name is lucky too.' The ease with which Claire knelt at the block, stretched her neck out, still chattering away.
'She hasn't been very lucky so far,' my mother said, almost purring. 'But maybe her luck is changing.' Couldn't Claire smell the oleanders cooking down, the slight bitter edge of the toxin?
'We just adore her,' Claire said, and for a moment I saw her as my mother saw her. Actressy, naive, ridiculous. No, I wanted to say, stop, don't judge her based on this. She doesn't audition well. You don't know her at all. Claire just kept talking, unaware of what was going on. 'She's doing wonderfully well, she's on the honor roll this year. We 're trying to keep that old grade point average up.' She made a half-circle gesture with her fist, a Girl Scout gesture, hearty and optimistic. The old grade point average. I was mortified and I didn't want to be. When would my mother have worked with me, hour after hour, to raise the old grade point average? I wanted to wrap Claire in a blanket the way you do with someone who's on fire, and roll her in the grass to save her.
My mother leaned toward Claire, her blue eyes snapping like blue fire. 'Put a pyramid over her desk. They say it improves memory,' she said with a straight face.
'My memory's fine,' I said.
But Claire was intrigued. Already my mother had found a weak spot, and I was sure would soon find more. And Claire didn't realize for a moment that my mother was jerking her chain. Such innocence. 'A pyramid. I hadn't thought of that. I practice feng shui, though. You know, where you put the furniture and all.' Claire beamed, thinking my mother was a kindred soul, rearranging the furniture for good energy, talking to house-plants.
I wanted to change the conversation before she started talking about Mrs. Kromach and the mirrors on the roof. I wished she'd glued a mirror right to her forehead. 'We live right near the big photo labs on La Brea,' I interjected. 'Off Willoughby.'
My mother continued as if I hadn't spoken. 'And your husband is even in the business. The paranormal, I mean.' Those ironic commas in the corners of her mouth. 'You've got the inside scoop.' She stretched her arms over her head, I could imagine the little pops up and down her spine. 'You should tell him, his show is very popular in here.'
She rested her arm on my shoulder. I discreetly shrugged it off. I might have to be her audience, but I wasn't her coconspirator.
Claire didn't even notice. She giggled, zipping her garnet heart on its thin chain. She reminded me of the tarot card where the boy is looking up at the sun as he is about to walk off a cliff. 'Actually, he thinks it's just a big joke. He doesn't believe in the supernatural.'
'You'd think that would be dangerous in his line of work.' My mother tapped on the orange plastic of the picnic table. I could see her mind winding out, leaping ahead. I wanted to throw something in there, stop the machine.
'I told him just that,' Claire said, leaning forward, dark eyes shining. 'They had a ghost that almost killed someone this fall.' Then she stopped, unsure, thinking she'd made a gaffe, talking about murder in front of my mother. I could read her skin like a newspaper.
'You don't worry about him?'
Claire was grateful my mother had let her little faux pas gently slide by. She didn't see, my mother had hold of what she really wanted. 'Oh, Ingrid, if you only knew. I don't think people should fool around with things they don't believe in. Ghosts are real, even if you don't believe in them.'
Oh, we knew about ghosts, my mother and I. They take their revenge. But rather than admit that, my mother quoted Shakespeare. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
Claire clapped her hands in delight, that someone else had quoted the Bard for a change. Ron's friends always missed her references.
My mother flicked her long hair back, draped her arm around me again. 'It's like not believing in electricity just because you can't see it.' Her bright blue assassin's eyes smiled at Claire. I knew what she was thinking. Can't you see what an idiot this woman is, Astrid? How could you prefer her to me?
'Absolutely,' Claire said.
'I don't believe in electricity, either,' I said. 'Or Hamlet. He's just a construct. A figment of some writer's imagination.'
My mother ignored me. 'Does he have to travel a good deal, your husband? What's his name again? Ron?' She wrapped a strand of my hair around her little finger, keeping me in check.
'He's always gone,' Claire admitted. 'He wasn't even home for Christmas.' She was playing with that garnet heart again, sliding it up and down the chain.
'It must be lonely for you,' my mother said. Sadly. So sympathetic. I wished I could get up and run away, but I would never leave Claire here alone with her.
'It used to be,' Claire said. 'But now I have Astrid.'
'Such a wonderful girl.' My mother stroked the side of my face with her work-roughened finger, deliberately scraping my skin. I was a traitor. I had betrayed my master. She knew why I'd kept Claire in the background. Because I loved her, and she loved me. Because I had the family I should have had all this time, the family my mother never thought was important, could never give me. 'Astrid, do you mind letting us talk for a moment alone? Some grown-up things.'
I looked from her to my foster mother. Claire smiled. 'Go ahead. Just for a minute.' Like I was a kid who had to be encouraged to get into the sandbox. She didn't know how long a minute could be, what might happen in a minute.
I got up reluctantly and went over to the fence closest to the road, ran my fingertips over the bark of a tree. Overhead, a crow stared down at me with its soulless gaze, squawked in a voice that was almost human, as if it was trying to tell me something. 'Piss off,' I said. I was getting as bad as Claire, listening to birds.
I watched them, leaning toward each other over the table. My mother tanned and towheaded, in blue, Claire pale and dark, in brown. It was surreal, Claire here with my mother, at an orange picnic table at Frontera. Like a dream where I was naked and standing in line at the student store. I just forgot to get dressed. I was dreaming this, I told myself, and I could wake up.