by Jill Malone
“What were the fights about?” Claire asked.
“Girls.”
“So early?”
“From the beginning.”
Claire considered this. “And your parents?”
“They’ve known for so long, I can’t remember a time when they didn’t.”
In the kitchen, a motif of yellow roses, Claire touched the wallpaper, this house made her nostalgic: for the child, Liv, and something unspoiled in herself. Liv’s hands, then, at her waist, and Claire closed her eyes. Listened to the murmur as Liv held her mouth against Claire’s throat, intoxicated—two ungovernable girls alone in the parents’ kitchen—and yes, transported.
The tree had to have grown in the living room. No one could have squeezed such a behemoth through a door or window.
“This is the biggest Christmas tree,” Liv said, “that I have ever seen.”
Uninterested by the lights, ornaments, or scale of the evergreen, Simon played with a set of old wooden trains on the floor by the nutcrackers.
“I’ve been reading to him,” Liv’s mother said.
“Has he read to you?” Liv asked.
The parents both looked at Simon.
“Simon, do you want to read a book?” Claire asked.
“No, no, thank you.”
“Just this one about trains?” Claire asked.
He hopped up from the floor, and climbed into her lap. She turned the pages while he read. The parents, vigilant, incredulous, the mother whispering, “But he can’t have known this story, Olivia. This is one of your books.” As though this were a magic trick, amazing, but staged. Afterward, she brought Simon into her lap, and had him read aloud from the pile of books beside her.
Claire scrutinized the ornaments while the parents carried Simon to bed, and tucked him in. A strange house, and strangers, but he kissed her and Liv goodnight, and wandered away from them willingly.
“What are you parents’ names?”
“Dennis and Susan.”
“Great, now I can stop thinking of them as ‘the parents.’”
“I have this sense that they like Simon.”
“It’s possible,” Claire said.
“He’s certainly at his best. I thought my mother would go into shock when he sounded out expedition.”
“He’s a faker. His story at home—Jane’s Perilous Expedition—is an old standard. But he is in rare form, same as you. How does she seem to you?”
“It’s hard to say. She looks better, more energetic, but she might just be high on Simon.”
“Are they winding down?” Claire asked.
“Oh yes. And you? Do you want to go out?”
Claire shook her head, astonished that it had never occurred to her that they might escape for a few hours on their own.
“Are you sure? For a drink, or some music?”
“Shouldn’t we all be on our best behavior?”
“What does that mean, no fun? I wasn’t raised by Congregationalists, my folks are cool with us going out.”
“No,” Claire said. “Tomorrow night, maybe. I think I’m done for the night as well.”
“Ready for your own bed in your own room?”
“Are they light sleepers?”
“The lightest.”
“Fun.”
Liv turned off the lights on the tree, and wandered through the main floor, checking that the doors were locked, and the rest of the lights off. In the darkened entryway, Claire waited for her. Standing there, she could see it, Liv at seventeen, dropping from her bedroom window to the grass below, to meet some girl in some park, to huddle among the trees, or in a car, both of their hearts unstable.
“Your boy,” Susan said from the landing above Claire, “is precious.”
Claire had started, and gasped. She cleared her throat, willed herself not to laugh. “Thank you.”
“Has Liv explained to you about the rooms?”
“No,” Claire said. “She hasn’t.”
“My great aunt played poker. She was incorrigible, lied just to hear herself talking. Every one of her stories ended with a close friend of hers getting shot. I admired her.” Wood on the landing shifted with her weight. Claire closed her eyes a moment to listen to the house—the fan blew air from the furnace, shifted the pale curtains in the room beyond them. “She said the worst thing a host could do was deny any guest the right to a room of her own.”
Claire opened her eyes, peered into the dark. She could see Susan’s teeth, a glare from her eyes.
“So I always give each guest her own room, and allow her to choose.” She’d started back up the stairs when she laughed. “Good night, girls.”
“Asshole,” Claire whispered to Liv.
