Shrug

by Lisa Braver Moss

  The place smelled of stale cigarettes and dirty socks and was paneled in fake dark wood that buckled out from the wall in certain spots. It was hard to picture Mr. Hinge getting excited over the thick sounds of Wagner. The office was more the workspace you’d imagine for a jazz sort of person.

  Mr. Hinge got off the phone and stood up, greeting us with a gruff “Hello” and not asking us what our names were. His white Oxford shirt was tucked in diagonally across his fat belly, and the last button wasn’t fastened. My father handed him the carton of Chesterfields. Mr. Hinge grunted his thanks and put the smokes in a drawer. He sat down and lit a Chesterfield from an open pack, exhaled, and rested the cigarette in an indented corner of a huge, filthy glass ashtray that was already full of butts. My father lit a Sherman.

  “You told me Plowshares was a farm,” was the first thing Mr. Hinge said. He sounded angry.

  My father shrank back a little. “Some farm in Fresno that’s also a school, is what Willa said.”

  Mr. Hinge’s glasses were perched on top of his head, and he pulled them down onto his nose. He started looking under a stack of papers for something, then under another stack. He stood up again, turned around, and found a pad of yellow lined paper with writing on it, on top of a dusty, faded pile of magazines behind him that was so tall, it looked like it was about to fall over.

  “My mother put Drew there because it’s a place for rebellious kids,” Hildy put in. “Which is completely unfair. He’s not—”

  “Simmer down, now,” my father said to Hildy. Lawyers charged a lot of money.

  “But Dad, Mr. Hinge needs to know that Drew is a good boy!”

  “Now, you told me your son was eleven,” Mr. Hinge said.

  “I know,” Hildy said. “It’s ridiculous, but my mother—”

  “Jules, you didn’t have to sign anything?”

  “Sign what?”

  “Papers. When you put your son in there.”

  “I didn’t put my son in there,” my father said, flicking his ashes into the tray. “I told you, Willa took him. Whatever papers needed to be filled out, I assume she took care of all that. Look, I admit it. Forms are just—not my thing.”

  Mr. Hinge let out a long sigh. The yellowed slatted window blinds were aimed downward. Somehow, the sunlight showing the dust on their rounded surfaces made me want to cry.

  “Plowshares—Jules, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “What?” Hildy and I said at the same time.

  “Spit it out, Hinge,” my father said.

  “Plowshares is—they do have a farm there. But mainly, it’s a facility for wards of the state.” Mr. Hinge stubbed out his cigarette. He didn’t look at any of us.

  Hildy said, “Wards of the—what does that mean?”

  “It’s a place for juvenile delinquents in California whose parents aren’t in the picture,” Mr. Hinge answered quietly, “or who have no parents.”

  “But Drew has parents! Two of them,” I said. Shrug.

  “And he’s not a juvenile delinquent!” Hildy put in. “He just likes to multiply numbers. I mean, he might’ve stolen some stuff, plus he sold the answers—”

  I elbowed Hildy.

  “What?” Hildy said to me. “The lawyer needs to know everything. And he has to keep our secrets, dummy.”

  “Pipe down, girls,” my father said.

  “In any case,” Mr. Hinge went on, “this seems like an inappropriate placement, maybe even an illegal one.”

  “Illegal?” my father said. The ashes of his cigarette were about to fall off.

  “Typically the kids are older. They have criminal records. They’re drinking, they’re in gangs, armed robbery, that kind of thing.”

  Suddenly, my father had had enough. He got up, stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m getting him the hell outta there.”

  Mr. Hinge boomed, “Siddown, Jules.”

  Slowly, my father sat back down.

  “Listen to me,” the lawyer commanded. “You let me work on getting your son out of there. You work on finding a job.”

  “Dad is losing his lease,” Hildy said.

  “I know that,” Mr. Hinge said.

  “And he has business debt,” Hildy added.

  Mr. Hinge looked at my father. “How much?”

  “Around twelve thousand,” my father said, his head down. “And I’m—well, I’m a little behind at the apartment.”

  Mr. Hinge gave a long sigh. “This’ll be a challenge, that’s for sure.”

