“Dearest God,” my father was saying. “That’s what Liebster Gott means. Did you know the German word liebe comes from the same root as our word love?”
I tried not to sigh too loudly.
“Basically, man has a psychological need to look upon God as dear, as loving. That’s the human condition, baby! Although historically, of course, this wasn’t always true. You see, in pagan times. . . .”
Stephanie was applying to Stanford and Yale, plus some little college in Vermont, or maybe it was New Hampshire. She was filling out the UC application, too, but planned to check the box for Davis, UCLA, and Santa Cruz, not Berkeley. She’d become so self-confident. She even knew she wanted pre-med for a major.
We could go to Santa Cruz together, Stephanie said, be in the same dorm, ask to be roommates! Or Yale. They had a good music department there; didn’t I want to apply? Didn’t I want to go away, get a fresh start? Live a little? Paisley encouraged me, too. She was applying to Reed and Radcliffe as well as the UC system.
Maybe that’s what gave me the stamina to keep pushing my father: that compared with other kids, I wasn’t planning a radical escape. I wouldn’t even be going as far away as Hildy’s place in Oakland. Just across the street. I wished he could see that.
It turned out the reason my father couldn’t find his tax forms was that he’d given them to Mr. Hinge. According to Mr. Hinge, since I was in my father’s sole custody, we didn’t have to deal with my mother’s income or any of her financial information; Cal would make the decision about my financial aid based only on my father’s situation. That sounded good, since my father was broke, and I didn’t want to have to call my mother to talk in the first place, let alone try to get financial information from her. Money—well, that was out of the question.
I tried to attack the financial aid forms myself, but it was hopeless. “Taxable income including wages, pensions, capital gains, interest, dividends, annuities. . . .” “Non-taxable income, including workers’ compensation, welfare benefits, housing and food allowances. . . .” I couldn’t make sense of it, either. So my father and I kept fighting.
Thankfully, Hildy stepped in one evening after we’d had a family dinner at Human Village. Back at the apartment, she coaxed him with the kind of soothing talk I could never manage—C’mon, Dad, it won’t be that hard, we’ll do it together. With a sideways nod, she banished me to the main room, where I leaned against the wall on my futon and translated the assigned section from Book IV of The Aeneid while Drew sat on his futon with a well-worn copy of Red Rackham’s Treasure.
At the kitchen table, Hildy gave my father the same kind of hand-holding that my father had apparently given Shalimar, only he kicked and screamed the whole time. “What the hell do they want from me? I don’t have any assets!”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Hildy said, “that’s exactly what they want to know,” whereas I would have said, “Well, duh now, Dad, our not having money is the whole point of applying for financial aid!” When my father didn’t settle down, Hildy calmly took the tax forms from him and figured out, one item at a time, which figures to put in which boxes on the Parents’ Confidential Statement. I had no idea how she knew what to do. I only hoped she did know what to do.
I felt so relieved when everything was finished, when all the materials were safely in the mail on time, that I wasn’t prepared for my own second-guessing. The counselor at school had urged me to check the boxes for more than one campus, explaining that Berkeley was accepting fewer students since campuses like Irvine and Santa Cruz had opened. I’d ignored her advice; how could I leave my father and Drew so soon after all that had happened? But with the application mailed, I worried endlessly about not getting in.
All I could do was hope, because I didn’t have a backup plan. Backup plans were for people who weren’t already pushing their luck just in having regular plans.
30
tour
In the spring, on the last night of the concert chorale tour, one of the bass players in Orchestra managed to score some big bottle of booze and was passing it around the rooftop garden of the hotel where we were all staying. A few hours before, we’d gotten the highest possible marks from the judges for our final performance, so everyone was in a good mood. I guess Mr. Seton and Mr. Krantz figured their job was basically done: somehow there was no adult supervision up on the roof.
