FIVE Salt Lank sat beside James on the cushions of the Fergusons’ old couch. Their shoulders touched. James’s eyes moved from person to person, door to door, through the bay window into their front yard, straining toward every creak and house noise like a bodyguard. Moonlight caught the bare skin of Lank’s soft crown. His dark eyes were hooded and his lips pursed, like a man weighing his options. Elizabeth and Rae had pulled up chairs. Rae alone had been crying. A yearbook from Lank’s school sat on the coffee table, opened to the pages of the Journalism Club, of which he was the advisor, where in a photo nine young people looked up from a layout table where they were composing the weekly high school newspaper. The boy in the photo with the Giants baseball cap, Jack Herman, had died early this morning in a car crash. He had graduated last year and finished two semesters at Cal. Amelia, the Goth girl, had suffered a spinal cord injury. They had left a party in the Valley after police broke it up. Melanie Hertz, who was now in jail, had brought a baggie of Ecstasy to the party. The parents of the kid having the party had paid for a keg, to keep him off the road. The cops allowed the kids to drive home unless they were clearly drunk, in which case parents were called. Jack and Amelia had gone over the back fence, laughing, urging others to join them, but no one had. They had crashed into a tree as they came around White’s Hill, a mile from town. “There’s one almost every year,” Lank said. “So stupid. He had everything: great parents, a marvelous mind, Amelia. He was the funniest kid I ever taught. Everyone liked him. His father had season tickets to the Niners. And yet partying with friends in the countryside, under the moon, smoking weed that costs what teachers make in a week, something beckoned him, promised more, a little more fun, a little more power, and he followed.” James shook his head, sighed, continued his vigilant scan of the room. Elizabeth poured herself another cup of tea from the pot James had brewed, and stared into it as if to read her future. “Where are you?” he asked. “Thinking,” she replied. “In the old days, this would have been the perfect excuse for us all to get sloshed. I wish Rosie would check in soon.” The phone rang just then, startling them into small laughs. Elizabeth got up to answer it. “Hello?” she said softly. “Hi, darling.” She could tell Rosie knew about Jack and Amelia. “Oh, baby. Where are you?” She heard Rosie breathe, sniffle, sigh. “Out at Jody’s aunt’s house.” “Are you?” Elizabeth bit her tongue, silent for a moment, pissed off but wanting to appear sensitive. “You didn’t ask if you could go to the beach tonight.” “Mama, cut me some slack. A kid died. Someone a lot of us knew.” “He was one of Lank’s students. He and Rae are here. Did you know him?” “Not well. But I knew her—she’s at the same fashion design institute where Alice wants to go. She’ll never walk again, Mama.” Silence. “Some kids knew them both. We’re all sitting around. Vivian made us grilled cheese sandwiches. We’re safe and sound here and need to be together. Do you understand?” “Of course I do, darling. But you still need to be home by curfew.” “No, no, not tonight, Mom. Let me come home later. Or stay here overnight—Jody and Alice are . . .” Elizabeth almost caved in, hating to make her daughter unhappy, hating to defy her and risk her wrath. But if she said yes, then she would live in fear of Rosie’s being out all night with other traumatized teenagers. “No,” she made herself say. “I want you home by one. I need you to be in your own bed.” “Mom, don’t be like that.” “Don’t tell me not to be like that. Be home at one. Rae needs you at church tomorrow afternoon, for the ceremony.” “I have a lesson with Robert at two.” “That works—Rae and I don’t need you until four. I love you, baby.” Long pause, then a sigh, and, “Love you, too, Mom.” She did not actually know Jack Herman at all, nor was she with Jody and Alice, at Vivian’s house, eating grilled cheese. She was in the phone booth at the gas station. But she was definitely feeling terrible about the boy’s death. How could you not? The thing was, you knew your luck would give out if you kept driving too fast when you were drunk, let alone on Ecstasy, too, and the kids who’d known him said he always drove fast with the stereo blasting. So the other thing was, if you were tripping, like on E, but you had to drive for some reason, you should go extra slow, and totally focus. She was with some girls from school whom she had come upon at the Parkade, three blonde girls you always saw together, who had a reputation for being stoners. Jody was with Claude at the Fillmore, Alice was trying to break up with Ryan because there was a new guy she liked. The blonde girls were fairly popular, not Homecoming level, but still bottom of the top tier. They ended up hanging with some guys in the dark at the top of the trail that meandered through the countryside, the bay and laurel, live oak and manzanita, where people ran and walked their dogs during the day. One girl had brought her dog, Brownie, a beagle, and someone else had brought a pint of vodka, which they were mixing with cranberry juice and lime juice from a plastic lime. The girls had perfect bodies, like Alice, not so tall as Jody or her own horrible