Easy Street, page 3
“Maggie?”
Sunny was smiling broadly, ingenuously, as she pushed her hand forward to shake mine.
I pulled my focus away from Joanna but felt hers remain on mine.
Sunny stood patiently, grinning. “We’re so happy to finally meet you.”
“And I’m so happy to finally meet you two,” I said in a tone I was pleased to hear sounded light and cordial. I was concerned my discomfort would feel like an insult to the two women, but my voice and manner, I felt assured, betrayed nothing.
Joanna was appraising me right back but without the bullshit cordial cover. She thrust her jaw forward like a bulldog and scanned me from head to toe. Sunny interceded before the awkward moment could develop into something worse.
“Say hello, Joanna.”
“Hi,” Joanna muttered while squeezing her purse into her chest and staring down at the frayed sandals incompletely covering her wide, flat feet. It did little to smooth the tension.
I glanced at Jimmy. He nodded, and in an attempt to assert normalcy, I repeated, “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
Jim led the way into Koo Koo Roo, and when we reached the cashier, Sunny asked if they could get the Supreme Original, which came with three sides rather than one.
“Sure,” Jimmy said, smiling. “Koo Koo Roo is all about the sides.”
“Four Supreme Originals,” he said to the cashier. “Give me the baked beans, mashed potatoes, and sautéed mushrooms. Maggie?”
I ordered black beans, yams, and a side salad, but Sunny and Joanna took a while deciding.
“We would both like garlic potatoes, green beans, and corn with our chicken,” Sunny quite politely told Jimmy.
Then at the last minute, Sunny changed her mind and asked for mashed instead of garlic potatoes.
“Garlic lingers a little longer than I’d like,” she explained.
Lingers longer than I’d like had a cadence to it that made me imagine Sunny in a different light. I repeated the phrase in my head as I pictured her with a teacup in hand, an extended pinkie, laughing lightly, her liquid wordplay alluding to the careful tutoring of a privileged child. A parallel universe, I thought, an alternate environment. A different Sunny.
When our orders were ready, the four of us squeezed into a small booth and spread our food out on the table. I sat next to Joanna, who ate in silence while Sunny entertained us with jokes she had submitted to Reader’s Digest.
“What do you get when you cross a dinosaur with a pig?”
“What do you get?”
“Jurassic Pork.”
Some were more sophisticated. “The problem with political jokes,” she observed, for example, “is that more often than not they get elected.” Sunny conversed easily, made eye contact, and had a knack for comedic delivery. How, I wondered, had this sharp, witty woman come to be panhandling in front of a casual chicken eatery?
I studied the two with curiosity as we talked and ate. Both Sunny’s and Joanna’s skin had a ruddiness that seemed to go many layers deep, making me think mother and daughter had spent many days out of doors. Sunny’s hair, more than tousled or unkempt, was shiny and oily all the way from the inky-black roots to the tips; I imagined Joanna’s electrified mop could not be tamed easily with a brush. Both women’s clothing, as well as their teeth, appeared to be stained in way that a light cleaning wouldn’t resolve.
I asked Sunny if she had any other children and was told she had a son named Jon who died in a board and care facility after being on dialysis for many years.
“And then,” she said, “there was the Other One.” At the mention of the Other One, Joanna’s eyes hardened, and I felt I could detect a shiver go through her. I waited for Sunny to say more, but she did not.
I noticed in the silence that Joanna’s nails were chewed to the nub while Sunny’s were long and jagged with a thin black layer at the quick.
I continued to study Joanna as we ate, playing amateur shrink and attempting to diagnose what sort of disorder she might be grappling with. Somewhere on the high end of the autism scale seemed the strongest possibility: the lack of eye contact, the repetitive speech pattern, the nervous flapping of her hands, and the fact that, Sunny proudly told us, she had committed entire episodes of The Golden Girls to memory and could recite lines on command.
