In the Break

by Jack Lopez

  My lawyer told us that the D.A. was trying to make inquiries with the Mexican Consulate and the U.S. State Department. But due to perpetually underfunded bureaucracies, the ball had dropped, so to speak.

  I just missed my friend and wanted him back.

  At some point our lawyer suggested that my parents hire a private detective or a bounty hunter to go down there and find Jamie (what he meant was proof of Jamie’s drowning), but when the cost was presented, my parents declined. They didn’t have that kind of money. My mother told the lawyer to contact Claire Watkins about the possibility, but he said she wouldn’t return his calls.

  Every time I saw my brother I worked on him to take me back down, but he couldn’t — his wife was pregnant and he thought it would be uncool to leave her at this time, and he had a full-time job, which he couldn’t lose. I saw his point, sort of.

  But one day at lunch he showed up just to see me. “I’ve got Bimbo Burgers,” he said.

  “Cool.” He brought me three of the little cheeseburgers, fries, and a chocolate shake.

  “I know you’re on house arrest,” he said, unwrapping his regular-sized hamburger and taking a big bite. He had a Diet Coke, no fries. “But Nestor won’t let you surf?”

  “Naw, he’d like to kill me, if he could.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You did mess up. I mean, really!”

  He looked right at me and smiled. I missed my brother. He didn’t surf and he didn’t play any sports; he really came alive when he danced though, even going on TV dance shows years ago. Back then he danced on weekend nights at the local hip-hop clubs too. I was too young to get in those places. Amber had been a few times with Robert Bonham, but she was really too young to go as well. She had said everyone was drinking, and I knew my brother had too, because I could hear him bumping into things when he came home late at night when we still shared a room. Now he was gone, married to his high school girlfriend, Bonnie. My sister-in-law. She was cool. But, still, my brother was gone. It was a weird situation. My parents weren’t really happy that he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant.

  After we inhaled the food and while he was crumpling the wrappers and placing them back in the bag, he said, “I just thought I’d see how you’re doing. I don’t see you much anymore.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “You know, we could go back down and look for Jamie some weekend. It would only take a couple of days. We could find him, I know we could.”

  While standing up, he looked down at the table. “I’m sorry, I can’t. Shit, what time is it? I’ve got to pick up Bonnie at the doctor’s.” He looked sort of sad, and older.

  As the weeks wore on, I had to enroll in LISE, the acronym for Long-term Independent Study Education. For major fuckups. Kids who were expelled or convicted of drug crimes and violent crimes. I had to go to the continuation high school once a week to get my work, my mother dropping me off and picking me up. Since I didn’t know any of those kids, it was no big deal. My work would be checked (it was always excellent), and I could do as many assignments as I wanted. The teachers seemed to think it was a big deal that my science labs were dry, but I didn’t care. I didn’t much like dissecting things and mixing stuff anyway. Besides, I was way ahead of the expectations for what I should do per week, months ahead really, because there wasn’t anything else to do, and I was never a huge television watcher, and I was banned from online stuff and everything else, so why not do the schoolwork, keep up with my class?

  Except Mrs. Perez, my counselor, said my missing the tenth grade would have dire consequences for my college application process. So would a felony, I told her.

  One afternoon I was just sitting around after doing my schoolwork. My father was asleep and my mother was at work and my little brother and sister were in school. I just felt like getting out of the house, and though I wasn’t supposed to, I walked all the way to the Albertson’s on the back end of the mesa. It was close to Halloween, and I always liked to look at all the candy in the stores. The candy reminded me of when I used to trick-or-treat, reminded me of all the candy we used to eat, and the fun I had running door to door with Jamie and our friends.

  A strong Santa Ana wind was blowing, bending the eucalyptus trees and the huge cypress trees that bordered the mesa from when it used to be farmland and the trees were functional, windbreaks. I could see forever, see the mountains that ringed the huge basin where we lived, could even see the granite white rocks on the top of the highest mountain, which made it look as if it had snow on it, even though it was over eighty degrees out. It felt so good to be out of doors, to be away from my house where it seemed as if I were under house arrest, which I was, if Nestor had his way. When I looked back over my shoulder, I could see the ocean all whitecapped and blustery-looking.

  My family had lived on this mesa above Playa Chica for a number of generations. Behind the mesa was the Colonia, the barrio where some of my relatives lived. My great-grandfather had had the foresight to buy property on the mesa when it was inexpensive. My grandfather had built our house there after World War II when it was affordable to build. Only people who wanted horses and land with neighbors far removed had purchased at that time, and things had pretty much remained the same, except that our house was old. As I looked at it now it seemed sort of shabby next to the newer, bigger homes.

  Walking in the market, I remembered the Halloween when Jamie had brought his father’s duffle bag, and wouldn’t stop trick-or-treating until it was halfway filled with candy. I smiled looking at all those bags of Snickers, my favorite, and M&M’s and Peanut Butter Cups, everything piled up in a huge square right when you walked in, like the farmers’ market for candy, the horn of plenty for rotting your teeth. I was thinking of treating myself to a bag when I saw something that shook me up so much I forgot about candy.

