by Jack Lopez
And Amber, well, I was now almost embarrassed about how I’d behaved. Not for anything I’d done. More so for how I felt. I was nothing to her. No, that’s not true either. I just wasn’t Robert Bonham; nobody could be, I now saw. They were meant for each other, I think, and I got in the way for a time. A very short time. I guess like the other guy she had fooled around with. Why would I think she would want to be my girlfriend?
It’s so silly, even though I have these incredible dreams about her. Last night we were in the ocean and I started kissing her and we were getting down to business, and when I opened my eyes underwater Amber was a dolphin, pulling me into a wave in the dream. Almost all the dreams are about sex and we don’t quite do it, or are interrupted or otherwise thwarted. But in the dreams she still wants to, and I guess that’s something.
I guess we connect with people in so many different ways; there are so many different forms of like and love and friendship. I’m good friends with Greg Scott, but he’s not Jamie and never will be. But he’s got my back and he does everything that a friend can do, and vice versa on my part. And there are other guys as well. Girls too. Girls who just seem to like me because I’m me, not any going-out stuff.
Maybe I should care that Corinna likes that fool Dan Avon. Maybe I should let her know that I liked her for a long time. Or it can wait; it’s waited long enough. I guess the big thing is that I see that I could hook up with someone else again, and I don’t begrudge Amber’s being with the person she wants to be with.
CHAPTER 17
All winter the coast was battered by El Niño storms. Huge weather systems from the gulf of Alaska generating massive swells that hit our coastline. Wind and rain pelted the house, flooding the streets and closing Pacific Coast Highway on a weekly basis. And I couldn’t surf. I stayed around the house doing schoolwork, talking with friends on the phone, and seeing Greg Scott on the weekends. My lawyer stalled the courts, and sucked money from my parents.
Robert Bonham showed up one rainy afternoon and knocked on the door.
“What do you want?”
“Amber’s board.”
“No way!” I snarled.
“We’re getting married. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Fuck you.” I pushed him off the porch, out into the rain. When he came back at me I slammed the door and locked it.
He pounded on the door and then kicked it. “You’re lucky I don’t kick your ass, you little asshole. She’s marrying me!” he yelled through the closed front door.
I stood quiet in the hall, until I slid down the wall and sat on the cold damp tiles. I could see the television set from where I sat, and couldn’t help remembering a time when Amber had showed up at the front door, breathless and in need.
And they did marry.
Amber sent me a letter, one that’s creased slick from having been read so many times, I could see as I looked at it yet again.
Dearest Juan,
By now you must know I’m married to Robert. Please, please, please forgive me if I have hurt you.
I can’t explain what happened down in Mexico with us, all that happened on the island. I still don’t know what to make of it. But I know you’re a part of my life in the same way that Jamie. Oh, how I miss Jamie. And you must too. It must be so very hard for you, Juan. I hope hearing from me doesn’t make things even worse. My intention is to ease your mind, to tell you that I’m okay, I’m getting on, that you are always in my heart, and I hope that I might see you someday.
Much love,
Amber
P.S.: My mother’s wrong to hold anything against you. You acted, you didn’t hesitate to help Jamie She will realize that someday.
Claire did hold me responsible, my mother told me. She, Claire, had told my mother when they finally spoke that had it not been for me, her son would be alive. My mother told her that she, Claire, was the person most responsible, if there were blame to lay, which there wasn’t. They talked no more after that. And my life was completely severed from that of the Watkinses.
As the winter wore on into early spring, and the first peach trees blossomed and then the apricots followed, my thoughts began to change. I knew that Jamie was not coming back. This was a result of everyone pounding that fact into my head, everyone from the parish priest to the court-appointed counselor I now had to see once a week. My father, my mother, my older brother, Amber in her letter, all of these things.
And this: even though I wasn’t to leave the house, one day I got my bike from the garage and rode over to Jamie’s. It was sort of far, and would take too long to walk before my father awoke. I wanted to confront Claire. Why wouldn’t she talk with me, or see me? She never even asked anything about why we left, or what had happened to Jamie. I wanted to ask her, Why did Amber have to be in Oklahoma, married? Of course I wasn’t to have contact with any of the Watkins family, but she could have at least called or something. But she hadn’t.
