by Jane Smiley
She said, “What time is it, do you think?”
“It is eight-oh-six. Time for a cup of coffee.”
When he walked across the room, she thought, This is the thing you never get to see in the movies—a naked hairy middle-aged man walking past the window in a graceful, casual way, pushing his hair back, adjusting his testicles, looking for his glasses, rubbing his nose, coughing—and yet it is a beautiful sight, no manliness problem at all. He went into the bathroom. She heard him blow his nose, urinate resoundingly into the toilet, and flush. She heard him go out the other door of the bathroom. After that there was silence for about a minute, and then he was back.
She said, “What’s the matter?”
“The house is full of people.”
“How many people? Do we know them?”
“Stoney, Charlie, Delphine, Cassie, Isabel, and Simon.”
“Simon! What’s he doing here?” She sat up.
“I don’t know what anyone is doing here. I got out there in the altogether, realized the place was teeming, and came right back for my bathrobe. Do you think we invited all these people for today? I thought they were going to be dribbling in one at a time over the next couple of weeks.”
It was, indeed, unusual that they all showed up at once. Normally, Max lived alone in the house itself, but his former mother-in-law, Delphine Cunningham, lived in the guesthouse. Even when his ex, Zoe (Isabel’s mother, the pop icon and sex goddess Zoe Cunningham), left, there had, apparently, been no question of Delphine going with her. As Delphine was Jamaican, Zoe said, it was wiser not to move her. But really, of course, the arrangements were more about Isabel than anything else. Delphine was tall, thin, and imposing, but Elena had found a small, perhaps pinpointsized, area of common ground with her on the subject of correctly roasting pork. Delphine and Elena agreed that brown sugar in the marinade, soy sauce, and slivered ginger and garlic (always sliced lengthwise) thrust into cuts stabbed into the meat with the tip of a good sharp knife were key, along with, of course, laying the roast in the pan fat side up, and setting the oven temperature low—325. Thirty-five to forty minutes per pound was not too much, either, if you wanted juicy. And they had come to these conclusions independently, only happening to compare notes one afternoon in Max’s kitchen.
Delphine’s best friend, Cassie Marshall, also in her seventies, lived next door. Whereas Delphine was tall, Cassie was short. Whereas Delphine was laconic, Cassie was voluble. Whereas Delphine did not drive and almost never made any noise, Cassie drove, ran an art gallery down in the Palisades, and was notoriously well connected. Delphine was reserved and Cassie was busy (and Max didn’t like to be disturbed), so Elena could not say that she had become actual friends with them.
Max said, “Simon shaved his head.”
“He did what?”
“I guess he did it yesterday.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” But this exclamation was mostly for show. She was a veteran of worse surprises than head-shaving. She said, “What about Isabel? I thought she wasn’t coming for a few days.”
“She looks good. Get up. They’re making pancakes. I had no idea Charlie would be here. I thought his plane was due this afternoon.”
She got up.
The kitchen was the only other room on the same level as the master bedroom, but whereas the bedroom seemed to stand out over the hillside, anchored to the rock but jutting into the air, the kitchen was set back under the trees, on what had been the original tableland. It was shaded most of the day by overhanging purple bougainvillea that grew up through a spacious deck. It was not terribly modern—no restaurant range with grill, for example, and the work space was limited—but you could cook there happily day after day, as Elena sometimes did, making bread or cookies or authentic Bolognese sauce with milk and white wine, just to prolong the pleasure of puttering around in the wood-paneled quiet. Her own kitchen, which she had installed after much thought, research, and consultation with experts, was more up-to-date, but she found herself cooking there less than here, in what had become, more or less, her territory.
