A boy is in the pool swimming, doing laps. After a few turns of the length, he changes strokes. I watch him for another five minutes, until he stops and pulls himself out. From here, he looks older than me. From here, he looks like a model. He’s wearing a Speedo and I can see everything, even from up here on the balcony.
Sid Vicious, who is sitting with me on the balcony, meows. The boy looks up at me.
You are beautiful, I think. Let’s get lost. Let’s run away from this place. I throw my leg over the balcony and I climb down the grate. I go right up to him. I say, Hello. My name is Katy and I am your destiny.
Only not really. Instead I look away, worried that the boy caught me staring, hoping he can’t tell all the way from down there that I think he’s cute, like somehow he can read my mind. I know he can’t. My wild thoughts are mine, safe inside of me.
I hope he lives here. I want to ask The Rat but I can’t because he doesn’t get out of bed until eleven a.m. I hear his movement in the kitchen and the distinct sound of the coffee grinder grinding beans.
I enter and The Rat is standing there in a pair of worn-thin boxers.
Don’t you own a robe? Don’t you remember there is a daughter in the house now?
I clear my throat, politely.
The Rat turns and looks at me like he doesn’t remember who I am and what the hell I’m doing in his dirty kitchen, then his face turns as red as one of the poppies he has tattooed on his left arm.
“Make coffee.” He points. “I’ll put my pants on.”
He pads out of the room as I take care of the coffee. I am used to the procedure. It makes me comfortable. I always make the coffee for Mom. It’s calming. For a quick moment, pouring the water and measuring the grounds feels like home.
As Mom always says, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
But it was just for a moment. I know full well I am not home.
After The Rat has had four cups of strong coffee, he seems ready to talk.
“So,” he says. “What should we do?”
“I dunno,” I say.
There is nothing I want to do in Los Angeles. Not one thing. Except leave. I’m ready to go. I’m still packed. Just drive me to the airport.
“I cleared my schedule so we could spend a little one-on-one time,” he says, dragging on a cigarette. “No band practice. No rock shows. Nada. Just me and you all weekend.”
He exhales the smoke in my direction. I cough. He doesn’t get the hint.
“Those are bad for you, you know.”
I’m just saying. In Canada the cigarette packs are emblazoned with pictures of blackened hearts and lungs. Rotten gums. Tiny deformed babies. It shows you how smoking makes you disgusting. The Rat is disgusting.
“Well, I quit the big things, Katy,” he says.
He’s talking about Heroin and Alcohol. Those are the big things. His big bad habits, the thing he and Mom had in common. Who started first? I wonder who got who hooked? I only know who quit first.
Mom, because she had a reason.
Me.
“I figure I’ll keep the caffeine and the nicotine,” The Rat says. “A man’s got to have some vices.”
That makes no sense. I want to ask why. And isn’t living in squalor vice enough? Never mind. I won’t be here long enough for it to be a problem. It’s his funeral. I won’t be here long enough to care.
“I’ll smoke on the balcony while you’re here,” The Rat says. “How about that?”
I’m confused. Do I have to answer? That action just seems logical to me. Smoke outside.
“Will you excuse me?” I say. “I think I’ll go check my e-mail.”
“When you’re done, let’s have breakfast.”
“I already ate,” I say, even though all I had was a banana.
“Well, I didn’t,” The Rat says. “And I’m starving. If you want, I could whip something up here. But usually I go out for breakfast.”
I get it. I bet he doesn’t cook. I bet he just uses the microwave and heats up chicken potpies. I’m sure that The Rat’s idea of cooking is gross bachelor frozen dinners or a can of soup, which is not my style. Mom is a good cook. She even made my baby food herself, and we always eat organic everything.
Tabernac! I am going to starve here in Los Angeles. I just know it. I’ll have scurvy or rickets by the end of my visit.
“Just so you know, Mom and I eat only organic,” I say, and I shrug. “I don’t really eat canned food.”
“Neither do I,” says The Rat.
