by James Franco
I knocked on Ed’s door. Inside, someone grumbled, and then, finally, there were footsteps. Ed’s professor father opened the door. At first only a little, and then he saw it was me and stuck his bald lightbulb head out and smiled, showing his bad teeth.
“Why, hello, Ryan. I thought you were some late trick-or-treaters, and I was about to tell them to go screw.”
“Can I come in?”
“Uhh, sure. Is everything all right?”
I was still shivering.
“Yeah, I’m just drunk and I don’t want to drive right now. I don’t think it would be safe.”
I thought he would understand about being drunk better than my own father. My father was tired of my shit.
“Sure, come in,” he said. He sat in his chair and I sat on the couch. Ed’s mom wasn’t there. The TV was on to the news, something about the Gulf War. Ed’s dad took up his meerschaum pipe and lit it.
“Would you like to smoke? Ed usually keeps his pipe here on the bookshelf, but I don’t see it. Here, I have an extra.”
He picked up another old pipe and loaded it with tobacco.
“Just suck a bit while you get it started or it will go out.”
I did, and inhaled sweet-tasting tobacco.
“Where’s Ed?” he said.
“Oh, out with the guys, I guess.”
“Chasing tail, no doubt.”
This was funny because Ed wasn’t the best guy with the ladies.
“Hope it works out for him,” he said. “He’s gone through all the tissues in the house.” He laughed a high-pitched, too-big laugh. The longer I sat there, the more I calmed down. It meant no one was coming after me. My father would hardly notice the dent on the already beat-up car. I might get in a little trouble because I had kept the car and not gone home after school, but that would blow over. I would tell Susan that I got upset over Nick and went home.
After about an hour there was something on the news about the actor River Phoenix overdosing outside a club in LA. Then I decided to go.
“You sure you’ll be all right?”
“Yeah, I feel okay now. Thanks, Mr. Sales.”
I never told anyone about the accident. The San Jose Mercury ran a story about the woman the day after and so did the Palo Alto Weekly. She was a librarian and had been walking home from work. She lived alone.
My last couple of years of high school, I passed that corner a few times, and the little-boy terror came back. But eventually the feeling left. When I went back home from college to visit my parents, I’d drive past the corner, and it seemed like the accident only happened in a movie.
After my father died, I’d visit my mother at Christmas. One December, I passed the corner while driving my mother to the library. At first the corner didn’t register. My mother was talking about the new children’s book she was working on, and I was just listening to her when, halfway down the block, I remembered, “Oh yeah, that’s where the accident happened.”
Lockheed
Math is my dad’s favorite subject. He works in Silicon Valley at IBM. He does math all day. I hate math. He makes me study with him, so I’m really good in math class, but I don’t announce it because I’m a girl.
When I got to high school I didn’t have friends. My best friend moved away, and I wasn’t popular. I didn’t go to parties. I got drunk only once, at a wedding. I puked behind a gazebo. I was with my cousin Jamie, who is gay. He goes to high school in Menlo Park, which is a five-minute drive. He is my only friend. He smokes menthol cigarettes.
After school I would go home. Me and Mom and Tim would watch Roseanne at the dinner table because Dad wasn’t there to say no.
Then Dad would come home and we would study.
A lot of times my math tests were on Thursdays, so my dad and I would study extra long on Wednesdays, and I would miss Beverly Hills 90210. I never taped it.
I did so well in math class that I got this internship for the summer at Lockheed Martin. They make missiles and satellites. I was the only girl out of ten students who got selected. My dad was very excited.
He said, “Marissa, one day you and I will work together.”
That summer, between my freshman and sophomore years, I worked for a Swedish guy named Jan, pronounced Yan. My job was to watch old film reels of the moon. There were hundreds. I worked in a cold, windowless basement. The reels would run from one spool to another on this old machine that looked like a tank. I was supposed to record blemishes and splices in the film. Sometimes the moon was full; sometimes it would get a little more full as I watched. Sometimes the film was scratched so badly it skipped, or it broke. I was in the basement forty hours a week. I watched so many moons.
