Prologue
June
Ending up at The Ivy with my grandmother was not how I planned on mourning the death of my mother. My grandmother and I sat down across from each other at The Ivy.
I did not want to be here. I didn’t want to leave the house at all, and for the last week, I hadn’t.
But this morning, Ruby was persistent.
She was visibly delighted as the hostess shook out the napkin and placed it in her lap.
Her silk caftan–covered shoulders shimmied with excitement as the menu was handed to her.
“Oooh, this limited menu is enticing. Though I don’t understand this newfound obsession with grapefruit.
Is it the new avocado? But pomegranate! Could we give pomegranate a moment, please? ”
“I think I’ll have the Southwest omelet with no Hatch chiles,” I said without looking at the menu.
Ruby tsked. Nothing I did was ever adventurous enough for my grandmother. Eating, traveling, dating. It was all met with tsks. But not all of us had the luxury of being spontaneous. Some of us had been taking care of ailing mothers since the year after college graduation.
It wasn’t that Ruby didn’t also take care of Mom, but it never came as naturally to her. She didn’t know how to change an ostomy bag without grimacing. It didn’t occur to her that spoon-fed ice chips were the best way to stay hydrated when the nausea made swallowing water too di?cult.
“I’d hardly say this was the precipice.” Ruby pouted as she considered our table location. “But I suppose it’ll do.”
I tipped my menu down and looked around. When I called for a last-minute reservation this morning, Ruby had insisted that I ask for a table with a view of the patio. Not on the actual patio, but the precipice of the patio. She wanted to look upon the outdoors without being in the outdoors.
We were definitely a few tables from a patio view, but it was better than sitting outside on this sweltering Sunday afternoon in June. Just parking the car left me with swamp ass. (I did not have expendable valet income.)
The Ivy wasn’t really a financially sound decision.
Ruby had caviar taste on a tuna salad budget.
But my grandmother needed her fancy Sunday brunch like I needed to sit in a dark room with peppermint tea and a heating pad after a wild night of eating too much soft cheese.
This was how Ruby needed to be cared for as we both grieved.
With forty-eight-dollar eggs Benedict. And I’d promised Mom we’d take care of each other. We both had.
“Did you mention my name to the hostess?” Ruby whispered. “I could feel her staring.”
“Rubes, I’m pretty sure the first Marvel movie came out before the hostess was even born.” I’d name-dropped to get the reservation, but it hadn’t been Ruby’s name.
My grandmother’s tight-lipped, all-knowing grin, the same one she’d carried since she was a teenager, faltered slightly.
“But you know,” I added, “maybe she’s seen In the Family. Or now that the creature movies are streaming, there’s no telling. She could have recognized your red hair.”
Ruby’s “natural” color was a concoction of two Revlon box dyes. I’d seen a few pictures from when she was a kid and had that same murky brown hair that came naturally to me and Mom, but my own memories were of her fiery red perm.
After a moment, she nodded before peering over and then through her Iris Apfel–esque glasses until the words on the menu came into focus.
While she perused, I attempted the day’s Wordle. I’d missed a few days when Mom died and felt unnecessarily bitter about my broken streak. Just as I hit enter on my personal favorite starting word (roast), a text from Brody appeared at the top of my screen.
Brody:
Hi! I know that I’m not supposed to be texting you because you’re on garievement leave, but do you remember the password to my Hulu account?
Not only was I the assistant to Hollywood’s favorite himbo, but I was also the keeper of his passwords.
Vera:
The first girl you kissed and the year you graduated high school.
I also nearly added: And it’s bereavement. Not garievement. But there was no need for Brody to be the victim of my scorn. I tucked my phone into my purse with a smile. Did I miss work? Was I actually missing work? Or was it Brody who I missed?
My phone chirped again and I pulled it back out.
Brody:
Miss you more than I missed Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza when they took it off the menu that one time.
I laughed silently, something resembling glee swelling in my chest, and typed back:
Vera:
Miss you more than I miss The West Wing.
