Astrid Magnussen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_oleander) wrote2019-11-01 10:13 am
white_oleander) wrote2019-11-01 10:13 am
California Institution for Women, Chino, California, 1993. [11/01 FT].
It was a gray morning so overcast you couldn’t see the Hollywood Hills from the yard. November First. Astrid's birthday. Claire had talked about doing something for her, a birthday party, something like that, but Astrid didn't have any friends at Fairfax she could invite, and the logistic of inviting her friends from Fandom were too much, how could she really explain to Claire a girl who looked like a cat but didn't see it herself? So instead, Claire, in all her misguided wisdom, thought the best gift she could give Astrid that day, the day she turned sixteen, was her mother.
Claire and Astrid were going to visit Ingrid. Claire had set it all up. She put on a miniskirt, turtleneck, and tights, all in mahogany brown, frowned in the mirror. “Maybe jeans would be better.”
“No denim,” Astrid said.
The idea of this meeting was almost too much to bear.
Happy birthday to me...
Astrid could only lose. Ingrid could hurt Claire. Or she could win Claire over, and Astrid didn’t know which was worse. Claire was hers, someone who loved her. Why did her mother have to get in the middle? But that was Ingrid, she always had to be the center of attention, everything had to be about her.
Astrid hadn’t seen her since last winter break. She looked in the mirror, imagining what Ingrid would think of her now. She'd been through so much since then. She wouldn’t know how to be with her now, she was too big to hide in her silences. And now she had Claire to worry about, too.
Astrid touched her hand to her forehead and told Claire, “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Stage fright,” she said, smoothing the skirt with the palms of her hands. “I’m having a bit myself.”
Astrid had second thoughts about her clothes too, a long skirt and Doc Martens, thick socks, a crocheted sweater with a lace collar from Fred Segal, where all trendy young Hollywood shopped. Ingrid was going to hate it. But she had nothing to change into, all her clothes were like that now.
They drove east for an hour. Claire chatted nervously. She never could stand a silence. Astrid looked out the windows, sucked a peppermint for carsickness, nestled into her thick Irish sweater. Gradually, the suburbs thinned out, replaced by lumberyards and fields, the smell of manure, and long, fog-clad views framed by lines of windbreak eucalyptus. CYA, the men’s prison. It had been almmost a year since she’d last come this way, a very different girl in pink shoes. She even recognized the little market. Coke, 12 pack, $2.49. “Turn here.”
They drove back along the same blacktop road to the CIW, the steam stack and the water tower, the guard tower that marked the edge of the prison. They parked in the visitors lot.
Claire took a deep breath. “This doesn’t look so bad.”
The crows cawed aggressively in the ficus trees. It was surprisingly cold. Astrid pulled her sweater down over her hands. They passed through the guard tower. Claire brought a book for Ingrid, Tender Is the Night. Fitzgerald, Claire’s favorite, but the guards wouldn’t let her bring it in. Astrid's boots set off the metal detector. She had to take them off for the guards to search. The jangle of keys, the slam of the gate, walkie-talkies, these were the sounds of visiting her mother.
They sat at a picnic table under the blue overhang. Astridwatched the gate where Ingrid would come in, but Claire was looking the wrong way, toward Reception, where the new prisoners milled around or pushed brooms —they volunteered to sweep, they were so bored. Most were young, one or two over twenty-five. Their dead-looking faces wished them nothing good.
Claire shivered. She was trying to be brave. “Why are they staring at us like that?”
Astrid opened her hand, examined the lines in the palm, her fate. Life would be hard. “Don’t look at them.”
It was cold, but now Astrid was sweating, waiting for Ingrid. Who knew, maybe they would become friends. Maybe Ingrid wasn’t playing a game, or not too ugly a one. Claire could keep her in postage, and she would be a nice character witness someday.
Astrid saw her mother, waiting while the CO opened the gate. Her hair was long again, forming a pale scarf across the front of her blue dress, down one breast. She hesitated, she was as nervous as Astrid was. So beautiful. She always surprised Astrid with her beauty.
Even when she had just been away for a night, Astrid would see her and catch her breath. She was thinner than the last time she'd seen her, all the excess flesh had been burned away. Her eyes had become even brighter, Astrid could feel them from the gate. She was very upright, muscular, and tan. She looked less like a Lorelei now, more like an assassin from Blade Runner.
She strode up, smiling, but Astrid felt the uncertainty in her hands, stiff on her shoulders. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Astrid was astonished to find that they were the same height. Her eyes were searching within Astrid, trying to find something to recognize. They made Astrid suddenly shy, embarrassed of her fancy clothes, even of Claire. She was ashamed of the idea that she could escape her, even of wanting to. Now she knew her. She hugged her, and held her hand out to Claire.
