Everything Leads to You (18 page)

When he hangs up, he comes in the living room but kind of hovers on the periphery. He’s a pretty outgoing guy. It’s weird that he isn’t introducing himself, especially since my mom is talking to Jamal about the rich and tumultuous history of his hometown and Ava is perched on the edge of the sofa, looking uncomfortable even though Charlotte’s sitting with her.

“Dad,” I say. “Come meet Ava.”

Dad takes two strides toward her and sticks out his hand.

“P-pleasure to meet you, Ava,” he stammers.

And then I realize what’s held him back. My father is star struck.

“Hi,” Ava says, standing to shake his hand.

“I’m a huge fan of your grandfather’s work,” Dad says. “I wrote my senior thesis about his pivotal role in creating the mythology of the American West.”

“
Okay
, Dad,” I laugh.

Ava looks nervous.

“I never actually met him,” she says. “But Emi and Charlotte showed me one of his movies. Well, part of one.”

“You have his nose,” Dad says. “And his freckles.”

“I didn’t know he had freckles,” I say.

“Most people don’t know,” he says. “The studios thought the freckles made him look too boyish, so he wore heavy makeup to cover them. In 1966, when he was presented the Oscar for best actor in
The Stranger
, the public first got a glimpse of them. It was in all the gossip columns.”

Ava cocks her head and her hair falls over one shoulder.

“Really?” she says. “It was gossip-column worthy?”

“Yes. In fact,” Dad says, “I have a collection of Dorothy Manners columns in my office. I have the one where she talks about his ‘boyish appearance at the Oscars last Monday.’ Want to take a look?”

Ava nods and stands and follows Dad down the hallway, and then Charlotte and I are together on the couch while Mom is saying, “Really? You didn’t learn about the Watts riots in school?
In
Watts? What on earth were they teaching you if not that? You have to know the history of where you come from. Okay, so it started like this . . .”

I say, “I felt kind of bad about us all descending on their mellow evening just because we wanted them to buy us dinner, but I think we just made their night.”

Charlotte nods. “This is a dream come true for the Miller-Price household.”

Finally, our buddy the delivery guy rings the bell.

He waves at me from the other side of our glass door as I open it.

“Hey, Eric,” I say.

“Hey, Emi,” he says. “Big order this time.”

“We have guests,” I explain and, when Mom joins us with an article she clipped from the Sunday
Times
for him, I mouth,
Good-bye
, and take the food to the kitchen.

Charlotte and Jamal and I pull out plates and silverware.

“Hey,” Jamal says. “I think your mom likes me.”

“Yeah, probably,” I say. “Why?”

“She called me handsome and graceful.”

“She was telling you what your name means,” Charlotte says.

“My name means ‘handsome and graceful’?”

“Apparently, yes,” I tell him.

He laughs.

“I didn’t even know you were black,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “My grandpa’s black, so I’m a quarter.”

He leans back to get a better look at me.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he says. He drifts to the refrigerator and studies the photographs hanging there. “Who’s this?” he asks, pointing to a photo of Toby and me. We’re dressed up for the premiere of a documentary Dad was featured in, and I see it as Jamal must be seeing it now: Toby several shades darker than me, his hair thicker and curlier, his eyes dark brown to my amber.

“My brother,” I say.

“Same dad?”

I nod. I could tell him about all the teachers who had Toby first and who tried to mask their surprise when they discovered that I was his little sister. Or the times when I was a kid when strangers mistook my mom for my babysitter.

But I decide to keep it simple for now.

“The mysteries of genetics.” I shrug.

“For real,” he says. And then, a moment later: “You have a cool family.”

I don’t know what to say in response. I don’t know anything about Jamal’s life, but the fact that he lives in the shelter with Ava obviously means that his home life wasn’t exactly ideal. I suddenly feel very shallow for being embarrassed when they first came in. There are far worse things for parents to be than overinterested in their daughter’s friends, than a little too excited about telling them things about themselves that they might not know already.

So I just smile and say, “Thanks,” and my dad and Ava reappear from his study carrying two Clyde Jones biographies and a few books about Westerns in their arms.

“Should we set the table?” Dad asks.

