Whispering Rock

He could hear the growing strength in Brie’s voice despite her new fears; she laughed regularly, and the sound of her voice brought him great peace of mind. He teased her, told her jokes, even played his guitar for her over the phone so she could tell him he was improving.

Jack, however, was too quiet. Mike confronted him, asked him how he was doing. “I just want her back, man,” Jack said somberly. “Brie—she was always such a goddamn life force.”

Mike gripped Jack on the upper arm. “She’ll be back. She’s got the stuff.”

“Yeah, I hope you’re right.”

“I’m right,” Mike said. “You need me for anything tomorrow? I’m thinking of driving down the coast, having a look around.”

“Nah, enjoy yourself,” Jack said.

Ordinarily, Mike wouldn’t have given even a second thought to going to Sacramento without mentioning it to Jack, but these circumstances were different, and he wasn’t an idiot—Jack would want to know. Still, he said nothing and in fact had covered his tracks, acting as though he was out for a day of poking around. He rose before Jack began splitting logs behind the bar in the early morning—his ritual even in summer, when there was no need to lay a fire. He hit the road south through Ukiah in the predawn hours, arriving in the city by ten in the morning.

After he rang the doorbell, he saw a shadow cross the peephole, then the locks slid and the door opened. “Mike?” Sam asked. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“I decided not to call ahead, sir,” he said. “I thought—”

Brie appeared from around the corner, standing behind her dad. “Mike?” she asked in equal surprise.

He smiled. “You look good,” he said, relieved. “Great. You look great. I was saying I didn’t call ahead because I thought if I just came here, maybe I could lure you out of the house for a while. If I’d called, you’d think of a million excuses.”

She actually took a step back. “I don’t know…”

“How about Folsom,” he said. “Enjoy the mountains, walk around the shops, have a little lunch, maybe stop at a vineyard or two. Just a few hours, just for some fresh air and maybe a little practice at facing the public. You have to get out in the world eventually.”

“Maybe not this soon…”

“It’s only soon because you haven’t done it. You’ll be safe, Brie.”

“Of course, but—”

“Brie,” Sam said. “You should take advantage of this. Mike is a trained observer, a cop with years of experience. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

Mike gave his head a slight bow in Sam’s direction, respectfully. “Thank you, sir. You’re welcome to join us.”

He laughed. “No, I think I’ll pass. But this is a good idea. Brie,” he said, taking her hand and rubbing it between his, as if warming it, “you should go out for at least an hour, maybe two. Mike’s come all this way….”

She looked at him pointedly. There might have been a glare in her eye. “You didn’t tell Jack you were doing this, did you.” It was not a question.

“Of course not. He would have tried to talk me out of it. If you needed someone to pry you out of the house, he’d want to be the one to do it.” He grinned. “I couldn’t risk that.”

She seemed to think about this momentarily. Finally she said, “I’d better change.”

“Nah, you’re fine. Folsom isn’t any fancier than your shorts. Let’s just do it. You won’t be out longer than you’re comfortable.”

“Dad…?”

“This is a good idea, Brie. Go out for a while. Have lunch, a glass of wine. I’ll be right here when you get home.”

Mike got her into the car and started to drive. Brie was predictably quiet, which was what he expected. “You might be stressed for a little while, but I think it’ll ease up,” he said. Another few minutes of quiet reigned in the car. “We internalize when we’ve had a trauma. Grow very quiet, very private with feelings.” Again, no conversation. She looked straight ahead, tensely, holding the shoulder strap with one hand, her other crossed protectively over her belly.

“I was the fourth of eight children and had three older brothers,” Mike said as they began to drive into the foothills of the Sierras. “By the time I went to kindergarten, I had three younger sisters as well, so my mother, she was very busy. A lot of old-world traditions and values in my house—my father had trouble keeping us all fed, yet he still thought he had the world by the balls with all those sons, and I’m sure he wanted more. But it was a loud and crazy house, and when I went to school for the first time, my English wasn’t so good—we spoke only Spanish and some very bad English in my home, in my neighborhood. And although my father is successful now, at that time we were considered poor.” He glanced over at her briefly. “I got beaten up by some bigger kids my first week in school. I had bruises on my face and other places, but I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened.” He concentrated on the road. “Not even my brothers, who offered to add to the bruises if I didn’t tell them who had done it and why. I didn’t talk at all for a couple of months.”

She turned her head toward him, looking at him. He met her eyes. “From working with kids who were victims of abuse, I learned that’s not unusual. To go silent like that. I also learned it’s all right to get your bearings before you start talking.”

“What made you talk?” she asked.

He chuckled to himself. “I don’t know if I remember this correctly, but I think my mother sat me at the kitchen table, alone, and said, ‘We have to talk about what’s happened to you, Miguel. I can’t let you go back to that school until I know.’ Something like that. It was the not being allowed to go back, even though I was afraid of getting beaten up again, that made me more ashamed of those boys thinking I was a coward. Empty-headed machismo even then.” He laughed.