I wouldn’t have gone, but the two girls who were sharing a room with me and Paisley said everyone else was going, and apparently there was a great view up there; were we sure we didn’t want to come check it out? I guess they could tell Paisley and I weren’t party types. But there was something freeing about being on the tour, where our usual selves, the things we were certain about, didn’t seem as certain, all the more since we were heading home on the tour bus early tomorrow morning.
By the time we got up there, a bunch of people were laughing really hard. Most of the girls had changed into jeans. The boys had loosened their bowties and put on Keds or sandals, eager to get out of their formal shoes but not bothering with a complete change of clothes. Clifton, in a plain white tee, blue jeans and huaraches, was the exception.
I was surprised enough that Giselle was one of the drinkers. But it turned out she was at the center of the whole scene, louder and laugh-ier than the others. She was still in her concert black skirt and white blouse, but she’d kicked off her shoes and was walking around in her black stockings, apparently not worried about getting a run or making her feet filthy on the asphalt. Her wavy long blond hair was tangled and loose—still beautiful, of course, like the flowing mane of a Botticelli goddess. Clifton, meanwhile, was quietly trying to keep the bottle away from her. You could tell he wasn’t used to handling this type of situation.
“Giselle, I think you’ve had enough,” Clifton told her softly, putting an arm around her waist and trying to lead her away.
“Oh, Clifton, for God’s sake, lighten up!” Giselle responded loudly. “I mean, oops! I don’t mean that literally, of course!” She started laughing hysterically at her own witticism. Besides the joke’s being completely tasteless, it was also weird that she’d say something that stupid. But maybe it was one of those paradoxes: I’d noticed over the course of the tour that Giselle had this way of lording it over everyone how cool she was for dating a black guy.
Clifton put a little more muscle into trying to drag Giselle out of there. “Come on, now. That’s right. You lean on me.” Giselle responded by turning around and puking on the asphalt behind some planter box. Clifton rustled around for a Kleenex in his pocket and came up empty. In one quick move, he pulled off his white tee and gently wiped her mouth. I tried not to stare at his lean, muscular chest. He reached down to pick up her black high heels, then put his arm around her waist, firmly walking her into the elevator and still holding the bunched-up pukey shirt in case she needed it again on the ride down to her room.
I stayed up on the roof and talked to Paisley about what a pretty view it was, and we agreed that “sunset” wasn’t a very accurate word, since the best part of any sunset was actually after the sun went down, when there was no glare, just a prolonged show of melty pink and orange. Slowly, the other kids started going back downstairs. The empty bottle was sitting upright on the ledge where people had been congregating. A stray black bow tie lay on the asphalt nearby. Paisley and I talked about how the performance had gone—my solo (for which she over-praised me); which parts sounded more ragged than we’d hoped; which parts we’d done really well. Then we heard the elevator door behind us, and suddenly Clifton was next to me. He’d put on a fresh black tee. YPSO, it said, for Young People’s Symphony Orchestra.
“Clifton, hi!” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Sure.” He looked confused.
“I—um, saw you earlier. Is Giselle—?” I managed.
“She’s asleep.”
“Oh.”
“How about you?” Clifton asked.
I heard the elevator doors open, and when I turne
d I saw Paisley stepping inside. Were my feelings for Clifton that obvious? I’d already told Paisley I used to know him when I studied violin with his mother, but she seemed to have made her own inference. I’d have to explain to her that Clifton and I were just friends.
“I’ve hardly talked to you lately,” he went on. “How’s it going?”
Maybe it was inner exhaustion that made me want to give Clifton Cray a real answer. “Well—it’s been kind of a roller coaster ride,” I began, even though I couldn’t think of any highs, only lows. “My father—my mom kicked me out! For basically no reason. You know, she’s the one who—” I was about to tell Clifton she’d made me stop taking lessons with his mother, but how would I explain such stupidity and meanness? “And then my dad got custody!” I went on. “Because, see, my mom put Drew in this horrible school for kids whose parents are drug addicts, or in jail. So my dad got a lawyer. My mom didn’t care! She didn’t even show up in court.”
