Текст книги "Lost Canyon"

Автор книги: Nina Revoyr

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Epilogue

One Year Later

The scholarship presentation was set to start in half an hour, but Gwen couldn’t keep her eyes off the sky. The clouds were gorgeous, stretched thinly across the top of the mountains. When she’d arrived at the park at six thirty that morning, they were lit pink on the bottoms, and that—along with the balloons on the fences, the neat rows of white chairs, the stage that was already draped with colorful banners—had convinced her it would be a lovely day. Now, at nine thirty, families were already lining up outside the rope barrier. There were a few more signs to put up, certificates to get in order, the AV system to check. She would be introducing all the kids today—thirty of her students who’d just graduated from high school and were headed off to college in the fall.

“Are you reserving seats for the graduates?” Todd asked.

“Yes, the first two rows.”

“Okay.” He stretched masking tape between the first and second rows, and set Reserved cards on each of the chairs.

Gwen smiled. It was still strange to see Todd in a button-down shirt and tie, but she was getting used to it. He had been volunteering for much of the last year—helping review contracts, sponsoring a field trip, coming to talk to a group of youth on Career Day. His firm had made a donation to provide all the graduates with $2,500 scholarships, and he was here to see them presented. At first Gwen had been unsure about his interest in helping—and some of her colleagues, like Devon, had been downright resistant—but now she was glad he was there. He seemed genuinely pleased to be involved, and it probably gave him something to do—which was especially important since he and his wife had separated.

By nine forty-five, over a hundred people were waiting. Some of Gwen’s colleagues monitored the line but all the families were patient—maybe it was pride on behalf of the students; maybe it was the pleasure of being outdoors on such a beautiful morning. The park—which used to be so overrun by gangs that people avoided it even in daylight—had been completely redone the previous year, and had recently reopened with new baseball fields, a soccer field, playgrounds and pools, exercise stations for the runners who circled the park, and vast amounts of grassy, tree-lined, unstructured space, one area of which they were using for the day’s event. Watts had not had a space like this in all the years that Gwen had worked there, and for many more years before that. Arriving this morning, under that colorful sky, and seeing all the early-morning joggers and cyclists, Gwen had been filled with happiness, and pride.

At ten, Gwen’s colleagues unhooked one end of the barrier. Families streamed in and took their seats, and there was a chatty hubbub of excitement. Gwen noted happily that the Latino and African American families intermingled, did not sit in different sections. People were talking to one another, kids playing with kids, mothers laughing and comparing stories, men shaking hands and clapping each other on the back. These families had made sacrifices, she knew—creating quiet zones in overcrowded apartments so that their kids could do their homework; working multiple jobs; pushing school officials and social service agencies and churches and clinics to ensure their kids got what they needed. All of this even though most of them lacked formal educations themselves, and many had language barriers. Gwen moved among them and greeted the parents she knew, hugged the beaming kids. Ricardo Flores, who’d graduated from Jordan, was attending USC. Darius Colson, from Locke, would be attending Cal State Northridge. Katrina Johnson and Maria Villalobos from Alliance were going to UCLA, and Pedro and Juanita Gonzalez, twins from King-Drew Medical Magnet, would be going to UC Riverside. LeHenry Stevens, who’d grown up in Nickerson Gardens, had gotten a full ride to Stanford, and Charise Tolliver, from Jordan Downs, was going to Howard. Sylvia Morales, Lupita Gomez, and Dawn Stanton, the girls from Lincoln, were going to Berkeley, Cal State Long Beach, and UC San Diego. And Sandra Gutierrez, the girl she’d worried about so much, had received a scholarship to UC Santa Cruz.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Gutierrez, hugging Gwen tight. That was all she could manage through her tears. They had plenty to celebrate, Sandra and her mom, and fewer things to be scared of. Sandra’s stepfather was in prison now, and would be there for at least eight years.

Mixed in with the families were other guests—the principals from the various high schools that the students had come from, teachers, coaches, pastors, representatives from partner agencies; the deputy from the mayor’s office who’d come to present a proclamation from the city. In one of the back rows sat Oscar and Claudia, and Oscar’s daughter Lily; they’d come in and taken their seats, waving at Gwen across the crowd.

Finally everyone was assembled and Dr. Morrison, the head of Gwen’s agency, took the stage. She began with a short prayer, and then thanked everyone for attending. She congratulated all the graduates, and thanked Harrington & Fletcher, Todd’s law firm, for awarding the scholarships, as well as several of the corporate partners who had donated a “college care package”—school supplies, backpacks, gift certificates for books—for each of the graduates. She thanked God for imbuing the children and families with strength and determination, and for blessing them with such a beautiful day. Then she turned the mic over to Gwen.

