by James Brown
“Don’t lie. I can tell you’re scared.” He turns to the clerk. “How much?” he says.
“Forty bucks.”
“I don’t want it,” I say.
Earl looks over his shoulder at me. “Who said it was for you?”
Pink’s Famous Hot Dog stand is across the street on the corner, and I follow him there from the magic shop, out of politeness, too shy to turn down his invitation. We sit on red vinyl stools at the counter and eat greasy chili dogs, not talking, not a word. It’s another hot smoggy day. The sidewalks are crowded with summer tourists, and as I watch them pass I wonder how it is that anyone could find Hollywood glamorous. Next door is a tattoo parlor. Farther down it’s the Pussycat Theater and a leather bar. Every block has the same old T-shirt shops, and at the end of the day, when the different businesses turn out the lights, what you can’t find in the stores is sold openly from their alcoves at night. My brother has bought grass here half a dozen times.
From under the counter Earl slips the bag from the magic shop into my lap.
“Thanks,” I tell him, “but I can’t take it.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
I set the bag on the counter beside him and he opens it. Holds out the mask.
“Try it on.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here. What do you care what people think?”
I hesitate.
“Go on,” he says. “Don’t be a pussy.”
The mask slips easily over my head. I like the strong smell of the rubber but it’s hard to breathe and the eyes of the mask don’t line up with my own. That’s when it comes to me. The Unearthly. The name of the movie I couldn’t remember. Or maybe, on second thought, it’s Mr. Sardonicus. My brother took me to both. “Hey,” someone says, “a monster.” From somewhere along the counter I hear laughter.
I pull off the mask and hand it to him. But he won’t take it, he waves it away. “It fits you perfectly. Keep it.” He sips from his Coke. He smiles. “Sometimes,” he says, “you have to go along with people, even if you don’t want to, because it makes them happy.”
At twelve I’m not very good at guessing an adult’s age. But I am forty-three years old as I write this, and when I look back, when I remember that smile and how his stare lingered, I see the face of a plain, average-looking young man. His hair had already begun to thin and gray on the sides but he couldn’t have been any more than twenty-four, twenty-five. His skin is what makes me think this. It is smooth in my memory, unblemished from the passing of too many years, and his hands as I remember them, and I remember them well, are as soft as those of any woman who’s ever touched me.
In the middle of the kitchen table is a lazy Susan that our mother and father brought back from their trip to Honolulu before the breakup. It is a relic of the past, somehow surviving our family upheavals through the years, our many moves where too many things get lost or broken or simply left behind. Perched at the top of the center post is the hand carving of a little girl wearing a grass skirt and a lei. She is captured in the pose of dance, her arms swaying to one side, the hips cocked in a rolling motion. In the wooden dishes surrounding her are smoked oysters, cashews, baby corns, green olives stuffed with pimentos, potato chips and garlic dip. I look closely at the carving, the stiff smile cut into her lips. Then I stab a toothpick into the open half of a deviled egg and push it into my mouth.
“That’s it, no more,” my mother says.
“I’m starving,” I say.
“Too bad. You just have to wait.”
On the kitchen counter is a bottle of Korbel, and she pours the last of it into her champagne glass, the rim stained red from her lipstick. She is wearing a bright yellow apron and fuzzy white slippers and the half-moons of exhaustion weigh heavy beneath her eyes. Our father sends her little money, he is struggling himself back in San Jose, and so our mother must work long hours, weeks on end without a day off until now. Tonight is about making up for lost time, all the fast food we’ve eaten, TV dinners and frozen chicken pot pies. Tonight is about declaring a truce with her older son, her favorite son, who is supposed to have been here a half hour ago. It will be our first dinner together since he moved out.
A pot of spicy marinara sauce simmers on the stove. She stirs it with a wooden spoon and calls out. “Marilyn . . . Marilyn.” The door to Marilyn’s room opens and she peers out from around the side. Her hair is wrapped in a towel, and you can hear the music behind her, louder now with the door open. Rock and roll. The Beatles’ White Album.
