It’s not bleeding, I said.
Am I okay? she said.
You’re fine. Let’s go.
CHAPTER 18
MY DAD AND I took the ferry directly from Puerto Vallarta to La Paz, avoiding any chance of running across those federales again. From La Paz we drove the Baja highway north, homebound. In Tijuana we went to a bullfight. I rooted for the bull.
We spent the night in a hotel in San Diego and the next morning my dad woke me and we were in front of my mom’s house on Topanga Beach. He opened the door to the side walkway and I listened for sounds of Nick coming down the corridor. My dad knocked on the sliding-glass door.
Hey hey, said my mom as she opened the door. It’s the Dynamic Duo.
I peeked inside. She leaned down and kissed me.
Hi Mom, I said.
Look at you. Brown as a berry.
My dad stepped inside and went to the fridge. My mom patted the back of my head.
So blond, Norman, she said. How was the trip?
Good, I said.
My dad bit into a peach and he shut the fridge and peered at me over Mom’s shoulder. In his eyes not a trace of those rifle barrels or the gunshot or the days we spent adrift—just the afterglow of tube rides and sunshine.
So it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be? she said.
I shook my head.
It wasn’t until dinnertime that I asked about Nick.
He’s away for a few weeks, said my mom.
I switched on the TV to my favorite show, All in the Family, and we watched it while we ate. When the first commercial came on I turned around and looked at my mom. No bruise, no scratch, exactly the same as the other eye.
It was quiet around the house for the rest of August. My mom didn’t have to teach for a few weeks and I just hung around Topanga and skateboarded and surfed and played with Charley and Sunny. Everybody on the beach was talking about eminent domain and I gathered the county or the state, somebody, was trying to kick us off the beach. Someone said they could do it because we didn’t own the land, just the houses. That seemed impossible.
Hockey camp filled my weekend mornings and football practice filled my weekday afternoons and I alternated my nights among my mom, my dad and Eleanor. Eleanor was the only one I talked to about Nick and my mom. She mostly asked me questions, and I liked how she listened carefully to my answers.
One night Eleanor and I were in her kitchen preparing dinner. She asked me how I felt when Nick called me a failure and a liar and such, or when my dad made me get up at four in the morning to go to hockey practice. I didn’t like it of course, I told her. Then her husband Lee opened the front door, walked in and set a broom against the cabinet, heading for the bedroom.
Where’s the rest, honey? said Eleanor.
What do you mean? said Lee.
The chicken and the salad dressing.
You never said anything about getting chicken, said Lee.
You think I wanted you to go to the market at nine o’clock at night to buy a broom?
Well. I thought it was kind of strange.
They stood watching each other. They were both very small people, very gentle and sensitive. So they studied one another as if trying to feel the other out.
Lee, said Eleanor. It took you forty-five minutes to buy a broom?
I wanted to get the exact right one for you, Eleanor, he said.
Like gas leaking from a balloon laughter seeped out of my mouth. I couldn’t control it and I threw back my head, surrendering. Eleanor was next, then Lee, and soon the three of us were keeled over in the kitchen.
Lee said he was exhausted from the laughing and had to go lie down. Eleanor prepared dinner. While boiling the spaghetti she explained to me about bad pretends and good pretends.
You have a choice, Norman. You don’t have to believe Nick’s bad stories. Those are his bad pretends about what may or may not happen, she said. You can make up your own good stories. Good pretends.
But then it’s just made up, I said.
So are the bad stories, she said. They’re about Nick. They’re not really about you.
That’s not fair, I said.
No it isn’t, she said.
Eleanor probably sensed I was getting overwhelmed and announced that dinner was finally ready.
We got into bed with Lee and watched a TV movie and ate spaghetti. I did not comprehend every nuance of the pretends concept, but it made me recall a photograph of Nick wearing a military uniform, from one of those military schools I assumed. He was strikingly handsome and he looked like he knew it. Maybe he’s the one that woke up one day realizing that the world did not revolve around him, I thought, and he’s having a bad pretend that the same will happen to me.
On Sunday I wandered down to Barrow’s to get a longboard. A bunch of boards poked over the rotted wood fence where the outdoor shower was, next to Barrow’s deck on which poker was played almost every weekend, rain or shine. I was hoping to spot the red board that was already dinged up so I wouldn’t have to worry about it hitting the rocks at low tide. As I angled up the sandbank, Sandra and my dad appeared, stepping out of the window-door onto the deck. I stopped below the sandbank because they were holding hands. She was back, and I knew there would be no explanation from my dad.
My dad sat down at the poker table and Sandra rubbed his neck while he got his poker chips. I changed my mind and took Sunny up the creek to my fort.
A week later I came home from football practice and my mom was taping together cardboard boxes.
Well, she said. We finally lost.
You mean we have to move for sure?
Yep. The state won. They’re kicking us off the beach.
There was a big party the following weekend and Nick came home. Everyone on the beach gathered at the yellow submarine house where Trafton, Woody, Shane and Clyde lived. Trafton and Clyde’s band, Blue Juice, played and everyone danced. Sandra wore a green silk bandanna and a white miniskirt and no top. I watched her dance and I compared Papaya’s slow rhythm and long banana-shaped eyelids to Sandra’s hardened expression. Even their breasts were opposites, Papaya’s so round and plump compared to Sandra’s torpedoes.
