“If you ever shoot another one,” Ruby said, “I’d love to participate. All ages enjoy riding bikes.”
“Absolutely,” Thad agreed. “You can never have too many beautiful women in a brochure.”
“I approve.” Ruby winked at Nora, then hopped down and led them into the backyard, where she’d been sunbathing. Nora took a sponge from the sink and wiped the suntan oil smudge in the shape of her mother’s butt from the stovetop.
Their waitress—strong arms holding a tray of drinks aloft, wide hips weaving through the crowded restaurant toward the table—looked like someone named Debbie, like a mom, with her simple, not unpretty brown eyes and a thin line of dark roots showing at her part.
Her own mother was talking to Thad. “We’re closer in age than you and Nora.”
“I was born under a lucky star,” Thad answered.
“Yes, practically the same year as me.”
The waitress set two pearl-white drinks before Thad and Ruby. “Oh.” Ruby clapped her hands. “The grown-up drinks look like clouds!”
Nora’s drink held a towering stalk of celery and green olives on a toothpick. She leaned forward, nibbled the droopy fronds.
“Ma’am?” Ruby touched the waitress’s sleeve. “If you had to guess, who would you say is the couple?”
Nora felt herself begin to rise from her seat before an arm anchored her, and warm breath tickled her ear. “No biggie, chicken.”
“I don’t have to guess.” The waitress tucked the empty tray beneath her arm.
Nora ordered the banana pancakes and Thad the broccoli quiche, at which Ruby snorted, one sharp
ha!
“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Nora’s body, starting with her toes, going up to her thighs, her stomach, and her teeth, clenched. She flicked Thad’s hand from her shoulder, then, changing her mind, she pulled him to her open mouth and kissed him. His cloud drink tasted sweet and sharp on her tongue.
Ruby’s stirring, vigorous and charged, nearly killed the fizz in hers.
On the way home from breakfast, Nora sat in back—a peace offering to her mother. She pressed her forehead against the rear window, watching the shoreline stream past, smudges of blue and yellow, ocean and sand. Ruby regaled Thad with stories of Nora’s pet catastrophes, a parade of deaths: run over, mouth ulcers, head caught in the back of a drawer.
“I think we’re the only people ever to have a cat commit suicide. It was horrible, the yowling. Remember, Nora? The landlord had to rip apart the entire cabinet to get at him.” She laughed a little. “That cat hated you. It used to hiss when you came home from school. Remember? Are you listening?”
“You named him Attila.” She felt like kicking her mother’s seat.
“The landlord sent me a sympathy gift. Lilies.”
He’d sent Nora a stuffed white kitten she named Willoughby. Her mom and the landlord dated briefly, and then they’d moved again.
Out the window, beyond the oil rigs, the ocean was flecked with whitecaps. When Nora moved in with Thad, she’d unpacked and put some of her things into the medicine cabinet and had been surprised to find a couple of half-empty bottles of baby oil. Too nervous to ask, she didn’t mention it, and it wasn’t until they came home from the beach one day and Nora discovered a quarter-size smudge of crude on her ankle that she found out what the oil was meant for. With cotton balls and baby oil in his hands, Thad had knelt before her and described the reflexive correspondence between body and foot, running a finger along her sole, saying it represented the spine, and the arch the waistline, and then, wiping away the crude, he massaged her ankle, which, he said, was linked to the pelvic zone. The kiss of cotton slick with oil on her skin drove Nora to tangle her hands in his hair. Thad carried her to his bed. She’d been glad she’d never asked what the baby oil was for, glad she’d found out in such a surprising way.
In the front seat, Thad made agreeable listening sounds for Ruby’s benefit, nodding his head. The back of his neck was the exact color of a fresh croissant. One Sunday a month Thad rode his bike over San Marcos Pass, a one-hundred-mile route, and came home tan, smelling of apples and salt. His hair, damp and pressed flat from sweating beneath his helmet, revealed spots where it was beginning to thin. The mileage was yet another Thad accomplishment, like mastering the roast sticky chicken recipe. Thad did everything right and then recounted it all for Nora. His bike rides, his day at work, all in excruciating detail, because he assumed that since he was interested in everything about her, she must be interested in what he ate for lunch. It was exhausting keeping him in the loop, and so sometimes she didn’t. Lately her answers were reduced to one word,
fine, good.
