Eye to Eye (21 page)

“You look like you got this,”
David
seems to be saying.

“Thank God you're not letting him run all over you like you used to,” Venus chimes in.

I don't know. Ian seems to be in a mood. The sky's a clear blue, there's a slight breeze. The pool water is making little ripples and Ian keeps staring off in the distance, at the water, at the sky, at anything but me. It's not a pissy mood, but just an unusually contemplative mood for Ian.

He's just given me a paper he wrote discussing
White Boy Shuffle
and
Catcher in the Rye,
books I'd asked him to compare and contrast. He'd also been asked to watch some hip-hop videos and analyze them. The books are wildly different, but both have narrators that don't quite fit into the cultural expectations others have of them. Both narrators are smart-ass, smarty-pants, too, which I thought Ian would appreciate. I skim the opening paragraph, which seems pretty strong. “This looks good, Ian. You liked them?”

“Holden was cool. All that stuff about phonies and being stuck having to be with all those people he couldn't stand.” Ian slumped in his Frank Lloyd Wright patio chair. “All those rich guys he hated, even though he had serious bank, too.”

“What about Beatty?”

Ian shrugs. “I don't know…a lot of it was weird. A lot of that stuff I didn't get. Like, the title?
White Boy Shuffle?
What's that?”

I know that Ian is going to get annoyed, but I can't help but go into teacher mode. “Even after reading it, you don't quite see how the title fits?” He considers my question and pulls on his hair, which used to be blue-black, but now has some sort of red streaks in it. I knew that when I assigned the book that it wasn't exactly teenager-reading material because there are all kinds of historical winks and references he likely hadn't known, but still, I thought it a worthwhile book. This skateboarding black kid ends up leaving the beach for the inner city and keeps trying to avoid or fit into whatever it is that people, white and black, expect him to be. Sharp satire and all that.

“I'll have to think about that title some more,” he says, “but one thing that bugged me was this one scene where he's making fun of rap videos.” Suddenly he sits up, straight in his chair. “I think those videos are sick.”

“You mean sick in the good way, right?”

Ian bit off a hangnail and spit it out. “Yeah, Grandma. Sick like cool, sick like, those dudes are saying ‘fuck you' to people telling them they have to act like white people want them to.”

Hmm. But his paper totally ripped apart
Laguna Beach,
so he can't just be swallowing all of that clichéd imagery. Guns. Money. Women hanging on dudes like jewelry. Still, Ian had a point. That was how it was, at first, back in the day when NWA first came out with “Fuck the Police” and everyone was all, “That's crazy, they can't say that about the police,” and then the police were all, “Hold that thought for a minute while we beat Rodney King's ass,” and then at least some folks were all, “Oh, okay, I can kind of see their point.” But now? The whole turning society on its head, bitch, ho, AK-47, drive-by-shooting thing is a wee bit played out, in my opinion. Except now, the only hip-hop guys who seem to be making major “bank,” as Ian says, are the ones who still glorify that shit. And the ones who can't make serious money are the more intelligent artists without a jiggling booty in sight.

“Ian.” I pick up
White Boy Shuffle.
“That scene is satire, and so it's an exaggeration of a true thing and since you watch MTV every single day of your life—you don't have to tell me—but just think about it. What do you see all the time? You don't even have to say anything. Just think it.” I flipped through the pages. “That's all Beatty is saying. Also, if you can only do the one thing that makes money, that all the people in charge demand of you, isn't that a form of acting the way people want you to?”

“Ugh,” Ian says. He stands up and stretches. “I need a sandwich or something. Don't you ever quit with that preachy shit? Next week you're going to be all, “Hi, Ian, I just discovered the secret to world peace.”

“Maybe I will.” I sneer at him. “And then you'll be all, ‘Please tell me, I want some world peace, man, come on.' And I'll be all, ‘Too damn bad. You were mean to me last week.'”

“You are one crazy chick. Totally tweaked.”

“Whatever that means.”

Ian sighs dramatically. “You hungry? Want a sandwich or something?”

A sandwich? With actual meat that's not poultry? Fancy cheese and gourmet mustard? On real bread that's crunchy on the outside and soft and tender in the middle? Thank you, lawd!

I shrug. “Sure. Whatever.”

 

Later that day, while we ate our sandwiches, I casually asked Ian if he wanted to go to my nephew's show with me. I waited until he took a big bite of his sandwich so he'd have to keep his ginormous mouth shut. He stopped chewing and held his half-chewed sandwich in his mouth as if he were barfing it up. I smiled amiably and chewed my roast beef as if I had just mentioned the most normal thing in the world. It went like this:

“A
show?
With
you?
Why are you fucking with me?”

“I'm not fucking with you. I'm serious.”

“Why?”

“Because he's good, and you might like him, and it's a way for you to see some new raw talent. You're connected right?”

And then Ian said he'd rather spend all day with his parents at the synagogue than hang out with me. “Fun like cleaning toilets,” is how he described hanging out with me. I
almost
said, “How in the hell would you know
anything
about cleaning toilets,” but I let it slide. Long story short, I
happened
to have my nephew's CD and Ian liked it, although he pretended to think it was just okay. So he's going. I asked the Bernsteins and everything. “Totally random,” as Ian would say.

Today, Doris is finally arriving after weeks of talking about all the fun, nonteaching, nonacademic stuff we're supposed to do while she's visiting L.A. All the cheap, between-us-we-can-scare-up-about-a hundred-and-fifty-dollars things to do. Bita is driving because my car is still acting up, and Charlie is working late. And we all know what that means. So it's going to be a girl's night out—if we can find Doris. This is the third time we've circled LAX and I've tried her on Bita's cell twice. No answer. Bita has been cussing out the various people who have almost run into her or vice versa as we weave in and out of traffic.