Later I got a hot dog and Nick tended the barbecue with his shirt off. His neck and face were red and his body was pale.
Life is a long series of readjustments, he said. Remember how I said you need to be prepared?
I nodded.
Well this is what I meant. And there’s more of it coming, he said. You understand?
Yeah it’s like when it’s all sunny and you’re skiing and by the afternoon it’s snowing and freezing cold. You gotta adjust to it, I said.
Nick’s eyebrows perked up and he opened his palms toward the sky and stretched his arms out. Right on the money, he said.
I moved along before he could bring up the skateboarding lie. I found my mom dancing with our neighbors, Wheeler and Maggie. It was peculiar because Nick had broken Wheeler’s ribs a few months ago in our kitchen—how could they still be friends? Next to them boogied Sandra and my dad. I sat on a rock and watched the action.
Late that afternoon the wind died and the ocean glassed over and I paddled out with my dad. It was small and we were the only two surfers in the water.
Well you’re getting your wish, Ollestad.
How?
I bought a house in the Palisades for you and your mom. I got a great deal on it, Ollestad.
Right on. Does it have a pool?
No pool.
Doesn’t matter. I can bike around and go to friends’ houses like every day.
Yep. But one day you’ll miss old Topanga Beach. You were born here.
I looked over the backs of the waves and followed a roller-rink curve of sand past Barrow’s deck, then back along the beach. Dogs moved in packs, Sunny chased a stick, Carol walked her llama by leash around the point, Jerry did wheelies on his dirt bike, and the dancing bodies weaved together like a parachute undulating to the music.
/> My dad put his hand on my back, as if to connect us, and we watched Topanga Beach for the last time. A set came and he told me to go. We rode those stained-glass waves lit from behind by the dying orange sun until dark.
CHAPTER 19
THE TERRAIN BELOW the big tree seemed like the easiest way down. It was less slick than the funnel on the far side of the chute where my dad was. I crouched below Sandra and told her to do the same.
Get the stick into the snow, I said. Chop it in every time you slip.
I kept the heel of my palm under her leather sole and with my other hand I checked down the first few inches of the chute with the stick. She remained clinging to the slope face like a salamander.
Okay. Inch down to me, I said.
She let go and barreled into my outstretched hand. My stick ripped out of the snow and we both starting sliding. I dug with my toes and raked both hands into the snow. I was slowing down and I used my shoulder and the side of my head to cradle Sandra’s boots. Luckily the snow was soft enough for me to maneuver us to a standstill. The stick was in my hand when I looked, unable to be sure just by touch.
You have to use the stick to ease down! I said. Don’t lift it all the way up. Okay?
It’s hard. I feel funny, Norman, she said. Is there something wrong with my head?
No. Just hang in there. We’re almost down.
How many times had my dad used the same exact line on me? I thought.
I stole a glimpse of the chute below. It fell and fell—fifty feet, a thousand feet, I did not know. My lie would be revealed soon, and I wondered what I would say next to encourage Sandra.
Then I realized that we had traversed across the chute toward the dreaded funnel. The whole chute slanted that way, as if tilted. So I arranged Sandra on my right shoulder to balance against the leftward pull into the funnel.
Okay, I said.
We crept down and I used my foot like a rudder, pushing against the slant of the chute, trying to keep us on the softer, bumpier terrain. As we descended I peered downward to get a bearing and felt Sandra lose contact with me. When I looked up she was creeping toward the funnel. Her stick turned outward so that it only grazed the crust.
Get the stick down! I yelled. Turn your hand down!
First it went up and then down and she continued to gain speed. She was about to really take off across the chute, I knew, so I scuttled as fast as I could sideways and downward. Ten feet away loomed the funnel—a threshold we could not cross. Her body jolted as if kicking into another gear, so I took a chance and pushed off, falling sideways like a spaceman until I was beneath her.
She butted against my shoulder and head—the only way to absorb her weight and still get my fingers into the ice. I propped onto my toes and kicked in. For no logical reason the snow was pulpier here and gradually I found traction. We stopped just before the terrain curled into the funnel. We had no more chances left.
You have to slide straight down, Sandra. Understand?
My arm is getting tired, Norman.
She sounded weak and that humbled me.
Just a little more, I said. You can do it.
How much further?
Not much. Ready?
We shouldn’t have left, she said.
We’re almost down. Ready?
God please save us, she said.
I hadn’t thought about God. If we get down then I’ll believe in God, I told myself.
I realized that my fingers and feet were completely numb now and that I would not be able to handle Sandra’s weight much longer.
I drew the stick to my hip, plunking it into the crust. I bent my knees, detaching from Sandra’s feet.
Stay with me, I said.
My free hand reached low and sunk to my wrist. My fingers rummaged for a stake in the ice. One leg stretched and the toe kneaded the top layer, kicking in, testing the hold. Then the other foot performed the same ritual. We moved down methodically and I felt like I was getting my technique wired.