freakish self; two of them took AP classes, two had their own cars. They all had it going on, way on, way more than Rosie ever would, but the best thing was that it was fun to talk to them—she made them laugh and they seemed to like her. All the boys smoked, so the girls sat apart from them and talked about books and guys and life, while chewing on the ends of grass, or their hair. The girls listened to Rosie with respect as she spoke, maybe because she was going to be a senior. She felt beautiful in the moonlight. It illuminated the foothills below, which looked like a theater backdrop, each one higher than the one in front, until they stopped at the summit of Mount Tamalpais, bowing before the sleeping lady. She had to walk the two miles home, tipsy, maybe drunk, and it sobered her up. Things would be fine as long as she didn’t get stopped by the cops. There was a town-wide midnight curfew for teenagers, which was a joke, since they never brought anyone in unless they thought the person was holding. Rosie wasn’t, except for a roach; actually, a pretty good-sized roach. They had smoked some killer dope, and the moon lit the town like a Christmas diorama. The cops were a joke. They wanted all the kids to like them, so when they busted up a party because the music was too loud and neighbors were complaining, they mostly shooed people out in a mellow and groovy way. Sometimes the parents were at home, sometimes the parents had even bought for their kids, so they wouldn’t be getting drunk somewhere else, but the parents always said innocently that they thought the kids were just listening to music, even though everything smelled like a concert at the Fillmore. If the cops did stop Rosie, she could probably talk her way out of it. She had used the arsenal of products she always kept near, Visine, breath mints, and moist towelettes. A siren roared in the night, waking Elizabeth, and her mind began to spin with scenes of Rosie being killed, by rapists, murderers, burnouts who milled around town all night, sleeping at dawn in the brush, but mostly with a vision of every parent’s nightmare: a bloody car crash, Rosie going up in flames when the engine exploded, or even dead but untouched after hitting her head in that one lethal spot, like the father in A Death in the Family, with only the small blue mark on his chin. The second siren was the last straw, and Elizabeth ran to the phone to call Rosie at Vivian’s house. She was actually gasping for breath as she dialed, digging the fingernails of her free hand into the back of her phone hand as hard as she could to contain herself, when the front door opened. It was almost two. “Jesus!” Elizabeth shouted, slamming down the phone. “Hi, Mommy,” Rosie said, stepping through the front door, and Elizabeth whipped around at the sound of her voice, so crazy with anxiety and adrenaline that she simultaneously wanted to sob with relief and tear out chunks of her child’s hair. Rosie comforted her the best she could. She talked her mother into going into the bathroom with her, where she peed while Elizabeth leaned against the sink. Rosie believed this would create a sense of intimacy. “Let me brush my teeth, Mama,” she said, easing her mother over to the side. She brushed her teeth and tongue, and then washed her face with warm water, and looked up at their reflections in the mirror as she dried her face with the towel Elizabeth handed her. Her mother looked grim, but not
majorly so—more like she was pretending to look grim and stern. Rosie studied the pterygium creeping over her iris. “Is this getting bigger?” she asked with false alarm, and Elizabeth’s face fell with worry. James was furious with Elizabeth in the morning for not grounding Rosie, although he had been asleep when she got home. “She was an hour late,” James said. “She missed curfew. It’s black-and-white.” “But it was a special case, what with the accident.” “She doesn’t get to come home at all hours. Period. We’ve talked about this,” he reminded her. “Teenagers need to feel a corral around them. They’re not safe without one.” Elizabeth knew this was true. “But it was a crazy night for the kids,” she said without much conviction. “We need to choose our battles. I was glad she came home. You didn’t even wake up.” “Because I wear earplugs. I choose not to let Rosie destroy my sleep.” “Well, I don’t have that option—I’m her mom.” “She says one thing and does another. She blows off curfew. She randomly announces she’s spending the night at the beach, instead of asking us if she can. And then what, she hitchhikes home? That’s your system. Did you ever think that maybe if Rosie keeps pulling the rug out from under you like this, it’s partly because you keep getting back on her rug?” Elizabeth nodded, so glad Rosie was safe in bed. But James went on. “Listen: Every time you draw the boundary way outside of what we’ve agreed on, she has to come back that much farther, to even meet us halfway.” Lank had arranged for a substitute so that he could take a mental health day, and he stopped by at nine to pick up James for an all-day hike at the water district lakes. Elizabeth made them cinnamon toast and ersatz mocha, with strong coffee, Rosie’s cocoa mix, and whipped cream. “These are all my favorite foods,” Lank said. He looked older. Elizabeth reached out to stroke