Fish on Land

A Broad Like No Other

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. -- William Shakespeare

My aunt Nancy was a wild but business minded broad. She lived in Nevada in the 1950’s and the family folklore whispers that, for a time there, she owned and operated a brothel with her husband Gale. Nancy was the first daughter but the second child born to my maternal grandmother. From the time that I was old enough to stand, I don’t remember a time when she didn’t have a lit cigarette in her hand and a genuine yet mischievous smile on her face. As a child, I adored her. She was loud, could curse like a trucker and had natural boobs that rivaled Dolly Parton. Her laugh could shake the chandelier and along with her lit cigarette, she usually also had a glass with whiskey and ice in it. Each year, she hosted a huge party at her house. She brought in regulation size craps and blackjack tables and hired real dealers to run the tables. I learned to shoot dice at her parties. I also tried vodka for the first time and brought my first boyfriend at the tender age of 15 to one of these parties.

When she was a young girl, Nancy had polio in her right leg. She suffered terribly and my grandmother spent nights placing alternating scalding hot and icy cold compresses on her leg. Nancy survived the polio but her leg remained shrunken forever the size of an 8-year old leg, a reminder of that painful episode in her life. She was teased at school, at a time when girls had to wear dresses, her misshapen leg so obvious to the world. As an adult, she never wore skirts or dresses and in many ways, she remained a frightened and hurt little girl, encased in a tough and tumble woman. She lived hard and, I think, never felt entirely loved by my grandmother, who left Nancy, my uncle Ted and their father in Ohio to run off to California and follow another man that she had fallen in love with. I miss her sometimes and think of her often, she was a role model for me in many ways. She apologized rarely and when she focused on you, the whole world melted away. She was full of opinions and had her way of doing everything. My appreciation of her, unfortunately, comes too late to express to her in person, but her direct approach to life remains with me to this day. 

Music to My Ears

My little bro is competing today in a “drum off” for a chance to win a car. He’s a phenomenal drummer, smooth and cool, full of charisma and completely non-arrogant. This competition is symbolic in a lot of ways. It means that he’s coming out of the foggy gloom and paralysis that he’s been in most of the year. It means that he wants to socialize, that he wants to play in public, and that he’s willing to take some risks and be competitive. I see it as a debut of his blooming self, the sweet boy disappearing and the handsome man emerging. He’s 19 years old and I love him like crazy. I’m so proud of him. My sister Sarah calls him “an old soul.” He’s always been an easy kid, patient and quiet, but very stubborn and focused. He has enormous potential, but he’s lazy and he knows it. He rarely gets mad or angry. He just gets very quiet.

On one of my last visits, he drove me to the airport. It was pretty eye-opening. He is a cautious and courteous driver. He doesn’t speed and he signals when he’s changing lanes. I didn’t feel anxious or afraid one bit when he was driving. He doesn’t listen to music when he drives so that he’s not distracted. So smart! He truly is an old soul. Obviously, I’m nuts about him.   

Just like me, music is his passion. Unlike me, he chose it at an early age and devoted himself to it. He’ll be playing today at 6:00 pm PST, so send him good thoughts and I’ll let you know when he wins. He’s already a champion in my book. Check him out doing a super cool drum solo while practicing on his kit.

Father's Day

“So a horse walks into a bar,” my seven year old niece begins her joke, “and the bartender says, “Why the long face?” Her perfect moon face turns up to me, eyes crinkled shut and her jack o’lantern smile beaming. We’re driving to breakfast for Father’s Day. My dad asks if I read the article in the New Yorker about aging. “It’s pretty bleak, ” he says, looking out the window, to some faraway place. He returns and catches my glance in the mirror, “There were letters to the editor the next week, doctors wrote letters, saying that the article was a matter of perspective.” There’s a glint of humor in his eyes, but concern hovers there too.

