Vladi

Vladi's parents were from Yugoslavia.  His father was a pediatrician and a socialist, of sorts, charging patients differently depending on their income.  Oh, he still made a lot of money, especially from his investments.  Vladi was the first kid I ever hung with whose parents had gone to college. 

Vladi was one of the emerging bohemian literati at school.  He was smart and wanted to be a doctor like his father, but he was a junior, a year behind his girlfriend, and he was trying to graduate a year early so he could go to college with her.  I never saw him hang out with anyone from his class.  

I'd known his girlfriend for years, of course.  She had never been anything special, but like a lot of things, she was changing now, and she had gotten hippie-ish and pretty.  She had been shoved into the background, perhaps, by poverty.  Even for us whose economic standards were sub-par, she was from a poorer family.  I think Vladi liked that in some way.  

He and I had hooked up through an interest in the undersea world, and we had decided to take diving lessons together at the local dive shop owned by a famous diver who held the world's record for making the deepest dive using compressed air.  He was famous, but his reputation was spotty, too, for several of his diving partners had died or been transfigured by an attack of the bends.  He was the one for us.  

Going to Vladi's house was strange for me.  It was big and new and had a swimming pool covered by a giant screen, something I'd never seen before.  His mother was big and had a preternaturally ample voice and no matter what she said, she always sounded as if she were crying.  Whenever we came into the house, she would cry for Vladi to eat, handing out fruit and making soups and sandwiches, forcing us to consume like starving men returned from war.  Vladi would complain but sit for a few bites before he'd say, "C'mon," and head for the door.  But it was a comfortable place, an easy place to hang out since his father was gone most of the time, and I didn't mind eating to please his mother.  It was an easy price to pay. 

Vladi had a sister who wasn't around much.  She was a mystery, really, until I found out that she suffered from a fragile mind and was seeing a psychiatrist.  I'd heard of such things in movies, but I thought that there were only psychiatrists in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles.  I was shocked to learn that there were such things in my own redneck town.  She was like a shadow, flitting in and out, speaking in that same weepy voice of her mother's without the heavy accent.  She was older by a few years and her existence scared me a little.  I always flinched when she came into the room.  

Driving back to the little cracker house was always a long way from Vladi's.  There was plenty of time to think.