Well, what’s all this? I want to say. I imagine that I get up and I open the pantry door and display the evidence like I’m on a game show, showing him the shelf of canned food.
“I didn’t know what you like to eat so I didn’t buy anything,” he says. “Other than my earthquake kit, the cupboards are looking pretty Mother Hubbard. We can go to the Farmers Market and get some produce. I have a grill out on the balcony. Do you like grilled food? I love grilled asparagus, even if it makes my pee smell funny. Why is that?”
I have to speak quickly or I’m afraid he’ll go on about his pee, and I don’t want to encourage him.
“Mom makes roasts,” I say. “I like roasts.”
“It’s too hot to roast. We’ll find something. That’s what cookbooks are for,” The Rat says.
Then he opens a cupboard that is too high for me to reach, and displays the long row of cookbooks. I don’t care if he has a certificate from a fancy gourmet cooking school. There is no way I would trust the cooking of someone who keeps such a dirty kitchen. I know about salmonella, and I’m not planning on getting it while in Los Angeles.
“I have every intention of being the kind of a person that cooks a lot, but to be honest, I’ve barely ever cracked any of these books open,” The Rat says. “It’s too hard to cook for one. But now that you’re here, maybe I’ll be inspired. Mostly I just go out to eat, or I order in.”
The Rat turns to the counter and pours himself another cup of coffee. Then he turns on the faucet and starts filling up the sink. I hope that he’s planning on doing the dishes.
I don’t want to help. I retreat to my room.
There are no messages from anyone, not even my best friend, Leticia.
I already miss Montréal, but it doesn’t miss me yet.
I decide to e-mail her.
Let . . .
L.A. SUCKS. The Rat’s cupboards are filled with canned food. I guess the only thing that’s good is that if there is an earthquake, we won’t starve, eh? He also smells because of the smoking. What’s going on in Montreal? Let me know.
Bisous, Katy
I don’t send it. I delete it. I don’t want her to think I’m already not having a good time.
I’m not surprised when the Fourth of July starts early — on July third. We’re in the car by ten a.m., which I’ve discovered is like the crack of dawn for The Rat, and he informs me that we have two barbecues to hit. I am watching the police helicopters circle lazily above us.
“Is that normal?” I ask. “Is everything all right?”
“What do you mean?” The Rat asks.
“The helicopters,” I say.
“Oh, there are always helicopters in Los Angeles — don’t sweat it.” The Rat laughs. “Unless they are chasing you, which is no fun. I can attest to that.”
I don’t know that story. The story of The Rat and the police helicopter. I don’t want to.
“Blue balloons,” he says. “The dealer had the drugs in his mouth in dirty blue balloons.”
I want to zone out as he tells me, haltingly, about a time that he bought heroin and was almost busted, running down alleys. He got away. But that wasn’t when he hit rock bottom, he says. No. He kept using.
It surprises me that he talks about it so openly, unlike Mom.
I don’t want to listen. It feels impolite. Like listening to someone tell you an embarrassing secret. Or like they are wearing their underwear on the o
utside of their clothes.
It makes me as uncomfortable as the letter I got from him four years ago. It was ten pages long, and rambling. It was too much information, like he felt as though in order to make his apology to me genuine and sincere, he had to tell me every thought he was having in his head. I could barely read it. I got the point. He was sorry.
I stare out the window and watch the cars, and the bright of the day, and the blue sky, and the neighborhoods, and I can’t help noticing how everything here is so spread out, the landscape changing from strip malls to houses to clusters of low-rent stores. It doesn’t feel like a city to me. It doesn’t feel like Los Angeles has a center.
“I’m playing in three bands at the Punk House. It’s a tradition,” he says. “But I have to stop at this other BBQ first. You know, put in an appearance.”
“Fireworks are a tradition, too,” I say. But he doesn’t seem to hear me; he just goes on with telling me the plan. He is always talking. Clearly The Rat can’t stand silence. I wish he’d just be quiet.
I like quiet.
