I KEEP SEEING GHOSTS. Or rather one ghost, in many places. At the grocery store, John walks by pushing a cart containing nothing but a dozen avocados and two gallons of skim milk. But it’s just a portly man of John’s age, probably going on some sort of fad diet, something John would never have done. I see John driving the Volvo behind me, and I’m so intent on looking in the rearview mirror I almost crash into the back of the yellow Toyota idling at the red light on Cowper. I come downstairs every morning at 5 AM, a habit I can’t break, and find myself listening for the sound of his car, that noisy muffler he should have fixed months ago. His inattention to details like that enrages me. Or I guess I should say enraged me. Except that I’m still angry. I find myself raging over his words, spoken so long ago, about how he’d found love with someone else.
That would have been MJ. I paced through our living room all night, then when the sun came up got in my car and drove to where she lived in south San Jose. I parked in front of her rental house, a flimsy stucco construction with aluminum windows—the ones in the living room barely covered by torn shades, Batman sheets hanging over the bedroom ones. I was relieved when a tall and thin, almost gaunt, woman came out the door. Her shirt was loose and untucked. She had blowsy hair and a ridiculous straw hat with cherries on it, like a dissolute Mary Poppins. I actually vomited from the release of stress—with a total lack of dignity, opened my car door and retched, right outside the house. MJ noticed. She came over, concerned, asked if she could help. Hay-elp. She had a more pronounced accent then than she does now, gave each word more syllables than strictly required. She meant her offer, wasn’t just hoping to be told it was all right, to move on. She was that kind of woman. You could see it from the small lines that edged upward from the corners of her eyes, her mouth surrounded by lines of genuine concern. Her large hands already reaching out, committed to the idea that help was needed, and that she would give it. Not my type of person at all.
But although certainly compassionate, MJ was apparently not intelligent enough to ask why a well-dressed middle-aged woman was sitting in a top-of-the-line BMW at her home early on a Tuesday morning. She spoke very kindly, offered to get me a glass of water, and when I refused, went back into her house to get one anyway. I took the opportunity to drive off. I don’t believe she remembers, or associates me with that long-ago incident. If so, she hasn’t said anything. Perhaps her life is made up of too many of these random acts of kindness to remember this time when her kindness was rejected.
I wasn’t sure if the visit made me feel better or worse. Among women in my social sphere, it is tacitly recognized that any favor involves a contract, and to be a contract there must be quid pro quo: this for that. Value for value. Payback. When MJ offered to help me, I felt instinctively that to accept her help would result in me owing her something. That would have been an untenable situation. I am known for being quite generous with my time, for my willingness to help others. But I take my social contracts seriously, and always ultimately demand my quid pro quo. This has gotten me quite satisfactorily through years of dealing with women in organized groups. But my encounter with MJ left me uneasy.
What would it be like to offer up a gesture of goodwill with no expectation—realistic expectation, I should say—of it ever coming back to you? Planting a seed and not claiming the fruit or the flower that grew from it? That’s why the people who believe in karma are such hypocrites. They live by the same rules as I do, only they expect the universe to even the score. Or some benevolent being. Not bloody likely, as my British friend Josephine likes to say. Not bloody likely that I was going to let this woman, this MJ, prevail. Neither would I owe her anything. So I drove off. Yet in fact she did do me a favor—a huge one. With her relative lack of intelligence, she took on John without asking many questions, thus saving my marriage. So if I act in accordance with my own value system, quid pro quo, I owe MJ. And my debt is not a trivial one.
25
Helen
MY PREVIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH THE detective had been over the phone. The woman had a low, melodious, and mature-sounding voice. So I am surprised to find this young person—barely in her twenties, it seems—waiting among my patients on Wednesday morning. She is dressed casually in jeans and a button-down blue shirt. She’d be a little overheated in our LA midsummer, but I remind myself she comes from Northern California. Her red cowboy boots are stenciled with stars and moons. I can see multiple piercings up the sides of both ears, and detect the remnants of a nose piercing, almost grown in. Today she’s wearing just a single pair of conservative stud earrings of blue glass that match her shirt.
“How can I help you?” I ask as I gesture her into my office.
She seems more nervous than I am, drops her notebook, then when she bends to pick it up, tampons and a recorder fall out of her purse.
She laughs, a bit shamefaced. “So much for appearing the seasoned professional,” she says when she’s collected her possessions. I like her immediately.