by Deb Caletti
We pass the kitchen (Jenn-Air appliances, espresso machine, glassed-in closet wine “cellar”), head upstairs. The library door is open, and Melanie’s mom sits at the desk. All the spines of the books look the same, so I guess the books aren’t for reading. Melanie’s mom is at the computer, and she turns when she hears us.
“Hi, Lisa,” I say. I can see her cringe, as if someone has just cranked her backbone tighter. Melanie’s supposed to call everyone Mrs. This and Mr. That. I’m usually a very polite person, and I work with the public, but there’s something about Melanie’s parents that makes me want to act out, which is also part of why Melanie keeps me around, I know. Vicarious rebellion. Lisa Gregory is the modern equivalent of the fifties mom, which means she drives a minivan and cares about window coverings and has enough candles in her house to burn down the West Coast. The semi-hysterical order in all this just makes me want to stir my little spoon of chaos.
“Hello, Indigo,” Lisa says. She turns back to her computer, where she’s buying stuff off of the Web. The Internet just extends store hours for some people. Twenty-four-hour mall, minus the Orange Julius, which is the best part of a mall, if you ask me.
“We’ll be in my room,” Melanie says.
“Have fun,” Lisa says, but she says it like a warning. Have fu-un, which actually translates to I’ll be able to smell any alcohol on your breath. Lisa was sure I drank and drugged because I played around with my hair color and didn’t dress in a conventional fashion, and because my parents were divorced. Divorced is okay, of course, if your parents have rejoined the respectable adult community and have remarried. Single parents, though—they’re sure to mean C averages and sex, booze, and drugs in an empty Mom’s-at-work house. Or, more accurately, “single parent” means “poor,” and “poor” means C averages and sex and drugs. “Poor” supposedly means kids who are out of control because they’re not babysat every minute by Mom, who’s working ten-hour days. Which is all pretty ridiculous, given that at my school, it’s the kids who drive their own Land Rovers and are babysat by every entertainment device possible so Mom doesn’t have to that are the biggest partiers and sex addicts. Go figure.
“Let’s hit the liquor cabinet,” I say, too loud. Melanie socks me. In her room, Melanie hooks up her iPod, which is thinner and smaller than a chocolate bar. I’m not really up on the latest toys, but Melanie tip, tip, tips on her computer, and in a second, music starts playing.
“I’d know that guitar anywhere,” I say.
“The CD isn’t even out yet,” Melanie says. It’s Hunter Eden. A new release. Melanie gets this stuff because her dad’s vice president of the PR firm that handles a bunch of musicians. This gives him a measure of cool factor, even if he gets manicures and his skin looks too soft and he has hair only on the sides of his head but is snow-plowed bald straight across the top. This also gives Melanie inherited cool factor, and concert tickets, too. She’s taken me to a few, which isn’t a bad friendship bonus. We got to sit in this little box, separated from other people, and a waiter even came. It made me feel like I was crashing some strangers’ wedding reception and eating their food.
“Turn it up,” I say, and we listen for a while. Hunter Eden’s playing probably two hundred thirty beats per minute, but he isn’t just fast, he’s good. Add sexy into that, and you just wanted to lick his leather boots. Too quickly it’s over, and the little chocolate bar moves on to a new song.
“Wow,” I say.
“Thought you’d appreciate that,” Melanie says. She takes her shiny blond hair out of her ponytail, puts it back just the way it was. “Wanna watch a movie or something?” Melanie spins her DVD rack around, runs her fingers across the titles. Her room is a technological amusement park—TV, DVD, computer, stereo, video games. Apparently, this way you could watch anything you wanted all by yourself in your own room, nudging yourself at the funny parts and telling yourself to be quiet because you couldn’t hear when you were talking.
“It makes me sick. I’ll never be that good,” I say.
