Chapter 26 Liz
THREE MONTHS OLD
Preston stood in the driveway and helped Liz strap Charlie into the car seat and check and then double- and triple-check that it was secure.
“It doesn’t look loose to you?” Liz asked, squinting in the morning light outside of Preston’s house.
“I installed it the exact same way I did mine,” Preston said, gesturing to the garage, where his car was parked inside. “Promise it’s good. Are you?”
“Yes,” Liz said. “No,” she admitted a second later. “I’m nervous.”
Charlie had been in the car before, and Liz had been in the car with Charlie before, but Preston had been there with them.
Liz had been cleared to drive for weeks, but now that Charlie had gotten his three-month vaccinations, and after everything that had happened with Ace, there were no more excuses to be made.
Since Liz couldn’t exactly cite fear of being alone with her baby in the wake of her father’s heart attack, she was going out into the world with her baby.
Alone. Birds were singing and cars were driving by and people were walking up and down the hill as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, as if another potential catastrophe wasn’t about to happen at any second.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Preston told her. “You’ll be great.”
“I don’t know…It feels crazy that no one’s making sure I can do this,” Liz said. “You have to take a test to have a driver’s license, but there’s no one qualifying you to take care of another human being.”
“That’s why there are shows like 16 and Pregnant,” Preston said. “Anyone can have a baby.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Liz said, her voice reaching a high pitch.
“Yes,” Preston said with a laugh. “You’re smart and capable and you’re completely neurotic, but you’re a good mom, Liz. You’ve got this.”
He hugged her goodbye, and then Liz went around to the driver’s seat while Preston leaned over and gave Charlie another kiss.
Liz took a breath to steady herself. Then she waved to Preston, and he shut the car door, leaving Charlie and her sealed inside by themselves, giving Liz no choice but to face her fear and drive away.
People do this all the time, Liz told herself.
All you’re doing is going out with a helpless human who is entirely dependent on you to protect him from the dangers of the world.
His survival is in your hands—no big deal!
Liz started driving to her favorite coffee shop and darted a quick glance to check on Charlie in the rearview mirror when she was stopped at a red light.
He was fine, and adorable, and unbelievably small.
Liz tried to imagine being Charlie’s age.
She tried to picture Angela getting behind the wheel with baby Liz in the back, the two of them headed off into the great unknown.
Liz didn’t know if Angela was still living at the Yellow House Foundation or if she had moved on to another artists’ colony or meditation retreat or weirdly named love interest. Nevertheless, Liz drove down Sunset, past the bright, sparkly billboards, until the ocean came into view and shimmered on the left, stretching out into the horizon and blending into the sky.
Charlie slept peacefully, lulled by the motion of the car, and Liz drove until she reached the turnoff to climb up the canyon into Topanga.
Her finger flicked up the right turn signal automatically, as if her body knew where she was headed before she had even realized it herself.
Liz hadn’t spoken to her mother since she had cut off communication months ago, before Charlie’s birth, and knowing Angela, she could be anywhere.
But when she arrived, Liz saw her right away.
Angela was painting outside in the dusty, weed-dotted field with another woman.
Both were completely naked. The better to access their art, Liz thought—you can’t let clothes interfere with inspiration.
Angela turned when she heard the car door shut and Liz saw her mother’s face rearrange itself with surprised delight.
Liz had the odd sense that maybe her mother had stuck around town in case of this: Liz arriving without warning, offering the chance of conversation and maybe even more.
Angela put down her paintbrush, said something to her fellow nude artist, and started walking over to Liz.
Angela still had twenty strides to cover before she reached the car, so Liz went around and carefully took Charlie out of his car seat. She adjusted his little hat and held him in her arms, and then Angela was standing in front of them. Naked and awestruck.
“Hi,” Liz said.
“Liz,” Angela said, clasping her hands together in front of her chest.
“This is Charlie.”
Angela stared at the baby for several minutes, taking him in, silent and reverent as if she had been granted a private showing of the Mona Lisa.
“He’s beautiful,” Angela said. “A very nice-shaped head.”
Liz waited for her mother to bring up her own misshapen cranium, but Angela’s focus was elsewhere. She tilted her face down to Charlie. “Welcome earthside, angel boy.”
“Do you want to hold him?” Liz asked, wondering if new life could usher in a new beginning.
