Fault Line

by Janet Tashjian

  I moved the stacks of newspapers and crawled underneath the blanket to my little basement hideaway. It reminded me of camping, sitting inside the safety of my Girl Scout tent looking out the flaps for animals. Back then, if I’d ever seen this many wild creatures I would have huddled into my sleeping bag in fear. And if I’d known they were dead—forget about it. But now, these excursions were beginning to feel like a picnic with old friends. Last week the mouse accompanied me in my bookbag; this time, I chose the blue jay.

  I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

  As I picked up the delicate bird, I heard someone coming downstairs. I shut off the flashlight and remained still.

  “Becky, you down here?” Delilah asked.

  I sat there silently.

  “I know you didn’t leave the house because your cell’s upstairs. And damn, if that thing hasn’t been ringing all afternoon.”

  I couldn’t give in; it was too embarrassing to be caught down here red-handed.

  “That crazy-in-love boyfriend of yours called three times, asked if you could stop by the frame shop. Rick called too, wants you to headline tonight.”

  Headline?

  “I thought that might get your attention. I left you a note upstairs with the details—whenever you’re done doing what it is you’re doing down here.”

  I didn’t know how Delilah navigated the basement stairs in those stilettos, but she did. I put the blue jay in my bag, covered up the animals, and waited a few moments before running upstairs behind her.

  I read the note and dashed up to my room; I had just a few hours to get dressed, run through my set, and see Kip at work before the gig.

  Headlining! A good time slot—nine o’clock—and twenty minutes instead of my usual ten. Boy, was I ready. My mother insisted I eat something, so my father whipped up an arugula and goat cheese salad with apple and walnut dressing. (I love him.)

  When I got to the front door, Mom was standing there with her keys.

  “You’re coming?” I asked.

  “Don’t I always?”

  “It’s just, you don’t have to anymore. Now that I’m eighteen, Rick’s been letting us wait by the bar as long as we don’t drink.”

  “But you’re finally headlining!”

  “I know, I just …”

  “Would you rather I not come?”

  “Well …”

  “Becky, why are you tiptoeing around? Since when can’t you just say what you mean?”

  I took a deep breath. Okay, just be honest.

  “Kip’s working late. I was going to stop in and see him, then go to the club alone. Is that all right?”

  “Of course it’s all right. You don’t need to treat me with kid gloves, you know.” She handed me the keys, and I hugged her good-bye.

  On the way to the frame shop, I practiced telling Kip about the gig. ENTHUSIASTIC—I’m headlining! LOW-KEY-Rick needed someone to fill in, I had nothing else to do. GOOD GIRLFRIEND—why don’t I take the frame orders and you go perform? I shook myself out of it. Mom was right; don’t tiptoe around, just say it.

  Kip had been working since ten that morning; he looked exhausted and hungry. But when he saw me, he vaulted over the counter.

  He held me close and kissed me. “God, the first good thing in my day. I’ve got a break in fifteen minutes, we can go grab a sandwich.”

  “Rick called. He asked me to headline.”

  He picked me up a foot off the ground. “That’s great. What time, twelve?”

  “Nine.”

  I might as well have slapped him in the face. “You told him you’d take the nine? You know I’m doing a double shift.”

  “I know, but nine is what he had.” I took Delilah’s note from my bag. “See? Someone got sick at the last minute, and he wondered if I could help out.”

  “I can’t leave now,” he said. “We’re mobbed.”

  I told him he didn’t have to leave, that it was no big deal. I could see him trying to decide which words to choose next. Please, I thought. Be nice.

  He wasn’t.

  “Is this it? I groom you for success so you can go off and perform on your own? Whatever happened to gratitude?” he whispered.

  I apologized yet again. Bill, his boss, walked by and gave us the evil eye.

  Kip suddenly grabbed an order form from the counter. “What we need to do is preserve this memorable occasion.” He began to fill out the form. “Let’s see—Becky Martin. Address, phone—know those by heart.” He took Delilah’s note from my hands and began to rummage through the racks of frames. “Let’s see, maybe gold-”

  “Kip, can we just talk about this?”

  “Or gold with a hint of green?” He held up two different frames. “Which one do you like better?”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  He continued to hold up the frames. In the long run, it was usually easier just to go along; I pointed to the frame on the left.

  “Okay. Number fifty-nine. Now, we need a mat … .”

  I stood between him and the counter. “This isn’t about Rick’s at all, is it? This is about the Improv.”

  “Oh, and that guy Mike you met in L.A.?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act all innocent—he’s been e-mailing you for weeks.” His voice attracted a few new onlookers.

  He suddenly looked as if he was about to cry. I reached for his hand, but one of the guys in the back room walked by and Kip pulled away.

  “No, you should go,” he said. “Tonight Rick’s, then the Improv, soon you’ll have your own HBO special. You and Mike.”

  “Mike has nothing to do with us. I swear.”

  “Sure, new boyfriend all lined up and ready to go. Next!”

  I could feel the familiar shame creeping up my face. “That isn’t funny.”

