White Oleander

by Janet Fitch

  She scolded me in those letters. What do I care about a 98 on a spelling test? Your flower garden. You’re so boring, I don’t even recognize you. Who are these people you’re living with now? What are you really thinking? But I never told her a thing.

  “You want to know about my mother?” I took a gray ribboned notebook, opened it, and handed it to Claire. “Here. Read it.”

  She took her hands down, her eyes puffy and red, her nose running. She hiccupped and took it from me. I didn’t have to look over her shoulder. I knew what it said.

  Spread a malicious rumor.

  Let a beloved old person’s dog out of the yard.

  Suggest suicide to a severely depressed person.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Tell a child it isn’t very attractive or bright.

  Put Drano in glassine folded papers and leave them on streetcorners.

  Throw handfuls of useless foreign coins into a beggar’s cup, and make sure they thank you profusely. “God bless you, miss.”

  “It’s not real, though,” Claire said. “It’s not like she actually does these things.”

  I only shrugged. How could Claire understand a woman like my mother? She would write these lists for hours, laughing until tears flowed.

  Claire looked at me hungrily, pleading. How could I stay angry with her? My mother had no idea what my favorite food was, where I’d live if I could live anywhere in the world. Claire was the one who discovered me. She knew I’d want to live in Big Sur, in a cabin with a woodstove and a spring, that I liked green apple soap, that Boris Godunov was my favorite opera, that I was afraid of milk. She helped me pack the papers back into the box, shut it, and put it under the bed.

  18

  RON AND CLAIRE were fighting again in their room. I could hear it as I lay in my bed, the rabbit crouching on my wall, his ears erect and trembling. Claire wanted Ron to quit his job, find something to do that didn’t involve cattle mutilations or witchcraft in the Pueblos.

  “What do you want me to do, wash dishes?” It was rare to hear Ron raise his voice. But he was tired, just back from Russia, he hadn’t expected a fight. Usually it was a home-cooked meal and kisses and clean sheets. “I’m earning a living. It’s just a job, Claire. Jesus, sometimes I just don’t know what goes on in your head.”

  But it was a lie. What Ron did was peddle fear. There was quite a market, it seemed. Everywhere, people were frightened. Threatening shapes lurked at the edges of vision, in the next car, at the ATM, maybe waiting for them in the hall with a .38. There was poison in supermarket toothpaste. Ebola, hepatitis C. Husbands disappeared on the way to the liquor store. Children showed up dead in ditches without their hands. The picture was pulled away from the frame, the outlines were gone. People wanted monsters and ghosts and voices from beyond the grave. Something foreign, intentional, not senseless and familiar as a kid getting shot for his leather jacket.

  That’s what Ron supplied. Fear in a frame. Aliens are always preferable to confused, violent acts. It was a career steeped in cynicism, pumped through with hypocrisy.

  Her voice in reply was like bending sheet metal.

  But I could understand him word for word. “What, you think I come off a fourteen-hour day, jetlagged, at some spoonbending convention in Yakutsk, ready to party? Hey, wow, bring on the bimbos! Maybe you should try getting some work, and remember what it’s like to be wiped out at the end of a day.”

  I felt his words burn her flesh like a lash. I tried to hear what she was saying, but her voice faded to a murmur. Claire couldn’t defend herself, she curled up like a leaf under a glass.

  “Astrid doesn’t need you waiting with the milk and the cookies. Jesus, Claire! She’s a young woman. I think she’d like spending a few hours by herself. Maybe make some friends of her own if you’d give her a chance.”

  But I did need her, Ron. Nobody ever waited for me when I got home from school — and never milk. He didn’t even know that much. I mattered to her. Couldn’t he understand what that meant to me, and to her? If he cared, he would never say such things to her. How dare he pretend that he loved her. I cracked open my door to see if I could hear her, but she must have been whispering.

  “Of course they stopped calling. Gloria said she called and called and you never picked up. Of course they gave up.”

