The Inventor

My bedroom abutted the lush, tangled backyard, which had had grass once but had been overtaken by errant ice plant and other, native coastal scrub and weeds. A cypress stood untrimmed in the corner of the yard and ivy crawled up the side of a dead oak that stood tall and stately and truncated just at the level where the first branches might have begun. The grass was tall and impassible, and the overall state of the yard made me uncomfortable. It was a mess to be put into order, like the living room and the bathroom and the hall, but yard work presented a challenge that cleaning the house did not.

I asked Russell one day why he didn't do anything with the backyard. He shrugged and said it was a rental house. "And anyway," he said, "look out the window sometime, and tell me if you think what you see would feel quite as comfortable in a yard with a manicured lawn and trimmed oleander."

I didn't think much about what he meant until an evening two or three days into March when I heard a scratching sound outside my window and sat up in bed to see a spotted skunk digging for slugs by the waning moon. The backyard wildlife had been an idle preoccupation that I didn't think much about unless it was bedtime, and I could spend an hour on my knees on the bed, leaning on the windowsill and waiting for a barn owl or a raccoon to visit in the night.

When I presented my first discovery, he told me about ecosystems, and the next time we went to the beach, he went on about it some more. The whales and dolphins and sea lions out there in the ocean fed on the fish, check out the pelicans, Hazel, and I learned more about mercury and sand and seaweed than I thought there was to know. He pulled a drawer out of his desk and showed me a sheet of kelp forest stamps. It was a self-contained ecosystem, and while his backyard was only a tiny patch of Daly City, it was the home or on the route of several different kinds of native species. "If you want to do anything to it," he said, "pull up that ice plant. It's invasive. It was planted here a hundred and fifty years ago to keep the cliffs from falling into the sea, and it's taken over everything." Like cottontails and starlings and house cats and angry-looking house sparrows. I was not so much interested in the diversity of the animal life, but the idea that those animals could make a living on slugs and forage was fascinating. I wondered what it would be like to pry mussels from a rock with a screwdriver for your lunch or dive for seaweed and abalone in the cold Pacific ocean.

"You have to stop lying to him," Bonnie said.

We sat under cover of the hall outside the gym with our lunches, watching the rain pour over the parking lot outside. I was feeling somewhat attacked. Over the weekend I had begun to justify my lies, at least to myself, and reasoned that it wouldn't matter. Russell wouldn't find out anyway - it's not like my mother was going to come and get me. "If I could, I would. You know, I told him that first lie before he was anything to me."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Somehow it had been more appealing - certainly, telling Russell my mother had died was less painful than the reality: She didn't want me. But I'm not sure I knew all that at the time, and I was certainly aware of my limited ability to explain it to Russell in a way he'd understand. "It doesn't matter. He's not going to find out anyway."

"What if you forget part of your story and he remembers it?"

"I never talk about it anyway."

"What if you get hurt and something happens and they identify you? And Russell finds out that your real name isn't even Hazel?"

"God," I said. "I don't want to think about it."

"Are you going to marry Mia?"

The morning was cold and cloudy, and I wasn't ready to be awake, but missing an outing with Russell wasn't worth a few hours of extra sleep. Seven o'clock had reared its ugly head and I dragged myself out from under the covers, pulled some clothes on and climbed into the car with him. We drove up 280 until it regurgitated us on a city street, and as we drove, the street turned into my former home. It was the first time I had been back to Ferry Park.

"What kind of question is that?" Russell said.

"I dunno. You seem to spend a lot of time with her." It came out sounding like a guilt trip, but it wasn't. I just wanted him to know that I liked spending time with him, too. "I thought you were maybe, like... getting serious or something."

He glanced down at me in an expression that world-wise adults so often seemed to reserve for children; had his lips been moving he might have commented on the charm of my naivete. What did I know about getting serious? As it turned out, not much: "I've known her for three months, Hazel. That's not long enough to get serious about anyone." He paused. "Or, I should say, that's not enough time for me to get serious about anyone."

"Three months is a long time," I said.

Russell's love life was progressing with fewer upsets than my own. I didn't see much of Mia, and I don't know if he took special care to keep her away or if things just turned out that way. He grew calmer and more content, and the little things I did didn't bother him so much when he'd spent an evening with her. I was violently jealous of Mia's effect on him, and uncomfortably aware of it. I wished a terrible car accident or a new lover on her with an emulsion of vindictiveness and guilt - guilt not for wanting Mia dead but for wanting to take her away from him. I began to worry that her presence was making me redundant. It played out too easily in my head, them getting serious, finding a house to move into together, and Russell sitting me down at the kitchen table to tell me firmly that there was no room for me in his life anymore, that he had made arrangements with the appropriate authorities to have me sent to a foster home. I ran through that scenario over and over until it was not just conjecture but inevitability, and tortured myself at night with it, before falling asleep in a pillow damp from scared tears.

