by Sloane Tanen
“Just a sec,” he said, not looking up as he entered some numbers. “You Amanda Kessler?”
“No,” she said. “But I can sign for her.”
“Great.” He looked up. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” Hailey said. He handed her the machine and showed her where to sign. She could feel his eyes on her. She was self-conscious about not having on a bra, just a tank top and sweats. They made eye contact as she handed him the machine. He wasn’t staring at her tits. Or maybe he was. But he was looking at her face too.
“Are you gonna give me those?” she asked, gesturing to the box of what she knew was more flowers. Her mother had been receiving flowers from school donors and delighted parents every other day since the show closed. Despite the fallout the production caused in their family, Hairspray had been a success, and Fair Hills, for the first time ever, had been officially invited by YPTI (Young People’s Theater Initiative) to take the show to San Francisco. The best drama teachers from high schools and colleges all over the country attended YPTI. School grants were given out there.
“Can’t imagine these are meant for anyone but you,” the messenger said. He was practically gawking at her as he put the machine in his satchel. Then Hailey remembered her bruised face.
“So you’d think,” Hailey said. “But they’re not.”
Since the accident, she’d been out of the house only once, to have the bandages and stitches removed. Her face was still swollen and bruised. She probably looked like she needed flowers.
Jaycee walked over to the door. The messenger briefly noticed her before his eyes darted back to Hailey. His gaze rested there and he smiled. Hailey’s thrill grew in intensity with each passing second. It was a small moment, but both girls felt it.
“Thanks, then,” Hailey said with a grin. She began to shut the door.
“Bye.” He stood there too long with his hands in his pockets. She closed the door in his face and tossed the flowers onto the counter. “Weirdo.”
“Are you gonna put those in water?” Jaycee asked, annoyed by the stream of deliveries. Every new floral arrangement was a reminder that Jaycee wasn’t allowed to go to San Francisco with the cast, that the school had put her on probation for what she’d done to Hailey, that she’d nearly been expelled.
Hailey plopped back down on the sofa, pulled the blanket up, and picked up her book. She was in the middle of The Buccaneers and she didn’t like being interrupted when she read.
Jaycee opened the fridge. “Should I make lunch?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat. You’re getting way too skinny.”
Hailey didn’t think she was getting too skinny. She liked the way her collarbones popped out and how her stomach was concave when she lay down. She didn’t know what to make of her face. None of them did. She was still bruised and puffy. Her features had a moist, almost newborn quality. She thought she might look good in that flat-faced, Icelandic-model sort of way. Hailey thought of Dr. Mintz smiling to himself as he removed the last of the bandages. He’d asked a nurse to take more pictures. He’d even called in a couple of other doctors to discuss the way he’d shortened Hailey’s philtrum, or the groove between her upper lip and nose. The doctors all nodded in appreciation.
She didn’t know how to interpret the way her mom and sister seemed to be stealing glances at her when they thought she couldn’t see. It wasn’t just that she looked different; it was that she didn’t really resemble her sister anymore. It was as though Jaycee had smashed the twinness out of her. Now that her old face was gone, Hailey kind of missed the familiarity of it. Her reflection was a constant surprise, like someone significantly better-looking was standing in her way. She’d wake up in the morning and run to the bathroom, needing to confirm that she was the person staring back at her. After what had happened on the hockey field, she was grateful that she had a face at all.
“You want me to get you some Pop-Tarts?” Jaycee asked. She sat down on the edge of the coffee table opposite Hailey.
“The Vicodin kills my appetite. Can you get me another pill?”
“Do you need another pill, Grandpa Marty?”
“Very funny. I’m in pain. And in case you forgot, this is all your fault.”
Jaycee shifted her weight and cleared her throat. Hailey could feel her staring.
“What?” Hailey snapped.
“I still feel guilty about what happened,” she whispered in that weird, hangdog voice she’d adopted since “the accident,” as she called it. “You just seem so, like, calm.”