“What’d you want?”
“Tell your boyfriend good-bye. You have to get off the phone.”
“In a minute.”
“Now,” she says. “Your brother might be trying to call.”
Marilyn slams the door, so hard the kitchen window rattles. A moment later the music grows louder, and our mother takes off her apron, tosses it on the couch. I think at first that she’s going after her, that she intends to set her straight, but instead she heads toward the bathroom. “I better get ready,” she tells me. “Would you mind opening another bottle of champagne? Just hold it over the sink, so you don’t make a mess.”
I have made her drinks before, two shots of Old Crow and a splash of Coke, vodka and V-8, or just neat with a pickled onion if it’s been a particularly long day. But champagne is her favorite, reserved only for special occasions, and I’ve never opened a bottle of it. Because Barry is older and stronger this would ordinarily be his job, and though I’ve watched him do it many times before I am still nervous as I peel back the label, untwist the wire and take hold of the plastic cork. I work it back and forth and soon it rises, on its own accord, pushing against my hand. I push back but the pressure is suddenly too great. The cork flies across the kitchen, bounces off the wall, and I hold my mouth over the stream of champagne so it won’t spill onto the floor. I swallow quickly, several mouthfuls, and when the stream subsides I tilt the bottle back and swallow some more.
When my mother returns she is wearing a black dress, a color she thinks makes her look thinner. She has always had a problem with her weight, ballooning up for months at a time and then starving herself, subsisting on celery, radishes and water. It’s a cycle. It’s a constant struggle, and since Barry left she has put on more weight than ever. Most of it goes to her thighs. The black dress fits too tightly, and her nylons make a faint scratching noise as she passes through the living room, back to the kitchen. The clock on the wall shows that it’s quarter after eight. He is over an hour late, yet she continues to prepare, ignoring the obvious. She sets the table with care, laying out her best place mats and matching cloth napkins, adjusting them just so, humming to herself. I want to tell her that she is wasting her time but I don’t. I know better. Instead I say, “C’mon, sit down for a while. Let me pour you another glass of champagne.” By now I am feeling the effects of it myself and no longer have an appetite.
Later that night, after she’s passed out on the couch, my sister slips out of her room. “I’ll be right back,” she says. “I have to get some hairspray.” She locks the door on her way out, and I get up. I phone my brother. But all I reach is his answering service, a harried woman on the other end of the line. “Tell him his brother called,” I say. “Tell him he was supposed to come by for dinner.” I hang up and return to the living room and sit back down on the floor beside the couch. The TV is on but the sound is turned low. It’s the only light in the room, and for a while I just watch the rise and fall of her chest, her gentle breathing. On her finger is the wedding band and diamond that my father gave her, and I remember asking about it, why after all these years she still wears it. She tells me it’s to ward off other men, that another man is the very last thing she needs in this life. Somehow I don’t believe her. I take her hand in mine, the same hand that holds a steak knife to my brother’s throat when he tells her that he is leaving. But I prefer to think of other times. I prefer to rest my head on the cushion beside her and feel the warmth through the coarse fabric of h
er black dress.
It is worse at night. It is worse when the apartment is quiet and I’m lying in bed across from where my brother used to sleep. Now his bed is stripped to the mattress. Now his dresser is gone as well as the bookcases and all the books that I helped him pack into boxes and label with a black felt pen. Fiction. Film. History. On the wall, where glossies of Montgomery Clift and James Dean once hung, there is only the vague outline of the frames, the brighter spots of paint. These nights, they just pass, one into another, and I have this sickening feeling inside that I am losing something more than a brother.