his fair freckled cheek with the back of her hand. “Is there a service?” “Yes, on Sunday. At the Catholic church in Larkspur.” “Oh, so the family is Catholic. Maybe that helps a little. Do you think?” “Rae thinks so. And Rae is right about almost everything, eventually. Nothing can help these people today. But maybe in a year, they will have come through.” They sat nursing their drinks. Lank took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. James called from the bedroom that he was almost ready. “I wish I had faith, Elizabeth,” Lank said. “I wish I were a Catholic or a Jew. Or Anabaptist. Or AA, or anything. I wish I believed Jack was still alive somewhere, being silly, cracking jokes. I wish I believed that he did not die in vain.” They sat in the comfortable silence of old friends. “I do believe in kitchens, though,” he said, looking up. “I believe they are holy ground.” Elizabeth smiled. Lank burst out laughing. “What?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by the shift in his demeanor. He laughed and laughed, and again had to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes. The soft red hair around his tonsure was sticking straight out on one side like a baby rooster. “You want to hear a joke Jack Herman told me once?” Elizabeth nodded, skeptical, and concerned for Lank’s mental state. “There was a second-grader named Mike who could not do math for the life of him, no matter how many tutors or how much extra help his parents gave him. He was always just barely getting by or falling behind. So for third grade, his parents put him in the local Catholic school. Right away, he starts doing better—coming home right after school, doing his homework, and starting to pull ahead of his classmates. And when the first report card comes, he’s actually gotten an A. His mother says, ‘Mike, what was it? Was it the nuns? Was it all that structure?’ And he says, ’Nah. But on the first day of class, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew these people weren’t fooling around.’ ” Lank and Elizabeth laughed so hard that he had to take off his glasses yet again to wipe his eyes and nose, and they sat that way, heads hung, until James came in, took a look at them, and not knowing what else to do, got a box of Kleenex, setting them both off again. Rosie slept so late that at eleven Elizabeth poked her head into the room. Rascal was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Rosie sleep. Elizabeth sniffed the air, detecting the faintest whiff of alcohol. She came closer, bent in to smell Rosie’s breath, which she’d surreptitiously sniffed last night. It had smelled fresh. It smelled dry and musty this morning, and there was definitely the hint of alcohol in the air. Elizabeth realized with a start that it was coming out of Rosie’s skin. She reached to shake her awake, sickened by the memories of her parents’ own scent as they metabolized vodka from the night before, and in fact, by the memories of her and Andrew on mornings after, which for her had become pretty much all the time after Andrew’s death. “Were you drinking last night?” she asked, shaking Rosie. “Wake up.” Rosie couldn’t focus right away. “God!” she snapped. “Get away!” “Were you? I’ll go buy a Breathalyzer if you won’t tell me the truth.” She had been urged to buy one, along with some home urine tests, by a counselor who addressed the junior class parents. And she had certainly meant to buy both, and definitely would now, later today. Rosie sat up. “After we left Jody’s aunt’s last night, we stopped by the Roastery, with a girl Alice knew, a girl who went out with Jack freshman year. And the girl had a half-pint of tequila. So we all sat outside for a while, and we all had a couple of sips—that was all there was! A half-pint, for four of us. I had like, two big sips. That’s all.” “It shouldn’t smell this strong if you only had two sips.” Rosie threw her hands up, exasperated, disgusted. “Fine, don’t believe me. Call Vivian.” Elizabeth was glaring at her, huffing. “Mama, maybe you’re just extremely sensitive to it, because you don’t drink anymore. Remember how you thought Rae had been drinking that time, and it was just polymers from her wrinkle lotion?” Elizabeth looked away. Then she sank to the bed. “Could you please do only a little bit of everything, and not get in trouble with it, and live to be eighteen, and not scare me to death? Very often? Please please please?” “I don’t do much of anything, Mommy. Come here.” Rosie patted the space next to her on the bed. Elizabeth stretched out beside her. Rascal came to stand on her chest, treading as if she were his mother and he a kitten. “Love can be so painful,” Elizabeth said, grimacing each time he flexed. Rosie watched her out of the corner of her eye. Then she slid a blanket between her mother’s chest and the cat’s claws. Rascal continued treading, eyes closed, drooling. “Are you teaching tennis today, darling?” “Yeah. I told you, at two. And then church at four, to help set up.” “I’ll see you there. Rae thinks a lot more people may come for the salt ceremony, because of the accident. People need to cry together. She and I are going to cook all afternoon.” Elizabeth wandered around the house, exhausted in part from having had to get up when Rosie had finally gotten home, and partly because of her