Not, she supposed, in the minds of Delphine and Cassie, who were busy flipping pancakes, or the tall girl, who would be Isabel, whose head turned in her direction as she came into the room. She was opening a jar of jam. She gave Elena a friendly smile, set down the jar, and stepped forward. Though she didn’t have the same attention-riveting incandescence that Zoe had, she did have a bright, intent look to her, and Max’s natural grace. She said, “Hi. I’m Isabel. You must be Elena.” And then she put a hand on each of Elena’s shoulders and kissed her. Simon said, “Hey, Mom.”
She turned from Isabel with what she hoped was a smile that matched Isabel’s in warmth. “Hey, Simon. What are you doing here?”
“Something not bad. Something fun.”
“That’s not a good start, Simon. I see you had your hair done.”
He put his hand on the top of his shining head and rubbed. “What do you think?”
She was more suspicious about his purpose for being here, but she knew not to openly pry. She said, “Honey, your head has a nice shape.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re lucky. Some people are entirely flat behind.” She decided to leave it at that. Cowardly. “How’s your car running?”
“It’s fine.”
“So have you two young persons been formally introduced?”
Simon said, “A long time ago. Do you remember that guy Decker, Roman Decker, that I used to hang with?”
“Not really.”
“Isabel goes with his cousin Leo.”
“Well,” said Isabel, rolling her eyes and spreading her hands, “I think Leo and I would have different views on that. I thought I was so relaxed about it, and I was going to take my vacation-time buildup and come next weekend, but then I just couldn’t stand the sight of him for one more minute, so I flew standby last night. The plane was four hours late, so I sneaked in after you guys were asleep. Little did I know that the bed and breakfast here was full.”
“I’m just staying for a couple of days,” said Simon, with a glance at Elena.
But Elena didn’t ask. She would ask later, she hoped.
Isabel turned suddenly toward her and said, “Do you mind that I called my mom? I mean, of course you don’t mind that I called her, but do you mind that she’s coming over? If she comes over she can see me and Delphine at the same time, whereas if she doesn’t come over who knows how she’ll fit us in.”
“I don’t mind. I like your mother.”
“Do you? You’re one of the few, then. Have you met Paul? Here are his credentials: He’s a terrific healer and he got back from China less than a year ago, where he climbed the seven holiest mountains. And, let’s see, as Mom would say, he has a boat.”
“What kind of a boat?” asked Simon.
“Well. He doesn’t have a boat. I am making fun of my mom. That’s what she said about her last boyfriend all the time—‘and…he has a boat.’”
“I have met Paul, actually,” said Elena. “I didn’t really form an impression of him, though.”
Isabel opened the refrigerator door and took out the package of butter. She said, “You are smart. I like you. I’ll have to consult you on what to do about Leo.” She unwrapped a stick of butter and set it on a plate, then she wadded up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder into the wastebasket without looking. Elena and Simon shared a glance.
Simon put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. She said, “Just tell me one thing. Are you going to get a big tattoo on the back of your head?”
“Isn’t that the best place?” But he slipped away from her without committing himself. He had only two tattoos so far, one on his calf, of a skull, that he had gotten in high school (“When I have to get a job, I’ll just wear pants”), and one on his upper arm, of a tree, that she rather liked. By the time he got that one, it seemed as though his future in corporate America was improbable, anyway.
Across the room, the pancakes, cooked and serv
ed without her help, were now being eaten. Cassie, Max, Delphine, Charlie, and Stoney were sitting around the island, hunched over their plates and laughing. Behind them, framing them, the lemon and quince trees she had installed in tubs on the deck looked simultaneously bright and dark, yellow and green, promising and calm, just as she planned they would. The pancakes were small, maybe three inches across, and delicate, with crispy edges, cooked in butter. She slipped under Max’s arm, gave him a squeeze around his middle, and reached for one, then said, “Hi, Charlie.” Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but Cassie said, “So how did you enjoy the Oscars? We watched for a while, then we turned it off and missed all the good parts.”
“They hid the red carpet around behind the building this year, for fear of snipers,” said Max, “so it wasn’t terribly festive.”
