by Vendela Vida
I feel a lightness in my chest and in the arches of my feet. “That would be really cool,” I say. I stare at Ewa, this refuser of cleaning up milk spills, with a new admiration.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING EVENING, I find two tickets on my desk fanned out in a “V” shape. The concert’s at the Fillmore. I’ve never been to the Fillmore. My lungs push against my rib cage. Now I just have to invite Keith. And then convince my parents to let me go. And I have to find out if the band’s recorded more than the one song I heard half of.
I change out of my uniform into my best black jeans. I tie a black sweater around my waist as a makeshift belt. I pick out a blue long-sleeve with a big button at the top. Good, I think, glancing at the mirror on the back of my door. I don’t glance too hard, just enough to think it looks nice. Closer examination, I have learned, is not my ally. I place Band-Aids on my ankles to prepare for the pulling on of my Doc Martens, which have not been sufficiently worn in yet. Doc Martens are for evenings and weekends. They are not permitted at Spragg.
I walk to California Street to take the first of two buses to the used record store I like. I hope to see Keith on his skateboard but he’s not there. I wait for the bus and then take it for four blocks before I decide to get a transfer ticket from the bus driver. It’s not a bus with boys. I hold my transfer in my hand and wait fifteen minutes for the next one. It’s worth the wait. On this bus I see Axel Wallenberg. He doesn’t know me, but I know who he is because he’s Swedish, too—our moms know each other. Axel Wallenberg, I have decided, is a deep, beautiful boy.
While his beauty is obvious, his depth may not be immediately evident. But I’m sure it’s there because I know a secret about his family. I’ve been obsessed with Raoul Wallenberg ever since I wrote an essay on him last year in seventh grade. He helped save hundreds of Jews in World War II by traveling from Sweden to Hungary and providing Jews with fake Swedish passports. But then in 1945 the KGB in Russia imprisoned him. The Russians say he was executed in 1947 but his body was never found, and I’m not sure I believe them. A lot of people don’t. I personally suspect that Axel Wallenberg, who’s currently on the 1 California bus with me, is his grandson.
We switch buses at Presidio and take the 43 to the Haight. Axel and his friends are in the back of the bus and I’m seated in the middle. I have to make sure to turn the pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being so it looks like I’m actually reading the book, in case anyone’s checking, which they are not. I’m focused on the boys’ conversation, which is now about Maria Fabiola. More interesting to me is the fact that Axel is talking about how he’s going to go to the party to welcome her back.
“You should totally spike whatever they’re serving,” one of his friends says.
“Yeah,” says the other friend, the one with the longer hair. “You should spike the punch.”
As we near Haight, I look out the window and see a girl with mousy hair wearing a pink fur jacket, round glasses, and bell-bottoms. She’s talking to two much older men, one with high heel boots. The other man is wearing a brown leather jacket and a beanie.
“Check it out,” one of Axel’s friends says. “There’s that freak who was swinging naked from the monkey bars.”
The other boys look out the window. “Fucking Chelsea morning,” Axel’s other friend says.
“She’s so messed up,” Axel says. “But I feel bad for her. Her mom abandoned her and went to Africa.”
India, I want to say. But I don’t want them to know I’ve been listening to their conversation.
When we get to Haight, we all get off the bus. The boys go left, where shops sell pipes, and, near the park, dealers sell pot. I turn to the right, toward the bigger stores. I pass a few high-school dropouts with dogs. You can tell they went to fancy summer camps at some point—they still have those sailing bracelets yellowed and rotting away on their wrists—and now they’re sitting outside stores, asking for money.
The record store is filled with guys, all of them about five years older than me. I only see one other girl buying records, but she’s with her boyfriend. I flip through the used records and can’t find what I’m looking for, so I have to go to the NEW section. And there it is—the Psychedelic Furs. There are two records. No, three. I don’t know which to get. I decide I can only afford one. Svea’s birthday is coming up in March and I need to save the rest of my money to buy her something that I’ll find deep in her closet a week later.
