The Tribes of Palos Verdes (19 page)

My mother freezes, a smile rising and falling. She says she wants us all to stay together tonight. She says it's high time we had a family night. She clicks the channel changer.

Jim suddenly drops her hand and runs out of the house.

A horn sounds.

*   *   *

“You look beautiful,” Adrian says in the car. “Wow.”

I kiss him, brushing carpet fibers off my dress, smoothing my hair.

“Let's go somewhere special tonight. Finals are over,” he says.

“I know just the place.”

My father's house is cavernous, the ceilings are arched like a medieval church. I tiptoe through his white living room, his Chinese lacquered furniture. I sit down at an oak table for twelve.

“Did my dad say anything about me coming to live here?”

“No.”

“He hasn't called us in two weeks. My mother says he wants to split me and Jim up.” I glare at the shiny silver candlesticks.

Then I say, “I'd never live here,” but I'm thinking of the shabby furniture at the house on Via Neve, the corduroy couch, thick with dog hairs, the rickety rattan, the scratched tables.

I run a paper clip over the smooth antique table, leaving a scratch.

Adrian sits close, watching for a moment, then takes the paper clip and smiles. He draws a thin line next to mine.

“Now it's official,” he says.

“Some maid will buff it out. Now for the fun part—where's the master bedroom?”

“You're crazy,” Adrian says.

We climb the spiral staircase to my father's bedroom; I jump on his mountain range of pillows, pulling it apart, ripping it.

“They've got a beautiful bed.”

“Yeah.”

“Are there millions hidden under the mattress?” I ask, laughing carefully.

“No,” he says. “They hide money in a fake cantaloupe in the refrigerator.”

I giggle with him and punch the rose silk bedspread. I throw Turkish pillows against the wall until the feathers eddy on the air-conditioned breeze. I kick over the table, shattering a glass vase.

“This is fun,” I say, “isn't it?”

“Sure,” he says, uneasily.

“My father won't want me now,” I say.

I pull him on top of me, kissing him. We roll around for a few minutes, running our hands over each other's bumpy, hot clothes. Then he turns over, lights my father's candles, switches off the lamp. Looking me in the eye, he pulls my sweater over my head, but the buttons gets stuck in my hair. I tell him to close his eyes. Then I strip down, naked.

“Okay, open them,” I say, turning around slowly so he can see. He looks at my body, biting his lip. Then he strips, too, and stands in front of me.

“I like your arms,” I tell him, feeling the smooth tricep muscles with my hands.

When we lie down on my father's bed, Adrian takes my hand, guides it down. I tell him I've never done oral sex before, but I want to try it on him. I tell him I'll go slow, not to move.

“I won't,” he promises, closing his eyes, waiting. I kiss his stomach, laughing when his muscles quiver, feeling his body rise up.

I look at his face to see if I'm doing it right. His eyes are wide open, his mouth moving, hurrying me on. When I choke he slows down, grabbing my hair, pulling it hard. The candles flicker in a sudden rush of air and I see a framed photograph of my father in Hawaii on the nightstand. Looking at it, I pull my mouth away. I sit up, pulling in my elbows, covering my breasts with my arms.

Adrian looks up, noticing me look at the photograph. He's breathing hard, then he rolls onto his stomach away from me.

He tells me to turn the damn photograph over.

We listen to a siren move past.

“Let's go to your room,” I say, breaking the silence.

*   *   *

Adrian drops me off at eleven. There's a beach towel hanging over my brother's window so I can't see in. I throw pebbles at it until he opens the window just a crack, then tells me the bottomfeeders are harassing him for the money he owes. They're coming to his window, rattling it, making threats.

At midnight, the bottomfeeders are lying in the army tent in a cloud of smoke. There is loud music coming from the corner, metal thrashing sounds. I hover a few feet from the opening of the tent and call out, “Hey, Simm, how much does Jim owe?”

“I can't hear you,” Simm says. “Come in.”

“I said,” I shout, “how much fucking money?”

Josh comes to the mouth of the tent, pulling his long hair from his eyes.