“I am calm.” Hailey shot Jaycee a look. “Maybe it’s the antidepressants, which, by the way, I’m not staying on. I don’t care how many kids take them or that the person who smashed my face in and her psycho mom seem to think I need them. They cause weight gain. Like getting fat wouldn’t be totally depressing?”
“You’re really skinny right now.”
“Eventually. Eventually those pills cause weight gain.”
Jaycee was quiet.
“I’m just taking them to get everyone off my back.”
Jaycee scrunched up her face. “I just feel so bad.”
“About the antidepressants or about smashing up my face?”
“Both.”
“Don’t,” Hailey said. She was thinking about all the things Jaycee had to feel bad about. “I’m stoked to miss school.”
“I wish being suspended were as much fun as sick leave. It’s like everyone on the whole faculty thinks I’m a monster. Mom and Dad can’t even look at me. And you know I’m not allowed to go to San Fran with Mom now, right? She gave Nelly Blythe my part! Nelly!”
Hailey went back to her book. She wasn’t mad at Jaycee but she didn’t feel sorry for her either. She had to know there would be consequences. “Can I get that Vicodin, please?”
Jaycee watched Hailey reading for another good minute or two. She finally stood up and walked to the door. “Maybe you should take a Tylenol?”
“Vicodin,” Hailey said, reaching for a bowl of crackers on the coffee table as a demonstration of her appetite. Jaycee disappeared into the bathroom and came out again with the white pill. She put it down with a cup of water next to the cracker bowl.
“Maybe some tea too?” Hailey asked. She winced a little as she sat up so that Jaycee would understand that there was suffering going on.
Jaycee narrowed her eyes, clearly running out of patience. “Lemon or chamomile?”
“Lemon. Thanks.”
“Okay,” she said, turning to go.
“Hey, do you know if Mom’s talked to Aunt Janine yet?” Hailey asked. She tried to sound casual. Their mom mentioned that Janine had arrived in LA but Hailey was pretty sure Amanda didn’t know that she’d had anything to do with her coming. Hailey loved that she’d pulled that one off. But why hadn’t she seen her aunt yet? She was getting frustrated and impatient. When she asked, her mom just sighed and reiterated that Hailey needed to recover in peace.
Hailey suspected that her mom was keeping Janine away on purpose. It was probably because Hailey had forgotten to clear her search history last week. That was so stupid. Hailey was still following the TMZ story. She really couldn’t get enough of Janine. She wanted to know everything. And so, after totally invading her cyber-privacy, her mom had yelled at her about “lionizing” her aunt, finally toning it down only because her poor daughter found it too painful to cry with two nasal tampons stuffed up her nose.
“How should I know if they’ve talked?” Jaycee asked. “Why are you so obsessed with her anyway?”
“I’m not obsessed. Jesus. Forget it.” She swallowed the pill and put down the water. She looked up at Jaycee, who was glaring at her as if she’d suddenly had enough of being nice. Hailey immediately regretted that she’d maybe pushed Jaycee too far, that her sister was annoyed with her again.
“Well, I don’t know anything about her,” Jaycee said. Her eyes were slits.
“I heard you. Okay.”
“Okay. And
why don’t you get your own damn tea,” Jaycee said, stomping into the bedroom. “It’s not like I broke your fucking legs.” She slammed the door behind her.
Henry
“Christ Almighty,” Bunny said as Henry got out of his filthy car. She was standing outside alone, smoking a cigarette. The valet wasn’t there.
“I haven’t had time to wash it.”
“Wash it? You need to burn it.”
Since the toothpaste debacle, Henry had been so busy with teaching and driving to and from Malibu that he hadn’t had time to deal with his car. In the interim, the Santa Ana winds had come and deposited a film of dirt and insects on the sticky paste smeared across the windshield.
