We Run the Tides Read online

  “We’ll take that as a yes,” the boy said. As the car drove off, he yelled out the window, “We’ll be back!” To some, that might sound like a threat, but to us it was a promise.

  Mrs. Sheridan, a neighbor I’d known most of my life, was our first customer. “What do we have here today, Eulabee?”

  “Lemonade,” I said, pointing to the sign that said “Lemonade.”

  She bought one cup, which she drank on the spot, and then bought a second. “And what’s your name?” she said to Maria Fabiola.

  “Maria Fabiola.”

  I would have thought Mrs. Sheridan might recognize her from all the times she’d been at my house, but apparently not. Her non-recognition of Maria Fabiola made me look at my friend differently. And for the first time I saw what everyone else must be seeing: she was no longer who she used to be. Her hair, once straight, had become wavy. Her body had swelled, stretching the fabric of her shirt and the back pockets of her jeans, so now the pockets tilted inward toward each other at an angle. The lie flew out of my mouth, a fabrication intended to collapse the distance spreading between us. “Maria Fabiola’s not just my friend,” I said to Mrs. Sheridan. “My parents recently adopted her. She’s my new sister.”

  Mrs. Sheridan, who wore a large cross on a thin chain around her neck, thought this was wonderful news. I did, too. It was hard, at first, to see what Maria Fabiola thought of my lie—her full lips were pillowed together into a pout—but she began to repeat the fib, and then embrace it, and this pleased me. We proceeded to walk around the block, ringing the doorbells and knocking the knockers and I introduced Maria Fabiola to every neighbor as my new adopted sister.

  We rang a few more doorbells, almost all of which were answered. Did no one in Sea Cliff work? Each neighbor accepted our lie as truth. The ease of deception made the lying less fun, so we stopped and returned to my house to get a snack. We made ants on a log—peanut butter on celery with raisins on top.

  “I didn’t know you were such a good liar,” Maria Fabiola said. She seemed to be evaluating me with new eyes.

  “I didn’t either,” I said.

  We continued eating without talking, the snap of the celery the only noise.

  Maria Fabiola’s mom came to pick her up in her black Volvo. Her mother had dark hair and wore large sunglasses so opaque that sometimes it appeared she had difficulty seeing through the lenses. She often lifted them up in an attempt to get a better view, and then let them fall back over her eyes as though disappointed at what things really looked like. She quickly whisked Maria Fabiola away. I hoped nobody saw her leave. Maria Fabiola’s departure had no part in the narrative of my newly fabricated family life.

  It wasn’t long before the phone started ringing. Neighbors were calling to congratulate my parents on the new addition to our family, and to ask if we needed help with the transition. Hand-me-down clothes, food, anything at all.

  During the phone calls, my parents were very attentive and intrigued. I couldn’t see their faces because I was hiding in the hall closet, standing inside a long raccoon fur coat that belonged to my mother. I knew the inside of this coat well. Its lining had a complicated brown and black and white pattern, into which my mother’s initials—G.S.—had been stitched and camouflaged. I had been told that if anyone ever stole the coat, she would be able to identify it as hers by pointing out the initials, but it was never explained to me why anyone would want to steal the coat and I never saw my mom wear it outside of the house—or in the house, either. Even the raccoon coat couldn’t muffle the sounds of my parents’ voices; I could hear they were befuddled, and angry. The closet door was opened. I had been hiding inside the long raccoon fur coat since I was little so it was not such a good hiding place, really. Five minutes later I was retracing my steps around the neighborhood, ringing cold doorbells and apologizing to stern faces.

  3

  My dad comes home one day in September and says that an episode of a TV show I haven’t heard of is going to be filmed at Joseph & Joseph. Joseph & Joseph is the art and antique gallery he owns on the other side of town. My father’s name is Joseph and when he was coming up with the logo he wanted an ampersand because he thought it looked more impressive. One small setback: he didn’t have a partner, so just repeated his own name. Now an episode of a not-well-known detective show is going to be filmed at the gallery and my dad has asked if Svea, my friends, and I want to be in the establishing shot. I don’t know what an establishing shot is, but I call Maria Fabiola, Faith, and Julia, and we plan what we’re going to wear. We’re disappointed when we learn that whoever’s in charge wants us to wear our school uniforms.

