Dear Daughter (30 page)

I kept my voice very la-di-da. “Well, when Chief La Plante wasn’t looking I snuck a look at Tessa’s folder. But there wasn’t anything in there except a shoplifting report.”

“That’s strange—I could’ve sworn from the police blotter that she got into all sorts of trouble.”

“Did the blotter mention her by name?”

“No.”

“Maybe it was some other girl.”

“Or maybe someone tampered with her records—like that brother of hers. I’ve talked to a lot of people, and everyone agrees that Tessa was bad news.”

I fiddled with the edge of the folder. “Did you try talking to Eli?”

“He nearly ripped my head off when I mentioned Tessa’s name. But I got an earful from . . . shit, what’s her name. Ruby? Sapphire?”

“Crystal?”

“Yeah, Crystal. Met her at the Coyote Hole. She had a lot to say.”

“Is there anything else—”

He swerved out of the way of a minivan whose turn signal had been on for a good half a mile. “Goddammit, can’t anyone drive out here?”

The moment Peter’s attention was back on the road, I reached into my bag and pulled out the report from the night Tessa had been picked up for solicitation. She had been spotted in the alley behind the Coyote Hole in the company of a man named Darren Cackett, and the officer had apparently witnessed some sort of cash exchange. Cackett claimed that he’d just been lending her money for cigarettes; Tessa hadn’t said anything at all. Cackett had been released hours before Tessa. Neither had been charged.

Had Cackett been telling the truth?

Had my mother started as she meant to go along, too?

I pushed the report back into my bag, zipped it, and tossed the bag under my feet. I settled my clunky boots on top of it and wished that I had the strength to push it right through the floor of the car and out onto the highway. I pictured everything inside being smashed and crushed and torn until all that was left were a few strips of dirty paper clinging to the novelty mud flap of a tractor trailer. I didn’t want to think about any other men who might be my father. Not yet, anyway.

I turned to the window and traced one letter in the cold-fogged glass: J.

•   •   •

The county jail was an economy-sized limestone building that was one part turn-of-the-century stateliness and three parts 1970s brutalism. We parked next to a fountain that was scummed over with mildew. The stone surround was slightly warm and damp to the touch, like a diaper that needed changing.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it felt an awful lot like coming home.

When we reached the door, Peter eyed the top of my head, which barely came to his collarbones. “Have you ever been to a jail before?” he asked.

“Have you?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But I’ve seen—never mind. I just wanted to be sure you wanted to go in with me.”

“I’m not scared,” I said.

But, naturally, the first thing I did when we walked into the visiting area was gasp.

Peter put his hand on my back. “I know,” he said. “It’s not easy to be in a room like this.”

Ha
. Little did he know. The place was actually pretty nice—what offended
me
was its silence. We were the only visitors.

What
bullshit.

Noah rarely missed a visit, but when he did, they’d usually had to double up on my Haldol. I thought of all those poor inmates L–Z who had probably gone to their windows as soon as they woke up to see what the weather was like, to estimate their chances of company that day, to predict whether or not love would outweigh the light drizzle.

I pictured my own little room, with its blue-sheeted bed and stainless-steel toilet and blessed lack of carpets, antiques, tapestries, and upholstery. No hints of lavender or rose—just the caustic scent of urine. I’d found I preferred it.

Each night before lights-out I had liked to trail my fingers along the line between the floor and the wall, simultaneously dispirited and reassured by the reminder of my cell’s structural integrity.

Sometimes I worried about bugs, that they would get in and get stuck with me. Not because I was afraid of bugs, but because I was scared that they’d serve as some sort of temptation to my splintering mind. Like maybe I’d name them and keep them as pets, and then, when they died, line them up in creepy-crawly funeral processions. Or eat them.

(Although, other times, deep down, I liked the idea that I might one day stop being that girl who killed her mother and instead become that girl who ate bugs—even though I knew that really I’d just become the girl who killed her mother
and
ate bugs.)

