Part 7 (1/2)

I had just woken up on a Sat.u.r.day morning and was heading downstairs to make a coffee when the front door opened. Helen doesn't bother to knock anymore, she knows the security code to get into the house. She was carrying a take-out tray filled with beverages, and she buzzed past me with Autumn in tow. Helen said, ”Ya still got bed head, CC.”

I followed them to the kitchen. Fernando was sitting at the kitchen table reading the Spanish-language newspaper. Helen handed him one of the bubble teas with the tapioca b.a.l.l.s at the bottom of the cups from her take-out tray. ”Here ya go, Ferdie,” she said. ”The bubble tea store on Clement Street has a D.WA. drive-up window.”

Fernando didn't look up from his newspaper, but he took a sip from the bubble teacup straw. He said, ”You mean, the Driving While Asian drive-in window for when you crash your souped-up Honda with the hot-rod racer wheels into the storefront window?” Fernando chuckled. 'Asian driver,” he said, and Helen finished off his statement in unison with him, ”No survivor.” Helen and ”Ferdie” all but high-fived each other.

I think Helen's mother loves Helen spending time at our house more than Helen does, because then Helen isn't home to abuse her mother about having no fas.h.i.+on sense or to scream at her mother that's she going to ART SCHOOL not to COLLEGE, even if she has to pay for it her G.o.dd.a.m.n self. Helen has two older sisters--one a first-year law student at Stanford and the other an engineering major at Cal, so Helen's mom must suspect there was a baby switch at the hospital when Helen was born, because Helen is just not conforming to the family's expectations of a nice Chinese girl. Helen smokes and loves beer--and Irish soccer night at 126.

the pub. She's really smart but her grades are only so-so. She has a temper--hence ”alternative” school. She refuses to work in her family's restaurant. (Helen a.s.sures me her mother is relieved on that count.) But Helen has never pretended to be a ”nice” Chinese girl. She's just...Helen.

Maybe Helen and I were switched-at-birth babies, because she's a natural in my household whereas I am a probable freak of nature here. I could totally groove on living in a cramped flat over a Chinese food restaurant in The Richmond, with a mom who would teach me to make pot stickers and pork buns and tell me brave tales of how she escaped a brutal Communist regime.

”Where's Mrs. Vogue?” Helen asked. ”She promised I could look at her old modeling portfolio today. I need to take some photographs for my art school portfolio, and I want to see if I get any ideas looking at some '80s relic flashback.”

Mrs. Vogue joined us in the kitchen, holding a grocery list in her hand. She was fully Gucci'd out for her big trip to Safeway. ”Good morning, girls!” I think Nancy loves H&A hanging at our house more than they do. She actually likes Helen's nickname for her in tribute to Nancy's favorite pathetic magazine of anorexic bimbos, and Nancy claims I am less pouty and unreasonable when my peers are present. Maybe Nancy oughta worry about getting herself an actual college degree, not me, so then she could stop spouting self-help-books pop psychology, ”peers are present” blah blah blah. ”I'm on my way to the grocery store. I'm making meat loaf and green bean ca.s.serole for dinner! Can you stay for dinner tonight?”

Sid and Nancy have made up since he returned from his business trip, but Nancy is still working extra hard (for 127.

someone who hasn't had a job in almost twenty years) to prove to Sid-dad how much she cares for him and how she really can survive without a Leila (she can't). The unfortunate consequence of Nancy's efforts is that our family is being subjected to horrible Midwestern cuisine, the only cuisine in her cooking repertoire, which means dry meat loaf and ca.s.seroles made from frozen vegetables and soup mix.

”No, thanks,” H&A both said. Like I said, smart girls.

”Fernando,” Nancy said. ”Sid is at the office until this evening. I'm taking Ashley with me as soon as she finishes getting ready. She needs to be picked up from her birthday party at one, and Josh from his sleepover at two. Here are the addresses.”

”Si,” Fernando said, taking the slip of paper from Nancy. Fernando said, taking the slip of paper from Nancy.

Helen handed my mother a bubble tea. ”Mrs. Vogue, will you show me your modeling portfolio before you leave?”

Nancy's face brightened. ”Yes! Gosh, I haven't looked at that thing in years. n.o.body in this household has ever shown an interest, if you get what I'm saying.” She looked in my direction. ”Come with me.”

I'm so gonna get Helen back for this.

Fernando got up from the table. ”Tell Sugar Pie 'hi,'” I told him. He didn't acknowledge me as he left the kitchen. Their romance may be out of the closet, but he's a very private person and doesn't like that when he has a few hours to spare, we all a.s.sume he'll be at her place. Because he will be.Autumn sat down in the chair Fernando had vacated.

128.

”Can I use the computer in your family room today to check out some colleges and scholars.h.i.+p programs?” she asked.

