I'd never cared about someone so much that I could feel their pain before. It made me sick, that they could do something like that to Claire, and I wasn't there, to tell her, Quit, you don't have to do this. "I love you, Claire," I said softly.
I WENT TO art class one evening, and we waited for Ms. Day, but she didn't show up. One of the old lady students drove me home. I opened the door, hung with a Christmas wreath with little candied pears and porcelain doves, expecting to find Claire in the living room, reading one of her magazines and listening to music, but she wasn't there.
I found her sitting on my bed, cross-legged, reading my mother's papers. Letters from prison, poet's journals, personal papers, all fanned out around her. She looked pale, absorbed, biting the nail of her ring finger. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I was outraged, I was scared. She shouldn't have been reading those things. I needed to keep them separate. I didn't want her to have anything to do with my mother, anything I couldn't control. And now she'd gone and opened the box. Like Pandora. Letting out all the evil. They were always so fascinated by Ingrid Magnussen. I felt myself retreating again, into her shadow. These were my things. Not even mine. I trusted her.
"What are you doing?"
She jumped, throwing the notebook she was reading into the air. Her mouth opened to explain, then closed. Opened again. No sound came. When she was upset, she couldn't say a thing. She tried gathering the offending materials with trembling hands, but they came in too many shapes, they scattered under her awkward clutchings. Defeated, she let them fall, closed her eyes, covered her face with her hands. She reminded me of Caitlin, who thought we couldn't see her if she couldn't see us. "Don't hate me," she said.
"Why, Claire? I would have shown you if you had asked."
I started to collect the notebooks, rice paper bound in string, Italian marbleized notebooks, Amsterdam school copybooks, smooth-bound, leather-bound, tied with shoelaces. My mother's journals, my absence written in the margins. None of this was about me. Even the letters. Only her.
"I was depressed. You were gone. She seemed so strong."
She was looking for a role model? I almost had to laugh. Claire admiring my mother made me want to slap her. Wake up! I wanted to scream. Ingrid Magnussen could damage you just passing by on the way to the bathroom.
And now she'd read the letters. She knew that I'd refused to discuss her with my mother. I imagined how it must have hurt her. Now I wished I'd thrown them out, not lugged them around like a curse. Ingrid Magnussen. How could I explain? I didn't want my mother to know about you, Claire. You're the one good thing that ever happened to me. I didn't want to take any chances. How my mother would hate you. She doesn't want me to be happy, Claire. She liked it that I hated Marvel. It made her feel close to me. An artist doesn't need to be happy, she said. If I were happy, I wouldn't need her, she meant. I might forget her. And she was right. I just might.
She scolded me in those letters. What do I care about a 98 on a spelling test? Your flower garden. You're so boring, I don't even recognize you. Who are these people you're living with now? What are you really thinking? But I never told her a thing.
"You want to know about my mother?" I took a gray ribboned notebook, opened it, and handed it to Claire. "Here. Read it."
She took her hands down, her eyes puffy and red, her nose running. She hiccupped and took it from me. I didn't have to look over her shoulder. I knew what it said.
Spread a malicious rumor.
Let a beloved old person's dog out of the yard.
Suggest suicide to a severely depressed person.
"What is this?" she asked.
Tell a child it isn't very attractive or bright.
Put Drano in glassine folded papers and leave them on street-corners.
Throw handfuls of useless foreign coins into a beggar's cup, and make sure they thank you profusely. "God bless you, miss.
"It's not real, though," Claire said. "It's not like she actually does these things."
I only shrugged. How could Claire understand a woman like my mother? She would write these lists for hours, laughing until tears flowed.
Claire looked at me hungrily, pleading. How could I stay angry with her? My mother had no idea what my favorite food was, where I'd live if I could live anywhere in the world. Claire was the one who discovered me. She knew I'd want to live in Big Sur, in a cabin with a woodstove and a spring, that I liked green apple soap, that Boris Godunov was my favorite opera, that I was afraid of milk. She helped me pack the papers back into the box, shut it, and put it under the bed.
18
RON AND CLAIRE were fighting again in their room. I could hear it as I lay in my bed, the rabbit crouching on my wall, his ears erect and trembling. Claire wanted Ron to quit his job, find something to do that didn't involve cattle mutilations or witchcraft in the Pueblos.
"What do you want me to do, wash dishes?" It was rare to hear Ron raise his voice. But he was tired, just back from Russia, he hadn't expected a fight. Usually it was a home-cooked meal and kisses and clean sheets. "I'm earning a living. It's just a job, Claire. Jesus, sometimes I just don't know what goes on in your head."
