Thrill-Bent Read online

  “Why didn’t you just come over and join us?” Betty asks, raising her voice above the rushing sound of a hand dryer. “Why the Columbo routine?”

  “I thought you were getting me a glass of champagne, not seducing my dad,” I say, much too loudly. I hear her snort. A toilet next to me flushes.

  “Qu’elle dramatique, mon ami!” she says, smacking her lips. “I was going to the bar to get us drinks, but then the Condor offered me a shot of his fancy tequila, and what was I supposed to do, turn him down? How rude!”

  Betty’s explanation makes me laugh, and when I involuntarily relax my pelvic muscles, pee flows out of me in a Euphratic gush. Betty, who is by now quite used to my inability to urologically let loose in times of stress, whirls around from her inspection in front of the mirror at the sound of my giant splash. I can hear her heels swivel.

  “Oh my God,” she gasps, “It’s like a fucking Perfect Storm in here.” She turns back toward the mirror.

  I sigh. Betty had been gone for a few minutes before I spied her with my dad at the bar. There’s definitely more to the story than she’s telling me. “Did you tell him you were here with me?” I ask. “I just want to know what I’m up against.”

  Her face appears above me as she stands on her tiptoes to peer into my stall. She has a tart little lipsticked smile on her face. “It didn’t come up,” she says, in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Are you saying you don’t trust me? Because I know that you trust me.” She waggles her eyebrows at me to emphasize her point. “You just leave the alcoholic concerns to moi, and you worry about the bullshit patrimonial psychodrama of the moment.”

  I scowl. “You mean bullshit patrimonial psychodrama like when my dad told you you had cute knees?” She nods briskly. “Or like when I bit my cuticle until it bled all over my dinner napkin while my dad’s tennis partners discussed his waxing and waning happiness quotient?”

  “Zackly,” says Betty, emphatically.

  The truth is, she does have attractive knees: tan, strong, not too knobby or scarred. My dad often used to flirt with friends of mine. He would train his Condor eye on their every move and make them feel like they were the most desired bit of prey scrambling around the playroom floor. He’d charm them, then break their hearts by forgetting their names.

  I start to cry unexpectedly, with my skirt hiked up to my waist and my underwear stretched like a tightwire from knee to knee. I watch silently as tears plop onto the cotton crotch panel that is hovering between my thighs like a window with its white curtains drawn. A window to nowhere, an opaque swatch where a square of sky might once have been. Colorless blotches of salt water embed themselves in the gauze and flatten out like saucers, but I know they won’t make a lasting impression. I know they’ll just dry up and disappear, moving through the atmosphere again in some other sneaky incarnation. Betty reaches her arm out over the door but can’t quite touch my head. She makes some stroking motions anyway, pawing at the air a few feet above me like she’s caressing my halo. She whispers, “Fuck him, I like Cuervo better anyway.”

  “Looks like Seth’s operation was successful,” a voice says cheerfully, as a body pushes through the squeaking entrance door. Our heads spin toward it. Operation? What operation?

  “What operation?” another voice replies, as though reading our minds.

  “Something where they implant electrodes in his brain, like a pacemaker for the nervous system. Chantelle’s sister is a neurologist, have you met her? Vivian, I think?”

  As I emerge from my stall, a red-haired woman wearing large gold earrings prepares to enter after me. Our eyes meet for a brief monitoring moment before I head to an outlying sink. Her companion is washing her hands and blinking into the mirror. Again I try to look as though I haven’t been paying attention to the conversation taking place around me, as though I’m merely a dispassionate bystander. Betty actually starts whistling softly to herself. I think it is the Shania Twain tune.

  “Is Vivian the one with the ponytail, at the head table?” the companion asks, turning back toward the stall where her red-haired friend is and shaking her hands to dry them. I am taking my time washing my hands, as though I am scrubbing off sins from past lives. My eyes are pink and damp.

  “Ponytail, yeah. Linen blazer. She looks too young to be a neurosurgeon, but you know those sisters! I heard that Chantelle refused to marry him until he nixed the Tourette’s. She was worried about him launching into one of his ... fits ... in front of Pastor Barth. So she sent him to her sister for tests, and the rest is history.”

  “Must have worked,” woman #2 says, inspecting her cuticles. “He’s as calm as a lake.”

