THE WEEKS BETWEEN THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS were, in Ruth’s opinion, the most tedious, if not the most downright deadly, of their entire stay in LA. First Holly Jensen, Bethy’s agent, left town for a two-week cruise around the Aegean Sea; then Donovan Meyer canceled his last class before the holiday and announced to Mimi that he was going to Aspen. Even Mimi seemed bored. So though it cost them a few hundred extra dollars to change their tickets, by December 4—the first day of Hanukkah—Ruth and Bethy were guilt-free and on their way home.

It was Bethy’s first trip back since they had moved to LA in September. She ran through the house, exclaiming over everything—the living room furniture, the posters on the walls of her room, the ordinary fixtures in her bathroom—as though she’d been gone for years.

It felt exactly the opposite to Ruth. Though her quick trip home several weeks ago had clearly felt like a visit, an abnormality, now that they were both here it was as though a portal had been opened to an alternate life in which they’d never left, except that the cupboards were once again bare. She and Bethany made a run to Costco the day after they got home, stocking up on items in quantities that had defeated Hugh when he contemplated buying them. When they’d gotten home and had unloaded the car, Ruth began putting together a pot roast. Bethy hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter and watched Ruth cut up vegetables. She stole a carrot and munched on it, ruminating. “I miss home.”

Ruth looked at her.

“I know, but it doesn’t feel the same. I mean, it looks like home, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Nothing happens here.”

“Things happen,” Ruth said. “Rianne got a job.” Rianne was helping out in her aunt’s pottery shop, wrapping holiday gifts.

“You know what I mean.”

Ruth nodded. She knew what Bethy meant.

“She has a boyfriend, by the way,” Bethy said, punching the plastic tip of her shoelace in and out of the ventilation holes in her sneaker.

“She does?”

“Some boy named Winslow Levy. He’s new here. I guess he just moved from Bladenham.”

“Winslow,” Ruth said. “Like Winslow Homer the painter?”

Bethany shrugged. “I guess. Weird name.”

“No weirder than Allison Addison or Bethany Roosevelt.”

Bethy smiled. “Yeah.”

Ruth handed her a carrot and a carrot peeler. Bethany started shaving carrot peelings into the sink from her seat on the counter. “She thinks he’s cute. She has pictures of him on her phone.”

“Is he cute?”

“I don’t know. He’s okay. But most of the time she talks about stuff that’s happened in school, and I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“That’s natural. You’ve been away.”

“I know. It just makes me feel bad.”

“Like an outsider,” Ruth guessed.

“Yeah.”

Ruth traded Bethy the peeled carrots for four unpeeled potatoes. “Yukon Golds,” she said.

“What?”

“The potatoes. They’re Yukon Golds.”

“Oh.” Bethany stared at the potatoes.

“Peel,” Ruth said.

Bethany began to add potato peelings to the pile of carrot shavings in the sink. “Don’t you miss it?”

“What, LA?”

Bethy nodded.

“Honey, we’ve been home for only a day and a half,” said Ruth. “And anyway, when I’m there I miss Daddy. They both have their pitfalls.”

“I miss him, too.”

“Not half as much as he misses us.”

But Bethy was thinking about something else. “I was wondering if maybe I could ask Allison up. Like, for a week. She’s in Houston, but she says she doesn’t want to stay there.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, even though there was no one home besides her and Ruth. “I think she’s cutting herself again.”

She had told Ruth about the box cutter and Allison’s arms. Ruth had been horrified. “Why do you think that?”

“I just do. Her stepdad doesn’t like her very much. I mean, he isn’t very nice to her and stuff. Plus she says her mom doesn’t stick up for her when he’s mad at her.”

Ruth smiled a little. “Second marriages are never simple.”

But Bethy didn’t care about that. “So can I ask her? I know she’d really really want to come.”

“Was this her idea?”

“No,” Bethy said firmly—too firmly. Which meant it probably was.

“We’ll see.”

“That means no.”

“It doesn’t mean no, it means I want a minute to think about it.”

“Okay.” Bethy looked at the wall clock. “There. That was a minute.”

Ruth sighed. “All right. But only for a week. She’ll want to be home by Christmas, anyway.”

Bethy said, “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“I don’t know,” said Ruth. “Until just after New Year’s, probably. It’s partly up to Daddy.”

Bethy nodded gravely. “You mean because of his having diabetes.”

“That,” Ruth acknowledged. “But he also likes to have us here, so we won’t leave until we really have to. He gets lonely.”

“I wish he’d move to LA.”

