This story is layered with unforgettable descriptions and observations; you know you’re in sharp, fearless hands when a sentence ends with the phrase “her mother, who has dark hair and a crepe for an ass.” What I admired about this story is its willingness to lurk in the gray areas: Will the protagonist relapse into her addiction? Is her father cheating on her mother again, and how far is she willing to go to find out for certain? I also admired the story’s dialogue and how much it reveals about the relationships between characters—what they’re willing to say and what they withhold. — Guest Judge Jennine Capó Crucet
Julissa has just dropped a month’s salary on a tiny diamond stud for her tragus, a reward for twenty weeks of sobriety. As she’s leaving the piercing salon, she sees her father enter a wine bar across Melrose with a woman whose blonde updo and juicy rump don’t belong to her mother, who has dark hair and a crepe for an ass. Again? She’d hoped her rehab had put an end to all that, the need to unite against a shared enemy, her addiction. She squints to cut the midday glare. The man’s back is to her and there’s traffic between them, so maybe he isn’t her father, who should be at his office eating a strawberry Yoplait. But the man has her father’s ducktail and compact, jaunty form, and there’s a glint on his left hand that could be his signet pinky ring. Julissa doesn’t have the bandwidth for another crisis in her parents’ marriage, but she won’t run from it either. Or will she?
The ficus hedge enclosing the wine bar’s patio should conceal her nicely while she gets a better look, so she steps off the curb to go spy. Immediately, a red Camry screeches to a halt inches from her left hip. The driver hurls a trifecta of hate—horn, middle finger, stupid bitch!—but Julissa continues to the other side without acknowledging the man’s rage. She’s too consumed to multitask.
The ficus is so thick she can’t see a thing. She considers aborting but decides to wait in her car instead, which is parked halfway down the block but close enough to catch the couple when they leave. She glances at her watch. There’s only ten minutes left on her lunch hour, but even if she’s late getting back it won’t matter. The owner gave her the job, a glorified gopher at a boutique ad agency, as a favor to her father, and she’s pretty sure she could hand the man a box of dead rats and he wouldn’t sack her. Neither would her supervisor, Peter. He might frown, but since he fucked her at the holiday party in December, there’s not much he can do about her intermittent delinquency and they both know it.
As she’s walking to the car, her hair dances in the sunny spring breeze and she gets a floaty buzz, one of those transcendent moments when the miracle of nature seems to justify life’s disappointments. The uplift crashes when she finds a parking ticket flapping under the windshield wiper of her vomit brown Accord. In her rush to get the piercing, she forgot to feed the meter. Her parents gave her the car after rehab—leased rather than purchased, a hedge against relapse—and neglected to consult her about the color. Although she tries to make gratitude a habit, it’s hard to respect a car whose color makes you want to snort a line of coke every time you look at it. Honda calls it “Cappuccino Brown Metallic,” which confirms Julissa’s opinion that advertising is all about putting lipstick on a pig.
She’s hunting for her key when she hears her name and looks up to see Pam McIntosh, a girl she was briefly close with senior year of high school. Pam looks fantastic in a navy suit and stiletto pumps, balancing sex appeal with the discretion of a professional. Julissa scrunches the parking ticket in her fist and shrinks against the car.
“It’s been forever,” Pam says. “What have you been up to, girl?”
Two answers come to mind. Julissa can explain about her descent into drugs during college, the three years of temp work and random sex in New York, hitting bottom overnight at Rikers, the prodigal return home followed by rehab, and now the possibility that her father is betraying her mother again. She opts for the second answer.
“Not much. How about you?”
“I went to law school right after SC and now I’m a first year at Hart & Coombs. They do environmental litigation, on the plaintiff side.”
At a football game once, Pam held Julissa’s hair back while she vomited into a metal toilet, her kindness a surprise given the crowd she ran with. Their friendship ebbed because emotional darkness is foreign to Pam.
