by Yvonne Prinz
Kit suggests that maybe after some sleep, I’ll know what to do, but I’m doubtful.
We finish cleaning at four a.m. The house doesn’t smell great but it doesn’t smell like we had a bonfire in the living room anymore. The kitchen ends up cleaner than it was before we moved in. Kit and I stand there, exhausted and filthy. We look like chimney sweeps. We get out of our clothes and take turns showering and then we finally pass out on my mom’s bed with wet hair. What seems like minutes later, I hear the front door downstairs swing open.
“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home? What’s burning?” Estelle is making her way quickly up the stairs. She stands in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom.
“Girls! Get up! I think something’s burning.”
I sit up groggily. “Estelle. Relax. There’s no fire.”
Kit mumbles, “No fire. Go ’way,” and rolls over, shutting us out.
“Where’s your mom?” demands Estelle, as though she might be trapped in the part of the house that’s still ablaze.
“She went camping. Didn’t she tell you?” I pull my mom’s silk bathrobe on over my tank top and boxers and close my mom’s bedroom door behind me. I follow Estelle down the stairs into the living room. She’s already pulling containers and bagels out of a bag and looking around suspiciously.
“Something happened here. I’ve never seen this place so clean.”
“Yeah.” I rub my eyes and sit on the sofa cross-legged. “Kit accidentally lit the kitchen on fire making popcorn.”
“Well, I guess if that’s what it takes to get the place cleaned up,” she says matter-of-factly, pulling out of her bag a container of Italian ground espresso that she special-orders from Dean & Deluca in New York. She goes into the kitchen. I can hear her filling the coffeemaker with water.
“This kitchen is blinding me,” she yells. I hear the sizzle and pop of the coffeemaker kicking in and the smell of coffee drifts into the living room. She reappears and starts arranging food on the coffee table. “Now, where was it you said your mom went?”
“Camping . . . with Jack.”
“Camping.” She looks at me dubiously.
“Yes.” I rub my eyes. “She must have told you.”
“There might have been a message on my cell phone. I don’t recall the word camping, though. What kind of bagel do you want, honey?”
“Have you got poppy?”
She pulls a poppy bagel out of the bag and slices it open with a large knife she brought from the kitchen.
“Shmear?”
“Sure.”
She pulls the top off a container of cream cheese and slathers my bagel with it. She opens a package of glistening coral-colored lox and artfully arranges several slices on my bagel.
“Onions?” she asks.
“No, thanks.”
She replaces the top half of my bagel and then hands it to me.
“Coffee’s coming up.” She jumps up and energetically disappears into the kitchen again. I’m starting to understand that I’ll be playing the part of my mom this morning. Tradition is important to Estelle but she’s not fussy about the cast. She’s had perfectly great Thanksgivings with families she barely knows. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been here. Would she have hauled Suki out of her room?
Estelle reappears with two steaming mugs of coffee. Somehow she’s managed to create foamed milk in our kitchen. I sip my coffee while Estelle prepares a bagel for herself. She finally sits back on the sofa with a sigh, bagel in hand, coffee to her left, New York Times in her lap, bare feet on the coffee table, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She flips through the sections, looking for the Arts and Leisure section and then the book reviews. Once everything is in place I cease to exist except for the occasional sharing of a headline or a, “Guess who’s coming to Carnegie Hall?” Or, “Guess who’s showing at MoMA?” Estelle is a modern-art lover. It’s part of the “neonouveau” thing. The old masters hold no interest for her; she’s all about new, new, new. When she lived in New York, she skulked through back alleys in the meatpacking district seeking out emerging artists’ studios, always wanting to be on the cutting edge.
I take my coffee mug and wander out onto the porch. The local paper is sitting on the doormat. Estelle must have stepped over it. As a citizen of the world, Estelle has no use for our local news. She wants the big picture and that can come only from New York. I lean over and pick it up. The headline is brief and to the point:
Telegraph Robbers Strike Again!