“I know, honey, but he’d have to give up his practice here and find one down there, and God knows he’d have some competition.” It was a running joke of theirs that there was a dentist on every street corner in Studio City, and all of them were running specials on tooth whitening.

“Yeah,” said Bethy. She put the last peeled potato on Ruth’s cutting board. “So I can ask her?”

Ruth sighed. “Yes. Go ahead and ask her. One week.”

“Yay!” Bethany jumped off the counter and skipped off to the den.

“One week!” Ruth shouted down the hall.

 

THEY MET ALLISON AT SEA-TAC AIRPORT THE FOLLOWING Friday. The girl stood out even in the midst of the mass of travelers surrounding the baggage carousel. Tall and willowy, she wore a pair of oversize sunglasses and carried over her shoulder a new buckled, riveted, belted, cinched, glazed leather tote that had probably cost as much as Ruth’s monthly food allowance. With the sunglasses on, she could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-five; men sized her up as they walked by, and more than one woman looked back at her as she passed. By contrast, Bethy looked like the young girl she was as she raced across the baggage claim area squealing.

The girls hugged extravagantly; Allison twirled Bethy around. “I’ve missed you so much!” Ruth heard Bethany say.

“I know!” Allison put her sunglasses on top of her head and looked around. “So this is Seattle?”

“Well, it’s Sea-Tac,” Bethany said. “Where we live is about forty-five minutes from here.”

“I can’t wait!”

Ruth remembered Mimi telling her once that although Allison looked like a sophisticate, the only place outside of Texas she’d ever been was LA.

At the carousel the girls had spotted Allison’s suitcase—big enough to hold a body, but with wheels, thank God—and hefted it off the carousel. Ruth thought of the steamer trunks that movie stars and celebrities had once traveled with. God knew what Allison had packed, to take up so much room. Ruth had visions of a microwave, small TV, and other light appliances.

“We’re ready, Mom,” Bethy panted. She and Allison towed the suitcase between them. “She brought only this one bag.”

Ruth gave Allison a hug. “Welcome to Seattle, honey.”

“We’re going to have the best time,” Bethy said.

“Oh, I know,” Allison said; and then, to Ruth, with heartbreaking simplicity, “Thank you so much for inviting me.”

When they got home, Ruth watched her move from room to room, taking it all in: the oak bookcases and built-in china cabinet and cheerful barnyard watercolors on the living room walls; Ruth’s ceramic pieces on the coffee table and fireplace mantel; the deep window seat at the end of the dining room; the braided rugs and warm fir floors throughout the house. There was a troubling wistfulness about the girl—exactly what you might expect, Ruth thought, from an orphan. Or from a girl who had too many houses and too few homes.

 

ACCORDING TO FAMILY TRADITION, FRIDAY WAS SPAGHETTI night in the Rabinowitz household. Ruth made her from-scratch marinara sauce with sausage and meatballs, plus garlic bread and a salad, and the girls made up an extravagant dessert using a graham-cracker crust, chocolate pudding, half a melted Hershey’s bar, a half cup of crushed peanuts, a touch of Kahlúa (Ruth’s contribution), and lots and lots of Cool Whip. Poor Hugh would have to settle for a sugar-free pudding cup.

On a whim Ruth said, “Girls, let’s use the silver tonight, how about that? Honey, go into the pantry and bring out Nana’s flatware.”

Bethy and Allison retrieved a heavy oak box lined in flannel. “Whoa,” said Allison when Ruth opened it up. “This is all silver?”

“Sterling,” Ruth said, pausing to look. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? We hardly ever use it, though, because it tarnishes too fast. In my mother’s day, people had more time for that kind of thing, polishing silver.”

Allison turned the pieces over and back, examining them minutely. “Well, I’d use it all the time.”

“Would you?” Ruth smiled. “You two can set the table, please. Bethy, use the cloth napkins.”

“We never use cloth napkins,” said Allison.

Ruth wasn’t clear on whether she was referring to her mother’s house or Mimi’s, so she just said, “Sometimes it’s nice. Especially when there’s company.”

“Oh, I know,” said Allison quickly.

The conversation around the dinner table was lively. Ruth believed in honoring her guests with the conversational spotlight, so she asked Allison about her house in Houston.

“It’s huge,” the girl said, wiping her mouth neatly with her napkin and tucking it back in her lap. “It’s probably like two of your houses. He’d just finished building it when he and my mom met. There’s a home theater, which is cool, and a swimming pool that has this bubble you can put over it in winter, except that the water’s still freezing. Plus he has a workout room. With weights and stuff.”

