My father looked down at the dog. “Go get your ball,” he said, trying to hide the regret in his voice.
Jacob tilted his head and lifted his brow at me, like I’d broken a promise. Shit, I said to myself, with the vengeful, burning pain of memory somewhere in my chest. Why was I the only one whose recollections never grew any fonder with time? Why was I the only one who seemed to look back on all those yesterdays as being so bad? Had the stories my father told actually been good times, or did he just choose to believe they were?
I allowed for the possibility that hindsight could reconcile one’s perspective on the past. But I leaned toward the likelihood of complete distortion.
It’s never the truth that changes.
Truffles barked at the edge of the table with a tennis ball in his mouth. My father took the ball and threw it into the kitchen. Twenty seconds later the dog was back, tail wagging for more. Halfway through dessert, after watching my father throw that stupid ball a dozen times, I came to a historic diagnosis. As I looked at him, at his house, his dog, his relaxed rapport with his wife; at how much he’d changed since I last spent time with him, it dawned on me that he and my mother may have been nothing more than a match made in Hell. I always saw my mother as the pathetic victim in the fiasco they called a marriage. I wasn’t so sure about that anymore. What I was sure about was how my mother and father didn’t belong together. They never did. It was finally obvious to me that they had nothing in common. I don’t know, maybe they loved each other at one time, but it was also quite possible that she only married him because she wanted to live in that chintzy house of hers, and wear her chintzy rings, and lunch with her chintzy friends at the chintzy fucking country club. The poor thing. She had no idea what the consequences of her aspirations were going to turn out to be.
“It really was nice to see you,” my father said again before we left. He hugged me that time. Tightly. And I hugged back. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for what I’d said at the table, I just didn’t have the guts.
“If you ever need anything,” he said, “please call me. Well, call me anyway, just to say hi sometime. How about that?”
I told him I would. Then he tried to give us a check. “Buy yourselves a house-warming present,” he said.
“Dad, I can’t.” I had enough of my father’s money. I refused to take anymore. He didn’t argue with me. He just shrugged and told Jacob I’d always been stubborn.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Jacob said.
The two of them shared a knowing laugh that made me feel like we were all part of a big, happy family, if only for an instant.
My father put his arm around Jacob’s shoulder and they shook hands, “You take care of her, okay?”
“I will,” Jacob said.
Driving away, the headlights on the cars going in the opposite direction hypnotized me. They were unearthly eyes that never blinked. I got a sinking feeling that they were trying to tell me a secret, to forewarn me. It was like deja-vu without the recollection of details. They sang to me through the radio, and they had the voice of my father, if my father had been Cat Stevens.
If you wanna leave, take good care I hope you make a lot of nice friends out there But just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware…
“You want to go for a walk?” Jacob said after he saw the effect Yusuf Islam had on my mood. He nodded toward Will Rogers State Beach.
“No, I just want to go home.”
Jacob took my hand to his lips, kissed my palm, and something swelled up inside of me.
“Did I do that?” he said.
I glanced down at my arms. Every hair was standing on end.
“Yeah, you did that,” I said.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Learn how to drive, asshole!” I shouted at the car that almost ran us off the road. I was about to continue my tirade by spouting off a few more obscenities, but Jacob put my window up.
“Hey,” I said. “Did you see the way he cut you off? It would be a very bad omen to get in a wreck on the way to our own party.”
“It would be an even worse omen if that guy pulled out a gun and shot you.”
The menacing vehicle, a custom-painted, chartreuse-green Riviera with gold-plated hubcaps, whizzed past us like a bottle rocket and swerved so far into our lane he almost took off our passenger-side mirror. We caught up to him at the next red light and that’s when I saw the TV—it was smack-dab in the center of his dashboard.
“Oh, this guy’s a real gem,” I said.
Jacob couldn’t see much while he drove, but I was able to look right in and give a full report. “He has a bottle of Budweiser in his hand and he’s watching television.”
“Television?” Jacob said.
I did a double take. I saw boobs—big, fake ones—the kind that probably felt like turtle shells. “Holy shit, he’s watching porn!”
“Wanna drive?” Jacob said.
I looked one more time. Then I screamed. “Oh my God! Jacob, there’s a German Shepard on the screen. And its dick is bigger than yours!”
Jacob almost crashed into a garbage can trying to get a glimpse. “I need to see it to believe it,” he said.
Once Jacob confirmed my story with his own eyes, we decided that of all our years in that crummy city, of all the crazy things we’d seen, a video of a woman getting fucked by a German Shepard—on TV in a car—was definitely in the top three. Maybe even number one.
“Well, that’s a good omen,” Jacob said.
“I’m tempted to ask why you think that starting off the evening of our going-away party with doggie porn is a good omen, only I’m not sure I want to hear your answer.”
“Trixie, could we have asked for a clearer sign that getting out of California is absolutely the best decision we’ve ever made?”
Pete and Sara’s house was only a couple miles from our apartment. Imagine what we could have seen if they lived in, say, Glendale.
