CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Los Angeles, 1959

Kathleen was munching from a bag of Hershey’s Kisses as I climbed in, and waved her own goodbye to Sister Teresa Mary.

“Eat,” she directed. “You look like you could use it.”

I picked out one kiss and carefully unwrapped it from its silver foil. I had always loved these elegantly wrapped chocolates. As a child, I had once opened a bag and lined them up on the floor, creating my own royal court, all gleaming and proud. I left them there when it was time for dinner, then forgot them and went to bed. Mother was not happy when Father walked into the room that night and ground chocolate into the carpet.

I unwrapped a second piece of candy, popped it into my mouth, and told Kathleen the story.

“That wasn’t as bad as when you left the dead snake in the garage for three weeks. Remember? The one you brought home from camp that you were going to boil, so you could make jewelry from the bones?” She shivered. “You did some weird things.”

We were good at this, finding refuge in shared memories before facing the present.

“So what did you think of the nuns in their new home?” Kathleen finally asked. By now, we were heading out of the Valley, back toward Sunset.

“They’re brave.” Staring out the window, I wondered how strange it must have felt for Sister Teresa Mary to bare her head for the first time in decades. “I hate the place, but they are brave.”

“I’ve offered to try and help them find a better location, but no response from the archdiocese.”

“I joined them for Mass.”

She glanced at me, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m glad I did. I understand them better now.” I told her how freeing it had felt to let go. I groped for the right words, but I didn’t have to work at it; she knew.

“Sounds good,” she said quietly.

We rode for a while in comfortable silence, and I found myself drifting into a doze.

Two days until the awards ceremony. I would soon be due back in New York.

The reality of time racing by hit me that night as Kathleen and I ordered dinner at a small Mexican restaurant near her apartment. It was a place full of light and cheer, with sombreros tacked on the walls at wacky angles and posters of dancing girls, smiling brightly, clicking their castanets in silent, frozen harmony.

“You’ve been staring at that menu a long time,” Kathleen said. “I can vouch for the enchiladas and tostados, if you’re having trouble making up your mind.”

“I have to go back in a few days.”

“Will you be glad to get out of here?”

She said it casually, and I tried to answer the same way. “I’ll miss you,” I said.

“So nothing changed?”

Running a finger over a grease spot on the menu, I thought about that, wondering. Had anything changed? I had walked back through old memories, touching them as briefly as I would touch a hot stove…but there was that moment at Mass.

“Some things, yes.”

She was studying me almost sorrowfully. Or so I imagined. “Maybe you haven’t gotten to the heart of it.”

“Please don’t say you mean Malcolm.”

“I don’t. But now that you mention him—”

The waiter came, sparing me the need to reply. By the time we ordered, I had figured out what I wanted to say. “I think I should say goodbye to him,” I said.

Kathleen was dipping chips into salsa, munching with relish. “Then call him at the studio,” she said. “As for the awards—you still don’t want to buy a dress?”

“I’m not so sure I want to go.”

“That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”

I caught her eyes squarely. “Do you know more about this than you’re telling me?”

This time, she didn’t act surprised that I asked. “Nope,” she said.

“It feels like some kind of—I don’t know—public-relations stunt or joke, or even a flat-out mistake.”

We jointly mulled that one over as we finished off the salsa.

We were both tired when we arrived back at Kathleen’s home. She peered into the mailbox by her darkened front door, grumbling about needing a light there so she wouldn’t someday thrust her hand in looking for mail and get bitten by a snake.

“Do you have snakes here?” I said, a bit alarmed.

“No, I just think about it. Ah, something.” She pulled out an envelope, glanced at the return address, and frowned.

“Anything for me?” The words just slipped out.

“No,” she said. “Nothing from Malcolm.”

I slept restlessly that night. I had wondered, coming out here, how I would fill over a full week in this rock-hard place I bewilderingly once called home. Now I felt that I was running out of time, that I had missed something. Questions kept buzzing in my head.

At three in the morning, I gave up and switched on the bedside light. I opened the drawer and took out the Academy Awards invitation, and then I stared alternately at it and the ceiling until, exhausted, I fell asleep around seven.

“Jesse?” Kathleen was gently shaking my shoulder. “Hey, Jesse? Wake up, it’s eight o’clock. A phone call for you from New York. Somebody from Newsweek.”

I stumbled across the room and reached for the phone.

“Jesse, is that you?” The line wasn’t very clear, but I recognized the voice of Mabel, my boss’s secretary. An envelope had come to the office addressed to me, she said. She reminded me that when we had lunch together a few weeks ago I had told her I was hoping to sell an article, and she figured, well, Newsweek could afford a long-distance call; maybe it was something I might want to know about before I came back.

“What’s the return address?”

A slight sound; maybe she was flipping the envelope over.

“Life magazine,” she said.

Just another rejection, I told myself. But maybe…I shut my eyes. “Would you please open it?” I said.

This time, unmistakably, I heard the envelope being ripped open.

“Well, they like it,” Mabel said.

“Is the word ‘regret’ in the message?”

“No. They want to buy it. Isn’t that nice?”

Laughing, I grabbed Kathleen and hugged her; I thanked Mabel effusively, and then thanked her again. She seemed a bit astonished, but pleased she had called. I collected myself enough to get the name of the editor I needed to contact, and finally said goodbye.

Then I turned to Kathleen, grinning. “It’s going to be published. I can’t believe it—”

“Why not believe it? You’ve sold a piece about a doll nobody’s heard of yet and that’s going to get attention. It’s a success, and there will be more of them.” She shook her head, clearly exasperated. “What did that guy you lived with do to you? You’ve been writing since high school; you didn’t just win speech tournaments, you wrote short stories and you talked about writing a novel someday. And you stayed with him for almost a year? What happened?”

“I’ve asked myself that a lot. I think I was just an idiot, wasting too much time feeling sorry for myself.” The truth, plain and simple.

“Well, dump that question,” she said. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. It’s what you do now that matters.”

“I’ve got two stories out to The Saturday Evening Post,” I said. “They’re pretty good; we’ll see.” I heard a new buoyancy in my voice.

“Fantastic! Hey, you’re on your way. Keep writing.”

“Right this minute? Can we have our coffee first?”

She grinned. “You never could pass up caffeine.”