  “Getting Drew out, you mean?” I asked. “What does that have to do with money?”

  “Getting custody,” Mr. Hinge said.

  “Custody!” Hildy and I exclaimed.

  My father didn’t look as surprised as I would have thought.

  “But I thought men couldn’t get custody,” I said. I realized I’d been thinking we were going to the lawyer to get him to force my mother to be a mother—even though she’d been in New York for several weeks now and our house was occupied by other people, strangers. Aside from one phone call I’d made to my grandparents’ apartment from my father’s place, to make sure my mother had arrived safely, I hadn’t talked to her. I was imagining we’d explain the situation to Mr. Hinge, and he’d force my mother to come back and rent an apartment somewhere, and Drew would come home, and things wouldn’t be so different from how they were before, and I could apply to college without so much disruption in my life.

  “It’s true that it’s rare for the court to award custody to a father,” Mr. Hinge answered. “But in cases where the mother is unfit, it does happen. And, of course, in cases of desertion,” he added.

  Unfit. Desertion. The words were so stark that I found them strangely soothing. But looking over at Hildy, I saw only grief.

  “Lemme find out what the court is willing to do on an emergency basis,” Mr. Hinge said. “That eviction paper will be helpful.”

  “Eviction? I’m only a little behind at the apartment. The landlord hasn’t even—”

  “No, no, no. The list of names that Willa gave your daughter, and that you passed on to me.”

  Mr. Hinge didn’t look at me or Hildy, but my heart skipped a beat. Shrug. Somehow I’d known that in giving the list of names to my father, I was telling on my mother. There was something thrilling about it.

  “You get a job, Jules,” Mr. Hinge went on. “I don’t care what it is. Just line something up for when the shop closes, to show that you can get some income going. Don’t worry about your debts for now. We may have to look into bankruptcy.”

  Wait, I could help with this! I could quit my job with Mr. Lucas, but first I’d ask him, beg him, to employ my father instead. I could make the case, I was sure of it: whatever knowledge I brought to On Record, my father would bring a thousand times more. Of course, I’d have to talk to my father about behaving better, because—well, he just had to. “Dad? I could—”

  “And Jules—lose the girlfriend,” Mr. Hinge boomed.

  “Shalimar?” Hildy said.

  “It’ll look better to the court if there’s no confusion about your commitment as a father, and nothing inappropriate going on. It’ll send a clearer message. Do you understand me, Jules?”

  “Fine,” my father nodded briskly. “But Hinge—” he paused. “You’ll call the place for me? I can’t seem to get—”

  “Obviously!” Mr. Hinge exclaimed. “That’s what I’m here for. I’ll let them know there’s a custody dispute brewing. And that there’s a question as to the legality of the placement.”

  My father bolted up, ready to leave. “Look, Hinge,” he said. It was almost a whine. “You get him the hell out of there. I don’t care what it takes.” Then he bent his head and talked in a softer voice. “I’m just not sure how I’m going to be able—”

  “By the way, Jules,” Mr. Hinge interrupted loudly, “I’ve never been happy with that Furtwangler recording of the Ring Cycle you sold me. The sound just isn’t that great.”

  “What?” My father paused. �
��Jesus Christ! I told you, if it’s acoustics you’re after, the Sir Georg Solti is far superior.”

  “I know, I know. I should’ve listened to you.”

  “I still have the Solti,” my father said, “with Birgit Nilsson as Brunnhilde. I’ll put it aside, damn you. Since you seem to require bombastic excess in a listening experience.”

  “Fine.”

  “Tell you what,” my father went on. “I’ll throw in the Guarneri’s complete Beethoven string quartets and any Schubert lieder I still have. Plus, I’ve got David Oistrakh’s rendition of the Brahms violin sonatas. It wouldn’t kill you to broaden your taste to include actual genius, you know, Hinge.”

  “Go to hell, Jules.”

