Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  “Hello?” the voice, a man’s, said. “I’m not sure I have the right number, but I’m looking for Pearl Daniels, née Kegan?”

  “This is she,” I said.

  “And you go by Lady? Is that correct? You’re the daughter of Simone Kegan?”

  I thought I might vomit, and it wasn’t from the hangover. “Who is this?”

  He told me his name was Douglas McDonald of Holler, Banerjee and Vebber.

  “I represent your mother’s estate.”

  “What? I don’t follow.”

  “Is this a good time for you to talk?”

  “Please just tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m sorry to let you know that your mother—she passed.” He cleared his throat. “Simone’s will lists you as the sole beneficiary.”

  “I see,” was all I could manage as he continued, his tone businesslike, capable. Thankfully I had enough wits about me to put down my glass before it slipped from my hand and shattered across the floor. I was sweating—the rank stink of fear—and every part of me felt slick and clammy. My mother was gone. I tried to fish the rest of a pickle nub out of my glass, but I couldn’t reach it, and my fingers came up sticky. My mother was dead.

  “In some respects,” Douglas McDonald continued, “there isn’t much, though there is the house on Monte Mar…”

  She hadn’t moved, not once. She had stayed put. I could have just driven over. All these years, she’d been there: vicious and gorgeous, the same always. Not anymore.

  “…which in this market, the land alone could go for—”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse. Me.”

  I knew I was nearly screeching. Devin looked away from the TV for the first time in two hours.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Daniels?” the lawyer asked.

  “Am I all right? Did you just ask me that? What do you think? Is it a habit of yours to call people before eight in the morning to tell them so coldly that their mommies have died?”

  Silence.

  “Please forgive me, Mrs. Daniels.”

  “Call me Lady.”

  “I apologize, Lady. Sincerely. I didn’t realize…well, it’s my understanding that you and your mother hadn’t spoken in almost twenty years.”

  I was crying, and I knew he could hear it.

  “When’s the funeral?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “When is it? What, am I not allowed to come?”

  “It was a couple of weeks ago,” he said gently.

  This news hurt me in a way I didn’t expect and I began to cry harder, great anguished heaves hiccupping in my chest. I’d missed my mother’s funeral. I’d been stupid enough to believe that because I hated her I didn’t also love her.

  When I came up for air, I asked, “How…how did she die?”

  “Car accident. But she’d recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.” He sounded almost pleased to relay this information. “A few weeks prior,” he explained, “she and I met at my office. After the diagnosis, she wanted to make sure everything regarding her estate and assets was in order. She always planned to give you everything, Mrs….Lady.”

  I could hardly speak. Douglas McDonald must have sensed my shock, and didn’t seem to expect a response as he went on to explain the will. I was barely listening.

  After I’d hung up, I flung myself back on the love seat. I was still crying, and my nose wouldn’t stop running.

  “Mommy,” Devin said, finally tearing himself away from the screen. “You done with your dog hair?”

  I laughed and wiped my face with my sleeve. “Hair of the dog, baby. And, yes, I finished it. Go back to watching your show now. Mommy’s all right. Mommy…” I started to cry again, and Devin—either charitably or cruelly, how could you tell with a toddler?—went right back to watching his show.

  My cell was lodged between the cushions and I dug it out immediately, though I wasn’t sure whom I would call. The only person who had known my mother was Marco, and I certainly wouldn’t get what I needed from him.

  We’d seen each other four times now, always in the middle of the day, always at his house in Chatsworth, and we hardly spoke at all, at least not about anything personal. The sex was never as brutal and quick as it had been the first time—we kissed, we laughed, we occasionally verged on tenderness—but still it felt like there was something worthless about it, just something for two damaged people to share, if “share” could even describe a transaction so physical. For me, our meetings were making everything worse; they were exacerbating all of my problems, and yet I needed them. Now I could never let Seth meet Marco. Our trysts were beginning to feel like the Bloody Mary I’d finished: a drink to distract from the pain of the other drinks, merely more of a bad thing. Dog hair.

  Marco had been the true confession I’d wanted to make to S the night before. Somehow I’d told her about the photograph and my pregnancy instead. Again I’d betrayed Karl.

  I called S, but the phone rang four times before going to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. Obviously she wouldn’t pick up; she was sleeping it off in the low cave of the Cottage. Lucky girl.

  47.

  I was drifting off to the dulcet tones of go, Diego, go! when my cell phone rang. It was Karl calling, and I’d never been so happy to see his face light up my screen. He and I hadn’t spoken since I’d started with Marco. Even after Seth had decamped for Kit’s, I could only bear to text or email. If Karl heard my voice he’d surely intuit that I’d been denigrating myself. Now, though, none of that mattered. I needed his comfort and his wisdom, his jokes.

  “Thank God it’s you,” I said.

  “Lady? What’s wrong? Is it Dev?”

  “My mother died.”

  I started crying again. I was wailing, I couldn’t help myself, it was the loss of my mother and also every secret I’d saddled myself with. Because Karl was Karl, he let me cry. He didn’t say anything, he just waited until I was finished. Devin was watching TV as if his life depended on it.