“I’m an account executive at Strom & Ross. It’s an ad agency.” Peter’s title. No harm borrowing it.
“Amazing. You look great, by the way. Did you lose weight?”
“Maybe.” Julissa is fifteen pounds lighter than in high school, thanks to drugs—first the illegal kind, and now a perfectly respectable antidepressant.
“Listen, I’m having a party Sunday night. My parents are away and I’m using their pool, like old times. You should come. Maxi and Ava will be there.” Maxine Martin and Ava Conroy, two of the nastier specimens in Pam’s crew. Pam digs into her Louis Vuitton Papillon and comes up with a business card and pen. She writes an address on the back and hands the card to Julissa.
“In case you forgot. Come around eight. Hope to see you.”
Julissa knows exactly what to expect at the party: People who swim in social acceptance, and drugs. Lots of drugs. There will be pills in a candy dish, white lines on the coffee table, and fat joints people can only smoke outside. Tequila shots, too. The beautiful partygoers will partake with the delicacy of cats lapping milk, but to Julissa excess comes naturally. She always goes overboard and finds herself swept away from shore, drowning.
After they say goodbye, Julissa settles into her car, relieved to be through this first reencounter with high school. Living back in LA, she knows there will be more. She checks the line of sight to the wine bar and opens the windows to air out the lingering smell of the McMuffin she ate for breakfast. Her ear is throbbing, the pain a welcome distraction from the lure of Pam’s party, which is already building in her brain. She studies her new piercing in the rearview mirror. The gold ball would have been cheaper, but a diamond takes years to become itself, which gives Julissa hope.
The sex with Peter took place steps away from their coworkers, in the powder room of their boss Bill Strom’s Encino manse, the sound of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” bleeding through the door they carefully locked. She had wondered what fucking sober would be like, so she let Peter seduce her. Apart from the marble countertop digging into her hipbones as he pounded her from behind, she found it surprisingly pleasurable. Peter, of course, had been drunk. He wouldn’t have had the nerve otherwise. He’s too timid, though she’d known by how he acted at work that he liked her—the shy glances, the apologetic way he assigned her tasks. His modesty makes no sense because he’s a total ace. The clients love him. Some people need to vacate their own head for their true self to come out. Julissa understands the benefits of insobriety and relinquished hers only when she had to.
When Peter came, right after she did, he groaned into her neck, “You’re so beautiful,” which ruptured the moment, the potpourri suddenly nauseating. She believed his sincerity, not like how guys just say those things after their postcoital endorphins kick in. But his raw admiration made her uncomfortable, and she has avoided further intimacy. This makes their work interactions awkward. Whenever Peter looks at her now, he resembles a wounded animal that’s been kicked to the side of the road.
Four weeks ago, Julissa’s dog M2 (Mr. Misbehaved) was actually kicked to the side of the road, or, more precisely, tossed into the breakdown lane of the Santa Monica freeway eastbound. Julissa had been heading to a group therapy session in West Hollywood when a beige bundle got ejected like a bag of trash from a Ford beater crawling in the slow lane. Gripped by a sickening hunch, she crossed multiple lanes without signaling, caught the next exit ramp, and made her way back to the scene, where she parked by the bundle and put on her hazard lights. A smallish dog, maybe a Jack Russell terrier mix, lay inert on the asphalt, but when Julissa touched its nose, she felt breath. She swaddled the animal in her jacket and transported it to the VCA pet hospital on Sepulveda, where she proceeded to max out her credit card on IV fluids and bloodwork.
When she brought the dog home, she discovered that its emotional injuries were less easily fixed. He uses her carpeting as a toilet, picks apart the trash, and nibbles her underwear and shoes. (He does have good taste—he went straight for her Manolo Blahnik mules.) On walks, he snarls at every oncoming dog or man, often driving people to cross the street. Every day, she considers surrendering him to a shelter.
