Genuine Lies

plunked her palms down on the wooden table, the cigarette jutting through her fingers. “Listen to me, Ada. Mama’s gone, Daddy’s gone. Lucille too. Even that lazy shit you married’s gone. They’re not coming back.”
    “I won’t have you speak about my husband—”
    “Oh, shut up.” Eve rammed a fist onto the table so the little plastic rooster and hen salt and pepper shakers rattled and fell. “He isn’t worth you defending, and by God he isn’t worth your tears. What you’ve been given is a new chance, a fresh start. We’re out of the fucking fifties, Ada. We’re going to have a president who’s not in his dotage in the White House come January. Women are going to start trading in their aprons. There’s a change in the air, Ada. Can’t you taste it? It’s coming.”
    “Had no business electing a Catholic, a papist. It’s a national disgrace is what it is.” Her chin jutted out. “Anyways, what’s it got to do with me?”
    Eve only closed her eyes, knowing Ada would never taste the change, savor the cool, fresh flavor of it, not through her own bitterness. “Clean house, Ada,” she murmured. “Bring the boy and come back to California with me.”
    “Why in God’s green earth would I do that?”
    “Because we’re sisters. Sell this godforsaken place, move to a place where you can get a decent job, have a social life, where the boy can have a life.”
    “Your kind of life.” Ada sneered, her red-rimmed eyes filled with resentment and envy. “Posing on the screen half naked so’s anyone with change jingling in their pocket can watch. Marrying and divorcing on your whim, and giving yourself to any man who winks at you. I’ll keep my boy here,thank you very much, where he can grow up with decent values and under God’s plan.”
    “Do what you want,” Eve said wearily. “Though why you’d think God would plan for you to be a bitter, dried-up woman before you’re forty is beyond me. I’ll send you money for the boy. It’s up to you what you do with it.”
    “Of course she took the money,” Drake went on. “Spouting off about wickedness, godlessness, and so on while she cashed the check.” He shrugged, too used to the taste of bitterness on his tongue to notice as it spread. “As far as I know, Eve still sends her a check every month.”
    It disturbed Julia that she sensed no gratitude. She wondered if Drake realized how very much he was his mother’s son. “If you’d had such little contact with her while you grew up, how did you come to work for her?”
    “The summer I graduated from high school, I hitchhiked to L.A. with thirty-seven dollars in my pocket.” He grinned, and for the first time Julia thought she could see a trace of his aunt’s charm. “It took me nearly a week to get ahold of her once I got here. It was quite an adventure for me. She picked me up herself in this little dive in East L.A. Walked in to this greasy taco joint wearing a drop-dead dress and stilletto heels that could impale a man through the heart. I’d caught her on her way out to some party. She crooked her finger at me, turned around, and walked out. I was after her like a shot. She didn’t ask me a single question on the way back to her house. When we got there, she told me to take a bath and to shave off the excuse for a beard I was wearing. And Travers served me the best meal I’d had in my life.”
    Something stirred inside him with the memory—a fondness he’d all but forgotten under the layers of ambition and greed.
    “And your mother?”
    The stirring died away. “Eve dealt with her. I never asked. She put me to work with the gardener, then shoved me into college. I apprenticed with Kenneth Stokley, her assistantat the time. Nina came along just before Eve and Kenneth had a falling-out. When she decided I had potential, Eve put me on as her press agent.”
    “Eve has very little family,” Julia commented. “But she’s loyal and generous with those she does have.”
    “Yes, in her way. But relation or employee, you toe the line.” He set the drink aside, remembering it best to gloss over any dissatisfaction. “Eve Benedict is the most generous woman I know. Not all of her life has been easy, but she’s made it work. She gives those around her the inspiration to do the same. In short, I adore her.”
    “Would you consider yourself a kind of surrogate son to her?”
    His teeth flashed in a smile that was too smug to be affectionate. “Absolutely.”
    “And Paul