“Welcome to Valhalla,” she said, shaking Claire’s hand. Astrid tried to imagine how Ingrid must be feeling right then, meeting the woman Astrid had been living with, a woman Astrid liked so much she hadn’t written anything about her. Now Ingrid could see how beautiful she was, how sensitive, the child’s mouth, the heart-shaped face, the delicacy of her neck, her freshly cut hair. Claire smiled with relief that Ingrid had made the first move. She didn’t understand the nature of poisons.
Ingrid sat down next to Astrid, put her hand over hers, but it wasn’t so large anymore. Their hands were growing into the same shape. She saw that too, held her palm to Astrid's. She looked older than the last time Astrid saw her, lines etching into her tanned face, around the eyes and thin mouth. Or maybe it was just in comparison to Claire. She was spare, dense, sharp, steel to Claire’s wax. Astrid prayed to a God she didn’t believe in to please let this be over soon.
“It’s not at all what I thought,” Claire said.
“It doesn’t really exist,” Ingrid said, waving her hand in an elegant gesture. “It’s an illusion.”
“You said that in your poem.” A new poem, in lorn Review. About a woman turning into a bird, the pain of the new feathers coming in. “It was exquisite.”
Astrid winced at her old-fashioned, actressy diction. She could imagine Ingrid mocking her later to her cellblock sisters. But Astrid couldn’t protect Claire now. It was too late. She saw that the perennial hint of irony in the corners of Ingrid’s lips had now been etched into a permanent line, the tattoo of a gesture.
Ingrid crossed her legs, tanned and muscular as carved oak, bare under her blue dress, white sneakers. “My daughter says you’re an actress.” She wore no sweater in the cold grayness of the morning. The fog suited her, Astrid smelled the sea on her, although they were a hundred miles from any ocean.
Claire twisted her wedding ring, it was loose on her thin fingers. “To tell you the truth, my career’s a disaster. I botched my last job so badly, I'll probably never work again.”
Why did she always have to tell the truth? Astrid should have told her, certain people should always be lied to.
Ingrid instinctively felt for the crack in Claire’s personal history, like a rock climber in fog sensing fingerholds in a cliff face. “Nerves?” she said kindly.
Claire leaned closer to Ingrid, eager to share confidences. “It was a nightmare,” she said, and began to describe the awful day. Overhead the clouds roiled and clotted, like dysentery, and Astrid felt sick. Claire was afraid of so many things, she only wIngrid’s smile, so kind¬ looking. There’s a riptide here, Claire. Lifeguards have had to rescue stronger swimmers than you.
“They treat actors so badly,” Ingrid said.
“I’ve had it.” Claire slid her garnet heart pendant along its chain, tucked it under her lip. “No more. Dragging myself to auditions, just to have them look at me for two seconds and decide I’m too ethnic for orange juice, too classic for TV moms.”
Ingrid’s profile sharp against the chinchilla sky. Astrid could have drawn a straight line using the edge of her nose. “What are you, all of thirty?”
“Thirty-five next month.” The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She would be the witness from hell. She couldn’t resist the urge to lie down and bare her breast to the lance. “That’s why Astrid and I get along. Scorpio and Pisces understand one another.” She winked at Astrid across the table.
Ingrid didn’t like that they understood each other, Claire and Astrid. Astrid could tell by the way Ingrid was pulling her hair. The crows cawed and flapped their dull, glossy wings. But Ingrid smiled at Claire. “Astrid and I never understood each other. Aquarius and Scorpio. She’s so secretive, haven’t you found that? I never knew what she was thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Astrid said.
“She opens up,” Claire said cheerfully. “We talk all the time. I had her chart done. It’s very well balanced. Her name is lucky too.” The ease with which Claire knelt at the block, stretched her neck out, still chattering away.
“She hasn’t been very lucky so far,” Ingrid said, almost purring. “But maybe her luck is changing.” Couldn’t Claire smell the oleanders cooking down, the slight bitter edge of the toxin?
“We just adore her,” Claire said, and for a moment Astrid saw her as Ingrid saw her. Actressy, naive, ridiculous.
No, she wanted to say, stop, don’t judge her based on this. She doesn’t audition well. You don’t know her at all.
Claire just kept talking, unaware of what was going on. “She’s doing wonderfully well, she’s on the honor roll this year. We’re trying to keep that old grade point average up.” She made a half-circle gesture with her fist, a Girl Scout gesture, hearty and optimistic. The old grade point average. Astrid was mortified and she didn’t want to be. When would Ingrid have worked with her, hour after hour, to raise the old grade point average? She wanted to wrap Claire in a blanket the way you do with someone who’s on fire, and roll her in the grass to save her.
