Terminal Island

Chapter Six

RETURN TO SENDER



The next morning, Henry carefully gets out of bed so as not to disturb Ruby or the baby. It’s been a rocky night and he can’t lie down any more. He goes to the window and looks out at the misty, sleeping town—early morning has always been his favorite time of the day, especially on weekends. That’s the problem: it’s Monday, Labor Day, and he feels funny about not being at work. Checking his cell phone for messages, he finds there’s no signal—in a way it’s a relief.

Gingerly putting clothes on, he sneaks out and walks to the pier. It’s brisk, the last day of the tourist season. Standing overlooking the water, he vividly remembers the feeling of casting his line out and reeling it back. He wishes he had a pole again, just for one try.

Looking at the sleepy tourist town, Henry can’t imagine that such a place could ever harbor anything bad. And so much of his childhood seems like a dream to him that if it weren’t for the living proof of his mother, he would gladly dismiss the past and forget it ever happened.

From somewhere deep in town, he hears a scream. A series of screams—a child’s screams—increasingly frantic, pealing high and wild and then abruptly cut short. Silence clamps down again like a vise.



Henry and Ruby are spending the morning on the town beach, watching Moxie dig in the sand. The weekend crowd is gone; they just about have the place to themselves.

“This is nice,” Ruby says, leaning back against Henry’s chest.

“Uh-huh,” he says, a bit tense. “When do you think we should go see my mother?”

“Soon. Not yet.”

“This afternoon.”

“Yes. This afternoon.”

It’s perfect weather, sunny but not hot, with a slight breeze. The water is colder than Ruby likes, but Henry takes a dip and Moxie splashes at the glassy edge of the shallows, collecting pebbles.

Coming up from dunking his head, Henry is suddenly aware of a scum of debris and cigarette butts floating around him—there’s crap in his hair. He splashes it off and gets out.

“I don’t know how clean this beach is,” he says.

“Really?”

“It’s like a giant ashtray.” He points out drifts of butts in the hollows of the sand. “I didn’t realize until just now. It’s pretty gross, actually.”

“Yuck. I didn’t even see that.”

“You know what it is? Look—the street drains right onto the sand.” He suddenly notices the spouts in the concrete sea wall. “All the spit and filth of the night before, they just hose it all down here for the tourists to sit in. Unbelievable.”

“So we’re basically wallowing in a big gutter? Ugh.” She begins folding up their towel to leave.

Walking out, they see a gawky teenage lifeguard wearing an oversized pith helmet. He resembles a gnome squatting under a toadstool.

In passing, Henry asks pointedly, “Excuse me. Is this beach clean?”

The guard looks at him, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, pimply mouth an exaggerated moue of pure contempt. “Cleaner than back there,” he sneers, indicating the mainland. It is as if he’s referring to some absolute sink of foulness; the source from which all corruption flows. Meaning them.

Partway back to the hotel, Ruby has to pry something away from Moxie. “Oh shit,” she says. “Honey? Look what she was playing with.”

Henry peers at his wife’s cupped palm in disbelief. In it is a human tooth—a big, ugly molar.



After they’ve showered and changed, Henry and Ruby ask the desk clerk at the Formosa about the address he has for his mother. It is in a letter he received some months ago from an acquaintance of his mom’s—an elderly neighbor who he thinks was probably her only friend in recent years. The handwritten letter reads:



Dear Mr. Cadmus,

I am a friend of your mother’s. Some weeks ago she was very excited to tell me she had a wonderful opportunity to move to a condominium on Catalina Island, and asked me to forward her mail to this address: Box 327B, Shady Isle, Avalon Township, Los Angeles CA. She promised to contact me as soon as she arrived, but I have not heard back from her. Since her health is poor, I would be grateful to know if you have heard from her, and if she is well. I know from speaking to your mother that you and she are not on the best of terms, but I hope you can reassure me that she is all right. She is a remarkable woman, and has always spoken highly of you and your family. Thank you.

Sincerely—Lucille Sanford



After receiving this letter, Henry had written his mother at once, alarmed to hear of this latest likely debacle:



Mom,

I just heard from your friend Lucille that you’ve moved to Catalina—what’s going on? Have you won the Lotto or something? You’ve got everybody worried—please fill me in on your situation ASAP so I know you’re okay. Ruby and Moxie say hi.

