Mother

I called from the laundry matt in the center of Los Gatos.

“It would only be for a night or so,” I explained. “You know how Daddy is, he’ll let me back in later.” I leaned against the coin machine looking out the window to the small city park as I talked to her. There were mothers on park benches chatting while their kids chased after birds and crawled on the grass.
“Just like that – he locked you out?” she said. I imagined her shaking her head as if she would never do such a thing, even though she'd kicked Deney out at seventeen.

The laundry mat was empty but bright like a hospital. There was something about the place that calmed me. Maybe it was the order, the cleanliness. Maybe just the lingering warmth from the dryers.

“I don’t think he’s taking his meds,” I said. I picked up an old copy of Ladies Home Journal and flipped through it while I waited for her to say yes to letting me stay at her apartment. If Rachel was in town I would have called her up, but no one was sure exactly where she was – perhaps someplace in Central America. Being lost, out-of-reach was exactly what Rachel wanted when she left six months ago.

“Sure,” she said then added, “Debbie and Latika live here now, you know.”
“I know that,” I said. She’d been complaining about Debbie and the way she didn't take care of her daughter properly ever since she’d moved: Debbie left the milk out. Debbie wiped the floor with the same papertowel that she’d wiped the baby’s milk cup. Debbie took a shower for fifteen whole minutes. Can you believe that?

I felt for Debbie. I too liked a good long soothing shower just letting the hot water run over me, filling every square foot of the bathroom with a mildew producing steam, zoning out not wanting to start the day.
“It’ll only be for a couple of nights. I’m sure. I’ll just sleep on the couch.”
“If you like. Or, you can sleep with me.”
“That’s okay, the couch is good,” I said. I thought our old yellow couch from the good room that we were never to sit in as kids, would be just fine.

“Debbie! Debbie!” she hollered into the phone. I held the headset away from my ear but I could still hear her telling Debbie to watch Latika. And Debbie’s calm, unriled response, “Carol, she’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Rachel’s voice said Don’t do this. Don’t move in there. Rachel stayed with my mother to save for her trip to Central America. A arrangement that ended abruptly.

"I just can't take the hypocrisy" Rachel had said.
"The hypocrisy of what?" I asked. It sounded like a phrase she'd picked up somewhere. I don't know where exactly.
She’d called me from San Jose airport saying I could use her car until she got back and that our family was totally fucked.
“What happened?” I asked but I didn’t really need specifics.
“You know all the stuff with Deney and her cheating on Daddy.”
“Oh that. Do you think she really cheated on Daddy?”
We’d sometimes theorized that Rachel was my mother’s love child. She was the only that had a pet names. She was Sweetie, Honey, Pumpkin. Deney didn’t get talked to at all. Sometimes Fraser got called the dog’s name, but that didn’t really count.
We had this conversation often and everywhere: in supermarkets, waiting for buses, in line for a movie. It seemed normal to us, but often I wondered did other families talk like this.

“I gotta go. Don’t smash the car, please,” Rachel had said.
I made a half-hearted attempt to explain that our family was as messed up as everyone else’s family.
“What about Elizabeth’s?” she said. “I just want out of here. That’s all. I just need to get away,” she said. It seemed like she’d been saying this ever since she was a kid.

After I hung up with Rachel, I 'd tried to think of a few messed up things about Elizabeth’s family but there didn't seem that much. There were things that bugged Elizabeth, like her mother constantly calling her Liz even though she’d told her not to; or her father working too much in the fashion business; or her sister Rebecca getting passed over for roles on Broadway because she was overweight. And Elizabeth's father making her live in Manhattan and take over his fashion business.

But was it really fucked?

“When will you get here?” my mother asked. “I’ve got stuff to do. I can’t be waiting around all day to let you in.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked. I was curious really. I wanted to know how she spent her days since AMD laid her off. Was it wrong for daughter to ask her mother what she had on her plate for the day.
“Stuff, Emily. Just stuff, I need to take care of some stuff and can’t put off waiting around to let you in. Okay.”
I thought maybe she hadn’t much to do but who was I to have any say, really. Or maybe she was going to meet her sometimes boyfriend Ashok or drive by his house and to catch him with his wife and baby.

Don’t do this.

But I really didn’t have any options. There was a youth hostel somewhere in town, up in the hills. I could stay there until my father took his medication and reached a more stable, and charitable equilibrium. Rachel had camped out in the hostel after her last nannying job came to another explosive ending. She’d met a group of girls like her, on their way somewhere else -- heading up to Mendocino, or down to Baja – going somewhere other than where they were. Piper and Audrey. She got into mushrooms, vegetarianism, long flowing skirts, and hair braids.

“I’ll take the bus over then,” I told my mother “Thanks.”
“Sure, that’s fine,” she said. I could tell she was put out. But there was something in her voice too – or maybe I was just reading into it – that she really wanted to help me out. So it was settled. I would move on to my mother’s apartment. I leaned against the coin changer and stared at the the park outside of the laundry mat. There were kids running across the grass with their hands out wide chasing pidgeons. Mother’s hovering close by ready if they should fall. And when one little fat one tipped over and the mother rushed to scoop it up, felt so black, so damn depressed, that I picked up the receiver and dialed Elizabeth in Dallas.

The sound of the dial tone produced in me a sensation that was probably what drunks felt when they stepped into a bar and heard the clink of glasses. I felt the dreariness of the world disappear and a simple beautiful clarity take its place. And as I waited for her to pickup I felt how thin, how very fragile the line dividing these two states was.
“Elizabeth?” I said when I heard her answer.
“Emily?” she said, “Is this the one and only Emily?” She had a lovely sing-song lilt to her voice that sometimes made me feel that there were two meanings to everything she said.
“The one,” I said. I tried to add a little dramatic tone to my voice just so she wouldn’t think I was taking her too seriously. I could hear her answering the phone from any one of our friends from college and calling them the “one”. But still it warmed me to hear her say it.
“Hang on a second, will you, Em. Honu is beckoning,” she said. She coved the receiver but I could still hear her shouting to her mother, somewhere in their rambling Dallas house.

I guessed she was lying in her bed, her down comforter puffing all around her like she was the center of some fluffy meringue dessert. I saw her room with everything in its perfect place – slippers by the foot of her bed, the box of tissues on the night table, her dressing table with the art deco lamp the one with the bronze woman holding the glowing orb that she had shipped to Santa Barbara. Her Oscar de Laurenta lotions and purfume. Maybe a cup of tea next to her bed out of place – the teabag smashed dry on a spoon that, Gloria, the maid would whisk away while Elizabeth shopped or her met a friend for a drink.

She came back on the line, “I may have to strangle her,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Dear Dad wants me to go with him to Italy in November to learn about the business of buying ugly fabric. But I don’t want to learn about the business. I don’t particularly like the business, Em. It’s old lady wear. Fat old lady wear. And Honu is set on taking me out shopping each and every day for sweaters, coats, scarves, gloves, ear muffs. You’d think I was going to Antarctica, not Florence, where – I remind Honu – they have a few clothing stores.” She put her hand over the phone muffling her voice again, but I could hear her still, “No, just capers”.
“You’re going to Florence? For how long?”
“I don’t know. A month. More. I don’t care. Tell me about you. Take me out of myself.”

It was a line from Brideshead Revisited and it saddened me to hear it now. Still it brought back a sudden flash of a memory. We were rolling on my bike down to the beach. Her arms wrapped around me. Late in the afternoon. She would have to get back soon. She always had to be somewhere. But we had an hour, maybe less. The ocean sparkled. Birds and wind swirled around us. “Take me out of myself,” she’d said.
“There’s nothing to tell. I’m a waitress and my dad has locked me out.’
“Em, that’s not good. That’s very bad.”
Keep it light. Do not go on. But sometimes I found the nerve to test her, just a little, see what she might do if I said something more serious. “I keep thinking about things…” I said.
“I do too,” she said.
“What things?”
“Everything. You, of course. John Joe too.”
The laundry mat came back into sharp focus. I watched a man in loose grey shorts that rode up between his legs when he walked shove everything from a canvas army bag inside a washer. He held a cigarette between his lips as he fished in his shorts for change.

“How is JohnJoe?” I asked.
“He’s the same. A Peter Pan, now in dental school.”
“Ah,” I said. I wanted the conversation back in our direction. But how to steer it there “What school?” I asked and wondered if she’d already told me.
“San Francisco. Just think, my two favorite people so close.”
“What a coincidence,” I said. I was losing interest in the conversation and found my eyes scanning the junk pinned to the cork board by the phone for a bus schedule. Someone had tacked up a piece of binder paper with a scrawled message: “Need a place to live. Prefer cottage with garden, own entrace . Own two dogs”. I noticed to the left of the want ad, someone else had a studio for rent: “Studio available, no dogs, smokers or unemployed. Hotplate.”

The dream and the reality, I thought.