I talked for awhile, and then Clifton put his arm around my waist and slowly drew me close and kissed me on the forehead. I gazed up at him, and we looked at each other for a moment, and then suddenly we were kissing, a long kiss, before I drew back.
“Clifton, I can’t—you already have a—”
“I know,” Clifton said. Then he kissed me again, and I could feel the bulge in his pants, my private parts melting, my knees going weak. He tasted salty, sweet, almondy. Like the right combination of everything. It was as if my body knew this, because it totally forgot to shrug.
We were up on the roof for a long time, talking and kissing. I asked Clifton about being bullied in seventh grade. He asked me more about my family. Finally, I confided in him about my father’s hitting. Clifton winced, and then his jaw tightened, and in that moment I could tell he was never going to like my father.
The next morning, Clifton was sitting with Giselle on the bus as if nothing had changed. I caught his eye as I was taking a seat next to Paisley, diagonally across from them. Clifton looked pained, as if he felt terrible but there was nothing he could do about it; Giselle was still his girlfriend.
Then it occurred to me that maybe what I’d told him about my father had so appalled Clifton that he’d decided he couldn’t have anything to do with me. For sure that’s what my mother would have thought, and how did I know she wasn’t right about stuff like that?
I cried over Clifton. Stephanie tried to comfort me by saying the world was a lot bigger than Berkeley High, and that in college, I’d have plenty of guys to choose from. But that only reminded me: what if college fell through? I hadn’t told Stephanie that I’d stupidly only checked the box for Berkeley. Now I realized I should have explained in one of my essays about how I had family responsibilities and needed to stay in Berkeley. If I had, maybe the admissions office wouldn’t think I wanted Berkeley just because it’s the coolest and most prestigious of all the UCs. I’d had the chance to make my case about that, and I’d blown it. If the college thing went down in flames, it was my own damned fault.
Besides, what if I didn’t get financial aid? I could keep working, use my money for tuition and books, and keep living with my father, but that wasn’t exactly ideal. What if Hildy hadn’t quite known what she was doing on those forms? I kept having to remind myself of her heroism in filling them out for me, all the more because she herself wasn’t transferring to Cal. At least not yet, because that whole plan had slowed way down. I couldn’t help blaming Rolly.
Hildy had been supporting Rolly since he’d decided that instead of being a carpenter or going back to college, he was going to write a novel. Hildy thought he was absolutely brilliant, and told him so every time he read paragraphs to her from his yellow legal pads, on which he was scribbling his masterpiece double-spaced with a blue medium-point Paper Mate while Hildy did her shifts at Gabel. Though Rolly had convinced Hildy that creating a full-length work of fiction was the equivalent of graduate school, his parents didn’t see it the same way, and they’d stopped sending him any money. Rolly must’ve felt bad about living off Hildy, because he’d started dealing pot and also hash.
Ann had moved out. She was going to nursing school in San Francisco and needed to be in the city to make life easier, but I think she also wanted nothing to do with Rolly. She tried to get Hildy to move to SF with her, but Hildy believed in Rolly and didn’t want to go. Meanwhile, Hildy had stopped taking classes for now. She was having stomachaches again, and between school and the job at Gabel, where she was now an assistant manager, it was just too much.
The worst thing, though, was that Rolly had roped Hildy into doing a hash delivery for him. He couldn’t manage the delivery himself, he said, because the cops already had their eye on him. He told Hildy she’d be perfect: no one would suspect a cute young girl with granny glasses. Reluctantly, Hildy did the delivery, and immediately, Rolly talked her into doing another one. Then, thankfully, Hildy put her foot down. She made me swear I’d never tell my father.
The very next time Rolly did a pickup, he got busted. His parents were so mad at him by then that Hildy had to bail him out.
