Much Ado About Mother

by Bonaduce, Celia

  “I’m sorry, Dymphna,” she finally said. “I don’t know the signs of a distraught rabbit.”

  “Look around the yard,” Dymphna said, sweeping her hands in an arc to encompass everything. She lowered her voice so as not to attract any attention from the newspeople.

  Virginia looked around the yard. Clumps of little furry tumbleweeds rolled across the lawn with every hint of breeze.

  “They’re losing their fur?” Virginia asked.

  “Yes,” Dymphna said.

  She unlatched the cage of the rabbit she was petting and put it on the ground. Virginia remembered that this rabbit, with his little black booties, was named Paws. Paws hopped a few steps then halted, looked around, then hopped again and stopped again. Virginia wondered if perhaps his name was actually Pause. She looked up to see Dymphna putting more rabbits on the ground.

  “Rabbits need to be free for several hours a day,” Dymphna said.

  So that’s what’s happened to the lawn.

  “And they need to feel safe,” Dymphna said. “How can they feel secure with all of that?”

  She pointed accusingly toward the newspeople.

  A slight wind wafted through the yard and a great cloud of bunny fur lifted into the air.

  “They are very hairy,” Virginia said, treading carefully. “Isn’t it reasonable for them to lose some fur?”

  “Not like this,” Dymphna practically wailed as they watched the tufts of fur float away. “I brush them twice a day. Molting like this is just angst.”

  Angst?

  Caro appeared out of nowhere, plopping down on all fours in the middle of the rabbits. Virginia’s breath caught at the sight of him. He was sporting his lion cut and looked more the predator than ever as he turned his head slowly from right to left, scanning the rabbits. Virginia started toward him, but Dymphna put her hand on Virginia’s arm.

  “Don’t worry. They’re all friends.”

  It was true. Virginia watched in amazement as Caro jumped gleefully around the rabbits. He’d bat at one and the rabbit would hop at him. Caro would dart away and begin the game again with another bunny. Virginia was relieved but thought the majestic cat looked ridiculous in his new role of rabbit whisperer.

  Virginia suddenly picked up Caro and held him up to the sunlight. She studied him from several angles. Caro stared back, clearly displeased by being interrupted in his game of cat and rabbit.

  “What is it, Virginia?” Dymphna asked, looking up at the cat, her eyebrows knit.

  “Let me see your iPad,” Virginia said.

  CHAPTER 20

  ERINN

  “Goldfish do not need air,” Blu insisted. “I brought one home in a plastic bag from a fair once. He was fine.”

  “He was fine for an hour or so, Blu. Not for long,” Erinn said. “Fish need air. You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

  “But I want to make a five-inch-heeled see-through shoe with a goldfish in the platform,” Blu said. “I can’t do that if the fish needs air.”

  “That isn’t the fish’s fault,” Erinn said, not quite believing that she was being subjected to this conversation. “Besides, there are other problems. You couldn’t feed the fish, the fish would be . . . concussed, for lack of a better word, when you walked.”

  “Not to mention, when the fish pooped you would see it,” Mac, the shoe factory owner, added.

  He and Blu burst into guffaws. Erinn chided herself for not asking more questions before they got to Shoe-B-Due, the hole-in-the-wall shoe factory. Blu bought many of her custom five-inch platforms from Mac and had convinced him that he would be getting incredible media exposure if he would just let her TV crew shoot here. Erinn was impressed that Blu had been so resourceful, but now she was having second thoughts.

  Mac’s interest in Blu was certainly not conveyed with the same professionalism as Dr. Roberts’s had been. Mac ogled Blu at every opportunity. This would make for just the sort of lowbrow TV that Cary was looking for; a series about an aging starlet needed this sort of heat. However, Erinn just couldn’t stand to shoot it.

