Losing Clementine Read online

  Richard still lives in our house. He got it in the divorce. I still consider it part mine in a cosmic sense. This is preferable to the literal sense because the house is in Sherman Oaks, which is less suited to painters than to Amway salesladies and people who purchase potpourri in bulk. Also, Sheila has taken up semipermanent residence on my side of the bed, which would be awkward if I were still sleeping in it.

  The last time I was over, which was two breakdowns ago or about a month, Richard claimed Sheila just came over a few days a week to visit, but when I riffled through the bathroom cabinets, I found two of her prescriptions, both for urinary tract infections. One I knew from experience turns your pee orange. Part of me hoped her doctor didn’t warn her about that ahead of time.

  Richard objects to my referring to it as “our” house, but when you know where all the Tupperware lids are, even the ones that always go missing, I don’t know how it can be otherwise.

  I parked in the oil-stained driveway and heaved Chuckles, who had given up yowling for a throaty growl, out of the car. I pushed through the wrought-iron gate in the hip-level hedge that surrounded our front yard and took the cracked walkway up to the front door. Then I laid on the doorbell because I was in that sort of mood, and there were no teapots around.

  “Jesus Christ, Clementine, what do you want? And what happened to the front end of your car?”

  The cut on Richard’s cheek was almost healed. He was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt that he’d probably slept in and a pair of bright green soccer shorts that went shish-shish-shish between his thighs when he walked. Richard had played intramural soccer in college and still liked the uniform.

  “Here.” I shoved the carrier at him. Chuckles gave his best yowl.

  “I am not adopting your cat.” He threw up his hands as if I were handing him a leaking bag of poop, which, depending on how quickly he took the carrier and let the cat out, I might be.

  “It’s just for a couple of days. I’m going on a trip.”

  “Rich,” a high-pitched voice called from the kitchen, “who is it?”

  “I didn’t see Sheila’s car,” I said.

  I looked back over my shoulder and scanned the street for her lime-green new Beetle, which, in my opinion, was a car better suited to cheerleaders than tax attorneys. Maybe it was her way of rebelling.

  “It’s in the garage,” he said and then called over his shoulder, “It’s Clementine. She’s trying to drop off her cat.”

  Sheila did not respond. We didn’t like each other, Sheila and I. That had always been true, and I didn’t know if she knew about the incident with the fan or not. The injury was unmistakable, but Richard could have made up a story: I fell down the stairs. I ran into the doorjamb. They were shameful abuse-victim stories, and I still hoped he’d told one, because I didn’t want her to know how much better she was than me.

  “Why can’t Jenny take care of him?” he asked.

  “I fired her. I don’t think she’d do it pro bono.”

  “You can’t fire Jenny. You’ll die.”

  I decided to appreciate that joke on the inside.

  “Take him,” I said, “or he’ll make himself vomit.”

  Richard took the carrier.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Tijuana.”

  “You can’t go to Tijuana. There’s a drug war. You’ll be killed and abducted into slavery by gangs.”

  “That appears to be a very popular opinion,” I said, remembering it was Richard’s habit of telling me what I couldn’t do that had played a large part in our divorce.

  He scowled at me the way he did when he thought I was being unreasonable and I thought I was being clever.

  “Why are you going?”

  “That’s where they keep the medicine.”

  He set the carrier down with the door pointed toward the kitchen and pinched the release mechanism. Chuckles went shooting out like flames were coming out of his butt and disappeared behind the couch.

  “Why do you need medicine? Are you sick?”

  “Yes.”

  “With what?”

  He was looking toward the couch, and I answered the back of his head.

  “Cancer.”

  The lie just popped right into my mouth, and I paused to taste it. I liked it even if it was false. It was sort of like how strawberry candy doesn’t taste anything like strawberries, but we all collectively agree that red dye number five and corn syrup will be called “strawberry” anyway. My disease would be called “cancer.” And it was, in its way, like cancer. My brain had certainly turned on itself.

  Richard looked me right in the eye. “That’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t think it was particularly hilarious myself.”

  We stood there facing each other on opposite sides of our threshold. His hair was standing up on top like he’d been running his hands through it a lot and maybe hadn’t showered since yesterday morning. He didn’t look so good now that I was looking. The wrinkles that sprouted from the corners of his eyes were deeper, and something was pulling down on the corners of his mouth. I tried not to look at the faint pink line across his cheekbone.

  He watched me, and I watched him until eventually it started to feel like a staring contest. As much as I wanted to win, I couldn’t help but let one eye wander to the white scar down the middle of his chin that looked like a Cary Grant cleft and was the result of a skateboarding accident when he was thirteen.

  He acknowledged his win by speaking.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am.”

  His face broke right down the middle. “Oh, God.” We stood there looking at each other for a beat. “Jesus. Where is it?”

  “In my brain.” Strawberry, strawberry, strawberry.

  His eyes were a mixture of disbelief and pity. “When did you find out?”

  “Something’s been wrong for a while.” Truth.

  “How are you treating it?”

  “Palliatively.”

  “Clementine, fucking hell, can’t they do anything?”

