by Tish Cohen
“Money? Because you could try for a scholarship.”
“I’m not that good. They’d never take me.”
“You never know, right?”
“No. Sometimes you really do know.”
He said nothing, just pulled out his bottle of NyQuil and twisted open the lid, sipped hungrily. “I’m going to New York.”
She turned her pencil around to erase a tiny mistake. “So you said.”
“Right. Sorry.” He burped into his hand, then stuffed the bottle in his bag. “I say it twice and now you think I’m this self-centered jerk who loves his own stories so much he can’t keep track of what he’s said to who.”
She couldn’t resist. “Whom.”
“Perfect. Now you’re thinking, ‘Linguistic ignoramus.’”
Trying not to smile, she said, “Actually, the who/whom thing wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, but ‘linguistic ignoramus’…You don’t actually expect me to move past that one.”
He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and started to weave backward, clumsily, toward the door, then half squinted, half smiled. Stopping, he tipped his head to the side. “Wait. Did you just ask me out?”
“No. Good-bye, Adam.”
“It didn’t come out right—what I said back there in the hall. It sounded creepy, but I just meant your pose was so thought out; you challenged the students the way other models should but usually don’t. It’s good. It’s why Lichty just told me to schedule you for more than half his classes.”
Taken aback by his honesty, Lila stared down at her drawing and said nothing. By the time she looked up to thank him, he was gone. She returned to her drawing. Not one minute later, she heard a muffled cough behind her and turned, expecting to find he’d returned.
He hadn’t.
In the center of the room was a tanned woman in her early forties, maybe late thirties. Not especially tall, but the way she stood, hunched over herself, hands squeezing each other for support, and clutched to her chin—it was as if she was waiting for a blow. The woman said nothing at first, but inched a bit closer. Coppery curls hid part of her face, and her eyes—round and hoping, like a child’s—blinked furiously.
It was the same woman in the flowered mini Lila had seen on her way in. The secretary was giving her a hard time, something about nonstudents not being allowed to wander through the halls. Lila might not have recognized her but for the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her gauzy blouse.
“If you’re looking for Lichty, class was canceled,” Lila said.
“Pardon me?”
“Try him tonight. He has a sophomore class at six-thirty.”
The woman’s lips flattened together as if suppressing a smile. Then she pressed fingertips to her mouth and a near-silent sound escaped. Almost a whimper or a gasp. Like the sound a child might make if you woke her up too early. Not the response Lila was expecting. Finally, the woman spoke. Her voice was husky and near the point of breaking. “He dyed your hair.”
“What?”
“Looks like mine.”
Lila’s hand reached up and touched her messy braid. Was her hair dye that obvious?
“Delilah.”
She hadn’t heard the name in so long.
Delilah.
It wasn’t a question or a greeting.
It was a statement.
The woman stepped closer. “It’s me. Your mother.”
The art board slipped from the shelf and struck Lila in the knee. For whatever reason, Lila looked back to the spider, but she too had been startled by the intrusion and scuttled into a gap in the cupboard. Suddenly, with no sense of how she got there, Lila was on her feet.
Her mother. Her. Mother. Lila’s memories of her were hazy. Thick and murky and choking, like the smoke that settled over L.A. after a week of wildfires. Yes, she could see it was her. Or a tinier version of her. It was the movie-climax moment Lila had wished for, but it wasn’t that moment at all. Instead it was strange, sticky like the web. And she could smell her own body odor. That would never happen in the movies.
Lila wanted to back up, hide. Get naked in front of the class. Anything to give herself a moment to drum up the requisite joy. Where the hell were her emotions?
The last time Lila saw Elisabeth’s face was the night before moving away, when her mother dropped her at Victor’s for a sleepover. Lila tried to wave, but Elisabeth hadn’t looked up—her last memory of her mother was the side of her jaw seen through a dusty car window.
And now. Standing here, shorter than me. So much shorter than me.
It was time to speak. She’d stood, stunned, too long. “Wow” was all that came out.
