My Hollywood (26 page)

Claire
AND IS MY LOVE FOR SALE TOO?

We met Helen and Jeff because they wanted Lola. Once, they would have paid anything for her. I thought we could probably still talk them into it. We had a supper scheduled.

I told Lola while we were washing dishes at the sink. “Lole, we’re having dinner with Jeff and Helen. Should I tell them they can have you? I’m sure they’ll jump at the chance.”

“Anyway, I will be there too.” She shrugged. “So you will be the one to ask.”

“I’m ovulating,” Helen said, first thing, when we arrived.

“Really? How do you know?”

“Basal thermometer. The doctor said to keep my legs up twenty minutes after sex.”

“The doctor with the freckles?” Paul asked.

“Isn’t she cute?” Jeff looked at Paul. “I have a crush on her.”

“We both have crushes on her,” Helen said, and for once took the punch line herself. “But I have the more intimate relationship.” Then she stood to take our plates to the kitchen.

“Sit
down
, I’ll
do
it,” Jeff said. “Or let them. That’s why they’re here.”

Paul and I started stacking.

“Not you. Lucy and Lola.”

In the lull, I lurched forward. “There’s something we have that you may want,” I began. They looked at each other and started talking.

“… your landlord would ever sell?”

“You think they would, you talk to them, I’ll pay you, man.” Jeff fisted Paul’s shoulder. “Commissionorama.”

They wanted to buy our little house! And Paul was listening! I stood up and ran to the bathroom. Then he was there, knocking. “Let me in.”

I sat on the floor hugging my knees.

“Claire, it was a misunderstanding. They thought you were offering.”

“You told them no?”

“Let me in. They’ll be fine,” he said, patting my back. “They’d just use it for his office. Course, if we did want to, we could probably make a pretty penny.”

But what about the days I’d scrubbed the new grout with a toothbrush, or painted the inside back corners of drawers with that toxic enamel, work you do only for your own. “Is my love for sale too?”

“Claire, I was just saying. I thought you might like the cash for a down payment.”

“I love our house.”

“’Kay. Done.” He ushered me back outside. “Claire’s put a lot of work into the house. She’ll be burying me in the backyard. But what she meant, when she said we had something”—here he lowered his voice—“was Lola. We’re going to have to let her go.”

Helen lifted her fingers from the table, one at a time, keeping them straight. Jeff looked up into the jasmine as if he weren’t following. They’d lost interest in what had once been so urgent to them. They were over Lola.

“And we thought, maybe with another baby,” Paul continued.

But they had Lucy, who was fun and talented with flowers.

Helen shook her head. “I’ll go a different way this time. We’ll do a baby nurse and maybe a UCLA girl. We’ll see. Bing has outgrown Lola.” She rested a hand on her belly.

Time doesn’t age you
, Lil said.
Having kids does
.

As Helen served stone-fruit cobbler, Jeff grabbed her plate and lifted it. “You really want this?”

“Yes,” she said.

“When do you go?” Paul asked Jeff.

“I told him, next movie’s here or somewhere I can bring the kids without vaccinations,” she said. “I don’t want to be away more than one or two nights. That’s not being a mother. That’s being a father.”

I kicked Paul. “That was it,” I said, finally outside. “That was my problem all along. I wanted to be a father.”

“Maybe you should see somebody,” Paul said.

Helen and Jeff passed on Lola. I hardly remembered the beginning anymore; I remembered it the way you remember someone else’s life. There was a year he woke up at five. Paul changed his diaper and drove around until Will’s neck wilted on the car seat. For months, I’d worried about whether I had enough milk. I didn’t want Will to have a drop of anything else, even water. I pumped and Lola marked the date on each bottle. So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn’t matter anymore, forever after. Little Him would never remember. All the closeness; looking up into your eyes as he sucked; you could have fed him unwarmed formula, for all he’d know by the age of memory.

At a year, Lola stopped boiling the bottles. At fourteen months, I weaned him. If I’d succeeded at this or failed, it was finished.

I tried to find what should have been my baby journal. The pages were blank, except one scribbled recipe for homemade Play-Doh we’d never used.

We fired Lola.