“It sounds lovely,” Ruth said.

“I guess,” Allison said indifferently. She turned to Hugh. “May I have the bread, please?”

It surprised Ruth that the girl had such excellent manners. Whatever the particulars were of her home life, someone had either raised her right or she was a very quick study. Bethy had told her once that Allison’s mother had been a stripper before she married her current husband. Ruth never got a straight answer about whether or not the mother had ever been married to Allison’s father, who, anyway, seemed to be long out of the picture. And the mother had probably been a stripper because she couldn’t make enough money doing anything else. Ruth had heard of girls—women—putting themselves through college that way. Just because you were a stripper didn’t mean you were a bad or immoral person. Ruth thought it was important to remember that.

“You have very nice manners,” Hugh was saying as he passed Allison the bread basket. “Our Bethy could get a few tips.”

“Thank you. Mimi sent me to this etiquette school last year, where they teach you which side the fork goes on and which is your bread plate and stuff like that. How to say please and thank you.”

“Well, whoever it was did a good job,” Hugh said. “Your mother must be very proud of you.”

Allison smiled at him enigmatically and wound up a fork-load of spaghetti using her spoon as a backstop. “She doesn’t understand why I don’t work more. She thinks actors just work all the time, like it’s no big deal to book things. She says Mimi isn’t trying hard enough to sell me.”

“Do you think so?” Hugh asked her. “One thing I’d have to say is the woman seems to have excellent sales skills.”

“I know—she’s really good,” Allison agreed. “She’s one of the best managers in LA. She’s been written up in a bunch of magazines and stuff.”

“Oh?” said Hugh. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“You should hear her on the phone, Daddy,” Bethy chimed in. “She isn’t even that polite. She just calls the casting directors up and tells them who she wants to audition for stuff, and they usually say okay.”

“Usually,” said Allison.

“Usually,” agreed Bethy.

“Well, you girls are in a hard line of work, that’s for sure,” Hugh said.

Allison shrugged. “We like it, though. Don’t we?”

“A lot,” said Bethy.

“Well, sure,” said Ruth.

 

WHILE SHE DID THE DINNER DISHES, RUTH WATCHED Allison and Bethany playing something on their twin Game Boys, curled side by side on the living room sofa. They had their arms linked; now and then, a forehead quickly touched a forehead. Once, Allison planted a loud, smacky kiss right on the top of Bethany’s head, the way Ruth sometimes did, and Bethany smiled, shy and radiant that this beautiful creature had chosen her.

“It’s really nice here,” Ruth overheard Allison tell Bethy.

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fancy or anything, like your house.”

“I meant your parents. Your mom seems pretty stressed down in LA, but she’s different here. And I like your dad.”

“Yeah?” said Bethy.

“Yeah,” said Allison, and Ruth could tell by the tone of her voice that she really meant it.

 

WHEN HUGH OFFERED TO MAKE THE GIRLS PANCAKES ON Sunday morning—despite the fact that he couldn’t eat them himself, because what was the point of pancakes without syrup, and sugar-free syrups just weren’t the same—Allison offered to help.

“Well,” Hugh said. “I’ve never had a helper before. It’s pretty much a one-man job.”

“I could make bacon,” the girl offered. “Do you have any? I always make it at Mimi’s.”

The truth was, he wasn’t all that eager to be alone with the girl. He couldn’t shake the memory of her backing him into the sofa corner in Mimi’s greenroom. Still, she was only a little older than Bethany, and she was trying to be useful, which he applauded. So after consulting with Ruth, he dug a package of turkey bacon out of the refrigerator and handed it to Allison. “It’s nasty stuff, though, I warn you,” he told her.

“I’ve never heard of turkey bacon.”

“Someone’s bad idea,” Hugh said. “But it’s good for us, so we eat it. There are days when I miss fat more than I miss sugar. Here’s a lesson for you: keep an eye on your weight. Not that I imagine you’ll have any problems.”

Allison opened the package of turkey bacon and rummaged around in the cupboards until she found a pan. “Nah, I could eat like ten Twinkies and a whole pizza and I’d still be skinny. We’re both thin, me and my mom.”

“Lucky you.”

“Mimi’s fat, though.”

“I saw that.”

“I’m trying to get her to go on a diet, but she sneaks stuff. Like she’ll wait until she thinks we’re asleep and then she’ll bake a whole batch of Pillsbury crescent rolls and eat them all herself. She’s got high blood pressure, too. If it’s quiet you can hear her breathing and stuff. Wheezing.”

“That’s not good,” said Hugh.