It got so boring, I stopped looking for splices. Instead, I drew pictures on computer paper that I pulled from the recycling bin. Jan was never around, so I drew a lot. I drew rainbows, and people, and cities, and guns, and people getting shot and bleeding, and people having sex. When I got tired I just drew doodles. I tried to draw portraits of people I knew. My family always looked ridiculous, but funny because the pictures resembled them, but not enough. Then I drew all these things from my childhood, like Hello Kitty and Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony. I drew my brother’s G.I. Joes. I made the My Little Ponys kill the G.I. Joes.
I drew hundreds of pictures and they were all bad. I wasn’t good at drawing. It was also a little sad to draw so much because I could see everything that was inside me. I had drawn everything I could think of. All that was inside me was a bunch of toys, and TV shows, and my family. My life was boring. I only had one kiss, and it was with my gay cousin, Jamie.
One day, Jan came down to the basement. He saw all my little drawings. He didn’t say much. He picked them up and looked at them. He looked at every picture that was there. When he finished with each, he put it onto a neat pile.
He was tall and restrained, with clean, fading blond hair, combed back, with a slight wave in the front. He had a plain gold wedding band. As he looked at the pictures, I tried to imagine what he did for fun, but I couldn’t. He put the last picture down on the neat stack and looked at me.
“How is Mr. Moon?” he asked. In his accent his words came out short and clean. There was a hint of warmth, but it was contained.
“I found a few scratches today,” I said.
“Good,” he said, and left. I didn’t draw any more that day. I looked at the moon.
The next day I was back in the basement. It was almost lunchtime, and Jan came in.
“Come here,” he said, and turned and walked out. I followed him down the hall and outside. We crossed the parking lot, me following him. The surface of the blacktop was melting where they had put tar to fill in the cracks. There were no trees in the parking lot and the sun was pushing hard. I followed the back of Jan’s light yellow shirt and tan slacks over to his truck. It was an old, faded mustard-colored pickup that said TOYOTA in white on the back.
When I got to the truck, he was messing around with something in the stake bed. He put the back part that said TOYOTA down. On top of this, he laid out a big, black portfolio. He opened it and there were drawings inside.
“Look,” he said. He stepped back, and I looked. He said, “These are mine.”
They were good. They were mostly portraits. There were a bunch of portraits of a pretty woman’s face, all the same woman. He was a lot better than I was.
“That’s Greta, my wife,” he said. “She was not my wife then, when I made them. She became my wife.”
“She’s very beautiful,” I said. She was. Prettier than me.
“I did these when I was at school,” he said. “I wanted to be artist. But it was no good. It is no good to be artist. I practiced every day, eight hours a day. Then I could draw like Michelangelo. Then what? There is already Michelangelo. I realized there was nothing more to do. In science, there is always more to learn. Always more.”
I didn’t look at him; I looked at his pictures. I felt very lonely. I pictured him and his wife, alone a
t a long table, eating some bland Swedish food, not talking. The only sounds were from the utensils hitting the plates, and the squish of their gentle chewing.
“So,” he said. “You see.” He reached over me and shut the portfolio to punctuate the “You see,” but I didn’t know what to see. Then I looked at him. He stood there and looked at me. We were so awkward.
“Okay,” he said finally. “See you.”
“See you,” I said.
That summer, my only friend was my cousin Jamie. He was smart, and knew what he liked. He could be pretty mean behind people’s backs because people were so mean to his face.
Jamie invited me to a Fourth of July party, at this Menlo girl’s house, Katie Hesher. It was my first high school party. She lived on the other side of the San Francisquito Creek. It was woodsy over there. It was this big, one-story wooden house, like a fancy log cabin. We got there around nine. There were roomfuls of people. Everyone was drinking beer, mostly Keystone Light. I recognized a lot of people from my school, Paly, but I’d never seen them outside of school.
Jamie got me a beer; I opened it and held it. Jamie went off somewhere, and I sat on a couch in the living room. People came and sat on the couch, and talked, and left. I sat there for a long time. I didn’t know anyone from Menlo, and I didn’t know the people from my school. I sipped my beer. It was like thick, frothy urine.
