“That’s a pretty terrible thing to say. Cynical.”
“I’m glad to hear I’m not messy,” Lorene said. There was a pause and Lisa finished rinsing out the sink. She turned off the water. She looked at Lorene, who stubbed out her cigarette. A million half-finished cigarettes. What do you make of that. Lisa peeled off the gloves.
“Lisa.”
Lisa looked over at her again.
“Lisa, by the way, I’m not cynical.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just, you. .” Lisa glanced around the room and then looked directly at Lorene. “You have a lot of beautiful things. You have a peaceful, safe place to be. I don’t feel sorry for you.”
Lorene almost laughed. Women like Lisa used to really admire her. It was a given, an absolute certainty. What had happened?
“You’re sort of a smart cookie, huh? Fair enough. I asked, after all. And when I talk to you, I don’t ask you any questions about your life, do I?”
Lisa smiled at her, shrugging.
“I noticed that, too.”
“So what occupies you, if not some performance of yourself?”
“What occupies me? My family. My family, my family and, oh, yeah, my family.”
“Your kids?”
“That’s what I said, my family.”
“And their father?”
Lisa shrugged again.
“Their father is an unwilling participant.” She put the cleanser in the cupboard and shut it. “I have to clean your bedroom now.”
Lorene nodded over her coffee. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”
Lorene could hear Lisa getting the vacuum cleaner from the hall closet and carrying it slowly up the stairs. Soon afterward she heard the sound of the vacuum running in the bedroom. Something almost crossed her mind about what it would be like to be Lisa instead of herself. Almost. She crossed her legs and her kimono opened loosely, revealing one white smooth knee and one hairless creamy thigh. She examined her leg, pushing her hand across her smooth skin, sitting alone in her pristine kitchen.
Mina walked the two miles to Vanity and Vexation. She had to break her date with Max, stop in and check on the other two restaurants, then return to V and V for a meeting with the designer, then make it home in time for dinner with David. She hadn’t read the postcard in her pocket. She knew it was another one from Michael. When she arrived at the Gentleman’s Club, she had phone messages to call her father, her mother, and Lorene. She ignored these. Then she received a phone call.
“Mina?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Scott.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem too happy to talk to me.”
“Well, I’m busy.”
“I’m in town.”
“But you were just here.”
“I know, but I need to talk to you.”
“I just saw you.”
“I have to see you.”
“I’m really busy. “
“But I really have to see you.”
“OK, OK. Not today, though. Sunday. Three o’clock.”
Mina walked back along Wilshire to Food Baroque.
When you ignore me, I feel as if I don’t exist.
The card was of two Indians holding corn. She folded it and put it away. She had to get to the restaurant and supervise the new reservationist. Allison, or maybe Alysyn. No, it was Ashley. Or Ashleigh.
Mina had followed Michael to her parents’ bedroom. Thanksgiving vacation, Michael’s first visit home from college. But it was “Michael,” now college-distanced, Michael 2.0, the latest version, the imposter. He took her hand and said he wanted to show her something. A secret. He actually looked over his shoulder stealthily. It felt for a moment as if they were not teenagers on the verge of dreaded adulthood, but kids again, on a covert, invented mission. She felt a momentary sort of relief. He went to their father’s antique rolltop desk and pulled out one of the drawers. He reached to the back of the drawer and pulled out a hand-sized box. It was inlaid wood with different-colored stain and a smooth satin finish with rounded edges. One of those horrible Santa Barbara craft shop boxes tourists buy, with secret smooth, airtight compartments obviously built for drug stashing. Michael slid open the main compartment. Inside were several small screw-top glass vials full of white powder, and a folded Ziploc bag full of emptygelatin capsules. Mina couldn’t hold back an audible gasp, which made Michael cover her mouth with his hand.
“Shut up,” he whispered. He opened one vial and sniffed at the opening. He inserted a pinkie in the top and tasted the powder. He had seen this in cop shows a million times, he was well prepared.
“I think that’s your everyday cocaine,” and he made a stage-yawn gesture. He reached for the next vial and repeated the cop-show bit.
“That looks grayer and clumpier,” Mina whispered.
“Well, it’s not cocaine,” he whispered, and made a face indicating a bitter flavor. “I wonder what drug it could be? Maybe I should ask Daddy.”
“Put it away and let’s get out of here,” she whispered, looking at the doorway. “What difference does it make what it is?”
“One way to find out,” Michael said. Looking at him, she realized he was enjoying this discovery quite a lot. Then, in a gesture of huge import, something Mina would never forget, a point of difference that would be turned over and over and referred to for years to come, her brother looked straight at her, leaned back his head, put the vial to his mouth, and tapped the entire contents into the back of his throat. He swallowed hard a couple of times. Amazing, exceptional Michael. He had the giddy, exalted air of someone who had just proved something dramatic to himself, even if it wasn’t clear yet what that was, or maybe the giddiness came from not knowing the precise consequences and just waiting for the fallout. Mina thought again about the newly surfaced difference between them, beyond age or gender or geography, but a categorical difference, an absolute, italic difference.
“Are you, like, fucking nuts?” She felt tiny and frightened.
“Shh, it’s OK. Jut get me some water.”
A half hour later it was time for the family meal. They sat at the dining room table, the entire family and the friends who were included as family. Lately — actually,precisely—since her incident with Dennis, her father’s best friend, she regarded these friends as intrusive, creepy, envious types. Sort of Anne Baxter-ish groupie characters, admiring her family but deeply resenting it, too. Right next to her father sat Dennis, as if everything were the same — he had said to forget it ever happened, and, look, he had. And her father’s assistant, Sheila. Smiling at her. All these familiar people now had shadow selves to Mina, as she did herself. But these were only minor distractions compared with Michael. She didn’t take her eyes off him once as they began eating. Michael seemed unaffected. He ate and conversed and even quoted a whole monologue from a movie, flashing his dazzling golden-boy smile.
“Say, Mike, what are you studying out there?” Dennis asked him. Michael looked at him and took a sip of water.
“Michael is going to take a graduate philosophy course next semester,” Jack said.
“As a freshman?”
“He got to skip his required undergraduate philosophy survey.”
Mina pushed the food around on her plate, estranged from her own body, abstracting eating into a hideous, complicated thing. Her family invaded by pod people, or what was that movie? Where they all look familiar but they have really been stolen away? They all seemed to be having so much fun, Michael included. Mina felt as if she had taken the mystery vial of white powder, that she must be the one invaded by foreign entities.
Now Michael started to eat very slowly.
“Where do you think you’ll go to graduate school?” Sheila asked. Michael stared at his fork as if it had suddenly become an object of mysterious function.