Girl, Unframed

by Deb Caletti

  “What’s with all the texting?” Lila asked. She was back in her regular clothes, but she still had her makeup on, a bandage on her ankle.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “The booooy,” she said, singsongy. “Tell me all about him.”

  I ignored her.

  “What’s his name?”

  I was the CIA agent with state secrets.

  She moped. She stared out the window as the lights of the city flashed across her face in the darkness.

  * * *

  When we got to the hotel, Edwina had already checked us into our suite. She’d ordered dinner. This was supposed to be a vacation for her, on Buick’s dime, but she was back in her old job of taking care of us.

  “Gran!” I said, and ran to her as if I hadn’t seen her in a million years. It was kind of bratty, because I hadn’t given Lila a greeting like that.

  “What happened to your foot?” Edwina folded her arms and scowled at Lila’s bandage.

  Lila dropped her purse on one of the padded chairs. “They gave me a shoe with a razor blade for a buckle. I am in such pain right now. And what the hell. You never told me that our baby grew up.”

  She sounded mad about it. Like it was something I’d gone and done without her permission.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Exhibit 36: Sworn statement of Edwina Short, 2 of 2

  I got out of going back to the Buick set by saying I had a migraine. I feel bad about this now, because I was kind of being a shit that whole trip, but Lila understood migraines because she had migraines all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever really had one. Edwina said, Let her rest, and I’ll bring her by later.

  We sat around in the suite, watching Edwina’s favorite morning shows in luxury. The suite had a living room and three bedrooms, thanks to Buick. Then we went out for a late breakfast at the Griddle Cafe and ate until we were about to bust.

  Look! I texted. Pancakes.

  Look! The guy who washed dishes at the Cliff House restaurant, flashing me a peace sign.

  * * *

  “Everything okay at the house?” Edwina asked. She crumpled up her napkin and tossed it onto her plate before pushing it away. She must have seen Lila’s bruise, because she stared across the table like she meant business. I licked a bit of sticky syrup from my finger.

  Telling her the truth felt like tattling, but she was supposed to be looking out for me. Edwina was the one person who always did. And I was probably the one person who loved and cared for Edwina. I mean, look at the history: Her husband, Hal, ditched her and Lila. Her own father had done the same thing. She was pretty much raised by her grandmother after that. And she’d been the baby in the arms of the beautiful Ella, escaping a violent man during the 1906 earthquake.

  And now, a lot of the time, Lila treated Edwina like a servant.

  Then again, it was Edwina who’d brought Lila to LA when she was fourteen to get her into acting. She pushed her into it so they could make money to survive. Lila wasn’t at that particular coffee shop by accident. If you thought about it, Lila had sort of been a toaster to Edwina and Hal, too—useful, an object, discarded when it stopped being shiny. The women in my family have probably felt like that doll with the blank eyes and the smile for years and years and years—beautiful, voiceless, occasionally played with, tossed wherever their owner put them. Being an object was something that got handed down, same as that doll had.

  “They fight.” I didn’t tell Edwina about the paintings, or the man parked outside our house. I didn’t tell her how bad the fighting was.

  Loyalty was confusing when there was always a triangle.

  Blame was confusing when stories went so far back, you couldn’t see where they started.

  * * *

  Edwina and I didn’t meet Lila later like we said we would. I could tell she was hurt, but we didn’t want to go. We sat around watching TV in our hotel robes and then hung out by the pool, me in my bikini, Edwina in her white shorts and flowered shirt and Rite Aid sandals. We picked up Lila when filming was over. We went to dinner. Then we went back to the suite and ordered all these room service desserts. It felt like the old days, since Buick was paying. I didn’t feel guilty or worried about the cheesecake and the torte and the lemon pie.

  It was fun. Lila was kind of leaving me out then, buddying up with Edwina, teasing her about the old days, when Edwina would sit up and wait for Lila to come home after a date, even though Lila was thirty-three and already had a kid.

