Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 20

BEFORE I KNEW it I had started the sixth grade. Grammar school was walking distance from my new house, a two-bedroom, two-bath 1940s Craftsman built on a bluff overlooking Santa Monica Bay. My dad got a great deal on it because a few years back during a big rainstorm the house next door had slid into the canyon. My dad believed our house was safe because it had been tested by the big storm and survived.

Right away I was taken off guard by my new suburban life. Most of my peers’ references and quips involved video games, baseball cards and knowing the latest happenings of Starsky and Hutch, all stuff I was unfamiliar with. So I made it my goal to learn how to play Pac-Man and watch more Starsky and Hutch.

Within days it became painfully obvious that swearing was frowned upon and that my stories of Mexico or Topanga Beach were hardly endearing me to the neighborhood kids. They just looked at me like I was crazy, and kept me out of their conversations. And my cozy picture of walking to school with my friends was abruptly altered by the new desegregation busing law. I did get to walk along the sidewalk with my neighbors, as I had fantasized, but when we got to school we had to board a bus and drive forty minutes to South Central Los Angeles.

Some things stayed exactly the same. Nick sat in the same rocking chair watching the same news programs. My mom picked fights with him every once in a while and Sunny slept in my room. I spent my weekends on Topanga Beach surfing with the legends. Most of them had moved up the canyon or right across the highway into the Snake Pit. We all congregated around the lifeguard station (my former neighbor’s house that had been converted into a lifeguard station), storing our boards in its shade, hiding our coveted bars of wax in its nooks and crannies. The beach was strange now, just a stretch of dirty sand and broken stairs leading to nothing.

That fall Nick filmed all my Saturday-morning football games. Later in the week he would bring the Super 8 reels to the coach’s house and sometimes the team would meet there and the coach would critique our plays. On game days Nick would lend me his heavy fishing weights for me to stuff under my thigh pads and into my jockey cup during the weigh-in with the refs. I was the only kid in the whole league trying to weigh more than he actually did. Half of my team spent the morning in a sauna trying to lose a couple pounds so they could play. Nick was my biggest fan, cheering from the bleachers where he filmed. He told all his friends how I went head-to-head with the biggest kids and never backed down. It felt good to impress him and I wished we always got along so well. But I never knew when Nick was going to explode again, and a part of me was always braced for it, and that made it hard to trust those sweet moments.

My dad made all the games too, but never said much about them. He had damaged one of his knees playing football in high school and thought football was not worth jeopardizing hockey, skiing and surfing—sports that I had a real chance to excel in.

Winter came early and before Thanksgiving I was training with the Mount Waterman ski team—four members strong. At the end of one long day of racing gates my dad made me ski the sheer ice face back to the car. He made me ski it two more times so that I’d learn ice.

On Thanksgiving Day I skied the Cornice at Mammoth, dreaded for its ten- to fifteen-foot lip hanging over the run. It was treacherous dropping in, intermittently airborne while slicing across the wind-buffed overhang. According to my dad it was good for me so we skied it all day.

On the drive home my dad was suffering from the malaria he had contracted while working for Project India back in the ’50s. It often made him feel drowsy and he told me he was going to rest one eye. As I had done several times before, I took the wheel while his foot kept even pressure on the pedal. If a car appeared up ahead I was to wake him up even though he was supposedly just resting one eye. It never struck me as dangerous. In fact it seemed like a good deal because when he woke from his catnap he always felt fantastic and I was always proud to share the load.

I finished my homework just in time to watch All in the Family. My mom cooked steak, serving it with brown rice and salad with walnuts and avocados. Nick came home and interrupted our show so he could watch some news special. He ate his steak with both hands and shoveled down the rice with the large serving spoon.

Near the end of the special he turned to me.

Stop chomping your food, he said.

I slowed my chewing and made sure to keep my mouth closed so no sounds would escape. During the first commercial Nick recited an article he had read about manners and how if they weren’t learned young they became an embarrassing indiscretion when you got older.

No more eating with your hands or chomping your food, he declared.

Look at you, Nick, said my mom.

I’m talking about Norman. Don’t make excuses for him.

Where do you think he gets his bad habits?

You’re right, he said. But now it’s time to get control of the situation.

I was struck by how it sounded like an emergency and I wondered how he would have reacted when I was upside down in that tree well or sliding down that icy face or drowning in ten-foot surf. Real emergencies.

My mom made me a cup of ice cream with chocolate sauce. I ate it while we watched a sit-com and Nick had his first vodka.

Goddamn it, Norman, he said after a few minutes.

My hand stopped mid-spoon. My mouth was open. I had been slurping.

Sorry, I said.

Go in the den.

I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. I just want to watch the end.

He grabbed my arm and the cup and walked me into the den. He slammed down the cup and jammed me into the chair.

If you can’t control your slurping then you eat separately, he said. Until you learn.

I wasn’t hungry anymore so I went downstairs to my room. My whole body shivered. I turned on the furnace and got into bed and buried myself head-to-toe under the blanket.

The very next day on the way to the bus one of the neighborhood gang pointed out another kid in our grade named Timothy. I recognized Timothy as the boy who always looked down at his feet, muttered, sat alone, read comic books at recess, and startled easily. He reminded me of a beaten dog—sort of how I felt last night. One of the gang called to him across the street.

Hey, Creepothy, he yelled and the other boys laughed.

Timothy did not look up. He turned away from us, stopping so that we’d get far ahead of him. I kept glancing back at him, fascinated. He was skittish like me, but he couldn’t hide it. He probably has a mean dad or stepfather, I thought. I wanted to cross the street and walk with him. Then the idea repulsed me. I was the first one to walk ahead.

Later that week Nick punished me again for chomping and I sat in the den and ate alone. When I was finished he handed me a piece of paper.

A contract, he said.

I looked at it, unmoved.

Read it.

I hereby promise to get control of myself and take responsibility for my actions. I will not chomp, slurp or eat with my mouth open. If I do I will eat alone.

Do you understand it?

I nodded.

Sign it.

I signed it.

A few days later I saw Timothy at recess picking his nose. He sat on a bench in the corner of the yard. Somebody threw the kickball at him and he tried to duck it, tripping over his feet. It bounced off his face as he scurried to the other side of the yard. I wondered if they’d do the same to me if I stopped being good at kickball. I played my butt off that day.