antidepressants. Some days they left her feeling logy and too mellow. Yet at the same time, her stomach was often filled with butterflies. She wanted to experiment with taking just half a dose every day. She should tell James or Rae that she was having this thought. Or even her psychiatrist, come to think of it. But they really didn’t have the money. An hour with the shrink cost what James made at his radio job every week. So she went to an AA meeting at noon instead. A young businessman in his mid-thirties was the speaker, with a wild story of alcohol and coke, involving violence, crazed spending, jail for public displays, and two overdoses. It was hard to believe—he looked so Ivy League. When he was finished with his story, he chose service as his topic for discussion, and when no one raised a hand, he volunteered that every morning when he took his psychiatric medication, he knew he’d done his community service for the day. Elizabeth went up afterward and thanked him profusely for saying that. Robert was late for their lesson, but Rosie had tucked a copy of Waiting for Godot into her racket cover and stretched out to read in the grass beside the tennis courts. She pretended to focus as she turned the pages, chewing on the ragged nail of her baby finger. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Amelia, now imprisoned in a frozen body. She had called Robert to see if he wanted to cancel his lesson, and he had all but begged her to meet him at the courts, saying he had never needed a work-out so badly. Her heart wheeled around inside like it was on a tricycle. Her feel
ings puzzled her. There was definitely something between them. Alice, who was the best at understanding guys, said that if you thought there was something going on between you and a guy, there was. It wasn’t like Jody and Claude; more like when Stuart Little falls in love with the beautiful two-inch Harriet Ames, and buys a souvenir birch-bark canoe in which to take her rowing at twilight: love in an old-fashioned way. She would try to love Robert from afar. He kind of seemed to love her, for her mind—the only A student in her physics class—and for helping him to get so good at tennis; and the looks on his face when they talked about stuff like The Seventh Seal and literature made him seem entranced. She thought about him more and more these days, in a deeper way than when you have a crush. She yelped when he sat down beside her, and felt herself turn red. Raising one hand to her chest, she said, “You startled me!” She gave him a look of mock aggravation, then crossed her arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, sitting down. “I thought you saw me walking here. You were lost in your book.” “It’s okay.” She was still lying down, using the log as a headrest and pillow. He sat with his back against it. Her long brown legs stretched out before them. She sat up, and they both swiveled so that they faced each other, and he asked her if she knew anything more about Jack and Amelia, and she told him there had been Ecstasy at the party, that Melanie Hertz was in jail. He shook his head. “Melanie Hertz is a wonderful kid. She’s a honeybee. There’s a funeral at St. Patrick’s on Sunday,” he said. “Are you going?” “I didn’t really know him,” she said. “We’re doing a grief ceremony at Sixth Day Prez this afternoon, if you or anyone wants to come. At five.” After a while he said, “Can we just sit here by the creek?” She nodded. Neither spoke. Time fluttered in the glade where they sat. There was still some water in the creek, making a soothing, clean burbling murmur. “What are you thinking about?” he asked. She didn’t answer right away. His eyes were as big and almond-shaped as Rae’s. She liked how serious he was. She dipped her head shyly and said, “Jack.” The energy, sorrowful and close, was now stretched taut between them like a fishing line. He looked so sad that she almost reached out to touch him, like you would anyone who looked in such distress. “Tell me about the creek,” he said. “What?” She had no idea what he meant. “I don’t know.” Neither of them spoke for a moment. “I guess,” she said, “a creek is like the rush of my thoughts.” Oh no, it sounded like the first line of a little kid’s poem. “But because the brook keeps moving forward—unlike my snaggy, plugged-up thoughts—it smooths me out.” “It washes out the roar of rushing, tumbling thoughts,” he said. “Exactly.” He fished a wadded-up handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. She wiped at her eyes, and held the handkerchief to her nose to inhale all his smells, and the sweet, sticky child smells, too. “Let’s get up and hit for half an hour,” he said, and she didn’t want to, she wanted to sit with him by the creek, but he gave her shoulders a squeeze, stood, and handed her a twenty-dollar bill. Elizabeth and Rae made rice, black beans, corn bread, and salad with lettuce from Elizabeth’s garden, for a large crowd. People had heard that there was a commemorative ceremony and somehow thought it was in honor of Jack and Amelia, and that was to some extent what it had become, since that was the community’s most immediate shared sorrow. Rae had brought ten avocados, but they wouldn’t cut them up to add to the salad until the last minute. She and Elizabeth chopped tomatoes and onions and cilantro