Anywhere But Here (27 page)

We’d seen it twice already. It was the picture I held in my mind at night when I was trying to fall asleep. My mother told Julie what she’d told other real estate agents, other times: that we’d come ahead to start looking, but we were waiting for a husband to join us. After a while, my mother stopped returning Julie’s phone messages. They came on little pink slips the man behind the
reception desk handed us when we walked into the Lasky House. My mother stuffed them in her purse.

While we licked our ice cream cones at night, we drove by the house. Once, my mother parked in front. We just stared.

“It really is a beauty, isn’t it? It’s small, but elegant. It has charm, more charm than a lot of these that have been added on to and added on to so they end up one big hodgepodge. I’d do it all in white wicker and chintz. It’s really the perfect little place for two girls. And in the winter, we could make fires in the fireplace. We could go to the woods and collect pinecones, remember how nice they burn?”

“But we can’t afford it, can we?”

She sighed. “I don’t see how. But who knows, we’ll see.”

“It’s a hundred thousand dollars. How much is that you’d have to put down?”

“I don’t know, twenty, thirty.”

“And we don’t have that much?” I had no idea how much money we had.

“Honey, we’ve got barely enough with what I’m making to pay the Lasky House and our food every night. Plus your school clothes and when we get an apartment, we’ll have to give a deposit, plus, plus, plus. I can’t do all this on my own.”

“So it’s out then. We can’t afford it.”

“I
told
you, we’ll see. I just don’t know right now. Who knows, Gramma might even give us something.”

We parked on the street in front of Julie’s condominium, a new high-rise building.

“Now, you know, this might be the last time we see her, once she finds out we don’t want the house. She knows she won’t get her commission then,” my mother said.

We’d called home, collect, to my grandmother many times.

“I know, I don’t care.”

We sat in the car. It was October and a little cool in the evening. We had the heat on.

“Okay, as long as you know. So you won’t be disappointed.” My mother hadn’t wanted to return Julie’s messages. She thought the
best thing would be to drop it and just run into her again sometime, later, when we were all set. It was my idea to call.

We rode up the elevator in silence. When she opened the door, Julie was standing, holding a phone to her ear. A thirty-foot extension cord dragged behind her. She ushered us in, smiling, all the while saying, “Right, right,” into the receiver. She was wearing a man’s long-sleeved shirt rolled up to her elbows and purple panties. Her fingernails looked newly polished. There were cotton balls stuck between her toes.

We sat down primly, waiting for her to get off the phone. We liked Julie.

“So, how are you,” she said, as she hung up. “I’ve missed you, I’ve been calling.”

“Well, we’ve been busy, haven’t we, Ann?” my mother said. “And I have some unhappy news. My husband won’t be coming. We’ve decided to get a divorce.”

Julie pounced on the couch beside us, her fingers spreading on my mother’s back.

“It looks like he won’t be joining us. I’ve decided to leave and so … we’re on our own.”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I am too. I’m really sorry for her. And she’s being a very brave girl. But I think it’ll be for the best. I’ve really known that for a long time. And I just don’t think I can live with him again. I just can’t.”

“Jesus, let me make some coffee.”

My mother said she’d decided to leave; she thought turning down money was a claim in itself. I’m sure to Julie it made no difference. Julie wasn’t a snob. She was a practical person. If you had the money, you bought a house. If you didn’t, you rented.

“I can’t do it, it’s just not right,” my mother yelled into the kitchen.

“Maybe then it’s not bad news,” Julie called. “Maybe it’s really good news. Or it will be. If you’ll be happier.”

“I think we will, in a little bit, when we’re settled. But unfortunately, I’m afraid it means we won’t be able to swing the house. On our own, we just won’t be able to do it.”

“There’ll be other houses again when you can. That one was a particular steal, but if you can’t, you can’t.”

“I’m just sorry for all your trouble.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry about me, that’s my business.” Julie squeezed my shoulder. “Ann, I’ve got a half gallon of Jamoca Almond Fudge in the freezer, why don’t you dish it out for us.” She yelled after me. “If there’re no spoons in the drawer, they’re in the dishwasher.”