  23

  hink’s

  After the meeting with Mr. Hinge, I didn’t feel like returning to the store with my father and Hildy. I’d left my school stuff there, thinking I’d go back after the appointment, but I suddenly couldn’t stand my life, its endless rotation of math assignments, Latin quizzes, physics labs, Concert Chorale sectionals, shifts at On Record, and then the college forms I was supposed to pick up at the Berkeley High counseling center and start filling out. I somehow felt these things kept me afloat. They didn’t.

  I didn’t want to eat out with my father and Hildy, spend money we didn’t have. I didn’t want to hear those brainwashed, bald-headed guys next to the food carts on campus chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare over and over again in their peach togas. I didn’t want to see Shalimar. I didn’t want to try calling Drew. I was tired of remembering where my things were, and I was tired of keeping going no matter what. Sometimes I forgot that I was tired, but today I felt it in my body. It was as if I were on my feet all the time, had been for weeks and months, and kept looking around for somewhere to sit or lie down, and there was never anything, so I kept going, because I just wasn’t the type of person to sit right down on the ground to rest. Or lie there.

  I could skip Smoke and Records, retrieve my school stuff tomorrow. My toothbrush and clean clothes were at Stephanie’s, and she’d have the Latin book. We could finish the leftover spaghetti that Sylvia had made last night. We could drill each other on vocab and the passages from Virgil, with that weirdo Helvetica rubbing against our ankles with her grey body. We could talk about how Declan had gotten suspended again. I never seemed to get around to telling Stephanie about my “having feelings” for Clifton, if that was even the phrase for it. It was easier just to be one more girl who was pining over Declan Wilder.

  There was a southbound 51 waiting right on the corner of University and Shattuck. Before he and Hildy hopped on, my father gave me change for the bus to Stephanie’s.

  If I took the 67 back to my old house, would the Cal students let me in? Would they believe me, that I lived there? I could prove it. I could tell them about the hidden cubbyhole in the kitchen pantry, or about the small opening at the back of my closet that linked my room to Hildy’s. If I showed it to them—told them about how I’d passed notes and a sandwich to Hildy through that opening one time when my mother had banished her to her room—would they let me stay with them? There must be a quilt lying around in the linen chest. I could bring it into the bathroom and sleep in the tub, which would only be a problem if someone had to use the bathroom during the night. Or, I could sleep in the pantry. Or the living room. I could take the quilt onto the front porch and sleep out there. Maybe the Cal students would give me the car keys and I could sleep in the station wagon. I knew how to be nice. I knew how to convince people I was trustworthy and would be okay in a pantry or on the back seat of a car. I knew how to sit on only half a chair at a dinner table, or in a lawyer’s office, to prove I could make do with less than other people.

  I wandered south on Shattuck toward Hink’s. I needed to pee, but besides that, there was something grand and predictable about Hink’s, an oasis of calm, that always lured me. Underneath the covered walkway in front, I walked across the elegant marble tiles next to the display windows. The blond hardwood floors just inside creaked familiarly as I walked past the ladies’ makeup and perfume counters. As always, a melodious bell chimed an F-sharp every now and then—who knew why? To me, Hink’s was a soothing riddle, changing whenever I needed it to be different, knowable when I needed familiar.

  It wasn’t true what people said, that you knew your downtown department store, or your house, or the back of your hand. There were always unexpected angles and perspectives, so many that it would be impossible in one lifetime to experience them all. However long I walked around Hink’s, there would always be spots I didn’t know, patterns too intricate to be memorized.

  I made my way up the wide wooden steps toward the ladies’ room, which was tucked behind a luxurious burgundy velvet curtain on the mezzanine. The stairs were kind of shallow, yet it seemed, in a weirdly pleasant way, as if I could lose my balance. At the landing halfway up, I turned around and scanned the store, taking in the lingerie, the women’s coats, the makeup counter in the front, the drinking fountain at the bottom of the stairs, the girls’ clothing racks. The heads: long blond hair, black Afros, grey curls. Women, waiting to talk to salesgirls or looking down at price tags.

