Shrimp (10 page)

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look as awesome as the day I first knew I loved you,
and not,
Whoa, what the hell happened to you?

"Maybe I won't be here much longer," Sugar Pie said. For an old person, she looks damn good: Her face has some wrinkles that I like to think of as treasure maps to her past, but her skin has a rich, deep color, glowing now from the true love she waited a lifetime to come to her.

Now I was more depressed. Was Sugar Pie saying maybe she would die soon? No, that wasn't possible. She's in reasonably decent health except for the dialysis treatments she has three days a week because of her bad kidneys, and the only reason she moved into "assisted living" was because she doesn't have her own family to take care of her on the days she has dialysis. But on her nondialysis days she's pretty chipper--at least chipper enough to be carrying on a love connection with Fernando (hookup courtesy of
moi;
I know how to match two true loves), who is at least ten years (cough) her junior. Their May-December romance has lasted through the summer and into fall, and it's officially out of the closet, too--grandchildren jumping on the bed and an official dinner at a fancy restaurant with Sid and Nancy and everythang.

"Something you want to talk about?" Sugar Pie asked me.

"I can't talk to you with all these people around," I whined.

"Isn't somebody just a little self-absorbed?" Sugar Pie said. "If you haven't noticed, everyone else in this room is focused on the baby and the doughnuts and
Fantasy Island
on TV Land. You've got something to say, say it. Your moody-girl self is ruining my good time and all these nice people visiting."

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I paused. "The first anniversary of...um...you know is coming up."

"And?" Sugar Pie said.

'And?" I repeated. 'And I don't know. Just bumming me out is all."

Sugar Pie pointed to the TV bolted to the corner wall in her room, where the little guy called Tattoo was announcing, "Da plane, Boss, da plane!" Sugar Pie said, "Maybe what's bumming you out is there's a certain other little guy, one you've got to tell what happened. Because if you're wanting that boy you claim is your true love back in your life, you know that's what you've got to do."

"You're the psychic. Is it gonna go okay if I do?"

"No promises, baby. No promises."

"I'm worried," I whispered. Not about the fact of Shrimp knowing about the A-date so much as that for all the time we were going out before, I never mentioned this kinda important piece of information about what had happened to me soon before meeting him. Well, also: guys are just weird about that stuff.

Sugar Pie said, "It's a hurdle to get over, an important one, but not one that should come between you two in the end. This is when you have to remember that some people have no feet."

I looked down at my platform thong sandals, with toe-ringed, black-nail-polished feet. Say what? Call it my blond moment, but it took me a minute to realize what Sugar Pie was telling me: When life deals you lemons, don't make lemonade--get some perspective. BFD.

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*** Chapter 11

The thing about
the new peace is that it's actually harder than the old war. Trying to keep my cool with Nancy, now that she's chasing me with college applications (though I'm on record as not wanting to go) or waking me up in the mornings to ask if I want to go to yoga with her (where the Zen teacher man at her yoga studio has a slight boner under his shorts half the time--very distracting), is much harder than the old system. Before I had no hesitation to just scream, "Get out of my face!" and she had no hesitation to scream back, "AHHH!" and then slam a door in my face, after which we could both ignore each other and go about our days, business as usual. In the new regime we're both bound by an unspoken but implicit code to at least try.

So I can't be held accountable that she chose to push our boundaries on my sleep-in Sunday morning, post-Krispy Kreme sugar high and A-date blues low.

"Wake up, honey!" was all she said, very tender, in my ear. I felt her fingers running through my hair and massaging my scalp. But I was startled awake and I muttered, "Get away from me." I brushed her hand from my head, then banged my pillow back into a comfortable position, keeping my eyes closed so I could fall back asleep without the bright morning light waking me further.

She murmured, in that particular Nancy way of hers that grates most when my inner bitch is aching to be let

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loose, "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

My eyes popped open to see her lemon face standing over me. "SOMEONE," I hissed, "HASN'T EVEN WOKEN UP YET. GOD, WHAT IS YOUR ANEURYSM? CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?"