I choose the most recent record, with the image of a man with reddish hair in a blue tuxedo jacket. I hold it between my hands like it’s the face of someone I love.
The balding guy at the cash register with the ironic? Blondie shirt nods when I give him the album. “Cool choice,” he says, and I don’t say anything because thanks doesn’t seem like the right response. I try to make my eyes say Of course. Then I carry my bright yellow record bag down the street, taking care to not swing my arms so it doesn’t hit anybody.
I pass a mannequin in a storefront window wearing a dress that’s black with tiny white polka dots. Impulsively, I enter the shop.
Two willowy women work at the store. One of them is wearing a scarlet bow tie, the other a pencil skirt with a bronze zipper that runs all the way down the front. “The dress in the window . . .” I start to say.
“Oh, that would look fabulous on you,” says the woman in the bow tie.
“That’s our only one,” says the woman with the zipper skirt. “I’ll take it off the mannequin.”
She approaches the window and removes the mannequin. For a moment she and the mannequin are engaged in an awkward dance. Then the woman lays the mannequin on the floor of the shop and starts to unbutton the bodice of the dress. It looks like she’s about to perform CPR. The inert form, I can’t help but notice, looks remarkably like me. The bow-tied woman observes this as well. “The mannequin looks a little like you,” she says.
“I just hope I look more alive,” I say.
“You do,” she says.
“Well, that’s good!” I say. The two women stare at me. Then the one on the floor manages to wrestle the dress off the mannequin. She hands it to me. “The dressing room’s that way,” she says. “Behind the pink curtain.”
In the dressing room is a poster of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, with Venus rising up out of a half shell, and maybe the poster has something to do with it, but when I put on the dress and look in the mirror, I imagine I look like a better version of me. A future me. This is what I’ll look like when I’m older, I think, and this reassures me. Maybe I am meant to wear dresses with small polka dots.
“Let’s have a look,” one of the women says.
I exit the dressing room, hoping the spell holds.
“Wow,” they both say, and I know it has.
“You have exactly the right body for that dress,” Zipper Skirt says.
“It’s not too low-cut?” I ask, hoping she won’t say it is. I know it’s on the cusp of revealing too much.
“Definitely not,” she says.
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Bow Tie says. And this makes me laugh. I’ve never had, never flaunted.
“Do you happen to have a bowler hat?” I ask.
The two women look at each other, then shake their heads, and look at me. But my request for another item has inspired them.
“Do you need shoes?” Bow Tie asks. She’s wearing very high heels.
“I think I can just wear these with the dress,” I say looking down at my Doc Martens.
“No!” they both cry out in unison.
“What size are you?” Zipper Skirt asks.
“Six and a half,” I say.
“Okay,” she says, searching the shelves of shoes.
“Try these. They’re used.” The shoes she offers me are silver and delicate—the opposite of my Doc Martens.
I sit on a low velvet couch and change shoes. The Band-Aids are falling off my heels, and I have to push them back into place. Then I stand, trying not to wobble.
Bow Tie whistles.
“I wish I could whistle,” Zipper Skirt says. “But I can’t. It’s genetic.”
I look in the mirror.
“See how nice they make your legs look. They’re e-lon-gated,” Bow Tie says, elongating the word itself.
“I’m afraid to ask how much everything is.” And suddenly I’m very afraid.
Zipper Skirt gets out her calculator and presses some buttons and then tells me the total including tax, which is substantial, but not as much as I feared. I have enough money with me, all of my Svea birthday money. If I spend it, I will only have three dollars to my name. I know I can run errands for the old people in the neighborhood and earn it back. I pay, and the dress and the shoes are delicately wrapped in tissue and then stuffed ungracefully in a paper bag.
I thank the women and step around the inert and naked mannequin on my way to the door. A bell rings as I exit the store.
