Flavor of the Month (11 page)

Seven, maybe eight—no, nine days. Nine days ago, she had come running here to Aunt Robbie’s from her mother’s house. The picture of Kevin bent over the potting table snapped into place. The headache sprung full-grown again. The memory of the animal sounds curling from his lips accompanied the picture. The scene brought spasms of nausea to her stomach. She swallowed hard against the urge to retch.

A low whirring sound came from the other end of the one-level contemporary house Aunt Robbie had built in Benedict Canyon. The sound, familiar to her, grew louder as it neared. Then it stopped, and Lila heard Aunt Robbie fiddle with the door handle before swinging it in. It had to be Robbie. José, Aunt Robbie’s houseboy, normally left her breakfast tray outside the door.

“‘Suffering was the only thing made me feel I was alive.’” The words were sung by Rob’s deep basso voice as he rolled into the room, Chinese-red lacquer breakfast tray held chest-high before him. Aunt Robbie came to an abrupt stop at the low hammered-brass table. He put the tray down and reached up to pull the drapes back from the windows, suddenly flooding the room in a bath of sunlight. Again he sang Carly Simon’s line from the song: “‘Suffering was the only thing made me feel I was alive.’”

“Shut up an’ go away,” Lila growled.

“Come on, Sister Miserere—novena’s over. Nine days of pissing and moaning over a man is all the good Lord allows.” With surprising grace, Robbie sat down on the camel saddle, his mauve-trimmed flowered satin caftan billowing around his feet, hiding the roller blades he wore. “Makes me feel light on my feet,” he had once explained to Lila. Now he grinned; “Come on, I had José make this especially for you.” Robbie poured thick black coffee from a small antique Russian samovar he swore had been given to him by his first John—who was most assuredly one of the deposed Romanoffs.

“Lila?” he asked, and paused. When, after a few moments, there was no response, he leaned over and picked up a mallet and banged the brass temple-gong to which it was attached. She jumped. “Listen, girlfriend, get the fuck over here this minute.” He slapped the filled Limoges coffee cup onto the brass tray.

Her head ached with the echoes of the gong. “Don’t do this to me, Aunt Robbie. Please,” Lila begged.

“Now, now. No whining. It’s time you and I had a little chat.” He patted a stack of cushions beside him. Robbie’s voice softened. “Come sit next to your old but ever-so-attractive auntie.”

Lila sighed, sat up, and moved with effort to the cushions. It was exhausting, so she dropped down, then put her face in her hands and began to cry. “Robbie, I can’t bear it another minute.” She cried soundlessly, and he let her until she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the peignoir he had given her the day she arrived. After a few more minutes, she looked up and took a sip of the coffee Robbie handed her. “What am I going to do?” she asked for the thousandth time in nine days.

“What do you
want
to do?” he asked. Aunt Robbie reached across the table and touched Lila’s chin with his stubby, crimson-nail-tipped fingers. Lila knew that he loved her as much as he had loved her father, though she shrank from his—or anyone’s—touch. Still, his gentleness and soft voice showed his concern.

“Honey-girl, I know how hard this is on you, how confusing. But you can’t let yourself just melt away. I’m serious, now—nine days
is
long enough.” Robbie stood up and rolled again to the window, touching Lila’s arm lightly as he passed. “You haven’t been out of this room since you got here.”

“I hate her,” Lila said.

Robbie turned from the window and faced her.

“She was the one who set up the marriage. My own mother. She said he’d never bother me. But she didn’t tell me
why. I
didn’t know until I walked in on them that he was…” Lila’s voice trailed off. She didn’t want to offend Aunt Robbie, although she knew she could always be honest with him. “Well,
you
know,” she continued. “Not only was it
disgusting
, it was
deceitful
. He said he loved
me
.”

“Well, maybe he does. There are different kinds of love, you know.” Robbie was standing at the full-length mirror now, patting his red-dyed hair in place. “If I curled up in bed every time one of
my
boyfriends dipped his wick in another inkwell, I’d be a fat mental case by now.” He made a full spin on his skates, then considered his reflection once again. “Actually, I
am
a fat mental case now, but you get my point.”

