Palo Alto: Stories (3 page)

“That’s Greta, my wife,” he said. “She was not my wife then, when I made them. She became my wife.”

“She’s very beautiful,” I said. She was. Prettier than me.

“I did these when I was at school,” he said. “I wanted to be artist. But it was no good. It is no good to be artist. I practiced every day, eight hours a day. Then I could draw like Michelangelo. Then what? There is already Michelangelo. I realized there was nothing more to do. In science, there is always more to learn. Always more.”

I didn’t look at him; I looked at his pictures. I felt very lonely. I pictured him and his wife, alone at a long table, eating some bland Swedish food, not talking. The only sounds were
from the utensils hitting the plates, and the squish of their gentle chewing.

“So,” he said. “You see.” He reached over me and shut the portfolio to punctuate the “You see,” but I didn’t know what to see. Then I looked at him. He stood there and looked at me. We were so awkward.

“Okay,” he said finally. “See you.”

“See you,” I said.

That summer, my only friend was my cousin Jamie. He was smart, and knew what he liked. He could be pretty mean behind people’s backs because people were so mean to his face.

Jamie invited me to a Fourth of July party, at this Menlo girl’s house, Katie Hesher. It was my first high school party. She lived on the other side of the San Francisquito Creek. It was woodsy over there. It was this big, one-story wooden house, like a fancy log cabin. We got there around nine. There were roomfuls of people. Everyone was drinking beer, mostly Keystone Light. I recognized a lot of people from my school, Paly, but I’d never seen them outside of school.

Jamie got me a beer; I opened it and held it. Jamie went off somewhere, and I sat on a couch in the living room. People came and sat on the couch, and talked, and left. I sat there for a long time. I didn’t know anyone from Menlo, and I didn’t know the people from my school. I sipped my beer. It was like thick, frothy urine.

I thought about Jan’s Fourth of July. I imagined him going to a movie. He was with his wife, Greta. They entered the theater with their arms around each other. They were smiling.
Maybe they were going to see
Schindler’s List.
They sat in the movie and ate popcorn and enjoyed it and were serious about life.

After a while, I got up and went outside. There was a mist. I walked down the long driveway, under the large sycamore trees. The noise from the party got quieter the farther I walked. At the end of the driveway, I crossed the street. On the other side was the San Francisquito Creek bed. It was very deep and steep and I could barely see the water at the bottom. It was so dark.

I still had my beer. I couldn’t finish it. I took another sip, and then dumped the rest out into the dirt. The creek trickled in the black below, the bushes around me were still. I kept the can, and I walked back across the road and up the driveway. I saw a guy from my school, a water polo player named Zack Cuttle. He was standing behind one of the cars in the driveway. I was about to say hi, but then I realized that he was probably peeing. I tried to walk by discreetly. As I passed, I could see that his eyes were closed. I looked over, and I realized that he wasn’t peeing; he was getting a blow job from someone behind the car. I stood there for a second. Then I walked quickly before he saw me. I went up the stairs and back inside.

I couldn’t find my cousin Jamie. I sat back on the couch, right in the middle. There were lots of people around. Everyone was talking so loudly. After a few minutes, Zack Cuttle and Stephanie Jeffs walked inside. I looked at them, and then I looked down. They went into the kitchen, where a lot of people were.

Then this guy sat next to me. Ronny Feldman. He sat right
next to me on the couch. He was a bad kid and he was handsome. He had gone to my school but had been kicked out.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I came with my cousin.”

“But why are you
here
?”

“I don’t know,” I said. He laughed. Then he grabbed my beer can and shook it a little. He laughed again because it was empty. He put it on the table.

“Here,” he said, and gave me another Keystone Light. I was already feeling light-headed from the first beer.

“Thanks,” I said. He was wearing a white T-shirt that was thin from being washed so many times. The neck was wasting away. His arms were thin but muscular. They had all these old scars and bruises on them. He had short, straight blond hair and a cherubic face, with a perfect nose. He was so handsome, but also like a little boy and dangerous.

I didn’t know what to say, so I opened the beer and took a sip. Too big of a sip. I choked.

“Easy,” he said. He patted me on the back.