Forty minutes later, Julissa’s maybe-father and the blonde leave the wine bar and walk in the opposite direction from her car. When the traffic breaks and she can hook an illegal U-turn, they’re a block down, kissing against a white car, but by the time she’s close enough to see their faces, the man is walking away with his back to Julissa, down a one-way street she can’t turn onto. He’s walking in the direction of her father’s office. She gets a good look at the woman, though, who’s getting into the white car, a Mercedes-Benz coupe. The resemblance is stunning: the French twist, the oval face and finely curved nose, the slim-fitting suit with a pencil skirt reaching to mid-calf. This woman could be Kim Novak, or at least her body double. The resemblance awakens one of Julissa’s few happy childhood memories, watching old movies with her dad. Her mother never joined. Classics bored her. KTLA Channel 5 showed tons of them, including Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Vertigo is still Julissa’s favorite. She’s seen it seven times and always cries when Kim’s brunette character, Judy Barton, agrees to dye her hair blonde so Jimmy Stewart will love her.
Julissa considers fighting the traffic to pursue the man, but stalking her father has never paid off. Also, if she doesn’t catch up to him, she could lose sight of both and come away empty-handed. This isn’t an option because in two nights she’ll be with her parents, having recommitted to Sunday night dinners, and how can she go to their house without knowing the truth? Maureen, the group therapist, says the only way out is through, and even though Maureen has terrible tats, she knows her shit. So Julissa double parks and watches Kim.
The Mercedes’s brake lights come on right away, but Kim doesn’t pull out until the traffic clears in both directions and she can hook a U-turn. Julissa’s kind of gal. She follows suit, and they head west. Julissa keeps a two-car distance to avoid suspicion, like Tyne Daley in Cagney & Lacey. She’ll have to blow off work, but Friday afternoons are useless anyway. On Monday she’ll tell Peter she got a sudden migraine.
Soon they’re in Beverly Hills, where Kim turns into an alley between Beverly and Rodeo. Midway down, she parks behind Bijoux, a popular jewelry store. A sign says, Private Parking—Unauthorized Vehicles Will be Towed. Julissa continues through the alley, turns up Rodeo, and circles the block three more times before finding a parking space near the shop. This time, she remembers to feed the meter.
Bijoux’s window features a giant bunny holding an Easter basket of Cadbury eggs and diamond tennis bracelets. Julissa pretends to study the bracelets while peering through the glass. Kim stands behind a display case, talking to a couple, a black tray on the counter. A woman in a pink dress arranges earrings on a jewelry tree. When Julissa enters, a bell jingles. Kim stays focused on her customers, but Pink offers help.
“I’m just looking,” Julissa says and fingers a display of enamel bangles.
Kim reaches into the case and withdraws two rings, placing them on the tray. One is a large emerald cut diamond with baguettes, the other a smaller but very sparkly round solitaire.
The couple appear youthful, the woman with a perfect butt in Guess jeans, the man wearing an Adidas tracksuit. They give off the giddy pride of young professionals ascending the ladder of adulthood. Next rung, children. Julissa can’t imagine getting married now, maybe not ever. Any upside doesn’t seem worth the risk.
The woman slips the emerald cut ring on her finger and holds out her hand. A tiny price tag dangles down.
“That one’s three carats, E-color, VVS1.” Kim’s voice is frank, with a Midwestern accent, not at all sultry or restrained like original Kim’s. The woman angles her hand to give the man a better look.
“It’s nice,” he says noncommittally. “The other one sparkles more.”
Kim holds up the smaller ring. “Brilliant cuts are designed for maximum sparkle. This one’s an excellent example.” She’s not taking sides.
The woman spirals her hand to make the larger diamond flash. “I like how sleek this one is.”
“It looks like an ice cube,” the man says.
When Kim offers to show them smaller emerald cuts, the man flushes and the woman frowns. Kim says she’ll give them some time. She smiles at Julissa then joins Pink, who steps aside.
The man tells Kim they’ll think about it and the couple leaves. When the door closes, Kim catches Julissa’s eye.