Ingrid leaned toward Claire, her blue eyes snapping like blue fire. “Put a pyramid over her desk. They say it improves memory,” she said with a straight face.
“My memory’s fine,” Astrid said.
But Claire was intrigued. Already Ingrid had found a weak spot, and Astrid was sure she would soon find more. And Claire didn’t realize for a moment that Ingrid was jerking her chain. Such innocence. “A pyramid. I hadn’t thought of that. I practice feng shui, though. You know, where you put the furniture and all.” Claire beamed, thinking Ingrid was a kindred soul, rearranging the furniture for good energy, talking to house-plants.
Astrid wanted to change the conversation before Claire started talking about Mrs. Kromach and the mirrors on the roof. She wished she’d glued a mirror right to her forehead. “We live right near the big photo labs on La Brea,” Astrid interjected. “Off Willoughby.”
Ingrid continued as if her daughter hadn’t spoken. “And your husband is even in the business. The paranormal, I mean.” Those ironic commas in the corners of her mouth. “You’ve got the inside scoop.” She stretched her arms over her head, Astrid could imagine the little pops up and down her spine. “You should tell him, his show is very popular in here.”
Ingrid rested her arm on Astrid's shoulder. She discreetly shrugged it off. She might have to be her audience, but she wasn’t her coconspirator.
Claire didn’t even notice. She giggled, zipping her garnet heart on its thin chain. She reminded Astrid of the tarot card where the boy is looking up at the sun as he is about to walk off a cliff. “Actually, he thinks it’s just a big joke. He doesn’t believe in the supernatural.”
“You’d think that would be dangerous in his line of work.” Ingrid tapped on the orange plastic of the picnic table. Astrid could see her mind winding out, leaping ahead. She wanted to throw something in there, stop the machine.
“I told him just that,” Claire said, leaning forward, dark eyes shining. “They had a ghost that almost killed someone this fall.” Then she stopped, unsure, thinking she’d made a gaffe, talking about murder in front of Ingrid Magnussen. Astrid could read her skin like a newspaper.
“You don’t worry about him?”
Claire was grateful that Ingrid had let her little faux pas gently slide by. She didn’t see, Ingrid had hold of what she really wanted. “Oh, Ingrid, if you only knew. I don’t think people should fool around with things they don’t believe in. Ghosts are real, even if you don’t believe in them.”
Oh, they knew about ghosts, Astrid and her mother. They take their revenge. But rather than admit that, Ingrid quoted Shakespeare. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Claire clapped her hands in delight, that someone else had quoted the Bard for a change. Ron’s friends always missed her references.
Ingrid flicked her long hair back, draped her arm around Astrid again. “It’s like not believing in electricity just because you can’t see it.” Her bright blue assassin’s eyes smiled at Claire. Astrid knew what she was thinking. Can’t you see what an idiot this woman is, Astrid? How could you prefer her to me?
“Absolutely,” Claire said.
“I don’t believe in electricity, either,” Astrid said. “Or Hamlet. He’s just a construct. A figment of some writer’s imagination.”
Ingrid ignored her. “Does he have to travel a good deal, your husband? What’s his name again? Ron?” She wrapped a strand of Astrid's hair around her little finger, keeping her in check.
“He’s always gone,” Claire admitted. “He wasn’t even home for Christmas.” She was playing with that garnet heart again, sliding it up and down the chain.
“It must be lonely for you,” Ingrid said. Sadly. So sympathetic. Astrid wished she could get up and run away, but she would never leave Claire here alone with her mother.
“It used to be,” Claire said. “But now I have Astrid.”
“Such a wonderful girl.” Ingrid stroked the side of Astrid's with her work-roughened finger, deliberately scraping the skin. Astrid, the traitor. She had betrayed her master. Ingrid knew why’d kept Claire in the background. Because Astrid loved her, and she loved Astrid. Because she had the family she should have had all this time, the family Ingrid never thought was important, could never give her daughter. “Astrid, do you mind letting us talk for a moment alone? Some grown-up things.”
Astrid looked from her real mother to her foster mother. Claire smiled. “Go ahead. Just for a minute.” Like she was a kid who had to be encouraged to get into the sandbox. Claire didn’t know how long a minute could be, what might happen in a minute.
Astridvgot up reluctantly and went over to the fence closest to the road, ran her fingertips over the bark of a tree. Overhead, a crow stared down at her with its soulless gaze, squawked in a voice that was almost human, as if it was trying to tell her something. “Piss off,” she said.
She was getting as bad as Claire, listening to birds.
Astrid watched them, leaning toward each other over the table. Ingrid tanned and towheaded, in blue, Claire pale and dark, in brown. It was surreal, them there together, at an orange picnic table at Frontera. Like a dream where Astrid was naked and standing in line at the student store.
