Authors: Claudia Welch
I hang up feeling a bit giddy. I sit down at my kitchen table and stare out at the trees, at the dappled light on the dappled bark, and I think of nothing at all. I am simply happy.
The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“There is no way Ben is driving Bob's brother's Mustang,” Karen says.
“I've been telling everyone that,” I say.
“What is Cindy thinking? Just because her son is old enough to drive, she thinks everyone is old enough to drive?”
“Well, don't forget, she used to be an Omega,” I say, grinning, feeling euphoria taking over every cell.
“Okay, just making sure we're on the same page. Have you talked to Megan yet?”
I glance at the microwave clock. “I leave to pick her up in fifteen minutes. I'll tell her what's been happening, and then, what? Let Ben call her with the formal invite?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. I'll have him call her at about seven, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. “And, Karen? I told Matt I'd call him back, and after I talk to him, I'm going to be calling you later today. Be available!”
Karen starts laughing. “Okay. I'll be here. Call him right now, okay? I can't wait to hear back. I'm going to want every detail! No skipping the juicy parts.”
I nod and start to laugh. “You just got off the phone with Diane, right?”
“Roger that.”
Karen
â
S
ummer 2001
â
“Down in front!”
“Are we getting popcorn at this premiere? A bling bag? Anything?”
“Somebody shove a bag of popcorn in the microwave for Candy before she passes out from hunger,” I say. The whole room looks at me expectantly, so I get up off the floor with a huff and say, “Fine. I'll be your server today. Is there anything I can get you?”
“Finally, we're getting some service in this dump,” Pi says.
“I'd like my popcorn with just the barest drizzle of butter, salted butter,” Diane says primly, “and then just keep drizzling until it's sopping wet. Got it? Thank you.”
“Fine, you get drizzled if we get a movie out of you,” I say, heading for the kitchen. “Megan has a schedule to keep and we can't sit here all day while you mess with the DVD player.”
“McCormick's DVD player is completely uncooperative,” Diane says, going back to punching buttons, “and does not know how to play well with others.”
“Or it could be operator error,” Pi says.
Laurie's house is magnificent, sprawling, and homey. All three at the same time. It's minutes from LA (usually) and yet it seems like it's on the edge of the magic forest. It's a pretty place,
a place to call home
, as Laurie has said more than once, once too often according to Ellen. Oh, Ellen . . . Anyway, where was I? Right. La Cañada. Laurie's house was looking pretty good when she bought it, but once Megan took up residence, Laurie went full tilt and full out. The house looks fantastic. The kitchen is all white marble with heavy veins and white cabinets and dark wood floors. It looks elegant and warm, high-end and comfortable.
Laurie and Megan don't look up as I walk in, so I study them for a second before I say anything. Laurie's hair is a pale champagne blond that makes her eyes look more blue than gray; she wears it shorter, to the chin, blunt cut, no bangs. She looks both very professional and very feminine. Laurie is still slender and still Laurie, but only around the edges. At her core, she's soft and squishy.
Megan. Megan is Ellen all the way with a sugar coating of Laurie on top. Megan is . . . one of us. Megan is
not
a placeholder for Ellenâthat would be disgustingâbut she's not only Laurie's kid; she's our kid, too. To a much lesser degree, naturally, but still,
ours
.
“I have an order for popcorn from the peanut gallery,” I say, walking in fully. They look up in tandem, this mother and child who found each other like two lost survivors of a shipwreck.
They don't look alike, not really, but they dress alike and they move in the same way sometimes, a lifting of the head with a simultaneous flick of the hair, the way they root around in their purses, like a careful archaeological dig, the way they use a pen, from the grab all the way to the tossing discard. Laurie is still that blue-blood beauty, and Megan bears the hot, glowing imprint of Ellen's red-blooded femininity. I still remember that so clearly, my first impression of both Ellen Olson on one side of me and Laurie McCormick on the other. I don't know what I was then, except slightly desperate, anxiety and confusion coming out of me with every breath.
“I'm on it,” Megan says, turning from whatever she and Laurie were doing to pull a microwave bag out of the cupboard next to the refrigerator and pop it into the microwave. Megan's blond hair, long and loosely curled, swings with each movement. She looks like a palomino in motion, young and vital and fearless.
“With butter,” I add. “Real butter. I hope you have it or Diane will stage a mutiny. And she's the one to do it.”
“I know who I'm dealing with,” Laurie says, pulling a stick of butter out of the stainless steel fridge.
“What are you guys doing?” I say, coming closer.
