by Deb Caletti
“No thanks. I think I’ll just stay in.”
“No problem. Whatever works for you.”
I didn’t exactly want to stand there like that and have a conversation, but I didn’t want to be rude, either.
“I’ll just order Chinese or something.”
“Sure.”
When I got to my room, I shut the door and I locked it. I didn’t lock it because Jake had done anything wrong. I locked it because it was there again, that I think I’m uncomfortable/I’m kind of uncomfortable/Am I uncomfortable? feeling. It was hard to even know what it was or wasn’t. I could hear him in the room next to mine, grunting with exertion as he lifted the weights, then clanged them down again. I just wanted the distance of the lock.
But when Lila arrived home, she came upstairs. I had my music playing. I didn’t hear her. She rattled my doorknob. Honestly, I might have locked it to keep her out too.
“Syd? Open up.”
“Just a sec!”
She pounded. “Syd! Now!”
I poked my head out. “Hey.”
“What are you doing in there?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Why is your door locked? You never lock your door.”
“Privacy.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is everything all right, baby?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going out for dinner. Want to come? We’re going to RTB.” Which meant more food like abalone blah-blah and shaved mushroom whatever. Food for the bored. Food for people who’ll pay big bucks for some piece of fish the size of your thumb.
“Nah, I’ll just stay here. I had a big lunch.”
“All right. Put whatever you want on the card if you decide to eat.”
The problems with the card had magically disappeared. I wondered if Jake was the magician. She didn’t protest me not coming either. She probably hoped I’d say no.
The locked door, though. It maybe said something to her that it shouldn’t have. Then again, that thing that happened when she was twelve—maybe that’s what kept speaking and speaking.
* * *
I ordered Chinese. I talked to Meredith on the phone while I waited for it to arrive. She told me stuff I already knew, that Cora met a guy at a softball game. That Meredith saw them kissing that same night. She thought Cora was acting stupid and reckless. I didn’t tell her I was on Cora’s side. I didn’t tell her about Nicco.
When the food arrived, I took it to the patio over the ocean. It was still warm out, but it wouldn’t be for long. The sun was setting. The sky blazed orange and pink, unreal, looking full of rage or beauty. I fed Max chow mein noodles and some barbecued pork. He had to keep going inside for drinks of water. I forgot how Chinese food makes you thirsty.
I took a picture of him and texted it to Nicco. Big dog. He sent me one back, a photo of his foot. Bigfoot. I felt a hundred smiling emojis but sent only one. Even his feet were cute. I know, I know—I said it before, but it was astonishing. No one’s feet are cute. He was so cute that all of him was cute.
I liked it better out there than in the house, where the quiet had an eeriness that reminded me of the ghost whispers. What if someone was on one of the other floors and I didn’t even know? How could I tell? The thought was unsettling. Even with the darkness falling, even with the black sea stretching to forever, and the crickle-crickle of the waves rolling out across the pebbles, and the crash of them coming in, it felt safer outside than in that house with all its years of history. It was built in 1925. The grand Victorian Cliff House mansion had long since burned down by then, but the Sutro Baths were still operating, with their multiple pools and trapezes. I could feel the way 716 Sea Cliff held decades of emotions and memories. Like its walls had soaked up nearly a hundred years of tears and joy and tension and regrets and longings. The whole city felt that way. Old and tragic, but still standing.
It was starting to get cold, and I rubbed my arms against the chill. The lights of the bridge twinkled on. I wondered how many people driving across it right then were falling in love. I wondered if I might be.
Max came outside and looked at me with those eyes.
“All that water. And now you have to pee. What was I thinking?”
Outside, the street was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see it. A car, parked across the street. That car.
I froze. The same man, I was pretty sure, sat inside. He was tapping stuff on his phone, which was a lit-up rectangle in the night. It scared me. I actually felt afraid.
I did that thing we’re so good at—I talked myself out of the alarm that was creeping up my neck. Maybe the neighbors were having domestic problems, and this was some private investigator. Maybe the guy just liked our street as a place to hang out. Maybe—
Shit! He saw me. I saw him see me.
“Hurry up, Max!” He could take a long time, too long, deciding which bush.
I rushed the dog back inside. I shut the back doors. I went around making sure all the windows were locked. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t play a movie in the theater room, because I needed to listen, and it was too hard to hear anything in there. It was silly to be afraid, I told myself. Sea Cliff was one of the safest neighborhoods in the city.
I climbed the staircase. Max raced ahead and then waited beside me on the landing, where I stopped. I faced that image of Lila. I stared her down.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
* * *
I tried to watch a movie on my laptop with the sound way down. It was too hard to concentrate, though. It got really late, but I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious. I kept peeking out the window until, finally, the car was gone.
I didn’t want to get woken up by the sound of sex or fighting, either.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this part. It maybe just speaks to the general direction that things seemed to be going at home. Down, down, down.
I headed to Lila’s bathroom and found her sleeping pills. I’d never taken one before, so I bit it in half. I went downstairs and unpopped the cork in the wine bottle on the counter. I took a swig straight from it. I’d forgotten how disgusting wine was, but whatever.
