Alix smiled. Even if it weren’t mandatory here, she would have smiled. Cricket had delivered her lines with far more grace than she, Alix, could have mustered if Beverly—by some remotest chance—had pushed her. Toward Beverly, Alix felt a dangerously interwoven burden of love and resentment which surfaced in her voice however hard she tried to repress the hostility.
Lupe took Sam into the yard.
Caroline fixed her chains and lit a Chesterfield. Beverly, jogged by Alix, offered refreshments. Caroline would adore coffee, black. Cricket said no thank you, nothing, and Alix—oh, so perfect a hostess—said she didn’t want anything either. The women disappeared into the kitchen.
Alix asked brightly, “Where shall we begin?”
Cricket’s gray eyes questioned.
“Catching up,” Alix explained.
Cricket smiled and said nothing, content—it seemed—to watch the maid and Fat Sam in the oversize sandbox. She’s young, Alix thought, shy. No-no! Just goddamn uncooperative.
Then Cricket asked, “Do you have a dog?”
“We used to. Boris.” Alix said. And stopped. Jamie’s dog, she thought. She hoped Cricket wouldn’t remember Jamie. Alix could talk of him only to her parents, and then rarely. “He died full of dog years,” she lied. Beverly had found Boris a wanderer’s heaven on an Ojai ranch.
But Alix couldn’t let the conversation drop. With anyone new she was in limbo until she roused a spark of warmth. “That was at the other house. This one’s Dan’s. He planned it. He plans everything. Talk about your dominant males.” And she told one of her Stories of Dan. Affectionate, with just a hint of derision. Perfect tone for a stepfather story.
Cricket sat with one knee bent, dreamy as a small animal sunning itself. Alix couldn’t tell if she was amused. Or even listening. Any of Alix’s friends would have had the decency to lean forward eagerly, laughing at the appropriate times.
Alix said, “Radcliffe turned me down.” What? She hadn’t said it aloud before. Dear Miss Schorer: We regret that there is not enough space on our campus for every qualified applicant.
Cricket propped her cheek in her hand. Her upper lip protruded, showing teeth as small as milk teeth. Alix felt that warm prickle under breastbone. Contact. She’d made contact. Generally she didn’t pay this high a price—complete exposure—but she had made contact.
“Did you get in other places?” Cricket asked.
“Santa Barbara.” Who cared? “I wanted to be a Cliffie. Generally I get what I want. No-no.” She nibbled a cashew. “That’s not it. Generally I don’t let myself want what I can’t get.”
“Turndown throws you?”
“Doesn’t it everyone?” Alix laughed.
“You don’t show any signs.”
“Great surface tension,” Alix said. “You’ve got a couple more years?”
“I’m out in June.”
“This June?”
“At Brace Ridge we finish at our own speed.”
“Then what?”
Cricket opened her eyes wider, as if the future were an idea alien to her.
“College?” Alix inquired.
A shake of yellow curls.
“Europe, then?”
Cricket looked more bewildered. She appeared never to have considered that all-important question: Is there life after graduation? Finally she came up with, “Fool around with my camera, maybe.”
“Then you’re a photographer.”
“No.”
“Goddard has this terrific photography department.”
Cricket was watching her.
“Why not college?” Alix asked. “It’s part of the bundle. You know, Add-a-pearl necklaces, Sweet Sixteens, the liberal arts college of your choice—wherever possible.”
“The conventional extras.”
“That’s it.” Big laugh.
“Alix, do you know my cousins? Roger and Vliet Reed?”
“Twins?”
“Yes.”
“About twenty-one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Never met ’em.” Smile. “Mother mentioned your aunt had twins.”
“They’ll be out this summer.”
“Don’t they live here?”
“They’re at school,” Cricket said, and returned to her thoughts. Or wherever.
Alix buried the silence decently with the new Joan Baez. Conventional extras had stung. Alix wanted to be as oblivious as her mother to the material, but the surface is strewn with thingee things, and the surface was where Alix was condemned to live. She was conventional. It bugged her, but she was. She wondered, had Cricket meant to hit a sore spot? She didn’t seem the type, but you never knew.
