Iris replaced the handful of rice, brushing it off her hands back onto the plate. “It feels funny when you squish it between your fingers,” she noted.
Daria shook her head. “It’s still a no. Scarlett, tell me what’s new. Same job? That’s what brought you down here?”
I explained briefly why I was in Los Angeles, not bothering to make it sound at all exciting and important as I usually did. And, with the help of the basic Spanish I knew Daria would understand from her high school language requirement, I managed to convey that Klere was a loca addict of drogas who might be in trouble with the policía. I also said that she was about as intelligent as a box of piedras, but that she was very savvy about manipulating her followers and using various companies (beverage, beauty, clothing, and other) to get a lot of trips, gear, and money. And furthermore, that I had no idea how I was going to get her to do any of the things I wanted, which were mostly to wear our clothes while she was clean (not physically dirty and also drug-free) and then post gorgeous pictures of herself talking about how she was inspiring us as our muse. I thought that plan was maybe just a pipe dream. “She’s kind of terrible,” I concluded.
“And why are you working with her?” Daria asked. “Why would you want to?”
“She’s exploding in popularity right now so we need to use her while we can.” I winced. That had sounded awful. “I mean, her follower count is through the roof and they’re right in our target audience. It’s the best exposure money can buy. A lot of money.”
“I have to figure out how to make myself a social media influencer. Right now, I can barely influence her.” Daria pointed at her daughter, who was still ignoring the vegetables on her plate. “Iris, eat them. I mean it.”
“I think you have it really good,” I said, looking around the crowded, dirty kitchen. “I think this is awesome.”
“Really?” Daria suddenly smiled hugely at me. “Thanks. I used to spend a lot of time being pretty jealous of you, you know. You always had money to do things, to buy things and travel. You never had to worry about paying your tuition.”
“Because I sponged off my grandmother.”
“And you always look so beautiful and put together. Even when you first wake up, you look good!”
I swallowed. “I’m not very put together, not at all. I’m not doing great.” I put my cheek down on Teddy’s head again.
“Scar, what’s the matter?” Daria asked, her voice full of sympathy.
I shook my head, rubbing gently against the baby’s hair. “I had a bad thing happen and I can’t seem to bounce back from it. I’m fighting with my family. I hate my job.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded and tried not to cry. I hadn’t felt this close to it in a while.
“Here.” Iris took off the beret that I had given her and reached to put it on me. “You can have this back.”
“Thank you.” With a huge effort, I pushed back the tears. “You should keep the hat. It’s really great on you.” She nodded solemnly and returned it to her own head.
“Hello,” a voice called from the front door. “Daria, there’s a car on our lawn!”
Her husband was home, and yes, I’d had a little bit of a hard time parking.
Iris leaped off her booster seat, saying, “Daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy!” and raced off to find him, and even Teddy seemed to get that his father was there and made a squawking sound. After learning that the car was mine, Ivo offered to remove it from the yard and find a more street-like parking space. He kissed Daria hello and rubbed her neck while listening to Iris tell him, at great length, about not being allowed to use the knives in the knife block because she could cut off her finger, but she absolutely, totally would not cut off any finger, and anyway, she had a lot of them, so what was losing one?
“I agree with Mommy,” Ivo told her. “No knives.” He took Teddy from me and kissed him too, and we finished dinner after he put my car on the street somewhere. I had liked Ivo when Daria met him at school, and I still did. He seemed to cover the husband/father stuff very well. He took charge of getting the kids ready for bed while Daria and I cleaned the kitchen, which was really just putting the dishes into the dishwasher that she didn’t think worked.
“You guys seem good,” I noted. “You and Ivo. From the fifteen minutes of observation I just had.”
“Yeah, it is good. It’s not easy, having two tiny people around and juggling the money stuff, but marrying Ivo may be the smartest thing I ever did. He still tells me that the day I called him from the circulation desk to hound him about returning an interlibrary loan book was the best day of his life.” She smiled.
“Lucky,” I commented.
“Him, or me? I’d say both of us.” She closed the dishwasher door, struggled to make it stay vertical, then slammed it with her hip. “We need to get this fixed. Sit back down and talk to me for a while about what’s going on with you. I’ll make some tea.”
It took me a while to convince her that I really, really still hated tea, and then she didn’t have it anyway. “Now, tell me,” Daria commanded, sipping a cup of hot water instead.
I told her, some. About realizing that I didn’t like much about my job, for starters.
“It just doesn’t seem like you,” she commented. That was what Nate had said, too. “I mean, the fashion stuff, yes. But having to grovel and cater to these crazy people? I feel like you’d be telling them that they could go shove their heads up their asses, like you did to the RA who yelled at me for losing my key.”
“I hated that woman. I hope she really did try to do it.” I sighed. “I wanted a career in fashion in my hometown, and positions like that don’t exactly grow on trees. I only got this job because of a favor, because of the people I knew, not because I deserved it. I only kept it because my mom’s friend had to step in when I got fired.” I shook my head. “That’s another story. I guess I wanted to be good at it, and to prove to myself that I could do it and be successful on my own, without favors, without my family’s money or anyone’s influence. I don’t mind working hard but the groveling and catering part,” I stopped and shook my head. “No, it really isn’t me. And lately, I’ve been really wondering what, exactly, I’m working towards.”
