Palo Alto

by James Franco

  In the second class we had a woman, Beth. She was about forty and large: her breasts hung heavy and low so that the skin stretched thin at the top of them, and her belly had folds. She was great for drawing, but I wasn’t in the mood. Wilson had killed my motivation for the fast drawings, but I didn’t have the patience to do it the old meticulous way either. I wanted to leave but I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I just drew her belly and shaded it and went over it again and again until it wasn’t any good. I thought about bodies decaying and my own life shriveling.

  Wilson was going on about his near-death experience again. He had had open-heart surgery six months before and almost died. He loved to talk about it, and the ladies and old guys loved to hear it.

  “. . . It’s true. I don’t care how much attention we devote to the body in here, I know there is a spirit, I experienced it. Whatever it is that makes me me had lifted away from this earthbound state and I was on my way, I was on my way.” He was laughing at his own enthusiasm and some of the women were laughing too; a few had stopped drawing to listen. “Excuse me, Beth, for talking about the body so much while you’re posing for us, but I think we should all think about this while we draw the body. The body is the vehicle for the spirit. We can’t draw the spirit, we can only draw physical things, but through those physical things you might be able to intimate something of the spirit underneath. At least try, don’t just draw Beth, draw her soul. Because it’s there. I am telling you, when I was going toward that light, something said, ‘Cy, nope. Nope, nope, nope, you’re getting a first-class tickeroo back to earth, you better do good by it.’”

  Usually I liked Wilson, but he seemed different now, like a clown. After class, I stuffed all my drawings into a trash can. Beth came out of the bathroom with clothes on and saw me trashing the drawings of her. She was wearing blue sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt like she was a regular person. She didn’t say anything.

  Instead of going home, I started walking toward Barry’s house. I didn’t care if April was there, I was ready to get high and not think about anything. The night was cold and I hunched with my hands in my pockets and my sketchbook under my arm, and there was a low orange moon, almost full, and huge because it was so low. And I didn’t care.

  I got to Barry’s a little after ten thirty; I walked through the ivy-lined pathway on the side of the house, and the heart-shaped leaves against my face were cold. At the back of the house the curtain was closed behind the sliding glass door that led to Barry’s room. I heard voices and I tapped lightly. Barry’s sea lion face appeared, scruffy and round. When he saw it was me he smiled and slid open the door.

  “Welcome, motherfucker,” he said. It was warm and dark inside. He had his lights off and his blacklight on, so the Zeppelin poster and the Crumb KEEP ON TRUCKIN’… poster were glowing in bright greens and pinks. On the floor there were about eight people sitting in a circle.

  “Teddy,” someone said, “siddown and get ready for the magic carpet ride.” I sat down and I saw that it was Bill. He put his arm around me for a second and squeezed my shoulder. He must have been excited because that was a lot of talking and touching for him. Fred was also there, and Ed, and Ivan, and Ute, and Jack Canter, and Tim Astor. No girls; no April. Barry continued packing his green three-foot bong.

  “The skull bong!” said Fred. And everyone else said, “The skull bong!” Because the bowl of the bong was shaped like a grinning skull.

  “And the official first crop of the Chambers homegrown!” said Barry, and everyone cheered. Then he put the bong to his mouth and lit the bowl, and in the light from the flame his round face turned orange as he sucked and the water bubbled, and the glass of the base was thick with smoke. Barry pulled on the stem and the smoke went up into his throat. He held it in and made little guppy sounds and then let it out and coughed and everyone cheered.

  The bong went around, and when it got to me I sucked as hard as I could, and when I saw the green tube was packed tight with smoke I sucked it up like a soul. It went right to the center of me and I knew that that one hit was going to take me over. I let it out and choked hard and by the time I got my breath back I was already high. I didn’t mind Bill or Fred or anything. The bong kept going around and I started smiling.

  Bill patted me on the back again. “See, Teddy, all is gooood. It’s like we’re at the fucking beach.”

  “The beach?” I said. Bill was smiling so big, so many teeth.

