God-Shaped Hole

“Give him a chance,” Kat said. “He’s cute. He looks like royalty. Maybe he’s a lord or something.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  I went home feeling so unbearably alone I actually thought there was a possibility I could drop dead before the night was over.

  Without consultation, Kat gave the lord my phone number. He called me the next day and asked me out for dinner. I told him I’d just been diagnosed schizophrenic. He didn’t fall for it.

  “Katrina said I couldn’t take no for an answer.”

  I had two choices: dinner with the royal pain-in-the-ass or sit at home and proofread my journal.

  “Come on, a free meal with a cute limey won’t kill you,” Kat said.

  That was debatable.

  His name was Steven, and rest assured, he was no lord. He arrived at my door wearing a white shirt that he’d buttoned all the way up to the collar, and pleated khaki pants. The fact that he was dressed for a Jordan family photo was the first red flag. Jacob wouldn’t have been caught dead in that costume. Nor would Jacob have combed his hair like Steven combed his, neatly to one side. Jacob would have never driven a car that smelled like baby powder either. Or listened to bubble-gum pop music. As a matter of fact, Jacob would have probably rather been shot by a firing squad than made to listen to bubble-gum pop crap.

  If the car hadn’t been moving, I’m sure I would have jumped out. As we drove down my street, I hoped Jacob had been stalking me. I kept an eye out for his dirty Land Cruiser. I waited for it to pull up behind us. I wanted a chase to ensue. I wanted Jacob to try and run Steven off the road. I wanted Steven to speed down the freeway, bank a turn, roll his car and break an arm, or maybe crack his snotty British nose. Nothing life-threatening, just enough to immobilize him and allow me to escape. I would have jumped into Jacob’s car and we would have driven off, never stopping until we reached the Memphis city limits.

  Steven took me to an Italian restaurant on Rodeo Drive. He asked me what I was going to have, and when I told him I wanted the spaghetti pomodoro, he ordered it for me. What I mean is, the waiter came over and asked if we’d decided on dinner, and Steven proceeded to say, “The lady will have…” I could tell by his asinine smirk that he thought he was being impressively chivalrous, but in all actuality, he’d just hammered the final khaki-colored nail into his bubble-gum pop crap coffin.

  If only I’d had some penicillin, I could have ended it real quick.

  I called Kat the minute I got home. I told her to shove Lord Steven up her ass. Then I spent the rest of the night writing in my still-nameless diary. I filled an entire page with a sentence I remembered from Hallelujah. It was one of my favorite lines in the book:

  Our love became a casualty of my family tree.

  I wrote it ninety-three times, until there was no more room on the page.

  On the next sheet of paper I wrote every possible version of my name if I would have married Jacob. Beatrice Grace. That sounded good. Beatrice Jordan Grace. Also good, but I knew I wouldn’t keep my maiden name if I got to pick up a lovely new one like Grace. Beatrice Casimir Grace. I crossed that out. Casimir is my middle name. I don’t use it because it’s my mother’s maiden name, as well as Chip’s real first name. In Poland, it’s loosely translated as “One who makes peace.” Go figure.

  I wrote my nickname, too. Trixie Grace. That kind of looked like the name of a stripper, but in Tennessee it might have gone unnoticed. How about the kids? Madeline Grace. Simone Grace.

  It would have been perfect.

  FORTY-TWO

  Dawn makes a sound. If you listen closely, right as the sun starts to come up, you’ll hear it. It’s like the echo of birth: silence, followed by a gentle push, followed by moans, then the sloppy deluge of new life. On good days I like it because it reminds me that I’m alive. On bad days it makes me feel like dust.

  Los Angeles without Jacob made me feel like dust. Los Angeles without Jacob was a giant mortar and pestle that ground me down finer and finer until I started to become nothing but powdery particles about to float off into a vacuum.

  To put it in plain English: I was highly unproductive after Jacob and I split. I still went to the studio every morning and tried to work, but my heart and my hands refused to cooperate. Kat called constantly to check up on me. Anytime she thought I sounded like I was about to jump off a tall building, she’d con me into coming over.

