I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason (3 page)

Which, I realized as I popped the last cinnamon bear into my mouth and the first videotape into the VCR, had been scheduled for tomorrow.

B
ut before I picked up where Erle Stanley Gardner had left off, I had Annie to deal with. And maybe this whole thing with Vincent was just a big misunderstanding. The girl did have a wicked habit of outfoxing people. This had been true from the very moment she'd come into the world.

“Congratulations!” Dr. Berger had trumpeted, hefting all nine pounds, six ounces of her into my arms. “You have a healthy baby boy…oops, I mean, girl!” I swear, Annie cracked up.

It's been like that ever since.

Her first word was
da-da
. Annie's father felt vindicated. Only she was talking about the family dog, not him.

As a child, she looked just like Shirley Temple, all dimples and ringlets. My mother was in seventh heaven. A movie career! Broadway! Greater glory for Grandma at her Friday afternoon haunt of thirty-five years, Sheila's Beauty-to-Go! But I hid the tutu she sent on Annie's third birthday. And the tap shoes she sent on her fourth. Just a reformed beauty queen doing her duty. The kid helped out. She tucked her
curls into a baseball cap, pitched like nobody's business, and sent the boys home crying, tails between their legs.

The title of that old Jimmy Cagney movie
Angels with Dirty Faces
always reminded me of Annie. But I didn't really know angels until Vincent came into her life.

So he writes a comic book about a garbageman in the future who recruits spies for alien regimes; it sounds a lot more subversive than it is. So he plays drums in a slash metal band; he wears earplugs during practice. So he's a card-carrying member of PETA; I, too, am willing to boycott leather goods—except for those made in Italy.

You'd never pick Vincent out of a crowd. His hair is long and shaggy, and I'm not sure I could even say what color it is. He wears a big T-shirt, baggy pants, and huge construction boots, the latter even in summer, with equally enormous shorts from the army-navy surplus store. But he has a kindness that radiates around him like a halo. And he makes Annie feel safe without smothering her. When Vincent walks into a room, you can feel a light somewhere inside her turn on. And if that isn't love, I don't know what is.

I wouldn't let them mess this up.

Perry Mason had distracted me for a few hours, but I was getting itchy. At the end of the fourth episode, when the big guy winked at Della after having tricked good ol' Paul Drake into picking up the dinner tab, I was out of there.

With no traffic, I could make it from Beverly Hills to Lael's in less than half an hour. But of course there was traffic. This was L.A. Ducking red lights and the occasional overzealous guy in a Hummer, I zigzagged my way to La Brea and Fountain, where things started to ease up.

When asked for advice by a struggling young actress, Bette Davis had replied, “Darling, always take Fountain.” That'd been good enough for me, apocryphal or not. But I could see a nasty accident coming up just past Highland, so I cut up and over to Franklin, cruising past the candle shops, the little theaters, and the coffee shop offering the
LAST CAP-PUCINO BEFORE THE
101. Turning left onto Beachwood Canyon, I got a perfect view of the Hollywood sign. It was no longer illuminated at night (too alluring for would-be suicides), but it glowed nonetheless, Tinseltown's very own North Star.

It was actually a misnomer. The fifty-foot-long sign had originally read
HOLLYWOODLAND
, advertising five-hundred-acre parcels to the droves of Midwesterners who came to L.A. in the 1920s in search of orange trees and sunshine. The “land” had fallen off in the forties, but the fairy-tale gates to the development were still standing. Likewise the tiny English cottage that was its original real estate office.

Lael lived halfway up Beachwood, just past the
REINDEER CROSSING
sign, on a hillside laced with meandering vines, wild vegetation, and mysterious stairwells cut directly into the rock.

On one side of her was a Moorish fantasy; on the other, a nicely maintained Craftsman. Lael had a French Norman cottage with a small tower attached to the hillside garage, but you'd never have guessed it since you could barely see the place from the road. The front yard was overflowing with junk—rusting tricycles, deflated plastic pools, hoses, buckets, terra-cotta pots bearing miscellaneous plant remains, a dented filing cabinet, scattered liter soda bottles, and piles and piles of old newspapers.