  “Yeah,” he said, and giggled. “Can’t you feel the sun, buddy? We’re at the fucking beach.” He really liked that idea because he was looking up at the ceiling with his arms spread as if there was a sun up there and he was soaking up the rays.

  “You’re a Mongoloid,” I told him. He laughed.

  “A mongo-what?” he said, but he didn’t want an answer because he started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  Then across the circle Fred said, “Hey, Barry, where the fuck is April? Did you fuck her yet?”

  Everyone got interested and Barry was quiet for a second. Then in a low voice he said, “Yeah, I did.”

  “No shit? Did the deed?” said Jack. “Your fucking first, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Barry, but he was being a little shy.

  “That’s fucking great,” said Bill. “I told you to fuck that shit!” and he started laughing at himself again. Everyone congratulated Barry: “Nice one,” “Good work, pimp,” “She’s fucking hot,” “That ass…” He let them say their stuff for a minute, and then he said, “No, it’s bullshit.”

  “You didn’t fuck her?” I said.

  “No, I did, but the whole situation is bullshit. She’s fucking crazy. I mean really crazy. Like I think she got molested or something.”

  “Why the fuck would you say that?” I said. “Did she tell you?”

  “No, but I can just tell,” he said.

  “Wadda you mean?” I said. “You mean you’re just making that up because you think you can tell.”

  “You can tell those things,” said Fred.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, Fred, no you can’t,” I said. “And how the fuck would you know, you little troll, you haven’t been with a girl in your life.”

  “Fuck you, Teddy,” said Fred. “You’ve only been with Horse Face, Dog Bite Shauna Woo.” Everyone laughed and oohed.

  “Shut up, Fred,” I said. “You don’t know shit.” And that was the end of it. I couldn’t bring up April again. Barry had done it with her, the girl I loved, and it had meant nothing to him; Tanya would die and no one would care; and there were billions of bodies alive on earth and they would all be buried and ground into dirt; and Picasso was a master at age sixteen and I was a perfect shit.

  Everyone smoked more and we listened to music. Bob Marley was on and there was a line in a song he kept repeating: “The stone that the builder refuse / Will always be the head cornerstone.” After the third time he sang it Barry asked everybody what they thought it meant.

  “It’s from the Bible,” I said. “The meek will inherit the earth, or something like that.”

  “Why will the meek inherit the earth?” said Ute. “I never understood that.”

  “Jesus said it,” said Jack.

  “I know, but why?” said Ute. “Why will they? And how?”

  Ed said, “They won’t.”

  Everyone thought about that and shut up.

  I had a bad weekend. I didn’t do anything. I just watched Point Break again and read some of Crime and Punishment. On Tuesday I went back to the Towers after school. I was almost done with all my hours, and then I knew I would never go back there. When I got to twelve Brian was there, carrying the television. The screen was cracked and there were dark spots behind the cracks. The TV wasn’t big but Brian was struggling a little.

  “Hey, help me with this thing,” he said. I took one end and we carried it together into the elevator. “One of the zombies fell on it and knocked it over.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Th
e guy was fine. They won’t even miss it; they can’t understand what they’re watching anyway.”

  “Yes they can.”

  “Are you kidding me? Those people are gone. They don’t know what’s happening. Two of them thought I was their son, and I’m Chinese.”

  “They’re still people.”

  “Whatever that means. The more time I spend here, I think more and more about how they’re just these bags of guts being wheeled around, and it’s like the gears are turning inside, but just out of habit, nothing is alive.”

  At the ground floor we went outside and around to the back where the Dumpsters were. We did three windup heaves and then let the TV go into the back of one of the Dumpsters. The screen shattered and the body settled among the papers and cardboard.

  Back upstairs, one of the orderlies came up to me. His name was Manuel, he was about twenty-five, and had a kind face.

  “Hey, Tanya’s daughter came by and saw the pictures you made of Tanya. She liked them.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you should go see her. Room twelve twenty-six.”

