by Paloma Meir
“Only when I need to be.”
“Shush both of you.” She linked her arms through both of ours and pulled the three of us uncomfortably close together. “We don’t argue in my family, and that’s what the two of you are to me. I'm happy to be back.”
“Where is the rest of your family Zelda? I was expecting to meet Louisa. A baby Zelda. You have a baby. How old is she? A year and a half? I haven’t even met her yet.” She released us and we moved back comfortably into our seats. “I’m happy you’re back too.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“She’s so sleepy after the long flight... You’ll meet her soon...”
The waiter came to the table, and we ordered. The chopped salad for me and scampi for my sister. A salad, two appetizers and the pasta special for the sylphlike Zelda.
I picked up the conversation and told them about my snowboarding trip with Danny, more of a way to get a read on Zelda’s intentions. Her face showed no emotion when I spoke of him and Sarah. I began to wonder if Danny had sent the message to himself in a fugue state of misery the night before. The problem with that theory was he hadn’t been unhappy. In fact, he had been ebullient. Sarah may not have been or would ever be the great love of his life, but he dug her company. She wasn’t that different from his high school girlfriend Isabella.
Her only reaction was silly and childish as I told the story of building an igloo for my new friend Kimmy, framing the tale of how my education at MIT assisted me in the most unexpected ways. I did not state I was intimate with her. I did not mention what the two of us had done in the igloo upon completion. Still Zelda felt it was important to remark that Kimmy was not a name an adult woman should call herself. If she had been wearing pigtails, I would have pulled one.
The waiter came back to take our plates away and take our dessert order of which, Zelda ordered three. The conversation turned to her time in France. She didn’t tell any stories that I hadn’t heard of already from her letters, but the way she told them was different than the way she had told stories as a teenager. Embellished with long leaps away from the narrative, they were very charming. I also thought a sign her Spanish Professor, and this made me dislike him less, had indulged her, pampered her even.
The waiter brought the bill to the table. Zelda tried to take it from him, but I was faster. The cost of the early dinner was $225.00 which was well over my weekly food budget. I made a note to myself to pick the restaurant should I take her and my sister out to a meal again.
My sister was headed back to New Hampshire in three days. Cranky as she was, she was still my sister, and I wanted to spend time with her. I would miss her a lot, as I always did, when she went back to school.
My schedule was clear. My last remaining responsibility, tutoring, I had ended a few days before the winter holidays. My bank account was down to my last $8,800.00, the lowest it had been since high school. More than enough to last until my job began March 1st, even with the down payment on the apartment Danny and I were going to rent in Malibu when our house was torn down.
I spent the next three days with Carolina and Zelda, picking them up from Zelda's small two story Spanish house some would consider the wrong side of the tracks. Those people would be wrong. The house was as deceptive as Danny’s on the beach. Small and modest but the cost to buy one would be in the millions.
I felt pretty good that Zelda hadn’t rented above Sunset Blvd because she could well afford to do just that. Whatever spending frenzy she had gone through in Paris had dissipated. Or so I thought until I spent the following three days shopping for “Mom” clothes with her.
I knew she had spent a good amount of time in Paris shopping with Theodora and her new friends. I didn’t see the need for an entire new wardrobe. I pointed that out to her several times, but she explained Los Angeles was culturally different and her wardrobe was too formal, too colorful for the relaxed city she had moved back to for reasons that remained unclear to me. She never mentioned her 'Danny plan' and didn’t seem interested in visiting her parents or letting them know she had moved back to Los Angeles.
I would sit on the sofas as we went to the boutiques along Melrose Place and watch her and Carolina trying on racks of clothes. The two of them excitedly coming out of the dressing rooms to show me their outfits. They would ask me of the raggedy shorts, t-shirts and puffy down jackets, what my opinion was of their “mom’ outfits that no mother I had ever seen around town wore.
Carolina wasn’t a mom, and would probably never be with her workaholic ways. I watched without comment as Zelda would pay for my sister’s piles of clothes. I couldn’t understand how she could accept so much from her friend without upsetting the balance of their relationship.
I wasn’t bored as one would think from seeing me sit on the sofas by the dressing rooms. Zelda would prance around the stores in her slips carrying back piles of clothes to the dressing rooms. The salesgirls meekly followed behind trying to keep up with her bundles. They were servile, praising her, and I’m sure wondering where this extremely wealthy, beautiful woman had come from magically lining their pockets with high commissions.
I sat on the sofa in a boutique I didn’t know the name of the day before my sister was to head back to school. Zelda came out of the dressing room wearing a shorter than usual black slip, glancing feverishly around the small store as if she might have missed something.
“I don’t know about that one, Zelda. It’s a little matronly, too conservative for someone as young and pretty as you are,” I yelled out confusing her, making her think for a moment I thought the slip was a dress she had tried on.
“Serge, you’re so patient. I’m sorry. We’re almost done.” She landed on the sofa beside me, curled up and whispered into my ear, “And I’m not pretty Serge, I’m beautiful. I know you think so too.”