  A short walk downhill from the reception courtyard, I find a little clearing where the din of celebrating is muffled to a low murmur by the trees, and the view is conspicuously lacking in linen-clad wedding guests.

  After we left the bathroom, I asked Betty to tell the Condor that I’m out here, half-expecting her to refuse or to insist on joining us with another bottle of tequila and a video camera, but she just nodded and said, “If you need me for anything, just whistle.”

  My headache is gone, and I feel strangely hollowed out and serene, ready for anything. This spot is relentlessly beautiful. The water laps at the black rocky shore in blue and green ribbons, and the enormous turquoise sky rests on a glowing white stroke of cloud that is turning gold around its edges like a curling magnolia petal. From under the shade of a cypress tree, I watch a pelican fly low over the ocean, back and forth across a half-mile stretch, sometimes plunging suddenly straight down, long beak first. The bird emerges again and drains on the fly, mouth open as it glides, water cascading from the pendulous throat-pouch like from a sheet on a clothesline in a rainstorm. The circling gulls don’t seem to bother it as they dive to rescue any extras that plummet back to the sea. I like to think about how many years this has been going on. Before people were here, birds ate fish, and waves lapped the shore. Everything essential is provided; all we have to do is exercise our own unique talents. That’s the hard part.

  On my way down here, I passed Pastor Barth, who introduced himself with a enthusiastic handshake and a searching smile. Oh, Pastor Barth—garrulous, Lord’s-name-dropping Pastor Barth, with another smooth ceremony under his belt. I wonder how the good pastor would have reacted if there had been some expletive-hollering, testicle-jabbing action at the pulpit? I swallow a smile, picturing the pastor trying to drown out my father’s “fit” with even more vociferous references to God and Jesus. It could have been like a cage match between good and evil. In my mind I repopulate the chapel with alternate wedding guests: instead of buttoned-down country club types like Rhonda and Bryce, I seat Buffy and her friends in the front pew—the blue spear of mohawk, Marie Antoinette wig, and lace headdresses block everyone else’s view of the nuptials. But that’s okay—in a middle pew Furry and his gang, all dressed of course in their rabbit suits, groom one another and feverishly nosebonk. Ralph and his buddies from the Snake Ranch Social Club are across the aisle, drinking from flasks and betting on greyhounds under the shade of their hymnals. Shirley is tucked in the rear in his Armani suit (whose crotch-level stain is almost dry), and Kelly is there, sexy in his Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, serenely watching while his baby son races the length of the pew. Johnny the Ring clutches a bouquet with his bejeweled hands, and Braxo stands with raised eyebrows by the wooden double doors, smoking a fat spliff. The smoke curls and spirals in a lazy line over to Jackson, who is humming to himself and looking glumly out the window.

  A glass of champagne (vintage Duetz—maybe Chantelle’s neurosurgeon sister is footing the bill for the wedding?) has fortified my nerves, and when I turn to see my dad’s shiny black shoes coming down the path toward me, I don’t even feel the urge to throw myself off the cliff. He leans down to me and says, “Jan.”

  I start to rise, since he’s extending his arms in what appears to be an offer of a hug, but as I do he is already squatt
ing down beside me, so instead of hugging him I essentially use his outstretched arms as a counterweight for balancing myself as I get up. Now I am standing and he is sitting. We both laugh and he pulls me back down beside him, and then we actually do hug. His torso is firm and warm, just as I remember, and his stiff shirt is a little damp from sweat. The dense hair on his brown arms is as soft as grass, and I will my hand to release him before I start unconsciously stroking it. I scooch over a little on the coat I’ve laid down to sit on.

  “I’m so glad you made it down here for the wedding,” he says.

  Oh, we’re being polite. “Me too,” I say.

  “It’s been too long,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. We sit for a few moments in silence and watch the pelican.

  “Dad,” I manage to start, “what happened to your Tourette’s?”

  He looks at me, bemused, like I am playing some kind of Gordian guessing game. Still no tics, not even a quiver.

  “I heard some women talking in the bathroom, saying that you got an operation. Is that true?”

  He shifts his weight and looks back out at the ocean, squinting a little against the setting sun. I was right; he is more handsome now than ever. “Well, it’s a new treatment. Yes, there was an operation, just to implant a small device that regulates things.”