“Can I show you anything?” she says while Pink puts the rings away.
“Do you have any super tiny earrings?”
“Definitely.” Kim pulls out a tray. “Do you have something specific in mind?”
“I just got my tragus pierced.”
“Let’s see.”
Julissa pulls her hair out of the way and Kim leans over to look. She smells of Poison by Dior, which Julissa’s mother wears. Would her father give his mistress a bottle of his wife’s favorite perfume? No way. He’s weak and vain, but not a creep.
“Fabulous!” Kim says. “But it’ll be a while before you can change the earring.”
“That’s okay. I also need a gift for my mother.”
“Birthday?”
“Not exactly.”
Kim’s too discreet to press. She pokes at the earrings with a polished fingernail. She has crow’s feet and a wrinkled neck. She’s well-preserved, but older than Julissa initially thought. She pinches a gold huggie between her fingers. “How about this?”
“It’s more of a consolation thing.”
“The earring?”
“The gift for my mom. I found out today that my father’s having an affair.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They’ve been together since high school.” Julissa’s parents met on a blind date in their thirties. “I saw my father and a blonde walk into Merlin’s Wine Bar on Melrose. It was such a shock.”
Kim hesitates, though her expression remains neutral. “Maybe they’re just friends.” She’s not giving anything away. Julissa should call her out, but what if the man wasn’t her father and she comes off like a lunatic?
“What about a hair claw for your mom?” Kim says as if they didn’t have the exchange they just had. “We have hair claws from France.” She comes out from behind the counter and strides to a basket near the bangles. Her body is reflected in an adjacent full-length mirror. Although she has the slim silhouette of her cinematic doppelgänger, a fleshy belly to balance her bum strains the fabric of her skirt. Julissa can see why her father might be attracted to Kim. She’s luscious in a way Julissa’s own mother never could be and would likely find repulsive.
Kim selects a tortoise claw with mother-of-pearl inlays. “The hinges on this won’t break, even on hair like yours. Let me show you.” She beckons Julissa with the claw, and when Julissa joins her, she gathers her hair and twists. “So healthy and thick! I’ve always wanted curly hair.”
“People with straight hair always say that.” Curly hair is stubbornly frizzy and only looks good in zero humidity.
Kim affixes the claw then turns Julissa by the shoulders so she can see herself in the mirror. She looks short next to Kim. A decade ago, she stood before a mirror like this with her mother. They’d been searching for a dress to slenderize Julissa, and when they found one, her mother squeezed her and said, “You’re so pretty. If only there weren’t so much of you.” That summer, she sent Julissa to a fat farm near Palm Springs.
“I’d love to get this as a gift from my daughter,” Kim says.
“You have a daughter?”
Before Kim answers, Pink calls out that she’s taking her break. “Please excuse me,” Kim says, and both women disappear into the back.
Julissa examines her reflection. She looks better as an adult, as if her body was waiting for her to catch up. Her hair looks sophisticated. Poison drifts through the air, along with chocolate and Lysol. She doesn’t completely hate how she looks. Why not end on a high note? She leaves without saying goodbye. Kim was never going to fess up anyway.
She sits in her parked car, unsure how to spend the rest of the afternoon, trying to ignore the background noise of Pam’s invite. The migraine excuse won’t work until Monday, so returning to the office is out. M2 will be ecstatic if she walks in the door ahead of the schedule he has memorized like a savant. The claw is still in her hair. She pictures Kim running after her, trailed by a cop, but Julissa has plausible deniability: She totally forgot she was wearing it.
* * *
Julissa’s mother banished M2 after he destroyed her Mona Lisa needlepoint canvas, so before leaving for dinner on Sunday, Julissa takes him for a long walk. She usually sticks to residential blocks, avoiding crowds, but she’s in a mood for change and braves Montana Avenue, which shouldn’t be busy at this time.