“You know what I would like?” Elizabeth said. She was crunching food. I imagined Gloria slipping into her room quietly, setting a plate at Elizabeth’s side and Elizabeth mouthing Thank You, then pushing the capers across the surface of her bagel with a flick of her finger, until they were all evenly distributed.
“If you and JJ could be close.”
“Close? How close?” I asked.
“However close you wanted.”
“I think we’re close enough,” I said.
“I know, I was just thinking.”
“I see."
There was a silence between us while I pondered what exactly she was asking and she yawned.
“Will you write me a nice long letter,” she said. The letter writing suggestion, I'd ome to learn, meant she wanted off the phone.
“Yes, sure,” I said.
"Promise?"
"Yes."

I hung up and vowed not to call her for at least a week. I ripped off one of the pre-cut tabs with phone numbers for the small studio. Of the fifteen tabs seven had been torn off. I figured the sign maker had torn off a few to make the place seem more desirable.

I dialed the number and waited.

“Haylo,” a man answered. Something in his voice reminded me of suspenders, a shotgun leaning against a rocking chair on the porch.
“The studio, is it still available?”
“I suppose,” he said.
“Is that yes?”
“Well, I suppose it could be available,” he said. “I suppose it could be.”

My life in the supposedly available studio flashed before me. I saw myself heating Top Ramen on the hotplate, stirring the chicken flavoring that was clumping in globules of yellow paste. I saw the window -- if there was one -- steaming up. My clothes stacked in a milk crate, my Broken Egg clothes tossed in the corner, a futon on the floor, a postcard from Rachel taped to the wall, while the sound of the man’s voice on the phone to someone just like me – without direction or plans -- “I suppose the studio could be available. I suppose it could be.”
I hung up and went in search of a bus schedule.

part 5

I tapped on the door lightly with my key. I tried again harder. There was a doorbell but it hadn't worked since he'd moved in and he'd never had it fixed. But still I pushed it, once, twice, then held it down. I used the flat of my hand and smacked the the door again. It felt good, and I had to make myself stop.

Excessive noise at inappropriate hours, the HOA complaint would read.

I turned around to see if there were any shadows in windows from the other condos spying on me. Christ, was I becoming just like him suspicious and paranoid, thinking I was being observed behind curtains, imagining heads ducking out of view at the last second. The thing of it was, I'd probably stand behind a curtain and watch me, too. Just what did that say about me, I wondered.

Could he be hurt, possibly collapsed on the floor gasping for air? It was a possibility -- and one my mother might assume and therefore I should not -- but more likely, he was he tucked away in bed, his body a lump beneath the blankets, his balding head poking out beneath the covers, an empty packet of Pepperidge Farms Milano double-chocolate cookies on the night table next to SemiConductor weekly.

I smacked the door some more, "Daddy!" The word came out like a gasp, like a drowning person surfacing from a great depth. It seemed to bounced from one condo to the next, tinkling wind-chimes, reverberating in the leaves and the precision-cut blades of grass, skidding over the wet cement walkway, ringing every single doorbell. I held my breath and waited for something. And nothing happened. No word from behind the door, no turning of the lock, nothing -- not even a "shut the hell up" from 1A or B or C.

I have to stop calling him Daddy, I thought. Too old.

It was 10:30. The clouds that had once looked so nice sliding across the moon in sliver slivers, now appeared more menacing, like a crowd of angry faces looking down upon me waiting to pounce.

I had two choices as I saw it. I could sleep in the back of my dad's Toyota. It wouldn't be so bad if I could get the side window to roll up completely; I'd have to grab hold of it from the top and yank it up. Doable. But then there was the issue of the cigarette ashes and fumes, and the still sticky areas of the car, in particular the back seat, that never really recovered from the orange juice explosion circa 83. Or, I could call my mother and ask if she wouldn't mind letting me crash at her studio because I was locked out.


I would try the car. I smacked the door one last time. The sting of the wood against my palm tingled all the way down the steps. I'd have divorced him too, I thought, though I was probably just trying to align myself with my mother if the stickiness of the car's backseat was too much to take. Still, it was easy to see her side of things about their disasterous marriage. He was definitely self-absorbed,lacking concern for the mundane business of day-to-day living, I agreed, as I walked to the car and sized up the rear window.

I could understand how this disregard might grate on one after fifteen years, as I grabbed the glass by the top and yanked, successfully raising one side of the glass about a millimeter. I looked up at the sky. If it rained I'd need a plastic bag to stop the rain coming in the open window. Or not. He always theorized away a new window saying that the rain would have to come in at a very sharp angle to actually soak anyone inside. He had so many theories that I ate up. I opened the door and winced at eardrum piercing screech the buckled door made.

I thought of Deney sleeping in her van after she broke up with Jim. She said it wasn't that bad. She showered at the gym and saved a lot on rent, utility and phone bills. I'd always thought that might be the way to go. You know, really deck out a van, put in carpeting, a comfortable mattress, darken the windows.

Only her van had no carpeting and only thin cotton curtains that she'd made (while killing time living in her van) with white pompoms. And since she didn't have a job, and Jim had kicked her out and wouldn't let her pick up most of her clothes, and since he had hit her in the face a couple of times, she wasn't really in the mood to fix up the van the way she'd wanted. She took it as it was: cold, hard, unlivable, really. But that was life, I guess. You get a taste of things, and usually it's missing essential ingredients that could make it a whole lot better.

(part 4)

As I took the dishtowel and dried our cups and plates -- a useless, time wasting activity that was momentarily comforting -- I thought about my grandparents and uncle who I had visited last fall in England.

I saw my grandfather his bowed legs and wide stance as he ran the towel over tea-cups and saucers. And my grandmother’s braceletes jangling, her meaty arms flapping as she wiped a breakfast plate clean. Like all activities they enjoyed together – tv watching, Guinness drinking, fish and chips eating – they like to rip into one another mercilessly.

“Harry, you keep rubbing that plate, you’ll bloody wipe the pattern off,” I heard my grandmother clearly. I saw her red lipstick applied outside the natural contours of her thin upper lip -- to make her more “gorgeous” my mother would say.

I couldn’t wait to leave them. I counted out the days on a sheet of paper and put large Xs through each day when it was done. Killing time.

Much as I was doing these days.

They were both dead now, Mabel first, then Harry a year later. Dennis was still there and sometimes we received a Christmas card from him. A large gaudy sort with glitter that my mother couldn’t resist calling tacky and placing in the back row of the small collection of cards she arranged our old dining room table in her studio at the corner of Blossom Hill and Snell.

My dad's tapping on his computer, like a bird's steady pecking, brought me back to the present. I put the dishtowel down and went down the hall and stood at the entrance to his study. His back was toward me, slightly arched as he typed with two fingers.

“Daddy,” I said. “Im gonna go out. Get some coffee or something.”
“We have coffee,” he said pushing his glasses onto his forhead and leaning in close to the screen.
“A new poem?” I asked moving behind him. His last one, tacked to the door of his study (breaking yet another HOA rule: no tacks shall be used to hang pictures, etc.):

“Excessive packaging”

a Kraft cheese sandwich
on Wonder bread,
greased with Mayonaise
really does not need
to be encased in plastic
given that
the unwholesome ingredients,
petroleum at best,
will surely survive
far into the next millenium
sweating in the sun
if there still
is one
then.

“He hasn’t changed a bit,” my mother said when she read the poem the last time she was at the his condo.

I glanced at the screen over his shoulder and read “Dear Lord, Who has entered my Garden?”

It was always startling to hear him mention God outside of “god damnit” “or “Jesus bloody Christ! when he whacked his head, or whacked a wall with his car, or was fed-up with my mother who was fed up with him for whacking things and messing up her life.

Epi turned him on to God and he became a Catholic. They went to church and before she left him she would hold his hand before a meal and issue a quiet prayer with her head tilted downward. I would seize the opportunity to pick at the food, or rip a chunk of bread and stuff it into my mouth.

I tried to read more of his current poem. Did he mean “garden” metaphorically, I wondered. Or was this a literal and paranoid poem to the Dear Lord about the people he thought were casing his condo? And then another thought shot through my head. Perhaps I was the one who had entered his “garden”. Was that how he saw me? Had I invaded his paradise. A graduated snake with a useless degree slithering in his midst?

“Daddy?” I said.
His back was rounded and his face was aimed directly over the keyboard as he hunted for the correct letter key. Why hadn't he ever learn to type in sixty-five years?

Typing was the one uselfull skill I’d acquired in my twenty-one years on the planet. Couldn’t cook, sew, or do any of the so-called female things.. Didn’t know how to apply make-up without looking like Lon Chaney, or style my hair beyond fluffing it with my fingers.