for the salsa while they talked about the same old things they always talked about, politics, periods, sex, books they were reading, books that they were reminded of by mention of these books. They washed lettuce and talked about Jack, Amelia, their bodies, Rosie, Lank, and James. “Jack is this year’s sacrificial lamb,” Elizabeth said. “Half of the kids are drinking and using, driving badly, way too fast, while lighting up or fiddling with the radio. And almost every year, the gods seem to come and collect. Or the devil does. I don’t know how these things work. But it feels like a bored evil is hanging around town, waiting for one false move.” “My understanding is not that there’s a devil outside, prowling Pali Park or the Parkade. But that there’s something inside that’s always bored, that beckons us, knowing what it is we each want most desperately. And adolescents have fewer defenses.” “Do you think that we’re wired this way? With the devil inside?” “Yeah, in the same way we’re wired for God. But not to the same extent. I think it’s tiny, and insidious. Like hairline cracks that let in the water that shatters the rock.” Reverend Anthony and Rosie had filled the sanctuary with candles, flowers, and origami cranes from the origami crane ministry, and every chair the church owned, which was sixty. Anthony asked the fifty or so younger people to please sit on the floor or stand, and he began with a prayer that the fire marshal not show. Even the people who were crying laughed. Rosie couldn’t believe how good her own mother looked. Maybe it was the light, or the solemn occasion. Other girls from her class were there with their mothers, and the mothers seemed sort of frumpy and stressed, even bottle blondes and brunettes. Elizabeth’s hair did not seem as gray and mussed as usual, but frosted, casual, confident. Her mother was actually a fine- looking woman, as Jody’s soldier, Claude, had said after meeting her. She was wearing black linen pants, a dove-gray blouse, a bamboo-patterned Japanese scarf, and shoes that did not for once make you want to die or join the government witness protection program. She smelled delicious—that was her best quality—of soap and baking. Rosie felt proud standing beside her, and wished desperately to be a better child. No matter what happened from now on, she was going to stop lying so much. Anthony wore the clerical dashiki of wine red and green and gold that he wore when he presided over unusually joyful or tragic gatherings. Rae was at the altar holding a small bowl of salt. She winked at Rosie. She always looked so great, in comfortable flowing clothes, cool accessories, an elegantly messy bun. Rosie’s head felt like an anthill. What could Anthony possible say? Plus where on earth was Robert? She had scanned every inch of the sanctuary, like a jumpy spy, but he was not there. Anthony began, and Rosie turned to listen, although she knew his pitch by heart. He would begin by saying that most of the time in our lives we were taught to silence our sorrows, because they were so hard for others to bear, and so he did. “But today,” he continued, “we welcome you to a sacrament of expression, a ceremony of salt, of tears and sorrow. We are drawn here every year by the suffering of the world, of our church members, and now today, for the families and friends of Jack and Amelia.” He looked out at the congregation, took a deep breath, and seemed to choose his words carefully. But Rosie knew exactly what he would say, that he had no easy bumper-sticker explanation for what our losses meant, and that there was no sweet, hopeful, cute saying that made them less of a nightmare. He did say something like that, and then surprised her. “People make decisions that have horrific consequences,” he intoned. “Sometimes these are political decisions, and we get to rise up and fight them. Sometimes terrible things happen to the most innocent people, and we come together as one wounded body, as Christ crucified. The psalmist, in Psalm Fifty-six, says, ‘You have put my tears in your flask,’ and that means that God is paying attention to the pain of God’s people. And we may not get what we want, but we will get what is needed. God is struggling in this with us, in all the sadness of our lives, in the car accident, and God is the answer. Our tears are in God’s flask, and if what is needed is going to get done, it’s going to be through divine love working through us. So we acknowledge as a community that what is going on sucks—if you’ll forgive my French.” People laughed and said, “Amen.” Rosie’s mouth dropped open. Whoa—that was pretty good. “In closing, we ask ourselves, what is the next right thing we can do? How can we stop the bleeding of those we love? How can we fund-raise to get the money for a burial, or therapy, or medicine, or a walker?” Rosie sighed: The End. There was a large glass bowl on the communion table, filled with water, and Rae stood beside it with her container of salt. Anthony asked everyone to come forward, take a pinch of salt, and drop it into the common bowl, tw
