The Merchant of Venice Beach

by Celia Bonaduce

  The first time Eric said this, Suzanna tried to look back with an impartial eye. She wasn’t angry with Carla. Instead, she thought, “Wow, this kid is good. She’ll go places in the world, or at least in kindergarten, and I’ll be right there beside her.”

  Call it survival instinct, but Suzanna could tell that having Carla Caridi on your side of the sandbox would rock.

  CHAPTER 10

  Eric Cooper moved into the snug Napa neighborhood when they were all thirteen. The Cooper Vineyard was about four wineries down the lane from the Caridis’, and four wineries and a meadow from the Wolf barn–house. Napa in the seventies and early eighties was a small, small town, so if somebody your age hit town, everybody knew about it. Suzanna and Carla rode their bikes past the Cooper Vineyards every day that summer until they caught a glimpse of him. When they finally saw him walking down the lane, they were thrilled to find out he was really cute—and one of the few boys who was a reasonable height at that age. Eric was loved by all. Cool kids loved him, dorky kids loved him, even grown-ups loved him. He was one of those kids who was completely comfortable talking with adults. Suzanna’s parents, for example, were dazzled by him. The first time she brought him home—Carla had managed through some incredibly quick thinking to snag him as a partner on a three-way science project—Suzanna’s father was working on a lesson plan on haiku, that Japanese seventeen-syllable, three-line poetry thing.

  Eric got into a discussion with him about it and, on the spot, made up a haiku:

  The sea tumbles near

  Go back, mighty, mighty wave!

  How to dry my shoes?

  Her parents had burst into applause. Suzanna was thrilled that her family was impressed, but also jealous of the adulation her parents slathered on the boy. Erinn was off in New York City by this time, but Suzanna could hear her father bragging about Eric whenever he and Erinn talked on the phone.

  “I’ll tell you, Erinn. He’s the smartest thing in Napa Valley now that you’re gone.”

  Suzanna tried not to bristle. After all, Eric was amazing and smart and inquisitive. How could they not love him? Her parents loved knowledge—or more specifically, her parents loved thinking. Suzanna felt as if she was always letting them down. After Erinn—and now Eric—with their shiny intellects, she didn’t have a prayer.

  During a teenage parental bitchfest, Suzanna complained to Eric that her father came into the room one evening when she was sitting in front of the television. He shot her a sorrowful look.

  “Could you at least look like you’re thinking?”he’d asked.

  Suzanna rolled her eyes as she relayed her predicament to Eric.

  “Now, every time my dad goes by, I try to think some important thought, and it’s ruining my TV shows.”

  “What do you think about?” Eric asked.

  “What?”

  “What important thoughts have you come up with?”

  “I don’t know . . . the usual . . . Was Napoleon really as bad as everyone thought? Would anyone ever discover who Jack the Ripper was?” Suzanna said.

  She was lying. Under pressure to think, she usually came up with something like, “Why does my mom always open her mouth every time she puts on mascara?”

  Eric nodded. Suzanna knew he wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with a profound thought when put on the spot.

  “I’m running out of things to think about,” Suzanna confessed.

  “Well, that’s easy. He didn’t ask you to really be thinking, he asked you to look like you were thinking. How hard is that?”

  At that moment, Suzanna realized that she was in love with her neighbor. He really was a genius! And using his gift for evil, not for good.

  She put Eric’s plan into action, and while she was clumsy at first, she did soon get the hang of just looking as if she were thinking. She would hear her father’s boots on the floorboards, and one of her eyebrows would arch intelligently. As he walked by, they would give each other an erudite nod. He’d go on his way, and Suzanna would go back to watching The Wonder Years without missing a punch line.

  Eric’s family was new to the wine industry and their focus, in those first years, was on the business. They weren’t negligent of their son, but they had other things to worry about. Eric was a good kid, so his parents simply left him to his own devices.

