by Deb Caletti
“She looks happy,” I said.
I wouldn’t see her looking that happy for a long time to come, but that night she was.
* * *
Wine bottles kept arriving. At State Bird, they brought around carts of food same as dim sum, only it was food like ahi tuna with this puffed-up black rice, and pork belly with plum salad, and little pancakes with cheddar and some kind of ham. More and more plates stacked up. I thought about that credit card, but Lila didn’t seem concerned. She drank and laughed and clinked glasses. She gave me one of her full glasses of wine and left it there in front of me.
I sipped. The liquid tasted sour and hot, but it gave me an easy, warm feeling in my body and a nice, swimmy buzz in my head. Jayson Little was telling me about a road trip he took when he was eighteen, and he was leaning very close to me, and I forgot all about who I was. I forgot all about who he was. It was a weird out-of-body experience, because I felt beautiful, and in my white dress it seemed like I was having some magical power over Jayson Little, even if the only thing I was doing was smiling and looking at him with awe as he told his stories. I barely spoke, but when I did, he laughed at everything I said, and he bumped up against my arm and touched my hand. It was kind of amazing, that power. The restaurant was getting noisy, and in order to hear, his head was so close to me, I could feel his breath on my cheek.
This was the sort of IT I had in mind. Maybe IT came with drinking or a man’s warm breath, because I felt full in a way I hadn’t before. My father had forgotten my birthday, but so what. I had a lame thought you hate yourself for, because I wished he could see me right then. From afar, where he wouldn’t be allowed to come in. Serves you right, I said to the imaginary him watching through the glass of the locked restaurant door, where, from a distance, I was being amazing.
I was probably a little drunk on one glass of wine. The alcohol and the candlelight and the loud voices lifted me from myself. “Getting hot in here,” Jayson Little whispered in my ear. This made me shiver, which made him grin. I fingered my heart necklace and thought stupid thoughts about love. I’m embarrassed to admit that, but it’s true. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I thought, I don’t know. That he really liked me. Me. Jayson Little made a joke, then traced the neckline of my white dress with his fingertip and laughed. Oh my God. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, Jayson Little was whispering in my ear and touching my neck. He was in his twenties and I wasn’t, but I wanted to be near his energy and everything he’d already experienced and accomplished. Even if I was slightly terrified of his energy and everything that he’d already experienced and accomplished. I’d accomplished tenth grade, but he was so handsome.
He was important and magnetic. I wasn’t. Or, I was right then, since he’d chosen me.
And then I looked up. Lila was standing over us. Standing? Looming.
“We never did have that drink, Jay,” she said. Words stopped being secret whispers. Words got loud.
“Not yet,” he said. He sat back in his chair, away from me. She gazed down at us, and there was some uncomfortable silence I didn’t know how to read. There was the sound of silverware clinking against dishes. Voices shouting to be heard over the noise. Louise laughing wildly at the other end of the table, her head thrown back.
“Is Jake coming?” I asked. I’d just then realized he wasn’t there. It seemed strange, after their night by the car, after my birthday flowers. Maybe the timing was bad, maybe it looked like I was trying to send her a message of some kind, but I wasn’t.
She waved her hand at me. “This girl. So loyal. She thinks if you’re dating, you need to be welded at the hip.”
It wasn’t true. I wasn’t old enough to have theories about dating. But that didn’t seem like the point anyway. The point was to make me the child who didn’t understand things. And, well, I didn’t understand a lot of things.
Right then, Lila made eye contact with the waiter and nodded. It was time. A crew of waiters brought out trays of panna cotta with strawberries, and chocolate pots de crème. Everyone began to sing.
I felt suddenly awkward. Mortified. I felt a deep but confusing sense that something was very wrong, though I didn’t know exactly what. I blew out the candle in my dessert. “Happy sixteenth, baby,” Lila said, and kissed my cheek. She was still standing over us, me and Jayson Little. I forgot to make a wish.