When Gwen stepped to the podium, she gazed out at the audience—the proud faces of the students and their families. She looked past them at the rest of the park—the kids starting to gather for baseball; the booths at the farmer’s market; the two police cars stationed fifty yards beyond their event, unobtrusive but present, just in case.

“I want to tell each and every one of you how proud we are,” she began. Beside her, with another mic, her colleague Julio translated her words into Spanish. “You have succeeded despite facing challenges and barriers that others can’t even imagine. You’ve succeeded despite the assumptions of many people outside the community, and some inside too, that there’s no hope for the youth here in Watts.”

“Viva Watts!” someone yelled from the audience.

“That’s right!” agreed another.

“You will need every bit of your optimism, your hard work, your determination, your faith to keep on with your success as you enter this next stage of your lives,” Gwen continued. “But you’ve already shown that you have all those things. And let me tell you something: you have them because of where you grew up, not in spite of it. All the difficulties you’ve faced have made you stronger, more compassionate. They’ve made you who you are.”

She thanked the principals, the teachers, her coworkers, the families. And then, one by one, she called the students up and introduced them, announced which school they’d just graduated from and what college they’d be attending. When she called Sandra up, and then the three girls from Lincoln, she had to clench her fists to keep her voice from shaking. Dr. Morrison handed them each a certificate—and a check for $2,500. It wasn’t much—not enough to cover tuition or rent—but for many of them, it would pay for them to travel to campus. It would enable them to buy clothes, or a laptop, or a desk and chair, or glasses. Each student posed with Gwen and Dr. Morrison as a photographer took a picture. It was time-consuming, but the families couldn’t get enough—they erupted in cheers and applause for every student.

As Gwen spoke the words about experience and strength, she knew that they applied to her too. Before last summer she wouldn’t have been able to stand up and speak in front of a crowd. Before last summer she couldn’t have said these words and meant them. But since she’d returned from her trip to the Sierras, everything had taken on a different light. It hadn’t happened right away. For weeks she’d called the Forest Service every few days, hoping for word about Tracy. For months she’d checked and double-checked her windows and doors; she’d dreamt of A.J. and José and gunfire, and constantly thought there was someone behind her. But A.J. was dead, and none of their names had come out in the media. She carried the burden, as did Todd, of having taken a life, but it was a burden that was never made public. All that was reported—just like the rangers had promised—was that members of two rival groups, a white supremacist group and a faction of a Mexican drug cartel—had killed each other, and that law enforcement had eradicated their gardens. There was no mention of Gwen and the others at all.

Because of this, no one outside of Oscar and Todd were aware of what had happened. As far as her family and colleagues knew, they’d gotten lost and had to be helped out of the mountains. One of them, Tracy, had never come back; there had never been any word of her. She’d just vanished, and Gwen felt the loss of her, despite her lingering confusion, even anger. It was just like Tracy to disappear so that the story didn’t have to end. Maybe she was still in the mountains, outrunning threats, whether real or imagined. Maybe she was trying to settle a score with A.J.’s brother, or José’s men. Maybe she’d gotten out and gone somewhere else, come up with a new name and started over. Or maybe she’d gone deeper into the mountains to forge a new life, just like she’d said she wanted to do.

But Gwen suspected it was none of these, suspected her friend was gone; that she’d wandered off and fallen or hurt herself and hadn’t made it out. She was saddened by the reckless way that Tracy had handled her life—maybe if you courted danger the way she did, you could only beat it for so long. Tracy’s house stood unchanged, and Oscar said her family didn’t want to touch it, just in case she did come back. If it hadn’t been for Tracy’s disappearance, it would have been hard to believe their trip had really happened.

Once Gwen had recovered physically and gone back to work, the slightest things gave her pleasure—her banter with the receptionist, her first sessions with the next crop of kids in the new school year, even the damned boring management meetings that took up half of each Tuesday. She was grateful to be able to do these things, grateful to be alive. And after what she’d been through, she found that she wasn’t inclined to keep quiet anymore if she had an opinion. She proposed several adjustments to their programs and Dr. Morrison, after being surprised at her assertiveness, took her suggestions. It wasn’t long before she was promoted. Now she not only ran her own youth groups, she supervised all the other staff who ran groups too.

“You keep this up,” Dr. Morrison warned, “and you might be running this place someday.”

The promotion had led to a raise that made another change possible—six months before, with Oscar’s help, she’d bought a condo in Baldwin Hills. Yes, she’d needed to borrow some money from her mother and stepfather to cover the down payment, but she would pay this back as quickly as she could. She didn’t have much furniture yet, and there was nothing on the walls. But there was a decent-sized grassy area where Timber could run, ringed by a small garden of native plants. She couldn’t be happier about her condo-in-progress. She finally had a place of her own.