  Finally, I blew my nose and said, “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I explained that the lawyer had called. “It only took him a couple days to find me,” I said.

  “Your mom could have done it,” he said. “She could have found you, if she had tried.”

  “And now,” I began to cry again, “she never will. I can’t believe she’s dead. My mother…”

  “This is probably insensitive of me, Lady, but can I ask why you feel so sad? I thought you were okay with not having her in your life.”

  “I guess in the back of my mind I assumed I’d see her again. She’d ask me to forgive her, I’d take her hand…”

  He chuckled. “Ah yes, the fantasy of the bedside vigil. Kit wanted that with our mother, and I guess she sort of got it in the hospital. They had a moment. It was the only one in the history of their relationship where Mom wasn’t mean to her.”

  “My mother didn’t even get a bedside! The bitch had cancer but it was a car accident that killed her. The bizarre part is that she left me everything. Can you believe it? The house in Beverlywood? It’s mine.”

  Now he was silent.

  “What?” I asked.

  “How long were you going to wait?”

  “Wait for what?”

  “When can I expect the papers?” His voice had gotten very tight and strained.

  “Karl, I’m a mess right now, please stop with the code words.”

  “Well, now that you own a house in Beverlywood, there’s no reason to stay in ours.”

  “I love this house, you know that.”

  “What about me—do you love me?”

  “I—” I wanted to tell him that I missed him and his wit, his smell, the pasta he made on Sunday nights, and that every time I left Marco’s I felt tainted. Karl could lick me clean like the mother cat he was. I remembered last night, in the closet. I’d told S the one thing I made Karl promise never to confess to another human being, and all it had taken was a little gin.

&
nbsp; I began to cry.

  “Are you crying about your mother or me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something’s up with Seth,” he said after a moment. “He’s angry, clomping around, doing the brooding thing. He brought up his father again. He asked me if you still knew his dad. Ridiculous, I know, but you need to talk to him.”

  “I would if he ever came back. Seth’s left me.” I was crying again.

  “How about I bring him with me tonight, when I come to pick up Dev? You two can discuss it.”

  “I need to see you first. Just you. As soon as possible. Let’s meet at my mother’s house—I need to be there. The lawyer guy said he’d meet me at ten.”

  Karl agreed, but he hung up before I did. I was done weeping. For now. My headache had returned, a crying-induced one, dehydration caused not by liquor but by my own body, in service of my body. It was a noble pain.

  48.

  It wasn’t lost on me that I was yet again dragging Devin along to see a man with whom I had a complicated relationship. This time, at least, the man was his father, or the person he assumed was his father. It wasn’t much of an assumption; I had seen Devin’s real father only twice in my life, whereas Karl had rubbed a can of cold Diet Coke against my lower back while I was in labor, signed the birth certificate, gone out to buy the diapers, and worn the baby carrier. He wasn’t Devin’s father, okay, but he was his daddy, and no one could take that away. I’d have to tell S that.

  As I pulled onto Monte Mar, Devin announced from the backseat, “You have a mommy!” I had been explaining the situation with my mother all morning, and I’d had to repeat the information on the drive over. It was a lot for a little kid to process: this new and dead grandmother, this house we owned, but not for long, what a will was.

  “Everyone has a mommy,” I said. “I just didn’t see mine.”

  “Why you not see her?”

  “Because she wasn’t nice. I loved her, but she wasn’t nice.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain, honey. Lots of people have complicated relationships with their mothers and they need to sever communication with them in order to lead healthy lives.”

  He was quiet. Sometimes, if I answered his big questions with adult language, it short-circuited his brain.

  I pointed out the window. “That’s the house!”

  It looked the same. Better, even. The glossy black door, the bright green hedges, what I assumed was a new roof. I wasn’t surprised. My mother’s property was an extension of herself, and she would never, ever, let herself go. She might have died in a car accident, but at least on her last day of life her cancer hadn’t yet ravaged her. At the moment of impact, she’d been pretty, and that must have brought her peace.

  I was about to cry when I saw a man was already waiting on the porch. I pulled myself together. It had to be Douglas McDonald: he was tiny and middle-aged, with two cell phones clipped to his belt, a set of keys in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. He waved with the hand that held the keys.

  “I’m sorry again for your loss,” he began as soon as we were face-to-face. I said thank you.

  He was meeting me so soon after our phone call because he knew he’d botched that conversation. He needed to prove he was human, that he had feelings.

  I kept it short because I wanted him gone by the time Karl arrived. I assured him I would come to his office first thing Monday morning to review and sign all the paperwork.

  “I’m only going to walk through the house now,” I said.

  “Spend all the time you need.” He handed me the manila envelope and explained that a copy of the will was inside. “For your perusal,” he said, as if it were a wine list.

  After he had driven off, Devin and I waited on the front lawn because I couldn’t bear the idea of going inside just yet. Devin wasn’t much older than Seth had been the last time I’d walked into this house, and out of it, and I needed to change the choreography. I needed a man.

