Sputterpub's Blog

Juley was frustrated by the Sunday School debate and irked about Aaron’s harassment by Keith and Steve. He felt protective toward his friend and he stopped being as cooperative at school and at home. He became difficult. He waxed disruptive and funny in class. With increasing frequency he was sent to detention. Even there he cut up. He began to be friends with some other bad boys. With Billy who was fat and rather smart and always rocking back and forth in his chair. With Doug, red-haired like Keith but nicer, mischievous and hyperactive, a prankster.

Aaron and Juley lived in the northern, newer part of town. Billy and Doug came from neighborhoods on the other side of the transit tracks. It’s not at all certain they would have met but for the detention room. As it was, they formed an early posse.

Most of the time Juley did the deciding for them. They all helped with the thinking, but Juley had the strongest will. Aaron recorded, Billy protected, Doug sparked from indignation to chuckles, and Juley declared. For a number of years that delegation worked.

They weren’t bothered any more by Keith and Steve. Although they were never in classes all together and seldom even in pairs, Juley received courage for his convictions from his friendships with the other three, and the other three got their individual measures of support. Billy grew large and coarse-featured, but he never knew he was unattractive so his peers didn’t either. Aaron and Doug were appreciated even when they discovered their homosexuality, together at first, and then with their respective and individual domesticity and promiscuity. The four helped each other through the years of dead boredom in their suburban community, through the seasons of raging impatience awaiting their lives.

Usually Juley spurred them. Sometimes they all led others in reasoned acts of disobedience. The causes were often big, like saving the planet and ending world hunger, and occasionally as small as a personal experiment. Once Juley made a mess of his mother’s kitchen counter by trying to pour milk into three abutting glasses without righting the bottle between them. That was a simple physics experiment. Another time he threw a bowl of rice into his sister’s offending face. She had been arguing in favor of cars and corporations while he had just finished reading The Silent Spring. He grew indignant and wanted to see what his parents would do. His father smacked him and his mother made him clean up the mess. Juley amassed information and drew conclusions.

For a time he was almost uncivil in his disobedience. In his late twenties, consumed with dismay about the sprawl of suburbs and the metastasis of cars, Juley moved with his second wife Sharon, sister Ruth, Billy and four dogs to the backwoods of Colorado, retreated behind the thick walls of a bermed lab, and built a few bombs. But he veered from that course before any detonation; he got his revenge on the world like he did on his former wives, by doing nothing at all. Just as his exes tripped on their own nurtured delusions, so Juley got the dubious satisfaction of witnessing the world wobble as his predictions were realized. Of course he would rather have been wrong. He lived long enough to see his children sickened by the simian viruses that swam in required vaccines. He watched his olive-skinned grandchildren grow cataracts and melanomas in thin-filtered sunlight. But the phenomenon that really bothered him, the one that Juley always knew could have been fixed quickest, was the continuing tendency for suburban teens, emotionally abandoned by their parents and maddened by safety, to take automatic weapons to schoolyards and slaughter their peers.

Juley’s mother thought it was weird that he only wanted to eat, add and read when he came home from school. But he was happiest when she gave him columns of numbers to total or took him to the library for more books. He was never eager to play sports with the neighborhood boys. He and his friend Aaron took exploratory hikes sometimes, in the scrubby foothills behind the junior high. They tried to spot exotic birds and to avoid the older boys with BB guns. They talked about candy and planned to build a fort.

They never saw any birds rarer than sea gulls and sparrows but they usually avoided the bands of hunting boys. One April day when they were eight, though, Steve Mankiovitz managed to wing Juley with a BB; the pellet struck his upper right arm and left a small circular bruise. Juley and Aaron spotted Steve as soon as they figured out what happened; he was just up the hill from them, crouched behind some manzanita with his mentor Keith. They ran away as fast as they could while Steve aimed his BB gun at their backs. On adrenaline-fueled feet they flew toward home. With adrenaline-honed eyes Aaron spotted the irregularity in the eroded cut-away cliff by which they raced, and pulled Juley behind screening bushes, and so they found their secret cave.

