Rich Friends (23 page)

He was laughing, too. Reaching across, he touched her coffee mug. “Alix, I'm going to.”

“Don't count on it, Van Vliet.”

Chuckling, they sat back.

4

This was the year of Martin Luther King's assassination, the summer of racial riots that took seventy thousand troops to contain, the summer that, right here in Los Angeles, a .22-caliber hollow-nosed slug scattered Robert Kennedy's brains. This was the summer that Alix's friends were sending closely written postcards out of Europe, Morocco, Hawaii, the summer of graduation, the summer of diaspora. But why make a philosophical deal? Even if the world were imploding, even if every friend she had were camping on her private patio, she would have spent her time with the cousins.

The weather had changed. Sun blazed white and hot. Most days, the four of them went to the beach.

Often Alix would bring Fat Sam. She once had brought another brother, but she never mentioned Jamie. The front door had been open, and fat flies had clustered on bloody terrazzo. Jamie's death went too deep for pain: she never had visited Dan's mall. Her mother had, but Alix couldn't.

Without the baby they body-surfed, each differently. Cricket floated in on small waves. Vliet let the dangerous ones go. Roger, a powerful swimmer, rode only those killers. Alix took them all, regardless of size. Head down, long, dark hair water-whipped to her shoulders, arms flat at her side.

They baked in the sun.

Alix asked, “Is happiness one giant Pepsi commercial?”

She was asking Vliet. Roger rose up. Though shorter than his brother, a mere six-one, poor midget, his shoulders were heavier, and currently he had a large zit on the left one, caused, Alix decided, by his taste for Hershey bars.

“There are other things,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot from saltwater, which made them bluer, even.

“Seven-Up?” Alix asked.

“Come on, Alix.” He rarely used her name.

“No kidding, I should be brooding about the riots,” she heard herself say, “and the Middle East situation, and Kennedy and Vietnam and poverty. But let's face it, today I'm happy.”

A wave crashed. Roger's eyes stayed on hers, putting her on the defensive. From that first day, between them there had been this tension that she found exhilarating and therefore terrifying. She ached to hit him in his firm gut with all her strength, he turned her that bitchy. Other girls could afford to be bitchy. Not Alix.

She let sand trickle through her fingers. She
was
concerned about leached earth and Israelis being pushed into the Mediterranean (living with Dan, who could be apathetic?) and war and peace, but at this point wouldn't the admission come off saccharine, too feminine, playing up?

She smiled. “Besides, what's wrong with Pepsi?”

“To some,” Vliet said, “happiness is a warm sickle cell.”

“Up yours,” Roger said.

“Anemia?” Alix asked.

“Roger'll explain.”

“Fuck you,” Roger said. The twins tossed obscenities to one another as amiably as they did a Frisbee, and although Alix could tell no difference in this particular exchange, Vliet must have. He lay back down on his stomach.

“All I know,” Alix said, “is only black people get it.”

Roger eyed her. Grains of sand were caught in his moustache.

She persisted, “Isn't it a matter of genes?”

To keep silent any longer would have been rudeness. The twins had perfect manners.

“We really don't know,” Roger said. He pushed himself to sitting position. Heavy shoulder and arm muscles worked. He might have come, Alix thought, from a more solid planet, a hard and difficult place that, while not as conducive to ease, was permanent. “It's a riddle.”

“You enjoy solving them?”

Roger's expression changed completely. His smile, of tremendous sweetness, reminded her of Jamie. He nodded.

“Roger,” Cricket said, “it's not just that. The gardener's boy, he's why you got the grant.”

Alix stared down at filing grains, wanting to know more about the gardener's boy and how, exactly, Roger Reed had earned a grant.

“Big deal,” Roger said.

“Tell me?” Alix asked.

“A summer job,” he said briefly. His smile vanished and his expression again—or so it seemed to Alix—condemned her.

He wasn't condemning: he was trying to condemn. Her hand propping her face—so luminously bronzed it appeared wet—drew up the lovely dark eye on that side. Dazzling. Unattainable. So Roger was doing something he wasn't proud of, yet couldn't help. Putting her down. He'd done this often with Vliet's toys, belittling them in his own mind until he no longer envied them. (Or the affection that had caused the toys' bestowal.) She's a human being, not a toy, he told himself, and was warmly ashamed, but glancing at her, he decided that nothing he said, nothing he did, could mar the perfection.

“They needed a body to push a broom,” he muttered.

At this Vliet stood, brushing sand from his long arms. Some fell on Alix. “Roger, time to get food. And quit impressing my girl with how good you push a broom.”