  By the time she, Carla, and Eric started high school, Suzanna had no complaints when he started hanging around her house after school. Her parents considered him a good example for their daughter now that big sister Erinn was in New York and there was no straight-A sibling in whose scholastic footsteps Suzanna could follow. Suzanna tired to ignore the envy she sometimes felt when her parents were blathering on and on over Eric’s wonderfulness. Wasn’t not measuring up to Erinn’s wonderfulness enough?

  Because Suzanna’s father was an English professor, it went without saying that the English language was big at the Wolf house. They had a special place in their collective heart for the palindrome, a word or sentence that reads the same forward as it does backward. “Able was I ere I saw Elba” was the premier example, although naturally, as a kid, Suzanna preferred “As I pee, sir, I see Pisa!”

  One time, in the tenth grade, Suzanna and her class were studying palindromes. The teacher, a bearded young man with a sense of humor, offered a good example: “A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota.” Suzanna ran home and passed it off as her own. Her parents actually gasped in appreciation. She practically melted from their praise.

  Take that, Eric.

  Suzanna did have some complaints, however, when Carla suddenly felt drawn to the household whenever she saw Eric’s bike in Suzanna’s front yard.

  Science project or no science project, if Eric’s bike was in the driveway, you could count on Carla showing up.

  Suzanna and Carla were best friends by proximity and a gruesome “blood bond” in which they sealed their fate with a ceremony (involving a very sketchy-looking rusted nail, if Suzanna recalled) when they were ten. Both girls took their blood bond seriously, but by the time they were fifteen, they knew instinctively that when it came to boys, all bets were off.

  May the best adolescent win.

  And Carla won. She stole Eric from Suzanna. That is, Carla stole Eric, according to Suzanna. According to Carla, Eric was a free agent.

  After many years (and enough wine) Suzanna would admit that Carla didn’t technically steal Eric from her because he wasn’t technically her boyfriend. But he was her boyfriend in her mind—and at fifteen, that should have counted for something. And after many years (and a little more wine), Carla would admit she wasn’t completely innocent—she did know that Suzanna loved him.

  Suzanna never admitted that she saw it coming. She just had no idea how to prevent it. She wasn’t as smart as her sister or as pretty as her neighbor. What was a girl to do, except roll with the emotional punches? To add insult to injury, she found out about them in her own kitchen. The three of them were working on yet another science project, determining what noxious weeds were spreading through the valley. Eric was especially fixated on the Arundo donax, a cane-like grass that was displacing native plants and wildlife, causing flooding and erosion. Because it was flammable, he argued, it would make a great visual for their classroom project—nothing like fire to get that teenage blood flowing!

  Suzanna left the room to get some samples, which were growing in the backyard. She had a nagging feeling that she shouldn’t leave Eric and Carla alone in the kitchen too long, so she grabbed a tray of the donax and started back into the kitchen as fast as she could.

  But not fast enough.

  At first she wasn’t sure what she was seeing—she thought they were just bent over their books or something. But no. As hard as she tried to ignore it, there was no denying it: her best friend and her boyfriend-in-her-mind were making out!

  Suzanna was too embarrassed to tell her parents, but too distraught to go it alone, so she called her sister in New York. While she did her best, Erinn was a hu
ge hit by this time and didn’t have the focus or patience to discuss teenage angst. But she did listen to Suzanna pour out her heart.

  “So you were growing donax in the backyard?” Erinn asked.

  Suzanna stopped sniffling. Unhappy as she was, she could still recognize a non sequitur when she heard it.

  “Yes,” Suzanna said.

  “Dear God, Suzanna,” Erinn said, “you were actually growing harmful weeds in our yard? Didn’t it occur to any of you that you’re surrounded by precious grape-growing vines? Have the three of you lost your minds?”

  Suzanna couldn’t think of anything to say and hung up the phone.

  Maybe it had something to do with growing up in a small town . . . there weren’t a whole lot of people to be friends with. Or maybe Carla and Suzanna were just destined to remain friends. But somehow, they got through it. Although Eric and Carla dated through junior year and Suzanna did meet Fernando shortly after the monster make-out reveal, Carla, Eric, and Suzanna managed to keep it together. And they got As on all their science projects throughout high school.

