The Surf Guru (6 page)

 

 

The weather held, so they had the birthday party outside. Wearing a gold mylar birthday-boy crown, Kenny opened all of his presents, flinging shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper into the air faster than Kacy could collect them. The entire cake was wolfed down in no time—why had she bothered with all the details?—along with quart after quart of ice cream, and the backyard was humming with sugar-fueled little boys with buzz cuts and wide-open mouths that were short on front teeth. Mooch the beagle nosed around under the redwood picnic tables, lapping up bits of cake from the grass. Skillet was there, too. He'd appeared in their yard that morning like a stray, his dyed-black hair sticking up in unruly tufts. He wore a pair of blue service-station coveralls with a name patch that said WOODY. There was an angry silver spike through the skin beneath his lower lip, and Kacy noticed he was trying to grow a mustache, without much success.

Marisol sat with her, watching the boys play. Kacy tried to sneak a glance at her watch, but Marisol saw her. “You do that all afternoon,” Marisol said. “Why?”

“I have a wedding after this. I can't be late. I know that sounds awful, but I have other responsibilities. It's just a fact.”

Marisol nodded. “I am a mother, too, Mrs. Burroughs.”

“So you know how I feel.”

“You go when you must go. I will take care of the things here.” Marisol gathered up all the used paper plates and plastic utensils and carried the garbage bag up to the house.

April—wearing a dirt-smudged beer-logo bucket hat that Kacy guessed was Skillet's—was playing with the boys, letting them chase her, weaving and feinting with more agility than Kacy had thought her blocky frame would allow. When Kenny hurled himself at April's leg and clung while she ran, April laughed—a rich, honest, adult laugh that Kacy couldn't remember hearing before. Skillet was camped out on a chaise longue with a cup of fruit punch, watching April with a dazed, sleepy smile.

Roger, to whom she'd hardly spoken all afternoon, appeared on the patio and blew a four-fingered whistle that stopped the boys in their tracks. “Know what time it is, fellas?” he called out, lifting a huge papier-mâché baseball out of a cardboard box. “It's piñata time!” He held the ball over his head proudly, and the kids clustered around him as he walked across the grass to the sturdy live oak that grew in the yard. With a short length of rope, he hung the piñata from the tree's lowest limb.

Kacy seated herself at one of the picnic tables and surveyed the scene. She'd leave soon. Right after the piñata. “I think that's going to be too high for them,” she called out.

“No, it's not,” Roger said in a sugary, carefree tone that she knew was meant to rankle her. He looked up at the baseball, and then down at the little people jostling around him. “They can ride on my shoulders.”

“Whatever you say,” she said. She flicked a glob of brown icing off the table and sucked her nail clean.

Roger told Kenny to be polite and let his friends go first, so Kenny just danced in place and sized up the ball with eager eyes. April tied a blindfold on the first boy in line and then handed him a broomstick after Roger hoisted him up on his shoulders. Roger bobbed gently through an orbit around the ball, letting the kid get a few licks in, but never allowing him enough leverage to do more than rock the ball harmlessly. After a few more boys had their turns, Skillet took over piggyback duty, and Kacy was pleased to see that he was following Roger's lead, rigging the game so the birthday boy could strike the killing blow. When it was Kenny's turn, April lifted him onto her shoulders. She brought him close to the piñata and stood still, but Kenny missed the ball entirely, slashing wild verticals through the air.

Kacy looked at her watch. It was 4:52.
Hit it, Kenny. Why can't you hit it?

“Level swing, Kenny,” Roger coached. “Focus.”

Kenny hit the ball dead-on. Nothing happened. Twice more, and still nothing happened.

“Hold on,” Roger said. “I have an idea.” He jogged over to Kenny's pile of presents and picked up the baseball bat he'd given to his son, a gleaming piece of lacquered ash. When he'd brought it home the week before, Kacy had tried to convince him that the bat was too big for Kenny, but he'd waved her off, tied a blue bow around it, and hidden it in their closet. Every time she'd looked at the bat since then she'd been more and more certain that it would break something of hers. It was just a question of when and what and how badly.

Roger slid off the bow and handed the bat to Kenny, who squealed when he felt the heft in his hands.