Once seated at the restaurant, the waitress starts to take our drink orders, my uncle Jaime suddenly looks up from his yellowed paperback and says with absolute certainty, “CORONA!” The waitress looks to me to confirm, waitresses always look to me to confirm. Here we are. My dad, my uncle, my brother, my husband, my niece and I. We’re in a curving booth at Canter’s, the famous Canter’s Deli on Fairfax, to celebrate. My food arrives and I stare at it, wondering why I ordered lox, it’s so pink and slimy. I take a bite and lose my appetite. My brother James stares at his corned beef hash and keeps asking my husband if his double meat pastrami sandwich is good. James admits that he should have ordered what Charis ordered. I tell James that Charis’ food always looks good, it’s inevitable, Charis just orders good stuff. On our way out, my dad indulges us at the bakery. We order turnovers and cookies and chocolate rugulah and éclairs. My schizophrenic uncle stands outside, leaning on a meter, smoking a cigarette.

On the way back, the pastry boxes tumble around. No one can seem to hold them in place and there’s no room on the floor or in the back of the car. We drive slowly and I remember my life here, passing streets and neighborhoods that used to be mine. I can’t even come up with a good place to eat breakfast anymore. It’s been 10 years since I lived here. My niece asks why I left. As we get ready to leave, she holds on to me and whines, “Don’t go, just stay here. Why do you have to go?” Her dad stands in the driveway as we leave. She’s jumping and skipping around him, her thick straight hair suspended in the air, as if frozen, landing briefly on her shoulders before floating back up.

Soldier Trials

When he was a little boy, he ran so fast that his feet were a blur and didn’t seem to touch the ground. He loved to wear hats – and not just one at a time – he would precariously balance 5 or 6 at a time on his head and then expect them to stay there. When we went to Disneyland, Captain Hook terrified him, he clawed my mom, trying to climb over her to avoid being near the tall character with a big plastic face and pirate hat. He could spend hours playing with his miniature plastic soldier men that my dad would buy him in a bag of 250 for $1.99. I hated it when walking around the house barefoot, I stepped on one of them. They really hurt to step on, with their little rifles, and I would holler, “James, I hurt my foot again stepping on your soldiers!” When Mom was practicing on the piano, she’d leave the tape recorder on between breaks. He would be playing nearby, there are audio tapes of him, his little boy voice, “Pow, pow, crash!”, “Hey you! That’s not the way to go!” ”I’m almost to the top of the mountain!” He had a complete sensory world that he created in his imagination, plastic soldiers and him. In grade school, he was a straight-A student, very bright and energetic, so many pictures of him with perfect posture and a clear and honest smile on his face.

James is 28 now, soon to be 29. His adult life has not been easy. He has a quick temper and is well-known in the neighborhood for outlasting so many of his contemporaries. When Russell was killed, I was sure that he would be next, that he would put himself in a terrible situation, trying to get revenge for a senseless death. The truth is that he wasn’t built to handle such loss. No one really is, but he exhibits anger so much better than sadness that there’s no room for sorrow in him now, only bitter anger. He has a daughter, a beautiful, intelligent and precious little one, she sees through him better than all of us. On the weekends that she spends with him, they cuddle on the bed and she knows the tender father that’s inside him. When he was pulled over by police for changing lanes erratically, an officer who knew him and seemed to have a grudge against him, there in the back seat she sat in her car seat. The officer asked James to get out of the car, and while he searched through the front of the car he came out with a large baggie of crystal meth and asked James what he had planned to do with it. James looked at him, with spite in his eyes, “That’s not mine.” The officer arrested James and charged him with a felony. The case was thrown out. James doesn’t do drugs and hasn’t for many years, he doesn’t smoke pot and drinking makes him act goofy. He wouldn’t have a baggie of crystal meth in his car or anywhere else, not to mention near his daughter. The police officer planted the baggie, and given the chance, the officer would do it again, and James knows it. His latest entanglement is over his precocious daughter. The mother wants full custody and has levied some terrible allegations against James. Some may be true, but many are falsified in order to take his daughter away forever. He’s stoic about the whole thing. Perhaps, he considers, he could move away and start over. He knows that won’t happen, it’s as fantastical as his childhood living room floor soldier attacks.       

For James, there are always battles, sides to take and a clear path. He’s seen and been through so much, that he just nods his head in comprehension and rarely ever smiles that bright open smile that he had as a child.

