Palo Alto

by James Franco

  “Fuck it,” I said.

  “What a cowboy,” said Fred.

  * * *

  That Friday after school, Fred and I went over to my friend Barry’s house. It was still light out but we had a little party anyway. We all went in on a bottle of Kessler whiskey. April, this girl I liked, was at the party. I thought that if I got drunk enough, maybe some things would happen with her. I could tell her how I really felt and maybe by the end of the night I’d fuck her.

  Barry and I and Fred and Ivan and A. J. Sims sat in the kitchen nook at the little table and took shots of the whiskey. It was strong and burned, and I felt powerful at that little table. When people would wander through the kitchen we’d get smart with them because the whiskey was working on us.

  Chrissy came in to get a glass from the cupboard.

  “Hey, Chrissy, you suck any dick lately?”

  “You’re a fucker, Ivan,” said Chrissy. She was short, pretty, and perfectly blond. “Barry, why do you even let this fucker at your house?” she said.

  “I dunno,” said Barry.

  “Chrissy, suck dick or get out,” said Ivan.

  “You’re such a motherfucker,” said Chrissy. “A pale motherfucker.” Ivan was really pale.

  “Suck dick,” said Ivan, and all the guys drinking whiskey laughed because Ivan had a running thing with Chrissy where he hated her and just said the worst things to her. Her boyfriend, Jerry, wasn’t there so we felt free to laugh.

  After a while I was drunk and things felt wavy. I felt like I could talk to April. I got up and wandered around the house. It was still daytime and there weren’t that many people at the party. Some people were on couches drinking beer. I went through Barry’s bedroom and out some sliding glass doors to the backyard. Ed was out there on the wooden bench on the deck. He was hunched over some tinfoil with the clear shell of a Bic pen. He was lighting the bottom of the foil and trying to suck up the smoke. There was no one else outside.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  He sucked for a bit, then stopped, holding the smoke in. “Smack,” he said.

  I’d never seen anyone do heroin before.

  “You seen April?” I said, and looked away. The yard was empty but I looked around anyway.

  “There she is,” said Ed. He was pointing back inside through the sliding glass doors. On the far side of the room, April and Barry were standing in the doorway to his bedroom, holding each other. Then their heads were slanted and they were kissing.

  I walked to the front of the house. Fred was sitting on the brick step before the front door, smoking a cigarette.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of this place,” I said.

  He said okay and we walked down the driveway to my car.

  “Where are we going?” said Fred.

  “Fucking nowhere,” I said, and drove faster.

  I was at a stop sign at Middlefield, which was a pretty busy road, so I waited for a while. I was still angry. Then I drove forward and I saw the white car sink right into the front side of my car. It hit my car around the front tire, and there were some crashing sounds, and my car spun to the right, and then I was facing down Middlefield. For a moment I just stayed there. It was all very still, more than still. And then I was driving again, fast. In the rearview I saw the white station wagon with its front crumpled waiting in the center of Middlefield, diagonal to the road. Other cars were stopping. I turned off Middlefield onto a side street and my tires screeched and slipped, and when I pulled the car straight I raced down the block.

  Fred said, “What the fuck is going on?”

  “How the fuck did you know?” I yelled.

  “What? Know what?”

  “How did you know I’d get in a fucking accident?”

  “I didn’t! What? What are you talking about?”

  “Fuck you, Fred! ‘What if? What if?’”

  Then he said quietly, “You’re not really blaming me, are you?” I didn’t say anything; the driving filled me. Then Fred said, calm and quiet, “Can I get out?”

  I stopped really fast so that the wheels screeched and we slid. We were stopped in the middle of the street but no one was around. I didn’t look at him. He opened the door and got out, and before he closed the door he said, “I’ll see ya.”

  I drove, then I turned a corner and another corner, and I drove.

  I drove past Nana’s house. Then I was on El Camino and I drove past Stanford. I turned off El Camino and drove past my elementary school. While I drove I thought up ideas. I’d tell my dad that I crashed into a tree. I’d tell him I’d pay for the repairs.