It wasn’t very deep and it wasn’t very tall, but it opened enough to swallow the two of them cozily, and it hid them behind its shrub-shrouded entrance. They took to using it for reading sessions, smuggling in Greek or Norse myths or the small books of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling, ahead of their class. They couldn’t manage the big dictionary. Juley’s home was where they finally found “authority” and, after a fruitless search of the Js, the epithet Keith gave them in the fall: “gigolo.”

It seemed like Steve and Keith existed then only to pick on them. They lived one block over. They were older than Juley and Aaron but seemed socially less mature. Keith was Steve’s neighbor, he had red hair, and he always seemed to have a fresh idea about how to make someone miserable. Steve hung out with Keith because their mothers were friendly and Keith always had weapons. Firecrackers at least. Often a knife or his BB gun.

When Juley was in fifth grade a few memorable events occurred. First he retired from Sunday School. That happened when he asked his teacher who created God. His teacher didn’t know how to answer and tried to dispense with the question. “I don’t know” might have worked, but “God was always there” certainly didn’t. Juley protested. The teacher objected. Juley was removed from the room. He didn’t go back.

His parents tried to get him to return to Sunday School. They even threatened to stop his allowance. But he was adamant; he wouldn’t waste his time there. This was especially his position because of what happened to Aaron the very hour Juley was arguing with his Sunday School teacher.

Aaron’s family was Jewish like Juley’s but didn’t belong to a synagogue. Aaron didn’t go to Sunday School. He had always been free to hang out alone in their cave on Sunday mornings, and it’s where he chose to be that day. Unfortunately, he ran into Keith and Steve on his way there. If Juley had been with him, they would have been bothered and chased and maybe even nicked with a rock or a BB. Alone, Aaron was quickly caught.

It wasn’t like they tied him up or anything. The coercion was purely social. They suggested Aaron tag along with them, and he just didn’t feel able to refuse the invitation. He worried that they would hurt him if he declined.

They led him some distance away from the secret cave. Together the three boys made their way into a thicket of pepper trees and manzanita, careful about the sharp mahogany-colored twigs that whipped stabbingly at their bare calves. Keith and Steve took Aaron to a clearing in the middle of the scrub-forest, and there Keith exposed himself and rubbed his penis until it discharged a substance Aaron described to Juley as shiny clear jelly.

Aaron didn’t have to stay to watch. Later he felt a bit ashamed that he did remain. But at the time he was mesmerized and curious about what would happen. He was tingly and reluctant to move, let alone exit.

Civil disobedience could have been Juley Brahnstein’s middle names. Should have been. He was born to rebel.

He cut his second day of kindergarten. He found his own class insufficiently fun the first day, so on the next he followed his friend Aaron. Sure enough, they did something his dull class hadn’t done. Aaron’s teacher read each kid’s name, and the kid got to say “Here.” When Juley told his mother about it, she said, “Except you.”

“Huh?”

“The teacher didn’t say ‘Julian Brahnstein,’ did she?” her mother asked him, holding the heavy door open as he climbed out of their green Buick.

“No.”

“And you didn’t get to say ‘here,’ did you?”

“No.”

“That’s because you were absent. Not there.” Juley would live another eighty years and never forget learning that word. “Your teacher was probably calling your name just about then. And you weren’t there to say ‘here.’ Don’t you think you should go back to your own class tomorrow, so you don’t have to be absent any more?”

It was one of those rare moments when Juley agreed with his mom. What she said made sense. He thought absent was a wonderful word.

In general Juley liked kindergarten. It was more fun than tagging along with his mother on her shopping trips and coffee visits. It was better than hanging around home with his mother and his cute stinky sister Ruth. But he never enjoyed rest time.

The kindergarten day was only four hours long. He didn’t understand why resting had to be part of it. But halfway through every day, in Aaron’s class as well as his own, all of the kids were expected to lie down on little mats for a time, as if they were napping. Juley never liked naps even when they made sense, at home on a bed after some hours of roughhousing, and he detested the little school exercise. As far as he could tell, no one (except maybe the teacher) got anything out of rest time. It didn’t make sense to him.

