Pink Smog Read online

  Lily was the stable one in our group, we joked, because she still had two parents living at home and the home was an actual house. The reason it was a joke, though, of course, was that Lily was just as messed up as Bobby and me, maybe more so because she never ate. Her father was a dentist who washed his hands a hundred times a day and her mother was a professional housewife who liked to cook elaborate meals to entice her daughter into eating. The huge, fatty dishes only made Lily starve herself more. It turned out that the lasagna story was true. Someone must have heard her mother telling the school counselor about it because it got around and she’d never been able to escape. She told me that sometimes she dreamed about her mom’s dinners coming to life—headless zombie chickens and chocolate cakes oozing fat—and chasing her, trying to choke her to death.

  “Have you ever gotten help?” I finally asked. I knew I should have said it before but I was scared it might make things worse.

  “My mom made me see this shrink once,” she told us. “And then I started group therapy with all these other girls but it just gave me more ideas about how to lose weight so they pulled me out. I’d hide in the bathroom with the door locked during my shrink sessions so they finally gave up but I have to weigh myself every morning and if I go below ninety I have to go to a hospital.”

  “Sweetie,” I said, hugging her. I wanted to make her soup but I was a lousy cook and I knew she didn’t want any either.

  Bobby didn’t say anything. He went into the kitchen and came back with a large green apple and a cup of peppermint tea with lemon and honey.

  I was thinking a lot about my friends those days and not so much about my family or my neighbors.

  But one night it happened.

  I got home late from the store. It was dark early—we’d just put the clocks back. My arms were full of groceries and I was starving. I’d spent the afternoon at Bobby’s and come home to find that we didn’t have anything to eat in the house.

  As I was walking through the gate I heard whispering from the shadows. I stopped.

  “Don’t you dare go any farther,” the voice said.

  Annabelle jumped out from behind the low stucco wall. She was wearing the blonde wig, the long, pink satin dress, and loads of costume jewelry. Compared to her, Staci, Marci, and Kelli look like kittens with bells on their collars trying to chase birds.

  “What the hell?” I stepped back and almost tripped.

  “What the hell is right? What the hell were you doing in my room?” she spat.

  “I was visiting your brother.” You know how they say it feels like your heart is in your mouth? That.

  “My brother doesn’t want to see you in our house either,” the girl said.

  The eggs were rattling in the bag I held. I wondered if they would break. I tried to get my hands to stop shaking. She’s just a girl, I told myself.

  It didn’t help.

  “What did you buy?” she asked, her voice shrill.

  She grabbed one of the grocery bags out of my hands and opened it. I just stood there. I felt like Winter when he looked at Staci, like I couldn’t even move.

  Annabelle took out the carton of eggs I had just bought. She opened the container carefully and examined them.

  “Stop it,” I said, but weakly. I wanted to make pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs for dinner. Sometimes it cheered me up to eat meals at the “wrong times.” Maybe my mom would eat some, too.

  “Always check for cracked ones,” she said softly. She was whistling to herself or maybe to the eggs in the carton. “You don’t want any cracked ones, you know. Are any of you cracked, little chicken fetuses?”

  Then she looked up at me and her eyes were glittering. I mean, her eyes were actually lit up with tiny sparks of hate like black water in the sunlight. She started hurling the eggs at me. I put my hands over my face as the eggs slammed into me, drenching me in gooey streams of phlegmy yolk.

  “Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it! Who are you? Get away from me!”

  She wouldn’t stop. I crouched into a little ball on the ground, covering my head with my arms as the eggs cracked, every last one. I didn’t run. There was nowhere to go. I screamed but I didn’t scream for help. In that moment I had decided not to. I knew no one would come.

  If my guardian angel heard me he had decided not to bother. He was busy with Staci Nettles.