“You’re sixteen? Today? Like, you were fifteen a few hours ago?” Jayson said. I swear, he even scooted his chair away.
“It’s my birthday,” I said, as if that hadn’t just been made very clear.
“You thought she was turning, what, twenty? You must think I’m ancient.” Lila laughed, but it was a fake laugh. The knot of discomfort cinched tighter in my chest. I felt ashamed of how I’d smiled at him and how he’d touched me, and I felt like an idiot in my white dress.
“Well, hey, happy birthday,” he said, and stood. He put his napkin on the table. “Early day tomorrow.”
“No need to run off, Jay,” Lila said. But he was already thanking her and saying good-bye. I couldn’t eat that dessert. Humiliation just steals your appetite.
* * *
When Lila and I got to the car, it had the cool of night inside, and soon it filled with the restaurant-alcohol smell we’d brought with us. Lila probably shouldn’t have been driving. On the way home, she said, “I hope you had a marvelous day, baby.” She took my hand and shook it in the air a little.
But I only felt coldness now, and not just because it was a chilly summer evening and we were in sleeveless dresses. The warmth of her shine on me was gone. I felt alone. I remembered another night of a different summer. I was twelve. She lived in the redwood house in Topanga Canyon then. We’d gone out to dinner. I was wearing a sundress, and I’d painted my toenails and felt pretty. We had to walk through the bar of the restaurant, and I walked ahead, feeling my new straw purse bump along my hip. Behind me, I heard Lila hiss, “She’s just a little girl, you pervert.”
I turned around, and I saw a man in a suit, but I didn’t know what had happened. She was protecting me from something, but I didn’t feel protected. I felt embarrassed and dirty. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
In that car, I had the same feeling. The white dress felt awful. I didn’t understand the comfort zone or any zone, how to stay in it or step out of it or even know where the lines were. I felt bad for whatever I might have done. I wanted it back, the way it was when the brightness was on me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Exhibit 28: Sworn statement of Louise Redwicker
I went to Baker Beach every morning. It was the one closest to home, and I tried to be back when Lila woke up. I was bored, and going to Baker was something to do. IT was beginning to seem like a stupid longing.
I’d bring a peanut butter sandwich and a water bottle, and I’d stretch out on my towel and read The Deepest Dark by R. W. Wright, where a psycho from the past punishes/kills every girl who drops her pants or opens her legs. I accidentally ripped a page. I wiped my dirty peanut butter fingers on another. I opened the cover as far as it would go and I bent it back.
I started to recognize the nudists. I gave them names. There was Chet, the old guy in the Dodgers cap, and Bill Sr., who had the long scar near his heart. There was also Quentin William III, who read British mysteries and ate those white round water crackers with bits of cheese he brought wrapped up in cellophane. And my favorite—Agatha. I really liked when she wore her sun hat. This seemed both ironic and stylish, since the rest of her was bare as a deflated balloon. She often had a City Lights book bag over one shoulder, where she’d put the good shells she found. Once, she had a friend along, who left only her shorts on, as if she were going one step at a time into the nudist waters. Every time I saw her, Agatha was her full, old self.
There were also a lot of the same non-nudists. A mom and her two boys. A group of teens who smoked pot and then left. But I never saw the boy with the journal again.
Not at Baker, anyway.
> Those days began like this: I’d get on my bike. I’d roll it out the gate and fling one leg over.
And next door, the construction guy would stop whatever he was doing and watch. The other men kept sawing and hammering, hauling and drilling. But not him. He made a point of walking to the edge of wherever he was to catch my eye. He was a big guy, with big arms, wide shoulders, sandy-brown hair, and he’d just stand there and cock his head to one side, grinning. Or he’d shake it, like I was too much for his eyes to handle. And when he did this, I’d feel a slow burn crawl up my thighs and through my stomach and into some empty space in my chest. I didn’t know if the burn was pride or desire or shame or powerlessness. I just felt the heat of it, and the way it rattled me. It was telling me to be afraid or to be fearless, only I couldn’t tell which.