  I saw F. He was on his own in the market, using a walker. He shuffled along like an old man. Seeing him like that gave me goose bumps and I ran all the way home.

  As I stood inside the entry hall in our house, I heard Nestor coming down the hallway. I was breathing hard so I flopped down on the floor and began doing push-ups.

  “What are you doing?” Nestor said. It looked as if he’d just gotten out of the shower.

  “I can’t get any other form of exercise,” I said.

  “You can go to school.”

  Before I could think of a comeback, Paul burst in saying, “Hi, Dad!”

  They went into the kitchen to get snacks. I went to my room.

  Seeing F like that brought to mind what my mother had said about Jamie. For some reason I couldn’t get her comments that Jamie was mean and hard out of my head. Both of those words were pretty bad for her to say. She meant that he was a lout, an unsavory character, in her opinion. I had never heard her use such harsh terms regarding any of my friends, and I couldn’t let it go.

  Why would she think that of Jamie?

  He’d always been my friend, and sure, we got in a few spats over Monopoly and ball games, one accusing the other of cheating, or one of us just pissed off over losing, whatever, nothing serious. Nothing that had ever come close to blows.

  Maybe she meant the change that had come over him after his father died. He had changed so much over those years. It wasn’t quick or anything, something very gradual and subtle, as I thought about it. Something that my mother could spot out after knowing Jamie for so many years, since he was practically a baby. She could see the change, maybe when I couldn’t.

  But that he was mean and hard? What’s hard? If she meant that he’s tough, can fight well, then that’s right. So what?

  The Kent Chambers fight had come to him, and so had every one of the others, if I remembered right. In fact, one time a guy punched Jamie right in the jaw, and he just looked at the guy in passing. It was for no reason, when we were at the pier at night, and walking back through the parking lot to head over to somebody’s house. We passed some older, drunk guys, and one of th
em hauled off and hit Jamie. It staggered him for a second, and I thought I saw his knees buckle just the slightest, but then he kept on walking without missing a beat. I think it had been around the Fourth of July or something, a time when it’s full-party-drunk-out-time at the beach and inland assholes are ubiquitous.

  And there was another time when Aaron Stangy tried to pick a fight because Jamie wouldn’t loan him his board. Aaron was a hog, a leech, one of those guys who liked to surf but never seemed to have a board of his own. He’d always borrow boards from kooks and shit.

  Jamie hadn’t fought him, either.

  But then I remembered the time we were skateboarding in front of Jamie’s house, and John Needles was still around then, the three of us just grinding off the curb and stuff, talking and hanging out on a Friday night. Some other kids came by, kids we didn’t know, and mouthed off. There were like five of them.

  Jamie just went at the biggest one and kicked his ass. Pretty fast. That’s how most fights were, a bunch of flailing fists and arms and sometimes legs, and one guy would get tagged, and the other guy would go in for the kill. A guy might get hit in the face or something, and see his own blood and freak out, or get energized or something and go off one way or the other. I think Jamie broke the guy’s nose on the first punch, because there was a lot of blood and the guy seemed unable to see, and Jamie just wiped the floor with him, shutting up those other boys as they took off helping their friend. There were a number of fights from confrontations in the water too. And one on the beach not long ago when a guy was trying to break into Claire’s car. Jamie had taken it, of course, without her permission. He beat the crap out of that guy too. But I always thought Jamie was in the right in all his fights. But did he have to fight, I guess was the question. To look at it through my mother’s eyes, I’d have to answer that question. And I could see now from more perspective that, no, he didn’t always have to fight. Kent Chambers had made him fight. And F had made him fight Kent Chambers the second time. But there were others after and before when he truly didn’t have to.

  As I thought about it, I realized I was always half-afraid that Jamie was going to go off on someone, especially when we surfed. I thought it was just the way things were in the water. But not everyone is like that. Lots of guys surf without ever getting in fights. Certainly not fights in the water. Maybe Jamie was different. Maybe he did have a penchant for violence in the same way that I had a blind spot for him and ignored his violent tendencies. But when you grow up with a guy, a guy who’s your best friend, you tend to overlook certain things. Perhaps I was wrong to do so. Possibly that was what my mother was saying.

  I couldn’t answer my mother’s indictment one way or the other. On some level she was right, maybe. But there were other considerations.

  And the one that I couldn’t answer, ever, was the one about losing his father. That was a perspective that I couldn’t get into, no matter how hard I tried. And I hoped I would never have to, for the prospect seemed too horrible. Nestor pisses me off sometimes, but he’s my father, end of story.

  Jamie lost his father. And he was never the same.

  But could the stuff with F have gone differently? Did Jamie have to fight and injure F? Could he have just gotten out of there, and possibly the police would have dealt with F? I don’t know, and I’ll never know because the fight had escalated, and Jamie had done what he was very good at: fight.

  My mother had threatened our family with church, and she kept her word. Two weekends after my “transgression” — my mother’s term for stealing her car and running away with Jamie and Amber to Mexico on a surf trip — we went back to mass as a family.

