The Middle of Somewhere(27)

CHAPTER NINE





Liz and Gabriel went to high school together in Santa Fe, but ran with different tribes, or, more accurately, he was a member of a variety of tribes while she had only a small circle of friends, mostly two. She might have been more than a bit player in high school except her sarcasm and wit were underappreciated. That and she didn’t give a damn about being popular.

Gabriel Pemberton didn’t have to give a damn about being popular. He just was. And he managed it without being a jerk most of the time. He as handsome in a clean-cut, East Coast prep school way, and disarmingly candid, and girls found their way to him. He befriended them all and dated only three. It could have been forty. Liz was not a prospect. She was more than pretty enough, but chose not to put herself forward. Boys, including Gabriel, assumed she was aloof, awkward or a lesbian, possibly all three. In truth, she didn’t think much of men, and teenage boys did nothing to argue the opposing case. She went out a few times with a couple of boys from other schools (simpler all around), but thought she might wait until the selection improved, or she died, whichever came first.

They both ended up at UCLA, he on a track scholarship (middle distances) and she because it was the best school that offered her a place. In the spring of their second year, they met outside a dorm party where he was helping a friend vomit into the bushes. She watched them from the steps, deciding if she would wait for Valerie, already a half hour late, or simply return to her aunt’s house. By the time she’d thought it through, the vomiter was taking a nap on the lawn. Gabriel climbed up and sat beside her.

“You’re Liz, right?”

“Guilty.” She was surprised he remembered her. “And you’re the fellow who needs no introduction.”

He flashed his knock-the-girls-out smile. “You cut your hair. I like it.”

She’d worn it chin length when everyone in high school had tresses streaming down their backs. Now it was cut in a pixie-style. “You like guinea pigs. What a coincidence. So do I.”

For the next two hours their conversation flowed as freely as the beer they were missing upstairs. Turns out, sarcasm is an acquired taste. As for Liz, it was now permissible to fall for a guy like Gabriel. In a city of fifteen million, teeming with actors, would-be actors and surfer dudes, he really wasn’t all that popular.

In the days that followed, their conversation continued between classes, over meals and, after two weeks, in bed. They talked as if no one had ever listened to them before. For Liz, this was more or less true, particularly where men were concerned. She had grown up without them. Her mother, Claire, was a sculptor with a small talent and a large trust fund. When Liz was eight, she asked her mother why she and her father were not married. “We’re both much too selfish.” Liz took it as the truth, at least about Claire. Her father did marry, but she had no idea how it turned out, because her mother waved aside her questions with a bored flick of her wrist. And Liz never dared to ask her father directly.

So she lived with her mother in solitude. Claire fed and clothed her, but played with her or read to her only sporadically. Some days she’d invite Liz into her studio and hand her sticky lumps of clay or pots of watercolor. More often she’d ignore her, not assiduously, but as if she’d forgotten she had a child. There were nannies from time to time, but Claire couldn’t adhere to any sort of schedule, and they soon left for steadier work. When Liz was a teenager, she asked her mother why she’d bothered to have a child. Claire wasn’t offended by the question.

“Every woman should have one. I thought it would be interesting.”

Apparently not.

From an early age, Liz learned to keep her own company. When she tired of her books and toys, she began to disassemble household objects using a screwdriver and various kitchen implements. She began with simple things—a picture frame, a stapler, her desk chair—but soon graduated to toasters, radios and door locks. Claire was amused and told her daughter that if she couldn’t put whatever it was back together, she’d buy a replacement. Liz electrocuted herself only once, when she reversed the wiring on a night-light. It hurt enough to ensure she would not make the mistake twice.

Wiring was easier than making friends, but Liz’s humor and lack of malice guaranteed she always had one close friend, which was plenty. When she was old enough to compare her family to others, the contrast evoked more curiosity than self-pity. Fathers were the strangest element, present in her friends’ lives at sports games, dinner tables and movie nights, followed closely by doting mothers. She knew about boys from school. They were like her, but louder.