Shrug

by Lisa Braver Moss

  “You get that goddamned dissertation written, goddamn it!” my father shouted. I expected Shalimar to at least wince, but she just leaned over quietly and put the necklace in his plaid shirt pocket as Hildy was coming out of the house, leading Rolly by the hand while Drew trotted around the car and got in next to me.

  Rolly was very tall and very big, with granny glasses and a long beard and wavy light brown hair almost down to his waist. It would have been tempting to call him jolly, except he wasn’t.

  “You just met Drew,” Hildy said, “and this is my sister, Martha. And this is Shalimar. And that’s my father, Jules!” she pointed. Shalimar and I had rolled down our windows so we could say hello, and the drizzle was getting on us. Rolly nodded and waved and said, “Hey man,” without coming any closer. I could tell he wanted to get back inside.

  Hildy let go of Rolly’s hand and walked up to the car, leaning in to kiss Shalimar on her bony cheek. “We’re gonna miss you,” she said, and Shalimar smiled warmly. Then Hildy threw kisses to my father, me, and Drew while Rolly waited, his glasses getting sprinkles on them. Hildy’s glasses, too. My father waved, almost a dismissal, and turned the motor back on. We headed for the highway entrance to get to the airport.

  Shalimar was sick. It was something called anorexia nervosa, where girls or women thought they were too fat and starved themselves on purpose. It was psychological, so they wouldn’t listen when you told them they weren’t fat. Shalimar’s clothes had gotten even baggier, and her heart had become weak. Once recently, she’d wound up in Cowell Hospital on campus. Today was the first time I’d heard her mention her dissertation in a few months. She still smiled a lot, but her eyes were bulgy, because even her head was kind of skinny. She was going back home to St. Louis so her parents could take care of her.

  29

  unlaxing

  Drew had never been the type to get into fights, but now if anyone messed with him, even a kid who was taller or who outweighed him, he’d go after them with his fists. He’d come home with sore knuckles, not to mention a black eye or badly kicked shins or a bloody nose. He never complained, of course, but I begged him to settle his fights over poker. He kept fighting, due to his unhealthy identification with his sick role model, Jules Goldenthal! Clearly not due to his outrageous recent incarceration in a shit-hole.

  Drew kept using those wordy curses like Captain Haddock, plus he’d started making up his own. Millions of maximally moronic muttonheads! Quadrillions of queerly quiescent quagmires! Normally when people swear, it’s a way to connect with the other person—a way of emphasizing that whatever it is you’re saying, you really mean it. But Drew’s elaborate curses had the opposite feel. It was as if he were pushing you away, as if he had a private private joke, and didn’t give a damn that you didn’t get it.

  Sometimes my father would get calls from the principal about Drew’s cutting class, or from the school counselor about the urgent need for Drew to see a psychiatrist, or from teachers reporting that Drew didn’t listen, that he was always “somewhere else,” that he had unmet potential, stuff like that.

  It didn’t seem to occur to my father to hit Drew or even yell at him about messing up in school. “This is pure horseshit,” my father would tell the school. Then he’d start in about how if “you people” had anything remotely interesting to offer to an imaginative math genius, Drew wouldn’t have these so-called problems in the first place.

  As for pot, my father knew Drew was “experimenting.” It was normal, he said. It was the human condition. He even pretended not to know about the stash that Drew kept in the partition, in the back of the shelf that had the pop records Drew and I liked, where the records jutted out a little from having the plastic bag behind them. What my father probably didn’t realize was that every day on his way to school, Drew was taking a quick detour up into People’s Park to get high instead of walking straight down Telegraph to get to Willard. In the afternoons, on his way home, Drew repeated the detour in reverse.

  I wouldn’t have known about Drew’s circuitous route to and from school if not for a bloated, sweaty-palmed boy in my Israeli Folk Dance class at Berkeley High. Stephanie, Paisley, and I all needed two semesters of PE credit senior year. When we found out Israeli Folk Dance had been approved as a way to fulfill the requirement, we were happy to sign up. So were the non-athletic kids from all the other grades, which didn’t include Clifton, since he’d gone out for track, or Declan, since he didn’t seem to give a damn what the requirements were for graduation.