  Week after week we had to endure the monotone priest, the beaming parishioners, the handshakes at the end followed by “Peace be with you.” One Sunday as I sat in the pew between Nestor and Paul, I remembered the times Raul and I used to ride our bikes to early mass. So that we would be finished with the obligation early enough to get on with our day: He would hook up with a girlfriend, I would surf. What I remembered was getting the giggles (we always sat in the very back of the not-very-filled church) when Raul would stuff trash in the collection envelope, or gum, or even snot once. I would imagine some officious layperson opening the envelope… .

  I must have chuckled, for Paul slugged me in the arm. I leaned down and whispered, “Love, Jesus,” while pinching the baby fat under his ribs.

  He shrieked, and everyone in the whole congregation looked at us. Nestor spoke in a hushed though severe voice to him, and then glared at me. What, was I going to get in more trouble? I didn’t give a shit, if this was my life.

  I figured I would get in trouble big time from Nestor once we got home, but the opposite happened. He was so impatient to leave that he took off before the priest walked down the aisle with the incense and shit he carried. My mother was furious with Nestor, almost running to catch him as we hustled to the gravel subsidiary parking lot, the overflow lot, where we were forced to park, since we’d arrived late. My mother liked to hang out in front of the church after mass, exchanging pleasantries with strangers. Once she caught up to him she said, “What kind of example do you think you’re setting for your children?”

  “What?” Nestor said. “I want to go.”

  “What’s the big rush?”

  “I don’t want to get stuck in the logjam getting out. This parking lot’s a bottleneck. We’ll be here a half hour.”

  “So what?”

  Before I’d even buckled my seat belt, Nestor peeled out, spraying gravel as he lurched the car toward the exit.

  “That’s it!” my mother shouted. “You’re not going next week. You’re banned.”

  I thought I saw Nestor crack the slightest grin as I looked at his face in the rearview mirror.

  The first therapist I had to see was a therapist-in-training, and she was free, available from my church, St. Mary’s. My mother had talked to Father Daniels, and he suggested that I begin sessions with Ms. Catrone.

  The first session we just met and I pretty much wouldn’t talk. Why should I speak with a stranger? Why should I pour out my heart to someone I didn’t know? I didn’t. And when I did talk in the few sessions we had, I withheld the good stuff. I said that F was a cheap jerk and that Jamie should be given a medal for fucking him up. Ms. Catrone didn’t think I was being very charitable. It was hard to reconcile the image of F in the market with the one of him dragging Jamie off the beach that day. But the violent image always won out, ergo my apathy toward what had happened to F.

  She wanted me to talk about my feelings about Amber, once I said that we’d hooked up. But I wasn’t going to tell that woman anything about her. Talking about it would somehow lessen our experience, wouldn’t it?

  She knew we weren’t getting anywhere so she cut off my sessions. She told my parents that I didn’t trust her, which was true, I supposed. And it was fine because there was nothing wrong with me; I was just stalling until Jamie returned. They’d find him, or he’d simply get back on his own somehow. Jamie could do it, I just knew he could.

  I had a fantasy about Jamie returning one day, all scraggly, like Chance, Shadow, and Fluffy had done in The Incredible Journey. There’d be so much celebrating that the whole area wouldn’t be able to contain itself, not the teachers at my high school or continuation school, not any of the law-enforcement people, not the D.A. or my lawyer, not the neighbors who now looked at us askance; not anyone, we’d all be so happy that all the bad stuff would go away.

  “Don’t you know anyone who drives?” I said. Greg Scott and I were sitting in my room after school was out for him.

  “Robert Bonham.” Greg Scott thought he was funny.

  “You’re not funny, dude,” I snarled at him. “I want to go back down.”

  “You can’t, dude. You’re on bail.” He was sitting on my bed playing his newest handheld.

  “So?”

  “So, you jump bail and they send bounty hunters after you.”

  I knew he was r
ight. But it was just that months were going by and nothing had happened. Except that Amber wasn’t coming back, I didn’t think, and Claire had separated from F, or so we heard.

  “Would your dad take us?”

  “Shit, man, I got so much heat for getting you guys the sleeping bags and stuff. Gimme a break.” He turned off his system. “You know who’s dating Corinna now?”

  I had had a crush on her since the fourth grade. Now, after Amber, Corinna Cervantes seemed a little girl. “No, who?”

  “Dan Avon.” Greg looked at me as if I were supposed to care. I didn’t. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird?”

  “Why?” I couldn’t care less who went out with Corinna.

  “You don’t seem to care about much these days,” Greg said, putting his things in his backpack, getting ready to go home, I guessed.

  He was right, I didn’t.

  “Let’s check out the waves,” Greg said.

  We went into my backyard and climbed up on the block wall. Not much was going on in the ocean.

  “When do you get to surf again?” Greg Scott said.

  “Ask Nestor.”

  After he left I felt so lonely I thought I might actually cry, the one thing everyone was trying to get me to do, but also the thing I refused to do. Jamie was coming back… .