T. Parker: California Girl

He was looking forward to writing this obit more than he’d looked forward to writing anything in his life. Alma Vonn was a door to the world, and he could push through it with questions and words. He would be closer to understanding. Closer to wisdom. The power and strangeness of this made his heart flutter, then gallop.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Meredith.

“I don’t like it when you ask me that.”

“I know you don’t. But if we’re together I have a right to know.”

Andy wondered why thoughts weren’t private. Weren’t you just a prisoner if you had to surrender your thoughts on demand? “Alma Vonn killed herself today.”

Meredith pushed up on one elbow. “That’s so terrible! Absolutely terrible, Andy. I feel so bad for those little girls.”

He watched two meteors fall side by side like sparks from the same firework. She settled one arm across his stomach and her head on his chest. She began crying.

Andy watched the meteors race and fall. Eighteen. Nineteen. He listened to Meredith’s sobs and wondered at her capacity for joy and sorrow and empathy. He wasn’t sure if it was larger than his or if she just had more noticeable ways of expression. He felt the wholeness of her. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. So what if he’d written most of her paper on Les Misérables? Meredith had labored through every word of the novel in French, and language didn’t come easy to her. Like it did to him. Or his brother Clay. Fifty. Fifty-one. But she had understood it. Her emotions had been genuine and exactly what the author had intended her to feel, in his opinion.

A dry cool breeze picked up from the east and the meteors were everywhere now, crisscrossing the darkness in sudden arcs, boring into the sky.

“It’s almost scary how many of them there are,” she said.

“I lost track.”

“I wonder what would make her do that,” said Meredith. “They seemed like a nice enough family.”

“Dad said trouble would find them anywhere.”

“Like Jean Valjean.”

“The Vonns are more complicated than a novel.”

“Oh.”

She stood and looked down at him. Her long red coat showed up clearly in the dark and Andy would never forget that color. Like there was some special light on it. Behind her the sky was dizzy with silent meteors.

“Don’t hold it against me,” she said.

“Hold what?”

“That I’m not ready and you are.”

“I know it’s different for you.”

“How?”

“You lose something.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly and the breeze lifted her fine golden hair. One wing of her red overcoat collar had come up and stayed up, which gave her a slightly disorganized look. Her hair shined more brightly than it should have. More of that special light. Andy felt his breath catch in his throat.

“Then don’t bully me, Andy.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t.”

“I love the falling stars. I made a wish on every one. A whole lot of them for us.”

“I made some for us, too.”

THE BECKER BROTHERS all made it home the day before Thanksgiving. David flew into L.A. from San Anselmo’s School of Divinity near San Francisco. Nick and Katy drove over from their place in Santa Ana near the jail, where Nick worked. Clay and a new friend, Eileen, came down from the Army Language School in Monterey.

David had the idea to invite the Vonns to Thanksgiving dinner. Because it was the Christian thing to do, he said. Because he had visited and ministered to them and they were in shock and pain. David had changed since San Anselmo’s. A new confidence in himself and his calling, a neat new mustache.

Clay said with a smile that Alma Vonn was lucky she’d never have to see the rest of her family and he didn’t want to, either.

Monika Becker said Clay had the face of a movie star and the soul of a devil and Clay smiled.

Nick said why not-the Vonn brothers had all moved out. It was just the girls and the dad.

Andy thought it was a great idea but he didn’t say why.

“Decided,” said Mr. Becker. “David, you make the call. Do it in person, not over the phone.”

Half an hour later the Studebaker rolled back into the Becker driveway. David strode into the house to say that Karl Vonn and he had prayed together. To David’s great relief and surprise Mr. Vonn had then accepted the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. He and the girls would come early afternoon, because the Beckers liked their turkey early.

“Don’t you say one word,” Mrs. Becker said to Clay.

ANDY WAS thrilled to silence at being seated across from Karl Vonn. Andy could feel the heat of life and death and heartbreak and suicide coming off the man. Like he’d just come back from a spectacular battle. But Andy couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem impolite or just dumb, so he studied Karl Vonn’s ears and outdated clothing while Meredith made easy conversation with him. Karl told her about the “seemingly never-endin’” ride on the Sunset Limited that had brought his family of seven across the state of Texas to California.

“I love Union Station in Los Angeles,” said Meredith.

“Oh, the tile on that floor’s nice,” said Karl Vonn.

Andy drank another glass of wine while Nick talked a little about the Orange County jail, where he worked days. Nick still wasn’t much of a talker, but he said the jail was getting too small. The way the county was growing they’d need a bigger one soon. Either that or you let inmates out early to make room for new ones, which wasn’t exactly what the people expected when they sent somebody to jail. To Andy, Nick wasn’t God anymore, but Andy still liked his big brother’s good face and muscles and the calm sarcasm of his mind.

Nick’s wife, Katy, blue-eyed and blond and eight months pregnant with their first, watched her husband with what looked like reverence. Andy couldn’t figure if she was rationally impressed by Nick or maybe a little simple.

“I’m so happy to see him walk in from work and put that gun away,” said Katy. “I know for the rest of the day nothing bad can happen to him.”

Andy saw Karl Vonn go extra quiet when Nick spoke, figured that Karl had seen some of that jail stuff from the other side.

After a brief but elegant prayer of thanks, David leaned his tall thin body back in the chair and looked at the Vonns with a bright-eyed eagerness. Like everything he was about to hear would be interesting. Like he really cared. He sat across from Janelle and Lynette Vonn and listened to their stories from sixth and eighth grades, respectively. Heard about friends, snobs, boys, the plan to get a horse someday. Andy liked the strength in David. The strength it took to care about people. Thought his oldest brother had a kind of glow on him. Andy heard him tell the girls to start diaries as a way of understanding their lives.

“And a diary is always a good place to keep a secret,” David said with a pleasant smile.

“Do you young ladies have secrets already?” asked Katy.

“When they develop secrets,” said David.

“Janelle’s got a secret boyfriend,” said Lynette.

“And you don’t,” said Janelle.

“Girls,” said Karl. “Let’s not talk about all that right now.”

Janelle smiled at David without embarrassment and Lynette looked down at her plate.

“I know a secret,” said Clay. He looked at Karl Vonn. “Have you heard about the international Communist conspiracy to establish a one-world Soviet government?”

“Some, in the papers,” said Karl Vonn. “I’m not really clear on how it works.”

“Oh, it works,” said Clay. “Look at Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia. The Congo. French Indochina. Cuba. The pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place, just like Lenin said they would. It’s a war on two fronts-at home and abroad. Khrushchev said America will fall like overripe fruit into their hands. Have you read Das Kapital?”