“Chlo, I feel very strongly that you shouldn’t post any pictures of yourself flying private. It isn’t relatable.”
“Well it’s relatable to me!” she peevishly retorted.
“But not to all your followers in the flyover states, Chlo.”
“They’re called ‘followers’ for a reason! They won’t even know what they are looking at!”
“Listen, I don’t want to tell you what you have to do—”
“Yet that is exactly what you are doing right now—”
“No, it’s up to you, but if you don’t take it down, be aware there may be ramifications.”
“Okay, I hear you. Loud and clear.” Then Chloe instantaneously pivoted from petulance to imperiousness. “Momsy, would you get me a kombucha?”
“They’re in the kitchen, you know where to find them,” she replied tartly, then briskly walked off.
Jane pondered the meaning of Lisa’s threat, which was vague yet ominous. Chloe, brow furrowed, considered for a moment, then poked at her phone and tossed it on the bed.
“I guess she’s right. God, I mean, whatever. Moms are a lot, right?”
Chloe’s bathroom was about the size of Jane’s bedroom. The mirrors above the sink and on the facing wall created a dizzying multiplier effect. On the wall above the toilet and bidet were shelves holding bins of makeup, hair products, and beauty miscellany. This could prove to be a quagmire, but Chloe was brisk and decisive. Even if she was only fifteen, she was, above all, a businesswoman.
Chloe sat at the bathroom vanity and applied a shade of lipstick, a coral pink that Jane grudgingly admired, then looked at her image endlessly refracted in the infinity of the mirrors.
“Ugh. I get so fucking sick of looking at myself sometimes.”
Chloe was sick of looking at herself. This could turn out to be the most authentic moment all day. Now Jane saw in this slick,processed, packaged teenager, a flash of real, aching vulnerability, and felt a tightness, a sorrow, ball up in her chest.
“That shade is really pretty on you, Chloe. I think you should keep it.”
It felt like the middle of the night when she got to her car, though it was only five thirty. It got dark so early in December, and there was a bracing chill in the air. People who claimed there were no seasons in LA weren’t paying attention.
As she drove off, specters of those cloned dogs with their eerie button eyes haunted Jane. It was a monstrous exercise of wealth as a means of control, as a means of denial, as an attempt to cheat death. And a cheat is all it was: even though Lisa’s dog had come back to life two times over, it was also still dead. Maybe Lisa was hoping she could eventually clone herself and be immortal. Beverly Hills hubris.
Jane wondered if Chloe felt trapped by her influencer business. Was she the engine of the whole enterprise, or was Lisa the latest iteration of a stage mother, funneling her desire for fame through her daughter?
Jane felt like her own mother, burdened by caring for her son and with few resources left for her daughter, had never shown much interest in what Jane did, let alone offered her any encouragement.
Jane wavered, then reached for her phone. Stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard was as good a time as any. The phone rang two times.
“Oh, Jane, hello.” Her mother sounded distracted. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. How is John?”
“He’s the same.” It was a well of pain for her.
“Oh, I wish I could visit....”
“Yes, we’ll miss you at Christmas.”
“It’s a very busy time for work.”
“Of course.”
Jane’s mother didn’t ask about Teddy.
“I’m thinking about getting a dog,” Jane blurted.What?
