My Hollywood

by Mona Simpson

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re a musician.”

  “A chemist, actually, in real life. But I play with the Glendale Chamber Orchestra.”

  I looked at his hands. No rings. But hadn’t I read that married men went bare-fingered and married women didn’t? I was married, I remembered, but I’d spun my ring on the floor one night, and it fell down a heating grate.

  Still, musicians look at hands.

  “You’re not a Park Century parent?” he asked.

  I shoved myself up. “No.” Willie didn’t go to school here and I hoped he never would, Tom Cruz notwithstanding. And Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard.

  The guy gave me his e-mail address to get the orchestra’s schedule. Just then, another group entered, its guide pointing out violins in the cupboards. “Lola!” I hadn’t wanted anyone to know I was here. And seeing her now made me trill.

  “I am looking for the grandson of Lita. He is an autistic.”

  I kept the slip of paper with the guy’s e-mail in my case, in the compartment with the rosin. That smell came up to my face every time I opened it. But I never e-mailed for the schedule of the Glendale Chamber Orchestra.

  Call lawyer, I kept putting on my list.

  I asked him again to move out. He said he wouldn’t, not now. He’d sleep in the den. We could talk about it after the pilot season.

  When was that? I asked.

  Summer, he said.

  He left the room then, the bedroom that was now mine. The bed made, a lawn mower going somewhere outdoors.

  Jeff had introduced a motif, a fugitive melody, nothing real. I understood he’d never felt what I had, but he’d made me hope for something. Slowly, I thought, I’d become the person I’d been before, fragile and eager.

  We finally agreed he’d move out August 1.

  Now what I talked to Harv about was money.

  “You think they’d go back to me? I was late. And they’ve commissioned Annabel Grass twice.”

  “Yeah, and she writes music as tight-assed as she is.”

  One afternoon in July Will was at camp, and I heard Paul thud in. We both roamed through our paths in the house. He’d been sleeping in the den since March.

  For some reason I remembered his saying, “That’s the only time we’ve had sex all year.”

  When it had been the last time, we hadn’t even known.

  We ran into each other in the hall, passed, and then he turned back. “Are you sure you want this? Because once we tell that little boy, there’s no going back.”

  Was I sure? No. I glimpsed a side of our familiar living room, stable and quiet. But I didn’t know how to make it better.

  “Our sex life has been pretty terrible for a long time. You’ve been unhappy with that.”

  “But how big a deal is sex, really? People say it is, but we don’t really know what goes on in other people’s houses. We don’t really know.”

  Paul could always soothe my envy, my ever-long sense of being outside a better life. Here was a good man I’d known for years offering a raw vista: This is who I am. We can take it easy. We can stay. A long soft part of me, which curled up against my right rib cage, wanted to follow him to our bedroom and pull the shades down.

  “I don’t really think of you that way anymore either.” Sex, he meant.

  “Do you think of other people?” I asked this idly.

  By now we’d flopped on our made bed, fully clothed. He folded his arms behind his head.

  “I never did, but just in the last year or so there are women who’ve expressed interest in me.”

  Let him go, I thought. He can find life. Maybe you can’t, but he can. Let him go.

  Lola

  A PORPOISE

  I ask Lita if she can get an off.

  “No,” she says, “my employer, she is back working. Alice is not moping anymore.”

  Lucy moved to the naval base in San Diego. In October, Lita told me that she had the baby: a nine-pounds boy. Then, in January, I received the announcement.

  Mrs. Lucila Pasqual gave birth to

  Asher Pasqual

  9 lb 2 oz

  October 20, 1996

  A Sunday near the end of February, I pick up Ruth and Aileen to drive down.

  Ruth brings snacks, so there is the air of a party in the backseat. Aileen half stands, dancing to a song on the radio, and Laurita tries to copy, punching the arms at air.

  My former pupil greets us in an apartment bare but tidy. Tony is gone, on a boat. “I am with Asher all the time, Lola. It is so much work.” Before, she took care Bing but she had Ofelia too.