Lila got up from the low cushions with what felt like an immense effort and sat on the chair in front of the vanity table. She stared into the triple mirrors. She picked up the Victorian silver-backed brush, and began to run it through the accumulation of knots at the back of her usually silky red hair. “What I don’t understand,” she said, as she strained against a tangle, “is how my own mother could have absolutely no regard for my feelings. She manipulated me into this engagement, but she didn’t do it for
me
.” Lila dropped the brush, helpless against the snarls, and turned to Aunt Robbie, who was now sitting on the end of the bed, legs crossed, one skated foot swinging slowly.

“It’s called narcissism!” Robbie said. “I’ve known your mother a long time and I love her, but I can’t say I’ve always liked her. Still, Lila, you have to try to remember there are reasons why people are the way they are.” Rob’s foot stopped moving. “Do you know anything about her childhood?” he asked.

“Oh, give me a break! Are we going to start that bit about how she went to her first audition in L.A. through the snow without shoes?” Lila snapped.

“You know, Lila, the only training for
being
a good parent is
having
a good parent. She didn’t, so she raised you the same way she developed a career—by the seat of her pants.” Lila angrily stood up and started walking toward the door. “No, wait, you’ve got to hear this,” Robbie continued. “Do you think you could do any better raising a child than she did, Lila? Given the way
you
were raised?”

“
I’m
not having children.”

“But if you did?”

“I’d like to think I would do better,” Lila said.

“That’s my point. So did Theresa. And she
did
do better than her folks did to her.” Robbie got up.

They both stood in silence for a moment; then Aunt Robbie skated back over to the open window. He looked out at his lover, Ken, who was cleaning the pool wearing only a tiny chartreuse Speedo swimsuit. Suddenly Robbie shouted to Ken: “Mary, what did I tell you about wearing that marble bag? You look ridiculous!” He turned back to Lila as if there had been no interruption.

Lila had to smile and look, too. She could see Ken moving the pole of the pool vacuum slowly up and down on the sides of the pool, as if he hadn’t even heard Robbie’s voice. Someone else was with him, she could see.

“Look at this, Lila.”

“Like I haven’t seen Ken in his bathing suit before,” Lila said, more grumpily than she felt. “Why don’t you leave him alone? You know he never listens to you.” Lila paused, looked at Robbie’s getup, and then laughed. “And how can you say
he
looks ridiculous?”

“No, I don’t mean Ken. Do you see that girl sitting on the chaise longue talking to Ken?”

“You mean the little black kid?” Lila asked.

“That’s Simone Duchesne, the star of the TV show
Opposites Attract
. And she’s no kid. She’s twenty-two.”

“
That’s
Simone Duchesne? But I thought Simone was the same age as her character—about six or seven.”

“Yeah,” sighed Robbie. “So does everyone else. She only looks like a kid. She has a benign tumor on her adrenal gland. It stunted her growth. It
could
have been removed by simple surgery when it was first discovered, but her parents—who, by the way, managed her—decided against it. Now it’s too late.”

“Why?” Lila asked, though the feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she already knew.

“They say they were too poor. But, hey, if she’d grown normally, she would have outgrown the TV role. The parents chose the money instead.”

“Poor kid. I mean, woman,” Lila said and shivered. “So is she after Ken?” she asked.

“Oh, no, she’s asexual,” Robbie said. “Her parents robbed her of that, too, when they wouldn’t allow the surgery. No, she’s just become attached to Ken, follows him around like a puppy dog. You know what a good listener Ken is. They met on the show. Ken did the lighting for it.” Robbie came away from the window. “She’ll never get hired for anything else. What a life, huh, Lila?”

Lila couldn’t answer, allowing the silence to speak for her.

“Some things are worse than being the child of a star. Like
being
a child star. Robbed of her stature
and
sex life
and
money by her greedy parents. Ken tells me Simone sees a shrink five days a week, and has started a lawsuit against them. But, no matter how the lawsuit turns out, she’ll still wind up the loser.”

“I know how she must feel,” Lila whispered.

“Tsk, tsk. Do you. Miss Self-Pity? Look in the mirror. I don’t mean at the puffy eyes and pale face—that’ll go away in a couple of hours. I mean, look at
you
. What do you see? Not a black female midget.”

Lila studied her reflection for a moment. “I know I’m beautiful, Aunt Robbie, and that men want me. But
I
don’t want
them
. Then my mother picks the only man that doesn’t want
me
. And I don’t really want
him
, either.”

“Do you want girls, then?” Robbie asked, gently.

Lila shuddered and turned her head quickly, as if slapped. “No! I
hate
women.”

