Rich Friends

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “No-no.”

  “You can’t never find anything that cute.” She pushed Northridge Whole Wheat bread along the stand, ringing her register. “You got a basketful.”

  “Hungry mouths to feed.”

  The checker said in a stage whisper, “I could tell right off you wasn’t newlyweds.”

  Alix laughed.

  The checker rang the total, $23.49. Roger reached for his wallet, but Alix already had her B of A checkbook in hand. “Now, Roger,” she said dulcetly.

  The woman held up Alix’s check. “Alexandra Nancy Schorer. One-two-oh-seven Crescent. [She pronounced it Creskent.] Beverly Hills. Have a check-cashing card here?”

  Alix shook her head.

  “Let’s have your driver’s license, hon.” She jabbed a button, examining Alix’s license again. “Not married,” she said.

  “Not in the least,” Alix said.

  The checker glanced at Roger. He turned a satisfying red.

  As Roger and Alix emerged, a little girl, possibly she was eight, pedaled furiously around the parking lot on a small-wheel, high-handlebarred bicycle. Roger opened the back of the bus, Alix hefted a bag from the cart.

  Tires squealed.

  Thud!

  A narrow, wailing cry.

  The little girl lay in an acute angle a yard from the overturned bike. The front wheel spun. A man was opening the door of a new green Pontiac. As Alix stared, blood began to spread on the child’s pale-blue slacks.

  “Oh Jesus!” Roger sprinted.

  Alix, dropping the heavy brown paper bag in the cart, ran after him.

  “I didn’t see her. Them fucking low bikes! There oughta be a law. How can anyone see ’em?” As the driver spoke, his chin worked.

  And all the time the child was emitting a thin, terrible wail.

  Roger, flipping off his jacket, knelt over her. His shoulder and back muscles formed a curve, a cave, strong, secure, protective. “Listen, I’m going to try not to hurt you, but maybe I will.” He spoke quietly, his large hands gentle on the child. “I have to see the bleeding, okay?” Moving her hips as little as possible, he slid down slacks. Bright red blood spurted from a frail wishbone leg. Pressing the heel of his hand to the depression of inner thigh, he asked, “You a Brownie? Or a Bluebird?”

  The child, now weeping in normal gulping sobs, shook her head. The orange earmuffs, twisted in lank hair, were matted with tears.

  “I was a Scout. This is how they taught us to stop bleeding.” Roger glanced up at Alix, whispering swiftly, “They have diapers in there. Get some. Find out if they have an ambulance or what. A doctor.” And he bent over the child, reassuring.

  Alix pushed through onlookers. How do they know, like buzzards, the minute there’s an accident? she wondered while another part of her brain efficiently cataloged Roger’s order: diapers, ambulance, doctor.

  Returning, she found a bigger group and a highway patrolman talking into his pipping motorcycle radio.

  “Fold me one,” Roger said. She folded. “Again,” he said. She did, handing it to him. The wound was no longer spurting, and he held the new diaper to it. The child’s face was the blue-white of skim milk. “Get the spread,” he told Alix. She ran to the bus, returning to cover the child with old chenille. She heard comments.

  “Shouldn’t oughta allow them low bikes.”

  “Hey, isn’t that little Bobby Jean Damin?”

  “Nobody else.”

  “Oughtn’t someone call the Damins?”

  “Flip did.”

  “Poor little Bobby Jean.”

  They knew the child. Yet they held back. Roger was young, but Roger had the strength of confidence. They let him run the show. The highway patrolman strolled over to say help would be here directly. In less than five minutes an old-fashioned high ambulance squealed onto unpaved parking. A gray-haired man—Alix wasn’t sure if he were an MD—knelt on the girl’s other side.

  “There was arterial bleeding,” Roger said. “But I think the knee’s fractured, so I didn’t raise the leg.”

  “Good,” said the gray-haired man. “Bleeding’s just about stopped. Good.” And he took over.

  The ambulance swung out, raising dust, coated people drifted back to whence they’d come. Roger went to wash. Alix loaded groceries.

