Bokelskere.no

I stayed for two weeks but I missed Monroe and my city and my mom and so even though I was sad to leave Charlie I was ready. I had started counting off the time until my return on the second day when the garbage smells rose up like monsters while we went to buy oranges, milk, and conrflakes at the corner market. My father's appartment felt cramped and hot and I longed for Los Angeles with its smog and flowers.

We had gnocchi and ravioli, Indian curries and samosas, pork buns and chow mein.

I wanted to make pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs for dinner. Sometimes it cheered me up to eat meals at the "wrong times." Maybe my mom would eat some, too.

In the morning I went to the grocery store to make pasta with pesto sauce and a spinach salad with walnuts and dried cranberries and balsamic vinegar from a recipe I'd found in the one old cookbook that hadn't been totally ruined in the fire when I was a kid. I found an old damask tablecloth and set the table with roses and candles and our best dishes. Then I put on a waiter jacket I had found in a thrift store and invited my mom to dinner.

Bobby didn't say anything. He went into the kitchen and came back with a large green apple and a cup of peppermint tea with lemon and honey.

To cheer myself up about not owning a dog, I went to Will Wright's and got a pistachio, chocolate, and strawberry ice-cream-cone – my own Neapolitan mix.

I thought at the time that the ocean was the best backyard anyone could ever have – so vast and alive and musical, always changing colors, always singing different songs. We ate little pieces of raw fish and candied ginger and my parents had cocktails and wine.

In the same way I ate a double-scoop pistachio-and-cherry ice-cream cone and then had popcorn and a large Sprite at the movie theater where we saw Young Frankenstein for the second time. My dad guffawed but I just sat there chomping on popcorn and rolling my eyes along with Igor. But still I wanted more. [...] After the movie we went to Café Figaro for dinner. It was dark and there was sawdust on the floors and we ate bread and soup and the waiters were very beautiful young men in white button-down shirts.

Charlie escorted me inside and we sat down under the wooden birds and ate the ornage sticky buns the rastaurant was famous for, as well as turkey dinners with pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and mashed potatoes.

Going out to eat was one of our favorite things to do together. When I was a little he liked to take me to Norms Coffee Shop for hamburgers and vanilla shakes that we ate in the vinyl booths, or we went to Ships where you could make your own toast in the toasters at your table. We had ice-cream cones at Wil Wright's ice-cream parlor in Hollywood, with the striped awning and the parquet floor. We drove all the way out to the Valley to Farrell's where they made a huge ice-cream birthday concoction called the Zoo that was covered with little plastic animals. The waiters, dressed in boater hats, striped shirts, and suspenders, ran around the restaurant honking horns until they arrived at your table to sing "Happy Birthday." There was also something called a Through that was so big you became an honorary pig for the night if you ate it all by yourself.

Butterfield's was a sunken garden at the bottom of the stair, like someone's run-down mansion where you could have elegant brunches with quiche, fresh fruit, and champagne among lacy trees.

When I checked on my mom she was asleep, breathing normally in the bed with the blue satin quilted headbord, so I got myself a bowl of Lucky Charms. The pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers ached my molars as the milk turned rainbow colors. I made my lunch, brushed my teeth, and put on my roller skates. The pavement rumbled, rough under my feet and up through to my heart, as I skated to school past the palm trees that my dad said looked like stupid birds, under i smog-filled Los Angeles.

He smelled like sand and tar and wind, gasoline and sawdust and oranges. He smelled like Los Angeles.

I would show them Monroe and make hot chocolate with whipped cream and mini mashmallows for us to share.

My mom looked like she hadn't gotten out of bed all day. I brought her Brazil nuts and ginger ale and red licorice. I would have tried to cook but I always burned the grilled cheese sandwiches or let the rice bubble over. The only thing I could make was instant mac and cheese but she didn't want that and neither did I. I wished she had taught me to cook when I was littler and she was happy and loved to make dinner but now it was probably too late.

[...] the cassette he played, a woman's raspy voice singing over raucous chords. She was whispering something about horses again and again. I'd never heard anything like it. Finally, I asked who she was. "Patti Smith. Isn't she cool?" He handed me the cassette. It had a picture of a gaunt, androgynous person in a white shirt, a string of black tie hanging loose around her neck. [...]"

Bear brought him into the kitchen where Fox, Tiger, and Buck were eating their lunch of vegetable stew and rice, baked apples and blueberry gingerbread. They asked the gardener to join them.

Sometimes at night, gathered around the long wooden table finishing the peach-spice or apple-ginger pies and raspberry tea, they would tell stories of their youth – the things they had suffered separately when they went out alone to try the world. The stories were of freak shows and loneliness and too much liqour or powders and the shame of deformity.