Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  “I know exactly what you thought—Jesus! You think I don’t get this shit all the time? If you have tits you’re automatically suspect. The point is, I don’t have to explain anything to you. I could fuck the entire town of Bellingham—you excluded, of course—and I wouldn’t have to explain a single goddamn thing to you, understand?”

  Silence. A motorboat passes us. A little kid waves. Bill is the only one who waves back. After a pause, the wake sloshes against the shore in heavy, rhythmic spills.

  “Lucy,” Grady says softly, turning in her direction. “Where’s Arlan?”

  “Fuck if I know,” she says.

  “He took the car,” Bill says. “I guess I pissed him off.”

  “Fuck Arlan,” Lucy says, getting up. “Fuck all of you.”

  We watch as she throws on her T-shirt and jeans, then walks to the edge of the road and sticks out her thumb.

  The first car passing picks her up.

  The three of us remaining have lost our enthusiasm for frolicking at the lake. We gather our towels and trudge across the beach to the road. It’s early afternoon, and it’s getting downright hot all of a sudden. The cool of the morning cloud cover has dissipated entirely, and the sun is glaring. A fly buzzes near my ear and I swat at it. I am thirsty and I feel a headache coming on.

  We stand at the edge of the hot black asphalt, holding our thumbs out in silence. I’ve never hitchhiked before, and I feel a little nervous; visions of my face staring back from a milk carton swim through my mind. Still, I don’t have any better ideas, so I keep my thumb out and try to look casual.

  “I just asked her a question,” Bill says, after half a dozen cars have passed us. “I didn’t accuse her of anything.” Grady and I just nod. “After the Nick Ferrari thing, we all know what she’s capable of.”

  “Who’s Nick Ferrari?” I ask.

  Bill looks at me quizzically. “When did you move in?”

  “June.”

  “It happened before she met them,” Grady says, looking out into the empty street.

  “What happened?”

  Just then Arlan pulls up in the station wagon. “Where’s Lucy?” he says, leaning across the seat to the passenger window.

  “She hitched a ride,” Grady says.

  “Goddammit.” Arlan shakes his head. “I hate it when she does that.”

  We climb in and Arlan heads back to the house. Nobody says a thing. Arlan turns on the radio; there’s nothing but Christian music and static coming in. He swears softly and shuts it off. Grady and I are in the back seat. I struggle with the ancient, rusty handle, trying to roll the window down. When I look up, I see Arlan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. All the innocence I witnessed earlier has drained away completely, and he stares at the road with a menacing concentration. I reach up to stick my fingers out the window, into the cool of the breeze, and when I look at the mirror again, he catches me staring at him. The black of his eyes makes me feel suddenly cold; I shiver and roll the window up.

  Midnight. Lucy’s still not back. The four of us maintain an increasingly medicated vigil. We’ve worked our way through two six-packs of Coronas and are now well into our third. Bill polishes off some leftover pizza, but the rest of us don’t eat. Twice, now, Arlan has gotten in his car and driven the streets, insisting on going alone. Three or four times he has gone into the bedroom and made short, terse phone calls. I consider going for a walk, but I can’t bring myself to abandon the tight little wad of misery we’ve formed. We let the room grow dark, keep the radio loud, and say little.

  At one point, Arlan and I find ourselves in the kitchen. Bill and Grady are out on the porch, smoking. This is the first time we’ve been alone since the Fourth. I am standing at the sink and he lunges unsteadily past me for the door of the fridge. His wrist grazes my hip as I turn. His fingers grab the handle of the fridge; he steadies himself with it instead of opening it. We look at each other, and I think of his mouth on his harp—the way his lips tighten around it, his eyes closed. The refrigerator hums loudly. We don’t move. I wish he would kiss me and I hate myself for it. Instead, he yanks open the fridge and frees another Corona from the cardboard container.

  “This isn’t the first time she’s disappeared,” he says. I just watch him, hoping my face looks purely concerned, as if I have been thinking of Lucy all along, and not of his mouth. “She took off for a month, once.” He leans against the fridge, takes a swig of beer. “No note or anything.” His eyes hold mine, and he says very softly, “I almost killed myself.” All the air seems to go out of the room. A surge of hatred rises behind my eyes; how could she do this to him? But then I think, he loves her cruelty. He laughs, as if he’s heard my thoughts, and says, “We deserve each other, I guess. I’m no walk in the park.” I think, Oh, Arlan, I want to be so close to you that the smell of your body fills me up.

