The Vinyl Princess (8 page)

I
completely forgot that I told my dad I would have breakfast with him on Sunday. I’m lying there in a coma, my body desperately clinging to sleep, when my mom flings open my bedroom door. “Your dad,” she says, and thrusts the phone at me as though the phone actually were a six-inch-high version of my dad.

“Hello,” I say groggily, knowing that I should know what this is about.

“Still on for breakfast? I’m almost at the Bay Bridge,” he says. I can hear wind in the phone.

“Yeah, where?” I rub my eyes.

We decide to meet at the Hideaway Café, a ways down from Bob & Bob’s on Telegraph; it’s a sort of weird, sort of cool greasy spoon. By the time my dad pulls up in his old Thunderbird convertible (Kee Kee drives a Mercedes), I’m on my second cup of the worst coffee ever, poured by the most annoyed waitress ever, who hates me. I watch out the window while my dad parks the big car, gets out, goes back once for his phone and then again for his wallet. He finally opens the door of the café and spots me. He walks over and kisses me on the cheek (since when?).

“Hey, you look great, Al.”

Not possible. My hair, which seems to have rebelled against last night’s wig, is pulled back from my face with a bandanna, and three pimples have sprouted on my face overnight, one on my nose and two on my forehead, all of them roughly the size of New Hampshire. It’s probably from all that makeup. Today’s outfit was pulled partly off my bedroom floor and partly from the laundry basket. I look down at my T-shirt and notice a big oily-looking stain.

I look at my dad. “Wish I could say the same about you,” I say moodily. His rugged rock-star looks have faded noticeably since he discovered the good life in Santa Cruz. He looks tired and older somehow. His brown hair is slowly losing the battle to gray. The little gold hoop in his earlobe doesn’t quite work for him like it used to. The waitress seems to feel differently. She’s magically transformed from annoyed to flirtatious. She hovers with coffee, batting her eyelashes. My dad accepts the coffee she’s offering and she’s close to walking off with the pot till I clear my throat and point to my cup. She fills mine, embarrassed. I glower at her.

“What’s good here?” he asks, looking down at his laminated menu after he gives the waitress his winning smile.

“Nothing. I’m going for eggs and greasy hash browns.”

“Me too then . . . and bacon. Kee Kee won’t let me eat meat.”

“How
are
things on the compound?” I ask after the waitress takes our order, helpfully suggesting fresh-squeezed orange juice. We both decline.

“Good. We just got back from Mendocino.”

“What’d you go there for?”

“A yoga retreat.”

“You do yoga?”

“Nah, I went kayaking with Moose. Remember Moose, the roadie?”

“Of course I remember Moose.” Back when I was a kid, he was a happy, smiley guy with apple cheeks and a ZZ Top beard. He was about the size of a refrigerator and he used to give me licorice and airplane rides. “Does he live up there?”

“Yeah. He has for years now. He got himself a great little place and he’s semiretired. He works a bit on a whale-watching boat in Bodega.”

Whales make me think of the TV show we watched the other day, which makes me think of Kit. I haven’t spoken to her yet this morning. I didn’t want to risk waking her, although I doubt she slept much.

“So, was it fun?” I ask.

“Kayaking was great. The yoga heads I could do without.”

We make small talk about nothing that either of us is really interested in until the smiling waitress puts our food down in front of us. She’s making me miss the annoyed version of herself.

“Anything else? More coffee?” She looks directly at my dad as she says this.

“Can I get some Tabasco sauce?” I ask.

“Of course.” She grabs a bottle off the next table and puts it down in front of me without taking her eyes off my dad.

We dig into our breakfast and I tell my dad about the avenue robberies. He feigns interest but he seems distracted. I was planning on telling him all about the blog and the fanzine, something I know he’d be keen on hearing if he were plugged in, but I change my mind. I quickly checked my blog before I left the house. I’m checking it obsessively now. Two comments had appeared on the Janis Joplin blog: one from a girl in Japan who went on in limited English for a while (but I got that she loved Janis) and one comment from that same creep in Seattle who said,
Downloading is king. Long live the king!
What an asshole.