  When every last egg was gone the girl walked away. I got up, gathered the remaining groceries, and went inside. My mom was asleep in front of the TV. I took a shower and put away the food. I couldn’t eat anything. I went and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling until I fell asleep. I didn’t even have the fantasy of Winter to comfort me anymore.

  It was late for anyone to call us. I woke right away but stared at the phone in shock for the first three rings before I pounced. It was him.

  I started sobbing as soon as I heard his voice. “Where are you? You didn’t even give me a phone number. It’s been two months! Two months. How could you do that to us?”

  “I had to straighten some things out,” he said when I stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know when to call, if she’d answer.”

  “What are you afraid of? Of Mom? You left me here with this insane neighbor. She threw eggs and sicced her dogs on me! Who is she? Her mother has your picture!” I was shrieking now, my voice getting louder and louder and suddenly I stopped, afraid he’d hang up, but he was still there.

  “Weetzie. Stop. Stop. What are you talking about? You’re not making sense.”

  I gulped for air. “The daughter of your friend. Winter’s sister. She’s a psycho. And someone keeps giving me these notes.”

  “Slow down, honey. I don’t understand.”

  “I think she put a curse on him or something.” I started crying again and he mumbled softly to me until I quieted down.

  “Weetzie,” he said. “Baby.” I loved the tobacco corduroy sound of his voice. “I really don’t know what you’re telling me. Who are these people?”

  “Stop denying it!”

  “Honey,” he said patiently, “I’m not denying anything.”

  I gulped down tears. Was he telling the truth? Was it possible he didn’t know? That Winter had made it all up? That I had made it all up—even Winter?

  “I’ll be back around Thanksgiving, okay? That’s not that far away. I’ll take you to dinner. The Tick Tock. We’ll have pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie under the cuckoo clocks, okay? It’ll be okay. I’ll give you my phone number. I have a place now. It’s kind of small but you can come visit me sometime and we’ll walk the whole length of the city from downtown up and back. I love you, baby.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want him to talk to Winter. I wanted him to talk to me—I wanted him to come back.

  “Did you hear me, baby?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Can I sing to you?” he asked.

  I was lying in bed now with my damp head and my tears making a huge wet spot on the pillow, the phone pressed to my cheek. It was almost as if he were there with me. His rough voice sang the lullaby from my childhood, just like he used to sing when I was tucked into my bed in the cottage.

  “Under Baby’s cradle in the night/Stands a goat so soft and snowy white/The Goat will go to the market/To bring you wonderful treats/He’ll bring you raisins and almonds/Sleep, my little one, sleep.”

  The exhaustion of the whole day hit me like one of the hurled eggs and I cowered into the blankets and closed my eyes.

  When I woke up the receiver was still pressed against my hot ear. I realized I hadn’t gotten his phone number after all.

  A few days later I was leaving school with my friends when I saw Winter’s VW Bug pull up and park in the loading zone.

  He got out of the car. I watched as Staci went to him with a confident smirk and hair toss.

  She stepped in front of him and put her hand on his arm. He spoke quietly to her and then moved his arm away. It was a cool day and he had on gray Levi’s cor
ds and a white, long-sleeved thermal shirt under a hooded sweatshirt. He looked up and even from that far away I could see how blue his eyes were. He was looking at me.

  Staci watched him as he came over to me. Suddenly, I noticed how short she was, even in her superhigh platforms. She didn’t even bother to toss her hair. She just walked away.

  “Weetzie,” Winter said.

  I looked at Lily and then at Bobby, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.

  “I have to go to the 7-Eleven,” Bobby said. “Slur-pee withdrawal. We’ll meet you at your house in like an hour?”

  “Yeah,” Lily said.

  They walked away. Shit.

  I started to follow them—“Guys!”—but Winter stopped me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Why do you care? You’ve been acting like you don’t even know who I am.”

  “Will you let me give you a ride home? I want to explain it. Please.”

  I felt like flipping him off but instead I just started walking.

