T. Parker: California Girl

“Yeah, Irene. A sister back in Brownsville.”

Janelle let the screen door slam shut behind her. She looked at Andy, then at her father. Climbed into one of the porch chairs. Pulled a footstool into place, crossed her bobby-socked ankles over the rattan.

“Except Mom didn’t love Irene,” she said. “Didn’t love anybody, including herself. That’s why she killed herself. Put that in the newspaper if you want.”

“That’s disrespectful and untrue,” said Karl Vonn. “He won’t print something like that.”

“No sir, I won’t.”

Janelle Vonn stared at Andy. Her nose was upturned and her cheeks lightly freckled and full. She was rounded. Not sharp. Antithetical to her father. Andy was convinced that in some illogical and maybe even miraculous way, Janelle’s face was never going to become the drawn, hopeless face of her mother.

“It’s better to love everybody,” she said. “You can’t love too much. You can only not love enough. Says right in the Bible. Somewhere. I’m sure of it.”

With this she hopped onto the footstool. Shook her curls for one blurred moment, spread her arms. Then fixed Andy with an unfathomable eye-to-eye look. She tried to make her voice rough and grown-up as she sang:

Baby, time will pass you by

But you can catch up if you try

So be whatever you want to be

And, baby, you can count on me.

She jumped off and ran back into the house laughing, colliding with Meredith on her way in.

Karl Vonn watched her go, then settled his black eyes back onto Andy. He sipped the wine with difficulty, still holding the glass by the rim.

“So, you saw a lot of death in the Pacific, Mr. Vonn?”

“I killed fourteen up close. That isn’t for the paper, boy.”

“I understand.”

“You absolutely do.”

ROGER STOLTZ and his tiny pretty wife, Marie, came by later that afternoon. Everyone followed them to the living room with their wine and after-dinner drinks and cigarettes. The Stoltzes got the seats of honor, Andy noted-the nice leather recliners his father and mother usually sat in. Max’s was blue, Monika’s white. His parents and the others arranged themselves in a circle of respect. Karl Vonn and his two daughters were introduced to them. Stoltz smiled at the girls, hugged each one, and touched their arms consolingly. Marie looked into each girl’s eyes while she spoke to them.

Andy noted David’s obeisance to Stoltz. Stoltz was eight years older than David. Stoltz had helped to arrange a position for David when he was finished with his Presbyterian education. David would be attached to First Presbyterian in Anaheim. This was no mean feat for a young minister. The presbytery in Southern California had too many young ministers as it was, David had told him. Something like three thousand too many.

The room swam with voices and faces and the flames from the big fireplace. Andy couldn’t get Karl Vonn’s words out of his mind, or Alma ’s words, or the expression on Meredith’s face earlier. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his tie loosened but he was still sweltering in a room that was apparently fine for everyone else.

He stood next to Meredith and listened to Roger Stoltz hold forth about the Communist threat, how it was so obvious what the Bolsheviks had in mind with the United Nations, and watch Cuba he said, with Fidel and Raúl and Che Guevara down from the Sierra Maestra you’re going to have Russian puppets running a country ninety miles off our shore. Khrushchev will try to bring in all kinds of menace, he said-machine guns to missiles-you watch, you’ll see.

Andy had heard Roger Stoltz use that sentence before: You watch, you’ll see. Stoltz’s voice was clear and not loud but the timbre of it cut through other voices and bored straight into Andy’s brain. Marie looked ten years older than her husband. Something preserved about her, thought Andy-something halted, like a photograph.

Meredith led him outside for some fresh air.

He followed her off the porch, away from the light and windows. In the darkness of the grove they kissed. Andy felt a determination he’d never felt from her before, the same thing he’d seen in the look she gave him before Clay had tried to claim her attention by embarrassing her.

“Ready to do all this again?” she asked, breaking away, almost breathless.

“Yeah, sure.”

The agreement was they’d do the Becker family get-together early and the Thornton family dinner later.

“I love you, Andy. I realized it, just sitting there watching you and your family.”

She’d never said “I love you” to him and he knew that these words made all the difference in the world. For the second time that night Andy’s words failed him. He was aware that his mouth was partly open and something hard was lodged between his chest and his throat.

“I’m ready now,” she said.

“Where?”

“The Serenade. Nobody’ll know if we park the Submarine in back.”

“I’ll get a bottle of wine.”

“Fantastic. I’ll say my goodbyes. I’ll hurry.”

WHILE MEREDITH waited in the Submarine Andy signed the register as Mr. and Mrs. Neal Cassady. He hoped the name would mean nothing to the middle-aged Mexican woman at the desk. He had placed his Tustin High School class ring on his left hand and spun the black face of it inward so it looked like a wedding band. She did not meet his eyes as she handed him the registration card or handed him the pen or took his cash.

A few minutes later Andrew James Becker pushed open the door to paradise: four walls, a painting of a Mexican casita in a desert, a bathroom, and a bed.

To be kissing Meredith while standing next to that bed was almost too much for him. He went very slowly, helping her with her clothes and letting her help with his, all while his penis seemed to be bellowing at him to hurry up. When she held it for the first time Andy bit his lip and shot immediately. Almost cried with embarrassment but she held on to the shocking thing and laughed in a way that made him feel better. He kissed her everywhere while she shivered and shook. He had never imagined such wonderful, powerful tastes and smells. Like he’d wandered into a secret garden.

A little later when she took him inside Andy could tell she was tense and afraid. But she was wet and eager too as she pulled him in hard and got it over with with a faint yelp. She cried in his arms so Andy cried, too, then they found themselves laughing. They held each other and made love again.

Later Andy got his watch off the floor and gave Meredith the bad news.

“I don’t want to go,” she said. “We didn’t even open the wine.”

“Let’s have a glass,” he said.

“There’s no time. But please come here, Andy. There’s time for you to hold me.”

1963

DAVID STOOD ON THE crumbling asphalt of the old Grove Drive-In Theater in Orange and looked up at the movie screen. It was early summer and the screen shimmered down at him with white heat.

“What would your church do with this property, Reverend?” asked the realtor. His name was Bob. He was sweating hard. A small American flag was pinned on his lapel.

“We have some ideas,” said David.

Bob smiled uncertainly. Wiped his forehead with his jacket sleeve and looked up at the screen again. “It’s been sitting empty for five years. Ten acres. Speakers and speaker stands, playground for the kids, snack bar and kitchen, projection room, everything. The property taxes killed it and the walk-in theaters ended up with most of the business. A management group owns it now.”

The last movie David had seen on that screen was ten years ago, when he was seventeen. Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity. He and some buddies had climbed the wall just after dusk, run to one of the empty parking spaces and set up their beach chairs, turned the speakers around them all up high, and sat in the chill night while the bullets flew. The theater manager found them half an hour later. Let them stay because most of the spaces were empty anyway.