I've been gripping the handle above the window and trying not to scream every time I think Bita and I both are going to see Jesus and I occasionally ask questions that I think will get Bita talking about her situation with Charlie. Since Charlie has moved out, I've not heard much. As her best friend, I should be the first to know, and I suppose I will be—when Bita feels like letting me in on things. I try one more time, though. As we approach Doris's airline, I ask Bita, “So, B., do you think you and Charlie are going to do the counseling thing, or is he gone for good?”

Bita leans into her steering wheel and peers off into the distance. “Is that her? Is that Doris?”

Curbside, I see Doris wearing a long, drape-y dress the color of the rainbow, lots of yellow, red and orange. And a big, chunky red necklace that looks like something Betty Rubble from the
Flintstones
would wear. I lean out the window and wave like a crazy person. “Mrs. Roper! Welcome to L.A.”

Doris gives me a big smile and the middle finger as we stop in front of her. I step out of the car quickly enough so that I don't get hollered at by the airport security fascists and give her a big hug. We throw her luggage in the backseat and then she climbs in.

“Bita! Thank you sooooo much for picking me up. I was trying to get you guys but my shit phone wasn't getting reception.” Doris pauses long enough to take in the car. “And look at this. Wow.”

I twist my body around so that I can see Doris. “I know.”

“What is this car, exactly?”

“It's a Mercedes SUV.” I raise my eyebrows at Doris.
Get a load of this thing.

“I know,” Bita says. “I don't want to hear it from you two, the cultural police.”

“I think this car is great,” Doris enthuses. “Would that I could afford something like this. Sorta like this…maybe a little bit smaller, something that uses less gas.”

I flip down my visor to block out the sun—and to look at Doris and give her the SHUT IT signal with my eyes. “I ain't saying nothing, Bita.”

Bita rolls her eyes. “Rare.” We're finally out of airport traffic and merging on the 405. “Besides,” Bita says, running her fingers through her thick, black hair, “I'm thinking of trading it in for something less fancy. You know, simplifying my life and all that.”

I want her to keep going because I know this must have everything to do with the Charlie Situation, but Bita changes the subject, as usual.

“Tonight, though, I don't want to simplify. Let's go someplace to eat that's nice, someplace fancy.”

Doris is quiet in the backseat because she can't say what I can most definitely say. “Bita, Doris and I are broke asses. That's Latin for teachers. Wherever you're thinking of taking us, we cain't afford it.”

“No worries. It's on me. My treat.”

“No….” Doris and I both say. Weakly.

“Don't even try it. Unless you're going to jump out onto the freeway and die, I'm in charge and we're driving to wherever the hell I want to.”

“Wow,” Doris says. “You're hard core.”

“We're going to Morton's,” Bita announces. “We're eating big, juicy steaks and drinking a couple bottles of wine.”

Steak. Yay!

“Yay!” shouts Doris. “I loooove this car. I loooove fancy restaurants. I looooove cow. The cultural police are keeping their big mouths shut.”

“Bullshit,” Bita says, laughing. “It's in you guys'
blood.
”

 

As Doris and I get ready to go to the show out in Corona, I have to shake my head. Earl had said trouble was coming to town, and I certainly feel something like trouble percolating. I try not to be so fatalistic about things. And how bad can a little show be, really?

I'm dressed already, as dressed as I'm going to be with square-toed Frye boots and a turquoise flowered shirt with pearl snap buttons. I pull on my jean skirt, which keeps twisting to the side, for some reason. When Doris comes out of the bathroom we both freeze and stare at each other.

“What are those
shoes?
” I say.

“
Me?
Is Earl dressing you? You're going to a hip-hop show in
that?
”

True, my ensemble is a little on the cowboy side, but I
like
it. I'm going to be comfortable in it, unlike Doris, who is wearing metallic green platforms with pink glitter lightening bolts on the side. And a star, a giant pink glitter star on the toe of each shoe. “You're blinding me with those things. You're like Bootsy Collins exploded into Ziggy Stardust.”

Doris clomps toward me with a big grin on her face. “We'll just see who the hip-hop zygotes go for. Me, who actually has something cool on and, dare I say, very, very unique, or you, in your hayride, hoe-down outfit. I'm scared to think about what you'd be wearing if we stayed in Langsdale, Indiana, a day longer.”

I look down at my skirt and boots, and I consider changing. “Yeah, well, I'm scared to think of a lot of things if I'd stayed in Langsdale a day longer.”

“Amen, sister.” Doris checks her makeup in a compact. “The lighting in this kitchen is god-awful. Or I look like somebody's mom.”

“Bad lighting,” I say. “Definitely.” I grab my keys. “Let's hit it.”

“What, we're not waiting for Earl?”

“No.” I feel a bit guilty. To my surprise, Earl had been excited about the show, had wanted to come, but I talked him out of it.

“Oh, Earl,” I'd said. “It's not a big deal. It's just a small thing.”

“I don't care,” he said. He had laid two T-shirts out on the bed. “Which one looks better to you? I like the black one.”

“You always wear black.” I pointed to the grey one. “It doesn't matter, though. Really. There's no need for you to go.” I stood in front of our bedroom mirror and checked my lipstick. I could see Earl's image in the mirror and he stared back at my eyes until I looked away.

“You sounding like you don't want me to go. I told you I don't need to go out with Jake. We go out all the time. It'd be fun to hang out with you and Doris. Scare that boy some.”

I didn't answer, because I didn't know what to say. My silence answered his question, and he put on his grey T-shirt and left while Doris was in the bathroom getting ready.