“It’s quite something, Henry.” Bunny lifted her sunglasses and stepped forward to examine the mess at closer range. A discussion of the sad state of his vehicle was going to be the prologue to today’s meeting. That was okay by him. In the past few days, they’d been getting along surprisingly well. There was almost a jocularity between them. She’d managed to call him and apologize, albeit grudgingly, and he’d come back, reluctantly. Their second session wasn’t much better but Henry could tell she was making an effort. He’d been coming every other day since, and this new tone was a meeting place from which they were both able to air their grievances without the whole thing collapsing into an argument.
“Why not just buy a new car? Cleaning it isn’t going to change the fact that it’s lumpy and old.” She held up her finger before he could interrupt and took a drag on her cigarette. “You have a trust fund,” she said, exhaling cigarette smoke. “I understand that you’re making some puerile point by not spending the money but—”
He laughed. “I can afford a new car on my own.”
“Well, then?”
“The car doesn’t usually look this bad.”
“What is that stuff anyway?” she asked, gesturing at the windshield.
“Toothpaste and petroleum jelly, among other things. Risa’s a very angry woman.”
“So that’s over now?”
“Quite. We split up recently. She also broke my Mesoamerican corn goddess.”
“Well, I’ve no idea what that means, but she sounds dreadful. Can I buy you another one?”
“Thank you, but no. It was one of a kind. I bought it at auction.”
“Well, talk to your father. I’m sure he can dig one up.”
“That’s about what he’d have to do.” Henry looked around for a valet. “Why are you outside?”
“I was waiting for you. I wanted a few minutes alone. To talk.”
“Ah,” he said. He still didn’t want to be alone with his mother. For all the progress they seemed to have made, he knew how quickly things could turn sour, and Mitchell (for whatever it was worth) was an astute moderator.
Finally Todd, the valet, returned, pink-faced and running. “Sorry, man. I’m having a little stomach trouble.”
Henry reluctantly handed him the keys. As Todd wrote out his valet ticket, Henry whispered to his mother, “There was a horrific outbreak of norovirus at the university last year. I didn’t have office hours for two weeks.”
“Oh, Henry,” she said. “I’m sure he just ate a bad tofu sandwich.”
Bunny and Henry laughed at that as they watched Todd drive the car away. Bunny saw it before Henry and gave a little gasp. There, neatly written on the bumper in gummy white letters, was the word creep.
“It’s quite something what she can do with a tube of toothpaste,” Bunny said after a short, stunned silence.
How long had that been there? Henry wondered, horrified. Had Risa come back with a fresh tube of toothpaste or had he simply not noticed it for a week? He shuddered to think how many people had seen it and not said anything. He was certain everyone on the faculty was having a good chuckle at his expense.
“You must have hurt her very badly, Henry.”
“She cheated on me! I simply told her it was over. We weren’t compatible.”
“Well,” she said with a sigh, “that’s clear. She’s beneath you. Shall we?” She wrapped her scarf around her shoulders to insulate herself against the ocean breeze. “Mitchell will be waiting.”
“What is it you wanted to talk about, then?” Henry asked, trying to shake off the sight of Risa’s handiwork and bracing himself as they walked inside. His bad ear was throbbing now, as it often did when his blood pressure went up.
“We’ve been getting on well, haven’t we?”
“Mm,” Henry muttered as he walked alongside her.
“I had an epiphany,” she continued. “I’m certain it’s the distance that’s created this fracture between us. I think you should move back to London. I’m not getting any younger, you know. Neither is your father. We won’t be here forever.”
Henry stopped and looked at his mother with a gentle smile. “Don’t write yourself off just yet. I’m flattered that you miss me. Truly. But I have a job, you know. I happen to be the leading expert in my field. And USC is the leading university in my area.”
Bunny frowned and crushed out her cigarette with her shoe. “I don’t buy it. You chose that university precisely because it was in Los Angeles, as far away from London as you could get in a city that you know I don’t care for. Nobody goes to Los Angeles to quench an intellectual inquisitiveness.”
