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After the funeral, Lola sat on the steps of the church, clicking the heels of her shoes against the sidewalk. They were her mother's shoes, a pair of sleek black heels that Father thought Lola was still too young to wear. But her only other pair of black shoes were a pair of Mary Janes that made Lola feel about five years old when she wore them, and when she'd put her outfit together and come downstairs this morning, Father hadn't gotten to say anything about it before he'd been accosted by yet another well-meaning aunt bearing a worried smile and a casserole. She figured she was allowed these shoes, at least for today. She was nineteen years old, an adult by all the laws of the state of California (even if Father wouldn't believe it), and now she was the only woman of the house.
And, Lola thought bitterly, turns out that Mother won't be needing them anymore.
It was a clammy day, the kind too windy-cold to go short-sleeved but humid enough to make you hot and itchy inside your clothes. Lola pulled her hat tighter on her head anyway, letting the black veil fall across her face. That well-meaning aunt had come to her after she'd gotten done with Father, talking about poor child and if you need, anything, honey, and that had set the tone for the rest of the day. Everybody had wanted to hover around her at the funeral, like a bunch of flies around a carcass, making soothing noises and tentatively patting her on the back. It made Lola want to scream, except she thought if she did that they'd go ahead and close her up in some dark room with a cup of chamomile tea and a nurse ready with the smelling salts.
"Are you coming?"
Lola looked up. There had been an exception to all that solicitude, and that had been her mother's nurse, Phyllis. Lola hadn't taken much notice of Phyllis before, and what she'd seen she hadn't much liked. There was just something off about that woman, something like needles hiding behind her teeth whenever she smiled. But Phyllis had taken everything about the past few days with the same cool calm she usually did, including the way she'd treated Lola. She'd been efficient and brusque, maybe asking Lola to call a florist or help her hang up the black bunting, but otherwise letting Lola at peace with whatever she felt. No checking up, no uncertain sympathy, just getting a process done.
Lola could appreciate that, if nothing else.
Phyllis tugged her lapels closer, smoothing the crisp black jacket. One thing to be said for Phyllis, she knew how to dress for a funeral. "I said, are you coming? They're loading up the cars to go to the cemetery." She sounded mildly impatient, but otherwise emotionless. Maybe she'd seen so much death she didn't mind it anymore, being a medical professional and all.
"Maybe I don't want to come," Lola replied, hunching over with her eyes focused on her heels. It'd be a horrible thing to say to anyone else, but with Phyllis she didn't feel like pretending. It shouldn't be so strange for a daughter to not want to hear the clods of earth falling on her mother's coffin, with half the crowd there keeping an eye out to see if she'd cry.
Phyllis shrugged. "Your choice. You're a grown woman, you can decide for yourself. Your father probably wouldn't appreciate it, though."
Lola looked up at Phyllis then. Her eyes were cool as always, same as her tone of voice had been. She had said nothing but facts, no sentimentality involved. Lola could believe that Phyllis honestly didn't care if Lola came to the burial, except maybe as a point of curiosity. Maybe that should have horrified Lola, but considering how much everyone else had been invested in how Lola was feeling these days, it felt like a relief instead.
Phyllis seemed to register when Lola made her choice, because she offered a black-gloved hand to her. Just an offer, not one she appeared to care whether Lola took or not. It was enough for Lola to take her hand and let her bring her up. Lola wobbled on her heels as she straightened.
"You'll get used to those," Phyllis said, letting go of Lola's hand. Maybe Lola was just seeing things, but she thought she could see Phyllis's smile turn up slightly at the edges. "Come on. If we're going to do this, we're going to do this right."
Lola was the only woman of the house, but not in truth. And not for long.
Perhaps it should have been strange that Phyllis didn't leave, now that Lola's mother was gone. But Father had gotten used to her always being there to take care of things, the same as he'd gotten used to the maids (and to me, Lola thought when she felt particularly cross with him), and so he'd had Phyllis there to plan the dinners and book the appointments and all the other things it took to keep a house going. Maybe that should have been Lola's job to take, but when she thought about spending her time stuck in the house looking after whatever Father needed, a choking feeling rose up in her throat. If Phyllis wanted to take on that responsibility, so be it. It left Lola more time for her correspondence courses, and her wandering around the city streets, and for that dark-eyed movie usher whose eyes Lola felt burning into her back whenever she stopped by the pictures.