“If it’s worth it.”
I nodded. “If it’s worth it,” I agreed. “If I even like anything about it at all. If I’m going to kill this influencer when I go to her house tomorrow.” I patted my bag. “I’ve been carrying around our contract for her and I have to get her to sign it. If I don’t, I may have to take a contract out on her.”
“If you’re as unhappy as you seem, then I think you should look for something else to do,” Daria said, and I nodded again. She was right. “And with how much I’ve been dreading returning to work, probably so do I.” She sighed. “Ivo keeps telling me to stay home, take a break and figure out what I want to do next, but things are tight enough as it is.”
“Remember when we used to talk about having our own business, our own website? I was going to track all the trends, know what people should be wearing and where to find it, and you were going to write it all up?”
She nodded now. “We were going to sell stuff, too. A ‘carefully curated collection.’ I can barely say those words now without getting nauseated.”
I laughed, tension spilling out of my mouth with the sound. “Why? I still think it’s a good idea. I know exactly what people should and shouldn’t wear, and I bet you can still make it sound interesting. We could sell stuff and never use the word ‘curate.’”
“Honey, come kiss everyone,” Ivo called from across the little house.
She stood. “You come too, and say goodbye to them. Then we could go out and have coffee or a drink, or actual tea, and talk more about what’s going on with you.” As she said it, her face practically split in two in a yawn.
“No, I’ve talked enough about myself for tonight. But let’s stay in better touch,” I suggested, as she led me into the kids’ tiny room and I also got
to kiss them goodnight.
After she got out of the bedroom without the one more story that Iris had requested, Daria walked me to where Ivo had moved my car down the block. “Scar, you made me a little worried about you,” she said as the rental beeped itself unlocked.
“No, I’m fine. You’re right about my job and I’m going to start looking around.”
“What about the other things you said, about fighting with your family? You and your mom, and you and your gorgeous brother? And what happened that—”
I turned and hugged her. “I’m going to figure it all out. Thanks for listening to me bitch.”
“Hardly. That’s what friends are for.”
I thought about that statement a lot as I drove back to my hotel and I also thought about Nate and Joey. How Nate had pretty happily rearranged his life to help his friend when he needed it and how I myself had said that Joey would have done the same. I hadn’t had friends like that since college, and I wondered if I had ever been that person for anyone else. Daria seemed to like me, but I wasn’t exactly clear on why.
But I got sick of self-pity. Hanging out with Daria and her kids, seeing how much they all loved each other, made me rethink some things I had been doing lately with my own family. I called my mom back first.
“Oh, thank goodness!” she answered the phone. “Why haven’t you returned my calls? Are you all right? What have you been doing?” She kept going for a while but ended with, “Where are you, Scarlett?”
“I’m on a work trip in LA.” I had a question of my own. “Mom, why? Why did you set up that lunch with Brooks?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t like what’s happening between you and your brother. I’m sorry now that I didn’t tell you that you’d be meeting them and not me, because Lanie said you were very angry.”
Lanie. Of course, Lanie. “Would you like it, if I tried to make a fool of you?”
“I wasn’t trying to make a fool out of you, and if you had done the same to me, I would have known that you were acting out of love and trying to help me! You need to talk to your brother—”
“No. No, I don’t.”
She tried again. “If you just told him—”
“No! No, I’m not going to tell him! And if you do, I will never, never forgive you. I’ll never speak to you or see you again.” My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that it was all I could hear, until I went through a red light by mistake and horns blared.
“All right. I don’t like to see you like this, honey.”
“I’m fine,” I answered woodenly.
“And now Zara is upset, too. Something about you spreading rumors about Bradley? She’s been trying to get in touch with you.”
“I’ll call her next.” I didn’t have anything else to say. “I don’t want to fight with you, Mom. I have to go.”
“I love you, Scarlett. Even if you’re angry at me, I know you love me, too.”
“I do,” I choked. “Bye.”
I waited a while before I called Zara because I was seriously dreading it now. “Hi. It’s me, your sister.”
“Scarlett!” she exploded. “I must have called you fifty times!”
Seventy-two, because I had wondered and counted. “Yeah, sorry. I’m working in Los Angeles and I’ve been busy.”
“I have to talk to you about Brooks.”
“No, Zara. I don’t have anything to say about that. If Mom wants to try to facilitate some stupid reconciliation, it’s not going to work.”
“What? What are you talking about? What do you need to reconcile with Brooks about? No, I want to discuss what you said to him about my husband.”
I thought back to when I had seen my brother at the horrible lunch with Lanie. What, exactly, had I said about Bradley?
“Did you tell Brooks that Bradley was behaving, um, affectionately with you?” my sister asked.
“Um…” Had I? I had been so angry, I had said a lot of things. I thought I had blurted out that Bradley had touched me.
