Shrimp

  If our house has become a sanctuary, suddenly I wanted to be back in Alcatraz, alone in my room, locked up. I raced upstairs but stopped cold when I was passing by Sid and Nancy's bedroom. Sid-dad was slumped at the open bedroom window, with the view out over the deck and back garden. When he looked at me standing at the doorway, I

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  saw his eyes were wet and his face splotchy, and I knew.

  "You heard," I said, looking past him to the open window. I should have paid more attention to the decibel level of my voice when Shrimp's head had stopped thrashing in time to the opera music that had been wafting from the bedroom window down to the deck below after the music had been turned off.

  Sid-dad nodded.

  I thought my worst fear was Shrimp finding out my secret, but now I realized it was my dad finding out. I stood at the doorway, paralyzed, not knowing what to do or say.

  "Cupcake," Sid-dad said, and I felt flush with relief, because even if he knew he still loved me to call me by that name, right? "Come in here, please." I went inside the bedroom and he gestured for me to sit on the ottoman by the window.

  I assumed he wanted to talk about it, whether to lecture or scream or I don't know what, but instead he burst out crying, which hurt my insides more than that painful procedure ever had. The only times I've seen him cry before, aside from when he gets misty-eyed talking about that Boston Red Sox first base player who let the ground ball slip through his legs and lost the team the World Series, have been when Josh and Ash were born, and when Leonardo DiCaprio drowned in Titanic. Sid-dad made no effort to compose himself either as he sputtered, 'All I ever wanted was to protect you, for you to have a good life, and now, to know you went through that, let yourself get into that situation." His tears caught up with him in the form of anger. 'ARE YOU JUST STUPID TO GET INTO THAT KIND OF TROUBLE?"

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  "I was," I whispered. Words came furiously from my mouth, like they needed to work double time to make this up to him. "I know. I'm so sorry, Dad. So sorry. It'll never happen again; I'll never not take precautions again. Please don't hate me, please don't be mad at me. It was over a year ago!" I was blubbering uselessly. I could see in his face that I will have to live with this disappointment he sees in me for the rest of my life. I can't change it.

  But seeing the emotion on his face, I felt a crossing-over moment too. Since Nancy married him I've basically considered Sid-dad to be my father. He's the only one I've ever known. I've always loved him--what's not to love?-- but part of me has held back a little too, distancing him a few degrees in my mind for being my stepfather and adopted father, not my natural father. Since the summer with Frank, I understood, but now I truly got it, indisputably.- Sid-dad is my father. The best Frank ever felt for me was just wanting to be assured that I was okay. Sid-dad grieves for me, feels for me, hopes for me.

  "Of course I don't hate you. Don't be ridiculous. I'm your father--I'll always love you, that never changes. But I'm not so happy with you right now. I know it happened over a year ago, but to find out like this, to know you've gone through this and kept it inside all this time. You've been to the gynecologist since?" he asked. "Been checked out?"

  "Yeah," I said, without thinking, "Mom took me after she found out..."

  The expression on his face turned from anger to something entirely different, something I could only explain as being a look that one married person has for another when

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  one finds out the other has withheld a crucial piece of information about the family.

  Alcatraz is an especially wise escape destination right now. I'll just dollnap Gingerbread back from Ash's room and have her join me, for old time's sake.

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  *** Chapter 15

  Alexei is less a Horrible and maybe just more of a Poor Sucker. His semester off from school is a complete bust. The "assistant manager" at the swank new restaurant in The City has been reduced to sitting next to the Little Hellion, folding napkins and changing lunch menus to dinner menus in the quiet late afternoons after the business lunch crowd rush.

  Alexei's upside is I'm fairly sure he's getting some play from Lord Empress Kari. On more than one occasion I have caught him coming out of her office looking disheveled, tucking in his shirt, giving me a typical Alexei glare, indicating I can just keep my mouth shut about whatever is or isn't going on in that office. I can't imagine how a little booty from that horror chick is worth a semester away from his precious college, but who am I to criticize in the love department? I'm not exactly a relationship expert, seeing as how I couldn't even major in "just friends" these days, even if I wanted to.

