Much Ado About Mother (3 page)

“You do some very nice work,” Erinn said.

“Sorry, I've got paint all over my hands. Business as usual,” Christopher said as he wiped his hand on his jeans before extending it. He smiled and looked her right in the eye, just the way an artist would, taking in every mole and wrinkle. “I've seen you on the Beach Walk a couple of times.”

OK, enough with the teeth and cheekbones,
Erinn thought, although she merely nodded in acknowledgment.

“Erinn lives just up the street,” Suzanna said, tilting her head north of the pier.

“Oh, with the fancy people,” Christopher said, and he and Suzanna laughed.

The Venice crowd liked to think of themselves as the bohemians of the area and lumped everyone north of the
WELCOME TO SANTA MONICA
sign as rich, staid, and stodgy—never mind that Suzanna and Eric probably made twice what Erinn brought home.

“What are you doing up here?” Suzanna asked, as if Santa Monica were hundreds of miles away instead of three.

“A couple of the horses were looking a little faded,” Christopher said, glancing back at the horse in the middle of the carousel. “Just lending a hand with the restoration.”

“Christopher is very into local preservation,” Suzanna said, scooting Lizzy onto the other hip. “He started a petition to get our block designated a historic landmark.”

“Well,” said Christopher, “part of our block. Actually, just part of Mr. Clancy's Courtyard.”

“I know the building!” Erinn said. “Well, buildings. It is a courtyard after all.”

“Very true,” he said hesitantly.

“I met Mr. Clancy years ago. Is he still with us?” Erinn asked.

“In what sense?” he asked. “Alive or still at the courtyard?”

“Take your pick,” Erinn said.

“He's still kicking.” Christopher smiled, turning to Suzanna for validation. “As irascible as ever. He's fighting us on the whole historic designation thing, so it's pretty intense over there.”

“Oh, yeah . . . that historic designation thing is pretty intense, all right,” Suzanna said.

She said it as casually as she could, but Erinn knew that her sister found local politics and problems a bore. Eric found it all fascinating. He was in the middle of everything, although he made it a point not to take sides. Anyone could stop by the Nook and discuss the finer points of any argument. Erinn often joined in these heated discussions, but as soon as any battle started getting interesting Suzanna tuned everyone out. Conflict was not her thing. Erinn was sure Suzanna wouldn't actually be able to explain what the historic landmark hubbub was all about if you asked her. On the other hand, Eric would probably tell most people more than they'd want to know. The two of them were so different.

Erinn wondered if this was true of all married couples.

The buzzer on the carousel sounded, announcing that the ride was starting up again. Lizzy threw her arms around her mother and buried her head in Suzanna's neck.

“You should stop by and see some of our new work,” Christopher yelled over the canned circus music.

Erinn was pleased to be invited, but Suzanna spoke as if he were talking to her.

“I will,” she yelled back. “Soon!”

Conversation became impossible and Christopher pantomimed that he was going to get back to work. The sisters watched him jump onto the moving carousel and thread his way to the center, where he leaped off with equal grace. Erinn stood and watched him until she realized Suzanna had already left the building.

Back at the Rollicking Bun . . . Home of the Epic Scone, Suzanna handed Lizzy over to Eric so he could put her down for a nap. She came back with two generous mugs of a new tea she and Eric were thinking of featuring in the shop. It was called Night of the Iguana Chocolate Chai. Erinn sniffed at it suspiciously.

All was quiet and Erinn knew there was no escape. The tea shop and bookstore were both closed for the day. Eric was probably reading some calming children's story to Lizzy in the rambling apartment over the store—the place he, Suzanna, and Lizzy called home—while Erinn sat trapped with a cup of vile tea.

“Mom took Piquant to the vet,” Suzanna plunged in. “He has asthma and needs to be in a warmer climate.”

“The vet has asthma?” Erinn asked.

“No, Erinn, the
dog
has asthma.” Suzanna added some milk to her tea. “Please don't start. You know I meant the dog.”

“Well, one can dream,” Erinn muttered, gagging on the tea.

“I don't understand what you have against Mom.”