But what really made no sense, then or after, was the way the kids went along with it. Juley kept looking around. He was a good counter, and by his tally there were no less than nineteen other children. All of those kids to one teacher and Barbara, the Wednesday aide. Juley couldn’t figure out why all the kids did what Miss Adams said, even when none of them wanted to. It was obvious to him that they could simply tell her: no. What could Miss Adams do? He would have loved to find out. But the other nineteen didn’t seem to see it that way. In fact, as far as Juley could tell no one else even considered disobeying.

He asked his parents about it. His mother looked at him blankly over the bright cover of her McCall’s. His father spoke about “authority.” When Juley asked what that meant, his mother told his father he should stop using such big words and his father told his mother to shut up, which made her return to her magazine, paging fitfully, and made Juley leave the room. He was too young to look up the word in a dictionary.

He learned to read the next year. He was very bright and rather motivated. He wanted to decipher the big Funk & Wagnall’s that sat on the carved oak stand in the family room. He longed to read the text that accompanied the illustrations in his father’s slim volume of Candide. There was one picture especially, of a naked woman held spreadeagled by four soldiers, her round rump up and the side of one round breast down, that made Juley tingle warmly in the base of his young penis, made him want to stroke its underside slowly full length, and he needed to understand the words around that picture.

He paid attention to the alphabet and quickly learned to read. He paid attention to numbers and mastered arithmetic. He didn’t care much for the subjectivity of history. His prodigious capacity for numbers balked at remembering dates. This contrary condition stayed with him all his life. Even as an old man he remembered his childhood addresses, his wives’ Social Security numbers. But he never could recall the year of the Battle of Hastings, or when the Magna Carta was signed.

“Sure. My kid sister’s sixteen. My boyfriend is nineteen. You’re talking ‘bout my generation.” Laura keeps her hand on Sharon’s shoulder while she says this, grinning and transforming herself from naiad to LA-child-of-perpetual-sun. She might as well be freckled, she’s suddenly so cute.

She cants her head to one side as if a lightbulb has appeared in the space above her. She rolls her eyes up a little, and Sharon can see how clear the whites are. Admires the arch of the smooth throat. She’s pulled out of a reverie by Laura’s next words: “There’s an old guitar in the Mercado.”

“Hmmm?”

“No. It’s the perfect gift. I just remembered it.”

“I didn’t see any guitar.” Sharon’s eyes blank as she mentally reviews the Mercado’s inventory. She can see the heavy silver from Tasco along the right counter, the corny painted ceramics along the left. Overpriced clothing at the back wall, books and knick-knacks near the central register. No musical instruments.

“There’s only the one. Actually, it belongs to the manager. It’s quietly for sale. But any teenager would love it. An old damaged Hansen, so fingerworn it hardly has a fret left. You should at least look at it.”

Sharon mashes her lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “I ‘on’t know…” she manages around her fingers. She drops her hand suddenly. “Jessica is into music. But I don’t want to encourage noisemaking. I was hoping she’d stay with Girls’ Chorus and the classics.”

Laura laughs out loud.

Sharon looks a little wry.

Other diners need refills, and Laura notices. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else,” she says as she moves with her pitcher to the adjacent table. She wears her white apron like a sarong. “But check out the old guitar.”

Sharon nods at her but Laura isn’t looking back. “No way is that woman in my kid’s generation,” she mutters. “…and I doubt she really knows what Jess wants.”

She stretches her arms above her head. “Oh it’s good to relax,” she claims, fidgeting as she exhales, clenching her shoulders and neck. She’s so competitive she’ll argue about how much less tense she is than the next person, all the while pulling at her mouth.

“I’ll get Jessica something useful,” she concludes. “An outfit that will minimize her hips or make her feel better about her bustline. Yes.”

