The Smart One and the Pretty One (22 page)

“Sneaky and a little bit nasty,” Lauren muttered.

“It’s the cancer talking,” her mother said. “I’m really very nice, you know, but the cancer sometimes says these nasty little evil things. I just can’t stop it from taking over now and then.”

“Good thing we’re going to the hospital to poison it right out of you, then.”

“Once it’s gone,” Nancy said, “I’ll go back to being the good, sweet, kind mother I really am. But until then—”

“Sneaky and nasty?”

“Learn to live with it.” She touched Lauren lightly on her arm. “So are you going to introduce me to your friend or not?”

“Sure, I’ll introduce you,” Lauren said. “He’s a weird guy, though. Don’t expect too much.”

“I’m just glad you’ve found someone to talk to at the hospital. It must be pretty boring for you, keeping me company there all these long, endless afternoons.”

“I don’t mind,” Lauren said. “I’m glad I can do it.”

“I hate that you have to.” Her mother pushed the visor down in front of her with an irritated snap. “I hate that everyone’s life is getting disrupted because of me.”

“I like it,” Lauren said. “Honestly, I do. I like getting you all to myself for a few hours. I’ve never had that before.”

“You had three years alone with me after Ava went off to college,” her mother said. “And you were rude and sullen the entire time. You never said a word to me except the occasional, ‘Do you honestly expect me to eat that?’”

“I was a teenager,” Lauren said. “I was just doing my job.”

“You did it very well.”

There was a pause. In the sudden quiet, Lauren could hear the car radio, very faintly—it must have been left on, but at a low volume. It sounded like someone was whispering secrets in the backseat.

Nancy broke the almost-silence. “Ava said you went on a date last weekend with the guy from the hospital.”

“I can’t believe she told you that!”

“Why?” Nancy said. “Isn’t it true?”

“See, this is the problem with living with your sister. No privacy.”

“
You
moved in with
her
. So how was the date?”

“It was okay.”

“Ava said it ended very early.”

Lauren flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder. She was wearing it long and swingy today: it had taken her half an hour to straighten it with the flatiron that morning. “You guys had a nice long talk about this, didn’t you?”

“Do you like him?”

“I don’t know. And I’m not saying that to be unhelpful: I’m just trying to figure him out. That’s all. I honestly don’t know if I like him or not.”

“All right,” Nancy said. “But when you do figure it out, will you let me know the verdict?”

“Probably not,” Lauren said. “But don’t worry—you can always ask Ava.”

The chemo ward was a little less crowded that afternoon, and the nurses were able to put Nancy in a private room. Lauren got her settled, turned on the TV, waited until the drip was fully activated, and then prowled around the edges of the room until Nancy said, “I thought you were going to find your friend and bring him here for me to meet.”

“You sure you’re up to socializing?”

“Absolutely. It’ll make a nice change from trying to pretend I’m interested in
that
.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the TV, which only received three channels, all of which were currently showing daytime talk shows with guests who appeared to have been recruited from caves deep in the Ozark Mountains.

“I’ll be right back,” Lauren said and left the room.

Finding Daniel turned out to be unexpectedly easy: she spotted him the instant she turned the corner. He was just standing in the corridor, peering into his cell phone and pressing the keypad.

“Hello,” she said as she came up to him.

He looked up and stared at her absently, as if he couldn’t quite place her and didn’t have the time or the inclination to work it out at that moment. But then he closed his cell phone. “Oh, hi. Where’d they put your mother?”

“Room 523,” Lauren said. “Your mom in there?” She pointed to the door behind him.

“Yeah. She had a bad night and the nurse was a little worried about how weak she was today, so I thought I should probably stay close by. I only came out to make a call.”

“Cell phone use is prohibited.” She pointed to the sign that said so.

“They don’t actually interfere with the machinery. It’s all bullshit. Anyway, what’s up?” He kept fingering the edges of his phone like he was anxious to get back to it.

“My mother wants to meet you,” Lauren said.

He snapped his head back. “Why?”

“She just does. She knows I’ve been hanging out with you here and that I saw you this weekend—”

“How’d she know that?”

“My sister told her.”