  I hear a slight slur in his voice, and the left side of his mouth seems to be drooping. Maybe it’s the tequila. “And this device was implanted in your … brain?” I’m kind of horrified. To me, this sounds antiquated and barbaric, like shock therapy or bloodletting.

  “Yes, a tiny electrode is planted in the brain, and a little box that controls the impulse is implanted here.” He takes my hand and puts it over his collarbone. Through the fabric of his shirt just below his clavicle I can feel a hard, convex surface like a skipping stone or a stopwatch. “It’s called a neurostimulator. An insulated wire that runs up the back of my neck connects it to the electrode. Deep brain stimulation: DBS. The name is a little misleading, since what it really does is block abnormal nerve signals, not stimulate them.” His words seem rote, like he’s done this little teach-in a hundred times. There is a droning slowness to his speech, a lack of emphasis anywhere that makes it difficult to follow what he’s saying.

  “Is this an established treatment for Tourette’s, Dad?” I’ve never heard of deep brain stimulation, which appears to have taken away his Tourette’s symptoms and replaced his personality with that of a tortoise.

  “It’s been used for Parkinson’s for years,” he says flatly, “but it’s still in the experimental stages for what I have.”

  It occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve ever heard my dad say the word Tourette’s. Neither of my parents ever referred to his disorder. It was always “what I have” or “your father’s condition.” Even when he was finally diagnosed, twenty years ago, I heard about it from my mother’s hairdresser. Apparently, he had read something about Tourette’s in a medical journal, clipped the article and sent it to my mom with a post-it that said, “Could this be what Seth has?”

  The first neurologist my dad went to, clipping in hand, said, “Oh no, you can’t have that, that’s very rare.” Three specialists later, he got accurately tested and diagnosed. Maybe my father still prefers to think of his condition—his former condition?—as nothing more than bad behavior, the attention-getting class-clown routine that his parents always insisted it was. By getting rid of the symptoms (thanks to Vivian’s scalpel) he has finally let go of his look-at-me narcissism, finally become a man. But if that’s even moderately true, then why do I miss it?

  “Fingers crossed,” I hear him saying, and I realize I’ve missed a few sentences, at least. Fingers crossed? You let somebody implant an electrode in your brain and your response is: Fingers crossed?

  “Was this Chantelle’s idea?” I blurt out. I hadn’t intended to ask that, as it’s certainly none of my business. But the stench of money is all over this whole endeavor—the wedding, the operation, the haircut, the high-end liquor, the fancy patio furniture, the blandness where there used to be fire. I don’t think you buy all that on an insurance adjuster’s pension.

  My father looks at me and I can see a familiar mood overtake him. His eyes flare with anger, and for a fleeting moment I think he might strike me. He takes my forearm in his hand and squeezes, pulling me to him on our little patch of coat. I can smell his breath now—a sharp spearmint spark cutting through the tequila—and as his large hand clamps down on my arm, time spins like a dial on a telephone. I am five and eight and twelve and twenty, trapped in a snare, afraid to struggle and somehow simultaneously turned on by the fear, by the secret knowledge of my father’s intentions. The heat from his palm travels through my whole body, flushing me with a low electric hum. For a long moment, we are locked in a blinkless stare, and then he rises to his feet in a swift bound.

  “Of course not,” he says, brushing some invisible dirt off of his pants. “Please don’t make assumptions about things you know nothing about.” His featureless tone is back. “Listening to ladies’ room gossip isn’t your style, is it?” He smiles, but I can’t keep up with his transitions.

  I am still sprawled on the ground rubbing my forearm when my father strides up the winding path back to his wedding party. In a daze, I gather my shoes and coat, covered in seaside topsoil and spilled champagne. Ducking under a low feathery branch, I glimpse the Condor at the top of the hill, stepping back onto the terraced patio. Chantelle trots over and tugs him up the last step with a flourish, like she’s pulling a rabbit out of a top hat.

  I tell Betty that I don’t mind driving, but she jangles the rental car keys and slides behind the wheel. As she starts the car she unbuttons her pants and recants her food intake: herb salad, chicken Florentine, half my steak Diane, two buttered whole-grain rolls, two slices of the lemon curd raspberry cake with white chocolate ganache, and a breath mint.