Sixteen was different. Or that summer was different. Or maybe I just started noticing. You know, men looking. It’s strange to talk about. Girls can’t even talk about these things to each other without someone saying or thinking, Hey, she’s not that hot, or Wow, she sure thinks she’s special, or Why’d she keep walking past when she knew what was going to happen? It’s bragging or we’re blamed for it, and how messed up is that?
Whatever, because this is a part of the truth I’m supposed to tell, the way I felt the eyes. And I felt those eyes in particular, his, the ones belonging to the man who worked next door. Some days, before I left the house, I’d hear that endless hammering, the sawing, and I’d think about the staring, and the way the house was just the bones of the structure without the skin of the walls, and I’d peek out the window to see if he was there, so I could leave without being seen. I tried to go the other way, up a different street and over, until I reached a dead end. Sometimes, I’d wear something new, something white that showed off my tan skin, and I’d think, Go ahead and look. Have at it. In order to be where I wanted to be, I had to go past him first. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Wherever you wanted to go, you had to go past him.
It was like he thought I was his. Like I was a vase or a glass that he could admire or drink from or shatter, whatever he decided. I didn’t get a say because vases don’t talk and glass only reflects. I didn’t know what to do about it. It seemed like it was just part of what you dealt with. Lila did. Cora did. Edwina did, in her day. I’m sure even our beautiful great-grandmother who fled during the earthquake did. That old mansion next door and all its history had been torn down. Something new was going up. But he was still the one holding the hammer.
* * *
Maybe ten days or so after my birthday, I was done with Baker. I was over it, going there just so I could hurry home to Lila. I felt pissed about it. Ever since my birthday, Lila had been in a mood. It was summer, and I was there so we could do stuff together, but even when she got up, she’d lie around, saying she didn’t feel well. I tried to get her to go out for lunch, shopping, the gym, anything, but it was, “Baby, I’m just exhausted.”
“What happened to Jake?” I asked.
“He’s being an ass.”
It was frustrating. Maddening. She’d asked me to be nice to him, and he’d given me those flowers, and she’d been so happy about him when I came that I kind of wanted him back, honestly. I was ready to give him a chance, if she’d only snap out of it. But she watched cooking shows for hours on end and had long closed-door talks with Louise, her “crisis manager.”
God.
Every time I called Meredith (Seven more weeks! Six and a half more weeks!), I heard about all the fun they were having—bonfires, parties, swimming. I pictured eyes glittery from the light of a fire, beer in a cup, slick skin against slick skin underwater. I wanted it all so bad, my chest hurt with longing, but I was stuck in that house.
I got online and spent the birthday money my father sent me. It had arrived a week late. It’s hard to remember stuff like that—the day a daughter was born—especially when you’d wanted a son (according to Lila) and you were busy vacationing in Cabo. The enclosed photo showed him on a beach I’d never been to, with some friends I’d never met, wearing clothes I’d never seen, and holding the hand of his new girlfriend, who apparently had a kid that lived with them now. I bought some expensive new bathing suits and beach towels and other stuff I didn’t even want.
And I took my pastels to China Beach or I read outside. Sun, warm, heat—restlessness. Lotion on legs, tan skin, the great feeling of sea air, with nowhere to put it. I finished The Deepest Dark and tried to go on to She’s So Cold but couldn’t finish. Suddenly, I badly wanted the loose girls, the easy girls, the sluts, the forward ones, the ones who made the first move and were hungry and who needed things, to stay alive, but they never did. One day, I stuck my gum in the cover and never opened it again.
I felt empty and anxious. And alone. I was missing out on everything a summer could bring. That house, even with all its large windows, felt gloomy. Those enormous paintings of women stared from the walls every day. I’d get the mail, and there were more bills. Lila never looked at them. They stacked up like a tippy building on uneven ground. The dread just waited, the ghost floated around, and my anxiety spiked whenever she tossed another envelope to the pile or poured a drink too early in the evening.
