I hated to think it, but I was ashamed of my dad. Ashamed that Betty Lou knew what a loser he was. And I wondered if I would ever forgive him. But I didn’t say that.
“Well, I think he’s maybe got his own problems,” I said, instead. “He’s done a disappearing act, but he’s not really nasty. He’s just … he just won’t be involved.”
“He has to be involved enough to write you a note to school explaining your absences,” Betty Lou said, covering the bases. “Got to get the school thing square or the whole plan could cave in.”
“Right. I’ll get Dad to write a note.” Screw him, Z will do it.
I brought Mom to join Betty Lou and me in the living room. They sat. I stood.
“I called this,” I said, holding Mom’s attention with my look, “because I can’t do this family thing anymore. I have to go to school and have a life of my own. I can’t stay home and take care of you, and right now, you can’t take care of yourself. Betty Lou is going to help you get settled with Arvin in Manteca.”
Mom groaned and rolled her eyes. “Ohhhhh,” she said, like a wail. “Ben … I can’t go there. What will they think of me?” She started crying.
Betty Lou said, “Mrs. Mander,” but I interrupted her.
“Mom, you’ve got to think about what’s best for me, too. I can’t take care of you here, and you won’t take care of yourself. And you need people your own age who can make sure you take your medication like you’re supposed to. I can’t help you, but Arvin and his wife can, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Mom whimpered but didn’t say any more. After maybe twenty seconds of silence, she started crying again.
“So, when does this all start?” I asked Betty Lou.
“Wait a minute,” Betty Lou said, wincing like she was annoyed. “What about you? You’re a minor. I can’t knowingly make a plan that will leave you home alone with no supervision.”
“Well,” I said, thinking as I spoke, “I’m, uh, I have a family that will watch over me until I am eighteen. I just have to make a call to set it up.”
Mom’s crying got louder.
“So, when does this start?” I asked Betty Lou again.
“Best case scenario, five to ten days for your mom. That is, if you or your family transports her. I can make the clinical transfer to San Joaquin County so they’ll be ready to monitor your mom’s condition and provide her medications.”
When Betty Lou left, it was dusk and our house was pretty somber. We hadn’t turned any lights on. Mom and I sat together in the living room, leaning against each other on the couch. Mom was dozing. I was looking out the window, watching neighborhood kids ride their bikes and goof around until they got called home for dinner. An evening with the Manders, before they go to their placements.
I could picture Hubie saying, “Don’t worry. Years from now you’ll look back on these touching, fond family moments … and run away crying and screaming.” Right. Actually, this was the most peaceful time we had spent together in months.
I had trouble sleeping that night. Partly because I was excited about the changes that would be happening, but mostly because I couldn’t get Marco out of my mind. Who was he? What was going on with that story? How could he know those details about my life, my mom’s delusions, my neighborhood? Sometime after three in the morning, I got dressed and drove to his house.
The front door was unlocked. That was a little surprising. But I guess Marco thought there was nothing much to steal. I tried the lights but none of them would come on. That was peculiar. Made the house kind of eerie. The three straight-backed chairs were in a semicircle, facing each other in the nightglow by the large dining room window. Like someone had been sitting in them, talking in the dark so they wouldn’t be seen by any neighbors.
The kitchen remained empty, unused, no glasses or plates. Bathroom: no towels. No toilet paper! Nothing in any other room except Marco’s. And there, his bed made, sleeping bag zipped. The whole house was silent, dusty like the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed for months. A vague smudge of footprints from the front door to Marco’s room. And maybe some marks by the chairs.
I noticed a wadded-up piece of paper under the chair nearest the dining room window. I picked it up. Not paper. Maybe a thin but stiff kind of cloth or plastic. When I spread it out, it had some lines and dots on it like a code of some sort. I couldn’t read it. Tossed it back on the floor.
I went back into his room. Felt like I should be tiptoeing. I could smell his sleeping bag. Sour. It needed to be aired out. Through his window I thought I could see, back at the far end of his yard, the large dome-shape of an oak tree, branches moving quietly in the night breeze.