It still took time for Phyllis to take a place in the house for herself. First Phyllis stayed for dinner, never in her mother's chair but in the chair right beside, her hand brushing close to Father's. Later, she folded her legs neatly on the couch while Father sent Lola off to bed, with her new anklet catching the light and shining in Lola's eye as she turned and marched out of the room. When Lola saw Phyllis come down from the roof wrapped in a towel and that anklet and nothing else, she knew it was only a matter of time before Father sat her down with a Phyllis and I have something important to tell you, kid.
They managed along all right, she and Phyllis; they spent a few evenings playing Chinese checkers, and Phyllis would turn the radio to Lola's favorite program whenever it came on, even if Phyllis had been listening to something else beforehand. But Phyllis never tried to be another mother to Lola, still never looked at Lola with anything but the same cool eyes.
Which suited Lola fine. She still couldn't say she liked Phyllis, but she might have hated Phyllis if she had done anything else.
On the day of the wedding, Lola drove Phyllis to City Hall. Father would meet them there with an old Stanford buddy of his; the buddy and Lola would be the only witnesses. After Lola parked the car, she and Phyllis waited for a moment in the parking lot, each taking a deep breath after the hell that was Los Angeles traffic.
"Thank you," Phyllis said abruptly.
Lola had definitely heard Phyllis thank her before, but it was always for something like handing Phyllis a pair of scissors or answering a door for her. For Phyllis to thank her out of nowhere was something new. "For driving you? It wasn't any trouble."
Phyllis smiled wryly, the realest smile Lola had ever seen from her. "With that traffic, it was definitely trouble." She adjusted her hat, refastening one of the pins on the veil. Funny, how it had only been a few months and they'd traded in the black veils for white. "But that's not what I meant."
"What did you mean, then?"
"I meant to thank you for being such a sport about this. Because it's not easy for a girl to get a new stepmother. Believe me, I know."
"You had a stepmother, too?" Phyllis had never talked about her past before. Lola realized she'd never even thought about whether Phyllis' parents were alive or dead.
Phyllis didn't answer, only looked into her compact and reapplied her lipstick. When she finished, she turned back to Lola, her lips still slightly parted. "Never mind," she said, waving the thought away like a cobweb. "What matters is, are you all right with this?"
Lola's hands tightened on the wheels, thinking. "If I said no, would you stop the wedding? Take a dollar and get on the bus as far as it'll take you?"
"No," Phyllis replied, her expression unchanged and her voice steady. Just like after the funeral - no emotion, just fact. "But I'd like to know anyway."
And what did Lola want out of this, anyway? Maybe she would have liked Father to stay alone, still married to her mother's memory, but she had known better than to hope for that even back when Mother's cough had started getting really bad. Father was the kind of man who'd been so long married he didn't know how to live without a wife, and the kind of man too stubborn to learn how to live otherwise. "Better you than someone else," Lola said finally. "At least you don't want to be my mother."
"I don't," Phyllis said. "But I do think we might make a good team." She stepped out of the car, leaning down to look at Lola still sitting in the driver's seat. "I can be a lot of help to you, if you let me. Just think about it, all right?"
In some ways, nothing much had changed between the first and second Mrs. Dietrichson. The sunlight still threw stripes on the carpet through the Venetian blinds; the fringed shawl didn't move from its place on the grand piano. When the first red goldfish died, Phyllis bought a couple of new ones so quickly Lola didn't even have time to notice the empty bowl.
The main difference was the noise. Mother had spent most of her evenings curled up with a book, reacting to any inconvenience with a heavy sigh at most. Mother had been a quiet woman. Phyllis was decidedly not.
"Thirty bucks you spent on that hat?"
Lola stopped at the top of the stairs. Judging from the voices echoing from the living room, this wasn't a situation she particularly wanted to walk in the middle of.
