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A few minutes later, Colleen comes back by herself. I ask, “Where’s my mom?”

Colleen points. “Waiting for us in the men’s section.”

“What’s she doing —?”

“She’s really sorry about what happened twelve years ago. She’s kind of ashamed of herself and hopes that you’ll just forgive her and be patient with her.”

“She actually said that?”

Colleen squirms a little. “Not in so many words.”

“What exact words did she say?”

“Um, that there are some sale items you might be interested in. But you just have to read between the lines.”

“And that’s what you were doing in the bathroom? Reading between the lines?”

“She loves you, Ben. She’s just . . . I don’t know. Shell-shocked or something.” Colleen tugs at me. “Now, c’mon. She wants to buy you a T-shirt. It’s important to her.”

“Is she ever coming to dinner?”

“Next week. If she can.”

“BENJAMIN?”

“I’m ready, Grandma.”

“It’s seven.”

“We’re just going across the street.”

Grandma has always been super-prompt, and while I’m on my way to the door, where she’s waiting, I wonder if it’s because she took me to so many appointments when I was little. Endless doctors’ appointments and physical therapy appointments. What in the world would I have done without her?

She’s holding the door open, but I let her go first. When I’m right beside her, I put my arm through hers.

“I’m perfectly steady on my feet, Benjamin.”

“It’s not that. I just like you.”

“Well, of all the things to say.”

But she doesn’t pull away.

It’s dusk or evening or not-quite-night or one of those. It’s usually really clear in Los Angeles. But it’s hazy tonight, and that reflects headlights and streetlights and millions of TVs.

I know the stars are up there, though. Right now we’re studying constellations. In English, no less. We have to memorize a whole list of them — not just the marquee ones, like the Big Dipper or Orion, but Canis Major and Boötes the Herdsman, too. And then we write about them.

They’ve all got stories. Myths about how they got to be who they are and where they are. Some of the kids in my class are really creative. They make up new constellations like Redbrick Silo or Korean Grocer, then tell how they got their names. Which gods they cheesed off or, maybe, were kind to when they came down here in disguise, which is what the gods like to do.

We’ll make a little constellation tonight — Colleen and me, Marcie and Grandma and my mother. A constellation that’s too unstable to have a name yet. I don’t ring Marcie’s doorbell with trepidation, exactly, but I do wonder how this evening is going to play out.

Grandma whispers, “I enjoy seeing Colleen working in the yard.”

“She’s clerking at that natural-foods market on Arroyo.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but you make an interesting couple.”

“Wow, I never thought you’d say that, either.”

Almost every night now, Colleen and I watch a movie together. Except she’s in her room at Marcie’s and I’m in my room across the street. Sometimes we don’t say ten words for an hour and a half. But we know the other person is there. I hear a little
clink
when her glass touches a saucer. I hear the toilet flush and then the rustle of covers when she settles down in bed again. Every now and then she’ll say, “Ben?” and I say, “I’m right here.” In a weird way it’s more — and I guess the word I want is
intimate
— it’s more intimate than anything Colleen and I do. And I mean anything.

Just then Colleen opens the door. She’s in a tangerine-colored crewneck, blue pants (but not jeans), and old Doc Martens with the laces undone.

I tell her, “No mother yet.”

“Give her time.” She looks me up and down. “You are too cute in that shirt.”

But Colleen keeps the PDAs to a minimum around my grandmother, and maybe that explains the long-sleeved sweater: if there’s a tattoo in the forest and nobody sees it, is it really there?

“C’mon in, you guys,” she says.

There’s a drop cloth crumpled up at the foot of one wall, some spackle, and two or three cans of paint. One of the first things Marcie told me when we got to be friends was that she was almost always discontented. I remember we were talking about the camera she was going to loan me so I could make
High School Confidential,
and she just said it. How restless she was. I liked her right away.

Marcie comes charging out of the kitchen. Big smile. Arms open. She likes to wear caftans, and tonight’s is green with a bamboo print. She hugs everybody. Even Colleen, who she saw about two minutes ago. Marcie is just that way.

“Sit down,” she says.

I hold Grandma’s chair like a good boy. Colleen watches and then says, “Unfuckingbelievable.”

“No one ever did that for you?” Grandma asks.