“You can be anything you want to be,” Melanie says. She got those words fed to her in her bottle. All those Army-ish recruitment lines that talk you into some state of hyped optimism that no human being regularly feels without narcotic aid are deep within her, embedded at the cellular level. Think positive! Never say “never”! The key to success is positive self-esteem! In my opinion? It’s fine to have a reasonable amount of self-doubt. Maybe it’s even necessary to avoid being an obnoxious human being. Cavemen did not do affirmations. Pilgrims fighting disease and freezing temperatures did not focus on eliminating negative self-talk. The dusty and disheveled folks trudging on the Oregon Trail made it without one-year and five-year goals tacked to the insides of their covered wagons. I don’t think they even had self-esteem in those days.
“Are you still going to be a marine biologist?” I ask Melanie.
“I guess,” she says. “How about I Know Your Secrets?” She shows me the DVD case. Girl running in the dark, scary house in background.
“Whatever. Why do you want to be a marine biologist?”
“God, Indigo. You’ve asked me this a thousand times. I like fish.”
“You don’t like fish,” I insist.
“Yes, I do.” She pops out the movie, slips it into the player.
“You hate the water.” Anyone who’s ever gone to a pool with Melanie knows this. First, she stands at the side of the pool forever, with the dread of a sacrificial virgin who must leap into the volcano. When she finally gets in, she swims like those old ladies who don’t want to get their hair wet. Little cupped prissy hands. Her chin in the air. It is the kind of thing that makes me like her. She tries so hard to be a part of things that you can’t help but root for her.
“So?”
“You know, maybe I’m an idiot but ‘marine’ and ‘water’ kinda go together. You might as well say you want to be a mountain climber but you hate mountains. A skydiver but you hate sky. And fish. Take fish. You don’t have any. Not an aquarium, not a single guppy, not a poster of fish or a fish bedspread or books about fish.”
“No one has a fish bedspread, Indigo. Can we drop this, please?” Melanie knows what I’m getting at, that’s why she’s annoyed. See, I’ve always told her she should think for herself, but that idea freaks out Skyview people. It’s as if they fear they might lose what they already have if they don’t walk the tightrope of acceptability, same as people knock on wood or walk around ladders. Follow convention or the big hand of fate will reach down and grab your Mercedes and your flat-screen TV. And convention tells you what to be, because certain professions ease and trickle and embed themselves viruslike into the kids at school at certain times. Three years ago, everyone was going to study psychology. Then they were all going to be pediatricians, and this year it’s marine biology. So many of Melanie’s friends want to be marine biologists that there is practically going to be a one-to-one ratio of fish to fish-studier.
“And I thought you only made the waiting list for UC Santa Barbara. You know I love you, but shouldn’t you be looking at other options?” Let’s just say that when it came to taking the SATs, poor Melanie hadn’t been able to bring along all of her tutors.
“Did you come over just to give me crap about my future? My parents will work out something,” she says. “Now shut up and let’s watch the movie.”
I do and we do. I sit patiently through all the scary-movie essentials: (1) Girl gets creepy caller on telephone when her parents are away. (2) Girl hears noise—oh my God!—but, alas, it’s only the family cat. (3) Girl does some incredibly stupid thing, like hunting around the front yard for creepy caller. (4) Girl finds out creepy caller is actually in her own house. (5) Girl tries to get away but her car won’t start, and no one has AAA in these movies. (6) Phone lines are down by storm, so girl can’t call AAA even if she had it. (7) Girl stabs creepy caller with kitchen knife. (8) Creepy caller appears dead after girl makes him into sushi, but he’s not dead after all. (9) Girl s
ummons inhuman strength and reaches the knife before he does and then administers the death blow.
“I swear, I’ve seen that before,” I say when it’s over.
“I am never, and I mean never, going to stay at home alone,” Melanie says.
I gather my shoes. They’re still in a line with the others, so I guess they were playing nice. I get into Mom’s car, with its oil change reminder sticker on the windshield, the date listed so far past that it’s when I used to watch cartoons and wear stretch pants. I’m relieved to be back in the car again, but also there’s this edgy sense of what might be disappointment. I think of what Melanie said—My parents will work out something—and I know she’s right. It’s what I most like and what pisses me off about being part of Melanie’s world—that there are no questions here. That money makes everything decided and possible.
Here, weeds are not allowed.
4
“Mom. God, it’s not raining anymore,” I say.
“Oh! Right,” she says, and flicks off her windshield wipers.