  When they were back on the snaking road, she said, quietly, “You’ve learned a lot at Hopkins.”

  “First-year med students don’t get to lay on hands,” he said. “It’s the truth what I told her—Bobby Jean. First aid, learned in Boy Scouts. Anybody could’ve done it.”

  “But none of us did.”

  He grinned. “We already decided you weren’t a Boy Scout.”

  Alix wanted to apologize for that bitchy, stupid scene in the market. A squirrel, tail raised in a question mark, ran across the road. Roger slowed. “I don’t mean just physically,” she said. “You, well, you were reinforcing her.” It might not be an apology, but it was true.

  When they stopped at the peaked garage, Roger glanced at her, sheepish. “What do you know?” he said.

  “Nothing much, Doctor.”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “Maybe doctor.”

  3

  April 25. April 25. April 25.

  The date shattered her sleep. The date jumped in her mind. Today is April 25. Vliet snorted, rolling over, rubbing his stuffed nose in his pillow. Yesterday, making out the check, she had written April 24, 1968, and the writing had disturbed her, but she’d been too involved with her brilliant revenge to pursue the question. And the rest of the time, she’d thought about Roger, nothing else.

  April 25 was Jamie’s birthday. After his death, Alix had spent the day with Beverly. They would drive to the cemetery, sitting near the inset black-marble slab:

  JAMES SCOTT SCHORER

  1952–1963

  Beloved son, brother, grandson

  A gardener would use his knife, digging out the recessed metal vase for water, and the two of them would take their time arranging Shasta daisies, they always took Shastas because the fluffy white blossoms appeared to grow naturally from the grass. It was sad yet not depressing. Her mother didn’t have anyone else to go with, certainly not Grandma Frances, who politely hated Dan, and certainly not Dan. Anyway, Alix needed to be there, too. She dressed, shivering, in the bathroom. Upstairs, she wrote on a napkin:

  vliet,

  i have to be home.

  see you tomorrow.

  alix

  A curt note that explained nothing. Let it be, let it be. She had no time.

  The sun hadn’t risen. Gray dawn light invaded the mountains. She hurried uphill, her hands clasped under the cape. Icy air stabbed her lungs. ONE LOUSY DAY IN THE WHOLE DAMN YEAR, AND I FORGET. FORGET! A blind panic filled her. I have to get home, she thought, I must get home! She left the winding path, cutting directly up the embankment. Her boots slipped on pine needles. She used her hands to climb.

  Gasping, she reached the two-lane road and trod impatiently back and forth. When finally a car came, it was from the wrong direction. Morning light thickened. Trees soughed. Alix heard a motor from the right. Long before the car appeared, she held up her thumb. An old Chevy, lights on, wipers thwacking half circles on frosted windshield. It didn’t even slow. Please, she thought, “Please!” she shouted, racing down the center of the road. The Chevy turned the bend. Gasping acrid exhaust, she gazed hopelessly after it.

  “Hey, Alix!”

  Roger, in his old leather jacket, trotted toward her. A distant car sounded. She moved to the unpaved shoulder.

  “What’re you doing?” he called.

  It was a Ford pickup. She held up her hand.

  He was next to her. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  A middle-aged couple glanced curiously at them. She jerked her thumb, frantic tears itching at her eyes. The truck passed.

  “You want to go down the hill?”

  She nodded.

  “Home?”

  She nodded aga
in.

  “I’ll drive you,” he said.

  He drove fast. Thank God, he always drove fast, but anyway her right foot pressed hard, as if on the accelerator. Roger was making a four-hour trip, two hours each way. No-no. Rush-hour traffic. Way longer. She owed him an explanation. They passed Arrowhead Village. A single light shone in the bakery window.

  “I’m always with my mother today,” she said. “It’s my brother’s birthday.”

  He nodded.

  “Jamie,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know I had another brother?”

  “Yes.”

  Embarrassment at hiding a known fact increased her frenzy. She thought of the way a rabbit dashes through open fields to the warren even though safety demands it remain still.

  “Of course you know. One good reason never to mention him.”

  “Why should you?”

  “Because it’s a brilliant secret.”