But it was a lie. What Ron did was peddle fear. There was quite a market, it seemed. Everywhere, people were frightened. Threatening shapes lurked at the edges of vision, in the next car, at the ATM, maybe waiting for them in the hall with a .38. There was poison in supermarket toothpaste. Ebola, hepatitis C. Husbands disappeared on the way to the liquor store. Children showed up dead in ditches without their hands. The picture was pulled away from the frame, the outlines were gone. People wanted monsters and ghosts and voices from beyond the grave. Something foreign, intentional, not senseless and familiar as a kid getting shot for his leather jacket.
That's what Ron supplied. Fear in a frame. Aliens are always preferable to confused, violent acts. It was a career steeped in cynicism, pumped through with hypocrisy.
Her voice in reply was like bending sheet metal.
But I could understand him word for word. "What, you think I come off a fourteen-hour day, jetlagged, at some spoonbending convention in Yakutsk, ready to party? Hey, wow, bring on the bimbos! Maybe you should try getting some work, and remember what it's like to be wiped out at the end of a day."
I felt his words burn her flesh like a lash. I tried to hear what she was saying, but her voice faded to a murmur. Claire couldn't defend herself, she curled up like a leaf under a glass.
"Astrid doesn't need you waiting with the milk and the cookies. Jesus, Claire! She's a young woman. I think she 'd like spending a few hours by herself. Maybe make some friends of her own if you'd give her a chance."
But I did need her, Ron. Nobody ever waited for me when I got home from school — and never milk. He didn't even know that much. I mattered to her. Couldn't he understand what that meant to me, and to her? If he cared, he would never say such things to her. How dare he pretend that he loved her. I cracked open my door to see if I could hear her, but she must have been whispering.
"Of course they stopped calling. Gloria said she called and called and you never picked up. Of course they gave up."
Now all I could hear was her crying. She cried the way children do, sobbing, hiccupping, nose running. And the soothing tones of his voice.
I could picture him, taking her in his arms, rocking her against his chest, stroking her hair, and she'd let him, that was the worst part of it. And they'd make love, and she'd fall asleep, thinking he was so kind, after all, he must love her. It would be all better. That was how he did it. Hurt her, and then made it all better. I hated him. He came home, upset her, when he was just going to leave her again.
A LETTER CAME in the mail, from my mother. I started to open it when I realized it wasn't for me. It was addressed to Claire. What was my mother doing writing to Claire? I never told her about Claire. Should I give it to her? I decided I couldn't take the chance. My mother might say anything. Might threaten her, might lie, or frighten her. I could always say I opened it by accident. I took it into my room, slitted it open.
Dear Claire,
Yes, I think it would be marvelous if you’d visit. It's been so long since I've seen Astrid, I don't know if I'd recognize her — and I'm always delighted to meet my loyal readers. I will put you on my visitors list —you’ve never been convicted of a felony, have you? Just teasing.
Your friend, Ingrid.
The idea that they corresponded filled me with a sickening dread. Your friend, Ingrid. She must have written after I'd caught her reading in my room at Christmastime. I felt betrayed, helpless, anxious. I would have confronted her with it, but I'd have had to admit I'd opened her mail. So I tore up the letter and burned it in my wastebasket. Hopefully she would just be depressed that my mother never wrote back, and give up.
IT WAS FEBRUARY, a gray morning so overcast we couldn't see the Hollywood Hills from our yard. We were going to visit my mother. Claire had set it up. She put on a miniskirt, turtleneck, and tights, all in mahogany brown, frowned in the mirror. "Maybe jeans would be better."
"No denim," I said.
The idea of this meeting was almost too much to bear. I could only lose. My mother could hurt her. Or she could win her over. I didn't know which was worse. Claire was mine, someone who loved me. Why did my mother have to get in the middle? But that was my mother, she always had to be the center of attention, everything had to be about her.
I hadn't seen her since Starr. Marvel refused to let the van people take me, she thought the less I saw her the better. I looked in the mirror, imagining what my mother would think of me now. The scars on my face were just the start. I'd been through a few things since then. I wouldn't know how to be with her now, I was too big to hide in her silences. And now I had Claire to worry about.
I touched my hand to my forehead and told Claire, "I think I'm coming down with something."
"Stage fright," she said, smoothing the skirt with the palms of her hands. "I'm having a bit myself."
I had second thoughts about my clothes too, a long skirt and Doc Martens, thick socks, a crocheted sweater with a lace collar from Fred Segal, where all trendy young Hollywood shopped. My mother was going to hate it. But I had nothing to change into, all my clothes were like that now.
We drove east for an hour. Claire chatted nervously. She never could stand a silence. I looked out the windows, sucked a peppermint forcarsickness, nestled into my thick Irish sweater. Gradually, the suburbs thinned out, replaced by lumberyards and fields, the smell of manure, and long, fog-clad views framed by lines of windbreak eucalyptus. CYA, the men's prison. It had been more than two years since I'd last come this way, a very different girl in pink shoes. I even recognized the little market. Coke, 12 pack, $2.49. "Turn here."