By the Bay Read online

  Evan blinked back some tears. He stared into the garden. There were canaries of different candy colors. He could see a hummingbird buzzing from iris to iris. Dragonflies hung over the still end of the pond. He wanted to play Donkey Kong.

  He sat down in the middle of the sofa. It was still warm. He picked up the discarded game cartridge. He stared at the TV. He didn’t want to be seen sitting by himself so made a wide arc around the living room and walked down the hallway until he could hear the room with all the guys in it.

  He tried the doorknob. It was stuck. Were they locking him out? He pushed harder and it turned suddenly with a loud squeal. No one noticed him come in. They were all cramped together, elbow to ribcage, facing the TV. When a player made a mistake, they said, “Eh! Whatsamatta you? You no wanna rescue the princess? Whatta you a fag?” and shoved him. No one had played the game yet so they all took turns getting punched as they built up their learning curve.

  After a while Evan started to get hungry but didn’t want to say anything. A few minutes later one of the boys said, “Hey, when’s the food going to be ready?”

  “Yeah, what’s taking so long?” said another. “Aren’t you having like a cook-out?”

  Tim looked out the window to the back yard. “My mom doesn’t know how to start up the barbeque. It might take a while. My dad’s not back yet.”

  “Ask them for something while we’re waiting,” Mark said.

  Tim went out and came back. “She doesn’t want us to spoil our appetites,” he said. He squeezed in next to the boy who had given him the game and gave him a healthy shove.

  “Couldn’t you sneak some food in?” Evan persisted.

  “Do you do anything besides whine?” Mark said as he grabbed the controller out of Tim’s hands. “If you’re so hungry why don’t you go ask?”

  “Yeah,” someone said. “Make them go to McDonald’s and get us some Big Macs.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Evan’s mother had been too busy getting ready to make breakfast. He had cereal. Now that the sugar was wearing off his stomach was growling. He could hear the women clinking glasses. They’re probably getting drunk while they’re starving us to death, he thought. He went to the kitchen.

  “Um, can we have something to eat?”

  “It won’t be long,” said Mrs. March. “Tim’s dad is going to barbeque.”

  “But we’re hungry now.”

  “Mrs. March doesn’t want you all to spoil your appetites,” his mother said. She walked towards him quickly.

  “But mom…”

  “No ‘buts’ young man.” She turned him around and pushed him out. With her back turned to the other parents, she twisted her fingers around the meaty part of his butt and pinched hard.

  As he slowly made his way back, he passed the table with all the moms’ purses. He knocked hers to the floor. Her wallet and makeup fell out. He bent over and picked up the wallet. He’d seen some fast food restaurants a few blocks away, walking distance. He found a twenty. No, too much. He took out a ten.

  “What are you doing?”

  Evan turned around. It was only Debbie.

  “Jesus! Don’t sneak up on people like that.”

  “I was just going to the bathroom. You’re the one sneaking money out of someone’s purse.”

  “I, uh, I was just looking for some gum. Anyway it’s not stealing if it’s your family.”

  He put the purse back and walked out the front door. Debbie followed him.

  “Hey, are you running away from home because you’re a thief?”

  “No, are you stupid or something? Why would I run away from someone else’s house?”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “To get something to eat, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh, where? Can I come?”

  “No, you can’t come. You just called me a thief. So you can wait for your dad like everyone else.”

  “But that’s going to take forever. He has to light the coals and then it has to get hot.”

  Evan was already on the sidewalk. He didn’t know where they were, somewhere in Sunnyvale. His mother had droned out the street names while she drove, Nightingale, Oriole, Mockingbird. It’s called Birdland, get it? She said someday, when she was married to someone new, they might get a house here too and wouldn’t he like that.

  He went inside their car and hunched low over the map, just in case anyone else saw him. Someone tapped on the glass. Debbie again.

  He rolled down the window. “Get lost you little brat.”

  “I know how to get to a McDonald’s,” she whispered. “We can take my brother’s bike. It’ll be faster.”