She was Vliet's girl.

They went to see
2001
and they visited one another's friends. They listened to his records. This summer Vliet was collecting the Big Bands—Harry James, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw. Kay Kayser and Vliet joining in perfect pitch with Ish Kabibble,
Three little fishees in an itty bitty poo
. Breakable, scratchy 78s that brought Dan and her mother, smiling, into the family room.

“Camp?” Vliet said.

“For camp,” Dan said, “why not play Tiny Tim?”

Vliet riffed his fingers lazily. “This turns me on,” he said.

Nonnegotiable in the currency of truth. Alix knew that Vliet found joy in good music, classical and otherwise: his current purchases came not from strength but from weakness, an abdication of passion in favor of amusement.

When they were alone, she said, “I never would have figured you so big on kitsch.”

“There's a lot of things we don't know about one another,” he said, for once cold-serious.

“Alix?”

“Mmmm?”

“Yes?”

“No-no.”

“Why?” he asked, kissing her again.

They were stretched in the VW on an old chenille spread. The night was warm, filled with insects and one chirping bird. She liked kissing Vliet. Nothing sex-ridden here, simply a way of sharing affection. She was truly fond of him. His hands moved down her body. She tensed. His touch, it seemed to her, was rough and impersonal. She never could connect his touch with his hands, so rhythmic and graceful.

“What's it you want?” His voice in their metal cave sounded different. More intense. Frightening. “Tell me, Alix, what you want.”

SHE WANTED HIM TO STOP THRUSTING HIMSELF AT HER!

“Rape?” he asked. “Seduction? I'll play it heavy, Alix, I'll play it light. However you say.”

She let her lips graze his cheek.

“Beg pardon.”

“Just this,” she said with another brief peck.

“That's white of you.”

“What's wrong with being friends?”

“So that's it. More of a relationship.”

“Why not give it a try, Van Vliet?”

Naturally she wasn't about to let him in on the fact she was an anachronism, the last of the Beverly Hills holdouts. Virginity might have been swell in Mother's day, but now virtue hath its own reward. A name for being a sexless wonder. She let him touch wherever he wanted, but still, “No-no.”

Later, in her room, she picked up
Anna Karenina
. The letters made no sense. She kept wondering what in the numerous names of God she was waiting for. Earthquakes, thunder, word from a conveniently placed burning bush? Certainly she wasn't waiting for love. The word, even, terrified her. Looooo-ooooove. It sounded like a process to melt ore. She liked Vliet, and like was all she wanted. Her eyes focused:
Vronsky's thoughts had profoundly changed. He had unconsciously submitted to Anna's weakness. She, yielding all of herself to him, expected him to decide their fate and agreed in advance to any decision
. Tolstoy, Alix realized, hadn't meant only the obvious sexual yielding. Alix would eventually. She grimaced. Of course she would. But she, unlike Anna, never, never could let herself yield entirely. She wasn't strong enough. Only the strong can afford weakness, and she was vulnerable in too many areas. If a weak person discards her protective carapace, and something shattering happens, she's had it. She's broken. Pieces all over the place. Alix often was praised for her strength. While she knew this was a compliment to her self-erected facade, still, it pleased her. She respected strength, admired it, wanted it.

She read again.
Yielding
.

With a violent gesture, she ripped out the page, crushing it in her fist. Never before had she defaced a book. She lay back in her pillows and thought of Jamie and her father, thoughts drifting to words: gone, forlorn, alone, forlorn, afraid, forlorn, forlorn, forlorn.

5

The next day around noon, she answered the door chimes. Heat hit her like a slap. Vliet, leaning on the jamb, managed to look cool in stay-press slacks and blue-stripe shirt.

“Why so formal?” she wanted to know.

“I'm taking you to meet Ma.”

She bent her face, laughing into her hand like a Japanese girl. “C'mon now. I didn't mean that.”

“I did,” he said, eyeing her up and down. Expecting to go to the beach, she wore her green-and-blue bikini. “Pretty fantastic, girl, but not quite appropriate.”

She changed, thinking: I'm not Anna Karenina. I'm that all-time, old-fashioned, full-length-novel tease, Marjorie Morning-star.

The Reeds lived in a tract near Glendale. Acacia roots had buckled the sidewalk, and Alix trod carefully to the prim little house, worrying her blue number from Rive Gauche might look as expensive as it was.

“Relax,” Vliet said. “I've brought girls here before.”

