The Merchant of Venice Beach (15 page)

“So, we’re on, then?”

“Yeah, sure. We’re on.”

Eric smiled at her, turned around again, and headed home. Suzanna looked at the sky. How long would she be hanging up here in midair? She had to get home and tell her mother that she was going to the prom with Eric. Maybe she didn’t have a future—or even a college—all mapped out, but she had a date to the prom. And that date was with Eric! It was like a dream come true. She worried—and wondered—about how Carla was going to feel about this.

Pop! With unsteady ankles, Suzanna was back on the ground, already dreaming of the prom. Her parents tried to hide their obvious elation. Suzanna suspected that they saw Eric as her salvation. The dive from deliverance to prom date was a pretty big one, but at this point, her parents were pretty much grasping at straws.

After informing her parents about the prom news, she raced up to her bedroom to call Carla. She stared at the phone for a few minutes. Carla and Eric really did seem to be over their junior-year romance. Carla had gone on to a steady relationship with Scott, the senior-class president, and Suzanna had no good reason to think she might not be happy with Suzanna’s news.

But still . . .

Suzanna steeled herself, called Carla, and broke her big news.

“That’s fantastic!” Carla said. “I had a feeling he might ask you.”

Suzanna tried to punch down the demon that was leapfrogging through her head, whispering that the two of them had been discussing her. She reprimanded herself—she was not going to let herself spoil this moment. Eric had asked her to the prom and that was all that mattered.

She had a hard time sleeping that night, counting the hours until she got to school and saw Eric. She didn’t spot him until lunchtime. He had already grabbed a table and was deep in conversation with Fernando. Suzanna came over and joined them, wondering if the invitation to the prom had upped her status in his eyes. Apparently not; their relationship appeared to be exactly the same.

“Fernando isn’t going to the prom,” Eric said. “Did you know that?”

Suzanna did know that. Fernando had said that if he couldn’t attend the prom with his boyfriend, then he wouldn’t go at all.

“But you don’t have a boyfriend,” Suzanna said.

“That isn’t the point.”

Since Suzanna couldn’t figure out what the point was, she dropped it.

“That sucks, man,” Eric said.

“So, you guys are going to the prom together,” Fernando said, eyes blazing at Suzanna.

Suzanna reddened as she realized she had forgotten to tell
Fernando this earth-shattering news. She knew she would not be forgiven easily and would have to kiss up for weeks for her transgression.

“Oh! Yeah! We are,” Suzanna tried to sound casual.

“He’s making a statement, Beet,” Eric said.

“I know,” Suzanna said, trying in vain to control her flush.

“Well, I think the three of us should go together,” Eric said. “That’s at least part of a statement.”

Fernando might have been angry with Suzanna, but he dearly loved his best friend and could read the panic in her eyes as her dream crumbled.

“No, that’s OK,” Fernando said, grabbing Suzanna’s wrist lest she float away. “I don’t really care about the prom, anyway.”

Suzanna could have cried, she was so overcome by his loyalty. Why was it that Fernando could understand every nuance of her psyche and Eric wouldn’t see undying love if it hit him like an anvil?

“No, seriously, we should go together,” Eric said. “We’ve done everything together this year. We should go to the prom together, too.”

“Well, what about our science projects?” Suzanna asked.

“What about them?” Eric asked.

“We didn’t do those together . . . We did them with Carla.”

“You’re right,” Eric said, just as Carla and Scott were walking by. He turned to them.

“Hey, Scotty, Carla. Suzanna, Fernando, and I are all going to the prom together. You guys in?”

Carla looked surprised and tried to do a mind-meld with Suzanna, but Scott and Eric were already slapping high-fives. It was a done deal. The five of them would be the first—and to date, the only—double-and-a-half date at the Napa Valley High School prom.

Carla and Suzanna decided to go dress shopping in San Francisco. Fernando insisted on coming. Suzanna balked, saying that this was a “girl’s day,” but Fernando would not be dissuaded.

“You can’t pick out a dress without me,” he said.” You’ll go into all those stores, get overwhelmed, and forget what your taste is. Face it, Suzanna, you need me.”

Suzanna (and Carla) knew she couldn’t argue, and off they went in the Caridi family car to the big city across the bay. On the highway, they passed a sign that read University of California, Berkeley. Suzanna averted her eyes as the iconic bell tower on the Berkeley campus came into view. Although Suzanna had advised him against applying, Fernando sent in an application anyway.

“They can’t say ‘yes’ unless I apply,” he had said.

Suzanna pointed out that, even if by some miracle they accepted him, how did he plan on paying for it?

“That’s what we call a ‘fun’ problem.”

When his thanks-but-no-thanks letter came, Suzanna wondered how and why he always put himself in the path to get hurt. It was as if he had absolutely no fear of rejection.

“It’s not that,” he had said. “I just know you can’t succeed unless you try. You know, like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . . . when he tries to rip the sink out of the wall. Remember?”

“Yes . . . he can’t rip it out. He fails.”

“Sure, he fails . . . but he says, ‘At least I tried. ’”

Suzanna noticed that Fernando also turned away from the campus as they drove by and wondered if Berkeley held as many dashed dreams as it did students.

Fernando helped Suzanna select her dress. He had been right, of course. Within half an hour, Suzanna had lost all confidence in herself and just gave herself over to him.

Fernando outdid himself. He found a spectacular white strapless dress with huge polka dots splattered all over it. To add to the mayhem, the dress also had a red taffeta bodice and three tiers of red taffeta ruffles on the skirt. He zipped Suzanna into it, spun her around and said to her:

“Oh. My. God. You look like an explosion in a ruffle factory.”

To the saleswoman, he said:

“We’ll take it.”

