“I went to UCLA—I had to stay in Los Angeles because we were shooting the show there. But I didn’t have a normal college experience. People stared at me and followed me around campus. And I didn’t trust that anyone really wanted to be my friend. Even the professors wrote notes like Let’s meet in my office and discuss this. I always thought that most people just wanted to spend time with the famous girl.”
“Kinda like Bonnie,” Jimmy said. Sheba and I both looked at him.
“It seems like Mrs. Cone really does like you, though,” I said.
“No, I’m sure she likes me. And I like her, too. But it’s hard to have a balanced friendship when one person wants everything the other person has.” Sheba poked her nail through the pile of Zonkers, searching for the best bits, I guessed.
Jimmy got up, kissed Sheba on the lips, and then kissed the top of my head. He left the room and came back a few seconds later with his guitar.
“How about this?” Jimmy started plucking a song I didn’t know. I knew all his songs by then, so it must have been from someone else’s album. Sheba sang along, and by the time they started through it a second time, I knew the words and was harmonizing: “And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.”
“I like that song,” I said when we finished. “Did you write it?”
“Hell no,” Jimmy said. “Stevie Winwood wrote it.”
“We gotta take you record shopping,” Sheba said. She got up, went to the cupboard, and pulled out a new box of Zonkers.
Jimmy started a new song. Before each line, he said the words aloud so I would know what to sing. Sheba stayed on melody and Jimmy took the harmony with me. I could feel our voices vibrating in the air, perfectly balanced like a mathematical equation.
Dr. and Mrs. Cone didn’t come in through the beach door, but I did hear the front door open and close. This was late, after the second box of Zonkers was gone. Sheba and Jimmy and I sang through the night—sometimes the same song three or four times just so I could learn it right. Around four in the morning, Jimmy put the guitar down and we went to bed.
Izzy woke up before seven, as usual. “Birds in a nest?” she asked.
“Just come snuggle with me for a minute.” My eyes felt like they’d been cemented closed.
She crawled into my bed and I wrapped my body around hers like we were side-stacked seashells.
“Can we read a book?”
“You look at a book and I’ll sleep for twenty more minutes. And then we’ll get up and I’ll make you birds in a nest.”
“Okay.” Izzy didn’t move to get a book. She just lay there, as still and warm as a curled-up kitten. I thought of Dr. and Mrs. Cone with pangs of guilt for not having worried more about them last night. I wanted all to be right and safe in their marriage so that Izzy could grow up in that wonderful house with both of her parents coming in and out. I vowed to do the best job I could taking care of Izzy, to make sure she always felt loved and safe and secure.
“Is twenty minutes up?”
“No. Two minutes are up.”
“How long is twenty minutes?”
“Twelve hundred seconds. Count to twelve hundred. Minus the hundred and twenty seconds that already passed.” I knew I could fall back asleep if I had only a moment of silence.
“What’s twelve hundred seconds minus a hundred and twenty seconds?”
“Um . . . one thousand . . . um . . . one thousand eighty seconds. Count to one thousand and eighty.”
“OK. One. Two. Three . . .”
Izzy made it to eighty-five and then rotated in my arms so we were face-to-face. I could feel her warm breath on my nose. I could feel her eyes bearing down on me. She was being so good—saying nothing, barely moving, breathing deeply and quietly. I opened my eyes and stared right back at her. We looked at each other for the longest time, neither of us speaking.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get up now.”
Izzy leaned in and kissed my nose. And then she tumbled out of bed, half falling, half cartwheeling, pulling off her nightgown and talking all at once.
It was a long, lazy day. Dr. and Mrs. Cone stayed tucked away in their room. Izzy didn’t seem to notice their absence and Sheba and Jimmy didn’t seem to mind. By early afternoon, Jimmy put down his book and napped in a chair on the beach. Sheba lay on her back, put on her oversize sunglasses, and sunbathed. Maybe she was sleeping too. I couldn’t see her eyes.
Izzy and I worked on sculpting a giant sunbathing couple out of the sand. Izzy heaped mounds of sand for the woman’s breasts. I thought about making a penis for the man, then decided to make a Ken-doll lump instead. After last night, I felt confident that my initial urge to sculpt male genitalia didn’t make me a sex addict.
