Southland (5 page)
D
RIVING INTO her garage that night, after spending the day with Lois, was like walking into open arms. Jackie loved her apartment, a top unit in a four-plex that had been built in the 1920s. All the buildings on this block were old and solid—although her books had fallen off their shelves in the quake and the refrigerator had shuffled out into the middle of the kitchen, the structure itself had withstood the earth’s violence. The unit had a refinished hardwood floor; the furniture was simple and elegant. She’d lived in this apartment all through law school, and while she could have found a place much closer to campus, it seemed like too much trouble to move—especially since, in a few more months, she’d be able to afford a much nicer place. The real reason Jackie had stayed here, though, was Laura. It seemed to Jackie that if she moved at all, she should be getting a place with her girlfriend—they’d been together now for almost three years. But something in the strange, shifting nature of their relationship did not make this an automatic choice. For the last year or so they’d been poised at the edge of something—Jackie didn’t know exactly what. And any big actions or decisions needed to wait until they fell, decisively, one way or the other.
When she got inside, the first thing she saw was the red light of the answering machine, flashing three times, stopping, flashing again, as if sending out a distress signal. She flopped down on the recliner and looked at her watch. It was just before six. With a feeling that was equal parts anticipation and dread, she pressed the “play messages” button.
The first message was from Laura, at 1:30, checking in. The next was from Rebecca, a friend from law school. She was in Sacramento, interviewing for a public interest job, and she wanted copies of the notes that Jackie would be taking in their Tax Law class on Monday. The third, again, was Laura, this time sounding tired and just short of impatient.
“Jackie, it’s me again. It’s 5:45. I was thinking you’d be back by now, but…I don’t know. Anyway, give me a call when you get in.”
Jackie picked up the phone, and as the answering machine rewound she dialed her girlfriend’s number. She half-hoped that Laura would be out somewhere; she needed some time to recover. your last call.” But Laura picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, I’m home,” Jackie informed her. “I must have just missed
“Hi. Where have you been? How’s Lois doing?”
“Oh, fine. I ended up staying with them all day.”
“What did she want you to do?”
“Just some little stuff. I’ll tell you about it later.” She wondered how much she’d really tell her, knowing there’d be gaps in the narrative. “What have
you
been up to?” she asked.
Laura didn’t answer at first, and Jackie could feel her considering whether or not to press further. “Oh, I just lazed around,” she said finally. “Had coffee with people. Went for a run with Marie.” She paused now, and Jackie could tell from the texture of the pause—she’d thrown a net around her emotions, but there were holes in the fabric and little bursts of feeling kept wriggling through—that her girlfriend was annoyed. Then Laura added, “Marie and Steven are having a cocktail party tonight. And I know you had a long day, but I was thinking that maybe we could go.”
That was it. Marie was one of Laura’s friends from work, another young politico, like Laura, who’d been hired out of elite private universities to work in city government. There were about twenty recent graduates who had jobs in City Hall, and they often met for meals or coffee and threw parties for themselves. They believed wholeheartedly that they were the future of the city, and Jackie, privately, hated their self-importance, but also, more privately, envied it. Now, Jackie knew why Laura had been so anxious—she didn’t expect Jackie to want to go out with her, and she was right.
“Laura, I’m exhausted,” Jackie said. “It’s been a really long day and I don’t feel up to being social. But why don’t you go by yourself? I’ll probably just do some reading and hit the sack.” There was silence on the other end. “Laura?”
“You never want to spend time with my friends,” Laura said.
Jackie sighed and squeezed her temples. “Of course I do. We just went to your friend’s dinner party on Wednesday, didn’t we? I’m just really tired now. I mean, I’ve had a lot going on the last couple of weeks. Besides, it’s already six o’clock. Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t want to go. I know you’ve had a lot to deal with, but can’t you just come and sit there? You do need to eat at least, right?”
Jackie twisted the phone cord around her fingers. “Listen,” she replied, “just go. You’ll have a better time without me, anyway.”
“But I want you to go with me.”
