Fault Line

by Janet Tashjian

  “It’s like studying your mind,” I said.

  He reached out and ran his fingers through my tangled hair.

  “My hair,” I said. “It’s always such a mess.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s great.”

  “I’m so bad with it,” I babbled. “I wish I were one of those people who could French braid or tie it up …”

  He kissed me on the neck and shoulders as I continued to prattle on about scrunchies and ponytails. When he got to my mouth, I finally stopped stammering and kissed him back. After some stumbling around in the safe-sex department, we ended up making love. Not on the antique bed with down pillows and comforter, but on the floor of the spare room, surrounded by ribbons of paper towels and piles of T-shirts.

  The only other guy I had been with was Peter. But that relationship seemed like preschool compared to the way things were evolving with Kip.

  I spent the next hour drifting in and out of sleep, blanketed by Kip’s words.

  10/15

  NOTES TO SHELF:

  Next time with Kip—more of the same, thank you very much.

  See if Kip’s mom will detorate my room. ,

  Submit applications online or by mail—decide!

  If a cannibal ate a clown, would it taste funny? Enough with the one-liners; I need a set that builds.

  The harvest dance was almost fun—I knew Kip didn’t really want to be there, but he was a good sport. I’m glad we went, but I’m over it.

  Every college application stressed the same thing: “Your personal statement is the most important factor in the admissions process.” I weighed the various options. SERIOUS—list all my academic achievements and extracurricular activities. SERIOUS YET FUN-discuss my love of comedy and film, the diversity of my home and neighborhood. Or just REAL—Hey, you there, Admissions Officer! Things are great. My life used to be about as exciting as a glass of water sitting on a counter. Now it’s suddenly a glass of tropical punch—tangy, colorful, full of fizz. In fact, Dear Sir/Madam, before Kip I never knew how much of the human experience I’d been missing out on. Therefore, the chances of me contributing to your university have increased exponentially. Dare I say it—? You’ll be kicking yourself in the head for years if you don’t scoop me up for your freshman class now. Hitch up your wagon to me, University of FILL IN THE BLANK, ’cause I am going places!

  In the end, of course, I went with a semi-traditional statement—with a few humorous touches buried in the text. I procrastinated and sent in my online applications seconds before the November 30 deadline. (What was the hurry? So I could spend the next three or four months sitting by the mailbox?)

  Abby applied to CalBerkeley, confident that the universe wanted her to stay in the Bay Area. Kip and I applied there too. Before we met, almost three months ago, neither of us thought we’d apply so close to home, but now a stay-together-in-San Francisco backup plan seemed like a good idea. Northwestern had been my first choice (because of its proximity to the famed Second City), but lately moving to Chicago seemed out of the question. UCLA was now the most serious contender. L.A. was less than an hour-and-a-half plane ride away, with lots of opportunities for honing my stand-up skills. Kip applied to some schools in L.A. too. Although his grades and test scores were lower than mine, his personal statement was so sharp and edgy, it could have been posted on the Internet.

  Mr. Perez finally let me run the full-day Vertigo tour. We started in the city, visiting the sights of the 1958 Hitchcock classic, which included Mission Dolores, Fort Point, and Scottie’s apartment on Lombard Street. The crowd ate them up. Because we went south to Big Basin Redwoods State Park and San Juan Bautista, this was the tour for the film’s many die-hard fans; our once-a-month buses were always full.

  Vertigo was one of my favorite movies of all time, but compared to the rabid fans who took our tour, I came off as a novice.

  “This is the location of Madeleine’s apartment at the Empire Hotel.” I explained that they only shot the exteriors here, that Hitchcock used a soundstage on the Paramount lot to shoot the interiors. The Hitchcock fans snapped photos of the faded brownstone tucked into the now-trendy Nob Hill neighborhood.

  The bus was so jammed—Mr. Perez notoriously overbooked whenever he could—that I could barely see someone raising his hand in the back. I walked toward the guy with the hat and skateboard in his lap. I had to put down the microphone so the crowd wouldn’t hear me laugh when I realized it was Kip.

  “Don’t you think Judy should’ve sensed there was trouble in the relationship?” he asked. “I mean, Scottie doesn’t love her for who she is, but for who he wants her to be.”

  Okay, keep it together. “There’s a lot of denial going on, that’s for sure,” I said.

  A slow smile spread across his face. “Sexual tension too.”

  I walked back to the front of the bus before my laughter got me fired.

  I took the seat behind Mr. Perez as he drove down Route 101 toward San Juan Bautista. As the tourists disembarked for lunch, I pulled Kip aside and told him he was out of his mind.

  “What are you talking about? This is great!” he said.

  “I never knew you were such a fan.”

  “I had to watch it again last night to bone up. Talk about material—these people are insane.”

  When he removed his baseball hat, his long dark curls blew in the breeze. He then reached into his pack and took out a small blanket, which he held down on the grass with his sneakers. I grabbed two box lunches from the cooler; Kip grinned when I couldn’t open the resealable wrap on my sandwich.