  Now all I could hear was her crying. She cried the way children do, sobbing, hiccupping, nose running. And the soothing tones of his voice.

  I could picture him, taking her in his arms, rocking her against his chest, stroking her hair, and she ’d let him, that was the worst part of it. And they’d make love, and she’d fall asleep, thinking he was so kind, after all, he must love her. It would be all better. That was how he did it. Hurt her, and then made it all better. I hated him. He came home, upset her, when he was just going to leave her again.

  A LETTER CAME in the mail, from my mother. I started to open it when I realized it wasn’t for me. It was addressed to Claire. What was my mother doing writing to Claire? I never told her about Claire. Should I give it to her? I decided I couldn’t take the chance. My mother might say anything. Might threaten her, might lie, or frighten her. I could always say I opened it by accident. I took it into my room, slitted it open.

  Dear Claire,

  Yes, I think it would be marvelous if you’d visit. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Astrid, I don’t know if I’d recognize her — and I’m always delighted to meet my loyal readers. I will put you on my visitors list — you’ve never been convicted of a felony, have you?

  Just teasing.

  Your friend,

  Ingrid.

  The idea that they corresponded filled me with a sickening dread. Your friend, Ingrid. She must have written after I’d caught her reading in my room at Christmastime. I felt betrayed, helpless, anxious. I would have confronted her with it, but I’d have had to admit I’d opened her mail. So I tore up the letter and burned it in my wastebasket. Hopefully she would just be depressed that my mother never wrote back, and give up.

  IT WAS FEBRUARY, a gray morning so overcast we couldn’t see the Hollywood Hills from our yard. We were going to visit my mother. Claire had set it up. She put on a miniskirt, turtleneck, and tights, all in mahogany brown, frowned in the mirror. “Maybe jeans would be better.”

  “No denim,” I said.

  The idea of this meeting was almost too much to bear. I could only lose. My mother could hurt her. Or she could win her over. I didn’t know which was worse. Claire was mine, someone who loved me. Why did my mother have to get in the middle? But that was my mother, she always had to be the center of attention, everything had to be about her.

  I hadn’t seen her since Starr. Marvel refused to let the van people take me, she thought the less I saw her the better. I looked in the mirror, imagining what my mother would think of me now. The scars on my face were just the start. I’d been through a few things since then. I wouldn’t know how to be with her now, I was too big to hide in her silences. And now I had Claire to worry about.

  I touched my hand to my forehead and told Claire, “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  “Stage fright,” she said, smoothing the skirt with the palms of her hands. “I’m having a bit myself.”

  I had second thoughts about my clothes too, a long skirt and Doc Martens, thick socks, a crocheted sweater with a lace collar from Fred Segal, where all trendy young Hollywood shopped. My mother was going to hate it. But I had nothing to change into, all my clothes were like that now.

  We drove east for an hour. Claire chatted nervously. She never could stand a silence. I looked out the windows, sucked a peppermint for carsickness, nestled into my thick Irish sweater. Gradually, the suburbs thinned out, replaced by lumberyards and fields, the smell of manure, and long, fog-clad views framed by lines of windbreak eucalyptus. CYA, the men’s prison. It had been more than two years since I’d last come this way, a very different girl in pink shoes. I even recognized the little market. Cok
e, 12 pack, $2.49. “Turn here.”

  We drove back along the same blacktop road to the CIW, the steam stack and the water tower, the guard tower that marked the edge of the prison. We parked in the visitors lot.

  Claire took a deep breath. “This doesn’t look so bad.”

  The crows cawed aggressively in the ficus trees. It was freezing cold. I pulled my sweater down over my hands. We passed through the guard tower. Claire brought a book for my mother, Tender Is the Night. Fitzgerald, Claire’s favorite, but the guards wouldn’t let her bring it in. My boots set off the metal detector. I had to take them off for the guards to search. The jangle of keys, the slam of the gate, walkie-talkies, these were the sounds of visiting my mother.

