Treasure Island!!! (9 page)

“I was only seventeen. It was horrible.”

“What? Patty, have you heard a word I'm saying?”

She stared right at me: “You need a place to crash.”

“Yes, exactly! Do you live alone?”

“No, I live with my girlfriend.”

I didn't know what she meant by that. “You have TWO bedrooms?”

“Three, actually.”

“Then you have extra space!”

“Not exactly.” Attempting an emphatic gesture, she knocked over a stack of Styrofoam cups, which rolled across the counter.

“I don't put much faith in your math skills,” I said as she pursued a cup approaching the edge. “You live with ONE girlfriend, but your apartment has THREE bedrooms.”

“Yeah, but one of them is sort of our media room . . . ”

“Less TV, more reading. I recommend it. And I'd even sleep in the living room, or a sun porch, if you have that. Jim Hawkins sleeps in an apple barrel. Anyway, this is excellent! Roommates with Patty Pacholewski! In fifth grade, I never would have thought it.” (Seventh grade, I wouldn't have wanted to think it, but didn't say.) “Tell me the truth, Patty: would you have asked me, if I hadn't asked you first?”

“Did you ask me?” All the color had gone out of her face. Her day job sucked the life out of her. “You don't even know my girlfriend, Sabrina.”

“But I'd love to know her.”

“Listen, I really have to go fill the napkin dispensers now—no offense.”

“None taken, mate! You, me and Sabrina—let's find a time!”

Thank god for Patty Pacholewski, I thought as I walked home, kicking at snow boulders, many of which shattered violently at the first touch of my boot. When, I wondered idly, had
she
become a lesbian?

Back at the ranch, I discovered that someone had placed a letter into Chapter 1: The Old Sea Dog at the ‘Admiral Benbow.'

“What's this?” I said.

“That came for you yesterday,” my mother said. “I wanted to make sure you'd see it.”

The note was from Rena on a fine hand-made rice paper embedded with marigold petals. I read it rapidly; it was plain she was worked up.

 

. . . I miss the Gratuitous Pancakes. Why do all my calls go straight to voicemail? Are you mad that I took your shift at The Pet Library? Please write back. XOXO, Big Love, Rena

 

I ignored the letter. I had Patty now.

“Rena called,” my mother said.

“Rena called,” Adrianna said.

“Somebody's on the phone for you,” my father said. “Her name's Rowena.”

Eventually Adrianna chased me down, phone in hand. “She's right here,” she told the receiver in a loud, aggrieved voice.

“Yes?” I said (politely, almost secretarial).

“What's happening? Do you want to get a cup of coffee? How's Richard, how's living at home?”

“A hundred questions at once!” But I regretted my sharpness. What if the Patty situation didn't pan out? Crashing with Rena would be a retreat to primordial self without the boon of my mother's well-stocked pantry, but it would do to keep my options open. “Sorry, Rena, don't mean to be blunt. I'm just in such a rush.”

“Why?”

“Meeting someone.”

“Lars?”

“No,” I said with a snorting laugh. “Lars means nothing to me now. He's like a bad dream. A distant vapor. I can't even remember the color of his eyes.”

“Green,” she said.

“He's like a bank of fog that hung over everything and then the moon came up and burned him into nothing. What did I ever see in him?”

“I don't know,” she said with just the slightest tremor in her voice. “Green . . . with little gold tiger flecks.”

“Wait, first my crappy job, now my crappy boyfriend? Rena, you wouldn't dare!”

“I didn't do anything,” she pleaded. “But he was lonely, and I've been missing you. We didn't do
anything
, I swear. I wanted to sound you out first.”

“Sound this, you treacherous dog,” I said and hung up.

Lying on my crumb-laden bed, I thumbed through
Treasure Island
in search of solace, but the words blurred together, and I threw my book to the floor. Over the last few nights I had been pretending not to hear Adrianna making sad noises in her bedroom. She had been having long talks with Mr. Tatum and taking steamy baths at night, during which I was pretty sure I could detect, under the sounds of splashing, her sobbing. The girlish misery in this house was rising like a sea tide. Squelch it, I thought. I deliberately made myself think of Lars as a compendium of flaws and inadequacies. I remembered his lack of ambition and his habit of smudging his glasses. I remembered his boyishly servile way with my parents (until my mother had finally put a stop to it, he'd called them “ma'am” and “sir”) and his piercing, bed-shaking sneezes. I remembered his clothing—all of it, bad; in fact, the best you could say is some was neutral in color—and his penchant for supernatural sci-fi movies. By boarding the brig of his unappealing qualities, I managed to calm myself. Then I picked up my book, thrust it under my pillow, and slept.