  He is a cute baby, though, the hair long, and she keeps him very clean. I recognize the outfit with suspenders from Bing. Lucy stands barefoot, her toes polished black. Judith subscribes to Vogue, so I know that is the style. A curve settles in me: my pupil, she has found happiness. Not doctor, but this is something too. Before I did not believe in it, but from Laura I learned that life is not only diplomas. Lola too found luck—a correct fit in the bedroom—and maybe my Laura, she will find a private happiness, just a small one. She will never be the prettiest. I feel a pang for Issa, twenty-seven years old, working in the hospital forty hours at a time. Maybe I have been too strong with my own. Not allowing even a crush.

  I look around the living room. My pupil, she used to decorate the house of Bing with flowers. Here I see no frills. The crib of my Laura that came from Alice makes the center, with a new denim bumper tied on.

  “Target,” she says. “Twenty-four dollars. Cheska bought.”

  I finger the round wooden table, the best thing here. “Helen gave,” she says. “Have you seen them, Lola? The baby?”

  “No, with Laura I am now seven days.” I, too, have found my life.

  “A girl. Jessica. Maybe they will be happy. I really do not know with them.” This table has a jar of baby food, a spoon in, a bib, and a half-open book. “The review course,” Lucy says.

  “For doctor?”

  “Just nurse, Lola. To try for nurse.” Ten years medicine, then when she should have started, they came here. But Lucy did not go to Far Eastern. Her hair, it is chop short, not the hair of my daughters. She was always poor.

  Before we leave, I go to the lavatory, and when I return, Lucy makes the center again, the way she used to at our playclub. “Because I do like this.” She bends her knees, barelegged, a way that would be indecent if we were not grandmothers and children. My pupil, she gained weight again. She will have to diet before her sailor returns. “I push.” Her feet spread wide, pelvis moving, eyes squinting to demonstrate. “I try hard. I do my best.”

  Once again, my pupil, she is telling her success story, even here in this plain apartment. Ruth and I sit, hands on our laps, each of us a mother also. We try our best too and we know—life, it can turn out a different way.

  “So she will not be doctor after all,” Ruth says, in the car again. Every time my former pupil got another raise or her taxes paid or when they hired the immigration lawyer, Ruth used to call me. What will be next? She will be doctor! You watch.

  It seemed my pupil, she could go so high. We always understood she would leave us behind, but now that she was not going to be anything, we wanted her to. Our poster Filipina. But Lucy ended up like the rest of us, not doctor, just a mother. Maybe she was not as much as we always thought, or our own lives were more.

  Then I notice Aileen, too quiet in the back. “What happened you?” I turn. “No more dance dance?”

  “I lost my dancing powers,” she says, her head resting on the car seat of Laura. Laura’s face makes a wavery smile. Aileen has grown up used to people watching her as a favor. Is that why she is kind?

  One day Laura falls at the park and gets a huge bocal. I push her in the stroller to Burger King to ask ice. As soon as I pick her up to apply the cold pack, she purrs. That is the thing with this girl. She loves me a way the boys, they never did.

  Someone taps my elbow. “Hey, Lola. Remember me?” China. She is holding a mitt, wearing
a team uniform. She must now be almost six, like Williamo. “Lola, d’you ever see Mai-ling?”

  I tell her Mai-ling lives on Park Avenue. “In New York everyone wants Filipinas. A Filipina there is worth three times a Filipina here. But me, I do not like. It is too cold.”

  Four months later, Mai-ling is back. Every August, the Sapersteins take a two-week vacation. During that time, they pay Ruth to stay there, feed the pets, collect the mail, and keep the machines running. Monday, the pool man comes, Tuesday and Friday gardeners, Wednesday Salvadoran sisters who clean, Thursday the water delivery and a different Salvadoran just for laundry. And while the Sapersteins swim in Massachusetts ponds, the friends of Ruth drive to Beverly Hills to flutter their legs in the turquoise water of the pool. Danny grills lechon. I attend with Laura and she follows Aileen, trying to dance along her dances. Mai-ling stands by the grill, hands in her pockets.

  “Manhattan, it is too big,” she says. “Taller than Manila. More on glass.”