  We sat at a picnic table under the blue overhang. I watched the gate where my mother would come in, but Claire was looking the wrong way, toward Reception, where the new prisoners milled around or pushed brooms — they volunteered to sweep, they were so bored. Most were young, one or two over twenty-five. Their dead-looking faces wished us nothing good.

  Claire shivered. She was trying to be brave. “Why are they staring at us like that?”

  I opened my hand, examined the lines in the palm, my fate. Life would be hard. “Don’t look at them.”

  It was cold, but now I was sweating, waiting for my mother. Who knew, maybe they would become friends. Maybe my mother wasn’t playing a game, or not too ugly a one. Claire could keep her in postage, and she would be a nice character witness someday.

  I saw my mother, waiting while the CO opened the gate. Her hair was long again, forming a pale scarf across the front of her blue dress, down one breast. She hesitated, she was as nervous as I was. So beautiful. She always surprised me with her beauty.

  Even when she had just been away for a night, I’d see her and catch my breath. She was thinner than the last time I’d seen her, all the excess flesh had been burned away. Her eyes had become even brighter, I could feel them from the gate. She was very upright, muscular, and tan. She looked less like a Lorelei now, more like an assassin from Blade Runner. She strode up, smiling, but I felt the uncertainty in her hands, stiff on my shoulders. We looked into each other’s eyes, and I was astonished to find that we were the same height. Her eyes were searching within me, trying to find something to recognize. They made me suddenly shy, embarrassed of my fancy clothes, even of Claire. I was ashamed of the idea that I could escape her, even of wanting to. Now she knew me. She hugged me, and held her hand out to Claire.

  “Welcome to Valhalla,” she said, shaking Claire’s hand.

  I tried to imagine how my mother must be feeling right then, meeting the woman I’d been living with, a woman I liked so much I hadn’t written anything about her. Now my mother could see how beautiful she was, how sensitive, the child’s mouth, the heart-shaped face, the delicacy of her neck, her freshly cut hair.

  Claire smiled with relief that my mother had made the first move. She didn’t understand the nature of poisons.

  My mother sat down next to me, put her hand over mine, but it wasn’t so large anymore. Our hands were growing into the same shape. She saw that too, held her palm to mine. She looked older than the last time I saw her, lines etching into her tanned face, around the eyes and thin mouth. Or maybe it was just in comparison to Claire. She was spare, dense, sharp, steel to Claire’s wax. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in to please let this be over soon.

  “It’s not at all what I thought,” Claire said.

  “It doesn’t really exist,” my mother said, waving her hand in an elegant gesture. “It’s an illusion.”

  “You said that in your poem.” A new poem, in Iowa Review.

  About a woman turning into a bird, the pain of the new feathers coming in. “It was exquisite.”

  I winced at her old-fashioned, actressy diction. I could imagine my mother mocking her later to her cellblock sisters. But I couldn’t protect Claire now. It was too late. I saw that the perennial hint of irony in the corners of my mother’s lips had now been etched into a permanent line, the tattoo of a gesture.

  My mother crossed her legs, tanned and muscular as carved oak, bare under her blue dress, white sneakers. “My daughter says you’re an actress.” She wore no sweater in the cold grayness of the morning. The fog suited her, I smelled the sea on her, although we were a hundred miles from any ocean.

  Claire twisted her wedding ring, it was loose on her thin fingers. “To tell you the truth, my career’s a disaster. I botched my last job so badly, I’ll probably never work again.”

  Why did she always have to tell the truth? I should have told her, certain people should always be lied to.

  My mother instinctively felt for the crack in Claire’s personal history, like a rock climber in fog sensing fingerholds in a cliff face. “Nerves?” she said kindly.

  Claire leaned closer to my mother, eager to share confidences. “It was a nightmare,” she said, and began to describe the awful day.

