The Ruins of California (33 page)

“Where are you applying to college?” Carol asked in a matter-of-fact way.

I shrugged. I hadn’t really thought about it yet, I said.

“Don’t you have to apply in a few months?” She seemed troubled, almost stepmotherish.

“I guess so.”

“Paul, haven’t you taken her around to see some schools?”

“I was hoping,” he said, “she’d want to go to Berkeley.”

“Well, that’s pretty hard to get into,” Carol responded with a whiff of disapproval. “You’ll have to broaden your— But didn’t you
teach there, Paul? Still, I don’t think you can pull strings at a
state university
. I suppose you’d be close by, though,” she said, turning to me again. “Wouldn’t you?”

Was it a sign of parental neglect or healthy lack of pressure that we’d never discussed college? I assumed the wind would blow me someplace, the way it always had. Shelley was planning to go to art school in Rhode Island somewhere. But Berkeley? It was definitely too far away from David.

“Carol is so pushy,” my father said once we were tucked inside his little Alfa Romeo and pulling away from Union Square. “Can you believe all that grilling about college? Hard to get in.
Give me a break!
She doesn’t know how smart you are.”

I nodded, but inside I was thinking,
A year from now, David and I will be married. And we’ll be living on our own compound in Molokai.

“I think you’d like Berkeley,” my father continued. “I really do. Hey, that’s an idea. Should we cruise over there now and check it out? Let’s do it!”

But Berkeley seemed shabby and uninviting and even seedier than North Beach. The campus was empty, and the only people on the streets were winos and druggies and scowling Vietnam vets in wheelchairs. “Doesn’t look like much in the summer,” my father said. “Not too many kids around.” Then we picked up a local paper, checked the movie listings, and trotted off to see
Star Wars.
Afterward, inspired by the movie, we loaded up his pipe and took a few hits in the car. I held the smoke in my lungs for a long time, and he was watching me carefully, seemed to hesitate—but plunged in anyway.

“I hope you’re not buying dope on the street, Inez.” He was trying to seem casual when he said it, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling that way. “Don’t be that stupid, okay? There could be angel
dust or God-only-knows-what-else in it. Pesticides and all kinds of poisonous stuff.”

I shrugged, blew out the smoke, and said, “I’ve never bought anything, ever.”

“Where does Shelley get her stash?”

“Some guy. I don’t know. From her old school.”

He sent me back to Van Dale a few days later with a plastic Baggie of sticky marijuana buds. “I’d feel a lot better if you smoked this and not Shelley’s,” he said with a vulnerable smile. A few weeks later, when school started, he asked me on the phone, “How’s your supply? Do you and Shelley need any more?”

M
y birthday that year brought the usual greetings and celebration, trumped by a Rolex watch that my father sent, which—like the Nikon camera, and the MG before it, and perhaps the bag of dope—was way too much of a good thing for a young girl. The watch was nice, and a surprise, but most of my memories of the day are about waiting for a package to come from Hawaii—or a phone call, or something. With each minute that passed, from the moment I woke up in bed, I felt a growing dread. Each minute ticked by and seemed to steal something from me, a pint of blood, a piece of heart. A faith and hopefulness that I’d never regain. When a long cardboard box came with a bunch of waxy tropical flowers in reds and pinks with long yellow pistils, my heart raced with excitement until I read the little white card.

I’d never felt such piercing sorrow. How had I sunk into such unhappiness? Just months before, I’d been a carefree girl in a sports car, driving from party to party, a tease, a public temptation. I bounced out of bed, sang in the shower, merrily dressed in one of my thrift-shop outfits, passed notes to Shelley in class, snuck off to smoke a cigarette. I was always laughing, always having fun.

The race to love was sweet, but the arrival miserable. My feelings were fizzy and out of control—lifting and plummeting. Love had made me more sensitive and expressive and almost manic, but also pathetic and dramatic, narcissistic and so confused. Love didn’t seem governed by laws that I was familiar with—or had encountered before—but ruled by magic and spells and wishes made on shooting stars. By the time the news came, I was almost ready for it.