Z!
The best thing that happened during the next two weeks was Z’s unexpected visit. I got as close as I’ll probably ever get to dating Z.
A couple of days before, Betty Lou had asked me if Mom “cheeked” her medicine, pretended to take it but really not. When I said I didn’t know, Betty Lou told me to give it to her and watch her swallow it, and then ask her to open her mouth real wide immediately to make sure it had disappeared. Betty Lou said it would be embarrassing at first, but then it would begin to get routine, and this would make sure Mom got thinking clearer.
Anyway, Mom was fed, med, and off to bed. I was getting ready to visit Marco, when I heard a horn honking out front. Vinnie? I grabbed an umbrella from a stand by the front door. Mary Poppins meets Godzilla.
Z! In her beater that might have originally been a Honda. Waving me over while she stayed in the driver’s seat.
“Onetime, no-frills offer,” she said, through the rolled-down passenger window. “I’m off to a party. Thought you might want to join me.”
“A party,” I said.
“Very good,” she said. “You’re able to repeat in English. Of course, statistics show that most crimes are committed by repeaters.”
“No,” I said, trying to collect myself. “I’d like to go out with you. I, I’m just not ready or anything.”
“Let’s be clear,” she said. “I am practically a junior in college. I’ve got about four years on you. You’re jailbait. You are not ‘going out’ with me. You are riding with me to a function. We’re … acquaintances. This is not a date. Comprendez vous?”
Whatever! “Do I need a coat?” I wondered if my breath smelled.
“Yeah, and a haircut, and probably a steam bath, but get a jacket and let’s roll. Carry some change. There could be a cover.”
I brushed my teeth, pulled on a clean sweatshirt, and grabbed my good leather jacket. If this was social work, bring it on!
I had imagined the teen club that’s always changing hands down by the Liquor Barn. Or even the sports bar over by the new post office. Not to be. We headed west on 299 to the Whiskeytown Overlook and took the road south toward the dam. Brandy Creek Beach? Nope. We didn’t take the cutoff over the dam, went straight instead, and wound up at the old cemetery. I could hear a mishmash of music from the far side of the graveyard and see what looked like flickering candles illuminating moving bodies. Live bodies, I was hoping. We sat for a minute in the parking lot while Z looked around. Then she drove a quarter mile or so to a trailhead parking lot and turned off the car.
“The greenies come, we may have to circle back here away from the road,” she said. She got out and wrapped a long black shawl painted with bright yellow skulls over her black T-shirt and red plaid jeans.
The greenies?… Park Rangers?
From the backseat she grabbed a necklace made out of rubber costume store rattlesnakes woven together, and put it around her neck outside the shawl. She made sure her combat boots were tied, and finally, she ran her fingers along her sideburns, the only hair that wasn’t spiked for tonight’s spookfest. Her face was glow-in-the-dark white, her lips black. I looked down at my wrestling sweatshirt and blue jeans. Hmmm.
“We’ll walk the road, but if a car comes by, step behind a tree. We’ll probably see the Rangers’ strobe lights before we h
ave to jam,” she said. “I won’t leave without you.”
I nodded.
“Until then, raise hell and no puking.” She snake-danced away toward a knot of people with multicolored hair and enough metal on their faces to pick up a Chicago radio station.
My eyes were adjusted to the dark and stayed that way unless I looked directly at one of the big black cylinder candles. Or I guess they weren’t all black. Some were red. Looked like they were homemade in gallon coffee cans. Decent light and pretty safe in the winter woods. There was no moon, but occasionally stars shone through broken clouds and pine limbs.
There was a tub—a trough? People were dipping cups in it, and I could make out empty bottles lying beside it. Vodka, tequila, Mountain Dew, and something with Asian characters on the label. I picked it up. It smelled like brake fluid.
“Quaff it, Chip.”
A wiry guy in a baseball uniform, battered Uggs, and a blue bus driver’s hat was standing beside me, waving his empty cup. I left him and went looking for a beer that hadn’t been opened. Surely these folks also drink beer?
