The Lobster Race

Mrs. Mitchell was of the philosophy that depravity cultivated moral fiber; a redefined prerequisite for what she assumed was progressive parenting. Her only daughter, Elliott, was cloistered from what her mother had decided would spoil the pure fruit of her “tree of virtue.” These mealy garden worms of devastation included but were not limited to animal byproducts, public television, synthetic materials, partially-hydrogenated soybean oil, and most importantly, religion.
Whenever Elliott would pluck up the moxie to ask her mother for something that happened to fall into her rolodex of corruption, whether that be to attend a sock hop at the community center or have peanut butter instead of flax-seed spread on her sandwiches, she would receive the same well-rehearsed retort from her stringent caretaker: “There is a time and a place for sock hops/peanut butter, but this is not it.”
It was a mantra, an absurd mantra, repeated so many times that it had lost meaning for both Elliott and Mrs. Mitchell. It didn’t take long for her to come to the realization that this time and place would never come as long as she lived under her mother’s roof.
Mrs. Mitchell filed for a divorce from Elliott’s father after dealing with his “poor choices” for far too long. After years of adhering to his wife’s austere and minimalist lifestyle, he found himself longing for the fullness and warmth he experienced as a child living in the Midwest. He looked to the local Methodist church to find himself spiritually, but after a few months he instead found himself divorced. That was three years ago, right after her tenth birthday. Elliott saw him every other weekend, but it wasn’t exactly what she would call “quality time.” He spent the weekend following her around like a puppy with a glass of merlot, hammering her with questions about her mother’s social agenda. Mr. Mitchell was still desperately in love with his ex-wife for reasons Elliott couldn’t begin to comprehend.
The only thing Elliott liked about the odd weekend spent at her father’s was the access to a television. Granted, it was an old white Zenith set from the early 70’s, but she could still get decent reception if she tilted the rusted rabbit ears the right way. She would get a carton of ice crème from Mr. Mitchell’s freezer, her mouth practically watering for unrefined sugar and triglycerides, crash on the cheap futon and educate herself.
She would watch any program that came on regardless of popularity or interest; it was all novel and fascinating to Elliott. Music videos, news specials, 50’s sitcoms, reality programs, game shows, movie reruns…all were grand vessels of pertinent information. Of course she never told her mother about her descent to the realm of mass media. It was better to just read yet another volume of her Encyclopedia Britannica and eat a slice of organic nut loaf, oblivious to the flashing, pulsating world that revolved around her.
It was the night before Mother’s Day when Mrs. Mitchell crept into Elliott’s dim bedroom, and kneeling by her head, reached out a soft hand to stroke her daughter’s rich chestnut hair. Elliott was not yet asleep, she was staring at the wall with drooping eyes, still trying to think her way through the list of ingredients she would need to bake a vegan coffee cake the next morning for her mother. She waited for her to speak.
“What is it?” Elliott finally asked, agitated to be disturbed.
“Oh, honey, I thought you were asleep.”
“Not yet. What is it?” she repeated, still staring at the wall in front of her.
Her mother inhaled sharply.
“I just wanted to make sure to tell you to wash your hair in the morning. We’re going to need to go to the hospital, to visit Tami.” She said the last part very fast.
Elliot flipped over to face her, eyes wide with curiosity.
“You said I wasn’t allowed.”
“I know I said that. But this time is different. She really wants to see you.”
“She really wanted to see me before she overdosed. You wouldn’t let me then.”
“Elliott, please. I said this time is different.”
“Because this time you feel guilty,” she mumbled into the corner of her pillow.
She regretted it the minute it came out of her mouth. The hallway light that escaped through the crack in her bedroom door cast a deep shadow on her mother’s face, but she didn’t need any light to see her tears. She hated it when her mother cried. It was like watching Superman walk with a limp.
Tami was her mother’s younger sister, and Elliott’s favorite person in the world. Tami was everything her sister was not, fun-loving, understanding, passionate. She had hair the color of a freshly-minted penny, and a lot of it. She was a painter, a real painter. Mrs. Mitchell was a painter too, but not in the same way that Tami was. Mrs. Mitchell painted wholesome bowls of crimson apples, or idyllic landscapes with weeping willows and petite chateaus, nothing Elliott had ever actually seen in real life. But Tami didn’t paint things, she painted ideas. Vibrant, revolutionary ideas.
When the Mitchell’s were still married and pseudo-happy, Elliott would be dropped off at her aunt’s house while her parents went out on the weekends. Elliott would sit on a burgundy barstool and watch her aunt paint. She wouldn’t use a stretched canvas like her mother; she would use a sheet of corrugated aluminum siding, something she found in a dumpster in back of the grocery store. She wouldn’t sit on a chair with her legs crossed either, she would dance around in her leggings with bare feet, flicking purple paint on each side of the metal sheet as she belted Elton John, her hair dotted with prismatic turpentine. She would pass the paintbrush off to her niece and both would dance and flick and sing until they collapsed on the floor in a heap.
Elliott wasn’t allowed to see her anymore. Tami had made “poor choices” as well, but these choices had nothing to do with religious preference. Shortly after her sister’s first overdose two years ago, Mrs. Mitchell sat her daughter down on one of the many floor cushions scattered throughout the loft and explained to her that Tami was a user, and had been for quite some time.
“Do you know what a user is?”
“A drug user, yeah,” Elliott responded.
Her mother looked at her with narrowed eyes. She clearly hadn’t expected her daughter to understand.
“I read about it. Newspaper.” HBO, actually, she thought to herself.
From that day forward, Elliott was banned from seeing her favorite aunt. She was still sore about it, and for that reason felt partially justified in snapping at her mother that night. But being privy to her mother’s internal guilt and sorrow was too much to bear the night before Mother’s Day, so she changed the subject hastily.
“It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow.”
“I know sweetheart, but we’ll just have to celebrate when we get back home.”