“Oh, none for me, please,” my mother said, “I really shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.” Julie slapped a thigh. “Come on, Adele, you
should.”

“Well, a wee bit.”

“So, you’re going to need an apartment.” From her pink lacquered file cabinet, Julie took out a map of Beverly Hills. She squeezed between us on the couch. We each ate our ice cream staring down at the map on the coffee table. We listened and memorized, alert, to all she could tell us.

“The bottom line is you want to keep her in Beverly Hills for the school district. But I think we can do even better than that. In high school—they’re all together. But this year, for seventh grade, there’s four elementary schools. And if you can get her in with a good group of kids, she can just keep on with them.”

“RIGHT,” my mother said, hitting the table. “It’ll just carry over. That’s why I wanted to get her in now, while she’s still in the seventh.”

Julie traced the map and its districts with her pink fingernail. The names enchanted us. Trusedale Estates and all the long, wide streets with palms down the center belonged to Hawthorne School. Canon, Rodeo, North Elm Drive.

“I’d try to keep her in El Rodeo. Beverly Vista is mostly apartments. And see, Horace Mann’s way over here. That gets into La Cienega.”

My mother reached over and ruffled my hair. “We’ll keep you in El Rodeo.”

Julie snapped her fingers. “I have a friend who has a daughter
in seventh or eighth grade in El Rodeo and she’s in with a real chic crowd. She’s the only one in her group who doesn’t live in a house. All the others live above Sunset. Should I call her and ask if she has any advice?”

“Would you?” My mother dabbed the corner of her eye. My mother loved being grateful. She crossed her fingers while Julie dialed. I turned away.

“Okay. Good.” Julie stood on one leg with the other foot crushing down a sofa cushion. “She should. Okay. One sec.” She looked at us. “She says she should work it in the conversation that she’s from Wisconsin. A lot of the new kids are just from other schools in LA and that’s a bore. But Wisconsin’s different, so see if she can mention that.”

Excitement built on my mother’s face. She loved social strategy, careful planning. It was one of her lifelong passions.

“Oh, Annie, I’ve got it,” she said, hitting her hands together.

“What.”

“You can say, how’s this, she can say, Gee, in Wisconsin, where I’m from, by now, by this time of year, I’d be wearing my bunnyfur coat. It’d already be so cold.” One of the great prides of my mother’s life will always be that when I was ten, I owned a real rabbit coat. “Say, Every year I was wearing it by November. Or even October. Say October.”

“I’m not gonna say that.”

“Why not? Or, let’s see, you could say, Boy, is it ever warm here. I wonder if it’ll ever get cold enough to wear my bunnyfur coat. In Wisconsin—”

Julie’s hand slapped over the mouthpiece again. “And she should be a little shy, aloof. Don’t chase them. Let them come to you.

“Yes. Let
them
come to you. Do you hear. Don’t PUSH. Wait. Just let them come to you in their own time. Because sometimes you push.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. I’ve seen you.”

That was a theme of my mother s. She thought I was too aggressive.

She tried to teach me to be feminine. The art of waiting. I thought if she were a little more aggressive, we might know people and have a place to live.

“Why don’t you worry about making friends yourself? I don’t see why you’re so worried about me.”

“Where am I going to meet anybody? You’re the one who can.”

Julie found us a one-bedroom apartment on South Elm Drive, just inside the El Rodeo border. It had nice windows overlooking the street and gold shag carpeting throughout. We lived there with no furniture except a queen-sized Sealy Posturepedic mattress and box spring we’d ordered over the telephone.

My mother was obsessed with paint. The first few weeks, she found spots the painter had missed. She called the landlord, a large-breasted woman who lived north of Sunset and drove down to our building in a brown Mercedes once or twice a week. The landlord had also promised my mother white shutters for the windows. My mother became enraged each succeeding week they were late. She began to doubt that they would ever come. Every day, I arrived home from school before my mother. And when I saw the windows still bare, I got nervous, knowing my mother would yell for a while when she came in from work. She had long, angry telephone conversations with the landlord at night. Sometimes, the landlord put her husband on. I could hear the change in my mother’s voice. She was softer with a man.