“First there’s the party at the Yellow House. We’ll just stop in there for a quick hello. A bunch of guys on their day off from the Warped Tour will be there, and I want to let them know that Suck is playing, that we’re back together. Then we’ll jet over to the Punk House for the all-day Fourth of July Jam.”
“I thought you were taking time off for me,” I say.
“Well, I am. The first two aren’t my real bands, and then Suck is playing a secret show.”
Playing in three shows in three different bands in one day doesn’t count as playing too much to The Rat.
I want to wave out the window at one of the helicopters up in the sky. Take me away, I think. Come get me out of here! Rescue me! Send down a ladder! Shut him up! I’m being talked to death! I don’t want to hear one more thing about Suck.
But the helicopter passes us by, in pursuit of lesser crimes.
“I can’t believe how good the timing is that you’ll get to see Suck’s first show in years. Is that kismet or what?”
“I want to see fireworks,” I say. But I don’t really.
“Well, someone’s bound to have some that they’ll shoot off, though it’s probably not going to be some big spectacular show. OK?”
“It’ll have to do,” I say, sighing. Besides, nothing would beat the International Fireworks Festival Competition they have in Montréal. I wish I were there.
The Rat gets a funny look in his eyes.
“What?” I ask.
“We had a picnic at this fireworks thing in Montréal. Me, you, and your mom. I went with you guys once. The sound scared you, so you stuck your head under my shirt the whole night.”
“I don’t remember that.” I really don’t. I’m not lying.
“Oh, yeah. You were like two years old,” The Rat says, kind of trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. “It was the first time I came to Montréal, so I could meet you.”
You were never there. Mom and I go to the fireworks every year. Me and Mom. Me and Mom are a team. A team you are not on.
We’re quiet for a while. I am trying to remember all the times I have hung out with The Rat, and they don’t amount to much. Just a bunch of lunches at St-Hubert Chicken, a few trips to the Insectarium, some kiddie movies. It was all when I was really little, and Mom would never be there when he would pick me up. He’d come to Grand-maman’s house, and she wouldn’t let him in. He’d have to wait for me in the hall.
And then, when I was seven, he stopped coming.
“Is he ever going to come back?” I finally asked. I didn’t really care. He wasn’t that big a deal. I hardly knew him. But I was curious.
“No,” Mom said.
“Don’t you care?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“But you don’t want to see him again.”
“No. But I’m sad for you, Katy.”
“Why isn’t he coming?”
“He tried to bring drugs into Canada, and they caught him and they told him he could never come back,” Mom said.
“Never?”
“Never.”
“That’s a long time,” I said.
“Yes, never is a long time.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “Why would he try to bring drugs here?”
“Because he’s an addict,” Mom said. “Just like me.”
“But you don’t do drugs,” I said.
“No. I don’t. Not anymore. But I still have the disease.”
And that is the deepest she ever went into it with me. She changes the subject whenever the word drugs or addiction comes up. She makes some tea. Or bakes a cake. Or goes to her room and calls Grand-maman. She has to talk to someone about it. It’s just not to me.
So I stopped bringing it up.
The Rat didn’t really mean that much to me anyway.
After his big long apology letter, he never really mentioned not being able to come into Canada to see me. Not once in all the postcards sent from the road and stuff. He’d just say that he was on “adventure time.” That road trips were fun. That he wished I could see rock tours the way he sees them. He never mentioned that I never really wrote him back. Maybe it makes him uncomfortable, too.
The Rat starts tapping away on the steering wheel. He goes back to his favorite subject. Suck.
I’m beginning to see how this works. When in doubt, bring up Suck. Awkward silence? Talk about Suck.
“You’ll get to meet Sam Suck, my best friend. We’ve known each other since junior high school.”
