by Lisa Glatt
Even though wine hadn’t been Martin’s drink of choice, he didn’t want to talk about it or think about it or watch it bleed down the glass.
“No one likes to drink alone,” she said, repeatedly.
“Then stop,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
One night, after a couple glasses of what she called a very impressive cabernet from Blackwood Estates, she admitted that she didn’t think Martin had a drinking problem. She always thought he’d made a big deal out of nothing. “You drank moderately, like a normal person, certainly like a normal teenager or young man, and then, one day, for no apparent reason, you got all cranky about it,” she said.
“For no apparent reason, right,” he said, his voice rising.
“Your father never thought you had a problem, either,” she said.
It was late, after eleven p.m., and they were sitting in the living room in front of the television. Martin in his dad’s chair and his mom on the couch with her feet up, slippers crossed on the ottoman. She was getting drunk, slurring her words. On the coffee table in front of her was a bag of pretzels she hadn’t yet opened, a square of dark chocolate wrapped in foil on a napkin, and her third glass of that simply terrific red. The room was dark except for the light coming from the television. Johnny Carson had just finished his monologue and a commercial for toothpaste was starting up.
“Johnny is a good-looking man,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind getting to know Johnny.”
“Please, no,” he said.
“What?” she said. “I’m still a person. I’m still alive, Marty.”
He said nothing. He looked at the screen and pretended to be interested in toothpaste.
“You know, I spent the last thirty-five years not thinking about the way men looked. I mean, I saw men—they come into the restaurant all the time, obviously—but I never really looked at them.”
“You were happily married,” he said.
“That’s true, but some women still look. I think most do.”
“I guess.”
“But now,” she continued, “as much as I miss your father, there’s half the population I can look at.”
“Jesus,” he said. “That’s a lot of looking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really,” he said.
“I miss him, of course—don’t get me wrong, Marty. He was everything to me, your dad. I suppose at some point I’ll need to move on, though.” His mom leaned toward the chocolate. “Want a piece?” she asked him.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Chocolate will have to do for now,” she said, smiling sadly.
He heard the crinkling of foil and the hard snap as his mom broke off a piece of candy.
She was talking and chewing at once. “You were the first one who talked to me about moving on, Marty. You said it yourself.” She picked up her wine and took a sip. She ran her finger along the rim of the glass and didn’t look at Martin.
When he’d talked to her about moving on, he’d meant her life in some generic sense and hadn’t meant to encourage this plan of hers to ogle half of the population.
“Up until this point my life had been all planned out,” she continued. “And after I recover, there will be all this possibility.”
“Recover?” he said. “From what? Are you sick?” He leaned forward, suddenly worried.
“From grief.”
“Oh, good—I mean, I don’t want you to be sick.”
“Grief’s a sickness, Martin—don’t minimize it. Or it feels like a sickness. You’re lethargic, everything aches—not just your heart.”
“Yes, you’re right. I just didn’t want you to have a disease.”
When she drank, she seemed to him anything but grief-stricken. She seemed more like a slurring, sloppy woman on the mend.
“I thought you and Dad were happy,” he said.
“I thought I was … I mean, I was. But now, there’s possibility—a surprise waiting.”
Martin didn’t want to think about his mom’s surprise. He didn’t want to lie awake in bed tonight thinking about his dad, about how easily one man was forgotten once his widow had sucked down a few glasses of wine.
2
HANNAH WAS uncomfortable and confined in the front seat of Pablo’s dad’s truck, her cast at an awkward angle in front of her, her foot pressing against the floorboard. A cardboard lemon dangled from the rearview mirror, but the truck still smelled like his dad’s cigarettes. Pablo, squinting and leaning toward the dashboard, drove slowly, like a little old woman, and she wondered if perhaps he was nearsighted.
“Can you see all right?” she said.
He turned to her, surprised, like he hadn’t known she was his passenger. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said. “The truck’s dirty—that’s all.” He cleared his throat, leaned back in his seat, but was still squinting. Hannah reminded herself that the drive to Rebecca’s house was a short one. It would be worth it. Rebecca’s parents were away for the weekend and they’d have the place to themselves. Rebecca had promised them fruit punch and vodka and leftover Chinese food, she’d promised them time alone, just Hannah and Pablo, and even though Pablo was squinting and she was cramped in the passenger seat, Hannah felt like someone’s girlfriend, and perhaps she was, sitting next to a boy she’d liked for years.
She tried to ignore his squinting and the dirty windshield, tried to put her concerns and reservations to the back of her mind: Pablo hadn’t called her in a week, and when she finally called him, he asked her to hang out, yes, but was rushed and impatient on the phone. She tried not to dwell on the fact that he hadn’t really helped her into the truck, just opened the door and taken her crutches from under her arms and tossed them into the back without giving her his usual boost.
“When this truck is mine—which it will be one day—it’s going to be spotless. My dad’s a slob,” he said, turning on the wipers and squirting cleaning fluid with a flick of his wrist.
Hannah smelled ammonia and felt her toes going numb.
“You OK?” Pablo said, looking over at her. “You look uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re almost there,” he said.
