The sand was hot and white. It was August and the fog was long gone and the sun beat down. Nick and his friend Mickey drank beer and drew a circle in the sand.
That’s the boxing ring, said Nick. Don’t step outside the ring or you’ll be automatically disqualified.
Everybody said Nick looked like Paul Newman. He was taller than my dad and didn’t have broad shoulders—I had decided it was because he didn’t surf. He was different from my dad in a lot of other ways too. He would never dance at parties like my dad always did. And Nick didn’t play any instruments like my dad, or sing—stuff Dad learned to do when he was a child actor. Dad was in the classic Cheaper by the Dozen, acting in several films and TV shows through his early twenties. On a show called Sky King Dad played a mechanic, which was funny because he couldn’t fix anything, not even my bike. And I couldn’t imagine Nick running a summer cheerleading camp like my dad did. That’s how Dad met my mom—he was recruiting song girls to teach at his camp and my mom was staying with one of the song girls in an apartment in Westwood by UCLA. It was 1962. Dad had just resigned from the FBI and was working as an assistant U.S. attorney under Robert Kennedy. He and his friend Bob Barrow, who grew up near Dad in South Los Angeles, cooked up the idea of organizing a summer cheerleading camp as a way to make some extra money and meet college girls. Dad would teach the girls dance routines in the mornings before suiting up and going into the Department of Justice.
On their first date Dad took my mom to Topanga Beach. He played guitar for her and convinced her to paddle out surfing with him. They got married a year later, moving into a house on the beach.
Mickey helped Charley and me string up our boxing gloves. Mine had been acquired in a trade for my Raggedy Ann doll with a boy who was moving from the beach. This went down following a particularly tyrannical evening with Nick after which I had announced my desire to learn how to box. Then a few days later, as if to show that he was unfazed by my sudden urge to box—an obvious gesture meant to protest Nick’s drunken rages—Nick put together this little bout between Charley and me.
It’ll be good for you, Norman, he said.
While Mickey secured the knots Charley and I craned our necks to peek around the flat-topped dirt knoll on the point.
Stop leering at the naked ladies and put your mouthpieces in, said Nick.
The nude beach was just around the dirt knoll and both Charley and I quickly denied any interest in girls.
Good, said Nick. You know what’s behind those tits and asses?
Charley and I looked up at Nick, waiting with our eyes and ears wide open.
Mothers and grandmothers and brothers and sisters and cousins that you have to deal with, he said. Weddings and anniversary parties. Endless headaches.
Charley and I waited for more, but that was it.
You’ll get it one day, said Nick. Mouthpieces in?
Yeah, I said.
Good. Your mom would have a complete nervous breakdown if you lost your teeth.
Mickey was chugging down his beer. He looked back into the cove at my house where my mom was watering plants on the deck.
Okay, said Nick. Keep your hands up and keep your feet moving.
Like Muhammad Ali, I said.
Nick smiled and I could smell the beer on his breath.
Yeah, just like Ali.
Charley didn’t look nervous at all. He was two inches taller and about ten pounds heavier. We circled each other and I danced like Ali. I saw some openings between Charley’s glove and shoulder, enough room to punch him in the jaw, except my arm just lurched instead of shooting forward to punch him. Again, I tried to swing but my muscles tightened and I had to break through their resistance to throw a punch that ended up as a fly swat across Charley’s forehead. Then all of a sudden he came at me. I put my hands up and he hit me in the stomach and I lost my breath and turned sideways and he hit me in the nose. A stinger went down my body to my feet. It wasn’t as simple as pain. It was liquid and it was cool like the ethyl alcohol that my dad used to wash out his ears after surfing. My eyes watered and instantly I was scared shitless. I looked around for help and Nick was squinting at me, lips pursed.
Ready to quit? he said.
I nodded. Charley threw up his arms in victory.
I put out my hands for Nick to unlace my gloves and he rubbed his forehead and sighed and put down his beer. Charley moved with a confident swagger and Mickey complimented him on his toughness, and that brought to mind my crying over my Raggedy Ann doll the night after I made the trade. I had wanted it back. It was the only toy left from when my parents lived in the same house. But it was too late—the boy and my doll were already in another city.
Charley got his gloves off first and said he was going skateboarding with Trafton and Shane and a few of the other legends on the beach. They were going up to Coastline where the pavement was new and the streets were wide and steep and rolled on forever.
Your mom specifically forbids that, Norman, interrupted Nick before I could make my plea to tag along with Charley.
I looked at him and I felt my face turn red and my chin quiver.
It’s too dangerous, he added.
I touched my nose and it was sore and he seemed pleased that it didn’t make sense—allowing me to box but not go skateboarding.
Life is a long series of readjustments, he said, patting me on the back as if to soften the unfairness. Better to get used to it now, Norman, he added.
Nick and Mickey went ahead of us, carrying the gloves and mouthpieces so that we wouldn’t lose them. I followed Charley to his house near the point.
You can come along if you want to, he said.
I didn’t need his approval, I knew all those guys too, but I pretended to be grateful.