He kept patting me, even after I stopped choking. I didn’t stop him. He did it softly. One of his friends walked by, this black guy named Camper Williams. He had skinny arms and legs, but a fat belly. His face was like a pit bull’s.

“That’s fucked-up, Ronny,” said Camper.

“What?” said Ronny. He stopped patting me. Camper laughed and walked away.

We sat there, and then I said, “Why did you get kicked out of school?”

“Because I broke all the windows in this asshole’s car.”

“Why did you do that?”

“This motherfucker, Brian Simpson, threw some eggs at me.”

“Why?” I was very interested.

“Whatever. On the Sunday before, I was walking, and I saw this car drive by. Someone said something, and then I saw the car turn around . . .”

“Where?” I said.

He looked at me funnily, like who cared where it happened, and then he said, “Over on East Meadow. So they drove back and they threw eggs at me. I fucking chased them, but they were gone. I guess Brian thought I wouldn’t recognize the car, but I did. So on that next Monday, I went to school at lunchtime . . .”

“You didn’t go to first period?”

“No, I—no, I skipped first period.” He seemed like he was laughing at me a little bit. But not in a bad way. “I just went at lunch, to fuck up his car. I smashed every window with a bat. They kicked me out for that.”

“So now where do you go?”

“I went to this continuation school, Shoreline, but I got kicked out because I was the only white dude with all these black and Mexican dudes from East Palo Alto. They thought they could fuck with me, but they couldn’t. They kicked me out for fighting. Now I go to this school for idiots and I’m with the
real
retards.”

He was
so
. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.

“I bet you’re smart,” he said. It was the best moment of my life.

Then this guy came up to him. He looked part Latino.

“What’s up, little bitch?” the Latino guy said to Ronny. Ronny was calm. He looked up at the Latino guy. This guy was older.

“Fuck you,” said Ronny, but softly. Then it seemed like the party got quieter.

Katie Hesher came out of the kitchen. She looked upset. She said, “Ronny, don’t! Not in my parents’ house.”

“Come outside, little bitch,” said the older guy to Ronny. The older guy looked like an ugly wolf. He had a skinny face, and pointy, uneven teeth. There were zits all over his nose. “Come outside, little Ronny,” he said.

“Ronny, kick this spic’s fucking ass,” said someone in the crowd. Ronny stood up.

“Don’t get hurt,” I said. He didn’t hear me. Everything was fast and scary. I sat there for a minute on the couch. Everyone else was pushing to get outside, after Ronny. I was still waiting for Ronny to finish talking. He was telling me I was smart and he was looking at me. But he was gone. It was like it hadn’t happened.

I got up and squeezed onto the porch with all the people. Mist was on the front lawn. The whole party was out there. Ronny was in front of everyone. I couldn’t see the Latino guy. Ronny took his shirt off. He was thin, and tough, and wiry in the mist. The guys were cheering him on. He was laughing with excitement. He had a big white smile. The other guys worked up this chant. They were saying, “Wet
back attack,” over and over. Ronny’s older brother was there, Boris. I only knew who he was because he was a legend. He had got into more trouble than Ronny did when he was in high school. They were both Russian. I knew that. I don’t know how I knew that. Boris took his shirt off too. A bunch of the guys took their shirts off. I was standing behind so many people on the porch. It started to rain a little. Their bodies were pearly in the misty rain. Their chests were flexing and their stomachs were breathing.

Then everyone was fighting. It wasn’t just Ronny. All the Latino guy’s friends, and Ronny’s friends. There was shouting. I couldn’t see Ronny; he was in the middle of everything. I saw Boris, he was shouting at someone, then he was fighting again. There was a guy on the ground, in the grass, facedown. Two guys were kicking him. One of the guys kicking was Ronny; he kicked and stomped. It was hard to see through all the people on the porch.

Then a bunch of the fighters were running away. It was the Latino guy and his friends. Ronny and some others ran after them. And then they all disappeared, except Boris and a black guy; they went over and punched and kicked the guy on the ground.

A car drove up very fast. It was a white SUV. There was a person on the hood. The car stopped abruptly and the person fell off into the street. Then the SUV backed up and drove away. Everyone on the lawn ran to the body. I did too. It was Ronny. I could see his face through the heads. His eyes were slightly opened, like a whale’s eyes. They lifted him; he was trying to say something. They took him out of the street, and
laid him on the grass section between the sidewalk and the street. Then someone yelled. Everyone looked.