  “I’m going to get a parking ticket. Please, Weetzie.” Then he added, “Let me explain.”

  That was what got me—I followed him.

  I sat in his car with my arms folded on my chest. The Bug smelled of sawdust. He leaned over and buckled me in. I breathed the clean, herbal scent of his hair over the dry undertones of the Bug’s stuffing. I kicked at the floorboards, pressing my feet down as hard as I could. We didn’t say anything to each other for a long time.

  “Listen, I want to explain something,” he said, finally. “My sister has a serious problem.”

  “I kind of got that.”

  “I’m not trying to make excuses but she’s had this … influence over me. She does this thing and I start acting really weird. It’s happened before. Around Halloween, especially. I didn’t think she could do it anymore but I guess I was wrong.”

  I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about? You sound like a crazy person. You’re as bad as she is.”

  He pulled over and parked the car. Everything looked especially bleak in the gray weather. L.A. wasn’t made for days like this. Even the buildings and the pavement, embedded with sparkling bits, needed sun in order not to look depressed.

  “I know it sounds freaky. Maybe I am crazy, I don’t know. But my sister does these things, these spells. And I guess the last one worked on me. She got me to hang out with Staci and I know Staci was a bitch to you and that I acted like a shit, too. I’m really sorry.”

  “Why the sudden change of heart?” I said grandly. I had heard my mom say that to my dad once. I thought it sounded like a line in a movie or at least a daytime soap opera.

  I saw him repress a small smile. Then he looked serious again. I hated how cute he was.

  “I spoke to Charlie about it.”

  “My dad says he doesn’t know you. Who are you all? What do you have to do with my father? And what are those notes about? I got another one. Just leave us alone!”

  I tried to get out of the car but he leaned over and stopped me. The blonde hairs on his tan arms shone softly even on that sunless day. His mouth was close to mine—I could see the slightly chapped skin on his lower lip—and for a second I had the strangest feeling that he wanted to kiss me. It can’t be real though, I told myself. You’re hallucinating, Weetzie Bat.

  “Your dad really loves you,” Winter said. “Just remember that, okay? You’re lucky to have a father who loves you so much.”

  Then he moved his arm and let me go out into the glitter-less cold.

  THE MAGIC OF FORGETTING

  My dad did come a few days before Thanksgiving like he said he would. He was waiting for me, down the street from the Starlight, when I got home from school, sitting parked in the bashed-up yellow T-bird that he had crashed once while making out with my mother as they drove down PCH to watch the sun set at the beach. We had agreed not to tell my mom that he was coming. He looked thinner and paler than when he had left and he still had the five o’clock shadow all over his chin. I thought of how many times it must have been shaved off and sprouted back since I’d last seen him. He got out of the car and held me and I wanted to melt into the warmth of his tweedy arms, become part of him so that he would never be able to leave me. It seems impossible that you can love one person so much, no matter what happens, no matter what they do. How just a lullaby or a turkey dinner can make up for so much in the moment. And how you can keep looking for someone like that person for the rest of your life. I knew then that that is what I would always be doing—looking for a Charlie Bat, for his lullabies and his dinners and his smell and his coats. He put one arm around my shoulders and looked into my face. He had tears in his eyes and I thought about how sometimes he started crying when he read me bedtime stories like Peter Pan or The Wizard of Oz and how it made my stomach feel weird and ticklish in a bad way to see him like that.

  “Are you eating, skinny bones?”

  “You should talk.” I squeezed his bicep.

  “Well, you look cute skinny. But I think we both need a good Tick Tock cooked meal.”

  Going out to eat was one of our favorite things to do together. When I was little he liked to take me to Norms Coffee Shop for hamburgers and vanilla shakes that we ate in the vinyl booths, or we went to Ships where you could make your own toast in the toasters at your table. We had ice-cream cones at Wil Wright’s ice-cream parlor in Hollywood, with the striped awning and the parquet floor. We drove all the way out to the Valley to Farrell’s where they made a huge ice-cream birthday concoction called the Zoo that was covered with little plastic animals. The waiters, dressed in boater hats, striped shirts, and suspenders, ran around the restaurant honking horns until they arrived at your table to sing “Happy Birthday.” There was also something called a Trough that was so big you became an honorary pig for the night if you ate it all by yourself.