Mom drops me off at Carrera’s on her way to work. I was able to work before school and not just on weekends because I had all my graduation credits and could have first and second period free. So Mom and I “carpooled” the few miles downtown to the café, and from there she went on to Dr. Kaninski’s office in Seattle. Right then, Mom’s trying to balance a coffee cup between her knees as she shifts, which is a recipe for disaster even with a cup sporting a lid with a little slit. “Indigo, I want to apologize for snapping the other day. I feel like the worst mother in the world.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night. At dinner. I’ve been up all night, thinking how terrible I acted.”
“Why?” I ask. “Mom, your coffee…” I can see it rising from the lip of the cup. Any moment it’s going to splotch onto the skirt she has on for work.
“Why! Are you kidding?” She lifts the cup, sips, downshifts into second through the stoplight by the Front Street Market. “I said I’d had enough. I told you guys you were ungrateful. I know you’re not ungrateful.”
“You were right. We don’t help unless you ask us.”
“When I got up this morning, Bex was dusting the living room.” Her voice wobbles.
“So?”
“So! I was hurtful. I threw that oven mitt.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mom, it was an oven mitt. It’s got dancing vegetables on it. It’s not like you threw the knives. You know, then we’d have an issue.” I swear, Mom could feel bad for days about things we never even realized happened.
“When does she ever dust? She never dusts. I never dust. I’ve had that can of lemon Pledge practically since we moved in. The bottom is all rusty. I’ve just been so stressed lately. God.” She looks like she might cry.
“You know my friend Liz?” I say. “Art class? The cool one that moved from Oregon? Her mother’s going through menopause too. You should hear her talk about it—it’s hilarious. Her mother tells her, ‘We never spend time together anymore! Where are you? We’re growing apart!’ And then when Liz makes a point to be around the house, her mom says, ‘What are you doing home? You need to get a job!’ Liz says she comes downstairs and sees her mom standing in front of the open refrigerator, just staring.”
“Indigo, jeez. Would you quit with the menopause thing? I’m too young for menopause. You can be over forty and just be a bitch.” Her guilt is disappearing, deflating, as if it has been punctured. I like her better like this.
We reach Carrera’s, and I haul my backpack up and open the car door. “Have a good day,” Mom says. “I’ll, you know, try to keep the hot flashes down to a minimum.”
“No throwing oven mitts at work,” I say.
Trina’s car is parked at the curb, but something horrible catches my eye. Red-block-letters-on-black-plastic-rectangle horrible. A sign in the Thunderbird’s window: FOR SALE.
I shove open the café door, clattering the bells so loudly that Jack leaps to his feet and gives a woof of alarm.
“Tell me I didn’t see what I thought I saw,” I say.
“In the Thunderbird,” Joe says.
“You saw what you thought you saw,” Jane says. “Easy on the bells, huh, Indigo?”
“We all saw,” Nick Harrison says.
Trina rips the top off of two sugars and pours them into her coffee. She’s wearing this white cape, with white leather pants. The emerald ring from Roger that she used to wear on her left hand is gone. “For Christ’s sake, you people are more attached to that car than I am.”
“I’m sorry, but you cannot, I mean cannot, sell that car,” I say.
“If it’s a matter of money,” Joe says, “we can help you. Not that I have any myself, but we could all pull together—”
“Hey, I’ll have a bake sale,” I say. “Anything—”
“It is not a matter of money,” Trina says. I didn’t think it was. Trina exhales the scent of cash. “I just want to rid myself of any reminder of Roger.”
“That was two weeks ago, already,” I say.
“God, Indigo, two weeks is nothing,” Trina says.
“I’m still not over Victoria,” Jane says. “That was six months ago.”
“She was too controlling anyway,” Funny Coyote says. “You could tell by the way she bossed you around.”
“Yeah, you know, Jack never liked her. That should have told me all I needed to know right there…. A bad sign,” Jane says, and sighs.
“I’ll never be over my wife…,” Nick says. “Well.” He clears his throat.
