by Tanen Jones
“Do you ever think about moving away, Leslie?” Mary chimed in.
“No.” I glanced around for the owner.
“No? Not even as a thought?” Albert smoothed his napkin. “You know, I always thought maybe I’d move to Vermont. I knew a family with a cabin out there. They used to invite me up for grouse season. It’s an interesting sport, although I might not be limber enough anymore.”
“Yeah, Leslie,” Mary said. “You could move to Vermont and shoot grouse.”
I shook my head.
“What’s your dream location, then?” she asked. “Where would Leslie go, if she could go anywhere?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” I said. “Maybe I’d live in Santa Fe.”
She laughed. “That’s an hour away! That’s the dinkiest dream move I’ve ever heard of.”
A waitress appeared at her shoulder, holding the bottle of wine. She poured it for Albert first, then paused. Albert glanced at her, brow wrinkled, and then said, “Oh, I see. No, I’m sure it’s fine, no need for all that,” so the waitress moved on to Mary’s glass.
“And where would you live, Robin?” Albert asked, when we had all placed our orders and the waitress had gone away again. “Would you stay in Las Vegas?”
“She’d go to LA,” I said without meaning to.
Mary’s eyes fixed on me. “Yes,” she said to Albert. “I would. I love it there,” she added, sinking back into her cheerful attitude. “It’s always seventy-five degrees and everyone has a tan and a therapist. I’m going to buy a long scarf and drive around in a convertible, like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.”
“A film buff! Do you like Hitchcock?”
“I hate Hitchcock. I love Grace Kelly,” Mary said.
Albert laughed. “Hate Hitchcock? How?”
“His movies are all so slow, and all the people in them are like little cutouts in a dollhouse.” She propped her chin on her hand.
“I think he’d say that’s what he wanted from his films,” Albert suggested. “He called actors cattle, you know.”
“I knew it!” Mary declared. “You can just tell from watching those movies that Hitchcock was a big old dick.”
“Ma—Robin!” I said.
“Well, he was.”
Albert chuckled. “Robin isn’t wrong. Tippi Hedren might agree with her. But of course you can be a real jerk and still make great art.”
“Sure. But I think it creeps into your art. Art is intentionally showing your ass.” Mary fiddled with the built-in ashtray, sticking her finger in it from the underside. “If you’ve got poison in you, the art will show it, eventually.”
There was a pause as Albert pursed his lips, considering this. Finally he said, “Well, I suppose every generation must hate the previous generation. It’s a measure of growth.”
She smacked him gently on the arm. “Aw, Albert, we don’t hate you! We just want you to tip your waitresses nicer.”
The owner reappeared, followed by the waitress from before, bearing mustard-yellow plates with salmon covered in sliced lemons and parsley for Albert and Mary, and a Cobb salad for me.
“You know,” Albert said, pointing his fork at Mary, “you remind me of your father.”
I made a little noise, like a sneeze. Mary kicked me harshly under the table and I exhaled in surprise.
“Thank you,” she said at the same time. “Wow, that really means a lot. Is it my chin? I feel like he had a really distinctive chin.”
Albert pulled his fork out of his mouth; I heard the tines against his teeth. “Not that. Your sense of humor. He was a funny man.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said, jerking my chair back several inches to avoid Mary’s shoe. Robbed of a target, she was forced by momentum down into her seat, as if several vertebrae had liquefied. Then she had to drag herself back up again, pretending nonchalance.
“You don’t think so?” Albert squinted at me. “I guess not so much when he was sick. But before that, he was like Robin. Quick, you know.”
“What a compliment,” Mary said, adjusting the top of her dress, which had lost its grip during her abrupt descent into her chair. “I really appreciate hearing that from someone who knew him so well.”
“He wasn’t like that,” I said. “Not with us. Not at home.”
Mary glared at me; Albert patted his mouth with a napkin. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Albert said at last. “It’s too bad you only had so many years with him when he was well. I knew him for almost thirty years. We were very good friends, your dad and I.”
I didn’t reply.
“Tell me more about him,” Mary said, leaning toward Albert. “How did you meet him?”
“How did I meet him?” He took a sip of his wine and coughed. “Actually, we were coworkers. At Hogarth and Wyeth.”
“When was that?”
“The late seventies, I think. I hated him at first—he stole my girl.”
“He didn’t!”
Albert shook his head. “Of course he did. You knew him. He was competitive. I was dating one of the secretaries. A nice girl—a little meek, I thought. Well, not too meek, because she two-timed us for a while. All at the same office! We were in meetings together and we didn’t know about it. She let slip to him eventually, or he got it out of her that she was seeing other men, and she came to me one evening and said, ‘Warren told me that I must choose between you two, and I’m afraid our time together has come to an end.’ So formal. So I didn’t like him very much for a little while. But I figured I couldn’t hold a grudge, because the guy married her. I certainly hadn’t had any intention of marrying her. I thought, Good on her!”
“Wait, when did he marry her?” Mary asked. “That wasn’t how he met Mom.”
