The Vinyl Princess

by Yvonne Prinz

  Back in my hood, it’s like that Monkees song, “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Mrs. Kobayashi is planting flowers under an oak tree in her front yard, wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat. She and I both have Sundays off. I wave to her and walk up the path to my house. I look up at Suki’s window and lock eyes with Pierre, who’s lying in the open window, gazing down at me lazily. I kick my board up with my heel and carry it into the house.

  Chapter 8

  My mother and my grandmother are sprawled out in the living room drinking coffee out of big mugs. My grandmother’s mug advertises a drug for the prevention of high cholesterol and my mom’s says WORLD’S GREATEST GOLFER. The coffee table is laid out with lox and bagels and cream cheese from Saul’s Deli. Sections of the New York Times are scattered about. This is a Sunday tradition. My grandmother drives over from Walnut Creek, where she lives in an over-fifty community that she’s transformed into a kibbutz for blue-hairs. The docile retirees out there didn’t know what hit them when tornado Estelle arrived on the scene from New York five years ago with big plans for “improving” things. She worked her way up to president of the condo association in a New York minute and proceeded to Estelle-ize the place. She’s had everyone from Ralph Nader to Gloria Steinem out to shake things up in an author series she organized, and canasta tournaments are on the activities schedule permanently, as are ashtanga yoga, kickboxing and Pilates. She set up a residents’ art gallery and a library in the former rec room and she holds weekly salons to talk about books, movies and politics. She’s famous for her letter-writing campaigns to government officials: Bill and Hillary Clinton are her pen pals; so is Robert Kennedy Jr., and she’s working on Barbra Streisand.

  The community van used to take the residents to Safeway for senior discounts on Thursdays; now it takes them to the Museum of Modern Art and the Asian Art Museum for docent-led tours, all arranged by Estelle. She also heads up the now-popular yearly fitness/art/culinary trips to Europe. The children of these people who were counting on healthy inheritances must love watching their money evaporate as Estelle jets their parents off to Tuscany for yet another adventure.

  “Allie, gimme a hug, honey.” She looks at me over her tiny reading glasses.

  “Hi, Estelle.” I’m not allowed to call her “Grandma” or, God forbid, “Bubbie.” When I complained once she said that my only other option was “Ms. Horowitz.”

  I hug her and she squeezes me hard and gives me a big fish-scented kiss on my cheek. I collapse next to her on the sofa and put my feet up on the table. She pats my thigh with her hand. Her fingers are long and thin and tan and she wears a big amethyst ring on her middle finger and a silver band on her thumb. My mom’s reading the book review section of the Times.

  “How was your breakfast?” she asks, lowering the paper to look at me.

  I shrug. “Okay. Kee Kee’s pregnant, by the way.”

  My mom and my grandmother lock eyes.

  “What a putz,” says my grandmother, shaking her head.

  My mom seems amused. “Well, that particular honeymoon is over.” She looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. What do I care?”

  “That’s the spirit,” says Estelle, patting my thigh again. “Oy, men. They just can’t seem to get past that primal need to spread their seed.” She looks at my mom. “When your father proclaimed that he wanted a child—and I have to be honest, I was ambivalent—I said, ‘Julian, one child and then I’m right back on birth control.’”

  “Gee, Mom, don’t get so sentimental; I’m misting up over here.”

  “Don’t act like you were any different. I taught you well.”

  My mom rolls her eyes.

  My grandmother’s been married three times, divorced twice and widowed once. She married a doctor, an architect and a retired archaeologist. Even though she’s Jewish, she’s never had a Jewish husband, which makes my mom half Jewish and me a quarter. My mom’s dad was the architect. He died when I was ten. The way the story goes is that my grandfather had a heart attack behind the wheel while they were driving to the Adirondacks to visit their friends Shirley and Maury, who have a summer cabin up there. My grandmother climbed over the seat, took the wheel, and navigated the car safely off the road and then she called 911 on my grandfather’s cell phone. While they waited for the ambulance, Estelle tried to keep my grandfather’s spirits up by singing show tunes and telling him bad jokes. Just before the ambulance arrived, he turned to my grandmother and he said, “Estelle, you kill me.” And then he closed his eyes and died.

  Estelle taught my mom to be very independent and, as she was seeing her off to UC Berkeley at eighteen, she announced that she was selling the condo on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and downsizing to a small apartment in the Village, so my mom would have to sleep on the couch in the living room the next time she came home. My mom never went back to New York, and, during her many visits west before and after her divorce from her third husband, Estelle eventually decided that California was a good place to live, even though she had always said New York was the only place on earth she would ever live. She moved out here too. All her friends moved to Florida but she didn’t care. She said that New Yorkers go to Florida to die and she felt very much alive.

  “How was your week, Estelle?” I ask, pulling the amethyst ring off her finger and putting it on my own. I admire my bejeweled hand.

  “Well, let’s see. I signed up for a nude drawing class at the art center. That starts in a week. What else? Oh, I went on a date with Stanley Kozinski on Tuesday.”

  “Who’s Stanley Kozinski?” I ask, trying to remove the ring. It won’t come off.

  “A schmuck who likes to hear himself talk.”