We’re golden, I said, using one of my dad’s favorite sayings. Keep it going.
I looked upslope—my words drawing me back to him. I saw the sapling tree cricked over from my earlier fall. We’ve only gone thirty feet, I realized. We’ll never make it at this pace. Never. When I glimpsed my dad way above the tree, a sketched figure, I innately understood that I had to squash the doubt curdling inside me.
This never-ending ice curtain was all in the way you chose to see it, like water-juice.
We gotta hustle, I said to Sandra. We’re in like Flynn though.
I inched lower and at first she stayed with me. My shoulder was numbing and I was so focused on my own movements that soon I was five feet below her.
Straight down to me, I coaxed her. No problemo.
Instead of moving downward Sandra’s body tracked left. I couldn’t climb upward to stop her. Her left hand eased over the funnel’s threshold and just like that my plan went to shit. Sandra’s arm, shoulder then hip slipped into the funnel.
CHAPTER 20
BEFORE I KNEW it I had started the sixth grade. Grammar school was walking distance from my new house, a two-bedroom, two-bath 1940s Craftsman built on a bluff overlooking Santa Monica Bay. My dad got a great deal on it because a few years back during a big rainstorm the house next door had slid into the canyon. My dad believed our house was safe because it had been tested by the big storm and survived.
Right away I was taken off guard by my new suburban life. Most of my peers’ references and quips involved video games, baseball cards and knowing the latest happenings of Starsky and Hutch, all stuff I was unfamiliar with. So I made it my goal to learn how to play Pac-Man and watch more Starsky and Hutch.
Within days it became painfully obvious that swearing was frowned upon and that my stories of Mexico or Topanga Beach were hardly endearing me to the neighborhood kids. They just looked at me like I was crazy, and kept me out of their conversations. And my cozy picture of walking to school with my friends was abruptly altered by the new desegregation busing law. I did get to walk along the sidewalk with my neighbors, as I had fantasized, but when we got to school we had to board a bus and drive forty minutes to South Central Los Angeles.
Some things stayed exactly the same. Nick sat in the same rocking chair watching the same news programs. My mom picked fights with him every once in a while and Sunny slept in my room. I spent my weekends on Topanga Beach surfing with the legends. Most of them had moved up the canyon or right across the highway into the Snake Pit. We all congregated around the lifeguard station (my former neighbor’s house that had been converted into a lifeguard station), storing our boards in its shade, hiding our coveted bars of wax in its nooks and crannies. The beach was strange now, just a stretch of dirty sand and broken stairs leading to nothing.
That fall Nick filmed all my Saturday-morning football games. Later in the week he would bring the Super 8 reels to the coach’s house and sometimes the team would meet there and the coach would critique our plays. On game days Nick would lend me his heavy fishing weights for me to stuff under my thigh pads and into my jockey cup during the weigh-in with the refs. I was the only kid in the whole league trying to weigh more than he actually did. Half of my team spent the morning in a sauna trying to lose a couple pounds so they could play. Nick was my biggest fan, cheering from the bleachers where he filmed. He told all his friends how I went head-to-head with the biggest kids and never backed down. It felt good to impress him and I wished we always got along so well. But I never knew when Nick was going to explode again, and a part of me was always braced for it, and that made it hard to trust those sweet moments.
My dad made all the games too, but never said much about them. He had damaged one of his knees playing football in high school and thought football was not worth jeopardizing hockey, skiing and surfing—sports that I had a real chance to excel in.
Winter came early and before Thanksgiving I was training with the Mount Waterman ski team—four members strong. At the end
of one long day of racing gates my dad made me ski the sheer ice face back to the car. He made me ski it two more times so that I’d learn ice.
On Thanksgiving Day I skied the Cornice at Mammoth, dreaded for its ten- to fifteen-foot lip hanging over the run. It was treacherous dropping in, intermittently airborne while slicing across the wind-buffed overhang. According to my dad it was good for me so we skied it all day.
On the drive home my dad was suffering from the malaria he had contracted while working for Project India back in the ’50s. It often made him feel drowsy and he told me he was going to rest one eye. As I had done several times before, I took the wheel while his foot kept even pressure on the pedal. If a car appeared up ahead I was to wake him up even though he was supposedly just resting one eye. It never struck me as dangerous. In fact it seemed like a good deal because when he woke from his catnap he always felt fantastic and I was always proud to share the load.
I finished my homework just in time to watch All in the Family. My mom cooked steak, serving it with brown rice and salad with walnuts and avocados. Nick came home and interrupted our show so he could watch some news special. He ate his steak with both hands and shoveled down the rice with the large serving spoon.
Near the end of the special he turned to me.
Stop chomping your food, he said.
I slowed my chewing and made sure to keep my mouth closed so no sounds would escape. During the first commercial Nick recited an article he had read about manners and how if they weren’t learned young they became an embarrassing indiscretion when you got older.
No more eating with your hands or chomping your food, he declared.
Look at you, Nick, said my mom.
I’m talking about Norman. Don’t make excuses for him.
Where do you think he gets his bad habits?
You’re right, he said. But now it’s time to get control of the situation.