  I shook my head. I was starting to feel a little guilty and didn’t know why. This was more humane than being honest. It did, after all, explain a lot.

  He chewed on the inside of his cheek then spun around on his heel and headed back toward the hallway that branched off into our bedroom. His shorts shish-shish-shished until he had almost disappeared.

  “Wait for me in the car,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m coming with you.”

  He took longer to come out than it would take to pack a duffel bag for a couple of days. He took just the exact amount of time I estimated it would take to pack a duffel bag for a couple of days and have a big argument with your maybe-live-in girlfriend about taking a road trip with your ex-wife to purchase illegal prescription drugs. It was an argument I knew he’d win, because even a lawyer can’t find a loophole big enough to jump through in “she’s dying.”

  When he came out, a small dark cloud was hanging over his head, and it followed him all the way to the car. He opened the passenger door and shoved his bag between the two headrests, knocking the sunglasses perched on my head. He’d changed into jeans and a gray T-shirt with fewer wrinkles.

  “You never said what happened to the front of your car.”

  “I hit somebody.”

  “An actual somebody or a car?”

  “A car.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He shook his head but smiled a little, which is easier to do when you’re no longer on my insurance policy.

  “Sheila’s allergic to cats, you know.”

  I started the car and tilted my head to the side like this was new information. “Is she?”

  “You can’t possibly have to pee again.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I just have a burning desire to see what kind of paper towels the Jack in the Box uses.”

  “You don’t have to get pissy.”

  “You don’t have to compl
ain every time I have a bodily function.”

  He pushed back into the passenger seat and leaned against the headrest. I left him there while I went inside. By the end of our marriage, we had stopped traveling together. He would fly to San Francisco while I drove. That turned out to be only the most temporary of solutions.

  Tijuana is a straight shot on the 5 south from L.A. I took the last U.S. exit, which spit me out in front of a series of giant parking lots, one after the other all the way to Mexico. The monotony of row after row of cars was broken only by bright neon signs over small offices advertising Mexican auto insurance. I pulled into a lot and took my ticket, promising to pay my eight dollars a day and agreeing that should I fail to return after more than two weeks, they could tow and auction off my car.

  I chose a spot at the back of the lot and pulled forward until the nose of my car was three feet from the border fence, an ugly metal wall that snaked off over the hills and disappeared with the horizon. I’d heard it didn’t even stop at the beach but kept right on going into the water just in case you had any ideas about wading out and around.

  It was faster to walk across the border than to drive. I put my bag on my back, and we headed for the series of revolving metal gates that were heavy enough and spun fast enough to make you worry about losing a finger. A guard waved us through. No passport check. No baggage search. On the other side, a troop of brown-skinned children juggled for tourist change, and beyond them cabdrivers in dark sunglasses and pressed yellow dress shirts offered overpriced rides.

  “You need taxi?” each asked as we passed, despite having watched us say no, no, no, no to the other four guys in front of him. Hope springs eternal.

  We shook them all off and headed toward our hotel. A huge McDonald’s was off to our right along with a billboard advertising human growth hormone at “lowest price!” Cars snaked back toward the U.S. border, inching forward like rush hour on the 405. Vendors walked between the lanes pedaling snacks and drinks. Rolling carts like out of a county fair offered warm pork rinds crumbled into bite-size pieces off whole back sections of skinned pig. Last chance for a bouquet of flowers, a bag of tamarind candy, an out-of-season Day of the Dead skull.

  Those cars not in line to cross the border were zipping around traffic circles marked in the center with gargantuan statues. One was abstract and looked like Chinese chopsticks, another clearly portrayed an Indian chief, and a third was of Abraham Lincoln holding a broken chain and looking as if he, too, didn’t know how or why he had come to be there. People were everywhere, enough to fill the city of Houston.

  It was less than a five-minute walk to our hotel. With practiced efficiency, we were ushered into the air-conditioned lobby, and the receptionist with perfect English took my credit card. Beyond the front desk was a coffee shop and bar pushed up against the wall to make room in the center courtyard for an acre of slot machines, all of which flashed and jingled whether anyone was playing them or not. Encircling them were twelve floors of rooms. The doors faced out onto interior balconies that looked down on the gamblers. Unlike Vegas, which blocked out all time-of-day indicators as if it were conducting a scientific experiment, the whole hotel interior was topped by a glass skylight. It felt more honest that way.

  A bellman took us up to the fifth floor. He opened my room with the key card, flipped on the lights, and accepted the two-dollar tip. Everyone took dollars here just the same as pesos and would give you change in either currency. That, at least, hadn’t changed since my last trip across the border some dozen years before.

  Richard looked at me with the creases around his mouth forming deep gullies. “I don’t know about this.”

  I wondered if I should’ve paid the bellman more to stay.

  “About what?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t take anything you buy here.” He gestured around the room like I was considering fishing around under the bed and swallowing whatever I happened to find there. “It might not be safe.”

  Richard and I had always had different opinions on what constituted safe.

  “I’m hungry,” I said to change the subject.

  “Already?”

  “I’m anticipating it. I’m going to take a shower and a nap first.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

  “Find a room.”

