When I turn onto our street I slow way down and casually look at the Lamm house. Adlyn is nowhere in sight, which is a bummer. Neither is her older brother, Larkin, which is fine with me. His van is in the driveway. The house is all concrete and glass, curvy and science fictional, nothing like the tract houses across from it, where we live. The Lamms moved in six months ago. On the last day of school I got brave enough to talk to Adlyn. Dr. Lamm is an important officer at the Tustin Naval Air Station, says Dad.
“Adlyn is nowhere, nowhere, nowhere to be found,” singsongs Marie from the back. “She’s too mature for you, Mike. You’re too chicken to call her so she has to call you.”
“Shut up, Marie.”
“My whole face is burning. Mom’s going to make me soak it in vinegar again.”
In the darkened living room the eight-millimeter projector clicks along, showing a mass grave and soldiers looking down into it. The black and white film makes all of it look even more freezing and bleak than it must have been. More doomed. Some of the soldiers still have their rifles unslung. There’s a mist in the air, but you can’t tell if it’s fog or gunpowder or the cigarette smoke in the living room.
My brother and sister and I sit three-across on the piano bench in the back. Max smells like vinegar. Mom and Dad make us sit through these things, the atrocity film and guest speaker, anyway. Mom will give us a quiz on Tuesday evening after dinner to make sure we paid attention. The next footage shows a man sitting on the edge of a big pit, stiff with bodies. He’s dressed in a beat-up suit of all things, and his hands are folded over a small suitcase on his lap, apparently something he’ll need for his coming journey. His face is sad and dirty, and he reminds me of Charlie Chaplin. A soldier steps up beside him and shoots him in the temple with a pistol, and the man slumps back against the pit side and slides in.
“Latvia? Lithuania? Estonia?” asks this month’s speaker, State Senator Brock Stile. “Do you think the World Communist Conspiracy simply stopped in Europe? How naive can you be? What do you think happened in Korea? What’s going on in Vietnam right now? Do you think the U.N. will protect us from this? I urge you to take steps to prevent this from happening here. First… become informed by joining the Society tonight. Second…”
I sip a stolen cocktail medley over fresh ice with plenty of root beer poured in. The projector clatters along, and I look at Max and Marie, the images playing on their faces, their eyes fixed to the screen. I look at Dr. Lamm, trim in his golf shirt. His mustache is brief, and he stands beside Mrs. Lamm. Mrs. Lamm is half a head taller, slender and mini-skirted, a Barbie doll with a chocolate bouffant. I spring one, hope it goes away. Why now? Why should an important part of me be outside my control?
Between Dr. and Mrs. Lamm stands their son, Larkin, a husky guy with a strong face, a cleft chin, and calm gray eyes that don’t blink. His hair is short like the grown-ups’, but he looks just a few years older than me. Smile lines at the corners of his lips. He seems amused by the film. He’s been to a few of these. He walked by the house yesterday wearing a beret and sunglasses, then came past the other way a few minutes later. Now he turns slowly and looks at Marie, then me, then back to the screen. Click-click-click-click goes the projector. Mom says Larkin attends a prestigious private liberal arts college in the Midwest, so he’s only around holidays and some weekends.
As soon as Senator Stile’s presentation is over I wander out to the back patio, where the picnic table is loaded with chips and dips, beer, and soft drinks. When no one’s looking I stride to the side yard, march past the trashcans to the gate and let myself out to the driveway. Half a dozen gleaming police motorcycles are parked in formation on the front lawn, local law enforcement always welcome at our Birch Society meetings. The streetlights shine off their black-and-white paint, their chrome, and their civic emblems, but I hardly notice them. There’s a flagpole in the middle of the lawn, too, one of Dad’s and Mom’s patriotic projects. There’s a toilet float spray-painted gold bolted to the top of the pole. As a family, we hoist the flag in the mornings before school, and take it down at sunset. Humiliating.
A minute later I’m halfway down the block, and I can see the Lamm home, fortress-like and glowing at the end of it. As I trot toward it, I look to Adlyn’s large bedroom window for a vision of her. No vision, but the light is on. Her room is an upstairs corner on the west side of the house. I let myself through the side gate and stand under her balcony. Leaning my back to the high concrete sidewall, I see the railing and the beam ceiling, from which all kinds of glass-enclosed candles and potted plants dangle in macramé slings. It’s like a jungle. Suddenly she’s standing amid long tendrils of Wandering Jew and Creeping Charlie and Boston fern. She looks down at me and gathers two handfuls of greenery then holds them to her breasts.
“How you doing down there, little Romeo?”
“Groovin’, Adlyn. And you?”
“Oh, fine I guess.”
“Far out. I was pretty stoked when you called me.”
She looks at the plants in her hands with what appears to be mild wonder. “Mike, I’ve seen the way you look at me. Like in class and at the beach and at that party at the end of school. And I’ve made some difficult decisions. I want to tell you some things.”
“Uhhh…”
“Sorry I couldn’t go to the beach today.”
“I looked for you. It was blown out.”
“Larkin’s back for a whole week. So we had to do cultural stuff. Went to lunch in Pasadena, then the Huntington Gardens.”
“I’m glad you’re back now. Larkin’s over at our place for the chapter meeting.”
“He likes that kind of thing. He always has. Wherever we live.”
“Freaky.”
“That’s nothing!” She giggles, lets go the foliage, and leans over the railing. Her beautiful red hair drops forward into the light. She’s wearing a lacy white top that there isn’t much of. “Would you like to come in?”
“Bitchen, Adlyn. Fully boss.”
“Would you mind climbing up? The house has alarms on the doors and windows and I don’t know the code.”
“Alarms?”
“Silly. But Mom and Dad never quit trying to keep us safe and sane.”
The round columns supporting Adlyn’s balcony are concrete and ivy-covered, and I manage to bear-hug my way to the balcony floor, swing one knee onto it, then get my hands on the railing and pull myself over. I’ve got ivy juice on my favorite Hang Ten shirt and jeans, but Adlyn is smiling. I can smell her strawberry perfume. Under the white lacy top she wears a two-piece swimsuit, pink-and-orange swirls. Her legs are tan and smooth.
Her room is three times the size of mine and Max’s, with a tall ceiling. There are lights built up into it, not like in my room, where there’s only one ceiling lamp in the middle of the popcorn, with an opaque shade that collects dead moths. She slides a button on the faceplate and the lights dim and brighten. “It’s called a rheostat.”