by Jill Malone
“Bailey, since when do you need to discuss any of this shit with me?”
Simon, at the edge of the water, looked over at Liv.
“I just thought you’d be interested in helping. She’s your friend too. This is a big deal for her. She deserves—”
“Please talk to me about what she deserves.”
“What’s going on? Why are you so hostile? What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m going now, Bailey. Bye bye.”
Liv lay back in the grass. Bugs everywhere. Her body in open rebellion now, spasms in her belly, her back, her shoulders, and the cigarette had made her nauseous.
Two days later, they pulled up the basement carpet. Simon held the door open for them to drag the rolled sections outside. Rain pelted down. Hefting the sections into the truck bed, Liv gritted her teeth against the sharp pain in her back beneath her shoulder blade. Coffee was enough now to lick the headache. As the muscle spasms dissipated, and her diet included more interesting food than bananas and toast, her sanguine temper returned.
They had the new carpet for the basement propped in the entryway. Already the basement breathed again: the walls striking, the rooms larger and brighter, the nasty carpet rapidly depleting, and the new anxious to sprawl in its place. Claire worked like she exercised, focused to the exclusion of conversation and impediment. Without plotting, or dialogue, or any delay, she could be relied upon to complete this task and prepare for the next. Liv admired Claire’s drive, and was pleased that they worked so well and easily together.
While Liv and Simon swept the basement, Claire made sandwiches. Tonight they’d celebrate Claire’s completion of the book with a dinner party at Bailey’s. Something grand, Bailey had promised. Liv would have given anything to decline. She’d offered to watch Simon, but Claire had refused to go without her.
Bailey couldn’t just go out for dinner and drinks like normal people. Everything had to be an event. It felt a little dramatic since she’d only known Claire for a month, but Liv would go and enjoy herself. She expected the food to be exquisite.
“What?” she said to Simon. He’d stopped sweeping and was standing beside her, his broom discarded. He pointed at the desk and dragged Liv with him.
“Mama,” he said, pointing at the desk.
The desk was tall enough that Simon couldn’t actually see the photographs; he’d only remembered that they were there. Liv had never noticed them at all. She lifted a series up now, and crouched so that Simon could look as well.
Four photographs, and in the first, Claire with her hair long—it had a wave to it long—a barrette pinning it back from her face, and braces. In another she had pigtails, and might have been three, in a green gingham dress. In one she wore a blue hospital gown, the IV still in her arm, and a swaddled infant with a knit cap cradled against her chest.
“Is that Mommy and Simon?” Liv asked.
“Yes.”
“Is that Dee?” Liv pointed to the heavier woman, her grey curls unruly, her smile gap-toothed; she carried Simon on her shoulders.
Simon smoothed his hand across the glass covering the photographs. “Simon,” he whispered.
“Yes. Dee and Simon.” He looked at the photos a long time. She rested her head against his, and stayed.
Fifteen
The dinner party
Claire dropped Simon at Agnes’ house at six, and came home to climb in the shower with Liv.
“Don’t,” Liv said, “We’ll never leave.”
“I’m helping.”
Liv laughed. “Go on, then.”
They wore jeans: Liv’s with a light blue, long-sleeved button-down shirt, and Claire’s a sleeveless purple v-neck. Claire drove, her hand on Liv’s thigh.
“Is it just me that thinks this is absurd?” Claire asked.
“The party or Bailey?”
“I have to choose just one?”
“She overdoes. It’s her thing.”
“How long has she been in love with you?” Claire asked. She’d rolled up the window, and was wishing now that she’d worn long sleeves.
“I think you’re my replacement.”
“No,” Claire said. “Bailey is in love with you. I’m just another opportunity for her.”
“How’s that?”
Claire tugged on the hair at the nape of Liv’s neck. “So far I’m not one of your fuck-and-run girls.”
“And that gets her what exactly?”
“Maybe I’m the field guide.”
“The field guide to what?”