  “The Improv’s gone downhill anyway,” he said. “No one wants to work there anymore.” He moved around me and went back to the mattes. “What do you think—black, beige, or the dark green?”

  “Can’t you just talk to me?” I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. I blinked them back, determined not to make a scene. Several people in line looked over, and I lowered my voice.

  “Well?” Kip asked. “Which matte is better?”

  I stared him down, then finally answered. “Black.”

  “Nonreflective glass or regular? Myself, I’d go with nonreflective, this being such an important document and all.”

  He finished filling out the form with a flourish. “That’ll be $68.47.”

  “I don’t want a stupid frame and you know it.”

  He got in my face. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been wasting my time all along?”

  “No!” I shouted.

  “Because I’ve got a big problem with someone wasting my time.”

  I looked around, hoping others weren’t staring. A middle-aged woman waiting in line looked annoyed, but more with me than with Kip. I inched my way closer to him.

  “I don’t want to fight about this. I’ll call Rick and tell him something came up.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “No, no—you shouldgo.”

  My mind flashed to the conversation with my mother in the doorway. Was I the one making these discussions so complicated? I asked Kip if he was sure about me going.

  “Yeah. Have a great set. Leave me a message and tell me how it went.”

  “Really?”

  He smiled. “Absolutely.”

  I was getting whiplash from all the ups and downs in the conversation. I smiled back halfheartedly and turned toward the door. Kip’s boss came by again, looking even more perturbed.

  “Miss?” Kip said. “That’ll be $68.47. You pay now, not when you pick it up.”

  Was he kidding? He pointed his head toward Bill, who circled by again.

  Kip folded his arms and waited.

  People in line began to turn around.

  And stare.

  I just wanted to make it out the door without a scene. Wo
uld do anything to avoid a scene. I took out my wallet and handed Kip my emergency credit card. He ran it through the register and gave me the receipt to sign. Then he took Delilah’s note from the counter.

  “We’ll take good care of this,” he said. “It’ll be ready on Thursday.”

  Outside on the sidewalk, I burst into tears.

  Why had he humiliated me like that? What was he trying to prove?

  When I finally calmed down and opened my bag to put my credit card away, I saw the blue jay. Which made me start crying all over again. I suddenly remembered an old Lily Tomlin line—“If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?”

  I looked at my watch and hurried to the car. If word got out I had bagged Rick at the last minute, I wouldn’t work for weeks. I raced to the club.

  In his familiar Buzzcocks T-shirt, Rick was a welcome sight. I had never realized how much I’d grow to appreciate predictability.

  “You ready, Sunshine? Caitlin’s on, then you.”

  I went to the ladies’ room to compose myself. Block it out, compartmentalize. You can do this.

  I threw Rick my half-opened bag and took the stage like a pro. With my anti-nostalgia set, I had a solid twenty minutes. Until something happened that hadn’t happened in months.

  I got heckled.

  Some poor dope with a buzz on made the mistake of busting my chops onstage. I mean, who in their right mind heckles a comic with a mike in her hand? This guy was asking for me to bury him.

  I obliged.

  “The only thing I’m nostalgic for is somebody funny,” the man yelled.

  “Excuse me?” My set was clicking; I was completely in the zone. Couldn’t this moron see?

  “You heard me, honey. Your act stinks!”

  The man and his friends sat right up front, begging me to spar.

  “That’s pretty funny,” I told the man. “Especially coming from a potbellied guy with pressed jeans trying to pretend he’s not a tourist from the Midwest visiting San Francisco for the first time. Let me guess—you spent the day eating sourdough bread, then drinking hot chocolate at Ghirardelli’s, right?”

  His friends laughed. “You got it!” one of them yelled.

  “You probably came here from Iowa, wore your sweatsuit on the plane, finagled senior discounts even though you’re only fifty-nine.”

  “Fifty-five—he just looks bad!” His friends were loving this. Easy to turn that around.

  “So you gathered up your middle-aged cronies, all of you looking for something to distract you from your insipid little Corn Country lives. You traveled to the Big City, taking pictures of each other huffing and puffing up Lombard Street—‘Wow! This really is the most crooked street in the world!’ Walking around the Castro, hoping to see some gays so you can tell the fellas back home you saw two guys making out right in front of you. You and your friends grabbing each other’s asses, acting out all those homoerotic urges you keep bundled up inside during your poker games back home. Then—something really original—listening to the audio tour at Alcatraz, you and your buddies take turns locking each other in the cells, more homoerotic tendencies to act out. Then what? Irish coffees at the Buena Vista? Can you get any more predictable?”

  When the men got up to leave, they no longer looked full of bravado, just embarrassed and old.

  “Oh, what’s the matter? Can’t take the heat? You’d rather shout out insults to a teenager from the safety of a darkened room, is that it? Hey, tell your friends at the diner back home you really kicked ass, humiliating a young girl onstage in San Francisco.”

  The guy and his friends headed to the door in silence.

  “Good! Go, you big dope!”

  I put the mike back in its stand.

  “Stupid bastard.”

  Rick was in my face the second I walked offstage. “What the hell was that?”

