June, overcome, ran to Mick and her father and hugged them both.
“You have my blessing,” Theo said, turning his gaze to Mick. “With the caveats we talked about, son.”
Mick nodded.
“Thank you, Daddy,” June said.
Theo shook his head. “Don’t thank me. Mick here’s got a few years in him to try to make it big and then he’s ready to do the right thing and take over the restaurant.”
Theo shook Mick’s hand and Mick smiled and shook it back. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Theo went over to Christina and June pulled Mick aside. “We’re going to take over the restaurant?” she whispered.
Mick shook his head. “He just needs to hear what he needs to hear right now. And so I gave it to him. But did you hear the first part? A few years to make it big? I don’t need a few years. Don’t worry, Junie.”
Over dinner, Mick complimented Christina’s cooking and Christina finally smiled. Mick asked Theo for advice on car insurance and Theo gladly stepped in to consult.
And over dessert, strawberry shortcake, Theo asked Mick to sing.
“June says you sing Cole Porter better than Cole Porter,” Theo said.
Mick demurred and then acquiesced. He put his napkin on the table and stood up. He starting singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” And before he got to the bridge, Theo was nodding along, smiling.
Mick felt a lump in his throat and so he carried on, but he pushed harder out of his sternum, held the notes a bit longer than normal. And when he was done, Mick caught his breath, unable to look at Theo as he tried to steady his pulse.
June clapped. Theo joined her. “Nicely done,” he said. “Nicely done.”
Mick looked at him, finally took in his approval.
Christina smiled wide but June noticed she neither parted her lips nor scrunched her eyes. “Lovely,” she said.
Mick said good night to everyone shortly after dinner. He kissed June on the cheek in the driveway. “We’re really going to be something together. You know that, don’t you?” he asked her.
And June beamed. “Of course I know that.”
He held her hand tight as she tried to walk back into her house, as if she could drag him with her. He dropped it at the very last second, not wanting to say goodbye. He stayed in his car until she waved at him from her bedroom window. Then he backed out and went on his way.
Christina found June in the bathroom moments later, washing her face. Christina was already in her robe; she’d set her hair in rollers to sleep in.
“June, are you sure?” Christina asked.
June felt her shoulders begin to slump. She straightened them out. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“I know he’s handsome and I know he’s got a great voice but …”
“But what, Mom?” June asked.
Christina shook her head. “Just make sure he knows how to run a restaurant.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” June said, feeling her voice getting higher, “that I might be meant for something bigger than a restaurant off the side of the road?”
Christina’s face tightened, her lips pursed together, as if she was guarding herself against her daughter’s sharp tongue. June braced herself for a moment, unsure how her mother would react. But Christina softened once more.
“I know you like all this flash, honey,” she said. “But a good life is knowing people care about you, knowing you can take care of the people that count on you, knowing you’re doing a little something in your community. The way your father and I do that is by feeding people. I truly can’t think of much bigger than that. But that’s just me.”
June apologized and kissed her mother good night. And then she picked up a copy of Sub Rosa and imagined, one day, reading about Mick in those pages.
• • •
Mick started getting paying gigs at restaurants in Hollywood and Beverly Hills singing standards while rich people ate dinner. Then he booked a few clubs in Hollywood with a backup band he’d put together called the Vine.
With each show, June became prouder and prouder, telling anyone who would listen that she was marrying a professional musician.
Mick and the Vine booked a show in a small casino in Las Vegas, a week on a cruise to Ensenada, a wedding for the head of Sunset Studios.
Then the Mocambo called with an offer for Mick to do two shows there solo. June jumped up and down when he told her. Mick picked her up and swung her in the air.
The first night at the club, June came with him and stood behind the curtain as he sang, staring at the stars who came and took seats. She thought she saw Desi Arnaz. She could have sworn Jayne Mansfield was there.
