When he smiles at me as I take off, I know exactly what he’s feeling. In the water, far away from my mother’s watching eyes, he loves me more than anything.
But he won’t walk to the trail with me at the end of the day. He tells me to go ahead, he’s going to walk with the guys later. He pretends he has something else to do, a joint to smoke, a ding in his board to patch. I pretend to believe him. But I know he is ashamed of something.
“Who were you with last night?” he asks me later.
“No one. I was nightsurfing, alone.”
Jim stares straight ahead. Then he looks at me.
“Mom says she saw you at the bay with Randy Marx.”
“Gross! It isn’t true,” I say vehemently, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. “Here, I’ll ask him.” I stand up, ready to shout for Randy, but Jim yanks me down. He rubs a hand over his eyes. I move closer to him.
“You know I’m not a liar.”
“Okay, genius,” he tells me. “Miss Mentally Gifted knows everything.”
“I wish you didn’t believe what people say about me.”
“I thought you didn’t care,” he answers, half smiling, “what anybody thinks.”
“I don’t care about other people. I care about you—the good one.”
“Just ’cuz you’re bad doesn’t mean I’m the good one,” he says.
* * *
For as long as I can remember, Palos Verdes surfers have been at war with the Vals. Vals are the guys from the San Fernando Valley, forty miles east of here.
Lunada Bay, the bay, is one of the best surf spots in Southern California. The waves are long, clean, tubed right, with no close rocks. The bay is famous, not only for its waves, but also for its exclusivity. Locals Only—no Vals—is our policy.
You can spot a Val a mile away: they have colors on their wet suits and weird haircuts, long in the back, short on the sides. They have bumper stickers on their cars, and rusty dents.
Only Vals use leashes, the wimpy rubber bungee cords that attach a board to your ankle. In P.V., if you lose your board to a wave, you swim, ashamed, after the wipeout.
You don’t do tricks, or fancy stunts. You just ride waves. You ride and you don’t fall off.
* * *
When Vals invade, Skeezer throws rocks at them, and Jim lets the air out of their tires. All the boys circle them in the water and jeer at them, calling them “trolls, idiots,” menacing them until they pack up and leave.
The police don’t mind if the guys punch a few Vals out, as long as they do it fast. The citizens wink and say it’s better to keep the riffraff out. No one wants tourists or Vals parked in front of the million-dollar view.
But some of the Vals are cute, and some surf like pros. If the other guys aren’t around, I even talk to them sometimes. I tell them they better run when they see Skeezer, though. I tell them not to leave their radios on the rocks if they want to take them home in one piece. I tell them they better buy black wet suits and get normal haircuts. Some of them are babes.
I never kiss a Val, though; you just can’t, not even the cutest ones.
Skeezer can tell I would, though.
“Val fucker, Val fucker,” he taunts me.
* * *
The house on Via Neve is always dirty now. My mother will not clean, and she doesn’t trust maids or gardeners anymore. She made Jim fire them last week, saying, “They’re all gossips and spies for the neighbors. Besides, we have to start saving our money now.”
While Jim and I take turns washing the bathtub and doing the dishes my mother lies stiff on her bed, telling us my father is late with his check. She says he might never send us money again, and we’ll really be poor.
“We’ll have to sell the furniture,” she sobs. “Even the TV.”
At dinnertime I open a can of chili, but she snatches it away from me.
“Only eat half, Medina. We have to save.”
My brother looks at me, slowly grinding his teeth.
He doesn’t joke around as we smoke pot and pull weeds the next week. Instead he looks out at the bay. All of a sudden, he takes his board, steadies it against the pool fence, then punches it.
I try to joke with him, I tell him it might hit back. He tells me to fuck off and punches it, until my mother comes from her room. She tells him not to stop.
“Imagine it’s your father’s face,” she says.
* * *
My brother is leading two lives. One minute he’s playing Fish with my mother, next he’s acting cool at the beach, swaggering like a Samoan. He acts tough, but I can tell he’s getting tired. His eyes are bloodshot, and his hands are shaky sometimes. I try to surf next to him, but he pretends to be irritated, shooing me away like a dog. Still, I never leave him.