She just forgot to get dressed. She was dreaming this, she told myself, and she could wake up.
Claire pressed her palm to her forehead, like she was taking her temperature. Ingrid took Claire’s other thin hand between her large ones. Ingrid was talking without stopping, low, reasonable, Astrid had seen her hypnotize a cat this way. Claire was upset. What was she telling her? Astrid didn’t care what her mother’s game was. Her time was up. They were leaving, she was staying. She couldn’t screw this up for Astrid, no matter what she said.
They both looked up as Astrid rejoined them. Ingrid glared at her, then veiled it with a smile, patted Claire’s hand. “You just remember what I told you.”
Claire said nothing. Serious now. All her giggles had vanished, her pleasure at finding another person who quoted Shakespeare. She stood up, pale fingernails propped on the table-top. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she said.
Ingrid and Astrid watched her go, her long legs in their matte brown, the quietness of her movements. Ingrid had taken all the electricity away, the liveliness, the charm. She scooped her out, the way the Chinese used to cut open the skull of a living monkey and eat its brains with a spoon.
“What did you tell her?”
Ingrid leaned back on the bench, folding her arms behind her head. Yawned luxuriously, like a cat. “I hear she’s having trouble with her husband.” She smiled, sensually, rubbing the blond down on her forearms. “It’s not you, is it? I know you have an attraction to older men.”
“No, it’s not me.” She couldn’t play with me the way she played with Claire. “You stay out of it.”
Astrid never dared speak to her that way before. If she were not stuck here at Frontera, Astrid would never have had the nerve. But she would be leaving and Ingrid would be staying, and in that fact there was a strength Astrid would never have found if she were out.
She could see it startled her mother to be opposed. It angered her that Astrid felt she could, but she was controlled, Astrid could see her switch gears. She gave her a smile of slow irony. “Your mommy just wants to help, precious,” she said, licking her words like a cat lapping cream. “I have to do what I can for my new friend.”
They both watched Claire out past the cyclone fencing, as she walked to the Saab, distracted. She bumped into the fender of a station wagon. “Just leave her alone.”
“Oh, but it’s fun,” Ingrid said, bored with the pretense. She always preferred to bring her daughter behind the
scenes. “Easy, but fun. Like drowning kittens. And in my current situation, I have to take my fun where I can. What I want to know is, how could you stand to live with Poor Claire? Did you know there was an entire order, the Poor Claires? I would imagine it’s a terrible bore. Keeping up the old grade point average and whatnot. Pathetic.”
“She’s a genuinely nice person,” Astrid said, turning away from her. “You wouldn’t know about that.”
Ingrid snorted. “God forbid, the nice disease. I would have thought you’d outgrown fairytales.”
Astrid kept her back to her. “Don’t screw it up for me.”
“Who, me?” Ingrid was laughing at her. “What could I do? I’m a poor prisoner. A little bird with a broken wing.”
Astrid turned around. “You don’t know what it’s been like.” She bent over her mother, one knee on the bench beside her. “If you love me, you’ll help me.”
She smiled, slow and treacherous. “Help you, darling? I’d rather see you in the worst kind of foster hell than with a woman like that.” She reached up to push a lock of hair away from Astrid's face, and she jerked away. She grabbed her wrist, forcing Astrid to look at her. Now she was dead serious. What was under the games was pure will. Astrid was too terrified to struggle. “What are you going to learn from a woman like that?” she said. “How to pine artistically? Twenty-seven names for tears?” A guard made a motion toward them, and she quickly dropped her wrist.
Ingrid stood and kissed Astrid on the cheek, embraced her lightly. They were the same height but Astrid could feel how strong she was, she was like the cables that held up bridges. She hissed in her ear, “All I can say is, keep your bags packed.”
****
Claire stared out at the road. A tear slipped from her overfilled eyes. Twenty-seven names for tears. But no, that wasn’t Astrid's thought. She refused to be brainwashed. This was Claire. Astrid put her hand on her shoulder as she made the turn onto the rural highway. She smiled and patted it with her small, cold one. “I think I did well with your mom, don’t you?”
“You did,” Astrid told her, gazing out the window so she wouldn’t have to lie to her face. “She really liked you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and Astrid brushed it away with the back of her hand. “What did she say to you?”
Claire shook her head, sighed. She started the windshield wipers, though it was only a mist, turned them off when they started squeaking on the dry glass. “She said I was right about Ron. That he was having an affair. I knew it anyway. She just confirmed it.”
“How would she know,” Astrid said angrily. “For God’s sake, Claire, she just met you.”
“All the signs are there.” She sniffled, wiped her nose on her hand. “I just didn’t want to see them.” But then she smiled. “Don’t concern yourself. We’ll work it out. It's your birthday, anyway. Let's go get you something nice.”
