The Diamond Lane (11 page)

In fact, Los Angeles seemed a little plain, merely a backdrop for the huge colorful billboards that shot up into the sky. About the worst you could say about the place, he concluded, after they had chugged over the pass – through stark blue hills, marred only by a few half-occupied housing developments – was that it was rather unimaginative. It reminded him of the backgrounds in cheap cartoons, where the cat chases the mouse past the same tree, the same house over and over again: minimall Mexican restaurant Xerox copies tanning salon liquor store. Minimall Mexican restaurant Xerox copies tanning salon liquor store. Minimall Mexican restaurant Xerox copies tanning salon…

And in each minimall, the same shops, all geared in some way to the upkeep of feminine beauty – hair salon, weight reduction, weight training – or the renting of videotapes. There seemed to be a preponderance of shops that recycled the same four words: Happy Nails, Friendly Nails, Friendly Rosy Nails, Rosy Happy Nails. The cabbie, who turned out to be Korean, snorted that these were fingernail salons all run by scheming
Vietnamese. Tony looked over at Mouse and thought she could stand a session at all of these places, save the tanning salon.

“Vince said once a woman in front of him in a queue at the grocery store invited him to her place up the coast somewhere, Santa Cruz, I believe. Her ‘place,' it seemed, was a nudist colony of some sort. John Denver was there, serenading the nudists. His guitar rather artfully placed over –”

“– oh Tony, really,” said Mouse. She was not in the mood to hear Vince Parchman's clichéd observations and anecdotes about life in L.A. Up to the age of nineteen she had lived here her entire life. Without exception it had been dull dull dull.

She leaned her head against the back of the greasy plastic seat and closed her eyes. The insides of her lids felt like emery boards. She had no idea what she felt or what she thought. She did know that she craved a shower and a bed.

“I'm sorry I'm cranky,” she said. “It's just, you used this as an excuse to get out of Nairobi, didn't you? Be honest.”

“I did,” he said. “No one can leave Nairobi without an excuse. They ask you at customs. ‘What is your excuse for leaving Kenya,
bwana
? It had better be good,
bwana
.'” He snaked his long, freckled arm along the back of the seat around her bony shoulder.

“Just do me a favor and don't look like a kid in a candy store, all right?”

“Far be it from me.”

AT THE HOSPITAL
Mouse spoke to a young nurse with white-blond hair and heavily mascaraed eyelashes. Mouse was gradually getting used to all these beige-faced blonds of the First World. The nurse was tall and strapping, and wore a diving watch.

“I'm looking for Shirley FitzHenry.” Mouse glanced down at her hand on the counter and saw a thread of African dirt embedded under each nail. She knew she looked like hell. Greasy hair, mossy teeth, BO that would warrant a head turn even in the most odoriferous corner of Kenya. Cleanliness, Mouse
realized, was not next to godliness, but affluence. The surfer nurse smelled like flowers, the hospital like mouthwash. You could count the germs in this place on one hand. Surgery could safely be performed on the floor of the waiting room.

“You must be Mouse,” said the surfer nurse. “Your mom's in 456. Congrats.”

“Thanks,” said Mouse, confused. For what? Getting here in one piece? Maybe it was some new California colloquialism.

The nurse shrugged. “Sure.”

Mouse found Shirl propped up in bed snoozing through a news show. The other bed was empty and freshly made up. Her first impression was of the godawful white bandage. She thought her mother resembled the peg-legged piccolo player in the famous painting depicting the American Revolution.
How can you think that at a time like this!
The Pink Fiend scolded. Mouse chewed on her sunburned lips.

On her mother's lap were stacked two or three slick magazines, thick as telephone directories. Her head hung to one side, her thin lips loose, shiny with saliva. Her skin was sallow, and the dastardly duo of Age and Sun had left their usual calling cards: wrinkles, lines, and spots. It was not the woman Mouse remembered. It was not the Olive.