Finally, the shutters arrived. The landlord had promised white shutters and they were white, but a shade off from the color of the walls. My mother felt heartsick and furious. After two nights of phone calls with the landlord, the same painter came back to repaint.

“It’s cheap. She got the cheapest bad paint and slapped it on. With all this cheap stuff around not right, I don’t even want to be here. I JUST CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS!” my mother screamed.

I stood there. I used to make myself peanut butter sandwiches on toasted English muffins and eat them standing up.

The second day the painter came back to match the shutters to the wall, I stayed home sick from school. I wanted to offer him
something, but we didn’t have the usual things, like coffee. All we had were sunflower seeds and peanut butter and English muffins.

Then the landlord walked in and I hid in the closet. The painter knew I was there, but she didn’t.

“Just impossible,” I heard her say.

“Oh, she’s all right once you get to know her,” the painter said. “I think she’s really a good person underneath.”

I didn’t know if he was saying that because I could hear. He and my mother used to talk, though. She’d cry and tell him how frustrated she was, how hard everything was for us here, at the same time pointing to spots on the wall and saying, “Oh, oh, you missed” or “This little bit looks thinner, would you mind, just to even it? Thank you.”

“Well, she may be wonderful as a person, but as a tenant, she’s a nightmare.”

When my mother came home, the landlord was in the front yard talking to the gardener. My mother bounded upstairs to see the painted shutters and then marched down again. “Well, the shutters are better, it’s an improvement. But now what about the carpets? They were supposed to be cleaned two months ago. I don’t even want to walk around without socks and shoes. They’re filthy.”

I watched from the window upstairs. The landlord dropped the green hose she’d been holding.

“I mean, Geraldine, I JUST CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS!”

“Adele, it’s been shampooed twice already and let me tell you something. You say you can’t live like this, with the shutters a shade off color, and meanwhile you can live in an empty apartment with no furniture, with a daughter in school for three months.”

“Well, the furniture’s all picked out, it’s just WAITING at Sloane’s to be delivered. I just want everything RIGHT before it comes.”

They talked a while longer in low voices and then the landlord slid into her brown Mercedes and drove way. But she’d gotten to my mother that time. At dinner, in our booth at Hamburger Hamlet, my mother seemed distracted. I tried to talk about different
things. She had a piece of her hair between two of her fingers and she kept turning it, studying.

“Split ends,” she said, in the middle of my sentence.

I stopped talking and she seemed to notice. She looked up at me. “You know, she’s right, Ann, living all these months with no furniture and I’m worried about the carpets. She’s right.”

I loved her then. I was so glad, that seemed so normal and reasonable. I thought now we might start living the way other people did.

But the next thing that happened was my mother found another apartment. It was smaller, but cheaper and already furnished. “I mean, it’s not great furniture, but it could be cute. I can see already. We could make it real cute with some felt draped and different things around,” she told me.

So maybe that was it all along. Maybe we just couldn’t afford our apartment.

“But she could sue us for the whole rest of the year,” my mother said. She was scared about our lease. So we moved out late at night, carrying all our stuff in bags and suitcases to the car and driving to the new apartment in the dark. “I want us all out of here, before she knows.” Even without furniture, it took hours before everything we had was moved. We left the bare, almost new mattress and box spring. The studio had only one room, with a small alcove to sleep in, and the alcove already had a bed in it.

When we finished moving, we didn’t go to sleep. The new place was still too new and we didn’t want to look around carefully, then. We drove out Sunset in the dark to see the beach. We parked on the Pacific Coast Highway, and sat in the car with the doors locked, looking at the waves. We did that whenever things got too bad. You couldn’t see much, the ocean was just black, but you could hear the waves and sometimes we saw foam. We waited until it was light and the sand changed and then we drove back to town and had big breakfasts at Nibbler’s. My mother called in sick to her school. We were both going to stay home and work on the new apartment.

Then, when it was nine o’clock, we drove right up to the landlord’s
house. We’d never been inside, but we knew where it was, we’d driven by. I pressed myself hard against my car seat. But then we were there parked in front and my mother was taking off her seat belt, saying, “Okay, here we are. Let’s get it over with.”