“You, Liv.” At that moment Claire envisioned herself writing it—the field guide to a girl: You’re studying the girl as though she were a butterfly. Sketching the musculature and wingspan, charting the range and season as though you’d discovered a new species.
Could you hunt them like mushrooms? Is that what Liv did, hunt girls? Claire wound down Government Way; the pines sunburned, cheat grass tall as Simon, and billowing.
You observe unobtrusively. And the more you watch, the more apparent the patterns become: the proclivity for a certain flower, the skills employed to evade predators, mating. In fact, you want to believe that the throbbing flicker of this creature in-between your thumb and forefinger is your discovery, previously unknown, and unknowable.
In the passenger’s seat, foot propped on the dash, an unlit cigarette in her fingers, Liv was mid-sentence. You want to believe yourself scientific, a researcher. What, after all, is your objective, but the furtherance of knowledge? They drove along the cusp of the city.
“What,” Claire said softly to the steering wheel, “is your objective?”
“You know, I’m really OK staying in the car,” Liv said as they parked in front of Bailey’s house.
Some chick named Marjorie opened the door. “Hi, I’m Marjorie. Come in. There’s been an incident with one of the pies. We only know it involved a paper bag and a fire. But that’s all we know. I’m Marjorie. You guys are twins, right? I used to have twin neighbors when I lived in the Valley. They were not identical, though. They didn’t even look like twins, really. It was disappointing like that. Which one are you?”
“I’m Claire.”
“Oh happy party, Claire! Bailey’s so excited. She said you’re a really important artist and you had to be celebrated. So yay, you! Have I seen your art? Are you at like a gallery or something?”
“Sort of,” Claire said, and gripped Liv’s arm.
“Cool. So which of you guys is older?”
“She is,” Liv said, smiling her brightest smile. “We have to go see Bailey. Excuse us.” And she propelled Claire through the entryway and into the living room. There were eight trays of appetizers on the coffee table and three people sitting on the same side of the sofa, concentrating on their napkins.
“Hi,” Liv said and kept propelling.
Bailey wore an apron around her vintage red dress. She’d worn stockings and red glimmer shoes and had pitched her blond hair atop her head like a diner waitress. At the kitchen doorway, Liv smelled cinnamon and yeast, and remembered riding bikes through her grandparents’ neighborhood on a rainy afternoon, and a treat of fresh baked bread with apple butter. On the counter, a platter piled with ears of corn, grilled and still in husks, brought back her first ride in the back of a wagon. The aroma of hazelnut chocolate from a cooling torte, gave her a scene with her first girlfriend on a cross-country skiing adventure.
“This smells like my childhood,” she said now.
“Good, you’re here. Liv, I need you to open the wine. Those bottles on the counter. Claire, relax, enjoy; go have a seat and eat something. I think the crab cakes are pretty good. And the stuffed cabbage rolls are maybe the best I’ve made ever.” Claire withdrew as though she’d been sent away from the campfire. Bailey went on, oblivious, “Liv, have I ruined my oven? Look at this fucking mess.” She opened the oven to reveal ashes, the drenched remains of a pie and a charred paper bag.
“What happened?” Liv asked.
“Paul threw
a glass of water on it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an ass,” Bailey whispered. “And it was on fire.”
“You put a brown paper bag in the oven on purpose?”
“Keeps the pie moist.”
“And extra flammable.”
Liv grabbed the trash and tossed the mess in. Water and ashes had pooled at the bottom of the oven. “It’ll be fine once it cools. Self-cleaning and all.”
“Stupid ass ruined my pie.”
“So we’ll just have seven desserts rather than eight.”
“Don’t try to cheer me up.”
“OK,” Liv said. “Who the fuck are these people?”
“Associates of mine.”
“From the baking underworld?”
“Bring the wine, smartass.”
They gathered around the table—beautifully laid with china and place cards—as Bailey introduced each to the rest, and most particularly to Claire, their guest of honor. Claire sat on Bailey’s right, and Liv had been placed on the other end, next to Sophia, Bailey’s housemate. In the middle were Marjorie and many others like Marjorie in proclivity for vacuous exchange.