ice. “A pinch for each sorrow, and one for each joy, to express the bittersweet aspect of our paradoxical faith.” Rosie went up with Elizabeth, who said for her sorrow, “Jack and Amelia,” and for her joy, “Rosie.” Shame for her endless lies nearly made Rosie cry out loud. This, and the fact that Robert hadn’t come—she had so gotten her hopes up. She felt crushed, and that made her feel insane. “Jack and Amelia,” she said, for sadness, although she was more sad that she didn’t have a boyfriend. For joy, she said, “My friends.” She should have said her mother; it would have made her happy. Later, Anthony said a prayer for the community, and Rae stirred the water, troubling it the way angels did in the Bible so people could enter and be healed. Then Rae went to join Elizabeth in the fellowship hall, to cut up the avocados for the salad, and serve everyone who had shown up. Rosie threw herself into bed when she got home, and fretted. James came in and tried to get her to tell him what was wrong, but even she didn’t know. Elizabeth had gone to her psychiatrist’s after the ceremony, which Rosie found extremely annoying. What kind of crazy person saw a shrink at seven p.m., she wondered. God, her mother was never here anymore when you needed her. James sat at the foot of Rosie’s bed, but when he put his hand on the blanket covering her feet, she nudged his hand away. He went and got her a cup of sweet, milky tea, his solution to everything. After a while, she sat up, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Is this about a guy?” After a moment, Rosie shook her head. “You tell me where he lives—I’m going to go over there and knock some sense into him.” Rosie glared at him, and then into her lap. “I said no.” “But your eyes said, Oui, oui.” Rosie punched him, smiling, teary. “ ‘Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding space,’ to quote the late, great Zora Neale Hurston. It’s not much fun when the love that beckoned you out gets cold feet and leaves you there alone, like a snail in between shells. Very scary.” “That’s the thing, I don’t love anyone. I hate my life. Why do Alice and Jo have boyfriends and not me? What’s wrong with me?” James didn’t say a word, as any other adult would have done, like “You’re so pretty” or “It’ll pass,” which was so meaningless. “It’s even worse than that—I think I like someone who is a hundred percent unavailable. Someone who’s totally taken. I’m a total cliché.” “Never, ever, that.” She drank the tea he had brought, and blew her nose. He went back to his office to work. She lay in bed reading a book by Roy Blount, Jr., that Claude had lent her. When James came in later to check on her, they talked about what a genius Blount was. She read him her favorite lines. Then she talked him into lending her the car. It was not hard to disarm him with a subtly vulnerable expression, a nuanced compliment about how sweet he had been, eye contact, using his name: he was putty. He squinted. “Didn’t you lose driving privileges for another couple of days?” “Yeah, technically.” She gave him a pained look, and his face softened. She watched him hem and haw. “Let me go out for a while. I just have to be with my friends. Please, James.” “Okay,” he said finally. “It’s a special night. I think your mom would let you go. But if you get home past curfew, my ass is grass. And I’ll be pissed.” He could be so great, and she swore to him and to herself that she would be home on time. She put on her sexiest tank top, her tightest, lowest jeans, with a zipper barely three inches long, and makeup so she’d look good for whatever she and Jody and Alice might end up doing—a party at someone’s house, or up in the hills, or even under the streetlights of the Parkade. “Fucking A,” she said out loud in front of the mirror, blending in foundation, what a douche to fall in love with this old teacher, a married teacher with a wife and little kids, who didn’t even like her back. Thank God she hadn’t made a move all those times; and the best thing was, no one knew. She hadn’t told anyone else. She outlined her eyes in kohl, smiling with relief, still a little sad, but talk about close calls. She looked good in the reflection. She practiced looking hard, then tender and dewy, sassy, ecstatic, bored, and above it all. She picked up Alice, Jody, and Claude. Alice had found out about a party up in the hills way above the Manor School tonight at nine. This was so great, much better than a house party. Everyone was going. It was sort of in honor of Jack and Amelia. It was one of those parties where you had to pay five or ten dollars, depending on if there would be E there or only kegs. People would meet at Safeway, get shuttled by the older guys who were throwing the party. Nobody got to drive themselves down the hill, because most of them would be pretty trashed, and the guys giving the party couldn’t risk legal problems. They stopped at the Parkade, bought a joint for Alice and Rosie, shoulder-tapped Gilligan, in his floppy hat, who bought them a six-pack of lager, and the four of them sat at the park getting high. Rosie and Claude had a lively talk about the Roy Blount book, like one you might have with Robert. Claude was sweet and cool, surprisingly sophisticated when he spoke, even with that drawl. Alice was all about this new guy she was hooking up with later. Rosie felt a little down, but not too bad. She imagined talking with a new guy tonight, too. Her mind retraced the scene today with Robert, how easily they talked and how deeply, and the shape of his eyes, oval, pointed at the sides, so