  “You just relax, little lady,” she tells me. “Maybe I’ll let you take over when we have to stop for gas.”

  I don’t argue, because I really want to change out of my dress and into sweatpants for our drive down to Mission Beach (the site of my final roller coaster escapade tomorrow), which will be easier, though probably not terribly easy, to accomplish in the passenger seat. Betty is listing her caloric intake so I’ll think she’s sobered up, but I can tell she’s still tipsy—she gives off a certain odor, like metal and fresh dirt. I don’t care, though. I’m just glad she’s not pissed at me. Though I never explicitly said so, I know in her mind I’d promised her a freak show, and I hadn’t delivered. After all these years of subjecting her to my second-rate Tourettic dad imitations, I’d squelched on the real deal. She’d only gotten to see the new Omar Condor, which is a far cry from the Condor Classic. But just as I start to apologize, we hit a set of speed bumps on the way out of the parking lot, and my voice warbles unnaturally like a dying swan.

  She looks at me and laughs, her head shaking ungrudgingly. “Don’t even,” she says. “You’ll have plenty of time to ’splain yourself after we hit San Clemente.”

  And with that, she slips in a CD of Brenda Lee singing “Break it to Me Gently” and we turn south on the 101.

  Good Vibrations

  Belmont Park opened in the 1920s, experienced a renaissance in the 1950s, and was already well past the apex of its parabolic popularity curve and sinking into a protracted downslide by the time I was tall enough to ride the Giant Dipper. When I was a child, plastic grocery bags and stray seagull feathers fluttered from the barbed wire fence that surrounded the midway, like dragonflies caught on a spider web, and the parking lot had become a kind of hobo camp, complete with bonfires and rats’ nests and crunchy mosaic bursts of broken glass. But Belmont Park was just a block from Mission Beach, and the view from atop the rides was the stuff of California legend—waves and sand, surfers and sunbathers, girls in string bikinis pedaling Schwinn beach cruisers down the boardwalk wh
ile drinking forty-ounce cans of PBR.

  The Giant Dipper roller coaster was mighty and vicious, made even more intense by its palsied, geriatric state. It is possibly the last remaining wooden coaster designed by the famous duo of Frank Prior and Fred Church. These guys are exalted in the coasterphile world—church actually patented the train that most coasters use now, where the bobsled-type cars are set on flanged wheels and coupled with a ball and socket joint, so they can negotiate sharper turns. Of course, this was in the 1920s, the heyday of thrill rides, when there were almost two thousand roller coasters in the US and guys like Prior and Church catered to thrill-seekers everywhere, always trying to conjure ways to serve up bloody noses, bruised limbs, broken teeth, and plenty of excitation. (I say it is “possibly” the last P&C woodie because there is a debate among coaster enthusiasts whether Arthur Looff, who built the still-standing Santa Cruz Giant Dipper, also designed Belmont Park’s Giant Dipper, as he sometimes claimed. My tendency is to think not; it is too much like P&C’s previous designs, and too problem-free for a first-time coaster designer—but what do I know?)

  The Plunge, as the Olympic-sized public pool was called, used to be next to the midway, and the sound of screaming kids plummeting from the high dive blended with the sound of screaming kids hurtling down the roller coaster track to create an unabating symphony of fortissimo squealage. The park was condemned in 1976, and then the homeless really took over, apparently making cozy sleeping nests out of the roller coaster cars and toilets out of the Tilt-A-Whirl buckets. I’m guessing local skaters and graffiti artists claimed the Plunge after it was emptied—what Southern California punk tween with a skateboard and a can of spray-paint could resist an empty Olympic-size pool right next to the beach, especially one where Esther Williams and Johnny Weissmuller supposedly learned to swim?

  But during that magical window between reaching the required height of forty-two inches and hearing about Belmont Park’s impending demise on the evening news, I would insist that my dad take me to ride the Dipper at least twice a month (unsurprisingly, my mother wanted nothing to do with the place). Most times I was allowed to bring a friend, and my dad would wait in the Fiat listening to a game on the radio while we stood in line for the back car again and again. But sometimes, the Condor and I would drive down to the city alone on a Saturday, and after we rode the Dipper and played a few games of Down the Clown he would take me to the Starlight Room at the top of the El Cortez Hotel for a Shirley Temple.