Casebook (12 page)

By the time we returned to LA on Christmas Eve, Eli had vanished. He was working in the DC shelter again, my mom told us; he’d fly to Wisconsin in the morning. What about his brother? I remembered all of a sudden. Was Hugo just alone? Why didn’t Eli go there, instead of to the shelter? For that matter, couldn’t he have brought Hugo here? I hoped the Mims had invited him. Maybe she hadn’t. She should have. But then she’d forgotten Eli’s birthday.

The doorbell rang, and Charlie stood there, buttoned into a
dress shirt, holding a ridged glass canister filled with roses, holly, and pine. Every year, Sare gave presents with one flea-market component and something else she made. Last year, she delivered alcoholic eggnog in antique jugs. I preferred that. For the obvious reason.

I set my alarm for a predawn hour and pushed myself out of bed to make sure stockings were stuffed. I walked through the house, the only one up. Croissants the Mims had sent away for had risen under a white towel. On the mantel, our stockings bulged. I could have gone back to bed, but I liked waiting alone at the kitchen table. I wanted to hear people wake up. My sisters talked among themselves in their room, then they went to the porch and brought back the plate where we’d left cookies. They still believed! They really did. I tried to make them let the Mims sleep, but she came from her room, tying a long robe around her waist.

“Kind of old Hollywood,” I said, fingering it. “A gift?”

But she shook her head.

After the riot of tearing, we sat around the tree. There seemed to be too few of us again. Our dad would come but still not for hours. My head hurt behind my eyes. The Mims stumbled around in that robe stuffing crumpled wrapping paper into a garbage bag. She was always moving. I wanted her to sit still. She set up the Boops squeezing oranges, each with her own old glass juicer from her stocking. (Just what every eleven-year-old girl dreams of: a citrus juicer!) I opened a drawer in the kitchen for no reason: matches, pencils, a small notebook.

On the last page I found:

CONTRACT:

I, Irene E. Adler promise to move to Pasadena.

I, Eli J. Lee promise to love the above forever.

They’d both signed their names.
Move to Pasadena!
I wanted to ask, but I knew I shouldn’t have snooped, so instead I held up a rectangular thing from the drawer, a stack made of squares of cloth. “What’s this?”

“Oh. Eli bought a suit. Or had one made—but I guess they didn’t do it right. So they’re giving him another. He wants me to help pick the fabric.”

“Does he get to keep the first one?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Two for the price of one. Like Dad’s hats.” The first present the Mims ever bought my dad was a hat, a Borsalino, the brand Humphrey Bogart wore. But it didn’t fit his head. My dad took it back and came home with two different hats.

I remembered the card with names of London tailors. What was it with Eli and suits? Suits and animal shelters clashed, didn’t they? I tried to picture him in a suit, holding a dying cat.

“Can I have a cookie?” Boop One called from the other room.

“Have you had any yet?”

“I had a star but it had two arms broken off.”

A car stopped outside. Our dad walked up in jeans, smoking one of his little cigars, stopping for a last drag, then dropping it and smashing it out with his shoe. In front was an old dark blue convertible with a wreath tied on the grille. I ran outside to see. “A guy at the studio garage let me borrow it.” He turned on the radio: Frank Sinatra singing “Fly Me to the Moon.”

“Get your mom and sisters.”

We drove on the Pacific Coast Highway beside the beach, wind batting our faces, riling our hair. The sky was clear, the ocean dark blue, and palm fronds were going totally wild. Air came so fast into your eyes they ached on the edges. We jammed our hands in our pockets. It was a quiet thrill to be in this car, with our handsome dad driving! At times like this, I thought of Simon’s mom saying we had the best everything. The whole feeling was what people in LA know when they eat in a restaurant with a movie star
but don’t indicate by any word or movement that they recognize him because they understand that actors and actresses live among them and have to have real lives, too. We ended up at the Getty. “I booked a corner table,” our dad said, standing in the open-air train. He carried two bags of shiny store-wrapped presents. The restaurant on top of the hill looked over miles of our city. The air felt thin, prosperous, with a stable, old sacred-day light. It was a museum, after all. We laughed without stopping all through lunch.