”Duh,” I said. Autumn lives in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in The Sunset with her dad, who is a poet--that is, broke all the time--and has a c.r.a.p computer.

”How come you didn't come to the party at Aryan's last night?” Autumn asked.

”Why do you think?” We're at two weeks since I told Shrimp about the A-date: Week one he ignored me at school, and week two he simply didn't show up at school. But I knew he would show up at Aryan's party, so no way was I going.

”He wasn't there,” she said.

”Oh.” THEN WHERE HAS HE BEEN! ”How was the party?”

”Your basic beer, booze, and girls-sticking-out-their-b.o.o.bs situation.”

”So why did you go? It's not like you would meet somebody you'd be interested in with that surfer crowd.” Autumn's Shrimpcapade was the experience that made her decide she was gay for sure, but she's not rus.h.i.+ng to jump into a relations.h.i.+p. I envy her that--she has that first time/first love to look forward to, but by the time she finds it she'll have really earned it. The waiting may make the payoff better for her.

”To watch over Helen,” Autumn said.

”What does that mean?”

It means: Given enough beer, Helen doesn't exercise the best judgment when it comes to doling out, er, certain s.e.xual favors, and not of a reciprocal nature. No wonder she knows tons of guys but has no boyfriends. What does she 129.

expect? Maybe I need to have another conversation with Helen about the Madonna/wh.o.r.e boy complex. We chicks don't have to like it, but the fact is it's there, and if Helen wants Aryan for real she better wise up. I am all for s.e.xual liberation, but fooling around when it's not an even exchange is just a raw deal, especially if it's with a guy she really likes, someone she wants to know in more than a casual sense. Has Helen learned nothing from my whole Shrimp debacle?

”NO!” we heard Helen shriek from the living room. Autumn and I hustled to the living room, where Helen was poring over a large black notebook/briefcase type thing with pages of photographs inside. Helen saw us and said, ”Your mom is the coolest, CC.” Helen held up a black-and-white picture of my mother, about my age, standing on a gritty New York street of graffitied tenement buildings. Nancy was skinnier even than she is now, wearing a short black leather dress and dancer tights with cowboy boots, her blond hair moussed high in front, and eye shadow--dark on one side, light on the other--applied in a rectangular shape from the bridge of her nose across her eyes to the edge of her head, like sungla.s.ses. She looked like a freaking Blondie Debbie Harry new wave G.o.ddess.

”Holy s.h.i.+t!” I exclaimed.

Helen pulled out a picture from behind the Debbie Harry photo, a strip of photo-booth shots of my mom laughing and kissing some stubble-faced James Dean-looking stud.

”What's this?” Helen asked.

”Yeah!” I said. ”Who's the hot guy?”

Nancy looked uncomfortable and surprised, like she'd 130.

forgotten about the photo-booth shots hidden behind the portfolio shots. But she acknowledged, ”Brace yourself, CC. Your mother had a life before you were born. That was my first boyfriend. We ran off to New York together as soon as we'd finished high school. We were barely eighteen years old. I was going to be a dancer; he was going to be a photographer.”

”What happened to him?” Autumn asked.

Nancy hesitated a moment before answering. Then: ”He died about six months after those pictures were taken. Heroin overdose.” For heavy words, her tone was light, but her face had gone pale and her eyes blank.

Talk about a downer on the Nancy past-life discovery. If you had quizzed me yesterday, I would have said Nancy, from her privileged perch lording over Pacific Heights, would have no clue what heroin looked like, she wouldn't even know the diff between a needle user and a pipe user.

I can't imagine how devastated I would be if Shrimp died. I don't know how I could go on. How did she?

Some mental time line calculations fired off in my head. She must have met bio-dad Frank right after her first love died. All my life I've been kind of ashamed that I am the product of my mother's relations.h.i.+p with a married man, not because of the so-called illegitimacy aspect (anyone who cares about that is an idiot), but from feeling that my coming into the world was the cause of pain for a lot of other people. But if it were me and I had just lost Shrimp, I probably wouldn't make the best choices about the next person I jumped into bed with either. I might just want someone to take care of me. Maybe that's what Nancy thought she would get from Frank.

131.

The doorbell rang and we saw Ashley run past us wearing her birthday party velvet frock, white tights on her legs, and Mary Jane patent leather shoes. She shrieked, ”I'll get it!” Ash returned to the living room, holding Shrimp's hand.

Nancy had said he would come around, and she was right.

132.

Chapter 18

Ash must have sensed the girl-power-solidarity wave of resentment toward Shrimp coming from me, H&A, and Nancy, because after she saw the expressions on our faces she dropped his hand like he had cooties. sensed the girl-power-solidarity wave of resentment toward Shrimp coming from me, H&A, and Nancy, because after she saw the expressions on our faces she dropped his hand like he had cooties.