  “Get your ass down here, my salesgirl called in sick again.”

  I always went. And not so much because Kat was good at cheering me up. I just didn’t have the energy to do much else.

  “Beatrice, telephone,” Shelly said. Shelly was my pony-tailed little assistant. She was supposed to help me make jewelry, not play secretary, but I don’t like to talk on the phone when I’m gloomy. I’m distrustful of people when I can’t see their faces.

  I pretended to be busy drawing rings. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jacob,” she whispered.

  He’d stopped calling me exactly fourteen days and sixteen hours earlier, and we hadn’t spoken or seen each other since the day we broke up. I desperately wanted to talk to him. As a matter of fact, I’d called Pete and Sara’s apartment a dozen times in as many days intending to admit what a fool I’d been, but every time someone said hello, I’d get scared and hang up.

  With pangs of regret, I shook my head. That meant Shelly was supposed to tell Jacob I wasn’t around, even though I’m sure he’d heard my voice.

  “He wants you to call him,” Shelly said. “He said it’s really important.”

  I could tell, by the tone of her voice, that she was on his side.

  I picked up my purse. “I’m going to Chick.”

  I walked into the store and told Kat she had to help me make a list of all the reasons why it would have sucked to live in Memphis. She started to itemize immediately.

  “Number one: It’s humid in Memphis.”

  “No,” I said, “that’s no good.”

  “What do you mean? It gets hot in Tennessee.”

  “I know. But that was a positive for us.”

  “Why?” She cringed, anticipating a ludicrous response.

  “Sweaty sex,” I said.

  “Oy-vey, Blanca!”

  Kat felt sorry for me and said I could work the cash register for the rest of the day. Then she had an idea. “Let’s pretend we’re one of those uppity Beverly Hills stores that give poor people dirty looks when they walk in. Like the way they treated you in Gucci.”

  I was always treated like trash when I went into fancy stores. I didn’t dress rich enough. The last time I’d gone to Gucci I was with Kat and Gopal. He needed to pick up a pair of shoes, and he had on one of their suits so they were nice to him. I was wearing hand-me-down pants from the Army/Navy store, along with Jacob’s Love Motel T-shirt. I didn’t look like I had a pot to piss in. The sales girl, who I swear had a fishing pole up her butt and chicken cutlets in her bra, followed me around like I was going to steal something. Kat begged me to pull a Pretty Woman maneuver and buy up the place, but back then I still thought I was moving to Memphis, and what kind of shithead wears Gucci in Memphis?

  Kat wanted to conduct an experiment based on that incident. “We’ll fawn all over the scrubby-looking people, and treat the ones who think they’re important like they have leprosy.”

  As for celebrities, it went without saying that most of them got the shitty treatment, no matter how they were dressed—they cared too much and we didn’t like them for that. Credible musicians were our one exception.

  “Because we respect them,” Kat said.

  “This is reverse discrimination,” I told her. “And lucky for you, I’m in the right mood to go along with it.”

  “New number one,” Kat said. She was still working on the Memphis list. “Did you really want to live in the same state as Dollywood?”

  There was no arguing with h
er on that.

  A lanky supermodel wearing a crushed-velvet hat walked in not long after we’d decided to torture patrons such as herself. Kat said hi to her as a test. She returned neither a word nor a smile.

  After examining the jewelry case for a few minutes, the girl spoke to me without looking up. “Can I see that necklace? The one with the pink and purple stones.”

  They weren’t pink and purple stones, they were amethyst and rose quartz.

  “Excuse me, Miss?” she said a little louder.

  I pretended I was deaf and didn’t even raise my head. The model chick sashayed out, more confused than offended.

  “Should I call him?” I said to Kat. I picked up the phone, then I put it down quickly and shook my head. “No, I can’t.”

