Allison shrugged.
“You don’t seem okay,” Ruth said.
“No, I am.”
Ruth sighed. “Home or the studio?”
“Home, please.”
And that was all any of them said until Ruth pulled into Mimi’s driveway, except that Allison didn’t get out.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said, and then, in a small voice without a hint of attitude, she said, “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful. I don’t know why.”
“Oh, honey,” Ruth said.
“Maybe you could come over sometime,” Allison said to Bethy.
“Really?”
Allison nodded because she was crying, and then they were all crying and then laughing about it, and Allison gave them both an awkward hug from the backseat, and with supreme dignity put on her big movie-star sunglasses, climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and waved like anything as they drove away.
ALL AROUND HER, THE HOUSE WAS SILENT. GRATEFUL, Allison closed and locked the front door, went into her bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her mother had had the same size boobs as Allison would probably wind up with—a 34B, probably—before Chet-the-Oilman bought her a new pair a couple of Christmases ago. Allison thought they looked like someone had slipped big, hard doughnuts inside her chest. They came at you suddenly, too. Flat back, no underarm fat, bony chest, suddenly one boob, then nothing over the breastbone, then another sudden boob, then flat over the rest of the rib cage and other underarm. Her mom thought she looked great, though. Ever since she’d gotten them, she hardly ever wore anything except a thong when she was just hanging around the house, especially if Chet was home. Allison thought it was sad, because she didn’t look half as good as she thought she did. Her butt was flat and saggy at the bottom; she had a lot of little moles. Allison thought Chet didn’t have very high standards. Or maybe he did, and that was why he’d done what he’d done to her in the cabana.
Before him, her mom had been okay with the regular men at the lounge where she used to work. She called it a lounge, but it was a strip club. Allison had known that for years, even though her mother thought she didn’t. She used to go into her mom’s bureau and closet sometimes when she wasn’t home and look at all her stuff. She never tried any of it on, though. She didn’t even actually touch any of it; she only used the hangers or a tissue to move it around, as though the clothes were radioactive or coated with poison. There were these clear acrylic shoes about a foot tall, and bikini underwear with no crotches. There were bras that were nothing but a couple of feathers and some string. One of her mom’s girlfriends had made it all. Her name was Cynthia, but she called herself Delicious. That’s how she’d answer her phone: Hi, this is Delicious Delight! How can I help you? She had a laugh like a mule. The year after Allison’s mom got her faux boobs, Cynthia had gotten them, too, and the next time she came over to the house she took off her top to show Denise and Allison. “Go on,” she’d told Allison. “You can touch them if you want to.” Allison hadn’t wanted to.
Now she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, watching her reflection raise her arms high over her head. The undersides were crisscrossed with so many cuts, if you squinted a little bit they all ran together. Before Allison had started on them, her arms had been white white white, with blue veins that looked like they were about a millimeter below the skin. Sometimes when she cut there, she’d pierce the veins without even trying. You heard a little pop—or maybe you just felt it—and then they bled for a little while, but not for as long as you’d think, before they clotted. When she did that, she just blotted up the blood with toilet paper and flushed it so no one would see bloody stuff in the wastebasket and ask questions.
Now she turned on the water in the bathtub, got the temperature just right, and poured in some aromatic bath salts she’d bought the other day. Then, while the tub was filling, she dug her box cutter out of the back of a drawer, sat on the covered toilet, and spread her legs wide.
After the first cut, she didn’t feel a thing.
THAT NIGHT HUGH WAS WASHING UP HIS MEAGER SUPPER dishes—he’d eaten what he’d come to think of as his white meal: a baked potato, boneless, skinless chicken breast, and steamed cauliflower—when Ruth called for a long talk, something she hadn’t initiated in weeks. Apparently there had been some disaster with an audition, though he was a little shaky on the details; and for the first time he detected a pure note of doubt. Mostly he just let her talk. “Of course I understand that she’s not going to book everything, I mean, my God, the competition’s just overwhelming and there are so many kids,” she was saying. “But the thing is, you can only hear no so many times.”