The inside was pretty much the same. Nina, Lael's ten-year-old daughter, once said she'd like to turn the house upside down and let everything fall out the windows.

I rang the bell. Nina's fourteen-year-old half brother, Tommy, opened the door.

As usual, my nose went into overdrive. Tonight the dominant note was nail polish, sharp and acrid, mellowed somewhat by the aroma of caramel wafting from the kitchen. Then the merest soupçon of Play-Doh, finished off by a whiff of Crayola crayon. Perhaps also a stray diaper, ripped off in the heat of the moment.

“Hey, Tommy,” I said.

“Hey, Cece,” he replied. “She's in my room, sitting in that old beanbag chair she gave me. Mom gave her a piece of pie.”

I headed toward the back of the house. Years of neglect followed by some haphazard remodeling had preceded Lael's arrival. But she was entirely responsible for the add-ons and the add-ons to the add-ons, a string of converted closets, enclosed porches, and strange lean-tos patched together with plywood and nails in a fashion that not only defied L.A.'s stringent housing codes but was guaranteed to make a city inspector feel faint. And those guys were hard to impress.

Tommy's room was at the end of the line. I knocked on the door. Annie opened it.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, looking down at her bare feet. Her toenails were each polished a different color.

“Hi, baby,” I answered, wrapping her up in a hug. I could feel my shoulder getting wet, but I didn't think I should be the one to talk first. I waited for a long time, quietly staring at the skateboard decals on the window.

“I like your shoes, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“They're really pretty.”

“I like your toenails.”

“The Hello Kitty pastel palette. Nina did it.”

“What's going on?”

“I know what I'm doing even if you don't think so. I made a mistake and I have to fix it.” Annie started to pace, something she always did when she was nervous.

“What mistake? Honey, please. Sit down and we can talk this through.”

“You always want to talk it through. Why didn't you and Dad talk it through before you screwed everything up?”

“Where did that come from? We're not talking about me and your dad.”

“Exactly how many men have you slept with?”

She was as matter-of-fact as an H&R guy tabulating tax deductions.

Stalling for time, I dropped my purse and went to retrieve it. I considered crawling out of the room while I was down there, but that would have been counterproductive. Time to face the music. Honesty is the best policy. I made my bed, now I had to lie in it.

“Nine.”

“Nine! How is that possible?” Annie demanded. “You weren't with anyone before Dad, and after him, there was only Joshua, right?”

“Well, not exactly,” I said slowly. “There was somebody before your dad, and there were a few before and after Joshua, but no one significant. Well, not really significant, except maybe for Peter Gambino, but that sort of fizzled.
Oh, and Alex. But he moved back to Milwaukee before we had a chance to find out if there was anything there.”

Alex, I reminisced. Thick, curly hair. Muscles in all the right places. The man who loved to spend the weekend in bed. Who loved to laugh. At anything. At Howard Stern. At
Family Circus.
Uproariously. Oh, god, it all comes back. He ran a chain of semisuccessful tanning salons. At the time, the differences between UVB and UVA light seemed far more thrilling than James Fenimore Cooper's use of the simile. What did I know? I'm sure I gave myself melanoma as a result of that relationship.

“You are unbelievable! I can't believe this! Everybody's slept around except me. Even my own mother! Mom, listen to me. I am twenty-one years old. I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I've had only two lovers my whole life—”

“Two!” I interrupted. “You were sleeping with someone in high school?”

“Of course not. You know I could barely speak to anyone without breaking out in hives.”

“Well, that's what I thought.”

“Aren't you going to ask me when?”

“Fine. When?”

She stared me right in the eye, defiant.

“Last week.”

“Is that what this is all about?”

“No.”

“Does Vincent know?”

“Yes.”

“And what does he have to say about it?”

“That he loves me. That he wants to work it out.”

Relieved, I said, “Annie, you have to get a grip here. This
isn't a game. Having sex doesn't turn you into a grown-up.” Then it all became clear.