We got to the party just as Ronnie the Rib Tickler had finished setting up. The whole yard smelled like roasted, greasy meat. Ronnie was a stout guy with a belly that hung a few inches below his waist. He had barbeque-stained fingernails and a face that looked hickory-smoked. Jacob became obsessed with Ronnie the minute we walked through the gate. Word on the street was Ronnie had done time for manslaughter before he became a cook. His business card said he was a three-time runner up at the International Barbeque Festival, which happens to be held in Memphis. Jacob talked Ronnie’s ear off, notebook and pen in hand.
Inside, Joanna was predicting the sex of Sara’s baby. “It’s a boy for sure.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Pete said.
Joanna explained her theory to me. “When a pregnant woman grows by width, when her hips are the first to broaden, it means she’s having a girl. When she gets a pouch protruding from her lower abdomen, it’s a boy.”
Sara was about six months along and she had the pouch. From the back she looked baby-free. From the front she looked like a mother kangaroo.
Not long after Jacob and I arrived, everyone else started sauntering in. Shelly, my ponytailed little assistant, came with her ponytailed boyfriend, Rob. Odie brought his newest model girlfriend. Her name was Claire, and she spent the entire night fawning all over Mike from the Weekly. Pete’s brother, Gary, was there too, with a bunch of his friends. I’d only met Gary once before. He was two years older than Pete, about three inches taller, twenty pounds heavier, and he worked as a bartender. We put him in charge of the drinks. The first thing Gary did was to stir up a batch of Kamikazes, which he passed around on a plastic tray.
“To get things started off right,” he said.
Gary was disappointed that Jacob wouldn’t take one. Jacob had made up his mind to stop drinking while he was in Big Sur. It was all part of his plan to be the anti-Thomas Doorley and he was sticking to it.
“I??
?ll take Jacob’s share,” Pete said, and downed a second shot.
I walked back outside. Jacob came over to tell me what he’d learned from The Rib Tickler.
“I was mentioning to Ronnie that you make jewelry. He told me about this place in Memphis, it’s called the Museum of Ornamental Metal. Have you ever heard of it?”
“No.”
“Apparently they have a rotating display of all things metal. Teapots, sculptures, even jewelry. It’s on the top of some hill Mark Twain supposedly called ‘The best bluff view south of St. Louis.’ You wanna know how Ronnie knew about it?”
“How?”
“He tried to rob it once.” Jacob laughed. Then he spotted Joanna. “Is that my mom in the kitchen?”
Jacob tiptoed inside. He snuck up behind Joanna and grabbed her waist. She jumped, spun around and swatted him in the chest with her purse. I watched them talk. Jacob’s face shined and his whole body seemed weightless. Like he hovered a foot above the ground. I’d never seen him look happier than he did then.
“Kiss me,” I said when he came back.
Kat stuck her face in between us, with Gopal on her arm, just as Jacob’s tongue was reaching the back of my throat. “Get a room,” she said.
“I reckon y’all are late,” Jacob teased. He and Kat had developed a habit of harassing each other whenever they could. It was all out of love, of course, but it never stopped.
“Shut up, Grace,” she said.
“Shut up, Grace,” he mimicked.
Kat looked him up and down. “I see you decided to dress up for the party.”
Jacob had on what he always wore: jeans, boots, and a T-shirt.
“You don’t like my outfit?” he said.
“You look like you fell down a flight of stairs.”
Gary came over and asked Kat and Gopal what they wanted to drink. “How about a lovely little aperitif to wet the whistle before the meal?”
Gopal said he needed food first.
“I’ll take a dry martini,” Kat said.
Ronnie rang his cow bell. “Chow time!”
After we finished eating, and after everyone had an opportunity to whine about how much they were going to miss us, Pete asked Jacob and Odie if they wanted to form a little trio and play a few songs. As we all relocated inside, Pete rummaged through a closet and pulled out two guitars and a bongo drum.
“Save me a front row seat,” Sara said. She ran into the bedroom, then came back a minute later with her video camera.
Joanna tapped me on the shoulder. “I hate to miss the concert, but…” It was getting late and she had to drive all the way back to Pasadena. I stole Jacob away from the band and we walked Joanna to her car. She pretended to be all bubbles and cheer, but we could see she was fighting the tears.
“Not yet, Mom,” Jacob said.
Joanna hugged us quickly and wiped her eyes. “I know, save it for Wednesday,” she said. We were going to have breakfast with her the morning we left; she wasn’t allowed to consider it good-bye until then.
We took our time walking back to the party. Jacob suggested we veer west. He wanted to stop at the beach.
“Once more,” he said. “For old time’s sake.”
“Later,” I told him. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”
Standing outside Pete and Sara’s door, Jacob stopped, turned to face me, and clutched my hand tightly. He looked like he needed to tell me something.
“Trixie…” he said. But then he froze.
“Are you okay?” He had goose bumps, I could see them all over his arms. “Did I do that?” I said, echoing his words from the night before.
He shook his head apprehensively. “I don’t know. I just had this really weird feeling.”
Gently, but with painstaking intention, Jacob put his hands on the sides of my face. He held me still and pierced me with his gaze, as if he were taking a photograph with his mind’s eye. Something about the sudden tightness of his features made me think he was frightened, but only for an instant, then the tension gave way to a faint glow of tranquillity that washed over him in the form of a subtle, pacific grin.