“I don't think that's smart, Roger,” Kacy called, but at the same time she felt herself drifting, disconnecting, her attention captured by the faint but steady
chik chik chik
of the sprinklers next door watering Mr. Weeks's garden.

Roger turned to her with his hands on his hips. “It's fine,” he said. “It's a baseball bat, for Christ's sake.”

“My mother says you shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain,” a redheaded boy said.

Roger turned to him. “Thank you, Peter,” he said.

At that moment, Kenny swung so hard he lost his balance, and April lurched sideways to keep him from falling off her shoulders. Someone shouted, and Kenny swung again just as Roger turned back to look. The bat caught him squarely in the face. Kacy heard bone crunch. She guessed it was his nose. She'd watched it happen without really seeing it; she'd thought vaguely of shouting a warning, but her mouth felt heavy and slow and it had stayed closed.

April screamed, and Roger fell, his hands clutched to his face. Kenny lifted his blindfold, saw his father bleeding, and burst into tears. Kacy ran to them and took charge. She ordered the boys—including the bawling Kenny—up to the house, where Marisol could watch them. She lifted Roger by the elbow, silently cursing him for getting hurt when the danger was so obvious, and now she'd have to waste hours waiting in a hard plastic chair outside the emergency room and she'd miss Dinaburg and the cake entirely. She had her car keys already in her hand when a better solution struck her. After all, Roger wouldn't be any worse off if she met him at the hospital later.

“Take your father to the hospital,” she said to April. “I have work to do.” When the stunned faces turned to her, she felt the warm, buzzy lightness that comes with decisions you can never unmake. Blood streamed through Roger's hands and speckled his sweatshirt and jeans. His eyes on Kacy were calm and lucid, which Kacy thought was remarkable, considering the pain he had to be in. “I warned you,” she said. He shook his head slowly, said nothing, and hiked up the sloping lawn toward the garage, stopping halfway to pick up a crumpled party napkin off the grass and clamp it to his face. From inside the house, Kenny let loose a piercing, frightened wail that Kacy knew would be heard for blocks, and then the screen door slapped open, and Kenny ran outside and launched himself at Roger's leg, clinging, crying. Kacy watched as Roger knelt and spoke softly to him, wiping one bloody hand dry on his jeans before running it through the boy's hair.

Kacy looked at April, at her chunky legs and acne-pitted cheeks and the little half-moon of scalp that interrupted her hairline, and she saw the only thing she could save. “Change of plans,” she said. She took the key to the car off her ring and handed it to Skillet. “You drive him, William,” she said. “April, you're coming with me in the minivan.”

Skillet stood still, the car key resting in his open palm. The key was the same silver color as the piece of metal he'd seen fit to stick through his face. He looked stupefied. Kacy wondered if he was on something.

 

 

“We should be with Dad,” April said in the van. “This is fucked. This is so
fucked
.”

“There's something I want you to see,” Kacy said, “some people I want you to meet.” She imagined the Dinaburg girl, a pale East Coast beauty, slim and beautiful in a Vera Wang dress, with a torrent of tight, dark, beautiful curls. “And let's clean up the language.”

The tires squealed as Kacy turned onto South Congress, narrowly beating a red light. April, with the filthy bucket hat clenched in one hand, started running her other hand through her hair, front to back, front to back, front to back, in a perfect, metronomic rhythm. Her eyes were far away. “Don't worry, honey,” Kacy said as they drove across the bridge. “Everything's going to be all right. You'll see.”

They arrived at the Four Seasons at 5:21. Kacy left the van with a valet and hurried into the earth-toned lobby, pulling April along with her. Between two lemon trees in terra-cotta pots, a sign with
Dinaburg-Fleischner Wedding
in white plastic letters pointed guests to the east wing. They went downstairs, where Kacy knew they'd find the dressing rooms for the wedding parties. She heard Dinaburg's voice raised high with good cheer and, with a tug on April's arm, followed it to a half-open door. Dinaburg, wearing a white yarmulke, stood with his back to them, a glass of red wine in his hand. He looked good in his tuxedo, she thought; his shoulders sloped more than she liked, but his butt had a cute little curve to it—not like Roger's sheer-drop wall of an ass. She caught a glimpse of a long white dress in the far corner of the room. The bride was surrounded by people—one of whom, Kacy guessed, was Dinaburg's snarly bitch of a wife—but she could tell that the girl was a tiny thing, with porcelain skin and a button nose and thin wrists and the dark curls that Kacy had imagined.