“Not your father, please. Please say it wasn't him filling your head with this garbage.”

Annie was quiet.

“Oh, this is perfect. Your father, the world's leading expert on screwing around. Getting advice from him on commitment—good thinking, Annie.”

“Mom, from what I understand, you weren't totally blameless.”

“Is that what he says?”

“Before he knew what was happening, you were moving him into married student housing.”

“I was moving
him
in! Give me a break! If only I had been that Machiavellian.”

“Mother.”

“Yes, I was crazy about him. You know that. He was rich and handsome and a grad student at a famous university no one from my rinky-dink high school was ever going to go to. But I wanted his
life
more than I wanted
him
.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I hardly aspired to being the wife, the one who passed on college so she could perfect her mashed potatoes while everybody else went to great lectures and read great books and had great conversations about important things.”

“You do make amazing mashed potatoes, Mom.”

“That's not the point and you know it. Oh, it is so like your father to twist everything around just to get you to think
he's
the aggrieved party. And to screw up your own good marriage in the process!”

“Okay, maybe I was harsh. I'm sorry. But this is exactly
my point. I don't want to make sacrifices, like you had to. Remember how you told me Della Street turned down five marriage proposals because she didn't want to give up her job? I'm with her, Mother. And I'm truly sorry if you don't like it.”

“Back up a minute, sister. Della Street is a fictional character. You're not her, and no one is asking you to give anything up. Vincent is not your father. And you are not me. Your life has not been one huge accident, for one thing.” Shit. Now I was sorry.

“Thanks a heap, Mother.”

“I didn't mean it that way, honey.”

“I have a hard time buying that right now,” she said, in a tone so like my own it gave me chills.

“Look, all I mean to say is, this is you and Vincent. I know how much you love him. That doesn't happen every day. You can't just give it up.”

“I already have. That's why I'm here. I've made up my mind.”

The door opened. Zoe, who was seven, was holding a squirmy baby August in her arms.

“Mommy's finished the cake she's been working on. Do you want to see it?” she asked shyly.

“No, sweetie, not right now,” I said.

“Yes, right now,” Annie said, grabbing the baby from Zoe just as he was about to do a face-plant on the hall carpet.

“This conversation isn't over,” I insisted as we followed Zoe back to the kitchen.

“So, what do you think?” Lael asked, her blue eyes opened wide.

Poised on a card table in front of the fridge was a six-tiered
wedding cake. It looked like a cascading waterfall. Each tier was covered in the thinnest layer of soft blue marzipan rippled with rings of powdered sugar, as if raindrops had fallen onto the surface. There was a large water lily on each tier, the pastillage petals lightly sprinkled with pink dusting powder. At the base of the waterfall, on either side of the royal icing splashes of water, were piles of rock candy pebbles, tinted grayish blue. At the very top of the cake were two sugar-paste dragonflies so delicate you could make out the veins on their wings.

“Exquisite,” I said.

“Amazing,” Annie offered.

Zoe looked proud.

Even baby August gurgled with pleasure.

“But Annie and I have to finish something right now,” I said.

“Not now. I'm going to lie down.”

“Well, let's go back home. You can lie down there.”

“I'm staying here, Mom, and please don't make a fuss about it.”

“What, and getting marriage counseling from Lael?” I blurted out. “I don't think that's very sensible.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Lael shot back.

“Oh, I don't mean anything, you know that. It's just that you're not exactly in a position to say much, considering you've never bothered getting married.”

Lael held her tongue as I should have, especially considering the kids were standing right there. Slamming her pastry bag on the counter, she turned to stomp out of the room. The baby's pacifier fell out of his mouth at precisely that moment. He started to howl.

“I'll get it,” I said, feeling contrite. Lael tried to beat me to it, and we collided. Zoe went to help us but slipped on some spilled silver sugar beads. Lael and I both reached for her, but not soon enough. Trying to steady herself, Zoe grabbed on to the flimsy card table, which tipped. As if in slow motion, the cake crashed to the floor.

Zoe gasped.