  "Cyd Charisse, you're doing a great job folding those napkins!" Kari chirped at me as she whizzed past the round table where I was sitting with Alexei.

  "Thanks!" I said back in my most chipper voice, but Kari didn't hear the sarcasm. She winked her lazy eye at me. "She's a superstar!" Kari sang before stomping to the kitchen to yell at the sous chef for not picking up enough

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  mahi mahi at the early-morning fish market. Even Alexei, sitting next to me, groaned.

  The restaurant employs several hostesses across different shifts. I'm the youngest hostess, I work the fewest hours of all on a two-day-a-week schedule, and I work the 2:00 to 5:00 shift, which has to be the restaurant's least busy, least stressful time of the business day. Yet I'm the only hostess whom Kari specifically praises for her napkin-folding skills or for doing such a fantastic job seating table 7. Yeah, like pressing creases into a piece of linen or leading a group of people to a table, handing them a menu, and offering a fake smile is so challenging. On the plus side, the sucking up does allow me a certain privilege other hostesses might not get, although none besides me want it: I get to stay extra hours in the kitchen with the sous chefs if I want, chopping veggies, learning how to sauté, watching how soup stock is made.

  "Does Kari actually think that all her sucking up to me gets reported back to Dad?" I asked Alexei. "Because I specifically don't talk about this job to him, and if I did, I specifically would not be singing Kari's praises."

  If I did talk to Sid-dad about the restaurant, I might tell him that it's Alexei, not Kari, who makes sure the wait-staff shares its tips with the busboys and dishwashers. It's Alexei who wooed the restaurant's new sommelier from a competing restaurant, Alexei who must have grunted through a marathon of miles talking to the wine expert about their shared appreciation of Sonoma chardonnays and the Detroit Red Wings over the treadmills at their mutual gym. Kari may have ultimately been responsible for hiring the wine expert whose great reputation is bringing in

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  a ton of new clientele, but she's not the person who had the "right contacts" to bring the sommelier over in the first place, as she claims.

  I am not talking to Sid-dad about the restaurant because my work-study semester is a big fat waste of time, in my opinion. (But if I did, I would be sure to throw in the word sommelier, because it does sound impressive. If the SAT had word associations like Chocolate is to lovemaking as sommelier is to__ _, I would kick ass on that nonsense

  test.) Hanging out in the kitchen can be fun, but mostly it's just a diversionary tactic to smell yummy ingredients and not think about the Shrimp situation. I don't belong in a place like this. I don't care about fusion cuisine. I could give less of a fuck about an establishment that is considered "hot." I hate changing into a conservative skirt, white blouse, and pumps when I start my shift after school; the uniform is suffocating. I loathe customers who order beet-and-goat cheese salad, pork tenderloin, and apple tartlet, only to barf their meals back up in the ladies' room after, and I know this because volunteering to perform the hourly TP check in the bathroom has resulted in more than a few unpleasant discoveries of spew chunks on toilet seats. What is wrong with people? Customers out at Java the Hut aren't like that. Of course Java the Hut is a completely different crowd in a completely different type of establishment in a completely different nabe--it's like com
paring apples to oranges, but maybe I am an Orange in a restaurant of Apples and I can't help but wish to be among my own kind.

  Not that jtH is an establishment I will be frequenting anytime soon. In the week since telling Shrimp about the A-date we've barely acknowledged each other at school and

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  the tarp on his unfinished painting on the deck at home has gone untouched. Sid-dad isn't around for me to ask for a job switch, anyway. He left almost right away on a business trip to the East Coast after our talk in his bedroom, when I let it slip about Nancy knowing about my...um...issues but not telling him.

  The peace temperature in our house has experienced a sudden climate change to: burr-ito (to borrow the favored expression of our not-Just Friend right now, Shrimp).