  Kat started lecturing me. “Call him already. I mean really, do you think you’re ever going to find a guy more perfect for you than that freak? Someone who loves you like he does? He’s fucking whipped. And you’re doing exactly what you talked me out of doing to Gopal. Why is it that you can con me into keeping a decent relationship going, but you can’t hold on to your own, huh? What would Oprah say about them apples, Blanca?”

  A skinny little girl with diamond stud earrings bigger than her ass walked in. She asked me for help finding a pair of jeans in her size.

  “Try the pre-teen department at Sears,” I said.

  Kat went back to her mannequin and the list. “Number two: Inbreeding,” she said. “Number three: Ducks in the hotels.”

  “Did you say ducks?”

  “It’s true. Gopal told me there’s some hotel in Memphis that lets a bunch of ducks march through the lobby, like, once a day or something. They hop into a fountain, take baths, then march back out.”

  “Back out to where? Where do they live?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Fixated on the clicking of the cash register buttons, I thought about Jacob and rang up a phantom purchase costing sixty-nine dollars and sixty-nine cents. I was adding on the tax when I asked Kat one more time if I should call him.

  “Not going to be necessary,” she said.

  I glanced up. Jacob was standing right in front of me. He looked unbelievably happy. Maybe he hadn’t missed me at all, I immediately thought, because he looked better than I’d seen him look since his father died. He was wearing a new shirt. It was too big for him, like everything in his closet, with short sleeves, buttons down the front, and a paisley design that made me think of sperm. He’d had his hair cut, too. The thick locks that used to brush his collar were gone, making him look cleaner and younger. And he had the most ridiculous coyote grin on his face.

  “Let’s go,” he said. He grabbed my purse off the counter.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said indignantly, just to give him a hard time.

  “You have no choice. You either get up willing, or I’m going to pick you up and drag your ass out of here.”

  “Oh my God, that would be just like An Officer and a Gentleman,” Kat cried. “Pick her up, Grace! Do it!”

  I sat there, arms crossed, and stared at him. I could be a real bitch when I wanted to, even when I wasn’t trying that hard.

  “Come on, Trixie. An hour of your time is all I ask. Then you never have to see me again if you don’t want to.”

  Funny, that struck me as the most horrible thought imaginable—to never see Jacob again.

  “I’m counting to three. One…Two…” He started around the counter for me.

  “All right!” I stood up and took my purse from him, trying my hardest to act annoyed. “Where are you taking me?”

  “It’s a surprise,” he said.

  FORTY-THREE

  “Give me the keys,” Jacob said when we got to my car. “I’m driving.”

  “Please tell me where we’re going.”

  “You’ll see.”

  We headed south down Robertson, turned onto the 10 freeway going east, and drove. After passing the La Cienega, Fairfax, and La Brea exits, Jacob finally signaled and got off at Crenshaw Boulevard. There was a guy in heavy trousers and no shirt standing on the corner selling roses. Jacob seemed to contemplate stopping for a flower, but the light turned green and we kept moving.

  “We’re going to the Hood?” I said.

  “South Central, baby.”

  I was sure the senile grin on his face meant he was taking me to the home of some gold-toothed gang lord where he was going to watch with glee as man named Booger chopped me up into little pieces then stuffed me in a dumpster.

  “So, how’s it going?” he said blithely. “How have you been?”

  I didn’t answer his question and that made him laugh. He kept glancing over at me as he drove. I focused my gaze out the window. I didn’t want to make eye contact with him—I was too weak for that.

  We passed pawn shops, dilapidated buildings, and tons of gas stations. It seemed like there was a gas station on every block.

  “Do a lot of people get shot around here?” I said.

  “Yeah, so you better behave yourself.” Jacob made a quick left and parked the car.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” I said.

  “It’s fine. Don’t be such a baby.”

  We walked across the street to a tiny restaurant that said “Chef Lulu’s” above the entrance. There were bars on the doors and windows.

  “It looks closed,” I said.

  “It’s not closed.” Jacob opened the door and we went in.