Because of all his kindnesses, the grocery shopping, the folded laundry—even her socks matched up—the red rose he tucked under her windshield wiper every Friday while she was in class, because of all these, she hadn’t told him about her boss and his offer.
Ruby blathered on, talking about
Sweet Charity,
Nora’s senior-class play. “I can hardly believe it’s been two whole years! What year did you graduate, Thad?”
When Nora was little she suffered carsickness. If only she could summon it now. Instead, she closed her eyes and hummed “Good Morning Heartache” to drown out the conversation. The horrible thing was, though her mother’s blatant agenda should have reinforced Nora’s commitment to Thad, and on the surface did, underneath she felt a fissure growing. She would never allow her mother to take credit for her doubt.
Ruby slapped the dashboard. “I love limes!” She’d spotted a Mexican man selling net bags of citrus at a stoplight on Pacific Coast Highway. She insisted they pull over and then stop again at Warehouse Liquors for a bottle of Tanqueray and some tonic. “Now we have a plan for the afternoon.” She reached back and squeezed Nora’s shoulder.
In class twenty minutes early, the smell of burning dust from the radiators mixed with the briny fog that drifted in the high west windows, Nora selected an aisle seat, the better to watch people wander in. Yesterday afternoon, over gin and tonics on the patio, she’d mentally gone through her wardrobe, deciding which top flattered her shoulders best. Now, she slightly shrugged, encouraging her blouse to slip off one side, revealing her amazing clavicle. She blushed. Would it have been better to ward off the attention with a sweatshirt? She didn’t want to be serving herself up on a dish, but she could feel the note, hot, all the way through her jeans. The note writer’s hair was dark, he’d had glasses and the earring. He wasn’t as tall as Thad. She pushed the thought away. Thad had spent the entire afternoon enduring her mother. Thinking of them, Thad and her mother together, Nora felt tethered.
Students, talking, burdened with notebooks, streamed in. Their murmuring and occasional laughter filled the lecture hall. Heads, blond of all shades it seemed, leaned over to whisper questions or peek at notes from last class. A boy with perfect teeth smiled at her, and she pinched her eyebrows together because it seemed best to appear aloof. She owed at least that much to Thad. It was ridiculous, the way her heart raced. She unfolded the Rate My Life quiz, frustrated with herself for her uneasiness, for her yearning.
Do you regularly eat fruits and vegetables
(of course).
Are you currently taking career-oriented classes
(no . . . yes, satire?).
How much do you agree with these statements: I am optimistic about my future; I have enjoyable hobbies; I like my living arrangement.
Every statement asked too much of her.
I am highly self-confident; I am a good person; I like my values; There is more good than bad in the world.
Someone leaned in so close to Nora that she couldn’t turn her head without brushing against a face. All she could see from the corner of her eye was dark hair, pale skin, and a tiny slit in an earlobe from where it was pierced. She felt warm breath on her cheek.
“You smell like sugar.”
“I work in a bakery.”
“I like it.” He sat back and she turned to see him, the boy of her note. Nora blushed again. Then the professor strode in and began talking about logical extremism or reductio ad absurdum as a satirical device. Nora lost the thread of the lecture almost immediately.
None of my senses are impaired; I exercise often and enjoy it; I believe everything happens for a reason.
Reductio ad absurdum, reduce the ridiculous to the daft, combine the absurd and the tragic, accommodate the improbable. All tools of satire. Pencils scratched, pages turned as the professor asked them to look at a passage from Evelyn Waugh, breath going in and out.
I get enough sleep at night; I can easily focus on the task at hand.
She felt the boy staring at her shoulders throughout the excruciating hour.
“You wouldn’t want to go for coffee, would you?” He introduced himself as Aaron, held out his free hand, which engulfed hers.
Reflexively Nora thought what the span of a man’s hand meant. When she was a little girl, back when they lived in LA, Ruby and her friend Maxine would drink wine spritzers on Friday afternoons and give each other man advice.
Never answer on the first ring;
shoes reveal income;
make eye contact then look away; never be coy with lipstick.
It felt as if Ruby were constantly elbowing her in the ribs. Nora looked away from the boy’s large hand, up to his eyes and then down to her notebook. Her too-long bangs fell forward, half concealing her eyes. “Coffee’s my only addiction.”
