The Ignored

“It’s not that — ” I hastened to explain.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

As a matter of fact, I had been thinking of asking him to accompany us. But I’d wanted to talk it over with Jane first.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Jane asked. I met her eyes, nodded my thanks.

He shook his head. “This is where I belong. These are my people.”

“But — ”

“No buts. I think I have enough faith and belief in myself to fight off any onslaught. No one’s going to tell me I don’t exist.”

I smiled, nodded, but I was worried.

In the morning, Philipe helped me pack the car. Jane finished cleaning the house. She did not want to leave a mess for the next tenants.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring your furniture?” I asked her. “We could always get a U-Haul truck.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Then we were ready to go.

Jane got into the car, buckled her seat belt. I turned to Philipe. Despite our differences, despite our disagreements, despite everything that had happened, I felt sad to be saying good-bye. We had been through a lot together, good and bad, and those experiences had created a bond between us that could never be broken. I looked at him, and his once-sharp eyes that were now not so sharp were wet at the edges.

“Come with us,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’m not fading anymore. I’m coming back. In a few weeks I’ll be stronger than ever. Don’t worry about me.”

I looked into his eyes, and I knew he knew that it was not true. An understanding passed between us.

“So where’re you going to go?” he asked. “Back to Palm Springs? You might be able to recruit some new terrorists.”

“That isn’t me,” I said. I gestured around me, at Thompson. “And this isn’t me, either. I don’t know what is me. That’s what I need to find out. But you stay here. You start up the terrorists again. You fight the fights for our people. You keep the faith.”

“I will,” he said, and his voice was soft. “Take care.”

I wanted to cry, and a tear did escape down my cheek before I could wipe it off. I looked at Philipe, and on impulse I gave him a quick hug. “Youtake care,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I got into the car.

“Good-bye,” he said to Jane. “I haven’t spent much time with you, but I feel like I know you anyway. Bob did nothing but talk about you the whole time we were traveling together. He loves you very much.”

She smiled. “I know.”

They shook hands.

I started the car, backed out of the driveway. I looked toward Philipe. He waved, smiled.

I waved back.

“Good-bye,” I said.

He ran after us as we pulled away, and he jogged behind us as we pulled onto the road out of the city. He stood there, in the middle of the street, waving, as we left Thompson.

I honked back at him.

And we continued east until Philipe was lost to sight and Thompson was only a tiny irregular speck in the distance.

Seventeen

We lived in motels while we locked for a home.

There was no property available in Laguna Beach, no uninhabited houses for sale, so we moved up the coast to Corona del Mar.

I suggested that, since we were invisible, we should just pick the house we liked and live there. We shouldn’t worry about finding a place all to ourselves. There was no reason we couldn’t find some big house and co-exist with the owners. We’d be like ghosts. It would be fun.

So we lived for a time with a rich couple, in a too-large mansion on a bluff overlooking the ocean. We took the guest room and the guest bathroom; we used the kitchen when the owners were gone or asleep.

But it was unsettling to live that close and that intimately with others, to be privy to their privacies. I felt uncomfortable seeing people when they thought they were alone, watching them scratch themselves and mutter to themselves and let their true feelings show on their faces, and we moved up the coast, to Pacific Palisades, finally finding a white elephant belonging to a has-been entertainer no longer able to keep up with the payments. It had been on the market for the past two years.

We moved in.

The days flowed from one to the next. We’d get up late, spend most of the day on the beach, read and watch TV at night. It was pleasant, I suppose, but I had to wonder: what was the point of it all? I had never really bought into Philipe’s idea that we had a specific destiny, that fate had some plan in mind for us, but I had thought that my life would eventually lead somewhere, that it would have a purpose, that it would mean something.

And it didn’t.

There was no point. We lived, we died, we tried to make the best of things in between. That was it. Period. No pattern had emerged from the series of disjointed events that were my existence because there was no pattern. It had made no difference to anyone that I had been born.

And then Jane announced that she was pregnant.

Overnight, everything changed.

This was the point, I thought. Maybe I would make a mark upon the world and maybe I wouldn’t. But I would leave behind a child, and how that child turned out would depend on me and Jane. And maybe that child would make a significant mark upon the world. And maybe not. But maybe his or her child would. And whatever happened, however far down the line it might be, it would be because of me. I was a link in that chain.

I had a purpose.

I remembered Ralph telling me that the children of Ignored people were always Ignored themselves, and I told Jane, but she didn’t care and neither did I. She said that she didn’t like the lifestyle in Pacific Palisades, that she wanted our son or daughter to grow up in a different environment, and once again we moved up the coast, settling in a beachfront house in Carmel.

The first trimester passed, and Jane was showing, and both of us were happier than we’d ever been in our lives. We tried contacting her parents, but they could neither see us nor hear us, and though it was expected, that was a disappointment. But it didn’t last long. There were too many other things to do, too many other things to be grateful for. We pored through books of names. We read manuals on parenting. We stole baby food and furniture and clothes.

We had been taking long daily walks along the beach, but when Jane began to get bigger and to tire more quickly and easily, she switched her allegiance to indoor exercise equipment. She told me to keep up the walks, however, and though I protested at first, I soon agreed. She said she didn’t want me to balloon up to her size. And, she admitted, she wanted to have some time alone, without me always hovering around.

I understood.

I even grew to like my solitary walks along the beach.

And then it happened.

I had walked a mile or so down the sand and was on my way back when I saw a strange disturbance in the air some ways ahead. I jogged forward, squinting.