As the last of the students stepped off the stage, Gwen felt her eyes welling with tears. A year ago, her sense of purpose and faith had been wavering; she’d despaired over whether she could really make a difference. She didn’t feel that way anymore. Not every kid they helped was going to make it, she knew. But many of them did.

As she looked out at the boys—jostling and kidding with each other, accepting the hearty handshakes from men and cooing from the women—she thought for a moment of Robert. He’d been gone for two years now. She still grieved for him, but the pain was more manageable these days. She knew that he was still with her, and always would be. And the best way she could honor his life, she realized, was to fully live her own.

* * *

From his seat in the fifth row, Todd watched Gwen and smiled so much his face began to hurt. She looked lovely up there, and happy. It wasn’t just that she was wearing a bright, patterned dress and that her hair was flowing over her shoulders. Something exuded from her, a confidence and self-possession. He could see the other men checking her out, and felt pride and amusement. Gwen seemed oblivious to the attention; she didn’t even get why her colleague Devon had wanted to hike with her, and had gotten his hackles up when Todd appeared.

Todd was glad to be here today, glad to have something to do on a Saturday morning. Several months ago, Kelly had asked him to leave, and so now he was renting a one-bedroom condo off of Beverly Glen and getting used to being single again. Things had been tense when he returned from his trip—she knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. And she wasn’t pleased by the sudden crashing of their household by Timber—who was wild, and wrestled with leashes, nipped and herded the children; who jumped on tables with all four feet and ate straight off the dinner plates. But Todd couldn’t keep up the charade anymore. Things had changed. He had changed. And he was surprised by how much he’d been shaken up by Tracy’s disappearance. For all her gung-ho craziness, she’d brought something out in him, in all of them, and it was strange to think that her vibrancy, her life, might now be gone from the world.

Not that the separation from Kelly had been easy. Even though he knew it was over between them, it had still been a tough few months. He missed his wife, he missed what they once had been. And he missed his children terribly. Right now they were spending every Sunday with him and a couple of nights during the week; otherwise, the condo felt horribly empty. Dogs weren’t allowed in his complex, and Timber was most attached to Gwen anyway, so as soon as she had closed on her place with the yard, Timber joined her in Baldwin Hills. He made the best of the time he had with his kids and tried to keep things cordial with Kelly. He’d heard from a colleague that she was dating an heir to one of the city’s old oil families.

Because of the divorce and upcoming custody battle, it wasn’t practical to leave his job. He didn’t like it any better than he had before. But volunteering with Gwen’s agency had given him a new sense of purpose. Like today—although he didn’t admit it to Gwen, he’d been nervous about coming to Watts, to an event in an open-air venue that had apparently been a gang stronghold. Even this morning he’d felt exposed and self-conscious—he was the only person, including the cops, who wasn’t black or Latino. But the park had been surprisingly nice, and the event was clearly a success, with no hint of trouble. And as he saw the parents hugging and crying over their kids, the kids who were so thrilled just to have money for clothes, he felt both shame and pride. He had come to take so much for granted. He was impressed by the park too—he would never have believed there was such a pretty place in Watts. But there was beauty everywhere, he realized, everywhere around, if you just knew where to look.

* * *

From his spot in the last row, Oscar was smiling at Gwen too. She was doing well up there with her speaking, better than he would have imagined. Seeing her in her element, and driving through the surrounding neighborhoods to get to the park, he had a greater appreciation for what she did.

“She’s like to faint up there in this heat,” a mother said from the row in front of him.

“She’ll be all right,” Oscar told her. And he knew that she would be. She’d handled a hell of lot tougher than this.

Beside him, Lily was wiggling impatiently—just a little bit longer, he told her. On her other side sat Claudia. He’d seen a couple of the other men watching her and had felt not the angry possessiveness he might have a year ago, but pride. He knew that if they looked down at her hand, they’d see the simple diamond engagement ring. They were to be married at the end of summer. And then they’d start working on a brother or sister for Lily.

It had taken Oscar three weeks to fight off the infection from the bullet wound, another couple of months for the shoulder itself to heal. He’d undergone surgery to sew his shoulder together, and now it was fine, except for the dark raised scar the size of a cigar that bisected his lion tattoo, and the pain he sometimes felt when he lifted his arm. He’d even started working out again, although he didn’t go to SportZone—it was too strange being there, with Tracy gone. He hadn’t missed much in terms of work, since there wasn’t much to miss, but when he went back in the fall, he represented a few more buyers—including Gwen—before going to work for his uncle David. Now he spent his days visiting the same neighborhoods he had as a realtor. He’d downsized and simplified—traded the BMW in for a Kia, bought tidy, more casual clothes. Although there were aspects of the old job he missed, there were also things he gained—the satisfaction of working steadily and hard, and seeing tangible results. Getting a paycheck every other week. When they were done here, they were going shopping for a new sofa and table; before she moved in, before they were married, Claudia wanted to replace his bachelor belongings.

