Much Ado About Mother (15 page)

Erinn was grateful that Cary was looking into the sun and couldn't read her face.

“I don't think it's going to work for our story,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

That wasn't exactly a lie!

“Whatever.” Cary shrugged, turning back toward the street.

Erinn took this to mean the inquisition was over.

“I've got enough problems,” Cary continued. “I'll work on
Budding Tastes
; you do what you can with Blu.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Erinn chirped, wondering whose bumptious voice she was channeling.

“But, Erinn, please, toe the party line.”

“Toe the party line,” she repeated, as they crossed the street. “A mixed metaphor, but I understand your meaning.”

“Don't push your luck,” Cary said as she got into her car.

Erinn watched her drive down Ocean Avenue until she was out of sight. Sighing with relief, she turned toward the house. Blu was standing in the front window, peeking out from behind the curtain. Erinn looked directly at her and the curtain dropped back into place. She knew that by the time she got into the house Blu would be nowhere in sight. This knowledge gave her a sense of satisfaction, until she remembered that Blu would be hiding out in her own bedroom.

Erinn picked up Caro and carried him into the hideously redecorated living room. She sat down at the computer and clicked on Facebook. She clicked on Suzanna's page and found pictures of Lizzy and Eric. She noticed a new profile picture, which was decidedly unmotherly. To Erinn's professional eye it screamed, “I might be a wife and mother, but I'm still hot.”

Poor Suzanna. She needed so much . . . feedback.

She clicked on Eric's page, which was full of links to social causes and thinly veiled advertisements for the Nook. There were no personal photos or comments. Erinn knew he used his site for more professional reasons—she did that herself—but he actually had a personal life. A picture of the family couldn't hurt, could it? Her mother's page could have passed for a travel brochure for Venice Beach. Pictures of the Beach Walk, the bike path, the tea shop, Bernard's artwork, Donell and his sage—it was all there. Erinn scanned the photos quickly, looking for a picture of Christopher, but didn't see any. Her mother had a new profile picture as well. Virginia was holding Spot up to the camera, their faces touching cheek to cheek (if rabbits had cheeks).

Erinn clicked on Jude's profile. He was still traveling the world, apparently. In his latest self-portrait (she refused to use the term “selfie”) he was pretending to be passed out among giant beer steins. His caption read:
Beer, women, and song . . . OK, beer and women . . . OK, beer.
Erinn smiled in spite of herself.

Blu's page was pretty much what Erinn expected: one semiporno-graphic pose after another. Erinn saw a video post that said “Blu twerks.” Having no idea what that meant, she clicked on it. Staring at the screen, she witnessed Blu squatting low to the ground, her backside thrust toward the camera. Her tiny rear end tensed, bobbed, and weaved to a pulsing, thumping rhythm. Was this a dance? Was that music? Blu started moving around the room, continuing her strange fertility rite. Erinn realized this video was made upstairs in Erinn's own room. She closed the page.

Dymphna's offering was a “fan page,” which meant you could show your support by “liking” it. There was a link to a YouTube video. Erinn watched as her own mother appeared on the scene, chasing a rabbit that in turn was chasing a square-headed dog, which was followed by a shrill, terrified man. The video had 100,000 hits. There was also a news article explaining why the rabbits were in Venice Beach in the first place: They were being used to highlight the tug-of-war about the cedar tree in Mr. Clancy's Courtyard. The article went on to say that the community was collecting signatures to show support for the tree and were now in the process of applying for historic landmark status.

Erinn read the comments at the bottom of the article. Viewpoints were passionate. Many agreed that the idea of landmark status for a tree that was too big for the courtyard was silly and “too Southern California for my tastes.” Others felt that the tree was deserving of protection, while others deplored the exploitation of the helpless, opinion-less rabbits.

There was a quote from Christopher, who said, “We want to be open-minded. We're going to apply for landmark status in short order and hope to raise enough funds to get a professional evaluation.” Erinn wondered if Christopher hadn't put the cart before the horse. Shouldn't they have checked out the tree before making all this fuss?

Giving in to temptation, she clicked on Christopher's Facebook page. Her fingers froze. Christopher's latest post featured Alice Albert's artwork and an open invitation to all interested parties to stop by and “check out the work of this first-class artist.”

Caro sensed the shift in Erinn's mood and jumped to the floor. Erinn put her head in her hands. She was a TV hack and Christopher was keeping company with a first-class artist.