“What’s got you smiling?” Ruby asked suspiciously.
Ruby had opinions about my screenwriting degree gathering dust for the last eighteen years and I didn’t need any more of her opinions right now, especially when it came to working for Brody.
“Well, are you going to share your big news?” I asked in an attempt to deflect.
“Not until we have something to toast with,” she said. “Oooh, is that Gillian Anderson over there? My god, that woman knows how to wear a silk blouse. Clothing really drapes so nicely over her breasts. Do you think they’re natural?”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Uh, she’s two tables away. Can you not talk about clothing draping her breasts while we’re in earshot?”
“I’m sure she would take it as a compliment,” Ruby said as she considered me.
When the waiter arrived, Ruby ordered us both some sort of superfood green juice and champagne while I stuck with my usual omelet, and she opted for the anchovy eggs Benedict.
I waited patiently for our bubbles to arrive, before holding up my glass in anticipation. Good news could mean anything with Ruby.
When I was a little girl, she and her friends hosted a “going away” party because a producer with a reputation for scummy behavior passed away.
The dress code for the party was To Die For.
Then there was the incident three years ago when she invested in some sort of crypto scam that was sure to change our lives.
(To this day, she still couldn’t explain cryptocurrency to me.
But to be fair, I couldn’t explain it to her without reading the Wiki page three times in a row and then promptly forgetting it all.
We both walked away with many unanswered questions.)
Ruby scooted to the edge of her seat and raised her glass in a toast, her red-painted nails curled around the stem like talons. “To new beginnings,” she said.
Slowly, I began to nod. “Um, not really how I think of my mother’s death.”
She took a sip from her glass and narrowed her gaze in disappointment at me for so obviously misunderstanding the moment. “I’m going to choose not to be offended by that comment.”
“Okay, then, of what new beginnings do you speak, Grandmama?” I asked like a future lady of the house on Downton Abbey.
Ruby rolled her eyes briefly before leaning in excitedly. “I sold the house,” she declared. “I sold Primrose!”
My heart stilled and those three words floated down softly like feathers on a breeze, taking me what felt like hours to comprehend. I stared at Ruby, completely dumbfounded, grasping for a thought or a word—or anything.
“The house,” I finally managed to say. “You sold our home? The place where we live?” A suffocating heat flooded my chest and then clawed up my throat.
Primrose was the name my mom gave the three-bedroom West Hollywood two-story cottage Ruby bought forty-five years ago.
The home where I’d lived for nearly my entire life.
(Well, except for college and the year after, when Tess and I were roommates before she abandoned me to get married.) Mom had named it because she always loved houses having names, and even though the name was much more regal than the cottage would ever be, it stuck.
“What—what about— Where will we live?”
“Well . . .” Ruby paused, and I could see the actual war within her as she tried to hide her own personal glee while still allowing me to process this information. “Well, if you’ll remember, my plan has always been to move into a retirement community. Surely you remember Starlight Palms.”
Her timing was awful. I hated to ask. It felt silly and childish, and I was nearly forty years old, but I had to. “What about me?”
“Vera, honey. Sometimes when a baby bird fails to launch, it just needs a little push out of the nest. A nudge!”
The clank of metal on ceramic sounded as I dropped the butter knife.
“A nudge is going to look at apartments with me. A nudge is asking me what my future plans look like. A nudge is encouraging me to start dating again. Not dumping me into one of the most volatile real estate markets in the country!” I could feel the level of my voice climbing with every syllable and the heat in my chest spreading up across my cheeks, turning them red next.
(This involuntary bodily reaction brought to you by rosacea, thank you very much.)
And I hadn’t failed to launch! I’d been—I’d been held back.
God, I hated to even think of it that way.
But I moved home for Mom because Ruby couldn’t take care of her alone.
I stayed at the same job for them. I skipped out on the social life that would have given me networking opportunities.