“You’re too far up on the nose when you paddle out,” he instructs me in front of the other guys. Then he demonstrates the best way to paddle, pushing water backward from both hands, digging into the liquid to propel himself forward. He tells me to bend my knees slightly, to sway with the motion like a skater gliding on ice.
Another time he says, “Don’t call surfing a sport, Medina.” He winks at Mikey. “It’s a lifestyle.”
He’s learned how to roll the perfect joint, how to say “What’s up brada?” in the perfect Hawaiian accent. He sits in the center of the popular boys, drinking his beer from a cooler, joking about girls and pot, ignoring me.
But he’s nervous at home. He closes the blinds as soon as he gets back from school, afraid people will see him playing cards with my mother.
“Do the Bayboys talk about me behind my back?” he asks when we’re alone in my room.
* * *
I snoop around, trying to find out what Jim and my mother do when they’re alone. Tonight they’re playing checkers in the dining room. Jim is at the table, face in his hand, glum, silent. My mother tells him to cheer up—she’ll make banana splits later, just the way he likes them, with freshly whipped cream. She pinches the skin on his arm, wags her finger playfully.
“You’re losing too much weight. Those shorts are baggy on you.”
Jim stammers. He starts to tell her he’s been feeling nervous lately, his friends wonder why he doesn’t come out at night like he used to.
“Maybe I should hang out with them more. Just to keep the peace.”
“I don’t see any reason for that,” my mother interrupts, leaning toward him. “We always have so much fun together.”
When Jim doesn’t answer right away, she takes his hand. “Remember what you promised? That you’d never leave me alone? That was so sweet.”
Jim drops his plastic piece, fumbles for it on the ground. My mother continues playing, advancing her piece carefully. Then she tells Jim he should forget about the Bayboys. She says they’re rough, ignorant, ill-bred. “You’re the sensitive type,” she says, feeding him a butter cookie.
* * *
At school, the class has to sit through Mr. Odell’s vacation slides. It was Mr. Odell’s lifetime dream to go to Africa on safari. He went in the summer.
In one of the pictures, Mrs. Odell is wearing brown lipstick and sweating. She stands against a row of tall black men, doing a native dance, smiling. Everyone looks crazy because Mr. Odell used the wrong type of flash, and in place of people’s eyes are glowing red dots.
In honor of Mr. Odell’s vacation, the whole class has to do a paper on Africa. Anything about Africa is okay.
I get a book from the school library about different tribes. For my paper, I choose the Morubu tribe of southwestern Africa, because the Morubus believe that no one born into their tribe can ever leave. Sometimes Morubu children stray from tribal ways and go to Cape Town to eat hamburgers and smoke hash. But the elders of the tribe aren’t stupid. They keep everyone’s soul.
The Morubu elders burn herbs and sticks, bless them with a name, and put them in a jar. Many Morubu youth die within months after leaving for the big city.
“With no soul, you die,” the elders
say in explanation. “The body dies, but we keep the soul safe.”
Leaving your tribe is worse than dying. This is what I write about. Mr. Odell gives me an A plus.
I show Jim my paper and tell him about the Morubus.
“It’s a fucking genius paper,” he says. “You write so cool.”
“Maybe we’re the tribe of Palos Verdes,” I tell him.
“Yeah.” My brother smiles. “I want ten thousand waves and no rules at all.”
* * *
My father’s new house on the other side of Palos Verdes is like a palace. I spy on it from Angel Point while I surf, looking at its sienna tile roof, its gardens that stretch like a belt around long perimeters. A bright white gazebo stands out against the snow poppies like a pearly carcass.
My mother says there’s no way my father could buy a house in three months and furnish it like that. She says he bought the house a year ago, in secret.
“I checked,” she says, holding out a phone, “and you can call a Realtor if you don’t believe me.”
My father hasn’t invited me over yet, but I’ve already seen the inside of the house in a magazine. It is white and sheep-skinned, crystaled, vased. It has high ceilings painted with gold filigree. It has money.