  “We met your mother right after it happened.”

  “See? There’s genius. Keeping a known matter secret.” She took a gasping breath. “I … it’s impossible for me … I mean, talking about him. I can’t.” But she found she could. “He’d be seventeen today.” The implications surprised her. She gave a brief, unhumorous laugh. “He’d be taller than me. Our parents are tall. I’ve never been able to talk about him to anyone else. Roger, he was really a sweet little kid. He had this funny mark in one eye, it made him look like he was asking you something. Maybe now he’d be playing basketball. He was sort of uncoordinated, but at puberty boys pick up?”

  “Generally.”

  “He’d have a car and a stereo. He never heard the Stones. Roger, I do appreciate this. Mother lights a candle, a yartzeit, that’s a memorial candle. Dan says it’s not right for a birthday, but she does it anyway. She and I, we go, uhh, this sounds necrophilic, but it really isn’t. We go to the cemetery. The one on the way to the airport.”

  “With fountains coming down the hill?”

  “That’s it. And a miracle happens. Mother and I, we don’t bicker. It was a senseless crime.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s right. You know, you know. It was in the papers and on TV and Caroline was up here with Mother, and that’s the only kind of secret to have, one everybody’s in on. A senseless crime, that means the murderer has his own logic.” Alix could hear her voice, too high, going on and on, but she couldn’t stop it. “Mother thinks it’s God’s vendetta.”

  “Against her?”

  “And Jamie, too. For being Jewish.”

  Roger said nothing.

  “Mother believes. It’s in her paintings. She has true belief. God in His heaven is her Enemy. Why doesn’t she pick on Someone her size? But she’s not small, Mother. She’s a very strong lady. And I’m not, Roger, I’m just not.”

  “Alix, it’s okay.”

  “Dan liberated one of those camps. Buchenwald, I think. Aggh!” She was talking very fast now. “Mother still could be right. In a group the odds are with you. That’s what society is, a big group of people acting the same, doing the same, being the same. Most places, Jews are outsiders. Outsiders do get pecked to death.”

  “Hey,” he said quietly, “Calm down.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends aren’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter, sweet.”

  “Not to me. I live in the age of paranoia. I love my father and he left. I love Jamie and he’s dead. Very cold. But you know what happens to a body. When a body. If a body meet a body.”

  They were on Rim of the World Highway, and Roger swerved across double yellow lines, braking on a deserted viewing area. Clouds hid the view—the flat agricultural land and cities of the San Bernardino Valley that lay seven thousand feet below them.

  She was shuddering. “I’m fine,” she said, “just fine.”

  “Let go.”

  “Let go? This is my high-wire act and I don’t use a net.”

  He turned off the motor, shifting across the seat. “We’ll make like this never happened,” he said, his arm around her. “If you want.”

  “I forgot,” she whispered. “Oh Roger, it’s his birthday and I forgot.” She wept into his shoulder.

  He stroked her hair. His driving glove caught strands and he pulled it off, holding her closer.

  She had known she was in love with Roger. What she hadn’t expected was that, by holding her to his solid body, he could return her to a childhood place, warm and inviolate, where comfort was possible. The leather of his jacket turned slick. She made no effort to control her tears. She let them stop naturally. She didn’t move from the wet, strong-smelling jacket.

  “Sometimes that happens when I think of him.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Funny. At first I couldn’t. Cry. I figured it was something lacking with me. When we lived in Hollywood—”

  “Hollywood?”

  “Right after, for a few months, Mother left Dan. She found this funny little one-bedroom and made her living doing baby portraits. I went to Bancroft Junior High and became an instant wheel. I really went at it. The thing had been in the news a lot and I couldn’t discuss it, so I did a superb lie job. Jamie became my nonrelative. By then I was into weeping. Fortunately we had a garage, unused. It opened on an alley. Nobody could see me. Except a couple of times I saw Dan.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Going slow in his car. I guess, checking to make sure she was okay—Mother.” Alix paused. “Father always was asking how she was. She really was torn up. I fixed her meals.”

