The Tribes of Palos Verdes

by Joy Nicholson

  She is in her bedroom when I go inside to face her. There is a note on the kitchen table that warns me “not to parade around half-naked in front of the gardener.” The house is quiet. I smell bacon and anger in the fading light.

  * * *

  At 1:30 A.M., my mother comes to my bedroom, shaking me awake from a deep sleep, holding a pair of nylon shorts between her fingers.

  My mother holds my face, cradling it, and rubs the nylon between her fingers, close to the small of my ear. It makes a scratchy noise, a dry itchy noise, sending off sparks from the heat.

  “These shorts are not what an old man should see. I saw him. I saw him looking at you.”

  As I try to wrestle my face from her hands, she tightens her grip.

  “You think you know about men just because you’ve charmed your father, but you don’t.”

  Then she wipes her sweaty fingers on her white nightgown, dropping the shorts in the hamper without another word. She slams the door to the bedroom with great force. She uses the door as a form of communication, as a punctuation mark.

  * * *

  I will never wear Dolfin shorts again. I will wear only striped shirts, beige sweaters, huge taped-up chino pants. Cami says only lesbians wear chinos, so maybe I’m a dyke. All the girls circle me after school, whispering, “Weirdo, dyke.” Then they try to make me kiss fat Dina Hauser, holding me down on the grass, pressing my face against hers.

  I fight them until the principal comes, but Dina rolls over, plays dead. Her eyes are calm, resigned.

  Jim tries to throw my chinos over Gull Cliff the next day, balling them into an angry knot, hurling them as far as he can.

  But I gather them up again. I run down the sheer face of the cliff, scooting like a crab, using both my arms and legs, triumphantly bringing up the pants on a broom handle.

  I laugh, shaking the dirty cuffs in his face like a witch doctor.

  I tell him never to do it again. I tell him I love these clothes of my father’s more than almost anything else. “Except not more than you, Jim, you idiot.”

  “I love you, too, you bitch,” he says, but he’s laughing.

  * * *

  The next day I’m running very fast with my father. The harder I run, the better I feel. We run neck and neck with the greenery, the flowers. We pass blond, emaciated women, jogging and frowning, wearing pastel shorts, the thin nylon kind, and matching Nike tennis shoes, running uphill in thin files.

  My father keeps looking at his watch because fat begins to burn after twenty-two minutes. The rest is only water loss.

  My father barely sweats. He wears aviator sunglasses like a movie star.

  “Looking good,” the women call out.

  Later we sit at Palos Verdes Park, stretching out after the run.

  Still breathing heavily, he asks me, “What would you think if I moved out for a while?”

  I close my eyes and stretch very hard, feeling pain radiate down my calf to my foot.

  “I think that would be very bad.”

  He exhales, explaining that things have gotten to “the point of no return” at home. He says my mother will be much happier without him in the long run.

  I bend all the way over, pulling my torso toward the ground. The muscles constrict and tighten down my back. I force my head all the way between my knees and keep it there.

  “Why don’t we come live with you?” I ask him, the words half-garbled, my throat constricted.

  My father sits down on the grass. He puts his chin in his hands. “That wouldn’t be practical, princess.” Then he tells me the real truth, that he’s fallen in love with someone else—someone he’s very serious about. He says it happened by surprise, that he hopes I’ll understand he’s getting a second chance to be happy now.

  All of a sudden, blood is rushing to my ears. I can’t hear what else he says, I feel like I’m going to pass out. His mouth is still moving as I straighten up. I see him reach out his hand to me, but I don’t take it.

  “Jim told me about all your girlfriends,” I say. “I didn’t believe him.”

  I tell my father not to hug me. “I’m not a baby anymore.”

  But I cry like one anyway.

  * * *

  My mother always cries into a pink tissue when she’s planning revenge. Today she’s looking out the window at Skip Dreeter, a twenty-year-old surfer. His legs are muscled, his hair bleached, his skin broiled bronze, his teeth cold and white.

  “Like a good string of pearls,” she murmurs.

