Hancock Park

by Isabel Kaplan

  I leaned in toward the woman behind the counter. “Could you, you know, maybe drop a plate or something? Just to divert the attention.” She raised her eyebrows. “People are staring, aren’t they?” She nodded.

  Then, as I prepared to turn around and make my graceful return back to the table, I felt a hand on the small of my back. A small shiver went up my spine, and when I looked up to see to whom that hand belonged, the shiver became something more of a shock. “I think the skirt is very attractive. It’s not riding up in the least.” Nicholas Hargrove winked at me.

  “Thank you.” I swiveled my body around, hoping to remove his middle-aged hand from my back.

  Grandma’s mouth dropped open as she stared at the scene unfolding. Movie stars aren’t as common in Del Ray Beach, Florida. She was out of earshot. I knew it must be killing her.

  I took a step back, trying to distance myself. Nicholas recovered quickly from my dismissal. He smoothed out his blazer and flashed a several-thousand-dollar smile.

  “Nicholas Hargrove,” he said, holding out his hand.

  So he was one of those celebrities. The type who introduce themselves, as if you don’t already know who they are.

  Problem is, this celebrity seemed to be forgetting that we had, in fact, met before. Several times. I hesitated just a moment too long, my hands firmly planted in the pockets of my skirt. Nicholas winked at me, and when he winked, wrinkles around his eyes appeared, nicely complementing his just-beginning-to-gray, too-old-for-me hair.

  Should I do it?

  This was the moment of truth. His hand was outstretched in front of me. Grandma’s toes were tapping, knees bouncing, excitedly.

  “Becky Miller.” I inserted my hand into his. We shook, and he held on for just a moment too long. “Your daughter, Alissa, is in my class at Whitbread. We’re going to be juniors—pretty exciting, huh? Only two more years of high school left!” I added, flashing my brightest smile.

  He dropped my hand and his smile disappeared. “I…uh…it’s, um, good to see you, Becky! Yes, juniors, how exciting….” Nicholas nodded his head and took a step back, still facing me. “You have a good day now.” He spun on his heels and walked back toward the table that he had been occupying.

  “Your Equal?” The woman behind the counter handed me several little blue packages, and I thanked her. “Now that,” she added, chuckling and nodding her head toward Nicholas Hargrove, “was funny.”

  I walked back to Grandma and sat down. My food had arrived, and Grandma was sipping her tea and reaching across the table, taking french fries off my plate. “Do you want me to put some on a plate for you?” I asked her.

  “No, no,” she told me, grabbing another handful. “I’m not hungry.” She craned her neck, trying to find Nicholas. “You know something?” I knew it was rhetorical, so I didn’t respond. “Your mother needs a good man. What about him?”

  Pulling my plate toward me, out of her reach, I gave her a pointed look. “My mom is married, Grandma.”

  Take Me Away

  I’d always wanted to be just like my mom. (Especially when I learned she got a perfect score on her SATs. I was much more likely to follow in her footsteps in the brains department than in the looks department, anyway.) And even though I was sixteen and probably supposed to hate my parents, that hadn’t changed. She and I had always been close. She told me everything—maybe too much sometimes—so even after Grandma made that comment, I couldn’t believe there might have been something going on in our family that Mom hadn’t shared with me. I didn’t want to flat-out ask her what was going on—although she shared (and overshared) with me, that’s not how our relationship worked. She always told, but I never asked. So instead I launched a subtle offensive.

  “And then, after all that,” I told my mom that night, “she suggested that you need a good man and that Nicholas Hargrove might be that man!”

  Grandma had just been dropped off at the airport; Dad was still at work, and I was regaling Mom with tales of the day. We sat in the living room, talking above the sound effects coming from the video game in Jack’s upstairs bedroom.

  “Can you believe it? I had to remind her that you’re married.” I looked up, trying to gauge her response. My mom leaned forward, set her mug down on the dark wooden coffee table, sat up, and took a deep breath.

  Oh, shit.

  I shook my head and felt my stomach drop. “Mom?” My heart began to thump. “You…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t form the words to the question that I wanted to ask. Instead, I left my eyes lingering hopefully on hers. She had on end-of-the-day remnants of TV makeup, which is just like regular makeup but ten times the thickness. Mom likes to joke that, after wearing the stuff every day, she now has a permanent inch-thick coating on her face. September would mark the one-year anniversary of her job as the host of Kathy’s Eye on the Style & Design Network. Mom was really excited to get her own show (before, she had been a commentator on a couple of morning programs), but it seemed to me that she was much more tired lately. Tonight, her eyeliner was smeared and there were shadows under her usually bright blue eyes.

  Finally, Mom said something. “I was thinking of taking up running. What do you think? Would you be interested in running with me?” She addressed the landscape painting above the fireplace behind me.

  I stood up and felt for the cell phone in my pocket, my heart pounding heavily now. “I…have to go. I forgot that I have, um, plans.”

  “Sweetheart!” my mom called out. I had made it all the way across the room and was nearly at the front door. Her voice grew quieter. “Grandma shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t how we wanted you to find out….”

  Fuck.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered, holding the archway for support.

  “This isn’t how we wanted to tell you.”

  My eyes and throat began to burn, and I started to inch backward.

  “Can I give you a hug?” she asked.

  I wanted to escape before I started crying. Crying would make it seem like I couldn’t handle it—make it seem like I was weak. I was supposed to be strong; I wanted to be strong. After I broke my wrist in the sixth grade, I cried all the way home from the hospital. Finally, Mom had turned to me and said, “Don’t be a baby, Becky. You’re stronger than this.” I’d tried my hardest not to cry in front of my mom—or anyone for that matter—ever since that. And I’d done a pretty good job of it.

  “Not right now. I have to go.” I rushed out the door and into the sunlight, power walking down the cracked Hancock Park sidewalks that held so many childhood memories. The driveway. That was where I had taught Joey Michaels and Jack how to rollerblade, where we had bladed down our first “big” hill together. At the time, it had seemed like a mountain. That driveway was where Joey’s mom, Pam, would honk the horn of her dark green Honda minivan when it was her turn to take us to school or the park or the zoo. We loved her car best because the cream leather seats were so worn in, and it always smelled like chamomile. Then there was that depression in the sidewalk in front of the Turkish consulate. Years ago, when El Niño hit and I was about to turn ten, Jack, Joey, and I had brought toy boats out and floated them in the sidewalk, in that crevice.

  I hadn’t seen much of Joey lately. We had been best friends when we were little, but once we hit middle school, I guess I replaced him with Amanda and he replaced me with a newfound love for computer programming.

  The big crack right where the sidewalk met the grass of the Rosenzweig’s front yard was where I had flipped over on my Razor scooter in the sixth grade and broken my right wrist. And the corner, well, that was where I had almost broken the heel on a pair of my mom’s Jimmy Choos—not to mention an ankle. That was my first time wearing heels, really. It was before a seventh-grade dance, and I was walking from my house to Amanda’s. I had wanted to just turn right around and go home and change into something a little less deadly, but my mom had looked so happy when she offered to let me wear her shoes. I didn’t want to disa
ppoint her. For a twelve-year-old used to Converse sneakers, those two blocks proved to be treacherous—but I managed. Now, once again, I couldn’t go home because of my mom. But this time, this stretch of sidewalk was the comfort I needed.

  911

  In all my years of therapy, I’d never had a “psychiatrist moment”—when you just know that something you’re dealing with is worth making an emergency call. When Jack toppled my bookshelves, I spent two hours trying to repair the specific alphabetical order of my books before I gave up, crying on the floor of my bedroom; but I took several deep breaths and realized, Nope, not a genuine psychiatric emergency. When we were on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for Mom’s fiftieth birthday, and she locked herself in the bathroom while my dad went out to drink, leaving Jack and me alone in the hotel room, I was halfway through dialing Sara Elder’s number when I hung up, dug around in my purse, and took a Xanax instead. But as I moved down my block, walking quickly to get away from my house and everything that might be going on inside of it, I thought, This qualifies as a psychiatrist moment. It was after five, so I decided on her emergency number. Much as I hated using it, this very well might be one of the biggest emergencies in my life so far.

