The Evening Star

  The next day, Melanie began to get the feeling that it was now or never. She made a plane reservation, called Bruce, and flew into LAX. Another bad sign was that Bruce hadn’t really wanted to come meet her plane. He said he had been working a double shift at the gas station and was too bummed to drive that far. He actually tried to talk her in to taking a bus over to Hollywood-Burbank airport, which would be a lot easier for him.

  “Bruce, I’m coming in at eleven-forty—nearly midnight,” Melanie explained. “Am I really going to have to ride a bus all the way across L.A. at midnight?”

  Then Bruce suggested that maybe her grandmother could give her enough money to take a taxi—he acknowledged that getting a bus at midnight was no fun. Melanie was getting close to losing her temper—he was just being so reluctant—and she was also getting close to crying when Bruce finally gave in and said, rather meekly, okay, he’d come and get her.

  He was there, too, looking nervous, and he didn’t kiss her on the mouth when she came bouncing up to hug him. She didn’t know if it was deliberate; maybe he was just shy, with all the strangers milling around them, but it sort of left her with a sinking feeling—not a good feeling to have when you were just getting home at midnight. It was hard to come back and start trying again, with Bruce acting so reluctant. She asked about his acting class, and what movies he’d seen and stuff, but Bruce just drove. He didn’t look at her, he wasn’t cooperative when she tried to hold his hand, and when they got back to the apartment and she made a pass—after all, it was her first night back—he just deflected the pass by saying he was tired.

  “Okay,” Melanie said. After all, it was one in the morning by then and he did work in a gas station, maybe he was tired. But the fact that he hadn’t kissed her on the mouth at the airport and then had deflected the pass, too, had begun to get her down. It wasn’t too often that Bruce deflected a pass—sex was kind of the one sure thing they had, and now the vibe she was getting was that maybe they didn’t have it anymore.

  Then, since she felt he wouldn’t talk and she felt too jittery just to get in bed and try to sleep, she started unpacking her suitcase and went to hang up her funeral dress and stuff, and that was when she got the big shock. They had only one closet, and it was always jammed, but now it wasn’t, and the reason it wasn’t was that none of Bruce’s clothes were in it anymore.

  “Bruce, where’s your clothes, was it a robbery?” she asked, panicky for a moment.

  “It wasn’t a robbery,” Bruce assured her, looking guilty and hangdog.

  “Then where’s your stupid clothes?” Melanie asked, almost yelling—she was getting in a bad panic. Maybe she shouldn’t have called them stupid, Bruce had some pretty good clothes, but still—

  He was just acting real reluctant—he didn’t even say one word.

  “Bruce, where’s your clothes?” she demanded. She couldn’t help it, she was getting wrought up.

  “I’m living with Katie now,” he said finally. “I took my clothes to her house.”

  Melanie was so stunned she couldn’t speak—but she should have spoken, because at that point Bruce just stood up, stuck a couple of twenty-dollar bills on top of the TV, and walked out. By the time she was ready to speak he was gone and there was no one to speak to—really there wasn’t even anyone to call. Her one semi-friend in L.A. was Katie, the little skinny yuppie who had just taken her boyfriend. Melanie would have liked to spend about a hundred hours talking to either one of them, or to both of them together, but of course that couldn’t happen—she was obviously the last person either of them would want to talk to. Bruce had had his chance, and probably hadn’t uttered thirty words all told, in the two hours she’d been with him.

  But it was so weird—the two of them had just been getting to know Katie a little. She had come out to her mother’s beach house a lot while Melanie was there recuperating from her miscarriage. Usually she had a guy, and usually they surfed. Sometimes all four of them went down the road and had Chinese. All Bruce could talk about afterward was what a complete yuppie Katie was. Melanie had even defended her, pointing out that she came by her yuppiness naturally. After all, nice as Patsy was, she was still pretty much a yuppie, and Katie was her daughter. Bruce even made fun of Katie’s skinny legs; Melanie had even said, Come on, she’s nice, she can’t help it if she has skinny legs.