My writing went from a future career to a weekend hobby to a forgotten past. It was all for them. And this was how Ruby repaid me.
I didn’t ask for this life. I was supposed to fall in love and live in a nice house with an updated kitchen backsplash and go out with friends for happy hour. I wasn’t supposed to be in a position where my grandmother selling her home would absolutely devastate me. But here I was.
“We’ll sort something out,” she said, reaching across the table as though her touch might ground me.
“Breathe.” She inhaled deeply through her nose and out through her mouth several times until I mimicked her, just like she used to do with her acting warm-up breathing exercises when she dropped me off for my first days of school, full of nerves and peppered with stress-induced acne.
“Can I get you two a few slices of our house-made banana bread?” the waiter asked.
Ruby looked up at him with a venomous gaze and said, “Shoo. Now.” “You can’t just shoo people away,” I told her after he’d backpedaled.
I somehow had it in me to rein Ruby in even though it felt like my entire world was being broken down like a defunct production set.
“Gillian Anderson will hear you and then she’ll think we’re the type of people who treat service workers like shit and she won’t care what nice things you have to say about her . . . chest.”
I blinked rapidly as my eyes began to well with tears. This could not be happening.
Ruby squeezed my hands. “Vera, dear, Starlight Palms has been my retirement plan since before you were born.”
Years ago, when colon cancer were two words I’d only ever heard on chirpy pharmaceutical commercials, Mom, Ruby, and I had gone on several weekend trips to Palm Springs—always on a budget, of course, but every time, Ruby would have Mom drive us past Starlight Palms, an old resort that had been transformed into a retirement community and assisted living center.
It was genius, honestly. A place for an aging generation to relive their youth.
“Mom died two weeks ago,” I reminded her. “Her ashes are still cooling. We’ve barely had any time to grieve.”
Her grip tightened. “I am eighty-two years old. Time isn’t something I have an abundance of. Now, stuff, on the other hand, I do. Which is why I have an estate sale agency coming in on Tuesday afternoon to assess the situation.”
“But the house never even went on the market,” I said, still trying to piece the logistics together. She didn’t even offer to sell it to me. Though I could never afford market price and this house was likely part of Ruby’s retirement fund.
“Janice next door bought it for her son.”
“Her son? Her son is like a human comments section! He’s the worst.”
My voice began to escalate in volume. Sorry, Gillian Anderson.
Ruby chuckled and sat back in her seat before taking a pull from her glass of champagne and calling out to our waiter. “About that banana bread, young man!”
“Her son once stole her checkbook to write himself checks. Janice had a meltdown because she thought her identity had been stolen.”
Ruby sighed. “Well, that wasn’t ideal behavior, I’ll admit, but he did write funny notes on the description line. I believe one of them said ‘for wearing the clothes Mom buys me for Christmas.’ The way Janice tells it now, the whole ordeal was nothing more than a practical joke.”
The waiter returned with two decadent slices of banana bread and scoops of honey butter on the side.
“He better not ruin the place,” I said bitterly.
It wasn’t that Ruby owed me Primrose or that I ever expected her to leave it to me, but I had never imagined my future anywhere else. At least not for a very long time now.
“Well, thankfully,” Ruby said, “those faulty pipes and cracked foundation are no longer our problem.” She smeared the butter across the bread and took a bite. “Divine,” she said as she covered her full mouth and pushed the basket to me. “You must try.”
I glanced down at the bread, champagne, and green juice. Suddenly the smells of sickly-sweet syrup and sounds of silverware scratching against plates were all too much.
My head was too full.
Over the last seventeen years, I’d paid property taxes on the house, mostly covered the utilities, and kept the place out of disrepair. And now I had nothing to show for it.
This wasn’t just about a house, though.
I was being left. I was still Mom’s caretaker. I was tethered to her. No matter how gone she really was.
But suddenly Ruby was free, like she’d had this whole life planned and waiting for her the moment Mom died.
And I was cut loose.