  I spy on her through the hall stairs as she watches old Skip and his friends surfing in front of our house. Her breath comes quickly, like a terrier’s.

  “Maybe I’ll do it, too,” she says. “My God, he’s beautiful. Look at him.”

  Skip comes forth, under the window, tossing a laugh over his shoulder, riding a sudden wave, then dropping into the skin of moving water. My mother touches her face with the tissue, a deep flush comes over her. She leans closer, over the mirrored coffee table, panting a bit with exertion. She starts to stand up.

  Then she sees her reflection in the mirror. The puff of buttery jowl that has just begun to form, the cruel rings of her neck like a freshly cut cake. She notices my shadow. “Hey, sneak,” she says, not looking at me.

  “The beautiful part is over.”

  * * *

  Most of my father is gone when I come home from school. His suits, books, ties, cologne, and toothbrush have vanished. His body has been cut, not carefully, from all the family photographs. Sometimes a hand or the crook of an elbow remains, a strange void of empty space surrounding it.

  My mother can’t bring herself to cut the expensive oil painting of our family above the mantel. Instead she tapes up a piece of black velvet, leaving a black space between my brother and me, covering our father completely.

  At first, I peek every day behind the velvet to see his smile. Jim never does.

  * * *

  “Men only want what they can lift.” My mother is weighing herself. “Your father used to be able to lift me.”

  I look at my mother’s nude body in the fluorescent light, embarrassed at the size of her nipples. Her nipples are burnt orange–colored and larger than teacups. Her nightgown is hanging on the hooks of the shower door, food stains around its lacy neckline.

  “He’s the one that made me do this,” she says, grabbing flesh in her hands. “When I married him I was one hundred twenty-five pounds exactly.”

  Then she tells me to come to the kitchen. She takes a Hefty bag out of the pantry and fills it with five packages of frozen meat from the freezer. She hands it to me to hold.

  “This is only half as much I’ve gained since I married him,” she says.

  I put it down on the floor and try to sneak out, but she tells me to come back, or I’m grounded from surfing. “Pick it up, girl,” she tells me.

  I hold the meat, switching the weight from leg to leg.

  “Sixty pounds, almost,” she says.

  When it starts to defrost, she puts it back into the freezer.

  When I look out the window, I see the whales going by.

  * * *

  My mother says Jim is the new man of the house. She increases his allowance by twenty dollars a week, plus he gets tea with sugar and freshly baked cookies with cocoa sprinkles. My mother says the man of the house has extra responsibilities, so he gets special privileges.

  “Oh, you’re so special,” I tell Jim, “but if you sit around here, you’ll miss all the good waves.”

  He goes to the window, watching a wave scoop up Skeezer and Mikey. His breathing is even, he stares transfixed. My mother waves her hands in front of his eyes.

  “Hello—earth to Jim,” she says brightly. “The last thing I need is for you to get sad on me!”

  Then she tells us we’re going to start a new life. No health foods, no running. Nothing bad anymore.

  She offers around a box of Mallomars, telling us we’ll celebrate.

  I sit on the kitchen cou
nter, licking the salt off the top of saltine crackers.

  “Oh, well, let your sister be a sourpuss. I guess she’s watching her weight,” my mother tells Jim.

  “You’re the one who’s watching my weight,” I say.

  Jim sits in the middle, narrowing his eyes at me.

  * * *

  When we go out surfing later, Jim sits on his board, barely moving. He doesn’t paddle for any waves. They’re just junk waves anyway, small choppy swells that bob upward and go nowhere.

  I joke with Skeezer and Tom Alexander, telling them I’m gonna be the next Frieda Zane—the most famous woman surfer in the world.

  “Not if you don’t start getting some waves,” Tom says, flicking water at me.

  Later, Skeezer asks me what Jim’s problem is.

  “Is it a brother-sister disagreement? Are sissy and Jimbo spatting?”

  “No. My parents are getting divorced,” I say. “My dad has a new girlfriend.”

  No one says anything. As fog blows in, the water turns black and cold, and the other two paddle in, shouting goodbyes to Jim, looking at him strangely.