Lola
A WHITE THAT WANTS OUR LUCY

My weekend and five-day employers, my wand turned them into friends. The husbands, they close the door to laugh and get paid for it. My weekend employer is a famous. So why is not the contract of Paul renewed?

The door to the kitchen swings both ways, and Helen backs in, holding a platter. I am the one to take. Lucy is here too: for their dinner parties, they double.

“Lucy, you seem down,” Helen says.

“I just do not know with Tony.”

I have a much bigger problem, but Lola keeps her private life private. Maybe the advice of Ruth was wrong. “That is old news,” I say, scissoring basil.

“Helen, there is something I want to ask,” Lucy says. “Your friend Dale, once he said about a painter? Can I see that picture?”

Helen stirs the pasta, adding more salt to the water, even though we already put. This is the problem here. Women have helpers, but they do not let us make anything complete. Then they feel unnecessary. When I had helpers, I let them cook. I ate.

“Dale thinks you’re gorgeous. We always tell him to bug off.”

“This is a white? That wants our Lucy?”

The face of my pupil closes. She bites a noodle. “Done already.”

Helen heaves up the copper and we both grab.

“He only dates Asians. The last American he went out with was in college.”

“But Lucy is Filipina. She must marry a Filipino.”

“What do you say, Luce? Think you’d ever date an American?”

“Blue-eyed babies,” I say. “Coconuts. Brown bark, white inside.”

Lucy mixes pasta into the sauce. “I will just see with Tony.”

“She will not even meet Filipinos,” I say. “Thirty-three already.”

I sprinkle the confettied basil, hand the finished pasta to Helen.

“To be continued,” she says, walking out backward.

We serve ourselves on the plates we use for the kids. Helen would let us eat on china, but these go in the machine. The cooking here, it really is too healthy.

“Me, I am eating salads, fish, like that. But my tummy, it is still big, Lola! And the girls here, they are so slim. Because they drink milk. They have long bones.”

But some Filipinas are slim too. Lettie Elizande. Me even.

“The ones in magazines. Tony said,
I want your stomach to become like that
.”

“Those girls aren’t doctors, Lucy. They’re models,” Helen says, here again. “They’d rather be doctors with a tummy.”

But supermodels earn more than doctors. Anyway, Lucy is not doctor here.

“Let’s put on the fish,” Helen says, sharp in her voice. Before, she did not have that. I cannot tell if Claire has asked yet about me.

Lucy takes the pan from the refrigerator with salmon marinated in orange juice. There are too many vitamins in this food.

“I say to him,
Maybe you don’t like me?
He says,
Yah, I like you
. But before he is saying we will be married. Now, no.”

My heart speeds. My pupil, she will not be ready to give me her job. I should have found for her a husband first.

Helen looks to me. She wants to return to her guests. “What do you think, Lole?”

“Lucy knows I do not approve. She should be with someone who has savings.”

“But she likes him.” Helen sighs, backing out the swing door to her life.

I shrug. “Kids like candy.”

I collect plates from outside; jasmine petals mix in the pasta. I eat one.

It does not taste much different.

At the table, they are laughing. Are they laughing my chop?

My pupil gets ready the platter, ringing the fish with slices of lemon and orange, picking out the pits with the tip of a knife. We wash the pasta plates, so it will not be too much at the end. Lucy tastes the fish, frowns. “In our place, Lola, the fish is so sweet. The fisherman take right from the sea and you eat.”

A shriek. I let Lucy go in even though it is my day. Bing sometimes he has nightmares. Williamo sleeps too, in his stroller, under a blanket, by the mother.

“Sleepysleep,” my pupil says, closing the door.

I sit. The leftover pasta I put away already. But Lucy takes things off the counter to polish. “Why you do? You are making me look bad.”

“I try to help them, like that.”

“But it is not your house.”

A long time under jasmine they talk. They will hand me from the one side of the table to the other, like a parcel.

“Lola, we are planning to rebuild our place in Iloilo. Last month I ask for a loan. An advance, like that.”

An advance! That is why she is polishing. But they will want her to work that off.

“Next January, my father will go back for the two-year anniversary of our mother’s death. It is our belief if you put on the roof yourself, that will be good luck.”