David had decided to stay in Hawaii—and not return to Caltech. My father was the first person I called. “Dad,” I whined, “he’s not coming back this year.”

“Oh.”

“He’s designed a board. He says it’s called ‘windsurfing’ now, and his family gave him some money to make a bunch of boards and sell them.”

“He’s starting a business?”

“Yeah, with a big-name professional surfer and all that.”

“Good for him,” my father said. “Academia is overrated. And anyway, he’ll be good at making money. He’s got those Jap genes.”

“Dad.”

“But you must be sad. Are you?”

“I am. I guess. But not as much as I thought I’d be.” Just a summer of being in love with David and waiting for a letter, for a call, for anything, had exhausted me. The downsides of romance—and
this new thing, sex—were hard to ignore. I’d spent an entire day waiting in the We Care Clinic for a doctor to give me a prescription for birth control pills. And after a few weeks of taking them, my face had broken out, I’d gained eight pounds, and I had no energy for anything, even getting out of bed.

“It’s like having another job,” I said, “this whole love thing.”

“Oh, that’s a funny observation,” my father said. “You mean because it’s so all-consuming? It does seem to absorb a great deal of time. But I like that part—all the hours spent thinking about the person, and daydreaming, and wishing, and aching to be together. And then imagining that they’re thinking about you. The beginning of an affair is so wonderful.”

“Not for me.” The bladder infection I’d gotten after David left wasn’t so wonderful, and how the bedsheets had been dotted with weird wet spots and gunk and scary blood, and then the constant stream of erotic thoughts that had bubbled up afterward, like lava after a volcanic eruption. “My whole summer was wasted thinking about him. Down the drain.”

“Oh, don’t say that! Not wasted. Think of all the things you know about now. And all the new feelings you’ve had. It gets easier—I promise. After the first few tries at love, you’ll start to know what to expect. Then it will be more manageable and fun. And you learn so much! There’s nothing like meeting somebody new and waking up parts of yourself that you’d forgotten were there—or never knew you had. The onslaught of new feelings and new experiences you can have when you’re first in love…well, it’s unlike anything else. Just a few more times and you’ll get the hang of it. Really, love is like learning to drive. After a while you become accustomed to the new sensations and intense feelings, and they aren’t so scary anymore. You know those nightmares you used to
have about the Garter Belt Man? Well, it’s like that. At first they seemed real, and you were afraid. Right? Well, after you had a few of them, you started to realize it was the same dream—another Garter Belt Man dream! And he wasn’t really chasing you, and you weren’t going to die or anything. Falling in love is kind of like that. The fear is only in your mind. You’re afraid of being hurt, afraid of losing control. Afraid of change, newness, all the overwhelming sensations you’re having. Right? But it’s really nothing more than your own fears you’re battling and getting used to. And after a while, after a few times, you can enjoy it, almost like an amusement-park ride, without much anxiety. The uncertainties that cause anxiety go away. Well, I guess they don’t go away completely, all those feelings, but somehow you learn to enjoy having them.”

“That’s what I’d like. No anxiety.”

“Well, I can’t blame you. He forgot your birthday and all that. Not a great sign, in any case, that David deserves you. Even if the sex was great. But isn’t it interesting how the heart repairs itself? How you could be so in love with David and now be okay that he’s not coming back?”

“I didn’t say I was okay—”

“Oh, you’re great. You’re fine! And there’s really no reason you can’t stay friends with him. Once you love somebody, there’s no reason to turn him into a monster—just to help yourself get over it. I’ve always tried very hard to keep people in my life. It’s the civilized thing to do.”

But two months later, when my mother and Bob eloped, my father didn’t sound so civilized after I broke the news.

“Vegas?”
he asked. “You’re kidding.”