Hidden in my mom’s bedroom, inside a shoebox in the back of her closet, there’s a photo of her, The Rat, and Sam Suck. Whenever I am curious about The Rat, I go to the shoebox and dig through it. I examine the trinkets from my mom’s past. There’s that picture. There’s a leather choker with a fleur-de-lys on it. A plastic ring, the kind that looks like it came out of a gumball machine. A bunch of lanyards for rock shows, and various VIP backstage passes. Bad Religion. Black Flag. Circle Jerks. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Thelonious Monster. Nirvana. D.I. Social Distortion. Sonic Youth. fIREHOSE. Jane’s Addiction. A beer cap with a hole in it. A Flipside magazine with Suck on the cover. A book of matches from someplace called Al’s Bar. Another book from a place called Jabberjaw, with BR + LB written in a heart on the inside. A sketch of The Rat and my mom, ripped out of a notebook, with 10/27 outside of Raji’s scrawled at the bottom. A broken drumstick. A bandana. A scrap of paper with curly writing on it. Let’s be friends! Yana Banana and a phone number.
They are artifacts of my mother’s time with The Rat. I want to understand why these keepsakes are important. I want to piece together the story.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” Mom always says when I ask her.
They are the only things I’ve ever seen from that time before I was born, before she left behind that alternative lifestyle and never spoke of it again. Before she became my mom.
“It’s like those Greek myths,” she says, “where someone has to go to Hades and back to get the one that they love. I went to Hell and back and I found you.”
In the photo, Mom has long blond dreadlocks and she’s standing between The Rat and Sam Suck. The Rat only has a few tattoos on his arms. He’s skinny — skin and bones — and he looks really young. They all do. Sam Suck has a tiny Mohawk, which has kind of flopped over on its side, and there is a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His eyes are half closed. My mom has her arms thrown around their shoulders. They look as though they are holding her up, like she can’t stand on her own two feet. Her head is tilted back and she’s laughing. Her smile is disarming. She looks totally happy. She looks totally free.
I love that picture for her laugh.
I have never once seen her laugh like that with me.
With me, her laughs have a little twinge of sadness, a little bit of something being held back. Or so it seems. Like she had to leave her real laugh behind in Hell. Like that laugh belongs to that gi
rl. In that picture, I imagine that her laugh comes right from her belly.
I have never laughed like that either.
I just know I haven’t. I always hold something back, too.
All I know is that I come from Hell. And The Rat and Sam Suck are where Hell begins. And now I’m with them.
In Hell.
The Yellow House is a nice house filled with nice normal people. They look like they have money. Even though there are some dreadlocks and spiked hair in the crowd, everyone looks clean-cut. There are a lot of kids running around, but not one of them is my age. It’s all babies and toddlers.
“Why are there so many babies here?” I ask.
“They all started breeding late,” The Rat says.
He probably means they didn’t knock up a teenage girl like he did when he was twenty-seven.
The Rat grabs a soda pop and then I follow him as he goes over to a bunch of guys, all wearing black jeans, colorful button-down shirts, and black-rimmed glasses.
After he introduces me to everyone, he gives me a little eyebrow lift, which I think is supposed to signal that these guys he’s standing with, who wave and nod at me, whoever they are, are really cool, and that they make him really cool.
Maybe I’ve seen them on Much Music in a video that I ignored because they are old guys and not the kind of boys that Leticia and I find cute. I don’t mind bands that have cute boys in them, but these old guys are like in their forties.
But I have to admit that even though they are not my style, they sure do look cooler than The Rat. Even just standing around these guys look like they could be on the cover of a magazine. They all have this ease about them, a kind of calm as they stand around eating. Not like The Rat. The Rat always has that jumpy nervous energy, drumming a beat out on anything he can tap his hands on, that makes me feel a little panicked.
I keep my gaze steady. I smile instead of rolling my eyes. I remain neutral. I nod enthusiastically, feigning interest as The Rat tells me that his friends are all in really big bands. But I don’t know who the guys are, and even though some of them look vaguely familiar, I’m unimpressed.
The Rat and the cool-looking crowd gather to one spot by the grill as one of the guys occupies himself by flipping the meat. They immediately get into an intense discussion. Then I think The Rat forgets I’m there with him. He’s probably not used to having someone tag along. He’s probably used to being a loner.
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