“No, this was Yvonne. They were together for five years or so, and then they got divorced. I don’t know what it was all about, exactly. He never liked to talk of it. But my personal thinking is that it was about you two.”
“But we didn’t exist,” I said.
Albert took another bite of fish and said through it, “He wanted children. I think that’s part of why he married Yvonne. She was very young when they married, twenty-one or so. But they never had any. I didn’t ask, but…” He shrugged. “Five years seems about right. You can’t try much harder than that.”
I stared at my plate. I hadn’t eaten any of my salad.
I felt Mary’s eyes on me. “Did you know?” she asked. “About Yvonne?”
I shook my head.
I’d spent years with him in that house as he died. I was the only person who’d stuck around—the only one who’d showed up for him. Illness had given us time together that we’d never had before, long stretches of boredom that invited conversation. One night Rocky was on TV. He’d muted it, looked over at me—said, I should have married someone like you, Leslie. I was in love with your mother, but she was too fragile. I should have seen that. Should’ve looked for someone with a spine.
But he’d looked before. It wasn’t just Christine who had failed him. Yvonne had failed too.
Why hadn’t he told me that?
Albert and Mary had gone back to eating while I’d been lost in thought. They were almost done, wearing identical expressions of polite regret: how sad your father never told you, but you can’t change the past, what’s done is done, etc. I picked up my wineglass and set it back down again.
“Why didn’t he just leave everything to me?” I felt weightless again, as I had this morning. My ears ached.
Mary swallowed quickly and said, “Let’s talk about that some other time. Leslie, will you come to the bathroom with me?”
Albert wouldn’t look at me.
“I was the one who was there. She ran away.” I watched the top of his head as he examined the edge of the table. “Why would he put this clause in there, that we had to be her
e together to receive the money? Why wouldn’t he just leave it all to me?”
Albert sighed and put down his fork. “It’s not an unusual situation for a decedent to leave his estate in the hands of his attorney, rather than burden a family member with the role of executor. You have a baby, a full-time job…it was a good thing he did, not to put this all on your shoulders.”
“That’s not what I asked.” My tongue felt swollen. “Why did we both have to be here? Why not just mail her the check and be done with it?”
Mary put her hand over mine. I felt her fingernails dig into my palm. “He was sick, Leslie.”
“I know he was sick.” I jerked my hand away and sat on it, flexing my fingers uncomfortably beneath my thigh. “I took care of him. He could barely eat. He could barely move or speak. He slept all the time. It spread to his lungs. He coughed up solids. I cleaned it out of the carpet. I helped him go to the bathroom and shower and brush his teeth. So…” I turned to Albert. “So I am just…just asking you. Why did he want her here now?”
His mouth trembled, and I thought he was close to giving me a real answer. Then, on the other side of me, I heard Mary say, “Thank God you’re here,” laughingly, and the waitress leaned over the table to take our plates, breaking the spell.
“Are you sure you’re finished?” the waitress asked me, glancing down at my barely disturbed plate.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. After a second, I felt her take the plate away.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Albert said to me, touching my shoulder. “I really am. The truth is, I think Warren wanted you girls to spend some time together after so long apart. That’s all it was. Of course he trusted you and loved you both. Of course he did.”
I opened my eyes. Albert looked smaller, sitting there in his crumpled button-down, the collar gaping at his neck. Like my father’s shirts had, near the end.
Mary smiled at him. “Thank you so much for saying that. You have no idea how much that means, coming from such a close friend of his.”
Albert cleared his throat. “What a nice meal that was. I haven’t been here in a long while. I need to start coming back more often.” He patted his belly. “Well, all right. I suppose you’ve got to get home.”
“It’s past Eli’s bedtime,” Mary said. “If you want any time with him, Leslie, we do need to start getting ready.”
I stared back at her. She was still perfectly cheerful. Her lipstick was fresh, and there was a faint red stain on one of her front teeth. Had she put on a fresh coat just now? When?
Albert leaned down and shuffled through the papers in his briefcase. “Aha! Well, here we go. You were in luck after all. The county notified us of receipt in time, and Angela made out your checks this afternoon.” He pulled out two envelopes, each stamped with the GRUNDMAN, JAMES & RODRIGUEZ letterhead. On the other side, his assistant had written our names in blue bubble letters: Leslie Flores and Robin Voigt.
I exhaled.
Albert pushed the envelopes across the table toward us. “Oh, here’s the check,” he said, turning his attention away immediately. “I didn’t even see it arrive.” He took out his wallet.
“Oh, no, we should pay,” Mary said. “We invited you. Leslie?”
“Yes,” I said after a moment. “Sorry. Yes.” I fumbled in my purse and found my credit card; Albert sat back and folded his knobby hands as I tucked it into the bill.
“So that’s it, right?” Mary added as the waitress came back to take the bill. “We don’t need to do anything else?”
Albert patted her arm. “We’re all finished. Thank you, dear. And thank you for dinner, Leslie.”
I picked the envelope up off the table and stared at my name on the front. It was sealed. I slid my thumb under the flap.
“Well, don’t open it now, honey!” Mary exclaimed.
