Drift

by Victoria Patterson

  The piano man is adding exaggerated improvisations to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” hands skimming the keys, a large brandy snifter on his piano brimming with dollar bills. Near him is a waiting area with a blazing fireplace, paintings of foxes and hunters, and overstuffed chairs and couches. Darkness lends an aura of horror, candlelight from tabletop candles flickering on the white-pinkish faces of diners, jaws clenched in grind and chew.

  Outside, behind B and Will, she sees palm trees, fronds shaking as if they, too, are in dread. It’s dusk, the air soft and bruised. She watches the valets with their red jackets and black pants sitting in fold-out chairs, keys draped like ornaments in their small booth. She has an urge to be with the men, listen to them joke and talk. She wants to hear them laugh. Maybe they’ll smoke cigarettes. “Dinners are hell,” she’ll tell them. And it’s even more trying when there’s a meeting—a first meeting—with John Wayne on the other side.

  Thinking about John Wayne is like acknowledging the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. She’s curious, having watched many times late at night from her bedroom deck as he skateboarded past. The sound of his wheels on asphalt first alerted her to his presence; unable to sleep, from her bed she would listen to the pebbly noise coming closer, reaching its peak, and then receding. Being awake in a house where everyone slept made her lonely, so she started waiting at the deck. She became acquainted with his pattern of skateboarding down the alleyway, making a sharp turn at the end near the Rothbergs’ garbage cans (Michelle Rothberg, an anorexic senior whose nipples poke out from her shirts, once gave her a passionate lecture on the benefits of colonics).

  Sometimes, he appears to be talking to himself, swooping through the alleyway, long hair waving behind him. On Wednesdays near midnight, he gets into a man’s car at the end of the alleyway—a large black Mercedes—holding his skateboard against his thighs and folding his long legs into the passenger seat.

  Rosie asked her friend Chris about the Mercedes during a break in tennis practice. Chris is a year older and she has a captivating indolence. She never seems surprised. Whenever Rosie asks her something, she answers in a melancholic manner. This time, her eyes narrowed. She leaned her back against the brick of the wall behind the tennis courts and took a deep drag from her clove cigarette. Her breath came slowly, smoke temporarily clouding her eyes.

  “It’s a damn shame,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He’s prostituting himself,” she said, tapping ash. As if she could anticipate Rosie’s questions, she continued, “I don’t know how he got his nickname, he’s just always been John Wayne. He’s nice to look at, but he’s retarded from drugs—when he talks it ruins everything; he’s our age, or close, seventeen at most, and his family disowned him. His brother and sister are the Gleeson twins. The assholes pretend they don’t know him.”

  “How can you stand it here?” Rosie asked.

  After a long pause, Chris answered, in a grave tone: “Sex. Drugs. Alcohol.” They were quiet, listening to the whispering palm fronds and the sporadic plunk of tennis balls.

  “It’s fucked up everywhere,” Chris said. “Think about it: a man that dyes his hair black and pretends to be a cowboy is President.”

  “I guess so.”

  “The best thing you can do,” Chris said, dropping her cigarette and grinding it with a white leather K-Swiss tennis shoe, “is not tell anyone about the Mercedes because John Wayne already has a bad reputation.”

  Last night—close to midnight—when he skateboarded through the alleyway, she was waiting at the deck, and she threw one of Will’s golf balls, not to hit him, but to get his attention. The ball skipped in front of him, rebounded against a garage door, and landed with a rustle in a gardenia bush. He stopped, squinted up at her, and smiled.

  She stared at him in the dark, the breeze cool and moist, and she could hear the soft sound of a foghorn in the distance. “Meet me tomorrow night at eight,” she whispered down. “Narcissus, near the Ugly House.” The Ugly House is Whitey Smith’s house, from Whitey Smith Mercedes, the one modern home at the end of Narcissus at the cliff, lights usually off, made of glass and steel, reminding her of a shark with windows like teeth.

  He tilted his head to one side, watched her in an abstract way.

  “The one with all the windows,” she said, thinking he might need clarification.

  He smiled, an attractive, squinty-eyed smile.

