Shrimp (12 page)

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Hmph, that was a nice thing to say. I think.

'Also," he added, "my parents are driving me crazy at the house. I came over here almost as soon as your mother called."

Ahhhh, my head is just swirling in confusion about where Shrimp and I are. But then I thought,
Why not just run with this moment and learn a little more about Shrimp?

I sat down on the leather sofa next to the desk. "I still haven't heard how Papua New Guinea was."

Shrimp didn't look up from his sketching, but he did start talking. "PNG was awesome. It's a really beautiful place, but sad and strange, too. There's a lot of poverty and there's also a problem of corporations doing toxic dumping there because the government is sort of nonexistent. It's, like, as beautiful a place as it is depressing. Fiji had to be my favorite of all the places we visited. I could live and surf in that paradise forever. And the people are so nice, you can't believe it."

"How come your parents decided to come home?"

Shrimp looked up to the door, scanning to see if Sid and Nancy had returned to the room, I suppose. "My dad has a little habit of getting kicked out of various places once his talent for growing and selling weed is discovered. I love the guy, but it's just kinda... skeevy, y'know?" This struck me as a strange comment coming from Shrimp, whom I've always perceived as being the most nonjudgmental person ever. Shrimp looked around the meticulous room with the antiques and ceiling-high shelves filled with books. "You always used to complain about your parents, but I think you're so lucky. They're, like, solid, you know?"

I nodded. I actually do know.

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"So how was New York?" Shrimp asked. "What was your bio-dad like?"

"Disappointment."

"I kinda figured he would be."

"But my brother, Danny, he's so great. I really want you to meet him. And New York! You HAVE to go..."

The little monsters barged into the room, screaming "Shrimp! Shrimp!" They both ran over to him. Ash took up residence on his left knee, while Josh kept a manly distance but he had on the idolize face as he gazed at Shrimp. Sid and Nancy followed behind, carrying drinks and steaming dumplings on a tray.

Clearly the new peace has gone haywire. It will never last.

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*** Chapter 14

Shrimp has taken
an artist's residency on the deck outside the kitchen at our house. It's a beautiful deck, perched high on the steep Pacific Heights hill on which our house sits, looking down to San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, and Tiburon, with a great view of the thick strings of fog that roll through the Golden Gate at dusk. Shrimp's got an easel, paints, brushes, and tarps set up on the deck. He's arranged his working space in the back corner where the view is most choice, but in a position so no one can see what he is painting. Strangely when he is gone, none of us peek under the tarps to see the painting, and we are the family always searching for secret hiding spots to sneak peeks at birthday presents. It's like we have an unspoken pact to respect Shrimp's process, and we all want to be surprised at the end when we see the completed product.

If he's painting some oil pastel of yachts sailing into Sausalito, I will seriously lose all respect for him. My respect for him is already in jeopardy because in the weeks since Nancy first commissioned him to do a painting, Shrimp has become almost a fixture in our house. If Nancy brings him one more lemonade out there I don't know what I'll do. It's really making me sick--worse yet, she thinks Country Time is real lemonade. Shrimp worked so late one night that Sid and Nancy let him spend the night on the couch in the study, and their invitation was all low-key and

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under the radar, too. No drama, no long discussions first, just "Oh, Shrimp, you're still here and it's so late. You've been working so long and your eyes look very tired, why don't you just crash on the couch." !!!!!!!!!!!!! And Shrimp made no attempt to sneak into my room to fool around, though I spent the night sleepless in my room, nearly getting repetitive stress syndrome in my hand from taking care of the business that I wished Shrimp was taking care of for me.

He's actually serious about this "just friends" business. Even Sid and Nancy have bought into the program, and believe me, they are loving it. They get the benefit of saying "Look how we've taken in Shrimp" with none of the disadvantages of worrying about the Little Hellion getting her groove on.

