Stranger Son Read online

  STRANGER SON

  Book Three of the

  Bridge Daughter Cycle

  Jim Nelson

  Copyediting: Beth at bzhercules.com

  Cover: The Cover Collection at thecovercollection.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Copyright © 2020 Jim Nelson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-0-9904802-5-9

  The Bridge Daughter Cycle

  Bridge Daughter

  Hagar's Mother

  Stranger Son

  Other books by Jim Nelson

  Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People

  A Concordance of One’s Life

  Everywhere Man

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Seventy

  About the Author

  “These huge highways form a kind of fifty-first state of their own, a state whose flower is the deadly nightshade and whose state bird is the vulture."

  — William R. Maples

  One

  She was not a woman who'd slipped between the cracks, as they say, but rather a woman who'd lived a life within California's many fissures. She roomed on cots and hideaway beds and sofa, taking shelter wherever she could find it, with a backpack slung over her shoulders and a pair of shower sandals dangling from one of the pack's utility hooks. This day, she wore a loose black concert T-shirt and leather sandals with no socks and faded blue jeans with white feathery rips across the knees. A butter-yellow sunflower patch was sewn in the place where the back left pocket had been torn away. Although dressed like she was fresh and nineteen and new in town, her crow's feet and bony fingers and streaks of gray in her hair made the impression of a woman twenty years older vainly attempting to appear teenaged. In truth, her age was somewhere in the middle.

  At the bus depot, the county express rumbled to a halt. The bus's pleated folding doors jerked open. The woman emerged with her backpack slung over her shoulders. She peered up at the bare Southern California sun and pulled on an old royal-blue Dodgers cap, tugging the brim low across her eyes. The sun seemed different here. Even after living in Southern California for over ten years, she'd never grown used to its sunshine. She missed the gentler sunlight and cooler clime of her Bay Area upbringing. She missed her mother and her sister. She missed the easier times growing up carefree in a suburban neighborhood of shade trees and wide streets and grassy parks for running around aimlessly. Twenty years ago, the world was cooler. Time unspooled at a more leisurely pace.

  The bus depot was built like a king-sized filling station. Rows upon rows of cement islands for buses to parallel park lined the lot. Walking across it, she found herself lightly inebriated with diesel fumes and sunshine. The interior of the depot's low, flat ticketing building was fluorescent and sickeningly cold from air-conditioning. Lobby benches were occupied by families with bags piled at their feet and on seats around them. The bready aroma of deep-fryers cackling led the woman to the fast-food counter in the rear corner. Its menu indicated it served primarily hamburgers, French fries, and canned soda. The menu's prices told her she couldn't afford what they offered.

  The woman entered the bathroom, urinated, and freshened up at the sink. She splashed warm water across her face and patted it against the back of her neck. The bathroom's hand dryer was out of order, so she used a towel she kept in her backpack. She brushed her teeth and checked her hair before donning the baseball cap. She was not trying to impress anyone, she just wanted to make sure she was presentable. It was something she'd learned from living day-to-day in government facilities, halfway houses, and charity halls: In the daily scramble of seeking out meals and a cot to sleep on, don't forget to check on yourself now and then. This was one precept she followed to avoid slipping between the cracks.

  Nothing in this part of Torrance distinguished it from the other towns and cities she'd seen in Southern California. She walked sixteen blocks across the city center. The county bus system did not offer bus transfers for Torrance's local lines. Although she had the cash for city bus fare, she decided to save it in case she wasn't up for walking back to the depot that afternoon.

  By the time she reached her destination, it was approaching eighty degrees with clear skies. She was sweating and feeling grimy and ripe. The time she spent in the depot bathroom freshening up now seemed a waste of time. She entered a 7-11, badgered the clerk for the restroom key, and once again washed her face and neck in an attempt to return to a state of presentable. She was tired and in need of a nap, even though it was only eleven thirty in the morning. She was twenty-nine and had less than a year to live. She was born a bridge daughter and now was a Hagar. This woman's name was Ruby Driscoll.

  Two

  Kokoro Independent Living was a village of single-story duplexes laid out as two crescent moons on the perimeter of a nine-hole golf course. Narrow sidewalk trails ran between all the units. Signs indicated guests were to check in with the main office. The young overly-tan man behind the desk confirmed Ruby was expected. He escorted her through the village.

  "Did you have any trouble finding us?" he asked her.

  "No," she said.

  "No trouble with parking?"

  "I walked," she said.

  He looked at her as though she had started speaking in Martian. No one "walks" in Los Angeles county. People here drive the interstate to a city park, where they can then take a "walk." He appeared about to ask a follow-up question but thought twice and said nothing.