As Caroline revved her Mercedes, Cricket called, “We’ll all get together.”
Don’t bother, Alix thought. Big smile.
An acceptance came from Pomona. Statusy enough. Now Alix could joke about Radcliffe’s lack of perception.
She paced in step with “Pomp and Circumstance” across bleachers set up on Beverly High’s green lawn, collecting her gold-starred diploma. In the audience sat her Linde grandparents, very correctly dressed (ultragoyishe, as Dan said), her father with Grandma Vilma (Presbyterian and not nearly so correct in flowery chiffon), and in the front row, Mother and Dan. One big unhappy family. Afterward, they clustered awkwardly, kissing her and bestowing keys to a new Mustang, two checks, and a graduation card handprinted: IOU 8 weeks in Europe. Father. Alix hugged and exclaimed and for a few minutes managed to get smiles on their faces. Was each, she wondered, as achingly aware of the missing person?
3
A drab June morning. Alix, shivering, backed up her new Mustang. A circular drive had replaced the walled patio, and she made a sharp right, heading for the street. She was blocked by an illegally parked gray VW bus. She honked. The dented VW didn’t budge. She touched her window button, ready to protest, when she saw—sandwiched between two large males—Cricket Matheny.
“Hey Cricket,” she called.
And left her motor running to greet her guests. They watched her. On long, friable-looking legs, Alix walked, her heels striking asphalt just firmly enough to produce interesting movements in tank top and white shorts. Who would guess she was self-conscious?
“Alix, this is Roger.” Cricket nodded at the driver, the dark one. “Roger Reed, Alix Schorer.”
Dark, rough hair and a moustache. Kind of tension. Heath-cliff, Alix thought. If Roger’s a singer, he drives the groupies wild.
“And this is Vliet.” Cricket tilted her head in the opposite direction. Vliet’s hair was pale and sleek. He smiled at Alix, one side of his mouth whimsically down. The twins were opposites. One feature only was held in common. The eyes. The eyes were deep-set and Prussian blue.
“Hi, twins,” Alix said.
Vliet’s easy smile came quick.
Roger’s slower.
“Hi, Alix,” Vliet said. “Where’re you headed?”
To buy the Modern Library Anna Karenina. “Noplace,” she said. “Come in and I’ll feed you.”
“We’re fed,” Vliet said. “And going noplace, too. Why not come with us?”
She glanced at Roger. “Why not?” she said. “Let me put the car away.”
When she got back, Vliet was in the middle, Cricket on his lap. Roger held open the door for her.
“D’you take pills for it?” Roger’s voice was husky.
Her lips moved in a wordless question.
“Or is it natural?”
“What?” she asked, unable to look away. Dark-rimmed pupils turned his eyes an even more vivid blue.
“Roger, you’ll never carry it off.” Vliet’s voice, good-natured. “Not your style, man, not you.”
“What?” Alix still gazed at Roger.
“The good looks.” His tone was deeper.
To which there was no comeback other than the routine smile.
The minor pass, Alix guessed (correctly) was a first for Roger. It had been excruciatingly awkward. Yet there was something, something with a
n impact that took Alix by surprise. Her bare leg grazing his Levi’s began to quiver. Hastily, she climbed into the bus.
Roger’s hands, large and capable, shifted and steered. Fast. He was a lefty. He didn’t speak. Neither did Cricket. Vliet and Alix bantered, champion figure skaters making easy patterns across silence.
Alix wanted Roger’s attention again.
She didn’t know how to get it.
An area Alix never had been compelled to cultivate, what her friends referred to as getting a guy. She had beauty, she had charm, she had males bringing her compliments, admiration, affection. No effort on her part. (Incredible!) To be honest, though, she never had experienced the magnetism that might have made her wish to draw a specific one. Sometimes, generally before she fell asleep, she would worry, was she frigid? And this admitted a greater, more ancient fear. The males nearest her had been banished, murdered. She would sleep on a comfortless credo: It is safest not to let yourself get close to anyone.
They were climbing the landscaped hill toward red-brick turrets and cement-slab modern blocks of UCLA before she ventured, “Roger, where do you go?” The question, to Alix, sounded pushy.