I knew none of the stuff cool women know like how to change car oil, or spark plugs or fix a flat. I didn’t know how to prune plants or grow flowers. House plants committed suicide under my care. I knew nothing about health and the human body beyond the basic monthly thing but I never really got that right, Each monthly visitor arriving like an unexpected guest without any clean towels. And I always made up the answer when nurses asked, “When was the first day of your last period?” --the question alone confused me. And all the stuff I learned in college: California geography, Calculus, Greek Tragedy, Music appreciation: I was like a big black hole of knowledge. Information went in and just vanished.

“Do you mind if I take your car?” I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I just wanted to get out, sit behind the wheel and feel some kind of movement. Drive up Highway 9 to Skyline maybe.
“It's low on gas,” he said as if reading my mind.
“I’ll fill it up,” I said.
He reached into his back pocket and took out his lump of a wallet and stared into it’s empty insides. If my head was a black hole, then most definitely his wallet was an even bigger one. I’d seen this look before usually after he’d promised my mother something. “Here,” he’d say, “Let me get that,” and finding no bills he’d pull out a credit card. “Ray, watch how much you put on that thing,” my mother would always say. But he never did seemed to care about debt until we had no money.

I got in his car and rolled down the car windows to let the cigarette odor out. I drove down Hgwy 9 heading toward downtown Los Gatos then down University. All the boutiques and antique stores were closed up. It was time for the restaurants to do business. I drove past the Champs Elysee restaurant, my favorite and looked at the diners seated inside. There was a mural on the far wall of a Parisian street scene with tiny lamps bolted to the wall giving the interior a cozy, inviting feel. I saw a waitress standing in front of a table talking an order. She wore a black skirt and white blouse. I bet she knew how to carry more than one plate at a time. I bet could remember the menu and not mess up orders. Not much else was open except for the Blackwatch Tavern -- some absurd imitation of a Scottish pub -- and the Double Rainbow cafe. But I remembered that odd guy who had breathed in my face -- not something I was in the mood to repeat at the moment. I drove slowly by and looked in. I couldn't see if he was there but the thought of going back to my dad's place, and having him see me lazing a round doing nothing much of anything was worse.

The stupid neon double rainbow was buzzing like before. I didn't know which was worse, the rainbow or the bright white neon lights that gave the interior a kind of emergency room feel. Was was I doing in there? I thought as soon as I entered the place and saw the same guy from before leaning against the counter.

"What can I do you for?" he asked.
I wandered along looking down a the tubs of ice-cream. It all looked good and I could have eaten a scoop of anything they had with a thick blanket of fudge, sprinkles, nuts, whipped cream but I knew I shouldn't, especially since I was just bored and slightly depressed so I looked up and tried to figure out what the cheapest item was as fast as possible so he couldn't see what I was up to.
"You have juice?" I asked. I figured a juice should be cheap and sort of good for me even if it was the last thing I really wanted, especially if it was apple which I really didn't like at all.
He pointed to the small refrigerator that came up to his knees. Through the glass all I could see were bottled juice.
"Nothing fresh squeezed?"
"Nope," he said. He made a popping sound with his lips.
"I'll take a coffee then," I said. I didn't even want that. How would I ever find happiness, I wondered, if I couldn't even find a food item that satisfied.
"You know what?" I said, stopping him as he reached for a styrofoam cup -- the kind that makes whatever you drink out it taste like car seats -- "I'll take a malt. A chocolate malt."
"Two scoops?" he asked tossing the icecream scoooper in the air and catching it.
"Yes," I said. As soon as he ducked his head below the glass, I could swear my butt started growing larger. It was hard for him to get to the ice-cream and I felt a little bad that I hadn't ordered the Pistachio which from the looks of it wasn't so popular but would have been easier for him to scoop out. He came up with two a smear of pale green ice-cream on his checkered shirt which only added to it's pastel ugliness. I took a seat at one of the many empty tables in the place and watched him open a container of malt and put in two scoops, then as if an afterthought, adding one more. The low rumble of the milkshake mixer blended with the background music. What was that song? I knew it I thought. Not a song you'd really hear in a ice cream palor.
"One chocolate malt," he said at last and I went over to the counter to pay.
I reached for it but he said, "Oh-oh-oh!" and put his hand out to stop me. "Forgot," he said and ducked down below the counter and came up with a jar of those horried red cherries and plucked one out by the stem with two fingers like a pair of tweezers. As it fell through the air and sunk into the top of my malted chocolate milk shake I suddenly wished that I had ordered it in a to go cup so that I could take it outside, out of his sight, and toss it in the trash. I was such a mess. How would I ever figure my life out if I couldn't stick with a decision as simple as a malt.

I took it over to one of the five empty tables dotted with dried drips from other people's sundaes and placed it before me. I plunked the straw into the stuff and sucked, watching the guy behind the counter.

He leaned over a magazine spread out by the ice-cream toppings. As he read I could see his lips moving. He didn't look too smart to me. Perhaps it was wrong of me to peg him in this way, but I had nothing better going on besides growing fat so I sucked down the malt in long deep inhalations and sized him up. I guessed he'd not graduated from highschool. He probably owned a hot-rod type car that was kind of a junker but he was proud of it because some engine part was big and shiny and made a lot of noise when he pressed the gas. He probably didn't have a girlfriend dressed the way he was, or perhaps she had very poor vision. But I sensed he was a nice guy -- maybe it was just the lips moving while he read

How did this place stay in business I wondered with its wretched rainbow color-scheme and the clutter of rainbow items f
-- cups, wind-up toys, packets of gob-stoppers --filling up every empty available space . It overloaded my senses.Why on earth was it open this late, too. For losers like me probably with nothing else to do but eat 5 thousand calories I was such a loser

This stupid town and its stupid boutiques, faux bars and dump antique stores was filled with small town losers and I would soon become one too -- a fat waitress loser. How could my life have fallen into such a loser rut so fast? Unless you tried not to be one, it was probably life's natural course.

But i had been trying hadn't I?
Here my mother's voice chimed in uninvited as usually does, especially when i'm examining my unique fucked-upness.
"Oh, you don't know trying," it said. "None of you kids have tried very hard at all. Not one of you."
"I have too tried," I said to myself. The malt was coming to an end and I was seriously considering getting another.
"It's all been so easy for all of you," she continued.
"Would you please not," I said to her, "lump me in with the rest of them." It really pissed me off when she did this. How was I like Denny, or Rachel, or Fraser? And if none of us knew anything about trying, if we were all lazy bums wasn't there a reason we were all this way?

I glanced up to see what the guy behind the counter was up to. I'd hoped that I hadn't said anything outloud.

I wondered, did he eat ice-cream all evening long? Did he dip his fingers into the fudge and put sprinkles on it? He was still reading his magazine. I looked away when I sensed he might see me staring. It was a bad habit of mine and sometimes gave the wrong impression that I was interested in the person in an admiring sort of way which in this case I was clearly not. But I stared too long and he saw me looking.

"What's this music?" I asked. I could only just barely hear it from somewhere behind the counter but it sounded familiar and I liked it.
"Cat Stevens," he said and reached over and turned up the volumn.
"Trouble, oh trouble," he sang softly, "trouble set me free."
Okay, time to go and never come back, I thought.

I carried my empty parfait glass which I unfurtunately noticed had a pink lipstick stain on the edge, to the counter.

"You came in here the other day," he said. "I'm really good with faces. Yours stood out. You have those chipmonk cheeks," he said and pointed his finger to either side of my jaw where, if I was a chipmonk, I'd have some nuts stored.

And then he pointed to my chin

I reached for a napkin and wiped my face. Most often ater a meal, I carried a portion home somewhere on my face. It was a bad character flaw and wasn't helped by my habit of using my sleeve to wipe it clean -- my dad once asking in all sincerity "Do you think there will ever come a time when you don't wipe your face with your clothing?"
"There's not much open around here at this time, is there?" I said.

"Sure there is," he said, not elaborating. Where could he mean, I wondered but I was reluctant to start up what might be thought of as a conversation. Cafe life was a very delicate thing, Rachel always said. "Don't make small talk to anyone," she instructed the last time I spoke to her before she quit her job packed up her apartment and went travelling Mexico and Guatemala six months ago. "Too many a good cafe is wrecked that way." It was like the only words of wisdom she could impart. Not much, but it stuck with me.

So I didn't ask him what else might be open but he pushed a magazine in front of me and tapped with his finger to a photograph of a bike.

"'I'm getting that bike. Weighs 16lbs" he said. I looked at it and thought of my old bike in Santa Barbara. A junker that weighed a ton but had a worn leather saddle, leather toe straps and new handlebars with orange grips. I would ride for hours along the bike path out to the beach. A backpack to hold my Walkman. Al Jareau singing, "Morning Mr. Cheerio."

"Looks fancy." I said and then breaking Rachel's rules of cafe engagement added, "Mine was stolen. I miss it."
"Probably misses you too," he said not really paying attention to me anymore, looking down at a page of bike wheels.
"Well thanks," I said and pushed the empty glass closer toward him.
"No thank you," he said.
As I headed out the door, he said, "If you get a new one, I'll take you on some gorgeous rides."
"Maybe," I said, "thanks."

