Sunset Plaza.
Soledad parked in the lot looking south over the city. Clear day. Warm weather. Decent view. LA wasn't all bad.
Soledad limped up the hill from the lot to Sunset, crutched it over to Le Petite. Her mother, Virginia-Gin-already there. Looking good. Soledad thought her mother always looked good. Wasn't just a daughter's assessment. Gin was handsome the way Maya Angelou was handsome. The way, the way early pre-glam-makeover Oprah was handsome. Strong black women whose greatest strength was primarily their intelligence.
The future as Soledad had predicted did not materialize. Her mother greeted her warmly. Said how good it was to see Soledad, made a comment on the quality of the day. She did point out an actor sitting three tables over who'd had a hit TV show six years prior and hadn't much worked since outside of commercials for some kind of snack chip that wasn't made out of potatoes.
Gin said nothing about Soledad's crutches other than to ask: "Hurt yourself?''
"Twisted it running," Soledad lied. What she figured to be the first of many she'd be spinning over lunch as she prepped herself for the continuing cover-up of her leg injury.
But Gin had nothing more to ask concerning her daughter's leg, was more inquisitive with the waiter regarding the specials.
Soledad absentmindedly ordered the Santa Fe salad. She'd had it once years ago. It was decent. She figured it couldn't've changed all that much, and if it had, probably not for the worse.
A thank-you to both ladies from the waiter. He went to place their order.
No assessment as point of entry into a wider conversation about Soledad's love life from Gin to Soledad re: the waiter's looks and what Soledad thought of them. If Soledad found him attractive. If she'd consider dating him. If she wouldn't, was it because she was already seeing someone?
Unusual. Highly unusual, the lack of question asking.
In the time between the food order was placed and its arrival, Gin took charge of the conversation, apologized for coming to the city without forewarning but it just seemed the two of them kept… missing each other.
Signifying. Saying without saying she was on to Soledad's long-running scam.
But Gin abandoned her grievances there. Barely started, she let them go no further. All that came from her were pleasantries. About her flight, about the city. To her daughter, and about life in general.
Lilac.
She thought she smelled it when she sat down. Now Soledad was sure. There was lilac in the air.
Soledad didn't know of any growing on Sunset, The smell had to be drifting down from up the Hollywood Hills. Near the intersection of Sunset and Holloway-six blocks away-in a car that was made in Korea a cover version of a song by Fleetwood Mac played on the radio. Somewhere on the Blvd. a woman cried, but they were tears of joy. For a brief moment a near portion of the entire world was received with exceptional clarity by Soledad.
It wasn't right. The situation was incorrect. A background as a cop wasn't needed for Soledad to know her mother suddenly showing up in LA by herself was messed up. As her mother talked, Soledad half listened, half tried to figure the most natural, the least abrasive way to ask what she needed to know. Except if Soledad was ever nonabrasive, she'd long ago forgotten how to be. Probably about the same time she'd forgotten how to be patient.
So Soledad blurted: "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you," Gin said.
That didn't come right away. There was a pause ahead of it. Brief, but it was there. The hesitation her mother had taken, the thought she'd put into a simple answer: Gin was lying.
Having spoken enough of them, Soledad knew a lie when she heard one.
"For no reason? You just get on a plane, fly a couple thousand miles-"
"To see you, talk with you. Not over the phone and not in, in vagaries."
"You and Dad splitting up?"
A laugh from Gin. A bitter one.
"If you are, you can, I guess, stay with me if you want."
"I never should have let you be an only child. You needed more family than your father and I could give you."
Soledad didn't know what to say to that, didn't know where it came from.
The waiter stopped by with the Santa Fe salad, the sea bass Gin had ordered, asked the ladies if they needed anything further.
A couple of curt noes.
Soledad fumbled with her silverware. Gin cut her food with a knife, forked a piece and ate. Ate another bite. Then she set the fork at the edge of her plate.
She said: "I have cancer. Ovarian cancer."
The handle of the knife she held, dull as it was, hurt Soledad with the force which her fingers gripped it. Drove it into her palm. Her throat went dry. And her eyes as well. Someone else hearing that, hearing their mother was potentially terminal, most likely their eyes would go slick. Soledad's did the opposite.
Her voice, Soledad's voice was steady. "You should be in the hospital."
"I will be. I'm scheduled to go in Monday."
"You're going to wait until-"
"I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you." Soledad started to say: You could have called. Except…
Her mother had called. She'd called and called, and Soledad had ducked and dodged.
Soledad felt a slow and steady drip of guilt water-torturing her. She knew she'd fed it for years.
Fucking cancer.
Gin: "I came to tell you… well, I came to say how much I loved you. How proud I was of you.
Was. Was?
"This is… you're, you're sick, and you come all the way out to tell me-"
"… but it sounded so odd, vapid to tell someone you loved them. Under the circumstances." Gin had to fight with that word some. Circumstances. "When you say it like you're making a final declaration. If they don't know it; if the person you're saying that to doesn't already know that you… and it sounded, and it sounded cliche. I'm dying, and therefore I have to… well, probably I'm dying, so I have to tell you that I… but I wanted to tell you."
"Stop it!" Soledad barked loud enough people four tables over looked in her direction. The has-been actor among them. "Stop talking in the past tense. It's like talking to a ghost."
Amazing even to herself; her mother had cancer, the bet was it was killing her, she'd picked flying to LA over going in for immediate surgery or treatment or whatever science was up to that was-in terms of fighting cancer- little better than a good leeching, and the only emotion Soledad could show was anger.
Unbelievable.
The waiter returned, asked the two ladies if everything was to their liking. Soledad's head shook.
The waiter thought one of the meals was lacking and started to go into a WeHo hissy fit.
Gin set the guy right, sent him off. She ate. She put an effort into eating, going to the trouble not hardly out of hunger as much as to give Soledad a minute to collect herself. Food was poor distraction. Gin didn't have an appetite, hadn't since her doctor had sat her down, looked her in the eye and told her with all the compassion of a guy who's told a hundred patients some HMOified version of the same spieclass="underline" You've got an illness which could very much end things for you, and it's pretty much beyond us.
Gin pushed her plate away. She looked to her daughter. "What I want to say, I wanted to say face-to-face. I'm going to be selfish, Soledad. I don't want you coming home."
"What?"
"I don't want you dealing with my sickness." In that sentence Gin put the emphasis on "my." "I don't want you watching me waste away."
"You're not going to die."
"You talk as if it were a matter of choice. If I choose to live, I will. That's hardly the way things are."