  She looked around the factory. It was a long and narrow space in an industrial park in the San Fernando Valley, a half hour and a world away from Santa Monica. “The Valley,” as it was called by friends and foes alike, was a giant suburb of Los Angeles that was always a good ten degrees warmer than the Westside (of which Santa Monica was the farthest point west). Besides housing thousands of families, a few studios, and a well-known sushi restaurant or two, The Valley’s main claim to fame was its dubious distinction of being the porn capital of the United States. It was probably the porn industry’s need for flamboyant hooker shoes that kept Shoe-B-Due in business.

  The factory had several long tables, filled with various samples of colored leather, heels of impossible heights, platform bases, and an entire table full of sparkling add-ons, like rhinestones, charms, and buckles.

  “Let’s see what else we can come up with,” Erinn said, leading the group to the accessory table. She looked at Blu. “Tell me exactly why you own a shoe factory.”

  Blu blinked. “I don’t.”

  “I know you don’t,” Erinn said. “But you came up with the idea, didn’t you, that you’d like to own a shoe factory?”

  “Oh, that.” Blu giggled and looked at Mac through long lashes. “Yes, my idea is that I want to sell five- to seven-inch heels to housewives so they’ll feel better about themselves.”

  “How do you envision that working?” Erinn asked.

  “They’d feel hot. Ya know . . . sexy,” piped up Mac.

  “Thank you, Mac,” Erinn said. “But I was addressing Blu. I need to know why Blu would think housewives, who have to shop and clean and chase kids and drive cars, would feel better about themselves if they were attempting to do all that in ridiculous shoes.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Blu said. “You don’t see any value in being sexy.”

  Erinn felt as if she’d been slapped. She caught Opie’s surprised reaction, which obviously embarrassed him. He suddenly became engrossed in the dials on his audio rig.

  “Perhaps I just have a different definition of sexy,” Erinn said, although she wondered why she felt she needed to qualify this insult. “Perhaps I think being well read and up-to-date on world events is a kind of sexy.”

  “Well, you’d be wrong,” Mac said. “The women who are going to buy these shoes don’t give a rat’s ass about world events and neither do the men who fuck . . . uh . . . marry them.”

  Erinn knew this conversation was getting them nowhere. She focused on the task at hand: selling the idea that somewhere there were women running busy households who would be lining up to buy hooker shoes from Blu Knight’s fictitious factory.

  Erinn picked up a little charm from the accessories table. It was two small red rhinestone cherries connected to a green stem. Erinn paired it with a platform base with a hole cut out.

  “What about this?” she asked, holding up the charm inside the cutout of the platform. She held it out to Mac to inspect. “Would you be able to create something like this?”

  “Yep,” Mac said. “And if the charm falls off, we can say Blu lost her cherry again.”

  Erinn stood stock-still as she waited for Mac and Blu to stop their convulsive laughter.

  “I’m glad we have a consensus on the design,” Erinn said.

  She called Opie over and put the camera up to her eye. She knew it was going to be a long afternoon. One good thing about these days with Blu was that they took all of Erinn’s concentration. She couldn’t dwell on Christopher or the fact that he was moving Alice’s art pieces to his studio.

  She sometimes felt that her maturity level was dropping as she got older. In her younger days, she would have accepted the fact that the few kisses she and Christopher had exchanged meant nothing. Even as a teenager, a kiss did not make you exclusive. But, as a teenager, nobody had an ex-wife. The harsh reality of Alice brought back painful memories of coupledom. There were many
possibilities for explaining Christopher’s actions: Christopher still loved his ex-wife but was using Erinn to shore himself up emotionally. OR Christopher had no residual feelings for his wife and was just being honorable showing her work at his studio. OR Christopher was showing her work at his studio because he thought she was a great artist.

  Of all the possibilities, the idea that Christopher thought Alice was a great artist pinched the most. Erinn was used to coming in last when the man she was interested in just wanted a showpiece. In her Broadway years, she had practically stepped aside when a beautiful woman came into the domestic picture. She once told Suzanna that if a man were interested in physical beauty alone, there really wasn’t anything she could do about it. It was as if a man announced he was gay and leaving her for another man. She couldn’t fight that. His desire lay in the opposite direction of her very essence. Fighting for him would just be silly. But if intellect, wit, and artistry were on the menu, watch out. She would go brain cell to brain cell with anyone.