  An object, an owned thing. A napkin. A magazine. A knife. A toaster.

  A kid.

  Me.

  * * *

  The next day, we went out for breakfast again, the three of us this time. Edwina had brought along the latest Inside Entertainment magazine. She just loved all that stuff, which is probably why she pushed Lila in that direction in the first place. Plus money, of course. But while we waited for our food, Edwina folded the magazine to a particular page and pushed it across the table to Lila.

  “Look. Look who it is. Did you see this? Asshole.”

  “I saw.” Lila spread the thinnest layer of jam on a piece of toast. “Karma. Finally getting what he deserves.”

  It was Rex Clancy, the director. Accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of female actors. I’d heard Rex Clancy’s name in our houses for years. He was important. He’d given Lila her first role, in The Girl Is Gone. She’d also worked with him on The Winding Road before Nefarious and The Grange, that historical drama that no one saw. Rex Clancy, well, you know. He’s got, like, four chins and is the gross kind of guy with unidentifiable food in his beard.

  “What? What’d he do? Did he do something to you?” It was shocking news, but I wanted to know stuff that summer. All stuff. I wasn’t the child with tender little flower-petal ears anymore.

  “More than something, and he wasn’t the only one, as we’re well aware,” Lila said, and met Edwina’s eyes. Important stories passed between them. Really important.

  “Did you ever tell anyone?”

  Lila made that scoffing sound in the back of her throat, meaning she knew things I could never imagine.

  “No, I didn’t tell anyone. For the same reason no one else did.” Lila waved the magazine. “Safety in numbers. It had to take, what…” She read the magazine. “Two dozen women before anyone would risk it. That man was in charge of my bank account, and my career. My whole life He sat in the big chair. He signed the checks.”

  “He was a sex maniac,” Edwina said. She looked like an old lady when she said it. Her eyes got all narrow, and her face wrinkled up like she’d eaten something sour.

  “Oh, stop! It’s not about sex! It’s about power, and that’s all. Who has it, who doesn’t, who can just take whatever they want. Assholes with big egos, that’s who. I’m over this conversation,” Lila said. And then she tossed the magazine onto her dirty plate, where it sat on the smear of yellow from her eggs and the toast crusts, and the napkin with her lipstick marks on it.

  * * *

  That afternoon, the three of us went shopping. Edwina was usually all judgy and careful about excess spending, but she was having a blast. She was wearing her polyester pants and blouse, and those shoes with the thick bottoms that didn’t hurt her feet, and she was like a girl on her birthday in those boutiques. Well, she was beautiful once, too. I saw the photos of her wedding to Hal, which were in an album she kept hidden in a drawer.

  Lila bought herself a purse and some earrings and two scarves, and she bought Edwina the same purse, plus this satiny dress that you could tell Edwina wanted so bad but would probably never wear. Lila bought a pair of sandals in gold for her and white for me. We all got these necklaces with our initials on them.

  She used a debit card. No credit this time. I would never admit how much she spent. I won’t say the number. It was probably a good chunk of the Buick money. I didn’t know how we could spend like that, but apparently we could.

  When Lila was in the dressing room trying on this peach silk she
ath, Edwina and I waited next to a table of jewelry and accessories.

  “What did Lila mean when she said Rex Clancy wasn’t the only one?” I asked. I couldn’t get it out of my mind—that look they’d shared.

  It wasn’t the time or place. The saleswoman hovered nearby. A woman with a dog in her purse reached for a bracelet.

  “A neighbor man. When she was twelve,” Edwina whispered. “He told her not to tell. We moved after that.”

  Lila came out of that dressing room with the shimmering peach sheath over her arm. The relaxing music played in the store. Edwina had gone on to look at a table of scarves, as if these were the sorts of things that just happened to everyone in one way or another. My stomach ached. I felt sick. I had thought, you know, that one day you weren’t in the world where grown men wanted you and then you were, but this wasn’t really true. Grown men had always been there, in our world.