  Ruby noticed each duplex was named rather than numbered. She assumed the names were all Japanese. At one named Rozu, he pressed the door buzzer and stepped back. He held a clipboard before his groin with both hands. There
was an awkward pause as they waited.

  "Are you a friend of Hanna?" he asked.

  Ruby realized he was peeking at her backpack. She unslung it and saw she'd left the zipper open after cleaning up in the 7-11 restroom. She kept a toiletries kit in her backpack, and years earlier, she'd drawn a Hagar's Urn symbol onto its side with a thick black marker. The symbol was hard to miss: A curvy silhouette of a water jug stylized to resemble the kind of pottery that would have been common in the Middle East thousands of years earlier. Oversized elephant-ear handles protruded from both sides. Ruby pushed the kit down into the pack and zipped up the bag.

  "I'm a friend too," the young man said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  "Is that so."

  There was a time when Hagars like Ruby were executed. There was a time when Hagars were locked up for the remainder of their stunted lifespans. In the past ten years, improbably, it became hip in America to be sympathetic to Hagars—to be a Friend of Hanna. Now it was fashionable for Hollywood celebrities to be seen mingling with Hagars or raising money for a Hagar assistance fund. Hagars had even become minor celebrities on the social networks. Acne-faced suburban teenagers were tattooing Hagar's Urn on their arms and shoulders and butt cheeks.

  The sensation Ruby felt when facing someone like this young man was revulsion. What was virtue signaling for him was a constant burden of her day-to-day life. He thought clicking a mouse button made him a Friend of Hanna. Had he ever ridden a bus before? Had he ever had no choice otherwise?

  The awkward moment was terminated when the door to the residence opened. An elderly woman with a soft smile and inviting eyes welcomed her. "Yes?" she asked.

  "I'm Ruby." She stepped forward with one hand out. "Are you Azami?"

  "Azami Hashimoto." She took Ruby's extended hand and pulled her inside. "Thank you, Michael," she said to the young man, who turned and left with a small wave and a smile.

  Azami was a petite older woman with a smooth face and frail hands and cat's-eye glasses. Leading Ruby by the hand into the abode, Azami said, "I was so surprised to get your email. It's been so many years, I sometimes have wondered what happened to your family."

  The grandmotherly familiarity was comforting. "You were married to Richard?" Ruby asked.

  "Richard and I lived together for thirteen years," Azami said. "Sit, sit."

  Ruby removed the weight of the backpack and let it slide to the carpeted floor. The residence was cool, not ice-cold like the bus depot, and all the interior lights were off, with only indirect sunlight from the windows for illumination. Through the sliding glass patio door, the rolling hillocks of the golf course were like swells on a green ocean.

  The rooms were not decorated in the gaudy chintz and kitsch of most grandmothers’ homes. Ruby wasn't even sure if Azami was a grandmother; she and Richard never had children. Rather, the duplex was sparsely decorated with personal effects. Fresh flowers in vases stood on the dining table and a bookshelf. Museum prints of expressionist paintings hung on the walls. The adjoining kitchen seemed rather oversized for the diminutive woman sitting before Ruby.

  "You live here alone?" Ruby asked off-handedly. A tray of iced tea and triangle sandwiches was waiting on the coffee table between them. Ruby wondered if Azami had company often.

  "Oh, no, it's me and two other gals," Azami said. "They're across the street at the Moskowitz Center. Today's jazz music day."

  "I don't want to take too much of your time—"

  "Tell me about Hanna." Azami scooted forward to narrow the distance between them. "I so want to know what happened to her."

  Ruby had not eaten that morning. The Beersheba House she bunked at the night before did not offer meals, only a communal kitchen to cook in, and Ruby did not bring any food to prepare. A faint sense of propriety, passed on long ago from her mother, told her she should not reach for a sandwich until it's been offered.

  "Hanna?" Ruby said. "I haven't seen her since she was sentenced."

  "Sentenced?" Azami said with a start. "You mean, to prison?"

  "Well, yeah," Ruby said. "Because of me." She felt the weight of the backpack on her shoulders again, although it was on the carpet at her feet.

  Azami stared back with a blank, confused expression. "Oh!" she said with a start. "I wasn't speaking of your mother. I meant her bridge mother."

  Of course—Azami and Richard had known the first Hanna, the bridge daughter born pregnant. Ruby's grandmother had raised bridge daughter Hanna in a somewhat controversial way, teaching her how to read and write and handle money, which was viewed as somewhere between distasteful and scandalous in the 1970s and 80s. Bridge daughters were supposed to remain obedient and deferential, and above all quiet, speaking only when spoken to. The child she bore was her genetic similar, a girl also named Hanna who looked almost identical to her. This second Hanna was Ruby's mother.