  Jim doesn’t come close to me. He takes off on a small wave, sliding at first, looking like he’s gonna wipe out, but pulling it off at the last second. He swims to the shore and gives me the middle finger over his back.

  I watch the sunset alone. Big, empty clouds hang just offshore.

  * * *

  When my father comes to collect his family china, my mother doesn’t yell at him, she even helps wrap the plates in newspaper. I spy through the door, barely breathing.

  “What happened to the way it was? Why did we move here?” she asks.

  “You’re the one who wanted the money and the Mercedes.”

  “Why don’t you just stop then,” she says softly, “if it doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  He looks around, gesturing at the furniture, the bikes in the driveway, then her body.

  “It isn’t just the kind of thing you can stop. I think you know that, Sandy.”

  When they go into the bedroom and lock the door, I can barely see through the peephole. My father opens his briefcase and shows my mother a thick notebook of papers. My mother laughs at the papers; she says there isn’t any reason to take things this far.

  For a while, it looks as if we’re all going to be okay. My mother apologizes, says my father can’t leave her, he promised he’d never do it.

  “For better or worse, remember, Phil?”

  Then she promises she’ll go on a diet, “for real this time.” She’ll even have her jaw wired shut like a Hollywood actress she read about, if it will make my father happy. My parents hug, both of them cry. My mother turns her face to my father like in a movie, trying to kiss him, but he jumps back, and places the briefcase on her lap, opening it. He takes her face in his hands, gently forcing her head to look at the papers.

  “Here are your choices,” he says.

  * * *

  My father leaves quietly, not saying good-bye. My mother’s face is puffy, her eyes bright and piercing. She acts like she’s in a very good mood, laughing and clapping her hands as she tells us that my father offered to buy her a house in Minnesota, on a lake. She describes how the houses are classy in Minnesota—big porches with real antiques. “None of this fake Spanish style,” she says.

  Then she starts to cry. She grabs Jim’s shoulders, and pulls him to her chest, hugging him tight.

  “Phil promised he’d never leave me. You’re all going to leave me, aren’t you?”

  Jim strokes her hair, murmurs softly, tells her he’s nothing like our father.

  “How could you even think that?” he says, pale, small.

  “So you’ll stay with me? Even like this?” Her voice is high, shrill, as she slaps her heavy thighs, pinches a roll of fat on her stomach, dissolves into fresh tears. Jim refuses to look at her body, trains his eyes on the flat horizon. His voice is neutral, terrible.

  “Don’t, Mom.”

  My mother suddenly stands upright, mascara running down her face, lipstick smeared across her chin, hairstyle askew. She holds Jim’s hand, faces me.

  “Your precious father wants to get rid of us, while he makes a new family with that woman,” she snorts. “He thought he could pull a fast one on me.”

  Rocks

  Jim and my mother have strategy meetings this week. She gives him my father’s antique rolltop desk and a locking file box, too. After school, she teaches him about paying bills, which ones are important, which ones can wait. She also opens up a bank account in Jim’s name to hide money from my father.

  “If we’re not smart, we could lose the house,” my mother explains, sitting on a low ottoman at Jim’s feet.

  Jim likes sitting at my father’s desk, opening the mail, drinking coffee. He’s nervous about forging my father’s signature on bills, though. He practices with tracing paper, looping the P over and over until my mother says it’s just right.

  When I can’t stand surfing alone anymore, I ask Jim to come with me, to forget all the secret papers. He shrugs and says he can’t hang around with me all the time like he used to. He has important things to do now.

  “Mom needs me to help her out,” he tells me. “She’s been having trouble with the bank, and she needs my help fixing things.” He folds his arms and talks about checking account balances.

  “You don’t know anything about money,” I say. Then I apologize, telling him maybe I better learn, too. He shakes his head. He takes off his sunglasses, looking me in the eye.

  “She heard you talking to Dad the other night. She heard you tell him she was a monster. That really made her cry.”

  “I didn’t say anything about her.” I shake my head violently, feeling a rush of cold air down my spine. “I didn’t, I swear.”

