if she did and it’s here, I’m determined to find it—or at least something personal and embarrassing that she wouldn’t want me to see. It’s not like she knew she was going to die and had time to destroy or hide anything, which is what I vow to do first thing tomorrow. I’ll burn my journals and any other incriminating evidence of embarrassing youth.
“What do they looook like?” Seth really needs to stop using the whiny voice.
“I don’t know.”
“This is boring.”
“Go find some wine and bring it back here,” I say.
Seth claps his hands, suddenly chipper, and heads for the door.
I’m sitting on the floor and my back hurts, a sure sign that I’m getting old and decrepit. There are papers all over the floor: stacks of yellow legal pads filled with nearly illegible column notes, receipts for lunches and charity donations, pre-release galley copies of self-help books she’d get at the paper, but no diaries.
An unexpected blast of music jolts me out of my head. I look up and see a white speaker discreetly embedded in the white wall, Whitney Houston or Celine Dion blasting out of it. “Seth!” I crawl to the doorway and shout down the hall. “What the fuck!” The music cuts out and I lay back on the floor, but quickly sit up—not so much because the room starts spinning, but because whenever I am flat on my back it’s yet another reminder of my age as I feel my squishy breasts sink into my armpits.
The music starts up again, but this time there’s no top-40 power ballads. Seth has obviously been rooting through my mother’s extensive collection of kitschy midcentury lounge music and I can tell from the full sound and occasional static blips that it’s the original vinyl. I don’t want to smile, but I do. My mother’s records—the Xavier Cugats and the Esquivels, not the Celine Dions and Whitney Houstons—are pretty much the only things of hers I could ever possibly want.
Seth appears in the doorway with a glass in each hand, a box of crackers under his chin and a bottle under each arm. “Red or white?” he asks.
I stand up and grab the box of crackers. I should have white. It’s lighter and the hangover isn’t as bad. But I’ve had all of those martinis, which means I probably shouldn’t have anything but water. I take a bite of salty goodness. Fuck it. “Red,” I say.
Seth pours us each a glass and we toast. I almost say, “To my mother,” because that’s what a good daughter would do, but Seth beats me to it.
“To Britt,” he says, so I don’t have to.
“It could have been worse,” Seth says. He’s moved out of his drunk-whiny stage into his drunk-wise-man stage. I don’t know which is more annoying.
“What?” I ask, and I drink two gulps of wine.
“Your mom,” he says. “I know you think she was this raging bitch, but seriously, Mason, it could have been way worse. It’s not like she hit you or let her boyfriends fuck you.”
“Jesus, Seth!”
“See? She doesn’t seem so bad when you think about it that way.”
I can’t believe Seth is defending her. No, actually, I can. He liked her. Janet liked her; she kept it to herself, but I could always tell. Men loved her. People—some of them, anyway—must have liked her because they read her column and wrote her letters saying so. She’d show them to me, and later, after I moved to Canada, she’d send copies in the post or scan them and e-mail them to me.
I never did understand those people who wrote the letters: were they losers with no lives of their own? Did they think she was amusing or insightful? Who would want to read every little thing about someone else’s life unless they were someone famous or smart or interesting? Did they wonder about the effect those columns had on the people in them? Did they ever stop to think about me?
ART
It takes me a moment to figure out who this Aaron person is and why he might be calling me. Then I remember it’s Aaron-Aaron, my ex-stepbrother Aaron, and flashes of that night at The Cecil swirl around in my head: the dancing, falling and the gross, sticky floor, the pearls scattered everywhere and the laughter of the Irony Girls. My shoulders bunch up as I cringe at my thoughts.
“So, I was hoping you’d come with me to an art opening tonight. I know it’s last minute and you probably already have plans, but it was really great to see you again and I think it would be fun because the artist is a friend of mine who does these really great—”
“Sure, I’ll go,” I say, cutting off Aaron’s rambling. I don’t have anything better to do and there is always free food and booze at art openings.
I arrange to meet Aaron at the gallery. He said he’d pick me up, and while I would like a ride, I tell him I’ll meet up with him instead. I hate walking, but the prospect of having to rush around and clean up after the mess Seth and I made the other night is worse.
It’s been years since I’ve been in a gallery, or at least in a gallery that sells work other than bronze cowboy sculptures and oil paintings of mountain landscapes. Wearing black is always a safe, if predictable, choice. My entire wardrobe is black, and I’d love to wear my favorite black pants and my big cowl-neck sweater, but the pants are a bit too tight and both pieces are in my closet in Canmore.
For a gallery, I need something sophisticated or angular and Japanese. I try on a long black skirt with tights and my lace-up Doc Martens ankle boots and decide it works. But I need a top.
After rejecting everything in my suitcase and my teenage wardrobe, I head to my mother’s bedroom. She was really into color, but there has to be something black I can wear. I go through her sweaters and shirts. I am not wearing anything that could be called a blouse. I find a black V-neck cashmere sweater and try it on. It’s tighter on me than it must have been on my mother, but it looks okay, though a little boring. I pull my arms back out of the sleeves and twist the sweater around until the V is in the back. You always see pictures of celebrities in low-back dresses and tops and I think I read somewhere—maybe in a magazine on the plane—that the back is the new erogenous zone. I line and fill my lips with MAC Russian Red lipstick and touch up the kohl around my eyes. I tug the front of the neck down, so it sits flat where the label is. That’s better.
It’s not Aaron who first greets me at the gallery: it’s Edgar. I’m surprised to see him there. Art didn’t really strike me as his thing. “Clients,” he says, nodding in the direction of two middle-aged men in suits contemplating a triptych of blank white canvases with one tiny black dot on each. “They wanted to experience the bohemian side of San Francisco, so I took them to the Haight this afternoon and they bought their kids hoodies at the Gap.”
“That’s so boho,” I say with a laugh.
“They’re from Ohio.”
“Ah.”
“There you are!” It’s Aaron. He gives me a kiss on the cheek and holds out two plastic glasses filled with wine. “I didn’t know if you preferred red or white.”
“Both,” I say and grab them from his hands. I down the white like a shot but when I take a sip of the red I nearly gag. It’s awful.
“Are you okay?” Aaron asks. “I’ll get you
