When we were in friend mode, my father would tell me how much he hated his job. He’d never had a chance to do what he really wanted because his parents didn’t have the money to pay for college. Plus, when Grandpa went to jail, somebody had to run the shop. So he’d been stuck fixing cars while my mom got her B.A. and teaching credential, all paid for by her middle-class parents. Now that the repair shop was thriving, he was trapped there for life. He’d never get to be a writer or a chef or a musician. When I was younger, I used to wish that one day he could go back to college. Then he would be happy. And maybe I wouldn’t feel every muscle in my body bunch up when he walked by. Lately, though, I’d started to think that nothing would ever make him happy.
Suddenly he stopped eating and narrowed his eyes at me, as if I’d already done something wrong. A familiar nausea crept up my throat until it felt like I was being strangled from the inside. I had to get away, so I used the least controversial excuse. “I’m going to go upstairs and read.” I put my dishes in the washer and raced up the stairs, freshly vacuumed carpet squeezing between my toes.
As I fled, I could hear my mother’s dubious commentary. “Do you think she’ll actually do her applications without you pushing her? You know how bad senioritis can be. I see it in my students all the time.”
“Let’s give her a chance. She’s not always lazy, even if she’s done the minimum required to get those grades.”
I closed the door quietly, wondering what it would feel like to slam it so hard that the knob came off in my hand along with a splintered collar of wood.
Fall semester was like one of those poorly preserved movies from the 1920s, where missing scenes have been reconstructed with still photographs from the production. I sutured the sound of my father’s voice, raised in anger or something worse, into hazy, scratched scenes. I tunneled through homework, applications, and classes I barely remembered a day after they happened. At least I didn’t lose my 1 A.M. privileges. Lizzy, Soojin, Heather, and I kept going to the backyard parties for punk rockers. Those moments were like brief glimpses of a fully restored print, the grays rich against deeply textured blacks. In the mosh pits, I earned every scuff on my boots and every tear in my combat jacket. But I wasn’t so sure I earned that early admission to UCLA, especially after my parents rewrote the admissions essay five times.
When I showed them the acceptance letter, my mother gave me a rare smile. “I loved going to UCLA. It’s a great school.”
My father gave us both a measured stare. “It’s not as good as getting into Berkeley. But at least you’ll have a chance to do better for grad school.”
I had a vivid memory of Tess, older than my father was now. She’d confirmed what he was capable of doing. Knowing that, remembering the recognition in her eyes, I said something I should have swallowed. “I thought you said that if you’d gone to UCLA your life would be way better.”
Bewildered rage gathered in his face, and for once my mother noticed. She made a quick cutting gesture in the air. “Go to your room, Beth. That was a nasty thing to say.”
The silence I left behind, I knew, was more dangerous than a scream. But something was different. My father didn’t come to my room with a list of new restrictions, nor did he spend the next hour breaking things and yelling about me downstairs. Maybe it was that admission to UCLA. No matter what happened, I would be gone at this time next year. My father could no longer claim to be my eternal watchman, ever vigilant. His tour of duty was almost over.
When the phone rang, my mother tapped on my door and said Lizzy was on the line. It was like nothing had happened. I grabbed the upstairs extension next to the computer, crumpling the curly cord in my hand so hard that it left little half-moon shapes in my palm. One thing hadn’t changed, at least: a clicking sound meant that my father was listening to our conversation from the downstairs phone. He only did that when he was looking for reasons to say I was breaking the rules.
We had to be on our guard, so I spoke first. “Hey, Lizzy! Did you still want to get together to finish our presentation for class?”
She got my drift immediately. “Yeah, that’s why I was calling. I figured if we finished it tonight we could actually have some free time this weekend.”
“I have to ask. Can you hold on?” I made a big show of putting down the phone and walking loudly downstairs so my father would have time to hang up. If I caught him, I’d have to listen to his lecture about why he was justified because I couldn’t be trusted. I found him at the table, morosely reading a novel by V.S. Naipaul. He barely looked up as he gave me permission to leave the house.
When Lizzy picked me up, she was jumpy with excitement. “What are you doing over winter break?” The school called it Christmas Vacation, but the kids who weren’t Christian usually came up with other names for it.
I thought bleakly about spending two weeks with my family. “I have no idea.”
“Heather and I want to go to this private show in Beverly Hills. I heard about it from one of the older guys at that backyard party on Saturday.”
“What’s the show?”
“I guess somebody from Matador Records is in town and there’s a rich record exec throwing a 1993 preview party for new indie bands?”
“That sounds… potentially interesting.” I used my bemused scientist voice, which was our code for “holy shit yes.”
We turned onto the cul-de-sac where Heather’s chocolate-colored house was exactly like all its neighbors. Lizzy killed the engine. “Want to get stoned before we go in?” She gave me her best naughty pirate smile. For the first time since that day with Tess, I felt a rush of unambivalent love for her. This was my best friend, who understood geology and never judged me and was a disobedient badass like Glorious Garcia. I was right that we weren’t going to murder anyone else. That was a seriously fucked-up thing that had happened, but maybe it wasn’t the most fucked-up thing I’d survived.
I took a hit off the wood-and-plastic tobacco pipe we’d bought improbably at a drugstore. “I am so glad we are getting the hell out of here in…” I counted on my fingers. “Six months? Do you think we could move up to L.A. in the summer?”
Lizzy blew smoke over her shoulder, into the murky wayback. “I don’t think we can get into the dorms until fall. But maybe there’s a way?”
We passed the pipe a few more times, and I felt the last remaining toxins from my father’s gaze draining out of me. Beyond the foggy windows, Irvine was evaporating, its endlessly repeating contours replaced by UCLA’s Spanish colonial architecture and the ragged, strobe-lit concrete of East L.A.’s hidden backyards.
When Heather let us in, I could see the remains of a large family gathering in the dining room behind her, full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Hamid was there too, clearing up dishes. His hair was longer, and when he looked over at me I felt a jolt that wasn’t an alien seizing control of my cardiovascular system. It was only my heart, beating faster. He grinned and I realized that I had forgotten to keep walking down the hall to Heather’s room with Lizzy.
“Hey, Beth.” He walked to the foyer and leaned awkwardly against the wall where everybody hung their coats.