Out in the car, put the key in the ignition but didn't turn it on. Instead I just sat there and stared straight ahead.
Where to go?
What to do?
What did I want to do? Tomorrow was another day in my terrible career as a waitress. I could feel my jaw tighten thinking about walking into that place, the familiar smell of burned bacon and bad coffee. Wayne and his stupid cowboy mustache banging the bell, hollering , "Up Honey" or "Up babe". I turned the key in the ignition, and put the car in gear. I drove along the quiet streets past the Broken Egg. It looked so quiet and dark without the people seated outside waiting to eat. Maybe it would burn down I thought.
"Get another job, if you hate it so much," Rachel said as she rolled up her clothing into cylindrical wads and shoved them into her oversized backpack.
"But I'll just hate the next one and a brand new kind of way," I said. "At least I know what I hate at the Broken Egg. No suprises, you know?"
"okay, stay there. Rot."

Rotting, I thought as I made a right onto Hgwy 9 toward my dad's condo. I would surely rot in this town. "Oh you are so dramatic," my mother's voice snipped. "I suppose you call what I do -- holding a dull job, paying my bills -- as rotting?"

I supposed I did and I supposed she knew I did.

I was starting to understand why people stayed in college, took more classes, delayed graduation. I should have applied to grad school, like Elizabeth and Greg. That's what the smart ones with money did.

I pulled into my dad's parking space. The sight of gash he'd created in the cement post made me smile. "Maybe if it was your post it wouldn't be so funny," my mother would say.Perhaps I thought. But it wasn't my post and the sight of the mesh and and the crumbling cement pleased me.

I unlocked the door to the central condo grounds. The sprinklers were on, still. I cut across the lawn instead of taking the cement path. My feet squelched in the swampy thick blanket of grass.

Was my Broken Egg shirt clean I wondered? Where was my scarf? I tried to recall where I'd last seen them and remembered that I'd peeled them off two days ago and kicked them into the back of the closet in the spare room. A pile of brown bacon smelling polyester. I'll smell them tonight, I thought. And if there were any stains on them, I'll wash them in the kitchen sink. They should dry by the morning.

I climbed the stairs and stopped at the top to look back. The moon was full and it's glow silhouted the trees on the Santa Cruz mountains. I stared for a moment at the sky and thin clouds sliding across the moon's path. At least I was here, I thought. There's beauty here at least. I wouldn't have lasted very long at my mother's on Capitol Hill Expressway a block off of the auto row with the enormous American flags billowing in the wind. I put the key in the bottom lock and turned it but it didn't open. The top lock, the one my father didn't have a spare key for, was bolted. I could see the thin sliver of it barring my entry. All the lights were off. I stared at the lock. Had he forgotten? Or had he locked me out on purpose?

"Just like your father," my mother's voice said. I leaned over the railing to see if I could see inside his place. Maybe he was sitting up snoozing, sleeping off a package of Pepperidge farm cookies?
I took my key and tapped on the door lightly.

chapter one...(part 3)

The Jupiter Symphony blared at a volume the HOA would not approve. The oboe in the second movement, or was it the first, just killed me, the way the note climbed and climbed “rising into the heavens” Mr. French, my music appreciation teacher would say, “You feel it? You feel it?”.

I could tell my dad was feeling it right then. He closed his eyes and smiled. Good, I thought, let Mozart carry you away.

“Why not take up an instrument? You could travel the world performing,” he said, after a bit, turning toward me, surprising me because I hadn’t thought he’d noticed me seated opposite him on the couch.

“Travel the world performing?” I repeated. Had he mixed me up with someone else? Yanni, perhaps?

His mere suggestion brought to mind terror of the third-grade school performance kind: my umbrella jamming, not twirling, as I stomped across the stage in my rubber boots, splashing through blue paper mache puddles; my eighth grade oral report on “Trees” and Margo Strumelbaum in the back row blurting, “I can’t hear you. Can you please speak up!” my voice disappearing like the great glossopteris trees of the South Pole; and just last Sunday, standing in front of a table of six, my heart racing, my forehead glistening with sweat, botching the breakfast specials, topping the Ole Omelets with blueberries and whipped cream.

“The violin, perhaps? Something small, easily transported.”

“Daddy, I don’t play the violin,” I reminded him. It was a minor detail but one I thought he really shouldn’t overlook.

The sun was starting to set. I loved this time of evening in Los Gatos. The hills became tinged with orange and the birds darted through the sky as if on one last blast of flight before retiring to wherever they went at the end of the day. Did birds sleep I wondered as my father continued charting an impossible future for me.

“You played the clarinet. You certainly could pick up the violin. Music is all the same, really, just a matter of learning the positioning.” He was talking to me but gazing at a cookie, rotating it in front of himself like Lear with the skull. A bird flew onto his deck and clasped onto the balcony with its bony claws, correcting its balance with a small flick of its tail.

“Take music classes, I’ll pay for them,” he said and popped the cookie into his mouth. I watched the bird and thought how I could use a tail like that, something that was automatic that kept me upright and balanced, something that was beyond my control that I couldn’t mess up. Its eye was yellow and for a moment it seemed to be staring at me.

Hello little bird, I said to myself.

“Go to Vienna. Now, theres a place to study music.”

Little bird, I said, what am I going to do with myself? Tell me, give me a hint, anything. What the hell, I thought; maybe you had to try anything to figure this world out.

“Although, Prague I hear is quite lovely. Cold though. Maybe not Prague.”

The bird and I stared at one another . It cocked its head pecked under its wing and then flew off without offering me any clues or life suggestions.

I looked over at my dad. He’d piled up a stack of Pepperidge Farm paper cookie cups on the arm rest of the couch. I counted five of them leaning like the Tower of Pisa. I picked up his security guard hat that he’d tossed on the chair. Stupid looking thing that was too large for his head even though he’d sinched the plastic strap to the last hole.

He’d thought the security job would be perfect for him. Within walking distance, just around the corner. Part-time, providing him with a little extra to pad his social security and pension. Outdoors, walking mostly. But it had gone poorly from day one.

Something about Brian, the day manager, saying he had the authority to demand that my dad wear the stupid hat; and my dad telling Brian that “as a senior scientist in the semi-conductor industry for the past thirty years designing the microchips that powered the computers at the 7-Eleven where Brian bought his Big Gulps” that if he didn’t want to wear the damn hat he wasn’t going to.

Or something along those lines. I’d heard about it from Rachel.

I put the hat on my head and felt it loose over my ears. It was the kind of thing truckers wore with plastic mesh and a thick white fabric front with the company name stitched in dark blue lettering: “Allied Security”.

“How’d I look?” I asked turning toward him, running my hand over the brim in a slick cowpoke kinda way.

“Ssh!” he said and stood up and turned the music down. “You hear that?” He walked to the window and peeked out.


“Hear what? " I asked. I heard lots of things, normal things like the far off hum of Highway 17, someone beeping their horn, a kid laughing out by the pool, a lawn mower. Normal mid-summer sounds that should not cause anyone to rush to the window and peek out through the blinds like a crazy person.

But Rachel had warned me about this behavior too.

He got up and walked over to the kitchen window and leaned with his back against the wall, lifting the blind with his pinky. He looked out to the central garden. I did in fact hear something. A weed whacker. The high pitched whine of it like a dentist’s drill was coming from directly below the window, about six feet below.

He leaned his head downward and stared, the hairs of his grey mustache smashed against the window, his breath fogging the glass. I picked up an uneaten potato on the dining room table and looked out from the opposite side of the window. Sure enough one of the condo gardeners was out there trimming the lawn to a perfectly straight edge that the HOA would surely smile upon.

I ate another potato and then another while he continued monitoring the gardener’s activities. Nervous food eating was a bad habit I was always fighting against. Do I really want to eat this I’d ask myself or am I just anxious. Half the time, the answer was “just anxious” but I ate whatever it was anyhow.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He angled his head left then right looking around the grounds. I followed his gaze. What was he looking for I wondered. I couldn’t see anything that looked like cause for alarm. Sure, things might be better: That woman lifting two bags of groceries from the bottom of her stairs really should be using her legs not her back to lift and maybe I wouldn’t have paired the blue socks with the orange shorts. I did see a carpet, smallish like a bathmat, hanging over the stair railing outside of Condo 54 that was clearly in violation of HOA rules but apart from these things all was in order, all was neatly clipped, clean, well watered, hazy and warm with the glow from a summer’s setting sun.

And yet, still he spied outside his kitchen window like an FBI agent while I reached for another potato, my fourth, and popped it in my mouth.

“Save those,” he said, letting go of the blind and heading off down the hallway toward his study. “We’ll fry them up for breakfast.”

