Oh! You Pretty Things (16 page)

I find her in the kitchen in a full face of makeup and a slinky dress, stirring the stew in Megan's one good pot, a white nine-quart Le Creuset enameled Dutch oven that her mother gave her for her twenty-fifth birthday, a subtle reminder that Megan should be on the fast track to domestic bliss.

Carrot peelings speckle the counter like confetti, and the stainless-steel trash can overflows with crumpled pink butcher paper and an upended green wine bottle.

“Hello, lumpkin,” my mother says in the purring voice she usually reserves for mixed company. “I'm making us dinner.”

I sweep a handful of her debris from the countertop into the trash pile. “Where did all this come from?”

She waves her arm toward the front door. “Rick and I had a little excursion today. He just went home to freshen up.”

“You went shopping,” I say incredulously. “With the creepy neighbor. And now he's coming for dinner?”

“He's delightful,” she says. “Did you know that his father invented the Post-it note? And he's never had lamb stew, so how could I resist?”

“Okay, first of all, I'm pretty sure he's an unemployable vet with PTSD and not the heir to the Post-it fortune, and second, who paid for all this?”

“Don't be gauche,” she says, giving the bubbling pot a final stir. “Now, hurry up and do something with yourself. You don't want to sit down in
that
, do you?”

I beeline to my room, lock the door, and call Scout. “I'm at DEFCON five. Please tell me you're home and I can come over.”

“I'm in traffic on the 10,” she says. “But if you take your time, I'll probably beat you.”

“I'm not taking my time,” I tell her. “I'll be on your porch.”

I don't bother changing, or even looking in the mirror. In the hallway, I brush past Rick, who's wearing a button-down shirt and a pair of too-tight blue Sansabelt dress slacks and clutching a bouquet of supermarket mixed flowers. If I hadn't seen the way he eye-rapes Megan when she's on her way to yoga, I might think it was sweet.

When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I call Megan. It rings five times and goes to voice mail. I hang up without leaving a message. The only thing I can think to say is “save me,” and there doesn't seem to be much point in that.

S
cout doesn't understand my frustration, or maybe she's playing dumb because she doesn't have time for me—she's getting ready for a big date with Weston. She relegates me to the balcony to smoke my cigarette, because she just saged her apartment. I'm already in a bad mood, and her use of the word “sage” as a verb doesn't help.

“You realize that you're hopelessly mired in the '70s,” I say. “You're doing more damage to your lungs with that hippie shit than I am with cigarettes.”

I exhale a stream of smoke through the closed screen door and she fans her newly manicured nails in front of her face.

“Hardly.” She's sitting on her living-room floor, painting her toenails a metallic green that looks like someone's midlife crisis car. “And why do you even care who your mother fucks?”

“You're missing the point.”

She caps the bottle and ineffectually blows on her wet toenails. “One of us is.”

I stub my cigarette into an empty planter box littered with bottle caps and a deflated Mylar balloon that reads
I LOVE YOU
.

“Okay,” she says. “What's the point?”

I slide the screen door shut behind me and flop onto her brown canvas papasan chair. “She doesn't want to fuck my neighbor. Come on, he's Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
. He's going to moon around in the hallway with wilted daisies and a love note written on a paper towel.”

Scout pulls the wadded-up toilet paper from between her toes. “If we're riding the Steinbeck analogy all the way, then she'll be dead and he'll be petting her when you get home.”

“Is that the part where I get to shoot her in the head?”

“Exactly,” Scout says.

“That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me.”

“You're so fucking broken.” Scout laughs.

“Yeah. And for the record, we're talking about more of a
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
situation. No one is mentally deficient and well-meaning in this scenario.”

“Except you.” She crosses the room to plant a sage-smoked kiss on the top of my head. “You're welcome to stay, but I have to get dressed. Weston's taking me to Baja Cantina.”

“Virgin margaritas,” I say.

Scout turns in the doorway and regards me with a tolerant look. “The point you're missing,” she says gently, “is that you're all growed up. If your mom's raining on your parade, deal with it.”

Ouch
. “Can't I just pay you to deal with it for me?”

“Sure, but I don't take postdated checks.”

“Can I pay you in chewing gum and French kisses?”

“Only if you want to marry me,” she says.

“I totally want to marry you,” I say. “I'll even turn a blind eye to your biker lovers.”

Scout laughs again. “You know you can stay here. I mean, you might have to fight for couch space with Tank, but those tattoos were just a prison thing. He's totally not a white supremacist.”

“I hate you,” I say.

“I hate you, too,” she says, disappearing into her closet. “But keep it in mind.” Her voice is muffled by the sound of wooden hangers clattering onto her bed. “And remember, it's
your
house, not hers.”

Yeah, your mouth says.

“I've got a really bad idea,” I tell her.

“You mean
another
really bad idea.”

“Do you think Eva was serious about the job?”

The clatter of hangers stops, and she appears in the door.

“I know, it's the worst idea ever,” I say.

“Are you kidding? She's been waiting for you to call.”

Hope blooms in my chest. “I've been waiting for
her
to call.”

“Idiot,” she says. “I'll text you her number.”

“You really think she's been waiting?”

“I know she has,” Scout says, then Weston wanders in and she can't see me anymore.