He led her through a cramped living room which smelled of carnauba wax, opening a screen door into a small, square backyard. A tiny woman in culottes knelt in front of zinnias. A jet flew overhead and she didn't hear them.

“Lady, that position's asking for it.”

Em jumped, turning. Seeing Vliet, she smiled. Seeing Alix, she pushed hastily to her feet. Alix thought: She's only a little taller than Cricket, with the same funny, wiggly nose. Vliet, come to think of it, has the same nose, except it's a perfect fit on him. Mrs. Reed looks way older than Mother or Caroline, and those sad, thin, hangy arms.

Vliet introduced them.

“Beverly's girl! Oh Vliet. Why didn't you tell me you were bringing Alix?”

“One of those spur-of-the-moment things.”

“Alix, it's so nice finally meeting you,” Em said. “I've heard so much about you from Vliet. And your mother was a dear friend of Caroline's—and of mine, too, of course.”

Alix effused in kind.

And Vliet glanced at a window. “Roger home?”

“He went someplace. I think County General. You know, probably that Dr. Bjork.” She looked down at her hands, brown with earth, still clutching the trowel. “Vliet, where are your manners? Not telling me! Alix, please excuse me.”

As she hurried inside, Vliet grinned.

“Ma's perfectly adjusted to the joys of late-nineteenth-century living.” He sprawled, long legs over the arm of a redwood chair. “She wants everything proper.”

“With you her work's cut out,” Alix came back automatically. She sat in the shady patio, tucking her mini around her thighs. She was filled with embarrassment. Why didn't I realize Vliet and Roger aren't rich? That first day Vliet said something about being middle class only on his parents' side. Why didn't I let it hit me? I kept mentioning going to Europe. Twice. But so've Vliet and Roger. Backpacking once and in the VW once. Oh God, how I've been flaunting the material. No wonder Roger's forever putting me down. How do the Reeds manage Harvard and Europe and Johns Hopkins for two? How come I'm always so aware of the money angle?

Em returned, wearing a brown shirtmaker that covered her upper arms. “There's lemonade in the kitchen,” she said. “Vliet, will you get it, please?”

“Ahhh, the silver-tray treatment for Beverly's girl.” He laughed and went inside.

“I'm afraid we spoiled him,” Em said.

Alix recognized Em's tone as the rich one her parents had used about Jamie. Vliet was his mother's favorite. “Mrs. Reed,” Alix said, “you have the two nicest sons.”

“Thank you, dear. I think so, too. But I'm partial.”

Em made a small ceremony of pouring lemonade (which was on a silver tray), of passing napkins, offering devil's-food squares.

“Well?” Vliet asked his mother. “Is she or isn't she?”

“You're terrible.” Em smiled indulgently. She turned to Alix. “Caroline—Mrs. Matheny—said you were a charming girl.”

“She said, ‘Luvs, she's exquisite! Beverly's girl is the most
gor
jus thing alive.'”

A perfect imitation. Em and Alix laughed.

“Mother,” Alix said, “told me Car—Mrs. Matheny used to wear glasses. Now I notice she doesn't.”

“Only for reading, dear,” Em said. “Excuse me for one minute.”

She went into the house, returning with two large scrap-books. Wheat-color pages had come loose, and their frayed edges protruded from brown plaid covers.

“Alix, here's something you might be interested in,” she said, setting the heavy books on the table. “There should be some pictures of your mother.”

Vliet and Alix on either side, Em turned pages. Grades on penny postcards. Shiny black-and-white snapshots, mostly of the two girls who had inhabited the bodies of this wrinkled woman and Caroline. “Look. There she is,” Alix cried. Beverly and Caroline (rounder in those days), both wearing one-piece swimsuits, leaned toward one another, forming an inverted V. There were yellowed clippings of Em's triumphs as Panhellenic delegate. A telegram:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GREAT HONOR
,
GRANDMA
. “She sent me that when I became president of the house.” Group pictures. The girls, hatted and gloved, looked as if their major ambition were to be forty. The boys, with their dark suits and brutally cut hair, seemed there already. “Mrs. Reed, is that Mother with the sailor?” asked Alix. Em replied, “Let's see. Yes. Lloyd Rawlings. He was at Caltech, in officers' training. It was taken at our Pink Rose Ball.” She pointed. “This, too.” An 8x10 glossy of Em smiling up at a tall man whom Alix knew without being told was Mr. Reed. Roger resembled him, the same tension around the mouth—or moustache. Em wore a formal with the skirt gathered on either side like a milkmaid's, and a huge orchid pinned on the complicated tucks of her bodice.