The Girl On The Half Shell (3 page)

Chapter Two

I feel sick, like I want to vomit. “What do you mean you are not going to New York?”

Jack leans back in the booth and stares at me. I must have said that too loudly. Even Rene looks uncomfortable. I don’t check to see if people are listening. People are always listening. I start to play with the paper from my straw.

My cheeks redden. “You promised,” I snap irritably since no one says anything.

Jack sighs. He leans ever so slightly forward with his elbows on the table. “I’ve had this thing going on,” he says quietly and I feel that rapid flash flood of emotion in me again.
Thing.
I hate when Jack blames “thing.” It could be anything. It could be nothing. But it is an old excuse, his things that ruin our time together, his schedule, things that take precedence, things I know nothing about, things he will never share with me. “…it can’t be helped, Chrissie.” That famous smile flashes at me again. “Besides, you girls are eighteen. I thought you would prefer New York without me. Who wants their dad along on spring break?”

I feel again that strange pressure of time running out. It is an odd thing to feel when you are only eighteen. All my desperate hopes for New York are that easily demolished. He doesn’t want to spend time with me. It is not my imagination. For some reason, he doesn’t want to get close to me. I dash a hand across my eyes. If I cry I’ll feel even more stupid than I do right now.

Silence descends at the table and I know it is my fault. We were having such a lovely dinner and I ruined it. Even knowing that, I am angry at Jack because I hate the silence. Jack says nothing when he thinks there is nothing to say that will help. I would prefer if he just said anything, got angry with me, said something pointless. That would suggest an effort, a note of caring, a note of something, a clue that we are father-daughter, irrevocably and undeniably connected in a way that neither of us can ignore.

From the corner of my eye, I see the cocktail waitress closing in on us again. Her shirt is cut too low, she has that pretty girl sort of obviousness that looks so pretty even when she is obviously flirting with my dad in that irritatingly phony way. She probably never thought she’d end up working here. Oh no, she was supposed to work somewhere better than slinging drinks in a locals’ haunt, she was supposed to end on a happy bed of stars like Eliza. I fix my eyes carefully on my father’s glass, the discreetly disguised mineral water filling the cocktail glass.

More drinks. Where does she think she’s going to put them? An endless stream of Jack Daniels has arrived since we sank into our booth, forgotten, cluttering the table to the point it was hard to fit our dinner plates on it. The waitress must be new since she thought it perfectly normal to interrupt our meal continually with bits and pieces of paper asking if Jack would autograph them and bringing every drink sent by a fan.

“Jeez, enough with the drinks already. Can’t you see he doesn’t want them? He’s been sober for ten years. I would have thought you were the type to at least read a tabloid.”

Oh god!
Did I say that out loud? The sudden shock of Jack’s expression tells me I did. And darn, the waitress looks like she’s about to cry.

It is a horrible moment, that kind of earth-quieting, horrible moment that will only get more horrible rapidly. The owner of the restaurant is closing in our table. He must have heard.
Be honest with yourself, Chrissie, everyone heard.
In the commotion around me I start to grow smaller and smaller and more inadequate. I started this and I can’t get a word out of my mouth, not even to apologize to the poor cocktail girl who is shaking with mortification. Tom, the owner, is flustered and apologetic. Jack is charming and reassuring. Rene is fascinated and watching with a sharply arched brow. Fascinated by what? Oh, the poor pretty waitress. How pretty she looks now that she is crying.

“I’m sorry, Jack. Truly, my apologies. She’s new…” those are the only words I catch in the ensuing drama. The owner apologizing for the waitress. No one apologizes for me, and I was the bully here, a dreadful Eliza wannabe hurting people I think insignificant. I stare at the waitress. There are no words from my mouth, but I hear them in my head:
It’s me! I’m the awful one. I didn’t mean to be mean. I’m just pissed off. It’s been a really trying day.

I can’t take any more. I say nothing, not even to Rene who is still absorbed in watching and I slip from the booth. Getting out of the restaurant is more of a hassle than getting into it had been. Someone must have put the word out that Jack is here. The sidewalk is packed with retro throwback sixties types, all waiting patiently their turn to see him, the voice of a generation. They would be happy if they only got to see him. I brush at my face and realize I’m crying and it doesn’t matter because I’m not with Jack so no one notices me.