  The phone rang twice before someone on the other end picked up. “Sara Elder’s office,” the woman said. This wasn’t actually her office, and the woman on the phone and I both knew that.

  “Hi. This is Becky Miller. I’m calling for Sara Elder.”

  “Alright.” The sound of popping gum crackled over the phone line. “What is your call concerning?”

  I kicked my toe against a patch of grass along the edge of the sidewalk. “Do I have to tell you?”

  “Well, no,” the woman replied. “It’s just information that the doctor likes to have.”

  “Just tell her that I need to speak with her, please.”

  “One moment.” Music began to play as I was placed on hold. “Ms. Miller? I can’t reach the doctor, but I paged her and left a message, and she will call you back shortly. Can I take down a number for you?”

  I paused, standing at the edge of my block. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember my area code. 323? 310? My mind was racing. Taking a deep breath, I tried to pull it together and gave her my number. I flipped the phone shut and turned the corner that led toward Amanda’s house.

  I walked down the block, gazing distractedly at the large homes and sprawling front lawns that defined the neighborhood. Many of the houses in Hancock Park were built in the early 1900s—most had an East Coast, traditional architectural feel to them, but some were inspired by Spanish or Mediterranean themes. Thanks to a historical preservation act, homeowners were prohibited from buying one of these houses, tearing it down, and then building a new one.

  I finally approached the Clarkes’ 1920s-era Spanish-style house, but I hesitated before starting up the walkway. I wasn’t actually sure why I was here, but I had walked off without my car, and there were only so many places (read: basically nowhere) that I could get to on foot. Amanda was my friend, my best friend since seventh grade, and although she’d be gone in a few days, she was here now. And I needed her. I rang the doorbell, my stomach flittering as I waited for someone to come to the door and wondered if I should’ve called first. To my great relief, Amanda—tall, gangly, and with her bright blonde hair in a ponytail—bounced down the stairs to greet me. “Hey! What’s up? Oh—my mom said she ran into you and your grandmother this morning. This was her last day here, right?”

  I nodded my head and Amanda grabbed a pile of mail from the front table and bounded up the stairs, climbing them two at a time. “I like the Christmas lights,” I told her as I ran my fingers over the dusty, multicolored bulbs hanging from the banister.

  “Funny,” she replied. It was a running joke we had. The Clarkes had taken to leaving the Christmas lights up year-round because it made Christmas decorating in December less work. Although I guessed they wouldn’t be needing them this year.

  “So, what’s up?” Amanda asked as we entered her room and she sorted through the mail.

  “Nothing’s up!” The words just came out. I’d come over here to vent, to lean on my friend while she was still here. I’d come over here because I had nowhere else to go. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything important. I was too used to keeping my problems to myself. “What’s up with you?”

  “Y’know.” She nodded, looking around her room, which has half in boxes. “Are you…I mean, I just wasn’t expecting you. Did you call earlier? My cell was off.”

  “Oh. Sorry, no, I…forgot…to call. I just had to get away from my Grandma, so I thought I’d come over.” It was barely a lie. I did want to get away from Grandma—and fortunately, she’d just left. But Grandma wasn’t all that I wanted to get away from.

  “Grandparents,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  I wanted to tell her what was going on—I did—but I just couldn’t make the words come out.

  “No way.” She held a large envelope with our maroon school crest on the front. “My schedule. Guess my mom forgot to tell them I wasn’t coming. Just like she and my dad forgot to tell me we were moving.” She sat down, cross-legged, on her trundle bed.