“Look, it's Medina Mason.” He makes a sarcastic face. “How do you do?” Then he laughs, and says, “I know how you do, I've heard you're pretty good.”

“Here.” I throw sixty dollars in tens and fives into the tent, and then step back.

Josh comes out, looking at the cash, spitting at my feet, thrashing around to the music, singing. Spitting again. “Punk rock is cool,” he says and laughs.

“You're a homo, Josh,” Simm says. “Sixty isn't gonna cut it, Medina, he owes at least one fifty.”

“Please leave Jim alone. I'll bring more later, but this is all I've got saved,” I tell him.

Simm looks at my legs. “That isn't all you've got.”

*   *   *

There are no fires for a few days. Life goes on as usual.

My mother tags the family furniture, plastic sheets it for removal. She happily signs the waivers, releasing it. After a week, a van pulls up with new furniture—light oak, Italian marble. New rugs are softly wheeled in. My mother signs and signs.

“It's almost perfect now,” she tells Jim. “We'll have a beautiful house, better than his.”

“I'm not going to steal from Dad anymore,” Jim says.

“I can't hear you,” she says, shushing him.

Our family portrait is back in its space over the fireplace, except someone is missing. In his place is the family pug dog, beautifully rendered. My brother and I, on either side of the dog, are separated by an unnatural gap, because Puggles isn't quite big enough to fill the space between us.

My father still hasn't called.

*   *   *

Jim is sitting in the backyard when I come home from the store. He tells me he doesn't want to go inside; he's afraid of the bottomfeeders. He says the house is evil now, dark and hot, full of plastic and packing chemicals.

“I hate all that new stuff,” he says. “It smells horrible.”

I think for a while, then tell him I have an idea.

“We can take the old tent out of the garage,” I say. “We'll set it up right here, live in the backyard until Dad comes home.”

“Dad won't let me live with him.” I tell him he's wrong, and I can prove it.

“How?” he asks hopefully. Then I tell him I'll bet my surfboard. Then he knows I'm telling the truth. He's suddenly energetic, full of plans.

“We don't even have to go inside to use the bathroom, we'll just rough it in the yard like we're camping, tell ghost stories at night,” he says.

But when we go to the garage, the tent is gone. The shelves are empty except for my sleeping bag and Jim's old bike. Even the paddle machine has vanished. My mother has given all the old stuff to Goodwill.

*   *   *

“Card number 234-237-116-221 has been canceled,” a catalog operator tells my mother when she tries to order a color television for Jim.

“What do you mean?” my mother says. “I'm Mrs. Phil Mason.”

The operator says, “Your card is void. Until Mr. Phil Mason reinstates you, Visa cannot authorize your use of the card.”

“But it's important,” my mother insists. Then she tries again. “I also have a Mastercard.”

When the operator comes back on the line, he tells my mother the Mastercard has been canceled, too.

“Who'll pay?” she cries, kicking the leg of the couch, cracking it.

*   *   *

Starfish can grow new legs. If you break four legs off, they might grow six back. Many have survived in the red tide pools until this week, but even they are beginning to wash up on the beach.

The remaining members of the Palos Verdes Key Club mobilize, wearing gauze masks and full-body rain gear.

They scoop the tenacious orange creatures off the rocks with garden shovels, sometimes breaking off a leg or two, and put them in Ziploc bags for transport to Laguna Beach. A battalion of Mercedes sedans and station wagons waits on Via Neve, back seats carefully coated with plastic sheeting against leaks.

In the closest tide pool, a Fish and Game Department scientist demonstrates “proper relocation procedure.” Tennis ladies giggle as they practice, neatly applying starfish to wet granite, as if gluing on Halloween decorations.

“Come on, stick, stick,” Harriet House says, mashing a starfish enthusiastically onto a tide pool rock, coaching it. “You gotta stick, little guy.”

As the cars drive away in a line, Jim and I stand in the driveway, waving to the neighbors. My mother watches from the window, crouched back a bit. A police car slowly cruises toward us, then stops. My mother bangs on the window, motioning for us to come inside. She opens the screen, calling out our names, telling us to come to her immediately.