It was too late for that now, and Astrid realized, staring out the window at the scenery flying by, that Ingrid hadn't even mentioned her birthday once.
[[ and, lo, one of my favorite scenes from White Oleander by Janet Fitch, and a pivotal moment for the rest of this arc. Modified slightly for Fandomness and quirking the timeline, NFB, but open for contact! ]]
Claire and Astrid were going to visit Ingrid. Claire had set it all up. She put on a miniskirt, turtleneck, and tights, all in mahogany brown, frowned in the mirror. “Maybe jeans would be better.”
“No denim,” Astrid said.
The idea of this meeting was almost too much to bear.
Happy birthday to me...
Astrid could only lose. Ingrid could hurt Claire. Or she could win Claire over, and Astrid didn’t know which was worse. Claire was hers, someone who loved her. Why did her mother have to get in the middle? But that was Ingrid, she always had to be the center of attention, everything had to be about her.
Astrid hadn’t seen her since last winter break. She looked in the mirror, imagining what Ingrid would think of her now. She'd been through so much since then. She wouldn’t know how to be with her now, she was too big to hide in her silences. And now she had Claire to worry about, too.
Astrid touched her hand to her forehead and told Claire, “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Stage fright,” she said, smoothing the skirt with the palms of her hands. “I’m having a bit myself.”
Astrid had second thoughts about her clothes too, a long skirt and Doc Martens, thick socks, a crocheted sweater with a lace collar from Fred Segal, where all trendy young Hollywood shopped. Ingrid was going to hate it. But she had nothing to change into, all her clothes were like that now.
They drove east for an hour. Claire chatted nervously. She never could stand a silence. Astrid looked out the windows, sucked a peppermint for carsickness, nestled into her thick Irish sweater. Gradually, the suburbs thinned out, replaced by lumberyards and fields, the smell of manure, and long, fog-clad views framed by lines of windbreak eucalyptus. CYA, the men’s prison. It had been almmost a year since she’d last come this way, a very different girl in pink shoes. She even recognized the little market. Coke, 12 pack, $2.49. “Turn here.”
They drove back along the same blacktop road to the CIW, the steam stack and the water tower, the guard tower that marked the edge of the prison. They parked in the visitors lot.
Claire took a deep breath. “This doesn’t look so bad.”
The crows cawed aggressively in the ficus trees. It was surprisingly cold. Astrid pulled her sweater down over her hands. They passed through the guard tower. Claire brought a book for Ingrid, Tender Is the Night. Fitzgerald, Claire’s favorite, but the guards wouldn’t let her bring it in. Astrid's boots set off the metal detector. She had to take them off for the guards to search. The jangle of keys, the slam of the gate, walkie-talkies, these were the sounds of visiting her mother.
They sat at a picnic table under the blue overhang. Astridwatched the gate where Ingrid would come in, but Claire was looking the wrong way, toward Reception, where the new prisoners milled around or pushed brooms —they volunteered to sweep, they were so bored. Most were young, one or two over twenty-five. Their dead-looking faces wished them nothing good.
Claire shivered. She was trying to be brave. “Why are they staring at us like that?”
Astrid opened her hand, examined the lines in the palm, her fate. Life would be hard. “Don’t look at them.”
It was cold, but now Astrid was sweating, waiting for Ingrid. Who knew, maybe they would become friends. Maybe Ingrid wasn’t playing a game, or not too ugly a one. Claire could keep her in postage, and she would be a nice character witness someday.
Astrid saw her mother, waiting while the CO opened the gate. Her hair was long again, forming a pale scarf across the front of her blue dress, down one breast. She hesitated, she was as nervous as Astrid was. So beautiful. She always surprised Astrid with her beauty.
Even when she had just been away for a night, Astrid would see her and catch her breath. She was thinner than the last time she'd seen her, all the excess flesh had been burned away. Her eyes had become even brighter, Astrid could feel them from the gate. She was very upright, muscular, and tan. She looked less like a Lorelei now, more like an assassin from Blade Runner.
She strode up, smiling, but Astrid felt the uncertainty in her hands, stiff on her shoulders. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Astrid was astonished to find that they were the same height. Her eyes were searching within Astrid, trying to find something to recognize. They made Astrid suddenly shy, embarrassed of her fancy clothes, even of Claire. She was ashamed of the idea that she could escape her, even of wanting to. Now she knew her. She hugged her, and held her hand out to Claire.
“Welcome to Valhalla,” she said, shaking Claire’s hand. Astrid tried to imagine how Ingrid must be feeling right then, meeting the woman Astrid had been living with, a woman Astrid liked so much she hadn’t written anything about her. Now Ingrid could see how beautiful she was, how sensitive, the child’s mouth, the heart-shaped face, the delicacy of her neck, her freshly cut hair. Claire smiled with relief that Ingrid had made the first move. She didn’t understand the nature of poisons.