  “Good,” she said, not knowing what else to say, and he skateboarded away, his wheels soothing and coarse on the asphalt, making his sharp turn at the garbage cans.

  The waitress sets down two old-fashioneds—glass bottoms wrapped with cocktail napkins—and whisks away the empties. Her appearance is of a sexualized peasant, red-pleated miniskirt rustling, bonnet ties loose at her shoulders. At least they’re not at The Quiet Woman, B’s favorite restaurant. The logo drawing on the menus, matches, and painted on the outside wall is a peasant woman, clog-wearing feet splayed like a duck, apron over her skirt, hands at her sides, with her head cut off. No wonder she’s quiet.

  The waitress’s pillowed breast grazes Rosie’s ear as her ice water is refilled. B’s on her third old-fashioned, her coral lipstick imprinted on the glass rim, as individual, ridged, and cracked as a thumbprint. She raises her cocktail, and in the dim light, the tawny colored drink matches her tan. “To the Tijuana Burro Man,” she says, a recurrent toast. B has turned Rosie’s mishap into an amusing family anecdote, but it happened over a year ago, and she’s tired of bearing the brunt of that particular joke.

  Conversations usually begin with the subject of golf or tennis and move to politics (Reaganomics equals lower taxes and smaller government equals good), in between a sprinkling of racist jokes (though not so much in Grandpa’s absence), thrown in throughout critical assessments of family members; but a week and a half ago, a well-known businessman named Theo Wilson committed suicide, and the suicide and its aftermath are a frequent topic. Although she hadn’t known him, the more people gossip, the more she imagines an alliance.

  “I read in the newspaper this morning,” B says, tennis bracelet sliding from wrist to forearm as she lifts her glass, “that he placed a towel to the side of his head so he wouldn’t make a mess when he shot himself.” She sips, takes her time. “He parked in front of the Newport Beach Fire Station because he wanted the firemen to find him right away.” She sets her glass on the table. “He left a note, typed, single-spaced, six pages, for his wife. He even let her know how to work the sprinkler system.”

  “A thoughtful suicide,” Will says, bemused, a hand on B’s thigh. “As far as suicides go.”

  “Is it true that his own brother fired him?” Rosie asks, knowing it’s true but wanting B to acknowledge the fact. Rosie never spent much time wondering how people came by their money or lost it before, just assuming that grownups had money and that some, like her grandparents, more than most; usually family businesses include real estate. Most people side with Theo’s brother or act as if it was a sad but inevitable outcome: it seems ruthless, money and business trumping family, no matter the circumstances.

  “Yes,” B says, but it comes out like an acquiescent sigh. “Relax,” she says, as if understanding Rosie’s growing fear that her own fate might be similar. “Men kill themselves. Not women. Usually over finances.” B often talks to her as if she’s an adult, giving her information as a confidante, and she appreciates the inclusion, but sometimes it makes her sad, like when B disclosed that Rosie’s father had been a marginal lover.

  “Mrs. Moes called,” B says, leaning back into the booth. “She’s concerned about your attitude.”

  Blood rushes to Rosie’s face. She has involuntarily become the focus of conversation and cannot grasp an immediate strategy for changing the course. Mrs. Moes didn’t like an essay she turned in for a ninth-grade English assignment inspired by the Pink Floyd song “Comfortably Numb,” positing that people in Newport Beach are numb, further articulating her fear that she’ll become num
b since it has happened to a certain unnamed teacher without this teacher’s awareness.

  B holds a red cloth napkin to her mouth.

  Will shakes his head gravely. He coughs, takes a sip of his old-fashioned, sets his glass down, and stares fixedly at her. The frame on the side of his eyeglasses is broken and he has remedied the situation with transparent tape. There’s a Band-Aid near his forehead and another on a knuckle. He’s always cutting himself accidentally with his Swiss Army knife or scratching himself up somehow. A few miniature plastic swords with bleeding cherries rest on his bread plate, unwanted accouterments from their cocktails. “I knew a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease,” he says. His eyebrows rise behind his spectacles. “Now there’s a man with problems, Rosie. Not us.”

