was in bed, some kind of dreamy folk music emanating from Donald’s room and Amy on the back steps locked in a phone call with a friend, arguing over her new veganism – ‘Vegetables are nature’s meat’ – Andrew answered a short hard rapping on the door. Dot heard male voices. Sometimes she hid from unexpected visitors, as though her agoraphobic self had reappeared. She and the kids made it a game, soundlessly gleeful as one extended a smooth leg and nudged the door of the television room so that it swung slowly to a soft close. But now she emerged from the blackened, soaked, foul-smelling kitchen into the hall, apron on, dishcloth and grater in hand. It was Michael’s bulk in the doorway, and Andrew said, ‘Mike’s back. He says his house has been broken into.’
Her brother was sweating, breathing hard, distress on his face.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘Do you have to know everything? Fuck man, this neighbourhood is totally unsafe.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Andrew said. He was shattered from sitting up all night guarding the open back door while they aired the kitchen. Half sleeping with his head on a pillow on the table, a tennis racket propped up next to him where another person would have had a shotgun.
‘Come in,’ said Dot. ‘We had a bit of an accident.’ She wasn’t sure how Michael was going to react. Her older brother sat on the living-room sofa with his elbows on his knees. A crane fly stroked the window with one of its fine, hairlike legs. In a blur it batted across the glass sideways and settled again, resuming its thin lines.
‘They found that guy,’ said Michael, ‘the one that escaped from Mount Eden. I was helping look for him.’
Dorothy picked up Donald’s homework book and held it to her chest.
‘Michael,’ she said, ‘I’ve seen Rena.’
‘Rena.’ It was as though she’d slapped him. Before she could mention the woman’s illness, or the commune, or the inheritance that waited there, her brother lowered his big head to his arms and wept.
15. View
Only twenty-four hours since they’d finally determined to go, Dorothy and Amy found themselves halfway around the world. A different time zone, everything awry, from the row with Andrew about leaving in the first place to the dream-long flight to LA. Ruth’s husband Ben, a wealthy, pigeonish banker, met them at the airport, where they hired a rental and followed him through the haze and tangled freeway, humming with Amy’s buzz at the vast spread of city, Dot’s own ongoing meditation about observing the loss. A month ago her parents had moved across the country to California, to be nearer to Ruth. Two days ago, they had died. The car tipped head first into a shallow ravine; consensus was that Frank had suffered a heart attack while driving, Lee in the passenger seat beside him, neither of them belted in.
People Dot didn’t recognise gathered outside St Mary’s, the modest Episcopal church in her parents’ adopted neighbourhood. She embraced Ruth, whose hair was professionally set. A few rushed introductions while Dot tugged at her formless aeroplane cardigan: Ruth directed them to Frank and Lee’s friends and the second cousins, the other Forrests. ‘But you’ll come back to the house afterwards. There’s an afternoon tea. I’ve had it catered.’
‘Yes. We’ll see you there. Wait, Ruth – where are your girls?’
But Ruth had gone to greet more people, perfect in low heels and tan stockings.
A tall skinny young man, one of the cousins, blatantly appraised Amy through his tortoiseshell specs, worn in the style of Frank Forrest. He was disappointed to learn that she and Dot were not staying on.
‘The return flight leaves tonight,’ Amy explained. ‘We’ll sleep on the plane.’
‘Why not come for longer? I could show you round.’
‘We’ve got to get back. We nearly didn’t come. I didn’t really know my grandparents.’
‘Aha. Tell me more.’
Inside, caught in a patch of sunlight on the left of the aisle, Rena sat away from the other mourners, bolt upright in a special padded seat. ‘You came all this way,’ Dorothy said. ‘My god. You’re amazing.’ Light limned the wiry shock of hair, her skin, hair and bone just held together by her electric will, her rage.
‘Your mother was a dear friend,’ Rena said. ‘A dear, dear friend.’ Her hands twisted.
‘How’s Michael?’
‘He didn’t want to come.’
‘I know.’ After Ruth’s phone call Dot had rung him to break the news. He lived at the commune now, with Rena, ‘Until it’s her time’, as