She rolled her eyes and did the Nancy Classic- a shoulder shrug combined with an audible sigh that could register on the Richter scale. "Someone named Helen--interesting haircut--is waiting for you downstairs. Get up, Miss Teenage Mood Swings." My eyes fluttered back closed. "NOW!" Her shrill pronouncement was probably heard all the way over in Ocean Beach. This time she kicked the wood frame on my futon bed. So much for Nice Mommy Wakey.

My morning did not improve after I'd brushed my teeth and was heading downstairs still wearing my cowgirl flannel pj's, only to trip on a toy machine gun of Josh's lying on the hallway floor. Now I understood why toy guns supposedly promote violence in children: I was ready to kill Josh. "FUCK!" I screamed at the sharp shooting pain in my foot. Sid-dad emerged from my parents' bedroom, next to where I was standing. He was wearing his red silk smoking jacket, which I do appreciate for its supreme style, even if it was the wrong time of day and I've never seen him light a cigar before his evening martini. "Cupcake," Sid-dad said, and I admit, for a sec my mood started to improve, "I'm not appreciating the profane language on a Sunday morning, and I am especially not appreciating hearing you scream at your mother all the way from your bedroom. Show some goddamn respect. Got it?" I almost protested but my foot hurt like a mofo and I could tell from Sid-dad's face that he

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wasn't gonna be hearing it. I nodded and mumbled, "Got it." And then he slammed his bedroom door in my face!

Dag, what did
I
do?

So I was very on the warpath by the time I made it downstairs to find Helen sitting in the living room with the AUTUMN wench. This had to be seriously the worst Sunday morning ever, like, if I had a Do Over card this would be the morning I would choose to use it. I'd go back to sleep and be awoken by the puppy Nancy won't let me get licking my face, psycho Leila would be back in the kitchen making blueberry pancakes, and Sid and Nancy and the little monsters would already be at the zoo or something. I would have the whole house to myself to blast Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys and Japanese superpop like Puffy Ami Yumi, and I would dance around the house wearing just my boy brief undies and a tank top, like Tom Cruise in
Risky Business,
but with a much better soundtrack.

'That crib you live in," Helen teased, sitting on the living room chair surrounded by gazillion-dollar artwork and brocade tapestry formations up the wazoo.

"Don't give me shit about it," I spat back. This embarrassing House Beautiful is the reason I've yet to invite Helen over--which of course begged the question, What was she doing here, and daring to tote along the Autumn wench, who was sitting next to Helen sporting that big-tooth smile, radiating sunshine when all I could feel was Sunday morning
el niño?

Helen turned to Autumn. "Our CC is quite the gracious hostess, too, as you can see. Phat crib and a lady to boot." Helen kicked her bright Converse All Stars upward from her sitting position, just for the hell of it. She and Autumn, both

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dressed in thrift-store punk threads, did look funny sitting on that plush red sofa imported from France. For the first time I realized how I must appear in this house: total clash effect yet somehow belonging and cozy, too.

"So what's the deal?" I asked.

Helen pronounced, "We've decided to take you on an adventure for the day. Your mom already told us you're not doing anything today, and according to your dad--who has quite the sartorial flair for smoking jackets--you historically never even bother to fake doing homework on Sundays. So your mom said so long as you're home by eight, you can come with."

Hmm, which part to explain to Helen first: that I'd just as soon be in a bad mood all day since I'm already in one now and I don't need some cheerful girly adventure package to help that sitch, or that NO WAY am I hanging with the Autumn wench. She can just take her dreadlocked self outta this house and go off wherever, I don't care, but get outta my space. Also, what is
sartorial!

To my silence, Helen added, "Your mom also said she got you a new espresso machine for your birthday, so I'm thinking you could start off our adventure of a day by pulling us a couple morning brews." Helen grabbed my hand and led me away from the living room, while Autumn remained seated.

When we reached the kitchen I told Helen, "Thanks for thinking of me, but I am not hanging out with that girl. I don't like her."

"How do you know? You didn't even talk to her at the party last night. She's, like, the coolest." Helen looked over the immaculate kitchen with the state-of-the-art appliances and the glass doors leading to an outdoor deck overlooking

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San Francisco Bay. "Wow, this kitchen might be bigger than my whole house."