The air hints at summer as they stroll by glassy storefronts. For the second time in three days, Julissa feels attuned to the mystery of life, the fact of it circling her mind until it loses any sense of logic, the way a word repeated over and over divorces from its meaning. How can existence materialize from nothing? Nothing is only a concept because if it existed, it would be something. These thoughts are what college was for, except back then she was too busy partying.
Julissa doesn’t notice the oncoming shih tzu until M2 is pulling on the leash so hard that her shoulder threatens to dislocate. His hackles are raised, his ears are pinned back, and he’s snarling and barking like it’s kill or be killed.
“Stop,” she shouts, tugging back on the leash with both hands, but he’s too in the zone to hear her and wouldn’t listen anyway. She can’t look at the shih tzu’s owner, who’s probably thinking M2 should be euthanized.
As M2 gathers his haunches to lunge, the shih tzu’s owner swoops up his dog, tucks it under his elbow, and squats with his torso separating the animals, all in one fluid motion. Then he holds out his hand for M2 to smell. Julissa is horrified, but M2 stops snarling and sniffs the man’s hand with the curiosity he normally reserves for the bathroom trash. His ears are still pinned, but he’s otherwise behaving like a normal dog.
The shih tzu’s owner is a light-skinned Black man wearing crisp jeans and a button-down, his long legs folded like a stork’s.
“How did you do that?” she says.
“You need to act nonthreatening. Let the dog feel it’s in control.” The voice sounds disturbingly familiar, and when he looks up, it’s confirmed.
“Peter!”
“Hi Julissa. I thought that was you. I’m glad you’re okay. We were worried when you didn’t come back Friday.”
“Sorry.”
“You haven’t been answering your phone either.”
“You called me at home?” Peter blushes. It’s disorienting to see him out of context. He actually looks kind of hot. “I got hit with a migraine and had to lie in a dark room with the phone off. I vomited twice.” Julissa has never experienced a migraine but knows these symptoms because her old friend Jenny got them.
“That’s awful. Do you get them often?”
“Not very.” She doesn’t feel great lying to Peter and is anxious to change the subject. Maureen is very big on living in rigorous honesty. “Do you live around here?”
“I’m in West Hollywood, but my great aunt lives down the street, at Montana Gardens. It’s a senior living place. What about you?”
“I’m on 16th between Idaho and Washington.” Mentioning the apartment feels cringey, as if Peter can read her thoughts and see her messy parts. She took the place before rehab and only recently moved back in. She’d stalked the obituaries for weeks in search of a rent-controlled unit, then slept with the broker to get an edge in the application process. At least she continued seeing him after the close so he wouldn’t put two and two together. No need to be cruel.
Peter pulls a jerky treat from his pocket, stands, and holds it above M2’s head, luring him back until he’s on his haunches. “Sit,” he commands, then lets M2 take the treat from his flattened palm. Julissa can’t believe Peter’s confidence, or M2’s docility. It’s as if her dog’s been invaded by a canine body snatcher.
“You’re quite the dog whisperer.”
“So I’ve been told.” He says this shyly, like he’s embarrassed it’s true. He pulls more jerky treats from his pocket and hands them to her. “Use these. The key is positive reinforcement. Reward the good behavior rather than punishing the bad.”
“Got it. Thanks.” Peter’s a good two heads taller than her. If a thief ran by and grabbed her bag, Peter would chase him.
“How long have you had him?”
“Only a month. Some psycho threw him out of a moving car on the freeway.”
“Jesus, people are sick.” He offers M2 another treat. “Are you fostering him?”
“I might keep him. I haven’t decided.”
“If you do, he’ll know you saved him and love you forever. Like Lucky here.” He lets the shih tzu poke out so she can pet him. His fur is silky, and so clean she regrets watching the Lakers game earlier instead of bathing M2, who’s still in a sit, staring down Peter’s pocket.