  My father’s antique gallery is South of Market. He found a small block he liked so he went door to door and offered cash to each of the owners of the houses. A couple of the owners remembered my dad from when he was a kid delivering newspapers. They were happy to take the cash; they were happy to leave. Then my father built Joseph & Joseph. The gallery hasn’t changed the neighborhood much—outside its large French doors, men sit drinking straight from the bottle. But once you step inside Joseph & Joseph, it feels like you’re in a giant dollhouse.

  Two floors of the building are filled with antiques. There’s also an auction room, which is often rented out for parties. My father has photos of himself with O.J. Simpson, with Mayor Dianne Feinstein. In the photo I can see her beautiful legs. My dad talks a lot about Dianne Feinstein’s legs. Once, after describing them, he said “Yowzah.”

  My favorite thing in the gallery is a Chinese spice cabinet. It’s almost six feet tall and four feet wide, and has forty-two drawers that are deep and long. I love opening a drawer and inhaling and trying to guess what spice was stored there. Then I close the drawer and open the next one. It’s like a library card catalog for smells.

  My father has a secretary named Arlene. Arlene is the sister of my dad’s best friend from their days growing up in the alley. My dad is loyal to his friends from the neighborhood. Arlene’s hair is so long it extends past her belt, and she’s partial to blouses with ties and burgundy pants. She can be grumpy sometimes and I know this means that it’s her time of the month. I first learned this from my dad and I hate that he knows this. I hate that I know this. I keep a chart in my calendar of when she’s grumpy toward me on the phone or in person, and it tracks: she’s testy toward me every four weeks.

  At other times she’s sweet and attentive. She gives me baby aspirin when I have a headache, and she lets me touch all the antiques, even the indoor marble fountain with the naked angel balanced precariously on top. The water spouts from the angel’s mouth like projectile vomit.

  On the day of the filming my mother drives Svea, Maria Fabiola, Faith, Julia, and me to the gallery after school. She has brought me a new, freshly pressed uniform, but this embarrasses me, so I don’t change into it. But Maria Fabiola, who spilled mustard on her uniform that day at lunch, says she’d like to use it.

  When we get to the gallery, half the furniture has been moved to make way for lights and cameras. My spice cabinet hasn’t been touched. Arlene has ironed her hair so it’s exceptionally straight today, and my dad is wearing his silver tie, his best tie, even though he’s not going to be on camera.

  Maria Fabiola takes the hanger with my newly pressed blue uniform skirt and my white middy into the bathroom and changes. When she comes out, I can’t help but stare. The middy, which is loose on me, is tight on her. I usually wear a white T-shirt under my middy but she’s not wearing one. Nor is she wearing a bra.

  The director, who isn’t dressed up at all and doesn’t have a director’s chair (a disappointment) tells us it’s time for the establishing shot. We go outside the building and see a camera has been set up. Faith, Julia, Svea, Maria Fabiola, and I are supposed to skip in front of the gallery like we’re heading home from school. It occurs to me that we were instructed to wear our uniforms because this will make it look like the gallery is in an upscale part of town, a part of the city where there are private sch
ools. The reality is that there aren’t any private schools within walking distance of Joseph & Joseph.

  We skip in front of the entranceway in one direction. Then we walk back to the starting point and skip again. After the third take the director talks to an assistant and the assistant talks to my dad and then my dad whispers with my mom. I watch their mouths moving but can’t make out what they’re saying. Finally my mom comes over to me and my friends. “This time, girls, let’s try it without the skipping. Oh, and Maria Fabiola, the director doesn’t want everyone looking so similar. Can you put on your uniform sweater?” Maria Fabiola does as instructed and then we walk in front of the gallery two more times.

  “And . . . cut!” the director yells. He doesn’t use a megaphone, but still my friends and I find it exciting that he’s using official movie language.

