Chapter 8 Liz #2
Cara, Madison, and Freya regarded her like they doubted it was all good, or even half good, which it wasn’t.
The truth was Liz and Preston hadn’t had sex since they saw the baby on the ultrasound at the doctor’s office for the first time.
Preston told her that he didn’t want their child seeing his penis.
Liz tried to explain it didn’t work like that—their embryo wouldn’t look up one day and see a dick hurtling towards him or her like a phallic asteroid.
But Preston couldn’t be swayed. If he was determined to wait out her pregnancy, that would be nearly a year without sex.
Which was worrisome for all the obvious reasons.
There was also Liz’s bigger fear: that potential penis exposure to the baby wasn’t the real reason Preston didn’t want to be intimate with her.
“Get the wedge,” Cara advised. “It’s a sex pillow.”
“Life-changing,” Madison said. “All bow down to the wedge!” She lifted her arms, then prostrated like she was praying to Allah.
“I’ll give you mine,” Freya offered.
“Thanks,” Liz said, though the idea of accepting her friend’s used sex pillow made her as uncomfortable as a pair of handmade clogs from Etsy.
The hot waiter brought their entrées, Freya threw back another martini, and Liz forced down a brittle kale salad while fielding unsolicited advice on birthing methods.
When Liz returned to Preston’s house, he was still out.
She walked around listlessly, observing the decor like it was a showroom.
Since the house had been fully furnished when she moved in (Preston’s mother Cricket had dispatched her decorator from the OC the second Preston closed on the house), Liz gave away most of her furniture, even her beloved Jennifer Convertibles couch, which obviously had no place here.
She had been trying to unpack in an unobtrusive way so it felt like a seamless transition into a shared space rather than a hostile takeover.
Preston had encouraged her to feel at home and told Liz to let him know if she needed more organizers in her closet (she was living in a house with his-and-hers closets!) or storage space in the garage, but Liz still felt like a visitor who had booked an extended stay at a luxe Airbnb.
She walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry, wondering if this feeling would go away.
Liz’s name wasn’t on the deed. She hadn’t picked out the travertine dining room table.
She hadn’t weighed in on what kind of towels she liked, or if the neighborhood was kid-friendly, or—wait, should she have offered to pay half the utility bills?
Flummoxed, Liz frowned as she looked at the array of healthy snacks, all sanctioned by Preston’s trainer and devoid of any nut oils, cane sugar, corn syrup, xanthan gum, or taste.
She had decided that part of blending into her new environment like a squid capable of adaptive coloration meant adopting Preston’s healthy-eating program, but Liz would kill for a bag of neon-orange Cheetos.
She considered texting Preston to see when he’d be home and stealth-ordering some artificially flavored, artery-clogging junk food in the interim, but instead tethered her phone to the charging cord and walked away so she wouldn’t be tempted.
Liz headed for the second bedroom, where she had stashed her boxes in the closet, and tried to get organized.
She unpacked some books and added them to the bookshelf in the living room, but then she opened a box containing assorted knickknacks, half-melted Voluspa candles, a dozen Hopi kachina dolls (Angela had been enraptured by Native American culture for a while), and never-used wrap gifts from Liz’s horrible job like a Hydro Flask branded with the show’s name.
Liz tried to imagine how Preston would react to finding a feathered figurine decorating his mantel, or even better, what his mother Cricket—or Cricket’s decorator—would say about a tomahawk adorning one of her beloved Assouline coffee-table books.
Liz shoved the kachina doll back into the brown cardboard moving box and put it in the closet to deal with another time.
Then she gathered an armful of generic flowery-scented candles and flimsy phone-charging docks (the work holiday gift two years in a row, because a production assistant had dropped the ball on ordering The Catch earthquake kits, never mind the irony that the show itself was the natural disaster).
Liz carried everything outside to the trash cans and unceremoniously dumped the load into the black bins.
She should have done a more scrupulous clean-out when she was packing up her life and choosing what items would accompany her to the new, adult, cohabitating phase of it.
Liz walked back into the house, entered the bedroom, and was about to turn on the TV, but stopped when she realized she hadn’t asked Preston if she could record some of her favorite true crime shows, mainly because she wasn’t sure if it was weirder to seek permission or not to.
Anxiety was forming in the pit of Liz’s stomach and she wanted to treat herself, but there wasn’t a Sour Patch Kid or televised triple homicide in sight.
Liz starfished listlessly onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling.
Lights from the neighbor’s house crept in through the slatted blinds.
She heard a burst of Taylor Swift from a car passing by.
Maybe it was too quiet; maybe that’s why Liz was…
what, exactly? Lonely? Liz wasn’t even alone!
Liz had a boyfriend who would be coming home soon, to a house they lived in together.
She needed to get a grip before she ended up on a holotropic breathwork retreat with her mother.
Liz was rising from her perch on the bed when she heard a noise that sounded like the front door shutting.
Liz froze in terror and listened. Preston would use the garage entrance.
But if it wasn’t him…Oh God. Liz stayed perfectly still, but she didn’t hear anything else.
Maybe she had hallucinated. She held her breath.
And then she heard it: footsteps. Liz panicked, mentally scrolling through the recent alerts on Citizen about the rise in crime.
Liz darted over to the bedroom door and locked it, then grabbed a ceramic vase and clutched it desperately.
She had seen action heroes slam objects against villains’ heads in movies—hopefully that worked.
But then, just as quickly, the footsteps receded, and Liz exhaled a shaky breath of relief.