Ingrid sat down next to Astrid, put her hand over hers, but it wasn’t so large anymore. Their hands were growing into the same shape. She saw that too, held her palm to Astrid's. She looked older than the last time Astrid saw her, lines etching into her tanned face, around the eyes and thin mouth. Or maybe it was just in comparison to Claire. She was spare, dense, sharp, steel to Claire’s wax. Astrid prayed to a God she didn’t believe in to please let this be over soon.
“It’s not at all what I thought,” Claire said.
“It doesn’t really exist,” Ingrid said, waving her hand in an elegant gesture. “It’s an illusion.”
“You said that in your poem.” A new poem, in lorn Review. About a woman turning into a bird, the pain of the new feathers coming in. “It was exquisite.”
Astrid winced at her old-fashioned, actressy diction. She could imagine Ingrid mocking her later to her cellblock sisters. But Astrid couldn’t protect Claire now. It was too late. She saw that the perennial hint of irony in the corners of Ingrid’s lips had now been etched into a permanent line, the tattoo of a gesture.
Ingrid crossed her legs, tanned and muscular as carved oak, bare under her blue dress, white sneakers. “My daughter says you’re an actress.” She wore no sweater in the cold grayness of the morning. The fog suited her, Astrid smelled the sea on her, although they were a hundred miles from any ocean.
Claire twisted her wedding ring, it was loose on her thin fingers. “To tell you the truth, my career’s a disaster. I botched my last job so badly, I'll probably never work again.”
Why did she always have to tell the truth? Astrid should have told her, certain people should always be lied to.
Ingrid instinctively felt for the crack in Claire’s personal history, like a rock climber in fog sensing fingerholds in a cliff face. “Nerves?” she said kindly.
Claire leaned closer to Ingrid, eager to share confidences. “It was a nightmare,” she said, and began to describe the awful day. Overhead the clouds roiled and clotted, like dysentery, and Astrid felt sick. Claire was afraid of so many things, she only wIngrid’s smile, so kind¬ looking. There’s a riptide here, Claire. Lifeguards have had to rescue stronger swimmers than you.
“They treat actors so badly,” Ingrid said.
“I’ve had it.” Claire slid her garnet heart pendant along its chain, tucked it under her lip. “No more. Dragging myself to auditions, just to have them look at me for two seconds and decide I’m too ethnic for orange juice, too classic for TV moms.”
Ingrid’s profile sharp against the chinchilla sky. Astrid could have drawn a straight line using the edge of her nose. “What are you, all of thirty?”
“Thirty-five next month.” The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She would be the witness from hell. She couldn’t resist the urge to lie down and bare her breast to the lance. “That’s why Astrid and I get along. Scorpio and Pisces understand one another.” She winked at Astrid across the table.
Ingrid didn’t like that they understood each other, Claire and Astrid. Astrid could tell by the way Ingrid was pulling her hair. The crows cawed and flapped their dull, glossy wings. But Ingrid smiled at Claire. “Astrid and I never understood each other. Aquarius and Scorpio. She’s so secretive, haven’t you found that? I never knew what she was thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Astrid said.
“She opens up,” Claire said cheerfully. “We talk all the time. I had her chart done. It’s very well balanced. Her name is lucky too.” The ease with which Claire knelt at the block, stretched her neck out, still chattering away.
“She hasn’t been very lucky so far,” Ingrid said, almost purring. “But maybe her luck is changing.” Couldn’t Claire smell the oleanders cooking down, the slight bitter edge of the toxin?
“We just adore her,” Claire said, and for a moment Astrid saw her as Ingrid saw her. Actressy, naive, ridiculous.
No, she wanted to say, stop, don’t judge her based on this. She doesn’t audition well. You don’t know her at all.
Claire just kept talking, unaware of what was going on. “She’s doing wonderfully well, she’s on the honor roll this year. We’re trying to keep that old grade point average up.” She made a half-circle gesture with her fist, a Girl Scout gesture, hearty and optimistic. The old grade point average. Astrid was mortified and she didn’t want to be. When would Ingrid have worked with her, hour after hour, to raise the old grade point average? She wanted to wrap Claire in a blanket the way you do with someone who’s on fire, and roll her in the grass to save her.
Ingrid leaned toward Claire, her blue eyes snapping like blue fire. “Put a pyramid over her desk. They say it improves memory,” she said with a straight face.
“My memory’s fine,” Astrid said.
But Claire was intrigued. Already Ingrid had found a weak spot, and Astrid was sure she would soon find more. And Claire didn’t realize for a moment that Ingrid was jerking her chain. Such innocence. “A pyramid. I hadn’t thought of that. I practice feng shui, though. You know, where you put the furniture and all.” Claire beamed, thinking Ingrid was a kindred soul, rearranging the furniture for good energy, talking to house-plants.