I pointed my index finger and shook my head at Helen, giving her the Don't Start with Me look. I said, 'Autumn's also the girl who fooled around with Shrimp last summer."

"So what? I made out with him once in eighth grade. You oughta know better than anybody, that boy just has something about him. Shrimp is just like a delicacy that every girl should get to sample once in her lifetime, at least on some level. But I think all are agreed that you're the girl who's the permanent fixture in his life."

I'm a sucker; that last line did butter me up a little.

But geez Louise, I had no idea Shrimp was such a slut.

Helen must have sensed a softening of my resolve because she said, 'Anyway that business with Shrimp and Autumn last summer, that was one night, and it was nothing! She doesn't even like boys that way, really. So just deal. You are better than that."

Now I was almost officially Parkay. I pulled the Hershey's milk from the Sub-Z fridge to make the Cyd Charisse Special, capps with foamed choc milk, and I turned on the espresso machine to get it primed. I said, "I'm not sure quite what you mean by that."

Helen found the Peet's Coffee in the freezer (as Java the Hut beans are banned in this household until Shrimp has lifted his embargo on me) and she handed the bag over to me. "It means," she said, "I think you are better than being some lamé-ass chick who is threatened by other girls and thinks of them as rivals rather than friends. It means, I challenge you to make friends with Autumn."

Ash was sitting at the breakfast-nook table eating a

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bowl of Cheerios and dipping a Barbie's head into the milk, then swirling the blond tresses around the bowl. "You said
lamé-ass!"
Ash said. "Good one." Ash's eyes appraised Helen, starting from the star-spangled high-top Chucks on Helen's feet to Helen's red-and-blue plaid bell-bottom pants and up to her white T-shirt picturing curvaceous Lynda Carter in her patriotic but impractically skimpy Wonder Woman bathing suit uniform. Ash's appraisal ended at Helen's shaved head of black hair that had grown to about two centimeters. Ash said to Helen, "What are you?"

Helen's eyes squinted as she inspected the Barbie hair twirl. She said, "What do you think I am?"

Ash said, "I don't know, but it looks like there used to be a hand colored on your almost-bald head."

"Yeah, copper hand is hard to dye out, turns out. And I'm a Helen. CC's friend."

"Ha ha!" Ash laughed. She almost choked on her Cheerios.

Helen looked toward me, confused. I explained, "She's never seen an actual friend of mine that wasn't a boyfriend in this house before."

Ash got up from her chair and went over to Helen. It's cute; Ash and Helen both have the same body type--short and stocky, like round teddy bears. What wasn't so cute was that Ash then pinched Helen's pudgy stomach, as if she had to prove to herself that her sister had an actual in-the-flesh friend in the house. Ash promoted her voice to a scream for the benefit of our brother, Josh, playing a video game in the family room next to the kitchen. "JOSH! COME SEE! CYD CHARISSE HAS SOME PRACTICALLY BALD, PIERCED FRIEND HERE WHO'S A GIRL!"

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*** Chapter 12

The sexual politics
of the Shrimp crowd turn out to be quite complicated. If I were a private investigator creating a flowchart attempting to illustrate their love connections, my head might possibly explode.

Start with Shrimp and me. Broke up. There's me with the pseudo-crush on Wallace, and then there's Shrimp with the rebound one-night almost-stand with Autumn (as in no penetration--a minor technicality but an important one, as it allows me to at least consider Helen's challenge to become Autumn's friend). Now I've found out that Wallace used to date one of Helen's older sisters before settling down with Delia, who reportedly once had a dalliance with surfer dude Arran a.k.a. Aryan, who has a crush on Autumn--completely ignoring Helen's crush on him, because he's so shallow he doesn't even notice if a girl bigger than size six has it for him--while Autumn has the same kind of crush on Helen that I have on Wallace: totally benign and sweet and understood to have no basis in a reality hookup.

If I learned all that just on the bus over to Haight Street, I shuddered to think of all the sexual histories I would discover should Helen, Autumn, and I actually hang out longer than a day. By the time we hit Amoeba Records, I considered it a miracle the whole Ocean Beach crowd at Java the Hut isn't one mass STD invasion.