“Actually,” I say, “we’re here to watch a video, so I’m thinking we’ll just coffee-table it in the den.”

“You have a den?” Jamal asks.

I nod yes, and Mom, now back to us, clasps her hands and says, “A movie!”

Charlotte and I exchange glances.

“Guys,” I say to my parents. “I don’t want to be rude but—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Dad says.

“Yes, right,” Mom says. “We don’t mean to intrude. Gary, we could watch our own movie. That sounds fun, doesn’t it!”

If Ava Garden Wilder were the star of her own film, the scene during which she watches her dead mother in a minor movie role would look something like this:

Ava sits in a small, dim room alone. She sits close to the screen, and when her mother appears, she turns up the volume to better hear her voice. When the scene is over, she rewinds the tape and then her mother reappears. She touches the screen and it’s a poor substitute for the woman she wishes she knew. She hits rewind, then play. Rewind, then play. Everything is cast blue by the TV screen; her face is tear soaked.

But this is not a movie, this is life, and I hear Ava say, “Actually it’s fine with me if you both want to watch with us.”

“What movie is it?” Dad asks.

“It’s called
The Restlessness
.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Scott Bennings. I haven’t seen it since it came out in—what?—’92? ’93?”

“Do you know
everything
?” Jamal asks.

“Don’t encourage him,” I say.

Charlotte asks, “Are you sure, Ava?”

I explain to my parents that Caroline Maddox, Ava’s biological mother, has a small part in the movie.

“A waitress,” Ava says. “In an important scene. I don’t want to watch it alone. It’s fine if it’s emotional for me, right? It doesn’t need to be a private thing.”

“Oh, honey,” Mom says. “Feel completely at home. You just let it out if it hurts. Gary and I are honored—
honored
—that you will include us in this moment.”

Dad is nodding in concerned agreement, but I see something else flash behind his eyes.

“Let me guess what you’re thinking, Dad. You’re thinking: I’m about to see Clyde Jones’s daughter in a movie, and not a single one of my colleagues or a single film critic knows that she’s Clyde’s daughter, or even that Clyde Jones had any children.”

Dad furrows his brow.

“Of course not,” he says. “I’m thinking about Ava and how important this must be to her.”

“You can be thinking about both,” Ava says, smiling. “It’s okay.”

I have an urge to send Charlotte a secret text from across the room about how wonderful Ava is, but I don’t. My willpower has suddenly become stronger than I knew it ever could be.

“Okay,” Dad admits. “It’s both.”

We all carry our plates down my wide family-photo-lined hallway and into the den, which is basically a shrine to my parents’ eclectic interests. Where else can you find a framed flyer for a 1963 protest against the savage police beating of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer hanging directly next to a framed poster of
Beverly Hills, 90210
, signed by the entire cast of the 1993 season?

One of the few areas where my parents’ professional passions overlap, though, is music, most significantly the rise of West Coast gangsta rap. They can talk for hours about it, analyzing the evolution of music videos, from the low-budget Snoop Dogg/Dr. Dre collaboration of
Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang
, which celebrates Long Beach and Compton over a backdrop of humble house parties, to the opulent candlelight, champagne-filled set of
2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted
, released only three years later.

I turn on the VCR, Ava hands me the video, and soon the screen (which hangs on the wall flanked by giant original photographs of N.W.A and Tupac on the left and my parents many framed diplomas on the right), is playing the opening credits of
The Restlessness
.

Blue light and snow over Chicago. A jazzy song.

The story is pretty simple to follow. It’s all kind of a nod to the noir genre, with a mysterious loner protagonist trying to solve a murder mystery before the police do. The plot is fairly predictable but the tension in the den is high anyway, because we don’t know when Caroline Maddox will appear. All we know is that she’s a waitress in the pivotal scene, so we assume that she won’t be on-screen until the movie is at the very least half over.

Even though the wait is inevitable, no one eats much past five minutes in, and Ava doesn’t eat at all. No one moves or says anything, and as is the case with many of my ideas, I start to worry that coming over here was a bad one.