#

Fountains sputtered chemically-treated water from one tier to the next, fichus trees sprouted in every corner, and the floors were so glossy that Elliott could see every freckle on her fair face, just by looking down. The nurses were waiflike and merry, pushing equally cheery convalescents around in hospital-owned wheelchairs, all smiling stupidly. What was the point of the hospital lobby looking like a Marriott? It was like putting pink frosting on a rotten fish…sure, it made it look better, but it’s still a fish, and a rotten one at that.
Elliott looked up from the floor to see her mother leading a handsome man over to where she stood. Mrs. Mitchell sported a plastic smile, which looked odd juxtaposed with her puffy, pink eyes.
“Elliott, you remember your cousin, Bryce?”
Vaguely. Bryce was the child Tami had in high school, before she dropped out and moved to Wimbledon with Bryce’s father, a motocross hopeful. Elliott met him once when she was seven at the first and last Mitchell Family BBQ, and even then it was only for a moment.
She was awkwardly aware of their age difference. Elliott had yet to fit into her bra, while Bryce had a tattoo of Bach on his neck that poked out of his wrinkled Sex Pistol’s t-shirt. She smiled sheepishly at him. He made a peace sign with his fingers. With that greeting, the three set off through the swinging double-doors of the intensive care unit.
The atmosphere changed dramatically. The walls were the color of mint juleps, and framed desert scenes hung crookedly on their nails, but that couldn’t mask the omniscient presence of death that lingered behind ever gurney, leaned against every nurse’s station, and breathed down Elliott’s neck, fogging up her wire-rim glasses. It was a world of cold reality, far from the synthetic optimism of the bobbling Mylar balloons and perky Gerber daisies. It was a world of tears and moans and IV drips. There was no need to pretend in the ICU. No need to frost the fish.
For a minute, Elliott thought they had entered the wrong room; the woman in the bed looked nothing like the vivacious aunt who used to put on puppet shows in the garage with cooking utensils and old gym socks. But Bryce made a beeline for the bed and kissed the corpse of a woman on the forehead, making her pallid face twitch. Her usually brilliant hair was ruddy and limp, eyes closed, veins prominently violet through her paper-white skin.
Elliott stood at the edge of the bed like a specter, hovering silently while her cousin and mother spoke in frantic whispers. She was starting to wonder why she had even come until she sensed Tami’s hand shakily moving towards her own, her index finger overlapping onto Elliott’s pinky, a haunting smile forming at her lips. Tami and her niece stayed like that for several minutes, until she started to twist from side to side in obvious discomfort, wobbly hand reaching to grab the rim of the plastic bowl on the nightstand.
It all happened very quickly, Bryce had pushed her out into the hallway before her aunt began to retch, shutting the door behind her. She leaned against the wood railing, staring at the closed door, slowly breathing in the stale, clinical air. She tried to cry, but nothing happened. This frustrated her even more.
After a while Bryce came out, brow beaded with pearls of sweat. He clicked the door shut behind him. He looked down the hall both ways before settling his eyes on his cousin.
“So, your mom is gonna watch mine for a while, just while she sleeps.”
“Okay.”
“Wanna get some grub?”
“What?”
“Food. Do you want some food?”
“Oh. Sure.”
He had a Jeep, a big black Jeep with no top on it. Elliott stared at the monster while he unlocked the passenger side door.
“Can this drive through water?”
“Probably. Not like a lake or anything. But big puddles, sure.”
They drove without saying a word. Bryce immediately jerked the knob that controlled the volume of his custom sound system to the right, prompting the netted speakers to explode with music Elliott was sure her mother wouldn’t approve of. She passed the time on the freeway by counting all the words she wasn’t allowed to use at home.
Bryce dropped his cousin off in front of a quaint beach house off of Tea Street, paralleling the famous Tea Street Beach. Tami used to take her there when she was little with her mother, when they sort of got along, or tolerated each other, at least.
“The key is under the mat. I gotta grab something from a buddy for dinner, there’s not really much in the house, you know?”