I have few friends, no close ones, anyway, of the sort that make a difference, and I spend most of my mornings stretched out on the couch watching TV. I don’t get dressed before noon. Later, maybe, I take myself to a movie or blow off a few hours dropping quarters into the pinball machines in the arcades on Hollywood Boulevard. By then it’s growing dark, and instead of going back to an empty apartment I hang out at Plummer Park for a while. Usually the baseball field is lit with stadium lights. Usually there’s a softball game, adult teams, and I sit at the top of the bleachers and watch them for a while, rooting with the crowd, cheering the hits, pretending I belong.
His guitar strap reminds me of the blankets I’ve seen hanging in the open markets in Tijuana. It’s made of the same material, the same pattern and garish colors, and that’s what first catches my eye. Though it’s still light out, the living room is dark. The shades are drawn, and as I reach for the light switch I see movement, I glimpse the strap. They’re on the couch, my sister and José, the boyfriend who carries his guitar wherever he goes and sings Spanish love songs to her. He has her blouse open and is working his hand into her pants. I don’t know who’s more shocked, me or them, but they both jump back, knocking the guitar off the couch.
“You’re in deep shit,” I say. “Just wait till Mom gets home.”
She holds her blouse together with one fist and flies up at me with the other.
“C’mere, you little creep.”
I’ve felt her blows before, and she isn’t even close when I’m back out the door. She stops at the threshold and hollers down the hall.
“I’m serious,” she says. “You better keep your trap shut.” It’s late in the afternoon and the rush-hour traffic has begun. I walk quickly, keeping my head down, concentrating on my steps. My brother lives in an older building in the heart of Hollywood, a tall, ten-story building that looks as if it were once a lavish hotel. In its glory days it was probably a nice place to live but now the paint is peeling off the stucco walks and most of the window screens are torn or missing. The ivy along the walkway is yellowed and dying, and inside the lobby, where a clerk works behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, it smells of mold and the powerful cleansers used to mask it. I step into the elevator. It creaks and groans as it rises, taking me to the sixth floor. From there I walk down the hall to my brother’s room and knock on the door. Music plays softly from inside. I knock again, louder. He answers this time, wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair is wet and freshly combed and one side of his face is covered with shaving cream. My brother is handsome, dark-complexioned from the Sicilian on our mother’s side. People tell me we look alike, and though I’d like to believe them, I don’t see much of my brother in myself.
“What’re you doing here?”
I shrug.
“I just thought I’d drop by.”
“You should’ve called first. I have to leave in a few minutes. But come on in,” he says, “we’ll talk while I’m getting ready.”
He returns to the bathroom but leaves the door open. I wander around the room. There’s a bed and nightstand in one corner and a service kitchen in the other with a small refrigerator and a hot plate. His books are carefully arranged on their shelves, even the paperbacks. The one window overlooks the rooftops of the stores and shops along Hollywood Boulevard, and in the distance, if you lean out and look east you can see the Capitol Records Tower on Vine Street. On the nightstand is an ashtray, and in it are several cigarette butts, the filters stained red. I pick one up.
“What’s she look like?” I say.
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
I hold up the cigarette butt.
“What’s this?” I say. “She the reason you missed dinner last week?”
He pokes his head out from around the bathroom door. “That,” he says, smiling, “is none of your goddamn business.”
I go to the refrigerator and open it. All he has are a few cans of Budweiser and an old package of Oscar Mayer bologna and a near empty jar of mayonnaise. I help myself to a beer and then lean against the doorjamb of the bathroom and watch him shave. He looks at me in the mirror, and for a second I think he’s about to reprimand me for drinking. Instead he tilts his head back and draws the razor slowly under his chin.
“That better not be my last,” he says.
“You got two more.”
“Good,” he says. “Why don’t you get me one.”
And I think to myself, Yes, this is what it’s like. To be on your own. To be a man. No one telling you what you can or can’t do.
“You mind if I stay over?” I say.
“Not tonight.”
“How come?”
He gives me that smile again.
“I might have company later. Hey,” he says, “where’s my beer?”
