A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (14 page)

and almost run across the highway, to the entrance before pausing for Toph, and my thoughts, to catch up.
Is this okay?
I think this is okay.
This is not okay.
I know what to do, I know what is right. Is this right? This is fine.
This is fine.
Nude beach?
Fine. Nude beach. Nude beach.
We walk to the entrance. A bearded man, sitting on a stool with a gray metal box on his lap, wants ten dollars, each, to enter.

“
Is he ten dollars, too?
”
I ask, indicating the eight-year-old boy next to me, wearing a Cal sweatshirt and a Cal baseball hat, worn backward.

“
Yes,
”
the bearded man says.

I glance beyond the bearded man, down the cliff, trying to catch a glimpse of the beach below, trying to see if it
’
s worth it.
Twenty dollars!
For ten dollars there had better be some very impressive nude women down there—and not just life-drawing-class nude women. This is okay. This is educational. It
’
s natural.
We
’
re in California! All is new! No rules! The future!

I
’
m almost convinced. I step over to the bearded man, out of Toph
’
s earshot, and try to get the lowdown.

“
So like, are kids allowed down there?
”

“
Of course.
”

“
But, is it like...
weird?
”

“
Weird?
What about it would be weird?
”

“
You know, for a little kid? Is it too much?
”

“
Too much of what? Of the
human body?
”
He says it in a way that
’
s meant to make
me
seem like the freak, he Mr. Natural and me some kind of clothes fascist.

“
Never mind,
”
I say. Stupid beach—probably just a bunch of naked guys with beards, bony and pale.

We run back across the highway, back into the red Civic and keep driving. Past the surfers, through the eucalyptus forest before Half Moon Bay, birds swooping up and over then back, circling around us—they too, for us!—then the cliffs before Seaside—then flat for a little while, then a few more bends and can you see this motherfucking sky? I mean, have you fucking
been
to California?

We left Chicago in a blur. We sold most of the stuff in the house, the stuff we didn
’
t want to move with, had this busy little woman come in and price everything, to tell the appropriate people about it—she apparently has a mailing list of devout shoppers, enthusiasts of possessions of the recently dead—about the estate sale for 924 Waveland, and then we got out of the way. When they were done just about everything was gone, and we picked through the
remains—some of Toph
’
s old He-Man dolls, some coffee mugs, random pieces of silverware. We packed up the things we had saved—quite a lot, actually, sixty boxes maybe—and the things that hadn
’
t sold, put them all on a truck and now all of it sits in our Spruce Street sublets low-slung garage. Bill kept Mom
’
s car, sold it, Beth sold Dad
’
s car and bought a Jeep, and I made the rest of the payments on the Civic that Dad and I had bought together, just before, so I could
get
home on the weekends.

In Berkeley we
’
re living with Beth, and her best friend Katie—also an orphan, both gone by the time she was twelve— and my girlfriend Kirsten, who always wanted to live in California and so came out, too. Between the five of us there was only one parent still living—Kirsten
’
s mother—and so at first we were smug about our independence; we orphans would surely re-create domestic life, from scratch, without precedent. It seemed like a great idea, all of us in the house together—just like college! like a commune! sharing the babysitting, the cleaning, the cooking! Big meals together, parties, joy!—for at least three or four days, after which it became obvious, for all the obvious reasons, that it was not at all a good idea. We are all vibrating with the stress of the sundry adjustments, new schools and jobs, and we all quickly begin to snip and snap and complain about whose newspapers are whose, who should know not to buy granular dishwasher detergent, doesn
’
t everyone know such things my God. Kirsten, with student loans to pay and little savings, is trying frantically to
get
a job, but has no car. And she won
’
t let me pay her portion of the rent—

“
I can pay it, don
’
t worry about it.
”

“
I
’
m not letting you pay
it.
”

“
The martyr rides again!
”

even though I can pay it, she won
’
t allow things to be easy, even for the summer. So I drive her to the BART in the morning, on the way to taking Toph to camp, and together Kirsten and I twitch and jiggle with tension, looking for reasons to attack, explode, let
it go, not knowing if we
’
ll be living together in the fall, if we
’
ll have jobs by the fall, if we
’
ll even still be in love in the fall. The house amplifies our problems, its alliances—Toph and I, Katie and Beth, Beth and Kirsten and Katie—and resulting skirmishes making the place claustrophic, even with the view, and generally putting a damper on the fun Toph and I are trying desperately to create.

For example, we soon discover that, because the floors of the house are wood, and the house sparsely furnished, there are at least two ideal runways for sock sliding. The best is the back-deck-to-stairway run (fig. 1), which allows, with only a modest running start, one to glide easily thirty feet, all the way to the stairs leading to the lower floor, the first half of which can be jumped, provided one is prepared to drop and shoulder-roll upon hitting the landing, which, if
“
stuck,
”
should be punctuated with a Mary Lou Retton arm-raise and back-arch. Yes! America!

