Chapter 20

1/18/92

My father continually needles me—unlike most everyone that occasionally puts the proverbial gun to their heads, I consistently go one step further and pull the trigger.

-----

"Get off here." I instructed Lee to exit the freeway at Kanan Road on our way to my sister's house. It was close to 6:00p.m. but night glimmered in suburban twilight.

Lee was stylishly ‘put together,' as my mother would surely notice, in his black Dockers and maroon sweater, his thick hair combed neatly but soft wisps still scattered in his eyes and framed his baby face.

"This was a stupid idea." I didn't want to hurt his feelings but couldn't hold in my growing anxiety. He'd accepted my sister's invitation when Carrie had called to inquire what I planned to bring to our father's 65th birthday party and Lee answered my phone. I'd anticipated this evening all week long, imagining finally being awarded my mother's look of loving approval, the one given so freely to my sister. Lee was charismatic, engaging, attentive, passionate— traits Carrie often complained her husband, Larry, sorely lacked. My family would welcome Lee in, one less obstacle between us.

"No worries, Ray. I won't disappoint. You'll be the belle of the ball tonight. I promise." He shot me a soft, knowing smile as he brought his Mercedes to a stop at the end of the off ramp. "You're going to have to tell me the way." He stared at me, waiting.

I stared back at him and then it occurred to me he was asking for directions. "Right. Turn right. Then over the hill and left at the second light."

His smile broadened again for just a second, then he looked away, focused back on driving. His jaw had literally dropped when I greeted him at my front door earlier. I wore my lace, maroon dress, the only clothing my sister ever bought me, for my 26th birthday, a week after Michael married. Unlike our mother's tailored choices, this dress was hot, tight around the tits and torso, flaring loosely from the hips to an inch below my knees.

We passed the glowing strip malls to the endless maze of houses that lined the rolling hills. Lee placed his hand gently on my knee to stop me from bouncing my leg. I clamped my hands around the chocolate cream pie I got at Marie Callender's to replace the chocolate mousse I didn't cook for the party. I forced myself to be still as we wove our way through the McMansions of the Morrison Ranch housing development. Lee turned down Carrie's short street, swung the car around at the end of the cul-de-sac and pulled up against the curb in front of my sister's white, eight bedroom, six bath, two-story, pre-fab colonial.

He turned off the car and looked at me. "You ready to go party?" He raised his eyebrows and flashed a grin, then retrieved a bottle of white wine from the back seat.

I gulped, shook my head.

Lee laughed. "They can't be all that bad, Ray. They produced you." His eyes kind of twinkled and he put his hand on my cheek a moment, gave me a quick kiss then released me, opened his door and got out.

I followed, and we walked side by side up the slate landings to my sister's massive oak doors. I glanced at Lee and his gentle smile fortified me. Then I pushed down on the long brass doorknob and opened the door onto the grand marble entryway of Carrie's house. A sweeping staircase graced the left wall and wrapped up to the second floor open hallway that bordered seven of the eight bedrooms. In the living room to the left, an enormous fire blazed in the huge marble fireplace casting an orange glow to the cavernous room.

Family and friends gathered in the entry and spilled into the dining room. I greeted my sister's lifelong girlfriend, Nancy, a regular fixture at festivities with a quick kiss. She introduced her husband and seven year old son to Lee. Next were the ever-present neighbors and their pre-teen daughter and punk teen son, followed by Grandma already sitting at the walnut dining table elaborately set for sixteen. I saw my mother standing with my dad and brother-in-law, in the back of the entryway. Mom had her public face on. It was hard to tell she felt anything beyond her sparkly façade until she spied Lee. Her countenance lit up with her genuine smile, like sun breaking through the morning fog she radiated her joy. I couldn't help smiling too as I led Lee down the hallway to meet my parents.

Carrie came from the kitchen to greet us. She wore a loose, tan cottony dress, mid-calf and cinched at the waist with a thick red bow. Her flaming red hair was pulled back with another thick red bow, the ends of the silken ribbon brushed her shoulders. She extended her hand and Lee shook it and introduced himself, and then he did the same with my parents and brother-in-law. After the canonical pleasantries, Carrie took the pie from me and excused herself to "orchestrate the meal," then went back to the kitchen.

My petite mother stood before me in a fitted navy dress and reasonably-heeled blue pumps, martini in hand. My father was next to her, big and imposing in his coal sweater and dark gray khaki's. He also held a martini in his huge hand, his long, artisan fingers spread around the wide rim of the glass.