* * *

Gwen stepped down off the stage to receive a flurry of thank yous and hugs from the families. Oscar and Claudia approached, and she thanked them for coming. Todd, who’d reappeared, gave Lily a hug and congratulated Claudia on her engagement. He and Oscar shook hands and clapped each other wordlessly on the back.

After Oscar and Claudia left and the crowd dispersed, Todd helped with the cleanup, folding chairs and picking up fallen streamers and untaping signs from posts. When everything was in order, he came back, looking sweaty and a bit sunburned.

“So, now that the school year’s over, do you have any summer plans?” he asked.

“Actually,” said Gwen, “remember Ranger Montez? She called me a couple of weeks ago and invited me on a hike she’d leading up in Mineral King.”

“Oh really?”

“I think she feels bad about what happened last year,” Gwen said, blushing. “She said she wants to show me another side of the Sierras.”

“She didn’t ask Oscar and me if we wanted to see another side of the Sierras.” He smiled. Awkward as this was, he didn’t begrudge it. Sure, he’d wondered if there might be something between Gwen and him—despite their differences, despite his sadness about the end of his marriage. But they were good as friends too, and he’d be fine with that. She was meant to be in his life, no matter what.

Gwen smiled and looked away. What could she say? She wasn’t sure what Jessica’s invitation meant either, but she’d been glad for it. She had thought about the ranger often in the months she’d been back. She felt a bit nervous about going to the Sierras again, but this—a day hike, no camping out, in the company of a ranger—seemed like to good way to do it. And she would be happy to see Ranger Montez again, whatever it meant. Jessica was a good one.

So was Todd. She was aware of this as they stopped by the potluck reception that the parents had put on, and ate plates full of tamales and fried chicken, mac and cheese and chilaquiles, carnitas and cornbread, flan and bean pies. She watched him interact with the families—nodding and bowing respectfully; shaking the hands of the young scholars with gravity and tenderness. She and Todd were so different, and she was aware of that here more than anywhere else, where he looked so out of place. And yet they were connected, and she did not want that to change. She wondered, half-smiling, what would piss her mother off more—if she brought a white man home for Thanksgiving, or a woman. Neither of them would try to tell her what she couldn’t do. She would never let anyone tell her that again.

After they’d eaten, they walked across the park and back toward their cars. It was almost one o’clock now, and the park was full. On two baseball diamonds, Little League games were underway; boys and girls of about twelve years old wore crisp uniforms and new-looking gloves. The soccer field and basketball courts were teeming with kids. In one corner of the park, the farmer’s market was still open—dozens of booths were packed with fresh produce and fruit, home-baked goods, brought by farmers who’d driven in from the Central Valley. Beyond the farmer’s market was the playground, where children played on new swings, slides, and seesaws, and dug in sandboxes, while their mothers—and even some fathers—watched from the side. A few hearty souls were still jogging despite the midday heat, and a group of senior citizens were using the leg press machines. They passed a large stage and sound system set up for an afternoon concert; people of all ages were already beginning to gather.

“I had no idea this was here,” Todd said.

“These people have always been here. There just hasn’t been a place for them to come.”

Things weren’t perfect, Gwen knew, not by a long shot. Here in this oasis, with its fresh grass and new sports facilities and large shading trees, it was lively and safe—thanks to overdue county funding and community-minded—finally!—police and stubborn residents who demanded the right to enjoy their own neighborhood. But there were families in the housing project just across the street who were still afraid, because of gang boundaries, to come to the park. And in the other housing projects and other neighborhoods, just out of sight, the despair, drugs, and violence continued. Beyond this area of green, beyond the sight of the police, there was trouble still, trouble not easily fixed, trouble as old as the city itself.

But Gwen didn’t want to think about that now. She was proud of the kids whose success she’d been a part of, proud of the families, schools, and community that produced them. She felt comfortable in the presence of this man, who—whatever he was to her—did not question what she could do or who she could be. Tonight, she’d go for a jog with Timber around her new neighborhood. She’d come home and drink a glass of wine on her upstairs patio, and look out over the city she loved.

As they headed toward the edge of the park, past the trees, the mountains came back into view. There, in those mountains, she’d started to hike and first learned to trust her body. There, she was with Robert on what might have been the last happy day of his life.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” Todd said.

They both stopped and looked. Even from where they stood, they could see the folds of small canyons, the lines of a trail, the antennas on top of Mount Wilson. A few more clouds had drifted in over the range, and it was dappled now in shadow and light. She loved these mountains, despite everything—these, and the San Bernardinos to the east, and the grand, untamed Sierra. They would stay there at the edge of her city, her life, to return to whenever she needed.

“Yes, they are,” she answered. She smiled at Todd with an understanding that didn’t need to be spoken, and they turned and walked out of the park.