  Three days after Melanie got back to town, Bruce called and asked if she’d send him his mail, and Melanie couldn’t help bursting out. “I guess you managed to get over your phobia about skinny legs, didn’t you, asshole!” she yelled.

  Bruce, since he wasn’t there facing her—he was safe at the other end of the phone—came on real calm and mature, which, considering the mood she was in, didn’t help matters at all.

  “You told me yourself I needed to get over that,” he pointed out.

  “If you were falling in love with her, why didn’t you tell me when I was in Houston?” she asked. “Why’d you let me come all the way back out here if you were already in love with Katie?”

  “It’s not so much that I’m in love,” Bruce said—he seemed to be real calm. It was as if he had just decided to meditate now about it all over the phone with her, real calm, as if he had done yoga all night or something. Just when she was so wrought up she could have smashed him with a club, he was suddenly Mr. Cool. It was extremely irritating. Melanie had all she could do to keep from screaming into the phone at the top of her lungs.

  “If you’re not in love, why’d you do this to me?” she asked.

  “Melly, it wasn’t like this was aimed at you,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t aimed at anybody. It just sort of happened.”

  “It may not have been aimed at me, but it hit me,” Melanie said. “Now I lost my job—they said at the restaurant that I stayed away three days too long. So now I don’t have a job and I don’t have you—I don’t have anything. I wish you’d told me before I came back here. All I do all day is sit and feel like a fucking fool.”

  “You need to get a little more positive about things,” Bruce said blandly.

  “Positive about what, you fuckhead!” Melanie yelled. “What do I have to be positive about? I’ve got about five dollars, the rent’s due, and now I’m going to have to ask Granny for money, which I absolutely hate doing.”

  “I don’t see why you hate it so much,” Bruce said. “She’s your grandmother. She’s not going to mind.”

  “She may not mind about the money but she’s gonna mind that I wasted my time with an asshole like you,” Melanie said. “I talked myself hoarse defending you and then this happened.”

  “Are my Varietys still coming to the apartment?” Bruce asked, trying to change the subject. “I sent a forwarding address but they haven’t started showing up over here yet.”

  “Yeah, they’re here, you wanta come and get them?” Melanie asked. For a moment she had the faint hope that if she could just get him in her presence for a moment he might come back to her. He might have just got dazzled briefly—Katie was very good-looking in her yuppie way. Also, Katie totally couldn’t exist without a guy—she went through every second of her life being vulnerable—maybe Bruce had fallen for the vulnerability. Maybe if he came back to get his mail he’d get some perspective and realize that Katie wasn’t really his type. At least it went through her head. At least she’d get to see him face to face. But a second later she was sorry she’d asked, because Bruce immediately made five or six excuses and got off the phone. When he hung up she felt so bleak she didn’t even move for at least an hour. There was nothing to move for. Who knew if she would even get to hear his voice on the phone again? He was a total wimp when it came to pressure—the mere thought that she wanted him to come over would probably be enough to keep him from coming over.

  While she was feeling so bleak she couldn’t move the phone rang and it was her granny—she had just called on a hunch. Her granny often had hunches where Melanie was concerned, and her hunches were usually right. They were so right that Aurora didn’t
even bother chatting for a while to see if it came out that her hunch was right. This time she just bore right in.

  “What’s wrong with my girl?” she asked, as soon as Melanie said hi.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Melanie said. “It’s my problem, you can’t help me, Rosie can’t help me, it’s just hopeless.”

  “That must mean that he left you for another woman,” Aurora said.

  “Yep, Patsy’s daughter,” Melanie admitted. Though she had meant to try to conceal Bruce’s departure for a while, she was actually just as glad she didn’t have to. Concealing things from a snoop like her granny took a lot of energy, and she didn’t really have that much energy, not just then.

  “Do you mind very much?” Aurora asked.

  “Yeah, I mind very much,” Melanie said. “Why would you ask me that? I love Bruce. What even makes you think I might not mind?”

  Sometimes her grandmother could just say two words and piss everybody around her off. It was as if she always had the two perfect worst words right on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t mind saying them, either.