  Deep inside, when all was said and done, Suzanna never completely trusted Eric or Carla again.

  But then again, after all was said and done, Suzanna never completely trusted anyone again.

  After Carla and Eric hooked up, Suzanna was at loose ends for the rest of the year. Carla and Eric still invited Suzanna to go everywhere with them, but she declined as often as possible, and without letting it look as if she was a sore loser. She tried to give the impression that everything was fine, but there was definitely some sort of internal shift. Although she kept her grades up, she was no longer interested in school or making new friends. Not that making new friends was much of an option. Suzanna never really did get the hang of being popular.

  Suzanna begged her parents to let her live in New York City with Erinn. She argued, constantly and aggressively, that she could finish out the rest of high school with her older sister in a more sophisticated setting. Unfortunately, since her parents were college professors and were very aware of exactly how sophisticated New York City was, they said no.

  Suzanna’s recollection of the rest of the semester remained hazy. She only remembered being horribly adrift and lonely. Until she met Fernando. He was a transfer student—and a godsend. One day, when Suzanna was having a particularly intense moment of self-loathing, she passed by a reflective window between classes and stared at herself in dismay. She started tugging at her hair (like all teenage girls, she assumed if she got her hair right, she’d get her life right. ) and as she pulled and twisted, she said, to no one in particular,

  “God, I hate my hair.”

  And a voice replied softly in her ear, “You don’t hate your hair . . . you hate yourself. Your poor hair is just taking all the blame.”

  Suzanna spun around (both hands still clamping clumps of curls) and there was Fernando. Even though he was only sixteen, he already had his hot little taut body going for him. Suzanna was stunned. She couldn’t believe such a cute guy was talking to her. But when she looked around and saw that there wasn’t anybody else around, she realized he had to be talking to her. One minute, he was leaning against a pole, appraising her, and the next, he took her hair, twisted it into some sort of Gibson-Girl-on-steroids bun, and disappeared into the crowd just as the bell rang.

  Suzanna was speechless when kids in her American Literature class complimented her on her new look. It took her a few minutes to realize they were sincere.

  Suzanna kept her eyes open and would spot Fernando from time to time in the gym, shooting hoops by himself, or getting into his father’s truck after school. The next time she actually spoke to him, she was standing in the art-department classroom by herself before some sort of awards ceremony, freaking out, quietly and alone, about her dress. She had bought it at a great little boutique and thought it was perfect, but now, in the harsh glare of high school, she could see that it was wrong, so wrong. It was dorky. She was dorky. Luckily, she was wearing her Gibson Girl up-do, so she knew that at least her hair looked good.

  Fernando popped in silently again and gave her the once-over.

  “Honey, that dress looks like something Bob Mackie would design after a stroke.” He shook his head. “Next time, take me shopping with you . . .”

  And with that, he grabbed a pair of scissors, cut off her sleeves, widened the neckline, and pulled the whole thing off one shoulder. He spun her around so she could see herself in the reflection of the classroom mirror. Suzanna had to admit it—she looked pretty good. While she stood blinking in gratitude, Fernando was rummaging around in the pastels. He picked up a charcoal, licked it, and rimmed her eyes.

  “See?” he said. “You can be fabulous. You just need to work it.”

  “Thanks,” she replied.

  “I’m Fernando,” he said, as he continued his overhaul.

  “And I’m—”

  “Late for the ceremony,” he said, pushing her out the door.

  After that, she’d see him around, and they started to become friends. He was a loner, like she was, but in his case, it was by choice. Apparently, Fernando was a magnet for people and if he wasn’t careful, his life could instantly overflow with hangers-on. But for some reason, he took a liking to—or pity on—Suzanna, and they became inseparable.

  Suzanna really liked him, but there was also some satisfaction that she was getting even with Carla and Eric, even if only in her own mind. They, of course couldn’t have cared less, lost in their own world as they were. If anything, they were probably relieved that Suzanna now had somebody to hang out with. In any case, it didn’t hurt to be seen everywhere with an incredibly handsome guy.

