The Tribes of Palos Verdes

by Joy Nicholson

  I see my brother below, floating on the water, looking at Heather’s ass, smoking a joint and putting it between her lips. I give Jim one last look from the edge of the trail, pausing for a moment, willing him to look up. But he is looking only at Heather.

  “Anyway, you can’t surf here,” I tell Adrian. “Go to Pratt Point. They don’t care where you’re from if you give them five bucks.”

  “How do you get to Pratt Point?” Adrian asks.

  I look at the way his hands open and close. His smile.

  “You’d need someone to show you,” I say. Then, “Maybe I’ll show you.”

  “How old are you?” he asks as I leave.

  “Fifteen.”

  He looks down. “You seem a lot older.”

  “Like, six million years old,” I say.

  * * *

  After school the next day, the house is quiet like a library, and my mother’s bedroom door is shut and locked. Jim’s surfboard is haphazardly parked in the hallway, brown dog hairs stuck to the wax.

  I turn up the television really loud and open and shut the refrigerator so all the glass jars of mustard and jelly bang together like cymbals. I walk heavily from end to end of the hallway, but all I hear are angry sounds through the keyhole. I smell nachos. Finally, I bang on the door.

  “Jim, Jim, are you okay? Open up. Open sesame.”

  I hear my mother talking about Heather. She’s listing all the things that can happen, how Heather could get pregnant and force Jim to marry her. My brother protests, his voice rising against my mother’s, telling her he’s way too young to get married.

  My mother continues as if she hasn’t heard him. “I want to know if you’ve had sex with this Heather person.”

  My brother is silent, embarrassed. “I don’t even like Heather that much,” he says twice.

  “Then there’s no reason to spend so much time with her,” my mother says, matter-of-factly.

  * * *

  At night Jim stays in the black, frayed chair, watching television with my mother, looking bored, eyes red with pot. He flexes his beautiful arms as if he is aching, staring listlessly at the commercials.

  He doesn’t take the phone when Heather calls, just waves his hand in the air and tells me to make an excuse. After I hang up, he puts his chin in his hand and stares out the window.

  I try to make jokes with him and race him down the hall, but he just watches me run. He looks at his feet, at the phone. When I sit close to him, he moves to the other side of the couch. He tells me to go away, but I don’t think love is anything like water. It doesn’t slip off that easily.

  * * *

  I slip out of the house quietly for a secret meeting. All week I’ve been undecided whether I should go. Jim stays in his room, playing the same heavy metal record over and over, telling me to leave him alone.

  “Fine,” I say, slamming the door. “I’m not going to wait around for you.”

  Adrian Adare is seventeen, older than I am, and smarter. He goes to the special school for super-brainboxes in Redondo Beach, so he can take a lot of science classes, get into veterinary school. He wants to get away from Palos Verdes as soon as possible, so he always studies science books, even here at the rocks on Pratt Point.

  He says he has something secret to show me, but we have to get to the deep-sea kelp beds first. We walk north for twenty minutes along the rocks, then paddle far out into the water, almost a quarter mile past the breakwall. When we finally get there he hands me a snorkel and mask. Even though it’s embarrassing to wear, I put it on. He tells me to dive under and look, he’ll hold my board while I go.

  Enormous sea ferns sway back and forth in the current. Long green grasses grow along the bottom, anchoring stalks of kelp that reach up for the sunlight. Seals swim around in the seaweed forest, slipping through tiny spaces in a blur of speed.

  Fish hide in the murk, waiting to eat other fish. Tiny, yellow eyes peek out of holes in the sand. I swim a few feet backward as an Aurelia jellyfish reaches out a tentacle to sting a silver minnow, immobilizing it before pushing it through a slit in its clear, mushroom-shaped body toward its feeding polyps.

  I stay under until Adrian taps my shoulder for a turn. There are pure red sea fans and thin, graceful sand filia. There are also rusty Coke cans, pantyliners, and Evian bottles.

  Adrian says fish are much cleaner than people.