“Told you I wasn’t raised by Congregationalists.”
“Your mom’s great aunt had a lover.”
“Several.”
“How many girls have you brought home?”
“Dozens.”
“Liar,” Claire said.
“Come to bed.”
“Say you’re a liar.”
“I am.”
Liv took two steps and looked back, a negative: her shorn hair, her luminous eyes; her neck, her arm on the banister, her forehead; light reduced her to fractions.
“Wait for me,” Claire said, thinking of boot prints in the grass, a girl checking her watch, anxious that it might not happen.
Thirty-one
Cancer mom and other bedtime stories
Liv followed the light downstairs. In the rocker, her mother slept with her head bowed. On the glass table at her right, potpourri and an African violet, a blue-jean quilt across her lap. Unsure whether waking her or leaving her would be crueler, Liv hesitated, and her mother woke.
“You’re here,” her mother said.
Liv stepped forward.
“I thought I couldn’t sleep,” her mother said.
“I’ll help you back upstairs.”
“No. Maybe the couch.”
Liv grabbed the folded fleece blanket from the back of the couch, attempted to swaddle her mother before she’d even managed to lie down. Cold, and imperiously white, this had always been Liv’s least favorite room. Stark and sterile, vaguely medicinal; she sensed that now more than ever, tucking the blue-jean quilt around her mother.
“Well, this is snug. You’ll get the light?”
“I will,” Liv said. “Do you need anything to drink?”
“I’m fine. I should sleep, I think. And if I don’t, I’m already downstairs.”
“You look good,” Liv said, perched on the edge of the sofa. She wanted to touch her mother’s face, but resisted.
“Yes, cancer’s made me glamorous.”
Liv reached out, rested her hand on her mother’s forehead, brushed her fingers over her eyes. Touched her as though she were Simon.
“You don’t have cancer anymore.”
“Or my breasts.”
After the scare, Liv thought. After the scare is worse. You think you’re free, that you have survived the worst of it. Your mother’s anger is harder than her cancer.
“I’ve never met a Simon before.”
“I hadn’t either.”
“She could be your double.”
“My stand-in for my film career?”
“Yes, precisely. She’s the sort of woman—capable—a consummate woman, isn’t she? Adept at everything, the sort of person the world seems to be generous with.”
Liv smoothed her mother’s eyebrows, followed the course of her cheekbones.
“I’ve always envied,” her mother said, “women like that: powerful.”
“Sleep,” Liv whispered.
“And you with a child, Olivia. You with a child was worth staying alive for.”
Her breathing deepened, her eyelids fluttered, but Liv kept tracing her mother’s face. Kept thinking the word, Indelible.
Thirty-two
Naps with Chinese dinosaurs
Almost before anyone else sat down, the bacon had been
consumed; Susan had laughed at the empty dish, patted Simon’s head, and made more. Now he ate pancake shapes at the table with huckleberry syrup and slabs of butter. Liv and Dennis were taking Simon to the OMSI exhibit of China’s Ancient Giants—they’d offered to take him to the zoo to ride the train, but he’d elected the dinosaur exhibit instead. They’d take the convertible, despite the month, just for the adventure of it.
Simon had imagined a car that changed—that converted—into a robot, and so, standing in the garage looking at the blue Dodge, was disappointed. Once they pulled onto the road, he freaked completely. He worried that his hat would sail away, that he’d be blown out, that someone could grab him and he’d be lost.
Claire had stayed with Susan to help bake pies, and de-bone the turkey. Susan had advocated that she was perfectly capable of handling all the prep for dinner on her own, but she had been overruled by the others, and been awarded her assistant by coup.
In the backyard, with the recycling, Claire stood admiring the fence, the tidy garden area, the lawn furniture. Dressed in a sweater, she found the Portland morning bearable, and like most visits, clear-skied. She heard the door open behind her, and said, “The weather always behaves when I visit.”
“Then you should come more often,” Susan said. “In the spring, Simon would see the zoo at its best.”
