo’s. Not sure how long she’s staying. Would you at least give a call? So that we can make our shocked faces at each other?
yrs,
Theodore
To: BloomOrphan
From: SpookyKid
Subject: I want to believe!
L,
just saw the preview for the 2nd XF movie! July 25th! You better be here by then because I won’t go see it without you!
R.
To: BloomOrphan
From: SpookyKid
Subject: Mulder, it’s me
Lula,
I’ve had it up to here with this absentee bullshit. School sucks. I can’t watch XF without you. I don’t even care about XF without you. I just want to see you again. Lula, if you’re reading this, just know that I can understand why you don’t want to come back here. And know that I love you.
R.
To: BloomOrphan
From: SpookyKid
Subject: no subject
lula,
what makes you so sure I wasn’t drowning, too?
r.
JANET CALLED THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY TO invite me to dinner, and to tell me that Lula’s mother was flying out that night. I went over, even though I hadn’t spoken to her since that first day, when we got the diary entry. When I got to Janet and Leo’s, Janet was making pierogies. Leo was on the back porch, smoking cigars with another old guy I’d never seen before.
“Can I help out?” I asked. I’d always liked helping Janet in the kitchen.
“Of course. Why don’t you run upstairs first? See if Christine’s bags are ready to come down.”
I walked up the stairs, hoping that this was going to end up like a movie. Lula would be there, sitting on her bed. Her mom braiding her hair. No, not braiding her hair. They’d be watching Lord of the Rings together. They’d both be fast-forwarding to the Aragorn parts.
But it was just Christine, alone in Lula’s room. Sitting on the bed, her boot heels crossed in front of her. Looking around at all the posters. The Mulder and Scully action figures, still in their plastic packaging. The books stacked against the peeling black paint.
“Janet wanted me to see if you needed any help,” I said.
“Thanks,” she looked up at me. “Rory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Chris. We didn’t really get off on the right foot the other day, did we?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh, can the ma’am crap. I hate all that southern-manners bullshit.” She looked around the room again. “I’m just sitting here trying to figure out who this kid turned out to be. I can’t believe I gave birth to a sci-fi nerd.”
“Lula’s not a nerd.”
Chris just smiled at me.
“Of course she’s not.” She raised her eyebrows. “So what is she, then? Just between you and me? Your lover? Friend with benefits? Or maybe you’ve got a boyfriend hidden away somewhere, and Lula’s your loyal, long-suffering fag hag.”
I took a sharp breath and didn’t say anything. I was ready to walk out of Lula’s room. I wanted to remember Lula and me there, alone. Just us two. Not Lula’s mother. Not this mean interrogation.
“Or is she the one that’s putting on the act? I still haven’t figured the two of you out. What’s all this business with the English teacher? Is my kid a dyke, or is she in love with you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think she knows, either.”
“But you did sleep together, right? I mean, I know you’d never tell Janet, ’cause she’s a square from Delaware, but come on. The two of you, alone up here. Your hormones are raging. Why not, right?”
I jammed my hands in my pockets. Shrugged. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Oh, fine. What do I care, anyway?” Chris stood up and stretched. She reached behind Lula’s desk to unplug her BlackBerry charger. “It’s just funny, that’s all. Well, maybe not funny. Lula’s father was gay. She didn’t know that, did she?”
“No,” I said. “She didn’t know anything about him.” Wow. I wondered for a second if I heard Chris say what I actually thought she said. Did I just project myself weirdly into her speech somehow? I almost wanted to say, No, you misunderstood, Lula’s dad isn’t gay, I am. What did she mean? That Lula’s father was really, actually, gay? Was that why her mom left her? Was that why he left? Would it have changed anything if Lula had known?
“Of course, her father didn’t figure it out until it was too late.” Christine stuffed the BlackBerry and its charger into her purse, a faraway look on her face. “Too late for him and me, anyway.” She looked up at me. “I guess that’s genetics for you, though. However you look at it. The kid’s either just like me, falling for her gay best friend. Or she’s just like him. Either way . . .” Lula’s mother trailed off. She zipped her purse decisively. I thought about Andy and his girls. Maybe Lula’s dad was like him. A guy from a small town, a conservative family. Maybe it took a little bit longer for him to figure himself out. Maybe he loved Lula, like Andy loved his daughters, but he couldn’t lead a fake life. I felt a weird pang of sympathy for Lula’s absentee dad.
“Hey, is Janet still making pierogies?” Christine asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah.”
“She’s still literally trying to feed an army. You know who that guy downstairs is, right? With Leo?”
“Um. No.”
“Leo never told you about his legendary black-ops buddy Harry Kemp? It’d be right up your alley, all this X-Files government conspiracy stuff.” She picked up her duffel bag, stood it on its end, and latched it closed with expert speed. The bag was her only piece of luggage, and it was exactly like the one Lula had. Standard Navy issue. Leo must give them out at Christmas.