  While I was upstairs, I went to the employment window and asked for a job application. They weren’t looking for anyone, but I sat down on a creaky green leather club chair and filled the form out anyway. I shrugged a few times when I turned it in, and I could see the lady noticing and deciding not to say anything. Downstairs again, I got a drink from the water fountain and approached the hat department at the west end of the store, where there was an exit. Against the sunlight that streamed in through the glass door, all the hats on display looked black. When I went back out onto the glaring, sunlit street it was kind of a shock to my senses, and I squinted my way up toward the bus stop.

  When I got to Stephanie’s, I wasn’t ready to talk. So I started in about how incredibly senseless a punishment it was that Declan Wilder, who loved to cut school, had been forbidden to attend for a few days. Then I said I thought Declan’s girlfriend Raquel was materialistic. She acted like she was so great, but had a whole bunch of those colorful gauzy Indian cotton blouses, which she wore without a bra. Probably deep down, I said, Raquel was using her clothes to compensate for not having substance as a human being, which was ironic, since didn’t Declan Wilder seem like the type who would see right through that?

  “What he sees right through is her blouse,” Stephanie said.

  We made a batch of oatmeal cookies and added so many chocolate chips that there was hardly any batter in between. Sylvia didn’t approve of sugar, yet she kept chocolate chips and other cookie ingredients around as if they were an ordinary household supply you had to have on hand. It never made any sense to me, but I loved Sylvia for it.

  Helvetica jumped onto the kitchen counter, we shooed her off, and she jumped back up again. I couldn’t look at her anymore without the name getting scrambled up in my head as HE EVIL CAT, even though the whole reason Helvetica was evil was because of her being a “she.” It was creepy, the way she couldn’t quite settle into the bean-bag chair where she slept in the corner of Brett’s room, the sound of the little beans inside crunching under her paws when she moved around in the middle of the night. My third morning at Stephanie’s, I’d found a dead mouse in one of the creases. At least none of its tiny limbs was missing.

  Stephanie and I had the spaghetti while Sylvia was at her poetry workshop, and during the ads on The Partridge Family and Love, American Style, we quizzed each other on vocab. Sylvia never bugged us about homework or bedtime or how many cookies we ate, though she did say, when she came in from her workshop, that she was surprised we’d want to fill our brains with the inanities of commercial television when there were such great programs on KQED. Stephanie flared her nostrils at me, since this was the exact kind of remark that made her hate her mother. I rolled my eyes in sympathy and smiled.

  Later, Stephanie and I put on flannel nightgowns an
d brushed our teeth. I didn’t really have a good nightgown, so I always wore one of Stephanie’s. I loved how the elastic in the wrists wasn’t all worn out. You could hike up the sleeves and brush your teeth, so even if water and toothpaste dribbled down your wrist toward your elbow, your sleeves wouldn’t get icky.

  “So—are you worried about your solos?” Stephanie asked. I could tell she was dying to know about the lawyer appointment but didn’t want to push. She was sitting on the edge of her twin bed next to me, putting her long hair into one thick side braid so it would be wavy tomorrow.

  “Nah, not really,” I said. “It’s funny, I just kind of open my mouth and the sound comes out. I don’t even shrug when I’m singing.”

  “You never told me that!”

  “Yeah! I mean, sometimes it happens before, or after, but when I’m actually singing, it’s like—that’s the main thing my body is doing.”

  “Well, that just proves it’s good for you,” Stephanie declared. “I’ll come to the concert!” She was about to fasten her braid with a purple ponytail holder.

  “My dad is gonna try to get custody of us,” I blurted.

  “What?” She turned to face me.

  “The lawyer said.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She tied the end of her braid. “Martha. Your mom will never let your dad get custody.”

  “I know, she’ll have a conniption, but the decision isn’t up to her. The lawyer said she should never have put Drew in Plowshares, that she might have done something illegal because that’s the wrong place for him. It’s more, like, for juvenile delinquents.”

  “Jesus! Did she know that when she put him in there?”

  “No idea. But she might be in trouble for it, plus for the list of names she gave me. Which—I gave that to my dad, and then he gave it to the lawyer.”

  “You mean it’s, like, evidence?”

  “I guess. The lawyer is going to set up a court thing.”

  “Is your mom gonna come back for that?”

  “I’m sure she will.” She’d relish the chance to make my father look bad however she could.