Just Get Home, page 2
Between the key kiosks and falafel stands, Dessa could make out the odd mix that was downtown L.A.: Hispanic families, wheeling babies with impossibly thick hair in collapsible strollers; Chinese immigrants shouting in Spanish, stacks of plexi boxes holding miniature turtles at their feet; Orthodox Jews closing up their jewelry shops for the night, sweating primly in their wool suits.
Dessa loved this about Los Angeles. When she had first moved, she had tried to lend it all a sense of adventure while on the phone with her mother. All these improbable people, wending their way through each other. Making their lives next to each other.
It was the future. So exciting. So American.
“Sounds messy,” said her mother.
A car pulled out of a space in front of her and Dessa’s heart leaped. She was not in purgatory after all.
She took a deep breath, shifting herself, as well as her car, from Drive into something else. Readying herself to see her...her...
Was friends the right word to describe Heidi and Laurel?
Maybe there was some middle word, an in-between word, for someone who is no longer a friend but also not a former friend. Something that bridges the distance of past cohesion and current apathy.
The Germans probably had a word for it.
And Gretch? Was friend the right word for their relationship either?
No. The word was insufficient for her too.
Gretchen was so much more.
* * *
Dessa’s name rang out over the dining room. Heidi’s unmistakable holler.
She shrank. The restaurants’ quieter inhabitants eyed her as she made her way past their tables toward Gretchen, Heidi and Laurel.
Gretchen stood. Giving her a hug. “The bride is already two in,” she whispered.
That much was obvious.
Heidi’s face was flushed. “Tell them I don’t have to wear the veil.”
“The veil?” Dessa was confused.
Heidi held up a flimsy piece of netting attached to a bedazzled plastic tiara.
“I told you to put it on, or I will pull out the giant inflatable penis I have in my bag,” Gretchen said flatly.
The bride made a face and wedged the crown on her head.
“You’re getting off easy,” Laurel said. “You can’t imagine the things we would have done to you in Vegas.”
Dessa sat back.
She was the reason they were here and not in Vegas. She flushed at the memory of having to call Gretchen after she had gone increasingly quiet on the emails listing nightclubs, performances, spa treatments and airline tickets.
“Gretch, even if I could get someone to watch Ollie, I can’t afford it,” she’d finally admitted.
“I’ll spot you.”
“Heidi doesn’t need me there anyway.”
“You guys are good. She wants you there.”
Dessa didn’t buy it.
When was the last time she had a good time with Heidi and Laurel?
It had to have been before Olivia. Before she was pregnant. Before Joe. Before everything that constituted her life now had begun.
Heidi and Laurel had a way of talking about Ollie like she was some kind of accessory Dessa had chosen to wear. Or a lifestyle choice she had whimsically decided to pursue.
But, of course, having a child is nothing like getting your nose pierced or trying out veganism.
Gretchen, though, was different. She never treated Ollie like less than a person.
Mortified by the veil, Heidi hid her face behind her hands. Something flashed on her finger. Gretchen grabbed it. “Are you wearing your wedding band already?”
Heidi demurred. “We just got them today.”
“Isn’t that bad luck?” Dessa asked.
They stared at her. The things you don’t say to a bride. She course corrected, “I’m an idiot. Don’t listen to me.”
“It’s gorgeous.” Laurel pulled Heidi’s hand out of Gretchen’s and toward her own face.
“Yes,” Dessa added. “It really is.”
“Thank you,” Heidi said. “I couldn’t help myself... It just looks so good and I know this is totally superficial, but...it makes the diamond look so much bigger.”
“The bigger, the better.” Gretchen aped Groucho Marx wiggling an imaginary cigar by her mouth. At least Dessa assumed it was a cigar.
The ring was now in front of Heidi’s face, casting sparkles across her nose as she admired it. “I mean, I know it’s not as big as Des’s...but...you know...”
Heidi looked up after a moment, as if she had only just heard what she herself had just said. Everyone at the table suddenly aware of the three carats that occupied the real estate of Dessa’s left hand.
Why the hell had she put this stupid thing on? What kind of person pleads poverty while wearing a college tuition’s worth of diamonds?
“Yeah...well...” Gretchen sighed. They all knew. No one wanted to talk about it.
“I’m so sorry, Dessa.” Heidi leaned toward her, laying her right hand over Dessa’s left.
Envy, followed by pity.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” Dessa smiled. “I think I could use a drink.”
3
The music at the club was terrible.
On the dance floor, Dessa felt assaulted by it. This was music that simulated migraines. The auditory equivalent of pressing your thumbs against your eyeballs...
“This must be what the young people are listening to,” Dessa shouted at Gretchen over the din. Her friend flashed a pained smile. Maybe she hadn’t heard.
Or maybe it was a lame joke.
We’re still years from thirty. We are “young people.”
Dessa sighed.
It’s only me who feels old.
