“Is this Pottery Barn sponcon?” Caroline asked. “I mean I do like the apron. I thought she didn’t talk to her mom?”
“I guess she does now,” Audrey said. She had started the feed again, the same clips playing one after the next.
“Good for them for doing the work,” Caroline said. She sounded like therapy speak in a way that made Audrey bristle, but since therapy had saved her, its argot was her default.
“It’s one edited video.”
“One more than none,” Caroline said. She turned to really look at Audrey, who was not looking back at her, so Caroline put her hand over the phone screen until Audrey did. “What’s this bringing up for you? Did she post something else about the movie?”
“Oh my God, it’s not bringing up anything,” Audrey said so quickly that she knew she didn’t sound convincing. She wasn’t convincing. In fact, she’d watched all of these clips earlier, before they’d left the house. Now here she was watching them again.
“I’m ready, we can go.” Audrey closed the app and dropped the phone into her bag, a vintage crocodile Hermès purchased by her father, the exact kind of reckless gift he liked best to send her when he was feeling guilty about things. (Audrey had twice made arrangements to sell the bag for cash but hadn’t gone through with it either time.) Her father also still held the mortgage on the house she and her mother lived in, even though they were the ones who (almost always) made the monthly payments. Even though he now lived in London. Even though he and Caroline had separated right before her scar-causing incident and divorced right after.
Caroline fished around in the cupholder—clicks and clacks—and then held her closed fist out to Audrey. “Here.”
Audrey put out her own open palm and Caroline dropped two crystals into it—one pink, one purple. They were raw and jagged, each about the size of a wine cork.
“Amethyst,” Audrey said, turning them over and feeling their rough then glassy surfaces against her skin. “And what?”
“Good,” Caroline said, surprised. “And rose quartz. In your case it’s for balancing energy and bringing calm.”
Audrey nodded slowly, not necessarily condescendingly but with a deliberate effort to appear to her mother like she was humoring her. Which she was.
“Whatever helps you to let go of negativity, yeah? And maybe encourages a little self-confidence? I’m not asking you to suck on them, Audrey.”
“It didn’t even occur to me that that would be an option.”
Caroline checked her reflection in the rearview, raking her hand through the side of her hair. “You know it’s supposed to be millennials who are way into inclusive spiritual practices—so of course it’s my child who rejects crystals out of hand.”
“Do you see what’s in my hand right now?” Audrey opened her fist again. There were red indentations along three of her fingers where the crystals had pressed into her skin.
“Now put them in your pocket.”
“I don’t always have pockets,” Audrey said. But she shifted in her seat and put them there anyway. And then she said, in a way she hoped she delivered like an afterthought even though it wasn’t, “I would just like to be good in it this time.”
“Oh, honey—”
Audrey cut her off: “This one time, I want to be good and I want the movie to be good and I want it to matter. I don’t want to have to make excuses for it.”
I want, I want, I want, she did not say.
Before Caroline could try some other tactic meant to assure Audrey, a man called out to them from the parking lot. “OhmyGod. I’m so sorry—I know this is tacky and gauche and we don’t do this in LA but I’m wearing your face right now. Like literally!”
Caroline hadn’t shut her door since she’d opened it several minutes before and now this person—sweaty at the temples, puffy red beard—was moving even closer to that open-door access while unbuttoning his flannel shirt as quickly as his fingers would do it. “Pleasejustwaitasec,” he said. “I have to show you.”
“Mom, shut your door,” Audrey said with more panic than she’d later admit.
Caroline did and hit the lock button, too.
“No—it’s only my shirt!” the man said, his voice now muffled by the car door, so he sounded like he was talking to them through a soup-can phone. He worked the last button and then flapped his shirt open to reveal the T-shirt he was wearing beneath, which was printed with the movie poster for House Mother 2: She’s Coming for You—the title in a garish, neon-pink font that screamed above the stalking shadow of the House Mother, her gray wig askew, a glinting knife in her hand as she came for the blonde in a bloody nightgown who was running, breasts first, as if into the camera and off the poster entirely.
The blonde was then-nineteen-year-old Caroline Wells.
“I’m a Jules Junkie! We always go when they play the trilogy at Vista. Did you know they do that?” The man now held his eyes so wide open they looked like something you’d draw in Sharpie on the side of a balloon to please a toddler. Jules Coburn was the final girl sorority sister Caroline had played in both House Mother 2 and 3: Now She’s Coming for Me.*
Caroline lowered her window. “I was there the first time. I did the talk back after.”
“Oh shit—no, I knew that!” the man said, shaking his head. “Jesus, I saw you there! I’m sorry I’m being so weird. I just—I’m a huge fan, which I know you must hear all the time, but I’m actually wearing this shirt today, and fucking here you are.”
“I’m glad you showed me,” Caroline said. She opened her car door again.
The guy now grinned a shy grin, proud that he’d won her over. He even took a step back to show that he didn’t want anything more from her than what he’d gotten. “Jules kicks Sam’s ass. I don’t give a fuck what the neckbeards on Reddit say.”
“There wouldn’t have been a Jules without a Sam, though,” Audrey said.
“Right—no, I know,” the man said, peering past Caroline as if he hadn’t realized Audrey was there until she’d spoken. Maybe he hadn’t. “I mean—all respect to Melanie Patrick, of course. I’m counting down the days until my kid is old enough to watch with me. We named her Jules—shit!” He made his eyes big again. “I totally buried the lede! I, like, completely forgot until this second that my kid is named after you. Sort of named after you. You get it.”
“I do,” Caroline said. “Thank you. That’s a real honor.”
“Thank you! My husband’s head is gonna explode when I get home. He was the one who was supposed to go to the store today and he bailed. It will drive him crazy for the rest of time that he missed you.”
“You should definitely get a picture, then,” Audrey said. She leaned around her mother to better see him. “To rub it in.”
The man smiled at her, but it was to Caroline that he said, “Really? I didn’t want to ask but I mean I did want to ask. Would you?”
They all met at the back of the car. “Here,” Audrey said, reaching for his phone, “I’ll take it.”