You Can Say You Knew Me When (24 page)

“We’ll get some real grub later,” Colleen said under her breath. “My treat.”

“No biggie,” I muttered, snapping a carrot with my teeth.
Can’t play the man if you don’t have the cash.
I turned to the adjacent table, decked with plastic cups of wine. “Can I get you one?” I asked her.

The gallery, L shaped, turned a corner, and in this second wing, filled with Ray’s quasi-self-portraits, I spied her. Surrounded by well wishers, she was animated, fluttering, her inviting smile a contrast to the many pained, sober versions of her face that hung from the walls. I started to move across the room to say hello, pulling Colleen with me.

“Are you nervous?” she asked. “Because you haven’t let go of me for the past hour.”

“That’s just because you’re extra hot tonight.”

“Yes, I am. So don’t scare off potential dates.”

I dropped my arm. A trickle of sweat slid along the seam of my un-crooked elbow. “After you.”

“Lead the way,” she insisted. “And girl, just relax.”

Sisters again.

I waved to Ray, catching her attention at last. Recognition took a moment—I watched her eyes uncloud—but as I got closer she called my name. We leaned toward each other for a loose, friendly hug. “Did you bring your special friend with you?” she asked. Over her shoulder, I saw David Stroh, her own
special friend
, who reached out for a handshake before Ray had even let go. I was being gripped by him, still tangled up in her, and was trying to formulate an explanation for Woody’s absence, when in my other hand I sensed the pliable plastic wineglass slipping from my grasp: a bobble, a splash, a gasp, the cup skittering on the floor, my ankles doused in Merlot.

“That’s what I call making an entrance,” said an older man to my side, as several others chuckled. One tall woman, ten years younger than Ray but with the same postmenopausal hairdo, patted a cocktail napkin against her pant leg.

I apologized repeatedly, while Ray turned to David, saying, “Hurry and find a wipe-up,” and the crowd stepped back, emphasizing my culpability with a clearly drawn ring-around-the-klutz. Before any of us had recovered, Colleen was stepping forward with a bar rag. She sopped up the spill, her silver boot arcing terry cloth across hardwood, while I stood by, exhaling helplessly.

“Hi,” I said, addressing the enclave with a feeble wave of my hand. “I’m Jamie.”

“He’s the son of a fellow I knew when I was just starting out as a painter, one of my original bad boys!” Ray announced, punctuating with her familiar burst of laughter. “Jamie’s doing research on the sixties.”

“The early sixties,” I clarified, not sure whose eyes to meet, still very much aware of the spectacle I’d made. Colleen was gliding away, soaked towel dangling. The surrounding silence seemed to beg more from me. This is the point where Woody, arm over my shoulder, would usually interject a remark appropriate enough—just enough humor, just enough apology—to put the entire sloppy moment behind me.

“He interviewed me about the old days,” Ray said.

“It’s a history project I’m going to put online,” I said.

“I’m next,” David said. “I’ll give him the real story.”

“And then I’ll give him the truth!” Another man’s voice, from behind.

A wave of insider laughter rose up:
Oh, the stories we could tell!
I chuckled along, making a mental note to extract myself before I was bombarded with unsolicited testimony.

“Are you in computers?” the cropped-hair woman asked, her penetrating voice supplanting the niceties.

“Not really. Radio, by profession.”

“Audio streaming will probably make radio obsolete,” she pronounced.

“Not everyone has Internet access or even a computer,” I said. “But anyone with a cheap transistor—”

“Sure, the
digital divide
. Give it time. That will change.”

I withheld comment. I had found myself in this argument repeatedly over the past few years, but radio wasn’t going anywhere.
The fucking spectrum wasn’t going away.

“I’ve got a website in development,” the cropped-hair woman was saying. She began telling me about it; my force field went up and I heard nothing.

The man at her side, the one who’d commented upon my entrance—her husband, her lover, whomever he was—murmured agreement as she spoke. “It’s a big idea,” he said. “Guaranteed to attract venture capital.”

“If you can’t make money off the Internet,” said David, “you’re doing something wrong.”

“Guilty as charged.” I laughed at myself,
hahaha.