XXXOOO—Henry



When a month passed with no reply, Henry decided to try the local Sheriff’s Department instead. Their reply was succinct:



Mr. Cadmus,

Regarding your inquiry about your mother, it may help you to know that many of our residents place a high value on their privacy—it is the chief attraction of an island lifestyle.

Cordially—Sheriff’s Deputy Tina Myrtessa



Island lifestyle? Gee thanks, officer. Yeah, that was it; he just could see his mother burning up the tennis court, or bicycling all day and dancing all night like the seniors on those adult diaper commercials. Obviously Deputy Myrtessa didn’t know his mother. At least it proved she was still there, though, and not homeless somewhere. Ticked off maybe, but all right.

Over the following months Henry sent several more letters, his tone becoming increasingly urgent and annoyed by her failure to reply. The last straw was when his last letter came back marked RETURN TO SENDER—what, she wasn’t even accepting his mail now?

That was it: Like it or not, he had to consider actually going there to find out what the hell she thought she was doing. Had she gone senile? Joined a cult? Shacked up with someone? Part of him doesn’t want to know, would have been so content just to let his mother vanish off the face of the Earth and take his past with her. That’s what she’s become to him: a relic of his personal history, sole repository of unwanted memories. A burden. Plus there was that other thing—the whole Catalina thing. Why did she have to move back there of all places?

With no regard for disrupting their busy routines or the amount of traveling and expense involved—starting with round-trip airfare from Chicago to L.A.—Ruby had decided it for him:

Oh, we have to go. That’s all there is to it.



The tanned, sarong-wearing desk girl at the Formosa squints at the address and says, “Gosh, I’m not sure…” Then she brightens: “Shady Isle. You know what? I think this is that new condo development around the other side of the Casino. You just have to follow the shore road all the way around the point and go up the hill.”

“Is it close enough to walk?”

“Oh, sure. I mean, if you don’t mind a little hike. It’s just outside of town.”

Ruby asks, “You think we can make it there and back before dark?”

“Oh yeah—no prob.” The girl snaps her fingers. “Hey, if you guys want us to watch your daughter for a while, we can do it—we do childcare at competitive rates. We’re state certified.” She hands them a business card. “Or if you ever want to like go out for the evening? Have a little romantic honeymoon? A lot of the guests like it. My granny’s so great with kids.”

“Thanks. We’ll have to take you up on that some other night.”

“Any time, just let me know.”

Out front, Henry says, “It’s getting kind of late. Maybe we should wait ’til the morning.”

“No way. I can feel you stewing about it, and it’s ruining my vacation. Let’s get this over with before you have a coronary.”

“Sorry. You’re right, I’m just procrastinating.” He takes a deep breath as if preparing for a high-dive. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Hey, I just want you to be able to relax. I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too. Thanks for helping me deal with all this.”

“What’s a good wife for?”

They push the stroller along the crescent waterfront, following the sidewalk away from the business district toward the northern tip of the bay: the stone jetty and the domineering red-roofed fortress of the Casino Ballroom.

“It’s not an actual casino,” Henry says. “I don’t know why they call it that. There’s no ballroom either, as far as I know. It’s always just been a movie theater and concert hall. I must have seen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at least ten times there.” Impulsively, he says, “Hey, maybe we should go to the movies while we’re here.”

“With Moxie?” Ruby says. “I don’t think so. You remember the last movie we tried to take her to?”

Henry shudders. “No, you’re right. Too bad.”

“Sorry, honey. We’ll go again when she’s away at college.”

The Casino is closed anyway, dark and shut up. There is a flyer on the window advertising an upcoming town meeting. They walk out to a sea wall overlooking the choppy open ocean, the water midnight blue and falling away sharply to bottomless depths. As a kid, Henry marveled at scuba classes going in here, heedless of sharks, boulders, icy currents, or dense kelp—he’s not so sure anymore he’d want to try it. You could vanish down there and never be found. Anything could be lurking down there in the dark—he has a bit of a phobia about it.

Between the Casino and the stone jetty there is a plaza with coin-operated telescopes. A few other couples have come here to enjoy the late afternoon sun before it sinks behind the island. The rest of Avalon is already in shadow. Ruby sets Moxie free to run around, but as they stand enjoying the view there is a disturbance, a harsh ripping sound from the road. It gets louder and its source appears: a yellow all-terrain vehicle ridden by two men, charging onto the square.

“Whoa,” says Henry.

Ruby calls, “Moxie! Stay by us, honey.”

