“Green Acres? That’s a good one,” Molly said.
“Remember Zsa Zsa Gabor?” Joy said. “Those were the days.”
“That was Eva Gabor.”
“Sweet girl, Zsa Zsa,” said Duncan. “We worked together. Years ago, years ago.”
As Duncan described an obscure movie in which he had an even more obscure part, Joy noticed Freddie raising an eyebrow at Molly. They exchanged just noticeable smirks. Joy kicked Molly under the table, which had the advantage of also dislodging Duncan’s hand.
“A little respect,” Joy said, first to Molly, then to Freddie’s father. “A little respect.”
“Nothing will come of nothing,” said Duncan in his rich and sonorous voice. He tried his smile again.
“Wasn’t that fun, Mom?” Molly asked as they drove home. “Jesus, Freddie, do you actually aim for the potholes?”
Freddie laughed.
Freddie really was good-natured, Joy thought. “Your father is a ball of fire,” she said. She would not mention the hand. What would be the point?
“Never underestimate a minor character actor,” Freddie said. “It’s already been done. Their whole life.”
“Who was that woman who tried to trip us with her walker?” said Molly.
Freddie shrugged. “One of his girlfriends?”
“I’m sure that was an accident,” said Joy. But Green Garden was even more frightening than she had imagined.
*
Joy leaned on the grocery cart, weary in body and soul. It was an expensive, trendy grocery store, the kind of grocery store in which half the children were probably not vaccinated against measles. Molly examined a small ugly root vegetable.
“I think you girls deserve some privacy,” Joy said. “You’ve been so hospitable.” She had tried this before but gotten nowhere, and this time, too, Molly smiled an abstracted smile and said, “Don’t worry about it, Mom.”
Joy pushed the cart to the fish counter and waited for Molly to catch up. She missed her apartment, her lonely apartment in which she could roam and mourn at will. She missed the doormen. She missed her friends. She missed the park and Karl.
“I’m homesick, Molly. I keep trying to tell you nicely. I want to go home.”
“I understand that you’re not completely adjusted—”
“Adjusted? No, I’m not adjusted. I don’t want to be adjusted.” Joy realized she was speaking loudly and the mothers of unvaccinated children were glancing at her suspiciously. Careful, Joy. Don’t rile up the natives, don’t rile up Molly, especially. “Sweetheart, you and Freddie have been absolutely wonderful, but put yourself in my position.”
“That’s just what I was talking to Daniel about, and we decided that even more than the change in scenery, even more than the warm weather, that what you need is to be useful.”
“Yes,” said Joy, suddenly jubilant. At last her son and daughter understood.
“Everyone needs to be useful.”
“That is so true.” She would go back to work and insist on getting her projects back. She would call Norman, that fellow on the board, the one who Aaron used to play poker with, why hadn’t she thought of it before …
“We thought you could do something at the Getty, maybe.”
“The Getty?”
“Yeah, you know, like volunteer. Or the Skirball. The training for docents is pretty rigorous, but still…”
Molly prattled away about Los Angeles museums and their volunteer programs as they loaded the cart with healthful food that Joy could not digest. Joy searched the shelves for Cream of Wheat and said, now and then in hopeless punctuation of Molly’s recitation, “Such good ideas! If only I did not already have a museum. In New York.”
One evening when Molly was at a meeting and not coming home until late, Joy and Freddie went out to dinner, just the two of them. It was the first time they had done anything like that, and they were both a little nervous, Joy’s discomfort manifesting itself in silence, Freddie’s in chatter.
“Molly doesn’t like this place, she thinks it’s boring, but I love it and I think you might like it, too. The traffic will be impossible on the 10, even in this direction, so I think I’ll take Venice, oh my god, look at them trying to get to the 405…”