“Time traveling,” Megan says, her bright blue eyes sparkling.
“Without a net,” Laurie says, smiling up at me. “Look at this, Karen. Look at how young we all were.”
The photo album is something from the ULA student store; red leather, gold embossed with the ULA emblem, and gigantic. It's a scrapbook, not a photo album at all; do they even sell scrapbooks anymore? Does anyone, anymore, keep the scraps, the paper bits of life that mark large moments and small, the ticket stubs, the theater programs, the letters of acceptance, the transcripts?
There's a photo of Laurie in her white dress at Presents, holding her yellow and white bouquet on the gold-carpeted stair of the Beta Pi house, her light brown hair swept back behind her shoulders in a smooth, straight fall, her smile picture perfect, frozen and held while the photographer clicked and saved the moment. At the bottom of the picture,
Beta Pi Presents 1975
, in gold letters.
I look up at Laurie, tears in my eyes, smiling, and say, “Just like yesterday.”
“I know,” she says.
“Enjoy every minute!” I say to Megan, who has come back to stand next to Laurie. “It flies by! You think it will never end, and then, bam, it's over.”
“That's what I've heard,” Megan says with a grin. She has a beautiful smile; Ellen's perfect white teeth in a perfect row.
I flip the pages, past Christmas parties and Hawaiian luaus in some Beta Pi parent's backyard, to all of us, Candy and Holly and Missy and Pi and Cindy and Joan and Lee and Ellen and Diane and Laurie, and I, arms around one another, grinning, mouths open in a whoop of joy, cuddled next to dates who sometimes turned into husbands and sometimes did not.
Greg is there, looking stiff in the photographs. Why did I never see how stiff and solemn and stern he was? Doug is there, of course, with Diane, and he is still the most handsome man I've ever seen. And it doesn't mean a thing, or nothing important.
When I think back on the parties, on all the times a photographer was hired and went hurrying through the party, taking photographs as quickly as he could, I think of my date, our dates, the boy/girl-ness of those nights. But when I see these pictures, I realize that it's us, the women, the Beta Pis hugging and laughing and posing against a dark sky, that dominate the shots. It was
us
. We were the party; we were the center of it all. The very purpose of the party was to hold us and bind us, to remind us of who we were to one another. We must have known it, deep down, in that silent place where a twenty-year-old girl never looks, because we are all together in these pictures. It's us. Photo after photo of us, arm in arm, side by side, looking so ready and so prepared.
“I've got it!” Diane yells from the family room.
“Thank
God
,” Pi says.
“Showtime,” I say.
The microwave beeps; Megan grabs the bag and opens it; Laurie puts the butter in a glass measuring cup and sets it in to melt for thirty seconds.
“Come on! Where are you guys?” Holly calls.
“Slaving over a hot microwave!” I yell back. “Popcorn doesn't just magically appear, you know.” Then I look at Laurie and Megan and say softly, “Except, yeah, it kind of does.”
Megan chuckles as Laurie stirs the melted butter over the popcorn.
“What are you
doing
?” Diane calls.
“Drizzling!” I shout back.
“Oh. Okay. Carry on,” Diane says.
Megan splits the popcorn into six small Fiesta ware bowls, the kind Diane's mother used to have, because Diane made a point of telling us so, and so we all bought a piece of anything Fiesta ware, just to shut her up, we told her, but really, because if Fiesta ware means so much to Diane, then Fiesta ware will mean so much to me. Between the three of us, we carry the bowls into the family room and pass the bowls out to the girls sprawled in luxurious abandon around the luxurious room. The floors are the same dark-stained oak as the kitchen, the walls are burnt caramel with caramel velvet floor-length drapes to match, drapes that I've never once seen closed, and the long, slim sectional is in mocha wool that has a hint of lavender in the weave. The throw pillows are all muted lavender, each pillow a different shape and texture. I love this room. It throws off a great, if silent, cue to snuggle in and relax.
“I still want my bling bag,” Pi says over a mouthful of popcorn.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say.
“Is everybody set?” Laurie asks. “Okay, then, this is for you, Megan, from us. It's a kind of going-away gift, and a graduation gift.”
Megan is sitting next to Laurie in the corner of the sectional, their shoulders bumping.
“I still get to keep the diamond studs, right?” Megan asks, nudging Laurie's shoulder to show she's joking.
“Oh, she's a smart one,” Holly says. “Way to keep your wits about you, kid.”
“Idiot child,” Laurie says, laughing.
“Hey, can we just show this thing? You can talk afterward,” Diane says. “I'm hitting
play
now.”