I push through the bodies feeling small and inadequate and—unfortunately—mean. I’m used to working free of the crowds that sometimes spring around Jack unexpectedly like a flash fire and I am an expert at disappearing. Though not tonight. I was not invisible tonight. They’ll talk about tonight at
Harry’s
for a while. Perfectly wretched. I was perfectly wretched.

I lean against the car to wait and realize I am hyperventilating. I can’t feel my limbs, and I know that the car I lean against is damp but I can’t feel that either. Everything looks so strange, the near empty streets, the cluster of people outside the restaurant in the all-but-vacant strip mall, and the way the world looks beneath the bleak fluorescent light of the parking lot. I probably look strange, too.

I sink to the ground, angry with myself for the senseless drama I created tonight. I am not a dramatic girl. Everyone always says I’m sensible. I am not a mean girl. Everyone always says I’m good. But tonight I went postal over a cocktail.

I really hate that I’m crying. Time loses the feel of realness when you cry. Seconds can feel like minutes, minutes can feel like seconds, and it is hard to tell which because it is the cry that determines that. Sometimes after I cry I check my watch and I’m always surprised. Sometimes it’s only a few minutes, but it was a really bad cry that feels like forever. And other times its half a day, and it felt like nothing at all, like a dripping faucet, an irritating sound punctuating otherwise normal sound. An irritation, no more significant than that.

Jack and Rene step off the sidewalk and into the parking lot. I take a deep, steadying breath and stand up. How long have I been waiting? It feels like they’ve left me out here an eternity.

I watch them cross the parking lot to me. They don’t look strange in the bleak fluorescent light of the parking lot. Jack looks like Jack, perfectly normal, and Rene has that glow about her as if she’s just left the best party and is thoroughly pleased with the world. I curse Rene in my mind for forcing me through the fiasco of dinner, but then, it really wasn’t her fault, and no one is more surprised than I am, that I went postal over a cocktail.

Postal over a cocktail.
It is all very stupid, especially now that I put it that way. They both smile at me as if everything is normal. No one says anything and we climb into the car to make our way home. I am committed to my silence during the car ride to the house and no one disturbs that, and I am grateful that they don’t, though I wish Jack would.

It is a short drive home, and five minutes later we are on Marina Drive making our way down the dimly lit narrow road into Hope Ranch, the neighborhood I’ve called home since birth. The familiar sights make some of my gloomy mood wane. I love the neighborhood I live in. It is private and quiet and wooded and protected. It is home.

Marina Drive is lush with woods: sycamore, oak and eucalyptus trees flourish among the richly green vegetation. On one side of the road are the cliffs above the beach. With the windows down and the music off you can hear the crashing surf as you drive, and I love that sound, sounds of home. On the other side is low rising hills with stunning homes upon them. Wayward, paved arteries flow through the thicket, private pockets of modest ranch homes and massive estates.

My father’s house has been in the family for two generations. It is a rustic, chicly humble Spanish style single story stucco and red tile structure. There is a main wing with two wings jutting off that gives it the shape of a not fully completed square. It sits on a cliff above the ocean, the modestly landscaped five acres left as close to natural as possible, and is only partially enclosed for privacy so as not to intrude on the equestrian trails that cut through Jack’s land.

No one owns the land or the beach, Chrissie. We are only caretakers.
I was five when Jack said that, I was sitting in the yard watching as he pulled down the fencing with his own hands that my grandfather had put in place with his own hands. The house had transferred to my dad when grandpa had gone into the nursing home, but the fence had stayed until after Jack Senior passed away. We didn’t live here full time until I was five. It was the year Mom got sick.

Now I feel teary because I’ve thought of Mom. There are more emotional punches inside, but in the driveway tonight the first emotional punch is Mom.

Jack climbs from the car. “You girls are going to have to share your room, Chrissie. There is not a spare room in the house, I’m afraid. And stay away from the pool house. Its current occupant doesn’t need you bothering him.”