Laura doesn’t notice when Sharon leaves the diningroom. She heads for the kitchen and her next job while Sharon looks once more at Laura’s slim back, and then angles toward the Mercado. There she makes a point of not seeing a guitar. She doesn’t look in any corners and she doesn’t ask the sleepy clerk. She never notes the time-polished pegs, the frets worn smooth as ancient stone steps, the crazed oil dreamscape on the rounded back. She leafs through knit sportswear on plastic hangers, and she selects knee-length Lycra pants for Jessica to despise, and a vee-necked yellow T-shirt for herself. The color would flatter Laura but does nothing for Sharon’s sallow skin.

She spends ninety dollars plus tax and she walks out into the afternoon sun vaguely dissatisfied. Still astounded that Laura is so young. She aims her face upward, lengthening her neck until the wrinkles unfold and show thin stripes like stretchmarks where the sun hasn’t been, and she decides to sit by the pool. Get some color on her face. Such a pretty face. To be sure, much prettier than Jessica’s.

“Maybe I’ll buy her one of those beaded bracelets,” Sharon says. “They seemed to have some good ones at the Mercado. Jessica’s built like Neil you know.” She pauses with her chin down, looking up through her bangs. “Big boned,” she explains, and she holds out her own slim arm for comparison. “Even at the age of ten she had a thicker wrist than me.”

She drinks some of her iced tea. Sits back and glances around the room. Notices that Laura is one of the lunch servers. Absentmindedly twists her ring and watches the young woman.

Sharon is quite taken with Laura. She spotted her within an hour of arrival, and she followed her up the mountain trail on the first morning hike. In Sharon’s opinion, the word to describe Laura is “smooth.” Not slick: smooth. Clean smooth straight hair, strong smooth firm neck, round little shoulders above high round little breasts, smooth torso, lumpless hips, legs and ankles and feet as graceful as a deer’s. Even in her baggy knee-length shorts, Laura is elegant. On her, white toenail polish is chic.

And Laura is more than beautiful. She manages to personify California health and energy. When she guides the stretch class, she shows them how to reach with every fiber; she models sensuousness; she elongates arched neck to curved foot. She can fold up like a piece of paper. When she leads the NIA dance she stomps and whoops with unabashed vigor. She inspires the normally sedentary Sharon to take fitness classes. She makes Sharon wish her own breasts were small.

Sharon is not gay. Many of her clients are lesbians, and she claims three among her acquaintance-almost-friends, but she insists that she herself is only oriented toward men. She believes that gay women are sexless and pale, physically. “At least, that’s the truth about the ones I know,” she confides to straight acquaintance-almost-friends.

She doesn’t want to do Laura; she wants to be Laura. Same thing makes her find the pictures riveting in Playboy, or Elle…fantasizing what it would be like to be that sexy.

Sharon uncrosses her legs and then recrosses them with the other knee over. “The wrong knee,” she thinks as she remembers the Feldenkrais class. She watches a hummingbird in the hibiscus while she tips her head back to swallow the last inch of diluted iced tea, and she rattles the softening ice around as she lowers her glass to the table. She wills Laura to bring the pitcher. She smiles when that appears to work.

It’s a metal bowl-bottomed pitcher, dappled below its spout with shiny condensation, its handle swathed in a thin scrap of white towel, and it’s borne ahead of Laura like a ceremonial vessel. Sharon pushes her glass forward as Laura tips it and together they watch the caramel-colored liquid ribbon smoothly over the lip of the spout. A few ice pebbles flow along. Laura’s right arm tenses – wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck – and Sharon’s glass fills.

“Thanks.”

“You okay?” Laura sets the pitcher on the edge of the table and cups Sharon’s shoulder with her left palm. She has a warm disinterested way of touching people. She’s a hands-on kind of person. It’s obvious she loves her job.

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine.” Sharon doesn’t leave it at that. She tosses the sides of her hair forward again, says “Ummm” a few times, pinches her bottom lip, and then offers, “I can’t figure out what to bring back for my daughter.”