This one, she has too many beliefs. First it was doors, that the doors should not line up so you can see through to the outside in their house in the province. I told her I would not pay to fix that. But she and Cheska sent home more than five hundred. Now it is the India trees in front of the house of Cheska. “They are saying that kind of tree, it is bad luck,” my pupil said.

“But you have not had hard luck.”

“No, Lola, it is. Butch, the son of Cheska, he got dengue. He almost die. And Mel, he is not sending much for the kids. Maybe he has another woman, like that. I told Cheska, cut the trees. We will just pay that.”

I saw the pictures. They are beautiful old trees. They need those trees. For shade.

I am more plain. I pay for my children to get degrees. “You believe in ghosts. Me, I am a believer in money. How much did your employers contribute?”

“Two thousand.”

Two thousand! Maybe that is why the talk outside is long.

“Jeff, he said,
I’d rather give you money for your tests. Who’s going to live in that house?
”

“Here, they do not understand a double life.”

“When I first came, I promised my mother we would fix the house.”

For a promise. To a woman dead and buried. But my pupil, will she remember her promise to me?

I do not want that it will be a problem when I take back the job
.

No, anyway, I want to go. Only one year, two years, like that
.

“It seems in this house now, you are almost daughter.”

“Yes, Lola. But I have lot of problem.” She opens the oven door and a carpet of warm floats out; peaches bubble through a shell. “With Tony, I really do not know.”

Normally, I would second the motion, but I have swallowed a question mark. I am wondering this white that says my pupil looks like a painting. The word
gorgeous
, that could work in her system like a drug. To Aleph Sargent, no. But for Lucy, this may be the first time anyone used that word. That is why it is important to have a mother. A mother can see behind flowers. Lucy is young, but she is not gorgeous. Me, I am suspicious. I was the same with my daughters and now the second eldest—she is married to a very nice Visayan, who owns a tilapia farm.

“You are always going with Tony to Chinatown. Maybe you need privacy.”

“Because it is cheap, Lola. I tell him, it is okay; we don’t have to spend.”

Helen comes in carrying a book. “Time for Lola’s coffee.” She pours milk into a pot. “This goes out in the blue pitcher. Here.” She opens the book. “Tahiti.”

The seed of the areola
. But the girl in the picture wears no shirt! Flower behind the ear. I am thinking the white. For him, it will be like getting a slave.

Helen pours thick coffee into our mugs, and then she swings out again. Why does she keep going back and forth? They all know we are in the kitchen. Why cannot she sit?

I wash, my pupil dries, to keep the hands fresh. But her clock is past time.

“Maybe you can have your Tony,” I say. “At last your teacher will allow. I will broker the marriage.”

In her face, I see an opening. A fan of light from a door; it is hope, full of terror, wanting to grow. “Just wait, Lola.” She blows on her coffee. “Just wait till I am more thin. One month, two months, like that. I have a video; it is Aleph Sargent and her mother exercising. A very nice tape.”

But I cannot wait.

I keep expecting Claire to tell me, but when they leave she avoids my eyes.

Maybe they did not want Lola.

Monday night, at the sink, I ask.

“Oh, Lole, I don’t know. When I said,
There’s something we have you might want
, they assumed I meant something else. They think everything’s for sale.”

“But-ah, when you said,
No, it is Lola?”

“I was so upset I didn’t ask.”

I am still taking care Williamo. How many more days? At five o’clock, I help prepare the supper, the sound of chop chopping the same. They still eat. There is really no one I can talk this. I do not want to tell Ruth. I hold it in my chest and breathe with this package hidden; up and down, it hurts. Others here have offered me jobs, but those spots, they filled already.

I can see they love me, Williamo does and Claire too, so the problem, it really must be money. Paul, what is the matter, all this time working, why he cannot earn? But every Wednesday I replace the underwear, washed and folded in his drawer, I see the card of the Hollywood agent. I see that rectangle with a spray of glitter. If Williamo starred in a commercial, maybe that would be the year salary for Lola. I call when he is at the camp. “I am the babysitter of the boy you met in Starbucks. We will try once.”