  * * *

  The next day, before our evening flight home, Lila had a car take us to Disneyland. I know it’s hard to imagine. Edwina in her Lane Bryant shorts and her sun hat, and Lila in that tight yellow sundress with her big sunglasses, and me, walking between them like a little kid. Lila had gotten some special pass that allowed us to get to the front of the line. We hurried around. They kept saying, “The baby needs to go on the pirate ride! The baby can’t miss the haunted house!” And we’d all get on, except for any halfway wild ones, when Edwina and Lila would wait, Lila sipping her iced coffee and autographing stuff like mouse-ear hats and park maps and whatever women had in their purses. A lot of people recognized her that day. Some tried to be respectful and only snuck glances, and others barged right up to ask for photos, but most fell somewhere in the middle, pretending to take a picture of the Dumbo ride while trying to get her in the background.

  When I told Meredith about it all later on the phone, she said, Weird, Syd. Her voice sounded full of… horror. I thought she’d say, How awesome or Lucky you. I think it was the baby stuff that freaked her out. It was one of the many things that were so normal to me that I couldn’t see how abnormal they were to anyone else. Meredith—well, it was funny, because a lot of people actually do have those perfect families like the ones you see on TV, but a lot of people don’t.

  And that day, I’m not sure I really minded all the baby stuff. I mean, there’d been that bad fight with Jake, and the way she’d cried that night, and the orange makeup on her arm, and the disturbing news about Rex Clancy and the neighbor. At Disneyland, she held my hand, and she and Edwina were both shoving me this way and that, having fun like kids without a care in the world, and people were remembering to shower Lila with love.

  It was like I was giving her something that made her really happy.

  * * *

  When Lila and I got home that night, it was clear that something had changed at the Sea Cliff house. Max greeted us as usual, but it was dark downstairs. The big doors were open, though. Out on the patio, there was a towel on the chaise longue, and Jake’s shoes were tossed on the White Room floor. A warm wind blew in, ruffling the pages of a magazine. It was eerie.

  “Jake?” Lila called.

  In the kitchen, that stack of bills had disappeared. Jake’s sweatshirt hung over the back of a chair. Jake himself was up in the media room. He had his cocktail next to him, and he was watching a movie. It was a hot night, and he was wearing only a pair of shorts. His shirt was off. He was stretched out, his legs up on the ottoman.

  “Hey, girls,” he said. He didn’t get up. Lila went and kissed him hello. She kissed him like the air had cleared between them. You bitch! he’d screamed, and there’d been a bruise on her arm, but she’d forgiven him, which meant I was supposed to forgive him too. There was this strange moment when I just stood there, and I knew I had to greet him, so I gave him a hug, a quick hug, and my hands were on the bare skin of his back. He smelled like sun lotion and sweat and alcohol.

  The thing that had changed was that Jake had moved in. Permanently.

  There would be the three of us now. A triangle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Exhibit 37: Photo of Female Torso, by Kazimir Malevich

  Exhibit 38: Photo of Jacqueline, by Pablo Picasso

  Do you know another great thing about Nicco? He wasn’t a social media person. You couldn’t just look him up and find out everything about him. Or rather, look him up and see some perfect version of him. He worked a lot too, to pay rent and living expenses, and so when I got back, I couldn’t see him for a few days. We talked on the phone and passed photos back and forth, and that’s how I got to experience his regular life. There was his cereal box (Chex) and pieces of his bedroom (a stack of books, a messy bed, a pile of laundry). There was a meal he and his roommate were having (pizza in a box) and his morning stubble (sigh). I tried to keep our house out of the images. I still hadn’t told him about Lila. I sent a lot of pictures of Max, who wouldn’t let me out of his sight since we got back.

  The night before I finally got to see Nicco, Jake was in the guest bedroom again. Another crate had arrived while we were gone. Why he opened some of the crates and not others—no clue. But he had his hammer out, and a screwdriver, and he was working to dismantle the outer wood frame.