I took both of those things—the half pill, the wine—because I wanted to sleep like the dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Exhibit 41: Surveillance images, 716 Sea Cliff Drive
I loved Max, but God! Early the next morning, when he went out to pee, he saw that the gate was open, and he went for it.
I took off after that stupid dog. He wasn’t exactly well trained, if you couldn’t tell that already. He wanted to be good, but if you handed him an invitation to be bad, he wasn’t going to say no.
Of course, he flew right past the house next door, so I had to too. The men were already there—they always started early, too early for that kind of noise, if you ask me.
Max was a blur as he headed toward the entrance to Baker Beach. If he reached those stairs before I did, he’d have a million ways to be gone.
“Max! Max!” I yelled.
God, he was speeding like a galloping horse, all hunched down low, his haunches pumping. He was almost to those stairs.
And that’s when I heard a whistle behind me. That shrill, sharp whistle people make using two fingers in their mouth, a whistle I could never master even though Hoodean tried to teach me once.
I looked over my shoulder as I ran. But that guy was catching up to me. Of course it was him, and he was trying to help, but fuck him, assuming that he could step in and handle this better than I could. And then something happened that made me even madder. Max stopped in his tracks. He came to a screeching halt, like some part of his stupid, infuriating brain knew that whistle. That guy assumed he could handle the situation better than I could, and he did handle it better, and it was infuriating. I mean, thanks a lot, Max.
By that time, the man had passed me, caught up to that turd dog Max, and
had him strongly by the collar. He led him to me. The worst part was, I had tossed on only my tank top and shorts to let him out, and I felt really embarrassed and awkward there with no bra. I had to lean down to get that stupid dog while having one arm crossed over my chest, and honestly, my boobs were probably in full view with the loose neckline of my top.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem. I’m around a lot of dogs.”
Yeah, I bet he was.
I snuck a look at him. Up close, he was younger than I thought. Maybe late twenties. Younger, but still old. Older. Too much older. Handsome. Handsome if he were maybe some guy on TV and not a real one who watched me all the time. Handsome could make you forget for a second all the stuff you learned about strangers. He had bright, playful eyes. Man whiskers. Big shoulders. Really big. Strong, tan arms, from working construction. Jeans, T-shirt. This is another construction-man cliché, but he looked like the kind of guy who would knock back a few beers with the bros, or have sports parties out of the back of his truck—I forget what those are called.
Our hands brushed as I took Max. Skin slid against skin. “There you go. Have a good day, princess.”
The word “princess” skittered up my back like an insect. Whether that guy was handsome or not, old or young, I wanted to smack that word, and him for using it. That word always felt small and bad and dehumanizing. My father called his girlfriends princess. He called me princess. As if all females, even his daughter, were indistinguishable from each other.
Of course, I didn’t smack him, or do anything close to it. He was twice my size, older, and he, you know, had a car and a job and muscles and stuff, and I was just me, a girl in her tank top and bare feet. I couldn’t even speak. The only thing I could do was smile that smile that really isn’t a smile, the tight-lipped one, the one that says, I’m barely tolerating you, but says it nicely so he won’t get pissed off.
He was supposed to read my smile, so why didn’t he? Because he thought he was supposed to pursue? Because he could do whatever he wanted? Because he didn’t take me at my word? Okay, I wasn’t using actual words, because maybe they weren’t the best idea. I would never forget how Cora tried for months to get creepy Lance Sweeney to leave her alone, until she finally told him straight out to go away. Then he called her a cunt and got all aggressive, and she had to avoid him for weeks until he moved on to Hailey Xavier, like a game of asshole hot potato.
I walked down the sidewalk, hunched over as I held Max by the collar, holding my shirt against myself to cover my boobs.
“Hey!” the guy called.
I could pretend like I didn’t hear him, but he was right behind me. He’d just helped me with my dog. I was going to have to keep seeing him every day until that house was done. I turned.
“My name’s Shane.”
I should have used some useless little weapon, like a fake name, but I didn’t. I don’t know why I felt I owed him. I don’t know why I always gave things I didn’t want to give.
“Sydney.”
“See you, Sydney.”
When I got back in the house, I was so angry with myself. I’d given over my name. I wanted to pinch my own arms. I wanted to scratch out my eyes. I was so mad that I took it out on Max.
“Goddamn you!” I glared at him.
But then his eyes looked so remorseful that I felt bad.
“What am I going to do with you,” I said.
* * *
I was surprised to find Lila in the kitchen. “You’re up early.”
“I need coffee! How do you work this?” Lila looked at the new machine Jake had bought like it was a set of complicated instructions to build a bomb. Honestly, she had her own production company, she was capable, but sometimes she acted like she was a toddler when she was around someone who might do stuff for her.
“Put the thingy in the compartment and push the button.”
“Wow. Easy, tiger. You don’t have to snap.”
“I just chased Max halfway down the block, so good morning. And I stayed up half the night because there was a creepy car parked out in front of our house.”
“A creepy car.” She sounded doubtful.
“I’ve seen it there before.”
