Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 18

MY DAD AND I took the ferry directly from Puerto Vallarta to La Paz, avoiding any chance of running across those federales again. From La Paz we drove the Baja highway north, homebound. In Tijuana we went to a bullfight. I rooted for the bull.

We spent the night in a hotel in San Diego and the next morning my dad woke me and we were in front of my mom’s house on Topanga Beach. He opened the door to the side walkway and I listened for sounds of Nick coming down the corridor. My dad knocked on the sliding-glass door.

Hey hey, said my mom as she opened the door. It’s the Dynamic Duo.

I peeked inside. She leaned down and kissed me.

Hi Mom, I said.

Look at you. Brown as a berry.

My dad stepped inside and went to the fridge. My mom patted the back of my head.

So blond, Norman, she said. How was the trip?

Good, I said.

My dad bit into a peach and he shut the fridge and peered at me over Mom’s shoulder. In his eyes not a trace of those rifle barrels or the gunshot or the days we spent adrift—just the afterglow of tube rides and sunshine.

So it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be? she said.

I shook my head.

It wasn’t until dinnertime that I asked about Nick.

He’s away for a few weeks, said my mom.

I switched on the TV to my favorite show, All in the Family, and we watched it while we ate. When the first commercial came on I turned around and looked at my mom. No bruise, no scratch, exactly the same as the other eye.

It was quiet around the house for the rest of August. My mom didn’t have to teach for a few weeks and I just hung around Topanga and skateboarded and surfed and played with Charley and Sunny. Everybody on the beach was talking about eminent domain and I gathered the county or the state, somebody, was trying to kick us off the beach. Someone said they could do it because we didn’t own the land, just the houses. That seemed impossible.

Hockey camp filled my weekend mornings and football practice filled my weekday afternoons and I alternated my nights among my mom, my dad and Eleanor. Eleanor was the only one I talked to about Nick and my mom. She mostly asked me questions, and I liked how she listened carefully to my answers.

One night Eleanor and I were in her kitchen preparing dinner. She asked me how I felt when Nick called me a failure and a liar and such, or when my dad made me get up at four in the morning to go to hockey practice. I didn’t like it of course, I told her. Then her husband Lee opened the front door, walked in and set a broom against the cabinet, heading for the bedroom.

Where’s the rest, honey? said Eleanor.

What do you mean? said Lee.

The chicken and the salad dressing.

You never said anything about getting chicken, said Lee.

You think I wanted you to go to the market at nine o’clock at night to buy a broom?

Well. I thought it was kind of strange.

They stood watching each other. They were both very small people, very gentle and sensitive. So they studied one another as if trying to feel the other out.

Lee, said Eleanor. It took you forty-five minutes to buy a broom?

I wanted to get the exact right one for you, Eleanor, he said.

Like gas leaking from a balloon laughter seeped out of my mouth. I couldn’t control it and I threw back my head, surrendering. Eleanor was next, then Lee, and soon the three of us were keeled over in the kitchen.

Lee said he was exhausted from the laughing and had to go lie down. Eleanor prepared dinner. While boiling the spaghetti she explained to me about bad pretends and good pretends.

You have a choice, Norman. You don’t have to believe Nick’s bad stories. Those are his bad pretends about what may or may not happen, she said. You can make up your own good stories. Good pretends.

But then it’s just made up, I said.

So are the bad stories, she said. They’re about Nick. They’re not really about you.

That’s not fair, I said.

No it isn’t, she said.

Eleanor probably sensed I was getting overwhelmed and announced that dinner was finally ready.

We got into bed with Lee and watched a TV movie and ate spaghetti. I did not comprehend every nuance of the pretends concept, but it made me recall a photograph of Nick wearing a military uniform, from one of those military schools I assumed. He was strikingly handsome and he looked like he knew it. Maybe he’s the one that woke up one day realizing that the world did not revolve around him, I thought, and he’s having a bad pretend that the same will happen to me.

On Sunday I wandered down to Barrow’s to get a longboard. A bunch of boards poked over the rotted wood fence where the outdoor shower was, next to Barrow’s deck on which poker was played almost every weekend, rain or shine. I was hoping to spot the red board that was already dinged up so I wouldn’t have to worry about it hitting the rocks at low tide. As I angled up the sandbank, Sandra and my dad appeared, stepping out of the window-door onto the deck. I stopped below the sandbank because they were holding hands. She was back, and I knew there would be no explanation from my dad.

My dad sat down at the poker table and Sandra rubbed his neck while he got his poker chips. I changed my mind and took Sunny up the creek to my fort.

A week later I came home from football practice and my mom was taping together cardboard boxes.

Well, she said. We finally lost.

You mean we have to move for sure?

Yep. The state won. They’re kicking us off the beach.

There was a big party the following weekend and Nick came home. Everyone on the beach gathered at the yellow submarine house where Trafton, Woody, Shane and Clyde lived. Trafton and Clyde’s band, Blue Juice, played and everyone danced. Sandra wore a green silk bandanna and a white miniskirt and no top. I watched her dance and I compared Papaya’s slow rhythm and long banana-shaped eyelids to Sandra’s hardened expression. Even their breasts were opposites, Papaya’s so round and plump compared to Sandra’s torpedoes.

Later I got a hot dog and Nick tended the barbecue with his shirt off. His neck and face were red and his body was pale.

Life is a long series of readjustments, he said. Remember how I said you need to be prepared?

I nodded.

Well this is what I meant. And there’s more of it coming, he said. You understand?

Yeah it’s like when it’s all sunny and you’re skiing and by the afternoon it’s snowing and freezing cold. You gotta adjust to it, I said.

Nick’s eyebrows perked up and he opened his palms toward the sky and stretched his arms out. Right on the money, he said.

I moved along before he could bring up the skateboarding lie. I found my mom dancing with our neighbors, Wheeler and Maggie. It was peculiar because Nick had broken Wheeler’s ribs a few months ago in our kitchen—how could they still be friends? Next to them boogied Sandra and my dad. I sat on a rock and watched the action.

Late that afternoon the wind died and the ocean glassed over and I paddled out with my dad. It was small and we were the only two surfers in the water.

Well you’re getting your wish, Ollestad.

How?

I bought a house in the Palisades for you and your mom. I got a great deal on it, Ollestad.

Right on. Does it have a pool?

No pool.

Doesn’t matter. I can bike around and go to friends’ houses like every day.

Yep. But one day you’ll miss old Topanga Beach. You were born here.

I looked over the backs of the waves and followed a roller-rink curve of sand past Barrow’s deck, then back along the beach. Dogs moved in packs, Sunny chased a stick, Carol walked her llama by leash around the point, Jerry did wheelies on his dirt bike, and the dancing bodies weaved together like a parachute undulating to the music.

My dad put his hand on my back, as if to connect us, and we watched Topanga Beach for the last time. A set came and he told me to go. We rode those stained-glass waves lit from behind by the dying orange sun until dark.