Just what had he been looking for I wondered as I took the bowl of potatoes off the table and placed them in the refrigerator. I cleared our dinner plates and placed them in the sink. Maybe he didn’t like how close the gardener was to his space. Was that it? Did he think the guy was casing the joint? But the man couldn’t even see in the window from where he crouched.

I let the warm water whisk away the scraps of our dinner, returning our plates to their former shiny, non-fishy selves and placed them steaming in the dish rack to dry.
His brain wasn’t like mine. It knew things, endless smart things, that no matter how he tried – and oh how he tried, with salt and pepper shakers representing electrons and photons – I never could grasp what he tried so hard to share: “but wait, I thought you said the butter knife was the earth’s gravitational pull?”

So it was possible that the gardener was not simply the gardener but something else? Wasn’t it, I asked myself.

chapter one....(part 2)

Lithium is just a kind of salt, I thought, as I tipped the shaker upside down and watched the salt crystals coat the the steaming potatoes. I glanced over at my dad as he sifted through the mail picking up each envelope and tossing it aside like a card dealer. He'd come home and tossed his mesh baseball cap, the one he was required to wear for his security job at the Los Gatos Inn, onto the chair. He'd sat down, then got up. I tried to look efficient in the kitchen, useful and handy to have around the house -- his house -- basically because I was sensing my presence was upsetting him. He turned on the radio in the living room. The volumn was up high from the last time he'd listened, when he had been in a happier mood perhaps. "Capitol Expressway Ford! Your number one sales team in South San -" He switched it off. I heard the weight of him, which wasn't much, maybe one-sixty, fall and sink into his leather armchair, the one that matched the couch that I'd been warming. I could hear the air puffing out as he hit the cushions. I couldn't see him from the kitchen but I imagined him sitting there, with his arms resting on the armrests, staring straight ahead, looking like the Lincoln memorial in Washington. I wondered if he'd been messing with his dose again. My mother said he had, the other day when I called to ask if she still needed me to take her to her eye appointment.

"He shouldn't mess with that stuff," my mother had said. "He should listen to his doctors. Do what they tell him," she'd said.

I thought this was funny coming from her. She was always bitching and moaning about the doctors she was seeing. The last time she went to Dr. Sadesh about the blinking in her right eye that she couldn't control, she said said they'd "gone at it" and when I'd asked her what exactly she'd meant by that, she'd said he'd walked out of the examining room in the middle of something she'd been telling him, "without even saying goodbye," she said as if they'd been lovers.

"Maybe the doctors are giving daddy too much," I'd suggested. "Maybe he knows better than them."
"You know you're starting to sound just like him," she'd said. "He always knew better than everyone. Look where it's got him," she add.

And just where are you, I wanted to respond but didn't.

The last time he fiddled with his dosage, he messed up his balance and tripped on the bottom step outside his front door. He complained to Home Owner's Association about the rickety bottom step which he claimed was the reason for his fall. "Yo see this," he showed me the step, prodding it with his foot, pushing at it repeatedly with the rubber tip of his tennis shoes to prove his point. I really I couldn't see any movement in the bottom step and I told him so, but i did wonder where he'd been walking in those shoes to get them covered in mud.

I heard him sigh several times so I knew something inside of him had shifted from the day before. I knew I would have to stay out of his way, try not to bug him, be quiet and let this thing rumble inside him and move on, which it always did in time.

"Daddy's taking Lithium, you know," Rachel had told me when I arrived in Los Gatos. "I was looking for nail clippers and found the medicine bottle."
"Don't you have your own nail clippers?" I'd resonded cooly.
"What sort of question is that?" she'd asked. "Did you hear what I just told you?"
I had heard what she'd said but I wanted to deprive her of the thrill of breaking the news, since she'd uncovered it during one of her frequent investigative snoops through other people's belongings.

"Daddy, dinner's ready," I said. I set the bowl of potatoes on the table, then placed the steamed green beans in a bowl next to the potatoes. I opened up the two foil-wrapped salmon steaks and put them onto our plates. How had my mother done it, cooking every night for a family of six. And she had not just simply steamed everything. She'd used spices and recipes, timers and measuring utensils. Still, I allowed myself a small degree of pride as I looked upon the meal I had layed out before us. I could steam food with the best of them, I thought, and then threw open the kitchen window as I'd fogged up the place like a sauna.

When I didn't hear him get up, I poked my head around the wall to see what he was doing, but he wasn't there. I walked down the hall to the spare room that he'd made into his study, the kind he'd always wanted, but never had with four kids. His back was toward me as he stood holding a magazine and stared down at the pages. On his desk was a stack of Semiconductor Manufacturing magazines. My brother's floor lamp in the corner, with the shade still singed like a toasted marshmallow. On the desk was a photo of him and Epi in Mexico. His arm around her, on his head a straw hat like the locals wore.

"Daddy? Dinner's ready."
"Yes, yes," he said but he didn't look up immediately, then he tossed the magazine aside and followed me into the kitchen.

“Watch out for bones,” I said, sounding like my mother as I handed him his plate, even though I was pretty certain that if he were to suck down the salmon filet like an oyster he would survive; these were, afterall, Lunardi filets. He was seated to my right and didn’t turn toward me when I spoke so I had to look for meaning in the slightest facial twitch on the one side of his face. He was eating the potatoes which i discovered were a little undercooked in the center, so I was cautious not to interpret any excessive movement in his jaw to anything more than applied pressure.

I sensed from the way he held his fork aloft in front of his mouth a few moments before eating that he was thinking about something keenly. What was it, I wondered. Something about semiconductors he'd just read in his magazine? Or, maybe Epi. Did he miss her I wondered. I certainly did. She was a calming influence in the condo, sitting in her spot on the couch embroidering, writing letters to her sister in Mexico.

“That Susan next door,” I said to fill the silence. “She questioned me about the hose,” I said. His right nostril, I thought, flared slightly at the mention of "hose," making me immediately regret this line of conversation. Why did I simply not shut up, let him eat in silence? I had an awful self-sabotaging streak that revealed itself like some kind of reverse darwin effect: making myself standout when I should really curl up and quietly play dead.

"They're building a case. That's what they're doing," he said. "They want me out of here."

I was completely on his side regarding the home owner’s association. Their relentless postings wore on one's nerves. No swimsuits, towels or other items shall be hung over balconies. No bird feeders or windchimes on balconies. No Alcholic beverages by the pool. No walking in swimsuits outside of the pool area. No car repairs in parking areas. Do NOT remove books, magazine or other items from the game room -- as if anyone really wanted to remove ten-year old copies of Ladies Home Journal magazines.

"I think they just want their hose back, Daddy," I said affecting a light and breezy non-Oliver Stone-ish tone, that I hope would nip this paranoia in the bud.

I mean it wasn't as if he broke their rules intentionally; he simply lost track of them in the business of living his life spontaneously. "Yes," my mother would say to this, "and with not a thought to anyone else but himself."

So on his way to the pool wearing just his trunks with a towel slung over his shoulder, he might fancy a glass of wine and go and get himself one. And perhaps after bathing, he might toss his wet suit and towel over the balcony to dry, and consider it a good time to replace the side panel on his Toyota. And he might leave his tools scattered across his parking space while he went upstairs to make himself a sandwich only to become distracted by the sight of the birds flitting in and out of his birdfeeder and the peaceful sound of the wind through his windchimes.

He had other things on his mind, and the HOA rules, like weeds under his feet, simply got trampled upon as he set out to smell the roses


"Have you been looking for work?" He said apropos of nothing. He grabbed the loaf of bread i had placed in the center of the table and instead of using the knife layed upon the cutting board -- very french, very Gormet magazine, i thought -- to cut a slice, he tore off a hunk wringing the neck of that poor loaf like a doomed farm chicken.

"Work?" I said. Had he not seen me walking in the front door on a Sunday afternoon, after the morning rush, wearing an apron splattered like a Jackson Pollock with ketchup, mustard and grease? Had he even wondered where I was going early in the morning on a Saturday with a kerchief on my head and comfortable shoes on my feet? Had he not noticed the new spray of acne across my chin and forehead that were clearly work-related, last appearing in the summer of 79 during my Der Wienerschnitzel employment period.

“Why Daddy,” I said, “I have a job at the Broken Egg. You know that.”

“Yes, Yes, that's right,” he said. “Indeed you do.” The corner of his right lip turned up for a moment and then dropped. I had hoped that my waitressing job at the Broken Egg would prove that I was not just a bum on his couch, mooching off him. I was earning my way in the world, learning to play with others. Clearly, he thought I was wasting my time there.

“Editing,” he said after a moment's silence. “Can’t you do something like that? Use your brain a bit, eh?"