I moved my face towards hers to kiss her cheek while laughing, “You’re not so bad. Maybe one day.” My nose rubbed against hers, and I wanted to do much more than kiss her. Filthy thoughts filled my head and quickly passed. The shopping did not bore me.
“Zelda,” my sister said ruining the moment, “Could you help me with the zipper?” She got up off the sofa as my sister looked down at me in a questioning or maybe concerned way. I smiled at her and patted out a rhythm on my knees to let her know I was fine.
We pulled up in front of her house after our long day out shopping to drop Zelda off. Carolina and I had invited her for dinner at our parent’s house, but she was tired and still feeling the effects of jetlag. We said our good-byes, but she did not move from the front seat, only staring up at me with a silly smile on her angelic face, her hands twisting in her lap. I smiled back at her. We stared into each other’s eyes as I tried to think of something to say to her. I didn’t know why she wasn’t getting out of the car, but then I figured it out.
“I’ll pick you up at noon tomorrow, Zelda?” The smile felt stuck on my face, as her wide eyes sparkled, “No more shopping though, okay? I’ll take you downtown to MOCA.”
“See you at noon Serge, and I’m done shopping. How much do you think I need?" She laughed as she bounced out of the car, bags swinging in her hands, her round bottom, like two small peaches sitting atop tall sticks, sashaying up the front walk.
“Serge, you can stop staring. She’s in the house,” my sister said ruining all of my dirty little thoughts.
“Making sure she got in safely.” I pulled the car away from the curb.
“She came home for Danny, not you.”
“Why do you always think these things?” I didn’t wait for an answer, “You need to get the Danny idea out of her head. Not going to work. He almost hates her. He feels taken advantage of by her. He can’t emotionally handle her. Maybe he never could.”
“You’ve been leering at her for three days. I’ve never seen you like this before. It’s gross, Serge. And trust me. They will be together.”
“Carolina, it’s not going to work out for her. Why is she so stuck on this idea?” I stopped at the red l
ight and turned around to look at her. “And I’m not leering at her.” I turned back around as the light turned green. “I’m not going to worry about any of this. She’ll probably meet some rich lawyer next week, and that will be that.”
“Like you, Serge?”
“What?” I asked.
“You’re going to be a rich lawyer, so someone like you.”
“Not like me. You know what I mean. Why are you being deliberately obtuse?”
“Emotionally obtuse is what you’ve been your entire life.”
“Carolina, enough.” I pulled the car over and turned completely around to her. “You’re my sister, my family, why are you always so angry? You weren’t like this when we were kids. We supported each other, built each other up. Now you’re always tearing me down, everyone in your life other than Zelda. When I call you at school, you spend the first half of the conversation eviscerating your colleagues and your students. What happened to you?”
“I would never want to tear you down.” She looked as if I had slapped her. “Our mother, the whole structure of our family… Knowing why doesn’t help. I’m angry all the time. I argued my whole… fighting every point, and you were always there with me, trying to help me. Don’t give up on me… I’m so sorry.”
“Carolina... I would never give up on you...”
“I don’t deserve that loyalty... Serge, don’t get wrapped up in Zelda. It’s too late for that.”
“Come up front, Carolina.” I patted the seat beside me as tears flowed down her face. She wiped them away as if they embarrassed her, “It’s going to be okay...”
She climbed up front, stepping over the center console and leaving a footprint, but I didn’t say anything about it. She cried onto my shoulder for more than an hour, talking out of order, her life spilling out of her. I listened, and that was enough.
Chapter Twenty
Zelda was waiting outside her home promptly at noon the following day. She was dressed in her “mom” clothes, black riding pants, high black suede boots, a white silk t-shirt, worn with a loose black cardigan, cashmere of course. The slightest shadow of nipple showed through her lacy bra under the direct sunlight of the day.
I would have been excited by the sexiness of her, the possibility of what may have been her nipples, but I was worn out after the night with my family and going home to Danny. I knew I couldn’t share the news of my day for fear of sending him back into an angry spiral.
I was quiet with her, attentive to her every need, most of them being sweets related, but silent. I nodded my head a lot the way Danny would if he didn’t feel like talking to people.
“Serge, what’s wrong?” she asked as I brought out the red bean cakes and coffee I knew wouldn’t be up to her standard at a little cafe across the street from the museum in Little Tokyo, “You’ve barely spoken to me all day. Did you not like the art? I don’t always understand conceptual art, but it was fun? Wasn’t it? The blown-up wasteland city... I liked that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I liked it,” I nodded my head like an idiot.
“Do you feel I forced you to spend the day with me?” she held the coffee cup up to her face, and hid behind her long, thin fingers. “We’ve been having so much fun, but maybe you only wanted to be with your sister. I’ve been intruding. I ruined your time with Carolina.”