  I walked over to Tanya’s room. Inside, it was dark. The overhead light was on, but it was weak and had a green cast. There were two beds in the room; Tanya was sitting on the edge of one, staring at the floor. The other bed had a naked mattress on it. I said hello and she looked up, and when she saw it was me she gave me her smile. I walked over and sat on the empty mattress across from her. Our knees were almost touching because the room was so small.

  Then I noticed the two pictures framed on the wall behind her. They looked like a memorial.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. I fine,” she said, smiling.

  “I see you put the pictures up,” I said.

  “Pretty. You draw so well.”

  “No. I think I’m crap,” I said. “Sorry, I mean, I’m no good.”

  She slowly reached over and took my hand. Her hand felt like sticks in a sheet. She cradled my hand with both her hands.

  “You good,” she said. “You so good, a good boy.” She lifted my hand and held it to her face. Her cheek was softer than I expected. I moved my thumb around a little and felt her wrinkles. They were just there, skin folding on itself.

  “You good,” she said again. “You captured me good.”

  She smiled and I felt the soft skin bunch under my fingers. I looked into her smile. There was someone in there.

  Part III

  April

  Right before eighth grade I moved from Phoenix to Palo Alto with my parents and older sister, Tiff. My dad came to work at ROLM. I could play soccer and I smoked more than anyone. But in Palo Alto, even when the other soccer girls were nice to me, something didn’t fit.

  Mr. B was my soccer coach. His first name was Terry, and his last name was Brodsky. He’d been “Mr. B” for years, he said. He was forty-two. He had all his hair and tan skin and wore a purple baseball cap a lot. After a week, he told me I was the best soccer player in the eighth grade. He told jokes about dogs and horses and skeletons and I laughed at them. “A skeleton walks into a bar and says, ‘Give me a beer and a mop.’” The ones about horses were even worse, and sexual, but I laughed. He would also make fun of the boys in my class. “I saw Teddy Morrison changing the other day and I think he’s missing the hair under his arms,” then he’d laugh.

  After two months in Palo Alto I had made some friends, Shauna, Sandy, and Alice Wolfe. And our soccer team was doing well. At the end of practice one day, Mr. B asked me to babysit his son, Michael. “I have a date this Saturday,” he said. “I know, stupid.” I told him it wasn’t stupid.

  “I don’t know why I even try, it’s going to be dumb.”

  “I can’t Saturday, Shauna is having her bat mitzvah.”

  “Bat mitzvah? Ha.” He was sweating at his temples from coaching us. “You going to go make out with some Jewish dudes at the bat mitzvah?”

  “No, but she’s my friend.”

  “I know she’s your friend, she’s great—a little horsy in the face, but—no, sorry, that’s mean, I didn’t mean that. Look, you should go, but if you did this for me, I’d consider it a personal favor. I don’t think I’ll be out late. I’m going out with a teacher. Just bring your dress and you can change at my place and I’ll drive you to the party after.”

  I thought about it and then I said okay. Shauna Woo was on the team. She was nice, but also just a girl. Her dad was Asian and her mom was Jewish. She was rich and she had just about everything, but she had been bitten on the face by a dog when she was younger. There were two jagged lines across her left temple and the top of her cheek.

  On Saturday I went to Mr. B’s at five thirty and he left for his date. His son, Michael, was five, he had a round head that was a little pointy on top, and unlike Mr. B he was blond. He was nice but he was just a kid, empty and selfish. He sat on the floor and looked up at the TV and played his video game.

  “What are you playing?”

  “The Legend of Zelda.” He was controlling a green elf walking around a graveyard.

  “What are you doing with that flute?”

  “It’s an ocarina. It does stuff. Like, you can call fairies, or call your horse.” The elf played a song on the flute and day turned to night and then lightning hit a grave and it exploded. Then the elf jumped into the grave.

