Eye to Eye Read online

  Blake rolls his eyes. “I ain’t mooching. One of these days when I’m sipping Cristal and living in my mansion, you gonna be asking me for a loan.” Blake winks at my brother. “And I might even give you a couple bucks if you’re cool to me now.”

  “I haven’t killed you or kicked your ass out on the street,” Joe reminds him. “I’m cool to you now. Trust me.”

  “Anyway.” I clasp my hands together and put them on the countertop. “I’m here on business. You’re messing up Blake’s and my negotiations.”

  “Please,” Joe says. “I’m going back to watch the fight. You owe me twenty,” he says, pointing at his son with a long, no-bullshit finger. “I’m not playing with you.” And then he leaves the kitchen.

  This warm show of family support reminds me of Ian and how easy he has it, with tutors, any clothes and the latest technological crap his black heart desires. I couldn’t even imagine the Bernsteins threatening to kick Ian to the curb, let alone actually doing it, like my brother did. I had an insane image of dragging Ian here so that my brother could give him a little physical therapy and a gentle talking to, then…Ian dissolving into a pool of tears and quickly coming up with something way more creative than whatever whenever Joe asked him a question. Alas, such a thing would never be so. I’d have to settle for Ian and Blake meeting, if Blake is okay with it.

  “I want to bring someone,” I say. “This kid I tutor. He knows a lot about music, about hip-hop, and he’d really dig your show.”

  Blake leans into the counter and raises an eyebrow. “A kid? That you tutor?”

  “He’s all right.” A bit of a lie, but so what?

  “What are you, bringing him just to be cool to him, or something?” Blake crosses his arms. He’s getting suspicious.

  “Trust me. Really. It’ll be really cool if he can come. His parents are loaded and he has access to folks you could maybe hook up with.”

  “For real?”

  I nod, waiting for the green light.

  “Sure. Whatever,” Blake says, running his hands over his cornrows. “Whatever whatever.”

  Blake’s show is two weeks from now, and Doris is going to be in L.A. just in time for it. “Let’s scam on the kids,” she said. “I can go zygote as good as the next guy.”

  “Or Ian. You can scam on Ian,” I’d said over the phone while I watched Earl make fried chicken. Damn, that man can cook. And real food like fried chicken and catfish and collard greens and meat loaf, as a matter of fact. He can cook a mean meat loaf, not a kalebone in sight.

  “Scam on him? I’m going to kick his little pip-squeak ass.”

  “Get in line. First Earl, and then you. But I’m warming up to him lately. He secretly likes subversive, corny, obsolete stuff like original thought and ideas. And books. I think he was just bored in school before.”

  “He’s faking,” Doris said, “being interested, I mean. Very sneaky and Internet date-y of him. You’re getting sooooft. Sucker.”

  “I’m not.” Though I do have a guarded hopefulness. I’m starting to like Ian. Craziness, I know, but I think he’s changing a teeny bit, or at least letting his guard down so that I can see that he isn’t all satanic, just partially so.

  “Just because your wolf put on sheep’s clothing, expensive, designer sheep’s clothing from Lucky Brand or Abercrombie or wherever the chillens shop these days, doesn’t mean that he’s changed. You sound like one of the broads that’s always saying that ‘He’s going to change, I know it. He’s sorry he smacked me.’”

  “Let’s not get crazy,” I said, as Earl delicately placed the final juicy piece of fried chicken on a plate. “A shred of credit, please.”

  “You watch,” Doris said. “Just you watch. But in the meantime, you better be planning truckloads of fun for me in Hellay. I need a really good time.”

  “We’ll see what we can do, won’t we, Earl?” I winked at him.

  “Tell Doris I’ma take her to the Baseline for some proper drinks so she can stir up some trouble like the good old days at the Saloon back home.” He wiped his hand on a towel and shook his head. “Trouble’s headed our way,” he said and grinned at me.

  Trouble, I’m looking forward to, actually. The glamorous life that I’d imagined in L.A., after shaking off the dust of Langsdale, Indiana, had turned into a very weird job tutoring some kid and getting by on every form of chicken and egg I could conjure. I had an advanced degree with no advancement. I was just hanging out, really. Floating on a life raft, scared of getting knocked off. Not what I imagined as I marched to “Pomp and Circumstance”, trying to keep that ugly mortar board thing pinned to my head.