When Mick finished at the Mocambo, he was invited to play at the brand-new Troubadour in West Hollywood. And suddenly, there it was, his name on a marquee. MICK RIVA: ONE NIGHT ONLY.
June delighted in it all. “I’m marrying Mr. Mick Riva,” she would say to Mrs. Hewitt, who ran the grocery; Mr. Russo, who delivered the clams to the restaurant; Mrs. Dunningham at the bank. “He just did two nights at the Mocambo. Don Adler was there. I saw him there with my own eyes. The night before he was there, Ava Gardner had come in. Ava Gardner!”
She showed off her tiny ring to her childhood best friends and the girls who picked up shifts at the restaurant sometimes. “He’s going to be a big singer one day, already is practically,” she’d say.
Two months later, Mick finally got his meeting with Frankie Delmonte at Runner Records. A week after that, he came to June’s house with a record deal and a new ring. This one twice the size of an apple seed.
“You didn’t have to do this,” June said. It was so brilliant, so bright white.
“I wanted to do it,” Mick said. “I don’t want you walking around with a tiny little something. You need bigger, you need better.”
June had liked the small little ring. And she liked this one, too.
“Just wait,” Mick said. “We’re gonna have so much money it’s gonna be embarrassing.”
June laughed but that night, she went to bed dreaming about their future. What if they could have a king-sized bed? And a Cadillac? What if they could have three kids or even four? What if they could get married on the sand, under a huge tent?
When she confessed these ideas to him, asking if he thought any of it was possible, he always told her the same thing. “I’ll give you the world.”
He would whisper it in her ear as he took off her dress. He would pledge it to her as he put his leg between hers. “Anything you want. I’m going to make sure you get it.” He would run his hand down her back, kiss the skin behind her ears, grab her hips.
Who could blame June for how often she lay naked beside him before they were married? When he knew so well how to touch her?
When they realized June was pregnant, neither of them was surprised.
• • •
“June,” Christina said as she shook her head, standing in the kitchen of Pacific Fish, whispering her frustration. “I thought you were smarter than this, honey.”
“I’m sorry,” June said, nearly in tears. “I’m sorry.”
Christina sighed. “Well, you’re going to have to move up the wedding. That’s first. And then I guess we will get you a forgiving dress. And figure out the rest as we go.”
June dried her eyes.
“You’re not the first woman in the world to lose her head over a man,” Christina said.
June nodded.
“C’mon, now,” Christina said. “Cheer up, buttercup. It’s a beautiful thing.” She pulled June into her arms and kissed the top of her head.
Mick and June said “I do” in a tent under the stars, right there on the sands of Malibu. Family on her side. Some music executives on his.
That night, Mick and June danced cheek to cheek as the band played standards. “We’re gonna do it all right,” Mick said to her. “We’re gonna love this baby. And we’re gonna have more of them. And we’re going to have good suppers and happy breakfasts a
nd I’ll never leave you, Junie. And you’ll never leave me. And we’ll have a happy home. I promise you that.”
June looked at him and smiled. She put her cheek back to his.
Toward the end of the evening, Mick got up in front of the crowd. He grabbed the microphone. “If you’ll indulge me,” he said, with a half smile. “I have a song I’d like to sing for you all tonight. I wrote it for my wife. It’s called ‘Warm June.’”
Sun brings the joy of a warm June
Long days and midnights bright as the moon
Nothing I can think of but a warm June
Nothing I can think of but you
June sat right in the front as he sang to her. She tried not to cry and laughed as she failed. If this was their beginning, my God, how high could they fly?
• • •
Nina was born in July 1958. Everyone pretended she was premature. Mick drove them both home from the hospital directly to a new house.
He had bought them a three-bedroom, two-story cottage, right over the water. Baby blue with white shutters on Malibu Road, the back half extending out over the sea. There was a hatch in the floor, on the side patio, that led to a set of stairs that went directly to the beach.
As if a new house wasn’t enough, there was a brand-new teal Cadillac in the driveway.