My phone buzzes with a text when I'm still on the stairs, but it's not from Scout. It's from JJ.

Help me. You're my only hope. It's our two-week anniversary. Where am I taking Megan? Something special. This is big.

Really, you fucker? You want romantic advice from me after you snatched Megan away to New Guyland?

Montage in Laguna Beach,
I text him.
Soft pretzels with Dijon, popcorn with truffle salt, and champagne on the balcony.
I think for a second, then add:
She is the best thing in your life
.

A few minutes later, I'm unlocking my bike from the metal pole in front of Scout's when my phone buzzes again.
Jesus, now what, JJ?

But it's from Kirk.

Thinking of you. Call me if you want to talk.

And I do. I do want to talk to him. But the whole thing's more than I can wrap my mind around right now.

Then the text comes. From Scout. With Eva's phone number.

I shade the screen with my hand and look at the numbers. I'm no longer two degrees of separation from Eva Carlton. I'm one. I have her personal phone number on my personal phone.

When I get home, the lights are on, but the rooms are empty. The kitchen is a disaster and there's a blanket—no, wait, that's my duvet—spread out on the living-room floor. There's a pile of sodden bath towels on the floor of the bathroom, and an upended bottle of my Peter Thomas Roth conditioner in the sink.

I don't care. I can't stop smiling. I call Eva and leave a chirpy, enthusiastic message on her voice mail, then sit at the kitchen table and wait for the call.

Flash forward: twenty-four hours later, and the call still hasn't come. The reality of my mother in my house slaps me in the face at every turn. Her damp, neon-pink thong underwear drying on the shower rod; a pile of Gauloises cigarette butts in a
Jade Wolf
coffee cup on the living-room floor; the opened pile of mail sitting on the kitchen counter. I don't even know how she got the mailbox key. It's yogurt time.

When I step into the kitchen the next morning, my mother's standing there with a full face of makeup and her purse on her shoulder, sipping coffee from a juice glass, because all the cups are dirty and piled in the sink.

“Hello, lamb chop,” she says. “It's so good that you're getting plenty of beauty sleep now that you're not working.”

I glance at the clock over the stovetop. It's 7:15.

“You're kidding, right?” I say, dumping the sludgy contents of the least-dirty mug into the trash. “Why are you even awake?”

“Rick and I are going to the farmers' market,” she says. “You should come. It would do you good to get out in the world.”

I rinse the mug. “I'd love to, but I've got shit to do.”

“What could be more important than spending the morning with me?” she says coquettishly.

“Spare me, Donna. Let's not pretend that you're here for any other reason than you incinerated another living situation and I'm your goddamn safety net.”

My hands are quivering as I toss the mug into the sink, where it crashes into a stack of Megan's white IKEA plates.

“Darling, no,” my mother says, wrapping her arms around me in a fragrant hug, her moist skin cool and slightly sticky against mine.

I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy holds out the football. I know she's going to snatch it away as soon as I come in for the kick, but right now it feels good to let her hold me and stroke my hair.

“Is everything okay?” she says. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“I'm tired,” I say in a quavering voice.

“Oh, sparkle pie,” she says, and I burst into noisy tears that immediately devolve into even noisier hiccups.

And then, God help me, I tell her the truth about waiting for Eva's call. Jesus, such an amateur maneuver. I blame it on Megan's absence.

“It doesn't matter,” I say, sniffling and wiping my eyes. I step back and steel myself against her. “The bottom line is, I quit my job. I have no income. We're going to have to leave the apartment.” I mean, it's not like I'm not going to forgive her in exchange for a little sympathy and a stupid hug.

“Leave here?” She gestures toward the living room doubtfully. “This apartment?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Sooner rather than later.”

“We can't leave. I don't have anywhere to go.”

“Believe me, I'm aware of that.”

She gives an offhand shrug. “You'll figure something out.”

“This is not my problem,” I snap, a flush of anger in my cheeks. “Don't you make this my problem. I'll figure something out? Yeah, I used to have a lot figured out. A job, a roommate, a fucking life.”

“And that's
my
fault? I gave up everything to raise you.”

My heart starts pounding like I'm jacked on street speed. I mean, I've never actually been jacked on street speed, but I've seen
Crank
, with a sweaty, adrenaline-filled Jason Statham, so, same thing. “You're kidding, right? You couldn't have done less to raise me if you were dead.”

“You're overwrought,” she says calmly. “You should take a bath and we'll discuss this when I get back.”

I pivot on my heel, cross to my doorway, and yell, “There's nothing to discuss.”

Slamming the door evokes every conversation we've had in the past ten years, and when I try to click the lock into place it spins around without engaging, like a giant metaphor for our whole relationship.

The next morning, there are three messages on my voice mail. The first is a hang-up from my mother, her throaty breathing a giveaway before the line goes silent and the automated voice says, “End of message.”

Erase.

Then JJ says, “She is. You're right. I'm not going to fuck this up.”

Erase.

“I'm leaving for a location shoot—” It's Eva, her voice instantly recognizable through the traffic noise in the background. “San Francisco the day after tomorrow. I know it's late . . .” A horn blast obscures her words. “. . . from the production company and I'll bonus you more if . . . one I want.”

Save.