by Karen Karbo
She prompted a mixture of pity and admiration, so they would ask to keep the tape, to hold on to it just a little bit longer, in case they got any good ideas as to someone else who might be interested in showing it. They would keep the tape, which would disappear into the universe of their cluttered desks and credenzas, and Mouse would never hear from them again, leaving her frustrated but determined.
Mimi found all of this maddening. Mouse was getting married in six months – pressed by Shirl, they’d finally set the date, May 11 – and she was obsessed not with the wedding, like any normal woman, but with some dumb movies about Africa. Exercise in Futility City if you asked Mimi, though Mouse never did, even though she was the only one in the family plugged into the film business.
“Let’s plan your wedding,” said Mimi.
“A judge, me and Tony, rice,” said Mouse. She and Tony had not actually discussed it. Their decision in front of the hospital had been enough, had kept her from being a liar. She figured eventually they’d decide where, and how, inching forward like timid bathers facing a cold ocean. They’d move slowly, get used to it. She half wished everyone would just sort of forget about it. “I talked to the LAFI yesterday, did I tell you? They turned us down. They did a series of docs on Africa a couple years ago. Apparently it’s like leap year.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Imagine a theatrical exhibitor saying, ‘Oh, sorry, Warner Brothers, we booked a violent cop movie last month, we’re not interested.’”
“No one gets married by a judge anymore. You want to go for elegance, and a priest is much more elegant than a judge. You only get married once, or once for the first time, anyway. You think you just want to get it over with, but you don’t.”
“Maybe we can get the Pope.”
“You slough it off. That’s what I did too. Just a wedding, no big deal. But as it gets closer you’ll realize you want the cake and the dress and the whole megillah. You’ll want everything to be perfect. It’s only natural. It’s normal.”
Mouse reached over, punched on the radio. It was an oldies station playing an Ivan song, a girl singer with a deep rich voice moaning about faithless love. Mouse wondered how hurt she would be if she jumped out of the car. They were only going forty-five.
“I’ll help you. I’ve got fabulous taste. I mean that’s what people tell me. I did my own wedding. You didn’t get to see it, it was really lovely. I should really be a production manager instead of an actress-writer. Maybe we could do a medieval theme, which is what I had. Or no, mine was more Victorian. We could get old-fashioned flowers in blues and pinks, lilies and stuff, snapdragons. I had the most gorgeous snaps! The ushers could wear morning coats. We could have a string quartet. We could even rent some little girls to be flower girls, people do that now. There aren’t enough kids around anymore.”
Mouse sighed. She had thought she’d organize a wedding in the same way she’d organize a shoot. Budget it, break it down, see where she could save money by getting services or locations donated (a ceremony on the beach, for example, would cost nothing; she could buy bulbs and grow the few flowers she wanted herself), make the necessary phone calls, have the necessary meetings. Working a few hours in the morning each day, she estimated it would take a week. Rent flower girls! An image of acres of shiny girls in white patent leather shoes parked in rows, surrounded by a Cyclone fence, like used cars, came to Mouse’s mind. It was ludicrous.
“– a wedding weekend,” Mimi was saying, “you have the ceremony on a Sunday, the day before have a brunch for your friends who’ve come from out of town and who aren’t in the wedding party. If you have it around a holiday that’s always fun. You can have a theme then, like an Easter Egg hunt if it’s around Easter. Or a Dickens Christmas. You can get snow brought down from Big Bear. Then the rehearsal dinner. I had a really nice one at –”
Jet lag. Culture shock. The hum of the wheels on the grooved asphalt. The drippy crooning of the girl singer. The hollow crash of the empty diet soda cans on the floor of the back seat every time Mimi slammed on the brakes or accelerated. Mimi’s eternal yattering. Mouse slid into a waking nightmare of the future. She saw herself, days or weeks later, washing her face before bed, Mimi leaning in the doorway yammering about the pros and cons of having gold-lined envelopes for the invitations. She saw herself waking up on a cool winter morning, and there is Mimi, at the foot of the futon, saying lilies and tulips are de rigueur, that anyone who has anything else in her bouquet is a hopeless boob. She is walking alone in the evening – something she loved to do – and Mimi is on her heels, proffering advice about the cake, the veil, the ring. She is trying to read and Mimi pulls the book from her hands, what about the silver pattern! The china pattern! The crystal!