He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “And
you
told your sister.”

“Yeah,” she said, annoyed that he was putting her on the defensive. “Was I not supposed to?”

“I just don’t see the need.”

“It wasn’t a need,” she said. “It was a conversation. Anyway, will you come say hi to my mother? Just for a minute or two?”

“I’m not in the mood to make small talk with a stranger right now,” he said. “I’ll pass.”

Lauren gave him an incredulous look. Then she shook her head. “Fine,” she said, turning away. “Forget it.”

“Hey.” Daniel grabbed at her arm. “What are you acting all pissed off for?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, shaking his hand off. “
I’m
the one who’s acting all pissed off?”

He took a deep breath and stood for a moment, his arms stiff and awkward at his sides. Then he said, “I’m sorry. Hold on a second. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“You sure about that?”

He passed his hand over his forehead. “It’s just . . . I didn’t get any sleep last night. Mom was really sick. The worst I’ve seen her. She tried to get up to go to the bathroom and fell. Collapsed on the floor. Luckily I heard her. If I hadn’t . . .” He shook his head. “And that was just one thing. She was in pain, too, even with the meds. And when I called the doctor this morning—” He stopped.

She immediately reached her hand out to him, concern replacing anger. “What?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s just—none of it’s good news. Not that I expected it to be. But it keeps getting worse and worse. I was standing here feeling sorry for her and for myself when you showed up.” He forced a smile. “It was bad timing.”

“I often have bad timing,” Lauren said. “And I totally understand. Can I do anything to help?”

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t make me meet your mother. I just can’t be social right now. And don’t resent me for not wanting to.”

“Okay.” A doctor in a white lab coat brushed by, making her step back out of his way. He didn’t even make eye contact, just moved on in a rush. There was a stain on the back of his coat. It occurred to Lauren, not for the first time, that there were a lot of different stories going on at that hospital. She said to Daniel, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hold on,” Daniel said. “I was thinking—right now is kind of bad, but my brother’s actually flying in later this afternoon—”

“Wow. All the way from Costa Rica, right?”

“You have a good memory. Yeah.”

“So he came through in the end.” Then, realizing how that sounded, she quickly added, “I don’t mean the
end
. I meant finally.” That didn’t sound all that much better.

“I told him he had to come,” Daniel said. “I didn’t give him any choice. And he knows that—” Again, he stopped himself. “Anyway, the point is that he should have some time alone with Mom once he’s here. Which means I could duck out for a cup of coffee or something later. Would you be up for that?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you. I can’t say what time definitely. My brother’s flight is due in at four this afternoon. It left on time, but you never know if there’ll be a ground delay. Plus I’ll have to get him settled with Mom, show him the routine and all that. But as soon as I know when I’ll be free, I’ll call you.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah, if everything works out.”

“Right.” She moved off down the hallway.

He called after her, “Tell your mother it’s not personal.” When she glanced back, he had already returned to thumbing his cell phone.

“I will,” she said over her shoulder. But she was lying.

Her second lie was to her mother: she told her she couldn’t find Daniel anywhere.

Nancy gave Lauren a big hug when they got back to the house. “Thanks for taking such good care of me,” she said, and Lauren left feeling very pleased with herself. She
was
being a good daughter, and since that hadn’t been her family role historically, she was reveling in its novelty and the sense of importance it gave her.

She got back in the car and drove straight to Brentwood—straight in a directional sense, anyway, but it was rush hour and traffic was atrocious. It took her five minutes to go half a block on Sunset and she felt briefly nostalgic for New York and its public transportation system. But then a song she liked came on the radio and she blasted it and sang along and danced in her seat and liked being in a car again.

When she did finally make it into the heart of Brentwood, parking was scarce and she had to circle around for a while. She ultimately found a space several blocks from her destination, and the walk back was long enough for a tiny pang of guilt to creep in. She worked on arguing it away. Sure, she had promised Ava she wouldn’t spend any money on clothing—had even signed a piece of paper to that effect—but it was an absurd and unnecessary promise, one that she had been pressured into making. The ultimate goal was that she learn to be more
restrained
in her purchasing, and the last month had proven she could do that: she hadn’t bought anything for herself that didn’t qualify as a necessity. So for her to buy something now was no big deal: one new item of clothing a month was probably less than any other young woman in America was buying. So long as she didn’t let the one purchase act like some kind of dam bursting and start spending money like crazy, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with it.

