About a woman turning into a bird, the pain of the new feathers coming in. "It was exquisite."
I winced at her old-fashioned, actressy diction. I could imagine my mother mocking her later to her cellblock sisters. But I couldn't protect Claire now. It was too late. I saw that the perennial hint of irony in the corners of my mother's lips had now been etched into a permanent line, the tattoo of a gesture.
My mother crossed her legs, tanned and muscular as carved oak, bare under her blue dress, white sneakers. "My daughter says you're an actress." She wore no sweater in the cold grayness of the morning. The fog suited her, I smelled the sea on her, although we were a hundred miles from any ocean.
Claire twisted her wedding ring, it was loose on her thin ringers. "To tell you the truth, my career's a disaster. I botched my last job so badly, I'll probably never work again."
Why did she always have to tell the truth? I should have told her, certain people should always be lied to.
My mother instinctively felt for the crack in Claire's personal history, like a rock climber in fog sensing fingerholds in a cliff face. "Nerves?" she said kindly.
Claire leaned closer to my mother, eager to share confidences. "It was a nightmare," she said, and began to describe the awful day. Overhead the clouds roiled and clotted, like dysentery, and I felt sick. Claire was afraid of so many things, she only went thigh-deep into the ocean because she was afraid of being swept under. So why couldn't she feel the undertow? My mother's smile, so kind-looking. There's a riptide here, Claire. Lifeguards have had to rescue stronger swimmers than you. "They treat actors so badly," my mother said. "I've had it." Claire slid her garnet heart pendant along its chain, tucked it under her lip. "No more. Dragging myself to auditions, just to have them look at me for two seconds and decide I'm too ethnic for orange juice, too classic for TV moms."
My mother's profile sharp against the chinchilla sky. You could have drawn a straight line using the edge of her nose. "What are you, all of thirty?"
"Thirty-five next month." The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She would be the witness from hell. She couldn't resist the urge to lie down and bare her breast to the lance. "That's why Astrid and I get along. Scorpio and Pisces understand one another." She winked at me across the table.
My mother didn't like that we understood each other, Claire and 1.1 could tell by the way she was pulling my hair. The crows cawed and flapped their dull, glossy wings. But she smiled at Claire. "Astrid and I never understood each other. Aquarius and Scorpio. She's so secretive, haven't you found that? I never knew what she was thinking."
"I wasn't thinking anything," I said.
"She opens up," Claire said cheerfully. "We talk all the time. I had her chart done. It's very well balanced. Her name is lucky too." The ease with which Claire knelt at the block, stretched her neck out, still chattering away.
"She hasn't been very lucky so far," my mother said, almost purring. "But maybe her luck is changing." Couldn't Claire smell the oleanders cooking down, the slight bitter edge of the toxin?
"We just adore her," Claire said, and for a moment I saw her as my mother saw her. Actressy, naive, ridiculous. No, I wanted to say, stop, don't judge her based on this. She doesn't audition well. You don't know her at all. Claire just kept talking, unaware of what was going on. "She's doing wonderfully well, she's on the honor roll this year. We 're trying to keep that old grade point average up." She made a half-circle gesture with her fist, a Girl Scout gesture, hearty and optimistic. The old grade point average. I was mortified and I didn't want to be. When would my mother have worked with me, hour after hour, to raise the old grade point average? I wanted to wrap Claire in a blanket the way you do with someone who's on fire, and roll her in the grass to save her.
My mother leaned toward Claire, her blue eyes snapping like blue fire. "Put a pyramid over her desk. They say it improves memory," she said with a straight face.
"My memory's fine," I said.
But Claire was intrigued. Already my mother had found a weak spot, and I was sure would soon find more. And Claire didn't realize for a moment that my mother was jerking her chain. Such innocence. "A pyramid. I hadn't thought of that. I practice feng shui, though. You know, where you put the furniture and all." Claire beamed, thinking my mother was a kindred soul, rearranging the furniture for good energy, talking to house-plants.
I wanted to change the conversation before she started talking about Mrs. Kromach and the mirrors on the roof. I wished she'd glued a mirror right to her forehead. "We live right near the big photo labs on La Brea," I interjected. "Off Willoughby."
My mother continued as if I hadn't spoken. "And your husband is even in the business. The paranormal, I mean." Those ironic commas in the corners of her mouth. "You've got the inside scoop." She stretched her arms over her head, I could imagine the little pops up and down her spine. "You should tell him, his show is very popular in here."
She rested her arm on my shoulder. I discreetly shrugged it off. I might have to be her audience, but I wasn't her coconspirator.
Claire didn't even notice. She giggled, zipping her garnet heart on its thin chain. She reminded me of the tarot card where the boy is looking up at the sun as he is about to walk off a cliff. "Actually, he thinks it's just a big joke. He doesn't believe in the supernatural."
"You'd think that would be dangerous in his line of work." My mother tapped on the orange plastic of the picnic table. I could see her mind winding out, leaping ahead. I wanted to throw something in there, stop the machine.
"I told him just that," Claire said, leaning forward, dark eyes shining. "They had a ghost that almost killed someone this fall." Then she stopped, unsure, thinking she'd made a gaffe, talking about murder in front of my mother. I could read her skin like a newspaper.
"You don't worry about him?"
Claire was grateful my mother had let her little faux pas gently slide by. She didn't see, my mother had hold of what she really wanted. "Oh, Ingrid, if you only knew. I don't think people should fool around with things they don't believe in. Ghosts are real, even if you don't believe in them."
Oh, we knew about ghosts, my mother and I. They take their revenge. But rather than admit that, my mother quoted Shakespeare. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Claire clapped her hands in delight, that someone else had quoted the Bard for a change. Ron's friends always missed her references.
My mother flicked her long hair back, draped her arm around me again. "It's like not believing in electricity just because you can't see it." Her bright blue assassin's eyes smiled at Claire. I knew what she was thinking. Can't you see what an idiot this woman is, Astrid? How could you prefer her to me?