“I suppose, “ I said although I found I wasn't so fond of using my brain at work. It got me into trouble and messed me up. I overthought simply tasks. After three weeks at the Broken Egg, I still had yet to figure out how to ring up a half-order of country fries so was handing them out for free left and right. I found I worked best when I worked on on auto-pilot, behind the scenes, like at Der Weinerschnitzels wrapping Chili cheese dogs: bun, weiner, cheese, chili. To be quite honest, I would have prefered to be one of the bus boys or the dishwashers at the Broken Egg, in the background, unseen -- clear, wipe, set.

chapter one...(part 1)

I found the grocery list my father had magnetted to the refrigerator with one of the magnets Epi must have picked up from the bank before she left him. it had a picture of a man in a white shirt and tie waving back at all the people opening their refrigerators. "First USA. Number One in Customer Service" it read. It was the kind of gaudy American junk that started appearing in his condo since he'd married Epi, like the enormous silver and topaz rings on his index finger. i read his list, the usual concoction of salmon steaks, vegetables, wine and Pepperidge Farm cookies. He was into the Linzer ones lately, the kind with the powdered sugar and gooey filling.

"What about Houston," he'd said last night. He'd been trying to get me to think of a place where i could start my new post college life and career. The night before, he'd come up with New York.
"Perhaps," I said giving his suggestion with as much weight as the powdered sugar that floated from his lips and dusted the front of his sweater. It was the sugar speaking, or the two glasses of wine. The panic such suggestions once inflicted on me when i first arrived in those early days of June had vanished.

I locked the door behind me and headed down the stairs toward the mailboxes. I eyed the third box from the left, looking for a patch of white from inside. I'd looked from the kitchen window at least ten times that morning waiting for a sign of mail.

All i needed was hope. Hope that Elizabeth had written. Hope that she had not moved on and forgotten me. I patch of white provided that hope and so I walked past the box without opening it. Hope was better than evidence and in Elizabeth's case, hope was a lot more enjoyable than the actual letters she was sending these days.

"I found this card and thought of you," was the last thing she'd written to me. On the front of the card was a picture of a yellow volkswagon bug, the kind I'd driven at UC Santa Barbara. That was a week ago. I had saved the card from the morning, not opening it until after I'd left the Broken Egg where I was currently employed as a waitress. I'd put the unopened letter in my pocket and the hope that she'd written something along the lines of "I miss you more than ever and my life is not the same with you," got me through six hours of "I ordered scrambled not poached."

My father walked to work so I drove his car to the grocery store. A white Toyota Corolla with a black door that he'd found at the junk yard. The hood was held down with some rope. Inside it smelled like an ashtray with a light dusting of ashes coating everything. Made me feel nautious to be in it but Rachel took back the Bug that she'd lent me as soon as I moved in and she got back from roaming around Mexico and Central America. I think maybe she felt okay to be doing nothing with her life but travelling and hanging ourt with German heroin addicts in Talum as long as I was loafing around in Santa Barbara. Or maybe it was just a coincidence that she was now looking for a real job and need her car back. I had a bad habit sometimes of giving myself way too much importance in other people's lives.

I drove to Lunardi's my father's favorite overpriced shopping venue on the south side of Los Gatos. The lettering of the word "Lunardi's" was in the old 50's style type trying to make shoppers think they were going back to a better time. A more wholesome time of caring and goodness, when things meant something. High prices, that's what Lundardis stood for, but my dad loved it.

I saw a parking spot close to the entrance and honked a couple of times to get the man pulling out in front of me to hurry up and move before someone else took it. People in Los Gatos moved slowly it seemed to me because they had nothing really pressing on them. I had a board game growing up called Candy Land. That's how I thought of Los Gatos with all its boutiques and antique stores. Its cyclists in their lycra sipping cappucinos without ever seeming to get on their expensive carbon bikes.

Inside the store it was all old-time quaintness and modern rip-off. Pyramids of products. Butchers in silly white hats. The produce displayed in bins designed to look like farm baskets. It made me want to puke but i had to admit the service was better than at Safeway on University. At Lunardi's all I had to do was wonder -- get that where-is-paprika-look -- on my face and some nice middle-age, slightly overweight white guy stopped what he was doing -- stacking solid white tuna in a pyramid and came to my rescue. Safeway, they'd just tell you they were out. "We don't have eggs, no more," they'd say just to get rid of you.

I took a basket and headed over to the fish section. White fish, yellow fish, pink fish. Shrimp. Dead lobster, live lobster. Scallops on a stick ready for the barbeque. Crab. Crabcakes. Trout. Tuna. I got that "Where the heck was salmon?" look and instantly, help arrived.

"Can I help you?" the man behind the counter asked. His name was Jim. I knew this because my father introduced me to him the last time we came shopping. I also met the lady in the bakery, Alice, slicing up coffee cake. And George on aisle seven stocking cans of smoked oysters. My father had stopped them all, interrupted their work, and told them all about me and my life, my recent graduation, my plans to go into the publishing business.

"How's your dad?" Jim asked as he plonked a couple of heavy salmon steaks onto the scale. He seemed concerned. I was used to this look from people who had encountered my dad during one of his high-flying manic moments when he'd talk to anyone like they were long-time buds. And Lunardi's with all of their staff so damn friendly and helpful, only just encouraged him. Sometimes, I'd wonder off and look for tampons, or toothpaste and come back and find him talking a mile-a-minute to one of the bag boys, or the some other anonymous behind-the-scenes sort of employee that people generally overlooked. He'd ask them their names, where they were going to school and then talk about his days in the shipyard in Scotland when he was about their age. He didn't care if they were trying to maneuver eighty shopping carts, or sweeping up a ketchup spill he'd talk and talk, chuckling at his own jokes. Totally oblivious my mother used to say about him.
"He's doing good," I said.
"Nice man," Jim said. "Scottish, isn't that right?"
"Yes," I said and took the two steaks from Jim. Ten bucks a piece.
"You take care now," Jim said.

I found the cookies on aisle seven. He used to be into Milanos. First the plain old chocolate kind then the orange ones. When they came out with the double chocolate version he liked them a lot but said the concept of double-chocolate epitomized what was wrong with America. "A culture of excess," he said as he bit into the cookie and examined the extra layer of chocolate. I thought the double chocolate ones were the best especially cold from the refrigerator so that they snapped when you bit into them. I put two bags into my basket and went over to the produce section for his small red potatoes and green beans. He liked to boil the potatoes and steam the green beans. The fish he wrapped in foil and put in the oven, or rather “flung” in the oven as he liked to say. It was his favorite fixings when he was in his up phase which had been for the past two weeks. I could do no wrong. He just wanted me to enjoy life, don’t worry about looking for real work, he’d say because he didn’t consider my job as a waitress real. “Go sit by the pool and read a book,” he’d say and so I did. I didn’t read, of course, I brought paper and pen and composed letters to Elizabeth. He came down to the pool and joined me with a glass of wine. The Home Owner’s Association forbid wine by the pool but he was ant-HOA most of the time and called them Nazis. So I enjoyed his manic phase sipping my wine, thinking of Elizabeth and shielding my paper from the splashes he made when he dove into the pool creating a loud smack where his white belly hit first.

At the cash register, Allison, asked how my father was doing. I bet they all thought he was the most pleasant guy, so friendly, such a talker with his cute Scottish accent.

“And how are you Hon? “ she asked. “Your dad tells me you just graduated college. Good for you. Whatcha gonna do now?”
“I’m thinking about going into publishing,” I told her. Better to give the same story my dad was spreading around town. Keep it simple.
“Publishing,” she said, “Now that’s pretty exciting.”
Yes, it would be, I thought , if it was true or if it was my plan. But it was a good line and people liked it and sometimes the more I said it, the more it seemed feasible. I mean the first step to anything was having a plan. Wasn’t that right? And sometimes in the middle of the night, lying on my dad’s couch I thought, why not go into publishing. Why not? And so I told myself that somewhere down the road, who knew when, or where, or how, or even, why, I would go into publishing. The plan had a lovely calming affect upon me. I stopped staring at the walls thinking how am I ever going to support myself, find enough money to live somewhere like a real adult. And then pretty soon, whenever I felt freaked out about my future, I just told myself I was going into publishing and I felt better immediately.

As I walked out of Lunardi’s I eyed the payphone to the left of the doors next to the kid’s mechanical horse. There was a woman, perhaps early forties with a small boy who kept tugging at her arm to let him ride the thing. The saddle where all the kids sat was worn away and smooth, made me want run my hand on it. I don’t know why exactly. I was filled with strange desires these days, perhaps it was the freedom from any kind of restraint. Who knew me here in this town. I could do anything I wanted, but there was a down side to that. I was doing nothing – which was what I wanted. The only one around to suggest maybe I ought to do something, was my father and he was too whacked out on PepperidgeFarms cookies and the vague idea of my future in publishing to offer me any direction. But it was too late, the kid sat on the saddle and the only way I could touch it was to risk felony. The mother reached into her purse and pulled out a cell phone while the kid crawled up onto the horse. He sat there yanking on the little handles coming out of the neck of the horse – the kind of thing he would probably look back on one day and wonder, “how did I hang onto that horse.” He kicked his tennis shoes at the ribs of the horse where someone with a sparay can had scrawled, “You suck,”.

