Chapter Text
mama lou's posture--that curved back, that elegant arch of the hand reaching for strawberry-red car perfume--nearly sends her running back out again.
but then the back stays turned, the hand--nails now manicured, pale pink--drops the product in the cart and proceeds, still so old-fashioned, mama lou, tricks on her laptop and then on her phone that forced claudia into leaving it behind, too complicated for her to undo, and yet mama walked her loafers across grocery shopping, mopping, the post, with an ease and a comfort that spoke to preference of long-embedded habit. only the nails, the hair, the dress, keep claudia rooted to the ground, old instinct to avoid eye contact and pretend, pretend, pray, swept away by the dove-shaped novelty fluttering her foolish heart. dragging herself out is even harder than dragging herself in was.
in the parking lot, too, there's a noticeable absence of paranoia, slotting in with all the other changes just fine, but then again two am has been kind to mama in the past when neither claudia nor lestat were. she drops the bags dramatically upon catching sight of claudia draped across the hood like the petulant starlet she is.
"claudia," she mouths, too soft for the shifts to be catalogued, here, but claudia doesn't mind---the look on her face is all mama lou, familiar enough, home enough. mama had unlocked the car a few yards away, still busy with the bags, and so she lets herself in, now, desire to leave twisted to fit the trappings of her curiosity in a decades-old maneuver. like riding a bike, or talking to your mother again.
she called her mama before, too, after all.
when mama shuts the door behind her claudia can swear the temperature drops by a few degrees. the car, turning on, confirms it, or perhaps it's the air conditioner acclimated so perfectly to mama's temper, and not the other way around. like a hand pressed against cold glass, it thaws some of the ice around her own heart. mama always had that frigidity in her---cold looks for auntie grace, cold words for the proprietors around town that made assumptions about their family, the cold shoulder for papa, but around claudia all that melted away so easy claudia never saw it happen. that shelf of effort isn't so pretty to look at now as the click of the key in its lock sounded to her.
mama's jaw works, on the drive, nails barely restrained from tapping on the wheel so she can glare at claudia's feet up on the dashboard before claudia remembers herself. no questions, no lies, no half-assed mention of an invitation to dinner or how all the gumbo was just eaten up yesterday, surprise as it was to see her beautiful face around again in the town she rejected, but ah, that was the perfect excuse to stock up on our ingredients again, is it not, les, les, you're driving us---none of that script now; claudia's stumbled onstage to an uncooperative cast. it's fine. she waved the audience home early for this, waited until two for this, strip the facade away, truth and reconciliation, or some honesty. in mama, though, didn't he used to rage, honest has always looked a lot like reticent.
they pull in and the porch light is turned off. the house could be anyone's. claudia's assistant could be anywhere, the paparazzi could be a fiction of her nightmares, the sale deed in her old, withered satchel to the apartment on the other side of the town could be confetti, or a treatise on good grammar for little girl guests.
the car pulled the line of mama's body straight, but then she eases her coat and heels off and her retreating form is a time machine injecting such tremors into claudia's veins that she has to use the excuse of doing the same with her heavy jacket and sneakers to sit down. the silence of the house is lighter than the car's, somehow, emptier, more hollow, like a peach peel with the insides scooped out. claudia clamps her lips shut.
everything is just where it used to go. mama spares her no glances and leaves no prisoners, anticipating no help and refusing to acknowledge it as it comes, but the tears roll down her cheeks and when they're done claudia bites the question back to wrap her arms around her, from the back like she used to, still shorter than mama, still capable of crushing her lanky frame, and a hand comes up to massage her own.
they retreat to the couch with a bottle of wine mama pulls from the secret fridge behind the pantry wall, her wry smile as she does so the first concession of the night. she puts on happy together and tucks her feet underneath her, watches claudia as she does the same, and it is a knife fitting into the matching hollow in claudia's chest.
"you got someplace to go?" finally, finally, finally, and the words are all wrong but her voice is richer than ever now, even more beautiful than the new soft creases and lines on her face, some her own, some penciled in with care and color, but the tone so unmistakable claudia bursts into tears like a homesick child.
mama pats the middle of the couch so claudia can curl up in her arms, and wipes her tears with a temerity that sets claudia off again. to think mama used to be the crier, years choked on, swallowed, scratchy against a throat already hoarse, the sign of claudia's rising anger above all else as time passed and a pavlovian response developed to the pain of her favorite parent. a lot of good it did them, then. claudia's own concession---the fifth of the night, unbidden realization for all she swore to stop counting when she left--she keeps the wonder and the hope to herself, the burning questions tucked away in the same place mama drew her forgiveness from, the elephant of if it wasn't for him why why why HOW---and because, unlike mama, her generosity has always run low, run thick, run red, she doesn't offer up reasons or excuses, harsh as they tickle the back of her throat. she's going to wake up sick, she can feel it.
mama, despite everything, doesn't fall asleep on her shoulder, and claudia closes her eyes cursing herself. but it functions as a shovel for the guilt, when she leaves behind the sale deed on the couch over the folded blanket and slips out before the water in the shower downstairs can stop running.