“Harvard.” Vliet.
The male Radcliffe. Was that why Cricket never mentioned it? Leaning forward so it would be apparent she was talking to Roger, Alix inquired, “Have much longer?”
“We’re graduates is all.” Vliet.
“In what?”
“I just said, Alix, Ha-a-a-a-ava-a-ad.” Vliet.
“Ahhh. A diphthong major.”
“Really.” Vliet grinned. “I always dig the ones with extensive vocabularies.”
“Premed.” This time it was Roger.
Leaning yet further, she asked, “Going to their med school?” It’s so stiff, she thought. I’m floundering, she thought.
“Roger’s found us another diploma mill.”
“Where, Roger?”
“Hopkins,” Roger said.
And she—nicknamed Social Alix—could think of no better remark to keep this tenuous exchange going than, “Are we heading for the beach?”
“How come,” Vliet asked, “the anxiety about destinations, schools, the minor details?”
“My environment.”
“Harsh toilet training?” Vliet inquired.
“No-no. I’m a nice three-quarter-Jewish girl.”
Vliet rubbed a careless hand on his cousin’s yellow hair. “Fink,” he said. He smiled at Alix. “Cricket promised the one-hundred-percent genuwine article.”
“It so happens I’m sensitive about that quarter.”
“Who isn’t?” Vliet asked. “Alix, there’re days when I could cut my throat for being a Wasp.” He reached out as if to punch Alix’s bare, tanned arm, then had to clutch Cricket.
Roger was swerving onto Chattauqua.
There was no way Roger could have seen Vliet’s gesture. Yet Alix could swear Roger had cut the sharp left to divert the movement of Vliet’s hand. Telepathy? she wondered. Aren’t twins meant to have it? They were descending into gray sea fog.
“Anyway,” Alix said, “with as many parents around as I have, you learn to memorize. Keep the perspective straight.”
“Christ! A broken home, too?” Vliet said. “For a screwedup, sensitive, girl, you come across pretty healthy.”
“All cover-up.”
Roger had braked at the beach parking entry. He was watching her. She smiled at him. He stared a fraction of a second longer, shook his head as if hearing unspoken words, and rose up to get change from his Levi’s. Choppy waves snarled at brown cliffs: high tide, the narrowed beach was deserted.
“It’s a bitch,” Vliet said. “Come on. Buy everybody coffee.”
“I want to get some gulls,” Cricket said, reaching in back for a camera. A Nikon, Alix noted.
“Pass, too,” Roger said.
“But it’s freezing on the beach.” Alix.
“Great for running.” Roger.
“I like to, too. Especially in this weather.” Alix. She did. Fast and hard, as if in competition. “After coffee, let’s.”
“I’m not one for coffee,” Roger said.
“Coke?” Alix.
“Uhhh …” Roger.
And Alix realized Vliet and Cricket were staring.
“Roger, ever notice the lengths women go to, avoiding being alone with me?” Vliet asked, smiling. Oh, Alix recognized how gracefully it was done, she herself often used a self-deprecating crack to help a friend out of humiliation. Vliet reached across her, opening the car door. “’Raus” he said.
The coffee was bitter, not that it made any difference. Alix, too, wasn’t one for coffee. She used the heavy mug to warm her hands. Across Pacific Coast Highway she could see Roger’s broad-shouldered back. Hands in Levi pockets, he appeared to be gazing at the dismal sea.
“It’s the moustache,” Vliet said.
“What?”
“Don’t let the moustache fool you. He’s not your type.”
Q (out loud): “Who said he was?” A (silent): God, she really had thrown herself at Roger.
“I can tell you what’s on his mind.”
“Even from this distance?”
“Twins have the power. He’s thinking you’re not his type. You’re too ornamental.”
Alix took a sip of coffee and made a face. Pushy, she thought, how could I have been so pushy? She was furious at herself. And at Roger. Would one Coke have killed him?
Vliet went on, “He’s a practicing idealist, Alix. He’s sweating out whether ’tis nobler to practice in a poverty pocket or take even less cash on a sea of research.” Vliet wasn’t putting Roger down, he was telling the truth in a tone of bantering admiration. “How’s that make you feel?”