My dad and I watch out the window as a young woman walks by with her arms bent at the elbow and her wrists hovering limply in midair. She holds a sparkly leash in her dangling fingers with a tiny dog at the other end. The other hand holds a cigarette. Her body language is strange, as though she’s at a very chic cocktail party or else the Westminster dog show.

“Hey, Al,” says my dad, turning his attention back to me. “I’ve sort of got some news.”

“Yeah?”

“Kee Kee’s pregnant.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, Dad, weren’t you using birth control? That’s crazy. So what are you going to do? Is it too late for an abortion?”

“No, Al, she wants this . . . we want this.”

“Oh.” I certainly didn’t see
that
coming. Is it my imagination or are both my parents turning into adolescents?

“Be happy for me, Al. It doesn’t change what you and I have.”

“Well, that’s a relief, ’cause I’d sure hate to miss out on all this.” I wave my arm casually around the café.

“Al, c’mon, honey.”

The truth is, I don’t really care. I’m discovering that once somebody physically moves out of your life, it’s impossible for things not to change no matter how hard you try to keep them the same. The place you keep in your heart for that person is always there but it gets smaller and smaller, and I just moved my dad from a spacious loft to a cramped studio. The fact is, he has to make room in his heart for a new baby, and I suspect the place in
his
heart for me will get smaller too. How could it not?

“Can I tell Mom about this?”

“Sure, why not?” He winces slightly.

“She’s seeing someone, you know.” I throw that in for effect.
Now
he’s paying attention.

His eyes change. “She is?”

“Yup.” I twist the knife.

“What’s his name?”

“Jack.”

“What does this ‘Jack’ character do?”

“I dunno. I do know that he’s not a drummer, though.” I look at him squarely.

“What’s he like?”

“He’s great.” I refuse to divulge details. What he’s probably imagining is much worse.

“You like him?”

“Sure,” I lie. I don’t even know him.

“Well, good for her. I want her to be happy,” he says weakly with a thin smile. He excuses himself to use the restroom.

While my dad’s in the bathroom I grab his cell phone off the table and dial Kit’s number. She picks up on the first ring. Her voice is thick with crying.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Oh, hi.” She sniffs.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“No.”

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Chelsea’s number and hanging up when she answers.”

“You want me to come over?”

“Nah. I think I need to be alone right now. How about later?”

“Sure.”

I click the phone off and place it next to my dad’s congealed, half-eaten breakfast. He emerges from the bathroom and walks toward me. He still has the swagger of a rock star. His low-slung jeans fit his lean frame perfectly and his belt looks stolen from Mick Jagger’s wardrobe. Old habits die hard. The waitress brings the check and she’s conveniently included her phone number on it next to a smiley face.

I stand next to my dad’s car with him. I always dread the good-bye part of the visit. It’s horribly awkward, even after a year, and we both seem to feel obligated to act as though we’ll see each other really soon, like tomorrow, or later that day, when we both know that our visits have to be planned and carved out and arranged ahead of time. I can even hear him explaining it to Kee Kee: “Hey, I gotta go see my kid.” My dad goes in for a hug and I try to meet him halfway but it comes off weird and uncomfortable. We try to get away from each other as fast as possible so we don’t have to do it again. Even when we were allegedly happy, my family was never that touchy-feely. There were hugs in all the obvious places but my dad was far more likely to get close to me by putting on some music and saying, “Al, listen to this; you’re gonna flip.” And I’d listen, and I’d flip.

I take off on my skateboard up to Shattuck and turn left. I continue down Shattuck for a few blocks to the Sunday flea market in the Ashby BART parking lot. Even though I’ve never seen M in this neighborhood, I keep an eye peeled for him. It’s a habit I’ve developed. I wonder if M likes kids. I wonder if he’s ever thought about having them. I’m never having children. I’d only screw them up.