CHAPTER 17

VIRGINIA

T
wo months ago, if anyone had told Virginia she would be the object of desire of not one, but two men, she would have laughed . . . if she hadn't wept with relief. The malaise she felt in New York City those last few months, which she had pinpointed as missing her daughters, turned out to be a broader problem. She was missing life!

Feeling desirable at seventy was not the same as feeling desirable at twenty or thirty. She certainly felt the jolt of age when she stumbled upon the video for Robin Thicke's “Blurred Lines.” She sat stunned as the topless beauties strutted across the screen with their feverishly perky breasts bouncing. She was not so old that she couldn't see the allure of these girls, but the odd props and insane platform shoes seemed more silly than sexy. She guessed she was alone in that assessment—or at least among the under-fifty crowd.

She was past the age of comparing herself to younger women. Thank God. What a relief that was! If Bernard or Mr. Clancy were interested in her, it was not because they were expecting a perfect young body. Older men seemed to be kinder than their younger brethren, but whether that was because they had to be (they were not so perfect themselves, after all), Virginia didn't know.

Virginia wasn't sure why she hadn't informed her daughters that she was having a glass of wine with Mr. Clancy. She knew from experience (at this age, didn't she know everything from experience?) that children did not want to see their mothers as sexually attractive to the opposite sex. The fact that their mothers' sexual attractiveness to the opposite sex was wholly and directly responsible for their very existence would probably fall on deaf ears.

She felt like a teenager, sneaking out of the Huge Apartment for her rendezvous with Mr. Clancy. She had only meant to borrow Suzanna's makeup and perfume, but here she was walking out the door in one of Suzanna's lace tops. She hoped she could get it back into her daughter's closet before it was missed.

People who said “nobody walks in L.A.” clearly did not live near the beach. Virginia walked more in Venice than she had in New York. She could have walked down the Beach Walk as far as Rose Avenue before heading east, but she was trying to keep a low profile. She zigged and zagged through tiny courtyards until she came to Rose Avenue, where Mr. Clancy would be waiting for her at a tiny wine bistro. Rose Avenue was a trendy street, but as a whole kept a slower pace than the hipper, more energized Abbot Kinney, Main Street, or the Beach Walk. Virginia often thought it must be exhausting being a street in Venice.

Virginia could have spotted Mr. Clancy a block away. He was the only man in the city wearing a tie. She thought back to her dating years, when all men wore ties. When Virginia was in New York, if she went to dinner alone she had studied young couples on dates. The women tended to have put some thought into getting dressed. Even if they were dressed casually, their makeup was always perfect and their shoes impressively spiky. The men, on the other hand, often looked as if they had just rolled out of bed. Unshaven, wearing un-ironed shirts, beltless pants, and no socks—Virginia thought they looked as if they were signaling, “I didn't care enough about you to make any effort,” but the young women around her didn't seem to feel that way at all. Times had changed, no doubt, but she was touched by Mr. Clancy's old-fashioned gesture. He smiled nervously as she approached.

“You look so nice,” Virginia said.

“Thanks.” Mr. Clancy blushed. “It took me a while to find my tie.”

She had spent too many years as a professional to offer the easy hug that seemed to be the common greeting in Southern California. She thought about shaking his hand, but that seemed too formal, even for her. Instead, she just said, “I've never been here. Is it nice?”

“I don't know,” Mr. Clancy said, looking at the building as if he was surprised to find it standing there. “I've driven by it a couple of times and never had a reason to stop . . . until now.”

Virginia felt her own color rising.

“Let's go in,” Virginia said, taking his arm.

The bar was dark and it took a minute to adjust to the light. The room was small with only a few tables. A copper bar ran along one wall, red leather barstools dotting the length of it. Mr. Clancy led Virginia to one of the tables, his hand against the small of her back. They sat and he signaled the bartender. Virginia had been on her own for several years now and she found it hard to step back and let the man take the lead. Cultural submissiveness was not something she missed, but she supposed if you wanted a man to shave and wear a tie, you couldn't have everything.

“I'll have a glass of Shiraz,” Virginia said, setting the ground rules that she would order for herself.

“That sounds fine,” Mr. Clancy said. “I'll have one, too.”