“I . . .” Erinn took a sip of tea, realizing she didn't understand what she had against their mother, either. “I just feel as if I'm a child again whenever she's around. She takes my confidence away.”

“That isn't fair, Erinn. No one can take away your confidence without your permission.”

“Don't give me that tripe. Plenty of people take away my confidence and I don't recall giving any of them permission.”

“If you don't mind my saying so, Erinn, you could use a little less confidence.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you border on conceited, if you ask me.”

“I didn't ask you. And for the future, I am withholding permission for you to ever call me conceited again.”

Suzanna's ears visibly perked up and Erinn knew the baby must be crying upstairs. Erinn couldn't actually hear her, but Suzanna had developed that mother-supersonic hearing and Erinn just accepted that some sort of baby thing was going on.

“I'll let myself out,” she said as she dashed out of the tea shop, happy to skirt yet another argument with her sister.

Erinn lived clear on the other end of Santa Monica, the “good” side, known to the locals as “Canada” because it was north of Montana Avenue. She pulled into the driveway and looked lovingly at her house. It was one of the few Victorians still standing on Ocean Avenue. When Erinn moved to the West Coast from New York she used all her savings to buy the place. The house had been completely run-down but she was determined to fix it up. Times were rough for a while, but when she rebounded with her second career in cable TV, she spent whatever money she had on the house. The house was now a jewel of Victorian architecture. She often hid behind her living room curtains and watched as tourists and locals alike stopped and studied the house. She let herself inside. What if
this
career came to a screeching halt, too? She had come to terms with being a failed wunderkind playwright—that was the luck of the gods anyway—but failing at
cable?
Where else could she go? How many times could she reinvent herself?

Caro, her cat, padded down the stairs to meet her. Erinn scooped him up. She hated to admit how much she valued her pet. He'd stood by her through all the career highs and lows and halting romantic endeavors. As iffy as her careers had been, her romantic history was worse. The last man in her life, Jude, was much younger than she was and she had known it was destined to fail from the start. Suzanna had no sympathy when the torrid affair bottomed out a year ago.

“You always said it wouldn't work, so it didn't,” Suzanna had said. “You'd sabotage a relationship just so you could prove yourself right.”

Erinn pretended she was so affronted that she refused to talk to her sister, but the fact of the matter was she was afraid Suzanna might be right. That whole trend about “visualizing your success” was definitely suspect, in Erinn's book. If it happened to be true she was really in trouble. But romance was not on Erinn's immediate to-do list. She had to get a job. She sat down at the computer and logged on to Facebook to see what her work associates were doing.

Erinn had resisted Facebook for as long as she possibly could, but in an industry that relied not only on “who you know” but on “who you know this minute,” there was no avoiding it. Her relationship with the Internet site was, in the parlance of the medium, “complicated.” There were days when she wrote something particularly clever and got instant feedback and she wondered why she had been opposed to it for so long. Other times, when it seemed that all her professional colleagues were announcing new jobs they'd been offered, or worse, when she was bombarded with pictures from around the world from friends who had gotten international gigs that had them shooting in one glorious location after another, Erinn had to wonder why she bothered.

Facebook was also a great outlet for her photography, although it annoyed her when she got more comments on pictures of her cat than she did on her real art. Scrolling through some of her pictures, she had to admit that Caro looked pretty damn charming in some of them. He was a long-haired cat, and since he was outdoors as much as he was indoors, his fur sometimes became so matted, there was nothing to do but take him to the groomer where he got shaved into a “lion's cut.” Caro would leave the house a scowling, knotted mess and return a proud, regal beast with an impressive mane. Erinn was not one to romanticize animals, but still, Caro always seemed pretty pleased with himself when he came home with his new King of the Jungle hairdo. Whenever Erinn posted “before” and “after” pictures on Facebook, there was always an explosion of activity.

