The Shadow Catcher

The 101, which you have to take from the 405 to get to where I live (unless you take Ventura Boulevard), runs North to South from Ventura County toward Los Angeles, but then as it passes through Los Angeles, it doglegs inland in a true West-to-East direction, even though the signs still say 101 North and 101 South. So when I’m driving home from downtown L.A., from anywhere in the basin or from the other side of the hills, I’m always driving WEST, which in the afternoon means I’m driving toward the sun or, to put it another way, into the infrared. Into the western sunset, into the RED of western sky. Sunset where I live is only rarely red—it’s generally burnished rose or fatty salmon-colored — but I understand the Newtonian inarguables of Earth’s refraction and the truth that: at the close of day the world goes red. This fact of life is even more stunning if you happen to be in one of those places on Earth where the exposed rock is of the Triassic era, a time in Earth’s history when it’s believed there was more oxygen in the atmosphere than in previous eras, owing to the lack of plant life on the surface. Superoxidation, it’s believed, produced the kind of ferric red you see in rocks containing iron in places like Red Rock Canyon, for example. Or Sedona, Arizona. Or the Utah flats. Or around the Solway Firth in Scotland, for that matter. Red earths, red rocks, the color of dried blood. Earthly redbeds everywhere are a symptom of Triassic time, and anywhere they surface on Earth’s skin, as if on a living body, their color is the same: blood. It’s said that red was the first color hu mankind could differentiate. I don’t know how this could be proven but I suspect it has to do with Newton again and probably with the shape of the human eye as it evolved in the human skull, perhaps being, prismatically, more bullish on the carmine wavelength. I collect these little facts about the color red because my daughter is a redhead; and because my Greek grandmother’s maiden name was KOKINOS (the Greek adjective for RED). She, herself, was not a redhead, although her twin brother Sam was reported to have been one, which I find confusing. RED is associated with ALARM (no doubt because it’s the color of mammalian blood), and it is officially the most alarming color on the current Homeland Security Alert color chart. If I had to choose the human hair color that I find the most beautiful, it would be red because it’s frankly stunning and alive and volatile (besides my daughter, Da Vinci was a redhead; so was Jefferson; and so was Curtis), but outside the spectrum of human beauty, I don’t particularly like the color. I don’t particularly like garnets or rubies (or strawberries for that matter.) I don’t wear the color well, having a high complexion, anyway; and I don’t even grow red-colored flowers, with the exception of three explosive bougainvilleas that I inherited when I bought my house. I went through a red period in London when I decorated with Moroccan carpets and Turkish kilims, but here in California I don’t have a single piece of crimson fabric in the household. So when I come home from the meeting at the Hotel Bel Air and the red light’s flashing on my answering machine, it’s noticeable right away, even from the doorway. For me to have 9 MESSAGES in a single afternoon is (here it comes:) a red letter day:

1—“Miss Wiggins? This is Emily Rosen of Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. My number is 702-731-8112. Please call me back when you get this message. It’s an urgent matter. Thank you.”

I play it back again, to make sure I’ve taken down the number right. Vegas—where the odds are always stacked against the future and the biggest cons are played. Where identity is mutable. And fortunes bleed into the RED. The antithesis of all Nevada’s ghost towns — fastest-growing city in the nation. Sound my country makes when she is making her escape:

2—“Miss Wiggins, it’s Emily Rosen again. 702-731-8112. Sunrise Hospital. Please return my call.”

3—“Miss Wiggins, Mrs. Rosen again. If you’d call me, please, at—

And suddenly the phone rings. Startling me.

Hello—?

Miss Wiggins?

— yes.

Marianne Wiggins?

— yes.

Miss Wiggins, this is Mrs. Rosen from Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada.

(I recognize her voice.)

I’ve left several messages for you, already, today.

(I say nothing.)

Miss Wiggins, if I may just confirm: you are the daughter of John Wiggins?

What is this about?

John F. Wiggins?

(I don’t answer.)

Born third December nineteen twenty?

(I answer, slowly, but suspiciously: affirmative.)

Miss Wiggins, your father was brought in late this morning in cardiac arrest. He’s in our Cardiac ICU at present, but he’s still unconscious. I’m sorry.

Well, you should be. My father died more than thirty years ago.

John F. Wiggins, born December 3, 1920, in Quarryville, Pennsylvania? Social Security Number one nine six, one oh, eight two one six? I’ve got his Nevada driver’s license right here in my hand.