by Mona Simpson
“What about all these buildings that say TISHMAN on the scaffolding? I saw another one today on the way to school. On Roxbury.”
She sighed. “Could you come and help me here a second? Just tuck the other side.” The sofa bed felt flimsy, metal springs and a three-inch mattress. Sometimes in the night I heard a crash when the metal legs buckled and collapsed. “This man wants to make it on his own. He doesn’t want to just be the son of someone who made it big. But I think if one of his deals comes through, if this shopping center makes it, then he’ll go back to his family and say, See, this is what I could do, alone.”
“Are you sure it’s even the same family? There’re a lot of Tishmans in the phone book.”
“Honey, I’m sure.”
“How do you know? Did he tell you?”
“Ann, I just know. Okay? You just have to learn that I know some things you don’t. Okay? I’m a grown-up.”
“At least he could pay rent.”
“Honey, he does pay rent. He pays rent on his own apartment in Hollywood.”
We’d seen his building. It was dark red brick, old, set far away from the street. Once, after dinner, my mother had stopped there, outside his building, so he could run in and get clean clothes. While we were waiting for him in the car she pressed the button that locked our doors.
“He’s never in it.”
“Well, let’s just cross our fingers and hope it comes through soon, okay, Honey? Because I need it too. Believe me. Believe me, I’m getting tired.”
I dropped it.
I developed sores on my head; small red bumps with scabs. My mother thought it was either lice or some weird disease. She decided I’d caught it from Lonnie. She called and made an appointment with a doctor in the Valley, an hour’s drive away.
“You never know, people talk. Word gets around. Beverly Hills is really a very small community. And it’s not the nicest thing to have, you know.” My mother always worried that people would think we were unclean.
After school, we drove to the Valley. Sometimes, I really liked my mother. She drove easily, with one hand, as she pumped the gas with the toe of her high-heeled shoe. We looped on the freeway ramps smoothly. She talked to me and drove almost unconsciously on the six-lane highway with a freedom and confidence anyone at home in Bay City would have admired if they could have seen her. I remembered our first day in Los Angeles, how she’d clutched her whole body an inch away from the steering wheel. Her voice, when she told me to turn off the radio, fell stern and quiet. She’d been afraid for our lives. She’d driven on the right-hand side, almost on the gravel by the high aluminum fence. Her lips had moved and I thought she might have been praying. Now, she changed lanes and told me to look at the sun, just over a Coke sign on a dry hill. There were things to be proud of my mother for. I doubt she ever thought about it, how she’d learned to drive here.
She knew the Valley; she drove out to work every day. I didn’t know much about her life without me. And my mother seemed shy and a little ashamed of what she did all day. Driving to the doctor, I asked her what she’d done at school. “Oh, nothing. You know. Just the usual,” she said.
I imagined her in a room, plants on the windowsill, with tall boys and fat sloppy girls. With her they would all be timid. I imagined her standing close to them, holding their faces by the chin and looking in their eyes while she said the word. “Say thick. Th-th-th-thick.” Their mouths wobbled crumbled sounds, trying to copy her lips.
We were speeding, my window cracked open, the sun a fuzzy line over the brown hills.
“There’s my exit,” she said, real joy in her voice, as if she were showing me the building where she worked.
The doctor didn’t seem horrified by my head. My mother and I always felt calmed by doctors. They made us feel clean, like everyone else. He diagnosed the bumps as scabies, said I could have picked them up anywhere, probably in school, and matter-of-factly wrote out a prescription for Quell Lotion. He told us to wash my hair every day for eight days and put on the pink lotion afterwards. My mother nodded while he explained this, as if she were receiving critical and difficult instructions. That was all. He let us go. We bought the lotion downstairs in the pharmacy and then went for an early supper at the Van Nuys Hamburger Hamlet. We ordered big dinners and we each had dessert. It felt good to be alone, just the two of us.