We were escorted to our little cubicle. Jared was waiting for us. He had rabbit teeth and black hair that was two inches past redneck; his skin was an ambivalent shade of tan that could just as likely have been caused by dirt as sun. The lines around his mouth were deeper than those on his forehead, like he smiled more than he frowned, which didn’t make any sense.

His convict wear was olde-timey, a loose jumpsuit striped in white and gray. “County Jail” was printed on his chest in Dior Rouge No. 9. I felt a moment’s pique. This jumpsuit would’ve been way nicer with my complexion’s undertones than the traffic-cone orange I’d been stuck wearing.

He was staring back at us with an expression I recognized: the wariness of the prisoner confronted with an unknown variable and no means of escape.

I shifted nervously in my chair, one hand moving to pull my hair in front of my face, the other hand moving to push it back. I wasn’t sure if I wanted this man to be fooled—like, maybe I actually wanted more than anything for him to see past the pasty face and cracked lips and tired eyes all the way down to the DNA beneath.
Half of that is mine,
he’d say.

I could feel all the wrong words working their way up my throat like that last little bit of watery puke after you choke up a meal. The question was begging to be spat out:
Are you my father?

“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions,” Peter was saying, introductions apparently having been dispensed with while I was quietly freaking out. I pulled my shirt away from my body, flapping the hem to cool the sweat that was pooling above the underwire of my bra.

Jared wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You a reporter?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“What do you want?”

“I’d like to ask you about the robbery.”

Jared laughed. “I don’t know what I can tell you that isn’t already in the police files. Don’t know why I would, either. I’ve got everything I need here. Peace. Quiet. My own crapper. If I can just keep adding years onto my sentence, I won’t ever have to leave.”

Peter was holding the phone slightly away from his ear so I could hear, and even though Jared was speaking normally, his words made their way to me in a whisper, as if what he was saying was for me alone.

“It’s Tessa Kanty I want to know about,” Peter said.

“I don’t know any Tessa Kanty.”

“I’ve come from Ardelle, Jared. I know you know her.”

Jared crossed his arms, his fingers scratching his elbows. Then he pointed at me. “Who’s she?” he asked.

Peter looked over and frowned. “My research assistant.”

Only then did I remember to flip open the notepad he’d given me.

Jared sat back and tilted his head. His eyes were milky blue, like cornflower soap that had been worked into a lather. They skimmed over my face, lingering on, of all places, my right ear. I pulled on it nervously. Then he leaned toward the glass and rubbed his thumb against the glass window, like he was smudging a charcoal drawing. His brow lifted; his eyes cleared. A slow smile spread across his face.

My heart tried for a triple axel and broke the shit out of its ankle.

He
knew
me.

“Yeah, okay,” Jared said, still looking at me. “I’ll tell you about Tessa.”

“Was she your accomplice?” Peter asked.

Jared didn’t answer right away.

“The statute of limitations ran out a long time ago,” Peter said. “There’s no need to protect her now.”

Jared gave this great maybe–maybe not smile—a kind of smile I could appreciate, because I’d tried my damnedest to perfect it myself the first time I’d been interviewed on TV. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said.

“Whose idea was the robbery?” Peter asked. “Hers or yours?”

“Hers. She picked the bank, rented the safety deposit box, cased the vault—”

“But you were the one who went in there, who took on all the risk,” Peter said. “Why?”

Jared shifted in his seat and tugged at the neckline of his jumpsuit. “There wasn’t much I wouldn’t’ve done for Tessa,” he said.

“Were you in love with her?” Peter asked.

I leaned forward.

“Tessa wasn’t the kind of girl you fell in love with,” he said. “There’s probably some other word for what we were to each other, but I never knew what it was.”

“But if you didn’t love her, why’d you give her every cent?” Peter asked. “You only had fifty dollars on you when they picked you up. That’s not much of a return.”

He lifted a shoulder.

“Did she love you?” I blurted out.

Peter shot me an irritated look.

“No,” Jared said, smiling again. “And I was glad for it. I always said Tessa’s love must be a terrible thing.”