“Hang on a sec, sweetie, “ His mother said while she punched in a number on the cell phone, obviously calling someone who was not programmed in. Perhaps someone elicit, I thought, while I picked up the handset of the phone. I had the long distance 800 number and my pin memorized so that I could basically call anywhere in the world I wanted just by laying the tip of my finger on a set of buttons. I wasn’t pleased with the payphones close proximity to the bucking bronco and the mother on the cell. But what could I do? I turned my back and pressed the numbers for my calling card, then Elizabeth’s number in Dallas. As the phone rang I heard the mother on the cell say, “Yeah, well fuck it,” which was basically the mood I was in calling Elizabeth. The last time I talked with her, which was only two days ago, I swore I wouldn’t call again for at least a good two-or three days. There was somethin in her tone, or maybe it was just her choice of words – “So good to hear from you,” It was so cliché without any real meaning that I finished off the remaining half a bottle of 28.95 Napa Chardonay my father had splurged on. And I don’t even really like Chardonay especially when it’s luke warm from sitting by the side of the couch for four hours.

The stupid kid would not stop kicking the side of the horse so I turned and glared at the woman who had found fifty cents and was jiggling it in her palm bu too distracted with her elicit phone call to slip in the the coin slot.

I was tempted to just pay for the kid’s ride, when she leaned over and fed the machine.

“Alan, don’t be such a loser,” she said as the horse started rocking back and forth and the kid’s face lit up with delight. That was childhood right there, I thought. Your mother having an elicit phone conversation right in front of you because she can.

I turned my back and waited for someone to pick up in Dallas. Usually it was Amanda, their maid, a black lady who didn’t say much but who always seemed to be working quietly in the background while Elizabeth and I left for breakfast, returned for lunch and a swim, then headed back our for drinks and a movie.

Frankel’s residence she’d say just like all my old elementry school friends were trained to say when they picked up the phone.

“Hello,” Elizabeth’s mother’s voice came on the line.
I was tempted to hang up immediately and I was never sure why. She’d been nice as can be to me but I go this sense from her that she looked down on me somehow, like I was not fully developed, like she could tell I only skimmed Dante’s Inferno in our complit class, unlike her daughter who highlighted the footnotes. Maybe Honu had a right to look down upon me. I mean footnotes only pleased me when they filled 3/4 of a page. leaving less to read. Maybe she saw me for the loser I was more clearly than her daughter or even I could see.


“ My darling,” he mother said. I thought I could hear the crackle of a cigarette and the delicate clink of a wine glass on ceramic tiles. “Tell me, how are you, Elaine?’

“Good, good,” I said. I wished the lady with the kid would move off a little and give me some peace and quiet. But then, maybe here outside of Lunardi’s was the closest she came to privacy.

“What have you been up to, Kiddo?” Her questions were like darts hitting the bullseye of my uselessness. I felt the sting of them long before they hit their target mostly because I’d been stabbing at myself with the same questions for the past three months since graduation.

“Well,” I said, thinking. The boy’s ride had ended but he just sat there jiggling the handholds waiting for it to start up again, not realizing the fun was over.

“Not much, you know, just trying to figure things out,” I said. I was going to add that I was thinking about applying to a summer program at UCLA in journalism when she interrupted and said, “Amanda, have you seen Liz?”

That was it, I would never call that house again. I was a little nobody from San Jose California, living off Pell grants and student loans who had never heard of Ella Fitzgeraled or Duke Ellington before sharing a suite at Francisco Torres with their darling daughter. I’d never been to the French Riviera or flown on the Concorde. Inside my suitecase that September that I arrived at UCSB were two new pairs of Levis, a pair of shorts , a tee-shirt my mother swore looked cute on me and four fresh new pairs of underpants. I’d brought one thin pillow for my bed, a poster of the Who for my wall and a clock radio. By the time I’d arrived, one day before the first day of class, Elizabeth’s side of the dorm looked like something out of one of the furniture store magazines my mother used to look at and sigh with her down quilt all puffy and fluffy, her rattan rug, to match the shades she’d had sized and fitted to the window on her side of the room. A light, that I would later learn was Art Deco, cast a warm golden glow over everthing.

Surely, there’d been somekiind of mix-up in room assignments. Elizabeth was probably supposed to get Emily from Beverly Hills, I thought as Honu came on the phone and said, “Kiddo, Liz isn’t here right now. I’ll let her know you called.”

The lady and the kid were walking toward their car. She was steering him with her hand on the back of his round blond head. I hung the receiver up and just stared for a moment. Calling Dallas was a little like going under anesthesia and then waking up to a jarring white light and disoriented nausea. I looked out at the parking lot and past it to the clutter of stores and gas stations, street lights and the power cables. I watched people load up their trunks with groceries, stand at the pump and stare into space while they filled their tanks, or cautiously walk through a cross-walk looking out for something to run them over. It was all so busy and hurried and full of going and coming, and getting and doing and it made me feel so empty and sad. I did not want to be a part of any of it. I did not want to rush or scurry or to think of bank accounts, or meetings, or anything that all these people seemed to have running through their heads. I did not want to be any of them. But what did I want to be part of? That was the question.

Maybe it was just this wretchedly beautiful sunny white light all around that was the problem. Not a cloud in the sky or a hint of a storm brewing or anything to disturb the complete banality of it. I wanted fog and mist, pouring rain, wind that pushed behind me – something bigger than me that I felt, not this lifeless hollow happy light, like some silly woman at a party who says to everyone, “It was realy nice to meet you,” and always walks off in search of someone newer. I crossed the parking lot, looking at peoople’s faces. Did anyone share my feelings? Was there someone who wasn’t fitting in, wasn’t sure what the hell to do with the next fifty years. I looked around.

A bagboy leaned against a garbage can smoking. He looked about my age, probably never went to college, Did he have plans for the future I wondered, or was putting people’s tomato sauce and tampons into paper bag’s enough? Of course not, I’d done my share of crap jobs. Mindlessness was okay for about a month, I found before the self-doubts took all the fun out of not thinking. Shouldn’t I be thinking, I’d start thinking, even though there was something pleasantly freeing about not thinking, just doing: first the heavy items, then the soft items. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. I found myself admiring the bagboy as he leaned there calmly smoking, ruining his health and future. He’d go inside, stand at the end of the counter and wait for items to move toward him.

I got in the car and just sat there for a moment with the key in the ignition, waiting for a twist of the wrist to fire it up. I found myself in this kind of pause mode a lot recently. Standing at the kitchen sink with one hand on the faucet and staring out the window but not seeing anything outside. The other day, I was standing at the counter at the Double Rainbow café having ordered a cappucino. I’d paid the six or seven dollars it cost and stood there while the guy behind the counter moved to the left and started blasting the milk with steam. The loud swooshing sound transported me back to the Madeleine café on campus at UCSB. I could see the cast iron black chairs and tables, the small glass vases and silk flowers on the tables. The ceiling fan whirring, the high windows overlooking the bike path and a stream of students walking and riding to their next class when the guy behind the counter made the oddest sound that woke me and brought me back to the present. It was a “puh” sound, a kind of force of air through the lips.
I turned to him and must have looked startled.

He laughed and said, “that’s practically the same look my cat makes when I do that do her.”

Who was this idiot I thought, breathing on me. I glanced quickly up at him as I took my capuccino. He was a blur of pastel. I’d seen his type before, mostly behind the counters at jewelry stores or in the women’s shoe department. Feminin features with bad facial hair and gelled curls. I took my coffee and sat at one of the tables. I really hated the café with it’s silly neon double rainbow that gave off a terrible buzzing sound on top of the bad radio that played non-stop but the only other café in town was always packed with cyclists in lycra who never seemed to get on their bikes and give up a table. I had only been seated a few minutes – and began to stare with my pen held aloft over a blank piece of paper – when the guy sat down at my table and started telling me about his day.

He was saying something about riding his bike up a steep hill and how he can usually do it under forty-five minutes but this day it took him longer because he’d made himself run six miles the night before.

“You ever been up Bowman?” he asked. A man with a small child walked in the door. The guy at my table gave a quick look over his shoulder then leaned in close to me.
“You look strong. What do you weigh 105? 110? Perfect power to weight ratio.”

“Excuse me, we’d like to order some ice-cream here,” the man with the child announced seeing how the guy at my table was obviously messing up his precious ice-cream schedule.

“Why certainly,” the guy at my table said. “What can I get you?” He jumped up that afternoon and returned to his spot behind the counter leaving me wondering whether I needed to find a new coffee shop.