  Tim’s bicycle was on the lawn. Evan climbed onto it and Debbie clambered up to the handlebars. He pushed the bike off and pedaled in the direction she pointed.

  “We should bring back some food for my brother and his friends.”

  “I don’t have enough money to buy food for everyone.”

  “I have my birthday money,” she said. “Tim’s really sick. Like really, really sick. They think it might be leukemia or something. We have to go to Stanford and have him tested. My mom cries all the time and my dad has to travel a lot.”

  It only took six minutes to get to McDonald’s. Evan placed an order to eat in the store and made a separate order to go for the other boys. They were served their food quickly, while they were still standing at the counter, and started eating off the tray.

  “We can finish the fries on the way back,” Debbie said. “Tim hates it when his food’s cold.”

  Evan tied down the paper bags of food onto the shelf behind the bicycle seat. Tim still had bungee cords from when he biked to meets with all his gym equipment. He wouldn’t be doing that anymore. He didn’t look strong enough.

  “Is your brother going to be okay?” Evan asked when they were waiting for the lights to change.

  “Sure he’s going to be okay. Right?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  Debbie scrunched up her little face. “Really?”

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because Stanford’s a really expensive hospital so the doctors there know what they’re doing.”

  That seemed like a convincing enough reason. Debbie started talking about her best friend that she was going to have a double birthday party with later and who they would invite.

  They quietly made their way back inside the house.

  “I’m going to wash up. I smell like French fries.” Debbie said.

  The smell of grease preceded him into Tim’s room. “Guess what? I brought back some food,” Evan said. The boys turned around and stared.

  “What? How?” They all rushed at him. “All right!”

  “I just biked over.”

  “Wait, what? Did you just take Tim’s bike? Who told you you could take someone else’s bike?” Mark said.

  “Your sister,” Evan shot back. He hadn’t actually meant it as an insult but the other boys hooted.

  “Yeah, Mark, your sister!”

  “I meant Tim’s sister. She was hungry so I took her to get something to eat and she said we should bring some back.”

  No one was listening. They had grabbed the bags from his hand. Mark pulled out two Big Macs, passed one of them to Tim, and said. “Don’t tell your mom.” Then he pulled out his wallet and shoved a five-dollar bill at Evan, “Whatever. Thanks.” He grabbed a fistful of fries.

  The other boys likewise took food and gave him money. He made $23 that afternoon. He sat down on the bed and finished off the apple slices and grapes that someone, Tim’s mom probably, had brought for the guys in his absence. He tried out his luck on Mario Brothers. He was just as bad as everyone else and took turns jostling with the other kids.

  When the barbeque was ready everyone had hamburgers and hotdogs except Tim and his mother. They had something called tofu-burgers.

  After the party, as they waved goodbye to Debbie and Mrs. Ma
rch and drove away, Evan asked, “Is Tim going to die?”

  “No, of course not. Everything’s fine.”

  “Did you tell Tim’s mother that I had cancer too?”

  “No.” She shifted in her seat. “But I did say that I was worried about you so if she asks you’ll have to tell her the tests came back fine.”

  “I’m not going to do that!”

  “Now, now, don’t get so excited, Evan. You got invited to the party, didn’t you? And if we drove to the state finals with the Reinhardts, we won’t have to worry about the car breaking down.”

  Evan doubted whether their car would make it back to their crummy apartment in Palo Alto, never mind Sacramento. If she didn’t spend all his child support money on clothes and makeup, they could afford to fix the car.

  “They’re very rich, you know. So it’ll just be easier if you told—”

  “No, it would be easier if you didn’t make up stuff to begin with, Mom. What makes you think Mark’s parents are going to take us anywhere in their fancy limo?”

  She went quiet. He thought she was about to smack him in the mouth but she was looking over her shoulder, concentrating on changing lanes.