The video starts. Diane and Laurie and I did most of it, with a little help from Pi since she is the PR person and has an opinion on things like this. Okay, Pi did most of it, but Laurie, Diane, and I supplied most of the content. Who knew that we were the historians of the group? The title comes up . . .
Tales of Megan the Kid
; there's a tumbleweed rolling down an empty street in the background.
“What is this, a Western?” Diane says.
“I was going for atmosphere,” Pi says. “Cretin.”
“I'm calling you John Ford from now on,” Diane says.
“Down in front,” I say, trying to get them to shut up. I'm sitting next to Megan on the couch, Laurie on the other side; Megan smiles and crosses her legs, Indian style. Getting in the mood and grabbing the theme and running with it, right into the desert.
The first shot is a photograph of Laurie and Ellen, each of them wearing a black evening gown, their arms bare, their smiles wide, arms around each other in a two-armed hug, cheek to cheek. In fact, that old song “Dancing in the Dark” starts to play, music, no lyrics. As the music continues, there are photos of all of us, usually in black evening wear, always smiling, always hugging one another. One of Missy and Ellen, holding drinks aloft, Missy looking completely plastered. One of Ellen in her senior year, sitting on Mike's lap in someone's living room. Then another of Ellen, Diane, Laurie, and me in a semicircle, arms raised, our fingers in the ULA victory sign, and the music switches briefly to the ULA fight song played by the ULA marching band. Then there's a picture of Sammy Spartan on the white horse, reared on his hind feet, on the ULA Coliseum football field.
As the image fades, the music continues, softly and strangely melding into “Both Sides Now,” and photos of Ellen's wedding to Mike. Mike and Ellen cutting the cake. Mike and Ellen walking down the aisle. Ellen with the Exclusives in our wedding outfits; we look so young, so unscathed, which is an illusion. Even then, we had our scars.
I have to admit, Mike was a very good-looking guy. He really did have that James Dean thing going for him. Of course, that only works when you're young. Nobody wants a fifty-year-old James Dean loitering about.
Then the true videos start, the age of photography as the best way to capture a moment changing abruptly to video with sound and movement. A few hours after Megan was born, while Ellen was still in the hospital, and the music switches to “You Must Have
Been a
Beautiful Baby.”
“I look like crap. Put that camera down,” Ellen says to the camera, her hair flat and the whites of her eyes red with broken blood vessels, a shapeless hospital gown hanging askew on her shoulders. She looks young and happy and exhausted. Megan is in her arms, a tiny bundle in a plain hospital receiving blanket.
“Will you shut up and try to act maternal? Good grief, Olson, I'm trying to immortalize you!” Pi says, off camera.
Laughter erupts beyond the camera lens and the camera turns. Laurie and Diane and I look at the camera innocently, shaking our heads in confusion.
“What?” Diane says. “Don't film me; get the kid!”
“Do something interesting,” Pi says, the camera shaking slightly.
Diane flips a double bird to Pi, down at her hip level. “How's that?”
Pi laughs and swings the camera back to Ellen and Megan.
“You keep moving that camera around like that and we're all going to puke when we watch it,” I say on film.
The camera starts to move toward the Karen in the film, and I say, “Just hold it still!”
“She's so bossy,” Ellen says. “Motherhood has done something to her.”
“You wait,” the filmed Karen says, laughing.
The newborn film stops just as suddenly as it started, and a video of Megan and Ellen at Paradise Cove in Malibu comes up, the pier just to the left; the music switches to “Surfer Girl”
by the Beach Boys.
“I love this song,” I say.
“Shh!” from around the room.
Megan is about three years old and is wearing a tiny little hot-pink one-piece with double pink ruffles on the butt. She looks completely adorable, her white-blond hair gleaming in the sun. She's standing on the shore, the foam from the breaking waves just covering her toes, and every time a wave comes up to her, she stamps her feet in the sand, pushing against the foamy water. Ellen is standing at her side and holding her hand, staring down at her, smiling, looking back at the camera once with a big, white grin on her tanned face, then looking down at Megan again, talking to her.
The Beach Boys keep singing, but it's switched to “Little Deuce Coupe” and it's coming over the car radio. Ellen is driving, her face half-hidden by sunglasses; I'm filming Megan in the backseat, in her car seat, bouncing her legs, her pink Nike sneakers the closest thing to the camera lens, her whole body vibrating to the beat of the music, her little pink mouth in an O of sound as she sings along.
“Rock on, kid!” Ellen says from the front seat, just before she turns on her blinker.