  “Isn’t that your little brother I keep seeing at People’s Park?” the boy said to me after class one morning. We’d ended with a line dance, and I’d been next to him. His hands were cold and clammy.

  I peered at him. “How do you know my brother?”

  “Drew, right?”

  “But you’re a tenth grader, and he’s in seventh, so how—”

  I felt Stephanie grabbing me by the arm and dragging me away. “Dodo!” she said, as we left the Community Theater foyer where our dance class was held. “He’s talking about the pot smokers up at People’s Park.”

  “Wait, I thought they smoked in Provo Park!”

  Stephanie gave a long sigh. “Martha, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but—Drew must be smoking pot on the way to school. A lot of the kids that live near People’s Park do that. And on the way home, too. Didn’t you know?”

  There was something about me that was just hopelessly stupid. I was used to thinking it was because I was only in fourth grade, or only in ninth grade, or only in eleventh. But I was a senior now, and I was turning out to be one of those people who don’t learn as they grew older. I’d heard the tiny crinkle of Drew’s plastic bag behind the partition every morning, and I still hadn’t figured it out. I just thought Drew was checking the bag or something.

  As much as Drew hid his pot habit from my father, my father hid his from Drew. Stephanie had a theory about why they kept up the charade. She said it was like if you feel comfortable getting undressed in front of your best friend, and you also feel comfortable getting undressed in front of your cousin, that didn’t necessarily mean you’d feel comfortable getting undressed in front of those two people at the same time. We couldn’t figure out why that was true. It just was.

  “You ready?” My father shouted to me from the kitchen.

  “Hang on—just a few more minutes,” I answered from my futon. I could hear him jiggling his keys against the box of Shermans in his pocket while Lost in Space blared on the little black-and-white TV.

  I was writing a paper for Independent Study, the eight a.m. English class you could enroll in if you’d gotten good grades in English all through high school. You didn’t have to show up, which was nice, since you could sleep late, but Paisley and I both found the policy kind of bullshitty, because the teacher didn’t really teach us anything. I wished I’d decided to take honors English with Stephanie instead.

  The independent study assignment was to do a twenty-five-page report on literature, music, dance, or art, whichever you cared about the most. You had to make sure your thinking was original, and back up your points with rigorous analysis. Paisley and I both chose music, but that was where the similarity ended. She was writing about musical instruments and notation during the Renaissance period. I decided to write about how classical composers could sometimes be disappointing in what they did with their ideas.

  Like, I think the best part of the entire Mozart Requiem is during the “Confutatis” movement, when the sopranos and altos come in singing voca me in harmony, with total serenity and quietness, kind of as a counterbalance to the basses and tenors’ turmoil in the previous bars, where they’re singing confutatis maledictis, about bad guys getting rebuked. I’ve always felt let down that the women’s part of the voca me doesn’t last longer. So I wrote about how fleeting that theme is.

  Then I added that I felt the same disappointment in Verdi’s Otello, where the most transcendent moment, which Mr. Lucas said was called th
e kiss motif, evaporates way too quickly. Which was why, I said, Leonard Bernstein had to steal Verdi’s basic idea and run with it in “I Have a Love” from West Side Story.

  I was pretty sure my thinking was original. The problem was, I didn’t know what else to write in the paper. I supposed I could discuss all the pieces that I loved because the best parts were allowed to blossom fully. But there were so many, I didn’t know where to start. Maybe with examples of Mozart and Verdi that are more satisfying? Or, conversely, with examples of composers beating their ideas half to death, as in Bolero? Or maybe with Brahms or Mahler or Bach, where you never felt let down, either by over-development or under-devel-opment? What would make the best argument?

  It was only because I was stuck that I pulled out the UC application. I’d already filled out the easy parts, but I’d been avoiding the required essays, especially the one at the end. Lastly, have you faced any unusual personal circumstances that you would like the admissions committee to know about in considering your application?

  Everything I thought of seemed impossible to write about. My shrug. My father’s hitting. All the fights when I was growing up. My mother’s hatred of everyone in the family except me. My mother’s hatred of me. My father’s hatred of me. My father’s pot smoking— which was obviously way better than his hitting.