  “So, no second date?” I stick my middle finger in my mouth, trying to lubricate it.

  “God, no. Oh, I bought one of those MP3 thingies for my power walks, a tiny one; it’s the size of a matchbook. I love that little thing. My Pilates instructor, Sarah, loaded it up for me with music. Have you seen these things, Allie? They’re absolutely amazing.”

  “This Sarah person, she downloaded all the music on it from the net?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know from the net. All I know is that there’s more music on this little thing than I’ll ever get to. It’s fantastic. I’ve got show tunes, classical, jazz, big band, folk, you name it.”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this revelation. My grandmother’s what I like to call “neonouveau.” She embraces anything new like a gadget-hungry adolescent. She’s especially vulnerable to TV-advertised exercise doodads like the Ab Rocket and the ThighMaster.

  The ring finally gives and I slide it off and put it back on her finger.

  I leave them to the Times and go upstairs to call Kit. She sounds a lot better but I can hear The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead playing in the background (music to kill yourself by), so I tell her I’m coming right over. When I get there, I stand on the porch ringing the doorbell for a long time before Kit answers the door in a fuzzy bathrobe. Kit’s parents are almost never home. Sometimes, it’s like they moved away and forgot to mention it to her. Her dad does something called aerosol research at UC Berkeley. I have no idea what that means. I imagine guys in lab coats, spraying Arrid Extra Dry on one another. Her mom does hospice care, apparently around the clock.

  Kit’s nose is all pink and raw and there’s a trail of used tissues that look like white carnations leading up to her bedroom. We follow them like bread crumbs up the stairs and she shuts the door behind us. I knock about fifty soggy tissues onto the floor and climb onto her bed.

  “Have you talked to Niles?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” Her face hardens. “So, get this: I acted like I wasn’t there last night and I said, ‘Hey, how was the gig?’ And he’s all, ‘Oh, you know, same old, same old.’ So I said, ‘What’d you do after?’ And he says, ‘Me and the boys went out for beers.’ And I said, ‘Really, the boys? ’Cause I was there, asshole, and that person you left with didn’t look like a boy to me.’ And th
en he got really quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Hey, c’mon, baby, you know she doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just a groupie. You know how it is. I love you, baby. There’s no one else for me.’ And then I hung up on him.”

  “Has he called back?”

  “Yeah, five times but I’m not picking up.” Her eyes well up and she dabs at them with a wad of tissue.

  “Good. Wait till you’re stronger; then you can kill him.”

  She nods. I take her free hand and I squeeze it. We lie side by side on her bed, looking up at the ceiling.

  I sigh. “Man, what a shithead.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll never meet anyone as cool as that shithead again.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  “No, I won’t, and you want to hear something really terrible? All I want to do right now is go over there and be in his arms. How pansy-ass weak is that?”

  “I think that’s normal. But maybe musicians aren’t really the way to go. I don’t think they’re very good at committed relationships. Too much temptation, you know?” I think my mom might have said this very thing to me once while we waited on the side of the stage for my dad to finish chatting up yet another young female fan so we could go home.

  “I know, I know, but the fact is, I still love him and now I have to figure out a way not to and I don’t really know how to do that.” Her voice catches and she dabs her eyes again.

  “I don’t either but we’ll think of something, okay?” I turn my head and look at her.

  She nods. “Hey, do you think it was because my breasts are too small?”

  “No, Kit, I don’t.”

  “’Cause you know, I was thinking, I’ve got all this money saved up for this road trip we were supposed to go on and maybe I should just get the breasts I’ve always wanted.”

  “But that’s crazy! You’re only sixteen; your breasts haven’t even finished growing yet.”

  “What if they have, though? I’ll be seventeen in two months! What if this is all I get?” She looks down at her chest.

  “So what? You look great. Kit, you don’t want to mess with that stuff.”

  “Remember Wanda Wilson from middle school?”

  “Of course. She took me shoplifting when I was fourteen.”

  “Well, remember how flat-chested she was?”

  “We were fourteen.”

  “She was fifteen, actually. She got held back in sixth grade.”

  “Don’t expect my jaw to drop. What about her?”

  “Well, I saw her the other day on Telegraph and she told me she’d had a boob job and it was the best thing she ever did.”

  “Well, for someone who had a police record at fourteen, that might be true.”

  “She even let me feel them.”

  “Ewwwww!”

  “No, that’s just it; they felt perfectly natural and they looked fantastic.”

  “Where did she get the money? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “Don’t you need permission from your parents?”

  “I can get it, and besides, I’ll be eighteen soon and then I can do what I want.”

  “Yeah, like in two years.”

  “Fourteen months. Anyway, Wanda gave me the name of her doctor. I’m making an appointment.”

  “Kit, this is crazy. Wait a few days; I’m sure you’ll feel different.” I try distracting her. “Hey, how about we go over to Joey Spinelli’s pizza place on Friday. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure, but I wish you’d be more supportive of this. It’s what I want.”

  “I know, but don’t you think that the part of you that wants this might be the part that would do anything to get Niles back?”

  “No.” She rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands and sighs. “I feel awful. I think I’m dehydrated from crying.”