The cardboard lemon swung from side to side and the windshield wipers squeaked. Hannah shifted in the seat, trying to get comfortable, but it was no use.
He drove even slower down Second Street, passing dress shops and restaurants and bars, the parking meters and palm trees that lined the block, at what Hannah thought was parade-speed.
It was late summer, late afternoon, perfectly warm outside, and Belmont Shore was abuzz, busy with shoppers and families, people carrying bags and parents pushing strollers, young people spilling from bars onto the sidewalk, arms around each other’s waists or shoulders.
Hannah wore a short-sleeve white blouse and jeans with the left pant leg cut off. She had a whole drawer of jeans and pants that she’d had to slice up to accommodate the toe-to-groin, but these jeans were her favorite pair and she’d miss them when the cast came off and she’d have to throw them out.
A group of older girls in cutoff shorts and halter tops stood outside of Hamburger Henry’s, colorful combs sticking out of their back pockets and cigarettes hanging from their glossed lips. Three shirtless boys with wet hair clutching surfboards walked past the truck.
“It’s not like we’re in Huntington Beach. I don’t know why they carry those things around here.” Pablo paused. “Hey, I know those guys,” he said, excited now, swerving over to the curb.
Hannah leaned back, startled, her cast bouncing on the floorboard.
“The one in the middle, he’s a dick,” Pablo said out of the side of his mouth.
Hannah thought about her dad holding a surfboard. She imagined him walking down the street, a man among boys, and missed him suddenly. She’d talked to him last night on the phone and he’d told her that Christy was out of the hospital and almost back to normal.
Pablo leaned over her,
his shoulder hitting her chest. “Hey, Brian,” he shouted out the window.
“Hey,” Brian said, adjusting his board on his hip and moving toward the truck.
“Are you still a dick?” Pablo said, laughing.
“Pretty much,” Brian said. He looked at Hannah. “Don’t I know you?”
“Maybe,” Hannah said quietly. He had a patch of sand on his chest, buck teeth, and eyes so blue they troubled her.
“You’re the chick with the leg,” he said.
She said nothing.
“You’ve been in a cast since you were born, right?” He laughed, looking at Pablo, who didn’t laugh with him. “How long you been in a cast?”
She ignored him, looked at the windshield, the smeared dirt and bird shit, wishing that Brian would go away.
Pablo pulled away from the curb without saying good-bye. “Told you he was a dick,” he said.
They were quiet and Hannah wondered if Brian’s comment had embarrassed Pablo. Why would he want to be with a girl who’d been in a cast since she was born?
“You weren’t born in a cast,” he said.
But she was mad at him too. She didn’t want his sympathy. She knew it was wrong to implicate him with a boy he didn’t even like, but she couldn’t stop herself. It seemed as if all boys were one boy, all of them dicks.
Still, she wanted this dick to like her.
“Maybe we should go to the beach sometime,” he said.
“That would be great,” she heard herself say, and as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them. She wasn’t sure how her leg would look at the beach, especially before it had the chance to heal and match the other one. By the time it looked normal—which Hannah told herself was inevitable and only a matter of time—it would probably be December and too cold for the beach.
“You can watch me surf,” Pablo said, smiling. He clicked on the radio and found a blues station that he said was his favorite. Most kids at school were dicks and they didn’t know dick about music, he told her. He had one hand on the wheel and the other in his lap, tapping his thigh, keeping rhythm with what he called a very bitchin’ harmonica solo.
At the end of the block, he turned down the radio so that the music was barely audible. “Becca told me that Mustafa spazzed out at a Jack in the Box. Said he went all body-snatcher and shit.” He sounded eager to hear all about it.
“When did you talk to Becca?” She turned to him, surprised.
He shrugged.
“I just told her about Mustafa last night.”
“Tell me about Mr. Spaz,” he said.
“He’s not Mr. Spaz,” she said.
Pablo, slow as he was going, went over a pothole and her cast bounced against the floorboard again.
And then it was quiet in the truck and she wished he’d turn up the music.
And then it was still quiet.
She rolled her window down a couple of inches and then rolled it up.
She shifted in her seat.
And then she found herself talking about Mustafa, telling the story as if he were Mr. Spaz, just that and nothing more.
She found herself describing his seizure with enthusiasm, in detail, talking about his flailing hands and jerking feet. She was outside of herself, watching, she was two girls: the first girl gesticulating and excited, and the other one hating that first girl. She was upset, realizing that Pablo was enjoying the story, but what upset her more was how much that first girl relished in the telling.
She heard herself laughing when Pablo laughed.
She heard herself embellishing—the burger didn’t just fall from his hand onto the table but flew across the room and landed in the corner. Azeem didn’t catch Mustafa’s body on the way down, but Mustafa fell to the floor and hit his head. She described the sharp crack of his skull striking the tile. “He could have died,” she said.
The more she talked, the bigger Pablo’s eyes got, the more engaged he was, and the more he seemed to like her.