  Jim puts his glasses back on. He picks at his nails.

  “I’m not going to let you get away with talking about Mom like that,” he says, leaning way back in my father’s chair. “She’s not tough like you are, Medina.”

  Later I hear my mother moving down the hall. Her steps are heavy, decisive. She stops outside my brother’s room and knocks on his door.

  She says she can’t fall asleep. She wants him to sit with her for a while.

  * * *

  In the morning, the guys let Jim line up first so he can get a few sets in before our mother wakes up. As soon as he sees her yellow bathrobe in the bay window, he gets out of the water to make her breakfast and bring it on a tray into her room.

  All the guys stare at my mother’s yellow shape pushed to the glass. They talk behind our backs one day when they think we can’t hear.

  “Have you checked out Mrs. Mason? Pushin’ two fifty for sure.”

  “Fuckin’ A!”

  “My God, she used to be a model or somethin’. No wonder Mr. Mason left her.”

  “Maybe that’s why Medina’s so skinny. Mrs. Mason eats all the food.”

  After that, Jim stops surfing at all in the mornings, so my mother won’t come to the window. He stays home to have breakfast with her, as much cinnamon toast as he wants, warm and sugary. Sometimes she even lets him stay home all day from school to help her.

  My mother says Jim is her little man now.

  “Remember how close we felt in Joshua Tree? That’s how it’ll be every day.”

  Jim makes a joke. “Can we drink beer again?”

  My mother looks both ways, grins mischievously. Then she nods yes.

  “Just don’t tell anybody,” she says, pulling an imaginary zipper across his mouth.

  * * *

  When Jim finally comes surfing with me, we go to a new place, P-Land, on the other side of the hill. P-Land is named after the Petersons, one of the oldest families in P.V. They used to own all the land on the north side of P.V. until they sold it to the government in the sixties. From the top of the cliff, the water’s surface looks like a perfectly frosted cake, smooth ridges one after another.

  Even though he won�
�t admit it, Jim brought me to P-Land because he doesn’t want my mother to watch him surf the bay. He knows she’ll come to the window and the guys will stare. Lately she’s been following him everywhere. Whenever he goes out to surf, she pouts and asks him how long he’ll be.

  At P-Land we see an old green Volkswagen bus parked in the shade of a eucalyptus. An old guy, maybe thirty-five, is smoking pot out of a four-foot water bong, waxing an old longboard. His face is brown and lined like a turtle’s. His nose is scabbed over from being in the sun too much, his hair is bleached and thinning.

  “That’s Dan Edder,” Jim whispers, nudging me excitedly, “the shaper.”

  Shapers make surfboards. Some of them are a little weird because they breathe in so much chemical resin and fiberglass. But they get a lot of respect. Dan is a famous shaper. He specializes in making one-of-a-kind lightweight long-boards. Every surfer knows his story. He’s been surfing all over the world, even to Bali and Java. He cooks hamburgers on a butane stove in his bus. He reads a lot of comic books. He takes lots and lots of LSD.

  Dan lives in the bus on his parents’ property, just north of P-Land. He almost never surfs the bay, except on really big days. Even then he never talks to anyone.

  Jim and I paddle out, talking about Dan. Jim makes me whisper even though Dan is forty yards away.

  The waves are different on this side of the hill; they break much farther out, and there’s a lot of sharp rocks jutting out of the water. The water is muddy brown, filled with shells and stones that hit your arms like shrapnel as you paddle. It’s hard to fight a current that wants to push your board directly into the rocks.

  I try and try, but I can’t line up right, so I just push off with my hands and go. I ride sloppy, dipping into the water when I grab the rails, jerking around uncontrollably, then spilling off.

  Jim circles a few times, lining himself up perfectly. I watch him go as I paddle back out. He sways up and down, moving swiftly through the line of water, never even touching his rails. He’s calm and cool, barely sweating as he moves up next to me again. For the first time in weeks he smiles his best, widest smile.

  “Do you think Dan saw that ride?” he asks, grinning.