Therapy

sense copying down the number. I’d never heard of that.”

“She say why she was using prepaids?”

“She said it was simpler. I took that to mean she didn’t have enough of a credit history to get a real phone account. Or she had no permanent home.”

“Out on the streets?”

“No, I think she was living somewhere, but not in a permanent place. I tried to find out, she refused to tell me. I took that to mean she thought I’d disapprove.”

Ping ping. “I probably would’ve. Christi and I are very different.”

I said, “She called you to reconnect.”

“She managed to track me down at the History Department, I walk in one day and find a message in my box that my sister called. At first I thought it was a mistake.” Cody Marsh winced. “I didn’t think of myself as having a sister. Christi and I have the same father but different mothers, and we didn’t grow up together. Christi’s significantly younger than I- I’m thirty-three and she’s… was twenty-three. By the time she was old enough to relate to, I was in Oregon, so we really didn’t have a relationship.”

“Are her parents alive?”

“Our father’s dead. And so is my mother. Christi’s mother is alive, but she has serious mental problems, has been institutionalized for years.”

“How many years?” I said.

“Since Christi was four. Our father was a raging alcoholic. As far as I’m concerned, he killed my mother. Smoking in bed, blind-drunk. My mother was drinking, too, but the cigarette was his. The house went up in flames, he managed to stagger out. Lost an arm and part of his face, but it didn’t put a dent in his drinking. I was seven, went to live with my maternal grandparents. Soon after, he met Christi’s mom in a bar and started a whole new family.”

“Serious mental problems,” I said.

“Carlene’s schizophrenic,” said Marsh. “That’s why she hooked up with a one-armed, scar-faced drunk. I’m sure drinking was what they had in common. I’m sure drinking and living with my father didn’t help her mental state. I was the lucky one, my grandparents were educated, both teachers, religious. My mother was trained as a social worker. Marrying him was her big rebellion.”

“And he raised Christi after her mom was institutionalized?”

“It couldn’t have been much of a raising. I don’t know the details, I was living in Baudette, and he took Christi over to St. Paul. I heard that she dropped out of high school, but I’m not sure exactly what grade. Later, she went to Duluth with him- he was working on some sort of land crew. Then back to St. Paul. A really bad neighborhood.”

Milo said, “Sounds like you kept tabs.”

“No,” said Marsh. “I heard things from my grandparents. Filtered through their biases.” Marsh worked several strands of hair over his face, spread them back, shook his head. “They hated my father, blamed him for my mother’s death and everything else that was wrong in the world. They loved recounting his misfortunes in great detail. The slum neighborhoods he was forced to live in, Christi failing in school, dropping out. Christi getting into trouble. We’re talking editorializing, not straight reporting. They saw Christi as an extension of him- bad seed. They wanted nothing to do with her. She wasn’t their blood. So Christi and I were kept apart.”

“What kind of trouble did Christi get into?” I said.

“The usual: drugs, keeping bad company, shoplifting. My grandparents told me she got sent to one of those wilderness camps, then juvenile hall. Part of it was their schadenfreude- reveling in someone else’s misery. The other part was that deep down they worried about me. Being half-Dad genetically. So they used Dad and Christi as negative examples. They were preaching to the converted because Christi represented everything I despised about my roots. The trash side, as my grandparents called it. I was a good student, well behaved, destined for better things. I bought into that. It wasn’t until my divorce-” He smiled. “I neglected to mention that somewhere along the way I got married. That lasted nineteen months. Soon after the divorce, both my grandparents died, and I was feeling pretty alone, and I realized I did have a half sib I barely knew and maybe I should stop being a self-righteous jerk. So I tried to get in touch with Christi. Nagged my great-aunt- my grandmother’s sister- until she told me Christi was still living in St. Paul, ‘doing burlesque.’ I phoned a few strip clubs- I was motivated, the whole rebonding fantasy- and finally located the place where Christi worked. She wasn’t happy to hear from me, very distant. So I bribed her by wiring her a hundred bucks. After that, she started calling every couple of months. Sometimes to talk, sometimes to ask for more money. That seemed to bother her- having to ask. There was a shy side to her, she’d pretend to be tough but she could be sweet.”

Milo said, “She give you any other details about her lifestyle?”

“Just that she was dancing, we never got into details. When she called, it was always from a club, I could hear the music going. Sometimes I thought she might’ve sounded high. I didn’t want to do anything to put distance between us. She liked the fact that I was a teacher. Sometimes she called me ‘Teach’ instead of my name.”

Marsh removed his glasses and wiped them with his napkin. Unshielded, his eyes were small and weak. “Then her calls stopped, and the club said she was gone, no forwarding. I didn’t hear from her for over a year, until I got the message in my box at school.”

“No idea what she was doing for over a year?”

Marsh shook his head. “She said she’d made enough from dancing to relax for a while, but I wondered.”

“About what?”

“If she’d gotten into other things. I put that out of my head because I had no facts.”

“Other things such as…”

“Selling herself,” said Marsh. “That was another thing my grandparents were always telling me about Christi. She was promiscuous. They used less-kind language. I didn’t want to hear it.”

He took hold of his cup, managed to get down some chai.

“Christi had learning problems, but I guess one thing she could always count on was her looks. She was an extremely beautiful child. Skinny as a stick when she was little, white-blond hair below her waist. It was never clean or combed and she wore mismatched clothes- Dad didn’t have a clue. Sometimes, not often, he’d drop in unannounced. My grandfather would always storm up to his room and not come down. Grandmother called Christi ‘the street urchin.’ As in, ‘Here’s the bum and the street urchin come a-knocking. Better Lysol the cups and glasses.’ Usually, I’d escape to my room, too. One time, Christi couldn’t have been more than four, so I was fourteen, she ran up the stairs, flung my door open, and threw herself on me.”

Marsh pulled at the skin around his jaw. “Hugging me, tickling me, giggling, an idiot could’ve seen she was reaching out. But it annoyed me. I yelled at her to stop. Bellowed. And she got off me, stared with this look in her eyes. And slunk out. I really crushed her.”

His eyes were dry but he wiped them. “I was fourteen, what did I know?”

I said, “What do you know about her life in L.A?”

“In L.A. she didn’t ask me for money, I can tell you that.” He nudged his teacup aside. “I guess that bothered me. Because of what she might be doing to get by. Was she involved with bad people?”

“Did she imply that?”

Marsh hesitated.

“Sir?”

“She did tell me some wild stories,” said Marsh. “The last time we spoke, over the phone-”

Milo said, “How long ago was that?”

“Three, four months.”

“What kind of wild stories?”

“More out there than wild,” said Marsh. “She talked extremely fast so I wondered if she’d gotten into drugs- amphetamines, cocaine, something that was hyping her up. Or worse, could she be ending up like her mother.”

“Tell us about the stories,” I said.

“She claimed she was working with secret agencies, doing undercover work, spying on gangsters hooked up with terrorists. Making big money, wearing expensive clothes- expensive shoes, she went on a long time about her shoes. She really wasn’t making much sense but I let her go on. Then she just stopped talking, said she had to go, hung up.”