“That’s a funny penis,” Izzy said.
“It’s just a mound. We’re going to cover it with a bathing suit.”
We each took a bucket and walked along the beach collecting driftwood and shells for bathing suits. For hair we collected sea grass.
We were silently working on the seashell bathing suits when Dr. and Mrs. Cone approached, each carrying a chair. Mrs. Cone wore a giant hat and sunglasses. Her lips were orange and waxy. Her bikini covered so little, I wondered why she was wearing it at all.
“Look what we’re making!” Izzy said, and they both put down their chairs and came to examine the people.
“Beautiful!” Dr. Cone kissed Izzy’s head. She was sweating and her hair gleamed like a new penny.
“Amazing.” Mrs. Cone bent over Izzy and kissed her head too. “Everything okay?” She looked at me.
“Yeah. Everything’s good.”
“We had birds in a nest for breakfast and Jimmy made West Virginia steak for lunch!”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Mrs. Cone looked at me.
“Skinny, skinny, skinny meat.” Izzy went back to placing shells.
“Fried bologna. He said it’s what he ate for lunch when he was a kid.”
Mrs. Cone looked over at Jimmy and Sheba, who had barely moved. She turned back to me. “I’m sorry about what I might have said last night.”
I couldn’t tell if she was apologizing to me or just expressing regret. “It’s okay,” I said quickly.
Dr. Cone settled in his chair and opened his book.
Mrs. Cone forced a smile at me. She rubbed Izzy’s sweaty head and then went to her chair beside Dr. Cone’s.
Jimmy and Sheba woke up a few minutes later. I could hear Mrs. Cone apologizing to them, too. She claimed she was drunk and didn’t even remember what she had said, but that Dr. Cone had told her and “Boy, was it a doozy.”
“I’ve done way worse,” Jimmy said. But I thought he’d probably never said worse. Jimmy seemed to take good care of the feelings of everyone around him. He was always trying to make Sheba happy first, and the rest of us happy next.
If you’d been watching a film of us that last day, or over dinner that night, or even the next morning as we packed up the car, it wouldn’t have seemed that anything had changed. But something had. I felt like an invisible vibrating net had separated us into three alliances. The first was Jimmy, Sheba, Izzy, and me. The next was Dr. Cone, who had always remained outside everything anyway, as if someone had to be the real adult, the one in charge of keeping things aligned. And the third was Mrs. Cone. Mrs. Cone seemed slightly adrift and abandoned. She and Sheba chatted as usual, but their chumminess felt a little more stiff and guarded. Sheba wasn’t letting her in anymore. I knew she’d never again mention hotels in Antibes or handbags purchased at the flea market in Paris.
11
The time at the beach had gone quickly, but at the same time, it felt expansive. It was as if a whole season had zoomed by rather than a week. At home in my own bed, I missed everyone at the Cone house. With my mother, at breakfast, I felt like an imposter. Even my clothes were false, as I’d left the wardrobe Sheba had bought me at the Cones’ house, and promptly changed into a new outfit each morning right after I arrived. My mother, who had known everyt
hing about me since birth—what I ate, when I slept, who my friends were, what music I listened to, and what books I read—suddenly had a stranger at her table. But I was the only one who was aware of the change. I was now someone who had gone to family group therapy for sex addiction and knew the words to both the A and B sides of every Running Water album. Like Sheba in her wigs—I couldn’t wait to get to the Cones so I could rip off the false self and just be me. Barefoot. Singing. Cooking dinner. Wearing a bikini. Playing with Izzy’s hair.
Dr. and Mrs. Cone acted as if that night at the beach had never happened, but I noticed an effort in their relationship that hadn’t previously existed. They almost never touched each other, and when one spoke, the other shut up entirely as if to be careful not to interrupt or correct.
Three weeks after we’d returned from the beach, Mrs. Cone left the house in the afternoon for a hair appointment. Izzy and I were in the TV room, folding clothes. Laundry was one of Izzy’s favorite activities: every stage of it, from sorting to putting it away.
Sheba came in eating a Popsicle.