blue but not as blue as her own. It was such a nice memory, heightened, elevated, unspoiled. “I have a teacher I think you’d love,” she told Claude, though she meant it as an introduction of the topic to Jody and Alice. “He’s like we are about books. Like the other day we were totally jamming about Waiting for Godot.” She knew Jody would care, because she’d done the summer program with ACT her sophomore year, before her troubles with cocaine. “I love that play so much! Remember, I was Lucky in the junior production.” “I was Dorothy in sixth grade,” Alice announced. “Really, Alice,” Jody said, like a mortified schoolteacher. Rosie smiled. Then Jody turned around to face Claude: “Do you know that play? About the two little tramps, waiting for this guy Godot, or maybe it’s God, but nothing ever happens, the whole play is about them waiting, waiting, and then this guy comes along finally with his slave, Lucky, who he’s dragging along like a dog, to sell at the market. It’s like about the meaning of life.” “It sounds like a regular shoot-’em-out night at the theater.” “Samuel Beckett only won the Nobel Prize for it,” Jody snapped. “God, you’re my only hope,” she said to Rosie. “So what were you saying about Tobias?” “Nothing,” Rosie said. “He’s just totally cool to talk about books and science with. Plus, he pays me twenty bucks a lesson. I’ve made a fortune this summer—lucky for you two deadbeats.” Only she and Claude had any money that night, and they paid for the others when a guy with a Hummer and at least two woofers picked them up in the parking lot at Safeway. It was ten dollars tonight. “Where are the bracelets?” Jody asked. “You get them at the next station,” he said. “Or else too many people find out.” Too many usually meant more than a hundred or so. Bracelets would be issued—either a certain color yarn or a plastic tie like the kind her mother used for tying tomato vines to stakes with, or for ten dollars, maybe even the glow-stick kind. The bracelet got you a plastic cup for beer once you got to the party. The driver dropped them off at the Old Manor trailhead on the outskirts of town, where others were massing, looking for friends. The four of them immediately started hiking in the dark, a waning moon lighting the trail. It was not steep; more like a bunny slope at Tahoe. Ahead of them, Metallica blared from a boom box. Behind them, the old fire road gleamed, luminous with moon, lighter by far than the night or the trees that lined it. The four of them dropped back to lose the kids ahead of them, who were loud and silly. Then they stood looking up at the sky. The moon was lovely tonight; it was everything good and pure and huge, blessing right down onto them. And yet wafting through Rosie like another form of light was hurt confusion. “I am going to get so fucked up,” she said, and the others laughed. She took in the ambient sounds, dry grasses rustling, crickets. The warmer it was, the more the flowers opened up: the night smelled almost like a lei or corsage. “You think there are raccoons around?” Claude asked, genuinely worried. “How you going to be a soldier if you’re afraid of raccoons?” Jody asked. “Whe
n I’m in battle, I’m going to have a gun.” “To shoot raccoons with?” Rosie asked, and he shoved her. “I’m going up ahead and see if I can find Evan Andrews,” said Alice. “Wish me luck.” She moved off ahead of them, fast but clumsy, stumbling almost at once. Rosie and Jody smiled at each other. They were both so athletic, while Alice had an adorable clumsiness born of impatience, and not tuning in to her body at all unless there was a guy around. “I have to be home at midnight, don’t forget,” Rosie called after her. Turning to Claude, she said, “I don’t like raccoons, either. They hiss, and they gnash their teeth, and they sneak in through the cat door to steal my cat’s food.” The lights of the party campsite grew brighter, and soon they stepped out at the bottom of a hillside that went upward and onward forever. A girl Rosie didn’t recognize stopped them, to give them their bracelets and cups. You got to pick out what color bracelet you wanted. Jody and Claude picked magenta, which was light pink until they snapped each other’s on and the bracelets began to glow darker. Rosie studied the box of bands, light pink, blue, green, yellow. “The blue one is really pretty,” said the girl, “not fluorescent like the others. Blue blue. Tahoe blue,” and it was. The three of them walked up the shaggy dry grass of the corridor to where most people were gathered, where the generator sat. The space was perfect, an endless dark refuge extending the length of a football field up the hill, with lights plugged into the generator that also powered the boom box, and everyone glowed with a bracelet. They could see people leaning against the eucalyptus, bay, and oak, perched on top of boulders and rocks, sitting with their backs against logs, like it was all furniture. The stretch of grass was pretty clear of things to trip over in case you got loaded, no rocks to tumble over or brush to get tangled in. The people giving the party had found a great spot and were going to make a bundle tonight. They stood around getting their bearings, moving to the music, making small talk. Then a guy Jody knew from rehab passed Rosie a pipe, and held a lighter to its bowl