North of Montana

fading away from me again, eclipsed as always by Poppy.

What was her shadowy life compared to the scary, exciting visits to police headquarters in the bold blue glass building on Broadway? Poppy would steer me through busy offices where everyone thought I was cute, then, if there were no prisoners, through the actual jail with its terrifying steel toilets. Waiting outside for him, I’d call out to his buddies by name as they climbed into their squad cars, running my fingers over a big brass plaque near the lobby, a bas-relief of a policeman sheltering a boy and girl, “Lest We Forget”—Long Beach Police Officers Association, with a kind of preadolescent sexual thrill.

Poppy took me trick-or-treating, Mother stayed home. He took me body surfing in the breakers off Shoreline Drive, bullying me to get up and do it again no matter how many times the waves sent me sprawling — where was she? Timid, passive, afraid, self-effacing until dissolving into a ninety-pound cadaver before my eyes. In the end her skin was actually green and she didn’t have the strength to roll over in the hospital bed, lying on her side facing away from me, one arm struggling to rise above the collapsed curve of her hip, one word, my name, spoken as I entwined those dry brittle fingers in mine at age fourteen.

And yet she is not completely gone and yet … perhaps I really did mean something to her. Who else would have saved the document I now hold in my hand, and for what purpose other than someday her daughter might find it, shoved way in the back of a safe-deposit box inside an unused birthday card inside an envelope? It is her marriage certificate, stamped by the City of Las Vegas, August 3, 1964. It states that on this day, Miguel Sanchez and Gwen Grey, my father and mother, were married.

I stare at it with only one wish: that the black woman with the ponytail will dig her blue heels into the beige carpeting and push that steel door closed and give the big brass wheel a good strong spin, sealing me and what I now know into a dark airless crypt, where secrets are buried precisely so nothing will change, forever.

• • •

When Poppy doesn’t answer my ring at the door I use my key. I find him sitting out on the balcony with eyes closed, face to the late afternoon sun. He looks the same. He is wearing his usual tan slacks and yellow polo shirt open at the neck, bare feet in flip-flops crossed up on a small plastic table. His square rugged hands — reddish and hairy with age — are clasped on his chest. His chin is sunk forward and he is snoring.

Even now another ancient admonition stops me from waking him up, “Grandfather needs his sleep.” I turn back into the condominium and start picking up coffee cups and glasses and carrying them into the kitchen. A few yellowish curds have collected on the brown Rubbermaid mat in the bottom of the sink near the wooden dishwashing stick with the soft cotton head Poppy has been using for years. I see those red soapy hands rinsing bacon and scrambled eggs off green melamine plates and a wave of revulsion as powerful as the Long Beach surf almost doubles me over. The cups chatter as I place them on the counter and walk back into the sun.

“Poppy. I’m here. Wake up.”

He opens his eyes and smiles. “The woman of the hour.”

I am cold. “Why do you say that?”

“You busted that sleazy doctor who was harassing Jayne Mason.”

“Something like that.”

“Hell, it’s all over the news. I’ve got it right here.”

He swings his feet off the small table and stands. Steadily, I notice.

I follow him through the sliding glass doors into the cool darkness of the living room. Sun spots are still swimming in my vision as he picks up a sheaf of newspapers and magazines from the top of the television.

“You’re a celebrity.”

But there is nothing congratulatory in the flat tone of his voice. He holds my eyes before handing me the papers and behind the handsome mask of strong nose and weathered cheeks is a baby-faced pout of envy.

Of course I am nowhere near a celebrity. I receive no personal mention in Poppy’s collection of articles from the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the local Palm Springs rag. The FBI is said to be only peripherally involved. The big story is the million-dollar malpractice lawsuit being brought against “the sports injury doctor to the stars” by “movie queen” Jayne Mason with plenty of spicy comments from “superpower personal manager” Magda Stockman. The big graphic that has played in all the media is a split-screen image of Mason on one side and Eberhardt on the other. She looks beautiful and vulnerable, he looks hunched over and guilty.

“You don’t usually show much interest in my cases.”

“This one is different, it’s my gal, Jayne. That doc deserves to hang. What can I get you?”

‘Water.”

“Good idea. Dry today.”

He goes into the kitchen, I remain standing. When he returns with two glasses I drop the manila envelope I have been holding onto the coffee table.

“I got the documents from the safe-deposit box.”

“You didn’t have to make a trip. The U.S. mail would have been more than adequate.”

Is he deliberately undercutting me today, not thanking me for my effort, not acknowledging my accomplishments, or have these subtle put-downs and manipulations been going on for years? I can feel the tendrils of rage coiling around my throat, threatening to choke me off. I have to reach up and forcibly pry them apart to keep breathing.

“I made the trip to show my concern for you, Poppy.” I let the angry sarcasm hang there but he doesn’t hear it.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“Well, the radiation makes me drowsy and chemotherapy ain’t no day at the beach, but we’ll take that on when it comes.”

“What exactly is the diagnosis?”

“They call it a lymphoma.”

“What’s your doctor’s name, I’d like to speak to him or her.”

“No need for it.”

“You can’t go through this alone.”

“I’ve got friends in the complex. Lots of ladies want to look in on me.”

“Don’t screw with me, Poppy.” My finger is jabbing into the space that separates us across the living room. “I need to know your doctor’s name.”

“All right.”

Having won that bout, I spit a breath out between my teeth. I am still standing. He is sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed and eyes unfocused, a bleak inward repose as if I weren’t there.

I sit down in an armchair but it is too deep to get my feet firmly on the floor and too far from Poppy to force him to look at me. I try to drag it closer but the legs get tangled in the matted shag of the rug.

For a moment I am frozen like a diver at the edge of the board. As a child I would clutch, looking down at the water so far away. Once, when a line of kids behind me started hooting because I couldn’t jump off and I couldn’t step back, a lifeguard had to walk out, pick me up under the arms, and drop me into the pool like a slab of stone. She’s there now, the healthy well-muscled self taking firm hold of the shivering frightened self at last.

“When I was going through the safe-deposit box I found some things. Some jewelry, which I kept, and a marriage certificate between my father and Mom. You never told me they were married.”

“Who was married?”

“Miguel Sanchez and Gwen Grey. Do the names sound familiar?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’ve been thinking about this for the last two and a half hours, driving out from L.A. I’ve had a lot of time to go over it again and again and again. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you and Mom have lied to me about my father and my heritage and who I am and where I come from my entire life.”

At the end of it my voice betrays me by going weak.

“I told you to forget about that son of a bitch,” Poppy snaps. His eyes look black in the triangular shadow that cuts across the room. “He left you and your mother, can’t you get that through your head?”