  We’re thanked and told this episode of the show won’t air for a few months, but not even this delay can dampen our moods. My mom drives us home, and we’re all hyper, including Svea, who’s happy because my friends are paying attention to her and Faith’s even braiding her pretty hair.

  That night in the kitchen I ask my mother what the whispering on set was about. “Oh, that,” my mother says. “I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say.

  “Well, don’t tell your friends, but the director thought that Maria Fabiola’s appearance was distracting.”

  “Distracting?”

  “That’s the word he used,” my mother says.

  “Huh,” I say, trying to act casual.

  That night, I do a two-way call and I inform Julia and Maria Fabiola that the director thought Maria Fabiola was “distracting.” Maria Fabiola starts laughing and I join her. Julia is silent and then tries to act like she’s not the slightest bit jealous.

  “Sorry I wasn’t laughing before,” Julia says, “but I was distracted.”

  I hear Maria Fabiola’s bracelets jingling and I know she’s running her fingers through her long, long hair.

  4

  I am at Faith’s house the night her father kills himself. All four of us are there. It’s Faith’s birthday and we go to the Alexandria Theatre on Geary to watch The Breakfast Club. We watch the movie with rapt attention and with glee. When we leave the theater we are delirious. “Don’t you forget about me,” we say to each other over and over again. We want all the boys from the film to pay attention to us. We want to want. We want to love. We want to want love. We are on the precipice of having real boyfriends, of making out with them. We know this. We can feel this urge pulsating through our bodies, but we don’t know what to call it—we won’t call it desire—or how to express it to each other or to ourselves. And so we continue to laugh and sing “Don’t you forget about me” until Faith’s mother arrives at the theater in a ridiculous red raincoat, made more ridiculous by the fact that it’s not raining. She puts her finger to her lips and says, “Shhh.”

  Faith’s birthday dinner is at Al’s Place on Clement Street. Faith’s father, who is handsome and at least a dozen years younger than Faith’s mom, joins us after work. He orders a steak and what on TV they call a stiff drink. Faith’s mother orders a diet soft drink, which she sips through a straw, from which she hasn’t successfully removed the paper wrapper. A piece of white paper sticks to her lip for half the meal. When she excuses herself to use the restroom, Faith’s father orders another stiff drink. Faith’s father asks us each a few questions and tries hard to get my name and Julia’s name straight. He remembers Maria Fabiola’s name easily. Everyone remembers Maria Fabiola. Her looks have recently become troublingly arresting. Her body has blossomed more, and this has gifted her face an expression of constant surprise, as though even she can’t believe her good fortune.

  We return to Faith’s house after dinner and a sad slice of cake. Faith gives us a tour because Maria Fabiola hasn’t been inside before. “Never?” Julia asks. “I have a lot of after-school activities,” Maria Fabiola replies. She and I have the same number of after-school activities. We started taking ballet together at the Olenska School of Ballet when puberty began to take over our bodies, making us clumsy and laminating our curves with fat. Not that our instructor, Madame Sonya, thinks there’s much hope for us—she often quotes Isadora Duncan, who said that American bodies aren’t made for ballet. Still, while the dance classes haven’t done much for me, they have helped define Maria Fabiola’s figure. In addition to ballet, we go to dancing school every other Wednesday. All of us at Spragg go to ballroom dancing school because that’s where you meet the boys who go to the all-boys’ schools.

  Faith’s house is decorated with Laura Ashley patterns—tiny pastel flowers on white curtains, tiny pastel flowers on tablecloths, tiny pastel flowers everywhere. The house is clearly bigger than their home in Connecticut was because their furniture can’t fill all the spaces. And so it’s the kind of house that has a couch in one room, a desk in another. I know Maria Fabiola isn’t getting the full tour because Faith’s parents are home. The full tour includes the stack of Playboys her dad keeps in a shoebox in his closet, along with a gun—“the gun’s just to scare burglars,” according to Faith. The full tour includes the piles of pathetic diaries her mother keeps under her side of the bed. Each page lists what she’s eaten on a particular day and rates her intake as good or bad. The diaries never detail anything else about her days besides her food consumption.