The white SUV was driving back. It swerved up onto the sidewalk, toward the group around Ronny. The headlights lit up the whole scene in yellow. Everyone scrambled and dove out of the way, and the SUV drove over Ronny’s body. It was fast. His body jerked up from the sidewalk and turned over, so that he was facedown with his arms splayed.

Girls were screaming, and then I knew that it was me who was screaming. I couldn’t see anything for a while. The SUV was gone. I walked to the middle of the lawn to see. Boris was at Ronny’s side. He was crying. He was trying to turn Ronny over. Everyone was shouting, arguing about what to do. People told Boris not to turn him over. Boris was yelling at everyone to call the police. There was blood coming out on the sidewalk, slowly, from under Ronny’s face.

About half of the people walked or ran to their cars and drove off. I saw Katie Hesher crying on the porch with some people comforting her. Some of the neighbors were coming out in sweatpants and slippers. A neighbor woman in a flannel shirt went over to Katie. When I looked back again, the neighbor was kneeling in front of Katie on the steps, comforting her. Boris had turned Ronny over. Ronny’s face was smashed on one side, and swollen like a white balloon on the other. Nobody did anything until the police arrived. Boris had his hand on Ronny’s chest and was talking softly to him.

There were about five police cars, and then ten, and an ambulance, and a fire truck. All the flashing lights lit up the trees, and they turned the misty rain red, just above the cars.
The paramedics were calm. They checked Ronny, and then gently lifted him onto a gurney and put him into the ambulance.

Then the police were asking for statements. I was one of the people they talked to. A heavy policewoman with regular clothes and brown hair in a bun asked me questions. She had a tough exterior, but she was gentle with me. I told her everything about the car, and about how the fight had started. I told her about when Ronny and I were talking on the couch. She asked if I was Ronny’s girlfriend.

I said no.

Did I know him pretty well? No, but.

“But what?” she asked.

“Well, he told me I was smart. I mean, I think he liked me.” She looked at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. Then she thanked me, and said she would call if she needed more information.

She never called. The Latino guy, Richard Alvaro, was arrested. Ronny died. I didn’t get invited to the funeral. Nobody knew that I was the last person he had talked to.

I worked at Lockheed for the rest of the summer. I didn’t draw anymore. My parents could tell I was sad, but I couldn’t tell them why. I couldn’t even tell Jamie. I didn’t do much but watch the moon. It floated there, on the films, reverberant. I began picturing Ronny’s face in the moon. My face was there too and he was kissing me. Whenever there was a scratch on the film it would pull me out of the daydream, and I would mark it down.

Then the other day in tenth-grade American History, Mr. Hurston was teaching us about slavery and we had to act out a mock debate between the slave states and the free states. I played Mississippi, and I had to pretend that I wanted slavery to remain legal. Me and the other four slave state guys sat on one side of the room and faced the five kids from the free states. The rest of the class watched us with dull stares.

I’m not the most outgoing person, but no one was really saying anything. So I started it off.

“We need the blacks to be slaves because this country would fall apart without them.”

Jerry Holtz represented New York and the good side. Jerry
was handsome and good and a good soccer player. His hair was short in a crew cut and looked just right.

“Look,” he said. “We don’t want to cause any problems with you slave states, but the country can survive without slavery nowadays. We’ve established ourselves apart from England, and new industry is taking the country to new levels.”

“That may be all fine and dandy for you,” I said. I was getting into it a little. “But we Southern states depend on slave labor to run our plantations. It’s been done this way since the beginning, and there is no reason to change now.”

Then it was funny; something happened. Stephen Gary got really mad.

“What are you people saying?” he said. “It’s wrong! It’s dead wrong. I can’t believe you’re talking about it so calmly like this!” Stephen was playing Massachusetts, and he sat next to Jerry. His outburst was a shock to everyone. Stephen’s face was flushed, and his eyes were big. He looked mad and like he was going to cry at the same time. Mr. Hurston’s face was blank and he stared into the back wall. I looked to the other students. Some were interested in the debate now. Lewis, the only black kid in class, had a blank look on his face too. Stacey, the prettiest girl in class, was picking a scab off the back of her hand.