Angela’s head whipped up. “Really?”
“You’ve done this before, right? I made it to adulthood in one piece.”
“I actually did drop you—never mind,” Angela said. “But maybe I should put some clothes on first.”
“Good idea,” Liz said.
“Will you come with me?” Angela asked, and Liz thought maybe her mother seemed worried that the moment would evaporate, that Angela would put on a psychedelic caftan only to discover that Liz and Charlie were apparitions as a result of a different kind of psychedelic.
“Sure,” Liz said, and she followed her mother to her yurt, slightly concerned as she stepped inside that there would be an overpowering stench of patchouli or a cloud of peyote smoke that would flood her nostrils like a noxious poison, but her mother’s quarters were surprisingly tame and drug-free.
“This is nice,” Liz said, looking around at the bare-bones but pleasant space, which was covered with half-finished canvases and sculptures, most of them fashioned out of found objects from nature like feathers and sticks.
Liz recognized Angela’s artistic oeuvre immediately, which wasn’t hard because it hadn’t changed in thirty years.
The art wasn’t good, not by a long shot, but as Liz thought about it, wasn’t art completely subjective, after all?
A piece of art was worth what someone was willing to pay for it.
And besides that, Liz had to respect Angela’s commitment to her craft; it took a special kind of stubbornness to fail at something for decades but refuse to give it up.
Maybe that was just the madness of the artist.
“Make yourself comfortable!” Angela said. “Oolong tea? Or I might have some fenugreek! Excellent for milk production.”
“Just some water would be great.”
Liz sat down on a tufted pouf and Angela came over with two mismatched glasses of water that she put on a stack of old Art World magazines sitting on the floor.
“Here you go,” Liz said, extending the precious bundle in her arms. Angela gingerly took her grandson into her arms.
“Strong aura,” Angela said approvingly, looking him over. “September baby?”
Liz knew where her mother was going with this. “He’s a Virgo.”
“Hmm. Libra is a better September sign—some of my best lovers were Libras—but Virgos are great too! Have you had his natal birth chart done yet?” Angela asked.
“I thought I’d let you do the honors,” Liz said.
“Does that mean you’re talking to me again?”
“I’d like to figure out a way we can be in each other’s lives without me wanting to tear my hair out.”
“You’re already going to lose a ton of hair because of the hormones,” Angela said.
Liz smiled at her mother, who rarely knew the right thing to say but maybe, just maybe, did try her best in her own flighty, chakapa-gifting, gaffe-making, moon-goddess-worshipping sort of way.
“I think you and I have been locked in this dynamic where I’m ten years old, waiting for you to show up for my school play, and you’re out trying to chase dreams you’ll never catch up to because you have a kid holding you back,” Liz said.
Angela’s face fell. “That’s what you think? That you stopped me from living my life?”
“Didn’t I?”
“No, Liz. I didn’t stop chasing my dreams. I took you with me.”
Liz looked at her mother and realized that this was true, and she had resented Angela for it her entire life.
For putting her own needs before Liz’s own.
For not thinking about what Liz wanted. For dragging her around the country—around the world, really—and making Liz beholden to her whims and decisions.
Liz watched Angela coo over Charlie and rock him lovingly in her arms.
“You were so young,” Liz said. “Which I knew. I obviously knew how old you were when you had me, but I didn’t really realize it, if that makes sense, until I had Charlie. It must have been hard.”
“We had great times too, Liz.”
“Like when we were living in that cabin in Montana and you woke me up at three in the morning to see the first snowfall of the year.”
“We made snow angels in the light of the moon,” Angela reminisced.
“I’m sorry I don’t always remember the good parts,” Liz said. She checked the time, then rummaged through her diaper bag and handed Angela a bottle. Her mother took it and adjusted Charlie’s head, tilting the bottle at the correct angle so he would swallow as little air as possible.
“Kids never do,” Angela mused as she fed Liz’s son.
“In twenty years, Charlie will probably come to you with a huge chip on his shoulder and throw your worst mistakes in your face. He won’t thank you for all the times you wiped his ass and cut the crusts off his sandwiches and dried his tears when he had bad dreams and fastened his seat belt and did all the million forgettable things in the course of his life to care for him. ”
“You made me use a seat belt?”