“I know that, Ruthie. I’ve been saying that.”
“Well, I must not have been ready to listen, then. I keep trying to tell myself she’s serving an apprenticeship, just like if she were becoming a carpenter or a welder or something, but the difference is, normal apprentices get to work, don’t they, even if it’s at entry-level stuff. I mean, they’d at least get to solder a piece of metal to another piece of metal, or hammer two boards together, you know?”
Hugh smiled and nodded. He suspected it was all a little more complicated than that, but it was best never to stop Ruth in the middle of one of her analogies.
“Don’t you see?” she was saying, as though he’d been arguing a point instead of quietly clipping his fingernails over the kitchen sink. “It’s an impossible system, just impossible,” she said. “And she told me she thought she’d let me down. Me. And I found that chilling, I really did.”
“I can see why,” Hugh said.
“And these people they audition for, none of them must have children of their own or they couldn’t possibly treat the kids the way they do. Texting someone in the middle of her audition, I mean, really, it’s just too much.”
“Texting?”
“Bethy said one of the people she auditioned for was texting on her cell phone.”
“Oh.”
“That can’t possibly have been necessary.”
“I’d think not,” Hugh said mildly.
“Well, I just don’t know.”
“No,” said Hugh, and left it at that. He knew better than to expect the conversation to conclude with any sort of resolution. He had learned a long time ago that you couldn’t lead Ruth to a conclusion before she was ready, no matter how obvious it might be to those around her. Her earnestness, her willingness to take on life’s hard work herself instead of taking someone else’s word for it, was a quality that he found endearing. (His mother, on the other hand, who drew her scathing conclusions directly from other people’s folly, had always found it maddening. “What,” Helene liked to say, “you have to jump in the river to know you can drown?”)
“And you?” Ruth was saying.
“What?”
“How are you?”
Hugh washed the fingernail clippings down the drain. Six months ago he would never have dreamed of clipping his fingernails in the kitchen sink. It was only one of a growing list of ways he was slowly but steadily sinking into domestic torpor, but what was the point of bringing it up? She was agitated enough. So he just said, “My numbers have been good. Manny’s pleased.”
“Oh, honey. Does the testing still hurt? I can’t imagine sticking my fingertips all day. Especially with the work you do.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“I miss you,” she said abruptly, and he could tell she meant it.
“I know, honey; I miss you, too. Is there anything I can do? Should I talk to Bethy?”
“I just dropped her off at Mimi’s for a couple of hours. She and Allison have made up. At least that’s one good thing.”
“Well, sure,” he said. “I like the girl.”
After they’d said good night, Hugh closely examined the crease in his slacks. Were they too far gone to wear again tomorrow? Probably so. On the other hand, he thought if he put on a fresh shi
rt to tease the eye upward, he could probably get away with them for one more day.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, FEELING LIKE AN IDIOT, RUTH inched down Barham Boulevard in a bolus of traffic. Consulting her directions, she turned onto Lake Hollywood Drive and then snaked up the hill. The higher she drove, the more beautiful the houses: mullioned windows and window boxes planted with ivy and lavender, wrought iron detailing, cobbled driveways, and the unmistakable smell of money. Ruth sighed. The psychic had told her that her house was behind a wooden fence.
Ruth found the fence and snugged the car into the curb between a snappy Mercedes coupe and a Nissan Sentra with metal fatigue, which probably belonged to the hired help. She locked the car door, clearing her throat and rearranging Allison’s beautiful Gucci scarf around her throat. She pushed open a warped door in the fence, half expecting an alarm system to go off, though it didn’t; inside, there was a deeply shaded little courtyard paved in mossy bricks and haphazardly furnished with weathered wooden Adirondack chairs and a table made from an overturned industrial cable spool. Beyond was a screen door, and beyond that was a wooden door, which Ruth opened hesitantly. Nowhere was there a sign indicating that an office lay within. But when she pushed open the door a woman’s voice, lightly accented, called out, “Ruth? Come on in and close the door hard, really slam it. It sticks. I’ll be ready in a minute.” Ruth slammed the door, which didn’t quite close. She pulled the last inch to and the door gave in with a splintery sigh.
