7. November 1993“Nice equipment, for a six-year-old.”
NOVEMBER 1993
“NICE EQUIPMENT, FOR A SIX-YEAR-OLD.”
A t eleven o’clock on Thanksgiving morning, William walked down Santiago in the rain, three blocks closer to the beach. He turned down 47th Avenue to the late-Doelger-style house that was a carbon copy of his own. With the umbrella in his right hand, he tucked the bottle of Chardonnay under his left arm and held the bouquet of chrysanthemums in that hand.
At the Dunphys’ front door, he jabbed the doorbell with his elbow.
The footsteps clattered down the stairs inside - light footsteps, hers - and a moment later, the door flung open.
She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, then took the flowers and the wine. “My mom will be a total sucker for these,” she said while he folded up his umbrella.
She stepped back into what had once been a tunnel entrance, now enclosed to form a foyer of sorts, and shut the door behind him. He stood blinking at her in the relatively dim light. She wore one of her floral baby doll dresses with black tights and a bowler hat. Smiling, she kissed him again and handed back the wine bottle .
“Don’t worry,” she said as she took his hand and led him upstairs to the living room. “My mom is your first obstacle. Dad’s in the kitchen.”
Julia had invited him over more than once for sex after school, but William had never taken her up on it. It was not only her house - it was his boss’s. So she had always contented herself with sex in his bedroom, and he had never seen the inside of her house.
It turned out that the floorplan of her house was identical to his own, right down to the ground-level addition where the garage had once been. But where the faded lava-orange shag carpeting lingered in his living room, the Dunphys had pulled theirs up and refinished the parquet floors beneath. In his house, the dark wood-paneled walls and mustard-yellow polyester curtains swallowed the light. But Karen had painted their walls a nice clean white, pasted an English rose wallpaper border just below the ceiling, and raised the Roman shades to admit the sunlight.
They found Karen in the dining room, setting the table. She came forward to greet William with a hug and exclaim at his offerings. “You didn’t have to bring these! You already provided the crabs for dinner.”
William smiled and didn’t admit that his mother had shoved them into his hands as he walked out the front door.
Still holding the flowers, Julia took his hand again and whispered, “Come with me.” She led him past the dining table to the entrance of the kitchen. She released his hand to go rummage through the cabinets for a vase. She took her time, and he lingered in the doorway, watching Paul at the stove. Paul hadn’t noticed him yet, and William was tempted to turn and flee before he did.
Paul was a Catholic Republican with an abiding love of profanity and a penchant for launching volleys of it when under pressure. He certainly was not immune to unleashing it upon William, but unlike some of Paul’s other cooks, William didn’t take it too personally.
The other day, he let it roll off his back when Paul snatched the spoon from his hand and sampled his puttanesca sauce.
“Tastes like balls,” Paul said, slinging the spoon he had just put his mouth on right back into the saucepan. “Start over. ”
So William added less garlic this time and smiled privately to himself, wondering how Paul knew what balls taste like. Those moments were Paul’s way of teaching him. William could either get bent out of shape, or he could learn. And then he could savor the almost proud look on Paul’s face the next time he tasted William’s puttanesca sauce.
William could probably count on one hand the number of meaningful interactions he and his own father had shared over the past year.
All the times over the past three weeks that Julia had straggled home late, or not at all… and then Julia telling her father only yesterday that William was coming over for Thanksgiving. Paul might be peculiarly conservative, but he was neither stupid nor na?ve. He would have put two-and-two together by now: his daughter and his employee were sleeping together.
He turned around and spotted William. Paul’s lips pinched like a drawstring purse before he turned back toward the saucepan.
“Well,” said Paul, in a tone of inevitability. “Come on in.”
William obeyed wordlessly. At the kitchen cabinets, Julia finally located a vase. In William’s current state of nerves, he was barely able to appreciate the utilitarian efficiency of Paul’s kitchen. Clearly this was his domain, not Karen’s.
William spotted the crabs already simmering in the pots. Through the window of the illuminated oven, he saw the brussels sprouts roasting. The salad and the loaf of sourdough waited on the counter.
Paul didn’t say anything more. Didn’t even look at him. He was making a simple garlic and clarified butter sauce for the crab. William watched as the milk solids settled to the bottom of the pan, and Paul began straining the clarified butter from the top.
“Is that for the crab?” he asked.
The drawstrings tightened a bit more around Paul’s lips. “It is.”