  Alexei set down a tray of empty glass candleholders needing fresh candles for us to prepare for the dinnertime tables. He said, "I don't know what Kari thinks, but the sucking up is a little extreme. You know what though, kid?" Kid? "Fernando was right. You do have a decent work ethic, I'm gonna give you some credit. I thought you would be completely useless and a drain here, but you pull your own weight, for a skinny princess."

  "Thank you so much, Alexei. I can't express to you what a relief I feel knowing my work ethic meets your standards." I scrunched up a folded napkin and threw it in his face. He laughed.

  'Alexei," I said. "What is the deal with guys and their whole Madonna/whore complex?"

  "WHAT?" Alexei said, his face turning that tomato color his Eastern European genes exhibit so well.

  "Like, why are guys so into getting a girl to fool around, but once the girl does, then they hold it against her? What is that about? I mean, you have a past--everyone knows the scandal about your first girlfriend in high school being your trig tutor who was way older than you, but do your girlfriends since hold it against you?"

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  Alexei said, "I don't even know how to respond to all this. Where did this come from?"

  "I'd just like some answers is all. And you're the closest heterosexual male that I know who may be able to explain this to me. So?"

  Alexei's shrug acknowledged the truth of the question. "Guys are like that. I have no idea why. Any girl a guy dates seriously, he's going to want to think she hasn't been around."

  'Are you like that? If, say--hypothetically, of course-- you were dating someone like Kari and you found out she had, let's just say some indiscretions in her past, would you then lose interest in her?"

  Why am I so stupid? I had a very important question and Alexei was actually a person who might be able to give a reasonable explanation of the Madonna/whore male psychology in his faux intellectual way that might have made sense, but I ruined it by using Kari as an example.

  Alexei threw the napkin back at me. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He got up from the table to go into the kitchen.

  I heard the crash of a tray of water glasses falling to the floor and looked up to see Nancy swishing her bony hips past a busboy, whose mouth was agape at the vision of the tall blonde in the short, soft pink Chanel suit. She didn't turn her back to see the commotion she'd caused; she just continued walking over to my table.

  "I thought I would pick you up from work and take you out to dinner," she said. "The baby-sitter can stay late with the kids and make them dinner tonight."

  Oh, joy, the mother-daughter combo, with the menfolk

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  who aren't speaking to them, experiencing a night on the town.

  "Nah," I groaned. Nancy would probably want to stay at the restaurant for dinner, just to relish Kari's ass-kissing.

  "You can choose the place," Nancy offered.

  Well, that was an entirely different matter. "Can we go to Zachary's Pizza in Oakland?" My mouth watered at the thought of tasting the Chicago-style spinach-and-mushroom-stuffed pizza with the wicked stewed tomatoes, oozing with cheese.

  I wonder if something is wrong with me. All I ever think about is food or sex.

  "No," Nancy replied.

  "But you just said..."

  "I'm not driving across the Bay Bridge at rush hour. It'll take us longer to get there than it will to eat there. And I'm not eating Zachary's pizza. I just fit back into this outfit today. Why don't we stay here? The sushi is good."

  You can't just throw a dog a bone like that and take it away, so I wasn't willing to compromise. I hadn't asked for this favor. "No way."

  Nancy tried again. "Greens?"

  The offer was an interesting power play on her part, as she had suggested only my fave special-occasion restaurant that sits on a dock looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, with succulent produce from the Zen Buddhist organic farm in Marin County that's used for an all-vegetarian menu of food that's to die for. Literally. If I were on death row I would want my last meal from Green's, and no one is a bigger carnivore than me. But I still hesitated, so Nancy threw in one more bone, in the form of a set

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  of car keys she tossed me from her handbag. "You can drive," she said.

  Oh. My. God. Nancy just wanted my company.