“Hey, Z tells me you’re a mere child. Let me be maternal.”
This from a girl or young woman wearing what looked like silver underwear over black mechanic’s coveralls. She had an inch or two of height on me, a smile that showed a split between her front teeth, and crimson lipstick that was smeared just enough to remind me of my mother. No way.
I shook her hand like I was an imbecile and fled without speaking. Near the cemetery fence, I fell in with a tangle of party animals dancing together to a boom box barely visible in the middle of their group amoeba. I squished in.
“Watch my toes,” a possibly attractive girl warned me. She didn’t look old enough to be in college. For some reason, she had covered her face in black dots.
“Will do,” I said, waiting for the next time she was facing my direction. “My name’s Ben.”
“Ben,” she said, like she was tasting it. “Sounds trashy.”
“Funny, luv!” said a heavyset guy beside her. He was bulging in an orange hoodie and orange workout pants, with a piece of black garden hose hanging down behind him like a tail. “Trash bin! Good one!”
“Ben,” she said again, continuing to turn and bump. “Franklin?” she asked, facing Orange Guy, instead of me. “You should be high as a kite.”
This wasn’t going anywhere I wanted. I extricated myself from the body blend and looked for Z. Edging along the fence, I kicked something that clanked. Bottles. A cooler. Beer!
“Dollar a bottle, you want one.” A blondish smooth-faced guy in a sportcoat stopped dancing and walked over to me. Was that a costume, or was he a bank trainee in real life?
“First-timer?” he asked.
I ignored that. “Ben,” I said, meeting his hand for a quick shake. “Yeah, I’d like two.”
The light in that spot was very dim, but he reminded me of somebody. I couldn’t think who … Marco? I shook off that thought. No Marco tonight!
He dug under the ice and handed me the two beers as he pocketed my bills.
“Whose party is this?” I asked him.
He smiled. “Not sure, really,” he said. “You just got to know somebody who’s clued where it’s going to be. I’m one, but you don’t know me, so that won’t work.”
“What’s your work?” I asked him. Curious if I was right.
“University,” he said. “Admissions,” dancing back to join his group.
I went off to find Z. It wasn’t easy because everybody stayed pretty close together, even if they were in separate little groups. I found her on the right fringe, doing some kind of alien tango, clamped tightly to two other people, no music. The three of them collapsed to the ground, laughing.
“What was that called?” I asked her when she stood again. I handed her a beer.
“Thanks,” she said, giving me a look like I was actually a friend instead of a chore. “I don’t know,” she said, giving a mini-shrug. “The Bango Fandango?”
Her friends were still on the ground, snuggling and giggling.
She saw me watching them. “Hey,” she said, “want to fox-trot?”
“I don’t know how foxes trot,” I said, still sober but feeling giddy.
“Well,” she said, “I think in eighth grade they taught you how boxes waltz.” She grabbed my beerless hand, stepped into me, and began leading.
I never would have imagined the waltz could feel so good.
I saw the multicolored lights flipping through the trees before I heard the burst of a siren. Z grabbed my hand and we bushwhacked back to the trailhead and got in her car. Listened to her CDs on the way home, while I tried to think of something to say to her.
She stopped in front of my house and smiled at me, and then she was all business. “Might want to shower before you go to bed,” she said. “Lot of poison oak out there.”
“Hey, uh, thanks for thinking of me. I really … that was great.” I wanted to kiss her hand or her cheek or something, but I didn’t. She might have hit me. I just got out and stood at the curb.
My block was dark and quiet. Somewhere way behind me, a dog barked once. The air was chill and clean and full of the peppery trace of neighborhood spruce trees. I watched her taillights make their way down my street until they blinked one last time and were gone.
Lizard History
One evening, I think to make contact, to get some kind of response, I did something the doctors said I should never do. I asked Mom about the Lizard People.
Her eyes came up to mine as soon as I said it. Watching. To see if I was serious.