  Will is an encyclopedia of diseases, relaying descriptions as proof that their lives are fabulous in comparison. Last week she heard about Parkinson’s disease. She has developed a deep affection for him, although she treats him badly and would never admit it. He’s constantly being mistaken for her grandfather and it embarrasses her; the way he dresses is a disgrace. Tonight he wears pink and turquoise plaid pants, a red shirt, and a tie with umbrellas on it. He calls the phone “the horn”; the movies are “the moving pictures.” He has an irrational hatred of Barbra Streisand (she suggested seeing Yentl at the movies, just to anger him). His eyes light up whenever he sees B, and he gives them money and clothes, whatever they want. And she knows she takes advantage, the cumulative effect causing him to blow up over something insignificant—like when she didn’t lower the TV volume after he asked four times—making him the bad guy, though she understands there’s only so much a man can take. A plate hisses as it passes their table, a glimpse of flame, along with the waft and steam from smoking meat.

  “Why don’t you tell Rosie what Lou Gehrig’s disease is,” B suggests, buttering her roll.

  “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS,” he says. “A without, myotrophic muscle nourishment; L lateral side of the spinal cord; S sclerosis hardening or scarring.” He pauses, letting her take it in. She knows he isn’t finished. It’s common for him to tear apart words, revealing their Greek and Latin prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Her vocabulary has improved as a result of his impromptu lessons.

  He coughs, takes another sip, sets his glass down, and stares deeply at the wall. She imagines B’s fingernails under the table, resting like chips of coral on his knee. “There’s no cure,” he says, gaze fixed. “None. Your body dies, but you don’t. You stay alive. Your mind, your soul, whatever you want to call this thing that makes you, you and me, me. You’re helpless inside the cage of your body. At the end of it, unable to move, or talk, most die from the heart collapsing, or pneumonia, too weak to cough up the phlegm.” He reaches for his cocktail.

  The explanation of the disease—the unjust and terminal nature—hits her with an unexpected force. Her ridiculous fears, her anxiety regarding cellulite and the centimeter-sized difference between her breasts, her increasing sexual curiosity, and her longing for meaning, all of it makes her hot with shame. Her throat closes and the room swims. The sounds of cutlery clinking on plates and chairs creaking and the plunking piano are amplified and grotesque. She hates herself, tears coming when she can least articulate her emotions. She forces the tears to a throbbing pressure at her temples, but some are rimmed in her eyelashes, her vision watery and blurred.

  “Oh honey,” B says, “you’ll make her cry.”

  “I’m only pointing out,” Will says, “that we have no real problems.” He slices open his baked potato and steam rises from the pale insides. He lowers his face to catch the steam. “That doesn’t make us bad, evil,” he sets his knife down, lifts his face, “horrible people.”

  “Maybe just preferred people,” B says distractedly, reaching for the pepper.

  Rosie opens the thick wood door, glancing one last time over her shoulder at Will, who raises his credit card between his fingers without looking for their waitress. His half-devoured chocolate cake looks like a pile of dirt on its small white plate. B wipes imaginary flecks from her blouse. Rosie has told them that she’s walking to her grandparents’ house, and B’s only admonition is that she not be home late, but she knows she can be as late as she wants: B will leave the back door open so that they won’t have to get out of bed when she comes home.

  The door swings closed—the valets sit near the booth playing cards, and their heads go up, in tune to the door, but go back to their cards as soon as they see that it’s her. The streaks of sun have faded, leaving a misty night, moon full and orange, stuck low in the sky as if too lazy or heavy to heave further. She’s early, but decides to walk to Narcissus anyway. She has a habit of walking with a hunch, but inwardly she hears B’s voice, “Shoulders back, head up, accentuate your chest,” and straightens her frame.

  When she gets to Narcissus, John Wayne sits at the curb in front of the Ugly House, waiting with his skateboard across his lap. His feet are bare, one resting on the other. She sees that he sees her, and as she walks to him, she senses an imaginary magnet pulling her. While she stands in front of him, there’s relief, as if by leaving the restaurant and B and Will, she has left her dismal and oppressive thoughts, and now the possibilities are unlimited.