  “You want me to make you some tea?”

  “That would be nice.”

  While I’m down in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, I start thinking about Joey Spinelli and how he always goes for a certain “type.” I wonder if M’s got a type. Could having a type be involuntary? Do we find ourselves drawn to certain physical traits in the opposite sex for no apparent reason? Things like height, skin color, hair color, eye color, breast size, bone structure? Is that all planted in our psyches when we’re children or even in the womb, so that we spend our lives searching for someone we’ve been picturing in the back of our minds forever? What about character traits like sense of humor, intelligence and compassion? Do those all fall by the wayside till we’ve found our physical match? No wonder relationships rarely work out. Are we filling the gaps with types that we’re only too happy to discard when we find something closer to the “picture” we’re programmed to find? Or, even worse, do we settle for something close and then go about trying to change our mates into the picture? I guess that would explain a lot of plastic surgery. It seems to me that women, even smart women, are willing to transform their physical selves at their mate’s slightest whim. Men, not so much.

  I search through the kitchen cupboards and finally find some chamomile tea. I take a mug from the dishwasher and drop the tea bag in. The kettle whistles and I pour the steaming water into the mug and watch the water turn the color of straw. I gaze out the window, thinking about M again. In fact, I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow because there’s a chance in hell that I might see him. It’s possible that I’m developing a full-blown obsession with a stranger. I should probably have my head examined.

  I hear the shower go on upstairs, a good sign. A shower is always the first step back into the real world. Without even thinking about it, I start to hum a song from the sound track to South Pacific called “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair.” My mom and I have watched that movie together a few times. It’s pretty cheesy but I love it.

  Chapter 9

  Monday’s daily blog is about Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English. When I listen to this LP, recorded in 1979, I try to imagine what her life must have been like then. After building a career on sounding fresh and young and folksy, her voice was now raspy and world-weary from years of drug use. She sounds raw and damaged. This album makes me curl into a ball. It was one of the first LPs I ever owned. I bought it at Bob & Bob’s.

  When I check on yesterday’s blog, eight more people have posted comments: seven Europeans and one guy named Gerry, from Louisiana. He posted a comment that says, Hey, Seattle Guy, you’re missing the boat. Vinyl is where it’s at. Long live the Vinyl Princess. You rock. I send Gerry a response, thanking him for the support. I feel my little community slowly growing. Every day my number of hits increases. World domination can’t be far off now. I’ve also noticed that the zines are slowly disappearing from the magazine rack. Sure, maybe people are using them for scratch pads but some people have to be reading them too.

  M doesn’t appear at the store at all on Monday. By Tuesday I’m feeling a little desperate, wringing my hands and watching the door obsessively and occasionally wandering out onto the sidewalk to look up and down the street. This is what it’s come to. My moods are now determined by whether or not I see M (and by “see” I mean catch a glimpse of or maybe, if I’m lucky, eye contact). I’m officially pathetic. I’m in love with the idea of a man.

  But someone does appear. The guy from the Sunday flea market, the one I shamed into buying the Flaming Lips LP, suddenly materializes in front of me with a stack of used LPs under his arm. Why didn’t I see him come in?

  “Hi,” he says. Then he recognizes me. “Oh, hi.”

  “Where did you come from?” I ask him suspiciously.

  “New York, but that’s not important right now.” He grins.

  “No, I mean when did you come in?”

  “Oh, ages ago. I’ve been digging through the understock.” He wipes imaginary dirt off the counter. Then he carefully sets his LPs down and takes a white hankie out of his pocket, wipes his hands on it, fo
lds it carefully and puts it back. His brown hair shoots off his forehead in a wave like the French cartoon character Tintin, and he peers myopically out from behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Would you like to purchase those?” I ask.

  “Well, maybe, eventually. I’d like to have a look at them first.”

  He sets to work, carefully sliding each LP out of its jacket and holding it close to his face for inspection. He blows off the specks of lint and looks again, holding it under the light, tipping it one way and then another.

  “Do you have any Discwasher?” he asks.

  I look at him in disbelief and riffle through the drawer. I pull out the Discwasher liquid and a brush, handing it to him.

  “Knock yourself out,” I say, pretending to be annoyed, but the truth is I’m fascinated, much the same way a hunter in the jungle might stop to watch another one’s technique.

  “Thanks.” He clearly doesn’t care that I might be annoyed.

  His LP selection also fascinates me. He has Jimi Hendrix’s BBC sessions, Sun Ra’s Space Is the Place, A Portrait of Patsy Cline, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits, and Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. That’s a pretty eclectic stack of records even for someone who looks like him.

  “What’s your return policy?” he asks, wiping down the LPs like an expert.

  “Seventy-five percent store credit if you return it within seven days with a receipt.”

  “Store credit? No cash refunds?”

  “No cash refunds.”

  “Hmmm, well, then, do you think you could play this for me?” He slides the Roy Orbison across the counter at me.

  “No, sorry. We don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, here at Bob and Bob’s, we like to provide our customers with a completely positive shopping experience, which includes carefully chosen musical accompaniment. If I put your LP on right in the middle of things, the musical flow would be interrupted and that’s just not the way we do things here.”