A Little Better

This weekend, my brother Richard visited us. We did a lot of fun things, ate good food and in general had a relaxing and peaceful 4 days. During that time, I felt normal again. We laughed and joked, Charis and Richard talked about computers. Richard practiced on the guitar. I liked hearing him practice, the sound of live music in our house. We walked a lot. Walked to the jazz concert on campus. Walked up and down Solano and browsed the shop windows after brunch. Walked to a pie shop near the house to stuff ourselves. I walked with my 2 guys, arm in arm, me in the middle. It was the way that I walked with Charis and Russell, when Russell visited last Thanksgiving.

There’s a joke in our family that the only time we don’t talk about food is when we’re putting it into our mouths. Charis made BBQ ribs and Richard ate a pile of them. We ate burritos in Berkeley, clam chowder in Carmel, and fried seafood in Monterey. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and on a few occasions I felt Russell’s presence, right beside us, walking with us. Richard had vivid dreams too. Most of the places we visited were places that Russell visited when he was with us. It was a profound experience to sit at the table where he sat with us, eating oysters. Or standing in front of the ginormous aquarium with the prehistoric-looking sunfish drifting by. All of these instances were a first for Richard, and he asked if Russell liked it when he was here. We took pictures near the ocean wave-simulating machine at the aquarium and I had to step back and wipe away the tears.

When it was time for Richard to go to the airport, I became depressed. I told him that he could stay with us any time and for as long as he wanted. He seemed equally sad that he had to return home, to my upset mother and a lonely house, with an adjoining empty bedroom, left just as it was before Russell died. Richard is back home now. He stays in his room a lot and steers clear of my mom. He’s depressed in his own, quiet, passive way. The time away was a cruel joke that everything could be the same again, when in fact we’re still trying to get used to the new normal.

And Then The Nightmare Began

At 6:58 am on Saturday, December 24, our home phone rang. The ring was loud in the peaceful early morning hours and echoed throughout our apartment. Charis couldn’t sleep, so he was in the living room reading. He answered it at the end of the second ring. I turned in bed, groggy and looked at the clock. I thought it was strange to get a call at this hour. Emergencies happen in the middle of the night, not at 7:00 am. I convinced myself that it was his family calling from Cyprus. I wanted to fall back to sleep but instead I listened for his voice. He was speaking very quietly, I could only slightly hear his voice. I rolled over and faced the wall. Some minutes later he walked into the bedroom. Before I turned around to see him, I told myself that he was coming back to bed and that it had been a wrong number. When I turned to see him, he was holding the phone to his ear. He had a pained look on his face. I shot up in bed. Instantly, I said, “Is it Sarah?” and he nodded. “Is she alright?” and he said yes. Then I said, “Russell.” Charis nodded and while he handed me the phone, he said, “It’s not good.” Sarah was on the other end, “Sare, what happened?” She was crying and it was hard for her to speak. “Russell went to a party last night and he didn’t come home. Mom got phone calls from his friends telling her that he was shot. They told Mom that Russell died.” I sank into the bed, pulling at the sheet. There was the sound of a disembodied mortal scream, as if from an animal, a wailing, moaning howl. The tears were sliding down my neck, the receiver started slipping out of my hand from the sudden wetness everywhere.

After some time, I sat up and tried to get my head together. I asked Sarah where she was. She was at her apartment. I told her that she needed to be with the family, and to have someone drive her to Mom’s. I told her that I wanted to make some phone calls and that I would be there as soon as I could. I called the police station near my Mom’s. The on duty officer confirmed that there had been a shooting at a house party. That was all the information that he had – they were changing shifts and he had just come on duty. I asked about hospitals that would have been used. He gave me 2 hospital names. I called one and asked about recently admitted patients to Emergency and ICU. No name match. I called the second hospital. Still no match. I stoically requested to be transferred to the County Coroner’s Office. After many transfers and lengthy holds, a deputy investigator for the coroner’s office came on the line. He said that my mom was at the police station and that the detectives were speaking with her now. He stated simply, “I’m sorry. Russell was brought in a little while ago. He was the victim of multiple gunshot wounds.”