Carla wanted no input, and picked a sleek black halter dress. Fernando itched to jazz up her ensemble, but Carla knew what she wanted.

Always did. Always would.

Napa Valley kids were among the first to start taking limousines on prom nights. The five friends climbed into the back of a stretch and went to all their parents’ houses for pictures—except for the Cruz house. Fernando’s father said he had to work and wouldn’t be around. Carla had smuggled a couple of bottles of wine out and the friends toasted each other in the back of the limo. Scott did not have as much experience around wine as the other four, and got drunk, much to everyone’s amusement.

The dance started out well, although, as much as Suzanna wanted to have a picture taken just with Eric, Suzanna was disappointed that the five of them had their official picture taken together. Suzanna danced with Eric and Fernando, and they all dealt uncomfortably with Scott’s drunken and unsophisticated lust for Carla. While they were dancing, he would try to grope her breasts. Carla would slap his hands away, first playfully, and then a little more aggressively. Suzanna was dancing with Eric and could see him following the action with his eyes. Suzanna realized she was jealous of Carla getting Eric’s attention, even though she realized she was being horrible—if only internally.

As the evening progressed, Scott got bolder. He and Carla were sitting out a dance; Carla had suggested that perhaps they should take a minute to sober up. Suzanna was dancing with Fernando and Eric was off talking to some of their friends, when Scott started to walk his fingers, like the “eensy-weensy spider,” up Carla’s thigh, in front of everybody. Carla seemed frozen. Half the kids stopped dancing and their eyes were glued to Scott’s fingers as they advanced up Carla’s leg.

Suddenly, the situation was resolved.

One minute, Scott’s hand was creeping up Carla’s skirt and the next, he was splayed out on the floor, rented tux and all, clutching his face and howling. Suzanna’s first confused reaction was how stupid he looked, with his satin bow tie tilted at a less than jaunty angle and his yowling red face. When she was able to tune into the scene lucidly, she saw Carla crying in Eric’s arms. Eric, Carla’s knight in shining armor, had decked Scott. Fernando squeezed Suzanna’s shoulder in sympathy. Eric helped Carla step over Scott and they walked over to Fernando and Suzanna. Eric looked at Suzanna.

“Come on, Beet, let’s all go home.”

CHAPTER 13

Suzanna was in a funk for a week after the prom. She knew she should have been proud of Eric for coming to Carla’s rescue—and she was—but mostly she felt deflated. She tried to be mad at Carla, but she just couldn’t muster the imagination it would take to make this Carla’s fault. There was just no way she was ever going to be an object of desire as far as Eric was concerned. She knew it. For the weeks leading up to the event, thinking about the prom had been a welcome relief from the tension of thinking about colleges. But after the fact, it was back to wondering what her future was going to hold. All she knew was that it was a future without Eric. Even if Eric were staying in town, which he wasn’t.

College seemed more and more like a dreamland the fact that it appeared that Fernando was staying at his father’s place for the foreseeable future made it impossible to whine to him about her dilemma. As she predicted, the jelly fund left him far short of a college endowment, even if he had had a college to which he could apply it.

Suzanna knew she had let too much time go by—and the dream of fall admissions had slipped away—but she was sure she could salvage the situation if she could make up her mind and at least declare a school for the following spring. Although her parents never pressured her, Suzanna knew how much the Professors Wolf wanted to be able to hold their heads up at her graduation and say, “Well, Suzanna just wants to take a semester off to clear her head and then she’ll be starting [insert college name, any college name here] for the spring semester.”

But she just seemed to be immobile. She couldn’t picture leaving the security of Napa, and particularly Fernando.

Fernando was the one who finally broke the stalemate. As they walked home from school after a hard day of listening to the other seniors discussing their futures, Fernando said: “I’m moving to Los Angeles.”

Suzanna was surprised by the calm delivery of this statement. Normally, Fernando was overly dramatic about the most minute detail, yet here he was with earthshaking news and he just said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Suzanna decided to just go with the flow.

“Really?”she said. “What did your dad say?”

“Not much. He really can’t afford to send me anyplace, so I guess as long as I’m not costing anything, he’s okay. He’s probably relieved that I’ve got a plan.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I just told you—I’m moving to Los Angeles.”

“What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Get a job.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Something fun.”

“Something fun. That’s your plan.”

“Hey, it’s more than you’ve got.”

The reality of that statement took Suzanna’s breath away.

“What if I went to Los Angeles with you?”

Fernando stopped walking and looked at her. Suzanna couldn’t believe she’d said it. Her parents wouldn’t be very happy, but—one never knew. Maybe they’d be relieved that she’d finally made up her mind about something.

“Well,” Fernando said, “Then you’d have a plan, too.”

The Professors Wolf tried not to be judgmental. They really did. And Suzanna did say that she was going to go to Los Angeles just long enough to find some sort of life interest. When her parents were frosty with her, she pulled out the big guns:

“Erinn went to New York and she didn’t finish college. And look at her. She couldn’t be a bigger success story if she tried.”

She knew she wasn’t fighting fair. Even though Erinn was wildly successful with her Broadway career, Suzanna was aware that her parents were severely disappointed that she hadn’t stayed in school.

She was fighting dirty, but at least this argument shut them up.

The last few weeks of classes went by fairly smoothly. She found that many of the kids actually seemed to be jealous of the fact that Fernando and Suzanna got to take a break from school. Suzanna felt giddy to be getting out of school. Graduation day had gone perfectly, marred only by the printed program that listed all the kids and their colleges, with the glaring exception of Fernando Cruz and Suzanna Wolf. Suzanna noticed that when her parents came backstage to congratulate her, they didn’t bring a program with them. As she hugged her parents, she thought: