It was a book by Verena Baptist. Her name wasn’t familiar to me until I read the description on the back. When I realized who she was, I squeezed my eyes shut. I might have been in the Austen Tower, suspended in the air by nothing more than concrete and steel, but in my mind I traveled to Harper Lane, back in time to my childhood home. I felt a pang, the kind that memories bring. How did the girl know? She couldn’t have known.
I opened the book to see if there was a note from the girl or anything to let me know I’d found the right clue on her treasure hunt, but there was nothing. I had stuffed the book into my bag and was moving toward the door when suddenly it opened.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” The beauty editor’s assistant handed me a bag filled with the products I was supposed to test.
“Do you know if there’s a girl working here who wears combat boots and colorful tights?” I asked, taking the bag. “She uses thick black eyeliner. Maybe she’s an intern?”
The assistant shrugged.
I left the kitchen, hurrying to the elevators. Once I was on the subway headed for home, I opened Adventures in Dietland. As I read Verena’s words for the first time—Before my birth, Mama was a slim young bride—the train pulled away from the platform and nosed into the tunnel, moving me away from the Austen Tower.
Already, it had begun.
ALICIA AND PLUM
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AFTER FOURTEEN HOURS IN THE CAR, driving from Boise to Los Angeles in a single day, my mother and I arrived at 34 Harper Lane, our faces and arms colored pink. My great-aunt Delia and her second husband, Herbert, lived in the small stone house, its front door obscured by coral vines and bougainvillea, its yard green with lemon and palm trees. “You’ll go home to your daddy soon,” Delia whispered as I climbed out of the car. “Just give your mom some time.”
Delia had lived alone in the house on Harper Lane after her son Jeremy moved east for college, but then she married Herbert and then she welcomed us. My mother set herself up in the study, with the black-and-white television and sofa bed. I was given the spare bedroom at the front of the house that had a view of a date palm, or mostly its trunk, which was patterned in triangles like a giraffe’s neck.
After telephone calls to my father and the promised trip to Disneyland, my mother retreated to the study and rarely left it for the rest of the summer. If I wanted to see her I would tiptoe inside and curl next to her in bed. With the curtains closed it was dark; I couldn’t see her but I could feel her hand on my head, playing with my hair. I listened to the tick of the fan in the corner, my nose filled with the smell of her sweat.
Delia managed a restaurant during the day. Herbert was retired and sat on the sofa watching “his shows,” beginning with The Price Is Right in the morning and lasting until dinnertime. He wasn’t to be disturbed. He’d taken me to Kmart and bought me a stack of books, plus Colorforms, paper dolls, new roller skates, and a jump rope, expecting me to entertain myself.
One afternoon I sat in the front yard under the palm tree and read one of my new books. It was hot in California, much hotter than in Idaho, and I began to fantasize about a cherry Popsicle. As I was about to stand up, a blue car with two women inside stopped in front of the house. One of the women leaned out the passenger window with a bulky black camera and snapped the button several times. When she was finished, she eased back into the car and it sped away, the sound of the women’s laughter trailing behind it.
I looked around, searching for something photo worthy, but saw nothing. Had she been taking a picture of me? I went into the house and peeked from behind the living room curtains to see if the women would return.
Herbert didn’t register my presence as I sat down next to him on the sofa. On the coffee table, his reading glasses, in their snakeskin tube, rested on top of the open TV Guide. I tried to read my book again, but the game-show clapping made it difficult to concentrate. Pushing the curtains aside, I peered into the street but there was no one there. I went out with my Popsicle and sat under the tree, peeling down the sticky plastic wrapper and licking the red drops from my fingers.
A yellow convertible stopped. A girl leaned out the passenger window and snapped several photographs. She looked at me and laughed, then the convertible sped away, the wind blowing the girl’s blond hair straight up like a flame.
When the sound of the car disappeared and everything was quiet again, I dumped my Popsicle in the dirt. What had the girl seen? I wanted to run to my mother, but she was inside the dark room.
“Herbert?” I said, stepping into the house. He shooed me away. For the rest of the afternoon I stayed hidden in the backyard, sitting with my books inside the small swimming pool, a concrete shell with no water.