I nodded. Once. Unsure.
She looked off to the side and then closed her eyes.
“They’re real,” she said. “No one knows where they came from. They were the earliest Indians, before the Anasazi, but they were Lizards and they had to live below the surface. They built big underground cities, a labyrinth in the Los Angeles…” She opened her eyes and looked at me again. Was I listening? Was this a trick? Did I believe her?
I met her gaze and stayed absolutely still. I had not heard so much strength in her voice for weeks.
She closed her eyes again.
Did that help her keep the lid on?
“Four thousand years ago,” she said, “the Hopi Indians … a chief told his tribe about the Lizard People. They were all part of the before time. The Lizard People built these cities to protect against a big fire, like, uh, missiles, er, media showers—”
“Meteor showers?”
She didn’t pause. “Meteor showers, and they ruined the crops and killed everybody, but the Lizards were down in these caves they built, so they were safe. Most of them, for a while. Well”—she glanced at me to see if I was following her—“they’re coming back now. Up to the surface. To get everything. To take everything!”
“Why? Why would they do that?”
“They think…”
Mom looked puzzled. She cocked her head farther to the side as if listening to a faint whisper.
“They think that, uh, this is their time. And that we, all of us, we are not real. They think we aren’t real!”
She looked at me then, eyes wide. Alarmed.
I was up immediately, holding her shoulders. “It’s all right, Mom. It’s okay right now. It’s okay.”
I held her until her breathing quieted. My arms cramped, but I kept holding her until, after a while, she dozed off.
I kept physically motionless, but I was anything but calm. Why four thousand years ago? Why that number? What did that mean, this is their time?
Over the next several days, Mom stayed stable. We didn’t have any more outbreaks of insanity. She didn’t mention the Lizard People again, and I sure didn’t ask. She began to put on a little weight. She needed it. Betty Lou joked that it was the Mander Board and Care, Ben Mander, proprietor. But it was no joke. It was true.
Once in a while I fished in the late afternoon while Mom napped. I loved the quiet, just the sound of th
e moving water. I loved the feel of the current pushing against my legs, and how my body would begin to automatically keep its balance against that pressure when I waded over slippery rocks. And I loved the rhythm of the casting. Back, forth, stop the rod, and the line would shoot out. Thoughts left me, and I was free.
Three or four times I dropped by Marco’s place, but I kept missing him.
Mom went to Manteca with Arvin on a Saturday near the end of February, almost a month to the day after her reptile scene at my school. Saying good-bye to her was awful. She tried to smile and cried instead. I hugged her.
“Don’t worry about me,” she was whispering into my hair. “I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t, Mom.” I was trying to keep it together. “I love you. Just get better.”
Arvin had finished loading the suitcases. He came up to the porch to shake my hand and take my mom’s arm. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “We’ll take good care of your mom.”
In less than a minute, they were gone.
When she left, and I was alone in the house, I found myself crying. I’m not sure I can say why. The tears came and kept coming until I was as empty as a football stadium after the crowds have gone home.
Steelhead
The next morning, loud knocking woke me. Dad? No, he’d have a key. When I opened my front door, Hubie was standing on the steps, wearing a photography vest and a cowboy hat. A cowboy hat? I rubbed my eyes. Nope. He was still there. Smiling.
“Let’s go fishing,” he said.
“Fishing,” I said.
“You know,” he said patiently, “fishing. You love it. It loves you. Line, hook, pole.”
“Rod,” I said, trying to get a grip. Hubie doesn’t fish. His dad doesn’t fish. I shuddered to think about Z’s opinion of fishing. The only way Hubie would ever fish was if it was part of a complex computer game.
“Hubie, did you take a strange vitamin this morning? Did Z give you anything to help you study? What is the matter with you?”
Hubie walked past me into our living room and sat on the couch. “Hey,” he said, “does something have to be the matter when a friend asks you to take him fishing? I’m ready to learn something new. Get outdoors. Go for the gusto! Be all that I can be!”
Lizard People Page 9