Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (28 page)

S
ome people called; some sent notes. Peggy Bates sent a handwritten poem in girlish purple ink (
Though buds do fall / and boughs do break / so do our hearts / for you
), and Dolores Dee sent over a garishly large bouquet of lilies. Laura sifted through all the letters on the floor of the office. It was impossible to remember whom she had already written back to, and who was still waiting for a response. She found herself so easily exhausted: While Junior and Florence were at school, and Clara was out at work, Laura most often wanted to sleep the day away. She would tuck her knees into her chest and fall asleep in a little ball on the carpet, an overgrown puppy at no one’s feet. Harriet would cover her with a blanket and close the blinds, always wanting to defer to her boss’s judgment, even when it was so clearly clouded by misery.

Laura awoke to the sound of keys in the door—the drapes were drawn, though it was still the middle of the day. The clock on the wall told the unfortunate truth: It was hardly even the afternoon. Laura
pushed herself up to sit and felt the grooves on the side of her face from using her hands as a makeshift pillow. She heard laughter coming from the living room—Clara, who should have been at Triumph. Laura crawled over to the door of her office and rested her ear against the keyhole. The living room was a long hallway away, but she could hear well enough, with the rest of the house perfectly silent. Clara wasn’t alone.

“I
promise
,” she said to her unseen companion. “Don’t be such a baby.”

Clara and her friend—it was a man; Laura could tell by the sound of her daughter’s voice—sat down on the sofa. It was funny, Laura thought, that she knew the sound of every object in the house, without even realizing it. She could have been blindfolded and still identified every piece of furniture just by its individual groans and creaks. Every object in the house belonged to her and Irving together, and Laura wanted the house to mourn in silence too. They were on the sofa, not talking. Laura put her hand on the doorknob and turned it quietly. Though she was straining to hear every noise coming from the living room, no one was listening for her, and so the noises kept coming as she pulled the door open and began to crawl down the hall.

She’d made it halfway to the living room before she could really tell what was going on. Once it was clear, Laura wondered how she could have mistaken the sounds for anything else—an impromptu lunch date, a visit with Mama? Or a burglary? By her eldest daughter? No. Of course not. But Clara had managed to make some things disappear, nonetheless, and in record time. The straight line between the front door and the lip of the sofa was now polka-dotted with Clara’s clothing.

Her red skirt was closest to the door—it had come off first. Then the matching jacket, and the blouse underneath it. One kitten heel, then another. Laura stayed frozen in place, on her hands and knees.
Clara’s back and head were visible, pointing the other direction, toward the kitchen. She still had her bra on, Laura was happy to see, but no, there were hands reaching around to unclasp it. Clara had always been a good-time kid, kissing neighbor boys until they ran off home, and shutting her little friends in the closet if they didn’t want to play. Laura watched a section of Clara’s soft blond hair detangle itself from its pins and fall against her bare back. It was too much. They were laughing, and kissing, and Clara folded in half so that she was nearly out of view, resting her torso against her unseen partner.

Laura couldn’t take it anymore. She pressed all of her weight into her palms and straightened her legs, tilting slowly until she was standing all the way up. She’d never put much thought into the sexual lives of her children. She wasn’t a monster—it was better for them to be normal and have urges and live full lives than the alternative—but to see the urges undressed in her living room would have seemed a touch over the line on the best of days.

From her normal height, it was easier to see everything in the room: her daughter’s mostly naked body and the person beneath her, his eyes closed in dreamy reverie.

“Jimmy,” Laura said, loud enough for him to hear it. She picked some dust motes off her pajamas and strode into the living room. It was
her
living room, after all.

The boy opened his eyes, his lips still attached to Clara’s face. His pale eyelashes couldn’t have blinked faster if they’d been on fire. Jimmy rolled Clara off him, sending her crashing to the floor.

“Mom!” Clara said, and crossed her arms over her chest. Jimmy scooted backward on the sofa, until he was as far away from Laura as he could get. An apology tumbled out of his mouth, an incomplete sentence on an endless loop, as if it would explain away his lack of clothing and good timing.