That’s it? That’s what he has to say to me after I created that enormous scene? I nod and focus on pulling my cello case from the trunk.

Rene smiles and takes her bag from Jack. “Maybe I’m exactly what your pool house guest needs.”

I start to laugh. That comment I didn’t expect, but it effortlessly lifts the mood. Even Jack seems to be unbending, I notice, which is strange, because before the unbending I didn’t even notice he was tense. Rene probably saw it and I didn’t. Too close to the problem is what she always tells me. Perhaps she is right.

Jack’s smile this time is pleasant. He ruffles Rene’s dark hair. “Not on your life. I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you.”

I watch and follow them into the house. Jack’s relationship with Rene is more father-daughter normal than it is with me.

The house smells good, Maria cooked dinner tonight, and for about the hundredth time I wish we hadn’t gone out to dinner and had just come home. It smells like enchiladas and I love enchiladas made at home.

We find Maria in the kitchen busily tidying the mess created from feeding a house of guests. She has been with us forever, a refugee from Somoza, whom we all pretend is legal, but isn’t.

Maria carefully rinses a used paper towel. Everything has value to her. Nothing is ever thrown away after a single use. We have adjusted to living with her—the used paper towels, the giant balls of foil, and the wrapped half-finished meals in the refrigerator.

I watch her flatten the Brawny across the twenty-thousand dollar marble counter.

Maria’s round, matronly face softens when she sees me. “Chica. You are home. I have missed my beautiful girl. ¿Cómo está mi niña”

The feel of Maria’s embrace is familiar and warm, but I slowly grow agitated because it lasts longer than I am ever comfortable with, and the perfume on her flesh is slightly smothering.

I disengage and step back quickly. “Is Daddy being good to you? You tell me if he’s not.”

Maria looks aghast. Jack laughs. I stare at the used paper towel spread neatly on the marble.

“Señor Jack, he is no trouble. Never. It is good when there are people in the house. Señor Jack’s band is like family. I don’t mind the extra work. It is never work for family. And the new one, the young one, he is like a ghost. A sad ghost. Four months he’s been here and so sad and no trouble. It is good he is here with Señor Jack.”

She crosses herself in silent prayer for her sad ghost and I struggle not to laugh because I am really a very bad Catholic and Jack is an atheist and no one prays at the drop of the hat faster than Maria. And whoever Jack has tucked away in the pool house is most likely not sad, most likely an atheist, and most likely just a burned out musician in need of a crash pad.

Rene sticks her finger into the guacamole, loudly sucks it off the tip, and makes a popping sound as she pulls her nail through her lips. “A sad ghost in the pool house. I am intrigued.”

Jack squeezes Rene’s shoulder. “Be intrigued some other time. I mean it, little girl. Stay away from the pool house. Now go away.”

Chiding, parental and smoothly charming. Jack can be so multifunctional with Rene.

“Before you disappear, go out on the patio and say hello to the guys,” Jack says to me. “Just a smile and a hello, Chrissie. Then you two can run off and do whatever you two do.”

Just a smile and a hello.
I feel her again, the small child in me. I didn’t talk from 1975 until 1977. One morning, I just lost my words and they all stopped. Mom was alive when this phase of me started, and the way each of my parents handled it was so very different.

It was mom who forced me to play the cello, to take the lessons that would force me into public recitals and get comfortable speaking before people and hopefully end my silence. I remember my first recital. I was five. I had to give my name and the piece I selected to play. I didn’t want to talk. The words were painful in my throat and made me sick in my stomach. I had to force them out which didn’t feel good and I hated that people were watching me. When the performance was over, I ran to my seat beside my father, promptly threw up and cried in his lap. Jack was a good dad that day. He said nothing, let me cry, and I remember those gentle fingers stroking my hair even though Mom was humiliated by me.

Jack’s solution was to pretend I had no problem. He would take me with him to those places in town he could go comfortably, he would hold my hand, and before we entered a store or restaurant he would say:
Smile and say hello, Chrissie. It makes people happy when you smile and say hello.
And he would smile his stunning smile and I would want to make him happy so I would force myself to smile and say hello to each stranger we met.