Our best trick, though, is to pretend, for the benefit of the neighbors and who-ever
’
s around, that I
’
m beating Toph with a belt. This is how: with the back deck door open, we stand in the living room and then, with the belt buckled into a circle, I yank it quickly on either end, snapping it taut and making a sound not unlike that produced if I were striking Toph
’
s bare legs at full force. When it cracks, Toph squeals like a pig.

BELT: Whack!

toph: (Squeal!)

ME: How does that feel, kid?

toph: I
’
m sorry, I
’
m sorry! Ill never do it again!

ME: Yeah? You
’
ll never walk again!

BELT: Whack!

(Squeal), etc.

It
’
s great fun. We are attacking California, Toph and I, devour
ing what we can before the fall comes and hems us in, and so while Beth and Katie do whatever they do, and Kirsten does job interviews, Toph and I drive down to Telegraph and look at the weirdos. We walk around the campus searching for the Naked Guy, or tie-dye people, or Hare Krishnas, Jews for Jesus, for the topless women who walk around, daring people to complain, who troll for TV cameras and cops issuing unfair citations. We see no breasts, and never find the Naked Guy, but one day we do see the Naked Older Man, gray-bearded, chatting casually on a pay phone, naked but for flip-flops. We eat at Fat Slice, maybe drive down to the Berkeley Marina, and, at the park at the end of the jetty, green and hilly and right there in the middle of the Bay practically, we take out the bats and mitts, a football and a frisbee, always in the car, all of it, and we throw things and roll around. There are errands, groceries and bad haircuts to
get,
and then the slow, quiet nights, no TV in the house, and then bed, where we read, talk on his little bed—
“
Its weird, already I can hardly remember them,
”
he says one night, the words burning and unstoppable, and then has to sit through an hour of pictures and Remember? Remember? See, you remember, of course you do—and then Kirsten and I sleep in a room overlooking everything, the same view as the living room and porch above, with Beth next door and Toph sleeping— he sleeps like a dream; two, three minutes and he
’
s out—in a makeshift home for him we
’
ve made, with a curtain and a futon, out of the area between our bedrooms.

We
get
to Montara, the beach, and park above it, next to a van, behind which a blond man is taking off a rubber suit. We
get
our stuff and walk down, from above the cliff to below, on a set of rickety steps, the Pacific cheering heartily for us.

Look at us, lying parallel, he with his shirt on, embarrassed to take it off. This is us talking:

“
Are you bored?
”
“
Yeah,
”
he says.
“
Why?
”

“
Because you
’
re just lying there.
”
“
Well, I
’
m tired.
”
“
Well, I
’
m bored.
”

“
Why don
’
t you go down and build a sand castle?
”
“
Where?
”

“
Down there, by the water.
”
“
Why?
”

“
Because it
’
s fun.
”
“
How much do I get?
”

“
What do you mean, how much do you get?
”
“
Mom used to pay me.
”
“
To build a sand castle?
”
“
Yeah.
”

I pause to think. I am slow.
“
Why?
”
“
Because.
”
“
Because why?
”
“
I don
’
t know.
”

“
How much did she give you?
”
“
A dollar.
”
“
That
’
s crazy.
”
“
Why?
”

“
Pay you to play in the sand? Forget it. You won
’
t play in the sand unless I pay you?
”

“
I don
’
t know. I might.
”

The ocean is too cold, and the drop-off too steep, and the undertow too strong to allow for swimming. We are sitting, watching the water and foam run madly through our moats and tunnels. He
is not the best swimmer, and the waves hit the shore hard, and I get a flash— I
’
m watching another Toph drowning, twenty feet out. He got pulled out, into the maw, the wave came in and scooped him and—that fucking undertow. I run and jump and swim like a miracle to get him—I was on a swim team! I can swim and dive, fast and strong!—but am too late—I go under again and again but it
’
s all gray, the sand churning, swirling, the water hazy, and then it
’
s too late—he
’
s been pulled hundreds of feet out by now... when I come up for air I can see his little arm, tan and thin, one last wave and... Gone! We should not swim here, ever—

“
Hey.
”

We can swim in pools—

“
Hey.
”

“
What, what?
”

“
What
’
s the deal with your nipples?
”
he asks.

“
What do you mean?
”

“
Well, they sort of stick out.
”

I look him in the eye.

“
Toph, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you about my nipples. I want to tell you about my nipples, and generally about the nipples of the men in our family. Because someday, son [I do this thing, and he does this thing, where I call him son and he calls me dad, when we are having funny father-son-type chats, mocking them in a way while also being secretly, deeply queasy about using these terms], someday my nipples will be your nipples. Someday you too will have nipples that protrude unnaturally far from your chest, and which will harden at the slightest provocation, preventing you from wearing anything but the heaviest cotton T-shirts.
”