  I think of Doris calling me soft now that I’m sitting outside, trying to connect with Ian. We’ve just sat down at the table. Each time I come, I never know what I’m going to get. I look at Ian, sixteen years old and not a care in the world, only the fear that something will suck unless it goes exactly the way he wants it. I try not to have the attitude of the kid in the sandbox who wants to snatch the other kid’s toys from him. A lesson I thought I learned was never to envy what other people had because you never know what else is in those seemingly comfortable shoes you’re dying to walk in. Death and all kinds of equally fucked up stuff could be there. Plus, I’m being generous and all that now, giving Ian more credit and hopefully doing something good for my nephew.

  Even though Ian is wearing sunglasses that he refused to take off for fear he’ll actually have to look at me, the Venus and David statues are not looking as sorry for me as they did earlier in the game.

  “You look like you got this,” David seems to be saying.

  “Thank God you’re not letting him run all over you like you used to,” Venus chimes in.

  I don’t know. Ian seems to be in a mood. The sky’s a clear blue, there’s a slight breeze. The pool water is making little ripples and Ian keeps staring off in the distance, at the water, at the sky, at anything but me. It’s not a pissy mood, but just an unusually contemplative mood for Ian.

  He’s just given me a paper he wrote discussing White Boy Shuffle and Catcher in the Rye, books I’d asked him to compare and contrast. He’d also been asked to watch some hip-hop videos and analyze them. The books are wildly different, but both have narrators that don’t quite fit into the cultural expectations others have of them. Both narrators are smart-ass, smarty-pants, too, which I thought Ian would appreciate. I skim the opening paragraph, which seems pretty strong. “This looks good, Ian. You liked them?”

  “Holden was cool. All that stuff about phonies and being stuck having to be with all those people he couldn’t stand.” Ian slumped in his Frank Lloyd Wright patio chair. “All those rich guys he hated, even though he had serious bank, too.”

  “What about Beatty?”

  Ian shrugs. “I don’t know…a lot of it was weird. A lot of that stuff I didn’t get. Like, the title? White Boy Shuffle? What’s that?”

  I know that Ian is going to get annoyed, but I can’t help but go into teacher mode. “Even after reading it, you don’t quite see how the title fits?” He considers my question and pulls on his hair, which used to be blue-black, but now has some sort of red streaks in it. I knew that when I assigned the book that it wasn’t exactly teenager-reading material because there are all kinds of historical winks and references he likely hadn’t known, but still, I thought it a worthwhile book. This skateboarding black kid ends up leaving the beach for the inner city and keeps trying to avoid or fit into whatever it is that people, white and black, expect him to be. Sharp satire and all that.

  “I’ll have to think about that title some more,” he says, “but one thing that bugged me was this one scene where he’s making fun of rap videos.” Suddenly he sits up, straight in his chair. “I think those videos are sick.”

  “You mean sick in the good way, right?”

  Ian bit off a hangnail and spit it out. “Yeah, Grandma. Sick like cool, sick like, those dudes are saying ‘fuck you’ to people telling them they have to act like w
hite people want them to.”

  Hmm. But his paper totally ripped apart Laguna Beach, so he can’t just be swallowing all of that clichéd imagery. Guns. Money. Women hanging on dudes like jewelry. Still, Ian had a point. That was how it was, at first, back in the day when NWA first came out with “Fuck the Police” and everyone was all, “That’s crazy, they can’t say that about the police,” and then the police were all, “Hold that thought for a minute while we beat Rodney King’s ass,” and then at least some folks were all, “Oh, okay, I can kind of see their point.” But now? The whole turning society on its head, bitch, ho, AK-47, drive-by-shooting thing is a wee bit played out, in my opinion. Except now, the only hip-hop guys who seem to be making major “bank,” as Ian says, are the ones who still glorify that shit. And the ones who can’t make serious money are the more intelligent artists without a jiggling booty in sight.