She turned to make this observation to Gretchen, but her friend was gone. Dessa caught sight of the back of her head, as Gretchen wended her way through the throng of dancers. Maybe she was chasing after Heidi and Laurel. Making sure they didn’t get themselves into trouble.
Or maybe she was fleeing her best friend, a woman who was now incapable of just having fun for a few hours.
* * *
They had met in Venice Beach, five weeks after Dessa had moved to California.
Her college roommate’s older sister had invited Dessa to a party, with a tone that, at least over email, conveyed less an invitation than a favor.
What Dessa’s former roommate’s sister’s email had not mentioned was that the party would be on the roof of a building only a block from the beach.
Dessa had dressed for cocktails.
She was shivering before she even made her way up to the roof deck. From the edge of the building you could make out the white crests of the waves as they rolled in. Cheap string lights swayed in the wind. Dessa had searched for her friend’s sister in the clumps of party guests, hoping there would be some family resemblance as a clue. Everyone else seemed to have gotten the memo that it would be both cold and casual.
“Jesus, did you know you’re fucking blue?”
That was the first thing Gretchen said to her.
“I didn’t know it was an outside party.” Dessa tried to hide the shivering.
“Barbecues usually are. You know, outside.”
Gretchen was dressed for the weather. Several layers. Oversize sweater, Jeans. Dessa already felt lame. She didn’t want to make it worse by explaining that she hadn’t known it was a barbecue.
Gretch pulled a bottle of whiskey from the collection on the table. A woodland fowl on the label, something smaller than a turkey. A quail or a grouse. Off brand of the off brand. She flexed her grip on the container, the plastic popping. “That’s how you know you’ve got the really good stuff. The sound.” She poured herself a shallow glassful of the cheap stuff, sipping it. “Fucking law students.”
“What do you do?” Dessa asked.
“I’m a fucking law student.”
Dessa had snorted at that. Not laughed but snorted. The sound deep and porcine. Nothing cute about it.
If it had been in front of a man, Dessa would have been embarrassed. But in front of this woman, who seemed so at ease with herself, Dessa just let it go.
Gretchen thought it was hilarious.
“I like you,” she said. Like it was a normal thing to say.
Sometimes there is a recognition between two people that hastens their transition from strangers to friends. Like falling in love, but without the hormones.
For Dessa and Gretchen it was friends at first sight.
* * *
Gretch was “not a lesbian” but she didn’t mind if people thought she was. She called herself a “power bitch,” but to Dessa she seemed less bitchy than filterless. She did none of the usual feminine bullshit of opening a critique with a compliment.
“The compliment is that I’ve deemed you worthy of my fucking time,” she would say if anyone complained.
She smoked real cigarettes unapologetically, which is difficult to do in a place like L.A., where people confirm that their food is pesticide free before making appointments to put poison into their faces. Gretchen drank brown liquor, owned a pit bull name Kitty and loved bad television.
Dessa thought she was amazing.
They discovered that they lived only three blocks from each other. They went to the same coffee place. Ate breakfast in the same diner. They had probably been in the same room dozens of times before, but they had had to travel all the way to Venice to actually meet.
It was Gretchen who took her to drinks when Dessa finally got a job that would net her enough to live in her own place. Who dragged her to Italy, Vietnam and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. When Dessa complained about a boy—because they were all still boys in the beginning—it was Gretchen who tapped her painfully on the side of the head.
“Stop it,” she’d say. “Be more interesting.”
And from someone else that would have been mean, but from Gretchen it was just the thing Dessa needed to hear. Either sort your shit out or shut up about it. Being around Gretchen made Dessa want to be smarter and stronger. Weak women complained about the way they were treated. Strong ones changed the way they were treated or shut the fuck up about it.
Gretchen was strong.
She was the friend who flew to Pennsylvania when Dessa’s mother died. Who had helped iron out the worst of the estate tangles before taking a red-eye back to Los Angeles.
After the interment she had found Dessa sobbing on the floor of her mother’s closet. Gretchen had gotten on the ground then and wrapped her arms around her.
“Being an orphan is a motherfucker,” she had finally said.
And Dessa had laughed, her face red and wet.
That was how she was. How they were.
* * *
Dessa found Gretchen by the bar and then followed her eyes to where Heidi sat upon it, a shot glass topped with whipped cream pinned between her legs. A group of men gathered around her.
“It’s called a Muff Diver,” Gretchen yelled at her.
One of the men dipped his head between Heidi’s legs, his friends cheering. He popped back up again, the shot glass in his mouth, fists held high. His friend handed him a fresh cocktail. This, he offered to Heidi like a knight presenting a favor to his lady.
“Lighten up, Dessa.” Gretchen was right next to her. Mouth to ear. Her friend’s face was serious.
Dessa’s expression watching Heidi must have revealed something. Some judgment on her part. The humorless, unsexy, unfun part of herself that had been born with Olivia.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just fix it.” Gretchen tapped her back. “Can someone buy this woman a drink?” she shouted to the crowd. Heidi’s acolytes snapped to.