  On the way back from throwing out our trash, Kip dove to catch a wayward Frisbee for a group of kids. He tossed it back with a wave while several girls our age checked him out from another blanket. Barefoot, in his hospital pants and They Might Be Giants T-shirt, he was oblivious to how good-looking he was. I gazed up at the Mission—minus the special-effects bell tower they used in the movie—and wondered what I’d done to deserve someone like him.

  Whatever it was, that should have been on my personal statement.

  One of the best things about San Francisco is the weather, especially in the early winter. While people in other parts of the country are shoveling driveways and scraping windshields, we’re walking around in windbreakers, basking in the sun. Here, the winters are crisp and amazing.

  Of course, being in love didn’t hurt either.

  I listened attentively to my mother’s “chats” about curfews, moderation, and trust.

  Whatever you say, Mom.

  Then I snuck out to see Kip anyway.

  He and I spent every possible minute together, which, given my senior-year schedule, was nowhere near enough. I showed up for as many of my yearbook meetings as possible without getting kicked off the committee. Running the debate club was actually something I enjoyed. (My ulterior motive—more time onstage.) Abby disagreed with my strategy for getting into a good school. Her theory was to bag the extracurriculars and concentrate on a killer essay backed up with a few audition tapes as insurance. She figured she was a great candidate for any school, and the last thing she intended to do was have a stressed-out senior year.

  Kip was another one enjoying life to the fullest. He got a mention in The Guardian for his set at the Punch Line, and his job at the frame shop was a no-brainer. One afternoon, I arrived home to find him and Christopher in the living room, both wearing their underwear outside their pants and towels around their necks as capes. They raced through the house like Captain Underpants while Delilah and I cheered them on. (Hands off, Lois Lane; the superhero in the polka-dot boxers is mine.)

  After that, we explored the library upstairs, a room I was embarrassed to admit I hardly ever used.

  “Are you kidding?!” Kip asked.”This is a gold mine!”

  We sat on the floor and made notes—me in my journal, Kip on his paper towels—about anything even remotely funny. Creative visualization? The history of the Oscars? National Geographic? The room seemed b
rimming with possibilities.

  In fact, when we were together, it was as if time slowed down and every gum wrapper on the sidewalk, every cloud in the sky, was imbued with meaning. The universe spoke to me as it never had done before. If some scientist had bumped into me on the street and asked me to help him find the cure for cancer, I could have, that’s how plugged in to the inner workings of the world I felt. My physics homework made sense—of course those atoms formed a chain! Even Christopher’s Legos snapped magically into labyrinthine designs. My mind exploded with thoughts and ideas; I jotted down notes every few moments, an avalanche of material that would last me for months—if I only got around to joining the rest of the world and working again.

  As Abby was quick to remind me.

  “Look, I’m happy you have a boyfriend—I am! But you missed two gigs and an audition last week.”

  “I heard the crowd was so bad you couldn’t buy a laugh with a fistful of fifties.”

  Abby didn’t take my detour. “You’re turning into one of those girls we hate!” she continued. “A girl like Lynda, who only joins the living between boyfriends.”

  “Don’t even say that! I had two yearbook meetings and three tests—I’m swamped.” I didn’t tell her a huge chunk of my time had been spent just talking to Kip on the phone when I wasn’t with him. If she had known I’d had to change the billing plan on my cell phone twice in the past three months, it would only have added fuel to the fire.

  “I just miss you,” Abby said. “I never see you anymore.”

  “I miss me,” I said. “I’ve been getting up at six to study, I’m doing homework during dinner. It’s ridiculous.”

  She softened a bit. “I want to give you your Christmas present.”

  “How about Tuesday? No, no—Wednesday, around eight?”

  “Whenever you can squeeze me in,” Abby said.

  It was my turn to soften. “You going to open-mike tomorrow?”

  Her face finally brightened. “Wait till you hear my new set. A whole Barbie thing. Melanoma Barbie, Bipolar Barbie, Bulimic Barbie … Listen to this—if Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?”

  I was almost envious, not only of Abby’s new set but of the time she had to work on it, even with her new boyfriend, Jacob. I was determined to finish the setups I’d written with Kip in our library. I knew I had to get out to the clubs more often; I didn’t want my comedy skills to get flabby while the rest of me reveled in Planet Kip.

  After school, I met Kip at the frame shop, then we headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf. As we approached a small hair salon, he looked at his watch. “Right on time.” He grabbed a chair in the waiting room and picked up a magazine.

  I asked him what we were doing there.

  “It’s your last Christmas present,” he said.

  He had already made me five cd’s with the songs he continually sang when we were together. I’d gotten him several great shirts from Goodwill. (His favorite was a blue work shirt from Tom’s Garage with MECHANIC embroidered over the breast pocket. He had worn it at the Comedy Stop the week before and looked great.)

  I grabbed my huge hunk of hair. “Getting my hair cut is not my idea of a present.”

  “Are you kidding? No one takes scissors to that mane of yours as long as I’m around.” When he bent down to tie his hiking boots, a photo of the two of us fell out of his shirt pocket. He picked it up and blushed.

  A few minutes later, a whippet-thin woman named Marla called Kip’s name.

  “We’re on,” he said.

  I began to get nervous when he sat me down in Marla’s chair.