CHAPTER 3
NEAR THE TOP of Ontario Peak I woke up. Feathers rocked from the sky and coated my face. I had been dreaming but could not remember the dream. Were Dad and I just gliding side by side down a powder run?
Wind rustled through the spruce needles, so pure and uncluttered that I wondered if I was still asleep. I was kinked over and a section of the instrument panel crossed the foreground. One corner of the panel sunk into fog like an upended ship. A few feet beyond it was a big tree trunk. It crossed the other way, making an X with the panel. It was impossible to know where the horizon line was and my eyes strained to orient myself. Then the fog thinned like a flock of birds lifting and one of the airplane wings was stuck into the tree trunk. All these weird mashed-together pictures did not add up to anything that made sense. Chaotic swirls of snow fell sideways and back upward then disappeared behind a whitewash of incoming fog.
I tried to breathe but couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. My stomach was choked off by my seat belt, which strapped me into the seat. I called for my dad.
I can’t breathe, I bellowed. Dad I can’t breathe!
Pinned on my side by my seat, I couldn’t turn around to check on my dad and Sandra in the back. I went in and out of consciousness—like sinking into a murk of water and then suddenly rising to the top only to drop into the murk again. The whole thing is just a nightmare, I decided. A nonsense dream. Can’t wake up though.
I noticed something beyond the shattered cockpit—the pilot seemed sprawled out as if diving backward and there appeared to be a bloody cavity where his nose should have been. A reef of fog swallowed him before I could be sure.
I tried to breathe again. Just a speck of oxygen. My hand fumbled for the seat belt buckle and my blue mid-top Vans squeaked against the snow. The buckle released and my lungs burned with cold air. Dad will fix this, I told myself. He’ll turn everything right side up again.
I felt myself winding down, an engine sputtering. My head was light, eyes blurry. I had no idea where I was. Eyes began to close and I surrendered.
CHAPTER 4
WHEN CHARLEY AND I loaded into the VW bus it was filled with smoke from the joints going around. I took a puff, careful not to inhale too deep, and Big Fowler ha
d to jump out so that the bus could make it up the beach access road to the Coast Highway. A mile south we turned off the highway past the Getty Museum. Shane floored it so we could climb to the top of the hill, then one of the girls would drive the bus down to where Coastline crossed another street and went uphill—the run-out.
Barefoot and shirtless, hair in ponytails, the gang spilled out of the sliding bus door. Polyurethane wheels were fairly new, replacing the old clay ones, and I was awed by the swooping high-speed S-turns the gang carved down the center of the street. Charley and I watched until the succession of dangled arms disappeared around the first bend.
All that remained was the black slope. Charley didn’t seem intimidated and stepped right onto his board and took off. I had never skated anything this steep and I didn’t want to be all alone up there. I rolled forward, kept my turns long and made sure to curve back up the hill before starting the next turn. Charley went around the bend in a tuck and I worried that he would finish way before me and that everyone would be watching as I dribbled in last.
I sucked up my fear and pointed my board down the center of the street. In an instant I was flying. As I came around the bend I could feel the board start to wobble. I shot out of the turn and kept leaning up into the hill, trying to eat up some of the speed. The wheels sent violent quivers into the trucks—the metal axle below the skateboard deck—and up through the deck into my legs and my legs vibrated like loose exhaust pipes. Hold on, I told myself. The sidewalk was closing in and I had to start the next turn. I fought the whipping motion and shifted my weight to my toes and suddenly the wheels stuck and the board booted me into the air. I landed on my left hip, bouncing twice before my skin gripped the pavement and refused to let go. I put my hand down and my elbow came with it, flipping me over. When I finally stopped my back and ass were scraped raw too.
The air stung the whole left side of my body and the ground hurt against my backside. My hand burned and my hip throbbed but all I cared about was if anybody had seen me eat it. I looked up—Charley was already around the next turn.
My skateboard was in a rosebush and I plucked it out, scratching up my other hand. I threw down the board and pushed off, making big round turns for the remaining quarter mile. When I reached the run-out Charley was sitting against the bus with all the guys and the girls with the flowers in their hair.
What happened? said Charley.
Looks like Norm wiped out, said Trafton.
I nodded and pulled my trunks off my hip to show them my war wound. It was as red as a raspberry and bloody and the skin surrounding it was smeared black.
Check out that road tattoo, said Shane.
Everybody laughed and my bravado shrank.
You must’ve been hauling fucking ass, said Trafton.
I shrugged.
Way to shred, said Trafton.
Thanks, I said.
I didn’t have to look at Charley or anybody else—I knew I had their respect now. I pulled up my trunks and picked up my board. Charley offered me a sip of beer and I said no.
My mom was standing outside our garage, so Shane pulled the bus over at the top of the access road and I slipped out amongst a group of boys and right through someone’s gate. The gang climbed back into the bus and I heard it sputter away. I hoped nobody was home because I didn’t really know these people too well, only that a boy who visited one weekend a month stayed here with his father. I decided to walk down the stairs around the side of the house in order to make my way back home via the beach.
The stairs dropped past a window and I saw the boy’s father below on a bed. He was between a woman’s legs fucking her. I stared straight down on them and the woman turned her head side to side and her cheeks were pink and when she moaned a ripple of excitement washed down the center of my body. I could never share this with Dad. He’d tease me if he knew I liked girls. So would all his friends.