  “But you couldn’t eat?”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s a classic symptom.”

  “A classic bowl of soup took an hour to get down.”

  “What were you, thirteen?”

  “Twelve and thirteen.”

  “But you were looking after her?”

  “Just breakfast and dinner. I told you. My major occupation was being Miss Popularity.”

  “It’s not the easiest age for that sort of trauma.”

  “Hey, Doctor, are you the one they call Sigmund?”

  She could feel his chuckle.

  “I meant,” he said, “what about your anxieties? Didn’t anyone do anything to take care of you?”

  “Let’s go around again. We were each miserable in our own airtight compartment. I didn’t let anyone in mine.”

  “On the way up, you were thinking about your brother.”

  She moved back, looking at him, surprised and a little embarrassed.

  “You aren’t that inscrutable,” he said gently. “Somebody should’ve looked.”

  A lefty, he drove with his right arm about her. The musculature of his side brought a drugged weakness, and carpe diem, Alix seizing—yielding to—the moment. Was this, she wondered, how Cricket felt all the time? No-no. Who could feel this close to another person short of simultaneous orgasm? (Or what Alix imagined simultaneous orgasm must be like.) He pulled into her drive, glancing at his watch.

  “Five of nine,” he said.

  “A new world record for rush-hour conditions.”

  He cut the motor. They moved apart. His forehead, the end of his nose, his taut cheeks were red. Windburn, she thought, from the Chris-Craft. He got out to open the door for her, but she had it first, and they stood, she holding the inside handle, he on the outside. Across fresh asphalt a single leaf moved, blown by erratic wind.

  Her fingers tensed on the handle. “Letting you in on all that frightens me. It always does, below-the-skin stuff.”

  “Subcutaneous,” he said. “Want me to forget?”

  She shook her head. “But you’ve seen me.… Naked.”

  He pushed the door and they watched it slam shut. In the distance was the pulse of Sunset Boulevard traffic, and nothing but cold morning air separated them. He took the step forward, his arms reaching around her. “Oh Jesus,” he whispered. “Sweet.”

  She clutched him
. No tenderness here. He was her only security, and who knew, if she let go, maybe the universe would evaporate. She could hear his heart, feel his heart, feel him, and a million light-years away, a dog barked.

  Against her ear he whispered, “Know how long I’ve wanted to do this?”

  “How long?”

  “Since that first day, when you were getting into the VW.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  They were both breathing irregularly.

  “Alix, you did write me?”

  “Yes. And I dream about you.”

  “You, too?” He was surprised.

  “Like this. I wake up when.…”

  “Listen, why don’t I stay around?”

  “Today we go—I told you.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I can’t, it’s, I don’t know, all confused. Something to do with Mother being with Dan when she was married to my father. I just can’t. Roger, first I have to tell Vliet.”

  He released her. The warmth on her body faded. She felt weak, bereft.

  “When shall I pick you up?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Eight too early?”

  “Not at all.”

  They examined one another. The dog barked again, thin, shrill, insistent. Tears came to her eyes.

  “I love you,” she said. “Roger, I’m in love with you.” Saying the words required more courage than she possessed. Wiping her eyes, she ran on slender, shaky legs, heading for the side door so she wouldn’t have to fumble with her key. Lupe let her in.

  4

  From the beginning, Roger had yearned for love. It’s natural to. And if he hadn’t been a twin, if Vliet had been different, Roger would have had affection. But inevitably there were comparisons. Since babyhood everyone had fallen for Vliet’s smile, his fair good looks, his grace. Em, scrupulously just as she attempted to be, couldn’t help smiling differently at Vliet, speaking to him in a richer tone. Vliet was Family, yet hers. Sheridan, too, favored Vliet. Roger was bottom banana.

  Most children in this situation turn reticent or wild or make trouble or overeat or whatever. Roger, by nature warmer and more capable of love than his twin, was a thoughtful little boy. He turned the matter over and over as he might a piece of jigsaw sky. At last the puzzle fit. Vliet was more lovable. The answer seemed right to Roger. He didn’t become a problem. He simply withdrew from competition in this area.