  "Oh, that Hanna," Ruby said with an exasperated release of air. The bridge daughter was the Hanna everyone wanted to know more about. Friends of Hanna. Hanna Laws. No one ever asked about Ruby's mother, rotting away in a state prison. "Where to begin," Ruby said with a trace of sarcasm. She preferred not to talk about the first Hanna at all. People had glamorized and martyrized her, all but losing sight of the realities of the life of a bridge daughter.

  "Hanna ran away before she gave birth," Azami prompted. "As I recall, she ran away twice. I always wondered why she returned to your family."

  Ruby couldn't wait. "Do you mind if I—?"

  "Oh—please." Azami took a salad plate from a stack on the tray and set it before Ruby. She selected a paper napkin from a plastic holder, folded it, and set it beside the plate.

  The sandwich was delicious. Azami had toasted the bread slices and dressed them with a little mustard and mayonnaise. The sandwich Ruby had selected was ham, nothing special about the cut, but nourishing and satisfying all the same. The iced tea was not sweetened. Ruby added two cubes from an open box of sugar and stirred them in with the long-handled spoon already in the glass. She took ravenous bites of the sandwich triangle. She did not realize how noisily she ate it. She did not notice Azami watching her eat with a mildly startled expression.

  "Hanna was a brave little bridge daughter," Ruby said between bites. "The Hanna movement kind of painted her in a different light. They made her powerless."

  "Powerless?" Azami said. "I've never seen such a courageous little girl in my life. You don't know how many of my girlfriends I've told, 'I knew Hanna. The Hanna.'" Azami, so far with an unmitigated sunny disposition, now soured. "What's so humorous about that?"

  "Sorry," Ruby said, trying to force down her grin. "I don't know how many people I've met who claimed they 'knew' Hanna. I mean, I know you did. You certainly knew her."

  "I did," Azami asserted. "I think it's beautiful that people want to learn about her and what she went through."

  Ruby slapped bread crumbs from her hands. She leaned down, unzipped her backpack, and dug through the rolled-up clothes and towels. She came up with several sheets of mismatched paper folded in half inside a sealed plastic freezer bag. She searched through them for one page in particular.

  "When I was a little girl," Ruby said, "I discovered some old papers in my grandmother's house. They were about Richard. Uncle Rick."

  "Your grandmother called him Ritchie," Azami said. "She was the only one who could call him that."

  "My grandmother told everyone Rick died of a heart attack."

  "I know," Azami said. "I didn't appreciate it."

  There was more to that than Azami was letting on. "Did you not get along with my grandmother?"

  Azami hesitated to answer. She shook her head once, slight but firm: No.

  "So you know Rick…"

  "Took his own life," Azami said. "Yes. He was a…self-destructive person. That's why I left him after thirteen years. Thirteen difficult years, they were. He was a very funny man and a very passionate man, but he could not find a way to love himself, and that meant he had no room to love me." She add
ed, "I wouldn't normally tell any of your family these things, but so much time has passed…" She forced a smile. "Your message sounded like you wanted some answers. You deserve those answers. At least, I'll answer them as best as I can. I'm a little surprised you found me, though. I've not talked with anyone from your family in years."

  Ruby handed Azami one of the sheets of paper from the freezer bag, a photostat creased and wrinkled from age and repeated folding. "After Hanna gave birth to my mother, they found a little notebook she'd kept. It's a strange book." Ruby held up the other sheets of paper for Azami to read. "I copied every page. The notebook is a list of a thousand names. Well, not exactly a thousand. There's a thousand numbered lines, each with a name next to it. Sometimes the name is repeated over several lines, or repeated in several places throughout the book. But there's no indication what the list is for. Except maybe for this." She held the first page closer to Azami. Centered at the top of page, in bold letters, was the word Tsuru. "Tee-soo-ruh," Ruby attempted.

  "Tsuru," Azami said. "It's Japanese for crane." She touched the copied letters with the tips of her fingers. She looked up at Ruby with bewilderment. "This is me," she said, pointing down the list.

  "Right under Uncle Rick's name," Ruby said. The line read Aunt Azami.

  "Is that why you thought we were married? It was only a term of affection." She ran the tips of her fingers down the sheet. "Did Hanna cross out all the names in her book?"

  "I don't know why she did it," Ruby said. "Neither does my mother. My grandmother refused to talk about her bridge daughter. Just like she refused to talk about Rick's death."

  "Refused?"

  "My grandmother died years ago," Ruby said.

  "I'm sorry to hear it," Azami said with an honesty Ruby appreciated. "And your grandfather?"

  Ruby shook her head.

  "I'm sorry to hear that as well."

  "The only name not crossed out is her own." Ruby showed a photostat of the last page of the notebook. The thousandth numbered line read: Hanna.