“Is everything okay over here?” the cop says. Jim stands, frozen. I nod, confused. My mother is frantic now, she's yelling for the cop to get off our driveway.

“Do you have a search warrant?” she yells. “You can't come on my property without a search warrant!”

The policeman turns to Jim and me, then we hear a crash. My mother is throwing ashtrays and plates out the window, shouting at the cop, telling him she'll call the FBI if he doesn't get off our driveway immediately.

The cop takes a breath, then lets it out slowly. Turning to leave, he shakes his head, tired.

“Your father called us from France. He asked us to check on you, because he can't get through on the phone.”

“He's lying,” my mother says. “There haven't been any calls at all.”

*   *   *

The fire tonight is at Dapplegray Down. Someone sees a man run away from the flames. He is described as Tall. Mexican. Fast. A posse of citizens surrounds the peninsula each night. But the arsonist knows how to evade them.

As Adrian and I watch the flames, I tell him Jim's in big trouble; he isn't eating anything and he's taking lots of pills.

“I need money,” I say. “I want you to get the money out of the fake cantaloupe in my father's refrigerator.”

“You're acting like he killed someone,” Adrian says, serious.

On the way home, we pass a guy hiding in the bushes near my house. He's sitting on a backpack, eyes glinting red in the headlights.

I don't tell Adrian it's my brother.

*   *   *

My mother locked all the doors again tonight. Even my sliding glass door. I throw pebbles at Jim's window, but he's gone. I wait outside, face pressed to the glass, breathing in swirls, writing him a message in a fog of breath.

I have to talk to you.

I go to sleep in the garden inside my tan Big Five sleeping bag from the garage, watching silvery snails circle the wet ferns and the leaves of the eucalyptus tree flash in the moonlight. The air is blowing from the south, mixing the smell of red tide with salt and ash. I crawl into the bottom part of the bag, hoping the snails can't reach me.

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, Jim wakes me up by sitting on my head.

“Where were you?” I say, pushing him off. “Gross.”

“Shhhh. Come to the pool.”

Jim is dirty, red-eyed, lighting matches and throwing the lit ones toward the deep end.

“I saw you in the bushes,” I say. “Were you waiting for me?”

“You've been right about Mom,” he says in a deep, strange voice. “I'm sorry I didn't believe you.”

For the next half hour he stays silent, smoking, paddling from end to end of the dirty, heated water on a surfboard. I swim next to him with a diver's flashlight, guiding his way. He takes the flashlight, gets out of the water and throws it at the moon.

When he finally speaks again, his voice cracks, he says he can't believe she's been lying all this time. He wants to kill her. “I can't stop thinking about killing her.

“Are you afraid of me now?” he asks, shivering, not looking at me.

“No,” I say, kissing him. “And I know you're the arsonist.”

I say this casually, as if speaking about the temperature of water.

*   *   *

“Get up,” Jim whispers just before sunrise, gently splashing me awake from a nervous sleep. The tortoises are asleep on the deck, burrowed in their box.

My mother struggles down the steps, yawning. She has her hand on her hip, looking past me to Jim in the deep end.

“What are you doing out here?” she calls out.

“Looking at the stars,” I say, quickly.

“Counting them,” Jim yells, “one, two, three, four.” He laughs bitterly. “There are so many stars, it takes all night to count them.”

“What? What?” my mother says, coming to the edge of the pool.

“Don't come any further, or you might drown,” Jim yells, splashing her lightly until she squeals.

“She's meeellllting,” he cries out, splashing her again, imitating the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz.

His eyes glitter dangerously. His cigarette smolders. The first slice of sun glimmers through the blackness.

*   *   *

There are only a few sentences about pyromaniacs in the book I borrowed from the library,
Abnormal Psychology.
All of them fit.

“Pyromaniacs are secretive and evasive. Even those closest to them are often strangers to their secrets. Pyromania, like any of the mania-class disorders, is a serious illness—it is always difficult to stop the patient's obsessive thought patterns from reoccurring. In some cases impossible…”

*   *   *