  * * *

  Jim wants forty dollars today. He says he wants to buy some new tennis shoes.

  “You don’t even play tennis,” I say. “You just want to buy pot from the bottomfeeders.”

  “Well, can I have it or not?”

  I tell him he can have the money if he tells me what he really wants to do with it. He answers my question with a question.

  “Who’s that kook faggot I saw you with?”

  “He’s not a faggot,” I tell Jim.

  “He looks like one,” Jim says, flexing the fingers of his right hand so his muscles stand out. “I know a faggot when I see one.”

  * * *

  Cliff swallows fly back and forth over my father’s gazebo, surfing over currents of wind, opening their wings to the soft ocean breezes.

  I relax, hiding, lying on my surfboard in the flat, blue water. It’s the perfect position for spying on Adrian. I’ve been thinking about him a lot.

  He’s in the gazebo smoking, bent like an old man over a pile of books. He doesn’t look like a faggot, even in reading glasses.

  All of a sudden a housekeeper yells, “Mr. Adrian … your mother doesn’t want you to smoke!” I flatten myself against the vanilla board, trying to disappear in the thin folds of whitewash in case he looks up. But he doesn’t look at me. He flips his cigarette into the mermaid fountain and lights another right away. He stares dreamily at the swallows and smiles.

  I go home and call him.

  “Hey bookworm,” I say, nervous. “Let’s go running.”

  I want to show him how fast I can run, plus I want to show him off. I want the towel girls to see me with a cute older guy. But Adrian tells me he hates running, and besides, he has to study all night for a science quiz.

  “Why do you always study?” I ask. “It’s bad for your eyes.”

  “Don’t you want to go to college?” he asks. “You’re crazy if you don’t.”

  I tell him he’s the one who’s crazy, always worried about his books.

  “I have to study or I’ll never get out of this place,” he says.

  That is an answer I can understand.

  * * *

  It’s sunset. Adrian and I are sitting on the cliff in the Mustang, low in the seats, laughing as we make a list of all the people we hate.

  “Cami Miller, because she’s a big phony,” I say. “Believe it or not, she eats piles of French fries and throws them up in the school bathroom.”

  Adrian laughs. He shows me a page in his natural history book about birds called great frigates who follow smaller birds around and beat their wings until the little birds get scared and throw up.

  “Then the frigates eat the vomit,” he explains.

  “I hate birds,” I say.

  For a while we continue our list, then Adrian puts his hand on my sweater arm. The brown fur congeals in his fingers. It is matted with sea-foam, and tiny perfect buds of marijuana.

  “I hate everyone in Palos Verdes,” he says. “Especially the girls.”

  First I’m happy about this, then I say, “What am I then?”

  “You are a space alien, landed here. A wonderful girl from space—maybe from a faraway galaxy.”

  As we laugh, I remember what Jim said about the Adares—they’re tacky gold diggers. Not talking, I watch Adrian’s hands open and close. He’s breathing very hard.

  “I hate going home,” he says.

  “How could you hate living in that house?” I ask. “I thought that’s what you guys wanted, the money.”

  “No. I wanted to stay in Manhattan Beach with my friends. I hate it here; you’re the on
ly cool person I’ve met.” He looks at me and smokes.

  I light a cigarette, pretending I know what to do with it. Then I turn away from him and put on the radio, staring into its flashing lights.

  Finally I say, “Don’t tell anyone I’m friends with you. I have to keep it secret.”

  “Here’s a secret,” he says, pulling my sweater to his lips, closing his mouth on it.

  I smell fear and fur.

  “Please close your eyes for a moment,” he tells me. “I’ll hate it if you peek.”

  I smile, and the craziness of it makes my skin flush red, but he does not stop at my sweater. As I close my eyes, I feel him touch my neck, then my cheek, and then he kisses me on the lips.

  I can’t look at him.

  “I feel like the reverse of sick,” I say, laughing.

  “I hate sick girls.”

  “I hate kissing you,” I say, smiling crazily at him.

  “I knew I was going to kiss you. I knew it the minute I saw you today, Miss Fifteen.”

