fan.
He didn’t know what it was about, but his mother Vicki had a final falling-out with the family, a furious disagreement, and before Henry knew what was happening she had all their things packed up in a fat Yellow Cab, scooting in beside him and tearfully waving goodbye as they pulled away for all time from everyone he knew and the familiar, comforting gloom of the Del Monte Hotel.
We’ll be back, she called to her distraught, dying mother. Don’t worry, we’ll be back.
The next few years were a blur of pure chaos. Henry and Vicki lived from motel to motel (most apartment owners of the time disdaining children, much less single mothers), chasing jobs and cheap housing all over Greater Los Angeles, gaining and losing footholds until at last ending up where they began: overlooking the harbor.
Yes, they returned to San Pedro. Henry’s mother kept her promise; they had come back home.
But the Del Monte Hotel was gone.
“Didn’t I tell you it was coming?” his mother said.
Henry was eight years old now, almost nine, and thought he had seen it all. But everything past was prologue—all the disappointments and retreats, the winnowing of their possessions down to what could be carried on the bus—all of it shrank to insignificance before the wonderful vision that descended from the sky, banked overhead to kiss them with its hurtling shadow, and touched down not like a goose but like a white swan upon the water. It was their vision, coming for them. They had the tickets to prove it.
The magnificent sight of that seaplane as it waddled out of the harbor onto dry land, white keel dripping, fat black rubber wheels sloshing aground as it climbed the thickly-barnacled concrete ramp, was almost more than Henry’s pre-adolescent self could handle without bursting. Wow!—he was already closer than he ever imagined being to one of these aircraft, yet the threshold of reality would be pushed back still further, he knew; was about to be pushed beyond the limits of his imagining.
He watched awestruck as the plane executed a lazy taxi, propellers blasting spray off the tarmac as it presented its door to their cordoned-off boarding area under the flapping orange wind sock. With a final roar, the engines subsided.
The curved door behind the wing was opened, a step was lowered, and a smart-uniformed crewman emerged. At the same time, ground personnel opened the gate and briskly escorted the dozen or so passengers to the plane, checking seat assignments and directing Henry and his mother into the small cabin, up the narrow aisle.
Inside the fuselage it was cozy; the sound was muffled, and the curtained dimness—the bus smell and rows of fabric-padded seats—lent a feeling of homey familiarity.
Henry took his seat, really no different than a seat on the Greyhound Bus, and looked out the window at the sunlit terminal building and the big orange ball of the Union 76 station just beyond. The Del Monte Hotel was now only an empty lot, a bare patch on the hill, but he knew his mother was weepily staring in the direction it had been.
He wished she would forget about it. There was nothing there, and had never been. Not for them. But this, finally, was theirs; their moment, their future. No more crummy motels, no more crazy family, no more cockroach-ridden slums—this time they were moving to paradise. To Catalina Island!
It was the greatest moment of Henry’s life. He could never have imagined it would also be the precursor to the strangest and worst...or the last.
Chapter Three
AVALON, PRESENT DAY
“Ooh, Moxie! Look at the fishy! See the fishy?”
Ruby is recording as Henry pushes Moxie’s stroller up the ramp connecting the ferry dock to the wharf. Below them the water is gorgeous aquamarine, churned silvery by the idling ship, with vines of swaying kelp looming dark green and brown out of the depths. Here and there amid fizzy shafts of sunlight are living spots of bright orange.
“Those are Garibaldi perch,” Henry says, going back for the luggage. “Named after the Italian explorer. They’re protected. It’s like a five-hundred dollar fine to kill one.”
“That is so cool,” says Ruby. “They’re like big goldfish. See the pretty fishy, honey?”
“No,” Moxie says, craning out of her stroller. “Where?”
“Right there. Follow my finger.”
“Pishy, mommy! Stop! Wanna see Pishy!”
“Right down there. There’s one! See?”
“No!”
“Right there, silly.”
“Oh.” Moxie squints blankly at the fish and settles back, unimpressed.
“This is so beautiful,” says Ruby, taking a panoramic shot of the steep, rocky hillsides surrounding the town of