should’ve gotten closer to them while I’d had the chance.
Taz was still calling to me, but I ignored him and got in my car, turning the key in the ignition. I glanced back toward the Crawfords’ as I pulled out, and now both Mrs. and Mr. Crawford were looking openly through the parted curtains.
Six months ago. That would’ve been June. Jane and I had still been together then. I would’ve just gotten my job two months before.
Why hadn’t someone notified me? Why hadn’t I been called? Hadn’t someone found my name and address somewhere amidst their personal effects?
I had not really thought of myself as being ignored by my parents, but as I thought back to my childhood, I was surprised to find my memories slightly hazy. I could not recall any specific instances in which I’d done things with my mom or gone places with my dad. I remembered teachers, kids, pets, places, toys — and events related to each of them — but of my parents there was only a general sense that they’d done a good job of raising me. I’d had a fairly normal, happy childhood — at least I’d thought I had — but the warm, loving recollections I should’ve held, the remembrances of individual events I should’ve possessed, were nowhere to be found. There was no personalization to my parental memories.
Maybe that’s why we hadn’t been closer. Maybe I’d been merely a generic child to them, a personalityless blank they were obliged to feed, clothe, and raise.
Maybe I’d been Ignored since birth.
No, that couldn’t be true. I had not been ignored by my parents. They’d always bought me birthday and Christmas presents, for Christ’s sake. That proved that they thought about me. They’d always invited me home for Easter, for Thanksgiving. They cared about me.
Jane had cared about me, too, though. That didn’t mean I wasn’t Ignored.
That was about the time I’d first started to notice my condition, that I’d first become aware of my true nature. Maybe it was connected. Maybe when my parents died, when the people who knew me and loved me best passed away, what had always been dormant within me had been activated. Maybe it was their knowledge of my existence that had kept me from being completely Ignored.
I’d been fading even faster since I’d lost Jane.
I pulled onto Harbor Drive, pushing the thought out of my mind, not wanting to think about it.
Where were my parents’ belongings? I wondered. Had they been auctioned off? Donated to a charity? There were no other relatives except me, and I hadn’t gotten anything. Where were all our pictures and photo albums?
The photo albums.
It was the photo albums that did it. It was the photo albums that were the trigger.
I started to cry.
I was driving toward the freeway, and suddenly I couldn’t see because of the tears in my eyes. Everything was runny, blurry, and I pulled to the side of the road and wiped my cheeks and eyes. I felt a sob in my throat, heard a sound come out of my mouth, and I forced myself to stop it, to knock it off. This was not the time to be maudlin and sentimental.
I took a deep breath. I had no one now. No girlfriend, no relatives, no friends. Nobody. I was all alone and on my own, and I was Ignored. I had only myself — and my job. As strange and ironic as it was, it was now only through my job that I had any sort of identity at all.
But that was going to change. I was going to find out who I was, what I was. I was through living in darkness and ignorance. And I was through with letting opportunities pass me by. I had learned from my mistakes, I had learned from my past, and my future was going to be different.
I put the car into gear and headed toward the freeway. It would be nearly midnight before I got back to Brea.
I stopped by a Burger King and got a Coke for the long trip home.
Fifteen
Monday.
I was ten minutes late for work due to a three-car pileup on the Costa Mesa Freeway, but I didn’t sweat it. No one would notice if I was late.
I’d spent the weekend calling my parents’ friends, the ones I remembered, asking if they knew what had happened to my parents’ personal effects. None of them had known. Several of them wouldn’t even talk to me.
None of them remembered me.
No one had known or was willing to tell me which mortuary had handled the arrangements and at which cemetery my parents were buried, so I went to the library, xeroxed the appropriate pages from the San Diego Yellow Pages, and called every damn funeral home in the book. Of course, it turned out to be the last one. I asked the funeral director if he knew what had happened to my parents’ belongings, and he said no, he didn’t. I asked him who had paid for the funeral, and he said that information was confidential. He was understanding and apologetic and told me that if I could bring proof that Martin and Ella Jones were my parents he would be happy to divulge the information to me, but he could not tell me over the phone. Proof? I asked. Birth certificate, he told me.
My parents had kept my birth certificate.
He did tell me where my parents were buried, and I thanked him and wrote it down and hung up.
My past was gone, I realized. I had no roots, no history. I now existed entirely in the present.
David was hard at work on something when I walked into the office, and he did not even look up as I entered the room. I walked past him, took off my coat, and sat down at my desk. On top of the desk was a huge stack of papers. Adjacent to the papers was a hastily scrawled note on FROM THE DESK OF RON STEWART stationery that read: “Please document these procedures by 12/10.” It was initialed “RS.”
December 10. That was today.
The note was dated November 2.
I stared, read the note again. The bastard had deliberately done this to get me in trouble. I quickly shuffled through the pile of papers. There were memos from Banks and from Banks’ superiors dated several months back asking that this or that procedure be documented. I had never seen any of them before. I had never heard anything about these procedures.
Stewart had set me up.
I was furious, but I was so preconditioned that I actually got out a pen and began looking over the top page. There was no way I could complete even a third of these today, and after a few frustrating minutes I realized that I could not do this. I had to get out of here. I threw down my pen, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door.
At that point, I really didn’t care whether or not I got fired. I just had to get away from that office.
Outside, the early morning gloom was starting to lift, sunshine showing through the clouds, blue usurping the place of gray. I was parked out in the boonies of the Automated Interface parking lot, and by the time I reached my car I was already starting to sweat. I threw my coat on the passenger seat, rolled down the front windows, and backed out, leaving the lone open space amidst the endless rows of shiny cars. I pulled onto Emery, heading south. I turned right on the first cross street with a stoplight, then left on the next street. I did not know where I was going, had no definite destination in mind, was simply planning to lose myself in the comforting sameness of Irvine’s mazelike streets, but I found myself heading more or less in an westerly direction.
I ended up at South Coast Plaza.
I parked out by Sears and trekked across the asphalt to the main entrance. I walked into the mall, grateful for the relaxed coolness of air-conditioning after the humid heat outside.
Even though the Christmas season was here, there did not seem to be as many people in the mall as there should have been. The parking lot had been crowded, but inside South Coast Plaza the crowds were curiously sparse.
Muzak carols were playing over the mall’s speakers; elf figures and toy sleighs and fake snow adorned the window fronts. In front of Nordstrom, a huge flocked Christmas tree was festooned with garlands and tinsel and