(I recognized this new smile, too. It was the no-big-deal smile—another one I’d tried my damnedest to perfect. It only ever meant one thing:
This is actually a huge fucking deal.
)

I nodded, beginning to understand him now. “You would never have done anything to hurt her,” I said.

His eyes went wide. “No, of course not.”

It was at that moment that I really truly let myself wish I was his, and I rolled around in that wish like Scrooge McDuck in his money. I imagined taking Jared aside and buying him a decent sandwich and some cigarettes, and then we’d tell each other everything we knew about my mother in the hopes of piecing together a coherent whole. I understood things he couldn’t—but maybe he understood things I couldn’t. Maybe we would find something like comfort in the telling of it.

I stared at Jared, unable to help myself. I wanted to curl forward until my forehead was pressing against the window, leaving a sheen of sweat that wiped away all the fingerprints of all the inconsequential visitors who’d been there before.

“Do you know why she needed the money?” Peter asked.

No, no, no, wrong question!

Jared looked away from me long enough to roll his eyes, and I had a sudden sharp image of what he must have looked like as a teenager. Not so different from a young Marlon Brando, I realized.

Not bad, Mom.

Peter cleared his throat. “Okay, let me rephrase: Do you know why she needed to leave town?”

“Who
doesn’t
need to leave that town?”

“In Ardelle they seem to think she left because she was pregnant,” Peter said.

I scribbled something on the notepad because I couldn’t bear to look at Jared’s face.

“Where’d you hear that?” Jared asked mildly.

“Tessa’s friend”—Peter tapped my shoulder—“what did you say her name was again?”

“Crystal,” I said, still keeping my eyes down. “Rhymes with pistol.”

“Crystal was no friend of Tessa’s,” Jared said.

“Well, she said you were the father.”

My pen careened off the page.

“If Tessa was pregnant,” Jared said, very carefully, “I had nothing to do with it.”

I looked up.

“Are you sure?” I whispered. “Are you absolutely sure?” There was no way my voice was loud enough for Jared to hear it over the phone, but he didn’t need to hear me to know what I was saying.

“Like I said, it wasn’t like that.”

“Do you know who was?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Me, too
, I thought.

Fancy that.

Peter was watching me out of the corner of his eye, wincing slightly, presumably wondering how grim Jared’s life must be that he would take notice of a creature as pitiful as myself. I sank lower into my chair. Let him think whatever.

“There’s also the suggestion that Tessa was in the habit of—” Peter paused, delicately. “Charging for certain services.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jared said without hesitation.

“Why would Crystal and everyone else lie?” Peter asked.

“Oh, they’re not lying,” he said.

Peter straightened. “You mean—”

“I mean, they
believe
it. Everyone believed the worst of Tessa—Crystal, Stanton Percy, her brother. She was fired from more jobs than most people’ve ever had. If merchandise went missing, Tessa was the one who’d lifted it. If the cash drawer was a nickel off, Tessa was the one who’d stolen it. Now don’t get me wrong, Tessa was no angel. But it wouldn’t have mattered if she was. She was a Kanty.”

Peter sat back and crossed his arms. “It must have hurt like a son of a bitch when she hung you out to dry,” he said.

Jared shrugged. “Like I said. It’s not so bad in here.”

“Do you know where she went?” Peter asked.

“No.”

“Have you ever heard from her?”

“Yeah, she used to come by to see me every now and then.”

My pen fell from my fingers.
She what?

“When was the last time you saw her?” Peter asked, as oblivious to me as ever.

“A little more than ten years ago.”

“Do you know where she was living at the time?”

Jared glanced at me. I shook my head slightly.

“No, I couldn’t say.”

Peter cocked his head, thinking. “Did you know it was the last time you were going to see her? I mean, did she say anything—unusual?”

Jared rubbed his sleeve over his nose again. “Well, there was this one thing: She wanted me to pass on a message, in case—
anyone
ever came looking for her.” He looked directly at me.

“What did she say?” I whispered.

“‘Get the fuck out of here while you still can,’” he said. “‘And whatever you do, don’t trust Eli.’”

THURSDAY 11/7/2013 10:45 AM PST BY TMZ STAFF

JANIE JENKINS