The world was split into two groups, the damaged and the whole, the sick and the well, and no matter how much she wanted to be in one group, she knew she’d always be in the other. She could make out with a whole boy and even get him to like her, but she would always be a damaged girl.
She didn’t want to think about all that now, though.
She wanted to be someone’s girlfriend.
She wanted to be a girl on the beach.
She wanted to sit on the sand, smelling like coconut lotion, glistening and enviably tan, and watch Pablo surf. “My dad surfs,” she said suddenly.
“It’s cool when old men go out there. I’ve seen those old guys,” he said.
“He’s not that old.”
Pablo shrugged. “Is he good?”
“I’m sure he’s not as good as you are. I hear you’re really good.”
He told her that what she’d heard was true, he was good, but not good enough to go pro. He wanted to be a musician, anyway. He hated school and sometimes he even hated the beach and all the dicks who went to the beach and their dick girlfriends too. After he graduated, if he graduated, he said, he planned to live in the spotless truck and play his harmonica on the street for change until he was discovered.
She let him chatter on without interjecting and realized that she didn’t know him—she didn’t like him or like herself right now. She thought about telling him her stomach suddenly hurt and asking him to take her home, but decided to stay quiet.
“I’ll get me a pillow and a blanket and a hot plate,” he said, oblivious.
“You’d like that?” she said, weakly.
“Fuck yes.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” she said, realizing that it didn’t matter to him what she liked or didn’t like because his plans didn’t include her.
“I’ll live in a parking lot in downtown L.A and sleep in my truck. I’ve got a cousin who’s sleeping in a van now,” he said, proud.
“Poor guy.”
“What? Ernesto’s doing great.”
“Everyone needs a home.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. “I’ll live here.” He patted the steering wheel. “I’ll make friends with other people who love music as much as I do. I’ll hang out with my cousin and play my harmonica on the streets until someone important notices me.”
“Isn’t this your dad’s truck?” Hannah asked.
“It’ll be mine by then—and it’ll be clean,” he said, emphatically. He turned the music up, louder and louder—a guitar squealing so loud that even if she’d asked him another question he wouldn’t have heard her voice.
3
MARTIN RENTED an apartment a few blocks from the water. What they’d advertised as an ocean view was really a sliver of sea you could only glimpse from the low bathroom window. You had to be sitting on the toilet with your head cocked at an uncomfortable angle to see a damn thing.
When Tony came over, Martin sat on the closed toilet seat and demonstrated.
“Where?” Tony said. “I can’t see anything.”
“Fuck it,” Martin said, standing up and rubbing his neck. “If I want to see the ocean, I can take a walk.”
“There’s a meeting tonight.” Tony looked at his watch. “Starts in a couple of hours.”
“Don’t need a meeting.” Martin was irritated. “I haven’t had a drink in months.”
“You want one, though, right? An icy cold beer? Some vodka and orange juice? Whiskey on the rocks? Remember how we used to sit for hours drinking whiskey? Didn’t matter how cheap it was, we loved it.”
Martin walked out of the bathroom with Tony talking to his back.
“Don’t you want something cold and frosty?” Tony pestered. “It doesn’t go away on its own. You have to confront it. Don’t you want a drink?”
“Only when you talk about it, dickhead,” Martin said over his shoulder.
“Let me know when it gets out of hand.”
“Not when. If.”
They were in the living
room, sitting on Martin’s new couch. Martin rubbed his hand over the velvety fabric. “Bought this at the La Ramada swap meet, and those too,” he said, pointing proudly at the red leather easy chairs across from them.
“Annabelle’s been bugging me about new furniture. She wants a couch and a dining room set. She doesn’t want the boy in the girl’s crib. It’s yellow—we bought a yellow one so that the next baby, no matter what it was, could sleep in it. She wants, she wants, she wants. You’re lucky, man,” he said.
Martin said nothing.
“It’s not like we can’t afford it; we can. We’ve got enough money—it’s not that.”
“Get her what she wants, then.”
Tony shook his head. “Seems to me that you should sit on a couch until the springs poke up your ass.”
They were quiet a few minutes until Martin finally said, “Don’t you want some whiskey yourself?”
Tony sighed. He shifted his weight and looked out the window. He breathed in. “Can’t see the ocean from here, Marty, but you can smell it. Smells good,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you love a beer?” Martin pressed.
“Yes, yes I would,” he admitted. “I always want one, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to have one.”
“How’s that feel—me bugging you like that?”
“Shitty.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m trying to be a friend and sometimes I guess I’m just—”
“A dickhead,” Martin said, interrupting.
“I was going to say an asshole, but dickhead works.” Tony smiled. “Sorry about earlier.”
“Yeah, OK.”
“I mean it, Marty.”
Sadie hopped up on the couch between them and they both reached out to pet her head at the same time, their hands colliding. They quickly pulled away and Sadie had to do without.
The two of them sat without saying a word, thinking about the beer they wouldn’t drink, the many bottles of whiskey that waited for them lined up high on liquor store shelves all over town.
Tony got up from the couch and moved to one of the chairs. He cranked the handle on the side and shot back, disappearing from Martin’s view, his shoes in the air. “Damn,” he said.