I thought about Jan’s Fourth of July. I imagined him going to a movie. He was with his wife, Greta. They entered the theater with their arms around each other. They were smiling. Maybe they were going to see Schindler’s List. They sat in the movie and ate popcorn and enjoyed it and were serious about life.
After a while, I got up and went outside. There was a mist. I walked down the long driveway, under the large sycamore trees. The noise from the party got quieter the farther I walked. At the end of the driveway, I crossed the street. On the other side was the San Francisquito Creek bed. It was very deep and steep and I could barely see the water at the bottom. It was so dark.
I still had my beer. I couldn’t finish it. I took another sip, and then dumped the rest out into the dirt. The creek trickled in the black below, the bushes around me were still. I kept the can, and I walked back across the road and up the driveway. I saw a guy from my school, a water polo player named Zack Cuttle. He was standing behind one of the cars in the driveway. I was about to say hi, but then I realized that he was probably peeing. I tried to walk by discreetly. As I passed, I could see that his eyes were closed. I looked over, and I realized that he wasn’t peeing; he was getting a blow job from someone behind the car. I stood there for a second. Then I walked quickly before he saw me. I went up the stairs and back inside.
I couldn’t find my cousin Jamie. I sat back on the couch, right in the middle. There were lots of people around. Everyone was talking so loudly. After a few minutes, Zack Cuttle and Stephanie Jeffs walked inside. I looked at them, and then I looked down. They went into the kitchen, where a lot of people were.
Then this guy sat next to me. Ronny Feldman. He sat right next to me on the couch. He was a bad kid and he was handsome. He had gone to my school but had been kicked out.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“I came with my cousin.”
“But why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. He laughed. Then he grabbed my beer can and shook it a little. He laughed again because it was empty. He put it on the table.
“Here,” he said, and gave me another Keystone Light. I was already feeling light-headed from the first beer.
“Thanks,” I said. He was wearing a white T-shirt that was thin from being washed so many times. The neck was wasting away. His arms were thin but muscular. They had all these old scars and bruises on them. He had short, straight blond hair and a cherubic face, with a perfect nose. He was so handsome, but also like a little boy and dangerous.
I didn’t know what to say, so I opened the beer and took a sip. Too big of a sip. I choked.
“Easy,” he said. He patted me on the back.
He kept patting me, even after I stopped choking. I didn’t stop him. He did it softly. One of his friends walked by, this black guy named Camper Williams. He had skinny arms and legs, but a fat belly. His face was like a pit bull’s.
“That’s fucked-up, Ronny,” said Camper.
“What?” said Ronny. He stopped patting me. Camper laughed and walked away.
We sat there, and then I said, “Why did you get kicked out of school?”
“Because I broke all the windows in this asshole’s car.”
“Why did you do that?”
“This motherfucker, Brian Simpson, threw some eggs at me.”
“Why?” I was very interested.
“Whatever. On the Sunday before, I was walking, and I saw this car drive by. Someone said something, and then I saw the car turn around . . .”
“Where?” I said.
He looked at me funnily, like who cared where it happened, and then he said, “Over on East Meadow. So they drove back and they threw eggs at me. I fucking chased them, but they were gone. I guess Brian thought I wouldn’t recognize the car, but I did. So on that next Monday, I went to school at lunchtime . . .”
“You didn’t go to first period?”
“No, I—no, I skipped first period.” He seemed like he was laughing at me a little bit. But not in a bad way. “I just went at lunch, to fuck up his car. I smashed every window with a bat. They kicked me out for that.”
“So now where do you go?”
“I went to this continuation school, Shoreline, but I got kicked out because I was the only white dude with all these black and Mexican dudes from East Palo Alto. They thought they could fuck with me, but they couldn’t. They kicked me out for fighting. Now I go to this school for idiots and I’m with the real retards.”
He was so. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.
“I bet you’re smart,” he said. It was the best moment of my life.
