The next day, Lisa and Claudette lounged by the spiral stairs discussing Johnny's thirty-sixth birthday party. The custom of marking one's true age had persisted, with an air of condescension.
Claudette lowered her coffee cup. "Well sure, I can come." She paused for a moment, then continued, "but I don't know if I'll bring anybody."
Claudette enjoyed the dignified look of her apparent age, but had no suitors at the moment who presented as seniors themselves. Stark age differences, even when only cosmetic, were still a little scandalous. It was likely that Johnny's and Lisa's social circle was uncomfortable with the widening of the gulf between them from ten to twenty-four years; so far, no one had said so.
The two women gossiped, floating from one vain concern to another. Claudette described a property dispute with her brother, who was only a little more petty than she was.
"Everything goes wrong at once," she remarked. "Nobody wants to help me, and I'm 'dying'," she added flippantly.
Lisa rolled her eyes. "You're not dying, Mom."
Claudette took a swallow of coffee. "I got the results of the test back," she teased, "I definitely have breast cancer."
Annoyed, Lisa thought briefly of her own illness. She responded carefully, undermining her mother's melodrama while displaying the expected amount of sympathy.
"Look, don't worry about it," she began. "Everything will be fine. They're curing lots of people every day." She thought briefly, painfully, about Johnny's bank.
Claudette set down her cup and turned her right hand inward. "I'm sure I'll be alright," she said aloofly as she glanced at the timer embedded in her wrist. She smirked.
"Oh, I heard Edward is talking about me," Claudette continued. "He is a hateful man. Ugh, I'm so glad I divorced him."
"Look, don't worry about it," Lisa repeated. "You just concentrate on getting well," she added sarcastically. Unconsciously, she touched her neck.
Claudette absorbed the slight gracefully. "Well at least you have a good man," she replied.
Lisa summoned an expression of horror framed in nervousness. "You're wrong."
She saw the surprise in her mother's face. It was working.
"Mom, he's not what you think he is." She pinched her dark eyebrows inward. "He didn't get his promotion."
This didn't devastate Claudette the way it should have. Lisa anticipated this. Planned for this.
"And he got drunk last night," she continued. "And he hit me."