Larry offered Lee a martini, but Lee declined, confessing he didn't care for them. My father took on an actor's pose as he began his dissertation on what makes a good martini, and then tried to convince Lee to have one.

"Ed, you are clearly a man of discerning taste." Lee nodded humbly but with humor. "I, however, am but a mere commoner and would much prefer a diet soda if one's available."

"You don't drink, Lee?" my father inquired politely.

I tensed, afraid my dad would vocalize his warped perspective: Never trust a man who doesn't drink, or anyone who doesn't like dogs.

"I think it's very smart not to drink." My mother came to Lee's defense. "It's just a lot of empty calories anyway." She took another sip of her martini. "But ooh. This is sooo good!" A wide, childlike smile spread across her face, dark eyes twinkled with humor.

"Your rousing endorsement makes it hard to resist, Ruth, but I'm the Designated Driver tonight and I take my title seriously, especially having your daughter with me." Lee smiled at her confidently, tenderly. "Precious cargo." He slid his hand in mine and squeezed, plain as day for all to see.

I blushed, looked away, at Larry, though I noticed my mother beaming. "Is the diet Coke in the outside fridge under the bar, or in the garage fridge?" I structured my question to motivate my brother-in-law to go get the soda himself, knowing the idea of me rooting around his house would unnerve him.

"I'll get them. And I'm sure Carrie could use some help with dinner, Rachel," Larry sniped as he went to retrieve the soda.

I left my parents to chat with Lee, certain he'd wow them. I went into the den and kissed Scott and Jessie hello, though the kids hardly noticed, lost in watching Back To The Future II on their home theater system. Lee winked at me when I passed him on my way to help Carrie display dinner. I smiled outside and in as I entered my sister's enormous country kitchen.

"Lee seems very nice." Carrie was at the oven unloading a cinnamon and pecan kugel casserole onto the hotplate built into the elaborate range top.

"He is." I didn't extrapolate, assuming my sister would inquire further.

"Can you help Maria with the stuff in the fridge?" She said it more like a command than request.

We had no further exchange. I helped unload the huge brushed steel refrigerator of its contents. Carrie manned the ovens and toasters. We crammed the butcher block island with platters of pastrami, roast turkey and beef, smoked whitefish and lox, cheese blintzes, caviar and crackers. We crowded more food onto the kitchen table already filled with several salad choices, plates of mushrooms topped with crab to sweets from cranberry/jello mold to hamantaschen. Stacks of plates to begin the food orgy were placed between two large wicker baskets with fresh bagels on the counter top dividing the cooking from the dining area. Carrie was the archetypal housewife. She knew how to stage a meal.

When everything was off the stove top and out of the ovens, freezers and fridges, the three of us paused and looked at our efforts. The amount of food in that kitchen bordered on obscene for a guest list of sixteen, four of which were children. What Carrie blew on excess that night alone would feed Maria's family back in Mexico for a month, and me for several months.

Carrie nodded approvingly and addressed her maid. "Gracias, Maria. Pienso que eso es todo para ahora. Nos serviremos nosotros mismos esta noche."

Maria glanced at me as she walked by, out of the kitchen across the back of the entry hall to her small bedroom off the den. I looked at my sister to inquire again why she didn't think it appropriate for Maria to eat with us, but Carrie was already on her way to the dining room where she invited everyone to get a plate and serve themselves dinner.

I preferred self-serve at my sister's. A lot less work than playing waitress, but festival seating was the perk. After Lee and I filled our plates we sat together at the far end of the mammoth dining room table, however, within a minute Larry sat at the head of the table perpendicular to Lee. My father followed Larry, set his plate piled high with food on the table and sat facing Lee and I, but continued talking only to Larry. He was on some diatribe again.

"…And if the queen had balls, she'd be king. Sanctions don't work with these people. We need to go in there with brute force and bomb the hell out of 'em, find out where Hussein is hiding and bring him down. The world is watching if we'll follow through—live on TV! The U.S. must not appear weak." My father looked at Lee then back at Larry. "If we don't stop the bad guys then what the hell was the Gulf War for?"

"To free Kuwait, which coalition forces accomplished last year, Ed." Larry gave him a tolerant grin, as young often do to old. "Sanctions will send the message we want Hussein out of Iraq."

