Authors: Anna Stothard
Two of Lily’s ex-patients lived in a run-down Spanish villa in Laurel Canyon. The address was on the “contact sheet” that I’d found in the plastic zipped compartment of the red suitcase. Even from the road you could see paint peeling from the chalky stucco in the midday sun. It was cool up in the mountains, though, different from the polluted heat of Thai Town and Little Armenia. Gobs of sunlight ran around on the road as trees shivered above me. There was a massive Toyota people carrier in the driveway, and the sound of a dog yapping behind a garden door that seemed to be the only entrance to the house. It had been over two weeks since my rucksack got stolen, and I was beginning to stop looking over my shoulder for Richard or his friend. That morning I’d telephoned all of the people on Lily’s list of work contacts. Only one of the contacts from this list had offered any useful information about Lily. The first number I called was a wrong number: either it had been typed wrong or it was no longer in service. The second number took me through to a young-sounding Canadian man whose grandmother, one of Lily’s patients, was at a hospice now. The Canadian didn’t remember much about Lily, and seemed eager to get off the phone, back to whatever daytime television show was booming in the background of our conversation.
“She was only here a couple of weeks,” the Canadian man had said. “Don’t think it worked out or something, but I can’t remember.”
The second-to-last phone number belonged to Teddy Fink, presumably the same Teddy from the photo of him and Lily outside the place labelled “Malibu Mansions” in biro on the back, and from the greetings cards Lily had saved.
“I’m afraid Mr Fink died four years ago, and I have nothing to say about Mrs Harris,” said the woman who picked up the phone, “I’d rather you didn’t call here again, thank you.” And the woman put down the phone, so that wasn’t very successful at all. She sounded irritated and busy. Then the last number on the list was answered by Ms Bianca Forbes, who was immediately excited to hear that my mother was her former nurse and that I was looking for information about her.
“Oh! Well she came over every afternoon for years and years and years, we knew her well,” said the chirpy voice. “Of course we remember. I was so sorry to hear that she died. Poor thing. Why don’t you come up for iced tea this afternoon and we can tell you all about her? It’ll be fun.” So that’s how I ended up standing outside the garden door in Laurel Canyon with no one answering the door. I definitely had the address right, because I’d taken a taxi for the first time since being in Los Angeles. Lucy and Bianca Forbes lived right at the top of a road called Eden Drive, off Wonderland Avenue, which isn’t the sort of address you forget.
I knocked on the door one more time and then rang a doorbell that didn’t make any sound. The dog started to bark louder, though, and eventually I heard footsteps traipsing towards the door.
“Hello?” said a woman’s voice through the door. She opened it an inch, stretching two door chains like saliva on an oversized mouth. The woman I saw through the crack was small and wide-eyed and middle-aged with peaked eyebrows and black hair. A poodle yapped at her feet. “Miss Lily’s daughter, right? They mentioned, yes,” the woman said in halting English, and unlocked the door. She grabbed the poodle aggressively by its collar and dragged him off away from my ankles. The woman was wearing a black T-shirt and black leggings, with her hair tied neatly up in a shiny jet-black bob around her head, looking almost identical to the poodle. “They’re on the porch,” she said, and walked the dog away. Down some stone steps was a sloping walled garden that smelt of foliage and chlorine. At the lower end was the swimming pool, and at the top was a large Spanish-style porch with two identical old women sitting on colourful wooden chairs. They both waved at me, and I walked up towards them, trying not to trip over bits of crazy paving and tree roots.
“Hello, hello!” one of the women. “You made it!”
Let’s have a look at you, then!” said the other. They were clearly twins. Perhaps one of them was a little more hunched in her chair and the other a little more wrinkled at the neck, but essentially they’d aged at the same rate. They were pixielike, both wearing Oriental pointed slippers and cotton dresses with matching gold earrings hanging heavily off their ears. “Eldritch,” I thought, which means “unearthly and weird”, but the word always makes me think of elderly elves wearing lots of golden jewelry. The house seemed massive behind them. There were four white pillars holding up a second-floor balcony, which had elaborate wrought-iron railings that wound in the shape of flowers. Then the third floor was topped off by a sloping tiled roof the colour of rust that matched the colour of their slippers.
“You don’t look a thing like her, do you?” said one of the women, peering at me over a pair of tinted spectacles.
