North of Montana

Grandma Elizabeth was a policeman’s wife in a small seaside town in the 1950s — what choice did she have? When she died, my mother, aside from working as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, took over the solemn duty of caring for Poppy, preparing Koenigsberger Klops, his favorite veal and pork meatballs (when he worked the night shift, she woke up at five in the morning to warm them up for him in the oven). These past ten years it has been my turn (drawing the line at Koenigsberger Klops). We talk on the phone several times a week, I drive out to see him at least once a month. First thing in the morning Poppy is in my thoughts, sometimes with a fearsome rush of anxiety that he has died during the night, although I know he is independent and strong as a horse. When I have a question, his voice tells me what to do. When I screw up, his voice punishes me. I may be a hotshot federal agent who carries a gun and a pair of handcuffs (they’re light, you can throw them in the bottom of your purse trash) but my self-worth is still measured by my grandfather’s rules. From childhood he was my standard and my mother’s standard and I have always believed as innocently and completely in the rightness of Poppy as I do the American flag.

I am here for an overnight visit to wish him a belated seventieth birthday, but questions about my supposed cousin Violeta Alvarado and my father and the lost Latino side of the family are definitely percolating in the back of my mind, so that when I approach the tan steel door loaded with groceries, a birthday cake, and a duffel bag and hear barking from within, I am not pleased.

Sure enough it’s Moby Dick, one of Poppy’s whacked-out desert pals, and his friendly pack of killer Akita dogs, which he raises in a shack out there in the wilderness, illegally crossing purebreds with German shepherds to create these hulking muscular monsters with mottled gray fur and curling tails and schizophrenic personalities, just like his. Bikers and police officers with families buy them for five hundred dollars apiece.

“Freeze! It’s the FBI!” laughs Moby Dick, opening the door. I give him a wincing smile. His enormous bouncing belly is almost covered by a black T-shirt that says Fuck Dieting.

The television is on, beer cans on the coffee table.

“It’s about the dogs.”

“No problem.” He drags them out to the balcony by their collars and slides the heavy glass doors shut, shouting, “Commissioner! Your little girl’s here!”

I put the stuff in the kitchen. Poppy keeps a neat place. The dish drainer is empty. One box of Keebler’s crackers on the counter. Inside the refrigerator everything is low salt, low cholesterol — except for Bloody Mary mix and two New York steaks. At least Moby Dick isn’t staying for dinner.

“Annie!” He is there in the doorway wearing nothing but a white towel at the waist, vain as ever, showing off his extraordinary tanned barrel chest and weight-lifters ropy arms.

Even though he is seventy, hugging him bare-chested is an experience in maleness that brings back Sunday afternoons at the YMCA on Long Beach Boulevard, the reward for sustaining a perfect freestyle for fifty yards being holding my cheek to that strong upper quadrant — the compact pectorals, cool feel of chlorine-scented skin, dark furry hair surrounding a useless nipple, fascinating turkey folds under the chin, hard shoulders beneath my small naked feet as he magically lifted me out of the water to dive over his gleaming wet head. I didn’t have a father to teach me to swim; I had Poppy.

“Happy birthday. You’re looking great.”

“Not bad for seven decades on this earth. What’re you drinking?”

“Brought my own.” I slip a bottle out of a bag.

“White wine?” He shakes his head. “That’s the L.A. crowd.” Grabbing a handful of ice, “Hope you still eat red meat.”

“I eat it and I fuck it.” Beating him to the punch.

He cracks a can of 7UP. “Easy on the language.”

“Sorry. I wouldn’t want to offend Moby Dick.”

“Is that how Feebees talk?”—derisive cop term for FBI agents—“I thought they were educated bastards.”

I laugh. Here we go. “We try to be tough. Almost as tough as you.”

• • •

Poppy sits in a chair near the balcony wearing nothing but the towel, legs crossed demurely, drinking Seven and Sevens until long after it is dark and the relentless air conditioning has given me a chill. The dogs are still out there. From time to time they nose against the glass near his feet like canine spirits conjured up by the original Agua Caliente Indians.

I admit that the other reason I drove out to the desert was to tell all the details of my perfect bust at California First Bank to Poppy in person. How I was alone. How I staked the guy out and made the right moves and cuffed him with no assistance. How my brilliant interview technique led the suspect to confess to six other robberies. How it was so good it was pure sex.

I am always offering Poppy things like that. Accomplishments. Gifts. His reaction is usually noncommittal, with the implication that it really isn’t good enough, although he did attend my graduation from Quantico in his lieutenant’s full-dress uniform, and he did cry. Still I keep coming back, hoping that what I’ve done will be better, that it will please Poppy at last.

Moby Dick is a more appreciative audience and I find myself playing to him. He follows the action as if it were a Police Academy cartoon (which he watches religiously in the shack on Saturday mornings), stomping his huge Jordans and shouting “Right on!” Poppy’s only reaction is to tell about the time he, as a rookie patrol officer, cornered a murder suspect alone on the footpath near the Santa Monica Pier and chased him onto the beach. It was Saturday in July, crowded as hell, the suspect dove into the ocean and was never seen again.

“Wow, Commissioner, that’s a story,” Moby Dick tells my grandfather reverentially.

“What else happened when you were a rookie? When we lived north of Montana?”

“Well, we had the famous Hungry Thief,” Poppy grins, settling back with his drink. “Broke into a market, stole a thousand bucks, left two half-eaten knockwurst sandwiches.”

Moby Dick laughs, a whistling snort up the nose.

“I went past the old house on Twelfth Street,” I put in casually. “Trying to remember what it was like. Did you and Mom and I ever live there with my father?”

“I’ll tell you something that happened,” Poppy says suddenly, eyes bright, blatantly ignoring my question. “I had you down at the station one time when all of a sudden we hear this god-awful racket and we run outside to see what the hell it is, and goddamn, a military helicopter is making a landing right in the parking lot.”

Moby Dick asks, “What for?”

“For John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Poppy nods to our dumbfounded silence. “The President wasn’t actually on board, but at that time he used to make quite a lot of trips out to L.A. — they said to see his brother-in-law Peter Law-ford at the beach, but actually it was so he could keep on sticking Marilyn Monroe, so the Secret Service was checking out where to land the presidential helicopter and I guess they thought the Santa Monica police station would be pretty secure, the stupid bastards, boy did they fuck up in Dallas.”

Moby Dick says, “Amazing.”

Poppy chuckles. “They had these guys painting lines on the parking lot, they had it all marked off with chalk, then this goddamn huge thing lands and blows it all away.”

“Did I see the helicopter?”

“You?” Poppy looks at me, surprised to remember I am part of the story. “You were a little girl, you were scared of all the noise and the hullabaloo. Held on to my hand like there was no tomorrow.”

I remember none of this. It is the oddest sensation to hear a description about yourself when you can’t remember any of it, like having sex and feeling nothing.

“Is it true President Kennedy had an affair with Jayne Mason?”

“Great legs,” Poppy croons, again ignoring my question. “They used to call her Little Miss Sunshine, of course that’s when she was a kid. She grew into some looker. The guys had a picture of her up in the station. I saw Jayne Mason maybe ten years ago in Vegas. Beautiful voice, really something. The way she sings makes you cry.” He pats