She carried two garbage bags, and Claire relieved her of them. “Dennis loves this yard. This summer, I slept in the hammock while he weeded, and watered, and mowed. Laziest summer I’ve had in decades.”
In the kitchen, Claire peeled and cored apples, zested lemons, chopped anything laid before her. They listened to Hank Williams. Susan told stories of her own children when they were small. Seemed, now, grateful they were grown.
“Olivia was a great contrarian: everything was its opposite. ‘Close the door’ meant ‘open it’ and ‘no thanks’ meant ‘absolutely’ and I spent years interpreting every sentence. Later, when she was in school, and bored, I wondered if she needed complication in order to thrive. You know what I mean? Simple would never be enough for Olivia. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing, but I think it’s true.
“She brought home her first girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner when she was fifteen. I’d never actually considered the possibility, but in comes this chatterbox, and Olivia looking at her like she’s Helen, and I thought, ‘well, yes, I see that alright.’
“It was one of the most eventful dinners we ever had. The pumpkin pie exploded, and one of the dogs discovered the box of chocolates, and this chatterbox asked if she could have a glass of wine.” Susan laughed. “And I was young; hardly forty. My god.” She brought Claire several sweet potatoes and yams to cube. “Speaking of wine,” she said. “We should have a glass. Red or white?”
“Red.”
“Good girl.”
Susan poured a cab, set the glass at Claire’s station. Sliced a baguette, Irish cheddar, one of the skinless apples. Claire wondered if Liv’s succession of girlfriends had monikers, and what her own might be. Simon’s mother, in all likelihood, or the one with Simon.
Susan, wheezing, sat down beside Claire, and admonished her for working. Forced her to rest and indulge. They finished the cheddar before anything else, and Claire sliced more on the plastic cutting board with the unrelenting German knives.
It was painful to her, sitting like this with an older woman, listening to stories, drinking wine, tending the kitchen subversively, as though this were the field trip, and the others on some tedious errand.
“Were any of them serious,” Claire asked, “Liv’s girlfriends?”
Susan pulled another chair round to her side to rest her legs. Her little socked feet hung off the end of the seat. Above her, a crocheted canary swung on fishing line from the ceiling.
“I know she had one on the east coast that got serious, serious enough for her to leave school after they broke up. And Meg. Meg was serious. I wondered at the time—” Here she looked up at Claire, and dropped the story.
“Wondered?” Claire prodded.
“Some things are effortless—skills, athletics, friendships—for some people. Meg and Liv were like that: effortless, intuitive. I remember thinking they must’ve had each other wiretapped. But, like I said before, simple was never enough for Olivia.”
Claire drank her wine. Wondered where Meg had fallen, high school or later.
“Tell me something,” Susan said.
“Alright.”
“Are you lonely, raising Simon on your own? Besides Olivia, I mean. I remember being so lonely when my children were little, so isolated. I don’t mean to be maudlin, or self-indulgent, but cancer has been like that for me too. Illness is, I suppose, isolating. Have you been lonely as a mother?”
“Not while my aunt was alive. She died last January. Afterward, I got so frightened. At the funeral, I started shaking and couldn’t stop. Terrified what would become of us, Simon with just me to look after him.”
“You lived with your aunt?”
“Yes.”
“I stayed with my mother for a summer after Olivia was born. She kept a goat farm in Canada. We were like frontier women. I hated every goddamned minute of that arduous summer. Deprivation. That’s the way I remember that summer. No men, no conversation, no newspaper. We had the radio, the goats, and each other, and none of that was enough.”
After the museum, Dennis drove them to Peanut Butter and Ellie’s for lunch. Simon talked endlessly, to everyone in the café, about ‘the king one’ that he’d seen at the exhibit. Liv had bought him a model of the Tyrannosaurus, and Simon waved the model about, roaring at the rest of the patrons.
They ordered two peanut butter and banana sandwiches with local honey, and a peanut butter and marionberry special on French toast. Simon ate his, and half of Dennis’ and drank a milkshake as well.