“– save one bottle of champagne and drink it on your first anniversary. That’s what I would have done if I’d have had a first anniversary,” Mimi laughed.
A tiny Mimi stood on each of Mouse’s shoulders, angel and devil both, yapping in her ears: For my honeymoon, on my cake, in my ceremony, at my reception, with my dress, from my wedding party, by my maid of honor, since I’ve been through it once already, Mousie Mousie Mouse!
And never a mention of Mimi’s groom. Never.
Mouse rolled down the sleeves of her thin gingham blouse and buttoned the cuffs with shaky fingers. For some reason the air conditioning was on. Fury burned in her throat. Her puckered sunburned lips stretched into a painful smile. “We’d like to keep it small.”
“If it’s a time thing, if you don’t want to hassle with it, you should use a wedding consultant. My friend Nita does great work. She’ll probably give you a deal because you’re my sister. I would have brought it up before but I didn’t think you’d be into it. Wedding consultants are the in-thing these days, and you’re so… well. You’re the girl who thought a prom dress was an unnecessary expense.”
“That pink one you and Mom liked at Bullock’s could have clothed and fed India for a year.”
“You wanted to wear my old one, remember? With the spaghetti straps? You used those words, ‘unnecessary expense.’ I remember. You probably should have worn it, too, it really was meant for someone with less of a waist. Nita can do anything. Or else, well, I don’t have tons of time, what with my job and my writing and acting and stuff –”
“I’ll call your friend tomorrow,” said Mouse.
THEY EVENTUALLY FOUND the poppyseed filling at Rancher Bob’s market. The overstuffed grocery stores of America still made Mouse’s head swim; she read a magazine in the car while Mimi ran in.
Mimi found two dented, dusty cans at the back of a shelf, lurking behind some Italian cooking chocolate. Her sense of victory momentarily tempered her bad mood. She hated that Mouse would not take her advice. Mouse thought she knew everything, when, in fact, it was she, Mimi, who knew everything, at least about planning weddings.
The blood boomed in her eyes as she rammed her cart through the aisles, crowded with hip young neo-fifties wives and their petulant children. She remembered when Rancher Bob’s had sold natural food in bulk straight from the box it was shipped in, reminding Mimi fondly of her hippie days. But Rancher Bob’s had become chic. There was valet parking now. Charge accounts. Catering. An entire aisle dedicated to Condiments from the Seven Continents. The wives of overpaid, undertalented television executives, insensitive to the fact that some single, childless shopper on a time schedule might actually want to pass, clogged the aisles, babbling about good pediatricians and pre-prep school day care. Mimi loathed the entire scene. Even though she had recently dared to take out a loan for a tiny eye tuck – office procedure, low risk, guaranteed to lob off ten years – she still had her principles.
I’m a hard-as-nails working girl, she thought, jauntily tossing a roll of cheap paper towels into her cart. An actress-writer struggling to make ends meet, generous even though I’ve got nothing, sadly in love with a married, misunderstood genius. Mouse should make a movie about me.
As she dropped a
bag of pistachios into the cart she caught a glance of the price on the cans of poppyseed filling. Three dollars and thirty-five cents!
She scrunched her hair angrily. She couldn’t afford it. She could go ask Mouse – forget it, Mouse already thought she was a flake. She was not above floating a check, but Rancher Bob’s had recently installed a system whereby, at the checkout counter, the checker slid your bank card into a small box resembling a time clock next to the cash register, which provided a digital reading of your checking account balance. To her knowledge her balance was currently somewhere in the high single figure. She could put back everything but the poppyseed filling, or…
Her purse yawned innocently in the kiddie seat of the shopping cart. The cans would fit snugly between her makeup bag and her Week-at-a-Glance.
No. She did not do that anymore. Lifting a Jimi Hendrix album at thirteen was one thing. It was rebellious, daring. Lifting poppyseed filling at thirty-six was neurotic and desperate. Mouse would never do anything so base. Mouse didn’t even make poppyseed lemon cake. It did smack a bit of Shirl and Tupper-ware, Mimi reflected as she dutifully retraced her steps. Suddenly she was infused with a sense of purpose.