Elliott nodded. As she turned to face the house, she heard the wheels of the Jeep screech along the asphalt as he sped down the quiet residential street. The house, even without the loving touch of its mother, looked truly lovely in the late-morning sun. It was a fairy-tale cottage, sort of like the ones her mother painted when she wasn’t teaching. Cornflower blue hydrangeas lined the cobblestone walkway leading to the driftwood front door. Copious amounts of glinting silver wind chimes jingled a merry melody as they danced in the sea breeze. She could taste the salt on her tongue. Elliott bent down, retrieving the key. As she unlocked the door, her eyes fell on a small heart carved in the wood, right over the handle.
“From a lover,” Tami had answered one morning over their chai tea. “He carved that into my door the night after he professed his love for me.” Her eyes were alight with mischievous fire, remembering. Elliott smiled; hoping one day a lover would carve a heart in her front door too.
Tami rented the little beach cottage from an elegant elderly woman she met teaching art at the YMCA down the street. She had gone on holiday to North Umbria six years ago and simply never came back. She let Tami stay in her house just in case she did decided to return, but they both knew it was terribly unlikely.
Tami would lean over the table when she told this story again and again, and whisper playfully, “She met a man! An Italian man…can you imagine?”
Elliott could not. She was nine.
She would always ask her to imitate Dame Marie, as she was called. No one could do impressions like Elliott’s aunt. She did them the right way, with facial expressions and accents and props. She would wrap a pashmina around her shoulders and take great strides around the parlor, throwing her voice and clicking her French-manicured fingernails on the Formica countertops, name-dropping and making her niece roar with laughter.
Sometimes they would samba. They would samba around the armchairs and umbrella stands, sambaing through the kitchen and the backyard and the bathroom and the garage, and they would form a Congo line, just Tami and Elliott. Her mother had always frowned when they danced. Her mother always seemed to be frowning when she was around her sister.
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble,” she would say, glowering. “More trouble,” she would add.
Tami would flick her wrist into the air. “Lighten up, Lee Ann,” she would say, with a lighthearted smile.
Elliott didn’t understand what her mother meant by trouble, at least not until that morning, when she saw her fearless aunt vomit into a bucket with tubes sticking out of her side, hooked up to boxes that beeped. Trouble.
The front door slammed open, startling Elliott. Light streamed into the dank house. Bryce walked towards her out of breath, a delighted look on his face. He thrust his arms outwards towards her; pushing a two squirming, clicking creatures at her face. She involuntarily recoiled.
“Lobster!” He proclaimed proudly. “Buddy owed me a favor. We’re eatin’ somethin’ gourmet tonight!”
Elliott looked at the prizes closer. They were indeed lobsters, two soggy, scarlet lobsters double-wrapped in butcher’s paper. Their feelers waved every which way, desperate to collect their bearings out of the comfort of the tank. Their massive claws were rubber-banded shut, green elastic handcuffs for the innocent captives.
Bryce left the room; she heard the bathtub water start to run, followed by two distinctive splashes. He returned, a smile on his face.
“So, what do you like it with? Melted butter, or somethin’ a bit more high-brow?”
“Sorry?”
“For the lobster.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“You’ve never had lobster?”
She looked at ground, embarrassed of her own inexperience. He in turn threw his head back in laughter.
“Oh, man! How deprived are you? I spose there’s not enough room between your bran muffins and lentil soup to fit in lobster, eh?”
She smiled a little, and followed him to the kitchen. He was filling a deep pot with water with one hand, and rifling through Dame Marie’s spice rack with the other. Elliott wondered if he was thinking about Tami as much as she was.
“Are you scared?”
“What?” His head was in a drawer, looking for metal tongs.
“Are you scared about…about your mom.”
Bryce straightened up. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes, instead he chose a spot next to her ear, and focused on it intensely, clicking the tongs together.
