Almost California

The summer my brother Drill turned 17, his favorite saying was, “Yeah, that’s almost California.” I’m not sure I knew what he meant, but I was just his little brother and I knew he wouldn’t tell me even if I asked.

When he flubbed a lead playing guitar, or when he tried to fix the toaster and darkened half the house, he’d say, voice dripping sarcasm, “Yeah, that’s almost California.” About a burnt dinner, he’d say, “Yeah Mom, that’s almost California.”

California is where Drill wanted to be. Not where he was, small town, New York where we moved after our father died so my mother could be near her family. A town of four thousand with three main industries: apple orchards, dairy farms and nightclubs that thrived on serving kids from Connecticut which had a higher drinking age in 1972. The clubs were where Drill hung out that summer, even though he was underage. Not even Mom could stop him.

He was tall and, though fair-skinned, grew a think dark mustache. His body had filled out like that of an adult but he also knew how to look older. Mom said he was always good with looks. Drill told her, “Maybe that’s why my favorite holiday is Halloween.”

When he wasn’t listening to bands at the clubs, he was playing in them. A local newspaper writer said Drill played with a “bare wire intensity” and that “his fingers moved with a fearsome fluidity.” I think that said more about the quality of local reporting than it did about Drill’s guitar playing which I’d always considered pretty good. Drill liked the clipping though and taped it to his guitar case. The guys in his band needled him about it, but that didn’t bother him.

One night, I attended one of his practices. after giving Drill a hard time for being late, all they talked about was going to California. Steve, the curly-haired drummer who smoked cigarettes at the rate of a pack-an-hour and got ashes on everything in sight said, “We’ll make enough money in the clubs to move the whole band to L.A.” There was a silence in the room as if everyone was letting the vision sink in.

“That could take years,” Drill finally said.

“If that’s what it takes, we’ll do it,” said Tom, the singer.

I knew that Drill had let them in on his dream, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t waiting for the rest of them. On the way home that night, Drill said, “Those guys don’t know what California is all about. They think it’s just a joke.” He looked at me as we walked along the dark country road like an older brother looks at you when he thinks he’s talking over your head.

“Is California a serious place?” I asked.

“California,” Drill said as if he didn’t hear me, “California is where the sun shines every day and you’re never awake to see it.”

We were walking up the long hill that led to our house, and Drill’s friend Betty Ann was standing in the street. She lived just two houses away from us and Drill had known her since grammar school. A year older than Drill, Betty Ann had long, blond hair and always looked as if she had just stepped out of a Pepsi commercial.

“Hi, Drill,” she said. Her voice was soft like the sound of leaves playing against each other in the wind.

“Hi,” Drill said. “What’s new?”

“Oh, not much, just that my grandmother bought me a new car for graduation.”

“That’s great,” Drill said, and gave me a look to send me home. As I walked away I heard him say, “Have you ever thought of trying to get on TV Betty Ann?”

That summer, the band Drill was in recorded a single that got some local radio play. He stayed out later and later each night playing clubs or practicing, and in July decided he was finished with high school. “I may not have graduated,” he told our mother, “but I’m definitely finished. That’s for sure.”

Mom prayed every night that Drill would go back to school. She hoped he’d go to college, to divinity school. Somewhere she’d gotten a vision in her head of Drill standing at an altar, interpreting scripture for hundreds of religion-hungry parishioners. Mom told her sister over the phone that she had realized that Drill had a calling when she saw him in a school play.

Drill who was listening on an extension, said, “I was never in any school play.”

One night Drill was getting ready to go out as Mom was getting ready for bed.

“Why do you dress that way?” she asked him. She had long given up asking where he was going.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your pants are all faded and your shirt is torn, that’s what I mean.

He smiled at her as he hitched his belt. “At least they’re clean,” he said.

“They’re clean because I washed them,” she said. “And what about your hair?” Maybe she thought she could shame him into staying home. “I give up,” she said as Drill glared at her. Then she went into her bedroom. Drill stood at the door to her room for a long minute and waited for the light to go out. When the whispering started behind the closed door, Drill said to her, “Who are you talking to?”

“God,” she replied quietly, meek enough to inherit the whole universe.

“Ask him if it’s going to rain tonight,” Drill said, then left the house. I could feel Mom shiver right through the walls.

The next morning Mom tried to wake Drill early, but it was impossible. Every morning was the same thing: she’d come in to wake him, and every morning he’d pull the bed covers over his head and wait for her to leave for work. He’d lie there hidden and quiet, trying to look mean so she wouldn’t bother him. After she left, I said, “What are you doing under there?”