  That confidence seemed to have leaked away over the years. Could her work on reality TV stand up to a moose head made of beer cans? In Christopher’s mind, probably not. In her own mind, definitely not—and she wasn’t overly impressed with the moose head in the first place. Sure, it took a lot of patience, but was it art? It occurred to Erinn that perhaps that was the scariest part of this. Alice seemed to have a lot of patience. Alice could visualize what she wanted. And Alice could wait.

  Erinn snapped out of her thoughts, back to the juvenile antics of Blu and Mac. There was nothing to do but muscle through. Mac put a pair of shoes together in record time; in minutes, he had a Lucite pair of five-inch heels, a three-inch platform base with the cherry charm dangling in the middle. Blu studied the shoes. Erinn had to admit that the woman seemed to know what she was looking for. Blu had a practiced eye when it came to shameless footwear.

  “What size shoe do you wear?” Blu asked Erinn.

  “A seven.”

  “Good. These are a seven. Put them on.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mac said. “Why not?”

  “As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,” Erinn replied, “ ‘Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.’ ”

  Mac turned to Blu.

  “What?”

  “Ignore her,” Blu said to Mac and then turned to Erinn. “You need to try these on so you can see how sexy you’ll feel. You’re all judge-y for no reason.”

  “Yeah,” Mac said. “You need to walk a mile in her moccasins before you get all judge-y.”

  “Judge-y is not a word,” Erinn said.

  Blu held out the shoes and said, “I really think you’ll be surprised how you feel about yourself.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel in your five-inch-tall moccasins. This isn’t about me.”

  “I’m not shooting anything more until you try them on. I think you’ll stop being so stuck-up.”

  “I’m not . . . ,” Erinn began and then reached for the shoes. “All right, if we can get back to work after I put these on, I’ll put them on.”

  Erinn hoisted herself onto the table and slid off her Keens, which were the shoes she always wore while working. The large rubber outer sole that curved over the toe was not particularly attractive (even Erinn admitted it made your foot look like a hoof) but it was first-class protection from falling production equipment. When a battery pack landed on your toe and you walked away—that was a thing of beauty. She put her foot into the shoe and hooked the ankle strap. She flexed her ankle. She certainly didn’t feel any overwhelming sense of sexiness overtaking her. She looked up to see Mac, Blu, and Opie staring at her. She put on the other shoe.

  “All right?” Erinn said. “I have the shoes on. Is everyone satisfied? Can we get back to work now?”

  “No,” Blu giggled. “You have to walk around in them.”

  Opie put out his hand and helped Erinn off the table. She took a tentative step. Then another. Once she had her balance she walked around the table.

  “No,” Blu said. “You can’t stomp around like a truck driver. You need to walk like this. . . .”

  Blu straightened her shoulders and swung her hips back and forth, strutting to the end of the table and back, hair extensions swinging. Mac whistled. Erinn stood teetering at the edge of the table.

  “Try it again,” Blu said.

  Erinn took a step. She wondered if perhaps she did feel a little sexier after all.

  In the end, Blu had to drive them back to Santa Monica. Erinn had an ice pack on the knee that had crashed into the cement as she took another step. She was just grateful that Opie had managed to catch the camera before it smashed into the floor.

  “Do you think it’s broken?” Blu asked, not daring to look at Erinn.

  “No. I don’t have time for it to be broken and neither do you.”

  “I could teach you how to walk. It wouldn’t kill you to act more like a girl once in a while.”

  “You know, Blu,” Erinn said, massaging her aching knee, “when girls are little, they all think they’re beautiful. Then, as they are growing up, they find their rightful place in the world. Some go to Pretty Girl Camp, some go to Smart Girl Camp. It defines them.”

  “Uh-hum,” Blu said.

  “Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes! You’re saying that I went to Pretty Girl Camp!”

