From the outside, the house looked the same: the butterfly design — sleek angular lines spread open like wings, high windows with broad panes of glass, chartreuse front door.
As I made my way up the front walk, things began to look awry. Empty vegetable and dog food cans littered either side of the cement path as if someone had pitched them out the front door instead of into the trash. And why hadn’t Ben picked them up? Was he losing it too?
I rang the doorbell. Through the walls, a vague chime. I shifted from foot to foot, knocking, ringing the doorbell, and waiting. It took awhile for my mother to respond and when she did, she opened the door a crack.
“Who are you?” she said, peering out.
“I’m your daughter, remember me?” I replied, partly indignant. Still, I was freaking out inside. “C’mon, open up.”
“You look different,” she said, and pulled the door open.
“I cut my hair.” I reached up, touched the ends that I’d dyed blue.
“Why’d you do that?”
My hair had been long until last month when I kicked out Little Dick. “I needed a change,” I said.
“What the hell is with the turquoise?”
I dropped my bags in my old bedroom, which had hardly changed, put the wine in the fridge, and joined her in the kitchen. Joey Bishop spun as he barked. Yappy dogs can drive anyone right over the edge. Maybe this was what had happened to her; it was the dog’s fault. I leaned down to pet his head. He growled, then snapped at me. I jumped back.
“He likes to protect me,” she said.
“Not from your son, apparently,” I mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“Oh, nothing.”
The inside of the house wasn’t exactly a shambles, but something was off. The big plate-glass windows were smudged at the bottom from Joey Bishop’s snout. Big antiques were missing — the carved Chinese table my father had bought when I was twelve. A bronze mirror that hung opposite the front door, supposedly from the Tang dynasty. Then there were the missing Eames coffee table and Slim Aarons photographs.
End tables and built-in shelves were bare of artifacts she’d collected over the years from her trips to Europe and Asia and they were dusty, except for circles and squares that were varying levels of clean, the chalk outline equivalent of missing items.
A yellowing pile of Desert Sun newspapers as tall as a toddler stood by the sliders. I ran my fingers up the side. “You going to read all these?”
“I’ll get to them,” she said, and trundled to her midcentury stereo cabinet. Hanging on the wall behind it were dozens of framed photos, mostly of Ben and me, but also of the Palm Springs celeb set she once hung out with. She set the needle of the turntable down on vinyl. There was Sinatra again, singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” from his saddest album.
I poured wine into a mug with that Marilyn Monroe flying skirt image. After that long drive, I deserved a drink. It was five o’clock somewhere, right? I took my cup and wandered about the house, noting all that was missing or just plain wrong. I threw away an empty plastic milk carton on the floor by her nightstand. On the wall where a Slim Aarons photo once hung, the paint was a shade lighter.
“Where is it?” I said, pointing.
“Where is what?”
“My favorite photo of the Kaufmann house.”
“That’s been gone a long time.”
“It was here the last time I visited. Four months.”
“Seems like longer,” she said. “Ask your brother.”
“When does Ben come by? His voice mail was full.”
“He comes over every night to swim. His new religion. What do you want for dinner?” She threw open the fridge to reveal a dismal collection of milk, condiments, wilted iceberg lettuce, and not much else.
“Let’s go to the store.”
“You go,” she said, and handed me her checkbook. “Take one, unless you need more.”
“You shouldn’t be handing out checks like Halloween candy.”
“You’re my daughter,” she said. “If I can’t trust you, who can I trust?”
“Do you say the same thing to Ben?”
“He’s my son,” she said.
When I returned with groceries, I set them on the bench outside the front door, picked up the tin cans and threw them out, then carried the bags inside. Mom was on the sofa paging through a Palm Springs Life. Out by the pool the first man in some time I wanted to be close enough to smell was skimming the water, sweeping leaves, bugs, and crud into a net. He wore khaki board shorts, a neon-yellow rash guard like what surfers wear, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He looked to be pure muscle, calves striated like rocks carved by river currents. He moved fluidly, as if to his own soundtrack, and swished the pool sifter back and forth.
“That’s Ernesto,” my mother said without looking up from the magazine.
I put away the frozen foods and went out to introduce myself.
He was tall with eyes the color of kiwi fruit. He said he had tended the pool three times a week for the last two months.
“That’s a lot, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s what the man wants,” he said.
“What man? My brother?”
“Ben, he said his name was.”
So, the house can go to hell, but the pool needs to be pristine. Interesting.
“And you are?” he asked.
“Greta,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ll leave you to your work.” I turned toward the house.
“Que bonita,” he said softly, perhaps to himself.
“What?”
Rather shyly, he said, “You’re much more beautiful than your picture.”
I felt flustered, then dizzy, then smitten. It happened so fast, like I had just been hit with the flu. “How’d you see my photo?”
“Your mother asked me to look at her stereo. Sound wasn’t coming out. Your photos were on the wall above it.”
“Do you want a drink?” Was I hitting on him or had he just hit on me?
“A cerveza would be nice. So hot.” He wiped a red bandanna across his forehead.
“I don’t think there’s beer, but I’ll check. I have wine.”
“Whatever you like, I like,” he said.
I stumbled on my way inside. What is this? I wanted him, and that he might want me was enough to turn any whisper of the idea into a roar of demand.
I poured more wine into my mug and into one that read PALM SPRINGS with a palm tree, and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that took up the entire back of the house. Ernesto scooped water from the pool into a vial and squeezed in a chemical. Capped the bottle, gave it a shake, then dipped it in litmus paper. He was young; his face and body were absent of history. When I was eighteen, I wanted wrinkles so I’d be taken more seriously. Imagine. Now, closer to forty than thirty, I lapped up his attention like a neglected kitten.
In my old room I changed into my two-piece. Dust bunnies hugged corners. This wasn’t like my mother. She used to keep a pristine home, vacuumed as if it were her part-time job.
I carried the wine out to the pool and handed Ernesto one. We awkwardly thunked mugs.
“Sí, muy hermosa,” he said, looking me up and down as I approached in my two-piece. It wasn’t like me to find a man I’d just met, my mother’s pool cleaner at that, so instantly compelling. But after my lying Little Dick boyfriend — he’d even proposed! — I was game. I needed an ego boost, and fast.