But I’d torn the flap open far enough that I could see it: PAY TO THE ORDER OF LESLIE VOIGT FLORES. FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS.
There it was: the finish line.
46
Mary
Leslie started the car. I held my check on my lap, between my thighs, running the sharp edge under my fingernail. The ragged flap of her own check stuck out of the top of her purse. “We can’t go to the bank until tomorrow morning,” I said.
“You’ve got your passport,” she answered distractedly. “We shouldn’t go together. Have I given you Robin’s Social Security number?”
I looked at her long, sharp profile. “I did good, right? I did Robin right?”
The light turned red, and Leslie slowed to a stop. “Yeah,” she said, glancing over at me. “You were perfect.”
I grinned. The seconds ticked by, the car so quiet that we could hear the muffled sounds of someone else’s music from the next lane.
The light turned green. It took Leslie a moment to press the gas. “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Like where?” I tugged on the top of my dress.
“It’s a surprise.” Leslie reached a long stretch of avenue and sped up. Her features flickered in the intermittent light from streetlamps and passing cars, the shadows of her nose and brow slipping over her face like liquid.
I bit my lip.
“You’re leaving in the morning,” she said. “So tonight’s the last night for us.”
I thought about Dave on the lawn chair, timing Eli in the three-meter dash. “You don’t want to go home?” I said.
Leslie shook her head, but she kept going east, toward the mountains. I shifted in my seat when we passed the sign for her neighborhood, its silver metal lettering gleaming. “I just have to stop to get something,” she said at last, pulling into her own driveway. She didn’t turn the car off. The headlights against the closed garage door created a stagelike effect; Leslie’s shadow was enormous in the spotlight, moving silently beside her as she crossed the driveway and disappeared into the dark.
I slumped into the passenger seat and waited for her. The sound of my own breaths seemed to gain volume.
A tap on the window startled me. Leslie was just outside, her face flushed. I opened the passenger door an inch. “Turn off the car,” Leslie whispered.
I crawled across the console and pulled the keys out of the ignition, shutting off the headlights. “I thought you just had to get something,” I said when I was out of the car.
“Shh,” Leslie said. “People are sleeping.” I saw that she was holding a bottle of wine.
She saw me looking and the corner of her mouth lifted. Then she motioned for me to follow her. She didn’t go back into the house; instead we set off down the sidewalk, past the dioramic windows of her neighbors.
I stopped in front of the third house, where long, thin windows clustered around a breakfast nook. The family sat at the table with plastic cups, a longer, more formal table abandoned in the dimmer room beside them. I watched as the little girl leaned down to confer with the dog. “See, it’s not even that late,” I said. “They’re not sleeping.”
Leslie, ahead of me, kept walking.
I followed her around a corner to a cul-de-sac, where the house on the left was half-hidden by an enormous six-foot fence. The gate was chained shut, and a plastic lock with a keypad hung from the chain. Leslie crunched over the landscaping to the lock and pressed the keys quickly. The chain came free and the gate swung open. Leslie glanced over her shoulder. Something behind the fence lit her face with an eerie greenish glow. “You ready?” she whispered. Then she disappeared into a stranger’s yard.
I glanced around the empty street behind us. Wind swept across the ground, rattling the dry-leaved bushes like chandeliers.
Then I stepped through the gate, the chain clanking as I closed it behind me.
“Oh—” I began, and Leslie clamped a hand over my mouth. I started to laugh behind her palm.
“Shh,” she said. “We’re not supposed to be here.”
It was a swimming pool, taking up almost the entire length of the yard. Lights were set into the sides of the pool where shallow steps led into the water, sending a wavering glow over the dark perimeter. A wooden deck near the house held a wrought-iron table and two chairs, the bistro umbrella that shaded them during the day flapping wildly in the sudden wind. The surface of the pool rippled.
Leslie took her hand away. “You got lipstick on me,” she said, studying her palm.
“Are we breaking in right now?”
She wiped her hand against her arm and carried the bottle of wine over to the table. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” I raised my eyebrows, trailing after her.
“Dave knows the homeowner,” Leslie said, pulling out a chair as soundlessly as possible. The wind had pulled strands of hair from her bun, which lifted in unison around her face as she sat and pulled the cork out of the lip of the bottle. “She rents this place out for Airbnb, which is against the neighborhood bylaws, but Dave agreed to let people in and out occasionally in exchange for her letting him use the pool when the place is unoccupied in the summer.” Leslie shrugged and took a sip directly from the bottle. “I don’t think anyone’s here right now, but let’s not draw attention.”
I sat down beside her. “Do you come here by yourself?”
“No.” Leslie passed me the bottle, and eyed me as I tipped it back. “You know, I hadn’t had a drink in more than a year before I met you in Vegas.”
“Why not?” I said, feeling my accent start to come back with the wine.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I could have. I couldn’t—I didn’t breastfeed, so. I didn’t produce enough—enough milk? So we gave him formula.” She took the bottle back and picked at the label. “I could have gotten drunk anytime after he was born, but I didn’t.”
“Well, Vegas is the best place to break your sobriety,” I said.