NINETEEN

Late Friday afternoon I plopped down in front of my computer, turned it on, and read a message from Perry. He said that his kayak coach was one of those guys with thick necks and small ears, too muscled to do anything but stand around and look strong. But Coach Bicep was an expert in grizzlies. He led expeditions into Denali National Park, and Perry might trek up there next summer to help tag bears.

This was typical of Perry, always saying something dramatic, a way of keeping our friendship going. At the same time he made me realize how far away he was, gossiping about a kayaking grizzly expert I would never meet.

I sat the keyboard for a long time, but I could not bring myself to tell him anything about my dad. I felt like a witness finding it impossible putting words to some obscene thing he was under oath to describe.

Deena’s Diner was a former health food restaurant trying to look like restaurants in another era, green Depression glass saltshakers and sun-yellowed Coca-Cola ads on the walls. It even sported an awning that overhung College Avenue, EAT AT DEENA’S in white lettering against the blue canvas.

I hadn’t bothered to change out of my work clothes, heavy gray pants, steel-toed boots, a Ben Davis cotton blend shirt with the sleeves cut off. One of the nurses told me Dad had fierce headaches, the only part of his body with feeling.

Unable to tell Perry about Dad, I was in no mood to talk to anyone. I realized as soon as I sat down that my mom was right: she had taken to jogging out by the Marina in San Francisco and up the long hills into Pacific Heights, providing herself with sweatpants and a nylon zip-up top. When she was sitting still, you could hear her experimenting with breathing exercises, laboring to keep her nerves under control.

I should take up running, weight-lifting, anything. Bea pretended she didn’t see me when I came in, but I could tell by the sudden pink in her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes. I found a table and leaned back, watching her deliver a plate of tuna salad littered with bean sprouts to a man sitting under a Ford hubcap on the wall.

The man smiled up at Bea, one of those men who like to look women right in the face and let them see what they are missing in life. And Bea was looking right back, hitching her hip out to one side just like her mom. The man was laughing and Bea was joining in, only Bea’s laugh was quiet, like a cough.

I stretched out my feet and leaned back in my chair, a person who could take his time.

“Zachary, I didn’t expect you,” she said, and I was even more sorry I had come. Bea was embarrassed about her apron, I could tell without asking. And the little plastic button, HI, I’M BEA, and the other button, ASK ME WHAT’S SPECIAL.

“Is the tuna fish salad special?” I asked.

“Cobb salad is,” she said in her scratchy voice.

A big woman with a broad, fleshy face leaned against the counter, watching. When she shifted her elbows, a paper clip stuck to her elbow dimples for a second.

“What is Cobb salad, exactly?” I asked.

“It’s got iceberg lettuce and cubes of turkey and avocado and bacon, if you want, and grated egg, served with a pitcher of bleu cheese on the side.”

“I’m pretty hungry,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like enough food.” Bea and I used to go up to Tilden Park and toss a Frisbee around, both of us having just the right touch. We could snap a Frisbee back and forth for half an hour and almost never let it kiss the grass.

“Zachary, don’t do this,” she said, responding to the unfriendly weight behind my words. “Come pick me up at eight and we’ll go the gym.”

“And watch you box?” I knew I was being unfair to Bea, mad at myself because I couldn’t explain to my best friend what had happened to Dad.

Her lips pressed together for an instant. “I work out with the big bag and the speed bag, to music. You can do it, too—I’m allowed to bring one guest on a first-time visit.”

“You don’t call me,” I said.

“I do,” said Bea. “I think about you all the time,” complete with a little catch in her voice. “I leave messages.”

“Why do you suppose it’s called Cobb salad?” I asked.

The Big Lady eased herself around the counter and brought herself within earshot. She gathered some menus off a nearby table and stacked them, tapping the bottom edge on the table-top. “That’s a matter of some debate,” said Bea, sounding like her old self, the way we used to be.

“Can I order it without the lettuce?” I said.

“Zachary, I’m going to bring it out here and dump it all over your head,” said Bea, making it sound like one of those carefree things people say to each other.

“This is why I never see you. All these friendly people here in Deena’s Diner.” I said Deena especially loudly because I wanted the big woman to hear me. “Your mom doesn’t hesitate.” I was being unfair but I couldn’t shut my mouth. “She drives right on up in that new van of hers, with the calico curtains. She asks me if there’s anything else she can do.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said.

“You ought to learn how to lean forward and let your front hang all over people, just like your mom. Pour out that free refill and make the customer smile.”

“I think about how much you’re going through these days,” said Bea, her voice broken. I shouldn’t have talked about her mother.

But I couldn’t stop myself. “My dad can’t cough up his own phlegm and you stand around carrying on the family tradition, wiggling your butt for customers.”

I had not expected to say anything like this. I knew at the time it wasn’t right. Rhonda Newport’s pass at me had been a nonevent, I had come to believe, the result of eggnog and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the stereo.

“Bea, honey, you want me to ask this gentleman to leave?” said the Big Lady.

“That’s a good idea,” I said, lounging back in my chair with a smile: Go ahead, ask.

The woman looked me up and down, a little prickle of sweat on her upper lip. But she was cool about it, and when she left, shuffling briskly toward the swinging kitchen door she left a presence, an empty hole where she had been.

“I made Deena mad,” I said.

Bea laughed, a real laugh, kind, but with humor. “Zachary, that isn’t Deena.” This was a new kind of smile for Bea, knowing, well-informed on some practical matters about which I was totally ignorant. “That’s Ruth,” Bea was saying, “and do you know what her hobby is?”

I could think of about a dozen bright things to say, but I was tired of looking at the reflection of the room in the polished hubcap, a smear of colors, humans wiggling along the edge.

“She listens to police calls on her shortwave radio,” said Bea.

“I’ll pick you up at six,” I said, standing up, trying to make it all right by changing my tone, considerate, giving her a little chicken-peck kiss on the side of her neck.

“I think you better learn to operate your answering machine, Zachary,” she said, pulling her blouse down hard, so BEA trembled at the point of her breast.

I thought about Bea all the way home, all the way into the kitchen, where I sat at the answering machine and listened to a line-up voices, one at a time, far-off associates of my mom’s, most of them saying they didn’t know what to say.

And sometimes Bea’s voice was there. Bea, who didn’t like to leave messages, was there like an ancient recording of a human voice, someone almost lost to memory. She didn’t like to say anything straight out. She would say she was afraid of an on-rushing avalanche by suggesting that we might not want to get our clothes dirty.

“It’s three in the morning, Zachary,” her recorded voice whispered. “I’m thinking about you.”

I didn’t believe Bea and I would ever be close in the way we used to be, but the sound of her voice on the answering machine changed the way I thought about my friends. I had been thinking that Bea couldn’t possibly know how I felt. After all, I had been thinking, she had never even met my father.

I went into my room and booted up the computer. I sent Perry a message.