Mendocino and Other Stories Read online

  The guest room door was closed. I went into my room, put my books on my desk, and lay down on my bed. I closed my eyes and waited to see what would materialize—the glittering ballroom, the dark restaurant, the umbrella-shaded outdoor cafe: at that time the arena of my fantasy life was limited to places where I would not be alone with the object of my idylls. After a moment, the restaurant hovered into view. The walls were lined with smoky mirrors, the tables covered with pale pink linen and set with gold-rimmed china. I was tall and sleek in a clingy silver gown sewn all over with shimmering little beads. A handsome, square-jawed man—with whom I never, in all the adolescent hours I spent in his company, exchanged a word—met me at the door and guided me to our secluded table, his hand in the small of my back. (I had just learned about the small of your back; it was where you were supposed to aim your tampon, and although that was nearly as unpleasant to think of as it was to do, the idea of that spot had a kind of power over me. It suggested romance—not the candlelight and flowers kind, but something easier, more intimate.)

  I heard a noise from Bobby's room. It wasn't much of a noise: low and repetitive and only vaguely vocal. But before I was really even aware of the sound, I'd convinced myself that sex was taking place on the other side of the wall.

  I turned my radio on, loud, and sat at my desk looking at my Latin book, my heart pounding. A moment later I got up and clomped past the guest room and down the stairs. I paused in the kitchen, but the idea of the two of them—Bobby in pajama bottoms, a tousle-haired girl in the matching pajama top—coming down in search of something to drink sent me out to the garage.

  Leaning against the wall was a brand-new basketball hoop attached to a backboard. I looked it over for a minute or two: the backboard was white with jaunty red trim; the basket itself was a metal circle from which hung a flimsy-looking white net. I bent my knees and tried to lift it, but it was surprisingly heavy.

  “Careful with that, it's heavier than it looks.”

  I turned around and Bobby was standing in the doorway, his long arms dangling by his sides.

  “I was going to put that up for Danny this afternoon,” he said. He was wearing gym shorts and a grey T-shirt, and there were big dark stains where he'd been sweating. I must have been staring, because he said, “I was doing sit-ups.”

  “Danny's not much of an athlete,” I said.

  “Everyone likes to shoot baskets.”

  “Does my mother know?”

  He gave me a funny look. “She bought it.”

  I turned from him and examined the hoop again. “These strings don't seem too sturdy,” I said.

  He laughed and came over to where I was standing. “They're not meant to hold any weight. They hug the ball when it goes through so it'll drop down gently instead of flying all over the court. Stick around while I put it up and I'll show you.”

  “I have homework,” I said.

  He nodded. “More math?”

  “Latin.”

  “Can't help you there. The only Latin I know is pig.”

  I edged toward the door. “Well,” I said. “See you later.”

  “O-say ong-lay,” he said with a smile.

  A FEW NIGHTS later my mother came into my room on her way to bed. I was rearranging my closet, and she sat at my desk and watched me.

  “I guess we should get you a new parka this year,” she said.

  “This one's OK.” I hung it on a hook inside the closet door.

  “Maybe a down one,” she said. “I was thinking we should go up to Tahoe in February. Try again.” When I was eight or nine the four of us had spent a miserable weekend trying to learn to ski; we'd never gone back. My father had liked to say that we were the only family in California who didn't love the fact that the mountains were only five hours from the beach.

  “Down jackets aren't good for skiing,” I said. “Too bulky.”

  “Elizabeth,” she said. “Why do you have to be so difficult?”

  I looked at her; her lips were pressed into a narrow line. “I'm not being difficult. I just don't happen to want a down jacket.”

  “That's not the point,” she said. “I mention skiing and you don't react at all. Can't you at least say, ‘Yes, Mother dear, a ski trip would be lovely,’ or ‘No, Mother dear, the idea of trying to ski again makes my legs turn to jelly’?”

  I turned back to the closet. Very quietly, I said, “I'll go if you want me to.”

