Ian R. Wilson
Mona Simpson
Amy Hempel
Michael Cunningham
Jenny Offill
There is hardly a single action that we perform in that phase which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything.
Within a Budding Grove,
Remembrance of Things Past
Contents
PALO ALTO I
Halloween
Lockheed
American History
Killing Animals
Emily
Camp
Chinatown
Part I, Vietnam
Part II, Headless
Part III, Caffe Buon
PALO ALTO II
April
Part I, The Rainbow Goblins
Part II, Wasting
Part III, April
Tar Baby
I Could Kill Someone
Jack-O
Yosemite
Acknowledgments
PALO ALTO I
Halloween
Ten years ago, my sophomore year in high school, I killed a woman on Halloween.
I had been drinking at Ed Saless house all afternoon, which I wasnt supposed to be doing because I was on probation. The probation rules said I was only allowed to drive to school and then right back home after school was out. But it was six months since Id been arrested for being a minor under the influence, and my parents had become lax about the driving rules. On that Halloween Tuesday, instead of going home, I took some friends over to Eds and we all got drunk.
His father was a mathematics professor at Stanford and his mother was a nurse, and neither of them came home until at least six but usually seven. His professor father had a great liquor cabinet. I had my first drink there when I was thirteen, and in the three years since then we had been taking from his cupboard and putting water back into the bottles. We could never get much from any one bottle because it would be too obvious; so we would take a little from all the bottles and mix everything into a punch like the bums did in Cannery Row. I like that we did that, I liked thinking that we were like Mack and the boys, even though the punch tasted horrible. Wed usually mix it with grape juice, but it wouldnt help much.
We were all sitting in the backyard on a little picnic table that you might find at a park. His dad probably took it from the dump. He was always doing weird stuff like that to save money. Ed did it too, like scraping the mold off old bread and then eating it. His dad was a mathematics professor who smoked a pipe, every night. His teeth were yellow and crooked and horrible. Ed had a little pipe and he smoked tobacco with his dad at night. Ed was half Korean and half white because his mother was Korean and his dad was white from Gary, Indiana.
Outside, we were smoking weed in Eds little tobacco pipe. We were all planning on going to Alice Wolfes house later for the Halloween party, and we were getting ourselves revved up. I picked a fight with Nick Dobbs. I had seen him hanging around my girlfriend, Susan, and I didnt like it. I spotted them a couple times laughing in the corner of the library at school. I probably wouldnt have cared if he had been just one of those theater dorks that she was always planning events with, but he wasnt. He was a handsome skateboarder, and I had enough of the alcohol punch in me to start something.
I heard
you and Susan did acid. Why did you give my girlfriend acid?
She wanted it.
His eyes actually looked worried. It was not the reaction I was expecting. I suddenly felt powerful and a little bad for him at the same time. I probably couldnt have asked for a better reaction because I really wasnt a fighter, and this way, because he looked scared, I had beat him without having to fight him. I didnt like to see people intimidated, but this guilt made me turn meaner because I told him to apologize, and when he did, I demanded that he say it louder so that everyone could hear. I was pushing it a little and I could see him consider just taking a swing at me, but he apologized again slightly louder. Jack spoke up.
What the fuck do you care, Ryan? She does acid and other drugs all the time, with all of us.
Well, I didnt like that. Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that theres any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you dont know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each others tapes and find out what each of us was really like. But then youd have to watch girls go poo and boys trying to go down on themselves.
Then Eds Korean mom came home. She was only about four foot ten, but we all got scared anyway. We heard the front door close inside the house, and Ed said, My moms home! And we grabbed most of the cups and someone grabbed the punch and Ed grabbed his pipe and we all scrambled over the fence and jumped into my car. It was a Honda Accord Id inherited from my father when things were better between us, and it was pretty small for eight people. There were two others in the front besides me and five in the back. Jacks elbow was in my face, and when I looked in the rearview, the backseat was a jumble of arms and torsos and heads up against the ceiling. Nick wasnt in the car. He ran off somewhere to go and cry, I guess.