Astrid wanted to change the conversation before Claire started talking about Mrs. Kromach and the mirrors on the roof. She wished she’d glued a mirror right to her forehead. “We live right near the big photo labs on La Brea,” Astrid interjected. “Off Willoughby.”
Ingrid continued as if her daughter hadn’t spoken. “And your husband is even in the business. The paranormal, I mean.” Those ironic commas in the corners of her mouth. “You’ve got the inside scoop.” She stretched her arms over her head, Astrid could imagine the little pops up and down her spine. “You should tell him, his show is very popular in here.”
Ingrid rested her arm on Astrid's shoulder. She discreetly shrugged it off. She might have to be her audience, but she wasn’t her coconspirator.
Claire didn’t even notice. She giggled, zipping her garnet heart on its thin chain. She reminded Astrid of the tarot card where the boy is looking up at the sun as he is about to walk off a cliff. “Actually, he thinks it’s just a big joke. He doesn’t believe in the supernatural.”
“You’d think that would be dangerous in his line of work.” Ingrid tapped on the orange plastic of the picnic table. Astrid could see her mind winding out, leaping ahead. She wanted to throw something in there, stop the machine.
“I told him just that,” Claire said, leaning forward, dark eyes shining. “They had a ghost that almost killed someone this fall.” Then she stopped, unsure, thinking she’d made a gaffe, talking about murder in front of Ingrid Magnussen. Astrid could read her skin like a newspaper.
“You don’t worry about him?”
Claire was grateful that Ingrid had let her little faux pas gently slide by. She didn’t see, Ingrid had hold of what she really wanted. “Oh, Ingrid, if you only knew. I don’t think people should fool around with things they don’t believe in. Ghosts are real, even if you don’t believe in them.”
Oh, they knew about ghosts, Astrid and her mother. They take their revenge. But rather than admit that, Ingrid quoted Shakespeare. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Claire clapped her hands in delight, that someone else had quoted the Bard for a change. Ron’s friends always missed her references.
Ingrid flicked her long hair back, draped her arm around Astrid again. “It’s like not believing in electricity just because you can’t see it.” Her bright blue assassin’s eyes smiled at Claire. Astrid knew what she was thinking. Can’t you see what an idiot this woman is, Astrid? How could you prefer her to me?
“Absolutely,” Claire said.
“I don’t believe in electricity, either,” Astrid said. “Or Hamlet. He’s just a construct. A figment of some writer’s imagination.”
Ingrid ignored her. “Does he have to travel a good deal, your husband? What’s his name again? Ron?” She wrapped a strand of Astrid's hair around her little finger, keeping her in check.
“He’s always gone,” Claire admitted. “He wasn’t even home for Christmas.” She was playing with that garnet heart again, sliding it up and down the chain.
“It must be lonely for you,” Ingrid said. Sadly. So sympathetic. Astrid wished she could get up and run away, but she would never leave Claire here alone with her mother.
“It used to be,” Claire said. “But now I have Astrid.”
“Such a wonderful girl.” Ingrid stroked the side of Astrid's with her work-roughened finger, deliberately scraping the skin. Astrid, the traitor. She had betrayed her master. Ingrid knew why’d kept Claire in the background. Because Astrid loved her, and she loved Astrid. Because she had the family she should have had all this time, the family Ingrid never thought was important, could never give her daughter. “Astrid, do you mind letting us talk for a moment alone? Some grown-up things.”
Astrid looked from her real mother to her foster mother. Claire smiled. “Go ahead. Just for a minute.” Like she was a kid who had to be encouraged to get into the sandbox. Claire didn’t know how long a minute could be, what might happen in a minute.
Astridvgot up reluctantly and went over to the fence closest to the road, ran her fingertips over the bark of a tree. Overhead, a crow stared down at her with its soulless gaze, squawked in a voice that was almost human, as if it was trying to tell her something. “Piss off,” she said.
She was getting as bad as Claire, listening to birds.
Astrid watched them, leaning toward each other over the table. Ingrid tanned and towheaded, in blue, Claire pale and dark, in brown. It was surreal, them there together, at an orange picnic table at Frontera. Like a dream where Astrid was naked and standing in line at the student store.
She just forgot to get dressed. She was dreaming this, she told myself, and she could wake up.
Claire pressed her palm to her forehead, like she was taking her temperature. Ingrid took Claire’s other thin hand between her large ones. Ingrid was talking without stopping, low, reasonable, Astrid had seen her hypnotize a cat this way. Claire was upset. What was she telling her? Astrid didn’t care what her mother’s game was. Her time was up. They were leaving, she was staying. She couldn’t screw this up for Astrid, no matter what she said.