  Ruth shakes her head. “Nobody here will pay you six hundred a week to iron.” She wants Mai-ling out, far away.

  “I saw China,” I tell her. “She is asking you.”

  Cheska holds the stick with the marshmallow for Phoebe, the younger sister of Simon. Since Melissa died, Cheska volunteers at the school. This year she will be Class Mother.

  “How is Williamo?” I ask Simon. “Are you still same class?”

  “Guess so,” he says. Cheska nudges him.

  “He’s fine, Lola,” she tells me.

  Natalie and Aileen sleep in the yellow gingham room of Ginger Saperstein. When Natalie goes to teach her class at CalArts, Ruth watches Aileen. In two days, the Sapersteins will return; Ruth has to get groceries, she says, so they have fresh milk and strawberries when they wake up their first morning back. Should she leave Aileen with Candace, or should she have the babysitters babysitter ride the bus up? Eight years old, Aileen can almost take care herself. Watch TV. The babysitters babysitter, they usually just give her a few dollars or a pie or a cake from the store.

  I ask, What day? Maybe we can help.

  But Tuesday we have the occupational therapist.

  Ruth did not leave Aileen with Candace. She called the babysitters babysitter to take the bus up from Eagle Rock. Ruth bought her a Whole Foods cinnamon coffee cake. And while that lady was supposed to be watching, Aileen drowned. But Aileen could swim. She took classes in the big pool at Pasadena City College. I saw her once dive in a crescent off the high board there. The babysitters babysitter said Aileen was in and out, pulling herself up, on the metal poles. But the babysitters babysitter had to go to the bathroom. When she came back, there was a shadow in a corner. Aileen must have hit her head.

  I could not attend the church funeral because Laurita, she had chicken pox. Lita and Cheska went, and they decided that the Korean, he is good. The Korean quit his writing class, cut his hours at the family nursery. Now he just takes care Natalie.

  Ruth paid for the high mass, the flowers, the stone, but she did not quit Sapersteins. Natalie says she will sue, she wants to call the lawyer from the Times to imprison the babysitters babysitter, but then she slides under again and needs to sleep. The Korean drives her to the apartment and they give her another pill. He sits on the bed, puts a towel on the forehead, and pulls her T-shirt over her head. I never thought before but all the problems we pitied Ruth, Natalie must have been a good mother. Because Aileen, she was a very nice girl.

  Ruth did not talk about the accident. But the coroner sent a report; paperwork arrived from police also. The Sapersteins called Ruth into the downstairs den, the Mother and Father both, his knees spread, hands on the creases of his pants.

  They asked her did she want to stay there working.

  “If I am needed,” she said.

  They wanted to know, probably, if she would sue. Ruth, she did not say anything. It was not a yes-or-no question. They gave her a check for ten thousand to help with the funeral expenses and to send the mother of the child back to school. Ruth did not tell them she already paid the funeral or that Natalie would not take any more school. She accepted the money and said thank you. The whole thing it was not even a half hour.

  That room, I have seen it; painted dark red, it has no windows, with an L-shaped velvet sofa built onto two walls. The drinks room, they called it.

  I heard all this by telephone. Laura, she had chicken pox eight days, and we were in and out the oatmeal bath. I put cotton gloves on her, but she pulled them off in her sleep. I sat next to the bed so she will not scratch. It is the face and she is a girl.

  Then, in the morning, the mother asks, “Why are there no more paper towels?” The grandmother had scheduled a visit from Minnesota, and Judith canceled. “Too dangerous for an old person,” she told me.

  She either thinks I am not old or does not care I die.

  Laura, she is not like my kids or Williamo. She is behind.

  I am the one to take her to the speech therapist. We every night blow bubbles in the bath. When she learns a word, I write it down and put on the refrigerator. Lola, she said. Her first word. I waited for the second. Go. Then I let her pick out the Winnie-the-Pooh magnet.

  From no words age two, by the time she starts school a year later, we have more than a thousand. We cut Joan, the speech therapist, to Tuesdays only. My third daughter wants to get married at Christmas. I price the ticket and make the reservation, but when I tell Laurita, she screams, “You will never leave this house!” She knocks the sugar bowl off the table. “I breakeded it.” She takes out her money, crumpled dollars and neat birthday bills in an envelope from the Minnesota grandmother, coins from her princess safe. “I will pay you one hundred dollars to stay.” One hundred is the total, all she has.