The upside is the anticipation. I am confident that ultimately Shrimp and I will be together again, and I am treating this "just friends" business as an opportunity to become just that--Shrimp's friend, so dragging out the ultimate reconciliation is like extended mental foreplay that will make it just that much more delicious when it happens.

"Hey, pal," I said to Shrimp. I had come home from the restaurant job to find Shrimp out on the deck, painting. His head was thrashing in time to the opera music wafting down from the open window in Sid and Nancy's bedroom upstairs over the deck. Ash and Josh were playing on the deck quietly alongside him, if you can believe that, Ash with her Barbies and Josh on his Game Boy. Having Shrimp and his mellow vibe permeating our house is like having Paxil dosed through the central heating ducts. "Dad wants to know if you're staying for dinner."

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"Who's cooking?" Shrimp asked. The Artist has become enough of a fixture to know that if Nancy is "cooking"--she put frozen tater tots into beef stew last week--it's wise to pass, but if I've come home with entrées from the restaurant, or if Sid-dad is firing up the grill, it's worth staying.

"Dad. Steak."

"Staying!" Shrimp said.

The night before, Iris invited me over to The Shrimps' for dinner. She made tofu lasagna. I don't know if the food was bad or it was just the tension in the house--Iris is trying to take over Wallace and Delia's wedding plans, she's constantly faxing menu ideas over to them at Java the Hut during business hours, or she's chewing out their wedding planner for recommending a reception room at a posh hotel that doesn't have a signed union labor agreement in place with its hotel staff--but I found myself sneaking away from their dinner table to call Sid-dad from my cell phone. I figured Shrimp's family needed a moment of privacy anyway. Iris had looked across the table at Shrimp and said, "Your complexion is awfully rosy." Then she sniffed and declared, "You've been eating meat!" And then Billy, who rarely has anything to say because Iris is always there to say it for him, remembered he had a backbone and mumbled, "So what?" Billy's protest was followed by Shrimp and Wallace, who both snickered, "Yeah, so what?" Yikes! I excused myself from the table, my stomach grumbling hard, and ran to the roof upstairs to call Sid-dad to make him promise to grill steak for dinner the next night. All the carrying on between The Shrimps' over the ethics of eating meat and whose business was it anyway, shouldn't it be about personal choice, had made me crave a New York strip something bad.

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I'm not so sure Iris and Billy coming home was such a good thing. Wallace and Shrimp seemed happier before, without them. Like, they've been fine on their own, and it's too late now for Iris and Billy to be going all parental on them. To say nothing of the fact that Iris and Billy are basically guests. Wallace bought and owns their house, Wallace is the one who built a coffee business from nothing with no help from them, Wallace is the one paying the bills. I can understand why Wallace isn't taking kindly to Iris going all mother-of-the-groom and trying to dictate how to plan his wedding.

Snooty old Pacific Heights never looked so good, may I just say.

Somehow my house has become a sanctuary. I don't know if it's the new peace or Fernando living here because he's like our family and Leila never was, but this peace is starting to seem sustainable. I am trying to figure out what makes a marriage work when I look at Sid and Nancy. They are the oddest-looking couple--short, old, nebbishy bald guy with tall, young, blond glam wife--yet they work, much better than Iris and Billy; I don't understand why. In the twelve years since Nancy married Sid, I have watched them grow from awkward and polite mates--almost like strangers--to now, I wouldn't say there is great passion between them, but they're content, like they're a team or something. Even when they're bickering--and the peace dividend seems to have resulted in them bickering less (what's that about?)--you know with them that they've got each other's backs.

I really still hope they're not having sex anymore.

The peace is feeling so nice, and having Shrimp around

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strange but great, that the A-date anniversary has come and gone and I still haven't told Shrimp. I've told Helen and Autumn, but I didn't know whether he would react as they had--supportive but indifferent too, like it was important that I told them, but what happened was in the past and I had to move on.