Where do they sleep at night? I wondered as I watched Joanna spoon her potatoes away from the encroaching juice of the baked beans. Maybe they slept in the tents by the Social Security office a few blocks north of Larchmont. Or in Pan Pacific Park by the Grove shopping mall? Yes, that made sense, I decided, Pan Pacific. On top of one of those grassy mounds always covered at lunchtime with blankets and school children. At night I imagined it must be a different scene with shadowy creatures, previously hidden, emerging from behind hedges and porta-potties.
Did Sunny, I wondered, have to negotiate a nightly spot among others for a tent she stashed during daylight? Or did she and her daughter have their own secret spot nestled in the bushes away from the path, hidden from probing eyes and searching flashlights; a canopy of trees shielding the two from the elements? Or perhaps they slept in their car. I tried to picture the arrangement. Both reclined from front seats? Or Joanna curled in the back with Sunny stretched across the console in the front?
During that first lunch, I learned that Sunny had gone to Hollywood High School, that Joanna’s schooling had concluded with fifth grade, that Sunny liked big band music and wished she could play the French horn although she believed the instrument would not be fun to carry around on a bus, that Joanna thought the greatest song ever written was Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” that Sunny once won a vacation to Paris, France, which is in Europe, that Joanna once took a class at Barbizon modeling school where she learned to swing her arms in the opposite direction of her legs when walking (which isn’t as easy as it sounds), that Sunny thought models should eat more sandwiches, and that neither could understand why Thai people put peanut butter on salads.
Walking home, Jim and I were both quiet. When we got to the house, he said simply, “So that’s them.”
“Yes.” What else was there to say?
Over the following months and meals at Koo Koo Roo, I became more comfortable with the dynamic of our little quartet. I could keep Sunny happy just by listening to her jokes. Strained responses weren’t required, and sometimes the punch lines were funny enough to give me a real laugh.
Then one day, looking up from his iPad at the breakfast table, Jimmy said to me, “You know, there’s a Golden Girls marathon on Lifetime.”
“Yeah, so?”
“How would you feel about inviting Sunny and Joanna over to watch it?”
The whole endeavor seemed like it could end up being wildly uncomfortable and deeply awkward. But I couldn’t say “no.” I couldn’t endure what that would say about me to me. So I was in a bind. Did I not have an afternoon to spare? What was I doing that was so important I didn’t have a few hours to give to people who had been less successful than me at spinning the rigged roulette wheel of fate? Suddenly my discomfort seemed shamefully small, and I frowned.
“You hate the idea.”
I considered my husband’s lapis lazuli–blue eyes.
“No, no,” I said. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking, husband, that I married a good man.”
Sunny had a cell phone, and she had given Jim her number, so that evening we called to invite the two ladies over for the Golden Girls marathon. Sunny’s recording greeted us: “Don’t hang up. My friends tell me I have too many hang-ups already.”
I get up before Jim does, most days, and the Saturday morning of their visit was no exception. I was drinking my coffee in the kitchen when Jim walked in.
“I’m afraid it’s going to just be you and the ladies today,” he said, picking up his car keys.
“What?”
“I have to go into work.”
“You what?”
“You’ll be fine, though, right?”
“What? Oh, sure, of course,” I said. “No problem.”
“Yeah?”
He knew this was probably too good to be true.
“How long did you tell them they could stay?” I emphasized the word you ever so slightly so there would be no mistaking who made the offer in the first place.
“I didn’t say.”
“Oh, okay,” I said brightly but with a weariness I hoped suggested a great inconvenience was being overcome with magnanimity.
“You’re the best,” he said tentatively, gauging the level of my resentment.
“Yeah, well.”
Jim would feel the knife of guilt, I knew, and that was my intention, but to a jury of marital conflict, nothing could be proven.
“Okay, sorry about this, but thanks,” he said in way that assured me I had successfully made him feel he had done me wrong and at some point would need to make up for it.
When the doorbell rang at exactly 2:00 p.m., I was standing next to the front entrance, looking at my watch. Noticing my heart rate was a little rapid, I consciously slowed down my breathing, then composed a welcoming smile and opened the door.
“Here you are!” I declared, throwing out my arms too forcefully, as if the two women were beloved sisters I had been separated from for many years.