A strong onshore breeze blew all the eucalyptus trees that lined the mesa’s northern edge. When I looked back I could see the ocean all dark and stormy, whitecaps luffing along the sea’s edge. I crossed Golden Sunset Street, entering Jamie’s housing tract, pedaling on autopilot the different streets to his house. Jamie should be there; what if he were there? I think I just wanted to see Claire, who was a Watkins, after all.
On the ride over I remembered when Robert Bonham had entered the scene. He was a Sheila magnet, a very good surfer, popular in school, so I was told. Or overheard when Amber was squealing into her phone to one of her friends. Robert had asked her out, she said over and over. Robert would hold no water with the slutty girls.
Around that time Jamie never wanted to do anything other than sleep or hang in his room. I made him at least throw grounders in the backyard. And Amber’s bedroom window was always open so I could hear her phone conversations. I could hear her excitement, which made me happy for her. Once for me the Watkins house was the house of mirth; then it was the palace of denial. Jamie would just go through the motions like he was sleepwalking or something, many of the balls just dribbling under his legs and he didn’t give a shit. I’d have to go get the ball and throw it to him again.
“Yeah, can you believe it?” Amber yelled in the phone. “Friday! My mom said yes! I don’t know! Yeah! Yeah!”
And so it went. I figured it was a big deal for a bunch of reasons. Robert Bonham was a stud, a player, a guy with a car who could have his pick of girls. He was in the eleventh grade, Amber in the ninth at that time. He was an older guy. But he could see Amber’s qualities even though she was young. A lot of guys talked to her and talked about her but not many asked her out. And of the few who did, she mostly refused them. The timing must have been right, something for everyone to look forward to instead of the gloom that had overtaken all aspects of life at casa Watkins. I don’t know if Mrs. Watkins would have let her go out with an eleventh-grader under normal circumstances, but circumstances would never again be normal at Jamie’s house. Mr. Watkins would never have let her go out.
Amber did go out with Robert Bonham, and he brought her home pretty close to when she was supposed to be back, and he was nice to Jamie, even okay to me, so they settled into the boyfriend-girlfriend thing rather than simply hooking up the way most kids did.
I’d known Amber for so long, but when I saw all the different clothes she tried on or how excited she was it sort of made me not want to be around her. It was like a different person. She’d turned into a chick, giggly and stupid and moody, depending upon what was up with Robert.
After they had been together for about six months, Amber baked him a cake for his birthday. The problem was she had just finished putting the icing on it when Jamie and I returned from surfing. We rode bikes that day, had surfed close, at Playa Chica, had surfed about five hours, and had ridden to and from the beach. We were hungry!
I saw Amber in her cutoff Levi’s and pigeon-toed bare feet rush out of the kitchen as we entered. She was on her cell, I thought, and didn�
��t want us to hear her conversation.
“Thank you, dear Lord,” Jamie said, grabbing some plates and forks and a big knife from a drawer.
I was comfortable around Jamie’s house but not enough to cut open a freshly baked cake. I could get glasses and milk, though, which I did. And I could eat it. I put: the half gallon of milk right on the table with us.
“Oh, yeah,” Jamie said. “This is fresh.” Jamie’s voice was usually low, though it could be high when he laughed. But when he was happy or excited his voice got higher, elevating everyone’s mood.
He cut two huge pieces and we finished them in a second, washing them down with milk. As I watched him cut two more, I thought of what my father called Jamie: the skinny hog. Jamie could eat anything in sight but wouldn’t gain weight. We finished the next two pieces as well, savoring the cake’s warm, rich white texture contrasted with the chocolate icing.
“I’m hungry!” Jamie said. While smiling he cut what was left of the cake in half, placing one piece on my plate, the other on his. The skinny hog and his loyal sidekick.