When June first walked through the house, she found herself holding her breath. A living room with windows that opened to the water, an eat-in kitchen, hardwood floors. Surely it couldn’t have everything, could it? Surely each one of her dreams hadn’t come true all at once?
“Look, Junie, look,” Mick said, leading her excitedly into the master bedroom. “This is where the king-sized bed will go.”
Holding tiny, delicate Nina in her arms, June followed her husband through the bedroom and soon made her way to the master bathroom. She looked at the vanity.
She ran her right hand along the side of the sink, felt the smooth porcelain curve down, level out, and curve back up. And then she kept running her hand along the cold tile and rough grout, until she hit the curve of porcelain of her second sink.
10:00 A.M.
Nina pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and shut off her engine. As she got out of her car, she glanced up at the sign and wondered if it was time to have it redone.
Riva’s Seafood, once known as Pacific Fish, was still very much old Malibu, complete with a faded sign and peeling paint. It was no longer just a roadside dive but an institution. The children who used to come with their parents now brought their own children.
Nina walked through to the kitchen entrance with her sunglasses still on. She found herself leaving them on more and more lately. It wasn’t until she saw Ramon that she took them off.
Ramon was thirty-five and had been happily married for over a decade with five kids. He had started as a fry cook and had worked his way up over the years. He’d been running Riva’s Seafood since 1979.
“Nina, hey, what’s up?” Ramon asked her as he was simultaneously keeping an eye on a fry cook and getting shrimp out of the freezer.
Nina smiled. “Oh, you know, just making sure you haven’t set the place on fire.”
Ramon laughed. “Not until you add me to the insurance policy.”
Nina laughed as she came around to his side of the counter and took a sliced tomato off the cutting board. She salted it and ate it. Then she braced herself and headed out to the picnic tables to smile and shake hands with a few customers.
As she stepped outside, the sun was already bright on her eyes and she could feel the false version of herself coming to life. Her face took on an exaggerated smile and she waved at a few tables full of people who were staring at her.
“Hope everyone is enjoying lunch!” she said.
“Nina!” shouted a boy not much older than fifteen. He rushed toward her in madras shorts and an Izod polo. Nina could already see the rolled-up poster in his right hand, the Sharpie in his left. “Will you sign this?”
Before she responded, he started unrolling it in front of her. She could not count the number of people who had showed up at the restaurant with a poster of her surfing in a bikini, asking for her signature. And despite how bizarre she felt it was, she always acquiesced.
“Sure,” Nina said, taking the Sharpie from his hand. She wrote her name, a perfectly legible “Nina R.,” in the top right-hand corner. And then she put the cap back on the pen and handed it over to the boy. “There you go,” she said.
“Can I get a photo, too?” he asked, just as his father and mother got up from their table, armed with a Polaroid.
“Sure.” Nina nodded. “Of course.”
The boy sidled up right next to her, reaching to put his arm around her shoulders, claiming the full experience for himself. Nina smiled for the camera as she inched away from the boy ever so slightly. She’d perfected the art of standing close without touching.
The father hit the shutter and Nina could hear the familiar snap of the photo being printed. “You all have a wonderful day,” she said, moving toward the tables in the front, to greet the rest of the customers and then head back inside. But as the boy and his mother looked at the photo coming into existence, the boy’s father smiled at Nina and then reached out and smoothed his hand over the side of her T-shirt, grazing her ribs and hips.
“Sorry,” he whispered, with a confident smile. “Just wanted to ‘see for myself that it’s soft to the touch.’”
It was the third time a man had tried this line since her ad for SoftSun Tees launched last month.
Nina had posed for it at the top of the year. It had been her biggest payday to date. In the ad, she stood, in red bikini bottoms and a white T-shirt, her hair wet, her hips jutted out to the left, her right arm up against a doorframe. The T-shirt was threadbare. You couldn’t see her nipples but if you stared enough, you might be able to convince yourself you could.
