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TWO: I had been inside Erik's house on a couple of occasions, briefly, mostly when my sister was buying pot, which he grew between our houses under the oleander. But Carol, as Mrs. Claxton insisted that I call her, had temporarily changed things around. She was studying for her doctorate in biology so the counters were crowded with Mason jars full of seedpods and assorted stalks, and the entire house smelled like bread. Erik was very into a spare, bachelor-pad look at the time, his living room decorated with white melamine furniture in curved shapes, a chair shaped like a giant blue plastic hand, and very little else. His waterbed, the only ornate piece he had, rested on a gnarly wood base about a foot from the floor, with edges shaped like toadstools carved on to the three steps up to the bed, which he once told my sister was nicknamed "the stairway to heaven." He covered it in a pop art American flag bedspread, with one small white pillow in the corner. But Carol changed this -- the bed now had a velveteen coverlet in shades of purple, red, and ochre, and the bedside lamp got covered with a fringed shawl. There was burning incense everywhere, which only occasionally covered up the yeasty smell. Carol wore small glasses around her neck on an elaborately beaded chain she had made herself, and half-complete beaded projects lay strewn about on nearly every surface. Travis and Aaron were instructed to refer to their parents by their first names, just as they had asked me to, rather than Mom and Dad. I was completely in love. In fact I never wanted to leave. I soon learned that while Mrs. Claxton, uh, Carol, mostly beaded, baked, and studied, Mr. Claxton (Elliot) was out of the house every day, but only for a few hours or so at a time. Then I'd hear him returning with a treat of some sort -- leftovers from the deli, snow cones, cotton candy, garlic bagels. I didn't know exactly what he did but according to Erik, it had something to do with the entertainment industry; he referred to him laughingly as some sort of on-set "doctor," a vague description my mother wouldn't really fill in, no matter how much I bugged her. "It's just a joke, that's all, he was making a joke," she'd answer for the 100th time. "But is he a doctor, like a real doctor, like Dr. Minkoff?" (My pediatrician, who I supposedly asked to marry me when I was seven.) "No, nothing like that." "But then what does he do?" "It's an adult thing, you wouldn't really get it." So I had to file Elliot's work life under the rapidly accumulating "Adult Thing" collection in my brain, already packed with, among other things, deodorant tampons, the reason my sister wasn't living with us anymore, the significance of "alimony," and the supposedly hidden meaning of "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds" which my brother had started to explain to me when my mother interrupted saying it wasn't really appropriate. On maybe the third week the Claxtons were living next door, I was roused from my early morning TV-haze by the sound of laughter and splashing. A sort of suburban alleyway, choked with overgrown bougainvillea, separated our houses. Unattractive chain-link fencing separated our side from theirs up a sort of half-paved slope. Both of our backyards were set into the hills, spaces certainly not intended for swimming pools. Erik had gotten around this by grading the hill sideways and installing a walkway that led to a Jacuzzi and an atrium. The pool sat beneath them both. All my mother could afford to do, in her determination to have a pool after the divorce, was pay someone to dig out the concrete patio and install a staggered brick wall to hold back the hill, resulting in the early morning discoveries of half-drowned snakes we faithfully rescued with barbeque tongs and tossed back over the wall, shivering in the heat. There was little room in our tiny backyard for any deck to speak of so three steps out of the kitchen door and you'd be in the pool if you weren't careful. At the sound of their laughter I opened the door and crept around, my ass to the outer wall of the house to avoid falling in, then up the side of the hill in my bare feet in order to look down on the whole Claxton family swimming together. I gripped the fence like a prisoner gazing out across at freedom, the bottom of my polyester nightgown brushing against the dead grass and gravel. When they finally noticed me and shouted for me to come on over I didn't have to think twice. I ran inside, tore off my nightgown, and shimmied into my still damp (from the day before) bathing suit, rushing into it so fast I kept getting the straps around my neck all tangled up. It was a tremendous day, shiny and dry-hot, and we spent what felt like hours diving to the bottom of the pool to find rocks thrown from the roof by Elliot, riding on Carol's back like she was a seahorse, having spitting water wars, boys against girls. Playing a game with adults was a concept wholly unfamiliar to me -- my mother was too tired and my brother and sister were just old enough not to be interested in children and mostly not in the house anyway. Why they laughed almost constantly I never figured out, but even then I must have been aware enough to at least think it had something to do with meticulously hand-rolled cigarettes whose smoke smelled like cat pee that they smoked all morning long. And thus began an almost daily habit. I'd get up early, turn on the TV, eat maybe two bowls of cereal and wait for the shouts from next door, which would signal me to walk up the side and hang onto the chain-link until one of them looked up and noticed me. I was instructed, no ordered, by my mother when she came home from work after that first day, not to "bug" them, or ask for anything, or invite myself over under any circumstance. So I just waited quietly, though aggressively, my hands gripping tighter and tighter onto the metal the longer it took them to notice me standing there. I'm not sure when I noticed a change, or if I even did, but the time between first fence gripping and shout-out invitation seemed to be getting longer and longer. I even started coughing to get someone to look up from the water. One day, which seemed much like all the others before it, after our swim, Travis' parents went into the house and told us to play outside for a few more hours. We weren't allowed to swim without them watching us, so we trooped up the hill with Aaron trailing behind, setting up pieces of cardboard and sliding down the hill until my allergies got the better of me. Sweaty and stuffed up, I did the unthinkable, according to my mother's very British manners: I asked if we could play inside their house. Just came right out and asked. Travis reminded me that his parents had told us to stay outside for the next few hours but the mid-summer's day heat was pounding down on my chlorinated scalp, I was running out of sledding injuries for Travis to pretend-set with sticks and leaves, and the idea of that dark, air-conditioned house with the fun parents, plush bedspread and food smells was too alluring for me to let go of. He finally relented and we went around to the sliding glass door that led into the main living area. Travis cautiously called out, "Carol? Elliot? Jenny's here; we're coming in." We
walked in and found Carol and Elliot reclining on the carpet playing
chess. I got the feeling I wasn't entirely welcome almost instantly
because when they looked up, neither of them gave me their usual
wide-toothed grins.
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From
that moment on we established a sort of cautious friendship, though
we didn't see much of each other right away, what with the busyness
of their moving in and all. One glorious night though I was invited
over for a vegetarian dinner.