“I love you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I love you, too.”
Pete was tuning the guitars when we got back to the house. Odie sat patiently at his drum, somehow oblivious to Claire, who, along with Mike, was nowhere in sight.
“Hey Beatrice, your friend Kat’s got a Buttery Nipple,” Gary said. He shoved a plastic cup in my face. “Here. Have one.”
“I already had a beer.”
“You’re no fun,” Gary said.
Jacob made himself comfortable on the couch. He sunk into the flimsy cushions with a shiny black guitar on his lap. It made him look slight and vulnerable. After strumming a few chords, he stopped, took off his ring, and tossed it into my lap.
“Hold that for me, will you?”
I put it on my thumb.
“Any day now!” Pete yelled. He was sitting right next to Jacob but he yelled anyway. Odie was on a stool beside them.
Once Jacob finally looked settled, Pete said, “All right, now that everyone’s too drunk to really hear us, are their any requests?”
The whole party was gathered around them on the floor of the tiny living room, packed in like a kindergarten class at story time. Except for Gary—he was still at the makeshift bar, which was actually the kitchen table, whipping up some hideous concoctions.
People started blurting out random songs. Kat, who’d gulped down everything Gary put in her hand, kept yelling, “Sleepy Jean! Sleepy Jean!” She meant “Daydream Believer.” It was one of her favorite non-electronic songs, but she was too hammered to remember what it was really called.
“Free Bird!” Gary shouted.
“Forget it,” Pete said. “We’ll just play.”
Gary walked around with a towel on his head and a tray in his hands, yelling, “Tom Collins! Get your Tom Collins here!”
“What’s a Tom Collins?” Shelly asked before she took one.
“Why, it’s a choice beverage,” Gary explained. “Perfect for this hot summer evening.”
“Hey, Gary,” Jacob said. “It’s November.”
“Right.” Gary nodded. You know the old saying, three sheets to the wind? Gary had a dozen sheets flapping in the breeze.
By the time the new batch of drinks had been passed around, Jacob, Pete, and Odie were ready to play, and they actually managed to pull a few impressive numbers out of their hats. The first song they did was an acoustic version of the AC/DC classic “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
Jacob tried to sing, but Pete kept making obnoxious gyrations to go along with the lyrics and he couldn’t keep it together. By the end of the second verse, all three of them were cracking up.
Sara turned to me. “They’re so weird,” she said.
The second show-stopper was a song called “Like A Hurricane” by Neil Young.
“I hate this song,” Sara said as soon as she heard the first note. “Ask me why I hate it, Beatrice.”
“Why do you hate this song?”
“Because when you wouldn’t talk to Jacob, when he was living here, he played it all day long. I mean all day long.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Next, the guys did a raucous cover of “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones. Pete attempted to sing that one. I finally knew why he usually stuck with the string instruments. They followed that with a dazzling rendition of The Rolling Stones’s “Sweet Virginia.” Jacob smiled at me when he sang the part about California’s bitter fruit.
At the end of that song, Pete and Odie both wanted another drink, so Jacob played one by himself. He was a little clumsy with some of the chords, but his commitment made up for what he lacked in skill. It was a tune called “Shock Me,” originally recorded by Kiss, but J
acob did the version he’d learned from listening to a somewhat obscure San Francisco band called Red House Painters.
Once he’d finished, Jacob set the guitar down at his feet. I squeezed in beside him on the couch and he eased his left hand under my sweater, resting it on my midriff. I felt the pulse in his wrist. It seemed to be beating in time with mine. We were synchronized.
Gary marched around the room with a bottle of something that looked like vinegar and smelled like disinfectant. He poured a splash into every cup he saw.
“What is that?” Gopal asked, while he covered the top of his glass with his hand.
“Everclear,” Gary said. “Just a drop or two really rounds out a drink nicely.”
“Don’t anybody light a match,” Jacob said dryly.
Sara turned her video camera on us. “Look, here’s the two lovebirds,” she said. “Say something philosophical.”
“Something philosophical,” we said in unison.
“Attention! To whom it may concern, we’re running short on libations!” Gary yelled. Which explained why he’d resorted to spiking the drinks with firewater.
“The night is still young,” Pete said. And if the party was going to continue, he told us, he had to go for reinstallments. “When Muni’s calls, I answer.”
Muni’s was the neighborhood liquor store. It was three blocks away.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Sara said to Pete. “Nobody in this room needs any more alcohol.”
Gary booed.
“Hey, Sara,” Kat said. “Just because you can’t drink doesn’t mean we should all suffer.”
“It’s all right, Trixie and I will go to Muni’s,” Jacob said. He looked at me and winked.
We unglued ourselves from each other and got up. Pete, who’d seen Jacob’s eye gymnastics, said, “Everyone might as well say good-bye to them now, these two aren’t coming back.”
He was only half right.
FORTY-NINE
Jacob wanted to create a moment. That was the reason he gave for leading me to the beach instead of to the car after the party ended. One last romp with the life we were leaving behind. Something to put in the back pocket of experience like a souvenir.