I saw my father’s new girlfriend in the same magazine. She has black mink hair that falls in ringlets to her shoulders, a blinding smile, dark eyes, clear, white skin. She is much more beautiful than my mother. She looks very good sitting on the couch.
Their picture appeared a week ago in the Social Climber column in the Palos Verdes Gazette. My father stands with her. She hangs on his arm, all teeth and eyes and hair. The caption under the photograph says, “Phil Mason and Ava Adare … A Match Made in Tennis Heaven!”
Even though my father lies, I still miss him. I cut all the pictures of him from the society page of the newspaper and paste them inside a scrapbook. My father wears the same beautiful smile in every one. I cut carefully, the way my father cuts fat from people’s hearts. I hide my scrapbook from Jim so he won’t tear it to shreds.
When I ask my father when me and Jim can come see his new house, he corrects me gently. “Jim and I, Medina, say it properly—Jim and I.”
Then he tells me it will be soon, it’s always soon. I try to believe him and imagine myself living in the great house, with the beautiful woman and the rugs.
There’s a way to tell when my father’s lying. He clears his throat first.
After the article comes out, tennis wives jog past our house, looking at each other’s thighs and butts and whispering, “Sandy must be going off the deep end. Have you seen her lately?”
Nobody has seen my mother lately, except in the checkout counter at Ralph’s or as a bright yellow shape through our enormous bay window, visible from the beach. They tell each other gravely that my mother needs help.
“Poor Phil tried everything,” they assure one another.
“Just think about Sandy, and say no to dessert,” Mrs. Anderson says, rubbing her tummy.
“There but for the grace of God go I,” Mrs. Doty says, running faster.
* * *
My mother is shaking her head. Jim sweetens his voice.
“I promise I’ll come back at five. Please let me surf a little, Mom.”
“Sorry, Jimmy,” she answers. “Today I need you to help me write a letter to my lawyer. I’m too angry to hold a pen.” She stamps her feet. “He was planning this for a year at least! He bought that house six months ago; we have excellent grounds for a lawsuit.”
She turns to Jim, who’s quiet in the corner.
“You and I will take the bastard to the cleaners.”
* * *
Later Jim is stoned on the couch. My mother sleeps next to him. I’ve just come back from shopping with my father. I hold up a box for Jim to see. Inside is a brand-new pair of surf trunks, one size too big, just the way Jim likes them.
“Dad got this for you,” I whisper, beckoning him.
He follows me into the hall and takes the box. He shakes it gingerly like a box of salt. Then he puts it down, punts it across the room.
“He just feels guilty,” Jim says.
“No, he feels sad. He wishes you would see him.”
“Mom says not to talk to him.”
“Of course,” I say. “She wants you to hate him.”
“Don’t talk about her like she’s evil,” Jim warns. “She thinks you’re on Dad’s side. She doesn’t trust you.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side.”
“It would be great if all three of us were on the same side,” Jim says. Then he points out all the nice things she does for me. “She does your laundry. And she makes dinner.”
I try to steer the conversation back to our father’s gift. Jim ignores me. He starts to walk out of the room, then flashes me a smile, smoothing things out.
“Guess who I talked to at the cliffs,” he says. “Heather.” He strikes a muscleman pose. “She says I’m a total babe.”
“Gross,” I say to him, laughing, punching his arm.
* * *
Heather has black hair like Ava Adare. Black hair is Jim’s favorite. When we first came to Palos Verdes, he had a crush on our babysitter. Marnie always let us stay up late and snuck her boyfriend over. She had dark, wavy hair to her shoulders and laughed like a big horse, showing all her teeth, neighing.
Once when my parents were out to dinner, Marnie lit a joint in the backyard, smoking it with her boyfriend Dave by the pool. When they came back upstairs, she cooked a pan full of refried beans. Jim, reeking of my father’s aftershave, stayed in the corner, glaring at Dave.
“Aren’t the beans done yet?” Dave called out from the TV room, his feet up on the teak coffee table. “I’ve got the munchies so bad.”