* * *
I GET OFF THE BUS one stop early so that I can walk past Keith’s block. He’s there, on the street, on his skateboard. And he’s alone. I walk toward him, trying to be casual. I make sure my record bag is facing him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“What’d you get?”
“The Furs,” I say.
“No way.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And guess what? I have this friend who’s older and she gave me two tickets to their show.”
“Seriously? Cool.”
“Yeah,” I say. I stand there, gathering up the courage to say what I say next: “Do you want to come?”
“Pardon?” he says. He says “pardon” instead of “what” and I love this about him—like he’s from the South or the past or both.
“Do you want to come with me?” I repeat. “I have two tickets.”
“Maybe,” he says. “When is it?”
I tell him the date and he says he’ll check with his parents later and let me know.
“Cool,” I say. Before I can mess anything up, I turn away. I hope he’s watching me as I walk down the street with my record, my dress, my shoes, and the three dollars I have left to my name. I feel a loosened Band-Aid release itself from my ankle and fall off, but I don’t turn around to pick it up. I don’t care about litter because I am immortal.
19
At dinner I bring up the concert.
“I think it’s a good idea for you to go,” my mother says.
I know she means I think it’s a good idea for you to have a new friend your age. She likes that Ewa and I get along so well, but I can tell she’s worried that the phone never rings for me anymore.
“Wait a second, Greta,” my dad says and puts down his fork. He turns toward me. “You’re going to a concert with a boy?”
“It’s not a boy,” my mom says. “It’s Bonnie and Fred’s son. You know, from Sea View.”
I think of correcting my mother. Keith is a boy. But pointing this out won’t help further my case.
“What is this band all about?” my dad asks.
“They’re British,” I say.
“I’d like to hear them before I agree to anything,” he says.
“Okay. I have the album.”
After dinner, Ewa helps my mom with the dishes and my dad follows me upstairs. He bought me a record player from Sears last year. Embarrassed, I covered up the Sears logo. I used a special handheld machine that lets me punch out capital letters on red embossing tape. I wrote “BRAND NAME HERE” on the tape and stuck it over Sears.
My dad sits in my desk chair, swiveling. I hope he doesn’t see the concert tickets—I don’t think he’ll like the fact that I’m the one who invited Keith to the show.
My dad is no stranger to concerts. He went to see Little Richard across the bay in Richmond when he was in his twenties—he was one of two white men in the audience, he said. But there are noticeable gaps in his career as a music lover. One time I asked him who his favorite Beatle was. “I kind of missed that trend,” he said. Missed that trend, I thought. The Beatles trend. So I don’t know what he’ll think of the Psychedelic Furs.
The record’s already on the turntable and I place the needle carefully on “Pretty in Pink.” I figure the title of that song is innocuous, and makes the band seem most appropriate for someone my age.
He closes his eyes as he listens to the song.
“Eulabee,” my dad says.
“Yes,” I say.
“They’re fine,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. “So . . .”
“You may go to the concert,” he says, though it’s clear he can’t believe he’s saying the words. “We’ll have to work something out where maybe Ewa picks you up right afterward or something.”
“Of course,” I say. “Thank you.”
Instead of saying, “You’re welcome,” he nods. Then he stops swiveling and stands.
* * *
EWA DRIVES US TO THE SHOW in my parents’ yellow Saab. Keith and I are quiet on the drive and Ewa fills the air by talking about how popular heavy metal is in Sweden. We pull up in front of the Fillmore. The crowd is thick and older.
“She’s cool,” Keith says when Ewa drops us off.
“Yeah,” I say. I love that he likes her.
The scent of damp fallen leaves hits me as we enter the building.
“Pot,” Keith says.
Right, I think. The only other concert I’ve been to is Duran Duran.
We’re standing in the middle of the theater, not knowing what to do with our hands. Everyone else around us has drinks in theirs. When the concert starts, we sway a little to the music.