  Then the car started growling, the front right tire was rubbing against something. Then the hood was vibrating. I drove over to Colorado and then El Dorado and then a left on South Court and I was on my block.

  Our house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. I didn’t see my parents’ cars.

  When I pulled into my driveway, I saw a police car in Mrs. Bachman’s driveway next door. While I was parking in my driveway, I saw the cop who went with the car. He was walking toward me. Like a gentleman, I got out of the car.

  The cop was pretty small. He had an RFK haircut, and his eyes looked like they belonged to someone dumb.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hi, Chip,” I said. I don’t think he heard me; he was looking at my car. The front was smashed and the white paint from the Volvo was mixed into the mangled gray metal.

  “Whoo-eee,” he said. “Seems like you’re the one I’m looking for.”

  “Yeah, Chip,” I said.

  “Someone got your plates, buddy.” Then into the radio he said, “I got ’im.”

  The backup came pretty quick. One and then two more and then there were five cars. A couple of the cops kept the lights flashing even after they parked and got out. Red was whipping everywhere, especially on the white of my garage door, round and round.

  All the cops stood around me in their tight blue uniforms and the sky was golden above them. First RFK got my name and looked at my license. Then I had to hold my hand out and touch my nose while my neighbors watched. Another police cruiser slowed until it was in front of my driveway. There was a woman in the backseat with her face close to the glass. She didn’t get out, but I saw her nodding. Her face was all jowls, thick and hanging. Then the car left.

  “Walk along this line,” said a tough lady cop pointing down at a line in the driveway. She had a square face and shorter hair than mine. Hers was combed.

  I tried to walk along the line between the two slabs of cement in the driveway, but I couldn’t. It was spinning and jumping.

  “I can’t,” I said, and the words rolled around under my tongue.

  I saw Mrs. Bachman hobble over to watch with the others. I was tired of being the show.

  “Say the alphabet backward,” said the tough lady cop.

  “You say it,” I said.

  “If you’re trying to get wise… ,” she said, but she got interrupted.

  “Looks like we got a wise one here,” said the RFK cop.

  “I’m not wise, Chip,” I said. “I just can’t say the ABCs backward, I can’t even do it normally.”

  “Listen, smart-ass,” said the tough lady cop, “you can do this sobriety test, or we can go down to the hospital and they can do a blood test on you. Your choice.”

  “I’m drunk,” I said. “Take me downtown or wherever, I give in.”

  “Sir, I want you to say the alphabet backward. Now.” Her arms were crossed over her chest, and underneath, her breasts filled out the tight blue shirt.

  I looked around. There were a lot of neighbors now. All the grown-ups and their kids, and Mrs. Bachman, her froggy, scowling face, with those red German cheeks, below that frumpy white hair.

  Everyone waited solemnly; the lady cop looked as hard as Rushmore. I just wanted to go to Donkey Island where bad boys in leather jackets could smoke cigarettes and play pool and crash cars. I turned to the lady cop and said, “Z-Y-X… F-U-C-K U! U! U! U!” An
d I kept saying that letter while two cops bent me over the smashed-up hood of my Nissan Stanza. They cuffed me and walked me to the cruiser at the end of the driveway. The lady cop was shaking her head. The others guided me into the backseat, pushing down on my neck as I yelled, “U! U! U!… ,” so loud. I tried to break Mrs. Bachman’s hearing aid. If I could just reach those neighbors and tell them, “U! U! U!”

  A month later, I went to court. My dad took me. I was assigned a lawyer. She told me I had to call the judge “ma’am” or “Your Honor.” We waited for the judge and I kept hearing this line from this song in my head: “You down with O.P.P. (Yeah you know me).” It had nothing to do with anything, but it kept going around in my head. Then the judge walked in from the side. She was in the black thing and had a thin face and glasses and long brown hair. She sat and looked at my police record and my school record.

  “You know, Teddy,” she said, “normally I get kids in here who can’t multiply fifty by two, but you, you’re smart.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “O.P.P.” was blasting.