  “My girlfriend, Becky, needs some help.”

  “You have great hair,” Marla told me.

  “So I thought you could give us some lessons,” Kip said.

  “You want me to show her how to style her hair?”

  “No, I want you to show me how to style her hair.”

  “Well, aren’t you Mr. Right?”

  She winked at me, and I smiled back.

  Marla began by separating my tumble into three sections, then showed Kip how to weave from left to right. When she finished, she undid the braid and he tried. Fifteen painstaking minutes later, he was finished.

  Marla held up the hand mirror so I could see the back. I had to admit, it looked amazing.

  “Funny with great hair,” Kip said. “You could be Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”

  “Minus the Seinfeld royalties.”

  Marla then showed Kip how to twist my hair up, even fasten it with chopsticks. To be honest, having Kip styling my hair seemed bizarre, but I found the effort and thought endearing.

  Kip paid the receptionist, and we headed back toward my house.

  I stammered a thank-you. “No one’s ever taken such a personal interest in me before,” I said.

  “I can’t understand why.” He turned to face me. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

  My soul ate up the compliment like a hungry child scoffing bread. My clothes usually left marks on my slightly padded body, my contact lens case was gunked with solution, I couldn’t go anywhere without a wad of tissues in my pocket during pollen season. On most days, I felt like I was waiting for the world to discover what a semi-mess I was. But seen through Kip’s eyes, I was something else entirely.

  A person could get used to this.

  At dinner, Mom gushed over my hair—“It’s finally off your face!”—to say nothing of Delilah, who insisted on trying out my chopsticks.

  I lay in bed that night shell-shocked from all the attention.

  Until the shock went from inside my head to out, shaking the house, rattling the windows.

  “Don’t panic!” my father called from the next room.

  It was two-fifteen in the morning. For some reason, every earthquake I’d ever experienced had taken place at night. This one felt like the house was riding to shore on a wave.

  My mother ran into my room holding a half asleep Christopher. Dad followed.

  The four of us sat in my room and listened to everything we own shake. Like most people in the Bay Area, we made sure the shelves and bookcases were fastened to the walls, with nothing—not even pictures—hanging over the beds.

  After a few seconds, the tremor stopped.

  “A five or a six,” my father said.

  “No way,” Mom replied. “At least a seven.”

  “Seven or eight,” I added.

  Like judges holding up cards, we guessed how this one would register on the Richter scale. Mom took Christopher back to bed.

  Dad shut off the light and asked if I was okay.

  “Shaken, not stirred.”

  He turned the light back on. “I just want you to be safe,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “God, Dad! I’m fine.”

  He stood in the doorway, looking so helpless I wondered who was supposed to take care of whom.

  He turned off the light again. “Night, sweetie.”

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep, so I got online. As soon as I logged on, Kip IM’ed me. How did people ever have relationships before instant messaging?

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I wrote back that I was.

  “I can’t imagine anything happening to you,” he wrote.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” I responded.

  “In that case, what do you think of this routine?”

  We worked on his jokes for half an hour before we signed off. I had given him a few good suggestions; it made me eager to work on my own material. I laughed in anticipation of what I knew Abby would say about the earthquake tomorrow: “Hey, it’s not San Andrea’s fault!” The joke never got a laugh in the clubs, but she loved it and used it all the time anyway.

  The next morning, I jumped when I came downstairs—Kip was sitting at the kitchen table having coffee with my mother.

  “They say it was a 6.2,” he said. “Biggest one in a while.”

  I asked him what he was doing here.


  “Figured I’d test out my new skills.” He pointed to the kitchen stool and told me to sit.

  Delilah stood next to him and observed him at work on my hair, throwing in a few pointers of her own. Before long, I had a beautiful braid halfway down my back.

  My mother brought our cups to the sink. “Reminds me of braiding your hair in grade school. Maybe I should start packing your lunch again too.”

  I was going out with someone who put 200 percent into the relationship, who loved me more than anyone else ever had.

  Couldn’t she just let me be happy?

  1/5

  NOTES TO SELF:

  Absolutely, by far, the best Christmas ever. Such an original gift from Kip. Now, if my mom would just shut up about how weird it was that he came over to braid my hair. Get over it, okay?

  New Year’s Eve—pretending to be at Abby’s—a great night.

  Kip freaked when Charlie—stoner lab partner from hell—played with my braid outside school. “Who is he? Why did he touch your hair? Does he have a girlfriend?” I mean, it’s Charlie, for chrissakes. From now on, don’t mention him to Kip in conversation. (None of Abby’s boyfriends were ever this jealous. Kip and I must be on a whole different level.)

  From the Paper Towel Dialogues of Kip Costello

  Happy New Year! I hope this one’s better than last year. Can we turn the page on being the new guy in school? Hey—I go here now, okay?

  I felt like an imbecile taking Becky to the hairdresser’s—thank God, no one from school saw me. But Becky complains about her hair all the time—I thought she’d really appreciate it. I think she did.

  don’t know why that guy Charlie was teasing her, though. Sure, do your labs together, but that’s it, okay? Get your own girlfriend and keep your hands to yourself.