It never got easier, challenging Paul. But William sensed that Paul liked that about him, in spite of himself. It didn’t hurt that William had mastered the timing of his challenges and that he never challenged Paul unless he knew damn well what he was talking about. After only a few short months of working together, William had learned how to do it with merely a tone of voice and a facial expression.
Paul turned his body one-quarter to face William. “So this is the first thing you say to me, the first time you come into my kitchen, in my house.”
William smiled slightly. “I said something?”
“So tell me, since you’re obviously the expert here – what do the people want, if not to taste the crab? This lets them taste the fucking crab.”
“It does.”
Julia had found a vase and came to the sink to fill it. Still taking her time, clearly eavesdropping.
“Don’t tell me,” Paul said to William, pouring the clarified butter into ramekins. “You’ve got another one of your hallowed Sicilian grandmother’s recipes.”
William tried not to wince at Paul’s characterization of his Nonna as hallowed . “I do.”
“Of course you do.” Paul stepped aside, gestured to the counter and the stove. “It’s all yours.”
William gaped. “What?”
Paul crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s your big opportunity. Don’t blow it in front of your girlfriend.”
Out of the corner of his eye, William spied Julia casually arranging the flowers in the vase, as if she weren’t hanging on every word. He said, “Really?”
Paul opened the cabinet doors and drawers one at a time, revealing cookware, knives, and kitchen utensils. He gestured to the hanging baskets: onions, garlic, scallions, and lemons.
William cleared his throat. Gathered his thoughts, trying to recall his grandmother’s recipe by heart. Realizing that by this point, he didn’t really need a recipe – he had the basic skeleton, and could wing the rest through intuition.
Paul still stood there, arms crossed, watching for William’s next move. Julia was still there, too. She smiled at him for courage, but said, “Don’t look at me. My dad fired me from his kitchen.”
“I tell you what,” interjected Paul, “it’s Backwards Day. You play chef, I play prep cook.”
“Now that is something I have to see to believe,” said a voice behind William. He turned to find Julia’s sister in the doorway, balancing stacks of pinstriped pastry boxes.
William sprang forward to relieve some of Alison’s burden. Together they set the stacks of pastry boxes on the table in the corner of the kitchen. To his dismay, Alison assumed a seat on the built-in banquette with a clear view of the action and started plating the pies she had brought with her.
At least Julia’s mother wasn’t there to watch him sink or swim. But he intended to swim.
He pointed to Paul. “Chopped parsley and a cup of butter.” From the kitchen table, Alison cackled at his flawless mimicry of Paul, but he ignored her and pointed to Julia. “You. Open the wine.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
For his part, William peeled, trimmed, and minced the garlic and scallions. When Paul finished with the parsley and the butter, William ordered him to juice lemons, and then he boiled down a quarter cup of wine in the saucepan.
While he boiled and Paul juiced, Julia carried the vase of flowers into the dining room. A moment later, as he added the butter, salt, and garlic to the pan, he noticed that Julia now hovered in the doorway with her mother.
That’s what he liked about cooking – once he got started, it didn’t spare any psychic energy for his nerves.
When the butter melted, he waved Paul over with the parsley and the lemon juice. Paul threw them in the pan, and William followed it with a couple of pinches of cayenne pepper. He tasted. Added more cayenne.
Paul tasted, then shot William a look that was a combination of surprise and annoyance, as he often did when William proved himself right. But he only said, “That’s a lot of dipping sauce for five crabs. ”
William shook his head. “You pour it over the crab.”
Paul looked skeptical, but said nothing. He pointed to the ramekin of chopped scallions, still on the counter.
“Garnish,” William explained.
Silenced, Paul pressed his lips together. Julia and her mother exchanged knowing glances, and Alison smirked.
Paul strained the crabs from the pot and William rinsed them briefly under cold water. The women whisked the other dishes to the dining table while William and Paul brought the crabs and the sauce.
Julia sat beside William, and Paul served the wine while William demonstrated how to pour the garlic parsley sauce over the crab. Beneath the cover of the dining table, William tapped his foot nervously while everyone cracked their crab and tasted.
Paul said nothing, of course, but he ate every bite and washed it down with the buttery Chardonnay.
“You can admit it now, Dad,” Alison said to Paul as she served him a slice of pie.
“Admit what?”
“William knocked it out of the park.”
Karen laughed out loud, and beneath the cover of the table, Julia’s hand squeezed William’s.
Later, as they walked the three blocks together in the rain back to his house, William slid his arm around her waist and sheltered her under his umbrella. Julia balanced two boxes of Alison’s pies, one on top of the other. Her canary-yellow raincoat struck a cheerful contrast to his sober black umbrella.