We could have gone home after that and I could have washed my hair in our shower, but my mother panicked over anything having to do with uncleanliness, and when she panicked, spending money made her feel better, so she took me to her hairdresser. The hairdresser washed and blow-dried my hair so it looked thick and good, and then we had to ruin it, rubbing in the lotion, which made it greasy and rumpled.
“Ever hear from that Tishman fellow?” the hairdresser asked my mother.
“Mmmhmm, sometimes.”
The next day she took me to a different beauty parlor.
After my last treatment, it was almost dark when we left the beauty shop. We drove to our apartment to pick up Lonnie, and then we drove farther out into the Valley than I’d ever been. We didn’t have time for dinner because we were late. Lonnie had an appointment to meet someone for a business deal. He was supposed to be building a shopping center.
My mother drove and Lonnie sat in the front seat creating a chain reaction, hitting one hand on the other hand, which in turn hit his knee. My mother let him play the radio while she drove. I was sitting up against the back door with a book open, trying to do my homework. I was trying to improve my life, do what I was supposed to do. My efforts to make myself better never went anywhere. I didn’t really believe they would.
The land changed outside our car windows. It was brown and flat, the hills seemed lower, and buildings were small and scarce. It reminded me of little towns in the desert when we drove into California. We stopped at a light and a man in a cowboy hat crossed the road. There were no sidewalks, just highway and gravel on the sides. There were more trucks than cars on the road with us. Gray-brown tumbleweed dotted the hills above the shopping center, where my mother finally slowed the car.
There was a McDonald’s in the shopping mall and Lonnie told my mother and me we should wait for him there. When we all got out of the car, he walked in the other direction, towards a bar, where he was supposed to meet his partner. He walked away, rubbing his hands on the front of his pants. We stood on the blacktop and my mother seemed distracted until she said, “Wait here a second, stay right here,” and ran up to Lonnie, her purse hitting the side of her thigh as she ran. They weren’t far away. “She can wait in the car. She’ll study. Are you sure I shouldn’t come along?”
I stood still, growing cold up from my feet.
“Hey, hey, comemeer a second, Woman. Let me give you a kiss before I go.”
They stood there in the middle of the parking lot like two movie stars, her hair falling over her back and her stockinged heels rising up out of her shoes.
I looked the other way, at the window of a closed knitting store. I felt like I was nothing and I never would be. Then my mother came running back. She slapped her thigh when she stopped. “Come on. Let’s hurry it up.”
We sat against the inside glass wall of the McDonald’s. There was a field on the other side of the highway, except for one gas station, nothing. My mother sipped coffee from a coated paper cup. We thought if we were going to sit here, we’d better buy something and we didn’t want to spoil our appetites. My mother pointed on the glass.
“See, over there. That’s where they’re going to put the shopping center.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? So we can make some money, that’s why. And buy a house, maybe. So I don’t have to run myself ragged—”
“I mean, why there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They know where the best places are. This man is the expert on shopping centers. He’s already made millions.”
The sides of the highway were marked with glowing red circles on three-foot wooden
stakes. It was just brown field on the other side, nothing, land that could have been anywhere. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Lonnie being in a bar down the mall with some guy would make a shopping center grow there.
I thought of something I hadn’t remembered for a long time: the city I’d drawn under my grandmother’s kitchen table with crayons. I’d planned houses and swimming pools, buses. I could easily draw for hours, working on one thing for my city. Now I looked outside and imagined the colored structures I’d drawn, huge and built, on the field across the street.
“But there’s one already, across the highway. This one.”
She sighed, tired and preoccupied. “I don’t know, Honey. I’m not the expert. They are.”
“What kind of people have business meetings at night, in the middle of nowhere, anyway?”
She didn’t get mad. “Shhh, Honey. Just be quiet a minute. I’ve been working all day and I’m tired.” She put her purse up on the plastic tabletop and unclasped it. “Here,” she said, handing me a dollar. “Go get us french fries. But just a small because we don’t want to spoil our appetites. If this meeting goes well, he’ll take us out somewhere nice. We’ll get you a good steak. Really, Honey.”