For a brief moment, Jackie considered it. The parties weren’t terrible. Maybe it would do her good to get out and have a couple of drinks. The food was usually decent and the conversation was interesting, even if the young golden ones tended to forget that there were a few people in attendance who did not breathe the specialized, government-issue air of City Hall. And really, it was a small victory that Laura wanted to take her at all. For her first year in City Hall, she’d been closeted at work, even among the people her age. Jackie had resented being hidden and lied about, but after she’d won this battle—after Laura had told her peers about Jackie (but not her boss), after she’d started taking Jackie to parties and barbecues (but not official functions)—Jackie realized she wasn’t missing much. Now, she was in the strange position of not wanting to spend time with people she’d once been furious about not being able to meet.
“I really just want to stay home. I promise I’ll go to the next thing.”
Laura was silent for a moment. “Fine,” she said. And something in her voice frightened Jackie—not because it was angry, but because it wasn’t. She wasn’t fighting anymore. She’d surrendered. “Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry. You’ve had a hard two weeks. Why don’t you just come over? I’ll go out and rent a couple of movies.”
Jackie put her hand on her forehead and squeezed. “Laura, just because I don’t want to go to the party doesn’t mean that
you
shouldn’t go.”
“Forget it, Jackie. It’s too late. Just come to my place.”
Jackie opened her mouth, then closed it again, biting down on her reply. She didn’t want this to go any further—not now, not today. Their fights had been like quicksand lately—if they stepped down in the wrong place, they’d be swallowed up fast, neither of them able to pull herself out, or to reach back and pull out the other. “OK,” she said finally. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
Jackie took a long shower, fingering the caulk between the square crimson tiles, wondering how she was supposed to deal with Laura. Images of the last ten days kept popping up in her mind. The thin paper of the will. The heavy urn in its flowing
furoshiki
. The black strangers in the church. And she knew she would share none of this with Laura. She felt as guilty and overwhelmed—and as committed to silence—as if she were washing off the evidence of a clandestine liaison that she not only wouldn’t admit to, but planned to repeat. She wasn’t sure where this secrecy came from—she used to tell Laura everything. And now, as much as she tried to convince herself that she hid things from Laura to keep their relationship pure, to have Laura as an untouched sanctuary from all the things that ailed her, she knew she was kidding herself.
The house where Laura lived was only half a mile away. As Jackie left her apartment and stepped onto the sidewalk, she saw that the streets were plugged with cars, full of people who were heading toward the restaurants and boutiques up on Melrose and down on Beverly. Jackie took a detour to a convenience store to buy some Ben & Jerry’s—her usual peace offering—and as she walked the ice cream softened, the carton sweating through its paper bag. Jackie loved the Fairfax district and was always amused by it. Their neighborhood was home to many young, hip people trying to break into acting or music, and to elderly Jews who’d been living there for decades. Within walking distance were two large synagogues, several Jewish retirement homes, half a dozen Jewish private schools, and the most famous Jewish deli in L.A. Laura, who’d gone to Hebrew school until she was fourteen, often joked that if she had to be involved with a woman, at least she’d picked the right neighborhood to do it. To Jackie, it was the right neighborhood, period. The seventy-year-old apartment buildings were beautiful and grand, dressed with turrets, gables, red-tiled stairs and roofs, ivy winding up the fronts and the sides. Restaurants, markets, delis, banks, were all within a couple of blocks. Other than driving back and forth from school, she almost never used her car.
Jackie walked at a leisurely pace, enjoying the fresh air, thinking about her girlfriend. It occurred to her that they hadn’t been happy for quite some time—maybe not since the summer they met. Although they were both from L.A., they’d started dating in San Francisco, two months before Jackie started law school. Laura had an internship, working for the San Francisco Community Development Department between her junior and senior years at Stanford, and Jackie, who’d just graduated the year before from Berkeley, was finishing her paralegal stint in one of the Embarcadero buildings. They were set up by a mutual acquaintance who’d gone to school with Laura at Stanford and was working as a paralegal at Jackie’s firm. Their first date had started over ten-dollar sandwiches at a downtown lunch spot, and hadn’t ended until two days later.