“That’s too bad,” Aaron said, and Nora told him her name.
Tuesday afternoon Ruby wrestled her hulking suitcase into the living room. “Don’t bother,” she said, though neither Nora nor Thad had budged. They leaned into each other on the couch, Nora reading Molière and Thad thumbing through
Bicycling
magazine. Ruby stopped in front of them, sat on her luggage, and rummaged through her purse, eventually extracting large silver hoop earrings. “You two are like an adorable old couple.”
Nora lost her place and started over at the top of the page. Thad toed Ruby’s suitcase with his bare foot. “Have you got our towels and ashtrays in there?”
“I wore almost everything I packed.”
“And you’re leaving before we’ve seen it all?”
“Be careful what you wish for. Besides, I’ve always told Nora, best to keep a man guessing.”
Thad nodded. “Next time, remember: less is more.”
“On the body or in the suitcase?” Ruby put on the earrings, then slung her purse over her shoulder. “Help your mother to her car?”
Nora dog-eared the page she’d now scanned twice and stood.
Ruby blew a kiss with three fingers. “Goodbye, Dad.”
“Thad,” Nora snarled. “And just so you both know, your witty repartee is neither. It’s tragic and absurd.”
“Ouch,” Ruby said.
Thad unfolded himself from the couch and held open the door.
Once Nora heaved the suitcase into her mother’s trunk, Ruby took hold of her shoulders. “Beanie, listen, as much as drab Thad is killing your sense of humor, I am glad you have him for the next little while. I might not be available.” She stroked Nora’s bangs. “Hopefully, after you finish your term, and I get out, you’ll be tired of all this stability.”
Nora stepped back. “Get out?” It was like Ruby to spring something on her right before leaving.
“I’ve signed myself up for camp. It’s in the Santa Cruz Mountains, twenty-five bucolic acres, gorgeous pool, sand volleyball pit.”
“What about work? You don’t play volleyball.”
“Personal hiatus, and now maybe I will.” She bit her lip, squinted back toward the apartment. “Dad’s watching.”
Nora turned and there he was, standing in the window, fluttering his fingers in a small wave.
“It seems he can’t bear to be without you.” Ruby slammed the trunk. “Really, I have no idea what you’re getting from all this.” She flicked her small freckled hand out and Thad mistook it for a wave goodbye.
“Thad loves me.” She jammed her fists into her pockets, willing her mother to get in her car, start her engine, and drive safely away.
“He certainly does. Yes, he does.” Ruby reached out to tuck Nora’s hair behind her ears, pinched the naked lobes. “You should decorate yourself.”
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
“You’re so smart. Of course Thad can’t resist you.” She removed the silver hoops from her own earlobes, and one at a time slipped them into Nora’s. “But what about tension? I don’t sense any . . . flair.”
“Flair?” She felt her voice crawling up into her throat. “We have tons of flair.”
Now Ruby tousled Nora’s hair. “Must you be so solid?”
“Stop it.” She pushed her mother’s hands away, patted her hair flat again. “Quit ruining things for me. How would you know a thing about solid?”
Ruby trilled, a little self-deprecating chirp. “He’s still there. Mild and attentive. He’ll make you soft. He doesn’t make you work for it. Trust me, you’ll soon be bored.”
Nora enforced upon herself a haughty smile, a state of denial. She would compromise anything to spite her mother. “People with attention spans don’t get bored.” She turned and blew a kiss to Thad and his love-gaze—never would she keep him in the loop about this conversation. She felt her mother’s moue-lipped concern press against her back. “What do you expect me to be?”
“Young.”
The women looked at each other. Nora trembled with fragile defiance. A jay screeched over their heads. “I’ve never been young, Mom.”
Ruby was the first to look away, chasing the sound with her gaze and then looking down at her hands. The sun glinted off a bobby pin in her mother’s hair, pointing like an arrow toward her roots. Nora yanked the hoops from her ears and held them in her open palm. “These look better on you.”
“You’re right, Beanie. You don’t need decoration.” She clasped Nora’s hand before taking them back. “So,” she breathed out, a quick huff of recovery. “Camp? It’s a month-long interlude—all right, it’s rehab, or as I prefer to think of it, a spa vacation covered by insurance. I can watch what I eat, get lots of good sleep, no access to alcohol. Or Valium. Maybe I’ll write poetry.”