  “I want you to have an opinion.”

  I shrugged, but suddenly there were tears running down my face. I stared at my clothes.

  “Eliz?”

  “I can't.”

  She came over and touched my shoulder and I turned around. “What is it?” she said. She pulled me close and held me, and my shoulders started to shake. “What is it?”

  I shook my head.

  She ran her hand up and down my back. “Tell me,” she said. “Poor baby, to have such a brute of a mother. Tell me.”

  I pulled away from her, got a Kleenex from my desk, and blew my nose. “Why do you have to get so mad at me?”

  “I'm sorry.” She sat down on my bed and shook her head. She looked very small, sitting there; small and tired. There were wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and her hair looked thin and lifeless.

  I heard the sound of someone—Bobby—opening and closing the front door and coming up the stairs. A moment later, the guest room door closed.

  “I'm sorry,” my mother said again. “I'll try to be better.”

  I held my forefinger up to my lips, then pointed at the wall dividing my room from Bobby's. He can hear us, I mouthed.

  She smiled at me. “He doesn't care,” she whispered.

  “Well,” I whispered back, “I do.”

  WITH THE COMING of the basketball hoop Bobby was around more, and I had to find a new place to work on my pompon routine. I moved down to the basement, and against the muffled yet insistent sounds of the basketball bouncing on the asphalt and—thud—hitting the backboard, I settled on the Beach Boys' “I Get Around,” and began to choreograph my moves.

  Late one afternoon, when my routine was going badly and the Beach Boys' falsettos were all but drowned out by the hammer of the basketball, I decided that I'd had enough. I marched up the stairs and out to the driveway, icily polite equivalents to WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP running through my mind. But when I saw Danny standing there looking at the ball, which seemed bigger around than he was, I couldn't say anything. I watched.

  “OK,” Bobby said, glancing at me, “dribble a couple of times and then when you shoot try for some backspin.” He held his hand up, palm to the sky, and flicked his wrist a couple of times. “Roll the ball up your fingers.”

  Danny bounced the ball, then threw it at the basket; it hit the rim with a metallic clang and careened past me. I turned and ran after it, then carried it back and handed it to Bobby.

  “Want to try?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  He gave the ball back to Danny. “That was better,” he said. “Try again.”

  On the fifth shot, the ball hit the backboard, rolled around the rim, and went through the net. “Great,” Bobby said, giving Danny's shoulder a little shake. “That's the stuff.”

  He took the ball and without looking at me backed up so that he was standing just a few feet from me. Without seeming to aim, he tossed the ball and it sailed through the air and went cleanly through the basket without touching the backboard or the rim. “Swish,” he said.

  Danny caught the ball and came running over. “Can we play HORSE?” he said.

  Bobby looked at me and smiled. “Only if your sister will try a shot first.”

  “Blackmailer,” I said.

  Danny handed me the ball and I moved closer to the basket. I held the ball in front of my face, closed my eyes, and threw.

  “Two points,” Bobby yelled. “Whoo!”

  Danny clapped and called, “Maybe you should try out to play instead.”

  “Ha ha,” I said. I tugged
at my shirt, which had ridden up and exposed my stomach when I threw the ball.

  “Play HORSE with us,” Danny said. “Please?”

  “HORSE?” I glanced at Bobby; he stood there with the ball tucked under his arm, looking at me. “I don't think so, Dan.”

  “You don't even know what it is. Let me at least explain it to you.” Danny held out his hands and Bobby threw him the ball. He bounced it and looked up at the basket. “Say I go first. I stand wherever I want and try for a basket. If I make it, the next person has to stand in the same spot and shoot. And if they don't make it they get an H. And you keep moving around and whoever spells out HORSE first loses. Get it? They're a horse. Come on, it's fun.”

  “Sorry, kid,” I said. “Got to practice. I have no time for this ‘fun’ of which you speak.”

  “Your graciousness,” he said, and bowed to me.