She stared at her Facebook profile and saw that she had gotten a friend request from Jude Raphael, her professional colleague and recent ex-boyfriend. Her finger hovered over the Accept icon. She and Jude had parted friends, but Erinn had never really been in the habit of remaining on friendly terms with old lovers. Not that Jude was an “old” lover. He was a very young lover, more than a decade younger than she. He had always accused her of making too much of their age difference and he was probably right. But she found herself worried about her looks, her energy, her female competition on the TV shoots they shared, and she had realized she was turning into the sort of woman she just couldn't stand. For better or worse, instead of making adjustments she had broken up with him.

Caro jumped into her lap and Erinn absently petted the cat as she pondered the request. She closed her eyes as memories washed over her. Some cascaded like a warm shower, others like a bucket of ice water. Breakups, even those in which the participants agree to get along afterward, are never easy. The best you could hope for was that you could
pretend
it was easy. A quote by lateral thinker Edward de Bono came to mind:

“A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”

She clicked on the Accept Friend Request icon before she could overthink it. Jude and Erinn had worked together on many TV shows, he the director to her producer. She missed working with him—she missed
working
—but Jude apparently was scaling greater cable-TV heights. She clicked on Jude's profile page (she refused to call it his “wall” in Facebook-speak). There were pictures of him on his latest shoot, grinning broadly and standing in front of a sphinx. His comment read:

 

 

Erinn scowled. She knew Jude was just being his version of funny, but she personally did not think it was amusing. Contracts were signed for a reason!

She clicked through his other photos. There seemed to be pictures from all over the world, obviously work-related. She petted Caro, wondering what had happened to
her
career.

When she had to she rented out her guesthouse, which helped her stay afloat in lean times. Suzanna had been the first to recommend renting it out, and Erinn had at first resisted the idea. She didn't really like to have a stranger on the property, but by now it had become second nature to turn to the guesthouse as a means of pulling in some money. But only when she had to!

The realization that the guesthouse was currently vacant made her stomach lurch. Her mother wasn't planning on staying with her, was she . . . on this
extended
visit?

Erinn quickly exited Facebook and typed in
craigslist, los angeles, rentals
.

CHAPTER 4

SUZANNA

H
er mother had always set a good example of taking care of oneself while raising a family. Suzanna wanted to look toned and fit when her mother got here.

OK, maybe her mother wouldn't even notice that Suzanna was still carrying an extra fifteen pounds. But she should really be focusing on looking good for her husband.

Suzanna breathed deeply, admitted to herself that just maybe this sudden need to look good was inspired by the fact that Rio might be back in town. She started rummaging through her closet like an in-génue before an awards show. If that had been Rio, if he were, indeed, back in town, then another Rio sighting would certainly be a possibility. She would have to make an effort to look a little better. She pulled out a striped top and held it up to the light. It had stains on it from her year and a half of breast-feeding.

She threw it on the bed, starting a “give to charity” pile, then reconsidered. It would be charity to keep the top, just not wear it! Maybe she'd turn it into rags, but the thought of cleaning mirrors with a milk-stained rag grossed her out a little bit. Well, she'd start a pile and figure out what to do with it later.

Her next top was just as bad, if not worse. This one was stretched out at the neck and hem. Suzanna went through all her tops and realized how few were actually in acceptable shape.

Giving up on the tops, she steeled herself to look at her jeans. She held up a pair against her hips and winced as she saw gray sweatpants sticking out on both sides of the denim.

How did she ever fit into jeans this small?

Suzanna stripped off her sweatpants. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw she was wearing baggy maternity panties. Dear God, she had let herself go. Doubling her resolve, she tugged on the jeans. They did go over her hips but were inches away from buttoning. She gritted her teeth—she would button those jeans if it were the last thing she ever did.

Inching the button and buttonhole closer together, she thought about her very first stress float in junior high school. That had involved a boy, too. She had fallen at his feet during a play and when he and the rest of the kids started laughing at her, she just . . . floated away. No one ever seemed to notice she was drifting above them, and she always did manage to return to earth. Luckily, it didn't happen often and she'd gotten used to it. But it was always awkward. From her wedding day forward, she'd been firmly planted on the ground, and it unnerved her that Rio might stir things up this way.