The flea is huge and you can pretty much get anything there from a bag of oranges or a kitten to leopardskin car seat covers or a ratchet set. A good crowd of fleagoers meanders from one stall to the next, but I navigate around them and proceed directly to the Dean twins’ stall. Don and Dave Dean are identical twins who sell collectible vinyl. They dress exclusively in vintage rockabilly outfits and they sport matching honey-colored pompadours. They always smell slightly of mothballs. I honestly can’t tell them apart so I rarely call them by their first names.

“Mr. Dean, Mr. Dean.” I greet them as I jump off my skateboard.

“Hey, Allie,” they say in unison.

“Anything new?”

“Yeah, check it out, we picked up a box of Japanese imports in Bakersfield you might be interested in,” says Don or Dave. He points to a crate on the table.

I flip through them. There’s a guy flipping through the crate next to mine. He has vertical hair and very pale skin. He looks older than me but not by much. He’s wearing a bowling shirt that says FELLINI PLUMBING across the back and JIMMY on the pocket. He has a small pile of LPs put aside. He goes to the pile and starts pulling out each LP and scrutinizing its condition.

He holds up a Flaming Lips album,
Oh My Gawd!!!. . . The Flaming Lips
on clear vinyl. “Will you take five for this?” He says this with a heavy New York accent. He must be new around here or else visiting.

Don and Dave look insulted. “Can’t do it; that’s the original 1987 pressing. It’s twenty bucks on eBay. I’ll throw in a dollar LP for free if you take it but I can’t lower the price,” says one of them.

The guy looks torn. He studies his pile again . . . and again. He ends up putting the ten-dollar LP back in the crate. What an idiot. I can’t help myself. I swoop in.

“That’s a pretty righteous LP you’re putting back. You sure you wanna do that? You don’t see it around much. It’s totally collectible. If you don’t take it I will. Even though I already own it.”

He regards me from behind his Buddy Holly glasses like I’m an alien. I get that a lot. Guys don’t expect a girl to know that stuff, especially out on the street like this.

Don or Dave winks at me.

The guy takes the LP back out of the box and adds it to the pile. The Deans total up his pile and he digs around in his pockets for the money.

“Hey, thanks.” He grins at me.

“Don’t mention it.” I fake a curtsy and he disappears into the crowd.

I settle on a Japanese import of Roxy Music’s
Manifesto
that they have marked for ten bucks but they give it to me for eight. The discount is my take for selling the guy on the Flaming Lips.

I suddenly remember my fanzines and I unbuckle my messenger bag and take out a stack.

“Hey, do you think you guys could give these out to your customers for me? I started a blog called ‘The Vinyl Princess’ and I’m trying to drum up some readers.”

Don and Dave each take a copy and flip through it. “This is awesome, Allie,” says one of them.

“Cool logo,” says the other.

“Hey, I’ll tell you what. If you distribute these for me, I’ll give you an ad in next month’s issue for free.”

“Sure, cool,” says Don or Dave.

“Deal,” says Don or Dave.

I bid the Deans a good day and get back on my board with my new LP under my arm and weave my way through the market and back up Shattuck, headed for home. I turn right on Dwight and I’ve gone a couple of blocks when I spot the familiar late-model BMW with the fancy rims, parked against the curb next to a plumbing supply store. The black-leather-jacket guy with the bling is leaning up against the car with his arms crossed. No one else is around, the block is deserted, but he keeps looking nervously up and down the street. When he sees me approaching, he gives me an intimidating stare. I zip past him with my eyes to the ground and cross the street on the next corner. That was weird.

Back in my hood, it’s like that Monkees song, “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Mrs. Kobayashi is planting flowers under an oak tree in her front yard, wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat. She and I both have Sundays off. I wave to her and walk up the path to my house. I look up at Suki’s window and lock eyes with Pierre, who’s lying in the open window, gazing down at me lazily. I kick my board up with my heel and carry it into the house.