“Zelda have you lost your Mount Everest sized ego?” I took her chin in my hand, “Come on, you know better than that. The most perfect Zelda Moreau can only brighten the day, make it better in everyway.” The corners of her mouth curled into a smile, “I get it now. I haven’t been praising you enough. You’re devious in your quest for compliments.”
“I don’t know if I make things better anymore,” she laughed. “What’s wrong then, Serge?” she placed her index finger over mine which was odd.
I opened my mouth to speak, to make a joke specifically, but I didn’t do it. If there was anyone who could begin to understand the intricacies of the rotten root of my family’s tree, it would be her. I decided to give it a try. Talking about it couldn’t be any worse than sitting in the funk that filled me.
“Carolina being home brings it all back. It wasn’t that bad for me. What am I saying? You know that. Why am I complaining?”
“You being the good son didn’t make it okay for you. It made you...”
“It’s a feeling, Zelda,” I purposely interrupted her. “I can’t put a name on it, because everything’s fine now. Mother’s sober, Carolina is happy in New Hampshire, angry most of the time, but happy when she’s not cursing the world. My dad... well he’s still my dad. He makes no difference either way.”
“Helpless, you felt helpless to take care of the ones you loved.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. That’s not it, Zelda,” I swatted her nose. “You know what I’ve always wondered?” I asked because soul searching wasn’t for me. “Your roommate on your semester away, what was her name? Laurel? She told us the story of how you met Paolo or how you ended up with him. Something about you walking up to his desk, saying something to him that she couldn’t hear. She said he was a hard teacher, but...”
“I hate that she told the two of you that...”
“Okay Zelda, but what did you say to him?”
“You really want to know? It’s so silly,” she laughed lightly. “You’re going to be so disappointed Serge, I said, 'It’s a beautiful day. Would you like to go for a walk?”
“That’s it? That’s all you said?”
“Yes Serge. What did you think I said to him?”
“Always thought it was that. Not too surprised I was right,” I joked and picked up our mess to take to the garbage can. “Come on, let’s go. It’s getting dark.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you changed the subject.”
“Carl Jung you’re not, but I feel better Zelda, okay?” Garbage thrown away, I walked back to the table and offered her my hand. “Back to Paolo, how’s it going to work with Louisa? Will he be coming out soon? Shared custody? You never mentioned him in your letters.”
“The lawyers are working out the details.” She did not take my hand. She did not move from the chair. Her eyes looked a little wild, a little unfocused, and her hand moved across her chest and patted it gently. It wasn’t even close to the anxiety attacks she had after her bad day, not close at all, but still wasn’t a condition I wanted to see her in. “They told me not talk about it.”
“I’m a lawyer, Zelda. Well, I will be after I take the Bar next month. I’m taking your case on Pro-Bono,” I knelt down before her and took her free hand in mine, “We officially have lawyer/client confidentiality now.” Her wild eyes focused on mine, “It’s never been good for you to keep quiet about things.”
“It’s not like that Serge.” She released my hand and stood up, “This has an end date, only a few weeks away or maybe sooner. The moment it’s resolved, I’ll tell you everything, every detail, I promise.” She linked her arm through mine, and we walked out of the cafe courtyard towards the car. “You know, for a lawyer, you don’t ask the right questions. What I asked Paolo at dinner after the walk, would have been a better question. You’re a scientist at heart.” She leaned her head against my shoulder, and everything was right again. Back we went to our playful banter, with me promising to be a better host for her the next day.
I let her have her space, not asking about Paolo anymore. If we’re going to count mistakes I made, lapses in judgment, this would be one.
I would pick her up at noon. She would always be waiting outside on the steps, popping up and practically flying to my car, all smiles and buoyant energy asking me my plan for our day. We spent a lot time on Hollywood Blvd, and the Silverlake area, with me trying to keep the costs down. It was expensive to feed her, with her habit of ordering several entrees at a time, treating mealtimes and maybe her whole life as if it were a tasting menu.
I would ask to meet Louisa. She would say Louisa was tired, not adjusting to the time differences, other excuses
. I finally pressed her, almost offended she didn’t want me to meet her daughter. Louisa was eighteen months old by this point. I had only ever seen a few pictures from the disastrous breakfast the week of her birth.
She did not relent, but did tell me as her hand beat gently against her heart that she didn’t want to confuse Louisa with the men in her life, everything was unresolved, more promises, all would be revealed shortly. I let it go and stopped asking. Another mistake.
I wasn’t seeing much of Danny, partially out of avoidance, but mostly because his plans for the houses were coming together, everything ready to go. He was extremely busy. My life of leisure and lack of responsibility were coming to an end. I counted the days with regret, but I would still be living with him. We would still have our weekends together. I didn’t get too worked up about it.
…
I was having one of my lustful moments about a week later as we stood talking by the Tar Pits at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Zelda was telling me a longwinded story about a man who had drowned himself in the, as she called it, “oily goo”. I had no doubt a clinically depressed man had in fact chosen what sounded like an extremely painful way to kill himself. What I doubted was her fanciful details.