I took the longer route home instead of making a left on Saratoga, I continued on along University, the central thoroughfare through Los Gatos. A collection of useless boutiques filled with home furnishing nik-naks, harking back to a whiter, less immigrant infused period in American history, overpriced restaurants, upscale chains such as Anne Taylor, and lowscale chains like the Gap trying for the upscale sheen by hiking up their prices on plain black t-shirts. I drove past the Broken Egg, my current place of employment. Wayne, the manager was standing outside taking a break. His apron tied around his waist smeared with breakfast grease. I didn’t want him to see me so I looked straight ahead, as if I had a plan, a place to be in a hurry – which would be reason enough to explain why I could not work Wednesdays, Thursdays, or Fridays, apart from the fact that I simply did not want to work Wednesday, Thurdays or Fridays, ever. Further up the street on the left was the Double Rainbow cafe. I slowed slightly as I passed and looked inside the doorway. Maybe I would go in and write another letter to Elizabeth, I thought. I noticed the effeminite guy wiping down a table.


I parked in my father’s parking spot. It was easily recognizible by the large gash in the post at the exact height of the large gash in the side of the his car. The same turn taken wide had further damaged the post so that the internal metal meshing holding the cememt in place was visible. It was just the sort of thing that drove my mother crazy. The bad driving, of course, but more the messing up of nice places, like this condominium, in his unique ways. Sometimes I sided with her. He was full of himself and goddamned bloody annoying as she had said last week when I visited her at her studio over by Capitol Expressway, autorow, San Jose. She’d left it at that, as if that summed him up completely, as if I was completely on her side about who was more messed up out of the two of them.


I opened the gate to the condominium grounds. The sprinklers were spraying water across the neat lawns, clippered bushes and wide cement footpaths winding from condo to condo. I walked past the mailboxes. There was definitely a piece of mail inside. I could open the door, and find junk mail, or a bill, I considered, or I could let it sit there and imagine it to be a letter from Elizabeth – a nice hope that would get me through cooking dinner and into the evening. Or, I thought, as my dad’s neighbor, Susan, appeared at the top of the stairs by her front door, I could simply not live in some fantasy world, open the mailbox door, get the gas bill and drink an extra couple glasses of wine at dinner. I put the key in the lock and turned it.

“Would you speak to your father for me, hon?” Susan said. I glanced up at her. She was
wearing a business skirt looking thing – the kind that’s so ugly and unstylish, it’s considered professional wear -- and tennis shoes.
I opened the door to the mailslot. Immediately I saw, Elizabeth’s neat printing, all the letters the same height, the numbers penned in different colors like she liked to do, and my name underlined with a little squiggly flourish of a pink pen. My heart sank because I knew what such attention to the address meant. Little content.

“What?” I said.
“Tell your father that the association rules don’t permit use of the communal hose.”
I lifted the letter out of the box. It was stiff, obviously a card she’d picked up during one of her shopping sprees in Highland Park with her highschool friend Deedee of whom she always said she no longer felt very close to but seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time with since graduation.

“I’ll tell him, “ I said to Susan. She was talking about the hose he’d hauled up to his deck from the garden faucet below to water the moribund collection of potted plants Epi had left behind when she left him six months ago. The hose had been hanging there for a couple of weeks, I think, just to taunt the association because he’d only watered the plants the one time, tricking water on the brown shrivelled leaves while he sat back on the deck chair and drank wine.

“Thank you,” she said and still just stood there. I could see her out of the side of my eye as I walked up the stairs. She hadn’t lived there when I left for college. She was maybe ten years old than me, early thirties. She probably worked in a bank downtown. Or maybe in Human Resources at the hospital. Not really smart I guessed. Probably never heard of Nabakov or Dante or even went to college. Probably went to Los Gatos High, took a job typing in the HR department and just stayed there typing up memos and filing really well. Then maybe someone died or moved on and the new girl they hired left too because she couldn’t stand the awful cubicles, so they gave Susan a try. And Susan worked hard. Ate her lunch at her desk, little sandwhiches in ziplock baggies, cut celery (just to have something to nibble on when she really wanted a bagel with cream cheese from the coffee shop next door filled up with cyclists who never went on bike rides). Then maybe she applied internally for a position. They didn’t really want her but they took her on at a paycut, a sort of trial period, just to see if she fit in. She worked late, even took some work home and completed some spreadsheets on her old computer at home that was so slow it took twice the time it would have taken at work, so she was really working triple time.

“How’s it going?” she asked, interupting my re-write of her life.
“Huh?” I said. I was just about to put the key in the front door.
“I hear you just graduated from college. Congratulation. Any plans?”
“Publishing,” I said. I quickly turned the key and opened the door before she asked for more details.
“Good for you,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said and closed it.

I put the groceries on the counter and sat down at the dinner table with the letter. I held it up to the light, shook it, put it down and considered if I should open it right then. It might be one of her restaurant menus that she liked to fold up and send to me with circles around the food items that she had that day. Last week she sent one from Go-Go Burgers and circled all the extras she'd added. the list was long: avocado, bacon, cheese, grilled onions. At the end of the list, she wrote, "and now I must go to the vomitorium". I put the letter aside. I could feel one of my late-afternoon panic attacks coming on. Maybe it was just the pure silence apart from the tick-tick-tick of the sprinklers and the incessant hum of the refrigerator and the somehow the sight of little things like my father's dead plants on the deck or Epi's embroided table cloth with the hearts and rainbows that she left behind when she packed up and left to stay with her sister, something about it all made me feel like it would take hold of me, shoot out roots and wrap around my legs and ankles tie me to this spot forever.

I opened the bottle of wine and reached for a glass from the cabinet. My father had quite a few, all shitty things with chips here and there, micro-scratches from the dishwasher. I looked for the best one of the lot -- "Los Gatos 1985 Art and Wine Celebration". I knew Epi must have dragged him to this too. He'd have hated the crafts and all the cheery people trying to sell him wood carvings, and colored glass hanging flowers for the kitchen window.

As I poured the glass of wine, I looked up and stared at the glass window ornament in the shape of a unicorn refecting red, yellow and pink across the dirty dishes in the sink.

I sat down on the leather couch across from the glass windows leading out to my father's deck. I would become a drunk, I considered, but not just some ordinary drunk. I'd go to Lunardi's and buy good wine and sit on my father's deck and read books until I figured out something to do with my life. I could see it all now. One day, years down the road, I thought, as I worked in a vineyard having earned a degree in vinology or whatever it's called, I would think of how I had just let things happen. I had allowed my life to run its own course. I poured another glass of wine. I sniffed it the way you're supposed to, sipped it and let it roll around my palate. Maybe I approached life the wrong way. Maybe I was too forceful. I should let things happen as they will, let life come to me. Surely that's what Elizabeth was doing, letting her father supply with a job in the fashion industry, letting him give her an apartment to rent in Manhattan in September. Perhaps life would come to me in a similar tho less exciting, sort of boring, and entirely dull fashion.

Outside people were swimming and splashing in the condo pool. I took my glass of wine out to the deck and looked down on them. A man was floating on his back, extremely boyant from the flab around his torso. A woman on a deck chair holding a paperback in one hand and a cigarette in the other paid no attention to him, her head slightly tipped forward intensly reading. Probably smack in the middle of some steamy sex scene. They repulsed me for no particular reason and yet at the same time I wouldn't mind being them that very moment, free and having fun on a weekday, their jobs in the service industry secure, their car payment in the mail, their stocks doing well, a vacation to the Big Island set for later in the year, and maybe a couple of steaks in the refrigerator and a tub of sour cream for their baked potatoes. If I became a drunk at eighteen would I ruin my chances of having such a simple, pleasing, artery clogging existence I wondered. Was I dooming my chances right now of becoming simple and socially acceptable? I found a new pimple on my chin and ran my finger over it until it bled. Then used the sleeve of the shirt Elizabeth had given to me -- a sample of a new style her father's company was marketing -- to wipe away the blood.

"Watch" the man said as he drifted over to the side of the pool. He put his head against the cement and looked up at the woman.

"Mmm?" she said, and the way she slowly turned her head from the book to him, I could tell it was a small concession she was making to turn to look at him -- when probably Jake, or Randy, or Carlton in the book was just about to plunge his manhood into Virginia's womanhood -- that i felt like they didn't repulse me so much. But then, maybe that was the wine.

The man dove underneath the water and started walking on his hands with his hairy legs sticking out of the water. He was making his way slowly to the otherside of the pool, when the woman stopped looking and turned back to her book.

He came up out of breath, and slung his head to one side to clear the hair off his face. "You see?" he asked. She didn't look up or answer this time. I watched him the way a scientist might look down through a microscope at some gelatinous gob of goo stuck to a slide looking for signs of life. How was it, I wondered that people like him got by in the world so well. They wore ties, and had desks, perhaps their name on a door and they still needed applause for walking on their hands in a pool.