M
y mother and my grandmother are sprawled out in the living room drinking coffee out of big mugs. My grandmother’s mug advertises a drug for the prevention of high cholesterol and my mom’s says WORLD’S GREATEST GOLFER. The coffee table is laid out with lox and bagels and cream cheese from Saul’s Deli. Sections of the
New York Times
are scattered about. This is a Sunday tradition. My grandmother drives over from Walnut Creek, where she lives in an over-fifty community that she’s transformed into a kibbutz for blue-hairs. The docile retirees out there didn’t know what hit them when tornado Estelle arrived on the scene from New York five years ago with big plans for “improving” things. She worked her way up to president of the condo association in a New York minute and proceeded to Estelle-ize the place. She’s had everyone from Ralph Nader to Gloria Steinem out to shake things up in an author series she organized, and canasta tournaments are on the activities schedule permanently, as are ashtanga yoga, kickboxing and Pilates. She set up a residents’ art gallery and a library in the former rec room and she holds weekly salons to talk about books, movies and politics. She’s famous for her letter-writing campaigns to government officials: Bill and Hillary Clinton are her pen pals; so is Robert Kennedy Jr., and she’s working on Barbra Streisand.

The community van used to take the residents to Safeway for senior discounts on Thursdays; now it takes them to the Museum of Modern Art and the Asian Art Museum for docent-led tours, all arranged by Estelle. She also heads up the now-popular yearly fitness/art/culinary trips to Europe. The children of these people who were counting on healthy inheritances must love watching their money evaporate as Estelle jets their parents off to Tuscany for yet another adventure.

“Allie, gimme a hug, honey.” She looks at me over her tiny reading glasses.

“Hi, Estelle.” I’m not allowed to call her “Grandma” or, God forbid, “Bubbie.” When I complained once she said that my only other option was “Ms. Horowitz.”

I hug her and she squeezes me hard and gives me a big fish-scented kiss on my cheek. I collapse next to her on the sofa and put my feet up on the table. She pats my thigh with her hand. Her fingers are long and thin and tan and she wears a big amethyst ring on her middle finger and a silver band on her thumb. My mom’s reading the book review section of the
Times
.

“How was your breakfast?” she asks, lowering the paper to look at me.

I shrug. “Okay. Kee Kee’s pregnant, by the way.”

My mom and my grandmother lock eyes.

“What a putz,” says my grandmother, shaking her head.

My mom seems amused. “Well, that particular honeymoon is over.” She looks at me. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. What do I care?”

“That’s the spirit,” says Estelle, patting my thigh again. “Oy, men. They just can’t seem to get past that primal need to spread their seed.” She looks at my mom. “When your father proclaimed that he wanted a child—and I have to be honest, I was ambivalent—I said, ‘Julian, one child and then I’m right back on birth control.’”

“Gee, Mom, don’t get so sentimental; I’m misting up over here.”

“Don’t act like you were any different. I taught you well.”

My mom rolls her eyes.

My grandmother’s been married three times, divorced twice and widowed once. She married a doctor, an architect and a retired archaeologist. Even though she’s Jewish, she’s never had a Jewish husband, which makes my mom half Jewish and me a quarter. My mom’s dad was the architect. He died when I was ten. The way the story goes is that my grandfather had a heart attack behind the wheel while they were driving to the Adirondacks to visit their friends Shirley and Maury, who have a summer cabin up there. My grandmother climbed over the seat, took the wheel, and navigated the car safely off the road and then she called 911 on my grandfather’s cell phone. While they waited for the ambulance, Estelle tried to keep my grandfather’s spirits up by singing show tunes and telling him bad jokes. Just before the ambulance arrived, he turned to my grandmother and he said, “Estelle, you kill me.” And then he closed his eyes and died.