“Yes she does,” said the other woman. “Now, turn to the left a bit,” she demanded of me. “Now isn’t that Lily’s pout, just there, that curl at her lips?” And both women fell silent, studying my profile, the angles of my lips.
“We had no
idea
she had a daughter,” said one of them.
“I don’t think many people did,” I replied.
“Now why is that then?” said one of the twins.
“She was only fourteen when she had me,” I said.
“That’s terrible,” said one of the twins.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“Well my name’s Bianca,” said the hunched twin, “and this is Laurie Lee.” They both grinned at me. I noticed that the Poodle-faced woman hadn’t gone far. She was sitting on a deckchair looking our way. “And Lily came to work for us years ago, when she was just starting as a nurse. We recommended her to all our friends,” Bianca continued.
“Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “It means a lot.”
“It’s no problem at all; we were so upset to hear that Lily died. We read it in the papers.”
“Laurie Lee always reads the death notices. It makes her feel like she’s achieved something with her day,” said Bianca with a wink.
“Not dying is an achievement at this stage,” said Laurie Lee.
“Who would have thought we’d outlive one of our nurses?”
“Did you go to the funeral or the wake?” I asked.
“Oh no,” said Laurie Lee, “Bianca has such a trouble breathing nowadays, and I have this damned arthritis. We saw the death notice, that’s how we found out. We sent flowers. Brightly coloured flowers.”
“How long did she work here?” I asked, looking around at the muddled opulence of the place. The poodle woman was definitely watching us, and the poodle dog was chasing bits of blossom as they fell and floated on the still air from the trees above.
“Maybe three years?” Bianca said. “Although she worked for others as well as us of course. She was great fun. She was, what? Laurie Lee? What was she?”
“Vivacious,” answered Laurie Lee.
“She had a marvelous sense of the absurd,” said Bianca. “That’s one thing. For example, when we were a bit more mobile we used to go on a lot of church tours, you know, stained-glass windows and altarpieces and stuff. One time Lily came along on a particularly boring tour, and there was this sign – what did it say?”
“It said – ‘For the Sick and Tired of the Episcopal Church’,” said Laurie Lee. “It was for some free healthcare assessment. But Lily was bored, so she stole the sign and we all got helpless giggles in the car back home, because she was the one ‘Sick and Tired of the Episcopal Church’!”
I smiled politely, and the twins grinned with nostalgia.
“She was fun,” said Bianca. “That’s the thing.”
“How come she left?” I said.
“Well, it was a bit awful, in the end,” said Bianca. “Oly down there, the one who let you in, she’s our housekeeper. Been with us for years. She was always saying Lily stole things – objects and cash and what not, but we figured Oly was just jealous.”
“Turned out Lily really was stealing, though,” said Bianca. “Not a lot, mind you, so don’t worry, and we didn’t really mind. We have enough money, God knows, we didn’t even notice that she pinched some now and then, but I suppose it was the principle, and we had to let her go.”
“It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but we’d written letters of recommendation, and it was a little embarrassing when those people realized things were going missing.”
“I phoned some other people she worked for earlier today,” I said. “They wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Who’d you call?”
“A couple of people. One was Teddy Fink?” I said. “But he’s dead. I spoke to a woman who sounded really irritated that I’d called.”
“Daughter, maybe,” said Bianca. “Lily worked for Mr Fink while she was working for us. Did Tuesdays and Fridays with him, the rest with us even after she got married. We’d hear stories about him, that Mr Fink. He liked her a lot.”
“He adored her... the daughter
didn’t
.” Laurie Lee giggled.
“A lot of the people she nursed loved Lily, just as much as we did, but obviously you can’t keep help if they’re dishonest. You just can’t,” said Bianca, turning her palms outwards.
“Do you think she wants to know this about her mother?” said Laurie Lee to Bianca, then turned back to me. “I mean we still cared about her in a funny sort of way, we really did. Even after we found out. You know? We were heartbroken to see her go, and she still came around for lunch every so often. She was troubled, that’s all.”
“Do you remember when she set the Christmas pudding on fire and her hair got caught in the blaze?” said Laurie Lee to her sister.
“Woosh! Up it went,” said Bianca with a smile.
“She bought five different-coloured wigs from a dress-up shop. One day she’d have a neon-blue bob—”
“The next day she was a blond bombshell.”