I take the paper in with me and unfold it to reveal an old picture of Bob taken back when he was called “the Mayor of Telegraph,” back when there was a pulse on the avenue. The caption underneath it says, Bob Petrovich, owner of Bob & Bob Records. The article talks about last night’s robberies and includes a quote from Bob that says:
“This kind of crime is tough on the avenue retailers. Telegraph has always been a pretty peaceful neighborhood. If they don’t catch these guys soon it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt again or killed. We’re all very nervous and it’s really bad for business.”
“Rudolf Stingel’s showing at the Whitney,” says Estelle. “He used to live in my building on the Upper West Side. He always wore fabulous shoes.” She slurps her coffee and puts it back on the coffee table.
I read the whole robbery article carefully to see if they’ve uncovered any more details about the perps. It doesn’t look like it. The deli owner describes them exactly the same way Jennifer did. I’m not exactly sure what I’m hoping for here. Do I want them to get caught? I suppose it would take the pressure off me. Joel would undoubtedly end up behind bars but it wouldn’t be because of me. My head is throbbing. The stress of the last two days is obviously giving me a brain tumor.
I take small bites of my bagel and chew slowly. I decide not to tell Estelle about the robbery right now. It’s not that I think she would react badly. She approaches any situation with her version of calm. I just don’t want to think about it for a while. The whole thing has become a hollow pain in the pit of my stomach (probably an ulcer). It’s hard to go from thinking that a person is somebody you really want to know to finding out that not only do you not want to know them at all, but they’re capable of violence.
Eventually, Kit gets out of bed and joins us in the living room. In our secret sign language she asks me if I’ve told Estelle about the robbery. I shake my head no. Kit pours herself a coffee and sits next to me on the sofa, picking at a plain bagel. The newspaper is sitting in my lap. She reads the headline over my shoulder and looks at me, wide-eyed.
“Gimme that!” She lunges for it.
“Okay, grabby!” I hand it to her.
Estelle looks over her reading glasses at us and then returns to her paper.
Kit reads the article and then kicks the newspaper under the sofa with her bare foot.
Several minutes pass and then, suddenly, Estelle puts her paper in her lap and pulls off her reading glasses. She looks at me accusingly. “Camping. Do you mean like in a tent?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve heard the summer camp story, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother despises camping. Anyone in their right mind despises camping. Do you think the cavemen would have camped if they’d had access to luxury condos?”
“No?”
“Who is this Jack guy, anyway?”
I shrug. “Just a guy.”
“He must be more than ‘just a guy’ if he got your mother to sleep in a tent. Where is she going to the bathroom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she so desperate for a man that she’s willing to use moss for toilet paper and eat charred animals?”
“I don’t think she’s doing that.” Estelle seems a little fuzzy on the concept of camping.
Estelle shakes her head and stares into space for a moment. Then she puts her reading glasses back on and picks up her newspaper again. Kit kicks me with her foot.
When E
stelle has read every word of the Times that she’s interested in, she packs up her food and her Italian coffee and heads back out to the suburbs in her new lime-green Volkswagen. She’s escorting a couple of blue-hairs to an erotic poetry reading in the city this afternoon. God help them. The news of my mother compromising herself to the point of sleeping outdoors has Estelle on a feminist rampage.
Kit has to work at noon and her clothes are all smoky, so she has to stop at home. She gathers up her clothes and her sock monkey and leaves. I’m left alone in the house to contemplate the aftermath of everything. I go upstairs and pick my clothes up off the floor of my mom’s bedroom and check the pockets before I put them in the laundry. I pull out Officer Davis’s business card. I toss it in the garbage can and immediately dig it out again. I take it into my bedroom and put it next to my bed. I flip it over and then I turn it right side up again. I stand there contemplating the little white rectangle for a minute. The phone rings and I practically jump out of my skin. I guess I’m still a little shaken up.
“Hello?”
“Al, it’s me,” says my mom.
“Mom? You sound like you’re in a bottle.”