Elisabeth started to laugh and cry at once. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear your voice? My God, look at you. How you’ve grown. Last time I saw you, you didn’t come to my breast.”
“I feel like a giant.”
“You’re beautiful.” Elisabeth moved forward and hugged her quickly, stiffly, then moved back as if worried she might scare her daughter away. “I saw the nude.”
“Nude? Of me?”
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d been to every student gallery in town and there you were, right there at the back of a dumpy place on Melrose.” Elisabeth stepped forward again, took Lila’s hands. “Delilah, sweet baby. It’s been forever. Forever…” Elisabeth was crying now. Real tears and crumpled face and exposed teeth.
Something metal crashed to the ground in the storage closet and Adam Harding emerged from the doorway looking sheepish and apologetic. He held up a stack of poster paper and a fresh roll of tape. “I’m not even here. Just carry on with your moment like this never happened.” After offering up a clumsy half bow in apology, he ducked his head and marched out of the room.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” said Lila. “Here.”
Her mother reached out to touch her face. “Don’t tell me you lost faith in me?”
Lila was silent. Of course she lost faith in Elisabeth. It had been twelve years. Faith had petered out, sputtering and coughing, somewhere around year five. She looked into her mother’s green eyes, blinking and full of emotion.
The someday she’d waited so long for was here in front of her. She had to take special care of this moment; it was flyaway and delicate and shone like a bubble stretched so big they were standing inside it. One wrong move and it would pop. They would never see it again. She was meant to say something joyous and affirming. Something like “Never” or “I knew you’d come for me someday.” Instead she hiccupped and watched as the bubble burst. “Actually,” she said, “I kind of did.”
Seven
Victor stared through the glass door in the lobby. The plastic bin in his arms held the shrapnel of his career: a handful of stacked salesman awards, a few photos and baubles that had decorated his desk, a heavily thumbed copy of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. The good pen he saved for signing contracts, the shoe-shining kit Lila had bought him for Christmas the year Victor turned forty-nine, and, on top, eighteen carefully rolled-up ties.
It had been vital to him, as he packed up in stunned silence, that he exit with the utmost decorum. He’d nodded to whichever salespeople happened to be in the office, winked at the administrative assistants, and set the box between his feet so he could shake hands with Douglas and thank him for all the years of employment.
Blair Austen, with his butternut squash–shaped body that caused his thighs to rub together, and his great fleshy swag of a neck, complete with razor nicks and burns—for who could properly shave an empty sack of skin?—was to assume not only Victor’s corner office (he’d seen the boxes beside the jackal’s desk), but all of his accounts.
Including Fairfax.
Including Gen.
The thing is, Douglas was right. Victor had been having trouble with his memory. Arrived at an appointment on time, but found himself at the wrong address. Arrived at the right address, but on a Saturday. What he hadn’t realized was that other people were catching o
n. Still, it was normal, wasn’t it, to forget a few things in your fifties? Surely the Guzmans having to close early because of one misunderstanding was not something to get fired over. Siniwick was overreacting.
Blair Austen and his hard-sell approach made other people, people with more mannerly conduct, appear ineffectual and disposable—that was the real problem.
Lila wouldn’t be home yet—she’d said something about heading down to an art supplies shop off Sunset Boulevard that stocked a special type of canvas or paper or some such thing. Victor hadn’t really been listening. Or, if he was going to be honest, he had listened perfectly well. Then he’d promptly forgotten.
Then again, the art store mightn’t have been far from home. Lila could be back by now. He couldn’t bear the thought of going home and finding her sitting at the kitchen table, smiling up at her father and seeing the failure in his eyes.
He was hit with guilt so strong it turned his stomach. The girl didn’t deserve such a father. The thought of telling her he’d been fired—ousted by his own mind—the proof of deteriorating to such a degree rocked him with shame.
And if it was a case of Fate stepping in, getting even with Victor Mack for choices made, well, that wasn’t fair. The past was, as they say, the past.