As she’s petting Lucky, an awkward silence blooms. Peter breaks it.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I shouldn’t have let it go this long.” It’s a struggle, but he finally makes eye contact. “I owe you an apology.” Julissa thought he was going to say that her job performance left something to be desired.
“For what?”
“The holiday party.”
“Oh, that. You have nothing to apologize for. It’s okay.”
“I’m your supervisor. It really wasn’t okay.” He looks so chagrined that Julissa feels bad depriving him of his guilt. “I was drunk. It’s not an excuse, and it’s not why I did it. I did it because I like you, but being drunk made me forget that I shouldn’t. It won’t happen again.”
Julissa finds this promise unexpectedly deflating and says, “I’m sorry to hear that,” which makes Peter look so confused and happy all at once that she laughs. Then he laughs, too, and they stand there on the sidewalk laughing together though she’s not sure either knows why.
* * *
The moment her mother opens the door, Julissa regrets her last-minute decision to bring M2 to dinner after all.
“I asked you not to bring him to the house anymore.” Her eyes leave no room.
Julissa nestles M2 closer, hoping his low grumble won’t erupt into a growl. She doesn’t need this. Her head’s already brimming with doubts about her father and Pam’s siren call. Still, she steps over the threshold. She won’t give in.
“He’s been better lately,” she says, more hopeful than confident. She has treats in her pocket and Peter in her head, so anything’s possible. “We can leave him in the yard, if you feel strongly.”
“I do,” her mom says. But she fills a metal mixing bowl with water and another with shredded cheddar and leaves them on the porch. They watch M2 demolish the cheese then dash off, thrilled to have a yard. As he zigzags, Julissa feels weirdly forlorn. If he doesn’t mind being exiled, why should it bother her?
She catches her mother inventorying her body. It’s how she gauges Julissa’s well-being: thin Julissa is happy, plump Julissa needs work. But tonight her eyes lock onto Julissa’s ear.
“What’s that?” Her accusatory tone belies her elegant outfit—slim capris, sleeveless turtleneck, ballet flats—but complements the mean geometry of her hair, which is blunt cut and angled at the jaw.
Julissa covers her ear with her hair. “It’s not a big deal.”
“I disagree.”
“People pierce everything these days, Adele.”
“Please don’t call me Adele, and I don’t care what everyone else is doing. It makes an impression. People might think you’re, I don’t know.”
“Irresponsible? Trashy?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Then don’t overreact.”
“I just want your fresh start to go well.”
“It is. I’m twenty weeks sober.”
“I know, we’re proud of you. We’re going to celebrate.”
“The earring was my celebration.”
“A cake wouldn’t do?”
“You don’t like when I eat cake.”
“Everything in moderation, Jules.”
“Right.” Impatient with this stale territory, Julissa is ready to end the conversation. So even though she’s provisionally (because he’s innocent until proven guilty) pissed at her dad, she’s glad to see him coming down the stairs. He’s wearing his velvet smoking jacket that’s pure Hugh Hefner.
“How’s my little girl?” It’s rhetorical, but her father’s surfacy world has always comforted Julissa. He’s easily pleased, expects so little. She gives him a hug (abbreviated due to Kim).
“Your dad ordered Chinese.”
“I got your favorites,” he says. “Guess.”
“Moo shu chicken and beef lo mein?”
“Yup.”
“I wasn’t consulted.”
“I got your garlic green beans, Adele.”
Once they’re seated, Julissa’s mother prepares the moo shu pancakes. She’s the best at it, tucking the corners like origami. The moo shu never falls out.
“Don’t stint on the plum sauce,” her father says, and her mother replies, “You can dip it on the side, Dick,” dialogue that’s been repeated over Chinese takeout for as long as Julissa can remember. A bottle of chardonnay sweats in a silver bucket on the dining room table, where they eat on Sundays and holidays. Her first week out of rehab, Julissa overheard her parents discussing whether to drink in front of her.
“Won’t it be too tempting?” her father suggested.