The first things to accost them as he opened the front door were the blare of Thanksgiving football on the TV, and the overpowering wall of tobacco smoke.
“Un-fucking-believable!” Mike’s voice bellowed from the living room.
“Can you believe this fucking game?” came another masculine voice.
William cast Julia a sheepish look, and she grinned good- naturedly. That was the thing about her – if his family’s rough edges offended her, she never let on.
They ascended the staircase to the living room and found Mike, Uncle Frank, and William’s father slouched on the sagging avocado-green furniture, their eyes riveted to the TV screen, scores of empty beer bottles and smoking ashtrays scattered on the coffee table in front of them. William cleared his throat, but they still didn’t notice. He glanced at the TV and asked who was playing.
“Dallas and Miami,” said Uncle Frank.
William frowned again at the screen, at the ice and snow on the football field. “This is in Miami?”
“Texas Stadium. But still.” Uncle Frank looked up and finally spotted Julia. “Oh, hey, honey. Nice to see you.”
Mike and William’s father noticed her then, grunted their greetings, and turned back to the game.
William shrugged and steered Julia toward the kitchen, where his mother and sister darted around like balls in a pinball machine. His mother gave Julia a breathless greeting and a hasty peck on the cheek.
“Can I help?” Julia offered while his mother accepted the pastry boxes.
Kelly shoved a tray of antipasti at Julia. “Take these to the dining table.”
While William helped Julia with the antipasti, the house erupted in such a deafening uproar that he nearly dropped the platter. The men in the living room leaped to their feet, bellowing obscenities with such fervor that William thought there must have been a fight, except that their eyes were fixated to the TV screen.
“What happened?” said William.
“Live ball!” spluttered Uncle Frank.
“The idiot touched the ball,” William’s father explained. “The Cowboys were going to win, but they just handed Miami the game.”
“Good,” Mike declared. “Fuck the Cowboys.”
William again looked sheepishly at Julia. But she smiled and gamely said, “I didn’t know you swung that way, Mike.”
The men in the living room turned to her with a stunned look, then broke into snickers. Uncle Frank gave Mike a noogie and said to William, “She’ll fit in just fine around here.”
With the game over, everyone gathered around the table to help themselves to prosciutto and salami, tomatoes and mixed olives, marinated peppers and artichoke hearts, burrata and provolone and crostini. An hour later, William’s mother brought out a lasagna, and an hour after that, the traditional turkey, stuffing, and vegetables.
“Your family Thanksgivings are epic events,” Julia observed as William poured her a third glass of prosecco and his mother served Alison’s pumpkin pie.
“We’re Italian,” Uncle Frank pointed out. “We take our holiday dinners very seriously.”
William’s mother handed Julia her slice of pie, and Julia told them about the more modest crab feast at her house.
“You should have seen the sauce Will made for the crab, though,” she added. “All I’ll say is, the only pie my dad ate today was humble pie.”
Warmed by the prosecco and the smile Julia turned on him, William reached for her hand. He no longer cared if everyone could see his feelings on open display. It didn’t even irk him when Mike made a gagging noise and said, “Jesus, get a room.”
There was something almost primordial about the feeling it gave him to sit there like that, holding her hand in companionable silence while eating with the other hand. A feeling akin to pride of ownership, almost. It definitely wasn’t evolved.
But the thing was, her family liked him. His family liked her. Their families had been connected for generations, through both shared community and shared trade. On top of all that, she was the most beautiful thing in the room. And she was his .
Predictably, by ten o’clock, his father, brother, and Uncle Frank were well on their way to being thoroughly sloshed. Pretty soon they’d start up on the crude humor, and Mike would no longer bother hiding the way his wolfish leer raked over Julia’s body every time she crossed his path.
At least they were all happy drunks .
William announced, “I’m going to walk Julia home.”
Slurring their farewells, his family staggered to hug and kiss Julia, and William followed her downstairs to the enclosed tunnel entrance. But instead of leading her out the front door, he pulled her into the in-law unit.
William wasn’t delusional – he knew his family no longer bought his bullshit about walking Julia home, if they ever did.
He flipped on the light in the in-law unit and locked the door behind them. She turned her face up to his. He wanted so badly to undress her, to unwrap her like a present to himself, that his ears buzzed.
He reached behind her, found the top of her zipper. Peeled open her dress. Ran his fingertips down the groove of her spine.
She brushed her hands over her shoulders. Let the dress fall to the floor.