A UPS courier carrying a large box trotted up the steps toward the door, and Victor pushed it open with his back, watching as the young man with the cheery pink face, razored hair, and brown shorts that revealed chubby knees hurried through. Nodded his thank you. Victor turned and watched him rush into the open elevator. “I had no choice,” Victor called as the elevator doors glided shut.
Squinting into the morning sun, Victor started down the boxwood-edged walkway that led out to the street. On the sidewalk he stopped in front of the RoyalCrest Medical Distributors sign—a lowlying structure with raised stainless-steel lettering that Douglas had had installed a few months prior—and stared into the traffic racing past on La Cienega Boulevard. Everyone rushing, everyone needed somewhere.
He walked to his car, settled his box in the steaming trunk, and opened the windows to let the heat escape. The steering wheel was too hot to touch, and after starting the engine, he shaded the wheel with the sun visor and blasted the fan. Waiting for the car to cool, he thought of Genevieve. She would be back now from her big trip, sitting at the front desk, pursing her lips the way she did as she shuffled papers, and glancing toward the window now and again in the hopes that a bird might finally discover the feeder she’d placed in the bleak hospital garden. If Victor were there, he’d crack a joke about California birds being picky, insisting upon nongenetically modified sunflower seeds or low-fat peanuts. It would have made her smile.
Once the steering wheel was comfortable to touch, he pulled onto Lammens Road, exceptionally busy for the middle of the day. As he approached the light at La Cienega, intending to make his usual right turn and head for home, he reconsidered.
There was no reason to turn right.
So he felt like his chest, his ego, his life, had been rammed with a Mini Cooper. It was no reason to avoid Genevieve. He slipped into the left turn lane and hit his blinker, inching forward in a line of three cars, hopeful he’d make the light as he watched the first car turn left.
Seeing Genevieve had even more appeal now. She would be supportive without showing pity. She’d pat his hand, offer him coffee, tell him things would turn out fine. Knowing Gen, she’d even offer to pay for lunch, given the circumstances. But Victor wouldn’t allow it. He was still a man. He could still buy a woman a plate of spaghetti.
The second car in the lineup made it through the turn and Victor inched forward again.
Gen had been married before. To a man named Zig. He’d been a crack golfer, apparently, before dying suddenly of some disease Victor couldn’t recall. But that was a long time ago. Nearly a year and a half. By Victor’s calculations, it was the perfect time to swoop in. Gave her enough time to mourn, realize this really was her new life, but not so much time that she got swept away by another suitor. He couldn’t afford to face any competition. He wasn’t sure he’d measure up.
Especially now.
Another break in oncoming traffic and the Volvo coupe ahead of Victor swung into action, made the turn, and disappeared into westbound traffic. The light turned yellow. Victor pulled farther into the intersection and strummed his finger on the wheel. Finally, oncoming traffic obeyed the light and stopped. Just as the light turned red and he started to make his turn, two cars came out of nowhere, clearly running the light, one overtook the other, honking wildly, and they both careened through the intersection like maniacs. Victor slammed his foot down on the brake, narrowly avoiding being T-boned, his heart hammering in his chest.
The shock of it disoriented him.
The light was red now. Victor sat in the middle of the intersection, frozen, unable to remember what he was meant to do in this situation. There was a rule, but it eluded him. Should he execute his turn? Back up? One shouldn’t be in the middle of an intersection on a red light. At a standstill. He glanced hopefully in the rearview mirror only to discover that backing up was not an option—there were too many cars lined up behind him. The light on La Cienega turned green and now traffic approached from both sides. Horns wailed and honked as Victor struggled to organize his thoughts. To breathe. He needed to act, to do something to get out of the way. But what? Everything had happened too quickly for him to react.
More honking, then traffic veered around the Datsun, people shouted out their windows at him, honking, crowding, coming at him from left and right.
