Bend (46 page)

At least I hope it’s not true—and I hope he’s managing to save enough that he can afford to retire at some point and live comfortably. He’s worked his ass off for Relief International for almost all of his adult life, and he deserves a break. Though it’s possible he won’t want to stop until old age forces him to. That’s just how he rolls.

I take a seat in the only empty booth with its white-and-red seats, and soon my uncle slides in across from me, setting two little cups of ketchup on the table.

I haven’t been to In-N-Out since I broke things off with Mia, I realize. It reminds me of her, makes me remember how at least once a month she’d text me late, as I was about to leave work, saying she was hungry and asking if I wanted to go eat.

And we usually ended up here. Eating the food that somehow always tasted better late at night while sitting across from her. Talking and laughing. Rolling our eyes at the immature antics of the groups of teenagers who always came in for milkshakes.

My throat closes up. Fiddling with my straw wrapper, I decide I might as well get to the topic we’ve been carefully avoiding so far. “How was Texas?”

“Hot and full of Texans.” Uncle Warren leans back and spreads his arms, draping them both on the backrest.

I let out a snort-chuckle. And then, because I’m not ready to talk about my dad yet—and, judging by his evasive answer just now, neither is my uncle—I ask, “Did you see Mom there?”

“Nope. Was I supposed to?”

I shrug. “She called a couple of weeks ago and said she’d talked to you.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, looking unimpressed. “She called and asked for money so she could go see your dad.”

I freeze and shoot him a hard stare.
Motherfu—
“You sent her money?”

“Yeah, why?” His eyebrows draw together in confusion, and then his expression clears, comprehension lighting his eyes. “She asked you, too.”

It’s a statement, not a question. He knows my mom well enough that I’m surprised it took him that long to figure it out.

Shaking my head in disgust as I slouch down and shove my hands into my shorts pockets, I tell him, “I told her she could have it if she agreed to never call me again.”

“Ha!” The burst of laughter that escapes my uncle is like a sonic boom, loud enough to turn heads at neighboring tables. “How did that go over?”

“About as well as you’d expect,” I say glumly.

I’m actually not proud of how I handled that conversation. Yeah, my mom has had it coming for a long damn time, but I feel like I ended up stooping to her level. Aside from the money-begging part, her phone calls are so rare that they hardly qualify as a nuisance. Letting her reduce me to nastiness and pettiness gives her too much control over me. I need to do a better job of not allowing her to piss me off, because succumbing to those emotions hurts me more than it does her.

“Oh, I think that’s us,” Uncle Warren says when the girl behind the counter calls out the number forty-two, and he glances at the receipt to confirm. “Yup.”

Before I manage to move a muscle, he’s already jumped out of the booth to go grab the food, and I settle back to wait. He soon returns with the red basket containing two sets of Double-Doubles and fries, and I’m smart enough to shut up and let him enjoy his first bite in peace. Immediately, he closes his eyes and lets out a small grunt of appreciation. “Goddamn,” he growls. “I’ve been dreaming about this.”

I bite into my own burger, and the flavors hit my tongue all at once—the toasted bun, the meat, the cheese, the crispy lettuce and tomato, and the tang of the secret sauce.

And it tastes like crap. Just like all food has lately. I’m rarely actually hungry anymore and usually feel like I have to force myself to eat.

While slowly and unenthusiastically dipping a French fry in my ketchup cup, I ask, “Do you think she’ll actually fly down there?”

“Who knows? She might be there as we speak.” My uncle’s words are muffled by his mouth half full of food, and when he finishes chewing, a look of disgust passes over his face. “Can’t imagine what that conversation would look like.”

Uh, yeah. My parents were never exactly a match made in heaven.

After eating in silence for a minute, I decide I need to just ask it straight out. Not for my own sake. For Uncle Warren’s. Because he still cares. So I draw in a deep breath and say, “How was he?”

Holding the wrapper with his half-eaten hamburger up to his mouth, my uncle meets my gaze. He grows somber, the corners of his mouth turning down. Heaving a sigh, he sets down the burger and brings up a napkin to wipe his mouth before answering.

“His mind’s gone, Jay.” A faraway look steals over his face, and with a shake of his head, he explains, “It’s partially the drugs. You don’t do that to your body for as many years as he did without causing damage. But he’s been in solitary for twelve years, sitting in that tiny cell twenty-three hours a day, and when they do let him out of there, he’s still alone. He’s had no one to talk to except the voices in his head.”

Yeah. Boohoo.

“Did he recognize you?” I ask, realizing I’m feeling a remote kind of curiosity.

“Intermittently. It was like he was there one minute, and the next he was gone. He’d just, you know, go off on one of his rants about the government and how they know he’s ‘the one’ and are out to stop him, but they can’t because he knows all the tricks.”

I shake my head and briefly close my eyes.
Tough luck, Dad. Pretty sure the government already got you.

My uncle picks up his burger again and chomps down while I take a sip of my water, the liquid leaving an icy trail as it washes down my throat. “Does he understand what’s about to happen to him?”

Uncle Warren nods with his mouth closed while he chews. As soon as he can, he replies, “Beatty, his attorney, was there when I got there, and we talked for a while. He said there were some serious concerns about Mendes’ testimony and that they could probably have kept the appeals going for a good long while. But last year, in one of his lucid moments, your dad told him to stop.”