"Of, c'mon," Phyllis replied, "you saying you don't like the way it looks on me, darling?"
Lola noticed that Phyllis had a higher voice whenever she talked to Father, honeyed and wheedling. It wasn't the voice she used when she talked to Lola. She certainly didn't try to call Lola "darling".
"It's not bad," Father said grudgingly, his voice steeling up, "for a waste of money. Who even needs a hat in California?"
Their voices dropped quieter, still tumbling over each other like an overfull river crashing over rocks. Then a sharp clatter that had to be a glass hitting the tile, and the slam of the front door as Father strode out without even looking up to see Lola there.
Lola stepped down to the landing. Phyllis stood there with her eyes blank and her fists curled. The remains of the glass lay scattered around her feet, with the puddle of rum dampening her house shoes.
"Could you get me a broom?" Phyllis took a deep breath, then another. "And a wet rag."
While Lola swept up the glass, Phyllis dabbed at the remaining splinters with the rag. It was calming work, in its way, and Phyllis wiped the tile clean just as carefully as she had wiped Mother's brow when the final fever hit. It's funny, Lola thought. Just a couple of minutes, and there was nothing left of the whole incident but a wet spot and a bad memory.
Lola resisted the urge to touch Phyllis in attempted reassurance. Nothing she knew about Phyllis said that she'd appreciate it. "Are you all right?"
"I've been worse," Phyllis said shortly. She took the broom and pan from Lola, then abruptly set them to the side. To Lola's astonishment, she then patted Lola on the shoulder. "Thank you. I'll remember this."
Lola snorted despite herself. "What does that mean?" she said, plopping ungracefully onto the couch.
Phyllis smiled at her, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up. "I have a funny habit of remembering what people have done for me." She paused, her smile stiffening. "And paying them back."
Father came home around midnight, slipping in the front door like a burglar into his own home. Phyllis had gone to bed an hour or so before, but Lola still sat stiffly on the davenport, so keyed up she almost trembled. If she started moving, she thought she'd start bouncing off the walls.
"Hey kid," Father whispered behind her, and before Lola had time to do or say anything he walked around the sofa and pull her into a tight hug. The smell of liquor had mostly faded off his suit.
Lola hugged him back, but in the quiet of the night her head still rang with the sound of shattered glass.
A little while after that, Lola got a part-time job at the concession counter of the movie theater. Father approved in theory - get you earning your keep, as he'd put it - but in practice...
She knew the dark-eyed usher now - Nino, she whispered in the dark of her bed, Nino, Nino, Nino, - spent hours after work together. He snuck her into bars and led her along the city streets to the parts of town that Father would never let her go to, and after he walked her home every night she stumbled with equal parts exhaustion and exhilaration.
Father hated Nino. "He's not good enough for you," he said, but Lola knew that what he meant by that was he's not good enough for me to call my son-in-law. Not that she and Nino had any plans like that yet, but Father would hate Nino even more if he thought she and Nino were just going together for kicks. As it was, he hated that Nino was a dirt-poor not-even-a-medical-student-anymore, and that he was Italian, and that he was (Lola had to concede) maybe a bit surly when he had to talk to people he didn't like.
So they had to be careful, but that didn't always mean they were.
One night she practically fell through her front door, Nino holding her up with one arm. The familiar furnishings of her living room swooped as she took a few wobbly steps. Nino said something behind her - she could barely make out most of the words, but when she caught the word tequila she groaned.
"Don't remind me," she slurred, and then stopped cold.
Phyllis leaned in the door frame of the kitchen, holding a glass of iced tea. With her hair uncurled and her bathrobe on, she looked much less intimidating than Lola would have expected - or maybe that was just the half-smirk on her face. Like she found the whole thing funny. Lola almost wanted to start laughing too.
Nino clutched Lola closer to him. "Who are you? What do you want?"
Phyllis nodded at him, but otherwise she turned her whole attention to Lola. "You like you've been through a couple different wringers. You might want to take care of that a bit or you'll throw up on your way up the stairs, and I'm certainly not cleaning it up for you."