“Oh. Yea, I guess. But I mean, it happened before, you know? And she got out of it. They told us then there was no hope either. I don’t think I really believe the doctors at this point.”
“Why didn’t she stop the first time?”
“Stop doing drugs?” He smiled a little, and his smile turned into a chuckle. Elliott once again felt the stark difference in their ages. “You can’t just…you can’t just stop doing drugs like that.” He snapped his fingers together for effect.
“Doesn’t it bother you that she does them at all? I mean, she’s your mom, and…”
“I love her the way she is, it doesn’t matter what she does. Not everyone’s life is perfect, Elliott.” His voice had lost its congenial warmth.
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“I need to get the lobsters.”
Elliott stood, swaying on the spot as he whisked by her, her shame rising red-hot to her cheeks.
“When Mom would get us lobster, we would always have a lobster race.”
Bryce had returned to the room empty-handed. His hands were in his pockets, his eyes sullen. She hadn’t noticed the purple rings under his eyes before.
“A lobster race?”
“Yeah. We would make a track around the house, like a racetrack, and we would, you know, race them.”
“What did the winner get?”
He grinned. “Freedom. We would take him down to the beach and set him loose.”
She needed no more convincing. The two cousins began clearing a track in the cluttered house, moving end tables and piano benches, tearing the cushions off the couches. Books became barriers, as did crystal clocks and buckets of paint. Bryce told stories about his mother while Elliott listened. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she nodded, but most of the time she just remembered. At that moment, the only Tami that existed was the one who sambaed in the kitchen and blew the whistle at the start of the great lobster race.
“ When Aunt Tami gets better, we should have another one,” Elliott grunted as she pushed her weight against a cabinet, urging it to move. “I’m sure Mom would let me. She feels really bad about being…what’s it called? Estranged. We can come over every weekend, and we can race lobsters.”
“Maybe crabs too. We can have them fight each other. Mom would like that.”
The two stood back against the wall and admired their creation. The track started at the bathtub, where the two oblivious lobsters bubbled gleefully in the lukewarm water. It followed out the door to the living room, curled around a chintz armchair, paralleling the oak coffee table, littered with travel magazines and Tami’s art journals. It then traveled through the kitchen, under the knotted dining table, and finally into the den, where a shoelace lay across the brown shag carpeting marking the finish line.
“Which one do you want?” Bryce was holding the squirming lobsters.
Elliott chose the smaller one, and the crustacean athletes were placed on the worn bathmat, spilling water all over the linoleum. Bryce put his fingers to his mouth and whistled as if he were calling a cab. The race was on. The cousins then prodded their lobsters which reluctantly started to move, blindly bumping into the towers of antique books and shipping boxes collected from the garage. They screamed like parents at a little league game from the bathroom to the living room to the kitchen. Bryce’s lobster seemed to be edging ahead, but it was difficult to tell; they kept knocking over the pillow-walls with their flailing claws.
The lobsters were rounding the den when the phone rang. The shrill ring pierced through the air, giving Elliott’s arms; already wet from wrestling her sodden lobster to the starting line; little oval goose bumps. In a way they both already knew, even before Bryce picked up the receiver. She stood perfectly still, keeping both her eyes on her cousin as he listened intently to the voice on the other side of the phone. His lips pursed together as he silently nodded, eyes closed tightly. She felt the color drain from her face.
Had she been paying attention, Elliott would have noticed that her lobster, although smaller in stature, was far craftier than her cousin’s. She had taken the initiative and knocked over a goose-down pillow so she and her mate could escape the racetrack. The two were headed for the open front door, the door with Tami’s heart on it. They were heading for the front door, heading for the ocean, heading for freedom.