Still trembling, she questioned whether she should call 911, but she didn’t want the trespasser to overhear her and get violent.
The last thing Liz wanted to do was inflame the situation.
Take the signed Jordan jersey, she wanted to say.
Take the Assouline coffee-table books, take the coffee table, take the coffee maker—take whatever you want and leave!
But the trespasser was in no rush. Liz heard things being picked up and moved around, as if the thief were picky about what to steal.
It seemed like an hour had gone by even though it was probably only a few minutes.
Growing desperate, Liz searched “how to text 911” on her phone.
She was about to SMS her distress, but the footsteps suddenly got closer again, and then someone was trying to open the bedroom door, jiggling the handle repeatedly.
Liz fled into the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and called 911. Her entire body had gone to ice and she was shaking so hard that her teeth were clacking against each other.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“There’s an intruder in my boyfriend’s house!” Liz whisper-screamed. “I mean MY house! There’s someone in the house!”
“Is the person in the house now?” the operator asked.
“YES! Please come. I’m—alone. I’m all alone.” Liz dropped her head and convulsed with silent, panicked sobs.
“What’s your address, ma’am?”
Liz gave it, then stayed on the line with the operator until she heard the distinct wail of sirens crescendoing up the hill.
“POLICE!” someone called out, then thumped on the front door.
Still shaking uncontrollably, Liz thanked the operator for not abandoning her and hung up the phone.
She unlocked the bathroom door, crept out into the bedroom again, and listened to the cops bang down the door to enter the house.
A loud squeak spoke to the hinges being tested and then there was a flurry of movement, sounds of a tussle, and then…
“What do you think you’re doing?” No, it wasn’t…It couldn’t be…Was that…Her mother’s voice?
Liz closed her eyes. Of all the horrors Angela had perpetuated, this was a new low. Liz opened the door to see Angela, wearing a sheer caftan and turquoise beads, surrounded by four of LA’s finest. The flashing lights of the squad cars strobed through the windows.
“Angela! What are you doing?” Liz saw the cops side-eye each other.
“You know this person?” one of them asked.
“I’m filming this,” Angela said, whipping out her phone and directing it at the cops.
“Yes. I’m—she’s my mother. What are you—I’m sorry to bother you with a false alarm,” Liz said, rubbing her temples.
“Your mom?” another cop asked incredulously.
“I’m so sorry,” Liz repeated, at a loss.
“You should be apologizing to me,” Angela told Liz. “Calling the cops on your own mother? Who does that?”
“I thought you were a burglar! I was terrified!”
“I can tell. You look horrible. And you,” Angela said, glaring at the policemen. “This is going on Facebook Live.”
“If you’re both okay, this seems like a family matter. We don’t need to write up a report,” one cop said.
“I guess you’re the good cop,” Angela quipped.
“Next time, make sure it’s an intruder. And not your mom,” another cop said.
Liz apologized again to the policemen and showed them out. As soon as the door closed, she sprang on her mother. “What were you thinking?”
“I came by to drop off the chakapa,” Angela said, pointing to some sort of leaf fan resting on the counter of the open kitchen, like this was the most normal and obvious thing in the world. “Preston gave me the lock code to the front door.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Liz asked. “What were you doing in the living room anyway? What were all those noises?”
“The feng shui in this place needed some zhuzhing.” Liz noticed that her mother had rearranged the armchair and the side table; she had to admit, the room did look better.
“You can’t do that!” Liz said. And then, a little more quietly, she implored, “You can’t keep doing this to me.”
“What? Helping?”
“Showing up whenever you feel like it,” Liz said.
“Fine. I’ll go now,” Angela said, posturing like she was severely wounded, but Liz knew better. Her mother had the thick skin of a calloused, bronzed Floridian snowbird who had spent ninety years worshipping the sun and now looked like a purse. “Enjoy the chakapa.”
Liz blinked her eyes closed for a moment as the martyr made her way to the front door. Liz’s body was still humming with adrenaline, but she felt strangely disconnected. The whole episode was too surreal.
The door clicked closed behind Angela, and Liz trudged over to make sure it was locked.
Then she leaned against it, considering.
The thing that really tore at her was the realization that besides her therapist, whom she paid to listen to her, Liz didn’t have anyone she could confide in about this ordeal.
Her friends would be titillated, then digress into stories about their demanding in-laws, and an anecdote about Freya’s mother-in-law scheduling a family gathering during her baby’s nap time couldn’t compare.
Preston was Angela’s number one fan and would no doubt find it amusing.
Fuck it, Liz thought. Maybe it was the kale salad, maybe it was the sex pillow, maybe it was the chakapa, but something had sent her over the edge.
She picked up her phone. She could hear her shrink’s voice in her mind.
What’s the worst that could happen? Jayne would ask, a plaque of woven wall art behind her.
Victoria doesn’t write me back? Liz thought. And then she realized: So what? Liz was the daughter of a narcissistic, chakapa-wielding maniac. She had survived far worse.
She was about to text Victoria when Liz saw an unread message waiting for her like a shimmering jewel. During the chaos of the evening, she must have not heard the notification. Liz read Victoria’s text: Nice meeting you at Mother’s Haven. Do you want to have lunch sometime?
Liz clutched the phone to her chest and thought that maybe there was some semblance of order and equity in the universe. This was better than a family-sized bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Later, Liz would revisit this moment and wonder, had she known what was to come, if she would have made different decisions. But then again, hindsight was as useful as half a pair of shoes.