"You didn't answer my questions," Nino snarled.
"I'm Mrs. Dietrichson, and I'll answer any question you care to ask if we can do this in a civilized way." She turned back to Lola. "Why don't you go get yourself some water and wash your face, and I'll keep Mr. Zachetti company until you're ready. Do you like iced tea, Mr. Zachetti - you are the mysterious Mr. Zachetti, correct?"
Nino glowered at her, but Phyllis smiled back at him and motioned him graciously into the living room as Lola wobbled into the bathroom.
When Lola came back out, Phyllis kept her eyes discreetly on a magazine while Nino kissed her goodbye and dashed out the door. "Your father's asleep," Phyllis said, turning down a corner in her magazine. "I don't think he'll wake up easily, but you'd be better off if you can make sure you won't crash into anything before you go upstairs."
Lola flopped onto the couch beside her. The ceiling didn't spin as much as it had twenty minutes ago, which she figured was a good sign. "Did you see him?"
"Zachetti? I did. I also saw that pink slip in his coat pocket, as it happens."
"It wasn't his fault," Lola said, rubbing her forehead. If Phyllis started lecturing her about Nino, she'd start screaming, sleeping Father or not.
"I'm sure it wasn't," Phyllis replied. She handed Lola a glass of iced tea, which Lola pressed to her temple. "I'm not your mother, remember. You can go with whoever you like."
"Do you know what it's like?" Lola said, absentmindedly stroking the arm of the couch with her free hand. "To go with a guy like Nino?" She didn't know where she was trying to go with this, but she didn't seem to be able to shut her mouth right now.
Phyllis closed her magazine with a snap, setting it in her lap as she looked absently somewhere across the room. "I've known a few different men in my time." She set her arm across the back of the couch, not quite touching Lola but not far from it. "Are you asking for advice?"
Was she? "Mmhm," she mumbled. Let Phyllis take that however she wanted.
Phyllis tapped her fingers on the back of the couch, a thoughtful look in her eye. "With any man," she said, "it's a matter of knowing three things. One, the story he wants to tell about himself. Two, the story he wants to tell about the woman he's with. Three, how far you can push either story before it breaks. You know that, and you can get a man to do almost anything."
The next morning, Father and Phyllis greeted each other stiffly across the breakfast table, Father nearly shoving the butter dish across the table when Phyllis asked for it. They must have fought while she was out. Phyllis' movements got stiffer and stiffer as she sat, and when she finally got up and left the air almost crackled from the tension behind her.
"She's been good to me," he said, but he sounded half like he was trying to convince himself. He chucked Lola on the chin, like he had when she was little and trying to wheedle something out of him. "You might try to get along with her better, kid."
"We get along fine," Lola said, and while she meant it as a brush-off, she realized it was true.
Phyllis never caught Lola and Nino coming in late again, but Lola could meet Phyllis' eyes over the bacon and the grapefruit every morning afterward and know that she knew. Phyllis never commented on it, of course, except maybe to nudge Lola and press a finger on her own neck, showing Lola where she needed to cover a hickey. Whenever that happened, Lola would blush and tug at her collar, and later she might bring Phyllis a cup of tea or offer a compliment on her earrings in thanks. Phyllis would smile back at her for that.
Sometimes, Lola thought that smile seemed more real than the ones Phyllis gave to her father. Whenever she thought about that, warmth shot through her from her top to her toes, a mix of girlish glee at a shared secret and pride at knowing something her father never could. It all made the checkers games with Phyllis more interesting, anyway, especially when Phyllis called for Father to "c'mon, play the winner, honey" and distracted him long enough for Lola to sneak out.
And for a while, the balance held.
After everything - after Mother, and her plunge from well to sickly to suddenly dead - Lola should have known better than to think that it would last.
The night Father finally caught them, Lola could see him from all the way down the street. Not with her eyes, but with the eyes she could feel on her as she passed the honeysuckle bushes and clutched tighter to Nino's hand. The shadows on the front porch became her father, solid and coiled in casual aggression, knocking a fist causally against his leg like he was only whiling away the time as she and Nino approached the door. And when they got closer to the light, and she saw his eyes...