  “Oh my god, I could tell them we should rent a stretch limo so we can take Tim’s family, too,” she said, wiping some hair out of her eyes, blinking and kind of sniffing. “We’d be saving the environment. They’d probably offer to pay for the whole thing. You are such a big help. I don’t know what I’d do without you. It’s all going to work out.”

  Somehow it only made him feel worse when his mother acted nice. He would have preferred being hit. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes while she chirped on about how nice the Birdland neighborhood was, the best in Sunnyvale, really good schools… He thought about Tim’s garden. Someday he would have a house like that. Someday.

  Himself

  by Clare Ramsaran

  The neck of the heavy square bottle is smooth and cold in my hand. It clunks when I rest it on the smoky surface of the table. Unscrewing the top of my 12-year-old Bushmill’s whiskey signifies to me that the day has ended, that this is my time. I pour a glass for me and out of habit go to pour another glass for Lisa, who is not here of course.

  She is not tapping away at her keyboard in the other room, about to join me for a nightcap. The kids are not upstairs in their beds. They’re not here in this tiny apartment, North of the Panhandle, the realtor called “cozy.” They’re at home, our home back in Noe Valley. Well I guess now it’s their home.

  I put my nose into my glass, inhaling the warm aroma. It hits me in the back of the throat with the sharpness of gasoline, the earthiness of a damp forest. People call this smell “peaty,” but that’s not how I’d describe it.

  Back when we were kids visiting the grandparents in Ireland, my job was to bring in peat bricks for the fire: flat slabs of black-brown, with a cold, clammy smell, like a freshly ploughed field. I’d carry a stack of three or four bricks, piled up in my skinny arms, straining under the weight. Granddad would take them from me and say, “Well, if it isn’t himself, my strong little man.” Lisa even came over to Cork with me once, when my Granddad was still alive. They loved her: my Nana fussed over her and fed her homemade Irish stew, while Granddad flirted with her in his old-fashioned way. It was their way of saying they approved.

  I take a good gulp of whiskey and the glow of it spreads into my chest. I breathe out. Leaning back on the brown leather sofa I feel my shoulders drop. The rug is soft; I tug at its blue strands with my bare toes. I’m better off without her joining me for a drink when I think about it. Every chance she got she would recite a list of my faults like a catechism.

  By now the kids will be starfished out in their beds, their hair slightly stuck to their heads with the exertion of fighting sleep. Nowadays I speak to Bobby on the phone, but it’s not the same as seeing him every night. I never know what to say. I just end up asking him a series of meaningless questions. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “How was school?”

  “Okay.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  His little sister’s even harder to speak to. Sometimes she won’t even speak at all, but I know she’s still on the phone because I hear her breathing down the line. Then I hear their mother saying, “Say goodnight to Daddy” with a hint of triumph in her voice. She can hear that they’ve got nothing to say. God knows what she’s telling them about me. Lisa used to say I was obsessed with the polls and my popularity ratings. Said I’d more likely remember the percentage of the vote I’d won than my kids’ birthdays. Number sixteen on the list of my many faults.

  I top up my glass. It was great when we first got together, before the kids. We’d go out on wine tours to Napa Valley at the weekend or out to see the Giants at the ballpark. She was beautiful and kind. She was with me all the way when I was running for office. Everybody loved her. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was the envy of every guy I knew. But then, she just changed.

  I decide to make this my last glass. It’s my weekly press conference tomorrow and I want to be alert for it. I pull a couple of bottles of mineral water out of the fridge and put the whiskey back on the shelf.

  First thing in the morning I drop in to Scully’s Tea Shack; it’s on Van Ness, and it’s been there for years. There’s no artisan bread made in a wood-fired oven or designer coffee with flowers drawn into the foam in this place. I open the door and the café’s warmth carries the smell of fried eggs and bacon, and toasted soda bread. On the wall a large map of Ireland is grubby with fingerprints from enthusiastic customers pointing out ancestral homes or places they’ve visited.

