RENEE WAS A NAVY BRAT, BORN AND RAISED IN SAN DIEGO. Brat status is something we share, in fact, since my dad was a drill sergeant at Fort Irwin, down the road from Barstow. This was half the reason I was named Cadence; the other half had to do with Mom teaching piano. Cadence, apparently, was the only thing my parents had in common. Plus the Cady Mountains were right there, flanking the bleakest stretch of the interstate, so my nickname came ready-made. Mom had a long, boring rap about this, which she rattled off at every audition, come hell or high water.
Renee’s mom was the military parent—a Wave, I guess you call it. Her dad had some sort of civilian job on the naval base. They were always entering her in beautiful-child contests; she had baby lipsticks and her own batons by the time she was five. When she was a teenager, she ran for Miss San Diego but didn’t get into the finals. Her parents divorced the same year, and Renee, who was a guilt-bearer even then, felt chiefly to blame. One more beauty crown, especially that one, would have saved their marriage, she claims. She moved to L.A. after high school with a guy she met while working at Arby’s. He walked out on her only days after they found an apartment in Reseda. I have no idea what the problem was. Renee almost never talks about him.
Things Renee likes
Water slides
The color pink
The gum that squirts when you bite into it
Extra mayonnaise
Stories about Michael Landon’s cancer
Angora
Me
Things I like about Renee
Her loyalty
Her flawless skin
Her sense of color (except in regard to pink)
Her rice pudding
The way she has a name for her car without knowing where her battery is
Her smell after she’s come out of the shower
Renee talks in her sleep, though she won’t admit it. You can hear her all the way through the door—a sort of ladylike drone, completely unintelligible, that seems somehow intended for an audience. There’s something so formal and melancholy about it, so redolent of loss, that I think of it privately as her Miss San Diego acceptance speech.
I can’t help wondering if the guys in her life hear the same monologue, and if they’re freaked out by it. Or does she have different dreams when she’s sleeping in other bedrooms?
I’m afraid I’m making her sound tragic, like Delta Dawn or something, and that’s not the way it is at all. She’s a great person, really. I’m lucky to have her.