She couldn't stand the contempt in his eyes anymore. "Father - "
He lunged over and ripped her hand out of Nino's grip, his fingers bone-crushingly tight around her wrist. "You stay out of this," he snarled, throwing her hand back and stalking closer to Nino. "If I ever catch you with my daughter again, they'll have to bury what's left of you in a matchbox. You hear me?"
"Listen here, old man, you can't talk to me like that - " Nino started, but Father shoved him back with all the power of the football player he used to be. He threw out his arm to the side for good measure, stopping just inches from Lola's chest as she stepped closer to them both. They both got the message.
With a huff, Nino turned on his heel and left. As soon as Nino disappeared into the shadows, Father made to put a hand on Lola's shoulder, but she sat heavily on the porch steps and curled tight on herself. She felt him looking on her as if expecting one of them to apologize, and she felt when he finally left and she could be alone with her sick fear and fury.
She didn't even notice Phyllis until what felt like hours later, still trembling and cold all over despite the warm summer breeze. Phyllis sat down beside her, a careful inch apart, and out of sheer exhaustion Lola leaned her shoulder against Phyllis'.
Phyllis's voice came soft and low as a lullaby. "You want to have your own life. You don't want him telling you what you can and can't do anymore." Her hands curled around Lola's shoulders; as wild as Lola felt, the light pressure of her touch was just about all keeping Lola from flying apart. Phyllis leaned into Lola's side, her breath warm against Lola's ear. "You want him gone."
"Yes, Lola whispered, the word splitting harshly through her clenched teeth. "I want - I want - "
"Tell me, sweetheart," Phyllis crooned. She'd never called Lola sweetheart before, but now it made Lola want to weep. "Tell me what you want."
"Make him - strangle him, push him in front of a train - " Lola drew in a shuddering breath, her heart beating wildly. "Make him pay."
Phyllis lifted her gloved hand and wiped under Lola's eye. Lola hadn't even realized she was crying. "Don't worry," Phyllis said, pulling Lola into a hug. "Trust me, sweetheart, you should get everything you want."
Walter Neff was a nice man.
He wiped his shoes before he came into the house; he offered Father a smooth handshake and doffed his hat to Lola while telling them both how he'd always liked the old Spanish style architecture. Mr. Neff could keep up a friendly patter about Stanford football, so when the right moment came he could smile broadly and turn the conversation ever-so-politely back to life insurance. He nudged her father's pen subtly toward the bottom line, and it didn't seem so different from the way Phyllis would stroke a finger along her Father's shoulders when things were going well between them and she had a pricey new pair of shoes hidden in her closet.
None of them paid attention to Lola while the conversation happened, of course. But she still saw. Mr. Neff's eyes burned into Phyllis the way Nino's burned into Lola, and Phyllis' breath changed ever so slightly as her mouth flicked into a secret smile. It was nothing that could have held up in court, but then, Lola had spent the last few months learning all of Phyllis' tricks for keeping a secret. She knew all the signs by now, and besides, she'd had plenty of experience by now of women desperately in love.
Walter Neff was a nice man, and Phyllis Dietrichson never wanted to be a nice woman, but they looked at each other and saw something just the same.
She'd cringed telling the lie about going roller skating with Anne Matthews - it sounded so childish - but it had worked. If Father wanted to think of her as a child incapable of wanting anything more than a couple of hours at a rink and a milkshake afterward, that's the story she would give him. She hadn't cringed when she caught up with Mr. Neff and asked him to take her to Vermont and Franklin, but she knew that she sounded like a lovesick girl when she talked about Nino in the car. But if Mr. Neff was just like Phyllis, if he felt for Phyllis like Lola thought he did, he might be able to understand. And if Neff was looking for a story out of her too...well, the best stories had a bit of truth in them. Lola might be a woman now, but it wasn't hard to play up the silly girl.