“She’ll be facing temptation the rest of her life. Better she practice sobriety around people who love and will help her.” This sounded reasonable, but maybe her mother just needed a glass of wine to tolerate the humiliation of her failed daughter’s return.
“I saw Pam McIntosh today, on Melrose.” Julissa checks her father for a reaction, but he’s busy trapping a shiitake mushroom between his chopsticks.
“There’s a name from the past. How is she?” Julissa’s mother always encouraged that friendship and was disappointed when it petered out. She had radar for the popular kids and wanted her daughter to be one of them.
“She’s an environmental lawyer now.”
“I’m not surprised,” her mother says. “Pam always had a good head on her shoulders.”
Julissa hears scratching and hopes she’s the only one. M2 might be doing a number on the screen door.
“She invited me to a party tonight.”
“Are you going?” Her mother brightens. “You should go.”
“Why?”
“Because the people you spend time with influence you, and she’s an impressive person.” If only her mother had seen Pam back in high school, with white-rimmed nostrils, her hand down some guy’s pants.
“Maybe Julissa prefers a good night’s sleep before work tomorrow.” She likes when her dad defends her. “Bill Strom tells me you’re doing a bang-up job at work, Jules.” There is no universe in which this could be true, but she’s glad for the support.
“I’m starting to wonder if advertising is a good fit for me.”
“Of course it is,” her mother says. “You’re so creative and have a wonderful eye for detail.”
Who is she talking about?
“When you cut through all the bullshit, it’s just a professional form of lying.”
“Please don’t swear,” her mother says. M2 is barking now—shrill, piercing yelps.
Her mother’s jaw tightens.
“In group they talk about living in rigorous honesty.”
“Whoa, there’s a difference between lying to people and presenting them with options,” her father says. He’s the chief creative officer at Wellman & Co., an ad agency specializing in packaged foods. “Take yogurt. If people don’t know about it, they might not buy it, and it’s good for them.”
“Plain yogurt is good for them,” her mother says. “You only advertise the ones loaded with sugar.” Julissa agrees but won’t give her the satisfaction of saying so aloud.
“I’m dating someone,” she says instead. She’s trying it on for size. If she left Strom & Ross, and Peter asked her out, she might say yes. He could take her to La Petite Maison. When both her parents stop chewing and stare, she realizes she’s gone too far.
“That’s wonderful, babydoll,” her father says. “What’s his name?”
“Paul.” It’s close to Peter without giving too much away.
“New Testament,” her mother observes. “How did you meet?”
“Through friends.” If she admits they work together, her mom will make her dad ask Bill Strom to snoop, even though Bill Strom wouldn’t know her if they were the only survivors of an apocalypse.
“Did Paul encourage you to butcher your ear?” her mother says. “Tell me you noticed her ear, Dick.”
Her father peers at her. “What about it?”
Julissa pulls her hair aside.
“That little diamond? Cute.”
“Oh, please!” her mother says.
“I got it Friday, on Melrose. I thought I saw you across the street when I left the salon.” It’s risky terrain. Their family habit is silence, the tacit standoff that is her parents’ marital coping mechanism. At times it can feel like her problems are the only unifying force, her messiness the glue that holds them together. But tonight she can’t stop herself. The truth feels more important.
“Me?” Her father shoves a wad of sticky rice into his mouth.
“Around one, going into Merlin’s Wine Bar. That wasn’t you?”
Her mother puts her chopsticks down and stares at him coldly. “I thought you were in Orange County all day.”
M2 chooses this moment to start howling. He’s seen something, maybe a raccoon or a skunk.
“Can’t you shut him up, Julissa?” her mother says. “It’s not fair to the neighbors.”
“Orange County’s tomorrow.” Her father’s voice is swallowed by the racket M2 is making.
“Julissa, please do something about that animal.” But Julissa doesn’t have to because M2 stops as suddenly as he started.