I poured more milk. It wasn’t up to me to monitor cake eating in the Watkins house.
We left the kitchen for his room after having finished the cake. We were just kicking it, relaxing and listening to music, when we heard Amber cussing. Soon Mrs. Watkins came charging into Jamie’s room, blowing open the door like we’d killed the neighbor’s dog or something.
“What’s the matter with you two?” she shouted at us.
“Calm down,” Jamie said, smirking.
Why is that with some people the madder they get, the funnier it becomes? Maybe because it’s so out of place. Claire Watkins wasn’t going to harm us. She was probably having trouble yelling at us. And that’s what made it funny. That, and Amber’s banging around the kitchen.
“What’s the tragedy?” Jamie said in his high voice.
“You ate the cake Amber baked for Robert. The whole damn thing!” She was going to play tennis or something because she had on a tennis outfit but hadn’t yet put up her hair or put on her shoes. She stood there in her ankle socks, her cheeks flushed and her blond hair swinging back and forth as she moved her head for emphasis.
“We didn’t know it was for Robert,” Jamie said, now struggling to withhold his laughter. Then he chuckled, and that opened the floodgates. His laugh was staccato and his shoulders jumped up and down slightly and his whole face scrunched up so that his eyes were slits.
I didn’t know why the fact that Amber had made the cake for Robert made it funnier, but it did. And then when Amber showed up at the doorway glaring at us, we got an even bigger case of the giggles.
“You dork, Juan!” she shouted at me. “Asshole,” she sneered at Jamie.
That made Jamie roll off his bed onto the floor, overtaken with laughter.
“Watch your language, Amber,” Mrs. Watkins said. “It’s not funny, Jamie, Juan,” she said, trying to add some dignity to the scene.
But we couldn’t stop laughing, which was just getting us in deeper shit. Until Amber came in with a glass of water and threw it in Jamie’s face, which didn’t stop the laughter but got him off the floor as he chased her out of the room. Down the hall, I heard Amber shouting, “You’re both assholes! Assholes!”
When I stood up I was pretty close to Mrs. Watkins. I could smell her coconut body lotion and could see that her blouse wasn’t yet buttoned all the way, could just see some freckles on her chest by her throat. I was taller than she was, only recently having overtaken her. Jamie was almost a head taller than his mother.
She had looked in my eyes, and hers had clouded up, and I thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t; a smile broke out instead, and she mouthed the word thanks without uttering a sound, and turned on her heel and walked out. I didn’t know what she meant but I was glad that she didn’t cry, because I wouldn’t have known what to do.
I chuckled thinking of that cake and that time. But I also wondered if Mrs. Watkins would thank me now. I knew the answer to that question.
Riding up to his house, I saw the freestanding basketball hoop Mr. Watkins had bought a thousand years ago lying on its side, blocking the driveway, probably knocked over by neighborhood kids. All the roses were dead and withered, the flower beds filled with weeds, the hedges overgrown and unkempt, the lawn dead with patches of dirt and mud everywhere.
I rode right up to the front door, where I rang the doorbell. It didn’t work so I knocked. First softly with my knuckles, then using the side of my fist. I banged harder and harder, willing a Watkins to appear. I kept banging until my right fist hurt; then I used my left one.
“They don’t live there anymore!” the across-the-street neighbor shouted. An older guy watering his flowers. “Nobody lives there.”
I saw that guy over a period of years, saw him go from what I thought was an old guy to a very old guy. He didn’t know me from shit, it seemed. “Okay,” I whispered. I knew everything was over.
Riding back over the dead lawn past the downed backboard, I knew Jamie was gone.
As the days became longer, I became resigned to the fact that he was gone. It was gradual, first a vague sensation, then a creeping realization. I knew Amber was not around geographically, and though that hurt, I could accept it. But Jamie. I was responsible for him. I wasn’t a hero, though in the heat of the moment I thought my actions were appropriate. It turned out they weren’t, and they culminated in the drowning of my friend. And Amber. How had my actions affected her? If we hadn’t run? If I hadn’t stolen my mother’s car?