Ruth expected to find a tacky beaded curtain or smells of burning sage or incense, but in actuality the room was cheerfully neutral: blond Scandinavian furniture, wheat-colored upholstery, bright orange walls, glossy white chair rail and mopboards, wood blinds at the windows. Some kind of noise was playing: ocean waves and seabirds. Ruth had expected the place to be ridiculous, but it wasn’t. It was straightforward and reassuring and oddly, even clinically, professional. Ruth couldn’t tell if this was the waiting room or—what would it be called?—the séance room itself. She sat on the edge of a stiff loveseat.
“Whew.” A tall woman came in rubbing her wet hair with a towel. She looked like a Pilates instructor—blond, fit, mid-forties, laugh lines. She reached into a small refrigerator in a corner of the room and pulled out a container and a plastic spoon. “I’m sorry—my yoga class ran late, and then there was the traffic, always the traffic.” She raised the container in her hand like a toast. “Yogurt,” she said. “Would you like some? No? I can’t seem to get enough of it. What do you think that means?”
The woman was a psychic; shouldn’t she know? While Ruth tried to come up with something insightful, the woman sat in a chair, pulled off the container’s foil top, and sank in a spoon. Ruth’s stomach growled. She was dieting again, and it wasn’t going well. There was every possibility that she’d leave here and go straight to Porto’s for something big and fat-laden, a brownie or a wedge of red velvet cake.
The woman had evidently said something Ruth had missed, because she seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“I said I’m glad you’re here,” she said, clamping her spoon between her teeth and reaching across to shake Ruth’s hand. “I’m Elva. Elva Morganstern.”
Morganstern? Vee hadn’t said this was a Jewish psychic. Could Jews be psychic?
“I’m a Morganstern by marriage,” the psychic said, looking amused even though Ruth hadn’t said a word. “My maiden name is Guòjónsdóttir. I’m Icelandic. You noticed the accent.”
“How did you know I was thinking that?”
The woman just smiled.
“You know, I’m not really comfortable with this,” Ruth said.
“With—?” Elva opened her arms wide, taking in the whole room and, presumably, the activities that happened therein.
Ruth nodded.
“That’s all right. A lot of people feel that way the first time they come here.” The psychic dropped her yogurt container in a wastebasket. “Thanks for letting me eat my breakfast, by the way. I know it’s not very professional. All right, then, let’s do this—let’s get your payment taken care of. I do ask for it up front, so that will be fifty dollars for a half hour. I take Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express.” She took a credit card machine out of the desk. “Or cash, of course, but no one really uses cash anymore, do they?”
Ruth pulled a Visa card out of her wallet. There’d be no fooling Hugh when he saw the statement. She chose not to think about it. The psychic swiped the card and punched in a few numbers very efficiently, as though she could take people’s money even in her sleep. Then she smiled at Ruth and said, “Let’s go in and see what we can see. Yes, right through there.”
They went into an inner room. Ruth half-expected to see some sort of clinical equipment, but instead there was a large potted ficus; a batik quilt showing a river, a deer, and a log cabin; a small blond credenza; a large blond desk; and two comfortable-looking chairs that Ruth recognized from IKEA. Ruth sat in hers and bounced a little. At IKEA they had a display that showed the exact same chair being pummeled over and over by a piston, presumably to show the chair’s durability and resilience.
The psychic sat down on a small loveseat opposite Ruth, took a deep, slow breath, and said, “Let’s dim the lights. Okay?”
Ruth sat forward on the edge of her seat.
“You’re nervous about this, aren’t you?” said the psychic.
“I know I’m being silly. Go ahead.”
The psychic turned a dimmer switch and the room darkened. Ruth could see a palm tree in the outside yard casting a shadow on the window.