Sunny, inky-black hair shellacked more fiercely than usual to her nodding head, looked in from our porch with expectant eyes, while Joanna, apparently torn between curiosity to see the house and protest against the occasion, stood behind her, arms crossed over her chest, glowering.
“Please come in.” I said, pulling back my enthusiasm and standing aside.
Sunny clomped over the hardwood floors of our living room, taking in her surroundings. I followed her gaze, watching her eyes transform my home from a modest Los Angeles two-bedroom into the palace of a queen. Her attention moved over the eggshell walls offset by teal trim, the ebony piano, the fireplace framed by ruddy bricks and topped by a simple stone fleur-de-lis, and paused at the pair of thickly framed Japanese prints. She took a step closer to the one on the right, an ink painting of a bridge over a mountain stream at nightfall. Then she looked over to the creamy couch and chaise lounge, made creamier by their dark burgundy occasional pillows and a crushed-velvet throw. She might have looked like a doting grandmother admiring her granddaughter’s newly appointed home—had she been wearing flats and a dress or tasteful pantsuit instead of men’s athletic shoes and a stained T-shirt and trucker pants.
Joanna, on the other hand, stalked around the room, jaw loose, entire torso pitched forward. Occasionally she yanked her neck around to fix her eyes on me in a glare that seemed to mix envy with fright; greedy, as I imagined, for the material possessions on display, while at the same time expecting to be scolded at any moment for her unseemly desire.
“Where’s Jim?” Joanna asked with her back to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Unfortunately Jim had to work.”
“Well,” Sunny said brightly, “that’s too bad, but we’re happy to get to see you. What a treat.”
Joanna’s spine stiffened upon hearing the news, but she neither turned toward me nor said a word.
Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all, I thought, though I knew it hadn’t been mine. It had been Jim’s, who was not here. Jim who had made friends with these women and invited them to our house and then left me holding the bag. Remind him when he gets home, I made a mental note. Remind him silently and with plausible deniability. Leave no fingerprints; deny him any counterclaim or defense.
Joanna and Sunny followed me through the living room and into the dining area. Looking over the new room, they were drawn to a set of framed photographs displayed behind a pane of tinted glass in a large oak case along the wall. Sunny leaned forward—just about bumping her nose against her reflection in the glass—and scrutinized a glamorous eight-by-ten taken of me at my wedding.
“Oh, you look so beautiful!” she gasped. “What a pretty dress.”
“Thank you,” I said, suddenly embarrassed by the size of the photo and of Jimmy’s absence in it. It was a wedding picture, for goodness’ sake, not a modeling zed card. What had I been thinking?
“Are those roses in your hair?” Sunny asked, interrupting my train of thought while continuing to scrutinize the picture, which seemed to grow larger and more egregious by the second.
“Mm-hmm. They’re called black roses. I really like that dark color. It’s like red wine.”
While Sunny looked over the rest of the photos, I tried smiling back at Joanna to relieve the tension, but her glare only intensified, as if I were her captor at whom she wished she could fling food, or worse.
“Joanna and I,” Sunny said brightly, looking up at me, “think you look like Katherine Heigl.”
“Oh, well—what a nice compliment.”
“But not as pretty,” Joanna interjected quietly but firmly, focusing intently on her feet.
“Joanna!” Sunny scolded. “Don’t say that.”
“‘Like Katherine Heigl,’ is what I said,” Joanna growled under her breath, wrapping her arms around her torso, “but—not—as—pretty.”
Her unveiled hostility struck me harder than the insult. Joanna’s growl, and the way she bit down on the adjective pretty, knocked me off center.
And you’re not either I wanted to snap back but of course didn’t, though my bunching jaw muscles probably gave away the restraint required. Instead, “That’s true,” I acknowledged. “Would you like to see the TV room?”
I led the way out of the dining area and into our TV room and gestured for the two ladies to take a seat on the sofa. Sunny immediately found her spot.
“Ooh,” she cried, pressing the down-filled cushions with her hands and bouncing lightly on the seat. “This is so comfortable.”