I finally decided to go hang out at Ocean Beach and walk around Lands End, just past it. If Lila woke up and I wasn’t there, too bad. Maybe I’d stay the whole day. Maybe she’d have to wonder where I was for once.
“I’m sorry to leave you in this house of doom all day,” I said to Max.
He looked sad.
Then I had a great idea.
“Forget that. You’re going to get depressed if I don’t get you out of here. You’ll catch it like the flu, bud. Come on.”
* * *
I called the car service number that Lila had given me. When the car arrived and I went outside, I tried not to glance next door. But I heard the pounding. I felt the eyes.
“Ocean Beach,” I told the driver.
“The dog, too?”
“Yep.”
The driver sighed.
Max rode in the seat like a proper gentleman. “Don’t let him make you feel bad,” I said to Max after I signed the bill and we got out. “I’m sure you’re way more polite than a lot of people.”
I’d been out that way before, when Lila took me over Christmas break. I loved everything about it—the big, wide sand of Ocean Beach, the mysterious and beautiful Lands End, the ruins of the old Sutro Baths. The baths used to be this enormous labyrinth of saltwater swimming pools, filled by the tides. Back in the 1930s, the pools had slides and trampolines and trapezes, but now only their cement outlines were left. There was a cave down there too, where the waves rushed in so hard, the roar was an explosion. And then there was the Cliff House—the big white restaurant perched on the bluff. It had been there forever, all different styles over the years. Long ago, it was even this amazing eight-story Victorian mansion. It burned down twice, and was once destroyed when a ship carrying dynamite crashed on the rocks, but they just kept rebuilding it again and again.
The minute I stepped from the car, I felt better than I had in ten days. I could breathe out there, and I had a friend with me. We took the sandy stairs, and Max ran down them like he was a newly freed prisoner escaping his old life. He sniffed and peed on tall stuff. He raced to the beach, dying to do every awesome dog thing, like splashing in the water and chasing seagulls, rolling in gross beach junk and sniffing the butts of all the other dogs. His joy made me feel joy.
It made me realize how lonely I’d been. How that house felt seriously haunted, even if the only ghost was the one I’d brought with me.
After we’d been at the beach awhile, I clipped Max’s leash to his collar. “Wait till you see what’s next,” I said.
We walked to Lands End, and I took him out by the crumbling walls of the ruins, where the old baths were filled with disgusting, algae-thick water, which he of course wanted to go in.
“Yuck. Stay on task,” I told him. “It’s worth it,
I promise.” We hiked around the rocks, which were kind of slippery and hard to navigate, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Then we arrived. The little cave. I waited until the people ahead of us left, so we could be in it alone. Inside, you could see through a rocky corridor and out an open end, where the waves crashed. When a wave broke, there was a boom that sounded like the earth breaking in half.
“Wow, huh?” I shouted. Max just stared toward the open end of the cave, as if taking in the majesties of our universe.
“All right. I knew you’d love that. Shall we go?” We headed back to Ocean Beach. I removed the cereal bowl I’d brought in my backpack and filled it from my water bottle. Apparently, butt-sniffing and taking in the majesties of our universe makes you pretty thirsty. Max lapped for a good long while. When he stopped, water dripped from his chin.
“Now that’s what I call beautiful,” a guy said.
I wheeled around to face the voice. I thought it was another pervy man, but I was shocked to see the boy with the journal. Stunned. It was him, the same guy, and how was this possible? It seemed like one of those coincidences that happen only in the movies. It had to be fate, right? Maybe this was IT, magically happening. Well, actually, seeing him out there was pretty much a guarantee, but I didn’t know that yet.
He was wearing dark pants and a white shirt, an outfit way, way too hot and dressy for that summer day. A uniform, I realized. A waiter’s uniform.