  Fernando told her right off the bat that he was gay, so there wouldn’t be any “weirdness,” as he put it. Suzanna was disappointed, of course, but even though she hated to admit to stereotypical thinking, she kind of guessed he was gay when he told her that she could be “fabulous if she would just get that stick out of her ass.”

  Every time Suzanna was scared of looking a little too flashy, Fernando would nudge her to go for it. But because this was real life, she didn’t suddenly shoot right to the top of the list with the popular kids just because she suddenly had a secret stylist.

  CHAPTER 11

  Suzanna cried herself to sleep at night once Eric and Carla were considered a couple by all their friends. The pain was compound. She’d not only lost Eric, the object of her desire, she’d also lost Carla, her best friend. But the possible biggest torment of all was worrying that Carla would tell Eric all about the teenage fantasies Suzanna had spun and share them in excruciating detail. During her campaign to move to New York, Suzanna poured out her heart to Erinn about her fear that the two of them were laughing at her.

  “They aren’t laughing at you,” Erinn said. “They’re busy.”

  Erinn shared their mother’s talent for clear-eyed advice, no matter how much it smarted.

  Throughout their friendship, Carla had always been the visionary. When she received a large trampoline for Christmas the year the girls turned twelve, Carla begged her father to put it in the side yard, so she could look at it from her window. Mr. and Mrs. Caridi never woke up to the fact (literally and figuratively)that Carla’s bedroom was on the second story and that they had bought their daughter a late-night escape route.

  It wasn’t that Carla didn’t love the trampoline for what it was—the girls would bounce on the trampoline for hours on end—it was just that Carla always managed to envision everything to its fullest potential. She would catapult herself out her bedroom window, drop onto the trampoline, and soundlessly bounce into the grass. Then she’d make her way over to the Wolf barn–house, where she would let herself into the kitchen (nobody locked their doors in Napa in those days) and sneak through the living room and down the hall to Suzanna’s room. When Suzanna’s mother had designed the house, she left the organic footprint of the barn in place. The girls’ bedrooms were old horse stalls with thick walls
at the far end of the structure. Once Carla was past the living room, where overhead the senior Wolfs were sleeping in the loft, she was in the clear.

  It hadn’t immediately occurred to Suzanna that Carla would curtail her nighttime visits when Eric became her main focus. It was as if her entire world went down a rabbit hole. The girls remained civil and publicly social (neither was into catty revenge or painful drama) but things were certainly not the same. Suzanna tried not to wonder if Carla was hurling herself out of her room and making her way to the Cooper winery every night. Luckily, her new friendship with Fernando was opening up new worlds—they cooked, they sewed, they conquered. Fernando made it his mission to keep Suzanna’s mind off Eric and Carla, going to great lengths to keep her distracted. Anything he was doing, he included her.

  One Saturday, he invited her to his house and Suzanna enthusiastically pedaled over on her bike. Fernando lived with his father. His mother had moved back to Mexico when Fernando was a baby. Suzanna was flabbergasted when Fernando told her this nugget in his matter-of-fact way. But Fernando made no bones about it. His father, Armando Cruz, worked for a large winery but had aspirations to be a vintner himself one day. He owned a small plot of land where he grew the obscure merlot grape, confident that merlot would catch on with the California palate. Mr. Cruz was way ahead of his time.

  The road to Fernando’s was mercifully flat, but the weather was hot and the fields were heady with the scent of ripening grapes. She was wobbly when she got off her bike and pushed it up his rutted driveway.

  Suzanna dropped her bike in the backyard and entered a kitchen that smelled more like grapes than the wineries did. She looked at Fernando quizzically, but he was intensely focused on a bubbling pot. There were grapes being boiled, grapes piled a foot high on the counter, and grapes draining through colanders in the double sink.

  “What’s all this?” Suzanna asked.

  Stir, stir, stir.