as she inhaled. She held it as long as she could, exhaled, and took a second hit. “Be careful,” he warned. Moments later, she was bombed, totally toasted. Rosie turned away from Claude and Jody because they were shaking their heads and smiling about how wasted she looked. They couldn’t smoke at all. She was actually tripping lightly, merging with the crowd, dozens of her peers, all on the same plane. She walked to a group of kids by a cluster of oak trees. “Hey, who’s there?” she asked in the dark, and then their faces materialized, as two people called out hi to her, friends from school. She leaned against a tree, let it hold her up. “I am so wasted,” she said, laughing. One of the three blondes from the night before stepped forward, and they hugged. “Be careful. Someone here is selling sherms,” the girl said—joints laced with angel dust. “I’m fucked up, but I don’t think it was dust.” Rosie started laughing with pure joy, at the long stretch of the woods that embraced her, the tree trunk that held her up, the twinkling stars above, the whole fucking beautiful diamond universe, above her, below her, around her, inside her. This was the Truth, the capital-T truth, even when you weren’t stoned. It’s what Einstein proved—that it was all energy, and it was all One. She hugged everyone in the group, her new best friends, and then someone else came up to see who they were. First you heard the crunch of leaves, the rustly, scuttly sound of the dry oak leaves. No one could sneak up on you. Every time someone entered the meadow, you heard their shoes crunching on the fire road, and heard them greeted by the girl with the glow-stick bracelets and cups. It was like having a sound map of the new world. She wandered off to see who else was here. Each time the drill was the same—“Hey, who’s there,” then faces materializing in the dark, hugs, or introductions, then hugs for the new best friends. Whatever she had smoked had given her bright and dreamy hallucinations, and they took her to a soft, gentle place where she wanted to hold the whole world like Mother Teresa with an AIDS baby, and weep at its beauty. After several plastic cups of beer, she ended up dancing for a long time, sometimes with boys, sometimes with girls. She should think about starting back. Everyone was getting pretty loaded. Several girls had thrown up in the chaparral, one boy was having a loud sobbing nervous breakdown about what a misfit he was. His friends surrounded and comforted him. The hillside smelled more like eucalyptus than the fire road had, which was closer to the flowers in people’s gardens. The bay smelled like your father slapping aftershave onto his cheeks, but you didn’t have to have hair in the sink, all the slapping sounds, or the father. She climbed up the hillside, squinted into a group of ten or so kids. “Who’s there?” she asked, and was soon reconnecting with friends from school. They had washed out an empty milk carton and filled it with beer so they wouldn’t have to return to the hub so often. It was great, but after another cup, Rosie needed to sit. She plopped down onto the grass, clumsy as Alice, laughing at her efforts. Others sat down with her, and filled her cup. Everyone loved her, she could tell by their faces lit by glow sticks in the moonlight. And then she heard cars down below, several at once, not like when the shuttle came by from Safeway, and then kids were shouting and screaming. Rosie and her new crowd gaped at each other, as people in nearby crowds leapt to their feet. “It’s the cops, it’s the cops!” various people shouted in the night, and then there were cops shouting, “Stay where you are! Stay put!” Everyone was swearing, scrambling, streaming down the hillside to breaks in the brush on either side of the trailhead. It sounded like they were having fun, a mob moving as one. Rosie and her friends scrambled farther up the hill, trying to avoid the police flashlights. There had to be five cops at least, shining their flashlights, grabbing at the nearest kids, but some kids ran past them and out of their grips like greased pigs. The cops caught a couple at a time, and led them off to the fire road where their cars were, and came back for more, but mostly the kids outmatched them and got away. Everyone in Rosie’s group hung together, standing behind trees, holding their breath, peering down. Now a lot of kids were falling and rolling down the hill like an avalanche, like logs or little kids, laughing and screaming when they hit against rocks and branches, twenty of them rolling below where Rosie stood, all the way down the hill. It was a movie, a crazy strobe-lit movie gone bad, and no one in Rosie’s group dared to move. The kids below who had gotten hurt stopped where they were and called out for others to help them, but only more cop cars arrived, and police poured into the corridor. “Shit fucking hell, if my parents find out,” someone whispered. The boys Rosie was with took off for the higher area, trying to tug the girls, who were rooted in the pandemonium and shouting. They let go and took off when a woman in uniform stepped out from behind a redwood trunk. “Stay where you are,” she said to the girls, cold as the moon, and reached out a black-gloved hand for Rosie’s wrist, extinguishing the light of the glowing blue band.
Anne Lamott Page 5