After Father left for work the next morning, Phyllis asked where she'd gone the night before. Her fingers drummed on the back of the couch, her fingernails playing out a stuttering rhythm on the cloth.
Lola looked up from her cup of tea. "When did you start being worried?"
"Not worried," she said, her nails slowing into something more steady. "Curious, maybe."
Lola shrugged. "I was with Nino," she said, setting her empty cup on the coffee table. "I got a ride last night -"
"With Mr. Neff," Phyllis said, crossing her arms and cocking her head. Is she jealous?
"It wasn't anything special," Lola mumbled, and she knew then she sounded like a stupid teenager, so she straightened up taller and idly patted down a flyaway hair. "I just asked him to drop me off to meet Nino, that's all. I told him how sweet he was to help me out and now maybe I won't have to walk anymore if I want to go into the city at night. It wasn't hard."
Phyllis unfolded her arms, her brows moving as she processed the information. She still yanked Lola's cup from the table with a bit more force than it required, but just before she took the cup to the kitchen she paused and looked back at Lola, a half-smile forming on her face.
The same kind of half-smile she gave Mr. Neff when he walked in the door that first time and he started to roll his salesman lines like a well-practiced master.
When she looks at me, does she see someone just the same as her, too?
For the second time that year, Lola wore her mother's shoes to a funeral.
The clods of dirt didn't sound much better landing on her father's coffin than they did on her mother's, as it turned out. Worse, even. At least with her mother she didn't have the guilt pounding deeper into her with each thud of dirt, driving into her like a nail and making her heart bleed.
She looked at her wrist, right where Father had pushed her away from Nino that awful night. The bruise shouldn't have been this dark still, but she'd been prodding and worrying it for days - why? She didn't quite know, now that she thought about it. To keep her anger stirred up with her father? To prove something to herself? Nobody else had even hinted around about the bruise, not even Nino.
On the other end of the grave, Phyllis hid her face behind a veil. The aunts and neighbors convened on her with the casseroles and condolences this time, and Lola could see how Phyllis met each of them with a hanging head and a catch in her throat. With her smart black gloves and red-rimmed eyes she seemed every inch the grieving widow, as if she hadn't been meeting with Mr. Neff for days and telling him all about what Father could do to her and Lola. As if Phyllis had never told Lola what kind of stories men wanted to believe about women, what kind of roles a woman could play to get men to do what they wanted.
Had she been playing them the whole time? Playing Lola? Maybe Father really had dropped that glass that they'd cleaned off the tile together, maybe Phyllis never had a stepmother, maybe it was all a trick the whole time -
"Keep yourself together, sweetheart," she said, sidling up to Lola and offering her a handkerchief. Did she think Lola needed to cry, or did she think Lola just needed a prop? "The worst will be over soon."
Lola looked down at the grave, at the clumps of dark soil over the polished wood. Funny thing, how a little bit of dirt made everything so much uglier. "I didn't want him to die," she said, in a tiny voice that sounded like it was coming from miles away.
Phyllis raised her eyebrows. "Didn't you?" She stroked her thumb above the bruise on Lola's wrist. "That's not how I remember it."
Lola tugged her hands back and tucked them under her arms, because if she didn't she had half a mind to shove Phyllis into the grave. And maybe she could jump in too, the last of the Dietrichsons all in a wreck together. There'd be nobody to inherit, then, and maybe they can pile in everything we own after us like a bunch of pharoahs, she thought.
Lola Dietrichson, her parents' only heir. She was an orphan. In the worst possible way, she was free. See how she got what she always wanted.
The only other living Dietrichson stared down at the coffin while the gravediggers continued to work. She knelt beside the edge of the earth, plucking up a few rose petals fallen from the wreath and letting them float out of her hands into the grave. I have a funny habit of remembering what people have done for me and paying them back, she'd said once. What did she and Lola owe each other, now?
Lola smiled at her, and it felt like she had needles behind her teeth. She was free, and so was Phyllis, and a long road stretched out in front of them both. The heels of her mother's shoes sank in the cemetery grass, but Lola didn't wobble. "Come on," said Lola, offering a hand to help Phyllis up. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do this right."