Returning to the huddle was Colleen, bringing me, bless her, a much-needed fresh drink. “Let me introduce you to Ray,” I said, steering us from the boomtown buzz.

I couldn’t eat enough cheese cubes to keep pace with the wine I imbibed. Two hours later, food was crucial. Colleen and I wrangled Ray and David for a meal. I’m not sure who suggested we go to Al’s, though I know it was me who said, “Let’s just eat at a greasy spoon, one that serves beer,” and that when I said this what I had in mind was the kind of diner I’d haunted in my youth in Greenlawn: red vinyl booths, white stone exterior, middle-aged waitresses, French fries in gravy. Of course, with one or two exceptions, this is not what diners look like in San Francisco today, or rather, this is what diners look like, but this is not what diners are. Diners today
suggest
the diners of my youth. They’ve got the red vinyl, but without the cigarette burns; the milkshakes, but with chunks of name-brand candy
blasted
into them; the waitresses in white skirts and gingham, though few of them are past college age. Even the name Al’s is a retro reference: the name of the diner on
Happy Days,
a TV show about the 1950s that aired in the 1970s. A copy of a copy.

Colleen and I slid into a booth, across from Ray and David. “I want to say again how much I liked your work,” Colleen said to Ray. “And how elegant you looked in the midst of it all.”

Ray beamed. “Coming from you, dear, that’s a compliment.” Colleen’s cheeks flushed. “The two of you,” Ray said, flagging both of us. “Perfectly dashing.”

“Isn’t she great?” I said, squeezing Colleen’s shoulder.

David asked, “How long have you two been together?”

“We go way back, to New York,” I said.

“But we’re not together
,”
Colleen quickly added, the words seemingly directed at me. “Jamie has a boyfriend. A very nice guy named Woody.”

I reeled my arm back in, letting the ridiculous fantasy of
passing
crumble again.

“I was so looking forward to meeting him,” Ray said. “Where is he tonight?”

“We had a fight,” I blurted, then gulped down the rest of my wine.

I’d hoped blunt truth would halt further questions, but Ray followed up with, “Oh, dear. Was it your fault?”

“Takes two to tango,” David interjected.

“Though someone has to lead,” Ray said.

An image reared up: me on my bike, cruising along the park trails. “I guess it’s my fault,” I said. “If Woody was to blame, he’d be here now, making nice.” I could feel a burn in my cheeks, from alcohol, emotion, social ineptitude; my tongue suddenly swollen and uncontrolled. “Ray, you understand. It’s hard to be monogamous—.”

“You don’t have to get into it, Jamie,” Colleen said, clearly hoping I wouldn’t.

“I’m just saying, Ray, when you were my age, you felt the need to wander—.”

“True,” Ray said, “But you’re not dealing with abuse. I believe I told you?”

“About your controlling ex-husband?” I said.

“Ja-mie,” Colleen cautioned.

“Beyond controlling.” Ray said, adding, after the slightest hesitation, “It was physical.”

“Oh.”
Did I know that?
“I’m not sure I knew that.”

“He was a D.A., so what could I do? Show my bruises to the police?”

“So that’s why you had an affair with my father,” I slurred.

“Jamie, maybe you shouldn’t—.” Colleen put her hand on mine as if to impart sangfroid.

“I had to end it with Teddy for the same reason,” Ray continued. “Because he hit me, too.”

Teddy hit Ray. Yes, right, it was in the letter. “He shoved you that time.”

“I wouldn’t call it shoving.” I watched her eyes dart away and return before she spoke again. “There were a couple of incidents. The second one left a mark. I didn’t wait for strike three.”

“But he was crazy about you.”

“He was a little crazy, period,” Ray said. “Crazy with jealousy, and also something else. Something angry inside. Teddy didn’t like things that seemed bigger than him.”

“Did he just, like, slug you?” I asked, trying to understand.

Colleen moved her hand across the table to rest on Ray’s. “I’m truly sorry you went through this.”

I nodded vigorously. “I am, too.”

“Good thing she finally found the right guy,” David said too brightly, raising his beer in a kind of toast. Ray smiled back at him distractedly.

Colleen to Ray, again: “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

Ray: “The truth will set you free.”

David: “This food will set us free.”

