The Tribes of Palos Verdes (16 page)

I interrupt again, impatient. “How far away is the wave?”

“Twenty yards away, it's loud like thunder, coming really fast. You better start paddling.”

He goes on, getting excited now, telling me I've got to paddle like I've never paddled before. “Hurry, faster, you're gonna miss it.”

I pull on the rubber as hard as I can, imagining the wave setting up. I kick with my legs, furious, grabbing on to the side of the crate like it's a rail, feeling the swoosh and motion, hearing rocks tumble in the surf.

I push up with my arms, letting go of the bungees, rising on my feet, awash in the moment. I flail around with my arms, swatting at the hot garage air, hanging ten on the crate until it topples.

“I could see the wave,” Jim says, eyes shining. “I could really see it.”

At midnight I'm on the phone, telling Adrian about the paddle machine. He says he wishes he could see it, but we should go to Manhattan Beach where we can ride real swells.

I tell him if we go we have to take my brother.

“He'll like you, once he meets you,” I say uncertainly. “I'm sure of it.”

*   *   *

A moth bats softly against the kitchen window, trapped. My mother crushes it with a newspaper.

“I hate those things,” she says, sighing.

Jim glowers at his breakfast as I try to chew sausage in the rotten air. I'm telling him about the clean water in Manhattan Beach, how the three of us can sneak away and surf there.

“I thought it was going to be you and me now,” he says.

He gets angrier by the second, looking out at the water, muttering and holding his nose. When I spear a last piece of egg, Jim knocks the fork out of my hand.

“Just because your Val boyfriend has a car doesn't mean it's okay to betray everybody.”

“You can come, too,” I say, flushing. “There isn't a
real
law against going to other beaches.”

“Trolls, dickheads, fags, idiots. That's who's at other beaches,” Jim says.

“If your brother doesn't want to go,” my mother says quietly, “I'm sure he has good reason.”

Jim cackles, a disturbing sound that causes my mother to look up from her plate and say, “Jim, come on, don't, please?”

As she chews a rasher of meat, we all swallow, looking at each other. Jim stabs the table with the tines of his fork, telling me I'm a traitor.

“Please don't go with that guy,” he says, blinking.

My mother eats and chews angrily, looking at us, back and forth like a tennis match. My brother pops his knuckles, his throat moving, a puff of hostile
sssss
sounds coming out. I waver at the door, torn.

My mother smiles at Jim, holding out her hands to be touched, baiting like a sport fisherman, reeling, catching. Telling him how much she appreciates his loyalty to his friends.

“And to me,” she adds quickly.

As a reward, she opens her purse and hands him forty dollars.

He gathers up the money in his hands and then lies down on the floor, shaking with sobs, a strange froggy croak erupting from his throat. My mother moves close, getting down on the carpet with him.

A single cloud covers the sun, coming from nowhere. We both move even closer to him. I speak first.

“Okay, I'll stay with you. We can rent movies, maybe
Jaws
…”

I smile at him, whispering the
Jaws
music: da nuh, da nuh, da nuh.

I try to laugh, but it's too dry. I need water.

*   *   *

It's hot and crowded at Marineland. The air smells like fish and burnt cotton candy sugar.

I'm with Adrian waiting for the dolphin show to start because Adrian's writing a paper on dolphins for his science class. We're here to study how they live in captivity.

Sunburnt kids are throwing greasy popcorn into the murky water, hoping to lure fish to the top of the tank. Instead, shrieking, overfed seagulls swoop low, fighting over the morsels, mauling each other with their sharp orange beaks.

People clap when the trainer comes out from behind a white wall, wearing a tuxedo wet suit. A chute opens and the first dolphin swims out. He's wearing a plastic chef's hat, Velcroed around his head with a white plastic strap. The dolphin circles the small tank quickly before picking a piece of fish out of the trainer's hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it's Bobo, the gourmet dolphin!”

The trainer explains that dolphins aren't usually finicky eaters, but Bobo is an exception. He's used to hand-fed mackerel meal, enriched with vitamins.