Quickly, Dessa had a vodka something settled into her hands. An unwise second cocktail. The one she would regret tomorrow morning when Ollie refused to curl up in bed past 7:00 a.m. The one she would feel when her daughter started pushing her eyelids open. “Up, Momma. Up!”
And then they were back on the dance floor. Gretchen, Laurel, Heidi. And Dessa. Hips dropping and rolling. Fingertips brushing her own thighs. Finding the hem of her own dress. Not so old after all. She sipped her drink, slowly...
But still it was disappearing a little faster than it should.
She would need to drive home, after all. She didn’t even want to think about what an Uber to The Valley would cost on a Friday night.
Just then Dessa felt a vibration against her hip. Could be her phone. Or a phantom ring. There was too much sensory input here to be able to sort out the details.
She stepped away from Heidi’s grinding body and reached into her purse. Her phone was ringing. The screen filled with a vaguely familiar set of numbers.
“Hailey?” she shouted after picking up. “Hold on! I’m moving to where I can hear you.”
Dessa mouthed “Olivia” to Gretchen as she made her way back toward the entrance. More people had come in the interim. Dessa brushed against an army of sweaty bare shoulders on her way to fresh air.
“I don’t know if it was the grilled cheese...or if the milk was bad...”
Hailey’s voice was finally audible as Dessa crested the door.
“I mean, it was mainly grilled cheese. The throw-up.”
Dessa filled in the details for herself. Ollie had woken up. Vomited. In the background, Dessa could hear her daughter whimpering a little.
“Hold on... Does she have a fever?”
There was silence for a moment. Presumably while Hailey felt Olivia’s forehead. “Um. Well. She’s warm...but I don’t know if she’s like fever warm.”
Jesus. This girl was an idiot.
“Okay...just keep her comfortable. Give her little sips of water...but nothing else.”
Dessa looked up the street, calculating. She was a least a fifteen-minute walk from her car. She could call a car to get her there, but who was to say that wouldn’t take just as long. It was a thirty-minute drive down the 101. Less if there was no traffic and she pushed it.
“Did...” She hesitated. “Has Olivia’s dad been by yet?”
“Not yet.”
It was almost ten. He could still be on his way.
“I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Dessa hung up and scrolled Recents for Joe’s number. A picture of him with Olivia as an infant appeared on the screen. Her favorite photo of the two of them. Olivia all rolls and creases. Her father, eyes crinkly and happy.
It rang for a moment. Then dropped to voice mail.
“Shit.”
“Everything okay?”
Dessa turned to see Gretchen. Leaning against the building. Lit cigarette in her hand. She had been watching.
Dessa shrugged. “Olivia’s sick.”
“And he’s working.”
They both knew who she was talking about. The way she had said working, Dessa knew she meant something else.
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Gretchen took a drag, and Dessa stepped into her cloud. This was how it had always been with them.
* * *
Four years before, when Dessa first told her best friend that she was moving to Van Nuys, there had been a moment, a gap, between Gretchen’s true reaction and the one she gave.
In that brief silence sat evidence of how much Dessa’s friend loved her.
Because she did not say any of the million-million things she truly wanted to say.
Instead, she had paused. Breathed.
And then her voice pitched up an octave. “That’s great!”
The high voice is the lie voice. It was something they said to each other often. Calling each other out. They both knew Gretchen did not think it was great.
But sometimes love is in the lies.
“It’s cheaper, so...” Dessa shrugged. She ran out of words before she reached the end of her sentence. Her friend nodded, eager not to have to talk about it. Another kindness.
Gretchen offered to help her move. But Dessa turned her down. She didn’t want to see her friend’s face as they drove past the dingbats of her new neighborhood, taking in the iron bars on the first and second floors. She knew Gretchen would be measuring the distance from one check cashing place to the next.
Helping her move would make it too hard for her friend not to say those million-million things.
The things Dessa had already told her she did not want to hear.
* * *
When she did come over for the first time, Gretchen was careful with Dessa in a way she had never been before. She treated their years-old friendship like a pair of new shoes she was breaking in.
Dessa gave a tour of her half-furnished home, relieved that her friend said nothing about chipped tiles or curling linoleum. Instead Gretch had remarked on what great light came in the living room and pulled a flat-pack containing the crib away from the wall. Inside the mesh of the base resounded.
“When were you planning on getting this together? Clock’s a’tickin, Momma.”
This was Gretchen’s version of a peace offering—an acknowledgment of all the ways Dessa’s life had and would be changed.
They spent the morning assembling the crib, cursing the instructions and repeatedly losing the Allen wrench.
“You know I love you,” Gretchen said after they wedged the crib into a corner of the apartment’s single bedroom.
“I do.”
* * *
“You know I love you.”
“Yeah.”
Gretchen paused. Deciding. Up the street, a car lay on its horn.