In the window of the studio are high school graduation portraits. The young men wear tuxedos. The young women wear formals cut low in the front. They are all carefully posed, chins raised, staring off into the distance as if looking toward their future. Hanging above them are wedding portraits in big gold baroque frames, the couples looking dreamily into each other’s eyes. There are also pictures of babies and children and another of a Welsh terrier with a pink ribbon tied in a bow on the top of its head. Even though the sign on the door reads CLOSED, I see Earl inside behind the counter, still working. I tap on the glass. He comes to the door, jingling a set of keys, and unlocks the deadbolt.
“Good,” he says. “You changed your mind.”
“About what?”
“Having your picture taken.” He points to a photo of a young girl on the wall, a framed glossy. “I could put it there, only bigger.”
“Maybe some other time.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say. “I was hoping I could catch a ride home with you.”
“Give me a minute to lock up,” he says.
Earl drives a newer Firebird with wide tires and a T-top. The sky is dark now, and as we cruise down Hollywood Boulevard I look at the lighted marquees of the different theaters. The Egyptian. The Hollywood. The Pacific. I’m lightheaded from the beer I drank at my brother’s place and crave another. If one makes me feel good, a couple more will make me feel even better. I want to get drunk. I want to get sky-high drunk. There’s no other reason to drink, since I don’t care for the taste.
“Can you do me a favor?” I say.
“Like what?”
“Buy me a six-pack. I got the money.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “What are you, thirteen? Fourteen? That’s awfully young to be drinking.”
“I don’t need a lecture,” I say.
“No, I don’t suppose you do. You seem pretty grown-up for your age. Where do you plan on drinking it?”
“At the park.”
“That’s not too smart.”
“Who cares?”
“I just don’t want you getting in trouble, because if you get in trouble that means I get in trouble. I don’t need that. Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll buy you a six-pack but you have to drink at my place. It’s not a good idea to be wandering around the park drunk, especially at night.”
There’s a liquor store on the corner down the block from our complex, and after Earl buys the beer we go up to his apartm
ent. The first can goes down fast, and somewhere in there, as I’m working on my second, he reaches under the couch and pulls out the top of an old shoebox. In it is marijuana.
“Ever smoke weed?” he says.
I tell him I have, and it’s true, though I’ve never much liked how it makes me feel. I prefer to drink but when he offers me the joint I take a few hits anyway to show that I’m cool. That I’m not afraid. It’s powerful stuff. “From Maui,” he says. “They call it Maui Wowwee.” He laughs. On the TV is an old rerun of Star Trek, and while we’re watching the good ship Enterprise weather a meteor attack he slides his hand along the back of the couch. I’m twelve years old but I am not stupid. I know what this is about. I know what’s coming and I can’t explain it away, saying I’m drunk and stoned, but it’s as if I’m in another place at that moment, someplace far from here, that it’s not me sitting on that couch beside Earl. He starts with my hair, lifting strands of it, then slowly growing bolder and holding them out as if he’s measuring.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, and he says it softly.
I don’t say anything. I don’t move and he takes this as a sign and begins to stroke the side of my neck with the back of his hand. He raises my chin with the tips of his fingers as if posing me. “You really are beautiful,” he says. “It’s a shame you won’t let me take your picture.” Then he kisses my ear, and it feels good, feels gentle like a warm breeze. A chill passes through my body. He kisses me again, farther down my neck. I stand up. I start toward the door.
“Where you going?” he says. “Come here. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
But I am outside now in the hallway, and I hear other voices. I hear laughter. From over the railing I see my mother floating on her back in the pool, her eyes closed, her hair fanning out around her. My sister stands at the edge of the deep end, her arms stretched toward the sky, poised to dive. She looks up. She sees me. “Hey, Jimmy,” she says. “Where you been?” Threads of light reflect beneath the surface of the water, twisting and bending, and when she dives they shatter into a million sparks. Dizzy, short of breath, I move toward the explosion of light.