Everyone laughs except Adrian, who writes something down on a pad of paper, shaking his head. Next, three more dolphins swim out, jumping over high ropes and getting pieces of smelly tuna as a reward. Then loud, jazzy music comes on, and the trainer reappears riding two dolphins around the tank like skis, waving to the crowd.

That's when Adrian stands up to leave.

On the way out, we have to stop at the souvenir stand to get our parking stub validated. There's a huge inflatable killer whale hanging from the ceiling; blown glass dolphins and fuzzy sea lions are neatly lined up on the shelves.

“Do you want me to buy you something?” Adrian asks. “Isn't that what boyfriends are supposed to do?”

“Are you my boyfriend?” I ask, freezing in place, not looking at him.

“Of course.” He smiles. “If it's okay with you.”

I squeeze his fingers. “I already told everyone you were.”

We drive to Menlo Park, high above the bluffs where you can barely smell the red tide. I'm eating Kraft Parmesan Cheese out of the green metallic can, spilling a few grains into my palm, then licking them off. Adrian's writing something on his pad of paper, but he looks up when I shake the can again.

“Do you think this is gross?” I ask, wiping my hand on the grass before I pour more cheese into it. Adrian thinks for a moment, and says it's not half as gross as a dolphin wearing a hat. Then he writes again.

“Jim loves dolphins,” I say carefully, telling Adrian about my brother's book on dolphins and whales.

Adrian puts down his pad of paper. He lifts an eyebrow and shifts position. “He doesn't seem like the type who would care about animals.”

I tell Adrian that Jim isn't easy to explain.

“You two aren't anything alike,” Adrian persists. “I don't see how you could be so close.”

I tell Adrian he's wrong. Then I tell him he wouldn't understand about twins since he's an only child. I explain that Jim and I are closer than anyone else, and we always will be.

Instead of getting mad, Adrian lies down in the grass, massaging his temples as if he has a headache. Then he tells me he used to wish he had a sister, but Ava never wanted any more kids. I remind him about what'll happen if Ava marries my father.

We look at each other, scared. Then he wags his eyebrows, rubbing his hands together, perverted.

“Incest
is
best,” he says, pulling me into his lap, tickling me.

Then we're laughing so hard I almost pee.

*   *   *

“I told you your father wants to forget all about us,” my mother says later, when he misses his scheduled call that night. “Maybe he'll just stay in France.”

“He's flying back in August,” I say, looking at Jim, prodding him.

“I'll bet he travels first class,” my mother says.

After dinner, I watch Jim staring into space, flying his hand in the air like an airplane. Our dog Puggles is in his lap, snoring. I see the phone off the hook, knocked under the cushions.

“Look! Puggles knocked over the phone again. I bet Dad did try to call, but he couldn't get through.”

Jim crashes his hand into the carpet.

“It doesn't matter anyway. The divorce is final in two weeks. He probably won't want to talk to me anymore because he's got a new son now.”

*   *   *

South-facing homes like ours are the worst hit. As the tide thickens, more and more neighbors begin to evacuate their dream homes. They pack luggage with the essentials—tennis gear and sun oil—then head off to points south, Mazatlàn or Cabo.

They go in groups, the Weatherbys with the Cuttings and Snells. The Jewish families go together. A few families go to their second homes in Newport Beach.

The kids go reluctantly.

“Mom, I don't want to go to Mexico. It's so boring there, and you and Dad always get sunburned and complain about the food. Besides there's no surf in Cabo. Nothing for us to do.”

But anything is better than the stench of rotting fish and the closing of the tennis club. The families arrange to meet each other for drinks at a new resort, to have a tennis game and a glass or two of chardonnay.

“The Playa has a good wine list. The best in Mexico—we'll meet there. We'll make do, even have some fun. We'll survive—Olé!”

*   *   *

“We're alone on Via Neve, practically,” I report a few days later. “Even the Grahams are gone.”

“Well I'm glad they're gone, let them find someone else to gossip about,” my mother says, turning to Jim. She puts her arm around him, squeezing tight. He stands stiff, not looking at her.

“That family at Donner Pass ate each other when they were trapped.”