  Without the prolonged stop in her parents’ bedroom, the tour doesn’t last very long. After five minutes we end up back in the kitchen and start making popcorn. I look around—suddenly Maria Fabiola isn’t with us. Faith’s mom asks if we want to run to the corner store to buy Virgina Slims. She often sends Faith to the store with money and a note giving her permission to buy cigarettes. “Not on my birthday!” Faith yells. Her mom picks up her stained purse with its long fraying strap and leaves to get them herself. We don’t end up eating the popcorn because it’s burnt.

  A cool saltwater breeze enters the house and we follow it through the open back door and into the garden. Faith’s father is outside in the dim light having a drink. He’s sitting on a short white bench that I realize is a swing. It’s the kind of swing that you see in musicals or plays set in the South. Seated next to him on the swing is Maria Fabiola.

  “Let’s ride the elevator,” Faith calls out.

  “I’m speaking with your friend, Faith,” her father says.

  “It only fits three anyway,” Faith says, with an accusatory glance at Maria Fabiola. Then Julia and I follow Faith inside. The walls of the elevator are decorated with long ribbons that have been stapled at the top and the bottom. There’s an assortment of colors like those at Baskin Robbins: strawberry, pistachio, banana, and mandarin. “The previous owner decorated it like this,” Faith explains, though it’s evident that the frivolity of fluttering ribbons is antithetical to her mother’s entire being, which might be why we had to wait until she left to enter the elevator. We ride up and down and up and down the four stories of the house until I feel claustrophobic. When I get out on the bottom floor, Maria Fabiola is coming in from the garden, wearing an expression I can’t decipher.

  “How was the elevator ride?” she asks, in a condescending voice.

  “Honestly,” I say, looking at her, “I feel kind of sick.”

  Faith’s mother returns home, and the four of us girls seclude ourselves in Faith’s room, also covered in little flowers. Her books (few in number, and young for our grade) are too neatly aligned between white bookends that are meant to resemble owls but look more like melted moons. On her floor is a circular shag rug, and we run our fingers through its long, cloud-colored fibers like we’re stroking blades of grass in heaven.

  We study Faith’s yearbooks from her school in Darien, Connecticut. In particular, we study the boys who were her classmates and the boys who were a year above her and rate them on a scale of one to four stars. We ask Faith about the cuter ones—are they funny? What music do they like? Do they play lacrosse?—as though
her answers will help determine whether or not they are worthy of a crush. This is how it is for us at an all-girls’ school in Sea Cliff—the objects of our affection are either projected on a movie screen or else encapsulated by a square-inch photo from a yearbook in Connecticut. After an hour of flipping through the yearbook, each of us exclaiming “Mine!” when we see a boy we like, Faith aggressively shuts the yearbook and returns it to the shelf, next to the strange, sad owl.

  When Faith’s mother tells us it’s time to go to bed, we change for sleep. Faith removes a Laura Ashley nightgown from a hanger in her closet, then closes the closet door so she can change in privacy. Julia turns her back to the rest of us and slips on an ice-skating T-shirt with silver sequins on the skate’s blades. She keeps her bra on when she sleeps because she thinks this will help ensure her breasts are perky when she’s older. I turn to a different corner and remove my off-white bra and pull on dark blue pajama bottoms and a Hello Kitty T-shirt that I hope everyone will know I’m wearing ironically. When I turn back around I see Maria Fabiola lifting her shirt up above her chest. She hasn’t bothered to hide her body. Over the summer she’s grown full breasts that look like great scoops of ice cream. I see Julia trying not to stare. I try not to stare. Maria Fabiola pulls on a thin hot pink T-shirt that’s tight across the chest. It depicts two angels, one blond and one dark-haired, wearing sunglasses. I have permission, I figure, to study her chest when trying to read the word written in cursive beneath the cherub’s faces: “Fiorucci.”

  We unroll our sleeping bags on the rug, each of us trying to position our bags next to Maria Fabiola. We stay up talking about The Breakfast Club and deciding which one of us would date which boy. Then we giggle until Faith’s father roars at us to be quiet. “Don’t you forget about me,” we repeat to each other in whispers until, like candles being extinguished one at a time, each of us drops into sleep.