“It was all new to me,” said Elena. “I liked it. And at one point, they got every actor who’d ever won up on stage for a group picture. I thought that was fascinating. I understood that they did that during a commercial break, so no one at home saw it.”
“Frank still looks good,” said Max.
“Who?” said Cassie.
“Frank Pierson, the president of the Academy. You know him.”
“I do,” said Cassie. “He’s older than I am.”
“I don’t think so,” said Delphine. Elena didn’t know how to react to this. In fact, she didn’t know how to react to a lot of things Delphine Cunningham said.
Stoney smiled. His plate was swimming with syrup. He lived by himself three streets down the hillside and hated to cook.
Max said, “Frank told me a funny story at the Governors Ball.”
“What was that?” said Stoney.
“You know he worked on Gunsmoke for a while. And he said that, once, they were sitting around, waiting while the scene was being set up, and one of the old cowboys was sitting sideways on his horse, having a smoke. Well, the horse reached forward with his hind leg, I suppose intending to scratch some itch, and it got its foot in the stirrup of the saddle. Frank was standing right there, and he said the old cowboy just drawled, easy as you please, ‘Weelll, if yer gittin’ on, I guess I’m gittin’ off.’”
Everyone laughed.
“Frank has been around this town as long as I have and he’s still alive,” said Cassie. “Most of them aren’t.”
Stoney said, “Cassie won’t tell me how she came to Hollywood, but she says it’s mythic. So, Elena, you tell me how you got to Hollywood.”
“I never got to Hollywood. I only got as far as L.A.”
“We want to know,” said Cassie. “Then I’ll tell how I got to Hollywood.”
“You will?” said Stoney. Isabel leaned over his shoulder and took a strawberry off the plate in the middle of the counter. “You will?” she said.
“You tell first,” said Cassie to Elena.
She glanced over at Simon’s bald head. He was going down the stairs. “Well, my first literary work was a pamphlet called You and Infertility. What was this? Oh, twenty-five years ago now. I mean, I was married to my husband, and I could never get pregnant, so I did my usual thing, which was to find out all about it. Every time I made an appointment with an expert to find out more, he would ask me if I were writing a book, so eventually I started saying yes. Then that marriage broke up, which actually happens with infertility more than most people realize. Anyway, I wrote that book, and it made a fair amount of money. Then I got pregnant and had Simon, and I got interested in babyfood, though of course Simon was on the breast for”—she leaned forward, more as a joke than anything else, because Simon knew this about himself—“thirty-one months. I wrote the next book, with recipes and little pen drawings, called Don’t Feed Your Baby What You Wouldn’t Eat Yourself! That was put out by a press that published baby and child-care magazines with a natural slant, you know, homemade diapers, and how you could put a four-year-old child in a warm bath and ask him to remember his birth. When those magazines went out of business, another press bought it. They were more of a media conglomerate, so they brought me to L.A. to do a little demo tape—an infomercial, really. I made little messes and showed how to freeze them in ice-cube trays. That sort of thing. Once we were installed in our rental in South Pasadena, it wasn’t really in the cards to go back to Chicago. And Simon, of course, has never had a trans-fatty acid in his life. You can tell by his head of hair, can’t you?”
Max laughed and the others smiled.
“Very dull,” she said. “Now you.” She pointed her fork at Cassie.
“We’re ready,” said Stoney.
“Well,” said Cassie, “when I was a small child, in the thirties, I didn’t really know who my father was.”
“Don’t believe her,” said Delphine.
Cassie tossed her head. “I lived with my mother and my sister on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, and there were these two men who came around. One was a guy in a suit—he was in advertising, and he later got to be famous for the slogan ‘I’d walk a mile for a Camel.’ His name was Ewan Marshall, like mine. The other one was named Morton Hare. He was an impoverished artist. I preferred him. He would get me up early on Sunday mornings and take me out into Central Park with a gun and he would shoot ducks for food. They both had volatile relations with my mother, who also worked in an ad agency.”