“Well, it’s more than a once commitment, if you know what I mean. We’ve got to get pictures and then there’re auditions.”

“Where?”

“You’re in what, Santa Monica? I’m out there Tuesday, Thursdays. I’ve got my shrink if you want to know the truth. Why don’t we meet Tuesday, and in the meantime, I’ll see what’s coming down the pike. He’s what, three, four?”

“He is now four,” I say.

Tuesday, I have ready a package of pictures duplicated.

“I meant head shots,” she says. “We’ll need eight-by-tens. Tell you what, there’s an audition in Studio City tomorrow. Why don’t you just bring him? It’ll be a cattle call, but it’s Volvo, so if he did win, the jackpot’d be big.”

But he has camp tomorrow. To take without parent permission, that is a crime maybe. If they did not chop me already, they could chop me for this. Wednesday is the day that used to be our playclub. Nannies in Santa Monica know that at this house, there was a party. Almost every week, a few still arrive. All year, I had to tell them, the party is over; Williamo now attends school. I tape a sign on our door just in case. Today, after camp, there will be playclub at the place of Mai-ling. Her birthday, we will have to miss.

The bus ride it is almost two hours. On my lap he is becoming too big for, I tell him it is a contest and if we win we can surprise his parents.

“But what do we play?”

“You just smile. That is all we can do. Is smile.”

In the big auditorium, I look around; I am the only nanny. Williamo becomes impatient. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I promise French fries after. We still wait and then when they call his name and he goes to the front, Williamo he does not smile.

The agent, still in silver, stands, jingling. “We’ll have to work on stage presence,” she says.

But I cannot take Williamo out again. I will have to tell Ruth. While we wait for our transfer to the Wilshire bus, we go in McDonald. I keep a Baggie of pennies in my purse, but today I just hand the girl five dollars.

The ocean, in the distance, has over it a net of gray. Like the iris of an eye, the color is never pure. Over the line of mountains comes a ribbon of smoke. Malibu fires. It is still hot, even now, after five.

By the time we reach the house of China, playclub will be near done, but we have never yet missed. We step over old toys in the side yard, pass neglected animals, mean birds in cages fed by Mai-ling; two rabbits that run wild almost trip me. In back, nobody but kids and babysitters. A small cake stands on the table; a knife jabbed into the fallen middle. Brookie and Kate stand up a huge girl between them. Esperanza returned from Guatemala with her baby.

The bigger kids cannonball in the water, holding their knees. Babysitters sit on the edges of the pool. Mai-ling, she does not have a suit. That is because she never had to take China to classes; a private swim instructor comes here. A hundred dollars every time. And China and her brother, they already know how. Stroke refinement, the instructor calls it. For the birthday, we all chipped in to buy Mai-ling a one-piece. We had to go a special store for large sizes. She is short, shorter than me, but wide. They waited for me to give her the box. Mai-ling opens, looking embarrassed. That was a different Lola who asked for the collection and got the card for everyone to sign. I have bigger problems now. To keep the world running, you need people like me before.

Esperanza stands in the pool. Brookie hands to her the baby. She holds the big girl, skimming her feet on the water so they dance. But a baby should not be so big. And Esperanza walked twenty-one days with that huge girl strapped to a basket on top her head.
“Rapidos!”
She shows me with one hand, up to here in water. “And now she no more cry.” Esperanza arrived to the door of Beth Martin, carrying the baby and a sack of Pampers. The employers, they let her every day bring the baby. The USC girl they hired left wet towels on the floor and now they will have to refinish.

Stars of light pucker the surface of the pool. I just now realize, I love this, but I cannot stay. Still nobody here knows yet. If I could just get money, it would be as if it never happened.

“Everybody loves you,” Esperanza says to Phoebe, the little sister of Simon.

“I know onebody that don’ love me.”

Esperanza stretches like a cat. Her body still has its own ideas. Water on her skin angles off into air. She shakes a bottle of glittery gold polish and flecks her toes. I tell her, for a baby, you have to watch, every minute, not for a second can you turn your head. But I really do not have to tell, I am surprise. Esperanza, with this baby that is too fat, you can see she already loves it. She reaches over to tickle it. Then she polishes the toes of the baby gold.