Looking down while he dunks three fries at once in his ketchup, he adds, “He wants it to be over.”

Well, shit. I wait for my usual gut reaction of cynicism and disgust, but this time it doesn’t happen. Because my dad losing the will to fight is just fucking sad. Not in an oh-poor-him kind of way. More like, if he had any shred of humanity or guts or dignity, he would’ve owned up to what he did a long time ago. He wouldn’t have just sat there rotting in that prison cell until he couldn’t take it anymore.

Jesus.

I give up and toss my burger down into the basket, leaving half of it unfinished.

Across from me, my uncle is done with his and is crumpling up the wrapper. His voice cautious, he says, “He asked about you.”

My whole body stiffens. “Don’t,” I plead mildly, shaking my head.

“I’m not going to give you any shit, Jay. You know me better than that.” Uncle Warren drops back against the backrest again, giving me an unflinching look. “He understands why you want nothing to do with him. But when I talked about you, how you were doing, that’s when he looked and sounded the sanest. The most…there.”

Clenching my jaw, I return his stare. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

My uncle is visibly upset, though—upset and agitated. Which is understandable. So I soften my voice and say, “Are you okay?”

“Yup. It is what it is. We’ve had a long time to prepare for today.” He straightens and starts stuffing wrappers and napkins into our basket. “Kind of doesn’t feel like it, though. Stuff just creeps up on you, you know?”

I bob my head in agreement.

And then we get up to go, throwing away our trash before we push our way out the doors.

My watch face shows two thirty. Less than four hours until six p.m.

Back in the car, I ask my uncle what he wants to do next, and without hesitating he says, “The beach.”

With me giving him directions, we take surface streets west toward Huntington Beach. While he leisurely steers the Corvette down the road from one red light to another, passing residential neighborhoods and strip malls and parks and schools, we discuss the practicalities of what happens after tonight. He tells me he’s flying back to Texas tomorrow afternoon and will be claiming my dad’s body and making burial arrangements.

Not once can I detect any hint that he thinks I should be involved, that I’m somehow shirking a responsibility by refusing to step up and help. Still, I’m having some pangs of guilt—for my uncle’s sake, anyway.

I’m pretty sure that if it weren’t for me, Uncle Warren would be in Texas today, to witness. He’d feel obliged to put himself through that, but instead he’s here with me. The significance of that is not lost on me. In fact, that knowledge is churning in my gut, and my chest is tight with the love I have for this man. The day I get to go work with him can’t come soon enough.

After arriving at our destination, we leave the car in the parking lot by the pier. Since neither of us came prepared to jump in the water, my uncle suggests we rent bicycles and ride the trail along the beach. Which is fine with me, and to the sound of the crashing surf and the screeching of seagulls and squealing children on the busy beach, we stroll the short distance down the boardwalk from the pier to the small rental shop, where we pick up a couple of beach cruisers.

“So your dad asked if you have a girl,” Uncle Warren says without warning right after we start pedaling down the paved path with the golden sand and the ocean on our left side and cars rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway on our right. “I didn’t know the answer to that.”

My stomach cramps, and I tighten my grip on my handlebars.

I did have a girl. But I wasn’t right for her. And I knew that.

“I don’t,” I answer, struggling to sound casual, unemotional.

My uncle gives me a sideways glance. “Why the hell not?”

Yeah. Going into the truth of that is way too complicated, so instead I try to blow him off with, “Haven’t found one?”

“Give me a fucking break,” he scoffs, and apparently his irritation makes him pedal faster, because he shoots ahead of me.

I pump my legs to catch up. Okay, so maybe I’ll try something a little closer to the truth. “Guess I just don’t have the time.”

He throws me another quick look while we coast down a slight incline. “Don’t make work your whole life, Jay. Take it from someone who knows.”

Surprised, I clamp my mouth shut, and we both stay silent for a while as our beach cruisers carry us smoothly down the beachside path. The sun has crested and begun its slow descent toward the horizon, and the smell of saltwater and seaweed blends with the exhaust fumes from the highway.

This is the first time I’ve heard Uncle Warren voice anything resembling dissatisfaction with the choices he’s made. I guess I’ve just assumed he was content with dedicating his life to his job, and that made complete sense to me, because it’s tough and all-consuming work that’s extremely important and, according to my uncle, highly rewarding.

But now he’s suggesting that maybe it’s not worth it? That news is like a punch in the nose, and I’m feeling as dazed as if he’d done just that.

Something compels me to offer up another dose of honesty. “Okay, so there was a girl, but it didn’t work out.”

Uncle Warren widens his eyes at me. “Again: why the hell not?”

I take a second to mull over my answer. “A serious relationship doesn’t really fit in my plans right now.”

“And if you decided to stay here instead?” His head swivels back and forth as he alternates watching the path and watching me. “Would she fit then?”

Would she?

That’d depend on Mia, I suppose. Because the truth is, I have no clue how she really feels about me. I only know what she told me, which can simply be summarized as: I was her best friend, she was attracted to me, the sex was great, but she didn’t want a boyfriend.

Which I’m convinced is mainly because she still has feelings for Fuckface.

If that’s all there is to her feelings for me, then she’s not worth even considering changing my plans for the future over. I’ve been telling myself that for weeks now, but for some reason, I’m not being convincing.

Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her away. Maybe I should’ve fought harder to find a way to keep her. It’s a struggle to swallow past the sudden tightness in my throat.