  But then, maybe I could write about things that were more like events, rather than things that were just always true in our family. Custody case, I wrote on a piece of binder paper. Going to live with Dad. Smoke and Records—losing lease. Maybe there were tricks I could use to make my life sound interesting and unusual instead of sick and pathetic.

  “C’mon, shake a leg!” My father was getting impatient, and the truth is, I was still scared of him, so I got up off the futon.

  My father and I each had a reason to go for our rides. For me, it was night driving practice and a chance to pass places in Berkeley that were important to me. As for my father, I’d finally learned why his nocturnal car rides with Hildy were so “unlaxing” for him. “Unlaxing” meant getting high.

  In the kitchen, Drew was sitting too close to the TV, his mouth agape. My father was across the table in his jacket, bent over the crossword puzzle with a turquoise Lindy pen that was missing the cap that most people put on the end to make sure it doesn’t get lost. Underneath the folded newspaper was the UC Berkeley financial aid form, skewed to the diagonal and already a little crumpled at one edge. Somewhere in that pile, too, was my permission slip for the five-day bus tour to Los Angeles that Concert Chorale and Orchestra were taking next semester.

  “Dad, I thought you were filling out the Parents’ Confidential Statement.”

  “Petunia!” He started writing.

  “I won’t be able to go to Cal if you don’t fill out the financial form. Also, could you try not to fold it?”

  He was bent over the crossword, putting letters in the grid.

  I sighed loudly. “Dad! I thought you were itching to go.”

  “Shitballs, I can’t hear!” Drew turned the TV up.

  “You’re sitting too close,” I told Drew.

  “Alien!” my father exclaimed.

  “You guys!” Drew whined.

  “Okay, well, could you at least sign the Concert Chorale tour form? They need it early.”

  In truth, I was anxious about leaving my father and Drew for a few days for the Concert Chorale trip in the spring, let alone moving to campus housing next fall. I only kept pushing because it was one of those situations where you know in your bones that you’ll regret it if you don’t participate. Clifton was going on the trip, for one thing. So was Giselle. I couldn’t miss it, because I’d almost certainly be given a solo, plus the other altos needed me. I had money saved up, so it’s not as if my father could be mad about that.

  My father got up, tossed the puzzle on the table, and jingled his keys, turning to leave. I pulled the Parents’ Confidential Statement out from under, straightened the dog-ear, and laid it neatly on top of the crossword. Then I laid the tour permission slip on top of that, since it was easier than the financial aid application. “We’ll be back soon,” I told Drew. “Brush your teeth.”

  The Plymouth was parked a block and a half down on Bancroft, and I waited until we were close before I asked. “Dad, can I have the keys?”

  “I’ll drive.” He started whistling from his favorite Haydn string quartet.

  “No, really, I need the practice. Remember you said it’s a lot trickier than day driving?”

  He turned the engine over. KKHI was blasting, and he made it a little softer, pulling out into traffic. “Pure dreck,” he declared as a flute was finishing up an elaborate solo with the orchestra accompanying. The announcer took over in a strange combination of mispronounced L’s and a strange accent. “That was Mozart’s Flyute and Harp Concerto in C, Köechel 299. And this is KKHI, San Francisco. And Paylo Aylto. And now here’s a yittyle something for you from a famous fiylm soundtrack.”

  My father identified the new piece before the first measure was over. “Alexander Nevsky. Prokofiev. Do you know the film, by the way? An absolutely brilliant work. That battle scene later on, with the soprano in the background! My God, pure genius.” He started singing along, without the words, just ya da da.

  We were a few blocks down Oxford Street at a stop sign when he pulled the Sherman box out of his pocket, and the joint out of the Sherman box.

  “Dad, please?”

  He pulled forward and lit a match, still singing, neither of his hands on the steering wheel.

