(photo by superduperdiana on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/superduperdiana/)
Just as she’s reaching for the closet doorknob, Drew’s cell phone rings. It catches her standing half naked in a strange bedroom holding a doorknob in one hand and a watering can in the other. She fumbles for the phone in her skirt pocket.
“Hello?” Her face, reflected in the closet’s mirrored door, has flushed bright red.
It’s her father’s voice in her ear: “Drew? Is that you?” She can imagine him sitting at his spot in the darkened garage, on a stool at the worktable facing the window from which he can observe the sprinklers’ surge to life, the paperboy’s perfunctory toss, the commuters’ advent, and the thunk of mail being delivered, all with fatal, grueling monotony.
“Yeah. It’s me.” She feels her voice being sucked two thousand miles across the country to be held in his hand and pressed against his ear.
“Well, that’s good. I was beginning to get worried.” Drew puts the watering can down on the wood floor and pulls the closet door open. It’s dark inside and smells of heavy perfume. He continues: “So I only have two questions and I won’t take up too much of your time. One, did you remember to water the Lilien’s plants?”
“I’m here now, as a matter of fact.” She feels around until she finds the switch and flips on the light. What kind of person has a chandelier in their closet, she wants to know. The room is enormous—maybe the size of her entire apartment—and fitted with mahogany drawers and cubbies, like a yacht. Tom Lilien probably owns a yacht. He’s a successful lawyer in copyrights or patents or something like that, she can’t remember. He and her father went to high school together.
She runs her hand down the long line of fine suits on identical wooden hangars. Mr. Lilien had been wearing a suit like this when he took her out for dinner at Canter’s when she first arrived in Los Angeles. He had thrown his arm around her shoulder and told her if she ever needed anything… and let his voice trail off, leaving an endless list of unspoken possibilities. But she didn’t think he meant anything by it, nothing sexy that is. He just wanted to help her. He never had kids of his own. The fabrics feel clean and sleek under her fingertips.
“Really? You’re there, now?” There is a pinched curiosity in her father’s throat.
During their dinner at Canter’s, Tom Lilien had revealed that once, in high school, he had gone on a date with her mother. Drew had wanted to ask more and now she wondered what her father knew about that date. She could ask him now. She imagines the word “mom?” escaping from her mouth and into her phone, fragmented into a billion buzzing pieces, swarming his way.
When her mother left, her father never really said a thing about it. When he came home from the travel agency that evening and found Drew alone in the house, he had said she was probably out shopping. At seven o’clock, Drew went into the kitchen and opened a can of tomato soup. She made two grilled cheese sandwiches and brought his plate to the garage, where he was standing in the dark by the bumper of her mother’s car, looking out the window. The next morning she did the dishes before she went to school and that night, she made grilled cheese again. By the next week, they were out of food so she didn’t bring him a plate. The next morning she found a twenty on the counter by the refrigerator, the same place he had always left the grocery money.
Once when she was 16 she asked him if he ever thought about dating. She was pulling out of the garage in the 1986 avocado green Volkswagen Rabbit her mother had left behind, on her way to the new place in town that sold coffee from a fancy espresso machine. She rolled down the window and asked. She shouted over the thrumming engine, “I mean, you could go out sometimes. You never know, you could meet someone nice.” The engine idled for awhile before he finally he cleared his throat and mumbled, “I guess I don’t have much luck in that department, but maybe you do. Have a good time,” and he waved her down the driveway.
Her father is still hemming and hawing on the phone, filling the silent space with meaningless words. “I see. Well that’s alright then. I’m glad to hear it.” If he is curious about what the Lilien’s house is like, he doesn’t ask. “You know, it was really nice of the Liliens to think of you. Tom always was a good guy. Had a spotless reputation and I’m sure their house is very nice. Very nice.”