The photo was suggestive. And she knew that. She knew that’s why they wanted her in the first place. Everyone wanted the surfer girl to take her clothes off—she’d made her peace with that.
But then they had added that tagline without telling her. See for yourself, it’s soft to the touch. And they’d placed it right under her breasts.
It had invited a level of intimacy that Nina didn’t care for.
She grinned insincerely at the boy’s father and moved away from him. “If you’ll excuse me …” she said as she waved to the rest of the customers and went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
Nina understood that the more often she posed—most likely for even more high-profile campaigns—the more people would show up at the restaurant. The more often they would want her photo, her signature, her smile, her attention, her body. She had not quite figured out how best to handle the sense of ownership that people felt over her. She wondered how her father had tolerated it. But she also knew they didn’t touch him the way they touched her.
“You don’t have to go out there and shake all their hands,” Ramon said when he saw her.
“I don’t know … I wish that were true,” Nina said. “Do you have time to go over the books?”
Ramon nodded, wiped his hands on a towel, and followed her into the office.
“The restaurant’s doing OK,” he said to her as they walked. “You know that, right?”
Nina shook her head from side to side, a yes and a no. “It’s the keeping it doing OK that I worry about,” she said, as they both sat down and began to go over the numbers. It was a complicated endeavor.
The building was old, the kitchen had needed to be brought up to code recently, business ebbed and flowed with the seasons.
Fortunately, it had been a good summer. But the off-season was approaching and last winter had been brutal. She’d had to keep the place afloat with an influx of her own cash back in January, just as she’d done a few times before.
“We’ve pulled it out of the red from the top of the year,” Nina said, turning the book toward Ramon for him
to see. “So that’s good. I’m just a little worried we’ll fall back in once the tourists dry up.”
It occurred to her at times that she was using modeling to subsidize a restaurant in which people came to take her photo and often didn’t even buy a soda.
But she loved the staff, and some of the regulars. And Ramon.
“Regardless, we will figure it out. We always do,” she said.
She wasn’t going to be the one, three generations in, to let Riva’s Seafood go to shit. She just wasn’t.
“Can we stop at home before we head to the restaurant? I want to take a shower,” Kit said, over the sound of the road.
“Totally,” Jay said as he put on his blinker to turn down the street they’d grown up on.
Jay and Kit were the only two Rivas still living in their childhood home. Nina was in the mansion at Point Dume and often traveling for photo shoots. Hud liked living in his Airstream. But Jay and Kit stayed in the beach cottage they had grown up in, the one their father had bought their mother twenty-five years ago.
Jay had taken over the master bedroom. But he traveled a lot, too. He was often at surf competitions all over the world, with Hud by his side.
Soon, the two of them were supposed to leave for the North Shore of Oahu. Jay was scheduled to compete in the Duke Classic, the World Cup, and Pipe Masters. Then they’d be off to the Gold Coast of Australia and Jeffreys Bay in South Africa. O’Neill would foot a lot of the bill and have their name plastered across Jay at every turn. Hud would be snapping photos of him all the while.
The two of them were due for another cover, were planning on selling off the rights for posters and calendars. But to do so, they had to roam the earth. The life of a professional surfer and his entourage required a light foot, a sense of spontaneity. Jay’s and Hud’s passion, their livelihood, their lives, depended on chasing the ever-changing, unpredictable combination of wind and water.
And so, as much as Jay considered California his home, lately he didn’t think of himself as necessarily living anywhere.
Kit, meanwhile, was still sleeping in her childhood bed, looking at a junior year at Santa Monica College, spending her nights and weekends behind the register at the restaurant. The only bright spot she could see would be when she could ditch to take trips with her friends up to the breaks in Santa Cruz. The waves were big up there, some double overhead. But that was about as far as Kit’s life was taking her right now, just a few hours up the coast.
Malibu Rising: A Novel Page 5