“And we missed her when she was gone.”
“It wasn’t the same after.”
I think the twins continued to reminisce, but I lost track of the conversation. My mind went to Richard, and to thievery, and then to David’s part in all this.
I shared a sundae with David a few nights later. It was raining, like the night I met August properly, but the rain seemed hotter this time, and more dramatic. Los Angeles isn’t built for the rain, and everyone panics. The air gets saturated with ambulance sirens as oil rises up through the suddenly soaked tarmac highways, causing crashes. There was a flat-screen television in the corner of the diner where David and I sat, which broadcast the news. A smiley blonde presenter explained about blocked traffic and fatalities. A car fell off the edge of a road towards Malibu, killing a socialite on her way back from a charity gala. In Englewood earlier in the evening, a bus full of children had crashed on the way back from a field trip to the science museum. One died, twenty-two others were injured. There’d also been a gang bust-up outside a club that night, killing five gang members and two innocent bystanders.
David and I were both thoughtful that night. I played around with a computer game on his mobile phone. It looked new, and all the contacts on his phone were celebrity hairdressers and department stores and stuff, not people.
“I threw out my old phone when I gave up drinking,” he said. “A month and a bit ago. It’s easier without my old friends leading me astray.” I looked up from the game and straight at him – with this revelation about giving up alcohol, things started to make sense. It was six weeks since Lily’s wake. It was four weeks since David’s birthday dinner at the Thai restaurant. It had been an intense month that felt like longer, and I’m not sure I’d ever known someone so intimately as I thought I knew him then. Still, certain puzzle pieces didn’t quite connect. He seemed awkward and adolescent sometimes, but I guess that was because he was used to being drunk. He didn’t have many friends, but I guess that was because they were drinking friends. Even his scars, his weight loss, his sadness.
“You quit drinking when Lily died?” I said.
He paused.
“Yup,” he said.
“Because Lily died?” I said.
He paused again, and massaged his big shoulders slightly. He looked much better than he did when we had our first lunch in the car outside the Platinum Club. The bags under his eyes were thinning, and he didn’t look so gaunt. He swallowed a mouthful of ice cream and chocolate sauce.
“I sound like a Hallmark card,” he grinned, but it was a fake grin that immediately collapsed back into a frown again. He didn’t know where to look as he spoke to me. “I’ve done a ton of shit that I regret, that’s all. I’ve messed up. And I don’t want to regret anything else. I don’t want my life to be...
regrettable
.” He looked away, over at the television. “You’ve made a difference, is what I’m saying.” He stumbled, not looking at me. “You’ve helped,” he mumbled, and stared over at the TV.
I raised my eyebrows, and stuttered: “And Lily?”
“What about her?” he said, looking confused. I knew he wanted me to say something about what he just revealed, either the alcoholism or my impact on his sobriety. It was like a mental tick, though, and I asked:
“Was Lily an alcoholic? Is that why she died? Was she addicted to drugs or alcohol or something?”
David’s big green eyes rested steadily on me. He looked oddly beautiful, his shoulders hunched in front of the dripping window and his mouth curled into his trademark lopsided frown. I remembered the sight of him sitting on Lily’s bed at the top of the Pink Hotel during the wake, sucking his thumb after he cut it trying to get Lily’s photograph out of the frame.
“I don’t know,” he said. David glanced at his hands, then out of the window. Then he looked back at me. “I wish I hadn’t said anything.”
“Why?” I said.
“Does everything have to revert back to some party you happened to wander into?” he said. “I understand why she stays on my mind, but why do you bring her up? She has nothing to do with you.”
“Cos she has something to do with you,” I lied guiltily. “I don’t know. Cos she meant something to you, cos I wear her clothes – a million reasons.”
“What do you mean you wear her clothes?”
“I realize you were drunk when we met, but I stole her clothes – remember? You called me a grave-robber.”
“Of course I remember that. But at the café you said you sold them. You turned up at my door with a plastic bag.”
“A plastic bag full of her clothes, some of them,” I said. “The ones I didn’t sell.”
“You said you sold her clothes. I assumed they were new clothes. The plastic bag was from that clothes shop above the supermarket. I thought they were new clothes. You sold her clothes.”
“I said I sold some of her clothes.”
“Fuck.”
“What’s the big deal? I thought you knew.”
