Page 25 of Deja Who
“The moneyIspent!” Leah took a breath and tried to force calm. “As I was saying. No more spying. You aren’t just wasting your time—not to mention my time—but also your money. Oh, excuse me:mymoney.”
“Now, Leah.” It had the gall to sound reproachful. “We settled that years ago.”
Settled = seducing the judge who could have emancipatedLeah and given her control of her money/life/career/happiness/health insurance.
Leah controlled an urge to pluck her mother like a large pink chicken. “Listen carefully. I will not embark on a comeback with It. I will do nothing to breathe life into the chamber of horrors It calls a career. It should shrivel up and die and give her spot in the universe to someone else.”
“I dislike when you refer to me in the third person, darling.”
“That’sthe part of all that you don’t like?” Archer asked. Tom, she noticed, had fled. This, too, was the pattern of her childhood. At best, Tom enabled her mother. At worst... it didn’t bear thinking about.
“She gave herself the nickname,” Leah explained. “It goes back to her tiresome rant about—”
“I’m a commodity, we’re a commodity!”Oh, God.Leah buried her face in her hands as Rant #3 commenced. “Hollywood doesn’t see men or women, they see products. It always has. And the only way to fight it—”
Is not to fight it.
“—is to get on board. So we’re Its to them; not people, not names, fine. Exploit that! Just like in that Wild West movie.”
“Uh...” Archer shot her a look. He seemed to be in the grip of horrified fascination. And her mother’s lipstick was on the corner of his mouth. Leah stepped to him and scrubbed it away with her sleeve, perhaps
“Ow!”
harder than necessary.
“She meansSilence of the Lambs.”Oh how I wish that Archer had killed me.
“But that’s horror, or a thriller—not a Western.”
“You know, Wild Bill,” It interrupted, excited. “The bad guy.”
“The bad guy wasBuffaloBill, you silly twat,” Leah corrected. “Remember? ‘It puts the lotion in the basket or It gets the hose again’?”
“That’swhy you refer to yourself as—that’s a little weird.”
“We know,” mother and daughter replied in dulcet unison, then glared at each other.
“Because... um... it’s kind of silly. And maybe even immature.”
“That’s what she’s like,” Leah said, irritably gesturing at her mother.
“I meant you.”
Leah thought about it. It was wonderful to be in a room with Archer and her mother and have his attention on her and hers on him and It—Nellie—was where she belonged: out of the conversation. “Well, ‘Mom’ is inappropriate because there’s not a drop of maternity anywhere there. And ‘Nellie’ is just silly.”
“But ‘It’ is a shining beacon of good sense and subtle humor?”
“Point,” Leah admitted.
“It makes an impression.” Nellie bulled her way back into the conversation by reciting her favorite catechism after “it’s worth it to be famous.”
“Okay, this explains all the strange pics of you and Leah in all those costumes. Why didn’t you tell me you were a child star?”
“Because I’ve been too busy repressing my entire childhood.” She jerked a thumb at him. “Pay attention, Nellie. Archer is off the payroll. And the next time you put a dog on my back trail, they’ll find pieces of your wardrobe all over the North Side.”
Nellie shrugged. “Fine. I could use some new—”
“Allof it. The costumes, the gowns you wore to the Oscars, anything that ever touched your skin during your so-called career, not to mention mine: shredded. If your clothing was people, family members would not be able to identify them, you understand? Closed casket, you understand?”