  “Why can’t I sleep here? We slept together platonically all the time while we were married.”

  Good, I thought. I’d been hoping to use this trip to rehash old marital arguments.

  I opened the door and let in the jangle of the slot machines below. “Out.”

  “Why?”

  “For being an asshole. Get your own room.”

  He picked up his duffel bag with all the wounded huffing he could manage, and I let the door slam on its heavy, autoclosing hinges behind him. Even with it shut, the hyper ringing of the slots penetrated the room. That was going to bug me.

  I was good to my word and turned on the hot water. The room looked like any hotel room in Cleveland, Ohio, or Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, except stocked with free bottled water for those with delicate constitutions and a fear of microbes. I stepped under the spray, yelped, and put my hands over my nipples. The hotel had fallen under the sway of high-pressure, low-water shower heads that threatened to pierce your skin with needle spray.

  I turned my back and unwrapped a bar of soap. I liked this. Being away had always felt good to me. A fast car or an airplane could almost always outrun whatever black cloud was chasing me. Most times it would take a day or more for the cloud to catch up.

  After having the sweat and dust knocked off me by the water cannon, I needed tequila, so I pulled on a pair of my nicest jeans.

  Across from the hotel was what looked like a strip mall but was, the bellman assured me, an enormous discotheque several hours from being open for business. Next to it was a bar that at capacity couldn’t have held more than fifty. At the moment, it held nothing but a bartender and several neon Tecate signs. The sun was still up and only thinking about starting to retire.

  I sat at the bar and in two awkward sentences established that my Spanish was slow, error prone, and confined to the present tense. I pointed at the drink menu. Margarita on the rocks. The barman, who had been flipping through a magazine, looked pleased to have something to do, and the drink came strong and without salt.

  Rock en español was turned up loud, and a flat screen TV behind the bar played videos to go along with it. I watched a cartoon where a man’s limbs were being cut off one by one like a Monty Python sketch until he fell into the ocean as nothing but a torso and head and was rescued by topless mermaids. The bartender set down a bowl of snacks. They looked like small, matte brown marbles and tasted like honey-roasted peanuts. They were light and crunchy in your mouth and addictive in a way only Cheetos and cigarettes had been before. The bartender and I ate them and watched the cartoon morph into amputee porn, which was funny in both our languages.

  Too soon the video was over, replaced by the Mexican version of The Cure, and Richard had taken the stool next to me.

  “I asked the bellman where you went,” he said.

  I pushed the bowl of snacks toward him.

  He took a handful. “These are delicious.”

  The bartender came over, and Richard pointed at my drink. I went back to watching the excessive male eye makeup on-screen.

  “Would it help,” he asked, “if I owned up to being a jerk right now?”

  “Which time?”

  “What do you mean which time?”

  I took a healthy sip of my margarita, reached over, and pulled the bowl of nutty goodness back toward me and out of his reach.

  He conceded defeat. “In the hotel room. I shouldn’t have brought up sex.”

  To point out just what he was missing, I brought one of the nut snacks to my mouth in a slow, sexy motion like one of those ridiculous burger commercials with the lady in the bikini.

  “And I should not have commented on the frequency of your
urination.”

  “That was wrong of you.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  I let him have a nut snack.

  “What are these?” he asked, putting a palmful in his mouth.

  “The vehicle of my redemption.”

  He ignored that. “We should eat all of these and then go to dinner. I have a place.”

  I took my eyes away from the television. Richard had never once in the history of our rather rocky and complicated relationship made a dinner reservation.

  He shrugged at me. “I asked the bellman for that, too.” He ate a nut snack. “It’s possible we’re supposed to order rotten corn.” He looked sad. “It won’t be this good,” he said and ate another snack.

  Huitlacoche translates roughly into “raven’s excrement,” which is another way of saying bird poop. What it actually is is corn that has been infected by a fungus and morphed into black tumors. The chef mixed it with Oaxacan string cheese and served it in a purse-shaped crepe with poblano chili sauce. It’s better than even the nut snacks.

  The cab ride to the edge of town had taken less then fifteen minutes. The driver had dropped us at the foot of a steep, circular drive. Above us one of the priciest restaurants in Tijuana was perched on a knoll, surrounded by transplanted palm trees and aloe plants all dramatically lit with uplights buried in the ground cover.

  We had been ushered inside and seated promptly. The host had held out my chair and even placed my napkin in my lap, which I admit was a little overly familiar.

  I scooped another bite of the huitlacoche onto my fork. “Tasty, tasty tumors,” I said and laughed because sometimes you just crack yourself up.

  “Don’t joke about that,” Richard said.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  There were only four other occupied tables, and the dining room had the judgmental hush of a library. We were close to attracting attention.

  I took a sip of light red wine. The waiter had assured us in perfect English that it came from a local vineyard.

  “Tumors,” I whispered.

  “It’s not funny.”

  That was interesting because I was pressing my lips together to hold in the giggles, which was forcing them down into my diaphragm and making my ribs pulse with unexpellable energy. Richard cut a ladylike bite from his edible purse of bird poo.