  I sit on the curb for a few minutes after he leaves, burning out on the pavement, so cool.

  I’m holding my hand, staring at the black street. I look up at a white bird flying crookedly across the moon. Instantly exposed, like an X ray flash.

  Then it is gone.

  * * *

  All night I dream about water. I slosh from one side of the bed to the other, riding waves while I sleep, aloft on the vanilla board, wearing a rubber wet suit that rubs my restless skin.

  I’m half awakened when my mother creeps down the thick carpet of the hallway, tiptoeing over the places where the floorboards groan. Again I stir as she slowly renavigates the carpeting, chewing something fragrant with salt, and my dreams turn to a long spiral of water, wave after wave, visible in the shorelights blinking yellow and blue. My body is rocking, touched by cool water, held back by seaweed and a sudden warm current.

  The bed is still rocking when the clock rings.

  What I am feeling is this.

  Desire.

  * * *

  I call Adrian’s number the next night, but hang up suddenly. Jim’s knocking on the door, a secret soft knock so my mother won’t hear. He comes into my room, and settles down on the floor, feet up, the way he used to. He yawns and rolls his neck around casually, stretching.

  I wait for him to ask for more money.

  Instead he stalls, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a T-shirt from my folded laundry pile. He looks through our school yearbook, smiling at some of the pictures. After a while he puts it down and shifts onto his belly.

  “I broke up with Heather,” he says. “She was crying.”

  I go sit next to him on the floor; neither of us say anything for awhile. Then he tells me it’s definitely not because our mother told him to. He says it’s because he can never think of anything to say to Heather, her whole life revolves around her perfect family and her clothes. He tries to think of things to talk about in advance, but he can’t remember them.

  “She’s so damn beautiful” is what he says over and over.

  His head is back, his neck relaxed against the soft blue carpet.

  Then he switches subjects. “Do you love surfing,” he says, “I mean really, really love it?”

  I say yes.

  “I don’t,” he says. “I don’t think I love it.”

  I tell him it’s not true. Then I tell him how he looks on a wave, beautiful and free, hanging on to a powerful thrust, while it tries to throw him sideways. I talk to him as if I’m narrating a movie, I describe the deep gray-blue of the water, his gold blond hair, the way his hands push the water as he paddles. He interrupts me.

  “I miss talking to Dad, sometimes,” he says. “Even though I shouldn’t.”

  I take his hand, but he pulls it away. He tells me maybe he wants to stay in my room until he dies.

  Later, I hear my mother breathing. She listens at the door for a few seconds before knocking. Then she barges in.

  “Are you sick again, Jim?” she asks, kneeling in front of him.

  “Sick?” he repeats, thinking. “Yes, I’m pretty sick of everything.”

  * * *

  My father’s on the morning news. He’s going to do bypass surgery on Elizabeth Taylor. I see pictures of him wheeling a gurney around the cardiac ward, smiling, waving to his famous patients. I see a montage of film photographs of Elizabeth Taylor—then and now.

  Ava must be happy, I decide. Elizabeth Taylor is a pretty lady, but she’s much too old for my father.

  When I call him at the hospital, he tells me that I’ll need to take care of things while he’s in Europe for a few months. He’s taking Ava away; they’re going to a conference so my father can tell European doctors how to fix hearts.

  He explains how to avoid undertows in the water: just swim sideways and then to the shore. He warns me to pace myself when I run, so I won’t get tired, and to study for three hours a day so I’ll come out on top.

  “Maybe it’s not so bad underneath,” I say, even though he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  Then I tell him what Jim said. That he misses him for real. My father tells me he’s very happy to hear that.

  “When I get back everything will be fine again, princess. You’ll see.”

  I ask him if we can come live with him when he comes home. He clears his throat.

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  At sunset the ocean comes alive. Wispy fronds of seaweed grab at the last rays of sunlight, sucking in stray nutrients. Electric eels swim against the tide looking for prey, while blackfish and sharks swish past silently. Ghost-white gulls are the last to emerge, floating in the moonlight, diving like arrows for fish among the waves.