  “C’mon, Dad, I thought we had a deal.” I said it halfheartedly, because he’d never really agreed to it. He sucked in at the end of the joint and waved the match out and put his right hand back on the steering wheel, the joint wedged between the first two fingers. He was holding his breath. With his left hand, he opened the triangular window flap, blew smoke out of it. “Getting high makes me drive better,” he said, making a whoosh noise at the end of the sentence. “Way more instinctual—acuity. Want a hit?”

  “I don’t smoke, Dad.”

  “You should really try it sometime. When you’re ready to stop feeling superior.”

  “Dad, seriously, I really need practice. You always let Hildy drive at night. You said she’d need it, remember?”

  “Shhh! Listen!” He turned up the volume. “This section, oh my God. Just listen to that plaintive voice!”

  “Maybe you could say stuff like that when you’re announcing,” I ventured. “You know, like, talk about the parts of the piece that you really like, so the audience can—Dad, watch out!” A pedestrian was about to dash into the crosswalk, but saw the car and ducked back.

  “You know the story of Alexander Nevsky.” My father was talking loudly; how did he expect me to listen to the soprano? “A thirteenth-century Russian prince. They made a saint out of him—he was a national hero. Basically, Eisenstein was trying to prepare Russia for Hitler. Only he couldn’t say that directly, of course. . .”

  When was I supposed to listen, and when was I supposed to ignore?

  “. . . so he made a movie about a prince’s victories over the Teutonic knights of that era. That’s the human condition, baby! History repeating itself. . . .”

  Abruptly, he pulled over at a slight diagonal into a yellow zone. “Fine, you wanna drive?” He pressed the little rectangular Park button, left the motor running, opened the door, and began to climb out with the joint in his hand.

  “No, no! You scoot over! I’ll get out.” I scrambled out of the passenger seat, shut the car door, and went around. It would be just our luck to have a cop pull up behind us.

  In the driver’s seat, I turned down the volume a little and rolled the window all the way down. “Look, Dad, I know you hate paperwork—”

  “You’ve got plenty of time.” His voice was pinched as he tried to keep the smoke in his lungs and talk at the same time. “You’ll knock it out.”

  “But about that financial aid form—it’s due the
end of this month.”

  He exhaled irritably. “What’s the big goddamned deal if you miss the deadline? So you wait awhile and go to Cal in the spring!”

  “Dad, I told you about this months ago! And I’m doing all the work. All you have to do—” I knew I sounded shrill, but I was convincing myself, too. He had no idea how much the essays made me want to give up.

  “You always worry, ‘Am I gonna get an A?’” he mocked. “When are you going to figure out that you always get your goddamned A?” His lips were so dry from the grass that they were sticking to his front teeth.

  I wanted to say, Why is it okay for Shalimar to get A’s and even go to graduate school? But Shalimar was still very sick, still staying with her parents, so I didn’t bring it up. “Look, Dad, if you just tell me the numbers, I can fill out those financial forms. I’ll put the numbers in the boxes. All you have to do is sign.” Even as I said it, I knew it had to be more complicated than that. He probably didn’t even know where his tax forms were.

  “You know, daughter of mine,” he said quietly, then paused, as if he were about to tell me something highly confidential. “If you were a real intellectual, you wouldn’t need college.”

  Shrug. Shrug. My eyes stung and my cheeks grew hot. My father was wrong about so many things, but I couldn’t deny that this was one thing he was probably right about. I wasn’t a real intellectual. The truth was, I was applying to college because my friends were—a lightweight’s reason, not an intellectual’s. Real intellectuals loved Cody’s and Moe’s. What would happen in college, where the books would be harder and my trouble concentrating would probably only get worse?

  “You don’t tell Hildy not to take classes,” I managed weakly, though I guess Hildy was what my father considered an intellectual. “And anyway—what about Shalimar?”

  The Prokofiev had ended and a Bach cantata was on. “Liebster Gott,” my father pronounced, wetting his lips as we rode along. I passed the street where Paul Shapiro had lived before his family moved to Vancouver to protect Paul and his older brother from the possibility of getting drafted. I went through the tunnel and onto Solano, drove west for a while, and then began circling back near King Junior High, letting my father think I wanted to pass by Stephanie’s house when really, I was passing by Clifton’s and mentally waving.