Cassie took another pancake. Stoney said, “New York always leads to Hollywood.”
“So, when the war started, both of them went into the army, and my mother wrote a best-seller called Since You Went Away. David O. Selznick, who made some big movies—”
“Like Gone with the Wind,” said Stoney.
“Bought the book and brought my mother out here to write the screenplay, and us with her, of course. We started at the Westlake School. I was in the sixth grade and my sister was in the ninth grade.”
“A big movie,” said Max.
“Claudette Colbert played my mother, Jennifer Jones played my sister, and Shirley Temple played me. She had to follow me around and learn how I did things and my facial expressions. In the movie, she’s incredibly spoiled and bratty.”
“That was you,” said Delphine.
“Well, she followed me around a fair amount, but she was slightly older than I was and way more mature—when we went to gym class, I saw that they were wrapping her chest to make her look flat, because she was always having to go on good-will trips. She was nice to me, but even I knew she was having a difficult transition to more mature roles, and I think maybe they bought the book not because of how great it was and how noble and long-suffering and brave my mother was, but because Shirley’s career needed a boost. Anyway, Jennifer Jones followed my sister around. She was in her twenties, I think, and married to Robert Walker, who was in the movie as her boyfriend, but actually she was having an affair with David Selznick. Robert Walker was fairly crazy. You remember him, right? He was in Strangers on a Train as the guy who proposes that Farley Granger kill his father and he will kill Granger’s wife. It was all a very big deal, because Jennifer Jones had won the Oscar for Song of Bernadette. Delphine and I watched Since You Went Away a couple of years ago. Joseph Cotten played Morton Hare, and he was all over the picture, even though the ‘you’ in the title was supposedly my father, who was overseas. Anyway, at one point, Joseph Cotten gives Claudette Colbert a bigger-than-life-size picture of herself as a naval recruiting poster. She’s in a short-short skirt and high heels, no stockings, and she’s leaning forward. Her derriere is out to here, and a little skirt is fluttering around it, and she has a mysterious smile on her face, luring young men into the navy. Claudette Colbert is, of course, a little scandalized when Joseph Cotten gives her this picture, and they hang the picture somewhere out of the way, but not before the camera gets a good full-frontal look at it.” Max and Stoney chuckled.
“Except that we had that picture in my mother’s room for years, the very same picture that Morton Hare painted. Only it was a nude.”
Everyone laughed except Isabel, who produced an aut
hentically shocked look. She was a handsome girl, Elena thought, so similar to Max.
“Of course, in the movie, they are very careful to establish that Claudette Colbert only has eyes for my father. I had realized which one was my father by that time, of course.” She jutted her jaw saucily at Delphine. “But Joseph Cotten only has eyes for my mother. He keeps turning up and giving us things.”
“He was sinister onscreen,” said Max. “Effortlessly sinister.”
“What made me cry was the dog. It was my dog! He was an English bulldog, and I suddenly remembered that at some point they took him away, and then at some point they brought him back. In the movie he does exactly the same thing as he did around the house—nothing. But there are lots of shots of him doing it. It’s a very slow movie. Delphine and I had to stop watching at the intermission.”
“Well,” said Max, “it was basically propaganda. People were in the mood for it at the time. It was nominated for a lot of Oscars. I don’t remember how many it won.”
“I think I ended Shirley Temple’s career. The better job she did acting, the more accurate and convincing her portrayal of me, the more unappealing she was onscreen. But it was fun for us. My mother wrote a few more movies about the war, I rode ponies and horses, my sister became a specialist in international law and later met Shirley Temple at diplomatic functions, Selznick married Jennifer Jones, Jennifer Jones got rid of that strange young man, Morton Hare got a wife of his own in Europe, and the Allies won the war in part thanks to all the good-will trips Shirley Temple had to do.”
“More pancakes?” said Delphine.
Isabel gave her grandmother a kiss on the cheek. Delphine said, “Did you eat, Isabel?”