“Growth spurt,” Dennis remarked, as Simon finished off their carrots.
He growled at Liv. “The king one eats your face!”
“If your dinosaur doesn’t, you probably will.”
“Simon,” Dennis said, “what say we go home, and I show you my trains?”
He paused, nodded, and walked straight from the restaurant, leaving his coat, his hat, and his party behind. Liv sprinted after him, found him on the sidewalk admiring a yellow bicycle with a banana seat.
“Look, Liv,” he said. “Look. We’ll ride it?”
“We’re going to ride in the convertible.”
“No. No, thank you. I want to ride this.”
“You’ll pedal?”
“OK.”
Proprietarily, he placed his hand on the bicycle, but Dennis came out, spoiling their getaway, and Simon let go of the bicycle, followed obediently behind to climb again into the topless car.
Cinnamon. More than any other scent, cinnamon informed the kitchen. Claire grinned with wine, her sentences brighter, the air around them lightened, comical. She’d been frightened of this woman. Intimidated, as though it were her own homecoming rather than Liv’s. She’d been afraid of Susan’s anger. Instead, she found herself baking pies, sewing a turkey, opening a second bottle of wine.
“Mama,” Simon shouted from the porch. “Mama, look.”
They’d grabbed him, and Claire could hear the scuffle, the soothing pitch of Liv’s voice, the child struggling as his winter layers were removed. “Mama! Stop it. Let go. Mama! Help me.”
She and Susan came out of the kitchen, their aprons greasy, and officious, as though they were lunch ladies on a cigarette break.
Liv had lifted Simon to remove his shoes, and held him straight out like Superman. He extended his dinosaur to Claire.
“Look, Mama. The king one.”
“Scary,” she said.
He roared, and—released, finally from Liv’s stranglehold—lunged at his mother.
“The king one,” he whispered as he curled into her. “I like this one.” The dinosaur kissed her as she carried Simon upstairs. His blanket pulled to his ch
in, he was asleep before she left the room.
Liv had followed her up, and waited in the hallway.
“You’ve never seen anything like this kid ate today.” Liv cocked her head, grinned. “Oh, you’re drunk.”
“Yes.”
“How’s Mom?”
“Drunk as well.”
“Yeah? Interesting afternoon?”
“I’ve been hearing all about Meg, and the chatterbox, and the suck-face kisser, and the summer of goats and deprivation, and the time you and Kimmie Grant played chicken on the freeway, and the cops brought you home and your mother slapped you.”
“Wow.”
“You were a troubled kid.”
“Do you think, maybe, you should lie down for a nap too?”
Claire considered this. “Yeah. I think so.” She walked into their room, and crawled beneath the comforter, still wearing her apron.
“So, Mom,” Liv said as she walked into the kitchen. “What’s with the drunken indiscretions?”
“Claire wasn’t indiscreet. Come sit down.”
“How did you know about the suck-face kisser?”
“Bailey told me.”
“Traitors,” Liv said, sipping her mother’s wine. “This is good.”
“Have the rest of Claire’s glass.”
“They’re both out.”
“Your father too.”
“You’d better have a nap as well.”
“I don’t nap.”
“Uh huh,” said Liv. “The turkey smells amazing.”
“I’ve never sewed a turkey before. It was a little gruesome, holding it together.”
“If you tell all your stories this trip, what will we talk about next visit?”
“Oh, Olivia, I could never exhaust all the stories about you. I forgot to tell her about the time you started the brawl at the basketball tournament, and then won the Best Sportsmanship plaque.”
“Mom, you get that I like this woman, right?”
“Yes, darling, I have sussed that out.”
“Great. So we’re done with the mayhem stories. I’m actually not that fucked-up kid from high school anymore. I haven’t been rushed to the emergency room, or hurt in a fight in—” Liv stopped, closed her eyes, exhaled. “She doesn’t have to learn it all at once.”