In fact, she thought, getting into her internal debate (which she was winning), you could even argue that the one purchase would prove how much she had changed. She was buying it not because she simply wanted to buy
something
, which was, admittedly, a pathetic habit that had needed breaking, but because she wanted this
one specific item
. And once she owned it, her wardrobe would be complete. She wouldn’t need anything else for a very long time. Talk about your bargains.

With a determined jut of her chin, she shoved the door open, entered the store, and went straight to the turquoise camisole with the beaded bodice, which was exactly where she had remembered it.

The saleswoman admired the top on Lauren as soon as she emerged from the curtained-off dressing room to look at herself in the three-way mirror—“Oh my God, it fits you
perfectly
!”—and begged her to pair it with some jeans they had just gotten in that week. “You won’t believe how good these fit,” the girl said. She was dressed gamine-like in tight black clamdiggers and a short-sleeved black wool turtleneck, but the cadences of her speech were pure Valley girl. “Everyone who comes in here and tries them on loves them. And they’ll totally work with that cami.”

Lauren twisted her mouth to the side. “I have a lot of jeans,” she said.

“But these have a curved waistline so they don’t gape. You need that with this top since it has that loose drape—don’t want the world to see your business every time you sit down, do you? Plus they have a trouser cut, which is so right when you need to be a little dressed up but can still get away with wearing jeans.”

“That’s a good point.” She meant it. This girl was smart.

“Just try them,” the saleswoman said. “You don’t have to buy them.”

The truth of that was inarguable. Lauren tried on the jeans. While she was checking them out in the mirror, the young saleswoman—Griffin, she had said her name was—returned to her side with a pair of high-heeled jeweled sandals. “These are too perfect,” she said. “You have to try them on with that outfit. See how the beading kind of matches? You’d think they were made to go with that top. You’re like a seven, right?” She bent down and put them on the floor in front of Lauren, all ready to be stepped into.

This time, Lauren didn’t bother with demurrals, just slipped her feet into the sandals. The hem of the jeans had puddled on the floor before, but they were the perfect length with the sandals on. When she took a step, the tips of the sandals peeked out, girlishly pretty and satisfyingly shiny. She’d have to redo her toenail polish: the dark red she had on now was too obvious for these particular shoes. They needed something light and pearl-like.

She revolved slowly in front of the mirror.

“Wow,” the salesgirl said. “That is an amazing outfit on you. Has anyone ever told you you look like Julianna Margulies?” She reached out and minutely adjusted the straps on Lauren’s shoulders. She had been taller than Lauren a minute ago, but the shoes had given Lauren new height.

“God, I love this top,” Lauren said, twisting so she could look at the back view.

“And the jeans fit you perfectly,” Griffin said. “You have to get them. I wish they looked as good on me, but I don’t have your figure.”

She was clearly working on commission, Lauren thought, but that only made her feel warmly toward the girl—Lauren had worked on commission at previous jobs too. “I’ve been trying to cut back a little on my spending,” Lauren said, raising her right foot so she could admire the way the jeweled strap curved across her instep.

“None of these pieces is all that expensive,” Griffin said. “And you can wear them all separately or together. Honestly, you’re going to get so much use out of all of these things—who doesn’t need a really good, dressy pair of jeans? And the top will take you through every season—just throw a wrap over it when it’s cold. And those sandals will go with everything. I have a pair of them and I wear them with skirts, jeans, you name it.”

No you don’t
, Lauren thought with tolerant amusement. That was one of the oldest salesgirl tricks in the book: claiming to own the item you wanted someone to buy so you could extol its virtues and also subtly make the point that if even a low-paid salesgirl could afford it, then certainly her (almost definitely) wealthier customer could. Lauren had made that claim many times herself. Of course, she usually
did
own the item in question, having purchased a large percentage of her store’s merchandise. And Griffin was admittedly well-dressed. A fellow spendthrift, maybe?