“Laura, I’m so sorry, we were just…” was how he began.

“Enough.” Laura shielded her eyes with her hand. “Clara, get dressed. Jimmy, get out.” She waited. Under the edge of her palm, she could see Clara’s legs—wearing only her stockings—scramble to the other side of the sofa to retrieve her skirt.

Jimmy’s shoes came into view, his brown loafers just opposite Laura’s own bare feet. Laura let her hand drop. Jimmy’s face was nearly purple.

“Am I fired?” He spoke facing the carpet.

“No, Jimmy.” Laura sighed. “Just go home.”

“Thank you,” Jimmy said in a very quiet voice. He quickly walked over to the door, where Clara was still putting her clothes back on. It always took more time to put things on, Laura thought; it was true. She could remember when the house was new and she and Irving could hardly make it through the front door without undressing each other. Jimmy smoothed his hair with both hands, just like Irving used to do, which gave Laura a jolt. He then jerked toward Clara, kissing her awkwardly on the cheek. She slapped at Jimmy’s arm and pushed him out the door.

The room hummed. Clara let her arms drop to her sides. Her blouse was still unbuttoned, and hung open like a pair of sorry drapes. Laura hadn’t seen her daughter in such a state of undress for years, since the girls were truly girls and not young women.

“I thought you were out with Ginger,” Clara said.

“Well, I’m not,” Laura said.

Clara shrugged, and then buttoned up her blouse. “It’s not like you never did it,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

“I was married.” Laura rested a shoulder against the wall of the hallway, bracing herself up. Clara looked so much like an Emerson still, with her sturdy hips and face tight as a sailor’s knot. “I was married to your father.”

“But you were still married to Gordon when you started sleeping
with him, weren’t you? That’s what everyone says at Triumph.” Behind Clara’s head, the light flickered. Laura would have to remind Harriet about it, remember to change the bulb. There were too many things falling apart at once. She hadn’t slept with Irving while she was married to Gordon, but she’d thought about it, imagined it, wished for it, and that made her guilty enough. There was lipstick on Clara’s cheek, a red line drawn with Jimmy’s cheek.

“I’m going back to bed,” Laura said, unable to stand any longer. She wanted to sink to her knees and crawl back to her spot on the floor, but knew that she couldn’t, not now. So she held her chin up and pivoted on her bare feet, walking as slowly and carefully as if she were walking across a stage. Just before she reached her bedroom door, she stopped. “Don’t do that again,” she said without turning around. Clara could hear her well enough. After locking the door behind her, Laura climbed into her bed and swallowed three blue pills, enough to let it all sink away. When she let her head relax against the pillow, her body felt as if it were floating on the surface of the ocean, soft and lethal.

T
he first job Laura took after her Irving’s death was a feat of new technology—some of the studios were experimenting with three dimensions. 3-D, that was what they called it. The movie was about a woman who turned into a panther when she got angry—
Pantheress
. Susie and Johnny had made a couple of the 3-D films, but they never did more than toss bananas toward the camera during a scene at the market. They hadn’t
used the technology
—at least that was what people were saying to Laura.

A new studio was making
Pantheress
—the producers were young and frankly awed that they got to be in the same room with Laura Lamont, always wringing their hands and tapping their feet. She liked that they were nervous. It had been a long time since people had tried to convince her to be in their movies, and it felt somehow welcome to be unsure of the future. The kids making the film were only a few years older than Clara and Florence. Someone was funding them, somebody’s grandmother with oil-deep pockets. They wanted to start filming immediately, and Laura said yes without even having
read the script. She couldn’t bring herself to read a single page without Irving beside her in bed. Jimmy had said he liked it, that he would go see it in the theaters, and that seemed like enough. If the movie was wretched, who was going to notice?