  The restaurant was the size of a small living room, the metal tables and chairs bordered on decrepit, and the dark purple carpet on the floor was stained with grease, but I hadn’t eaten for hours, and the smells coming from the kitchen made my stomach growl. Still, I couldn’t figure out why Jacob had brought me there.

  A sign at the back of the restaurant boasted, “Best Oxtail west of the Mississippi.” I wondered what the hell we were going to eat. I certainly wasn’t going to feast on some ox’s ass.

  Jacob sat me down at a table and went to the pick-up window. The woman standing there happened to be Chef Lulu herself, at least that’s what her apron said.

  “What can I get for you?” Lulu said to Jacob.

  He ordered fried catfish with cornbread, collard greens, and a side of macaroni and cheese.

  “And give us a slice of sweet potato pie for dessert,” he said. “For my girlfriend. Because she’s being so sweet to me today.”

  Lulu poked her head out the window and examined me. She was a strong woman with big, dangling beads on her ears and a white scarf tied around her head. Her skin was the color of creamy milk chocolate.

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I told her.

  “She will be by the time we’re done eating,” Jacob said.

  At that, I rolled my eyes. Jacob said, “Trixie, stop being such a brat.”

  There was an ancient TV on in the corner of the restaurant. It had a pair of rabbit ears on top that you had to play around with to get a clear picture. The only other patron in the place, a hunchback man in a velour jogging suit, sat in front of it, fiddling with the antenna and watching a fat Texan explain the proper way to catch a fish. Lulu gave the man a bag of hot food and he wandered out. The Texan on TV said the most important decision to make when casting your line was depth. Don’t be afraid to ask the fisherman in the boat next to you how far down he caught his fish, he said. Sometimes he’ll actually tell you.

  Lulu informed Jacob that they’d bring our food out when it was ready. Before he took his seat, Jacob helped himself to the self-serve refrigerator of soft drinks. He brought us each a can of orange soda.

  An older African-American woman came in right after Jacob sat down. She was tiny and she held her head up high. Lulu greeted the woman with respect and asked her if she wanted her usual, red beans and rice. The woman nodded, then she made herself c
omfortable at the table across from us. I said hi to her and tried to start up a conversation, mainly because she looked interesting, but also because I was afraid to face Jacob. I knew he wanted to talk.

  “I’m Mrs. Morris,” the woman said. “But you can just call me Morris. Everybody does.” She told us she used to have a soul food restaurant, too. “It was famous for awhile. We even got written up in Gourmet magazine.”

  Mrs. Morris claimed she was eighty-four years old. Her face didn’t betray her age as a day over sixty, but her hands were history books. If I’d had a camera, I would have taken a picture of her hands and hung them on my wall to remind me that you can’t put life on pause and then catch up with it later when you have more energy to give. You have to play it all the way through to the end.

  Morris said, “I’m the only woman in town besides Lulu who knows how to cook beans. My grandmother taught me how to make them back in Arkansas more years ago than I care to remember.”

  I knew it. I knew she wasn’t a native. They didn’t grow very many people like her in the cement soil of Los Angeles.

  When her beans and rice were ready, Morris carefully lifted her bag and said good-bye. My heart hurt to see her go. She was exactly the kind of person I dreamed we would have had as a neighbor if we’d ever moved South—a surrogate grandmother who would invite us over for dinner once a week, complain that we were too skinny, and keep feeding us until we were ready to burst. We’d go to the market for her when she needed groceries, and she’d apologize for being a burden, but she’d love us and know we’d do anything for her.

  “Isn’t she great?” Jacob said after the door closed behind her. “I ate in her restaurant once a long time ago. I tried to order mac and cheese but she yelled at me and said only a white boy would order that in the middle of the week. She said I had to eat something else. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Morris thinks mac and cheese is a completely inappropriate side dish anytime except Sunday.”

  Jacob had never told me that story before, but it sounded incredibly familiar. It took me a few blinks to figure out why—there was a bent version of it in Hallelujah.