They had a perfect, all-too-brief summer of bike rides, big dinners, wine-tasting in Napa Valley, long nights of conversation and sex. Every weekend they’d bike across the Golden Gate Bridge and walk down to Black Sand Beach, where they’d hold hands and stare back at the sparkling city. Then, in early September, Jackie left for L.A., and they’d spent the academic year on the phone. During breaks, Jackie would go up to Stanford or Laura would come down to L.A. Laura would split her home time between Jackie and her mother, who loved that Laura was seeing someone in L.A. because it meant she came down more often. And Laura’s mother—and Jackie—were even happier when Laura got the job with the city; she moved back to L.A. right after her graduation.
It wasn’t clear to Jackie when things had started to go wrong. But their relationship, on this different turf, had changed somehow, the way a crop that might flourish in one kind of soil struggles simply to survive in another. When Laura first came to L.A., Jackie had visions of their one day moving in together (they both agreed they should live apart initially), having a dog, two cats, and eventually some children. But it quickly became clear that Laura was miserable. Despite the prestige of her job, she hated the stress of it. Despite how wonderful her family seemed to Jackie (Laura’s older sister was a second-year student at Stanford Business School, her mother the principal of an elementary school in Beverly Hills), Laura didn’t like being so close to them, and Jackie wondered if she resented
her
for also living in L.A. and being part of what had lured her back. But whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, Laura had grown increasingly depressed, and Jackie, who’d been so happy for their first year and a half together, watched with interest, then concern, and then growing despair as Laura slipped further and further out of reach.
Jackie arrived at Laura’s door and knocked softly; Laura opened it a few seconds later. She hadn’t changed much in the two years and eight months since they’d met. She was thin, 5’4", with dirty blond hair—but her eyes were often watery now, and a little puffy around the edges. She looked very tired these days.
“Hi,” she said, moving aside.
Jackie held her bag out. “New York Super Fudge Chunk?”
Laura smiled sadly and took the bag. “Thank you, sweetie.”
Jackie stepped inside and Laura hugged her, holding on as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. This embrace, Jackie knew, was about her grandfather’s death; was meant to show love and support. But it was hard for her to stand through it. Lately all their hugs had seemed out of proportion to the situations in which they occurred—and she didn’t feel like she deserved this one anyway.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the dinner?” Jackie asked as they separated.
Laura nodded. “Yeah. I’m tired anyway.”
Jackie looked around. “Where’s Rodent and Amy?”
Laura smiled, finally looking just a bit happy. “They’re both of out of town.”
Rodent—Rodney Adams—and Amy Carillo were Laura’s two roommates, acquaintances from Stanford. Amy was a second-year student in the screenwriting program at USC. She was almost always home, working on her screenplay or groaning over other people’s, which she read part-time for an agency. Jackie preferred her, though, to Rodney, who wrote music for TV and movies. He had a huge fancy set-up in his bedroom—synthesizer, drum machine, three-foot speakers, and a set of control panels that looked like they could be used to fly a plane. Rodney often had women in his room, watching him worshipfully, as he created the theme song for a new pilot at Fox, or wrote the music for a death scene in a horror movie. He worked off and on from dawn until midnight, and Jackie always felt, when she was there, with Rodney’s music in the background, as if she and Laura were trapped in a bad sitcom.
“
Both
out of town,” she said. “How tragic.”
“I knew you’d be disappointed. Here, come into the kitchen with me. I was just heating up some milk for hot chocolate.”
They walked hand-in-hand, Laura pulling Jackie along.
“Wow,” Jackie said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “It’s so quiet. Wish I hadn’t been busy all day.” She recounted, then, the more innocuous parts of the day—cancelling the AOL account, going to see the house, which was, it turned out, in horrible shape. “So obviously,” Jackie concluded, “it would have been a lot more fun to hang out here with you.”
Laura smiled. “I wouldn’t have been very exciting. After Marie left, I actually ended up doing some work.”