“I know.” Allison turned the bacon strips with a fork.

Hugh ladled batter onto his skillet. Impulsively he said, “Do you really like this acting stuff? The whole Hollywood bit?”

“Of course.”

“So do you think you’ll be a big star one day?”

“I have to be.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself,” Hugh said, surprised. Allison looked back at him strangely. “No?”

She shrugged.

“Tell me about Bethany. Is she good?”

“She’s pretty good. She could be better, though.”

“Really?”

“Yup. She just needs more practice. You can tell she still gets nervous and stuff.”

“Okay.” Hugh stacked finished pancakes on top of a plate with a paper towel on it, and put the plate in the oven so they’d stay warm. Then he spooned out more batter.

“Do you really like being a dentist?” Allison asked.

“I do. Very much.”

“Yeah, well, you guys have a high suicide rate, though. Dentists.”

“We do?”

Allison nodded. “I read that once in a magazine.”

“Huh.” Hugh flipped four pancakes, two at a time. “Well, I can’t speak for all dentists, of course, but the ones I know seem pretty well adjusted.”

“Yeah, but still.” Allison sniffed at the bacon. “So this smells okay. I mean, not like real bacon, but it smells pretty good.”

“What did you say your father does?” Hugh asked.

“I don’t have a father,” Allison said matter-of-factly.

“Oh. That’s tough,” said Hugh, and meant it.

Allison shrugged. “Yeah. I have a stepfather.”

“Do you?”

“His name is Chet. He owns oil rigs or oil wells or barrels or something. My mom likes him for his money, but he’s not that nice to her. He makes her ask permission before she uses his stuff. Like the last time I was home he yelled at her for borrowing this junky old sweater of his that he probably wouldn’t even be caught dead in. She said it was just a stupid sweater, and he called her the C-word, and then he didn’t talk to us for like five days.”

“Ow,” said Hugh.

“I told her we should’ve kept our apartment just in case, but she said it was too expensive. Which it wasn’t, because it was a dive.”

“Oh?” Hugh was at a loss.

“But I’m not around that much anymore, anyway,” Allison said bluntly. “He pays for me to stay with Mimi.”

“So I gather. Don’t you miss home?”

“Nah. It’s not like here.”

“Here here?”

“You know—this.” She spread her arms wide. “You’re like the perfect family.”

He looked to see if she was mocking him, but if she was, she wasn’t showing it.

“Anyway,” she said, tapping the bacon strips with her fork, “These are done.”

“Okay,” said Hugh.

 

IT WENT LIKE THAT ALL WEEK: TO RUTH’S LASTING SURPRISE, Allison was a perfect houseguest, blending in, picking up after herself, tidy to a fault—no child should be that dialed into her own care and maintenance—and offering to do dishes and other household chores that Ruth could get Bethy to do only by hitting her over the head with them. Who’d have thought the girl would be a good influence? As a reward, Ruth took them to the top of the Space Needle and for a ferry ride so Allison could see killer whales, and then for lunch in Friday Harbor. Another afternoon she dropped the girls at Bellevue Square, the Seattle area’s most upscale mall, where they wanted to go even though it had exactly the same stores as the Beverly Center in Hollywood. Bethany bought a flippy little skirt that Ruth thought was a tad too short, and Allison bought a silk scarf that Ruth thought no fourteen-year-old should have wanted. As it turned out, she didn’t: she presented it to Ruth as a gift that evening at dinner.

“Oh, honey,” Ruth said in dismay. “You shouldn’t spend your money on me.”

Allison looked crushed. “I thought you’d like it. It’s for Hanukkah.” The holiday had begun several days ago, and each evening they’d been lighting candles in Ruth’s favorite pewter menorah and the girls had each received small gifts: plush slipper-socks with pictures of dogs on them that vaguely resembled Tina Marie; gift certificates for a new Game Boy game apiece; packs of lip gloss in different flavors like bubble gum and cotton candy; matching, hand-carved dreidels made of horn.

Now Bethy told Ruth loyally, “It’s from Gucci, and it took her forever to pick it out.”

Hugh shot Ruth a look across the table: For God’s sake, keep it.

“It might be the most beautiful scarf I’ve ever seen,” Ruth told her sincerely, because it was true, and wrapped the silk around her throat.

Allison beamed and said, “I know some other ways you can tie it, too.”

Ruth didn’t doubt that for a minute.

To Hugh she presented a calfskin wallet, and then, when they all got up to clear the table, she approached Ruth shyly and gave her a long, tight hug, and then gave Hugh a chaste kiss on the cheek. In their bedroom that night, Ruth and Hugh agreed that the girl’s transformation was nothing short of astonishing.