She sucked in her stomach until her back hurt. Her baby was now two years old and there was no longer any excuse; this was not “baby fat.” Suzanna had always wanted to be one of those women who bounced back immediately after giving birth, and she had envisioned women coming into her tea shop making comments about how well she was looking.

The tips from high school about how to squeeze into jeans that no longer fit came back to her.

ONE: Button up before even attempting the zipper.

With a Herculean effort, she managed that, but her abdomen poked through the zipper opening with such force that she realized she'd have to be holding her stomach back with her left hand while trying to zip up with the right. She tried this until the skin on her right index finger was starting to bleed.

She put a Band-Aid on her right index finger.

TWO: Thread a wire coat hanger through the tiny opening in the head of the zipper and pull upward.

Suzanna tried to hold her stomach in while pulling gently on the zipper. It inched skyward, but stopped in the vicinity of her hip bones.

It was time for the final method from years ago. If this didn't work, nothing would, and she would have to give up.

THREE: Lie down on the bed, hold stomach in with one hand, and glide zipper toward button.

It wasn't working. Nothing was working. She was going to have to admit defeat, admit that her pre-baby body was as much a thing of the past as those carefree years before she was a wife and mother.

Suzanna took a deep breath, grabbed the hanger with both hands, and yanked. The zipper closed. She tried not to breathe.

Rio sprang into her thoughts. She tried to push him out. She tried to conjure up sexy images of her husband instead, but these days Eric seemed to be miles away, worrying about some local political intrigue or another. She couldn't say what, exactly. His involvement in one political cause after another had left her exhausted.

“Hey, hon . . . I've got to run down the street for a minute,” Eric called from somewhere down the hall.

Suzanna panicked and tried to sit up, but she was beached like a whale in a corset. She could hear Eric's footsteps getting closer and she rocked back and forth trying to get enough momentum to hurl herself off the bed.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” she gasped.

Eric was almost at the door. She rolled onto the floor and grabbed at the quilt to pull herself up. The quilt slid silently to the floor. She heard the doorknob turn.

“Everything OK in there?” Eric asked, rattling the knob.

Suzanna kicked the quilt under the bed as she heard her husband picking the lock.

Suzanna was still on the floor, with her feet tucked under the bed where she had kicked the quilt, when he walked in. He was holding Lizzy, who was sucking on a rag doll. The doll was covered in baby slobber, which usually amused Suzanna to no end. But there was a first time for everything.

“Oh, sorry,” Eric said, plopping the toddler on the bed. Lizzy pulled the doll out of her mouth and started sucking on the top sheet. Eric sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at his wife. “I didn't know you were exercising.”

Suzanna lifted her head and realized that it did appear that she was doing sit-ups. She lay back down, exhausted. If Eric wanted to think it was from a great workout, so be it.

“That's OK . . . I'm done,” she said. When she couldn't get up, she added, “Well, maybe just a few more crunches.”

Eric put Lizzy on the floor so she wouldn't fall off the bed. Suzanna and Eric had hoped they would be breezy parents, but the apartment now resembled nothing less than Baby Prison: locks on all the cabinets and doors, baby gates at every entrance to every staircase that were so complex Suzanna usually found herself leaping over them, and cleaning supplies stored on shelves so high Lizzy might not be able to reach them until college.

Eric blew Suzanna a kiss and headed out the door. He turned back, leaning against the doorframe.

“My parents called. They want to take Lizzy to Disneyland pretty soon. That good by you?”

“I don't know, honey,” Suzanna said. “I mean, she's only two years old. And she doesn't really know your parents very well.”

“I think that's the point,” Eric said. “The idea that your mom will be here and sucking up all the grandchild love has my mom feeling a little insecure, I think.”

“Let me think about it,” Suzanna said.

“I already told them yes,” Eric said.

“Then why did you ask me if I was good with it?” Suzanna asked in a surly voice. It drove her crazy when her husband asked her opinion on something, just to smack her down with an “I already decided.” She fell for it every time, just like Charlie Brown and his football. She realized it was a difference in upbringing. Eric always said his family was just nonconfrontational, but Suzanna felt that these “what do you think, even though I've already made up my mind” moments were passive-aggressive. When she finally brought this to Eric's attention, he said, “That's possible, but your family is aggressive-aggressive, so we're probably even.”