A while later, in his bed, he draped her halfway across his body, the back of her head against his chest. He was content and satiated and tired, and yet he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay there, a hand grasping one of her breasts, and stuck his nose in her hair, breathing her heady perfume of sex and shampoo.
This was going to be one of the happiest memories of his life. If he lived to be one hundred, this day would be just as fresh in his mind as it was now. He had already had a lot of days like that with her, and this was another one.
She started to roll away, but he squeezed her to stop her. Her eyes flickered open and lifted to his.
He twisted some of her hair through his fingers. “I’m going to apply to UCSB.”
She rolled over, propped herself up against his chest to look at his face. “The deadline already passed.”
“I’ll apply next year, then. If all else fails, I’ll work in a kitchen. There are plenty of restaurants in Santa Barbara.”
“But you've got a full ride to USF.”
He shook his head. “It's not set in stone.”
“Oh come on, Will. I really must insist that you toot your own horn occasionally. You have a 4.0 GPA and you got a 1510 on your SAT. You’re well on your way to being a National Merit Finalist.”
He was forced to admit that she was probably right – it did seem inevitable. There was no point in playing coy about it. And he felt like he owed it to Nonna to go to college. If it weren't for her, he never would have had the opportunity in the first place. He'd probably still be stuck in Special Ed, or some school for the emotionally disturbed.
He got up, went to his closet. Retrieved a bankers box and brought it over to the bed. Lifted the lid, and pulled out his old Nikon camera.
“My grandmother gave me this when I was six.”
She accepted it from him. Inspected it. “Wow. Nice equipment, for a six-year-old.”
“I didn’t talk for a whole year.”
She looked up sharply. “What?”
“I had to repeat a grade because of it. For a year, I wouldn’t talk to anyone except my grandmother.”
“Huh,” Julia murmured thoughtfully. “Just like Maya Angelou.”
“Yeah, except in my case, no one ever figured out why. They called it selective mutism. My grandmother gave me this camera as a way to express myself. Since I wouldn’t do it in words, I could do it in pictures.”
He gestured down into the bankers box. From inside, she pulled out a whole stack of photos and began flipping through them.
“I don’t really have a very good storage system for all these,” he explained. “So I just put my pictures in here, after I develop them.”
“You develop them yourself?”
“I use my bathroom as a darkroom.”
She burst out laughing. “That’s so completely dorky, it’s awesome.” His cheeks grew warm, and she added, “You know I mean that as a compliment, don’t you?”
He smiled, and she dug down further through the box and found photo after photo of varying sizes, some in black and white, others in color. She pulled them out one by one. The Cliff House. The Sutro Baths. The Camera Obscura. Land’s End. Hang gliders launching from Fort Funston .
“These are beautiful, Will,” she murmured. She pulled more from the box: a homeless man in Golden Gate Park with a shopping cart full of overstuffed plastic garbage bags. A hoary Vietnamese fisherman with deep arroyos carved in his face. The underside of the Golden Gate Bridge as he sailed beneath it.
“Why don’t you frame some of these?” she asked.
“My mom did frame one or two. They’re upstairs.”
“I know you said you don’t want to do photography for a living. But maybe you could still major in it in college. I mean, since you don’t know what else to study.”
He shook his head. “USF doesn’t have a photography major. I’ve been thinking of majoring in Hospitality Management.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Hospitality Management?”
He accepted some of the photos she held out to him. Began reorganizing them into neat stacks. “I could manage a restaurant, or open my own someday.”
She began pulling out more photos. Looking at them, one by one. “Well, I think you’ve missed your calling. You should reconsider.”
“If you want any of these, you can have them.”
“Really?”
“Sure. They’re just sitting in there, anyway.”
“Well, I like the ocean ones,” she said, going back through the whales, the waves, the boats, and setting some aside.
She reached the bottom of the box, and seized upon a photograph she hadn’t noticed before. A photo of a bunch of plants in his backyard, for his science project.
She gaped at him. “You’re already working on that? It’s not due until March.”
“What can I say? I’m overzealous.”
“You’re a shameless geek, is what you are. Who are you trying to impress, Dr. Benson? She’s a lesbian, you know. In the meantime, you’re making the rest of us look bad.” She picked up the photo and looked at it again. “What are you doing your project on?”
“Hydroponics. I’m exploiting Mike for his considerable experience. ”
“Mike?” she said, and then she got it. “Wait, those aren’t pot plants, are they?”
It was his turn to laugh at her. “Don’t you know what a pot plant looks like?”
“Oh no, not you too. ‘Julia, you’re so na?ve.’” She let go of the photo, and took his hand. “That day on the beach – you know, around the bonfire – you told me that you used to smoke weed, but you had been trying to stay away from it for a while.”