The bartender, a young woman in jeans and a buttoned-up black vest with a name tag that read
Neila
and her hair in a topknot, just nodded and returned to the bar. It was obvious Mr. Clancy was feeling as awkward as Virginia. They watched the bartender as if they'd never seen a drink poured before. When the drinks arrived, they toasted self-consciously and each took a sip.

“This is lovely,” Virginia said.

“I'm glad you like it,” Mr. Clancy said. “I was worried you might be a wine snob or something, coming from Napa Valley.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, not a wine snob, exactly. I just meant you might know a lot about wines and not like this place.”

“I do know a lot about wines, and I do like this place,” Virginia said, letting him off the hook.

“Listen, Virginia, I don't want you to think I only asked you out because I wanted to talk business.”

“I don't understand.”

“You know. We're on opposite sides on the tree thing. I just didn't want you to think I was trying to win you over or anything.”

Virginia just blinked at him. She hadn't thought that at all. They were on more solid ground when he'd called her a wine snob. He'd brought her out on a date to try to manipulate her! Who did he think he was? Who did he think
she
was? She suddenly felt very foolish in her lace top.

“I'm an old hippie chick,” Virginia said. “It would take more than a glass to make me compromise my ideals.”

“How about two glasses?” Mr. Clancy said, smiling.

She looked up, startled. He actually meant it—he didn't want this evening to be about the tree. She relaxed.

“OK, no shop talk. Deal?”

“Deal,” Mr. Clancy said, and this time they did shake hands.

Before they had a chance to settle back, Virginia noticed that Miles and Winnie had walked in. She watched as they headed to the bar. She pointed them out to Mr. Clancy.

“Aren't those Rio's kids?” she asked.

Mr. Clancy reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out his glasses.

“Yeah. Looks like them.”

“They aren't twenty-one.”

“Well, I know they have to be over eighteen to be one of Rio's students. I made sure of that myself. I don't want any trouble with crazy parents. The kids are crazy enough as it is.”

“Eighteen is not twenty-one. Excuse me.”

She took another sip of wine, got up from the table, and approached the daring duo at the bar. They appeared to have ordered whiskey sours.

Winnie looked past her as Virginia approached, but Miles smiled at her.

“Hi, Virginia,” Miles said. “Want a drink?”

“I have a drink,” Virginia said, gesturing to Mr. Clancy's table. “What are you kids doing here?”

“Uh, drink-ing,” Winnie said, staring through her charcoal makeup.

“May I see your ID?” Virginia asked.

Neila, the bartender, who appeared to be as surly as Winnie, stood on her side of the bar and planted her hands on the counter.

“I already checked their IDs,” she said.

“I'm sure you did, dear. But it's very dark in here. I'm fairly certain you couldn't tell a fake ID in this light.”

“What's it to ya, lady?” Winnie said. “We're not hurting anybody.”

“Oh, I know,” Virginia said. “But, you know, Rio is working really hard to give you guys something special, and the least you guys could do is meet him halfway. Now, you and I both know—even if Neila doesn't—that those IDs are fake. So, please hand them over.”

“No way!” Miles said. “They cost three hundred bucks each!”

“Dude, you're such a moron,” Winnie said.

Neila looked at Virginia, as the kids turned over their fake IDs.

“Somebody will have to pay for their drinks,” she said.

“Oh, I don't think so. I'm sure the police frown upon establishments that serve liquor to minors, fake ID or not.”

“Go ahead,” Neila said. “Call the police.”

“If you insist,” Virginia said, pulling out her cell phone. Who knew her years of being a professor would come in so handy? She'd been outbluffing young people since before this young woman was born.

“OK, OK,” Neila said. She turned to the kids. “You guys just go.”

Virginia wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a faint smile on Winnie's lips.

“Later,” Miles said to Virginia.

“Yeah,” Winnie said, “later.”

The kids slunk out of the bar. Virginia turned back to Neila, who was still glaring at her.

“May we have two more Shiraz at our table, please?” she asked.

“Sure,” Neila said. “And I guess you expect those to be on the house, too.”

“I hadn't,” Virginia said. “But since you offered, thank you.”

She headed back to the table, heady with victory. Mr. Clancy stood up as she approached.

“Wow,” he said. “That was pretty impressive.”

“I hope I didn't scare you,” Virginia said as Mr. Clancy held out her chair.

“No,” Mr. Clancy said. But instead of helping her into her seat, he turned her around and kissed her. “You didn't scare me at all.”