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Inside the SUV, Alan hands them a file. “I was told this was top-priority stuff. It’s pretty solid work for twenty-four hours, if I do say so myself.”
The file goes to the back and Claire takes charge of it, quickly flipping past a birth certificate and newspaper birth notice from Cle Elum, Washington. “You said she was about twenty in 1962,” the investigator says to Michael, whom he eyes in the rearview, “but her actual DOB is late ’39. No surprise there. Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.”
Claire flips to the second page of the file—Michael looking over one shoulder, Pasquale the other—a photocopy of a 1956 yearbook page from Cle Elum High School. She’s easy to spot: the striking blonde with the oversized features of a born actress. Beside her, the two pages of senior class photos are a festival of black-rims and cowlicks, of beady eyes, jug ears, crew cuts, acne, and beehives. Even in black-and-white, Debra Moore fairly jumps, her eyes simply too big and too deep for this little school and little town. Beneath her photo: “DEBRA ‘DEE’ MOORE: Warrior Cheer Squad—3 years, Kittitas County Fair Princess, Musical Theater—3 years, Senior Showcase, Honors—2 years.” Each student has also chosen a famous quote (Lincoln, Whitman, Nightingale, Jesus), but Debra Moore’s quote is from Émile Zola: I am here to live out loud.
“She’s in Sandpoint now,” the investigator is saying. “Hour and a half away. Pretty drive. She runs a little theater up there. There’s a play tonight. I got you four tickets at will-call and four hotel rooms. I’ll drive you back tomorrow afternoon.” The SUV merges onto a freeway, descends a steep hill into Spokane: a downtown of low brick, stone, and glass buildings, pocked with billboards and surface parking lots, all of it loosely bisected by this freeway overpass.
They read as they ride, much of the file consisting of playbills and cast lists: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by the University of Washington drama department in 1959, listing “Dee A
“She’s beautiful,” Claire says.
“Yes,” says Michael Deane over her right shoulder.
“Sì,” says Pasquale over her left.
Theater reviews clipped from the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer praise “Debra Moore” briefly in various stage roles in 1960 and 1961, the investigator’s yellow-highlighter pen framing “talented newcomer” and “the show-stopping Dee Moore.” Next come two photocopied Seattle Times articles from 1967, the first about a single-fatality car accident, the second an obituary for the driver, Alvis James Bender.
Before Claire can figure out the co
Shane reads the small obituary. Bender was a World War II army veteran and owner of a Chevrolet car dealership in North Seattle. He moved to Seattle in 1963, just four years before his death. He was survived by his parents in Madison, Wisconsin, a brother and sister, several nieces and nephews, his wife, Debra Bender, and their son, Pat Bender of Seattle.
“They were married,” Shane tells Pasquale. “Sposati. This was Dee Moray’s husband—il marito. Morto, incidente di macchina.”
Claire looks over. Pasquale has gone white. He asks when. “Quando?”
“Nel sessantasette.”
“Tutto questo è pazzesco,” Pasquale mutters. This is all crazy. He says nothing more, just slumps back in his seat, hand rising slowly to his mouth. He seems to have no more interest in the file and he stares out the window at the strip-mall sprawl, much the way he stared out the window on the plane earlier.
Claire looks from Shane to Pasquale and back. “Did he expect her never to get married? Fifty years . . . that’s asking a lot.” Pasquale says nothing.
“Have you ever thought about a TV show where you fix people up with their old high school flames?” Shane asks Michael Deane, who ignores the question.
The next pages in the file are a 1970 graduation a
The next page in the file is another photocopied newspaper story, from the Sandpoint Daily Bee, circa 1999, saying that “Debra Moore, a respected drama teacher and community theater director from Seattle, is taking over as artistic director of Theater Arts Group of Northern Idaho,” that she “hopes to augment the usual slate of comedies and musicals with some original plays.”
The file concludes with a few pages about her son, Pasquale “Pat” Bender; these pages are broken into two categories—traffic and criminal charges (DUIs and possession charges, mostly) and newspaper and magazine stories about the various bands he fronted. Claire counts at least five—the Garys, Filigree Handpipe, Go with Dog, the Oncelers, and the Reticents, this last outfit the most successful, signed by the Seattle record label Sub Pop, for whom they produced three albums in the 1990s. Most of the stories are from small alternative newspapers, concert and album reviews, stories about the band having a CD release party or canceling a show, but there is also a capsule review from Spin, of a CD called Ma
The last pages of the file are listings in the Willamette Weekly and The Mercury for Pat Bender’s solo shows in several clubs in the Portland area in 2007 and 2008, and a short piece from the Scotsman, a newspaper in Scotland, with a scathing review of something called Pat Bender: I Can’t Help Meself!
And that’s it. They read different sheets from the file, trade them, and finally look up to find that they’re on the expanding edge of the city now, clusters of new houses cut into the slabs of basalt and heavy timber. To have a life reduced like that to some loose sheets of paper: it feels a little profane, a little exhilarating. The investigator is tapping a song on the steering wheel that only he hears. “Almost to the state line.”
The Deane Party’s epic trek is nearing its completion now, a single border left to cross—four unlikely travelers compelled along in a vehicle sparked on the gaseous fuel of spent life. They can cover sixty-seven miles in an hour, fifty years in a day, and the speed feels u
Michael Deane ignores the translator, leans forward toward the front seat, and says, “Driver, anything you can tell us about this play we’re going to see?”