The burping quad ATV does a donut in the middle of the patio and stops, revving its engine. One of the riders gets off and examines the motor as the other keeps revving, the two of them conferring together over the noise. “I don’t like that sound,” the driver says.

“Yeah, we don’t, either,” Ruby mutters.

The men obviously aren’t tourists. They’re dressed in grease-stained overalls and scuffed work boots that clash with the magazine-pretty surroundings like a blue-collar reality check. Henry feels an odd pang of envy at the sight of them—they don’t give a shit about anything.

“Hold on a second, honey,” he says to his wife, and starts walking over.

Both men have the grizzled, sun-seasoned look of hardened grunt workers; roadies or even carnies, all wiry, tattooed muscle. They blandly look up as Henry approaches.

“Hey. Nice ATV,” he says.

“Yeah, she’s a beaut,” the driver replies amiably. “Just trying to figure out why she’s doing that—you hear that?” He guns the engine.

Henry can’t hear a thing. Nodding sagely, he says, “I bet it’s perfect for the terrain around here.”

“Oh yeah. Best thing in the world for hunting.”

“Hunting, really?”

“Hell, yes. Best big-game hunting you ever saw on this island. Do you hunt?”

Henry feels compelled to exaggerate: He once had a BB gun and plinked bottles and lizards. Other than that, the only shooting he’s ever done was in the Marines—at things that shot back. “A little bit when I was a kid.”

“Well, the way we do it is you flush a pig into the open, give chase, and stick ’em with a javelin on the fly—why do you think the Mexicans call ’em javelinas? Greatest f*ckin’ sport in the world.”

“Are you serious?”

“Hell, yes. We don’t f*ck around. The traditional way to do it is from horseback—these wild hogs can tear you up good if you’re down on their level, and a javelin doesn’t drop ’em like a gun. But this is almost as good as a horse. It’s hog heaven up there, dude. I almost never buy meat. Just last weekend me and him run down a big ol’ papa boar back up in the arroyo seco—had tusks this big, I swear.”

“No kidding. Wow.”

“Yeah—even gutted and skinned, the carcass weighed out at two hundred eighty-eight pounds. We had us a hell of a barbeque, didn’t we?” The other, larger man doesn’t smile. His sunburnt forearm is crudely tattooed with a buffalo head.

Henry asks, “Do you need a permit for that?”

“For hunting? Not if they don’t catch you.” He nudges Henry in the ribs. “Nah. Where you from, brother?”

“Uh, well, I live in the Midwest now, but I grew up in L.A. I actually lived here on the island for a little while when I was a kid. This is my first time back.”

“No shit. So that kind of makes you an islander, huh?”

“Sort of, I guess. I’m actually here to look up my mother. That reminds me—” he digs for the address “—maybe you guys can help me out. Do you know where this is? Shady Isle?”

They scrutinize the letter. “Well sure. All you gotta do is keep right on following this road here past the Casino. About a third of a mile down you’re gonna see a steep driveway on your left—just follow that right on up to the top. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks guys. Well, I guess we better head off before it gets dark. Nice machine.”

As he turns away, the man says, “You ever ride one?”

Henry hesitates. “What, one of these? Not really.”

“Come on, did you or didn’t you?”

“Just once, years ago, at Pismo Beach. But it was a three-wheeler.”

“Well hey,” the driver says, climbing off, “give ’er a spin.”

Henry tries to make light: “Oh, yeah. That’d be good.”

“Why not? Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. Why the hell not?”

“I’d probably wreck it or something.”

“Wreck it? You’re not gonna wreck it—a ten-year-old could handle this. Trust me, this mother’s been through a lot worse than anything you might do. Nothing you can do to wreck it. Come on.”

“Thanks anyway—I better not.”

“Come on, man, try it out. Just once around the square. What’s the big deal?”

Henry wavers before the force of the man’s insistence—there is something challenging about it, almost hostile: Let’s embarrass the stupid tourist. To them he must appear so useless and soft, but there was a time not so long ago when Henry would have jumped at the chance to show off. Before the car accident. Before his daughter was born. But now he pictures himself putt-putting around like an overcautious idiot, or the opposite: turning a little too fast and flipping the thing over, ending this trip with a broken back, paralyzed for life.

“No, thanks—the wife would kill me. Besides, we really have to go. Thanks anyway, though.” He waves and gets away.

“What was that all about?” Ruby asks.

“Just shooting the bull,” he says, feeling them still watching, like a drill in the back of his skull. “Let’s go.”