“Now,” said the psychic. “Let’s see the hand.”
“What?”
Elva pointed. “Your hand.”
“Oh!” Ruth turned her hand over. The psychic placed it, helpless as a turtle, across her knee and then stroked the palm with her index finger, over and over. The palm began to sweat. It tickled, and Ruth could feel herself on the brink of nervous, hysterical giggles. She cleared her throat. Elva Morganstern smiled pleasantly. “You really are uncomfortable with this, aren’t you?”
Ruth sighed. “I’m trying not to be.”
“You know, a lot of people who come here feel exactly the way you do. And I should come clean.” She inclined toward Ruth confidentially and said, “I can’t cure cancer and I won’t be sacrificing a goat.”
“What?” Then Ruth realized she was being teased. “Oh!”
The psychic settled back, smiling. “Is there anything in particular that you want me to pay attention to?”
“Well, we’re here—that is, my daughter and I—so she can act, but I’m beginning to have my doubts about whether it’s a good idea. I used to think I knew, but she’s only booked one thing in six months, and I gather when she turns fourteen, which is in June, she’ll start being at an in-between age where she won’t be booking anything, maybe for a couple of years, and yet I don’t want to cheat her of opportunities because we are not quitters, so if I just had some sense of an outcome…” Ruth wound down, winded and embarrassed.
“All right. I need to close my eyes for a minute. It helps me gather things up.”
Ruth watched the psychic’s beautiful Viking bones. Her eyelids were a faint, marbled blue, and beneath them Ruth could see her eyes moving around. That was a little unnerving. What was she seeing back there? When she abruptly opened her eyes, Ruth jumped.
“Well!” said Elva, smoothing her hair like she’d been caught in a high wind. Then she cleared her throat.
“What?”
“Are you stuck—do you feel stuck in place right now? Because I’m sensing that something will break loose for you in the next couple of weeks,” Elva said. “There’s a different energy. It may be health-related, and it may act like an opportunity of some kind. I sense a fork in the road, a place where you can choose a direction to move in.”
“Health-related—is it Hugh, my husband? Because he’s diabetic, except we only found out recently, and I’ve been—well, to tell the truth, I’ve b
een annoyed with him about it, and now, if something happens to him, it’s going to be my fault somehow—”
“I don’t think so.”
“Bethany? Oh my God—”
Elva grasped Ruth’s hand firmly, as though to keep her from blowing away. “There’s no reason to think this is something frightening. It may be something that is, in itself, very minor. All I know is, the energy is different, and it may give you a chance to look at your circumstances differently. It doesn’t mean you’ll change what you’re doing; it may just mean you’ll reaffirm it.”
But Ruth was busy thinking. “Is it me? Because if something’s going to happen to me, I’ll need to put someone on standby for Bethy, maybe Vee Velman—”
The psychic sighed. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. You know, it’s best not to take these signs literally.”
Ruth sensed that the woman was getting annoyed, but what did she expect when she was doling out alarming news? “Can’t you look again? Maybe a little harder? Maybe if you squint—”
“It really doesn’t work that way.”
Ruth subsided. So that was it, then; a vague warning about a health issue that could be anything from hives to a heart attack. Ruth felt like she’d put twenty quarters in a gumball machine that had burped out a single misshapen gumball and then died. Fifty dollars, and she felt worse now than she had an hour ago. She could just hear Hugh’s patient voice in her head, saying, “For heaven’s sake, Ruthie, what did you expect? What you do down there is our decision, nobody else’s.” And he’d be right, of course.
But still.
And just like that, the psychic stood up and Ruth’s half hour was over. She shook Ruth’s hand very cordially and Ruth walked out of the room and out of the house and got into her hot car and headed straight to Porto’s on Hollywood Boulevard and Magnolia and methodically consumed a chocolate mousse, an éclair, a slab of Neopolitan ice cream, and a Diet Pepsi. Then she called Vee and reported what the psychic had said.
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