31
oddities
Weeks passed, but I couldn’t seem to shake off the unexpected make-out session with Clifton and the rejection that followed so quickly. I felt hopeless about ever getting a boyfriend. I mean, if I couldn’t even get Clifton, who had always wanted me, wasn’t that a pretty good sign of the big fat nothing to come? I could tell Stephanie was getting sick of hearing me go on about it: whether I’d made a mistake in telling Clifton about my father; whether I was just a bit of an idiot, or a complete idiot; whether I only wanted Clifton now because he was good-looking (and what that said about me); whether I only wanted him now because he was unavailable (and what that said about me). At first I could barely eat, but as the weeks went by, I settled into my self-pity, thinking of the Clifton situation as the latest addition to the long list of things that were wrong with my life.
One Thursday afternoon, a refreshing idea came to me. I had the money, and there was a place a few blocks down Telegraph. So in the late afternoon, I went. The lady asked me if I was sure.
“Definitely,” I said, even though my heart was racing and my stomach churned, plus I shrugged a few times. But as soon as she started, I could see that the shoulder-length cut was going to be an improvement. Which was a good thing, because just as I was leaving the salon, there was Declan Wilder, sauntering out of Moe’s and heading into Cody’s.
He was wearing black jeans, his black leather jacket, and a black wool beret. A walking cliché, I supposed, but then maybe I was a cliché myself, getting a new hairstyle after a painful experience with a guy. Besides, instead of wearing black leather boots, Declan was in red high-tops with white shoelaces and those big white rubber half-moons at the toe. I had to admit the whole look was pretty original.
I watched him for a moment, and then found myself crossing the street, my heart a loudspeaker in my chest. Cody’s. I hated being reminded that all my efforts in school hadn’t turned me into the kind of thirsty intellectual Declan would want to spend time with. Or that my father might finally stop disdaining. But my legs kept moving, and I braved the door, entered into the sanctum.
Declan was bent over the second table, turning the pages of a thick volume of art prints. I walked up slowly and stood there until he sensed my presence. “New hairstyle,” he remarked by way of greeting, tipping the beret. A few of his own hairs, fine long blond strands that were the antithesis of the curly burden I’d just gotten rid of, stood up slightly, then lay flat as he replaced the cap.
“Thanks,” I answered, before realizing Declan hadn’t said he liked it. I reddened, willing an imaginary elephant’s foot onto my shoul-der—my latest technique for postponing the shrug.
He looked at me skeptically without closing the book. “So how goes it?”
“Pretty well! Still waiting to hear about college, though.”
“Good for you!” He had the bemused expression of someone who thou
ght of the Berkeley campus as a good place for rallies and a convenient corridor between Northside and Southside.
Declan wasn’t graduating from Berkeley High with our class. He had a few incompletes, and didn’t care about making them up, because of an apprenticeship he’d gotten with an important local photographer named Leonard something. Apparently Declan worked in the darkroom and lugged Leonard’s equipment around, cameras and lights, I guessed, and in exchange, he got to use the guy’s studio, somewhere below Shattuck on Southside. Plus Declan got to stay in a room at the back. I knew this because Paisley had sat next to Declan’s on-and-off girlfriend Raquel in Physics senior year.
I’d just come into Cody’s, but now Declan shut the book, ready to leave. “You coming?” he asked, as if we’d agreed to it—as if he knew damned well I hadn’t gone in there to browse. Why was he interested, somehow, all of a sudden? It seemed to be happening to someone else. My heartbeat was loud in my ears.
Outside, he pulled a sky-blue package of Gauloises from his pocket and lit one. “So, Miss Martha,” he said, inhaling sharply as he peered at me. “A café au lait, perhaps?” I nodded yes, and we crossed Telegraph and headed toward Caffé Med, Declan putting the cigarette out on the white bottom of his shoe and throwing the butt into the gutter before we went in. Where had he bought the cigarettes? Not at my father’s.
At the counter, I reached into my purse, not wanting Declan to think I thought this was a date. But he ignored me and bought his espresso and my tea, and led me up to the balcony, where we found a rickety table. Then he leaned over his cup and talked about why he found black-and-white photography so compelling. “There’s a certain impact you don’t get with color.”
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