"Mark my words, Saddam Hussein, and the fanatic Muslims he represents will come back to haunt us if we don't take him down now." He looked at Larry then Lee but not at me. My father never engaged women in political discussions.

"Personally, I'm not a big fan of war for conflict resolution." Lee looked at me then glanced at Larry but spoke to my father. "But I tend to agree with you, Ed. What was the point of going over there if we're going to be right back up against the same fascist dictatorship down the line? Of course, sanctions may help put pressure where needed to defeat Hussein's regime. Conversely, maybe after thousands of years as bedouins, most of the Middle-East just isn't ready for a capitalist democracy."

I choked on my Crescent roll. They all looked at me. I forced myself to swallow, and keep the smile off my face. Lee was playing them, taking all sides without ever stating a point of view, a sales technique for winning friends and influencing people.

"You know what I don't get?" I spoke to cover Lee's little joke and derail my father probing him further. "Dad, you're willing to pay the inexplicable price of war—for oil, instead of investing in alternative, renewable energy, or driving a Honda instead of your twelve miles to the gallon guzzling LeBaron. Why is that?" I stared at my dad but he surveyed his plate as he prepared a forkful of turkey and kugel without acknowledging me. A flash of anger overrode my shame. "And Larry, you support sanctions when surely you're aware they only hurt the poor while the regime hordes everything. The rich always take care of themselves, don't they, Lar." I delivered the words like bullets, meant to penetrate, but all I ever did was agitate.

"Do you have a better plan than sanctions, or war, Rachel?" Larry glared at me. "Our government has top minds working on it around the god-damn clock, but if you think you have an answer to the Middle East problem I'm sure they'd love to hear it. We'd all love to hear it."

I flushed, burned red hot inside, but kept my mouth shut. My father didn't look at me. He savored another bite of his turkey as if he hadn't heard the exchange. I couldn't look at Lee so I looked down, but felt the rest of the guests at the table watching us.

"A better plan might include the will of the voters to decide how to spend our tax dollars." Lee spoke to Larry and my father, but his words backed me. "After all, it's my hard earned cash and I'd like some say in where it's going. Investing in science, medicine, technology seems more fiscally responsible to me than blowing away countless more lives and billions of dollars annually to perpetuate our addiction to oil."

"So, you're a liberal." Larry said it with disdain.

Lee gave him a tolerant smile. "I'm a humanist."

My knight was a humanist.

I stared at him. Lee looked at me and I felt my smile match his. I looked back at Larry, then at my father still seemingly lost in his food, then got up and went into the kitchen to get a Diet Coke, and breathe.

I pulled a cold can from the fridge and stood at the sink looking out the kitchen windows at the dimly lit back patio. The jacuzzi glowed red and looked like molten lava the way the tub was sunk into the patio. A circle of wide clay tiles bordered the rim and separated the hot tub from the swimming pool which glowed phosphorus blue/green and stretched the length of the yard. The quarter acre manicured lawn that spread out to the left of the pool area faded to the night just beyond the ambient light from the house.

"Lee's really cute, and very charming. I see why you like him." Carrie came into the kitchen with half-full plates of scattered food, set them in the sink, then got the sponge and wiped away the endless parade of ants streaming along the splash guard of her granite counter top. "How are you guys doing?"

"Great. Lee's great. He really is a sweetie."

"Sweetie? Doesn't exactly sound like you're very serious about a 'sweetie.'"

I signed. "I don't know yet, Carrie. We're working on resolving some open issues before I'm ready to commit my life to the guy."

"Here we go." Carrie shook her head with an exaggerated sigh. "Everyone has issues, Rachel, especially if they're still single at your age. There seems to be something is wrong with everyone you date. Do you judge yourself that harshly?"

"Yes."

Carrie stared at me. "I believe you do, which is part of your problem." She shook her head again, then turned away and rinsed the dead ants off the sponge. "Maybe you should focus on what's right with Lee instead of what's wrong with him so you don't end up childless and alone." She squeezed the water out of the sponge and left it on the back of the stainless steel sink then turned back to me. "Look, do what you want to do. You always do. All I know is you're out of time, Rachel." She stared at me. "The struggling bohemian is only chic when you're young, hon. You ought to start living in the real world and realign your expectation with what you have to offer."