  “Just fishing,” Aurora said. “What would you rather do, get the boy back or get revenge on the other woman?”

  “Neither’s going to happen, what does it matter?” Melanie said. “I’ll probably never see either one of them again.”

  In fact, she had found herself wanting to beat Katie up. She had a dream in which she pushed her off the Santa Monica pier.

  “Whose fault do you think it was?” Aurora asked.

  “Come on, it’s both their faults,” Melanie said.

  “I imagine it was largely Katie’s,” Aurora said. “She comes by man-stealing naturally. Would you like to know what her mother’s doing at the moment?”

  “Who, Patsy?” Melanie said, puzzled. What difference did it make what Patsy was doing?

  “That’s the one—Patsy,” Aurora said. “Your mother’s best friend.”

  “Well, what?” Melanie asked. She felt a little impatient. Now that her grandmother had found out, Melanie was eager to hash over the Bruce-Katie business a little bit more, not hear gossip about Katie’s mother.

  “She’s trying to steal my lover,” Aurora said. “I don’t think she’s managed it yet, but she’s trying.”

  “Who, you mean the shrink?” Melanie asked, confused. Although months ago, long before the General died, Rosie had confided in her that she suspected Aurora might be “seeing” her shrink, Melanie hadn’t taken it too seriously, at least not at first.

  “What do you mean ‘seeing?’” she had asked Rosie. “Of course she’s seeing him. How can he be her shrink if she never sees him?”

  “Not that way, that ain’t what I meant,” Rosie said. “I think it’s more like a romance.”

  “Come on, he’s younger,” Melanie said. “He must be a lot younger. Why would he want to go with Granny?”

  “I don’t know if they go out or what they do,” Rosie admitted. “I think it’s a romance, though. Pascal thinks so too.”

  “Pascal’s no one to talk. Granny said she caught him with a twenty-year-old,” Melanie pointed out.

  “Okay, okay,” Rosie said—it was obvious that Melanie wasn’t thrilled with the confidences she was offering, and why should she be? “I just wanted you to know, in case they run off or something,” she added.

  Later, though, when she thought about it, Melanie decided she wanted to hear more. The thought that her grandmother was actually having sex with a man so much younger was slightly disturbing. Of course, why shouldn’t she? She and the General weren’t married, and her granny herself had told her that she would have liked to have sex with Pascal on the couch; there was no reason she shouldn’t stay active, and certainly she was the type to stay active, if there was any way to manage it. But still, the thought of Aurora and a guy that much younger took some getting used to.

  “The shrink,” Aurora confirmed. “My shrink. I should never have invited them both to my dinner party. Now she’s trying to get her greasy little hands on him.”

  “Granny!” Melanie said. She was startled—she felt really confused. What Rosie had been hinting at was true.

  “Melly, I hope I’m not shocking you,” Aurora said. “I thought it might help to realize that what just happened to you could also happen to me. But I suppose you would prefer to think that your grandmother is past all that—that I’m safe—that age brings serenity or something.”

  “You mean it doesn’t?” Melanie said. That had been what she was thinking, when she thought of her grandmother—even despite Pascal and the couch.

  “I suppose it might, for some,” Aurora said. She was sitting in her window nook, looking out her window, wondering what serenity actually felt like. She remembered asking her own mother that very question, after having just been jilted by a cool New Yorker; she felt that she could never be happy, much less serene. Her mother had just looked back at her, her large eyes gray and sad. If she had said anything, Aurora couldn’t remember it. Now Melanie had been jilted by a not-so-cool Houstonian and felt sure she would never be happy—and the possibility did exist that she would never be very happy, not unless she got tougher with boys.

  “So you mean you just think she’s trying?” Melanie asked. “You don’t think she’s actually seduced him yet?”

  “I think she probably hasn’t, yet,” Aurora said. “Unfortunately, since I’m in mourning, I’m not in a good position to fight fire with fire just now. He’s not a man with much backbone, I’m afraid. He’s the sort who tends to flow with whatever flow is flowing. I’m afraid I’m not optimistic.”