  The Tick Tock didn’t have Zoos or Troughs but we went there a lot, too. There were cuckoo clocks all over the walls. I wondered who had invented the cuckoo clock. There was something so weird about that little wooden cuckoo popping out of its house every hour.

  Charlie escorted me inside and we sat down under the wooden birds and ate the orange sticky buns the restaurant was famous for, as well as turkey dinners with pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and mashed potatoes. We didn’t say much to each other through dinner. I kept thinking of things I wanted to ask, and then stopping myself because I was afraid that if I asked it might drive him away even farther and sooner.

  Why did you leave?

  Why did you and Mom fight?

  Why did you go to New York?

  Why do you like it better there?

  Do you have new friends?

  Do you miss us?

  Who is the family in number 13?

  I didn’t ask any of these questions so there was kind of a tense silence through our meal. My dad asked me about school and my friends and how the dog walking was going but he avoided anything about my mom or what I had said during our last phone conversation. I ate too much and my stomach hurt, pressing against the tight waistband of my high-rise jeans.

  Finally, I said, “Dad, tell me the truth.”

  He put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

  “Were you having an affair? Is that the reason you and Mom fought?”

  “We’ve had troubles for years, your mother and I, Weetzie, you know that.”

  I pulled apart an orange sticky roll. My fingers were glossy with sugar. “But never this bad.”

  He nodded and reached across the table to cup my hand under his. My whole hand disappeared. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. I just want to enjoy our time together.”

  And, just like that, easy as pie, I fell for it again. It was the same as the lullaby and the dinner and the jacket, dense and tweedy with a world of warmth and comfort inside its lining. His hand on my hand was all I really cared about then. When I got out of the car he gave me a bouquet of
pink roses he had hidden in the backseat. I didn’t have to hide them from my mom—she was passed out when I got home.

  My dad took me out again the next day and we went shopping at a mall. I don’t know how he had the money but I didn’t question it. He bought me some Clinique face powder and blush in their little pale-green marbled plastic cases and a bottle of Jontue perfume with the unicorn on the box. He even bought me a new pair of Kork-Ease since the pale suede soles of mine were dirty and the beige leather straps had turned a soiled dark brown. They weren’t the really high ones but they weren’t the almost-flat ones either. I felt greedy, like I wanted to gather up every last bit of pretty to remind me that he had been here, that he cared. In the same way I ate a double-scoop pistachio-and-cherry ice-cream cone and then had popcorn and a large Sprite at the movie theater where we saw Young Frankenstein for the second time. My dad guffawed but I just sat there chomping on popcorn and rolling my eyes along with Igor. But still I wanted more. I didn’t want it to be over. After the movie we went to Café Figaro for dinner. It was dark and there was sawdust on the floors and we ate bread and soup and the waiters were very beautiful young men in white button-down shirts. My dad and I didn’t talk about anything serious. By then I realized that it would only make things harder when he left.

  We drove home along Santa Monica Boulevard. Something flashed in my eye and my mind and I put my head out the window and looked behind us at the boy I’d seen. I almost told my dad to stop but something in me hesitated because I didn’t want it to be him.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “I thought I recognized someone. A friend from school.”

  “Out here? I hope not. No kids should be out here at night.”

  I looked at the men in tight pants and small, cropped beards walking along the boulevard, the boys loitering under the streetlights, a strange, alien glitter streaking off of them like pretty, used cars in a nighttime car lot. I had a brief fantasy of bringing them all home with me and feeding them alphabet soup while my mom yelled for more gin from the sofa.