  Overhead the clouds roiled and clotted, like dysentery, and I felt sick. Claire was afraid of so many things, she only went thigh-deep into the ocean because she was afraid of being swept under. So why couldn’t she feel the undertow? My mother’s smile, so kind-looking. There’s a riptide here, Claire. Lifeguards have had to rescue stronger swimmers than you.

  “They treat actors so badly,” my mother said.

  “I’ve had it.” Claire slid her garnet heart pendant along its chain, tucked it under her lip. “No more. Dragging myself to auditions, just to have them look at me for two seconds and decide I’m too ethnic for orange juice, too classic for TV moms.”

  My mother’s profile sharp against the chinchilla sky. You could have drawn a straight line using the edge of her nose. “What are you, all of thirty?”

  “Thirty-five next month.” The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She would be the witness from hell. She couldn’t resist the urge to lie down and bare her breast to the lance. “That’s why Astrid and I get along. Scorpio and Pisces understand one another.” She winked at me across the table.

  My mother didn’t like that we understood each other, Claire and I. I could tell by the way she was pulling my hair. The crows cawed and flapped their dull, glossy wings. But she smiled at Claire. “Astrid and I never understood each other. Aquarius and Scorpio. She’s so secretive, haven’t you found that? I never knew what she was thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything,” I said.

  “She opens up,” Claire said cheerfully. “We talk all the time. I had her chart done. It’s very well balanced. Her name is lucky too.” The ease with which Claire knelt at the block, stretched her neck out, still chattering away.

  “She hasn’t been very lucky so far,” my mother said, almost purring. “But maybe her luck is changing.” Couldn’t Claire smell the oleanders cooking down, the slight bitter edge of the toxin?

  “We just adore her,” Claire said, and for a moment I saw her as my mother saw her. Actressy, naive, ridiculous. No, I wanted to say, stop, don’t judge her based on this. She doesn’t audition well. You don’t know her at all. Claire just kept talking, unaware of what was going on. “She’s doing wonderfully well, she’s on the honor roll this year. We’re trying to keep that old grade point average up.” She made a half-circle gesture with her fist, a Girl Scout gesture, hearty and optimistic. The old grade point average. I was mortified and I didn’t want to be. When would my mother have worked with me, hour after hour, to raise the old grade point average? I wanted to wrap Claire in a blanket the way you do with someone who’s on fire, and roll her in the grass to save her.

  My mother leaned toward Claire, her blue eyes snapping like blue fire. “Put a pyramid over her desk. They say it improves memory,” she said with a straight face.

  “My memory’s fine,” I said.

  But Claire was intrigued. Already my mother had found a weak spot, and I was sure would soon find more. And Claire didn’t realize for a moment that my mother was jerking her chain. Such
innocence. “A pyramid. I hadn’t thought of that. I practice feng shui, though. You know, where you put the furniture and all.” Claire beamed, thinking my mother was a kindred soul, rearranging the furniture for good energy, talking to houseplants.

  I wanted to change the conversation before she started talking about Mrs. Kromach and the mirrors on the roof. I wished she’d glued a mirror right to her forehead. “We live right near the big photo labs on La Brea,” I interjected. “Off Willoughby.”

  My mother continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “And your husband is even in the business. The paranormal, I mean.” Those ironic commas in the corners of her mouth. “You’ve got the inside scoop.” She stretched her arms over her head, I could imagine the little pops up and down her spine. “You should tell him, his show is very popular in here.”

  She rested her arm on my shoulder. I discreetly shrugged it off. I might have to be her audience, but I wasn’t her coconspirator.

  Claire didn’t even notice. She giggled, zipping her garnet heart on its thin chain. She reminded me of the tarot card where the boy is looking up at the sun as he is about to walk off a cliff. “Actually, he thinks it’s just a big joke. He doesn’t believe in the supernatural.”

  “You’d think that would be dangerous in his line of work.” My mother tapped on the orange plastic of the picnic table. I could see her mind winding out, leaping ahead. I wanted to throw something in there, stop the machine.