It felt like the first good Christmas since I’d been old enough to understand there could be any other kind. My father bent down to kiss my mother’s forehead when he dropped us back, brushing a piece of her hair behind her ear, the jewel earring he’d given her hanging next to her cheek. That’s how I remember it, anyhow. I realize, it probably couldn’t have been that jolly. These were people going through a divorce. From what I know now, they must have been almost done.

The Mims made a fire inside, threw on a log, saying, “Another Christmas.”

It was only afternoon, but we each went to our rooms. I pulled my shades down; I liked the lush, dark privacy, like a movie theater, with the scrabble of Gal.

32 • The Sex Diary

I’d been watching for the UPS truck. Eli had sent the box
before
he knew he was going to buy me binoculars. I knew it was greedy, but I hoped he’d put in something for me. The day after Christmas a truck parked in front of the house; it turned out to be a moving van. Men carried chairs, tables, sofas, and—in a moment of poetry—a pool table into the house next door. On New Year’s Eve day the people came. They had kids, my sisters reported. Four maybe. Or five. Hector and I climbed to the Rabbits’ Pad with my
German binoculars. We saw only an empty backyard. Even so, it was peaceful there. Hector read a thick book. I flipped through my dad’s old Richie Rich comics. After an hour, Hector sprang up. On the balcony of the house next door was a perfect girl: blonde, wearing white short shorts, with tan legs. “She’s a fox. Wait. There’s more. Binoculars!”

I’d adjusted them before to look at a bug. People were a different setting. Once we had her in focus, we spied. There seemed to be three of them, different sizes, all blonde. A wooden fence separated our yards. We could make a trapdoor.

“You have the best house,” Hector said.

We traded the binoculars until the girls retreated deep inside the house. Then we went down to ask about renting a movie.

My mom and Marge Cottle sat at the kitchen table, with papers spread out and a tin of almond brittle open. The widow and the soon-to-be divorcée. Neither looked that great. Hector’s mom, Kat, was definitely the poster single woman. The Mims had her hair in a bun held together with a pencil. Marge said she was starting a diet, which seemed like a good idea, but then again, she’d brought the almond brittle. “I think it’s really fitting that Eli’s willing to forfeit the big job and come out here. Stanley moved four times to follow me.” They paused. Stanley was dead. You couldn’t just put him in a conversation and gallop on.

“Eli’s grateful for the teaching,” my mom said. “He said we’ll use the money to take the kids away somewhere every month.”

“He’s thinking about it all,” Marge said. “I like that.”

I figured I’d have to write down his birthday and remind her next November. I tried to remember again where it was that he grew up. I’d have to write that down, too.

AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE BUT NOT MORE SO
—Uncle Albert was on the blackboard again.

Boop One slid in on her socks. “What are we doing tonight?”

“Eli’s coming. Maybe we’ll make resolutions.”

“We’re not doing
any
thing? What’s Dad doing?”

“
You’re
probably going to bed,” Marge said. “New Year’s Eve is not a classic eleven-year-old’s holiday.” Marge believed our mother spoiled us, although she fed her dog hormone-free sirloin from Whole Foods.

“I’m going to call Daddy to pick me up,” Boop One said. We heard her side of the conversation. “But you’re
always
going out with your friends. You’d rather go out with your friends than be with your very own daughter.” She kicked the floor.

“Chillax,” I said. “Most parents go out New Year’s Eve.”

The Mims told us we had to walk to Blockbuster, but Marge offered us a ride in the small back of her car. The dog perched on its own plaid cushion in the passenger seat.

She parked in front of Blockbuster and said, “I can swing you on back.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. But she waited. She had a sweetness that got lost in the volume of her face.

“She’s really nice,” Hector said as we bounded back up our steps. “I’m glad she has that dog.”

I hoped my mom had invited her for tonight; I had the feeling Marge was just going to be home with her mutt.

Hector and I put on a movie until we heard fireworks booming outside. Then we strayed down to watch. The foxes from next door stood with their parents on their new front lawn. Boop One had fallen asleep, but Boop Two crawled onto my mom’s lap. During the finale, Eli stepped out of a taxi, carrying a suit by its hanger.

“He looks like a spy,” Hector whispered. “And he travels all the time.”

“I don’t think the National Science Foundation has spies.”