 

BUT BY THE END OF THE WEEK, THE GIRLS HAD FINALLY begun to wear on each other, so when a neighbor called to see if Bethy could babysit for the afternoon, Ruth suggested that she say yes. Allison stayed behind at the house and helped Ruth unload the dishwasher.

“I think you two have done very well together,” Ruth said. “A week’s a long time.”

“Yeah,” Allison sighed. “Plus she’s younger than me.”

“You’ve been a good role model for her,” said Ruth, because, surprisingly, it was true. “That’s the thing about being an only child. There’s nobody to learn from.”

“I’m an only child,” Allison pointed out.

“Well, you seem to have a natural sense of the world.”

Allison nodded. “I read a lot of magazines.”

Ruth ran her dish towel around the lip of a casserole to dry it before putting it away in the sideboard. “Do you think you’re pretty?”

If Allison thought this was a strange question—as strange a question as Ruth herself thought it was; it had just popped out—she didn’t show it. She just said, matter-of-factly, “I think I’m beautiful. Hillary’s pretty.”

“I’d think it would be hard to be beautiful,” Ruth said, wiping down the sink.

“Sometimes,” said Allison. “People want stuff from you.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. They want you to like them and pay attention to them. It’s like if they can’t be beautiful, too, they can borrow some of it by being around you.”

“I guess I can see that.”

“Mostly I don’t mind, though. I’m used to it.”

 

RUTH HAD AGREED THAT THEY COULD USE THE SILVER FOR the rest of Allison’s visit. Allison loved knowing they were eating off precious metal, plus the silver made every meal a festive occasion, even breakfast, when, except for the morning they had pancakes, she and Bethany usually ate cereal and bananas by themselves because they got up so late. Allison always sat in the chair that looked out the bay window into the tiny backyard—the garden, Ruth called it, even though in Allison’s opinion it wasn’t much of a garden, more like a patch of grass the size of Mimi’s dining room table with big, spindly rhododendrons all around it, plus a few rosebushes and some kind of shrub that Allison didn’t recognize but Ruth said was gorgeous when it flowered in the summer. Whatever you called it, the garden was pretty even now, when it was dripping wet. Lots of birds came to use the birdbath and eat seeds from a feeder shaped like a mansion. You never saw little birds like these in LA, or maybe there was just too much else going on for you to pick them out. Allison thought it might be nice to be a bird living here, where all you had to worry about was whether the people remembered to put out enough seeds. From what Allison could see, Ruth always put out plenty—or now Allison did, since Ruth had given her permission. These were fat little birds; you could tell they’d always been well fed. The birds around their house in Houston—well, Chet’s house—didn’t look fat and content the way these birds did. They looked skinny and anxious, like they couldn’t count on things. Her mother had never put out a bird feeder in her life.

If she were Bethany, she’d never leave this place, not even for LA. Why would you? You got to eat off nice dishes that all matched; you got good night kisses, and several times a day someone asked you if you needed anything, and if you said yes (which Allison rarely did), that person usually got whatever you needed: a warmer sweater, a fresh diet soda, a hug. When someone called your name here, it was often followed by a term of endearment: honey or sweetie. People called you names like that in LA, too, but they didn’t convey love, just prompts. “Go over there, honey, and read that line again,” or “Thank you, sweetheart, you can go.”

Maybe Allison wasn’t being fair, though. Her mother used to call her baby sometimes. “Baby, I’m going to go out for a little while. Make sure you keep the door locked.” Now Chet-the-douche called her mom baby and no one called Allison anything at all.

She had told Mimi that, and Mimi had just shrugged and said, “Well, you’re here now, so.” Mimi wasn’t much for terms of endearment, but she cared about Allison, which Allison knew, so it was okay.

Now, for the first time during her visit, Allison had the house to herself. Bethany was next door babysitting, Hugh was off drilling teeth, and Ruth had run out to the grocery store. Allison walked from room to room, running her hands over things: the backs of the living room chairs and sofa, the top of the TV, the simple dressers in Ruth and Hugh’s room. She lay down on the bed, on her back, looked at the ceiling, and thought, “This is what they see when they go to bed at night,” and it sounded safe and serene. At Chet’s house, bedrooms were places where you closed your eyes and tried not to hear things like the headboard knocking rhythmically against your wall or your mom shouting, “You goddamn son-of-a-bitch bastard.” The odd thing was, Allison could never make out what Chet said back. Maybe he didn’t say anything at all. Sometimes Allison thought she’d rather hear something, even if it was loud or violent, than emptiness into which she couldn’t follow them. She’d even tiptoed from her room down the hall to their closed door once and tried to see through the space between the hinges, but she must have made a noise because Chet, pissed off, had yelled her name, and she’d gone back to the guest room.