“Well maybe I can help.” Laura shows smooth white teeth when she smiles. “How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Easy. I can relate. I’m twenty-one.”

Sharon is stunned. She knew Laura was young, but she had no idea how young. She lost all ability to guess a person’s age fifteen years ago, but she would have sworn that Laura was closer to thirty. Twenty-one! Sharon’s two sons are a decade older. Sharon has thirty years on her.

Such a pretty face.

Or it would be, if only she’d remember to…

Or it used to be, before she took to…

The truth is, the face is aging. The skin is beginning to sag on the skull. She props her chin on her palm, elbow on table, and she mangles her mouth as she speaks. Squeezes her lower lip between two fingers, or mashes her upper lip against her teeth with her sideways thumb. “Ummm” she says to hold her conversational place while she gathers her words, “Ummm” while she kneads and mashes, and “Ummm: this is all I brought for cold weather – I wasn’t expecting any chilliness – oh, this is my least favorite kind of vacation day.” She appears to think out loud, reacting to the gray sky but ignoring the mildness of the temperature, engaged in one of her theoretical frets. Her attitude is petulant and her movements are spasmodic against the lush landscaping of the ranch.

She has blonde hair. Her colorist paints it that way every five weeks. It was blonde when she was a baby, and it continues blonde as flocking on her legs, as down on her arms, as gnarl over her crotch. It would be dull brown and matte gray on her head, but her colorist makes it streaky blonde, and her stylist makes it a chin-length bob. Her manicurist applies acrylic tips to her fingernails so they seem long and shapely, but she worries at them with her other fingers, works them along the edge of her teeth when she isn’t lip mashing, and that fidgeting detracts from the look of her hands at least as much as the acrylic tips enhance them.

Her name is Sharon, and she doesn’t see herself when she looks in the mirror. She fails to note the small vertical lines in front of each ear that make her painted face sometimes appear like a mask. She never catches herself unsmiling, insecure-chinned, tremulous. She tosses that blonde hair frequently, and she often complains about her daughter.

“Jessica’s impossible to please,” she declares. She shakes her hair forward, massages her chin, jingles her bracelet. “No matter what I bring her it won’t be acceptable. Won’t be ‘cool.’ But I have to bring her something,” she concludes like it’s a fact. She crosses one knee over the other and swings her sandaled foot. Her pedicured toes gleam cardinal red. Blue veins zigzag like twine up her shin.

Jessica is difficult. She is sixteen-going-on-thirty but she has been her mother’s challenge since birth. Sharon loves her of course, but distrusts her. Always has. As far back as she can remember, Jessica has been watching her, critically judging her. From the crib, from the Johnny-Jump-Up, from the corner of the livingroom couch. That’s how it’s always seemed.

When she was young Sharon was beautiful. Her hair then was thick and her legs then were smooth. She always had big breasts. Jessica by contrast is a medium brunette, flat-chested, acne-cheeked. But Jessica has something – poise or posture or confidence or perhaps it is simply youth – the girl has an attractive presence that makes her mother feel competitive.

Maybe the resentment started at birth, for Sharon did not feel the surge of passionate affection that swept her when she bore her sons. She loved the baby, certainly, but without that voracious intensity. She noted her husband’s besotment with a little jealousy; Neil was her second spouse and she was then still in love with him, but Jessica was his first-born, his darling: perfection-in-a-diaper. She forgot the envy as she forgot her affection for Neil, but her body remembered and her eyes always looked critically upon her daughter. That may be why she was so surprised two years ago, at the anniversary party, when fourteen-year-old Jess appeared in a strapless red sheath, hair pulled into an attempted twist and lips colored off-scarlet, and Sharon overheard an eighteen-year-old male refer to her as “gorgeous.” Surprised unto devastation, as the same young man looked right through Sharon, barely excusing himself (“ma’am”) as he edged past her while eying her daughter.

And that was two years ago. Now Jessica has even more presence. She sways her hips with authority when she walks. She disdains just about everything her mother likes.