The High Season(90)
“Shit.” She jumped up, knocking over the champagne, and heard the tinkle of breaking glass. Lark started, but Doe was already moving, ignoring the sharp pain in the sole of her foot, heading off Lucas if she could. The prick. She should have seen it coming.
Shari’s mouth opened in an O of exaggerated happiness that didn’t fool Doe one bit.
“I found her alone at your place,” Lucas said. “I stopped by to see if you needed a lift.”
Shari’s uneasy smile widened. “Lucas got pissed that I took so long to get ready. But we’re here!”
“Doe, you’re bleeding,” Lark said, coming up. She leaned down. “We need a bandage or something.”
“Oh, angel!” Shari cried when she saw the blood. Lark looked up sharply, alert to the intimacy in Shari’s voice.
Doe looked down. Lark was on one knee, risking the magnificent embroidery of her dress. She felt the warmth of Lark’s hand on her foot and saw the stain on the hem of Lark’s dress, bright red. She felt nausea overtake her like a wave, and she had to close her eyes, which made her dizzy. The beautiful dress was ruined. But what did it matter, since Lark could replace it? What did anything matter, really?
“Lark, this is my mother, Shari Callender,” she said. “Mom, this is my friend Lark Mantis.”
Lark unfolded to her full five feet eleven inches. She and Lucas stood almost shoulder to shoulder, twin American gods, the stiff breeze ruffling their blond hair and fluttering their silks. Never had Doe felt shorter. Darker. Runtier. Brought up on diet soda and factory chicken and bottled salad dressing.
What did it matter.
Shari was talking, Lark was nodding, Lucas looked around for a waiter. Lark signaled and a tray appeared. Shari accepted the champagne by thanking the server profusely, as if he’d delivered a cash bonus, took a long sip, and belched out a “Delicious!” Doe felt herself shrink smaller still. Shari was loving every second of the fancy party while being utterly clueless about what was happening in front of her eyes. In Shari World, you smiled at the servers, you drained a glass of champagne and said “Ooooo,” and if someone gave you cake that was delicious you ate every bite and then pressed your fork into the crumbs and licked them off the tines. You cleaned your plate, swayed to music, called a big house a mansion. Look, Lucas’s smirk said, you come from people who know nothing.
There is nothing wrong with those things, she wanted to say.
Lark’s manners held throughout as Shari chattered about arriving from Hollywood, not the fun one, the one in Florida, about looking for work, about what a hard worker Doe was, how she was always crazy for art—had her friends ever seen her artwork, her photographs?—and Lark found cake and seats at a table. Lucas tried to drift away but Lark firmly and pointedly noted what a gentleman he was to keep Shari company while she had a word with Doe.
Doe allowed herself to be steered (limping now, her foot hurting like a mother, ha) toward the museum, into the gallery where Adeline regarded them with brittle amusement, an Adeline with wrinkles and sags and a thick line of dark plum along her soft jaw. She waited for Lark to start. She’d seen her happy, sad, sleepy, pissed, nonchalant, drunk, tender, eager, lustful, breezy, sullen, asleep and awake and in the shower, but she had never seen her like this.
“Tell me you have two mothers,” Lark said.
“What?”
Lark shoved her. “Tell me.”
“I don’t!”
“So there’s no Katherine Callender from Minneapolis? There’s only Shari from Hollywood-not-the-fun-one? No Katherine, who studied ballet and never got over it? No mining money? No family ranch in Upper Michigan? No Mary McFadden originals collection?”
“No.”
Lark shoved her again and Doe went stumbling back and almost fell.
“Okay! I’m Dora Callender from Florida,” Doe said. Never had she been so far from tears. “I didn’t go to Reed. I went to Miami Dade College and worked my way through. My mother is a train wreck. I have one sister who lives in Pensacola, who used to be a speed addict. My little brother drowned when he was four because I left him alone while I ate cereal and watched TV. We all have different fathers. I don’t know mine, he left before I was born. He was either Brazilian or Dominican because my mother is an idiot who thinks anyone who speaks Spanish is either Cuban or something else. I made myself up, okay?”
Lark shook her head.
“Okay, I’m sorry my mother crashed your party. Lucas is a dick. He wanted to embarrass me. I can get her out of here—”
“You think I’m angry because of your mother? I don’t even know her! You are such an asshole!” Lark turned away. Doe saw her reflection in the glass of the window, a ghost Lark that wavered and threatened to dissolve. “Don’t you realize you just blew it all apart! You were the only good thing in my life and you ruined it!”
“I’m the only good thing in your life? Jesus, Lark! You have everything you want, everything you need. You live in a twenty-million-dollar house!”
“Thirty million.”
“And you just had this job handed to you by your father. You think you got it because of your experience? Because you interviewed well?”
Lark jerked her head away. Doe watched her chest rise and fall.
“You don’t get it, Doe. You don’t get that wealth is a neutral. It doesn’t bestow anything on you except nice stuff and staff and yes, opportunities. You have to look for goodness just like everybody else. It’s not easier or harder. Maybe it’s harder, okay? Maybe we don’t have the tools to really see things, because no one is real with us. But I thought you were real! I thought we were true.” Was Lark drunk? Her voice wobbled, and she scraped a hand hard across her mouth, as if to wipe away a kiss.