She opened a jar of moisturizer on Ruth’s bureau and sniffed. It smelled like Ruth. She liked that smell, though it wasn’t sexy in any way, just clean and comfortable. She put some on her finger and worked it into her hands, then sniffed. It still smelled good, but it didn’t smell like Ruth anymore, just like Allison.

She opened some of the bureau drawers. Most of the clothes were ugly, boring women’s clothes, like big white panties and bras that must have been a D or even a double-D cup. Allison was never going to need a D cup; her boobs were on the small side, and so were her mother’s; and since she’d had her period for a couple of years already, they probably weren’t going to grow much more. Her mother had looked at them once and said, “Good thing you weren’t planning on making a living as a stripper, honey, because you don’t have the tits for it. Nice legs, but no tits.”

Someone like Ruth would never say tits.

In the bathroom, Allison looked for a razor, but found only an electric shaver. She’d been thinking about cutting again. She liked it here a lot, but she’d be leaving pretty soon, and cutting always made her feel much calmer. It had started in Texas a year ago, when Chet had yelled at her mother for spending too much money on Allison’s clothes. They hadn’t even spent that much, and what they had spent had been at Target: some socks, a new pair of jeans, a jacket. All of it had cost less than a hundred dollars, but Chet had freaked out anyway, making a huge deal out of examining each item on the receipt before getting right into Allison’s mom’s face and saying, “You don’t spend my fucking money on her without asking me.” He hadn’t cared at all that Allison had been right there in the room.

Later that day, when her mom had left to go drinking with her best friend, Shelley, Allison had gone swimming topless, though she couldn’t say why, except that it had something to do with Chet’s being such a prick, and her wanting to get back at him somehow.

So from the side of the pool’s shallow end—the end closest to him—she’d reached back and untied the strings holding up her wet bikini top, which came away with a faint sucking sound. She’d balled up the top and slapped it onto the concrete apron of the pool, right near his feet. He’d been pretending to read the Sunday paper, but she knew full well that what he was really doing was watching her as she swam a few slow laps. He watched her all the time, with those hooded eyes and slack mouth. So she pulled herself out of the pool and walked right past him, slowly, into the cabana—that’s what he called it, only it was more like a converted garage with cheap, thin carpeting—and he followed her. He came up behind her and without saying a word he put his hands on her breasts—not gently, not at all gently—and yanked her backward. She’d felt his hard-on against her. He’d forced her against him with one arm while he yanked his pants down with the other, and then he spun her around. She had just enough time to see his erection—a horrible, red, veiny thing—before he locked his mouth over hers in a kiss that burned like acid. Then he hooked her behind the knee with his foot and she folded up like she was hinged, dropping onto the carpet. He was on the floor, too, right on top of her, and he shoved his cock at her over and over—and it hurt, it hurt a lot—until he broke through and drove all the way up inside her, right up to the hilt of him like a knife. She would swear she heard her hymen tear, though it probably wasn’t possible. She could feel the cheap indoor-outdoor carpet scraping away skin on her lower back as he drove into her over and over; and then he must have come, because he stopped and slackened abruptly on top of her, suddenly so heavy she couldn’t breathe. She started pushing at his shoulders so he’d get off her, get off. He rolled away but reached out to stroke her cheek, except she slapped the hand away. Then he got up and she got up, too; and he pulled his clothes into place but she just stood there, thinking that she didn’t want to put her bathing suit back on because it would be cold and wet and it would sting the rug burn on her back. When he finished with his clothes and brought his face toward hers she thought he was going to kiss her again, but instead he brushed her cheek with his cheek lightly, lingeringly, which gave her goose bumps, and whispered, “If you ever tell a living soul, I will know and I will kill you.”

After he went outside she looked at her back in a mirror and found on her lower back an abrasion the size of a fist, weeping clear liquid. She left her wet bathing suit where it was on the cabana floor, walked into the house stark naked, and went straight to her bathroom, where she filled her Waterpik—she’d always had excellent dental hygiene—with water too hot to touch. She brought the thing into the shower with her and inserted the Waterpik nozzle into her vagina as far as it would go. She hadn’t been able to feel the heat until it was dripping down her legs like blood.