  My older sister, Tiff, had given me a joint for the weekend and I went out on the porch and lit it. It was nice to smoke alone. I leaned on the wooden rail and it was wet from dew but I leaned on it anyway. The sky was black with a dark blueness at the horizon, and different from a Phoenix sky, sadder. I watched the blueness sink below the houses until there was only black and stars. I smoked half the joint and licked my fingers and put out the end and put the unsmoked half in my Reds pack. I lit a cigarette and sucked hard. Shauna and everyone were at the party already. She had become a woman that day, but she would always have her scars.

  When I went back in Michael was still playing. The elf was riding on a horse, galloping across a grass valley. I told Michael he should stop playing so we could watch a movie. Mr. B had a videotape of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Michael said he wasn’t allowed to watch it but I let him. We sat on the couch together. Sex in a baseball dugout, sex in a pool house, an abortion. The joint made all of it funny. Michael didn’t laugh or say anything. He was really quiet when the boobs and vaginas came out. Then it ended.

  “I don’t want to go to bed,” he said. I picked him up and carried him into his room. I put him under the blankets and I lay next to him above the blankets. I guess he should have brushed his teeth but I thought, “Fuck it.” There was nothing to say because he was a little kid. I stared at the ceiling. I thought about my sister. Sometimes we laughed so much that I thought we’d never stop. But we hadn’t done it much lately; she had a boyfriend now. Then Michael was asleep.

  At eight Mr. B came home. “What are you watching?” he said. I was watching Cheers. He sat on the couch a little away from me. On TV Cliff was joking with Norm and Sam. He said, “Well, ya see, Norm, it’s like this. . . . A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. . . .” He was going to tell a joke but Mr. B started talking. “Well, that was a shitty date.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Nothing. That’s the thing with teachers, it’s always nothing. Boring. I feel like I’m back in school or something. I can’t believe you have to listen to those people every day. At least I can go home if I want.” He laughed at his joke.

  “I don’t listen,” I said.

  “You don’t? You listen to me.”

  “Well, yeah, of course I do that, Coach.” I smiled because I liked him.

  “You fucking better,” he said. We both laughed and he told me to get dressed and he’d drive me to the bat mitzvah.

  “What about Michael?”

  “He’ll be fine, it’ll take fiv
e minutes. It’s over near Gunn, right?”

  I went into the bathroom and put on the dress. It was light lavender. It was my sister’s and too big for me in the boobs.

  I walked out and Mr. B stood from the couch.

  “You look amazing,” he said, and walked over. I said I hated dresses, but he wasn’t listening. When he was near me he put his thick hands on the bottom of my face and tilted his head to the side; he kissed me. His face was close, and I smelled a strong smell, and everything seemed full, and bigger, and his chin was scratchy, and his lips were full of a thickness of feeling; he held his lips on mine for a long time. Then he pulled back, looked into my eyes.

  “You shouldn’t smoke so much,” he said. And then he kissed me again. An older person, but still a kiss. His mouth opened and I knew that part; his tongue came through like a little fish and I met it with my tongue. Everything was thick inside my mouth.

  “April, you’re the most important person to me.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “When you get to be my age, there is nothing you appreciate as much as a real person. You’re real.” We kissed one more time, softer, and then I said we should go. We went out toward his purple-blue 4Runner. When I went around the side of the car, I lost sight of him for a moment, and the streetlamps flared in their plastic coverings.

  He drove me over to the temple. We listened to Jimi Hendrix and didn’t say anything. Jimi was along the watchtower and the streets were glistening with wet. At the temple Mr. B pulled into the lot and there was a large unexpected bump because the entrance was slanted in a strange way, and we both jerked forward. He turned the car and parked us in a corner where it was dark.

  “I really fucking like you, April.”

  “I like you too,” I said. We sat there and there was moisture in his eyes, glistening from the dashboard lights.

  “When you know life like I do,” he said, “you know that there isn’t much that is good. But I know that you’re good. Really good.” One of the lights in his eyes was red. I said thanks and he kissed me on the cheek and told me I should go. I got out and started walking across the parking lot. Mr. B’s car turned and drove out over the dip and into the road; red taillights into black.