Robbie tsked again. “Doesn’t leave much choice, do it? Well, if it’s any consolation to you, you come from a family with a long line of gender confusion. Your father was the only man I ever loved—nothing personal against Ken—but your father didn’t know if he was coming or going. He spilled his seed all over Hollywood. ‘Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke,’” Aunt Robbie sang. “Theresa was the one who wore the pants in the family. You might take a lesson from her. As fucked up as she is, she
did
make one good decision in her life, once she realized that he would always make her unhappy. I don’t like what that decision did to you, but it saved her sanity. She decided, since her love life wasn’t going to be her career, then she would make her career her love life.” He paused. “That was what she wanted, and she went for it. What about you, Lila? What do
you
want?”

Lila stared at her reflection in the mirror for a long while before she spoke. Without taking her eyes off herself, she said, “I want everyone to love me—but always from a distance.”

Seven and a half miles outside Fort Dram, Texas, Sharleen stood at the side of Interstate 10, the white-hot glare of the sun beating down on her head, the steam of the blacktop burning through the thin soles of her sandals. She knew it was seven and a half miles, because she had walked every flat sizzling inch of them. So had Dean, and he had carried their bag as well. When they had first begun to walk, it seemed like the best thing to do. After only three miles of their last ride, Sharleen had begun to suspect that maybe the truck driver was being too friendly to her. They’d gotten out fast. Maybe he meant no harm, and maybe she had been too quick to get Dean away from the guy, but when the trucker had taken her hand and asked if she wanted a chance to steer, she’d become afraid that somebody might get hurt.

Yes, it was the right thing to do, she reasoned. It’s what Momma would have told her to do, if Momma had been there. But even with her momma so long gone, Sharleen would still never want to do anything that might bring shame down on her momma’s head. All those things her daddy had said were a lie. She made a silent prayer: Thank you, Lord, for getting us out of Lamson and to Fort Dram, and for getting us out of that truck and on this here road that’s burning my feet, instead of staying in the truck and maybe ending up burning in Hell. The thought that maybe Dean and she would go to Hell for what they had done to her daddy came to her. But surely Jesus would understand. “Dear Jesus, forgive us. It won’t happen again,” she said.

Dean was struggling along beside her, sweat rolling off his forehead and down his face, his white T-shirt now gray against his muscular chest, damp both from walking and carrying the one suitcase they had between them. He had broken at least two of the Ten Commandments, but Sharleen couldn’t see Jesus not forgiving Dean. And if Jesus sent Dean to Hell, Sharleen was surely going to beg to go right with him. Not, she thought, that Hell could be too much hotter than Interstate 10 outside Fort Dram, Texas. A white Chevy sped by, its wake more like a gust from an open oven door than a breeze.

“Sharleen!” Dean called out. “That was a New Hampshire tag! Ain’t never seen one of them! What does it mean—‘Live Free or Die’?”

“Means they don’t cut you no slack in New Hampshire, I guess,” Sharleen told him. Since Dean was a little boy, he had sat beside the highway, watching for out-of-state tags. Dean’s ambition was to see all fifty license plates. At home, he’d sit beside the highway for hours, though not much passed but local Texas plates, and the others often flew by too fast to decipher. Still, Dean was real patient.

“Now I got me fifteen, Sharleen: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, New York, Ohio, Colorado, Indiana, California, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana,
and
New Hampshire!”

“That’s real good, Dean.” She wondered how far it was to the next town, and how far that town was from the one after that. She couldn’t remember how many miles across Texas it was to the border. For a moment, she felt so overwhelmed by fatigue that she wasn’t sure she could take another step.

But she had to. And she had to risk taking another ride. Because they had to get out of Texas, and maybe even out of the country. And if a trooper or even a local sheriff drove by, she was sure that she and Dean would be in a world of trouble.

They had carried their father’s body over to Boyd’s Trans Am along with the bat, then pushed the car behind the dumpster. Sharleen said a prayer, best she could, and asked God to accept the two souls. But she didn’t imagine even Jesus could forgive her daddy, and she knew she never could. Then she and Dean lit out, stopping only to take Momma’s Bible, some clothes, and the few bills and change that they had saved in the place under the kitchen cabinet. They’d walked all night, gotten a ride to Fort Dram, slept all the next day in a park next to the post office, then caught another ride, the ride that hadn’t worked out. Sharleen knew she had to make a plan, a good plan, but all she kept thinking, over and over with each step, was “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”