  Good question. “I am so sorry, Rick. I—I lost it.”

  “What, now that you’ve got a television spot lined up, you forget your roots?”

  “Of course not!”

  “You wait right here.” He walked onstage to introduce Greg. When he came back a minute later, his ears were still burning.

  “Putting hecklers in their place—fine. Making them sorry they ever opened their stupid mouths—great. But sending them out the door—not fine! You know how much money you just cost me in drinks? And if they go back to their hotel and say what a crappy time they had, I can forget about concierge referrals altogether. Not to mention that you performed five minutes instead of twenty. Now I’ve got to find somebody else to make up the time.”

  “I’ll stay and do the eleven.”

  “Forget it. I don’t want you here.”

  “Rick, come on! I’m sorry.”

  “And don’t think I’m paying you.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You’re done tonight, Becky. Go home.”

  He shoved my bag into my hands. “And take Tweety

  Bird with you. I’m not even going to ask what kind of good luck charm that is.”

  I stumbled into the street, mortified by my own behavior. I hit Abby’s number on my speed dial and told her what happened.

  “All Rick cares about is the register,” she said. “The last thing he’s worried about is that guy’s feelings.”

  “It matters to me,” I said. “I didn’t get into comedy for this!”

  “What do you think happened?”

  I knew but didn’t answer.

  I had yelled at the wrong guy. The person I wanted to be screaming at was Kip. I didn’t dare tell Abby about tonight’s torturous incident with the frame.

  “Look at the bright side,” Abby said. “At least you worked on your improvisational skills.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Hey, if it’s tourist season, does that mean we can shoot them?”

  “Abby! When I talked about trusting my instincts, I didn’t mean jumping all over some middle-aged guy in a one-way rant.”

  “We can work on that.”

  It was nice to hear the word we. She said there were worse things that could’ve happened and she’d see me tomorrow.

  I drove downtown to the Marriott and the Hilton, two hotels known for their tourist packages. I walked around the lobbies, not even sure what I would do if I saw the poor guy. Say I’m sorry? It made me realize the conversation I’d just had with Abby was the first one in memory where I hadn’t made some sort of apology.

  I was back home much earlier than my one o’clock curfew.

  My mother was in the den watching Casablanca with the sound off, playing Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon in the background. “It lines up perfectly,” she said. “‘Big Yellow Taxi’ is on when Rick gets in the car, I swear.”

  I sat down next to her on the couch. When she asked me how it went, I lied and said it was one of my best sets ever.

  “You want some popcorn? I can make more.”

  I shook my head and sneaked under the blanket with her.

  “Watch,” she said. “I love this scene.”

  Rick was berating Ilsa for jilting him in Paris years before. Even with the sound off, his cruelty was visible on her face. Ilsa’s humiliation was too much for me to bear. I crawled upstairs to bed.

  I lay in bed for hours, staring at the movie characters on my wall—my own personal audience. I was embarrassed at my new form of comedy. Not just tonight’s rant, which was unforgivable, but my sets in general. My jokes had turned increasingly angry. Sometimes it seemed like my relationship with Kip was fueling something negative and bitter inside me.

  For once I didn’t lose sleep worrying or playing what-if.

  For once I stopped procrastinating and made a decision.

  I was going to UCLA.

  5/1

  NOTES TO SELF:

  Beg Rick’s forgiveness; he’s still mad.

  Mom and Dad actually took my UCLA decision well—Dad sent in the deposit.

  Surprisingly, Kip was okay
with my decision too.

  He vacuumed my car yesterday; I think he still felt bad about the frame.

  Set up routine heckle practices with Abby so I don’t make the same mistake again.

  Finalize set for the Improv show. Focus on the good things.

  From the Paper Towel Dialogues of kip Costello

  What was I thinking with that whole frame thing? Granted, Bill has been looking for an excuse to fire me, and I had to come up with something to look like I was working, but I never should’ve treated Becky like that. I canceled the order as soon as she left the shop. I’ve been on the receiving end of those humiliating feelings and wouldn’t wish them on anyone. Yet that’s just what I did to her.

  well, I certainly can’t blame Becky for going to UCLA. The way I acted, I’m surprised she’s not moving to Mongolia. I’ll still be able to see her, it’ll just be different. I had this whole scenario in my mind—the two of us living here, going to Berkeley, maybe finding a place on Telegraph. I blew that one.

  I Don’t think either of us realize the stress we’ve been under. I got rejected at four out of my five schools, didn’t get picked for the Improv gig. I’m working two jobs, almost flunked two classes—I know that’s no excuse for how I acted. At least I didn’t grab her this time—I hope I learned that lesson.

  l’ve been thinking about the relationship a lot, trying to understand it. I know it sounds screwed up, but when things are good, It’s like she’s in control of the relationships; when things are bad, I am. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true. Half the time I wonder why she’s with me. But if I let her know how great she is, she might leave. I don’t want things to be bad, but I’m not comfortable with her running the show either.

  How do other guys know what to do, what to say? Was I absent the day they handed out the instruction manuals?