"You're mom's not all there, is she?" Serene's best friend Kanani said once, taking in some of Ramani's erotic artwork of ejaculating penises hanging on the wall over the table of their old screened-in kitchen.
No. Ramani wasn't all there. Had never been, Serene had realized at that moment. After Cedar, though… well, after Cedar it was like watching a star explode, the bright light still brilliant and visible long after its source has died out. Ramani had died inside long ago. Her brilliance was just an after effect..
"We need to talk," Aarav said.
Ramani took a swig of beer and a quick sniff under her left arm, nose wrinkling. "Pungent," she proclaimed.
"Ramani."
She glanced up at Aarav.
"Now. I want to talk now."
"Sure. Here?"
"No. In the bedroom."
"You don't want to get the bags out of the car first?"
He was already heading down the hall, back stiff. Serene didn't know why he bothered. Ramani always got her way in the end. Her mother followed him, guzzling more beer as she walked. Aarav pushed open the already partially open bedroom door and stepped aside for his wife.
"Nothing's permanent. We can always change up the living room if you don't like it," Serene could hear Ramani explaining as the door shut behind them and their voices became muffled. From the upstairs apartment Darpan had claimed, music floated down––Enya's Far and Away, muffling the sound of Aarav's rising voice. Serene opened the cabinet with the delicate rose-decorated china and pulled out the haphazard stack of framed pictures. Placing them on the kitchen table, she studied them. Three little girls standing before this very house, holding hands from oldest to youngest, with short bobbed hair and knee-length swing dresses. Ramani in black patent leather shoes, her sisters wearing matching black and white saddle shoes. Another photo captured her grandparents walking down the steps of city hall, holding hands and smiling widely for the camera. Her grandmother in a dark pantsuit cinched in at the waist to accentuate her youthful figure, hair styled in sleek waves to her shoulders and curling toward the ears, the front swept back in a pompadour. Her grandfather in suit and tie, with chiseled, handsome features, holding his new wife close to his side. There were other black and white photos of unsmiling relatives from the turn of the century and more of Clair and Dottie a little older. Another of Ramani as a very young woman, carefully made-up and looking glamorous with sexy kohl-rimmed eyes and long fake lashes. Posed next to a red Mustang convertible wearing a sleeveless, knee-length blue knit dress. A cigarette resting between the fingers of her left hand.
"It's not right!" Aarav yelled, and something crashed. The silky sounds of Enya's crooning voice grew louder. Serene set down the picture taken of Ramani when she used to be called Brenda and liked things like red Mustang convertibles, black eyeliner and cigarettes. She opened the front door, stepped out and down the cement steps to the sidewalk, and started walking toward downtown Culver City.
3
Steve - April 1996
Steve watched the lanky man with longish blond hair from his bedroom window. He was doing a series of poses on the porch of the house across the street. One pose flowed into the next and Steve tried to remember what the exercise was called. Tai-something. The lanky blond man was his new neighbor, and some days ago, Steve decided that he was a complete weirdo. The man never wore shoes, even when he headed out to town, and usually not even a shirt. He owned a collection of pants that reminded Steve of Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves. The new neighbor liked to smoke pot and exercise on the front porch, and sometimes he and a brown-haired woman really went at it in plain view, bold as you please. But that mostly stopped when one of the neighbors called the police. What didn't stop was the curtains peeled back from the windows where you could see them walking around naked and, one night, having sex. Seeing them, Steve had felt helplessly aroused and grossed out at the same time. Mostly, though, he felt regret about the strange couple who moved into the house across the street. He'd known the woman who lived there before. Barbara. She was old––in her seventies, Steve would have guessed, and she'd been his friend.
Barbara Jones was one of the first friends Steve made after his family moved to Culver City from Elkhart, Indiana a year ago. His father Ron Bates had been promoted to president at T&M Advertising. His mother Maggie worked for the same firm as a secretary. She was able to keep her position in the transfer. It was a painless move for all of them. Both Steve and his sister Carrie were excited to come out to California, where the sun always shone and the chance to see movie stars increased exponentially. Carrie was a cool kid. She'd made friends instantly at the junior high school, and Steve fit in seamlessly at the local high school, falling in with a crew of skater and surfer kids. He'd bought a cruiser bike and a mini tanker with money he'd saved from odd jobs. On weekends, Steve and his friends met up to cruise the Ballona Park pathway that led to the ocean and Manhattan Beach, where they surfed El Porto or Manhattan Pier Northside.
In that first week of moving to Jackson Avenue, he'd noticed Barbara struggling with a box, trying to lift it out of her car. He went to help her and ended up carrying four bags of groceries into her house. Barbara's house was a bit like his grandparents' home with black and white family pictures on the walls and old furniture, some of it antique. They'd chatted politely on that first day. She learned he'd moved from Indiana, he learned she'd