  I’ve convinced Jim to sneak out and go nightsurfing with me. While my mother watches TV, we pretend we’re in our rooms doing homework. It’s easy to sneak out my sliding glass door, gliding it quietly along its track, holding it with a soft towel so it won’t bang shut.

  Usually we laugh and clown around, but tonight Jim lies on his back, silent, looking at the stars jumbled in the sky. His mouth is moving, as if he is praying. He drifts farther and farther away from me.

  He snickers, barely audible. “How can I protect anyone when I’m a joke?” His voice drops off, even lower. “A big, lame joke.”

  When I paddle closer he swerves away, warns me not to touch him.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have hit Dad that time,” he says. “He probably hates me now.”

  Then he says he’s been trying to laugh with the guys, but everything he says sounds weird and wrong, as if someone else is talking through his mouth.

  “They all want to come over to the house, they say it’s strange that I never invite them.”

  He says he might stop talking soon, to everyone.

  Then he takes off, free in the dark.

  When we come home, Jim wades into the pool. He falls asleep in the chlorinated water, stomach down, hugging his surfboard. My mother hovers at the top of the stairs, calling for us to come out of the pool. She brings cookies on a tray, and even dangles her feet in the water once. When she finds a rolled-up joint floating in the water, she hides it quickly in a napkin.

  Jim yawns, turning to his side. “I’m going to sleep here tonight, Mom, go inside, it’s okay.”

  My mother watches, slumped against the deck.

  I drag my own surfboard to the grass, and sleep with the fin between my legs.

  * * *

  The next morning, while Jim’s in the bathroom, she corners me in the kitchen.

  “If you’re giving him pot, I’ll go to the police,” she says. “I’ll turn you in as a dealer.”

  “I’d never give him pot. He’d have to pay for it, if I were a dealer.”

  My mother switches tacks, like a wildly blowing sail, coming close, listing in anger.

  “I heard your phone ring at two A.M. What kind of person would call you at an hour like that?”

  �
�A supercool person. The kind of person who talks to me as if I’m not the number one freak of Palos Verdes—” I stop short of saying “after you.”

  Jim comes out of the bathroom, his face scrubbed red.

  “Tell your sister to stop fighting me,” my mother implores.

  Jim runs back into the bathroom, slamming the door. I hear the sink running for a long time. He doesn’t want us to know he’s crying.

  Later I hear noises in my mother’s bedroom. I creep near the door to investigate.

  Through the crack in the door I see a bag of nacho-flavored Doritos on her lap. Her mouth is orange. She is talking on the phone, weeping, to someone at a suicide prevention center.

  “You don’t taste anything after the first chips. You just fill up your mouth and swallow. I can eat three handfuls at a time. They aren’t as filling as you’d think. But what would you know? You’re just a young girl trained to listen to other people’s problems. Don’t you have enough problems of your own?”

  My mother laughs into the receiver, munching. She sees my shadow under the door.

  “Medina, dear,” she calls out, “I seeeeee you, you little sneak. Always such a sneak, running around, spying on me. How would it feel if I got you back?”

  I run out the door, heaving with speed, sprinting down the wooden steps that lead to the shore. My mother follows, standing on the top of the steps, screaming. All the surfers on the shore look upward.

  She twirls around and around, the yellow bathrobe ballooning into the air. She is screaming at me, but her words are carried away by moving currents of air. Her legs are enormous, her underwear huge white expanses of material.

  At first the surfers don’t laugh, they only stare. There is a moment of silence until her voice floats down from the cliff.

  “Did you people know Medina is a liar?” My mother jumps up and down, singing.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire, lalala a telephone wire.”

  When some of the Bayboys begin to laugh, I walk into the water with my head down, and keep swimming until I am tired.

  The water roars, my legs and arms whip around in the eddies as I start to go under. I see the sky tilt, like a canopy bed coming down over my head, and I see clouds of whitecaps hitting the breakwater. I see my mother still standing on the edge of the cliffs.