  She told me she ought to put me in juvenile hall, but it was hard to hear because of all those guys singing in my head. She said she would give me one more chance and make me a ward of the court, which meant I belonged to the state.

  “If you do anything, if you are caught jaywalking, I will put you right into juvenile hall, is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Ma’am,” said my lawyer.

  “Ma’am.”

  “And as part of your probation, you’ll do sixty hours of community service.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you’ll make an official apology to Miss Grossman, the woman you hit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” We got to leave and finally, on the drive home with my dad, those guys in my head shut up.

  The next week I reported to my probation officer and set up a supervised apology with Sally Grossman. We met at the little place Sandwich Etc. in midtown, not far from where the accident had happened. Sally Grossman was fat, and she came with her fat friend, and there was a moderator there, Jake. He had combed white hair and a weak, kind face. We all had coffee and we sat around a small round table and looked at one another. I said I was really sorry. Sally Grossman looked like she liked that, but the fat friend looked angry.

  Then Sally said, “Look, you have a problem. You’re an alcoholic.”

  I nodded that, yes, I was.

  “I can understand that,” she said. “I have a problem too, eating. In some ways your problem is easier to deal with. I have to deal with temptation at least three times a day. You know?”

  I said that, yeah, I did. Then Jake said that he had a problem too, that he had dealt with a gambling addiction. And that was it. The fat friend didn’t say she had a problem. So we drank our coffee and Jake talked about the benefits of 12-step programs and I said that it sounded like a good idea and I would probably go soon. Then we were done and the next week I started my community service at the Children’s Library.

  The two old ladies who ran the library were nice to me. An old one with short brown hair in a bob was the assistant librarian, and a really old one with short gray hair in a curly flattop was the main librarian. The brown-haired one was named Judy; she was dry-skinned and thin. The other one was dry too, Mags; she didn’t say much. They must have seen a little kid inside me, because they smiled at me like they smiled at all the kids who came in.

  I walked to the library after school twice a week and on Saturdays. The old ladies would give me a cart of books to shelve. But after the first day, I just started reading all the picture books and didn’t do the work. When the library closed at six, my cart of books would still be full, but the old ladies never said anything about it.

  “See you soon, Teddy,” they would say, and I’d tell them that they would. Sometimes when I was sitting on the floor reading, the old ladies would walk by the room. I know they saw me but they never mentioned it. There was a garden behind the library; they called it “The Secret Garden.” There were sycamore trees in two rows and wooden benches with rounded cement frames. Sometimes I sat out there to think. But I didn’t know what to think about.

  I didn’t talk to Fred for two weeks. I was a little angry that he had predicted the accident, but more because he had gotten out of the car, and even more because I was embarrassed about everything. One day, he showed up at the library. I was on the floor reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He sat down next to me and I read out loud to him. At the end the caterpillar turned into a butterfly. After that Fred came all the time.

  One day, I started reading him The Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico. It was my favorite book when I was a kid. It’s about this group of goblins that are each painted a different color of the rainbow and they hunt rainbows because they live off the juice of the rainbows’ colors. The way they do it is they sneak up on the rainbows and they each lasso their designated color and then they drain the colors into their buckets and drink them. There are amazing pictures. Well, the goblins get sloppy and a field of flowers overhears their plans and then all the flowers of the valley conspire with the rainbow and the next day, when the goblins attack the rainbow, it disappears and the lassos spring back at the goblins and they’re trapped in them and then the flowers secrete weird colorful juices, tons of them, and drown the goblins. One thing that was always interesting to me as a kid was that the goblins didn’t wear underwear and when they drowned you could see the blue goblin’s butt.

  While I was reading this to Fred, sometimes my gaze would catch a picture on the far wall. It was an image from In the Night Kitchen. Those three laughing bakers had such fat faces. Heavy-hanging cheeks and bulbous noses like genitals. I didn’t want to look, but the picture kept grabbing my eye. Fred lay there with his eyes closed and his mouth open. He was higher than I was.