But the food merited such a party: pork tenderloin with porcini mushrooms; whipped parsnip potatoes; goat-cheese stuffed chicken breasts; roasted baby red potatoes; cranberry marmalade and balsamico; seared ahi, crusted with fennel, coriander, and pepper; sun-dried tomatoes and fruit compote; grilled asparagus and corn on the cob; Caesar salad and Hazelnut greens.
“The woman can cook,” Liv murmured to Sophia.
Sophia nodded, her mouth full, another bite ready to be launched. On Liv’s right, sat Paul, the ass.
“What do you do, Paul?”
“I’m a drafter for architects and intellectual property attorneys.”
“Interesting work?”
“Not remotely. What about you?”
“I’m a builder.”
“Now that sounds interesting. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever built?”
Liv wondered if he’d consider a harness weird. “I built a mock-up of my childhood home for my folks when they sold the place. It freaked me out how accurate the little rooms were. I wanted to be small enough to sleep on the tiny couch in the family room, or sneak out my bedroom window.”
“Like those mice in that story. They ransack the dolls’ house.”
“Yeah, like that. I’d built the place and it was so accurate and so wrong all at once.”
Paul handed her the basket of bread. Sophia paused eating long enough to ask for more potatoes. They started in on movies seen, and rendered opinions. Down the other end, Claire swallowed her wine and winked at Liv.
“Do you know Claire?” Paul asked.
“I work for her actually.”
“Oh,” Paul looked up at Liv, clearly impressed. “And she’s a well-known artist, is that right?”
“In her field she’s quite famous.”
“What’s her field?”
“Mycology.”
“Oh, right,” he said and looked down the table at Claire. “Impressive.”
Claire had been writing her field guide all evening. A roadmap to Liv, as she’d come to think of it. Begin with intrigue and a proposition; a woman who adores your child; leaves on mysterious excursions; is wholly unpredictable. Ensure that this woman works for you. Keep her vulnerable.
At this last, Claire looked down the table and winked at Liv. She wanted to tell Bailey about her field guide. They could write up a synopsis and sell it at the Mercury Café to all the dejected twenty-two-year-old girls propped against the jukebox or pool table. Claire drank more wine to keep from laughing. This party was worse than a farce.
Knickknacks crowded every surface of the place; they lived like old ladies. Even the elaborate dinner party felt bygone and overstuffed. Bailey talked on and on to everyone around her, who talked on and on in turn. Parakeets, Claire thought. Her neighbor filled her wine glass again.
“Do you like the tenderloin?” Bailey asked Claire.
“It’s all marvelous. I’ve never eaten anything quite like this dinner.”
“Oh good. I’m so pleased. You’ve earned it.”
Claire set her wine down carefully. “How?”
Bailey had turned to answer her neighbor.
“How?” Claire said, louder.
Bailey looked back at Claire, nonplussed. “Sorry?”
“How have I earned it?” It was the clarity with which she asked this question, rather than the volume, that silenced the table.
“Well,” Bailey said, glancing at Claire’s neighbor and back at Claire. “The book. You wrote the book.”
“I wrote the book.”
“Yes. And we’re all proud of you. Proud of your accomplishment.”
“Claire,” Liv said, at her shoulder. “Will you give me a hand a moment?”
“Keep her vulnerable,” Claire said to Bailey.
“What?” Bailey stared from one to the other.
“Will you give me a hand?” Liv asked again. “With the desserts?”
Claire stood up, and followed her lover to the kitchen. Bailey, the consummate hostess, asked her neighbor about his new puppy.
“We’ll brew coffee,” Liv said, opening the appropriate cupboard and handing Claire coffee beans while she plugged in the grinder.
“How do you know where everything is?” Claire asked.
“I used to room here.”
“You lived with her?” Claire hissed this.
Liv stopped, turned slowly around, and told Claire: “You will get hold of yourself this moment. The melodrama is over.”
