Dusty wanted to learn a few things herself. Did Claudia ever inform her of the circumstances by which she’d been acquired? Those were the stilted words she used; the woodenness made her cringe but she couldn’t help expressing herself that way. Allegra said she hadn’t. “She never mentioned you or your mother or ever even having seen one of your films.” Dusty said that Claudia wouldn’t necessarily have been able to put any of it together, as she had changed her name from Janine Whitmore when she started to act. “I always thought she was my biological mom,” said Allegra. “I mean, I didn’t have any reason to think otherwise. She may have even told me she was, directly. I don’t know.”
They sat awhile in silence.
“So, she babysat you?” said Allegra. Her mother nodded. “And this isn’t a joke.”
“Not a joke.”
“Holy, holy fuck.”
There were worlds upon worlds for both of them to suppress — a gargantuan history of body intimacies lay frozen beneath the tundra of the hellish new normal — and they shivered together like survivors awaiting improbable rescue.
“Do you want to come to the house?”
Allegra stared into space (they’d been doing a lot of that). “Okay.”
As if talking to herself, Dusty added, “I know I didn’t want to be alone — when I found out. But I kind of had to be. You don’t.”
Allegra winced and said, “Well… I guess the big decision is — Dr. Phil? Or Dr. Wrigley?”
“Diane Sawyer,” said Dusty with a smile.
(The ice, and everything else, had broken.)
—
Allegra told her to go on ahead, she’d be up in a bit. She thought she might check out of her room, but didn’t have the energy. Why should she, anyway? As if everything was just fine now! The only person who would fully appreciate the batshit bonkers-ness of it was Jeremy, but for now, telling him would have to be off-limits — who could she tell? She wondered if she should even tell herself, because it felt like she hadn’t.
The supercosmic joke of it — and it was a cosmic joke, because how the fuck else could you describe it — slammed Allegra as she drove through the flats on the way to Trousdale. The overall miscarriage of her life dogged and assailed: the esteemed, numerous non-accomplishments of a parasitical, childfucked existence had led her like a flower girl to this, her greatest achievement, the jewel in her crown of thorns. The snakes in the road that Tiresias would be separating for eternity were none other than she and her mother. No wonder the myth had riveted so! At last, she understood her destiny: to be one of the women she’d read about, plucked from her library’s bouquet — the daughters of Aphrodite that Herodotus wrote of, sacred whores who practiced in temples, consorts of divine marriage and tantric rape. Like defrocked priestesses, they were always out of their robes; just now, Allegra couldn’t remember where she’d left hers.
The gate was open. It felt like she’d been away for months. Dusty waved nervously from an upstairs window then retreated. Probably worried I wasn’t going to show. She imagined Willow up there too, waiting in the wings.
She entered the old house (she didn’t recognize it) as in a dream, wanting to awaken — but where? In Big Sur, for the wedding? In Cuba, when Dusty (and “co-hostesses” Anderson Cooper and Nathan Lane) threw a surprise party for her thirtieth? On that amazing day when she learned she was pregnant for the first time? In what moment of the slipstream did she want to wake up, before the propellers broke off? Well, there was no moment, because she’d never taken flight. All these years, she was really just a cripple sporting 3D goggles.
Dusty called from the landing, “Down in a minute!”
Allegra went up anyway. It was still her house, wasn’t it? More than ever now. Maybe she’s gonna surprise me with a nursery, she thought mordantly. With stuffed bunnies and a mobile dangling over a crib that I can be fucked in after a nice bedtime story. Overcome, she plunked herself down on the carpeted steps. She heard the flush of a toilet. She didn’t want Dusty to be her mother, she wanted Dusty to be her wife—for it to be like before and stay like that, when they were both so happy…
Dusty reappeared. “I know,” she said of Aurora’s little stair collapse, as if reading her thoughts. Like a mother would.
She roused herself and stood. When she reached the landing, Dusty touched her arm and the young woman smiled as she walked slowly by. Entering their bedroom, she thought of that glorious, sun-dappled path to the swimming hole at Black Bear that her mom — AKA Willow, Claudia, babysitter and kidnapper, sex and death cultist, madwoman — loved to chase her down, Allegra squealing in ecstasy before seizing the rope that would carry her far over the water before she let go.
She ran to the terrace, hurdling the balustrade.
THEN
I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its
mother;
The sleeping mother and babe — hush’d, I study them
long and long.
~ ~ ~
heart sutra
~ ~ ~
“Today, we have an amazing guest — amazing guests—with an extraordinary story. Four months ago, Derek and Larissa Dunnick lost their twenty-three-year-old son Tristen in an automobile accident. Just three weeks before his son’s tragic death, Derek was put on a waiting list… to receive a heart transplant for a condition doctors said might end his life at any moment, without warning. Now, it wasn’t until an emergency-room nurse checked their son’s driver’s license that Derek and his wife Larissa learned their son had chosen to be an organ donor — even going so far as to leave behind a note instructing that should anything happen to him, if it were in any way possible, he wanted his dad to receive his heart. Within hours of Tristen’s death, that wish came true. And because of his sacrifice, his father is able to be with us here today. Please welcome… Derek and Larissa Dunnick.”
The audience, who’d salted the host’s pithy introduction with sighs and murmurs, broke into applause. Dad smiled as Mom’s hand fell upon his. Rail-thin, Derek still looked healthier than he had in years. Larissa’s blown-out hair was a vibrant, recolored red, with maroon-gold highlights. She was overdressed for the occasion in the Givenchy gown she bought at a high-end vintage store on Melrose with some of the additional $25,000 that Jeremy had given the couple in support of Derek’s recovery.
Dr. Wrigley walked them through a gripping play-by-play of the events leading to his surgery, and Derek didn’t disappoint.
“I understand,” said the host, “that it was something… completely unexpected. I’m not talking about the accident, which of course was a terrible, terrible shock. But that your son had decided to be a donor—that took you both completely by surprise. Can you talk about that?”