  “Your majesty,” I said, bowing back.

  I turned and headed for the house. “Bye, Elizabeth,” Bobby called to me as I reached the kitchen door. “Nice to see you again.”

  I NEEDED SOME white gloves. My mother had said not to worry; she had several pairs I could choose from. The Saturday before tryouts I asked her to let me see them.

  She led me up to her bedroom and pulled a shoebox from the back of her closet. “I know you can't believe it,” she said, “but your mother used to be the picture of elegance.”

  We both laughed; she was wearing blue jeans and an old checked shirt, her usual weekend attire. Even when she went to work I thought she looked a little mannish—she dressed in somber colors, never wore jewelry.

  She slipped the top off the box and pulled away some tissue paper. “God,” she said.

  I looked into the box, and it was a strange sight: over a dozen gloves, some white, some beige, even a single navy blue one, all lying in a tangle. “How orderly,” I said.

  “Don't give me any lip, kid,” she said, smiling. She set the box on the bed and we began sorting through it, putting the gloves in pairs.

  “Where's the other blue one?” I said.

  “Long gone.” A dreamy look came over her face and for a moment I thought she was going to tell me a story. But all she said was “Lost to another era.”

  There were four pairs of white gloves in all, but none of them seemed right to me.

  “What's wrong with these, Elizabeth?”

  “The rules didn't say anything about buttons.”

  “Well, what about these?”

  “There's a huge stain on the left one.”

  “It's on the palm, no one'll see it.”

  “Mom.”

  “These?”

  “Too long.”

  Finally she sat on the bed and looked at me, her mouth in a half-frown.

  “I'll ride over to the shopping center and buy some,” I said. I began piling the gloves back into the box.

  She grabbed my wrist. “Elizabeth, for God's sake, you're only going to wear them for ten minutes.”

  I shook her hand off. “I want to look nice.”

  She stood up and cut me a disgusted look, then stalked out of the room. I hurried after her and caught up with her on the stairs.

  “Why shouldn't I get new gloves?” I said. “What do you care? I'll pay for them.”

  “I don't care,” she snapped.

  “Mom,” I said.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs and she turned to face me. “It's just so silly, Elizabeth,” she said quietly. “It's beneath you.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Your father would—”

  “Well lucky for me he's not here to see it!” I jerked open the front door and hurried out of the house. My bicycle was locked, and I had to twist the dial several times before I got the lock to open.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER I was at the shopping center—with-out a cent. I decided to look around anyway; when I found the gloves I wanted I would ask the saleslady to hold them for me, then go back home for my wallet.

  I went into Penney's and found the glove department. There was no one behind the counter, so I circled the glass case, looking. There were leather gloves and wool gloves and gloves made of bright red satin, but I couldn't find a single pair of white gloves.

  “Can I help you?”

  A woman stood behind the counter, blue hair piled on top of her head. I told her what I wanted and she said, “Oh, we haven't carried white gloves in ten years, dear. Is it for Halloween?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Prom?” she asked, cocking her head gaily.

  “No, I just need them for school.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “School play?”

  “No, I—thanks anyway.” I turned and hurried away.

  “You might try Peaches and Cream, dear,” she called after me.

  I got outside the store and leaned against the wall. My face felt hot. At the other end of the shopping center was Bullock's, where my mother took me twice a year for school clothes. I decided to go there first, even though Peaches and Cream was on the way; Peaches and Cream was a shop full of breakable knickknacks and precious little silk flower arrangements, and although I'd never been in it I had always held it in a kind of contempt: it seemed to have nothing to do with real life.

  But Bullock's didn't have white gloves, either. I wandered around the ground floor of the store, and, as if I were languishing in a boat on a hot day and needed the feel of the water, my hand trailed behind me, touching whatever I passed: wool, leather, chrome. In the makeup department I slowed even more, studying the nail polish and lipstick at first one counter, then another. A young woman in a salmon-colored lab coat caught my eye.

