Pink Smog (12 page)

I felt like flipping him off but instead I just started walking.

“I'm going to get a parking ticket. Please, Weetzie.” Then he added, “Let me explain.”

That was what got me—I followed him.

I sat in his car with my arms folded on my chest. The Bug smelled of sawdust. He leaned over and buckled me in. I breathed the clean, herbal scent of his hair over the dry undertones of the Bug's stuffing. I kicked at the floorboards, pressing my feet down as hard as I could. We didn't say anything to each other for a long time.

“Listen, I want to explain something,” he said, finally. “My sister has a serious problem.”

“I kind of got that.”

“I'm not trying to make excuses but she's had this … influence over me. She does this thing and I start acting really weird. It's happened before. Around Halloween, especially. I didn't think she could do it anymore but I guess I was wrong.”

I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about? You sound like a crazy person. You're as bad as she is.”

He pulled over and parked the car. Everything looked especially bleak in the gray weather. L.A. wasn't made for days like this. Even the buildings and the pavement, embedded with sparkling bits, needed sun in order not to look depressed.

“I know it sounds freaky. Maybe I am crazy, I don't know. But my sister does these things, these spells. And I guess the last one worked on me. She got me to hang out with Staci and I know Staci was a bitch to you and that I acted like a shit, too. I'm really sorry.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?” I said grandly. I had heard my mom say that to my dad once. I thought it sounded like a line in a movie or at least a daytime soap opera.

I saw him repress a small smile. Then he looked serious again. I hated how cute he was.

“I spoke to Charlie about it.”

“My dad says he doesn't know you. Who are you all? What do you have to do with my father? And what are those notes about? I got another one. Just leave us alone!”

I tried to get out of the car but he leaned over and stopped me. The blonde hairs on his tan arms shone softly even on that sunless day. His mouth was close to mine—I could see the slightly chapped skin on his lower lip—and for a second I had the strangest feeling that he wanted to kiss me. It can't be real though, I told myself. You're hallucinating, Weetzie Bat.

“Your dad really loves you,” Winter said. “Just remember that, okay? You're lucky to have a father who loves you so much.”

Then he moved his arm and let me go out into the glitter-less cold.

M
y dad did come a few days before Thanksgiving like he said he would. He was waiting for me, down the street from the Starlight, when I got home from school, sitting parked in the bashed-up yellow T-bird that he had crashed once while making out with my mother as they drove down PCH to watch the sun set at the beach. We had agreed not to tell my mom that he was coming. He looked thinner and paler than when he had left and he still had the five o'clock shadow all over his chin. I thought of how many times it must have been shaved off and sprouted back since I'd last seen him. He got out of the car and held me and I wanted to melt into the warmth of his tweedy arms, become part of him so that he would never be able to leave me. It seems impossible that you can love one person so much, no matter what happens, no matter what they do. How just a lullaby or a turkey dinner can make up for so much in the moment. And how you can keep looking for someone like that person for the rest of your life. I knew then that that is what I would always be doing—looking for a Charlie Bat, for his lullabies and his dinners and his smell and his coats. He put one arm around my shoulders and looked into my face. He had tears in his eyes and I thought about how sometimes he started crying when he read me bedtime stories like
Peter Pan
or
The Wizard of Oz
and how it made my stomach feel weird and ticklish in a bad way to see him like that.

“Are you eating, skinny bones?”

“You should talk.” I squeezed his bicep.

“Well, you look cute skinny. But I think we both need a good Tick Tock cooked meal.”

Going out to eat was one of our favorite things to do together. When I was little he liked to take me to Norms Coffee Shop for hamburgers and vanilla shakes that we ate in the vinyl booths, or we went to Ships where you could make your own toast in the toasters at your table. We had ice-cream cones at Wil Wright's ice-cream parlor in Hollywood, with the striped awning and the parquet floor. We drove all the way out to the Valley to Farrell's where they made a huge ice-cream birthday concoction called the Zoo that was covered with little plastic animals. The waiters, dressed in boater hats, striped shirts, and suspenders, ran around the restaurant honking horns until they arrived at your table to sing “Happy Birthday.” There was also something called a Trough that was so big you became an honorary pig for the night if you ate it all by yourself.

The Tick Tock didn't have Zoos or Troughs but we went there a lot, too. There were cuckoo clocks all over the walls. I wondered who had invented the cuckoo clock. There was something so weird about that little wooden cuckoo popping out of its house every hour.

Charlie escorted me inside and we sat down under the wooden birds and ate the orange sticky buns the restaurant was famous for, as well as turkey dinners with pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and mashed potatoes. We didn't say much to each other through dinner. I kept thinking of things I wanted to ask, and then stopping myself because I was afraid that if I asked it might drive him away even farther and sooner.

Why did you leave?

Why did you and Mom fight?

Why did you go to New York?

Why do you like it better there?

Do you have new friends?

Do you miss us?

Who is the family in number 13?

I didn't ask any of these questions so there was kind of a tense silence through our meal. My dad asked me about school and my friends and how the dog walking was going but he avoided anything about my mom or what I had said during our last phone conversation. I ate too much and my stomach hurt, pressing against the tight waistband of my high-rise jeans.

Finally, I said, “Dad, tell me the truth.”

He put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

“Were you having an affair? Is that the reason you and Mom fought?”

“We've had troubles for years, your mother and I, Weetzie, you know that.”

I pulled apart an orange sticky roll. My fingers were glossy with sugar. “But never this bad.”

He nodded and reached across the table to cup my hand under his. My whole hand disappeared. “Let's not talk about this anymore. I just want to enjoy our time together.”

And, just like that, easy as pie, I fell for it again. It was the same as the lullaby and the dinner and the jacket, dense and tweedy with a world of warmth and comfort inside its lining. His hand on my hand was all I really cared about then. When I got out of the car he gave me a bouquet of pink roses he had hidden in the backseat. I didn't have to hide them from my mom—she was passed out when I got home.