“Baby, you’ve watched too many of my movies.”
“Thanks for taking me seriously.”
She waved her hand at me. “Syd-Syd. Really. It’s the safest street in the city.”
“Okay, okay. Fine. It was just a stupid car. Being alone in this house freaks me out.”
“Well, your day is about to improve. We’re having lunch with Riley today.” Riley was Lila’s partner in her production company, Lilac Films. “Come with! I think he has some good news. One, he made a special trip just to tell me. Two, his voice gave him away.”
“What news?”
“Eek! I don’t want to jinx it.”
* * *
I don’t remember the name of the place. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Jackson Square neighborhood, brick building. Starts with a C. Upscale Italian. Fancy wood-fired pizza.
Everything about Riley was crisp and efficient—his clothes, his haircut, the way he spoke. Crisp and efficient pretty much means you’re terrified everything is going to fall apart at any second. His eyes searched for the waiter, and then he ordered the most expensive bottle of wine. It seemed kind of early to drink, but it was clear that this was a celebration.
As we waited for the wine, Lila politely looked at all of the cute photos of Marco Alexander, Riley and Jessica’s toddler, but you could tell she was impatient to get on with it. As soon as Riley put his phone away, she said, “Well?”
“Green light.”
Lila shrieked. It caused a few people to look our way and then look again because maybe that was Lila Shore. San Francisco wasn’t a big city for celebrities, which is what Lila said she wanted but probably didn’t really want.
“I wasn’t going to say anything before,” she said to me. “You know how superstitious I am. It was in committee, but we had to wait for it to be gaveled by the president and the CEO.”
“What, what, what?” I asked. She’d been pissing me off lately, sure, but it was great to see her so excited.
“Warner. A project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.” She paused a beat for suspense. “A contemporary remake of Peyton Place.”
She waited for my response. I had no idea what Peyton Place was, but I did know that a studio had just agreed to give them a bunch of money to make a film. This was a huge deal, something that was nearly impossible even with a big star attached, let alone sort of a falling star like Lila.
“That’s amazing.”
“Three women in a small town. Sexual frustration! Steamy undercurrents! God, it’s wonderful. We want it to be stylish, rich, all coastal beauty and beautiful people. I’ll play the mother of the teenage girl, but she’s not a mother-mother. Not a frumpy middle-aged mother. She’s the most attractive woman in town. Just repressed. Blond bombshell. Mothers of teenage daughters don’t have to look dowdy.”
“Who are you kidding? You’d never play frumpy and middle-aged,” Riley said. “And wait. A little something to help you celebrate.” He reached under the table. He handed her a box of chocolates and a bottle of champagne with a ribbon around its neck. Lila loved presents.
“Aw!” She air-kissed him twice and then was on to business. “I want you to scout out Sea Ranch. New Hampshire of the West Coast! Well, small town by the sea. Charming as hell. The main street is perfect. They’ll hate us, but we can handle it.”
This is what I meant about the Lila who handled things, the Lila who would never be with a guy who pushed her around. And yet, there was that makeup on her arm that day. How were you supposed to understand it? Well, God, 90 percent of history wasn’t understandable—it was just shit people did to each other.
In the car, Lila gave my cheek a great big kiss. “Things are looking up, baby.”
“Wow, Lila.”
“There’s no guarantee,
you know, what will happen. But it’s the best news we’ve had in a while.”
“I’m really happy for you.”
“For us.”
“For us.”
She took my hand and kissed it. What I felt most was a huge swell of pride for her. Edwina grew up poor, and Lila grew up poor. She changed all that. Men like my father, like Papa Chesterton, like Rex Clancy—they helped her, but they were also obstacles she had to overcome.
“I’ve got to tell Edwina.” In spite of their rocky relationship, she always wanted my grandmother to be among the first to hear any news. Lila called her before we even left the parking lot.
“I’ll play the mother of the teenage girl, but she’s not a frumpy middle-aged mother. Mothers of teenage daughters don’t have to look dowdy,” Lila said again.
She kept repeating that part.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Exhibit 42: Maker’s Mark bourbon bottle containing 60 of 750 ml
Everyone was buoyant. Everyone—Lila, Jake, me, and even Max, who sensed the energy in the room and was going with it, speeding around and skidding, snitching kitchen towels and running off.
We ate take-out Indian food. Jake popped open Riley’s bottle of champagne. There seemed to be a little sparring and smoothing between Jake and Lila, as if there’d been a disagreement. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but then I did. Jake wanted to be a producer on the project, but she said no. He was still kind of pissed about it, but she was joking and kissing and tickling him, all the stuff you do with a guy who gets angry.
We were putting the dishes away when Jake said, “You know what we should do tonight? For good luck! We oughta watch it.”
“What?” I asked.
“‘What?’ I can’t believe you just said that!” Jake threw his arms up in disbelief.
I suddenly knew what he meant. Nefarious. The film that made her so famous. The one where she plays a murderous seductress. “Nooooo,” I pleaded.
“That’s not going to boost my confidence,” Lila said. “It’s only going to make me feel old.” But she smiled a little. You could tell she wanted to.