“We’re going to iron.” Izzy pointed to the growing pile of wrinkled clothes. I’d already set up a footstool by the ironing board and was waiting for the iron to heat up. When Izzy ironed, I stood right behind her, ready to grab the iron if she dropped it, left it too long in one spot, or knocked it off the board.
“Can you believe I’ve never ironed?” Sheba said.
“Really?”
“We had this Mexican woman who lived with us when I was a kid. She ironed everything. Even jeans and underwear.”
“What about in college? Or now?”
“In college I dropped off my clothes at the cleaners every week and they were returned to me ironed and folded. And then after college I hired a cleaning lady who does all the laundry. Toni. She’s in the New York apartment now.”
“Mary Jane can teach you to iron,” Izzy said. “She’s good at teaching.”
“Okay. I’ll try it.”
“But you can’t have your Popsicle when you iron.” Izzy and I had had a struggle over a dripping red Popsicle in her mouth the last time we’d ironed.
“Bossy!” Sheba smiled at Izzy and continued to suck her Popsicle.
“I’ll finish it.” Izzy went to Sheba and took the Popsicle from her. Sheba got up and stood at the ironing board.
I laid a white button-down open and facedown on the board. “The key is to not linger. You just push firmly and slide it along the fabric.”
“One mustn’t linger!” Sheba winked at me. She pushed the iron a few times. I watched. Izzy got closer and looked up. The Popsicle dripped down her chin. “Now what?”
“Then you do the sleeves.” I readjusted the shirt so there was a single sleeve on the board.
“Firmly. And no lingering!” Sheba raised her voice to sound more like me. She slid the iron around the sleeve, then on the cuff. “Okay. I’m bored.”
“Already?”
“Yup. Let’s go record shopping.” Sheba put the iron on the shirt facedown. I righted it quickly before the shirt burned.
“I wanna go record shopping!” Izzy jumped up and down, waving the Popsicle.
“I don’t even know where the record store is.” There were no record stores in Roland Park, and none on the regular routes I went with my mother: to the Elkridge Club, Roland Park Country School, Huxler’s for clothes.
“Richard will know. I’ll find the keys.” Sheba sauntered out.
“Can I get a record too?” Izzy asked.
“Yes. I’ll buy you one.” I quickly finished ironing the shirt.
“You will? You have money?”
“Yeah. I’ve been saving all the money your parents pay me. But I’ll use some of it to buy you a record.”
Izzy ran to my legs and hugged me. I rubbed her head. Then I unplugged the iron and neatly folded the shirt.
Jimmy wanted to go too. He didn’t wear a wig and neither did Sheba. They both put on sunglasses. Jimmy was wearing a tank top and a Johns Hopkins baseball cap that must have been Dr. Cone’s. Sheba tied a color-block scarf around her head. It covered her forehead and draped down the back of her hair like two red and orange tails.
Dr. Cone walked us out to the station wagon. Sheba got in the driver’s seat, and Izzy and I got in the back. Sheba rolled down the window and Dr. Cone leaned on the window frame with his hairy forearms. “You remember how to get there?” he asked.
Sheba said, “Left on Cold Spring, right on Charles, stay on Charles awhile, left on North Ave.”
“That’s right. Cold Spring, Charles, North Ave. You can’t get lost.”
“Mary Jane is going to buy me a record!” Izzy said.
“She is?” Dr. Cone looked up from Sheba’s window, then came around to Izzy’s. He reached in and tousled her hair, then pulled out a folded bill and tried to hand it over to me. I waved him away. “What kind of record?” He tried once more to hand me the money. I shook my head, smiling. Dr. Cone shrugged and stuck the bill back in his pocket.
“I dunno. Mary Jane, what kind of record?”
“What about a Broadway soundtrack?”
“MARY JANE’S BUYING ME A BROADWAY SIDETRACK!!” Izzy leaned out the window. I grabbed her waist so she wouldn’t fall out. Dr. Cone kissed her and then backed away as Sheba pulled the car from the curb.
“You have fun at the record store!” Dr. Cone laughed at his daughter, who seemed perilously close to dropping onto the pavement.
“Bye!” Sheba yelled.