“Did your mother tell the authorities?” she asked.

“No.” He laughed again. “She told my brothers. She said, ‘If he comes home with one bruise, I will beat you and then your father will beat you.’”

“Well, that’s pretty horrible,” Brie said.

“Old World. Tradition.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, Brie. There were a lot more threats than there were beatings. I don’t remember beatings. My father whipped us across the bottom with his belt, but never injured anyone. For my mother, it was the wooden spoon. Not your pansy gringo wooden spoon, but a spoon as long as her arm. Christ, if the belt was unbuckled or the spoon plucked off the shelf, we ran like holy hell. The next generation of Valenzuelas has given up that form of child raising. By the way, it’s not Mexican by genesis—it’s that generation. It was not against the law to beat your child if he misbehaved.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, “Did you marry Hispanic women?”

He looked at her curiously. “I did,” he said. “Both times. Well, mixed Mexican.”

“You’re drawn to that culture…. Very strongly drawn…”

“I love the traditions of my family, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the marriages. I dated a lot of women who weren’t Hispanic. My marriages were brief failures of my youth.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the first time I was too young, and so was she. I was in the Marines, and she worked for my father. I wrote to her, married her while home on leave, returned after my tour of duty to find she was interested in another young man. I could have been outraged, but the truth is—I wasn’t faithful either. I was married and divorced by the time I was twenty-one. My mother was completely ashamed of me.”

“And the second wife?”

“Just a few years later. An employee at LAPD. A dispatcher.” He chuckled. “Time-honored tradition—cops and dispatchers. It lasted six months. My mother has completely lost hope in me.”

“I guess you didn’t cling to all the traditions….”

“You know what I miss about my family’s traditions? My mother’s cooking, my father’s skills and ingenuity. My mother and father did most of their cooking for large tribes on the patio—on the grill and in huge pots over slow burners. Mole, the old family recipe, tamales wrapped in banana leaves, enchiladas, carne asada. My mother’s salsa and guacamole would make you pass out, it’s so good. She makes a fish with sliced olives that’s amazing. Her shrimp in tomatoes, avocado and Tapatío is astonishing.”

“Tapatío?”

“Hot sauce. Pretty hot hot sauce. And my father could do anything—he built a room on our house, a gazebo in the yard, poured concrete, put a wall around the yard, rewired the house, built a freestanding garage—and I’m sure he did all that without building permits, but I had the sense never to ask. And the landscaping was incredible. That was his business, landscaping. He started out trimming hedges and mowing lawns, but later he started his own little business. It’s now a pretty good sized business with a lot of corporate clients. He has a million relatives and sons—he never runs out of employees. My father was an immigrant, but he didn’t have to naturalize. My mother is a first-generation American, born in Los Angeles—marriage to her validated him. But interestingly, she is the one to uphold the old traditions in our family. He wanted to acclimate himself to the U.S. quickly, so he could get about the business of making that fortune poor, hungry Mexican boys dream about. And he did, though he worked damn hard to do it.” He pulled into the town of Folsom, found a place to park and went around to Brie’s side to open her door.

“Tell me about your growing up,” he said.

“Not nearly as interesting as yours,” she said.

“Let me be the judge,” he said, taking her elbow and walking her across the street toward a gift shop.

As he maneuvered her through shops, galleries, antique stores and bakeries, she told him about life with three much older sisters who babied her, and Jack who fussed over her till she was about six, then again when he was home on leave. Her household didn’t sound terribly different from his, except that her mother didn’t cook outside, use oversize cooking pots and implements, and her father was a whiz at numbers and investing, not building or landscaping. Otherwise, their childhoods were similar—large families filled with noise and laughter, loyalty and blistering sibling fights. “The girls fought like animals,” she said. “They never fought with me—I was the baby. And Jack was threatened with certain death if he ever struck a girl, so they went after him with a vengeance, knowing he was helpless.”

“Any chance there’s a video of that somewhere?” he asked, laughing.

“If there was, Jack would have it destroyed by now. They were terrible to him. It’s amazing he loves them now. Of course, he had his revenge in small ways. He played tricks on them constantly—but to his credit, he never fought them physically. Fought back, I should say. Until he returned from his first hitch in the Marines, I believe he wished them dead.”

Mike stopped walking outside a corner pub and looked at his watch. “I’ll bet you’re getting hungry.”

“There’s a Mexican place down the street,” she said.

“Nah, there’s not a Mexican restaurant in the world that can satisfy me now. I’m a mama’s boy. How about a hamburger?” he asked.

She smiled. “Sure. This has been easier than I expected.”

“We’re taking it nice and slow and you’ve been distracted by conversation,” he said.

“That sounds so professional,” she commented, entering the pub. “And here I thought you were having fun.”