  Amanda’s dad’s midcareer crisis–inspired decision to trade directing big movies for directing Broadway shows was not going over well with me and Amanda. She didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to be left.

  “You’re going to have such a great year, Bex.”

  Nobody called me Rebecca, but only Amanda called me Bex.

  “How do you figure?” I asked, sinking down into her beanbag chair.

  “Because you get to be here.”

  “What’s so great about here?” I said. Frankly, I’d rather be anywhere but.

  She lay down and looked over at me. “It’s…here. It’s L.A. It’s, you know, home.”

  She wasn’t trying to make me feel worse—she didn’t even know how awful I was feeling to begin with—but each word buried me a little more. Here…L.A…. home.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said, because that was what you were supposed to say when things sucked. Then, you were supposed to say, “Look on the bright side: At least…”

  Look on the bright side: At least your crazy grandmother wasn’t in town for an entire week.

  Look on the bright side: At least your little brother isn’t a freak of nature.

  Look on the bright side: At least your parents aren’t getting divorced.

  But I didn’t say that. Just thinking it made my insides feel like they were caught in my throat. So I stopped thinking it, and then I was floating, in the sky, on the ceiling, barely hanging onto the crystal chandelier, just a shadow of myself, watching the scene unfold below. It felt just like sixth grade, when Sara Elder prescribed me sleeping pills that made me feel as though my body were twisting and spinning instead of relaxing into a good night’s rest. Or like in eighth grade, when I took Xanax for the first time, or ninth, when I took Vicodin for period cramps. Yeah. That’s what this was like. It was like Vicodin. Totally and completely surreal.

  Pretend-me sat there with Amanda, pretending everything was and would be just fine. Real-me was spinning into space.

  God help me when the pain kicked back in.

  New York, New York

  Just like the impulsive man he’d never been, Amanda’s dad insisted that the family get out to New York right away. They were leaving on Thursday, five days before my junior year of high school would start. My first year at Whitbread without Amanda. And I still hadn’t told her about the divorce. Because if I said it out loud, that would mean I was acknowledging it. And if I did that, I might have to actually believe that it was true. So instead, I kept that secret bottled up inside of me, spinning the problems into a coil that was sure to unwind.

  On Thursday morning, Amanda and I sat on her front steps, watching as movers loaded brown cardboard boxes into a truck. She held her knees to her chest and rested her head on my shoulder. We had been best friends for
years. I realized then that I didn’t have any idea when I might see Amanda next, and suddenly, a short string of words burst from my mouth.

  “My parents are getting divorced,” I said, watching the clouds above me.

  There was silence for a moment, and I lowered my gaze to Amanda’s neighbors’ house, scared to look Amanda in the eye, thinking maybe I’d spoken so softly and quickly she hadn’t heard me. Or maybe I hadn’t spoken at all.

  “Oh, Becky!” Amanda finally said. “I’m so sorry. When did you find out?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “You know, you could have told me earlier,” she said, and she turned away. Her voice was wavering, more hurt than mad.

  I hate hurting people. It’s something I should be able to control, and yet…

  I gripped the edge of the brick step that I was sitting on for support. “I know. And I wanted to. But I don’t think I really wanted to believe that it was real.”

  Amanda turned back to me as her dad weaved past us on the front steps and walked down the driveway. He was wearing an “I NY” T-shirt and holding the leash of one of the golden retrievers. “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, nodding her head.

  We drove over to Larchmont for one last latte together. There were three coffee places on Larchmont: Starbucks, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Peet’s. Amanda and I always went to Peet’s. We had our favorite spot (the armchairs by the front window), and the baristas had memorized our orders. It helped that we always ordered the same thing.

  “Two nonfat vanilla lattes and one three-berry scone,” I told the girl as Amanda browsed through the magazine collection. We brought our drinks over to the armchairs and sat down.

  “I can’t believe this is actually happening. I mean, who knows how long it will be before…,” I said.