“Get serious. My mother threw a chair at me once.”

I’m around the table before Colleen can say anything else. I pull the chair out a little and wait. Colleen just stares at it, then sits down carefully.

“So weird,” she says.

Marcie arrives then, putting a big wooden bowl in the middle of the table. Marcie’s a good cook. I can see avocado and tomato, two kinds of lettuce, and arugula. And candied walnuts on the side.

“Mrs. B.,” Marcie says, “I’ve got some chardonnay.”

“If you’re having some.”

Marcie shakes her head. “I’ve been going to AA again.”

That makes me look up from coveting all the walnuts.

She says, “I convinced myself I could have a drink or two. A spritzer after I’ve been working in the garden. A nice cabernet with dinner. Then two or three days ago, I’m at the store and I pick up a bottle of gin. I love gin. A couple of martinis, and there they are again — songs from the underworld.”

Colleen says, “You’re doing good.”

Her hand lands on Colleen’s tufty hair like a blessing. “And so are you.” Then she turns away. “Be right back with the entrée.”

Grandma asks, “So you two struggle together?”

“Oh, yeah,” Colleen answers. “When I say she’s doing good, I just mean that it’s after seven but she’s not drunk and I’m not loaded.”

Grandma looks around. “And how does your mother feel about this arrangement?”

“She knows I’m somewhere with a roof over my head, but I’d never tell her where. Marcie’s got nice stuff, and I don’t want somebody coming in and cleaning her out.”

“Someone your mother knows would do that?”

“When I was little, she’d come home from work, take a bottle of wine into the bathroom, and sit in the tub with bubbles up to her chin. She’d put a razor blade on the edge of the bathtub, and she’d call me in and say, ‘If I used this, you wouldn’t know what to do, would you?’ At first it made me cry, and I’d beg her not to kill herself. And then, when I was about twelve, one night I yelled at her and told her to go ahead and do it. I was sick of her, anyway, and I’d be okay on my own. Then I went and stayed with one of my girlfriends from school.”

“She didn’t ask where you were?”

“Now or then?”

“Either.”

Colleen shakes her head. “My mom’s kind of crazy, but different from Ben’s mom, who’s just out of it. Delia’s like somebody who’s been in a car wreck; my mom is like the person who hit her and then drove off like it didn’t happen.” Then she stands up. “Sit tight. I’m going to go help Marcie.”

Grandma waits till the door swings shut behind Colleen before she says, “I’ve never heard anyone talk so blithely about such tragic circumstances.” She takes a small bite of salad, then says, “Except doctors, maybe. I’ve been at fund-raisers where physicians come back from Ghana or Peru and tell the most horrible stories in such a matter-of-fact tone.”

Colleen walks in with a roasted chicken on a platter. She waits while I move the salad bowl and a few other things. She takes a huge knife and an oversize fork and goes to work carving.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” I ask.

“The butcher at work likes me. He’s tall and handsome, goes to the gym, works with Greenpeace in the summer, and rescued this baby seal that he’s taught to talk. But don’t be jealous, Ben. You’ve got a better camera.”

Colleen’s a real chatterbox tonight, and I wonder if that means anything about her equilibrium. I hope not. It’s probably just a lot of Pepsi, anyway. A little of anything is never enough for Colleen.

“We’re not going to wait for my mom?” I ask. “This dinner’s kind of for her.”

“She said not to,” Colleen informs us.

“You talked to her?”

“Sure. I gave her my number when you and I were out there last week.”

“How come she talks to you and not to me?”

“She doesn’t know what to say to you,” my grandma says.

I just look at her.

Colleen nods. “That’s right.”

Marcie holds out her plate for a drumstick but looks at me as she says, “Let’s talk about something else for a minute. I’ve been prowling the Net for you, Ben. There’s a ten-day film workshop this summer in Aspen. You should go.” She looks at my grandmother. “He should go, Esther.”

Esther.
I know that’s my grandmother’s name, but I almost never hear anybody use it. Marcie usually calls her Mrs. B. And to everybody else she’s Mrs. Bancroft. Colleen calls her Granny, but not to her face.

“Didn’t we see an Esther in one of those old movies you make me watch?” Colleen asks. “Always in a swimsuit.”