“Jim,” my mother says, “don't joke like that. Make us a sandwich. There's turkey and mayo.”

Fire

 

 

A brush fire starts at ten o'clock in the tall, dry grass of Gull Hill. Fire engine sirens echo from the rocks, red and blue lights reflect off the water, people and peacocks scream in the dark.

The barren hillside is gone in twenty minutes, orange licks of flame jumping from tree to tree like monkey tails. Even in the fog, columns of smoke are visible, rising, funneling darkly away.

Jim is alone on the curb in front of the house when I run down the driveway. He is smiling for the first time in days.

“Look at it go!”

“I'm scared; what if it comes here?” I say.

He puts my head on his shoulder, brushing the ash and smoke from my hair, reassuring me.

“Fire and water don't mix, stupid.”

A breeze comes up, and we hold our noses, nauseated by the smell of red tide.

“It's so beautiful,” he says, choking. “Doesn't it look like a wave?”

*   *   *

At midnight I lie on the bed with a wet towel over my face, trying to keep the smells out. Small dark shapes dart by, disappearing under the rocks on the cliffside. When the phone rings, I jump to grab it before my mother does.

“Wow,” Adrian says. “Are you okay?”

“Cats are running around like crazy.”

“It's arson,” Adrian says. “They found matches and stuff in the glen. The cops are swarming the place. Marge Paxton is on TV.”

When I run to the living room looking for Jim, I see Marge Paxton on TV, being interviewed by a pretty newscaster. The camera is zooming in on the fires and then on her face.

The newscaster says, “I'm here live, in the exclusive, gated community of Palos Verdes, with Marge Paxton, home owner.”

Marge bursts in. “First that tide, then this fire; what's next? The locusts?” She sweeps her pageboy to the side, looks angrily into the camera, and speaks. “Whoever did this, I hope you're happy.”

Jim laughs when she says this.

“No you don't,” he says. “You hope they'll die.”

*   *   *

My mother doesn't care about the fires or the tide.

Money. That's what she's talking about tonight. Piles of money stretching out to the water, oceans of bills that will float to Dr. Phil Mason.

All day we've been watching local news interviews with wealthy Palos Verdes families. My mother is indignant about the beautiful interior of Mrs. Paxton's house. She lists the prices of the Paxtons' antiques and rugs as the camera pans through their living room.

“It looks just like your father's house,” she says. “He spent plenty on that fancy designer from England. He never let
me
buy nice things for
this
house.”

She says she's tired of being poor, Jim deserves better. She hums softly.

“Don't worry, sweetheart, I have a good plan,” she tells Jim, “and your father isn't here to stop me.”

“Red Rover, Red Rover—send the catalogues right over. And row, row, row your boat upstream, Phil, because merrily, merrily we're going to buy a few things we need.”

“Shhhh,” Jim says, watching a citizen's fire-watch posse gather angrily in front of the bay. “Look. Even Mr. Chaplain is scared.”

“Maybe the arsonist will do us a favor and get your father's house next time.” My mother stretches, sprays a little cheese from a can onto her potato chips.

“Then he'd be poor, and we'd have to move for sure,” I say, glaring at her.

“He'd get the insurance. Your father is very shrewd.”

“He's still the one paying for this house,” I insist, looking at Jim.

“Oh yes. He'll pay,” my mother promises.

When dinner is over, my mother tries to command my brother's attention.

“Look, Jim, we can buy nice things like everybody else's now.”

She spreads the cards out, picking one with her eyes closed. With American Express Platinum, she orders Godiva chocolates. With Mastercard she arranges on the telephone for the family portrait to be repainted. As her orders are accepted, she becomes more sure of herself, arrogant even, hurrying along the operator.

“UPS it, Fed Ex it, next-day delivery. Send those things right over.” She laughs into the receiver. “Run, run, run as fast as you can.”

Mrs. Phil Mason the cards say. They say it in writing.

*   *   *

A family of hawks circles the black trees on the hill, diving near to the ground, looking for animals displaced by the fire. A few surfers, towel girls, and remaining mothers are there too, looking. Yellow police barriers crisscross the edge of the hill, people line up just behind them.