  As they neared Erinn’s house, she wondered how she was going to outrun the paparazzi in the front yard with a bum knee. As they pulled up to the Victorian, it was clear the newspeople were no longer there. Were they still camped out by the back fence? Erinn directed Blu to drive through the alley; no one was around but a few of the locals walking their dogs. Relieved, though a little perplexed, Erinn had Blu drive through the neighboring alleys and back out to the front of the house. Blu parked the car, and the two of them unloaded the gear from the trunk.

  Erinn could hear her mother’s voice deep inside the house. She could also smell a rich chocolaty aroma wafting from the kitchen. Erinn beamed at Blu.

  “My mother is making fudge!” she said. Nothing would heal a bruised knee like her mother’s fudge.

  “Oh? I’ve never tasted fudge.”

  Erinn stared at Blu.

  “How is it possible that you’ve never even tasted fudge?”

  Blu shrugged, then said, “I guess they only serve it at Smart Girl Camp.”

  Erinn limped after Blu into the kitchen. Her mother was at the stove, peering into a large pot. Dymphna was seated at the table, stroking Caro. Caro looked at Erinn in acknowledgment but didn’t get up.

  Her mother lit up as the women entered, but as soon as she saw Erinn was limping, her smile fell.

  “Oh, dear, what happened?” her mother asked, coming toward her.

  Erinn limped to a chair and sat down.

  “I’m fine, Mother,” Erinn said. “Don’t stop stirring!”

  Virginia went back to the pot. Blu looked out the back door. She turned around with a pout.

  “Where are the news crews?” she asked.

  “Your mother got rid of them,” Dymphna said. “She’s amazing!”

  “What did you do?” Erinn asked.

  “What did you do?” Virginia replied, indicating the torn jeans and purpling kneecap.

  “Occupational hazard.” Erinn swept the question away. She was too embarrassed to admit she fell off a shoe. “Come on, Mother! I’ve been trying to get rid of those pests for days.”

  Virginia was obviously enjoying herself. She had a little smile on her face as she stirred the fudge. Dymphna jumped up.

  “Erinn, can you walk to the backyard?” Dymphna said. “I’ll show you!”

  “Oh, Dymphna, don’t make Erinn get up!” Virginia said from the stove.

  Erinn got up. “No, no . . . whatever it is, I want to see it!”

  Erinn and Dymphna headed into the backyard, passing Blu, who stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.

&nb
sp; “You want to come with us?” Erinn asked her.

  Blu didn’t answer but unfolded her arms. She followed the two women into the yard.

  “Look at the pens,” Dymphna said.

  Erinn limped over to the rabbit cages and let out a gasp. The rabbits were bald!

  “They look gross,” Blu said.

  “That’s the idea,” Dymphna said. “Your mom got the idea from looking at Caro’s lion’s cut. She figured if we sheared the rabbits and showed them to the news guys the show would be over! It took all day but it worked. I sheared six of them and your mother sheared four. I didn’t even have to help her.”

  Erinn was affronted that her mother didn’t think Caro looked handsome. She went back into the house just as her mother was pouring the liquid fudge into pans.

  “Mother, how did you learn how to shear rabbits?”

  “YouTube, dear,” her mother said. “How else?”

  CHAPTER 21

  VIRGINIA

  Virginia remembered her own mother and mother-in-law weighing in on her fights with Martin. It was always grim. She knew better than to interfere. Obviously, Suzanna hadn’t tripped on the tree root on purpose. Virginia’s motherly instinct was to check her daughter’s palms on a daily basis to see the progress of healing. The sight of that flyer had sent Eric into a snit, but she ignored the iciness between the couple when the three of them were together.

  Virginia admired Eric’s determination to stay above the fray. Because she was a child of the 1960s, she couldn’t resist taking sides, but having been a professor at a university she understood, all too well, the undercurrents of local politics.

  “Eric isn’t being fair,” Suzanna said to her mother as they bathed Lizzy in the claw-foot tub.

  “Every community needs an arbitrator. Eric’s role is really important.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t help if the community’s arbitrator has a mother-in-law running around shaving rabbits to help save a tree,” Suzanna said, sitting back on her heels to look at her mother. “I mean, that’s a little too perfect, isn’t it? Cute animals and a tree?”