“I’ve got to go, honey. I’ll see you in a few days. Don’t forget about Jesse’s performance after school.”
Dora yawned and then pulled at Erica’s hand.
“Oh, no, no, no,” they laughed. “I’m running late as it is and the Lyft’ll be here any minute. But I’ll be thinking about you.”
“When you return, we’ll be sure to pick up where we left off,” Dora said lazily, and then, “What time is it?”
Erica laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s only seven. You’ve still got ten minutes before you have to wake up the troops.”
Dora sat up and then swung her legs out of bed. “Let me get my robe. I’ll walk you to the door.”
By the time the two made it to the living room, the notification for the arrival of Erica’s car pinged on her phone.
They grabbed their one bag and turned to wave at Dora once they got to the car. “I’ll call when I get to Charles de Gaulle.”
Dora blew her wife a kiss and then closed the door. It was only when she walked back to the bedroom that she remembered the meeting she planned with Mara.
A twist of nerves.
The faint memory.
What would Mara say?
A dense fog curtained the ocean, obscuring the water. More wisps of fog traveled like ghostly fragments over the coastal highway. Once Dora got to the PCH, the fog grew so thick that visibility was compromised. She had to turn on her low beams and slow to twenty miles per hour as her eyes strained to see a road revealed to her only several feet at a time. A mountain of white loomed up ahead and Dora thought about pulling over even as other cars whizzed past. At Topanga she made a right turn, climbing up the canyon road. Here the fog grew worse and Dora pulled over several times to let a string of cars pass. She was not a fan of driving through the canyon on a good day. The plunging cliffs and rocky walls of earth towering over the windy road always felt intimidating rather than gorgeous, as Mara liked to describe the drive. Dora could too easily imagine a boulder dislodging and falling on her car or one of Topanga's residents in their fast sports cars, barreling around corners and spinning out of control into her own larger SUV, sending her plunging off one of the "stunning" cliffs.
The odd memory which surfaced recently––a memory that felt almost dreamlike, Julie walking away, engulfed by the night, taillights of a car––played over and over in Dora's head. Every time Dora tried to pin down the vague scraps of mental imagery, it faded like a mirage. Something told her it had to do with Taylor. Had Mara been there that night? If so, when?
Yesterday Dora had called Mara, telling her she wanted to talk about Taylor. Mara suggested they meet at her Airbnb rental in Topanga. "We'll have a little more privacy. Sophie has big ears," she said of her youngest who was five and still home with the Morenos’ nanny.
The problem with the night of Taylor's death was that Dora hadn't experienced any of it first hand and now she was dealing with fragments of Serene's memories. She and Sahana had helped as best they could with the police interviews, the suspicion, the tension, going to court. It had all been too much for Serene and she'd slept through most of it, leaving the bulk of the work for Dora to deal with, as usual. Sahana had kept a cool head, but Dora flubbed up a later interview, trying to fill in that gap of time the detectives kept poking at. Serene saw Taylor and Darpan talking and kissing, but afterward Dora could only remember Little Girl's incessant crying, trying to sooth her, and then the feeling of wrongness and Serene needing help. She had told Serene to go to sleep. It must have been Sahana who walked them back to Enzo's. She did share that memory with Serene––finding herself in Enzo's kitchen and not knowing how she got there. So when the detectives picked apart her story, Dora made up the part about going to the backyard to sit in the hammock and think about what she saw before going to Enzo's.
Dora popped a piece of gum in her mouth, wondering how to bring up this new fuzzy recollection of Mara, especially since the memory belonged to Serene. Then again, she could be remembering a different night all together. And why was she suddenly having Serene's memories? God, she hoped Serene wasn't going to take over again. Dora had taken charge for years. Months went by sometimes when she didn't think of any of the others inside her.
Serene.
Dora thought of that part of herself with irritation. If melancholy were an embodied person, that would be Serene. She wallowed in grief, it seemed, and didn't know how to embrace life, marrying Steve––christ. He didn't even know what he had, playing the big-shot attorney to a bunch of entitled celebrities. There were bigger, better things to be a part of in the world.
While Dora liked fashion, she also was aware that society was changing and marginalized groups were fighting back for their rights. That was where she wanted to put her energy. If there had been a Me Too movement in the ‘90s, maybe Taylor might have come forward or sought help for the sexual abuse she suffered from her father, instead of acting out in self-destructive ways. Perhaps if men hadn't been allowed to exploit women and children for so long, Little Girl could have been spared. But it was too late now. Dora would always need to care for Little Girl, whether she was in charge or not, because when Serene couldn't handle, she slept. Slept the sleep of the dead. Dora hoped that this time Serene would sleep forever. She'd made a great life with Erica, and the only good thing to come