“GOODBYE!” Izzy yelled, and I tugged her back in before we were moving too fast. Once she was settled into her seat, Izzy started singing a Running Water song. Sheba jumped in on the melody and I sang harmony. Jimmy made instrument noises with his mouth that sounded pretty cool. He could actually make the sound of a trumpet. And for a guitar he sort of said the word twang, but in a way that sounded close to a guitar.
The farther we got from Roland Park, the fewer trees I saw. By the time Sheba parked the car near the record store, there were no trees, just pavement, street, sidewalk, stores, and cars. Though I’d lived in Baltimore my whole life, I’d never been on North Avenue. The first thing I noticed was that there were very few station wagons around. Most cars here looked either shinier and fancier—many were the color of jewels—or beat-up and barely drivable. Everyone on the sidewalk was Black and I imagined how uncomfortable my mother would be here. Jimmy, Sheba, and Izzy didn’t seem to notice that we were the only white people around.
We walked into the warehouse-size record store and Jimmy took a deep breath. “Fuck yeah,” he said.
I examined the store. Signs hung from strings above sections, naming the genre: Jazz, Funk, Rock, Soul/R&B, Classical, Folk, Blues, etc. Along the walls were listening stations that looked sort of like phone booths, but instead of a phone, each booth held a record player and headphones. The people who worked at the store all wore bright yellow-and-green-striped shirts, making them hard to miss.
“Why didn’t we come here on day one?” Sheba asked.
Izzy tugged my hand. “Where do we find the Broadway sidetrack records?”
“Over there.” I pointed to a sign that said Soundtracks.
A salesperson approached us. He was as skinny as a piece of licorice and had an Afro pick stuck in his hair. I thought it was a clever place to carry the comb, as the comb was too big for his pockets.
“How can I help you folks?” The guy smiled and jerked his head as if he were following a tennis game: Izzy, Sheba, me, Jimmy. “No way, man. No way. Jimmy and Sheba?” His smile grew.
“Yeah, man.” Jimmy pulled off the baseball cap, ran his fingers through his hair, and replaced the cap. “I need something new. Some jams that will inspire me, you know. I need a launching pad for my own shit.”
“NO WAY!” The guy looked behind him, as if to see if anyone else was seeing this. “Jimmy! I love Running Water! I know every Running Water song by heart!”
“We do too,” Izzy said.
>
“NO WAY! No way, man! I love both you guys! My whole family watched your show, Sheba. For years! YEARS!”
“Ah, you’re so kind.” Sheba smiled and I could see her sucking in this adoration like gold dust. She was glowing from it.
“My mother is going to DIE! This is UNREAL!”
“These are our nieces.” Sheba held her hand out toward Izzy and me. She flipped her sunglasses so they were propped on her head over the scarf.
The guy glanced at us, smiled, then turned back to Jimmy and Sheba. “Okay, okay, okay, so let me help you. Jimmy wants something inspiring. What do you want, Sheba?”
“I just want something fun,” Sheba said.
“I want Broadway sidetracks!” Izzy said.
“We got show tunes.” He laughed, smiling at Izzy. “We got everything, man. I’m gonna set y’all up. Wait here.” He held his hands up like stop signs. “Don’t move, okay? Like, not one step. Stay right here.”
“We’ll be right here, doll,” Sheba said.
The guy returned just a few seconds later, a small mob following behind him. The mob was made up of a bunch of guys and one girl. The girl was wearing a patchwork leather cap that I could imagine Sheba wearing on television.
“Holy moly, holy moly, I don’t believe this!” the biggest guy said. He stuck out his giant hand and shook Jimmy’s hand, then Sheba’s, then mine, and then Izzy’s.
“We’re record shopping,” Izzy said, and the man laughed.
“Look at her hair! Look at that cute hair!” the girl said, about Izzy. She was tall and had a face that was a perfect circle.
“Mary Jane is going to buy me show tunes!” Izzy said, and the big man laughed again, and then bent down and picked up Izzy. He looked even bigger with Izzy in front of him, like a giant holding a Munchkin.
The rest of the crowd leaned forward and shook all our hands, and then customers started noticing Jimmy and Sheba. Immediately three of the guys who worked there created a barricade, like bodyguards.
“Let them shop!” one guy said. “Give them some space!”
Mary Jane Page 20