He nodded. “I started smoking it around the time my grandmother died. It helped take my mind off things, but it got to the point where it was the only thing I wanted to do. The only thing that snapped me out of my funk was the fact that school was about to start again. I felt like…” He picked at some lint on his comforter. “I don’t know how to explain it. I guess I felt like I couldn’t dishonor my grandmother that way.”
She shifted her weight. Tucked her legs beneath her. “Dishonor your grandmother?”
He tried to explain. Despite his rejection of Confirmation, William knew he had made his grandmother proud in the last months of her life – he'd be the first in his immediate family to go to college, at no expense to either himself or his parents.
Then again, maybe going to college hadn’t been the inevitable thing, after all. Maybe meeting Julia at Holy Cross had been the inevitable thing.
Julia touched his cheekbone, bringing him back to the moment. She kissed his lips, and her hair tumbled over his face. He felt the stirrings of his libido again.
Clearly she noticed it, too, because her eyes flitted down briefly to his lap, and one corner of her mouth tilted up. Sitting up, she gathered everything back into the banker’s box and set it on the floor. Then she pushed him down on the bed again and shifted to straddle his hips, peering down at him with sultry eyes.
He ran one hand up and down the silky skin of her thigh, while reaching with the other to toy with a lock of her hair. His heart was so full to bursting that it actually hurt sometimes. “ God , Julie… you are so beautiful, you know that?”
“So you keep telling me,” she murmured, smiling tenderly. “Right back at you, by they way. How did I ever bag such a hunka hunka burnin’ love?”
He assumed his best Elvis impression, complete with lip curl. “Well, bebbeh, I guess it’s because I can’t help falling in love with you. ”
“Oh my God, not sexy!” she half-groaned, half-cackled, playfully swatting at his chest while he carried right on signing the lyric. He allowed it for a few seconds, enjoying the way her perky breasts bounced with the effort; but then he seized her wrists, grinning as she pretended to keep struggling. He reveled in the flush that painted her freckled porcelain skin – a heady cocktail of laughter, exertion, and arousal. He drank in the way her eyes bunched up at the corners with her full-throated laughter. And of course, he basked in the glow of her smile that never failed to flood his chest with warmth.
She turned him on so fucking much, and she was everything .
He nudged her shoulder, urging her closer, and she tumbled forward, taking his mouth in an urgent kiss. With a muffled groan, he finally released her wrists so he could run his fingertips up her back, lightly tangling them in her hair. The way she whimpered and wriggled on top of him drove him insane.
He reached down between their bodies, guiding himself to her; and with his other hand, he gripped her hip, already shaking with anticipation. Breaking their kiss, he lifted a brow in question. Her hooded eyes locked on his, and she answered by sinking down onto him, eliciting a hiss of pleasure from them both.
“Jesus, I’m already so close,” he gritted out in amazement.
She sat upright, reaching with slender arms to lift her hair up off of her shoulders and breasts, giving him access to all of her. He took it eagerly, raking his eyes and palms down her beautiful body as she started moving on him. She was all soft, creamy skin and sweet curves, with a slender waist flaring out to feminine hips, and an eminently-grabbable ass. Sexier than anything he had pictured in his wildest fantasies .
“Julie…” he whispered, his voice tinged with awe. “You’re perfect. So fucking perfect. I’m barely hanging on by a thread here.”
She moved faster on him and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, releasing it in professions of love, of how good he made her feel. Of how he, and this, were all she wanted, all she could think about.
He gripped her breasts, kneading them – perfect little handfuls. “If I went to Santa Barbara – if we moved in together – we could have this every single night.”
She slowed but didn’t stop entirely, grinding on him instead in tight, maddening circles. She was gazing down at him, her forehead creased as if deeply conflicted. But she murmured, “Don’t worry, Will; it’s ten months between now and when we start college. That’s a lot of time to figure it all out.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he decided now was definitely not the time to belabor the point. So instead he did a sort of curl-up and took one of her flawless pink nipples between his lips. Whimpering, she arched into him, threading her fingers through the hair on the back of his head and holding him to her.
Yes. There was only one thing in life he was really sure about, and that was Julia. So as he pleasured her with his fingers and dialed up their pace to frantic, he knew he would apply to UCSB. He wouldn’t get in, but he would move down there with her anyway.
Julia knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and he didn't. And as she came apart on him and he spilled into her with a groan of relief, he knew he would follow her and be happy until he figured it out.