When I awoke at dawn, I had an angry red crease on my right cheek where the spine had pressed. No cucumber slices, I vowed, no lotion. The book had cut me like a saber.

 

BOLDNESS

RESOLUTION

INDEPENDENCE

 

I didn't care that I couldn't remember the fourth one. Let the rude mark lie. On my way to breakfast, I did a capital imitation of a seaward whistle.

 

P
atty's girlfriend Sabrina sat cross-legged on the floor, in a dark grey smock and cargo pants, smoking. I liked her
instantly
, even though her tattoo alarmed me: a mermaid stabbing herself with Neptune's fork. Patty had gone out for more cigarettes.

“Steven King,” she said, when I asked her what she liked to read. “
Road and Track
, the magazine.”

There was a long pause in which she drank her beer, and I drank my water, both of us gazing at Richard, whose cage I had placed on the floor.

“Nice bird,” she said at last.

“Thank you. He's supposed to be a helpmate, but he's more of a talisman for my journey towards bolder selfhood. I got him after I read
Treasure Island
.”

“Okay,” Sabrina said.

Richard rocked from side to side, pupils slightly dilated. He bobbed on his perch in the dance style of Shirley Temple.

“Is he going to talk?” Sabrina asked.

“No, that dance always wears him out. He'll take a nap soon.”

He would. I'd given him a piece of Xanax. Although etiquette required me to disclose to Patty and Sabrina that I had a pet, I hadn't wanted to showcase his irritating qualities.

I explained to Sabrina that I knew Patty from fifth grade, and she explained to me that she had grown up in Michigan but at fourteen had run away from home. She had lived on the streets, then in the back of somebody's truck; she had moved here and taken a job fixing motorcycles, which she quit abruptly it seems, or maybe it was just her manner of telling it; then she went back to a different school; dropped out; rode around the country a bit; worked in a fish cannery in Alaska, and before she met Patty I don't know where she lived, though she spoke repeatedly of a drug-dealing person who went by the name of Midas, both because he was regarded as a king of sorts among his peers and because he liked to wear gold chains.

I could not hide a sense of awe. “When Patty first said she had a roommate, I assumed she meant some boring person we both knew in high school.”

“I barely attended high school,” she said cheerfully.

They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks . . . I seen a thing or two at sea, I have.

“What do you do now?” I asked Sabrina. “Odd jobs?”

“Bad jobs, odd jobs, shit jobs. Dishwasher, house painter, deckhand.”

“Deckhand,” I murmured and mentally gave Sabrina a tarry pigtail.

“Riverboat casino. The people suck, but those jobs are easy to get, if you're looking.”

“I haven't been on a boat since I was seven, at Disneyworld. It's A Small World After All.”

“That's a
flume
ride, not a boat.”

“Well, technically, but I didn't take to it. The colored lights, the dark tunnel, the dolls that sing; even if you close your eyes, their teeny tiny voices bore into your ears. I hurled on the fiberglass deck and had to be evacuated at an emergency exit platform. I never stepped in a boat again.”

Sabrina took a slug of beer.

“But people change,” I added.

“Not that much,” Sabrina said.

“No, that's what's so inspiring about people. People
change
.”

She looked skeptical, but we didn't get into it, because just then a snow-flecked Patty walked through the door in a long wool coat. She pulled off her wet boots and gazed at us, almost in disbelief.

“You came?”

“She came and she brought stuff,” Sabrina told Patty.

“To new beginnings,” I said as I presented them a double-handled shopping bag, which they rifled through with enthusiasm. Pine nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, five-pound bags of Jolly Ranchers. “There's always more where that came from.” I ignored the vision of my mother in the empty pantry, steeling herself for another Costco run.

When two women live together they create a world of gestures—flicking of hair, twitching of lips—which make their approval of you seem to hang in the balance. As Sabrina and Patty rummaged through the herbal selection in the mahogany tea chest, I watched them closely. I assumed a relaxed posture on the floor (my hosts having occupied the futon) and tried not to look at Richard, who, pupils further dilated, had started to daven. Sabrina put some throaty folk music on the stereo, and Richard screamed, “It's big, it's hot, it's back!”

“Wow,” Patty said.

“He
is
a talker!” Sabrina said with elation.

“So how'd you guys meet?” I said abruptly.

“Softball team,” said Patty. “Internet,” said Sabrina.

Since they had overlapped, I pretended not to have heard Sabrina and feigned an interest in softball. The conversation tottered along, with intermittent shrieks from Richard.

“Bird's getting lively,” Sabrina said.

“Shut the fuck up!” said Richard.

