“You know, Adele stuck to the story about falling on glass for the first few days, and then she changed her story and said Norman stabbed her and then, then”—the woman was pointing a finger—“then she changed it back. The grand jury indicted him anyway.” The woman smiled. “Indicted him even though she said she was too drunk to remember what happened, that she and her husband were ‘perfectly happy together.’ ” The woman made air quotes with one hand. “And good for them.” She laughed. “He ended up pleading out, third-degree assault they called it, gave him five years’ probation. He spent a couple weeks in Bellevue, this was before the indictment, but she wouldn’t sign off on shock therapy. Of course she was trying to protect herself but then everyone blamed her anyway. Norman’s mother, his friends, the entire quote-unquote literary establishment. They didn’t divorce, not officially, until sixty-two. I remember knowing this—reading it, or maybe someone told me, you know how gossip gets around—and thinking I should look her up and say something, something like I’m sorry. It’s too late now, of course. I never spoke to her again. Really,” she said, “what I’ve always wondered is whether they got the blood out of that dress. It was a lovely dress, scoop-necked with a plunging back, long and fitted but not tight, like liquid, skimming the surface of her body, and probably ruined, what with it being velvet and velvet being so hard to wash, so hard to mend, at least if you’re trying to do it properly, if you’re trying to do it without leaving a seam.” The woman sighed. “I think that’s all I have to say.”
“Do you want—”
“I think,” she said firmly, “that is all I have to say.” The last twelve seconds of the video were silent, the woman sitting in her chair, fingering her pearl necklace.
* * *
—
I was still at the kitchen table when my mother came home. For the past hour I’d been trying to figure out the woman’s name. Advertising plus executive plus rape had returned some promising results, but it was hard enough to find a list of current employees, never mind headshots. Plus almost certainly she was retired. Possibly she was dead.
My mother was carrying a jade plant and three bouquets, three honest-to-goodness riots of color: orange birds-of-paradise and pink peonies and white anemones, their pistils blue-black and their petals so thin and pale as to be almost translucent. “Sweetheart,” she said, turning on a light, “it’s so dark in here.” The names of the flowers coming, by habit, unbidden, unbidden, too, the names of their parts. Though pistil seems too violent a term for eggs and an ovary and in fact I prefer to call this bit, conscious of the error and of my mother’s chagrin, the flower’s nipple. She opened a cabinet, pulled out two vases, fished scissors out of a drawer, turned on the faucet. One vase for the table in the kitchen, one vase for the table in the living room, the ratio of orange to pink to white in each would, I knew, be varied so that their symmetry would seem neither wholly accidental nor exactly planned. In front of my mother, on the kitchen counter, on the windowsill, philodendrons and spider plants, an English ivy, overgrown, a blooming bromeliad. I closed my computer. The plants I don’t mind so much. “Hi, Mom.” She trimmed the stems under the running water. “Productive day, sweetheart?” I shrugged. She takes good care of the plants, never seen one brown on her watch, never seen one die, and if they’re not dying there’s only so much space, only so many she can buy. “Leads on any jobs?” I shrugged again. It’s the flowers I hate, fresh bunches almost every day, tossed, fine, composted, before any hint of wilt, like bright blooms aren’t a luxury, like they’re some kind of need. When we argue about the flowers, the arguments I make are about waste and about money, valid arguments both. Though in fact what I hate about the flowers is that they are, for my mother, a source of pleasure, that my mother believes in allowing herself pleasure, in indulging her various material desires. What I hate about the flowers is that they are an example of the many ways in which my mother extends her kindness also to herself.
“You’ll never guess,” my mother said, “who I ran into today,” no pause, “you remember Esther? From elementary school? You sat next to her in the fourth grade, I think, or maybe it was fifth. Anyway, I ran into her mother at the farmers’ market”—she was putting the flowers into vases now, mixing the birds-of-paradise with the peonies with the anemones—“you remember her, Marcia? Well, Marcia told me that Esther’s a junior account executive at, wait”—she put a hand to her forehead—“let me think, it was either CAA or William Morris, one of those big entertainment companies, agencies they call them.” “Mom, I know they—” “Anyway, Esther’s looking for an assistant and I said you were back in town and that you were looking for a job and she gave me Esther’s business card, the name of the company will be on the business card, I’m sure it’s either William Morris or CAA, if you look in my purse it’s in the little zipper pocket right at the top. Anyway, you should give her a call. That’s what Marcia said, Marcia said that you should give Esther a call, that she would tell Esther that we ran into each other and that you were back in town and that she should expect to hear from you. I’m sure it’s not much money but, you know, it could be a real kind of start, and if you want a new career you’ll have to start at the bottom, and most people apparently start in the mailroom so this would already be a leg up—”
“Mom,” I said, “I’m not even sure how long I’m going to be in Los Angeles.”
My mother turned away from the sink. “Well that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself options. You might really like the job, maybe that—”
“Mom,” I said, standing, tucking my computer under my arm, “I think I’m going to take a nap.”
My mother frowned. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to make you some tea?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m just tired.”
“Maybe some tea and a slice of toast? I could make you cinnamon toast, you used to—”
“Mom, I mean, thank you, but I’m not hungry, I’m tired. I’ll be fine if I can just get—”
“It’s just that you slept in this morning and if you’re feeling sick we should get some food in you, maybe some vitamin C, too, here, I’ll open one of those Emergen-Cs. Those’ll knock out a cold in no time, especially if you catch it early, and I know I have some in the pantry, give me a second and I’ll—”
“Mom.” I was raising my voice, which I knew my mother would notice and which I suspected she would remember and hold against me but in a way that would make it seem as if she were not holding it against me, as if she were only being observant, as if she were only worried about me, about how I was holding up, this was, after all, such a stressful time. “Mom,” I said, “I just need to rest. Give me an hour. Just give me an hour. We can talk about Esther in an hour.”