  “Ian.” I pick up White Boy Shuffle. “That scene is satire, and so it’s an exaggeration of a true thing and since you watch MTV every single day of your life—you don’t have to tell me—but just think about it. What do you see all the time? You don’t even have to say anything. Just think it.” I flipped through the pages. “That’s all Beatty is saying. Also, if you can only do the one thing that makes money, that all the people in charge demand of you, isn’t that a form of acting the way people want you to?”

  “Ugh,” Ian says. He stands up and stretches. “I need a sandwich or something. Don’t you ever quit with that preachy shit? Next week you’re going to be all, “Hi, Ian, I just discovered the secret to world peace.”

  “Maybe I will.” I sneer at him. “And then you’ll be all, ‘Please tell me, I want some world peace, man, come on.’ And I’ll be all, ‘Too damn bad. You were mean to me last week.’”

  “You are one crazy chick. Totally tweaked.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  Ian sighs dramatically. “You hungry? Want a sandwich or something?”

  A sandwich? With actual meat that’s not poultry? Fancy cheese and gourmet mustard? On real bread that’s crunchy on the outside and soft and tender in the middle? Thank you, lawd!

  I shrug. “Sure. Whatever.”

  Later that day, while we ate our sandwiches, I casually asked Ian if he wanted to go to my nephew’s show with me. I waited until he took a big bite of his sandwich so he’d have to keep his ginormous mouth shut. He stopped chewing and held his half-chewed sandwich in his mouth as if he were barfing it up. I smiled amiably and chewed my roast beef as if I had just mentioned the most normal thing in the world. It went like this:

  “A show? With you? Why are you fucking with me?”

  “I’m not fucking with you. I’m serious.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s good, and you might like him, and it’s a way for you to see some new raw talent. You’re connected right?”

  And then Ian said he’d rather spend all day with his parents at the synagogue than hang out with me. “Fun like cleaning toilets,” is how he described hanging out with me. I almost said, “How in the hell would you know anything about cleaning toilets,” but I let it slide. Long story short, I happened to have my nephew’s CD and Ian liked it, although he pretended to think it was just okay. So he’s going. I asked the Bernsteins and everything. “Totally random,” as Ian would say.

  Today, Doris is finally arriving after weeks of talking about all the fun, nonteaching, nonacademic stuff we’re supposed to do while she’s visiting L.A. All the cheap, between-us-we-can-scare-up-about-a hundred-and-fifty-dollars things to do. Bita is driving because my car is still acting up, and Charlie is working late. And we all know what that means. So it’s going to be a girl’s night out—if we can find Doris. This is the third time we’ve circled LAX and I’ve tried her on Bita’s cell twice. No answer. Bita has been cussing out the various people who have almost run into her or vice versa as we weave in and out of traffic.

  I’ve been gripping the handle above the window and trying not to scream every time I think Bita and I both are going to see Jesus and I occasionally ask questions that I think will get Bita talking about her situation with Charlie. Since Charlie has moved out, I’ve not heard much. As her best friend, I should be the first to know, and I suppose I will be—when Bita feels like letting me in on things. I try one more time, though. As we approach Doris’s airline, I ask Bita, “So, B., do you think you and Charlie are going to do the counseling thing, or is he gone for good?”

  Bita leans into her steering wheel and peers off into the distance. “Is that her? Is that Doris?”

  Curbside, I see Doris wearing a long, drape-y dress the color of the rainbow, lots of yellow, red and orange. And a big, chunky red necklace that looks like something Betty Rubble from the Flintstones would wear. I lean out the window and wave like a crazy person. “Mrs. Roper! Welcome to L.A.”

  Doris gives me a big smile and the middle finger as we stop in front of her. I step out of the car quickly enough so that I don’t get hollered at by the airport security fascists and give her a big hug. We throw her luggage in the backseat and then she climbs in.

  “Bita! Thank you sooooo much for picking me up. I was trying to get you guys but my shit phone wasn’t getting reception.” Doris pauses long enough to take in the car. “And look at this. Wow.”

  I twist my body around so that I can see Doris. “I know.”

  “What is this car, exactly?”

  “It’s a Mercedes SUV.” I raise my eyebrows at Doris. Get a load of this thing.