My dad took me out again the next day and we went shopping at a mall. I don't know how he had the money but I didn't question it. He bought me some Clinique face powder and blush in their little pale-green marbled plastic cases and a bottle of Jontue perfume with the unicorn on the box. He even bought me a new pair of Kork-Ease since the pale suede soles of mine were dirty and the beige leather straps had turned a soiled dark brown. They weren't the really high ones but they weren't the almost-flat ones either. I felt greedy, like I wanted to gather up every last bit of pretty to remind me that he had been here, that he cared. In the same way I ate a double-scoop pistachio-and-cherry ice-cream cone and then had popcorn and a large Sprite at the movie theater where we saw
Young Frankenstein
for the second time. My dad guffawed but I just sat there chomping on popcorn and rolling my eyes along with Igor. But still I wanted more. I didn't want it to be over. After the movie we went to Café Figaro for dinner. It was dark and there was sawdust on the floors and we ate bread and soup and the waiters were very beautiful young men in white button-down shirts. My dad and I didn't talk about anything serious. By then I realized that it would only make things harder when he left.

We drove home along Santa Monica Boulevard. Something flashed in my eye and my mind and I put my head out the window and looked behind us at the boy I'd seen. I almost told my dad to stop but something in me hesitated because I didn't want it to be him.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“I thought I recognized someone. A friend from school.”

“Out here? I hope not. No kids should be out here at night.”

I looked at the men in tight pants and small, cropped beards walking along the boulevard, the boys loitering under the streetlights, a strange, alien glitter streaking off of them like pretty, used cars in a nighttime car lot. I had a brief fantasy of bringing them all home with me and feeding them alphabet soup while my mom yelled for more gin from the sofa.

But had I really seen Bobby Castillo among them? My Bobby wearing a short-sleeved pink polo shirt and Top-Siders I'd never seen (that proved it wasn't him, right?), his curls lusciously rebellious in contrast to his clothes? I closed my eyes, my head still out the window, and let the night exhale across my face, blowing away the vision of my friend.

When my dad dropped me off I took my new things out of the bag and held them and smelled them—lilies and leather—until I fell asleep.

The senses can give you magical gifts, no matter what else is happening. Especially if you know how to use them selectively.

I was learning.

He came to see me one last time before he left. He pulled up and stopped the car but he didn't get out. I went over to him and he reached into the seat beside him and picked something up in his hands. It was tiny and it wiggled and yapped. I saw petal ears, a pointy nose, and the brightest black eyes. The slinky body squirmed free from his hands and into mine, and the cold, wet nose began to nuzzle my neck and armpit as if it were looking for milk.

“This is Monroe,” he said. “She is to keep you company while I am gone.”

A puppy should not be an excuse for leaving. Just as ice cream or perfume or roses or the pink rhinestone collar twinkling around Monroe's wrinkly neck weren't. None of it should have been an excuse but I allowed it to be.

Monroe's little heart thrummed under the thin membrane of her skin. She nipped gently at my fingers with her needle teeth. I wanted to dress her up like a baby in a bonnet and roll her around in one of my old doll strollers. I wanted her to sleep in my bed, so the empty feeling that came every night when I turned out the lights would go away. I wanted to feed her puppy chow and take her for walks and clean up her poop with a pooper-scooper. I had been asking my parents for a puppy since I was three and the answer had always been no, so now, as I held her, I felt like a little kid again.

“What will Mom say?”

“Tell her you won her and a lifetime supply of pet food? I'll send you some money for it. Tell her she can't turn a hot dog named after her idol out on the street.”

“A hot dog? Is she a wiener dog?”

“What d'ya think I am, a Chihuahua? A Pomeranian?” he quipped in the voice of an incensed puppy. “I'm purebred as the driven snow and don't you forget it!”

“Does she have all her shots?”

“Yep. But she hasn't had any of those brutal operations yet, so make sure you keep her away from any big bad boy dogs in the neighborhood, until you're both ready for pups. And the same for you I might add, young lady.”

“Dad!”

“Sorry. I just want to make sure your mother is sober enough to be able to explain about those birds and bees.”

“I'm old enough to know about that!” I gave him a disgusted look and he smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry. I forget. You're a young lady now. But that's exactly why I worry.”

Then I did what kids always do when they want to be comforted by a parent who can't really do it for them—I comforted him, even though what I was thinking was, If you don't want me to go boy crazy, why tell the cutest one in the neighborhood to keep an eye on me? “We'll take care of each other,” I said. “Right, Monroe?”

Well, we had to. Charlie was not going to do it for us.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. “What about all those notes I keep finding? Do you know anything about that?”

“What notes?” he asked.

“The Max Factor museum? The tar pits? A mime gave me one.”

“A mime? You should ask that guy in the building. What's his name? Hoople something? He's a mime.”

Monroe whimpered. It was pointless. “Never mind.”

“I have to leave you now, ladies,” he said softly, stepping out of the car and putting his arms around us. Monroe, pressed closer against me, stuck out her tongue as if I'd pushed a button, and licked my face. She felt warm but the day had grown cold. I thought of going in and calling Bobby and Lily. I hadn't seen them all weekend. I would show them Monroe and make hot chocolate with whipped cream and mini marshmallows for us to share. I was starting to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place, reciting the incantation. It was the magic of forgetting.

A
fter my dad left I thought things might settle down a little. I had my friends and a sweet dog and I knew, or at least thought, my father would come back again eventually. School was boring but not as traumatic as it had been. Casey, Jeff, and Rick were sobered by the acne incident even though Casey's face had cleared up. Marci and Kelli seemed to have lost interest in us.