This would be her last lemon poppyseed cake, her last married boyfriend, her last dumb job, her last day of vomiting. Back went the pistachios, the jicama, the Ethiopian Swiss Water-Processed Decaf. As she trundled up to the checkout counter she dug for her checkbook, feeling proud, adult, in control.
She would definitely rethink her thing with Ralph. He was married, and egotistical, and not even very attractive. There was Someone out there for her. She would go back to her yoga class. She would call Bob Hope and see if he had anything going. She would eat more tofu.
Then, she looked down at her checkbook. The austere white pad of deposit slips stared back at her. No checks! She had forgotten to put more in, and, it turned out, she had no cash.
She yanked her cart out of line, tears flooding her eyes.
“– AND THEN – you’re not gonna believe this, Mom!” yelped Mimi, bouncing on the edge of her chair.
It was nearly midnight. Mouse and Tony, Mimi and Shirl sat in the living room of the house on Cantaloupe Avenue having coffee and Mimi’s famous lemon poppyseed cake. Auntie Barb, Shirl’s sister, an antisocial clean freak from Boring, Oregon, who had come to take care of Shirl after the accident, was mopping the kitchen floor. All the windows were wide open in support of Shirl’s stubborn belief that Southern California weather was temperate and subtropical all year long. The night was sopping with fog. Between bites, Mouse’s teeth chattered.
“– the unbelievable thing is our Mousie Mouse getting married. We’re so pleased.” Shirl dimpled at Tony, perched on the other end of the sofa. He raised his blond eyebrows in acknowledgment, his ruddy checks full of cake.
The white helmet of bandages Shirl had worn in the hospital had since been removed. Because Tony, i.e., a Man, had come to dinner, she’d gotten dolled up. She wore rouge, and an aqua blue turban, a get-well present from Mimi. Normally she went without, wandering around the house scratching at the rusty eye of a scab, getting her nubby scalp sunburned sitting by the pool reading her decorating books and bridal magazines.
This new lack of vanity worried Mimi and Mouse. Also, the glazed doughnuts. All her life Shirl had been a starch person. She lived for pasta and bread. They had never had desserts growing up. Shirl didn’t know the first thing about making chocolate chip cookies, except from the prefab logs of dough from the grocery store. Then, the accident, and suddenly she was transformed into a sugarholic. Glazed doughnuts for lunch, cookies for dinner. Sometimes Auntie Barb caught her in the kitchen in the middle of the night licking tablespoons of canned chocolate frosting and peanut butter mixed together. Dr. Klingston had warned them there might be a personality change, due to the damage to the temporal lobe. Mouse thought it was more likely that during the operation Dr. Klingston accidentally nicked the all-important wad of gray matter that governed her mother’s sense of taste. Shirl gobbled down her fourth piece of poppyseed cake as though it were her first, poppyseeds dotting the corners of her mouth.
“Two seconds after he says he’s not going to report me, he asks if I want to go get a cup of coffee!” said Mimi.
“He asked you out?” said Shirl. “He didn’t ask you out. Now wait, honey, you go too fast. This boy who caught you shoplifting, this box boy –”
“– assistant manager, Mom. He’s an actor anyway –”
“When that Mimi sets her cap for a fella, look out!”
“I can’t believe you shoplifted,” said Mouse.
“It was really a riot,” said Mimi. “It was just this one time, anyway. I forgot my checks –”
“– uh-huh. First poppyseed paste, next convenience stores,” said Mouse.
“– filling, poppyseed filling –”
“Now I’m confused. I thought you said this boy worked at Rancher Bob’s –”
“– he does work there, Mom.”
“He’s the assistant manager,” said Mouse.
“But he’s really, you know, an actor.”
“Like twenty-seven thousand other people in Los Angeles,” said Mouse.
“More than that,” said Mimi. “He just does the Rancher Bob thing to pay the rent. Like I work for Solly.”
“What did you say his name was?” asked Shirl.
“Cliff Lyonswood. He’s been on a bunch of soaps.”
“On As the World Turns,” said Mouse.