  “I know,” Bita says. “I don’t want to hear it from you two, the cultural police.”

  “I think this car is great,” Doris enthuses. “Would that I could afford something like this. Sorta like this…maybe a little bit smaller, something that uses less gas.”

  I flip down my visor to block out the sun—and to look at Doris and give her the SHUT IT signal with my eyes. “I ain’t saying nothing, Bita.”

  Bita rolls her eyes. “Rare.” We’re finally out of airport traffic and merging on the 405. “Besides,” Bita says, running her fingers through her thick, black hair, “I’m thinking of trading it in for something less fancy. You know, simplifying my life and all that.”

  I want her to keep going because I know this must have everything to do with the Charlie Situation, but Bita changes the subject, as usual.

  “Tonight, though, I don’t want to simplify. Let’s go someplace to eat that’s nice, someplace fancy.”

  Doris is quiet in the backseat because she can’t say what I can most definitely say. “Bita, Doris and I are broke asses. That’s Latin for teachers. Wherever you’re thinking of taking us, we cain’t afford it.”

  “No worries. It’s on me. My treat.”

  “No….” Doris and I both say. Weakly.

  “Don’t even try it. Unless you’re going to jump out onto the freeway and die, I’m in charge and we’re driving to wherever the hell I want to.”

  “Wow,” Doris says. “You’re hard core.”

  “We’re going to Morton’s,” Bita announces. “We’re eating big, juicy steaks and drinking a couple bottles of wine.”

  Steak. Yay!

  “Yay!” shouts Doris. “I loooove this car. I loooove fancy restaurants. I looooove cow. The cultural police are keeping their big mouths shut.”

  “Bullshit,” Bita says, laughing. “It’s in you guys’ blood.”

  As Doris and I get ready to go to the show out in Corona, I have to shake my head. Earl had said trouble was coming to town, and I certainly feel something like trouble percolating. I try not to be so fatalistic about things. And how bad can a little show be, really?

  I’m dressed already, as dressed as I’m going to be with square-toed Frye boots and a turquoise flowered shirt with pearl snap buttons. I pull on my jean skirt, which keeps twisting to the side, for some reason. When Doris comes out of the bathroom we both freeze and stare at each other.

  “What are those shoes?” I say.

  “Me? Is Earl dre
ssing you? You’re going to a hip-hop show in that?”

  True, my ensemble is a little on the cowboy side, but I like it. I’m going to be comfortable in it, unlike Doris, who is wearing metallic green platforms with pink glitter lightening bolts on the side. And a star, a giant pink glitter star on the toe of each shoe. “You’re blinding me with those things. You’re like Bootsy Collins exploded into Ziggy Stardust.”

  Doris clomps toward me with a big grin on her face. “We’ll just see who the hip-hop zygotes go for. Me, who actually has something cool on and, dare I say, very, very unique, or you, in your hayride, hoe-down outfit. I’m scared to think about what you’d be wearing if we stayed in Langsdale, Indiana, a day longer.”

  I look down at my skirt and boots, and I consider changing. “Yeah, well, I’m scared to think of a lot of things if I’d stayed in Langsdale a day longer.”

  “Amen, sister.” Doris checks her makeup in a compact. “The lighting in this kitchen is god-awful. Or I look like somebody’s mom.”

  “Bad lighting,” I say. “Definitely.” I grab my keys. “Let’s hit it.”

  “What, we’re not waiting for Earl?”

  “No.” I feel a bit guilty. To my surprise, Earl had been excited about the show, had wanted to come, but I talked him out of it.

  “Oh, Earl,” I’d said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just a small thing.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. He had laid two T-shirts out on the bed. “Which one looks better to you? I like the black one.”

  “You always wear black.” I pointed to the grey one. “It doesn’t matter, though. Really. There’s no need for you to go.” I stood in front of our bedroom mirror and checked my lipstick. I could see Earl’s image in the mirror and he stared back at my eyes until I looked away.

  “You sounding like you don’t want me to go. I told you I don’t need to go out with Jake. We go out all the time. It’d be fun to hang out with you and Doris. Scare that boy some.”