I can’t take any more. I say nothing, not even to Rene who is still absorbed in watching and I slip from the booth. Getting out of the restaurant is more of a hassle than getting into it had been. Someone must have put the word out that Jack is here. The sidewalk is packed with retro throwback sixties types, all waiting patiently their turn to see him, the voice of a generation. They would be happy if they only got to see him. I brush at my face and realize I’m crying and it doesn’t matter because I’m not with Jack so no one notices me.

I push through the bodies feeling small and inadequate and—unfortunately—mean. I’m used to working free of the crowds that sometimes spring around Jack unexpectedly like a flash fire and I am an expert at disappearing. Though not tonight. I was not invisible tonight. They’ll talk about tonight at Harry’s for a while. Perfectly wretched. I was perfectly wretched.

I lean against the car to wait and realize I am hyperventilating. I can’t feel my limbs, and I know that the car I lean against is damp but I can’t feel that either. Everything looks so strange, the near empty streets, the cluster of people outside the restaurant in the all-but-vacant strip mall, and the way the world looks beneath the bleak fluorescent light of the parking lot. I probably look strange, too.

I sink to the ground, angry with myself for the senseless drama I created tonight. I am not a dramatic girl. Everyone always says I’m sensible. I am not a mean girl. Everyone always says I’m good. But tonight I went postal over a cocktail.

I really hate that I’m crying. Time loses the feel of realness when you cry. Seconds can feel like minutes, minutes can feel like seconds, and it is hard to tell which because it is the cry that determines that. Sometimes after I cry I check my watch and I’m always surprised. Sometimes it’s only a few minutes, but it was a really bad cry that feels like forever. And other times its half a day, and it felt like nothing at all, like a dripping faucet, an irritating sound punctuating otherwise normal sound. An irritation, no more significant than that.

Jack and Rene step off the sidewalk and into the parking lot. I take a deep, steadying breath and stand up. How long have I been waiting? It feels like they’ve left me out here an eternity.

I watch them cross the parking lot to me. They don’t look strange in the bleak fluorescent light of the parking lot. Jack looks like Jack, perfectly normal, and Rene has that glow about her as if she’s just left the best party and is thoroughly pleased with the world. I curse Rene in my mind for forcing me through the fiasco of dinner, but then, it really wasn’t her fault, and no one is more surprised than I am, that I went postal over a cocktail.

Postal over a cocktail. It is all very stupid, especially now that I put it that way. They both smile at me as if everything is normal. No one says anything and we climb into the car to make our way home. I am committed to my silence during the car ride to the house and no one disturbs that, and I am grateful that they don’t, though I wish Jack would.

It is a short drive home, and five minutes later we are on Marina Drive making our way down the dimly lit narrow road into Hope Ranch, the neighborhood I’ve called home since birth. The familiar sights make some of my gloomy mood wane. I love the neighborhood I live in. It is private and quiet and wooded and protected. It is home.

Marina Drive is lush with woods: sycamore, oak and eucalyptus trees flourish among the richly green vegetation. On one side of the road are the cliffs above the beach. With the windows down and the music off you can hear the crashing surf as you drive, and I love that sound, sounds of home. On the other side is low rising hills with stunning homes upon them. Wayward, paved arteries flow through the thicket, private pockets of modest ranch homes and massive estates.

My father’s house has been in the family for two generations. It is a rustic, chicly humble Spanish style single story stucco and red tile structure. There is a main wing with two wings jutting off that gives it the shape of a not fully completed square. It sits on a cliff above the ocean, the modestly landscaped five acres left as close to natural as possible, and is only partially enclosed for privacy so as not to intrude on the equestrian trails that cut through Jack’s land.

No one owns the land or the beach, Chrissie. We are only caretakers. I was five when Jack said that, I was sitting in the yard watching as he pulled down the fencing with his own hands that my grandfather had put in place with his own hands. The house had transferred to my dad when grandpa had gone into the nursing home, but the fence had stayed until after Jack Senior passed away. We didn’t live here full time until I was five. It was the year Mom got sick.

Now I feel teary because I’ve thought of Mom. There are more emotional punches inside, but in the driveway tonight the first emotional punch is Mom.

Jack climbs from the car. “You girls are going to have to share your room, Chrissie. There is not a spare room in the house, I’m afraid. And stay away from the pool house. Its current occupant doesn’t need you bothering him.”

That’s it? That’s what he has to say to me after I created that enormous scene? I nod and focus on pulling my cello case from the trunk.

Rene smiles and takes her bag from Jack. “Maybe I’m exactly what your pool house guest needs.”

I start to laugh. That comment I didn’t expect, but it effortlessly lifts the mood. Even Jack seems to be unbending, I notice, which is strange, because before the unbending I didn’t even notice he was tense. Rene probably saw it and I didn’t. Too close to the problem is what she always tells me. Perhaps she is right.

Jack’s smile this time is pleasant. He ruffles Rene’s dark hair. “Not on your life. I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you.”

I watch and follow them into the house. Jack’s relationship with Rene is more father-daughter normal than it is with me.

The house smells good, Maria cooked dinner tonight, and for about the hundredth time I wish we hadn’t gone out to dinner and had just come home. It smells like enchiladas and I love enchiladas made at home.

We find Maria in the kitchen busily tidying the mess created from feeding a house of guests. She has been with us forever, a refugee from Somoza, whom we all pretend is legal, but isn’t.

Maria carefully rinses a used paper towel. Everything has value to her. Nothing is ever thrown away after a single use. We have adjusted to living with her—the used paper towels, the giant balls of foil, and the wrapped half-finished meals in the refrigerator.

I watch her flatten the Brawny across the twenty-thousand dollar marble counter.

Maria’s round, matronly face softens when she sees me. “Chica. You are home. I have missed my beautiful girl. ¿Cómo está mi niña”

The feel of Maria’s embrace is familiar and warm, but I slowly grow agitated because it lasts longer than I am ever comfortable with, and the perfume on her flesh is slightly smothering.

I disengage and step back quickly. “Is Daddy being good to you? You tell me if he’s not.”

Maria looks aghast. Jack laughs. I stare at the used paper towel spread neatly on the marble.

“Señor Jack, he is no trouble. Never. It is good when there are people in the house. Señor Jack’s band is like family. I don’t mind the extra work. It is never work for family. And the new one, the young one, he is like a ghost. A sad ghost. Four months he’s been here and so sad and no trouble. It is good he is here with Señor Jack.”

She crosses herself in silent prayer for her sad ghost and I struggle not to laugh because I am really a very bad Catholic and Jack is an atheist and no one prays at the drop of the hat faster than Maria. And whoever Jack has tucked away in the pool house is most likely not sad, most likely an atheist, and most likely just a burned out musician in need of a crash pad.