The boy’s father thrust hard into the woman and she cried out and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Then he rested down on top of her. My nose was inches from the glass and the glass was steamed up from my breath. I stepped back from the window and there was a wet spot on it the size of my face.
I dreamed about her pink cheeks as I wandered down by the mossy rocks exposed at low tide. To the south near the bottom of the cove Bob Barrow, Beer-Can Larry, and Nick’s brother Vincent were hunched around the poker table on Barrow’s porch. I heard some scratchy noises next to me and turned. Music echoed from the yellow house where all the best surfers lived. They called that house the yellow submarine. Nick used to live there before he moved in with my mom. I was shocked when I found out that he didn’t surf. Trafton and Clyde appeared on the upper deck with their electric guitars. They stood stiff-legged and rehearsed bluesy riffs.
A woman with crow-black hair drifted down the beach as if carried by the wind. She fluttered to the foot of the yellow house and lay on the sandbank formed by the waves at high tide. She gazed up at Clyde and Trafton stroking their guitars. I ambled off the rocks onto the wet sand, drawn to her. She rolled onto her back and looked out at the ocean and bobbed her head to the jam. I kneeled down and dug a hole in the sand and stole glances up her miniskirt. Her body was magnetic, which seemed natural enough, but I was unsure of what to do with the excitement coursing through me.
At first I didn’t notice her watching me. It seemed like a long process of me tearing my eyes away before I noticed her there, looking at me. She studied me as if I had not been looking up her skirt but up some other woman’s skirt, detached, like she was studying a photograph of this scene. She didn’t seem to care that I was staring at her private area. Like the nude sunbathers around the point didn’t care whenever Charley and I meandered up there.
I picked up my skateboard and walked home.
I scurried over the ivy growing out of the sand in front of our porch. I heard a door slide open and saw my mom step onto the side walkway. It was shaded in there. Her silhouette moved around in the darkness and then went back inside. I made a run for the walkway. Once under it I hid my skateboard on the lower shelf behind the dog and cat food. I walked to the sliding glass door and stepped inside.
My mom’s torso was curving out from the laundry room doorway. She leaned back and looked at me.
Where have you been, Norman?
Down the beach.
Without Sunshine? she said.
Sunny came out from under the kitchen table, tail wagging and wiggling as if she hadn’t seen me in years. I kneeled down and petted her and kissed her snout.
You’re lying, said my mom.
What are you talking about?
You were skateboarding. Your board was gone.
I don’t keep it there anymore because Dad keeps dinging the surfboards on it.
I ducked into my room, which was right off the kitchen. I shut the door and Sunny scratched it as I whipped off my T-shirt and put on a long-sleeved shirt.
Coming out of my room I went right to the fridge, drinking from the milk bottle. My mom appeared on the other side of the fridge door.
Are you telling the truth?
Yes.
Don’t lie to my face. It makes it worse, Norman.
I’m not lying. Ask the guys. I didn’t go.
She eyed me and I shrugged.
Why are you wearing a long-sleeved shirt? she said.
I’m going up the canyon, I said.
She looked confused and sort of worried. I called to Sunny and we crossed through the kitchen into the living room, past Nick’s rocking chair from which he watched the news every night. I thought about having to watch the Watergate hearings and Nick shouting at the TV from that rocking chair with a bottle of vodka in his hand.
Sunny led the way, jumping off the step into my mom’s sunken bedroom and bounding through the opened sliding glass door onto the porch. Sunny was missing her front left leg but that didn’t stop her from leaping off the porch onto the sand.
She knew where we were headed. Topanga Canyo
n emptied at the point, the creek water gathering into a pond that trickled into the ocean, gushing when the winter rains came. We navigated a dirt pathway around the pond overgrown with licorice plants. The smell perfumed the air. I tore off a limb and chewed on it and tore off another and gave it to Sunny. A VW bus was still in the middle of the pond, having washed down the canyon after a big rain years ago. On a dare I once swam out there and stood on its roof.
Under the bridge it was cooler and the cars rumbled overhead. We came out the other side and the path meandered along the sandy edges of the creek. I led Sunny into the bamboo stalks and we sat down on our tattered blanket within the confines of our fort. I continued to tell Sunny a story I was writing about Murcher Kurcher, the famed detective who was looking for the Mona Lisa thief aboard a ship bound for Europe. As I spoke I wrote it down on the pad of paper I kept rolled up in an old metal thermos that I found in the canyon. At the end of my story I told Sunny that when I got older I’d have big muscles and would kick Nick’s ass if he yelled at me or bossed me or my mom around anymore. Sunny looked into my eyes. She always listened like I was the most important person on earth.
CHAPTER 5
MY BODY QUIVERED like a freight train and woke me. I was freezing cold, and the cold defied the soft fog wrapping around me. It was the same as when I woke up the first time—an impossible landscape devoid of shapes, a bottomless cloud that I seemed to tumble through. Then I saw the twisted instrument panel.
Crazy for the Storm Page 2