  I taught her the days of the week, but she will never say Sunday, because that is when I take my off. Okay, I decide. My daughter can have her wedding. I will stay until Laura is five. I will write that for The Book of Ruth. But as we put the money back in her safe, I tell her, “Some-a-day your Lola will be old. She will have to go home.”

  This job, it is a big responsibility. I try to teach her, also, not to use money with people. Because the teacher called to say Laura is giving money to a girl she likes. One dollar every day. The teacher made that girl return the bills, but the girl got mad, saying Indian giver. Some things they can come only as gifts, I explain. When you try to buy things that should never be sold, they turn into something else, like the princess who became a bird. Money cannot buy love, I say, but maybe it can. Not to the one paying, but for somebody else. Judith pays me and I love Laura.

  “I am lonesome,” I say, on the phone to Ruth. We talk now, at night after I put Laura down. “But I have purpose.”

  I hear the door creak, then Laura runs to my lap. “You have a porpoise? In the Philippines?” She pretends to be a baby, the finger in the mouth.

  “Yes, there we have many porpoise. What you do up?”

  “Za ert!” That is how she says “dessert.”

  My third daughter gets married in an office; she will save the church wedding for me. And exactly the month I would be mother of the bride, the teacher at the school tells me in learning, Laura is a little slow. What Laura loves, I tell the teacher, is hula. She can hula-hoop for long time. It is her special talent.

  “But she will have to learn her alphabet too.” The teacher writes a note for my employer. So we have to go to Dr. Hallian again. He has a room of toys, but he will not let Laura play them. She should sit at a little table and take his test. Well, she does not want to sit! Many of the pictures he shows, I tell him, But she knows that, she just wants to play the truck. She does not have a truck like that at home.

  So to Joan and the occupational therapist, we will now add a learning specialist and a social-skills group. The week does not give enough days. I am no longer on the team with the ones who win. But you can love them, this way, just the same.

  Claire

  THE HUMAN CONDITION


  Then it was the day to tell. William. Of our failure.

  We’d planned for months with a tall, grave child therapist Dr. Lark recommended, who met us in his backyard cabin, with a fire always burning.

  Then it was the day. We did it in the kitchen that had once been black. Sitting around our old table, in the morning, we began a scene we knew we’d never forget, not one of the three of us. Paul took William on his lap, and I didn’t want time to move.

  I wonder how many people stop then. And turn the day into a regular one. What a relief and reclamation.

  “We … have something to tell you,” Paul said.

  “What?” Terror recumbent in his voice, or did I just imagine it?

  Paul gave the little speech and Will gasped. Once. The sound unmade everything. He fell into his father’s arms, collapsed. There seemed to be no air in him. I touched the soft flannel of his sleeve. Paul, the man he was and would always be, kept talking in a good voice, a high child-explaining voice, making it simple. Now Mommy and Daddy will have two houses. Daddy has a new house and you’ll have a room there and your room here and some nights you’ll sleep in Daddy’s house and some night’s in Mommy’s.

  “I never thought you two—” Will said.

  He looked straight at me for a moment. “We’re going to be all right,” I said, remembering in that instant that I’d said this same thing when Lola left. When we’d fired Lola, Paul had made the decision. The school director told us to and we followed along.

  “I promise.” I’d make it be true.

  Will cried himself out, Paul stood up, and it was still the morning of the first day. We got into Paul’s car and drove to the new house. We parked and stood outside on the damp lawn. Paul had rented a good, family-looking house on a wide street. “Should we go in?” I whispered, but Paul motioned that he thought it would be better if we had lunch first. We had to be at the field an hour before Will’s game. We went to a place that had been our favorite for a few years then and that, after that day, I never stepped inside again. They made a pasta we liked and their own ice cream, a different flavor every day. That day was mint, white, not green. It was hard to think of things to say. I felt grateful for the luxury of Paul’s car.