Across the Frickin' Universe!!

Last night I went to the Arclight in LA to see Across the Universe a week before it hits the masses. Me, Bruno, Elyse, and Deave tarted up and hit Sunset Blvd. Friday night, saturated with the Beatles songs we had set on shuffle/repeat all week. After smooging around Amoeba for a while lusting after appropriately priced LP's, we claimed our $14 seats at the Arclight and prepared ourselves for the most remarkable viewing experience ever. The 4 of us were the most obnoxious people in the theater, screeching when our favorite songs came on or when Jude looked especially hot. [Even though I personally prefer Max, don't ask me why. He was the brother in Becoming Jane, and I wanted to sex him up good then.]

This movie....it made me perfectly happy to be myself, happy to be free, happy to be liberal, happy to be a Beatles fan, happy to be alive, happy to be young, happy to have the world open to me.

Plus, I saw Ryan Gosling.

An Unfinished Apartment

This is a tour of my favorite parts of our unfinished apartment, and it's really unoragnized because I suppose it's representaive of how unorgainized the apartment is and plus I don't really know a foolproof way of uploaing pictures on a blog.

This is where me and Frances live, Beachcomber 204. It's really something lovely.

This is the view from our peephole. You can see Erin, Holly and Kerri's apartment, it's right there in the corner.

This is a great ironical photo that is kind of representative of our kitchen.

This is the lantern that I MacGyver'd Up with tacks, safty pins, supeglue, and a piece of brown ribbon.

This is the chair I dug out of the dumpster. I like it, even if it probably does carry diseases.

This is our Couch Which Has No Parallel. Nothing compares to the comfort of this couch, nothing.

This is our collection of votive candles. We have a seperate collection of tea lights, tavel candles, and stick candles. All totally illegal.

This is Ross. He's my air purifier. He makes sure that we sleep well in an allgery-free enviroment, and block out [most of] the sirens.

This is Paddington. He is the protector/bear rug that basically takes up the whole bedroom.

These are our enviroment-saving canvas bags. We have 8. We take them shopping with us.

Feather in a Baseball Cap

I have a bit of a confession. I was in the bath tonight, marinating in cucumber bubble bath and ZZ Packer's prose when the fire alarm went off. And by fire alarm, I mean Renee, my RC, burst into the room yelling, "FIRE DRILL" in a voice that cannot possibly fit in her small body. I could hear her through the door of course, I'm not deaf. In fact, I'm sure if I was deaf I could have still heard Renee. But I didn't jump out of the tub to play follow-the-leader with the residents of Beachcomber and Lido. I was naked. Really naked. Instead, I turned the knob to make sure the water didn't drip and give away my position, and slunk to the door in a towel to make sure she had taken the apartment to be empty and left to parade her girls down Rosecrans Avenue at 11 at night. I then spent the next 10 minutes sniggering to myself in the tub, feeling perfectly sinister for disobaying Biola and risking a $50 fine.

I'm only confessing because I know all of like, two people are acctually going to read this.

Revamped for your pleasure.

Blogging and I have an on-and-off relationship. We are hot and heavy for a while, and then have a fight and don't speak for a while. The idea of blogging in my mind is eaither completely brilliant or a total waste of my time, depending on that day. i'm unfortunatly going to have to force myself to get in the habit, not exactly for myself, but for the good of others.

My childhood best friend, Lauren, is in Chile. My best friend back home is, as of yesterday, in Argentina. My dear friend Morielle is, as of yesterday as well, in Uraguay. My two closest friends and previous roommates, Roxana and Sydney, are in London. The latter two will be rather pissed off if I don't at least make an effort. I did promise them, after all.

So that's kind of why I'm writing again.