We were still eating the french fries, not talking, when Lonnie came in, rubbing his palms on the front of his pants.
“Hiya,” he said to my mother. He did that a lot, acted as if he was with just one person instead of two. He was wearing the same thing he wore every day. A velour pullover and a blue zip-up vinyl jacket.
I looked out the window at the dull field across the highway. Businessmen didn’t look like this. Neither did millionaires.
Lonnie was nuzzling his flecked chin against my mother’s neck. She hummed “mmmmm” with a noise that sounded vaguely electric.
“So, how’s about a little supper?” he said.
“Okay. What do you feel like? Should we stay somewhere around here or head back towards home?” Then, she winked at me from over his shoulder.
“How’s about here? I’d take a Big Mac and fries, how ’bout it. How ’bout it, Ann? Hamburger?”
“All right,” my mother said, sliding back down onto the plastic chair.
There was an apology in her eyes as she turned and held her face in both hands, but she never would have said anything in front of Lonnie.
“Let’s get it to go,” Lonnie said, fidgeting at the counter.
My mother’s car had changed. She never would have let me bring McDonald’s into the cream-colored leather interior. But she let Lonnie. We ate on the way home, my mother asking me to hold her milkshake for her on the freeway.
“So what was the gist?” she was saying in the front seat. I had the ashtray in the back lifted and I was trying to read my homework by that little light.
“That’s one proud man, I’ll tell you,” Lonnie said. He lowered his window so a whistle of air came in and he rested his elbow on the glass.
“So, do you think it’ll go or not so much?”
“Hey,” Lonnie said, beating his hand on his chest so the wind-breaker made a rattling noise. My mother was driving, I held her milkshake, Lonnie’s hands were free. “What kind of guy do you think I am, anyway? ’Course it’ll go.”
“Ann, you can hand me my malt now. Thank you.”
I had my book propped as close to the ashtray as it would go. It stayed steady there as long as the car went straight on the freeway. I didn’t look up until the book fell.
“This isn’t our exit, Mom.” We were past Beverly Hills. The streets where we were driving looked dark and unfamiliar.
“We’re going to stop at Lonnie’s apartment for a second.”
Yellow lights shone from his building. My mother and I stayed in the car while he ran out to get a change of clothes. His apartment building looked very old. We had buildings like that in Wisconsin, the orphanage and paper mills along the river. Dark brick buildings, small windows, built in the last century.
“So what happened to our nice dinner?”
She turned the heat on. The doors were locked and the motor was still running. “Honey, I’m trying to get rid of him, too. Don’t you think I’m scared? But let me do it slowly. I know how to manage this man.”
Someone walked by on the sidewalk, a kid. My mother stiffened, clutching the wheel, watching him all the way away in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t even like him anymore, believe me,” she whispered. “I think he’s on drugs. But he could hurt us, Ann. He’s in with people who could really hurt us. Do you know what the Mafia is?”
“Some kind of straw?”
“No, no, that’s raffia. Like we had at your birthday party the year with the piñata. That was fun, wasn’t it?”
“I don know what it is then.” The trees here scared me. Otherwise I would have lied. I didn’t like admitting things I didn’t know.
“Well, it’s gangsters. Awful, awful people. Criminals, but whole gangs together. All over the country. They kill, they cheat, anything. And I think he’s part of that. I’m worried for my life. And your life. This other man he met tonight could kill me.”
Lonnie started across the lawn, holding his bag in front of him with both arms.
“What about the police?”
“The police can’t stop them. Nothing can. So just let me take care of it, okay?”
I didn’t say anything, I was too scared. When he came back into the car, with a wash of cold air and the sinister click of the locks after him, it was almost a relief. He was just Lonnie. He’d brought his clothes in a brown paper shopping bag, a white shirt on the top.
In bed that night, trying to sleep, I couldn’t get warm. I thought of the shapes of my crayoned drawings, built, on a field of dull grass. I was scared to be in the same room with Lonnie.