“No banter,” Keith says.
“What?” I ask. Leaning in to him, I smell Tide. His mother must not dilute the laundry detergent the way my mom does.
“Interesting that there’s no banter from the band. Not even ‘It’s so great to be in San Francisco.’”
A relative newcomer to this world, I say, “Yeah.”
The band starts playing “Heaven,” and Keith begins spinning around with his arms stretched up in the shape of a V.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“That’s what Richard Butler does in the video for this song.”
I know better than to ask who Richard Butler is. I never thought of learning any of the names in the band.
“Try it,” he says.
I start spinning, reluctantly at first.
“Stretch your arms up and out,” Keith says.
I do.
And there we are spinning, circling in opposite directions so that our hands gently collide with each rotation. Each time we face each other I see that Keith is singing the lyrics. I succumb to the music. I soar up above the world and nothing else matters except seeing Keith’s face again on the next rotation, when I get another whiff of Tide.
“I’m so happy we came to the concert,” I say.
“What?” he says, trying to hear me over the music.
“I’m so happy,” I yell.
When the Furs finish their set and leave the stage my heart drops. But then everyone shouts for an encore—me included, me especially—and the band comes back out and plays “Pretty in Pink.” I scream because now I know what it feels like when the music stops, and I desperately don’t want it to end.
When the show is officially over, Keith and I step outside into the cold fog. The night air smells like new leather jackets. The Saab’s low and wide headlights come toward us and we both slip into the back seat.
“How was it?” Ewa asks as we drive away.
“Fantastic,” Keith says. His fingers spider-walk over to my hand and he holds it. I feel his heartbeat in his thumb.
“Look at this,” Ewa says as we drive up Pine. “The lights must be timed. We’re hitting green lights the whole way.” As we cruise smoothly and steadily through the night, it feels like we’re on a boulevard built only for us.
20
The Friday of the party finally arrives and Maria Fabiola’s
not at school. Maybe she was kidnapped again, I think, but know better than to say this aloud. The only person I could say this to would be Keith. He would think it was funny. But Keith’s out of town, in Yosemite, for his cousin’s wedding.
No one can concentrate at school—not even the teachers, all of whom, except for the science teacher, Ms. Mc., are going to the party, too. Everyone’s distracted by what exactly is going to happen. Is an announcement going to be made? A secret revealed? Not one of us knows any more about the circumstances surrounding Maria Fabiola’s disappearance and her miraculous Christmas Day return than we did three weeks ago.
Class is dismissed even before the 3 p.m. bell. The mothers in the horseshoe driveway are out of their Volvos, standing in small knots of conversation. They look more dressed up today than usual. I count at least six ironed pencil skirts.
* * *
WHEN I GET HOME I walk through Ewa’s room to get to mine. We call it her room now because the Swedish network hasn’t found her a new au pair position yet. This is a huge relief to me.
I’ve shown Ewa the polka-dot dress I bought on Haight Street, but she hasn’t seen it on me. I close the door to my room and slip it on for the party. As I button the bodice I think of the shopkeeper with her delicate, capable hands working the same buttons on the mannequin. I don’t feel like myself, in the best way possible, since myself is someone who’s been ostracized.
I slide into the new shoes and step into Ewa’s room.
“Perfect,” she says, pronouncing it purr-fect. Then, instead of asking me to spin around, she gets up from the couch and circles me as though I’m a statue at a museum, a work of art.
“Now,” she says. “I have a surprise for you.”
She walks to the sewing closet, her wide feet leaving imprints in the plush white carpet. She has transformed the sewing closet into her own—my mother’s knitting, embroidery, and quilt square have all been moved to the bottom shelf. I take this as a welcome sign that she’ll be staying for a while.
Ewa removes a circular leather case that looks like it’s intended to carry a musical instrument—a tambourine? A drum? She unzips it with the easy efficiency of a flight attendant demonstrating how to use a flotation device.