  “She won’t stay away long,” I say. And I know she won’t, because I’m here. I’m just enough of a threat to keep her tethered to Smoke Palace for now; she’s reckless, but not stupid. He just nods, drinks his beer and stares out the window.

  I wake to the sound of voices. I try to seize a pillow—something to drown out the noise—but all I feel is hard vinyl.

  “Don’t tell me what to do! Arlan— Get your fucking hands—”

  “You’re gone all night long—and you come in here like—”

  “Tell Bill to get off my goddamn floor—I want him out of my house.”

  “I’m driving around like a maniac…I called your mom, your sister—”

  “Why? Jesus, I had some drinks, so what—”

  “What is this shit about Zuckerman?”

  Something crashes to the floor. I stare into the darkness. Out the window, the sky looks close to dawn. I wait, holding my breath.

  Silence. More silence.

  Lucy giggles. Arlan laughs quietly. “You little moron,” I hear him say, but all the anger has left his voice. There is another long pause. Soon, I can decipher the sound of breathing, a soft, stifled moan, and, “Shh! Arlan…” and then, “Jesus, babe.” Then nothing.

  I look around the room. In the half light, I can see the silhouette of Bill collapsed on the floor, his elbow cocked at a weird angle under him. Someone has thrown a blanket over me—a scratchy, grandmotherly thing made of pale yarn. As I am studying it curiously, I feel the eerie presence of eyes on me. I look up and there is Grady Berlin, slumped in the chair by the window, with the dark gray, dimly illumined sky filling the glass panes behind him. He is leaning all the way back, his legs splayed out in a wide V. I can barely make out half of his face in the dim light from the window. I can see that his eyes are open, though.

  We stare at each other, listening to the sound of Arlan and Lucy making love across the hall.

  In the morning, Arlan, Grady and Bill go out for breakfast, but Lucy refuses to go, and I decide to stay behind with her. We lie on the bed, drinking coffee and staring out the window. We don’t say anything until she’s finished her first cigarette. Then she drains her coffee and says flatly, “I’m pregnant.”

  I look at her. “Oh my God. How do you know?”

  “I just know,” she says. “I’ve never been wrong before.”

  “So it’s not the first time?”

  She shakes her head and glances at me, then stares out the window again.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Come on,” she says. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

  We both stare out the window now. The Penny Guy—this weird little man with orange, wiry tufts of hair—appears from the alley behind Smoke Palace and stops below the window. He shields his eyes with his hand to peer up at us. His left eye is sealed shut, and the other roams a little toward the street. He carries a ragged burlap sack that sags at the bottom. “Hello!” he cries, seeming happy to see us. “Any pennies today?”

  “Hold on,” Lucy says. She goes to the desk and opens a drawer. It’s full of little plastic baggies filled with pennies. She takes one and return
s to the window. “Here you go,” she says, and tosses it down to him. He catches it and flashes her a grin so enormous and gleeful, I half wish she would toss him more.

  “Thank you!” he calls, ripping open the plastic and letting the pennies clatter noisily into his burlap sack. “You have a good day, pretty ladies!” He disappears back into the alley.

  “That guy,” she says, shaking her head with a little smile.

  “You have a stash especially for him?”

  “I like him,” she says. “I can’t help it.”

  I study the side of her face—her perfect, miniature nose, the long dark lashes, the pale, creamy cheeks just slightly kissed with sun. I wonder if I’ll ever really know her.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks, throwing me a bashful, sideways glance.

  “Nothing.” I make a fist on the windowsill and rest my chin on it. “Will you let me go with you?” I ask, after a while. “To the clinic, or wherever?”

  “If you promise not to turn it into a drama,” she says.

  “Since when am I the drama queen?” I say.

  “Sure,” she says, quietly. “Come.” And she puts one hand in my hair for a brief, unexpected moment, before she comes to her senses and reaches for another cigarette.

