me or not.”
Casey followed, past a lone sea turtle in a case with a some fake kelp and a couple of lobsters.
“I dig the tortoise, though,” she said, in a clear attempt to curry favor.
“It’s not a tortoise at all. It’s a green sea turtle,” said Susan.
“I was just trying to get your goat,” said Casey. “I do that to T. too. I know what a sea turtle is. I watch the nature shows.”
“Uh-huh,” said Susan.
“But he doesn’t love all animals. He’s mostly interested in the ones that are about to go extinct,” went on Casey.
“Nice,” said Susan.
“The more common they are, the less interested he is.”
They were in the kitchen now, Susan opening the freezer to get a can of lemonade concentrate.
“I didn’t mean to piss you off,” said Casey.
“I know, because you’re trying to get something out of me,” said Susan. “So that would be a tactical error.”
“Listen. For whatever reason, she’s comfortable with you,” said Casey. “She feels safe when you’re around. And face it, I mean, the cousins are assholes, no question. But it’s true this place is enormous. You probably wouldn’t have to even see her that much at all, if you didn’t want to.”
Susan turned and leaned back against the counter, the thin coat of frost on the cardboard tube melting swiftly against her fingertips.
“So because I’m single and live in a big house, all of a sudden I’m in loco parentis to your senile mother-in-law. You think I have no life of my own, right? I’m some kind of convenient middle-aged caregiver?”
“Not caregiver,” said Casey. “That’s why we’d hire someone. More of a hostess. A rich relative offering room and board.”
“Huh,” said Susan. She peeled the white ring from around the lid of the tube and dropped it into the sink.
“It makes sense,” said Casey. “You have to admit.”
“For you it does, sure,” said Susan. “Yes. It works out perfectly for you. Then there’s me. If Angela decides she doesn’t like the woman you hire, she’s my responsibility. And I’m basically up a creek. Like with that nice girl Merced. Angela ran away from her because she didn’t like her footwear. Did I tell you that already? She accused her of wearing shoes a hooker would wear. And then she showed up here in the middle of the night in a taxi that cost me like two hundred dollars. She left her wallet at home. Of course. I mean Jesus. I’m fond of T. and all, but I’m not the one who married him.”
“She won’t show up in the middle of the night, though, because she’ll already be here.”
Susan turned. She was holding up the tube, letting clumps of concentrate drop into the pitcher.
“I think you’re missing my point there, Case.”
Casey just gazed up at her, large-eyed.
“Fucking fine, then,” said Susan finally. “God damn it.”
Casey crowed with delight and threw her arms around Susan’s waist.
•
After Casey left she went out to the backyard and through the trees. The jackhammer guy had left a gray moon of dust on the trampled grass around the manhole cover. She knelt beside the lid, traces of cement still adhering to the grooves, and studied it: no words, only a diamond pattern that reminded her obscurely of pineapples and beehives. Couldn’t she just lift it up? But there was no handhold, no opening.
“Backhoe,” she said to herself.
Certainly it was a fool’s errand. Still, she would make some calls to the city.
Jim rented a U-Haul and drove his few possessions from the house he had shared with his wife in Palos Verdes, which Susan had never seen, to a small dove-gray bungalow in Silver Lake.
She went over the morning he moved in, carrying tall cups of coffee for both of them, and stood on the covered front porch with its square stucco columns. She liked the view out the uncovered wing of the porch, down to the bottom of the hill where the narrow street of cottage-like houses, about as quaint as you got in L.A., gave way to a dirty wide street of businesses and fast traffic. Rows of palms like truffula trees, with blowzy tops and spindly, bending trunks, stood out against the sky.
She liked the house, which was a finer, older version of the one she and Hal had lived in back in Santa Monica. It had more style but some of the same elements: the burnished-looking hardwood floors, the well-carved mantel over the fireplace, dark beams on the ceilings that crossed each other to make