  “Free makeovers today,” she said. “Would you like one?”

  “I don't have any money,” I said.

  “They're free.”

  “But I won't be able to buy anything after.”

  She patted the seat of a chair set against one of the counters. “You'll feel better.”

  I glanced around the area; it was nearly empty. I climbed onto the chair.

  “I'm Kristen,” she said. “Tell me a little about what you usually wear. Makeup-wise, I mean.”

  “Oh, just a little eye shadow and lip gloss,” I said, although in truth I never wore a stroke of either.

  “What's your name, honey?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Well, Elizabeth, I'm going to start with a little foundation.” She unscrewed the top of a small white bottle, tipped some liquid onto her fingers, and began dabbing the stuff onto my face.

  Another salmon-coated woman appeared. “Oh, fun,” she said. “Wild Sage on her lids, don't you think?”

  “I was thinking Midnight Velvet,” Kristen said.

  They joined forces. They mixed colors. They tried a little of this and a little of that. Half an hour later Kristen offered me a hand mirror. “You're going to love this, Elizabeth,” she said.

  I searched the image for signs of myself, but I looked like a stranger—not just someone I didn't recognize, but someone who wasn't quite human. My cheeks had unnatural-looking hollows, and across each cheekbone was a slash of pink. They had used so much mascara it looked as if I were wearing false eyelashes.

  “Well?” Kristen said.

  “She has to get used to it,” the other woman said. “It's a change.”

  I handed Kristen the mirror. “It's a whole new me.”

  She gave me a wide smile. “I knew you'd like it.”

  I thanked them and left the store. There were some benches arranged around a fountain and I slumped onto one. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my hair and skin. My face felt odd, as if I'd washed it and let it dry without rinsing the soap off. I thought about the pompon tryouts instruction sheet, the part about hygiene and grooming. I wondered whether everyone else would be wearing a lot of makeup for the tryouts: I knew that the other girls who were trying out were the kind who did wear eye shadow and lip gloss to school every day. I imagined myself in the girls' gym on the
day of the tryouts, standing there in my forest green polyester one-piece gymsuit and my white gloves, waiting for my turn; my stomach did a queasy dance. Then I thought about what my mother had said, and I stood up, ready to try Peaches and Cream.

  And there was Bobby.

  He was coming toward me, but he hadn't seen me yet. I thought of running, but I knew that would attract more attention than anything. Hoping I would somehow be invisible to him, I sat down on the bench again and stared at the ground.

  “Elizabeth?”

  I looked up. “Hi.”

  He did a quick double-take, so subtle that if I hadn't been looking for his reaction I might not have noticed it. “What are you doing?” He put his foot up on the bench next to me.

  “Shopping.”

  “What have you bought? I need socks.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I forgot my wallet.”

  He laughed. “Window shopping, more like, huh?” He turned and sat on the bench, a few feet away from me.

  “I guess so.”

  We sat there staring straight ahead, not talking. I was certain that he thought I was the most pathetic person on earth, that he felt too sorry for me to make a getaway.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” I said.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  I turned to look at him.

  “What happened to your face?”

  I felt, surprisingly, that I had a choice: I could die of embarrassment or not, it was up to me. I smiled, and a moment later we were both laughing. “I had a makeover,” I said.

  “In there?”

  I nodded. “There were two of them, Kristen and someone else. It took half an hour. It was free.”

  “What a bargain,” he said, and we both laughed. “I don't know, I think Kristen and her friend are in the wrong line of work.”

  “What?! You don't think they're artists?” I stood up and struck a pose.

  “More like morticians.”

  “So that's why I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror. I look dead.”

  We both started to laugh again, but a shadow of unhappiness fell over me and although I kept laughing, I was thinking about my father; we'd had an open casket, against my wishes, and when I saw him lying there, a false rosiness on his waxy cheeks, I felt a tiny pinprick of shock, as if I had to learn all over again of his death.