  Maybe I was in a good mood because I was going to see Nicco the next day. Or maybe it was because Lila, noticing my coldness to Jake after their fight, had grabbed my elbow on the stairwell, right under that huge picture of her, and spit the word, Please. But I went in there. I told myself that there might be something great to show Cora. I’d just had a long talk on the phone with her, about how she’d met a guy she really liked at a softball game, how Meredith was being all critical, but even more, how she’d decided to start a blog about important female artists no one had really heard of. Cora was always doing something amazing like that.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hiya,” Jake said.

  I plopped on the floor. Max sat his big, hot self right next to me. “Man, I wish you’d just open all of these.”

  “Yeah?” He stopped what he was doing and looked at me.

  “Yeah.”

  “You like ’em, huh?”

  “Who wouldn’t? They’re so cool.” I felt a sick little twist inside when I said it. A guilty twist. I mean, they were cool, but I could hear my own voice, kissing up, acting all admiring, trying to get his approval. I didn’t know why. I still don’t entirely understand it. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t there just because of Lila and Cora. Why do we still crave the approval of people who make us feel bad and uneasy and who are cruel? No idea. But I needed it. I wanted it.

  He grinned. He tilted his head and lifted one eyebrow and examined me as if he were a judge at an art show. He gave me that look again, as if I were really something. He chuckled, almost like a proud dad. And it was kind of great. It made me feel really good. It helped push that bruise and that fight into the past. My own father gushed and fussed over me when I saw him once a year, but he didn’t know me. He was a different sort of ghost. His absence was even louder than Lila’s presence. But this was a real guy who lived with us. Looking at me. Seeing me, right there in that room. He might not be perfect, but at least he was there.

  “Well, I can’t open them all, or else I gotta pack them all.”

  “Why would you have to pack them? Are they going somewhere?”

  “I can’t keep all these. I’m a broker.”

  “You mean you’re getting broker and broker buying so many?”

  He cracked up. “Something like that.”

  “Come oooon,” I whined. “Hurry up and get it out. I want to seeee.”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “You could help, you know, instead of sitting there on your ass.”

  It took maybe a half hour to free it from the box. Wrapping was everywhere. The painting was beautiful but strange. Bold, colorful stripes, a figure with just a red oval for a head, but no face. “I really like the colors. But… weird. No face.”

  “Female Torso, Kazimi
r Malevich. Oil on wood.”

  “I don’t get why they’re all women. All these paintings.”

  He ignored me. He was gathering up the layers and layers of mess we’d just unwrapped.

  “One more!”

  “I told you, no way. I’m gonna have to get professionals to come package it up to ship. Plus, the best ones are hanging right here in the house. What about the one in the dining room? Did you take a good look at that?”

  “Not really.”

  “For God’s sake. There’s your prizewinner.”

  “What is it?”

  He smiled, pleased. He paused for dramatic effect. “Jacqueline. Pablo Picasso.”

  “No way.”

  I was stunned. Honestly, my mouth fell open.

  “Yup.”

  “And it’s real?”

  “Yeah. It’s not so crazy. He made, like, ten thousand pieces of art.”

  “Who was Jacqueline?”

  “His wife. Last one he had before he died.”

  “Oh.”

  “All I know is, she was twenty-six and he was seventy-two.”

  “Gross.”

  “Supposedly, he drew a dove on her house with chalk and then gave her a rose every day for six months until she’d go out with him.”

  “Uh-huh, wow, roses would make you forget he was a creepy old guy.”

  “Yeah, well, she never got over him after he died.” He made his fingers into a pistol and shot at his head.

  “Oh, God. You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She was crazy about him.”

  “Or just plain crazy.”

  “And, hey, she was ancient compared to another girl of his. Marie-Thérèse Walter. She was seventeen and he was forty-five.”