“I’m in a phone booth. I had to walk a mile in sandals to get to it. I’ve got three blisters. I don’t know how I’m going to make it back to the tent.”
“So, how’s it going?”
“I don’t think I can spend another night out here. The place is surrounded by wild animals. Wait, what am I saying? The campers are wild animals.”
“Where’s Jack?”
“He went to get more firewood. All he does is chop wood. God, I smell like I’ve been barbecued.”
“Well, then you’re really going to like the smell around here.”
“What?”
“We had a small kitchen fire. It’s all under control but there’s a bit of a lingering odor; you’ll feel right at home.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, but Bob’s got robbed last night.”
“What?”
“Yup.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No, but they pulled a gun on Jennifer.”
“You mean a gun gun?”
“It looked pretty real from where I was standing.”
I watch out the window of my bedroom as a large man on a tiny bike pulls a shopping cart full of bulging plastic garbage bags up the street behind him. He moves slowly, like he’s a float in a homeless parade. Cars keep honking at him and passing him.
“Well, that’s it, I’m coming home,” says my mom.
“Okay, but your being here isn’t going to change much. I’m happy to be your excuse, but don’t come rushing home for me.” This is a lie. I want her to come home. I need some adult supervision.
“Are you kidding me? I slept with a rock under my ass last night and I can barely move. I’ve been peeing in the woods because I just can’t face the outhouse. I probably have poison oak. A mosquito bit my eyelid and I look like Quasimodo. We saw a bear yesterday and all the other campers were taking photos, but all I could do was imagine him with my severed arm in his mouth. I’m coming home if I have to hitchhike.”
“Okay.” My voice trembles a bit but I get it under control. “Don’t hitchhike, though. Remember what you told me you would do to me if you ever caught me hitchhiking. Oh, and Estelle was just here; she says you’re compromising yourself.”
“Great. I have to go.” My mom hangs up abruptly. I picture a bear sitting on its haunches, rocking the phone booth back and forth in its giant paws while my mother screams from inside.
Left alone with no distractions, I’m inclined to crawl back into bed and sob for the unforeseeable future. The humiliation and shame and sleep deprivation of the last few days come rushing back to me and I sink into a dark pit of despair. I’m achy and my throat hurts from the smoke. I fight the impulse to hide, and work halfheartedly on my blog for a while. I missed yesterday’s entry completely. There are a couple of comments from my regulars asking if I’m okay. One of them is from my Berkeley “Fan.” I guess I can eliminate Joel as a possibility. There’s also a comment from someone named Elliot in New York. He’s a website designer/vinyl junkie and he says he loves what I’m doing and he’d be happy to design my blog site for free if I’m up for it. I write him back immediately:
Dear Elliot,
Really? You would do that for me? I’m on a pretty tight budget but I could really use some help. Let me know what you need from me.
The Vinyl Princess
I write a blog piece on The Last Waltz, one of the coolest live records ever recorded and a rad movie directed by Martin Scorsese. It’s a farewell concert for the Band recorded in 1976 with an all-star guest list featuring Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters. I pull out the album and put it on while I write about it. The version of “Helpless” with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young makes me feel momentarily euphoric, the way an impossibly sad song can because you feel like you’re in good company. I post the blog and scroll down to check how many hits I’ve had. It says 1,437?! Can that be right? The last time I checked it was forty-one!
In a momentary flash of spontaneity, I throw on some clothes and head out for a walk to clear my head. College Avenue is humming with people brunching and strolling. The morning fog has rolled back right on schedule and revealed a gorgeous midsummer Sunday. I walk up the avenue with my hands in my pockets. The bizarre events of last night keep coming back to me like clips from a cop show on TV. The image of the gun is something I won’t be able to forget for a long time. It may as well have been pointed at me. And then hearing Joel say, “Have a nice evening,” so pleasant-sounding, just like the day he talked to me for the first time. It chills me.