She’d stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out, and when it did she sat naked on the bathroom’s fluffy pink, little-girl rug, sucking on her knee until, by accident, her eyes lit on the disposable razor she used in the shower to shave her legs and underarms. She crawled over and picked it up. There were ten perfectly round bruises on her arms, five on each from Chet’s fingers. She held the double blade so it connected two of the bruises and pressed the razor home. Two thin lines of blood welled up like tears.

She was on a plane back to LA two days later, with five one-hundred-dollar bills zipped into a new Coach bag that had been left on top of her suitcase. Inside there was a note, written in script like barbed wire, that said, “Remember.” Every month after that she got another five hundred dollars in cash in the mail. She made a point of spending every last penny. Once she gave a fifty-dollar bill to the homeless man who lived in a freeway cloverleaf and panhandled near Mimi’s studio, but usually she spent it on whatever. The day after she got back, she bought a box cutter at Kmart and cut four intersecting lines into her left arm: tic tac toe. You win.

Allison wandered out of Ruth’s bedroom and into Bethany’s. The girl had a ton of stuff. Books, books, books, paintings on the walls instead of posters, a nice TV, and all these Starbucks teddy bears in different outfits. Bethany had told her she had every Starbucks bear that was ever sold in Seattle, and that meant about six a year since she was eight. She had so many, she said, that a lot of them were in plastic totes in the garage. Allison picked up one that was dressed in bunny pajamas, bunny slippers, and a hood with bunny ears. It must have been an Easter bear. She kissed it on the lips, put its stubby arms around her neck, then put it back on Bethany’s bed and wandered out to the kitchen. The kitchen was her favorite room, with nice windows, cheerful yellow walls with white trim, and a generally homey feel. From there she drifted into the dining room and over to the sideboard that held the oak box full of silverware. The inside of the box was lined with thick, metallic-smelling, plum-colored flannel, which, according to Ruth, kept the silver from tarnishing. Allison picked up a serving spoon, looked at her reflection in the bowl, and stuck out her tongue. When she heard Ruth’s car crunching in the driveway she slipped the spoon into her pocket, closed up the box, and met Ruth at the door to see if she needed any help with the groceries.

 

IT WAS ALWAYS HARD ON MIMI WHEN ALLISON WAS AWAY, though she’d never tell Allison that. During the two weeks the girl had been in Seattle and then Houston for Christmas, the house had echoed; even Tina Marie had been abnormally clingy. Not that Mimi was at the house much, but still, you had to sleep some time, and the greenroom couch at the studio was too soft and too lumpy, though if she’d been twenty years younger, she probably wouldn’t have cared. Now it just made her sciatica kick up, so she worked through the evening, buttoned the place up, and drove home at the DUI hour, when all the drunks, drug users, and belligerents came out. This she knew from experience. In the past she had had too much to drink herself on more than a few occasions after a client blew a network mix-and-match, underperformed for the role of a lifetime, or choked on what should have been a cakewalk of a guest-star audition for a casting director who was a fan. That’s when the bottle of wine came out of the beat-to-shit credenza she had picked up, like many of her other furnishings, at a swap meet in Tarzana, along with the juice glass with the picture of Tweety Bird on it that had been given to her by one of her little six-year-olds however many years ago. The first glass of cheap chianti was always bitter, but the wine mellowed over the next three or four glasses until she could drink it like fruit juice.

 

MIMI PICKED ALLISON UP AT LAX. SHE’D BEEN CIRCLING the airport for an hour, she said, with Tina Marie barking in the backseat every time a plane flew over. She gave Allison a quick hug after Allison hoisted her suitcase into the trunk and hopped into the front seat.

“So?” Mimi said. “Did you have a good time in Seattle?”

Allison nodded. “They have a cute house. Small, you know, but cozy. They don’t have expensive furniture and stuff, though, which is weird since he’s a dentist and he probably makes a ton of money. But it was the kind of house where you could eat in the living room and put your feet up. We went bowling, and we shopped, and it was Hanukkah, so we lit candles and played with these little tops and stuff. Oh, and we saw a couple of movies, except at the end we were the only ones clapping. I guess people don’t clap at the movies unless you’re in LA. Hugh—he said I should call him that, not Dr. Rabinowitz—was in a really good mood the whole time. You could tell because he made us waffles and pancakes. He’s probably really lonely when they’re gone.”

“And Houston?”

Allison shrugged and looked out the window. “They gave me a pair of diamond studs and some Jean Paul Gaultier perfume.” She stuck out her wrist so Mimi could smell it. “Mostly they were never around, though. They had all these Christmas parties to go to, but Chet made me stay home because I’m underage. Like that counts if you’re at a party in someone’s house. I guess the bubble over the pool broke, so no swimming. They had this Wii thing, so I played that.”

