with some family pictures, a few black and white that hearkened back to the forties or so. I could see a brick fireplace in the living room and a sandstone hearth.
Kate came back alone. “He just fell asleep in his old room,” she said. “Was he very drunk?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Please, come sit a moment.”
Kate Richess looked in her late fifties. She had short brown hair with gray streaks, and wore a voluminous, orange-flowered muumuu above blue slippers. Her face had a kind of dignity. Immediately I thought she was a straight shooter, and one who expected you to be the same. In that way she reminded me of my own mom.
She had me sit in a recliner in her living room. I saw a couple of framed photos on the mantel. One was of a large kid in a football uniform. I assumed it was Carl. There was another one of a woman in a numbered jersey of blue and white.
She saw me looking at it. “I was on the Roller Derby circuit for a while,” she said.
“No kidding,” I said. “My mom used to watch that in Florida.”
“She a fan?”
“Was. She passed away.”
“I’m sorry. How long’s it been?”
“I was fifteen,” I said.
“That’s hard,” she said. Her eyes were sympathetic, inviting me to talk about it if I wanted to. That we had come to this level of intimacy so quickly told me a lot about Kate Richess. She was the kind of woman who opened her arms to the world, and sometimes got slapped for it. But would do it again if she thought you were hurting.
What she didn’t know, and what I barely knew at the time, was that I was incapable of talking about my mom’s death. That event was hidden away behind a locked door in a dark corner of my mind.
My dad’s death was different. That was vivid to me. Maybe because I didn’t see it, and my imagination took over. He died in the line of duty as a Miami cop. I was ten and remember all the details from the finding out, to the screaming into my pillow until I wore out and fell asleep, to the fear of the unknown, the wondering how I’d ever get along in life without him.
All those things I could see and hear, usually without willing it. Anything could set the visuals in motion. A black-and-white driving by. A cop movie trailer. Anything about cops, in fact. Or frightened boys, or funeral processions through city streets. Anything like that and then there they’d be—the pictures of Dad leaving my mom and me, spilled out all over my brain’s landscape like a batch of color photos dropped from a plane.
Not so with Mom’s death. All I had there were fuzzy images of hospital rooms and IVs and neighbors paying visits. And that’s all I ever wanted to see.
It doesn’t take a psych to know it was a defense, that at fifteen I wanted to push it all aside. I never talked about my mom dying to anybody. The family I went to live with after—my friend Vincent’s—wasn’t the warm, open kind, so it never came up.
Now, for some reason, with Kate I felt the key in the lock of that closed door starting to turn. I heard a click, and stopped it right there by saying, “I’m impressed. Roller Derby’s not for wimps.”
She smiled.
“Ever miss it?” I said.
“Sometimes I hear the sound of skates in my head. But then I remember I have two blown-out knees and my right shoulder will never work like it used to. Still, I was one great blocker in my time.”
“If you ever want to go down to Hi-Fi, catch a match, let me know.” Hi-Fi is Filipinotown, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. A warehouse down there has become the center of a resurgent Roller Derby circuit in L.A.
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “The girls are a little different these days. Names like Eva Destruction and Broadzilla and Tara Armov. They’re more into hurting each other than good theater.”
“A little more punk than back in the day?”
“Not to say that in my prime I couldn’t have taken one of these little wisps out. That was always fun. But fun doesn’t last, and you get old.” She sighed. “I gave it up when I got pregnant with Carl. He needed me because I’m all he has. Me and his brother. His father was not exactly present. He left for good when Carl was seven.”