A sullen child, Claire glared, swallowed her response, and crossed her arms. Liv returned to the grinder and its shrill mechanism. Before long, the coffee stoked, and the room changed perceptibly. Another scent, another road to another memory, and both women followed, one to a German restaurant with her aunt, the other to Seattle years before, at the end of a sorry weekend.
Liv handed Claire the first mug, and took the second, sitting on the windowsill. The dinner party forgotten, Claire’s hostile buzz overthrown, she drank to keep from speaking, afraid she might attempt to explain. Sick of the confusion—the blur between the woman people interpreted her to be, and the woman she was. Claire wasn’t even certain, anymore, which was which. Did dead women have secretaries? What was she exactly? Not a writer; the book was finished. What was she supposed to do now? She held the mug to keep from reaching for Liv. Claire felt herself overboard, desperate, clinging to any object in the water, anything to keep from drowning.
“Keep her vulnerable,” she said again. Drank the tepid coffee and wished it were scalding, that it could burn her tongue and the roof of her mouth and bring tears. Liv walked over, hooked her arm around Claire’s waist, and tipped her head to Claire’s.
“What comes next?” Claire asked.
“We go back in there,” Liv said, “and eat until we’re sick.” She kissed Claire, and then let her go.
Another road, then. Another road, and Claire, no longer in the water, near-drowning forgotten, followed obediently behind, with a torte and a mousse.
Sixteen
Errand girl
Her second trip to Home Depot in as many hours, Liv threw the tailgate closed like a dirty punch. Sweaty enough to be in an equatorial jungle, she slid into the truck, its windows already opened, and turned the engine over.
“Where you headed, stranger?” The girl was blond, in a white t-shirt and jeans, filthy and lank as a runaway.
Liv started to reverse. The girl reached her arm out, and said, “Liv.”
The truck idled and the girl leaned through the window. “You don’t remember me?” She sounded injured.
“I remember. I have to be someplace.”
“You can’t give me a ride?” She smiled, reached her hand into the truck, and slid a finger along Liv’s breastbone.
“I have to be someplace.”
“I already heard that part. Let
me in, will ya? You can’t leave me stranded in a parking lot.”
Liv took her foot off the clutch, swung the stick shift back and forth, told the girl to climb in.
Seventeen
Bailey investigates, part two
“You hated the dinner party,” Bailey told Claire. They sat in the recliners on the deck, drinking iced tea, watching Simon whack a plum tree with a stick.
“No.”
“You did. It’s OK to be honest. I’m just sorry you were disappointed or unhappy or whatever. I really meant for you to be, you know, honored. You’ve finished a book and it’s an incredible achievement, and I wanted to honor your work, and you. I meant to honor you.”
Bailey’s red sleeveless blouse looked fine on her. Since they’d met, she’d grown thinner and more sculpted, softened somehow, her lines more fluid and lissome. Claire herself felt years older, washed out.
“Bailey, can we agree to let the whole thing go? I didn’t behave very well, and I’m sorry. I appreciate everything you did. It was too much and perfect and I’m grateful. No, don’t say another word about it. Not one.”
Bailey lit a cigarette, pouted her lips between drags. “Fine, let’s talk about something else. How long have you been fucking the help?”
Claire reached over and slapped Bailey, hard, on her bare thigh.
“Ow, Jesus. Don’t be so sensitive. I didn’t read you as the chivalrous type. How long have you been making love to the help?”
Claire laughed, and hit Bailey again, harder this time.
“That’s enough,” Simon hollered at them from the plum tree. “No more.”
“Busted,” Bailey breathed. “Sorry, Simon, honey.” Bailey waved to him, then muttered at Claire, “You vicious thing. You made me drop my cigarette.” She lit another. “So how long?”
“I haven’t kept strict account.”
Bailey blew smoke through her nose. “You know what you’re doing.”
It wasn’t a question, but she was asking. Claire understood that. She understood because her answer was Of course, and Never, and they were both true, and both false. Liv was unbridled, audacious, and Claire knew herself to be beyond recall: the trough to Liv’s crest, and both in motion.