  There’s a postcard of a Waikiki sunset, and on the back my father has written Bender a note in such miniaturized script, it’s barely legible.

  June 16th, 1974

  Hey Einstein,

  I’m so sunburned. We drink mai tais for breakfast. This is the life. For lunch we eat fruit and fresh coconut flesh. For dinner we file into fancy restaurants filled with loud, obnoxious families and other honeymooners, all of them looking tired and furious. I’m no exception. Something about marriage makes a man irritated. Never mind—too many mai tais for me today.

  Just wanted to thank you for your speech at the wedding. Never knew a man could be so drunk and articulate at once.

  They play these really wild little ukuleles here. Maybe we should try making one. I know they seem sort of dwarfish and generally inferior, but I’ve seen some here that really turn me on. The abalone inlay would blow your mind.

  Later,

  Chet

  The next letter is written on the blank side of a yellow flyer advertising a free summer jazz festival in Golden Gate Park.

  March 23rd, 1975

  Bender,

  Okay, I know you and Sheila are only honeymooning for another ten days, so I guess it’s pretty ridiculous, me writing you like this, but I am SO GODDAMN EXCITED I CANNOT HELP MYSELF, brother, so HOLD ON, I’VE JUST GOT TO TELL YOU.

  Tuesday morning, ten o’clock, you’ll never guess who walked through our doors. I’m working on that twelve-string for the old fart, Edelman, and I’m concentrating so hard I barely even notice when the bell jingles on the door. When I finally realize we’ve got a customer, I yell from the back, “Be right there!” Couple minutes later I wander out and who’s standing in OUR FUCKING SHOP? BOB DYLAN AND JOAN BAEZ.

  You think I’m shitting you. Would I shit you about this? You know I would not.

  Dylan ordered a guitar from us, man. He likes our shit. No, I would have to say, given the amount of dough he’s willing to spend and the look of restrained giddiness he wore as he looked around, I would have to say he LOVES WHAT WE DO.

  Joan is twenty thousand times more beautiful than you ever could have thought possible. Her eyes are as wise as a crone, but she has the playfulness of a little girl.

  God, I wish Rot Gut were around to see this.

  We’re in the big time now,

  Chet

  “So?” I can barely conceal my impatience. “What do you think?” Bender looks around the workshop with an unreadable face. Sometimes I could swear he means to torture me. He takes his time, circling the room slowly, searching for electrical outlets and checking for leaks in the roof as he gnaws on a toothpick. This is the first time I’ve seen him without a Budweiser clamped between his fingers. He looks oddly naked.

  “All right,” he announces at last. “Might take some work, but it’ll do.” Not exactly the enthusiasm I was hoping for, but I remind myself not to take offense. It’s a big deal for Bender even to leave his boat, so I’m trying to keep my expectations reasonable.

  For an hour, we lose ourselves in plans; Bender does all the talking, since I know almost nothing. He muses about where to put the table saw, joiner and planer, how to keep the moisture controlled with a hydrometer. A soft rain begins to tap against the windows that line the upper part of the southern wall. The glass is beige with years of dust, and the rain makes muddy streaks. We’ve got the doors open, and the fragrance of wet pavement fills the room. I listen to Bender rattle on about exotic woods whose names evoke whole worlds: cocobolo rosewood, Hawaiian koa, Sitka spruce. Faint memories of my father’s shop come back to me in pieces: the high-pitched whine of his saw, the dust motes in the air, the strange smell bone emits when it’s sanded.

  After a while, Bender stops talking. We slip into a companionable silence as we linger near the doorway, watching the rain come down. Without giving it much thought, I ask, “Who was Rot Gut?” Immediately, his mood shifts, and I half regret having mentioned it.

  “Chet had pet names for everyone,” he says. “What did he used to call you?”

  “All kinds of things,” I say. “Mostly Gripper Girl, though. Sometimes GG for short.”

  “Gripper Girl,” he repeats, nodding. “Where did he get that, again?”

  “When I was a baby, I used to clamp onto things like a maniac. He claimed you could stick me to the wall—said my hands were like little suction cups.”