Then this guy came up to him. He looked part Latino.
“What’s up, little bitch?” the Latino guy said to Ronny. Ronny was calm. He looked up at the Latino guy. This guy was older.
“Fuck you,” said Ronny, but softly. Then it seemed like the party got quieter.
Katie Hesher came out of the kitchen. She looked upset. She said, “Ronny, don’t! Not in my parents’ house.”
“Come outside, little bitch,” said the older guy to Ronny. The older guy looked like an ugly wolf. He had a skinny face, and pointy, uneven teeth. There were zits all over his nose. “Come outside, little Ronny,” he said.
“Ronny, kick this spic’s fucking ass,” said someone in the crowd. Ronny stood up.
“Don’t get hurt,” I said. He didn’t hear me. Everything was fast and scary. I sat there for a minute on the couch. Everyone else was pushing to get outside, after Ronny. I was still waiting for Ronny to finish talking. He was telling me I was smart and he was looking at me. But he was gone. It was like it hadn’t happened.
I got up and squeezed onto the porch with all the people. Mist was on the front lawn. The whole party was out there. Ronny was in front of everyone. I couldn’t see the Latino guy. Ronny took his shirt off. He was thin, and tough, and wiry in the mist. The guys were cheering him on. He was laughing with excitement. He had a big white smile. The other guys worked up this chant. They were saying, “Wetback attack,” over and over. Ronny’s older brother was there, Boris. I only knew who he was because he was a legend. He had got into more trouble than Ronny did when he was in high school. They were both Russian. I knew that. I don’t know how I knew that. Boris took his shirt off too. A bunch of the guys took their shirts off. I was standing behind so many people on the porch. It started to rain a little. Their bodies were pearly in the misty rain. Their chests were flexing and their stomachs were breathing.
Then everyone was fighting. It wasn’t just Ronn
y. All the Latino guy’s friends, and Ronny’s friends. There was shouting. I couldn’t see Ronny; he was in the middle of everything. I saw Boris, he was shouting at someone, then he was fighting again. There was a guy on the ground, in the grass, facedown. Two guys were kicking him. One of the guys kicking was Ronny; he kicked and stomped. It was hard to see through all the people on the porch.
Then a bunch of the fighters were running away. It was the Latino guy and his friends. Ronny and some others ran after them. And then they all disappeared, except Boris and a black guy; they went over and punched and kicked the guy on the ground.
A car drove up very fast. It was a white SUV. There was a person on the hood. The car stopped abruptly and the person fell off into the street. Then the SUV backed up and drove away. Everyone on the lawn ran to the body. I did too. It was Ronny. I could see his face through the heads. His eyes were slightly opened, like a whale’s eyes. They lifted him; he was trying to say something. They took him out of the street, and laid him on the grass section between the sidewalk and the street. Then someone yelled. Everyone looked.
The white SUV was driving back. It swerved up onto the sidewalk, toward the group around Ronny. The headlights lit up the whole scene in yellow. Everyone scrambled and dove out of the way, and the SUV drove over Ronny’s body. It was fast. His body jerked up from the sidewalk and turned over, so that he was facedown with his arms splayed.
Girls were screaming, and then I knew that it was me who was screaming. I couldn’t see anything for a while. The SUV was gone. I walked to the middle of the lawn to see. Boris was at Ronny’s side. He was crying. He was trying to turn Ronny over. Everyone was shouting, arguing about what to do. People told Boris not to turn him over. Boris was yelling at everyone to call the police. There was blood coming out on the sidewalk, slowly, from under Ronny’s face.
About half of the people walked or ran to their cars and drove off. I saw Katie Hesher crying on the porch with some people comforting her. Some of the neighbors were coming out in sweatpants and slippers. A neighbor woman in a flannel shirt went over to Katie. When I looked back again, the neighbor was kneeling in front of Katie on the steps, comforting her. Boris had turned Ronny over. Ronny’s face was smashed on one side, and swollen like a white balloon on the other. Nobody did anything until the police arrived. Boris had his hand on Ronny’s chest and was talking softly to him.