Laughing, Marnie stuck her finger in the pan to test the beans. But the hot fat burned and she ran zigzag through the hall, trying to shake off sticky, molten beans that adhered to her finger.
Jim made Marnie an ice pack, elbowing Dave out of the way, telling him to go home. He promised not to tell my parents on her, and made me swear not to either.
My father teased Jim about Marnie later.
“She sure is a knockout,” he said. “She looks just like your mother did when she was Marnie’s age.”
* * *
Adrian Adare lives at my father’s new house. He’s Ava’s son, just turned seventeen, drives a Mustang. This is all I know about him.
My father says he’s a nice boy, someone I will like. He explains that Ava and Adrian aren’t ready to meet us yet. He explains that this will happen soon, when Ava feels more secure in the relationship, not too far off, he says, as if he were speaking about a ship in the ocean.
“If that guy ever comes near the bay, he’s gonna get it really bad,” Jim says.
* * *
But it’s Jim who’s getting it really bad.
That week he gets sick. There’s a weird smell in his bedroom. I bring in the small portable television, turn it on to the cartoons, and talk to him.
“Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman,” I say, trying to make Jim laugh. I talk like Elmer Fudd, or Bugs Bunny, and give him a running commentary about what’s happening on TV.
“Now Bugs is putting a bomb shaped like a hat onto Elmer’s head.… Now Elmer is shooting Bugs with a giant cannon.…”
I get good at keeping up with the sequences. “Bugs is shaking, little beads of sweat are rolling. Elmer has a mallet; he swings—once, twice—Bugs pulls out a big gun and shoots.…”
After a few days, Jim’s breath is really terrible. He has canker sores under his nose and lips. We take him to the hospital but the doctors can’t find anything wrong with him. When he comes back, he is skinnier, and weak. I don’t punch him in the arm, even as a joke. I only sit with him. I describe the ocean and give him water. My mother cries. In a few weeks Jim goes surfing again. He falls sometimes now.
As I spy from my surfboard, I see Adrian smokin
g, reading a book, flicking out ash in my father’s white gazebo. He lights one cigarette from the ash of the other. I am impressed.
Adrian is much cuter than you’d think. His hand is moving back and forth, maneuvering the cigarette from his lips to the ground. He looks small and tense. All his clothes are black. My father hates black.
“You look like you’re going to a funeral,” my father says to me when I wear my favorite black cashmere sweater, even though it used to be his.
* * *
My brother’s begun to dress very carefully. He sells his old guitar and amplifier and takes the money to the mall to go shopping. He gets two bags full of new clothes, muted polo shirts and pressed chinos. He takes his time in the bathroom, too, washing his face until it’s red and shiny.
The clothes bother my mother. She doesn’t like his new buzzcut either.
“Oh,” she says, teasing him, “do you have a new girlfriend?”
“No,” Jim says. “I just don’t want everyone to say we’re poor.”
“Oh, come on, what’s her name?” my mother presses. “Or is there more than one?”
“I’m not Dad,” Jim says, balling tissue wrap up and angrily tossing it.
“I know you’re not, sweetie,” my mother counters quickly.
“You have to look good here,” Jim says, “if you don’t want people to talk.”
* * *
“Change places,” my mother says as my brother and I wrestle with the ring on her finger.
We’ve tried soap, then water, then grease from the chicken dinner. I pull on one end against my brother on the other, but the bulge of my mother’s knuckle impedes us.
My brother refuses to pull any harder.
“Let’s go to the doctor, they can get it off,” he says. “They even take off tumors and moles.”
The ring is big. It is perfect, square cut, three carats, nice. We go to the emergency doctor’s office. He refers her to a specialist. The specialist gives her finger an injection of lidocaine, right between the V of her fourth finger and pinkie. Then he cuts the ring off with a tiny diamond saw.
She sends the ring to my father, after Jim removes the diamond with a butter knife. The empty band is secured with Scotch tape to the face of the doctor’s bill.
The Tribes of Palos Verdes Page 8