A few more minutes of panic and the lights changed again. Sweating now, Victor made his left, dodging down the first side street, where he pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, fought to calm his pounding heart. He dropped his head onto the steering wheel and exhaled while the sun coming through the windshield seared the back of his neck.
Eight
When a child spends a lifetime, or close to it, waiting for one specific moment, something magical and faraway with the power to set her entire world straight, she imagines that someday from up, down, and sideways. She thinks of the moment taking place here or there, the clothes she’ll have on, what song may or may not be playing on a fortuitously placed stereo. She pictures the weather; wouldn’t have to be perfect—a raging thunderstorm can provide a theatrical, you-and-me-against-the-world sort of backdrop. And she thinks about what she will say. Oh, the witty and poignant things she will say!
But there’s a fact about someday that you can’t possibly understand until it has settled upon you. Someday was doomed the moment you wished it into existence. You’ve already ruined it. By imagining it even once, you’ve created an expectation someday cannot possibly live up to.
About an hour later, Lila and her mother stood on the roadside looking down upon the cabin. Elisabeth raised one arm to shield her eyes from the sun and her blouse shifted to bare a tiny shoulder wrapped in relaxed muscles and toasted skin. There was a raw physicality to the woman that Lila had forgotten. Her sensuality and comfort in her own limbs was what you noticed before anything else. She moved with near-liquid ease. “So this is where you’ve been all these years?”
“This is it.”
Her mother squinted down at the hillside and frowned into the late-afternoon glare. “Is that a pile of steak bones?”
“There’s a coyote.”
Elisabeth sucked the back of her teeth in disapproval. “This place isn’t fit for a child.”
“I chose it.” She hadn’t, though. Victor’s boss had come across the private sale while visiting his great aunt all those years prior. But something unexpected happened on the drive home with her mother. The numbness Lila had been filled with, the bubble of the moment she’d floated inside of back in the studio, had been replaced by something else. Anger. She watched her mother cringe.
“I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said quickly. “I don’t mean to insult the place. Must have been fun to grow up around such urb
an wilderness.”
Lila nodded, pointing out the bridge over the cactus growing in the dry riverbed. “I used to play Three Billy Goats Gruff down there with a housekeeper’s daughter who didn’t speak English. And there’s this impossibly tiny in-ground Jacuzzi—it’s hard to see because of the bushes— where Dad used to let me take bubble baths under the stars. I used to think they were winking at me. Later Dad told me it was the smog swirling around.”
“Ironic. After you left, I used to wonder who turned out the stars. Here they were, watching over you the whole time.”
Lila didn’t answer. It was as if her mother felt she were the wounded party. “So why now? Why come now, just like that?”
Elisabeth smiled, cupped her hands around Lila’s cheeks. “I came to see my girl, Delilah Blue. Why else would I be here?”
A car drove past and Lila realized she should say something, anything. But banal objects kept catching her gaze: bits of trash trapped beneath some bushes, a rogue daisy that should never have survived the summer’s drought, dog shit parched to white next to the mailbox where she’d waited for letters—certain if she put enough force into waiting they would come. She grew to despise the ugly mailbox, the way it stood, head cocked, at the edge of the parking pad, untroubled by the twenty foot drop that loomed behind. When the little door hung open, the mailbox looked foolish, like a drunken frat boy showing his tongue to prove he’d swallowed a goldfish whole.
Her mother appeared as entranced as she was by the mailbox, staring as she was at the faded letters that spelled out MACK. “This is yours?”
Lila nodded.
Elisabeth stared at the stick-on name. She pressed a balled-up tissue to her mouth. “Mack. All this time…Mack.”
Lila nodded. “Dad changed it. And I go by Lila now.”
“Lila Mack.” She giggled sadly, tears flowing again, head shaking from side to side. “Lila Mack.”
“Lila’s just easier. And Mack…Dad said it was Grandma’s maiden name. Or Mackinnon was. That Grandma was the last Mackinnon, and when she married the name died. He said she was gone now so we could honor her memory this way. With Mack.”