Page 64 of We All Live Here
When she falters a response he adds quickly: “Not a big deal. I just enjoyed our chat. We could go for another Diet Coke.”
“Sure!” she says, too brightly. “But I—uh—can’t do this week. Absolutely flat out with work. And, you know, these two…”
He studies her face, then looks away, back down the garden. “Bill’s pretty worked up about this date, huh?”
“He really is.”
Eleanor would no doubt say she should date them both, keep her options open. But what she feels for Gabriel is so consuming that it feels wrong to string Jensen along.
“So what are you doing while the dinner is happening? I hear you’ve all been banished from the premises.”
“Oh, we’re just going to get a pizza.” The way he stands there makes her wonder if he’s half hoping to be invited along, and there is a brief, weighty silence. Finally he looks at his feet. “Well. Better get on with it.” He looks up, as if struck by a thought. “Hey—don’t forget that tree. Idon’t want to load you up with problems but you need to do something about it. I think it’s listing a little more than when I left.”
“Sure,” she says, waiting for him to go. She wishes this didn’t feel so awkward. She smiles, and it feels horrible. Not a real smile at all.
Another elongated pause, and then—after a beat—he nods and heads back into the garden.
•••
Sometimes Lila missesher mother so badly she feels she could become one of those people who sit by gravestones and talk to the dead. If it wasn’t so damp out and if she could be bothered to drive all the way to Golders Green, this would be exactly the kind of day when she would sit among the faded plastic flowers and the engraved marble urns and talk to Francesca. How do I tell someone nice that I’m not really interested without hurting his feelings? How do I know if the man I am interested in is interested in me? How am I meant to cope with all thisstuff, all of the time? Francesca had had a way of looking at you, her gaze intent and direct behind her tortoiseshell-framed glasses, as if she was really absorbing the question, and taking your feelings into account, even if they were probably not the feelings you should be having. And her answers were always wise, filled with compassion and not too prescriptive:Oh, darling, that’s very tough. I know you can find a way through this but if you wanted some advice, I’d suggest…orWhat is your gut telling you, Lila? You’re a terribly smart person. I think you probably know the answer to that one already.
Lila had been able to talk to her about anything. As a teenager, hers was the mother who never judged but who talked to her as if she were an adult, treating the most minor problem as if it was of utmost importance. She would take Lila on drives so that she didn’t face her directly (she told her long afterward she had read that you should discuss things with teenagers while not looking them directly in the eye—“you know,like dogs”) and while she never condemned Gene in front of her, she was always scrupulously honest in how she described her own feelings, admitting to anger or sadness or a sense of abandonment in a way that somehow managed to tread the tricky tightrope between truthfulness and overwhelming Lila with adult emotions she could not yet handle.
There was a period—Lila was fifteen or sixteen—when even Lila’s friends would ask Francesca for advice, sitting in the kitchen with her while she made them tea or handed out homemade muffins, and told them what she would do, and the many ways in which they were all doing wonderfully and were going to be absolutely fine. For a while, Lila had been slightly annoyed by how much her friends wanted to hang out with her mother. But in the trickier years of her marriage she could talk to Francesca about Dan without fearing that, like some mothersin-law, his failings would be totted up and stored away as evidence to be used against him at a later time when Lila inevitably felt more benevolent toward him. She would always preface her responses withWell, you know I adore Dan and always will, followed by careful statements likebut in this case I think he may be being a little unreasonable. I’m sure he’s not doing it deliberately. Why don’t you ask him gently how he would feel if the positions were reversed?She was also, enjoyably, not averse to the occasionalThey can absolutely fuck right offif the situation merited it. With hindsight, she had just seemed better at being human than anyone Lila had ever met. She had been not just an ally but someone whose advice always seemed so firmly rooted in what was right, or appropriate, that Lila had felt she had a permanent hotline to good sense. Until, thanks to a number 38 bus and an unseasonably rainy day, she didn’t.
Some days, it feels impossible, just impossible, that she isn’t here anymore.
But Bill has a date with someone else, and she needs to sort out her own problems. Lila peels off her rubber gloves and heads upstairs to get ready.
•••
There are pizzas,Gene is saying, and then there are pizzas. Sure, these are fine, but forrealpizza the girls need to try Antonio Gatti’s place in downtown LA. “I mean, the guy comes from a long line of pizza-makers from Sicily. His father made pizzas, his grandfather made pizzas…They have a whole bunch of black-and-white photographs on the wall of the men of the family. The interior is nothing—you’d walk straight past it out on the sidewalk. It’s no fancy-pants kind of joint. But he does something to the base so it’s as light as a feather, you know what I’m saying? And the mozzarella…my God…”
Gene has been talking about the superiority of American pizzas for almost twenty minutes, and Lila is watching the girls and marveling at how patient they are. No phones or electronic devices are allowed at dinner time—a rule that extends to restaurants—but right now he has been going on for so long that she almost wants to offer them her own as an escape route.
Gene folds a slice and feeds it into his mouth. “I gotta say, though, I’m liking this spicy salami with the chili. Got a kick to it, doesn’t it? What you got there, Violet?”
“Ham,” Violet says, her mouth full.
“What kind of ham?”
“Ham ham.”
Lila watches Celie quietly and industriously demolishing a vegetarian pizza, pausing occasionally to push her hair behind her ears. It’s good to see her with an appetite.
“How’d it go today, honey?” Gene is talking to her.
Celie’s eyes flash toward Lila and then back at Gene.
“How did what go today?” Lila says.
“It went fine,” Celie says, cutting a piece of pizza with a knife and fork.
“Did you kill, though? Did you actually…destroy?”
She allows herself a small smile. “I destroyed,” she says, and Gene explodes at the table.
“I knew it! I knew you could do it! Give me a high-five!” He swings his meaty palm across the table and, to Lila’s surprise, Celie’s hand rises to meet it with a resounding clap. “There’s no stopping you now, sweetheart. You got to listen to your old pal Gene. I got it all in here.” He taps the side of his head, leaving a smudge of tomato sauce on his temple.