  Sean appears from behind the long wooden counter with a huge metal teapot in his hand to give me his take on local politics. This man loves to tell me how to do my job, all the things he’d do if he were Mayor of San Francisco instead of me. But I listen to him. He’s no fool, and he has no reason to lie to me; it’s a precious thing in politics. As we talk he pours my tea, a dark black-brown, just the way I like it.

  A couple of minutes later and I’m at City Hall. I love walking up those wide white steps; I glance up at the ornate black and gold balconies and feel a rush of pride that I’m in charge here. I push open the heavy glass doors.

  Before the press conference I always have a meeting with my team. Usually these events are pretty straight forward, but right now we’re national news because of the gay marriage issue. It took on a life of its own. Leaders in the Chronicle and the New York Times have featured me. I’ve had interviews on ABC and the BBC; even Jay Leno’s people were calling my office last week. I’m getting hate mail telling me I’ll go straight to hell and then I get these really sweet letters from earnest lesbian mothers and flowery old queens saying that I’ve changed their lives.

  Lee, my sharp-suited Advisor, and Mike, my Chief Press Officer and undisputed king of the sound bite, arrive for our briefing. Lee winks at me, he’s a buddy, been with me for years. Mike’s still new, friendly but formal. Out of habit he pushes his fashionable glasses up his nose and runs his fingers through the front of his carefully tousled hair. Mike and Lee update me on what’s happening locally and nationally. We talk through some policy issues and what coverage we’re aiming for today. They’re good guys and know their stuff. I feel well prepared by the time they leave.

  After the briefing, I spend an hour reading the papers and checking out the news sites. I want to do something significant in this city; I want Sean to have a photograph of me up in his café and boast to customers that he knew me. I want to do something that would have made my grandparents proud. I don’t plan to end my career in obscurity like others who have sat in this office.

  Janie buzzes me to tell me that it’s 9:45am. Fifteen minutes to go. I check my tie, my hair and my fly, in that order, and then set off down the corridor. I nod an acknowledgement to the security guard, an older man, around my father’s age. Just outside the door Mike and Lee are w
aiting for me. Walking into these press conferences is like stepping on to a football field or into a restaurant on a first date. I take a deep breath, push a smile on to my face and stride through the door heading straight for the microphone.

  When I get to the front, I see so many faces I can’t tell one from the other. It’s one big many-headed Hydra to me. After a couple of seconds I regain focus and begin to differentiate between the tribes. At the back there’s a group of grey heads, the newspaper folks. They are easy with each other like siblings. They don’t think much of the radio hacks and prefer not to sit with them. And how could I miss the cameramen, roadies of the journalism world, dressed in scruffy jeans and black t-shirts? Their cables run haphazardly around the room, taped to our newly polished floors. They’re right in the front, in the middle, and have pushed the others out to the side. Though there are only five of them, they take up the space of ten of the others.

  Lastly, the bloggers. They have been showing up for a few years now. They are young and lots of them, male and female, look a bit like Mike with fashionable glasses and a vertical hairstyle; their hair gel is winning the battle against gravity. Typing their copy straight into electronic devices, they seem somehow mistrustful of old-fashioned pen and paper.

  I’m the conductor and they’re the orchestra; I need to make sure that they all sing from the same song sheet. On bad days I think I’m the rider and they are the horse. I don’t want any more discord from the ranks, not like last week. I open things up and invite the first question. There’s no shortage of these, flying through the air like poison-tipped arrows. My heart’s pumping, but I’m in control of this situation. They ask the questions, but I set the agenda. I’m not touching the budget today. Small businesses and small children, that’s what I’ll focus on, get people first in the wallet and then the heart.

  Near the front is one I haven’t seen before. He’s new and younger than most of them, blond and tall with a smart black leather jacket slung over one shoulder. It makes a change from most of those disheveled old hacks. He seems star-struck; it’s one of the perks of my job I guess. It’ll make his day if choose his question first. When I catch his eye, he looks flustered and blushes like a little girl. Now he’s trying to get his question out. Oh, please. Not another carping question about the status of the library. Do you think anyone, apart from you and your detail-obsessed editor, cares?