  “I guess you are in mourning, aren’t you?” Melanie said.

  “Yes, I have to try to behave for a while,” Aurora said.

  The way she said it—her voice got sad—made Melanie feel better somehow. Her granny must really miss the General, although she hadn’t talked about him much while Melanie was home. It was good that her granny thought of herself as in mourning, even if it meant that Patsy got to make off with the stupid shrink. The General had been with Aurora for a long time, all Melanie’s life—in fact, even longer than her life—and he deserved to be mourned. Certainly Rosie mourned him—she sort of turned into a wet mop every time he was mentioned. With her granny it was harder to tell. She kept her cool better. But if she was willing to risk a boyfriend in order to mourn the General for a while, it must mean that she really had loved him despite all their bickering, some of which had gotten pretty intense.

  “I hope she doesn’t get him,” Melanie said.

  “You see what I mean, though, don’t you?” Aurora said. “If the mother feels free to take another woman’s man, then the daughter’s very likely to do the same.”

  “I guess, but it still makes me mad,” Melanie said.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you shouldn’t be angry,” Aurora said. “Of course you should be angry. I find I have a touch of sympathy for Katie, though, despite her treachery.”

  “Why?” Melanie asked.

  “Because she lacked a proper upbringing,” Aurora said.

  “Baloney, she did not,” Melanie declared. “She went to the best schools in L.A. What’s so bad about her upbringing? At least she had a mother.”

  “Well, she had a weak mother,” Aurora said. “I don’t suppose I actually despise Patsy, but her character has certainly never impressed me.”

  “She was nice to me when I had my miscarriage,” Melanie pointed out. It was a little annoying the way her granny took every opportunity to attack Patsy.

  “I don’t see what’s so bad about her,” she added. “She bought me some new clothes. I sort of feel like she’s my aunt.”

  “Okay,” Aurora said. “Those things I grant you. I won’t run her down anymore. I would merely point out that it’s rather unusual for a daughter to exhibit more character than her mother has, particularly where men are concerned.”

  “Katie may be bad, but so is Bruce,” Melanie said. “He did the same thing wit
h Beverly. We were getting along fine, and the minute Beverly got a Ferrari, he split.

  “I guess he just likes yuppies,” she added, remembering the whole Beverly episode more clearly. Dresswise, Beverly and Katie were sort of two peas in a pod. Probably Bruce did just like yuppies—he was always criticizing her for not being neat enough, or not picking up the house often enough—stuff like that.

  “I think I’d better send you a little money, Melly,” Aurora said. “I doubt you have any.”

  “Not much,” Melanie admitted.

  “Are you in the mood to come home?” Aurora asked.

  “No!” Melanie said fiercely.

  “Calm down, I just asked,” Aurora said. “I do think Rosie’s going to drive me crazy if Willie doesn’t get back here soon.”

  “Is he nicer than C.C.?” Melanie asked—she had not had the pleasure of meeting Willie.

  “Well, he’s more modest,” Aurora said. “C.C. had a tendency to get bigheaded every time he made a few hundred thousand dollars. Willie’s never had a dollar to his name and has few reasons for getting bigheaded. He knows it, too.”

  They chattered on for a while. Melanie kept the conversation going—she didn’t want to go home, but on the other hand she missed her granny, and Rosie. When her granny finally got off the phone, Rosie came on for a bit.

  “Don’t criticize Bruce!” Melanie insisted. Although Bruce had behaved horribly, she wasn’t in the mood to hear him criticized.

  “Okay, I won’t until the next time I see him,” Rosie promised.

  “Why would you ever see him?” Melanie asked. “He’ll probably marry Katie. Then he can wear polo shirts for the rest of his stupid life.”

  “You may think you’re rid of him, but you ain’t,” Rosie assured her. “He’ll come back one of these days, acting like a wet dog.”

  “How does a wet dog act?” Melanie wondered.

  “Guilty,” Rosie said. “He’ll be trying to find a nice place to get warm.”