Of course Shrimp would take it the same way. I just had to get it over with, tell him so we could move forward, past "just friends" and into true loves--without secrets. Watching Shrimp paint and mock sing the aria coming from Sid and Nancy's bedroom on the second floor over the deck, I knew there would never be a right time, which left only now or never.

I told Ash and Josh, "Mom says it's okay for you guys to watch TV in the family room until she gets home from yoga." They looked up at me, disinterested. Ash said, "No fucking way," and head-banged Barbie into Ken. Josh grinned at me and said, "Nuh-uh." I said, "Go watch TV and I promise to read to you at bedtime?" Josh said, "Harry Potter?" and I rolled my eyes and said, "Yes," dreading another round of that. But Josh still shook his head at me and pronounced, "Nope." I was left with no choice but to exercise my Big Sister prerogative. "SCRAM!" I yelled, and they were outta there.

I sat down opposite Shrimp. "There's something I have to tell you," I said.

He continued on with his painting. "I'm listening."

How do you start a conversation like this? I didn't know how so I just jumped in, like when Shrimp and I used to go down to Santa Cruz last spring and he would wade slowly into the surf wearing a full-body wet suit but I

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would ignore the icy water and just dive right in wearing only a bikini, not even bothering to get my feet wet first, wanting to get over that initial freeze quick. "You probably don't even care about this and all, but, urn, there's just something I thought I should tell you. Last year at this time I had an abortion. It was right before I got kicked out of boarding school." Phew--there, I said it. Now we could move on.

Shrimp's hand stopped painting and he didn't look up at me. "Justin?" he mumbled, which REALLY pissed me off.

"Of course Justin!" I spewed, loud. For some reason I have a reputation as a wild child, but the truth is, I have only been with two guys in the biblical sense: Justin and Shrimp. "The same Justin who couldn't be bothered to help and who left me to go to the clinic by myself. What the fuck do you think, by some random stranger?"

Shrimp shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. His silence spoke volumes.

I felt my face turning hot with shame and sadness-- but shame and sadness for Shrimp, not for myself, because apparently he was not the cool guy I thought he was, one who could deal with a girl with a past.

Shrimp got up from his chair, placed the tarp over the easel stand, and walked inside the house. Just like that he left, without saying good-bye or
We'll talk about this later.

If our house has become a sanctuary, suddenly I wanted to be back in Alcatraz, alone in my room, locked up. I raced upstairs but stopped cold when I was passing by Sid and Nancy's bedroom. Sid-dad was slumped at the open bedroom window, with the view out over the deck and back garden. When he looked at me standing at the doorway, I

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saw his eyes were wet and his face splotchy, and I knew.

"You heard," I said, looking past him to the open window. I should have paid more attention to the decibel level of my voice when Shrimp's head had stopped thrashing in time to the opera music that had been wafting from the bedroom window down to the deck below after the music had been turned off.

Sid-dad nodded.

I thought my worst fear was Shrimp finding out my secret, but now I realized it was my dad finding out. I stood at the doorway, paralyzed, not knowing what to do or say.

"Cupcake," Sid-dad said, and I felt flush with relief, because even if he knew he still loved me to call me by that name, right? "Come in here, please." I went inside the bedroom and he gestured for me to sit on the ottoman by the window.

I assumed he wanted to talk about it, whether to lecture or scream or I don't know what, but instead he burst out crying, which hurt my insides more than that painful procedure ever had. The only times I've seen him cry before, aside from when he gets misty-eyed talking about that Boston Red Sox first base player who let the ground ball slip through his legs and lost the team the World Series, have been when Josh and Ash were born, and when Leonardo DiCaprio drowned in
Titanic.
Sid-dad made no effort to compose himself either as he sputtered, 'All I ever wanted was to protect you, for you to have a good life, and now, to know you went through that, let yourself get into that situation." His tears caught up with him in the form of anger. 'ARE YOU JUST STUPID TO GET INTO THAT KIND OF TROUBLE?"