  Karl pulled up a few minutes later and as soon as he saw Devin, he rushed out of the car with a big floppy grin on his face. He walked toward Devin like a gorilla, hunched over with bent legs, his arms outward, reaching for a hug.

  “Daddy!” Devin roared, and the two of them pawed at each other as I looked on.

  Karl wasn’t making eye contact with me, or that’s what it felt like.

  When they finally disengaged, I said, “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

  Karl touched my elbow and I leaned in to him. “Please hug me,” I said, and he did. It took all of me not to stick my face into the crook of his neck and inhale.

  “I had to lie to Seth and Kit about coming here,” he whispered into my ear. “They think I’m meeting an old friend from SC.”

  “You could’ve told them the truth,” I said. “Or am I enemy numero uno over there?”

  He didn’t answer because Devin had crawled between us. “Mommy and Daddy! Time to go in the house!”

  Karl stepped back to pick him up, and I turned to unlock the door.

  Inside, it smelled like it always had: the chemical lemon of wood polish, combined with reduced-fat everything—that had a sour spunk, didn’t it? My father had lived here until I was almost four and after that brief tenure it had been just my mother and me, and the only men who set foot into the house were the ones delivering packages or hired to fix something. It was almost exhilarating to know Karl was standing right behind me, taking in this space, violating it by his mere presence. I didn’t feel so sad anymore.

  I flipped on the light. The credenza remained by the front door, but the vase was bereft of flowers. I felt a pang of despair for my mother, and then triumph.

  “You’ll have to figure out what to do with all of this,” Karl said, gesturing first to the credenza and then to the umbrella stand. Devin was squirming in his arms. “You’re the sole successor, correct?”

  “I think so.” I waved the envelope and then tossed it onto the table. “But I don’t want to get into it today.”

  “I go play now?” Devin asked.

  “No,” Karl said.

  “Let him,” I said. “It’s just a house.”

  Karl sighed, releasing Devin from his arms. The boy ran to the living room and immediately climbed onto the couch, dismantling it, pillow by pillow. I watched Karl watch him, his eyes crinkling with pride.

  “Come with me,” I said, putting out my hand. He didn’t take it.

  I showed him my old room, which had long ago been redesigned for guests, replete with a Hollywood Regency bedside table, and on it, a mirrored tissue-box holder and a tray with a carafe and glass, ostensibly for water.

  I sat down on the bed. I knew without looking that there was no sheet under the coverlet; my mother didn’t like to sully linens unnecessarily.

  “Looks like a guest room,” Karl said.

  I was sure in the closet we would find the shoe hotels my mother used to house her impressive collection of footwear. Her own closet wasn’t large enough to accommodate them.

  “Check this out,” I said, pulling open the closet door.

  There they were: her shoes, the compartments for them piled high and orderly. The pairs I didn’t recognize gutted me as much as the ones I did.

  “Lots of shoes,” Karl said. He seemed impatient—or no, nervous.

  “This way,” I said.

  In my mother’s room, the four-poster bed and the large vanity remained, though the latter was covered not only with makeup and eye creams as I expected, but with prescription bottles, and ointments as well. The paraphernalia of the sick and infirm. The room itself had a different smell from what I was used to: medicinal and cloying, and also powdery, like a piece of cheap milk chocolate. An old-lady smell.

  “Someone must have come in here and tidied up,” Karl said, bending down to check out a bottle of pills. They were lined up in neat clusters.

  “Nope. This was my mother. She was very clean.”

  “Look.” Karl he
ld up a silver picture frame, certainly purchased at Tiffany’s or Neiman’s, billed as an heirloom piece. I imagined it heavy in his hand. “Is this Seth?” he asked.

  The photo was a little blurry. In it, Seth stood in the crib my mother had bought for him. The picture had been taken mid-blink and his eyes were only partially open.

  “Must’ve been the only photo she had of him,” I said. I was crying again. “How could she be dead?”

  “You regret pushing her away.”

  It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t say it gently either. This time, he was the one to leave the room first. I followed him.

  In my mother’s office, I was relieved there was no evidence of Seth. This was where the crib had been set up all those years before, though now the room was filled with other furniture, most of it imported from Asia, with the occasional midcentury end table.

  “What’s all this?” Karl asked.

  “Her business. She sold furniture—I’m surprised she was still at it, though.”

  Karl abruptly craned his neck into the hallway and yelled, “Dev, we’re back here! You okay?”

  Devin yelled something unintelligible but didn’t come running.

  “Stop avoiding me,” I said.

  “We’re the only two people standing in a room choked with Saran-wrapped furniture,” he said. “How is that avoiding you?”

  “You wish Devin were in here with us right now, so we wouldn’t have to talk.”

  “I miss my kid, okay? Weekends just aren’t enough with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” His tone was mean, bitter. “Are you really?”

  “I said I was, so I am, okay?”

  He sighed. “I got a place. An apartment. In Park La Brea. Two bedrooms.”

  “Park La Brea? In one of those Eastern Bloc high rises?”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Who’s going to live there?”