They both looked up as Astrid rejoined them. Ingrid glared at her, then veiled it with a smile, patted Claire’s hand. “You just remember what I told you.”
Claire said nothing. Serious now. All her giggles had vanished, her pleasure at finding another person who quoted Shakespeare. She stood up, pale fingernails propped on the table-top. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she said.
Ingrid and Astrid watched her go, her long legs in their matte brown, the quietness of her movements. Ingrid had taken all the electricity away, the liveliness, the charm. She scooped her out, the way the Chinese used to cut open the skull of a living monkey and eat its brains with a spoon.
“What did you tell her?”
Ingrid leaned back on the bench, folding her arms behind her head. Yawned luxuriously, like a cat. “I hear she’s having trouble with her husband.” She smiled, sensually, rubbing the blond down on her forearms. “It’s not you, is it? I know you have an attraction to older men.”
“No, it’s not me.” She couldn’t play with me the way she played with Claire. “You stay out of it.”
Astrid never dared speak to her that way before. If she were not stuck here at Frontera, Astrid would never have had the nerve. But she would be leaving and Ingrid would be staying, and in that fact there was a strength Astrid would never have found if she were out.
She could see it startled her mother to be opposed. It angered her that Astrid felt she could, but she was controlled, Astrid could see her switch gears. She gave her a smile of slow irony. “Your mommy just wants to help, precious,” she said, licking her words like a cat lapping cream. “I have to do what I can for my new friend.”
They both watched Claire out past the cyclone fencing, as she walked to the Saab, distracted. She bumped into the fender of a station wagon. “Just leave her alone.”
“Oh, but it’s fun,” Ingrid said, bored with the pretense. She always preferred to bring her daughter behind the
scenes. “Easy, but fun. Like drowning kittens. And in my current situation, I have to take my fun where I can. What I want to know is, how could you stand to live with Poor Claire? Did you know there was an entire order, the Poor Claires? I would imagine it’s a terrible bore. Keeping up the old grade point average and whatnot. Pathetic.”
“She’s a genuinely nice person,” Astrid said, turning away from her. “You wouldn’t know about that.”
Ingrid snorted. “God forbid, the nice disease. I would have thought you’d outgrown fairytales.”
Astrid kept her back to her. “Don’t screw it up for me.”
“Who, me?” Ingrid was laughing at her. “What could I do? I’m a poor prisoner. A little bird with a broken wing.”
Astrid turned around. “You don’t know what it’s been like.” She bent over her mother, one knee on the bench beside her. “If you love me, you’ll help me.”
She smiled, slow and treacherous. “Help you, darling? I’d rather see you in the worst kind of foster hell than with a woman like that.” She reached up to push a lock of hair away from Astrid's face, and she jerked away. She grabbed her wrist, forcing Astrid to look at her. Now she was dead serious. What was under the games was pure will. Astrid was too terrified to struggle. “What are you going to learn from a woman like that?” she said. “How to pine artistically? Twenty-seven names for tears?” A guard made a motion toward them, and she quickly dropped her wrist.
Ingrid stood and kissed Astrid on the cheek, embraced her lightly. They were the same height but Astrid could feel how strong she was, she was like the cables that held up bridges. She hissed in her ear, “All I can say is, keep your bags packed.”
****
Claire stared out at the road. A tear slipped from her overfilled eyes. Twenty-seven names for tears. But no, that wasn’t Astrid's thought. She refused to be brainwashed. This was Claire. Astrid put her hand on her shoulder as she made the turn onto the rural highway. She smiled and patted it with her small, cold one. “I think I did well with your mom, don’t you?”
“You did,” Astrid told her, gazing out the window so she wouldn’t have to lie to her face. “She really liked you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and Astrid brushed it away with the back of her hand. “What did she say to you?”
Claire shook her head, sighed. She started the windshield wipers, though it was only a mist, turned them off when they started squeaking on the dry glass. “She said I was right about Ron. That he was having an affair. I knew it anyway. She just confirmed it.”
“How would she know,” Astrid said angrily. “For God’s sake, Claire, she just met you.”
“All the signs are there.” She sniffled, wiped her nose on her hand. “I just didn’t want to see them.” But then she smiled. “Don’t concern yourself. We’ll work it out. It's your birthday, anyway. Let's go get you something nice.”
It was too late for that now, and Astrid realized, staring out the window at the scenery flying by, that Ingrid hadn't even mentioned her birthday once.
[[ and, lo, one of my favorite scenes from White Oleander by Janet Fitch, and a pivotal moment for the rest of this arc. Modified slightly for Fandomness and quirking the timeline, NFB, but open for contact! ]]