He had her there.

“I'm going over to the community garden. There seems to be some debate about pesticides; thought I'd see what the trouble was all about,” he said, looking down at her sweating form. “Don't kill yourself.. . . I think you're perfect.”

Did he think she was perfect? Was he blinded by love or had he just stopped noticing? She felt guilty about her less-than-kind observations of a moment ago. He really was an amazing guy.

Suzanna felt a tingling in her nose, which was a sign that she was going to cry. Disgusted with herself, she unzipped the jeans and sat up, still breathing hard from her “workout.” Eric was such a wonderful man. There was nothing to be gained by arbitrating the squabble at the community garden, but he saw it as his job to keep Venice on a happy, even keel. It was amazing how many people came in and out of the Nook seeking his advice. She was really proud of him . . . although he was often distracted. She kept telling herself that he was distracted for the greater good, but sometimes, as he headed out the door for more good deeds, she had to admit it irritated her. She knew he really did love her—even when he was preoccupied. When she was pregnant and crashing into chairs with her huge belly, he'd held her and made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Well, truth be told, he only managed to get as far as making her feel like the most beautiful
whale
in the world, but that wasn't his fault.

Suzanna pulled herself onto the bed, hauling Lizzy with her. She lay back, trying to catch her breath as she watched Lizzy attempting to stand on the mattress. The toddler gave up and crawled over to her mother. She patted Suzanna on the head, which made them both laugh. Suzanna swooped the baby up and covered her with noisy kisses. Why was she even
thinking
about Rio? She had everything in the universe right here.

Suzanna's resolve was short-lived.

She kept an eye on the Beach Walk for the next couple of days but there was no sign of Rio. She was relieved that she had probably just imagined the whole thing and let Rio fade into memory again. Besides, she had enough on which to focus. Their mother was due to arrive in two days and Erinn had one excuse after another why Suzanna should be orchestrating the bulk of the arrangements, including living arrangements. Erinn thought their mother should stay at Suzanna's and she was certainly persuasive in her arguments: Suzanna had Lizzy and their mother would love every minute spent in the baby's company. Erinn had a large cat that might not take kindly to Piquant. And of course Erinn was desperately trying to rent out her guesthouse to make ends meet.

Her mother called often, a little unsettled that nothing was finalized, but Suzanna told her not to worry about a single thing. The truth of the matter was that Suzanna and Eric would truly be thrilled to have Virginia stay with them. There was just something about Erinn's “It's not my problem” attitude that made Suzanna nuts. Suzanna told her mother that she and Erinn were fighting over her.

From the tearoom window, Suzanna could see clouds rolling in and a striking woman with perfect posture striding into the foyer that separated the Bun from the Nook. The woman looked around, clearly not a regular who was familiar with the place.

The Bun was closed for the day. Suzanna hoped the woman wasn't interested in tea. Suzanna hated turning people down. She couldn't stand to see the crushed spirit of a person being denied a cup of tea and a small pastry. She'd put a kettle on rather than be greeted by such disappointment.

Suzanna studied the woman. She wore tailored pants with a man's shirt tucked into them. Her hair was slicked back away from her face, sweeping across her jawbone. She wore large, round, black glasses. Suzanna thought she was attractive, in a postapocalyptic way: strong, confident, with a take-no-prisoners air about her. Something about her made Suzanna think this woman could stand the rejection of a closed tea shop.

“May I help you?” she asked, coming into the foyer from the tea shop.

“I hope so,” the woman replied, smiling a crisp, toothy smile. She waved a stack of papers. “I'm showing some artwork at Willow Station later this month and I was wondering if I might leave some flyers with you.”

Willow Station was a well-respected art gallery in Santa Monica. Suzanna had forgotten about it but made a mental note that it might be a good place to take her mother. She reached for the green flyers.

“I don't hang flyers in the tea shop,” Suzanna said. “But I'm sure my husband will be happy to put one up on the community board he has in the bookstore.”