Estelle taught my mom to be very independent and, as she was seeing her off to UC Berkeley at eighteen, she announced that she was selling the condo on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and downsizing to a small apartment in the Village, so my mom would have to sleep on the couch in the living room the next time she came home. My mom never went back to New York, and, during her many visits west before and after her divorce from her third husband, Estelle eventually decided that California was a good place to live, even though she had always said New York was the only place on earth she would ever live. She moved out here too. All her friends moved to Florida but she didn’t care. She said that New Yorkers go to Florida to die and she felt very much alive.

“How was your week, Estelle?” I ask, pulling the amethyst ring off her finger and putting it on my own. I admire my bejeweled hand.

“Well, let’s see. I signed up for a nude drawing class at the art center. That starts in a week. What else? Oh, I went on a date with Stanley Kozinski on Tuesday.”

“Who’s Stanley Kozinski?” I ask, trying to remove the ring. It won’t come off.

“A schmuck who likes to hear himself talk.”

“So, no second date?” I stick my middle finger in my mouth, trying to lubricate it.

“God, no. Oh, I bought one of those MP3 thingies for my power walks, a tiny one; it’s the size of a matchbook. I love that little thing. My Pilates instructor, Sarah, loaded it up for me with music. Have you seen these things, Allie? They’re absolutely amazing.”

“This Sarah person, she downloaded all the music on it from the net?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know from the net. All I know is that there’s more music on this little thing than I’ll ever get to. It’s fantastic. I’ve got show tunes, classical, jazz, big band, folk, you name it.”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this revelation. My grandmother’s what I like to call “neonouveau.” She embraces anything new like a gadget-hungry adolescent. She’s especially vulnerable to TV-advertised exercise doodads like the Ab Rocket and the ThighMaster.

The ring finally gives and I slide it off and put it back on her finger.

I leave them to the
Times
and go upstairs to call Kit. She sounds a lot better but I can hear The Smiths’
The Queen Is Dead
playing in the background (music to kill yourself by), so I tell her I’m coming right over. When I get there, I stand on the porch ringing the doorbell for a long time before Kit answers the door in a fuzzy bathrobe. Kit’s parents are almost never home. Sometimes, it’s like they moved away and forgot to mention it to her. Her dad does something called aerosol research at UC Berkeley. I have no idea what that means. I imagine guys in lab coats, spraying Arrid Extra Dry on one another. Her mom does hospice care, apparently around the clock.

Kit’s nose is all pink and raw and there’s a trail of used tissues that look like white carnations leading up to her bedroom. We follow them like bread crumbs up the stairs and she shuts the door behind us. I knock about fifty soggy tissues onto the floor and climb onto her bed.

“Have you talked to Niles?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Her face hardens. “So, get this: I acted like I wasn’t there last night and I said, ‘Hey, how was the gig?’ And he’s all, ‘Oh, you know, same old, same old.’ So I said, ‘What’d you do after?’ And he says, ‘Me and the boys went out for beers.’ And I said, ‘Really, the boys? ’Cause I was there, asshole, and that person you left with didn’t look like a boy to me.’ And then he got really quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Hey, c’mon, baby, you know she doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just a groupie. You know how it is. I love
you
, baby. There’s no one else for me.’ And then I hung up on him.”

“Has he called back?”

“Yeah, five times but I’m not picking up.” Her eyes well up and she dabs at them with a wad of tissue.

“Good. Wait till you’re stronger; then you can kill him.”

She nods. I take her free hand and I squeeze it. We lie side by side on her bed, looking up at the ceiling.

I sigh. “Man, what a shithead.”

“Yeah, but I’ll never meet anyone as cool as that shithead again.”

“Yeah, you will.”

“No, I won’t, and you want to hear something really terrible? All I want to do right now is go over there and be in his arms. How pansy-ass weak is that?”