“Shallow.”
“Likewise.” He poured her too much cream. “There. That should bring it up to substandard. I’ve chosen.”
“Chosen what?”
“My specialty.”
“Which is?”
“Dermatology.” He finger-combed back shining straight hair. “‘Hold still, baby, I’m getting that nasty wart off you.’ No night calls. Money, tons of it. I’m going to have one helluva practice and join the family. I’m middle class only on my parents’ side. I belong with the Van Vliets, or will as soon as that feelthy dinero starts rolling in.”
“That a visible scar?”
“Really. Put there by my unique first name and the first million people asking”—he raised his voice—“‘Oh, you’re one of the Van Vliets? How are you related?’ I’d like it known far and wide that Dr. Van Vliet Reed enriches his clan. And while we’re at this, Alix, I’ll let you in on my other major ambition.”
“Which is?”
“To zap every great-looking girl I come in contact with.”
He intended to get a laugh. He did.
Creamed coffee snorted up her nose. For a minute she was helpless, laughing, choking, trying to hide behind a paper napkin. On occasion Alix ran out of control. She fell back into the wooden booth, laughter shaking outward from the pit of her stomach. Get ahold of yourself, she thought, get ahold, you don’t know him all that well to be snorting coffee. Finally she managed, “And you say, you say you’re not an idealist?”
He was laughing, too. Reaching across, he touched her coffee mug. “Alix, I’m going to.”
“Don’t count on it, Van Vliet.”
Chuckling, they sat back.
4
This was the year of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the summer of racial riots that took seventy thousand troops to contain, the summer that, right here in Los Angeles, a .22-caliber hollow-nosed slug scattered Robert Kennedy’s brains. This was the summer that Alix’s friends were sending closely written postcards out of Europe, Morocco, Hawaii, the summer of graduation, the summer of diaspora. But why make a philosophical deal? Even if the world were imploding, even if every friend she had were camping on her private patio, she would have spent her time with the cousins.
The
weather had changed. Sun blazed white and hot. Most days, the four of them went to the beach.
Often Alix would bring Fat Sam. She once had brought another brother, but she never mentioned Jamie. The front door had been open, and fat flies had clustered on bloody terrazzo. Jamie’s death went too deep for pain: she never had visited Dan’s mall. Her mother had, but Alix couldn’t.
Without the baby they body-surfed, each differently. Cricket floated in on small waves. Vliet let the dangerous ones go. Roger, a powerful swimmer, rode only those killers. Alix took them all, regardless of size. Head down, long, dark hair water-whipped to her shoulders, arms flat at her side.
They baked in the sun.
Alix asked, “Is happiness one giant Pepsi commercial?”
She was asking Vliet. Roger rose up. Though shorter than his brother, a mere six-one, poor midget, his shoulders were heavier, and currently he had a large zit on the left one, caused, Alix decided, by his taste for Hershey bars.
“There are other things,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot from saltwater, which made them bluer, even.
“Seven-Up?” Alix asked.
“Come on, Alix.” He rarely used her name.
“No kidding, I should be brooding about the riots,” she heard herself say, “and the Middle East situation, and Kennedy and Vietnam and poverty. But let’s face it, today I’m happy.”
A wave crashed. Roger’s eyes stayed on hers, putting her on the defensive. From that first day, between them there had been this tension that she found exhilarating and therefore terrifying. She ached to hit him in his firm gut with all her strength, he turned her that bitchy. Other girls could afford to be bitchy. Not Alix.
She let sand trickle through her fingers. She was concerned about leached earth and Israelis being pushed into the Mediterranean (living with Dan, who could be apathetic?) and war and peace, but at this point wouldn’t the admission come off saccharine, too feminine, playing up?
She smiled. “Besides, what’s wrong with Pepsi?”
“To some,” Vliet said, “happiness is a warm sickle cell.”
“Up yours,” Roger said.
“Anemia?” Alix asked.
“Roger’ll explain.”
“Fuck you,” Roger said. The twins tossed obscenities to one another as amiably as they did a Frisbee, and although Alix could tell no difference in this particular exchange, Vliet must have. He lay back down on his stomach.
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