We’d driven by Century City on the way home; a few floors stayed lit in the tall buildings. I thought that in offices there, in rooms with typewriters and metal desks, shopping centers were being planned. I believed and I didn’t believe my mother. I was beginning to distrust her promises but I still believed her threats. I believed Lonnie was a criminal.
I barely slept that night. And in the morning, I got up when the alarm rang. Light was coming in through our faded Christmas green felt curtains, making delicate lacy patterns over the apartment. My mother and Lonnie were asleep in the middle of the room. Nothing looked so dangerous anymore. I bent down and shook my mother. For once, I wanted us all to be up on time.
“Why don’t you get up already so we can eat some breakfast for a change.”
“Shhh. He’s sleeping. Five more minutes. Please, Hon.”
“Fine, I don’t care what you do.” She turned over and pulled the blanket to her eye.
I took a shower and dressed. Then my mother got up. She stood by the bed, wearing nothing but Lonnie’s T-shirt.
“You know, you’re not the only person in the world,” she said.
“So.” I was buckling my shoes. I picked up my books. “I’m leaving.”
“Just hold your horses. You have time. I’ll be ready in a second. Sit down.”
Lonnie was awake now, too. He looked tiny in his white jockey shorts, the leg holes stretched and bagging. He held his slacks out delicately as if he might trip stepping into them. His hair was a mess.
“I’m leaving,” I said again.
“Just wait.” My mother was yelling. “You’d think SHE’s the only person in the world.”
“I don’t always have to wait for you just because you don’t want to get up on time and eat breakfast and live like a normal person. I’m always waiting for you.” I guess I was screaming, then.
“Oh, you, you—” My mother came at me, tripping over the huge sofa bed between us. She tripped and hit her knee, which made her madder. “I work, I slave, I run myself ragged, so SHE can live in Beverly Hills, so SHE can be a movie star, and what do I get? What do I get for thanks? A whole lot of guff from a stinky mouth.”
“Who’s a movie
star,” Lonnie said, one leg in his pants, one not.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Hey.” Lonnie lifted his hand in a grand gesture intended to silence us both. He looked at me, his face slack. “Your mother is a lovely woman,” he said, his chin weaving slowly left and right, “you ought to treat her with respect.”
My mother was still wearing nothing but the T-shirt, standing with her hands on her hips.
“I’m leaving.”
Lonnie staggered up onto the bed, so he stood there, with his pants unzipped. “Hey,” he said, loudly, raising his hand again. “Everyone quiet.”
He didn’t have a chance. Neither of us paid any attention.
“Oh, ohh, you lit-t—”
I was almost to the door when Lonnie jumped down and caught my arm, hard, twisting the skin. “Hey. Listen. I don’t want to see you upset your mother like this.” He looked back at her, she sat on the bed, crying now.
I twisted away. “Get your hands off me. Don’t touch me. I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”
“You go ahead, you should. Go on and get lost. You don’t deserve your mother. She’s a lovely woman and you’re nothing.”
“Fuck you!”
My mother followed me to the door but I was already outside, down the sidewalk. She stepped for a moment onto the landing, wearing just the T-shirt, the toes of one foot on the other, shyly, shouting my name.
I kept walking. I heard the door slam and then I heard her shrill voice and Lonnie’s low bellow. But they diminished as I walked, replaced by the small sounds of birds, slow tires, the first hammers on a construction site a few blocks away. The air felt kind, mild, windy as it touched my skin. I checked each of my pockets. I had everything I needed for a day. My hair was clean, just now beginning to lift a little as it dried, I had my books, money in my pocket. For once I had left early for school. The clean fronts of apartment houses, cars on the streets, the fountain at the corner of Wilshire and Little Santa Monica, all seemed indifferent and kind.
I’d been taught all my life or I knew somehow, I wasn’t sure which, that you couldn’t trust the kind faces of things, that the world was painted and behind the thin bright surface was dark ness and the only place I was safe was home with my mother. But it seemed safer outside now, safer with indifference than care.