“I think that’s normal. But maybe musicians aren’t really the way to go. I don’t think they’re very good at committed relationships. Too much temptation, you know?” I think my mom might have said this very thing to me once while we waited on the side of the stage for my dad to finish chatting up yet another young female fan so we could go home.

“I know, I know, but the fact is, I still love him and now I have to figure out a way not to and I don’t really know how to do that.” Her voice catches and she dabs her eyes again.

“I don’t either but we’ll think of something, okay?” I turn my head and look at her.

She nods. “Hey, do you think it was because my breasts are too small?”

“No, Kit, I don’t.”

“’Cause you know, I was thinking, I’ve got all this money saved up for this road trip we were supposed to go on and maybe I should just get the breasts I’ve always wanted.”

“But that’s crazy! You’re only sixteen; your breasts haven’t even finished growing yet.”

“What if they have, though? I’ll be seventeen in two months! What if this is all I get?” She looks down at her chest.

“So what? You look great. Kit, you don’t want to mess with that stuff.”

“Remember Wanda Wilson from middle school?”

“Of course. She took me shoplifting when I was fourteen.”

“Well, remember how flat-chested she was?”

“We were fourteen.”

“She was fifteen, actually. She got held back in sixth grade.”

“Don’t expect my jaw to drop. What about her?”

“Well, I saw her the other day on Telegraph and she told me she’d had a boob job and it was the best thing she ever did.”

“Well, for someone who had a police record at fourteen, that might be true.”

“She even let me feel them.”

“Ewwwww!”

“No, that’s just it; they felt perfectly natural and they looked fantastic.”

“Where did she get the money? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Don’t you need permission from your parents?”

“I can get it, and besides, I’ll be eighteen soon and then I can do what I want.”

“Yeah, like in two years.”

“Fourteen months. Anyway, Wanda gave me the name of her doctor. I’m making an appointment.”

“Kit, this is crazy. Wait a few days; I’m sure you’ll feel different.” I try distracting her. “Hey, how about we go over to Joey Spinelli’s pizza place on Friday. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure, but I wish you’d be more supportive of this. It’s what I want.”

“I know, but don’t you think that the part of you that wants this might be the part that would do anything to get Niles back?”

“No.” She rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands and sighs. “I feel awful. I think I’m dehydrated from crying.”

“You want me to make you some tea?”

“That would be nice.”

While I’m down in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, I start thinking about Joey Spinelli and how he always goes for a certain “type.” I wonder if M’s got a type. Could having a type be involuntary? Do we find ourselves drawn to certain physical traits in the opposite sex for no apparent reason? Things like height, skin color, hair color, eye color, breast size, bone structure? Is that all planted in our psyches when we’re children or even in the womb, so that we spend our lives searching for someone we’ve been picturing in the back of our minds forever? What about character traits like sense of humor, intelligence and compassion? Do those all fall by the wayside till we’ve found our physical match? No wonder relationships rarely work out. Are we filling the gaps with types that we’re only too happy to discard when we find something closer to the “picture” we’re programmed to find? Or, even worse, do we settle for something close and then go about trying to change our mates into the picture? I guess that would explain a lot of plastic surgery. It seems to me that women, even smart women, are willing to transform their physical selves at their mate’s slightest whim. Men, not so much.

I search through the kitchen cupboards and finally find some chamomile tea. I take a mug from the dishwasher and drop the tea bag in. The kettle whistles and I pour the steaming water into the mug and watch the water turn the color of straw. I gaze out the window, thinking about M again. In fact, I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow because there’s a chance in hell that I might see him. It’s possible that I’m developing a full-blown obsession with a stranger. I should probably have my head examined.

I hear the shower go on upstairs, a good sign. A shower is always the first step back into the real world. Without even thinking about it, I start to hum a song from the sound track to
South Pacific
called “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair.” My mom and I have watched that movie together a few times. It’s pretty cheesy but I love it.