  At the end of the book the rainbow vows to never touch the earth again.

  “That shit was stupid. That was your favorite book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Faggot,” said Fred. He didn’t open his eyes.

  I looked up and saw those bakers again. They were cooking up the naked boy in a pie. I was happy there with Fred.

  “Those fucking goblins were gay!” he said.

  “Not so loud,” I told him.

  Fred didn’t open his eyes. “They suck the juice out of rainbows? Rainbows stand for faggots.”

  “Shut up, Fred.”

  “What? They’re gay! Rainbows are gay!” His eyes were a little open now.

  “So?” I said.

  “So, don’t get all worked up over it. It’s just a fact, you and the Rainbow Goblins are gay.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Fred,” I said.

  “What? They’re a bunch of dudes, and they all hang out all the time. That’s all they did, hang out together. All those dudes.”

  “So?” I said.

  “And they lived together in a cave.”

  “So?”

  “All in a cave! Gay! Dirty and gay,” said Fred. As if he was the cleanest guy.

  “Great fucking point, Fred. I mean, what children’s book character isn’t gay?”

  Fred didn’t answer. Then he said, “A lot of them.”

  “Cat in the Hat?” I said. “Gay. The Grinch? Gay. Hungry Caterpillar? He turns into a butterfly, gay!” Now Fred was thinking about it. I continued, “The Runaway Bunny, the bunny in Goodnight Moon, the Velveteen Rabbit, Peter Rabbit, all gay. All rabbits are gay.”

  “No.”

  “They’re sensitive, but different, but also like boys, but then also not.”

  He thought, and then said, “Yeah, I guess they are.”

  “The little boy who flies around naked in Night Kitchen, and Max from Where the Wild Things Are, gay!”

  “Bullshit, Max isn’t gay.”

  “Bull true, he dresses up in his little white wolf suit, so gay. And then he tells his mom to fuck off…”

  “That’s not gay…�
��

  “. . . and then he goes to an island and hangs around with a bunch of monsters who party with him all night, dancing and parading him around on their backs.”

  “That’s so weird, but I think it’s kind of true,” said Fred.

  “All little-kids’ stories have to be like that. They have to be all soft and gay, so that the moms are okay with it.”

  Fred sat there, and then he said, “I want a wolf suit.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said.

  “I can’t think of anything sexier than a skintight, furry wolf suit,” said Fred. He was really laughing a lot, almost too loud. Those three bakers looked like they were laughing too.

  That night I had a dream. There were rainbows everywhere and I was driving all over town in my dad’s busted car, wearing a white wolf suit. The car was making this horrible grinding sound with a whine underneath it. Whenever I hit another car, it just bounced off me and I would cackle.

  Two days later, I went into the library to work. The place was empty as usual. I stopped at the front desk. Judy, the brown-haired one, was there.

  “I really like it here,” I said.

  “We like you, Teddy,” she said. “You’re always welcome here, even after everything is over.”

  I said thank you and walked toward the back room. Down the hall, Mags, the gray-haired one, came out of the bathroom and slowly made her way toward me. When we passed, I smiled, and she smiled a wrinkled smile and said quietly, “Good boy, good boy.”

  Fred didn’t come in. I rediscovered all the Bill Peet books. He usually wrote about animals and drew great pictures. I went through all of them. There was one about a hermit crab called Kermit the Hermit who hoarded all his stuff, and one about clumsy circus lions, and another about a little mountain goat with huge horns that he could ski on, and a peacock with a scary face patterned into his plume, and a pig with the map of the world on its side, and this clumsy beast that was part rhino, part giraffe, elephant, camel, zebra with reindeer horns called a Whingdingdilly. And there was this one about a dopey sea serpent named Cyrus that terrorized galleons. It was good to read those books again; all the feelings came back to me.

  Once upon a time there was a giant sea serpent named Cyrus. Even though he was a horrible looking monster he wasn’t the least bit fierce. All he ever did was wander about in the sea with no idea of where he was going.