“Mum—”
She shook her head, not finished. “I’d have understood if you’d come here to become a movie star or to open a doughnut franchise. But I think you moved here to escape me. Am I right? And yes, Henry,” she said, not waiting for an answer, deep into her monologue, “that hurts me. But you know what? I say we put it all behind us now. Come back to London. We’ll get you a nice job. I can help.”
Henry laughed. “Nobody teaches American landscape painting in England.”
“Exactly!” she said. “We can carve out a whole department for you. Oxford. Cambridge. Whatever you want.”
“I’m happy here.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Stop telling me what I mean,” Henry said, losing his cool as they walked into the main atrium. “You don’t even know who I am. You’ve never bothered to figure it out.”
Bunny glared and the fading bruises on her face turned an angry red. “Maybe if you hadn’t moved six thousand miles away, it would have been easier.”
“Maybe if you’d tried a bit harder in the twenty-two years leading up to my departure, I might have stayed.”
“So it’s all my fault?”
People were starting to stare.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Mitchell said, running up to them. “Is everything okay here? I’m not sure you two meeting alone is a good idea at this point.”
“And what point is that?” she asked.
“A critical one.”
Bunny looked furious as they all walked toward the counseling room in silence. Henry sensed it was going to take more than the therapeutic properties of cigarettes and nature today. He was right. She couldn’t seem to get off the subject of his “leaving” her and he refused to feel guilty for having a life of his own. She asked what exactly this life of his own consisted of. Where was his wife? Where were his children? Where, she’d even asked, were his friends?
By the end of the session, he was feeling depressed. And not just depressed in the way spending time with her generally made him feel. This was a more global tug-down.
After a brisk good-bye, Henry nearly jogged to the valet and collected his Subaru. Grateful to be alone, he sank into the hot seat, comforted by the womblike warmth of his car. He started to drive off the grounds, but he had to pull over to compose himself before facing the long ride home. His head felt like it had been sent through a food processor. He rifled through the glove compartment for aspirin, but all he found was a sheaf of inscrutable DMV papers and an old stick of gum. The view of the majestic ocean out the window made him want to cry. He thought about the sad, small boy he had been. He thought maybe his mother was right. Other than his career, wha
t kind of life had he made for himself?
He watched the sun play over the water. How strange to live so close to the sea and never glimpse it. Los Angeles was quite a good city in many ways. He wondered what it would be like to swim in the Pacific. He felt light-headed at the prospect. Did he have his trunks in the back? Then he remembered the upcoming ear surgery and Dr. Z.’s directive not to swim before then.
“Fuck it all!” He slammed his fists on the steering wheel three times. “Fuck it, fuck it, and fuck it!”
“You okay?” someone said. Henry startled, so shocked he forgot where he was. He looked up. A woman in sunglasses was standing next to his car, gesturing for him to lower the window.
Henry thought about hitting the accelerator but, thankfully, noticed the closed gate in front of him. He hadn’t even left Directions yet. He was parked just in front of the exit with the motor running. Looking back up, he saw the short-haired woman from the other day, the one he’d met at reception. She looked smaller than he’d remembered, standing there with her hand shading her sunglasses. Jenny something or other?
“Oh, hullo,” Henry said, rolling down his window, trying to sound casual.
“Henry Holter, right?”
“That’s right,” he said, remembering now how annoyed she’d seemed after he’d introduced himself. “It really is my name. She’s my mother,” he said, feeling, God knows why, that he owed this woman an explanation. “Bunny Small.”
“Okay.” She sounded more amused than impressed. “That’s who you’re visiting?”
“Mm.”
“That can’t be easy,” she said.
Henry gave her a listless shrug. It was bad enough to be dragged through therapy without having strangers commenting on his emotional state afterward.
“Okay,” she said apologetically. “Sorry to have bothered you but you’re kind of blocking the exit.” She pointed at the gate. “And you seemed, I don’t know…I’ll be on my way. I can go around you.”