The closet is divided down the middle, his and hers. Tom married a much younger woman, only seven years older than Drew, in fact. Katherine Lilien’s fancy shoes are lined up on brass rails like a it’s a parade. The first dress, pale yellow silk, is size 0. Zero, muses Drew, how could anyone be a zero? Drew sits on the leather bench in the center of the room. When she arrived at the house she had felt obliged to leave her dirty shoes and sweaty shirt by the door because she didn’t want to get anything dirty. In the closet mirrors she looks out of place in her old black bra and a tattered denim skirt.
Drew sucks in her tummy, adjusts her bra, and crosses her muscular legs. Her eyeliner is smudged from the heat. She has hair under her arms; she only shaves if she has a date. Her right thigh is encircled with a black tattoo, the letters of the alphabet in an old typewriter font. She got the tattoo to impress her first crush, Professor Justice, after they once had coffee and he mentioned that he wrote on an old Underwood typewriter, but before she could show it to him he inexplicably began sidestepping her in the halls and avoided looking at her during class, even though she sat in the front row. Her damp, tangled brown hair frames her high forehead, strong nose and sharp features. Her first boyfriend said she was pretty, if you liked girls who look smart, and he did, but, in the end, he liked her perky blonde roommate even better. On their first date, her last boyfriend said she looked “sad-beautiful like a Madonna,” then on their last date he shook her awake in the middle of the night to explain that he was the second coming, the next Jesus Christ, and if she didn’t believe him, she better watch out.
Her father says, “You’ll be careful to leave everything just as you find it, won’t you?”
“Actually, I was planning an auction. Maybe I could do some guided tours. They’ve got some fabulous stuff here. Very designer, very posh. You should see it.”
There is a rigid pause on the line. She feels him grip the heavy black rotary phone as he grasps for the right tone; modest, constrained words and a neutral tone of voice. As a child she often pretended that he was a secret agent or a member of a witness protection program. Alone in the house, she would go through all the cabinets and drawers but she never found anything interesting. No guns, no little black books, but he did own a trench coat and those little garters that go around your calves to keep your socks from slipping. He worked hard at the travel agency every day but Sunday and when he wasn’t at work he was in the garage tinkering with something at his worktable. Living with him had been like playing hide-and-seek with an invisible man. Finally he says, “A person’s privacy is sacred, Drew. Even though I raised you all by myself, I always tried to do my best.“
“Oh, come on, Dad. No need to call the cops. You know I’m just kidding.”
“Well.” He takes his time moving the receiver to his other ear. “Yes. Well. The second thing I called to ask was where we keep the punch bowl.”
“It’s in the pantry.”
“No. I checked there.”
“Then it’s probably in the attic. Why do you need it, anyway?”
“I don’t need it. I just remembered it the other day. I was standing there shaving and I remembered the eggnog we used to have at Christmas. Homemade.” There’s a long pause. “With real nutmeg.”
She knows he’s trying to ask her if she’ll be home for the holiday, that if she did she could make him some eggnog with nutmeg. She imagines how he must have dragged the stepstool from the kitchen down the hall, slippered feet climbing the rickety steps, fingertips groping the walls for balance while he stood with his head popped up through the hole in the ceiling, how pitiful he must have looked, just a helpless old body without a head, like a man who has had his head in the oven and it for the last twenty years, and she can’t stand it another moment. “Yeah. Well. I need to attend to these thirsty plants, you know. Hope you find that punchbowl but I’ve gotta go.” And she hangs up before he can say another word.
One little peek won’t hurt anyone. On a shelf near the door there is a framed photo of a pretty dark-haired woman wearing a scarlet negligee. To Tom, my Forever Valentine, signed Katherine. Katherine certainly doesn’t look like anybody’s mother, Drew thinks.
The closet drawers roll silently to reveal black socks folded into squares, stacks of shirts with crisp edges, panels of stretched velvet studded with gold cuff links and tie pins. Who knows-if she digs deep enough she might unearth something interesting: a crushed corsage, a pair of lacy panties or a dog-eared letter.
