Free Shelter Us: A Novel by Laura Nicole Diamond

mom’s accident. His wholeness drew me to him. Sitting here now, I feel a remnant of how it felt to be brought into his glow. For one beautiful moment, I remember what it was like to be us.

17
    T he light the next morning is not kind to me. The mirror that last night gifted me radiance now shows something closer to the truth: fields of wrinkles frame my eyes, lines criss-cross over brown spots. Gone are my rouged cheeks and pink lips. I look away from the mirror and out the window at the morning sky.
    Robert has left for work already, and I’m coaxing Izzy to finish dressing so we won’t be too late to Oliver’s school.
    The doorbell rings.
    “Coming,” I hear Oliver shout, accompanied by the staccato of his feet pounding a path to the front door. Before I am even downstairs, I hear a man’s voice speaking to him.
    “Hello!” I call out, hurrying to the front door. “Oliver, I’ve told you never to open the door to strangers.”
    “It’s not a stranger,” the man says. “It’s me.”
    My father stands on my doorstep.
    My eyes open wide in shock. He is supposed to be across a continent and an ocean from here. He holds a light-gray trench coat in one hand and in the other a gift bag that says LAX D UTY Free. His hair is grayer than I remember.
    I recover and say, “Oliver, this is Grandpa David. The one who sends you birthday cards from Italy. Remember?”
    “Oh, yeah . . .” he pretends.
    “Hi there, Oliver,” my father says to him with a chastened smile.
    “I guess you
are
a stranger,” I say, putting my hand on Oliver.
    “Can I come in?”
    I look him over. How would I explain to my kids not letting my own father into my house? Better to let him try to explain where the hell he’s been. I step aside and let him in.
    Growing up, I felt as though my story was a fairy tale. Good things came easy. Evidence that fate was kind was everywhere, in the most fundamental things. My parents’ meeting, for example. My mom could have lived her life in the small Guatemalan village where she was born, thousands of miles from my father’s working-class Jewish family in LA. But Bibi’s march north and her determination to send her daughter to college changed all that. “Love at first sight in the library,” my parents always said. When I was born, Bibi helped take care of all of us. I was the center of the universe to three parents.
    My lucky streak ended the day before my senior year of high school started. My parents were celebrating their anniversary with their annual weekend in Santa Barbara. They loved to walk on the beach, browse in art galleries, eat at their favorite restaurant on State Street. They took pictures of each other on the carousel. They saw the zoo’s crooked-necked giraffe.
    I imagine that they held hands as they drove home Sunday night, my dad at the wheel, my mother gazing at the moonlight reflecting on the Pacific. Maybe she dozed as they glided south along the Pacific Coast Highway. Or maybe her mind went to meeting my father, their wedding, my birth. Maybe she thought of Mother’s Day cards, which she kept in a box in her closet; of ballet recitals, tutus, and sagging pink tights. Maybe she thought about the coming year, my last at home before college. Such thoughts might have carried her well into Malibu, where perhaps she dozed off again, where my father strained to keep his eyes open, where he considered stopping for coffee and stretching his legs but didn’t because they both wanted to get home. Maybe she was sleeping when my father’s eyes closed and he noddedoff on a curve in the highway, failed to pull the steering wheel left the few degrees necessary to stay on course, and headed off the embankment and onto the rocky stretch of shore below. If only the car hadn’t rolled on its right side, she might have walked away like my father did, with a broken rib and some cuts on his face. If only one of them had said, “We’re tired; let’s stop.” If only they’d left Santa