“No.” I decided not to elaborate—or tell him that my mother and Bob had called from the Riviera Hotel, where they’d gotten a
giant suite. Bob sounded like the same old Bob. No change. But my mother’s voice was light and soft, not hysterical or loud or anything, just a little sad. Then again, maybe that was me.

“She hates Vegas,” my father growled.

“They just wanted to get it over with,” I said. “Isn’t that funny?”

“No, I don’t think it’s funny,” he said. “I can’t imagine anybody being so stupid.”

That was November. It wasn’t until a couple months later, after the holidays, that anybody noticed my college applications were long overdue.

SEVENTEEN

Haleiwa

T
he arrival of a camera in my life, one of many unasked-for gifts from my Dad, had preceded any passion for using it. But once I’d discovered that I was good at taking pictures—people said I was a born photographer the way they’d said my mother was a born dancer—it went everywhere with me, kept snug in a leather case that hung over my shoulder. If I left it behind, or had the wrong film, and came across something beautiful or haunting or strange—the flicker of a transient, one-of-a-kind image—I felt miserable and sad. Something rare and wondrous had slipped by, undocumented. An opportunity lost.

Taking pictures never felt like a defense against life or a nervous habit to distract me—something to do with my hands, or with myself, like smoking. It didn’t lessen my exposure to life, only enhanced it. When I was among people who made me uncomfortable or in a landscape too unfamiliar, it was almost impossible for me to take a picture. The photographer in me was shy, I suppose, and liked to hide. But the beauty of the world beguiled me, pulled me
out. It charmed and tantalized my hesitant side, and the lover of surface and texture. The camera encouraged me, drew me out. It taught me how to seize a moment. It banged against my ribs and reminded me to engage. Even so, my pictures were of buildings and signs in those days—things just beginning to decay—and sometimes of people looking away.

H
awaii seemed simple at first, and obvious, an oasis of clear blue water and yellow sand and salty breezes. On the tarmac of the Honolulu airport, the soft air surrounded me with a veil of sweetness, almost as if infused with syrup. Inside the airport there were refrigerated glass cases of bright plumeria leis to welcome bus charters, church groups, families on holiday, hordes of pale tourists in untropical clothes who seemed in dire need of transformation. By the time I reached baggage claim and found my two large duffel bags, so heavy I could barely lift them, I was dizzy and disoriented, intoxicated by the air and smells and colors and the sense of weightless removal from all cares of the world.

At a small terminal for private planes, I was met by a young pilot named Billy who had blond hair and an eastern accent—he was from Queens, it turned out. The Yamatos had hired him to bring me to the island of Molokai in a small four-seater Cessna. Billy was good-natured and smiled a lot, and he lifted my heavy duffel bags into the backseat of the plane without a groan or remark. I sat in front and watched him pull levers and flip switches and listen to incomprehensible airport chatter on the crackling radio. Our tiny plane ascended, rising beyond the blue sky and into a lingering mass of heavy gray clouds. It was raining below us and around us. The small plane continued on, weaving around the weather. I
wasn’t afraid. I rarely was in those days—youth’s armor against a big horizon, I suppose. The flight seemed no more dangerous to me than a ride at Disneyland or speeding along Pacific Coast Highway in the MG.

At my father’s urging, I had remained friends with David Yamato. A handful of letters had traveled back and forth between us over the year, and a few phone calls. Even though he’d invited me to visit the family compound on Molokai when he’d learned that I was coming to see Whitman, my conversations with David never dipped below surface cheer. He’d disappointed me, and I didn’t want him to have that chance again. So we’d established a vague and undefined alliance of being not lovers and not quite just friends. We fell somewhere in the middle, a location that my father claimed was the very best spot for me and David and, in fact, for all future David Yamatos in my life.

“Nobody is ever just a friend,” my father counseled, “and nobody is ever just a lover. It’s best to refrain from making those sorts of crude distinctions.”