I searched her eyes for compassion, or at least some awareness of how devaluing her words were, but saw neither in Carrie's banal expression. My older sister stared back at me like I was the clueless one. I wanted to scream, "You know nothing of the real world, in your colonial McMansion with your honey and his money," but I didn't. Carrie married at 22, right out of college, went from living at the home she was raised in to a McMansion with her husband. She'd never paid a bill in her life, had access to endless cash which she spent lavishly, and didn't have a clue what the ‘real world' was like for all but the privileged few. She was the harsh judge for a world she knew nothing of.

Carrie crossed in front of me and went back into the dining room. Moments later, I did too. I sat next to Lee and ate while listening to the boys argue politics, and then merge into religion, in which Lee joked about being an Apatheist, though acquiesced to my mother he was at least in part Jewish because his dad was a non-practicing Jew. At one point Lee suggested that the government legalize drugs and tax them like alcohol to help resolve the federal deficit, and my father jumped on that bandwagon as a staunch Republican who fervently believed in limited government intervention. But I knew, and Lee knew I knew that he was teasing me when he broached the subject.

After eating, Lee went to play Duke NukEm on the computer with my nephew, but the rest of the men sat there, waiting for coffee and dessert to be served. The women got up and started cleaning. Get up and help! I wanted to yell, but managed to refrain from saying anything else that challenged. Even in the 1990s men were considered kings of their castles, and most suburban families still modeled the 50s sitcom, Father Knows Best. And mine was no exception. I followed the ladies lead, gathered dinner plates scattered with unwanted remains and brought the appalling waste of food into the kitchen. Maria was back, doing the dishes stacked in the sink. Carrie retrieved the four layer lemon chiffon cake from the pink box on the counter top and loaded it with candles, then lit them. I followed her back into the dining room along with the other women singing Happy Birthday.

The party began breaking up a half hour or so after dessert was served. I wished my dad a happy birthday with a heartfelt hug and kissed my family goodbye. Lee shook hands with my father as he extended birthday wishes of health and a good year to come, and then shook Larry's hand. He kissed my mother and sister on the cheek, which seemed a little too familiar, though both women responded in kind.

Outside was cold and crisp. I blew steamy breaths on the way to Lee's car wishing I was exhaling smoke. I craved a buzz, as I so often did after being with my family, though I smiled with the image of my mother radiating joy as she gushed over how gorgeous, and smart, and sweet Lee was when she'd trapped me in the kitchen earlier while I was wrapping left-overs.

“That wasn't so bad, right?” Lee said as he opened the passenger door for me. “I, for one, rather enjoyed it. Great food. Good company. It was fun tonight, meeting your family.”

I watched him, perplexed, as he went around his Mercedes. “Fun isn't a word I've associated with my family since I was 10, and rarely even then.” I got in the car as he got behind the wheel and looked at me.

“Hey, at least your parents are still together, and your family is normal.” He started the car, and let it roll down the hill to the stop sign.

I laughed. “Normal? You mean classically pedestrian?”

Lee laughed. “OK. Let's go with that.”

Outside the occasional lights nestled in the Malibu Hills flashed by, but it was mostly dark beyond the light from the freeway. The Mercedes was a warm sanctuary. I was glad he'd come tonight, content to be with him, pleased by my mother's felicity. "Thank you for coming tonight. It was amusing with you there, watching you wrap them around your finger." I hadn't actually meant to say the last bit. I gave him a cocky smile and tried to soften the remark. "You were very impressive. Honestly, you made it tolerable. It was nice having someone on my side."

“I am, ya know, on your side.”

“I know.” For now, echoed my inner voice, but it was barely audible and may have been fear, not intuition. “Thank you, and not just for tonight.” I took his hand and held it, connecting us. He flashed me a soft smile as he turned left onto the 101 and accelerated rapidly down the on-ramp, pinning me to my seat. We both hadn't used for over four weeks, but I hadn't brought it up virtually at all, and neither had he. I'd hardly ever craved a buzz, safely ensconced with Lee, except on rare occasions like this evening with my family. I was afraid of confessing my craving right then, of bringing up weed at all with him. MA meetings everyone sat around and talked about all their stoned adventures which always left me salivating to get high. It's no wonder the AA program's best kept secret is their appallingly low abstinence rates.

“I want to be with you, Ray. In every way. I'm ready. Are you?” Lee said as the San Fernando Valley opened up before us, lights twinkling like diamonds from the recent rain.

1/24/92

Men are the freight train comin at ya.

Women are the poison in your food.

-