The Mims tried to lift Boop Two over her shoulder, but my
sister was too big now. It looked like the Mims was dancing with a rag doll. Boop Two was sucking her third finger; she’d done that ever since she was born.

“Where’s
he
gonna sleep?” I asked our mom.

“The futon-sofa. Or, if you guys want to go upstairs, we can give him your room.”

We called upstairs. He could have the bunks. Like my dad did that once.

Eli opened a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. They offered us each an inch. It tasted like pee.

He clunked around the kitchen barefoot, with adult knobby feet, opening oysters in our sink with a small knife. They seemed to work together without talking, like married parents, as boring as anybody else’s. The oysters quivered like eye gel.

Hector and I finished
About a Boy
. After that, we watched
Annie Hall
for the third time, the plaid comforters from my bunks pulled up to our faces. I got up once to piss and heard them.

“You know what I want from you? Your memory. Will you keep a diary? Can you even remember all the times?”

“I think I could reconstruct them.” His memory again—to her it was this great pile of coins. Some beautiful empty library.

“That would be my perfect gift,” she said. I remembered the box that hadn’t come yet. Had I just not seen it? Four books I hadn’t noticed before were stacked on her desk. James Newman’s
The World of Mathematics
.

I fell back onto the couch and repeated the conversation to Hector. He looked like he felt sorry for me. Diane Keaton flickered in front of us, our same LA but with everyone in outdated clothes. Then I bolted up. Sex was what Hector thought my mom was asking him to remember. A sex diary. I shook him awake. “That’s not what she’s talking about. She means like when we went to the cabin. And cross-country skiing.”

“How do you know?” Hector mumbled.

I ventured out to the top of the stairs, but it was quiet now. I crept down and looked into my bedroom; sure enough, there was Eli, tucked in alone. Comforterless.

Unlike my dad, Eli had taken the top bunk.

In the morning, I heard water in the pipes. I sat on the landing again.

“Rosenfeld says he could get three days,” my mom said, from the kitchen.

“Even though he has Malc drive them to school and comes home late?”

It took me a minute to understand: they were talking about custody. My parents must have been fighting over us! That started a feeling in my chest; our dad wanted me. I’d suggested a million times that I stay with him while the Boops were with my mom. Then we could switch. I’d never have to live with the Boops again.

“I suppose it’s good for them to go there. He gets home later than I do, but it’s a lot earlier than he did when we were married. Rosenfeld says divorce makes better dads.”

Our dad wanted us! My hopes flew wild. I liked the idea of being tugged between them.

“Can I read your divorce agreement sometime? You’ve seen everything of mine.”

Eli said, “Sure.”

33 • A Fight About Colors

He stood in my doorway after Hector left, a sagging hour. The checking-on-her-son talk: I expected it to last less than fifteen minutes. School started Monday, he reminded me, then squinted and recited my schedule, what I had each period. The Mims couldn’t have done that. My dad, oh my God, my dad. Then Eli started arranging my books on the shelves. He asked me whether I wanted to sort by authors’ last names or by subject. We alphabetized.
He hauled a ladder from the garage and washed the top of my bookshelf. The ladder reminded me of the lights. He’d do them next year, I was pretty sure, if he’d do this.

“Where do you read your comics?” he asked.

He must have noticed my floor. I knew the guy was neat, but I’d never seen anything like this. He’d bought me cardboard boxes the exact width of comic books. We decided to store them by publisher—Marvel, Dark Horse, or DC. He found a basket for the latest ones. He got a cup from the kitchen for pencils and made a place for every small object until you could actually see my floor. Did I know how to run the washing machine?, he asked.

“Kind of,” I said.

He tilted the hamper. It was full. A little more than, maybe. “It’s time for a load.”

“I mean, I’m not sure I remember exactly how.”

He took me down to the basement, and we separated whites from colors. He showed me where to put the soap. “Next time I’ll teach you to iron a shirt.” He told me he’d started wearing white shirts in high school. He’d bought them in thrift stores.

The last thing he did was sweep my floor. “I had an art teacher who’d been in Vietnam,” he said. “He told us that one New Year’s Eve he got so plastered that he threw up all over himself and woke up in a ditch. When he opened his eyes the next morning, the villagers were hanging out clean clothes to dry and sweeping their huts. Their tradition for the New Year was to clean. So he made us clean the clay room.”