We are quiet for a moment, except for Luigi. “Way down among the Brazilians, coffee beans grown by the billions…” he sings softly. Finally Trina says, “I’m getting rid of everything that makes me think Roger. The car, the leopard throw rug, my diaphragm—”
“Thank you oh so much for the diaphragm status,” I say. I bring Nick his orange juice and Funny her eggs and pancakes and bacon. Extra napkins, like she likes. Leroy must be sleeping late again.
“I changed the message on my answering machine. Not that I’m under any illusion that he’s going to call or anything. But if he comes running back…I had my neighbor record it for me. He says, ‘You’ve reached Pizza Hut. Today order a large special and get an order of cheesy bread sticks free.’”
“Roger was controlling too,” Funny says.
“No, he wasn’t! You never even met him!” Trina says.
“You said he told you what to wear,” Funny says. “High heels. That’s control.”
“If Trevor ever told me to wear heels, I’d pull those little hairs on his arm,” I say.
“Men should leave fashion to the ladies,” Joe says.
“I didn’t mind the heels,” Trina says. “Roger had a great eye.”
“Yeah, which he’s using on chicks in thong bikinis in Rio,” I remind. I can tell she needs some emotional rescue ASAP. She is in that post-breakup phase of wild swings—where the ex goes from being the saintly love of your life to the darkest wedge of evil within twenty seconds.
Trina nibbles the bit of piecrust on her fork. I can practically see her mind ditch Roger’s halo and remember all the times he checked out other women when he thought she didn’t notice. “I guess it’s a bad sign if you like everything about someone except their personality,” she says.
The bells on the door jangle and I shoot my eyes over in a flash, because it’s about Vespa guy time. He’d been coming in every day, and we still hadn’t gone beyond the smiles and thank-you’s and the occasional Have a nice days, Okay, you toos. But it’s not Vespa guy, it’s a man and a woman who must work at the salmon hatchery, judging by their T-shirts. I’m guessing not too many people wear matching salmon life-cycle shirts for amusement or glamour. I slide them a pair of plastic-covered menus, get another for the man who runs the used bookstore who comes in every now and then. It starts getting busy. Two ladies in business suits and with briefcases sit down and we’re rockin’ and rollin’, and I’m
taking the hatchery people’s orders—one fruit plate, one French toast—and trying not to stare at the salmon spawning over the little pile of eggs right on the guy’s left pec.
I start getting worried about the Vespa guy, but right about the time I give the bookstore man his Farm Scramble (eggs with ham and onions—I’ve tried to tell Jane the name of it sucks), Nick Harrison gestures my way and nods his chin out the window. Vespa, stage right. Maybe it’s pathetic, but none of us has lost our fascination with him. Trina sits up straighter, though she’s given up trying to get his attention. The fact that he hasn’t responded to Trina the way everyone responds to Trina only adds to his mystery. He couldn’t be moved by flesh packed into spandex, which tells you a lot about a person. Our theories so far: he is depressed, shy, a lonely newcomer, sexually confused, divorcing, evading the law, in over his head with cocaine addiction. But no one has gotten up the nerve to just get to know him and find out. As his waitress, I’d had the most natural opportunity, but I just couldn’t seem to get myself to do it. There was just something unapproachable about him. He was a store you wouldn’t go into, or if you did go, he was the things you didn’t dare touch hanging on the rack, the glass case you wouldn’t even lean against.
He sits at Nero Belgio, as usual. Caramel-colored corduroy pants and a buttery yellow shirt and a creamy suede jacket. It’s not the thin, fuzz-gathering type of corduroy either, but the lush, velvety sort. We do our routine. He smiles, I smile. I hand him a menu and he says, “Just coffee, please.”
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into anything else? French toast? Farm Scramble?” It’s the most I’ve ever said to him, and I’m pissed at myself that it’s Farm Scramble that comes to mind. It’s slightly embarrassing to say Farm Scramble to someone so well dressed.
“No, no thank you,” he says.
I bring the man his coffee cup, pour in a steaming stream. He smiles his gratitude. Tink-tinks his spoon against the sides of the cup, stirring. He stares out the window. It’s practically infuriating how little we know about him. I can feel this little burble of frustration percolating, a feeling I have to ditch because the French toast is up.