Our waitress had materialized with platters on her outstretched arms, all four entrées at once. David gazed upon her with enormous gratitude, not just for the food but for her timing. Colleen sent a resolute scowl my way, bidding me to cease and desist. Ray, in the midst of all of this, bore a vague expression, not unlike what I’d seen in her studio when I first confronted her with the breakup letter she wrote to Teddy. Not unlike the face she put in her paintings.

My need to clarify what I’d been trying to say, or ask, or—well, I couldn’t catch hold of the thoughts weaving through my boozy brain.
A couple of incidents. The second one left a mark. Something angry inside.
My father had absolutely never hit my mother, nor had he delivered more than the most basic spanking to me as a kid. Was Ray misremembering? No, no, of course not: He’d hit her, she’d left him, he’d learned a life lesson from it. He took that crazy anger and buried it so deep it only came out in his cold, deprecating voice and not with his fists.

I ordered another glass of wine.

“Eat something,” Colleen told me.

I stood next to her on a concrete island in the center of Market Street, clutching myself in the damp night air, waiting for the streetcar. Lined up against the railing with us were a couple of down-and-out black men who looked far older than they probably were, one talking through drool and the other nodding along, and two younger, geeky guys, one white, one Asian, with nearly identical eyeglass frames, the small, dark rectangles that were everywhere these days. “That was awkward,” Colleen said.

“At the diner?”

“Why were you pushing like that?”

“I wasn’t pushing her.” The accusation confused me. Ray trusted me; if she didn’t, she would not have spoken of difficult things. I could handle the tension; I grew up in a house where conversation sometimes flared hot; I interviewed people who occasionally got upset. I made a stab at explaining this to Colleen, but intoxication got in the way. I asked her if she was ready to go home, but got no reply. I tried again: “Let’s get a drink somewhere. It’s not that late.”

“I’m done buying you drinks,” she said.

“I can buy for myself,” I said. “For that matter, I can buy for you, too.” I pulled out my wallet and found a ten-dollar bill. “A beer, anyway.”

“Don’t bother.”

A suited-up, goateed white guy about my age, carrying a rolled playbill in his fist, stepped onto the island. He gave me the once-over as he approached. I met his eyes out of habit, then looked away quickly.

“He checked you out,” Colleen noted, also out of habit.

“So?”

“So, he’s cute.” She stepped back and scrutinized me. “What the fuck is up with you tonight?”

“What’s up with
you
?” The edge of anger in her voice had brought the same out in mine. “First you’re taking Woody’s side, then you’re acting like I’m, like,
inappropriate
with Ray—.”

“And in between I was cleaning up your spill and paying for your dinner.”

I knew from the set of her jaw that if I pitched a battle I would not win. I shuffled toward her pitifully, nuzzling her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I can’t help myself.”

So this is when she consoles me with a pat on the head; she accepts my apology; she makes sure I get home safely, with aspirin and water before bed. I wake the next day, hungover but relieved that I wasn’t an excessively drunken fool, that I knew when to reel it in. Colleen is my oldest friend. We had our share of arguments back in the day—when we were both twenty-one and we enacted our troubles in plain view, the unspoken but agreed-upon way to traverse the blind tunnels into adulthood. We forgave each other’s every excess and in this way, over time, we made fewer mistakes. I wake the next day happy that I didn’t mess things up with Colleen, the way I’d done with Woody. Drunken mood swings, erratic behavior, public tantrums: I wake happy that I have outgrown all this.

If only.

What actually happened: Colleen pushed me off her, probably more roughly than she intended, but rough enough to send me stumbling heavily and ungracefully into the guy who’d cruised me. He muttered a startled, “Be careful!” which inflamed me.

“Don’t push me!” I hissed at Colleen. Our eyes locked. Her hands tightened into fists at her sides. I took an angry stride forward, wanting to charge at her, knock her off balance, watch her fall to the ground—a desire that drew force through my legs, up my spine, down my arms into my own clenched fists. It would be so easy to let this raging impulse carry me without hesitation toward an impact. It was in my blood. I had learned that tonight.

Colleen jabbed a rigid finger at me, a warning, and she spoke loudly, with steel in her voice: “You don’t even see what you’re doing, do you?”