I walk all the way down to the Rockridge district in Oakland, oblivious to how far I’ve come until I’m walking underneath the BART station. I pass Olivia’s Café, a popular breakfast spot with a patio out front. Something familiar draws my eye, a person sitting alone at a table. It takes me a few seconds to realize that it’s Joel. He’s reading the same paper I just read. He’s reading about the robbery. There’s a coffee cup in front of him and the remains of his breakfast. It all looks very civilized, like he’s just a guy who lives in the neighborhood, not a ruthless criminal. He senses someone watching him and he looks up and our eyes meet. He darkens and something about the way he looks at me makes me understand that he knows that I know. He’s not afraid of me. I’m nothing to him. Anyone who’s confident enough to rob two places in ten minutes isn’t going to fear someone like me. I’m like a housefly he could smash with his newspaper or some lint he could pick off his sweater and flick away. As he watches me with his calm blue-green eyes, his mouth slowly turns up into a smile and he brings his index finger to his lips. He’s only ten feet away from me. He puckers his lips.
“Shhhhhh,” he whispers.
A chill runs down my spine. I pick up my pace and duck into a bookstore in the middle of the next block. I head for the magazine racks next to the window and pretend to browse till my heart stops racing. I watch out the window anxiously but I know he wouldn’t follow me. He doesn’t have to. He was just sending me a message. I heard him loud and clear.
Chapter 15
That night I can’t sleep at all. When I finally drift off I dream about Joel.
In the dream, he’s the M I invented, the nice guy. He and I are walking along a narrow ribbon of a trail cut into the side of a rocky cliff. Above us is a wall of sheer rock, and below us crashing surf. We seem oblivious to the obvious danger and we walk along the trail talking about music, M in front, me following behind. Suddenly, the trail becomes narrower and narrower under our feet and it starts to fall away. Rocks and pebbles clatter hundreds of feet into the surf below us. I grab for M’s hand. His face changes into Joel’s at the café today. He looks below him at the crashing surf and then he turns to me with a sinister grin and brings his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh,” he whispers. I lose my grip on his ha
nd and his fingers slide through my tightly clenched fist, one at a time, till my fist is empty. He falls backward through the air, his arms windmilling, and crashes into the pounding surf below us. I jerk awake. The house is quiet.
In the morning, I leave for work feeling wrung out. My mom is still sleeping. Last night she said something about sleeping for a week. She and Jack arrived home in the late afternoon. My mom was limping and her left eye was almost closed. So much for trying new things. Jack didn’t stay long. He looked like an exhausted mother dropping off someone’s kid after a really bad playdate.
My mom took a hot bath, praising indoor plumbing. She poured herself a glass of wine and we sat on the sofa while I told her all about the robbery. I left out the part about knowing who did it. I was afraid that she’d react badly and organize a manhunt or something. As it was, she made it pretty clear that she wants me to quit Bob’s. She says that no one should have to work in a retail environment where a bulletproof vest is required.
When I arrive at Bob’s, I unlock the store and pull the security gate behind me. I feel nervous and jumpy and I look over both shoulders. I slip my hand into the back pocket of my jeans and feel the corners of Officer Davis’s card. I stand just inside the door and look around the dusty store. Somehow it looks shell-shocked. Can a store look like a victim of a crime?
For the first time since the new in-store-music rule, Bob has forgotten to load the carousel. I can tell because it’s still full of Roger’s quirky brand of country music from yesterday. (Roger has a special deal with Bob. He gets to play his own music on Sundays.) I empty the carousel and fill it with my own picks: the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album, Teddy Thompson’s Upfront & Down Low, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker, Steve Earle’s Jerusalem, Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, Patty Griffin’s 1,000 Kisses. I guess I’m in a rootsy mood.
Laz arrives. He’s already been briefed about the robbery by Jennifer (I’m pretty sure that, in her version, she escaped death by using her wits and her catlike reflexes). I’m relieved that I don’t have to revisit the whole thing. Laz seems to have lost his enthusiasm for it too. He hunches over his newspaper, sipping coffee.