My lawyer told my parents that F was getting better with therapy. Sort of. I mean, he wasn’t a slobbering vegetable or anything. He did use a walker; I had seen that much, though I’d heard that he no longer had to use it.
At some point the police had talked with him about the fight with Jamie. Or the D.A. had, my lawyer said. Everything weird that happened was good for me, my lawyer said. All the complexities of the case, and of the Watkins family, were good for me, my lawyer said.
I think F cruised by my house once, but I’m not sure. It was when I was getting the mail from the box out on the road that I saw a car off in the distance. It was going real slow, idling forward, it seemed. And then it stopped. I looked at the car, but there was a glare off the windshield and I couldn’t see who was driving. It was a car like F’s, I think, and it gave me the creeps.
I wonder if that means Claire Watkins won’t ever take him back? She was in Oklahoma to be with Amber; she’d told my mother she was leaving California, and F.
The D.A. hadn’t committed to anything one way or the other regarding Jamie and F’s fight. And the Mexican Consulate finally produced an official letter stating that they couldn’t find anything out of the way about Jamie. In the letter there was some speculation about a drowning, no speculation about foul play, but nothing conclusive. All these things were great for me, my lawyer said, and subsequently he was able to negotiate a plea bargain, which placed me on two years’ probation. If I didn’t do anything to break my probation, the judgment would be expunged from my record when I was eighteen.
And that was that. Sort of. Yet there was no final resolution, no official statement or anything about Jamie. There was no funeral service or memorial service, nothing. He simply disappeared into bureaucratic indifference. He no longer existed because of government agencies that were too low on funds to pursue the matter.
I could get on with my life, the court commissioner assigned to my case told me. Since Nestor still had me grounded and since I couldn’t surf even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, my life could not go on. I would have to go back to school now, unless I wanted to remain in independent study forever, which I didn’t.
The psychiatrist the court ordered me to see as part of my probation told me to make up different scenarios about what happened. Unlike Ms. Catrone, I could talk with this guy. One scenario I made up was a dual family vacation, in which Amber and I got to do all the stuff we did, and Jamie got to
do everything he did, but we all came home and resumed our lives in a fashion similar to how we once lived. We returned, and Amber was my girlfriend. Jamie was the big stud surfer who’d ridden the biggest wave ever.
In another scenario my father accompanied me back to La Isla de los Delfíns. He believed me about the island. And when we returned, the dolphins were still there, and Jamie’s board was on the beach, and I surfed in that bay while my father watched, and I swore that Jamie’s presence was there, swore that I could see him in the waves with me, tucked back inside the tube, dolphin-kicking.
I also tried to remember accurately what happened, another suggestion from the psychiatrist. But it was hard to be truthful.
Here were the facts: the image of Jamie freefalling down that horrendous wave will be in my psyche forever. I didn’t remember much of that day after the outside reef broke. Amber pulled me from the surf, barely conscious, vomiting and shivering. She claimed a dolphin had swum me in to shallow water. I remembered nothing of that. When I came around, no matter how hard or where we searched, we found nothing of Jamie or his board. Jamie was drowned; Amber was married; I was on probation.
The psychiatrist also told my parents that it wasn’t right that I hadn’t cried. At first I thought I might tear up over any little thing, and then when I refused to believe that Jamie was gone, it was easy not to cry. Even when I found out that Robert Bonham and Amber were married, I didn’t cry.
I was supposed to prepare myself mentally to return to school, though all I did was ruminate about the trip, and the surfboards were a tangible link to that time and place, I supposed. And to make my life go on, it seemed, I cared for the boards. Maybe that was the starting point. Mine sat in the garage, gleaming its resin shine, though its nose was broken, a perpetual reminder of my notorious surf trip. Placing Amber’s board in the sun and leaning it against a trash can with the middle fin on a cushion, I prepared to work on it. The sun was hot and almost immediately it began to melt the wax. My mother had given me one of her old spatulas, which worked well for removing the wax off a surfboard.