Ava and Jamal are sitting on a love seat, my parents and Charlotte on the couch. I’m alone in a chair where I can see them all through my peripheral vision, and everyone is stiff and nervous. So many things could go wrong. Maybe Caroline Maddox doesn’t even speak. Maybe we only see her from the neck down, a hand and arm refilling a coffee cup in the foreground while our moody detective broods at the counter. Or, even worse, what if we do see her and she’s a terrible actress? What if Ava is embarrassed and we all rush in to say Caroline wasn’t that bad but she can tell that we’re lying?

An hour and five minutes in, I begin to feel ill. I have to remind myself to breathe. I have no idea what’s going on in this movie, only that, at some point, the scene will change to the inside of a restaurant and I will implode.

And then, here it is:

The camera pans to the outside of a steakhouse, and suddenly we are in it. The detective sits in a booth alone, awaiting a blond woman who may or may not be his daughter.

“Can I get you a drink?” a woman’s voice asks, and the camera reveals Caroline Maddox.

We all gasp, because there is no doubt that it’s her, even for my parents, who haven’t seen the photo. She has the same red hair as Ava, the same perfect nose.

And I get this feeling. Like when you’re a little kid and you make a fort out of chairs and blankets pulled off all the beds of the house, and when you’re inside the light is different, and you’re lying on pillows on the floor and you need a flashlight to read even though it’s the middle of the day. It feels like the people in this room are the only people in the world. Like all the life outside must be holding still and quiet, giving us these moments.

The camera stays on Caroline’s face as she waits for an answer. I was expecting her to be the jaded waitress who cocks her hip and chews gum and seems distracted or annoyed by her customers, but she isn’t. When she asks if she can get the detective a drink, she means it.

“Scotch,” he says, and we all gasp again, because the camera is now back on him and it would be too painful, too cruel, if that was all we saw of Caroline. Something is happening. He pats his pocket and pulls out a matchbook and narrows his eyes. Something has been solved, but I don’t know what. He gestures, and—thank God—here Caroline is again.

“Are you ready to order?” she asks.

“Change in plan,” he says. “I’m going to have to take a rain check on that drink.”

“Oh.” Her pleasant, professional courtesy is replaced with confusion, but it’s more than that. It’s concern. She smooths a strand of hair behind her ear. The camera stays on her for longer than it probably should, considering that this is an important moment that is in no way about her.

“Listen. If you see a blonde come in here, tell her something for me, will you?”

Caroline nods.

“Tell her that she duped me but I’m on to her. Tell her no daughter of mine would run around with Mack’s boys.”

“Okay, I’ll tell her,” Caroline says. “Sure you don’t have time for that scotch?”

“Tell you what. If I live through the night, I’ll be back to celebrate.”

Suddenly, I want the detective to live.

“What’s this guy’s name again?” I ask.

Jamal says, “Max.”

“I really want Max to live,” I say, and everyone murmurs in agreement.

Unfortunately for all of us, Max dies five minutes later, and the blonde never does go into the steakhouse, and the movie ends.

“Can we watch her scene again?” Ava asks, and I rewind the tape and find the part and press play. My dad stands up first and walks over to the screen, and soon Ava follows and then Mom and Charlotte and Jamal all at once, until we’re all standing just a couple feet away, staring into Caroline’s face at eye level.

“She’s beautiful,” Dad says.

“Such a kind face,” Mom says.

And I nod yes but as they all watch Caroline, I look at Ava, her hair fallen out of its ponytail, her hand raised to her mouth, her green eyes fixed to the screen, unblinking, taking in the sight of her mother.

Chapter Thirteen

At 4:40 a.m. on Sunday morning I pull up to the Echo Park house and text Rebecca that I’m here. When I look up from my phone I see Morgan’s truck in their driveway, which I guess is something I should have considered as a possibility. There’s no reason that seeing her should be any more awkward than it’s been the last few weeks—it could actually be less so now that we know where we stand—but I’m disappointed at the sight of the truck anyway. I wanted to feel like the art department expert on this excursion and every time I’m with Morgan it’s clear that she’s the more experienced one.

Then Rebecca appears, shutting her door behind her, carrying two travel mugs and Morgan’s keys.