“I wish you had said something to me, first, rather than spreading rumors and stirring up our brother! I talked to Bradley and it was all such a misunderstanding. You see, in his culture, there’s so much hugging, and touching! He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Bradley’s ‘culture?’ Do you mean like how he grew up in Sacramento?” I asked, flummoxed.
“He’s part-French,” Zara said, as if that explained everything.
I remembered back to one boring dinner when Bradley had pontificated about his family tree, after taking a DNA test that purportedly linked him to some kind of royalty. “Didn’t his European roots go all the way back to his great-great-grandparents or something like that? I don’t think that counts. Anyway, I don’t think you can blame another culture for his behavior,” I said, getting angry. The car next to me swerved as I may have drifted a little close.
“I don’t want you to worry,” Zara continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “He understands how you could have misinterpreted brotherly affection and he’s not mad at you,” she told me.
“Well, that’s a real fucking relief.”
“So maybe you could talk to Brooks,” Zara continued, ignoring my sarcasm.
“About what?”
“You know how Brooks gets so overprotective! You jumped to conclusions and now he’s totally flying off the handle, yelling and freaking out. I was gone with the kids, but I guess he came over to the house yesterday afternoon to talk to my husband. Brooks didn’t understand the whole French thing. He kind of,” she lowered her voice, “scared Bradley.”
“Brooks went to your house and scared your husband?” I asked. Because if Brooks had gone to bawl out Bradley, that meant he believed me when I had told him that Bradley was being pervy. And also, maybe that meant he still cared about me. Or maybe it meant he was just trying to help Zara.
My sister kept talking about mix-ups and cultural diversity until I cut her off. “Zara, I’ve been to Europe, ok? And I understand about how other countries do things differently, like in England you drive on the left and in Belgium you eat fries with a fork. This isn’t that. Bradley has been making comments to me since you met him and I don’t like it. He graduated to touching me and I want him to leave me alone.”
She was silent.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m sorry he acts like that and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t think that you’d believe me, and I know how much you love him, so I just told him to shut up or fuck off or whatever. But then he grabbed my ass, and made remarks about my breasts, and he cornered me at Mom’s house and made me feel really uncomfortable, and that’s it. I don’t want to be around him.”
There was another huge silence and my heart was beating hard.
‘“I have to go,” she said, in a small, chilly voice.
“Ok. I’m sorry,” I told her again. I wasn’t sorry that she now knew, because that part felt kind of like a relief. I was sorry that her husband was an asshole and I was sorry that she wasn’t going to be my sister anymore, because just as I had thought, she didn’t believe me and she hated me. Zara didn’t answer, but the call ended.
I released a breath of the stale air conditioning. Los Angeles was on the water, but I felt very far away from it. I needed to see the waves again. I executed a U-turn in the street, which was not easy with all the other cars, and headed west, toward the Pacific. I would just go for a walk on the beach and look a little.
My phone made the same horrible noise of someone calling me, and this time, I wanted to answer, because it was Nate.
“How’s tricks?” he asked me.
I sighed. “Not great. I just told Zara that her husband has been coming on to me.”
“And how did she take that?”
“It went exactly as I had expected. I think I can now consider myself an only child.” I closed my eyes and then remembered I was driving.
“Wait a minute, are you driving?” Nate demanded.
“No.” Because I
had just whipped into the right-hand lane and stopped. Cars started to act annoyed but I had put on my hazard lights, so whatever. “Zara hates me and thinks I’m lying, just like I thought she would.”
“Let her sit with it for a while,” Nate reasoned with me. “It’s a lot to take in about her husband. They have two kids. But she’ll realize—”
“No, she made her decision. There’s no use in talking about it, it’s done.” A police car pulled up behind me and flashed its blue lights, so I waved and started the car moving again, breathing in and out through my nose to calm down. “How was your day today?” I asked him. “As good as that?”
“Before we talk anymore, get off the street. Put down the phone and pull in somewhere.”
How the hell did he know? I got myself into a fast-food place parking lot, all dirty and seedy. “Ok, Sarge. I’m parked legally. Pretty much.”
“Good. Stay there,” he told me, and I saluted the phone. “My day was fine,” he finally answered. “I realized I’ll never appreciate modern art and I’ve reconciled myself with that. Pia seemed to like it the best out of all of us. Tell me about your dinner with your friend.”
I did, about Daria’s sweet kids and how much fun I’d had with them. “It was so good to see her, but I felt like she was just about to fall asleep, so now I’m going back to the hotel. And then tomorrow I’ll spring myself on Klere, hoping she’s still here in California somewhere.” I stopped, and sighed. “Do you really think that Zara will forgive me?”
“There’s nothing for you to get forgiveness for. Anybody who saw the way her husband looked at you knew that he was a fucking perv. I think she’ll see that.”
I didn’t know if that was true, but I really, really hoped so. “After I see Klere, then I’m coming home.”
“Good.”
His voice sounded strange. “What’s the matter?” I demanded, and there was silence. “Answer me right now or I’m going to call Joey and ask him.”
“Don’t call him, he’s asleep. I was just thinking that it’s funny,” he told me. “When we were in Hawaii, when I thought of you, I wanted to put my fist through something.”
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