The idea was this: Penelope, Laura’s character, was a librarian, still single after all these years. She lived alone in an apartment above her landlady, and cooked meals for one on a hot plate every night. She wore glasses, and had her hair in a bun, stuck through with a pencil. One night, Penelope was late leaving the library, and a couple of guys were lingering around the exit, barely visible in the shadows. Penelope hurried, keeping her keys in her hand, ready to attack, and the men trailed her, whistling catcalls. One of them came so close that he grabbed the hem of Penelope’s skirt and ripped the skirt off. Another man pushed Penelope to the ground and started to attack, forcing himself on her, when out of nowhere, a giant
wwwwrrrrrrrroooooooaaaaarrrrr
came out of nowhere. The men turned and looked in horror at the giant black panther that had just landed beside them. Penelope kept her eyes closed tight, and once the men had run away, the panther began to lick her body, starting where the men had touched her. Penelope woke up in her own bed, her wounds healed, thinking the whole thing had been a dream.

“So the love interest is a jungle cat?” Laura wanted Jimmy to explain it to her after the meeting. She’d been taking a lot of the little blue pills—the prescription was in her name now, and Laura had already refilled it twice, from two different pharmacies. There were so many doctors in Los Angeles, it seemed silly to have only one. It was easier to pay attention after she’d taken her medicine. It made her nervous to imagine having only a single bottle left, let alone running out entirely. Before Irving died, Laura had been self-conscious about her need for the pills, but now there was no one to feel self-conscious
in front of. Harriet had her own room, and so did the children, and Jimmy was far too polite to ever follow Laura into the bathroom.

Jimmy looked down at his notes. They were sitting in their office, which overlooked the pool. Laura had been thinking about redecorating, but that was as far as she’d gotten—thinking about it. She thought about eating meals too, but had largely forgotten to do so.

“Not exactly,” Jimmy went on.

When Penelope awoke, she found she no longer needed her reading glasses. Even without any of the library lights on, she could read the smallest print without any trouble whatsoever. She shelved books on the highest shelf without needing a ladder—she just scampered on up. Things were changing in Penelope’s body. When she showered in the morning, there were a few short black hairs in the drain, along with the usual long brown ones. It wasn’t until she was again leaving the library at night, and again was followed, that Penelope discovered what changes were afoot inside of her. This time, instead of having a panther come to her rescue, Penelope herself morphed into a giant black pantheress. She ripped the men to shreds and then leaped into her own window, curling up like a house cat on her bed.

“Oh,” Laura said. She stared out the window. Her body felt creaky and cold, as if her joints were filled with ice. It seemed likely that she had forgotten how to act, as one forgets a foreign language if it isn’t spoken. Laura felt that she could barely act like herself, let alone someone else. When Irving was alive, it had seemed important to her to keep working, and now she couldn’t remember why. The neighbor’s palm leaves slaked off onto her grass, giant discarded husks. The surface of the swimming pool was clear blue, like a child’s painting of the ocean. With Clara at work and Florence and Junior in school all day, the pool was almost always empty. The breeze blew the inflated
plastic beach balls back and forth across the otherwise smooth surface of the water. She had already forgotten what Jimmy was talking about.

“And it goes on like that, with her turning back and forth. She gets revenge. She prevents crimes. She’s really a very strong female character.” Jimmy sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

“So I’m playing a cat,” Laura said. The next-door neighbors had small children, much younger than Junior, and no pool. Laura thought about inviting them over, but she’d never spoken to them before, though she waved whenever she saw them. They might find her too strange. It wasn’t everyone who wanted to swim in a stranger’s pool. She would call and ask. Laura wrote herself a note.
Pool
, it said. Even as she wrote it, she knew she wouldn’t remember what it meant. Since Irving’s death, the days had been full of such half-remembered memos and thoughts. One night, Laura had a dream that lasted for at least two hours—she was sure of it—and within the dream she kept reminding herself,
Remember this
,
remember this
, because she was with her father and Irving on the night she won the Academy Award, and they were sitting together in the living room, just talking, as natural as could be. When she woke up, she wrote down
Living room
, but by the time she brushed her teeth, the rest was gone.