  “I remember that, now.” He takes the toothpick from his mouth and examines it. “You did have quite a grip….”

  “Why did he call you Einstein?”

  “Hell, I can hardly even remember. I guess I used to do a lot of homemade experiments—they always went south, of course. He called me Einstein once when we were kids and it just stuck.” He starts picking at his gums methodically with the toothpick.

  “So who was Rot Gut?”

  “That’s what your dad used to call my uncle. He was a luthier—had a shop in Palo Alto when we were kids. We used to hang out there whenever we could. He taught us the trade, when he wasn’t too drunk to see straight.”

  “He drank a lot?”

  He chuckles, but it’s a sad sound. “You think I’m bad…Uncle Dave drank Jack Daniel’s for every meal.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “No. Liver gave out on him.” He takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose twice. “So you’ve been reading those letters, I guess.”

  “Uh-huh. One by one. I never knew he was so obsessed with Bob Dylan.”

  He sits down on the stoop, and I do the same. The rain is falling harder now. A playful breeze tosses damp candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts this way and that in the alley. “Did he ever tell you he jammed a couple times with Dylan?”

  “No.”

  “I guess Dylan even suggested he might open for one of his shows. Your dad really wanted to be a star, you know. That was never my trip—I just wanted to make good guitars. But for Chet, fame was this mirage he couldn’t shake.”

  “So did he do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Open for Dylan?”

  “No. He was rehearsing like crazy for a year after this comment Dylan made in passing. When Chet finally called him up and told him he was ready to tour, I guess the guy barely remembered who he was. Crushed him. He was depressed for months after that. It was a chore just to get him out of bed.”

  Suddenly I remember something I haven’t thought of in years: my mother and me whispering so we won’t disturb Dad. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and it’s hot, and we’ve got to keep all the windows closed so none of the noise from the street will seep in. I remember the oppressive, stuffy quiet and the closed bedroom door.

  “When did that happen?” I ask.

  “Oh he
ll, I don’t know. Must have been twenty-seven, twenty-eight years ago, I guess.”

  “He got depressed a lot, didn’t he?”

  He nods. Then he stands and forces a little grin. “How’s about we get my tools over here Monday?”

  I’m getting used to Bender unceremoniously changing the subject. I shrug. “What’s wrong with tomorrow?”

  He chuckles, and a wild, silver curl rises from the mess of stiff, gelled ones, drifting upward on a breeze from the doorway. “You sure are a slave driver.”

  “What? You need Sunday off, already?”

  “Hell, no—I just thought you might have a date or something.”

  “Right,” I laugh. “Fat chance.”

  “Swing by the docks around eleven?”

  “Sounds good.” I look at him, and try to envision the young man my father wrote to so many years ago. His tragedies have etched themselves into the lines around his eyes and the deep, pensive grooves at the corners of his mouth. His body has given way to excess and gravity, but maybe years ago he was lean, before the beers added up.

  “Think I’ll just walk back,” Bender says, pulling the hood of his windbreaker over his head. I notice now that the elbow’s been patched with duct tape.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll drive you.”

  “It’s good for me,” he says, stepping out into the rain. He looks pleasantly Hemmingwayesque, there, with his hood on and the rain falling all around him. He nods goodbye at me, tosses his toothpick into a puddle and heads off in the direction of the marina.

  “See you tomorrow!” I call to his back. Without turning around, he raises one hand in the air, turns a corner and disappears.

  CHAPTER 12

  Stains

  Almost a week later, Lucy still hasn’t informed me of any appointment, and it’s making me nervous. She’s been drinking more heavily than usual, smoking more, eating less. Her beauty persists, but her face is more severe than it used to be—her cheekbones are more extreme, and her eyes are a little crazy.

  Thursday afternoon, after working with Bender on the shop, I come home to find her sitting outside, gazing listlessly into space. She’s leaning back in one of the increasingly disgusting porch chairs. I install myself next to her, in the even more decayed one, shifting to avoid the two or three exposed springs in the seat cushion. She reaches out and brushes a bit of sawdust from my arm. Across the street, the Goat Kids turn their music up so loud, it sounds like chainsaws. Their stereo is obviously unable to handle their volume expectations.