  His hair is longer than hers, beyond his shoulders, and it hangs in such a way that he looks angelic. He smiles, his teeth barely showing, a peaceful, sad grin, and he holds his skateboard against his thighs, wheels facing outward. Band-Aids on his kneecaps barely cover the scratches. She has an urge to clean his knees and bandage them properly. He has a long scrape at his elbow, and she imagines him falling off his skateboard onto the street. His T-shirt has a gaping hole in the armpit, and she can see his armpit hair. He keeps smiling and her body relaxes.

  “Dinners are hell,” she says, but rather than sounding indignant or sarcastic, her voice is timid. Dark curtains of ocean slap against the sand and rocks below, retreat, slap again. In the distance, she sees the murky expanse of ocean and sky, Catalina a darker smear on the horizon, as if finger-painted. The air smells like rotted seaweed.

  He hesitates, nudges hair behind an ear. She can tell he wants to say something, but doesn’t. She has a habit of falling in love when first meeting a person, becoming nervous, but with John Wayne, she senses that she can be silent or say whatever she wants.

  “I watch you when I can’t sleep,” she says.

  “You don’t sleep,” he says, not a question, and she chooses not to explain, believing he understands in his own way.

  “Have you heard of Lou Gehrig’s disease?” she asks, suspecting he hasn’t, but wanting to ask anyway.

  He nods, squinting in a speculative way.

  “It’s this horrible disease where a man’s soul is alive while his body dies. Sometimes I feel like everyone is telling me to be dead inside, because then I’ll be happy.”

  He smiles—halfway, as if unsure.

  “Some people,” she says, “don’t worry. They look good. It never occurs to them to ask why. They’re the chosen ones, the ones who live easily, laugh easily, and look carefree. Their families have big fat bank accounts and that’s all that matters. They’ll breed with one another to create more good-looking people with lots of money.”

  He scratches his arm.

  “I hate them,” she says, “but it’s probably easier to be them.” The way he looks at her makes her think he can see the constant panic lodged in her heart. “Grandma Dot—that’s my grandma—she says I waste time by questioning. She says I shouldn’t look too deeply, that life is really simple in the end.”

  He rubs his knee.

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  He stares at her—hard—as if to make sure she sees that he’s listening. He re-crosses his feet, putting the other one on top.

  “I want to know,” she says, “if anyone ever really knows anything, or if I have to feel my entire life like I don’t know anything and just get used to not knowing. And when I get old, will I just pre
tend like I know? Will I just fool myself into thinking that this is a kind of knowing, not knowing, but saying I know?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Let’s go to my uncle’s,” she says. “No one will bother us.” Her uncle Stan’s apartment is upstairs above the garage of her grandparents’ house. His apartment is the same as when he left during the Vietnam War for Canada, never to return, because Grandma Dot won’t let anyone change it. Grandma Dot stores the fake Christmas tree in her son’s closet, but Rosie gathers the plastic limbs and carries them downstairs every Christmas to Grandma Dot, waiting at the foot of the stairs in her Bah Humbug sweatshirt. Meanwhile, poor worshipful B’s room was changed to an office long ago.

  There’s a box of memorabilia beside the fake Christmas tree in Uncle Stan’s closet. Inside are letters and mediocre torment-filled poems scrawled haphazardly on torn pieces of paper. The jackpot is a folder of psychological assessments. These, Rosie believes, were done on behalf of Stan’s bewildered parents shortly before he fled for Canada. Perhaps they were trying to get Stan out of serving in the military on psychological grounds, so that he wouldn’t leave them. She has to guess at these details since it’s another topic not open for discussion. The technical language reads like a real-life novel of hopelessness. Stan’s drug history is carefully documented, and Stan has taken every drug known to man, including a large amount of acid. Stan’s defense of peyote on spiritual grounds seems to her to be completely valid, but the psychiatrist didn’t think so: he was diagnosed as incorrigible. She wonders if Grandma Dot purposely left the box. She knows for a fact that her grandma is never careless.