I had to do something about it. I tried to be good and for the most part I succeeded. I kept the living room clean and did the dishes and tried to make the house nice enough and clean enough that all he'd have to do when he got home was make dinner, which he enjoyed doing anyway. I asked him for homework help and we had long conversations about his days in school and what good this or that had done him in real life. I tried to get good grades to show him just how much good he was doing me by letting me stay here. I paid attention in English and brought home insight on some of his favorite books. I think he liked that.

His birthday was on March 4th, and that afforded me the perfect opportunity to do something to make him feel special. I had little enough money, but a few hungry lunches at school and I had enough to buy him a cake (I wouldn't dare try to make one on my own); the real problem was what to do about a gift. I consulted Bonnie.

What happened with Oliver and me on Saturday evening was not as I had represented it to Russell, but that was hardly my fault. In the heat of the moment, suffering from mental convulsions that rocked me back and forth between New Year's Eve and the present, where the picture on the big screen wasn't much better, I had risen from my seat, stumbled into the aisle in the flickering dimness of the theater and descended the stairs toward the exit, while Oliver spared me barely a glance, believing me to be under the influence of either a troubling stomach problem or an overwhelming need for confections.

I found out about this on Monday morning, when we met by our lockers and I tried to ignore him. I didn't know whether to feel angry or humiliated, and I settled for a combination of the two, shooting him a look that I fancied could have caused paint to coil in fear, and then looking away with disappointment. Oliver failed to catch the various meanings I was trying to communicate.

"Where the fuck did you go on Saturday?" he said. It was like having Russell yell at me, only with less teeth. He sounded more wounded than angry. "You just left."

Hazel slips in the door while I am hand-washing dishes in the sink, so quietly that I almost miss her. I feel the door close in its frame and then the air pressure changes. When I turn she has locked the door and is heading down the hall, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. It is far too early for her to be home.

"Hazel?" Something is wrong. Something is always wrong. I turn off the water, dry my hands and follow her into her bedroom. She lies on the bed, facing the wall, holding her pillow in a fierce hug that whitens her knuckles. I sit down next to her. I am still holding the towel. "What happened to your date?"

I was a liar in several respects, and I lied to Bonnie, too. I lied by omission to Russell, but told him the absolute truth on matters of emotion; Bonnie got the facts, but as far as she was concerned, it had had little impact on me. She was full of advice on all things practical and sought to make drama out of everything. Everything had either a meaning or a terrible consequence, and in the latter case, I was left to play devil's advocate to balance the doomsday scenarios she came up with. "He's spending an awful lot of time with Mia lately," she'd observe, and I'd shrug and say, "Well, she's his girlfriend, Bonnie," and then we'd argue about whether or not I qualified as his daughter. (She thought sort of; I merely wished.)

For the last fifteen years I have entertained thoughts of raising my daughter. I can't say I outright desired to do so, but once you have a kid you think about these things - how old she'd be now, what you'd be doing with her. Emily at two, at five, at ten, at fifteen... I used to go to the grocery store and see some child writhing around on the floor and screaming, only to be offered a Snickers bar for his trouble and I'd think, I could be a better parent than that. I imagined teaching a five-year-old to ride a bicycle, or building a model of a California mission with my fourth-grader, lecturing on economics when I went with my thirteen-year-old to open her first bank account.

The reality is far different.

I was grounded for a week.

Russell told me after Mia left late Wednesday night. No television. I was to come straight home after school, and I had better be there when he called the house. Outwardly, I was contrite, but it was only with much effort that I was able to hide the inward spread of joy that threatened to spill over into a smile. Being grounded was a form of absolution, certainly, but to me it was another sign that I was being absorbed into Russell's house like the cat, like more furniture, like his pots and pans. He might as well have told me that he was so upset that he wasn't letting me leave ever.

Bonnie wasn't convinced. "But you're not even his kid! Who the hell does he think he is?"

I should say that Bonnie was not to blame. Her only crime was her infectious excitement; later it would be made clear to me that she saw me as an abstract, my unbelievable story taking place so far out of the bounds of her limited suburban existence that I might as well have been a character in a book. She saw no consequence in her advice and I drank up the attention. Bonnie was my adoring fan, my follower, the reader who can't put the book down, and she was guilty only of pushing me forward, of revealing more of the story. I was the one who acted - all she did was give me the idea.

I didn't get around to snooping until Wednesday afternoon. It took me until Tuesday night to get used to the idea of violating Russell's privacy, and another half a day to steel myself against the blow-up that should occur if I was caught. I had been the target of two barely-provoked verbal attacks, and I hated to think what he would do or say if he caught me at something that was so far out of the way of acceptable that even I ought to know better. But Bonnie was right. I deserved to know about Emily and I deserved to know about Russell, and why against all reason he had taken me in and given me something of a home - naturally he forfeited his secrets when I walked in the door.