“On Friday I ate lunch at my desk.” It’s not a denial. He could have eaten lunch before meeting Kim. He shoves more rice into his mouth, gagging a little.
“Watch your manners, Dick. No one’s in the mood to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.”
Julissa agitates her green beans in their dreary brown sauce. Her gut tells her the man was her father. She’s nearly certain of it. But the cramps that gripped her outside the wine bar haven’t returned. To her surprise, she no longer feels devastated by the prospect of his infidelity. She looks at her face in the smoky mirror over the buffet. Through the gunmetal clouds she sees a stranger. A sober woman.
Maybe she’s grown tired of knowing. Maybe it’s not her job to mediate between consenting adults who should be guiding her and not the other way around. Trying to fix her parents’ relationship is exhausting. She cannot, nor will she, be pulled backward.
“Cars were whizzing back and forth, so I couldn’t see all that well. The guy just reminded me of you. Does anyone want the last moo shu?”
“All yours,” her father says and passes the plate. He looks relieved. Adele frowns. She doesn’t believe in seconds. The hair claw from Bijoux is still in Julissa’s bag. She could present it to her mom, a consolation gift after all, but Adele’s hair is too short to make use of it.
Her father reaches under the table and comes up with a smallish box wrapped in gold foil and a white satin bow. He hands it to Julissa. “For you.”
“What’s it for?” Her birthday’s not until August.
“I told you we were celebrating,” her mother says. “Your father picked it out.”
“Twenty weeks of sobriety. Well done, babydoll.”
Julissa opens the box carefully. Her mother will want to reuse the wrapping paper, which is meticulously creased, the tape barely visible. Inside, on a luxurious nest of tissue paper, lies a tortoise hair claw with mother-of-pearl inlays.
* * *
After dinner Julissa sits in the Accord looking back at her parents’ house, a white brick Colonial barely illuminated by low-voltage lighting hidden in begonia beds. It’s the tail end of twilight, and a navy sky suspends the pale brick as if in a surreal tableau. Two rooms emit light. The kitchen, where her mom putters with the darting movements of a grounded sparrow, and the den, where her dad is watching TV.
Pam’s parents live an easy drive due east, the opposite direction from Julissa’s apartment. She wouldn’t even have to go inside. She could stay in her car and just be close to the circle of acceptance, knowing she’s been invited. But temptation will be strong because remaining outside means enduring the endless space where people can drift, untethered, into terrifying loneliness.
She has this crazy fantasy that Kim, with her womanly flesh and Midwestern accent, could be her mother instead of Adele, that she would rescue Julissa and save her from needing to fight so hard. It’s silly, but the desire is real, and she feels it swelling until she might burst.
Soon, she finds herself driving to Kim’s house in Santa Monica. She knows where it is because on Friday afternoon she waited in the Accord for three hours until Bijoux closed, then followed Kim’s Mercedes when it emerged from the alley behind the store. Kim drove south on Beverly, then west on Olympic, demonstrating her hipness to the superiority of Olympic as an east-west corridor.
Twelve blocks from the ocean, Kim turned north and navigated to a Spanish bungalow on a quiet street lined with yew pines. The house had arched windows, a terracotta roof, and wisteria framing an entry courtyard where a spitting lion lorded over a mosaic basin. Kim parked in the driveway, exited the car, and picked a pink blossom from an azalea bush, crushing it in her hand. Then she smelled her hand, tossed the limp petals into the garden bed, and disappeared through the courtyard into the house.
Tonight, the sky is black when Julissa parks across the street. The bungalow is swathed in floodlight, the edges diffusing into a misty halo. Lights are on throughout, intimating the warmth of Christmas candles in every window, a family in their home as seen from a distance, the presumption of love. Maybe she’ll return to Bijoux with the stolen claw and explain that she never meant to take it. On the other hand, she already knows what she needs to know. The thing now is to bear it.
Rachel Vogel’s work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Harvard Review, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles, where she lives. She has practiced law and, together with her husband, raised three children.