Tears flooded Mouse's weary eyes, the side effect of an old memory being freed from its cage.
That's more like it
, sniffed The Fiend.
Show a little womanly sentimentality
.

When Mouse was very young, someone in Shirl's women's club had described Shirl as having olive skin. Mouse thought the lady meant her mother, who was short and oval-shaped, with a smallish head and small feet, and twenty extra pounds that had found a happy home around her waist,
looked
like an olive. Mouse read up on olives in
The Golden Book of Fruits and Vegetables
and thought that she and her mother – for Mouse took after Shirl's side of the family, as the taller, fairer Mimi took after Fitzy's side – had been grown on gnarly trees in Italy and imported
to the United States. It was not the stork who delivered them but the teamsters.

Mouse laughed out loud at the memory.

Shirl's eyes cracked open. She slowly rolled her head upright. “The wife of the caviar czar is gone,” she intoned in a flat voice, like a member from an underground movement delivering a dangerous message in code.

“Who?” Mouse's voice was dry. It occurred to her that perhaps she should have talked to Mimi before she came. What was the prognosis? How much damage had the falling ceiling fan done? Her mother had survived the surgery, but what if she was now in some complicated neurological way totally bonkers? She should talk to a doctor is what she should do. She backed toward the door, hoping to escape before her mother recognized her. “I'm sorry,” said Mouse, “I must have the wrong room.”

“Is that you, Mousie Mouse?” Shirl lifted her head off the pillow, fumbling for her glasses on the metal tray next to her bed. The bandage half-covered her ears, leaving only the red buds of her lobes exposed. She shoved them on anyway. They had large frames and plastic turquoise rims. Her little round nose bore the brunt of balancing them before her eyes.

“Mom! It's you!” Mouse stumbled forward. Too eagerly she leaned to kiss her mother's cheek. She knocked the glasses off her face and onto the linoleum, one earpiece snagged in the stainless steel bedpan tucked half under the bed. “Bloody Christ.” Mouse knelt to retrieve the glasses.

“Why, Mousie Mouse.”

“Mouse, Mom, Mouse.” She gritted her teeth, wiped the dripping earpiece on her skirt and handed the glasses back to her mother.

Shirl pursed her lips. She returned them pointedly to the metal tray.

“Sorry,” said Mouse.
Clumsy! Vulgar! Boorish!
“I'm just… I'm so…It's good to see you.” She wrung her sunburned hands.

“This boy is British, then?” said Shirl.

This boy? Mouse wondered. Could her mother really be that disoriented? She decided it was best to ignore the stray remark. “Mom, how are you? How did the surgery go? I came straight from the airport. I haven't slept in about forty hours. That's why I look such a mess.”

“Grubby. Your middle name.”

“I thought it was more important to see how you were.”

Shirl sighed, as if the decision Mouse had made was, as always, the wrong one. “I'm dying.” Her head lolled away from Mouse. She stared at the wall for a few seconds, then became interested in a news story on how modern technology has changed the world of artificial limbs.

“How long?” whispered Mouse.

“What?” said Shirl. “I had the nurse pick these up for you.” She patted the magazines on her lap.

“Thank you,” said Mouse. “Thank you.” She sniffed back tears. It was important to be like a rock. The low drone of the jet engines still hummed in her ears. Her bead throbbed.

“Is he British?”

“Who?” croaked Mouse. She had come all the way home for this. Somehow she'd thought if she'd made the effort, spent the money, rushed back without a decent night's sleep or a shower…

“Is he British?”

“I don't know who you mean, Mom.”

“Your fiancé.”

“Ralph?” her mother suggested.

“Who?” Mouse felt as if she'd landed in a bad production of a Harold Pinter play.

“No, that's somebody else. Somebody Mimi knows.” Shirl sighed with effort. “I'll think of it.”

Mouse took her mother's hand and held it. She rested her forehead against the side of the cool, clean bed.

