After being back in Arizona for a couple of weeks, I’m starting to settle into a routine. My grandparents and I mostly avoid each other except for two events that have been sacrosanct since I was a kid: sitting down together for dinner during the week and going to church on Sunday mornings. Dinner has been increasingly awkward and brief, but I don’t mind going to church. There’s always been something appealing to me about a group of people getting together to all study the same book that people have read for millennia. And, at least during the service, my grandmother can’t try to talk to me. She gave me more than a look when I came back with blue hair yesterday, but I haven’t given her a chance to ask me about it or anything else.
We’re probably halfway through a sermon on the eighth chapter of Romans when my phone buzzes and, with a start, I recognize Bauer’s number. When we’d called the restaurant Mrs. Dos Santos remembered, all we’d had to do was mention her name and they gave me Bauer’s cell. I left a message yesterday but didn’t really expect him to call me back, at least not this quickly.
I all but bolt out of the sanctuary, a blue-haired streak, not even giving my grandparents a second glance as I hurry into the narthex.
“Hello?”
“Ethan?”
“Yeah. Thanks for calling me back. I wasn’t sure if you’d even remember me.”
“Joy’s kid, sure, I remember you. How you been?” It’s loud wherever he is, lots of voices and clattering.
“Um, fine, yeah,” I say, caught off guard that he’s asking about me.
“Listen, I’m in the middle of a shift. We’re about to start prepping for the lunch rush, but I was thinking we could set up a time to really talk. Maybe even get together?”
“I’m not living in California right now, but I’ll be quick,” I promise. “It’s about my mom.”
I don’t think I say it in any special, revealing way, but Bauer swears softly then I hear him yell out that he’s going on break. The noise from his end of the phone gets briefly louder then it’s gone.
“She dead?” He asks it bluntly, evenly, and I nearly drop my phone because it’s too easy to imagine that reality.
“No, she was in rehab but she checked herself out and no one’s been able to find her.”
His sigh is long and drawn-out and I tell myself it’s relief I hear, but I don’t really know.
“Have you seen her? Or maybe she tried to call you?”
There’s a sound from his end of the phone, a match striking and I picture him leaning up against the outside of a brick wall with a cigarette in one hand and running the other through his lanky brown hair. “I haven’t seen Joy in years, not since you guys were living above that diner over on Hermosa. You were what? Ten, Eleven?”
“Twelve,” I say. I’d been small for my size until I hit fifteen and shot up.
His laughter fills my ears. “That’s right. I was gonna take you to see an Angels game for your birthday and you got sick before we could even leave, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” My mom had had that look in her eyes for days, the one that told me she’d be high the second we drove off. So I’d made myself sick instead, downed half a bottle of apple cider vinegar and threw up all over the place. I missed the baseball game, but my mom couldn’t get high that night. As far as birthdays go, it wasn’t my worst.
He laughs again before sobering. “I’m sorry I didn’t stick around to take you another time.”
Yeah, me too. The guy after him introduced my mom to a whole new world of shit.
“Is there anyone you can think of that she might have reached out to?”
There’s a pause. “Aw, kid, I wish I could help you. Maybe, maybe she doesn’t want to be found right now? There were times in my life when I didn’t.” I have no doubt about that, but her wants rarely match with anything good for her. “But I can ask around, okay? I still know where to find a few people from back then.”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
He makes a sound in his throat, dismissing my gratitude. “You know I’ve been meaning to track you down, you and your mom. I—ah, wasn’t a great guy back then.” He laughs a little. “I’m nothing special now, but I haven’t hocked my kid’s bike for a fix or anything.”
“You never sold my bike.”
“No? Well, I guess that’s something.”
There’s a pause that makes me wonder why I’m still on the phone. I should probably hang up, slip back into church, and hope my grandparents don’t ask too many questions about who I was talking to. Instead, I say, “So you got a kid?”
Another laugh that dissolves into a cough. “Can you believe it? Got the minivan too. I mean the kid’s not exactly mine, but I’m claiming him. Stayed sober for two years before his mom agreed to marry me and now we got our first one together on the way.”
Jealously spikes through me hard and fast and I can’t answer him. He and my mom were in the same place not that long ago, spiraling around the same endless cycle and dragging anyone who cared about them along for the ride. How is it fair that he got out and she sank deeper? Bauer says something, but I’m so tangled up in my thoughts that I miss it.
“Hello?”
“Sorry, what?”
“I said you still reading?”
“Oh yeah, I’m still reading. All the time.”
“Good, good. Don’t ever stop, you hear me? Books are the keys to the world.”
“Right.”
“So you’re not in California. Where’d you end up? If it’s not far maybe we can still—”
“It’s not a great time for me right now.”
“Okay, yeah. I get that. You’ll let me know when that changes?”
“Sure. And you’ll call if...?”
“Anything I find out, I’ll call.”
We hang up and I linger, staring down at my phone. I tell myself it’s possible that he’s lying about having his life together, but I can’t think of a reason he’d need to lie with me. I know I should be glad for him, glad for the kid he’ll bring more than books to now, but all I feel is resentment.
I look up when the door opens, not surprised to see my grandfather has come looking for me.
He walks right up to me, concern etched on his features. “Is it your mom? Is she alright?”
I slowly lift my gaze from my phone and my first instinct is to throw his concern back in his face and see how he likes it when somebody keeps things about his family from him, but I know just how messed up that is. They kept stuff about my mom from me all the time, even now they didn’t tell me when she left rehab. And maybe it’s because I just got off the phone with a man who may have actually succeeded in turning his life around or the fact that I’m in a church, but I don’t feel like being angry right now. My grandfather looks as small as I’ve ever seen him in that moment. He looks afraid.
“It wasn’t her,” I say. “If I hear from her, I’ll tell you.”