She looked up at Joanna.
“Sit. Sit!” she said. “You’re going to love this.”
Joanna, however, inspected the room with suspicion, still clutching her purse to her chest as if someone might leap out to snatch it at any second.
I picked up the remote, turned on the television, and began flipping through the channels.
Sunny was glowing. “Thanks for inviting us over,” she said. “What a treat!”
“Oh, I’m glad you could come, Sunny. It’s so weird to have you here.”
Did I say that?
“I mean it’s so nice to have you here.”
And then, because I was nervous, I started talking fast. “Sunny, you know I was thinking, is that your real name? Sunny?”
“Yes. When I was born, my mother said, I had hair the color of sunflowers.”
She was proud of this story, it seemed. She was beaming. “‘Like sunflowers on a summer day,’ my mother used to say was what my father said when he first laid eyes on me. ‘Let’s call her Sunny.’ And that’s what they did.”
My eyes drifted to her jet-black bob.
“I know,” she said, picking up on my unspoken question. “I’ve dyed it black since high school so I can look like Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Right,” I said, thinking, as if all that separates Sunny from Elizabeth Taylor is Clairol Nice ’n Easy charcoal rinse. “Of course.”
A familiar voice from the Golden Girls theme song crooned through the speakers, Sunny clapped her hands, and Joanna did a dead-drop butt-plop down next to her mother. Both women giggled, and I sighed in relief.
“Well, then. I’ll leave you to it,” I chirped. “Have fun, guys.” I started to leave the room, but my ingrained hostess habits stopped me at the door, turned me around, and worked my voice to ask, “Can I get you . . . anything?” I chided myself for not asking sooner. I didn’t know what to offer them. Tea? Coffee? A glass of wine? Finally, I landed on my goddaughters’ favorite snack.
“Cookies?”
“Oh, my. Cookies sound delightful,” Sunny cooed.
“And milk,” Joanna barked without looking away from the screen.
Her tone made me bristle but I shook it off, then turned to Sunny. “Would you like milk, too?”
“Oh, thank you. Yes, milk would be very nice.”
It wasn’t until I had pulled the door closed behind me that I noticed my expression locked in an absurd grin. I stopped in the hall and rubbed my hands lightly over my face, massaging my jaw to relax the muscles. What a ridiculous scene I found myself participating in. I felt my lips curl back into a smile, and a little laugh escaped my mouth as I walked into the kitchen.
Oreos? Chips Ahoy!? Fig Newtons? All three, I decided, lifting the bags down and placing them on the counter. As I plucked the cookies out and began arranging them on an eggshell-speckled ceramic plate, I imagined baby Sunny with her hair like sunflowers.
If I had a baby girl to name, what would I name her?
It’s a little rut my mind gets to circling from time to time, maybe more often than I would like to admit.
Babette?
I like the way this name combines the sounds of both baby and barrette, conjuring for me the elegance of a French sophisticate but containing, as well, the familiarity of a nickname. I like the way it feels to say it aloud, two voiced presses of the lips, two short vowels and a light tap on the hard palette with the tip of the tongue.
“Babette, Babette, Babette,” I repeated softly, laying three cookies down on the place.
I like the name, too, for the character of Babette Gladney, a thick, earthy woman who appears in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, where she teaches posture to senior citizens, perhaps the noblest occupation I’ve ever heard of. I felt a bit noble myself, in that moment, as I admired the array of cookies I had arranged on the plate, and I gave myself a pat on the back for taking the time to do it nicely. Good for you, Maggie.
I immediately scolded myself for indulging in cheap pride over such a minor generosity. What had it cost me to let these two women sit in my rec room watching a—free, by the way—TV show? How much did it take to bring them some crappy cookies on a plate? Plus, my husband was the one who had thought of doing this kindness in the first place. I had just agreed, somewhat resentfully, so I could describe myself to myself as magnanimous, as a woman helping the less fortunate, even inviting them into her home. I liked the way that made me feel. Wasn’t that true?