“Tom?” said her mother. “Toby?”

Mouse quivered with shame. Her shoulders shivered and
shook. The globe-trotting, family-deserting, tough-as-nails, hardship documentary filmmaker was unable to control herself while her brave little mother, who was afraid of snails on the sidewalk and driving on the freeway, of shopping after dark (rape and vivisection while walking to the car parked, inevitably, at the end of the lot), of public restrooms (loitering heroin-shooting lesbians hiding in the stalls), of eating shellfish (food poisoning), whitefish (choking), of the possibility of her daughters having boyfriends (sex and pregnancy) or not having boyfriends (no sex and social humiliation), was the picture of calm and strength in the face of death.

“Now now now,” said Shirl, “it's only natural. I cried too. Just promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“You will wear white.”

“To the, to the –” She couldn't bring herself to say funeral.

“And it will be done at a proper church.”

At that moment the surfer nurse glided in, a tiny paper cup balanced on her palm. She poured Shirl a glass of water from a carafe on her bedside table. “How we doing here?” she chirped.

“My daughter just returned from, where is it you were?”

“Kenya,” said Mouse.

“She doesn't normally look like an Amway saleswoman. Where did you get that jacket?”

Mouse combed though her hair with her fingers. The lighting in the hospital room made everything shine with a greenish tinge. Her stomach churned and boiled in the heroic task of digesting three days' worth of airplane food. Her bones felt like overcooked noodles. She had to sit down, lie down, something.

She settled for something, which was to doze for a minute or two standing up. Her eyes remained open. An obsequious, guilt-ridden smile hung on her lips.

“…the date,” the nurse was saying.

“Maybe sometime in the spring. Although that's up to the bride and groom. It's certainly none of my business. April is nice.”

Shirl and the nurse both turned to look at Mouse. “It is,” she said. She had nothing against April. She had missed something. Who was getting married? Mimi, no doubt. Probably to her best friend's boyfriend.

“Well?” said Shirl.

Mouse looked blank. She was starting to suspect that in her absence the English language had changed.

“You haven't discussed it, I take it,” said Shirl.

“I haven't even seen her. I told you, I came right here.”

“Her?”

“Mimi.”

“Your Maid of Honor!” said Shirl. “Of course you need to check her schedule. She has been one busy girl since you've been hiding out in, where was it? She's a big talent agent now, some show biz thing, and she's writing a book. She's really made something of herself. And you should see all her fellas! Well, you know, she's always attracted them.”

“Maid of Honor?” said Mouse. “
My
Maid of Honor?”

“You are having a maid of honor,” said Shirl. “You promised.”

Suddenly Mouse laughed. She had a deep hooting laugh that sounded like an owl being strangled. “Hoog-hoog-hoog-hoog…”

“I hope you're not taking this lightly. It does not bode well for the marriage, taking a wedding lightly.”

“Uh-huhuggg-hugggg-hoog-hoog-hoog-hoog.”

“Honestly, Mousie Mouse.”

The nurse, anxious to avoid the crossfire of what she could see was developing into a mother-daughter skirmish, scampered out of the room, promising Shirl the doctor would check in later.

“I'm sorry,” said Mouse.

“I hope the groom is more stable than you are.”

“What groom? You sure you're not thinking of Mimi?”

“You're not getting married?” Tears welled up in her mother's eyes, then coursed down her crêpey cheeks. She dropped her bandaged head onto her chest and held it in both hands, as though it was a fragile, overripe melon. “Fitzy. I think of Fitzy –”

“– Mom, please –”

“– just a day or two before he died we were talking about your wedding.”

I was nine years old, Mouse wanted to say, how could you be talking about my wedding? She patted her mother's hand.

“He was such a good, gentle person, Fitzy. I'm not just saying that because he's dead. People get revised after they die, their personalities, but he was always a gentle, honest man. Uncouth, but honest.”