  I caught the keys. "I'm there." I've got a learner's permit now, but between school and jobs I haven't had time to practice driving, and Fernando is not exactly volunteering to be the adult in the car when I try to maneuver a large vehicle up the steep streets of Pacific Heights--or scarier still, down the streets. I seem to have issues with how hard to hit the brakes on the downward slopes, and Fernando said there is only so much Excedrin for migraines medication he can take.

  After I changed back into my regular clothes I met Nancy at the reception area. As we walked outside where the valet was waiting with her Mercedes SUV, I informed her, "Iris says that SUVs are the cause of oil wars, and that SUVs are a wasteful nation's global disease, polluting the environment. Iris says that driving an SUV is practically being an accessory to terrorism. Iris says..."

  Nancy cut me off. "Good for Iris," she said, and hopped into the passenger's side.

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  *** Chapter 16

  I don't think my driving skills are that bad, but Nancy's face was ashen by the time we reached Greens. She ordered a red wine before the hostess could even hand us our menus.

  Once I'd checked out the menu I asked Nancy, "So what is the deal with Dad?" I placed Gingerbread on the table, against the fogged-in window.

  "You're kidding me with that," Nancy said, avoiding my question and pointing at Gingerbread, who is used to Nancy's abuse so I didn't have to worry about Gingerbread getting in a snit about being pointed at. "I thought you retired Gingerbread."

  "Dolls are like old people, Mother. They're not just cute props. They need to be aired out every now and again."

  "If you're trying to get me to let you take the car with Sugar Pie as your designated adult passenger, the answer is no."

  Damn.

  'Are you and Dad fighting?"

  "We're fine."

  "You don't sound fine," I said. "I heard you yelling at each other from your bedroom before he left for New York. I'm sorry if it's my fault."

  "Cyd Charisse..." Now I pointed at Nancy, to remind her of my name correction. "...Oh, for God's sake, CC.

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  What goes on between Dad and me isn't for you to worry about. He was a little mad and I understand why...."

  "Why?"

  Exasperated, Nancy said, "This is really a matter between two married people, not for mother and child to discuss."

  "I'm not a child," I reminded her.

  She took my statement as an excuse to change the topic. "I agree. That's why I thought we should have some time alone tonight to talk about your future. You can't dodge the college talk forever. It's late October already and application deadlines are coming up fast. What are you thinking you want to do? I've left several college brochures in your room, and I've noticed you've tossed them all in the recycling bin. Your academic record may be a little weak, but there are plenty of schools that will accept you, sch
ools I think you might even like. You're not a dumb girl, despite what your rocky transcript might suggest."

  "I know, but thanks for the backhanded compliment anyway." Why do adults think every girl who isn't some overachieving nitwit needs to be reassured about her intelligence? Folks, my self-esteem is just fine, thanks. I may not be school smart, and I might do extremely stupid things sometimes, but I know I'm smart. And I'd give me serious Vegas odds to kick the ass of Sarah Scholar at life-skills mortal combat any day.

  "I didn't mean it like that and you know it. You're going to have to do something next year after you graduate. What's it going to be?"

  Why do I have to DO something? What's wrong with no plan, with no college? I don't intend to be some trust-fund

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  rich girl who lives off Dad's (or in my case, Dads') bank accounts. I plan on making my own way. I just haven't figured out what way yet. But if I wanted to do nothing for a while, what's so wrong with that? It's not like I am applying for citizenship to live in the Nation of Slackeronia.

  I don't see me at college, and I don't see the crime in that. I wouldn't mind owning a café or something one day-- but later, after I've had time to figure out all that self-discovery bullshit your late teens are supposed to be all about. Anyway, the best future I've ever seriously considered was simply being Shrimp's girlfriend, and that prospect is looking pretty dead right now.

  I decided to change the subject back to what I wanted to talk about. "Why was Dad so mad? It's not like you were keeping a secret from him. I asked you not to tell him."

  The waiter came for our orders. Nancy said he might as well bring along a whole bottle of wine, because one glass clearly wasn't going to cut it this evening.