She pulled her daughter close, about to whisper,
See the bride? Doesn't she look beautiful?
But when she turned to look at April's full-moon face up close, she stopped herself. She saw patches of hair missing from both of April's eyebrows. Some of her eyelashes were gone, too; what had once been soft fans now looked like insect wings torn apart by cruel little boys. Pinpoints of blood red dotted the rims of her eyes, which still held a vacant, checked-out look. She instantly regretted bringing April with her. Forcing her to admire Dinaburg's daughter would be awful, unforgivable. “Let's go,” she said, leading April away from the door. “Let's go see the cake.”

“Who were those people?” April asked.

“They're from New York,” she said.

The kitchen staff said nothing when they walked through the swinging doors. They all recognized her from previous weddings; they'd jumped at the orders she'd barked, kept a safe distance while she'd added the final decorations and circled the cake, searching for imperfections. “Where's the cake?” Kacy demanded. “I'm a special consultant to Mr. Dinaburg.” One of the dishwashers pointed to the leftmost walk-in and turned back to his work. Kacy pulled the handle and opened the heavy silver door. They went in.

The cake sat tall on a serving cart. Mist swirled in on currents of humid kitchen air. She felt a strange mix of disappointment and glee. The cake was big, garish, loud, a monstrosity. Nine tiers of chocolate excess and opulence and self-indulgence. Strawberries crowded out by outrageous gnarls of gold-leaf spirals and clots of gum-paste tulip blossoms.

The cold snapped April out of her stupor. “OK, so it's really big,” she said. “Can we go see Dad now?”

“Shush.” Kacy studied the structure and detected a slight tilt in the third tier and a bulge crowning the sixth. April was right—there was no reason to stay. Dinaburg, she decided, was just a little man with too much money and no taste, and Rona Silverman—with her maroon hair and her tiny, tiny flowers and her magic New York water—was nothing special at all. But she had to be sure. She peeked back into the kitchen to see if anyone was watching. She had an easy path to a knife on a cutting board across the room, and calmly and confidently, she walked out to get it, plucking a clean white hand towel from a laundry box on the floor on her way back.

When April saw her approaching with the knife, she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Don't. Jesus, Mom, that's somebody's cake.”

Kacy laid a hand on April's folded arms. “Come on,” she said. “It'll be our secret.” Under the gentle but insistent weight of Kacy's hand, April's arms returned to her sides, and as Kacy hunched over the lowest tier of the cake and pierced the dark chocolate surface, she heard her daughter's breath quicken and thought,
She likes this. She's having fun, too
.

She carefully ran the knife through the cake and excised a piece—a thin piece, but thick enough so she'd be able to get all the flavor—and she folded the towel around it loosely. She looked at the wounded cake. Silverman's assistant, if he was good enough, would be able to cover it up. She silently dared him to try.

“Let's go,” she said. “Walk like you belong.”

And April did. She walked quickly and confidently toward the service exit. Kacy watched her, struck by her daughter's poise and confidence. It dawned on her that April might have barricaded her bedroom door that night because she'd had Skillet in there with her. She was thrilled. Not that April was sleeping with him—if that loser got her pregnant, she'd kill him—but that April was capable of connecting with somebody, that Kacy hadn't ruined her, that April might not blame her for everything that was wrong in her young life.

They emerged from the building in a small parking lot, where a dozen young people in kitchen garb leaned against cars and smoked. They walked right past a tall, well-muscled young man in a chef's coat with SILVERMAN CATERING stitched over the breast. He was flirting with a waitress, steadying his tall chef's hat on her blonde head, and he didn't even glance at them. They jogged around the hotel on a flagstone walkway, running in rhythm with each other, Kacy in her tennis shoes and April in her clompy black boots. As they waited for the valet to appear with the minivan, Kacy unfolded the towel. Daubs of chocolate icing stuck to the terry cloth. She held the cake out to April. An offering.