“Anyway, they’ll find her. Harry’s the one who found me, all those years ago. She’ll probably be home before the week’s out. I wouldn’t worry anymore about Lula.”
“So you’re leaving? Before she gets here?”
“I have to get back. I’ve got a theater to run. Besides, Leo and I have just about maxed out our temporary peace treaty. I should leave before we end up in an unintentional reenactment of the infamous You’re-Wasting-Your-Life- With-This-Acting-Bullshit Battle of 1985.”
“But, wait. What about—I mean, where do you even live? What if—” I stood there at Lula’s desk, bare without the computer. I felt my face go hot, angry. I wanted to shake this woman. I wanted her to unlock some mystery, to explain the pieces she’d left behind for Lula and me to decipher. I wanted her to show me how everything was supposed to fit. How could she expect to just show up here and throw out all these pieces, like telling me Lula’s dad was gay, drop these bombs and leave?
“She’s been looking for you for so long. She . . . she Googles your name.”
“Which name did she Google?”
“Christine. Christine Monroe.”
“Well, there you go. I’m easily found, if that’s what Tallulah wants. I’m in the Santa Fe phone book, just tell her to look under MacKelvey, not Monroe. And before that, I had to use a stage name, because there was already a Christine Monroe in the Screen Actors Guild. Why didn’t Janet and Leo tell her? I haven’t been Christine Monroe since high school.” She shook her head. “Google. Christ.”
I couldn’t believe she didn’t understand. That Leo didn’t talk about her. Wouldn’t talk about her. That Lula’s room was the only place in this house where she existed anymore. Lula was the only one here who was keeping her alive.
“What if she’s there right now? Waiting for you?”
“My husband’s at home. He knows she might show up there. I’m not taking this as lightly as you think I am.”
“I didn’t . . . I just wanted to know . . . I think Lula would want to know why you left her. She still keeps that bag of yours.” I nodded at the backpack on the shelf. “She’s read your books a hundred times. She practically worships you.”
“I left her because I realized that I didn’t want to be a mother.” Chris shrugged. “Simple as that. Couldn’t and didn’t want to. Nothing against Lula—I was just too selfish. I knew I couldn’t get where I wanted to be and stand around being a mom, too. And then her father left, so, a single mom, forget it.” Chris leveled her gaze at me. “I think it’s better I gave her to someone who wanted to be there all the time, don’t you? Instead of dragging her around all over creation, like I was dragged all over creation when Leo was in active duty? That’s hard on a kid. I would’ve been too hard on a kid.”
“You’re still her mother. You could at least call her or send her an email every once in a while.”
“Rory, forgive my cliché, but when you get older, you’ll understand.” She reached over to Lula’s shelf for the backpack that Janet had put in its usual place. “My God, why did she keep this ratty old thing?”
“Because it was yours.”
“Ugh. This is a terrible picture.” Chris went through the bag, tossing everything out on the bed like it was nothing. Like these weren’t serious relics that had been pored over and contemplated and studied.
“So that’s where my copy of Unseen Hand went. Liv Ullmann—did she actually read this? This is what she’s been worshipping all these years? A cheap Liv Ullmann memoir from the Strand? Good grief.” She laughed. “Be careful what you leave in the back of your closet. You never know when it might end up on a pedestal.”
“She just wanted to know more about you.”
“Well, when she comes home, maybe we can talk on the phone. I’m pretty busy, but maybe we could arrange a visit. Sometime next summer, if I’m not working in LA. Maybe the fall.”
“Maybe you should just—” I wanted to say something sarcastic and awful, to make this woman feel as awful as I felt right now. I wanted to know what Lula would say. But my mind didn’t work that fast. Instead, I was gripped by the thought that I wanted that little knapsack and the books. They weren’t Christine’s anymore. She’d given them up. They were Lula’s, and I had to keep them safe for her until she came back.
“Anyway, why is this all on me?” Christine went on. “Maybe she went to find her father. He’s over in Nashville—that’s, what, a couple hours’ drive from here? Maybe she Googled him. I told Leo, but he’s obsessed with this idea that she went to New York. Why wouldn’t a girl want to find her father?”
I didn’t have an answer. If Lula had ever looked for her father, she never told me about it. Maybe she never mentioned it because she knew I didn’t like talking about my own dad leaving.
“Maybe girls just need their mothers more,” I theorized.
“She’s got a perfectly good grandmother downstairs,” Christine said, warily. “I mean, does Lula really need me, specifically, to explain the joys of the menstrual cycle?”
“Then why did you bother coming here at all?” I said finally. “You don’t even care.”
“I care,” she shrugged again. “I just don’t think it’s the dire situation you all make it out to be. She packed a bag. She’s off having adventures; let her have them. Anyway, Leo thought it would help if I came back.” She shrugged. “But, obviously, he was wrong.”
“Obviously.”