“Sorry. Sorry! I don't know where he—”

“It's big, it's hot, it's back!” shrieked Richard.

“So the extra room?” I put in hurriedly.

“Right now we use the space—I mean it's kind of convenient for storage and TV watching—”

“Can't you watch TV in the living room? Because you'd hardly notice me. I'm very considerate, I'm independent . . . ”

“How much can you pay?” Sabrina interrupted.

The free gifts from Costco, the peanut butter pretzels that they had already ripped open and were snacking on, for godsakes, how much of me did they want?

“I can contribute, obviously. Are you open to a barter economy?”

“Not really,” Sabrina said, her mouth full of pretzels. “‘What does a lesbian bring to a second date?'” She gave Patty a private, almost misty look.

“‘A U-Haul,'” Patty replied.

“Old joke,” Sabrina explained, looking over at me.

“She
knows
you're not a lesbian,” Patty clarified.

“
Are
you a lesbian?” Sabrina asked.

“I'm very homosocial,” I said, dredging up a word from college.

“Steer the boat, girlfriend!” screamed Richard.

“Go, bird, go!” Sabrina said.

“I'm celibate,” I added.

“It's weird,” Patty replied sharply. “You always talk a big game about your ex-boyfriend, but you seem kind of—”

“Book-centered?”

“No.” She frowned. “I don't know. Intense.”

“Shut up!” Richard said.

“This one's a hoot!” Sabrina said. “Can we feed him?”

Richard edged over to the bars and took a pretzel out of Sabrina's hand, but half-heartedly, I thought, and with half an eye on the chocolate-covered Bing cherries Patty had torn open. There followed a great to-do in which Sabrina and Patty took turns feeding Richard rice cakes, pink Himalayan salt, ice cubes, and a pencil. Each time Richard plucked an object out of their hands, they laughed like fools. Which gave me an idea . . .

“It's a shame I can't touch
his
money,” I said, almost to myself. “But his earnings are all tied up in a trust fund.”

“Whose money?” Sabrina said.

“Richard. Didn't I tell you? He performs.”

“The
bird's
got a trust fund?” Patty said. “What does he do?”

“TV mostly.”

Sabrina stared at Richard as if she were mentally rearranging his feathers. “I
thought
he looked familiar.”

“Maybe you've seen his commercials.”

“Is he the one who can open beer bottles?”

“Oh yeah!” Patty said. “He rides a scooter on late-night talk shows?”

I indicated that his was a vast scroll of talents, still unfolding.

“He's done pizza, toilet paper, peanut butter, Carpet Barn, House of Tan . . . ” It was surprisingly easy to make stuff up, like that moment when Jim Hawkins realizes he can paddle off and cut the schooner loose.
One cut with my sea-gully, and the Hispaniola would go humming down the tide!
I cut the ropes and Richard drifted into celebrity. “Did you see the movie that won Best Picture at Sundance last year?”

“No.”

“Richard
was
that movie!” I cried.

It was extraordinary how well they received that news, given the impression they gave of not following independent film. Soon all three of us were chatting about animal movies and the best cat and dog commercials we had seen on TV.

“Look, here's what I'll do,” I said after a pause calculated to suggest some internal struggle. “If I can stay here, I'll keep Richard's cage in the living room. I'll guarantee you intimate access.”

“Really?” Sabrina said.

Patty looked a little doubtful. “But isn't he out working half the time?”

“No way.” I explained that he'd just come off a time-consuming shoot and was going on hiatus. He always went on hiatus while molting, I added.

“Could we take him out of the cage?”

“Sure.”

“Could we use him at parties?”

“I'll even waive his fee.”

“It's big, it's hot, it's back!” Richard said and then he said it a few more times, with some meager variations in pitch.

Sabrina applauded. I was glad to score a point, but I knew the narrowness of my corner. The free association, the feather plucking, the loose bowel movements, could start any minute. I stood to signal my readiness to go.

“Talk it over,” I said in an offhand tone. “Let me know.”

They stroked the top of Richard's head. They'd pretend to talk it over; I'd go home and pack tonight. Little Richard was going to save me, I thought, but just then, while they tickled his feet one last time, another sound came from his beak.

At first it seemed like a laugh. Then the laugh sort of fell down the stairs and became a wail. That intractable bird, that bird in whom I could barely wedge a useful phrase, had been studying my misery when I'd thought he was asleep. I threw the cloth over his cage and my hands began to tremble. The sound was terrible: defeated, despairing, almost crazy. Shut up, shut up, but he carried on sobbing, relentless as a wave.

“Freaky,” Sabrina said. “He cries like a girl.”

“He's studying for a heart-breaking dramatic role,” I said.