Page 31 of The California Dreamers

30

Disguises

1986

Monterey, California

Sixteen years old

After our separation, we meet the twins at a rest stop. Mama glows, enfolds them in her soft arms. Dyl takes my hand and we tell the twins everything we did while we were apart. It was thrilling to have Mama to ourselves, to get glimpses of her past, but I look forward to being back in the bunk tonight. Mag’s restless turns, Griff’s snores. Curling close to Dyl, poky elbows and all.

Mag is full of his own stories—chatty, even—about snowboarding. The rush, the etiquette that’s not too different from surfing. He couldn’t get enough of it.

But Griff is strangely silent and cool, like he has brought some of the mountain’s ice back with him.

I piece it together from Mag’s descriptions of “where I crashed” that the twins did not spend the last twenty days together. Griff went off alone after a week. He’d had enough of snowboarding and they separated.

“Where did you go?” I ask, shocked.

“Nowhere important.” His forced smile is a mask I can’t get behind.

We stop for a quick lunch in San Diamante, a sleepy, U-shaped cove above Santa Barbara. In the lacy shade of a scrub oak high above the dunes, we eat strips of dried chokecherry paste. Mama peels off a wide piece of the jewel-like treat, pinches the center over her nose, and holds it to her eyes. “Rose-colored glasses, like the poem?”

Griff laughs at her little joke, and I feel comforted, knowing that Mama also has noticed he needs cheering up.

As we walk down the road to the shady lower-level blacktop where the Gull’s supposed to meet us, I picture my beloved home, eager to get back to her. Feathery paint, little rusty awning-wings, her front lights like glossy white-and-gray eyes on a bird.

Except I don’t see her. There’s a converted station wagon, a beat-up Woody with two striped longboards on it…

Everyone else realizes before me.

Mama, who covers her mouth with her hand.

Mag, who stands still.

Griff, who drops his board and runs ahead.

Dyl, who clutches my elbow.

I don’t know why they’re upset just because it’s not there yet. Cap is off working, or delayed by freeway traffic, and he will be here soon.

Dyl says, “She’s in disguise.”

And it hits me. Cap has painted the Gull black, and clipped her wings.

***

Outside, the Gull is foreign. Inside nothing has changed. We collapse onto our bunks, and Mama ducks her head from Cap’s kiss.

“You should have warned us,” Mama says.

Dyl moves close to me. Griff and I glance at each other in surprise—Mama, should ing Cap?

Cap, who doesn’t swear, has an expression: “Don’t should on anyone and don’t let anyone should on you.”

“I’m sorry,” Cap says. He looks at each of us in turn, his expression remorseful. I’ve never seen him so pained, or so uncertain. “I didn’t know how to get word to you in time.”

“Tell them, too.” Mama’s barely audible.

“I’m sorry.” There’s a plaintive note in Cap’s voice I’ve never heard before. “All of you. I didn’t plan it, but I had to do it. There’s more tourist junk with our picture on it. A beach towel. But the photo is cropped wider and in this one, most of her left side is showing.”

Her white-and-pale-gray-and-putty-pink left side, with the clamped-down awning like a wing hugged close.

Cap unfurls a garish yellow towel with us on it; so I hadn’t imagined that one, the day I’d picked salmon berries and mushrooms with Mama.

“I had to paint her,” Cap repeats, pacing in the limited space of our home. “I got hassled by two cops just getting her to the bait shop. And both of them mentioned the picture. Our family’s fame .” He says it like it’s a dirty word. And I know, to him, it is. “Tina thinks maybe a cop’s envious because they’re sure we’re making money off that merchandise, or else it’s not a cop but somebody else who’s jealous and tipping them off.”

“Who?” Mag asks.

“I don’t know.” Cap wads up the towel. “The same person who left the Kenny’s advertisements with us in them at the Carve,” he suggests, referring to one of the board shops where Cap occasionally earns cash, helping out. “They won’t have anything to do with me now.”

“What?” Griff asks. “When did that happen?”

Cap shakes his head. “That was a while back.”

Who’s doing this? Someone who would want Cap to look like a hypocrite. To lose work shaping boards, to get hassled for parking the Gull where he shouldn’t. But who? Cap interacts with so few people. He’s known from a distance only, among old-school vanners.

The man at the hotel? Angry that Cap stopped ferrying money for him? Of course we can’t ask about that.

Cap goes on helplessly, “Tina offered me some old auto paint, no charge, and helped me paint her. No one has bothered me since. She’s unrecognizable—it’s the safest way.”

“Where are her wings?” Dyl asks, near tears.

Cap comes over to our bunk and places his big hand over the crown of Dyl’s head. “They’re in storage at the bait shop. They’re safe.”

Dyl nods bravely.

“We’ll paint her the way she was and put her wings on again when we’re sure this fuss has died down,” Cap says. “It won’t be long. Someone is making mischief, that’s all.”

Dyl’s tracing waves on the bunk, his finger movements barely perceptible.

Cap looks at me then, beseeching.

I dredge up my most encouraging, optimistic voice, the one I used on Dyl when he first learned to surf. “She’s the same, Dyl. She’s still our home. Actually, I think it’s really clever, her camouflage. I didn’t even see her, at first, in the shade, isn’t that funny?”

Dyl doesn’t find it funny.

But Cap casts me such a grateful look I have to glance down, pretend I’m smoothing Dyl’s hair.

It’s a silent reunion after that.

***

As I stroke Dyl’s soft, long hair in our bunk, I think of how the lavender didn’t wash me clean after all. I’ll keep getting punished for what I’ve done.

But I get an idea, and tiptoe out.

Four hours later, when I come back inside the Gull—who now looks more like a wingless raven—everyone stares at me, open-mouthed.

“It’s so much cooler,” I say, and let Dyl run his hands through my short locks.

I already miss my long, wild curls, which I stuffed in the rest stop ladies’ room trash can, along with the stolen box of Raven Black hair dye.

Mag hops down from my bunk and examines my head roughly. “Who did that to you? Some chook on the beach?” He sounds ready to pound on whoever did it.

“Nobody. I did it. I like it.”

Griff doesn’t say anything, but he quietly goes over to Mama and Cap’s bunk, murmurs something, and brings Mama to me.

Her eyes well up; she’s the first to realize why I did it. “Because of the picture,” she says.

“I’ve been thinking about it for months,” I lie.

“Well,” Mama says, wiping her cheeks. “Isn’t that modern? It shows off your pretty eyes. You look like a…a little wood sprite.”

Last of all, Cap, who comes down from the bunk to see why everyone sounds heated. Like Mama, he realizes right away that I’ve done it so I won’t look like the girl in the picture. Pictures. Who knows how many towels are out there. The Hang Ten! notepad alone has our photo on every one of its fifty pages, Griff said.

I expect anger, for some reason, but Cap sinks to the rug across from me. “You didn’t have to do that, Ronan.”

“I wanted to change it. It’s no big deal. Everyone stop freaking out, okay?”

Cap looks helplessly at the others. He is not one for hugs, but Mama drapes herself over him. And I swallow, holding back tears, then drape myself on her.

Griff says, “Maybe I’ll cut mine, too.”

“You match,” Dyl says, meaning I now match the Gull. Cropped, dyed black.

“I guess it’s not so hideous,” says Mag. “You look punk.”