“Sure, Esther Williams.
Bathing Beauty.
Almost outgrossed
Gone with the Wind.
”

Grandma straightens her shoulders. “My girlfriends thought I was just as pretty as Esther Williams, and I could swim, too.”

“Get out of town,” Colleen says.

“Why is that so unbelievable?” Grandma stands up and puts her napkin on the chair. Where it belongs. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

And out the door she goes.

“Is she mad?” Colleen asks.

“She doesn’t sound mad.”

I look at Marcie, who just shakes her head and says, “I always figured she was born in cashmere separates and only got out of them to bathe.”

“Well, while we’re alone,” I say, “how much is that summer thing you were talking about?”

“Who cares? Your grandmother can afford it, and it’s got everything — three films in three weeks, sixteen millimeter or three-chip DV, continuity work, composition, blocking, you name it.”

“You should go,” Colleen says. “Don’t worry about me while you’re off with beautiful, talented girls who share your passion for filmmaking. I’ll just work my minimum-wage job and help the butcher beat his meat.”

“Hey, I’ll go to film school if you’ll go to comedy school. Work on your timing. Get some new material.”

Colleen comes around the table, leans into me, kisses me on the neck, licks my ear. She’s just kidding around, but it still makes my heart beat fast. Partly because it turns me on, but partly because I used to see girls at school do that to their boyfriends, and I thought it’d never happen to me in a million years.

Marcie leans back in her chair. “I was born in this stupid little town with one stoplight and one cop. Whenever he caught high-school kids parked somewhere and making out, all he’d ever say was, ‘Take that somewhere else.’”

“Did you go to high school there?” Colleen asks.

Marcie nods. “They’d bus kids in from the boonies. There were maybe forty in my graduating class. Mostly girls. The boys dropped out and went to work or enlisted. We had a girls’ track team, though. Not that anybody cared. We just ran because we liked it. There weren’t any parents or boyfriends. Two of the girls were gay but didn’t know it, so we more or less protected them.”

“But you knew.”

“Nobody ever said anything.”

Colleen asks, “Who did you protect them from?”

Marcie shrugs. “They were just really happy when we were all in our stupid, baggy gym suits. Then they got married after graduation and were miserable.”

“Not to each other.”

“In Oklahoma? Are you kidding?”

Colleen looks at the door like this conversation will end when Grandma comes back, and she doesn’t want it to.

“But you got out,” she says.

“Oh, yeah. As soon as I could. I wanted to experience life.”

“Like?” Colleen’s eyes are bright and hot.

“Oh, like I had this boyfriend my first year in college. I knew he was coming over, just not when, exactly. So I’d read until he showed up, but I’d be nervous. ‘All het up,’ as my mother used to say. Then I’d hear his car, and I’d put a piece of paper in the book and put it back on the shelf. By that time I’d be on my feet.”

“Were you naked?” Colleen asks.

“Gee, no. He thought I was a nice girl. And, anyway, he liked to tear my clothes off. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I’d buy shirts and blouses from the Goodwill and sometimes just sew the buttons back on.”

“What happened to him?”

“Oh, he was married. My heart was broken.”

I ask, “Did you finish the books?”

Marcie shakes her head. “I still don’t know what happens at the end of
The Great Gatsby.
”

Colleen takes a bite of chicken before she says, “Well, I’m not telling my stories. They’re too sordid.”

“And you’re my story,” I say, “so we all know that one.”

We just sit for a while. Water from one of the little fountains gurgles and drips. The candles flicker, lean hard to the left for a couple of seconds, then straighten up. We grin at each other like something slightly magical just happened.

I think how much I like this: sitting at a table with my friends. Or one friend and my girlfriend and my grandma. Or maybe it’s really my girlfriend and two friends, because ever since the secrets about my mom came out, it’s like Grandma can relax. What would it be like with my mother here? Just thinking about it makes me nervous.

When the front door opens again, I stand up, because that’s what I was taught to do when “a lady” enters the room. Grandma’s carrying a blue plastic bin. I point to the nearest chair, but she says, “No. This will be fine.”

She means one of the tall stools that I’ve sat on and talked to Marcie while she cooked. But it’s a few yards away from the table, and Grandma has her back to us as she takes off the white lid. What’s in there that she might not want us to see? It’s not like her to just be dramatic.