“Thinking,” he said.

“Thinking is boring,” I said, “I’d rather watch TV.”

He let out a growl that was supposed to scare me. When we were younger, we used to call hiding under the covers skin-diving. We’d go under there with flashlights and snorkels and try to spear an old shirt of our father’s which we pretended was a devilfish.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“I was thinking that home is a four letter word,” he said.

After, he got up, Drill went into the kitchen to make breakfast. He clanged pots on the stove and banged the lids together as if he was playing cymbals in a marching band. “What do you want to eat he asked?” he asked.

“Coffee,” I said.

“What kind of meal is that?” he asked me popping out his eyes and raising his eyebrows in a bad imitation of Mom. “I think I’ll have the same,” he announced with a swagger.

I thought back to when we were kids and went out to dinner. I’d wait until Drill ordered and then I’d have the same. I thought if I were more like him, he would like me more.

“Here,” he said as he put the mug in front of me.

Drill sat at the table too. He sipped his coffee with a faraway look. Mom called it the look of a reluctant adult. He had acquired that look at his last birthday when all our aunts and uncles and such started to call him the man of the family. Even though our father died before Drill was 11 years old, that look — his eyes half closed and disinterested, his lips dry and closed tightly, the occasional twitch in the corner of his mouth or the slight flare of a nostril — that was the look Mom interpreted as Drill trying to act like the man of the family. I called it the California look because at the same time they start calling him the man of the family, he started talking about California.

Drill got up to get more coffee; what was left in his cup had gone cold. “You want some?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

When he sat down again he stared at me, at my face but not really at my eyes. I felt as if I knew all about him and he knew nothing about me. I imagined he was trying to find out some secret of my life. I tried to think of one, to tell him or keep from him, I’m not sure which, but I couldn’t.

He took a sip of coffee and looked down at his hands. He looked at them as if they offended him. I looked too, at the long white fingers that were as graceful as swan’s necks, except when he played guitar. Then they slashed at the strings like whips. He could play. He finished his coffee and looked around the kitchen. He studied it as if memorizing every inch the way he looked at our father’s face before they closed the coffin.

“This place is too clean,” he said to me. “It’s clean and it’s polished and it’s cold. It’s like a needle going into my eyes.” He squinted and I looked close into his eyes, as if I should find something there. He was beginning to look less like himself. He turned to me and said, “Did you make my bed?”

“Yes,” I said. I swallowed and the word barely got out of my mouth.

“Why?” he said. “Can’t you leave it alone for once? Do you always have to do everything she says?”

I shrugged.

Drill shrugged too and made a face.

After breakfast I washed the dishes and Drill went back to his room and closed the door. I heard him rummaging around the closet and clearing out his dresser. Then he made a phone call. I was still in the kitchen and picked up the extension the way Drill did it to spy on Mom. First I unscrewed the mouthpiece, then I let go of the hook. Drill was talking to Betty Ann. Just small talk at first, with Betty Ann doing all the talking.

“Betty Ann,” Drill finally interrupted. “I want to go today.”

She was quiet at first, then said, “Drill I can’t.”

“Never mind can’t,” Drill said. “Just drive over and we’ll go.”

“You don’t understand, Drill,” she said.

“Yes I do,” he said. “I’ll cash a bunch of checks before we leave town, I’ll say it’s for my mother, and we’ll have plenty of money.

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t go to California.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she said.

There was a silence, except I could hear Drill’s heart beating through the phone or through the walls, I couldn’t tell which.

“My parents are making me go live with my aunt and go to college in Arizona. Arizona State, you know. It’s a good school, but I can’t decide whether to go to be a vet or just take, uh, like a business course or something.”

I heard a sound that was like that of Pepsi hitting clean teeth.

I put down the phone.

Drill came back into the kitchen a few minutes later. He had the California look on his face, only he was a little pale. He sat at the table. I didn’t know what to say to him, to his tired gray eyes. I wondered why he didn’t get on a dumb bus and go to California. And then I began to see Mom’s reluctant adult look, but I still didn’t know what to say.

Mom would have thought of something. Something like, “You don’t want to go to California, you want someone to take you.” Which was true, but cruel for a brother to say.

Drill put his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. A smile folded across his face, and for a second his eyes glowed like a desert sun.

“Arizona,” he said.

And I knew what to say, “Yeah, that’s almost California.”