“Not that dumb show,” said Mimi, “Days of Our Lives. Anyway, he said those cans of filling were ancient, so I was saving him having to take them off the shelf.”
“Very comforting. I survive sixteen years in Africa only to die of ptomaine in L.A.”
“Cliff Lyonswood.” Shirl tasted the name. “That sounds made-up. Bad policy to go out with someone with a made-up name.”
“They’re not going out,” said Mouse.
“I just said he asked me out,” said Mimi. “He’s not my type.”
“That never stopped you before,” said Shirl.
Mouse froze for a split instant, her fork between her lips. Ivan hadn’t been Mimi’s type either. Mimi’s gaze clicked from Tony and Shirl, to her mug of lukewarm coffee.
“Well, anyway,” said Mimi lamely.
Mouse fell silent. She licked her ring finger, then poked up the leftover poppyseeds on her plate.
All evening Mimi had been as twittery as she’d been at sixteen, her messy-on-purpose hair flung up at a more gravity-defying angle than usual. She wore a limp black tank top, blue jeans tight enough to bruise her kidneys, scuffed red cowboy boots. She scuttled around Shirl’s newly remodeled kitchen, constructing elaborate dishes with exotic ingredients that required every bowl and appliance in the place, worked up a sweat, drank too much wine, told windy anecdotes for the benefit of Shirl and Tony, sitting cozily at the kitchen table watching her. They didn’t eat until ten o’clock. By then Mouse was so hungry that black and white pinwheels twirled on the insides of her eyelids every time she blinked.
“– really a pill, this client, Janice. She kept calling for Solly, and I mean calling!” Mimi gestured in the air with a whisk festooned with egg whites. “I mean six and seven times a day she’d call. Solly was waiting to hear on her deal from Fox and he had nothing to say to her. So I kept asking him if he wanted to take the call and he said, ‘Tell her I’m in a meeting, tell her I’m at lunch.’ All these excuses. And I tell her, and she starts getting pissed at me. She says, ‘I know he’s there, Mimi.’ She accuses me of not giving him his messages. Finally, one morning, Janice calls, and I don’t even ask Solly if he wants to take it, because I know he hasn’t heard from Fox, so I say, ‘He’s at lunch.’ Only problem is, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. Janice goes, ‘I can’t believe this. Put Solly on the phone right now,’ and I go, ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you, Janice,’ and she goes, ‘Mimi, who did you fuck to get this job,’ and I go – it just pops out of my mouth, I
don’t even know what I’m saying – ‘I fucked you, Janice.’”
“Margaret FitzHenry,” said Shirl, pursing her lips to keep from smiling. Tony hucked and hawed politely. A beat of silence while Mimi folded the egg whites into her soufflé, waiting for them to ask her what happened next.
Mouse had anticipated an interminable evening of strained pleasantries, forgetting that wasn’t how it worked on Cantaloupe Avenue. Instead, Shirl had ushered Tony straight to the kitchen, where she complimented him on his lankiness, then plied him with a plate of deviled eggs she’d made up especially for him. Fitzy, her late husband and Mouse’s father, had loved deviled eggs, she’d said. Especially with paprika. Shirl hoped he wasn’t scared off by paprika.
She grilled Tony about his background and about his and Mouse’s life in Africa. It did not escape Mouse that until tonight Shirl demonstrated no interest in Africa whatsoever. Tony, one long leg slung over the other, fingers laced over his lap, guzzled steady refills of gin and tonics, courtesy of Auntie Barb. He looked as if he already had a regular place at the dinner table, his own toothbrush hanging in the bathroom.
Mouse, exhausted from running errands all day, leaned in the doorway, clutching her brown elbows, smiling and nodding politely, as per instructions from The Pink Fiend. They love you so much.
“We were working for rival production companies –” began Tony, on the saga of how he and Mouse fell in love.
“– s’cuse me, I’ve got to go put on the love theme from Romeo and Juliet,” said Mouse. Tony wasn’t really going to start on that! She darted out of the kitchen with the ready excuse that she had to go to the bathroom.
“That’s right, run off, just like you ran off to Africa!” called Shirl, lassoing her back into the room.
“I didn’t run off to Africa.”
“Go, go. God forbid we should keep you from doing whatever it is you need to do.”