“What are you wearing now?”
“Hers,” I said, and we both looked down at my white cotton dress with the black buttons up the front, the same white dress I’d been wearing when I came to his house. “Her shoes. Her bra. Her knickers.”
He went pale, white as Lily’s dress. And I felt sick too, because I was deep in now.
“You’re insane. That’s disgusting,” he said.
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re actually fucking insane.”
“Don’t say that. You just admitted to not remembering half your life. Don’t call me insane.”
“You said you sold them.”
“You’re like a scratched record.
Some – of – them.
I sold some of them, David, and kept some of them. They’re just clothes,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is they belong to a dead woman.”
“You wouldn’t be here with me if I was still wearing polyester sports clothes and a dirty baseball cap!”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” David said, and pretended to smile. Again, the smile collapsed.
“I know you wouldn’t, though,” I snapped at him, “cos you walked away from me that morning.”
“I didn’t want to vomit on you! It wasn’t your fucking clothes. You really think I’m that shallow?”
“I think you like Lily’s taste. She had style. I don’t.”
“But I don’t give a fuck about Lily’s style. I give a fuck about you. Maybe it wasn’t instantaneous at the beach, but I was about twelve days gone at the dreg ends of a bender. If I’d been sober I would have fallen for you then. The clothes didn’t matter.”
“You don’t think they matter,” I said. “But they do.”
“Those clothes belong to a dead person.”
“I’m not arguing with that,” I said. “I know they do.”
“I’m trying to do something really difficult. The last thing I need is a tourist in stolen clothes sleeping in my apartment,” he said.
“You invited me,” I said. “The hostel was just fine.”
“Whatever,” he said.
“I’ll leave in the morning,” I said.
We drove to his place in silence, my bottom sticking to the wet leather seats of his SUV. I thought about him saying he would have fallen for me at the beach, if he hadn’t been so legless.
“Did you ever write her love letters?” I asked David in the car.
“No,” he said grumpily. I didn’t know if I believed him or not. Everything felt static as I undressed later in the living room, listening to him tug damp clothes off his body in the bedroom. We waltzed around each other. I turned on the bath water. He turned on the TV. He boiled the kettle on the stove. I got into the bath. Then ten minutes later he came into the bathroom and brushed his teeth while I was floating in the rising heat and heavy steam. I closed the sticky plastic shower curtain abruptly with my toes. I have long toes. They’re sort of funny. My second toe reaches out further than my big toe. Dad has the same thing.
“David?” I said.
He grunted and spat toothpaste out into the sink.
“I thought you knew,” I said, “I thought it didn’t bother you or, maybe, you were okay with it.”
“Why would I be okay with it?”
“You said I looked better the second time you saw me. Less feral.” The water looked bright green around me. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He paused for a while. He put his toothbrush back on the sink and took a sip of water from the tap.
“You stumbled in on all this,” he said eventually. “It’s not your fault. And I’d rather have you in weird clothes than not have met you at all.” I sunk my head quickly under water and emerged again. “Which I guess is the toss up,” he said, “since we wouldn’t have met if you weren’t a thief.”
“Or if you weren’t a mean alcoholic,” I said.
I could see his shadow through the shower curtain, leaning on the sink. We were silent again.
“You know, I’m ten years older than you,” he said after this moment of quiet. “That’s no good thing.” I wondered if this was time to reveal that I was five years younger than I claimed, but of course decided it wasn’t.
“Close your eyes, I want to get out of the bath,” I said instead.
“I’ve already seen you naked, little thief,” he said.
“You’ve never seen me naked when you’re angry with me. It’s a completely different thing. Go away or I’ll dissolve.”
“Dissolve into what?”
“Into the dirty bathwater,” I said.
“I don’t want you sliding down my plug hole with the troll people and the iguanas. You might clog the pipes,” he said.
“Charming.”
“My eyes are closed,” he lied. I peeked my head around the curtain, where he was clearly staring at my hunched silhouette beyond the frosted-plastic curtain. He smiled and picked up a towel from the rack, holding it out in front of him like a football banner.
“Have you turned into a mermaid?” he said.
“You wish,” I smiled, getting up. “As it happens I’m half human, half dove,” I rose from the water, stepping into the waiting towel.
“That sounds like something that ought to be explored,” he said, wrapping the towel around me.