Mimi nodded. “Did you download the sides?”

Allison patted the side of her Coach tote. “I printed them this morning so I could work on them on the plane. Oh, and guess who was in first class? Jessica Alba. She was with some guy, I can’t remember his name, but you could tell he wanted everyone to see him with her. He’d make eye contact with everyone he could as they went by. I didn’t look at him, just because he wanted me to so much.” She fished a compact out of her bag. “She’s pretty.”

“Who?”

Allison rolled her eyes. “Jessica Alba. Her skin’s not that great, though.” She pulled down the car visor and opened the compact so she could powder her nose. “She had a zit right here.” She touched a place on her chin. “You could tell she’d tried to cover it up, but you could see it anyway.” She put the compact away and settled the tote on the floor by her feet. “So what’s new at the house?”

Mimi shrugged. “It’s been pretty quiet. Tina Marie ate a shoe, we found a mouse in the kitchen. Little things. Nothing interesting.”

“Whose?”

“What?”

“Whose shoe?” Allison turned and shook her finger at the little dog in the backseat. “If it was mine, I’ll be so mad.” Tina Marie straightened her narrow shoulders and looked out the car window dismissively. She was riding in the doggie booster seat that Allison and Mimi had bought for her after reading an article on dog auto safety, and she clearly considered it an assault on her dignity.

Mimi answered for her. “Not yours. Reba’s or Hillary’s, and it was only a Croc flip-flop. I’ve told those girls how many times that anything chewy is fair game.”

“Oh, whew. Did anyone book anything?”

“Perry booked an Alpha-Bits commercial.” Perry was one of Mimi’s few African American clients, a four-year-old with a smile like an angel. “He’s booking everything right now.”

“Sure, because he’s cute,” Allison said. “Nobody else?”

“No.”

“Good.”

When they got home Allison climbed out of the car, freed a haughty Tina Marie from the loathsome booster seat, and wrestled her suitcase out of the trunk. Mimi took her tote. Allison was glad to be home; she danced into the front hall and turned to Mimi, her eyes twinkling. “So did you miss me?”

“Of course I missed you,” Mimi said.

“Oh, good. Me too,” said Allison, looking around the house and hugging herself. “Let’s order out—Chinese. Please? Can we? My treat.”

“It’s just us,” Mimi said. “Hillary and Reba won’t get back until the day after tomorrow.”

“Then bring it on, dog,” said Allison in her gangsta voice. She pulled a takeout menu from a drawer in the kitchen, tucked the phone receiver between her shoulder and her ear, and ordered without even asking Mimi what she wanted, because Mimi always wanted the same thing: double happiness chicken and potstickers. For herself Allison ordered lo mein with pea pods and shrimp, and an order of pork fried rice to share.

“Did you TiVo Ghost Whisperer?” Allison asked Mimi while they were waiting for the delivery. It was one of their favorite shows, and neither one of them thought Jennifer Love Hewitt was fat; she just had big boobs, which Allison, for one, envied. The guides at the Universal Studios theme park said you could see her Rollerblading around the lot at lunch sometimes, and that she always waved at the trams full of tourists. “Did you remember?”

Mimi had remembered.

When the food finally arrived they paused the TV while Allison paid. She tipped the delivery guy eight dollars because he was cute and he always blushed when she answered the door. The first time he ever delivered to them he included a headshot of himself and a résumé with the food order. A lot of delivery people did that. You never knew whose house you were going to; the worst that could happen was it got thrown away, but that wouldn’t matter if you made even one decent contact.

They watched the rest of their show while they ate. Mimi pointed out that she used to manage one of the guest stars, a good-looking guy in his twenties with a nice smile. “He always overacted,” she said. “It used to just drive me crazy. Someone must have finally gotten through to him, though. That or he’s just finally growing up.”

“Hey!” Allison said, suddenly leaning forward and pointing at the TV. “Look, that’s right off Lankershim. Remember when we got stuck in traffic because they had that whole detour set up, and we thought it was for CSI? I bet it was this.”

When the show was over they put all the trash together and Allison stashed away the extra soy sauce and an extra pair of chopsticks, which she used to put her hair up sometimes when she washed her face. Mimi said she was going to take a bath, so Allison dragged her suitcase back to her room and unpacked. She hadn’t worn a lot of what she’d brought, so it was all still neatly folded.

And underneath it all, carefully nested in one of her socks, was a single silver spoon.