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The van's spiel had ' been changed. "Alfred A. Magruder,
Mayor?" she murmured.
"Galveston is Fun City!" the van responded. Laura and her mother traded glances. Laura shrugged.
Highway 3005 was the main artery down-the-island. The road's glory days were long gone; it was haunted by the memories of cheap oil and private cars doing sixty miles per.
Long sections of tarmac had been potholed into ruin and replaced with plastic mesh. The mesh crackled loudly be- neath the tires.
On their left, to the west, bare cracked slabs of concrete fringed the road like fallen dominoes. Building foundations had no scrap value. They were always the last to go. Beach scrub flourished everywhere: salt grass, spreading mats of crisp glasswork, leathery clumps of reed. To their right, along the shore, surf washed the stilts from vanished beach homes.
The stilts leaned at strange angles, like the legs of wading flamingos.
Her mother touched Loretta's thin curls, and the baby gurgled. "Does it ever bother you, this place, Laura? All this ruin . "
"David loves it here," Laura said.
Her mother spoke with an effort. "Does he treat you all right, dear? You seem happy with him. I hope that's true."
"David's fine, mother." Laura had dreaded this talk.
"You've seen how we live, now. We have nothing to hide."
"Last time we met, Laura, you were working in Atlanta.
Rizome's headquarters. Now you're an i
"You think it's a setback to my career." Laura shook her head. "Mother, Rizome's a democracy. If you want power, you have to be voted in. That means you have to know people. Personal contact means everything with us. And i
"That's not how I remember it," her mother said. "Power is where the action is."
"Mother, the action's everywhere now. That's why we have the Net." Laura struggled for politeness. "This. isn't something David and I just stumbled into. It's a showcase for us. We knew we'd need a place while the baby was small, so we drew up the plans, we carried it through the company, we showed initiative, flexibility.... It was our first big project as a team. People know us now."
"So," her mother said slowly. "You worked it all out very neatly. You have ambition and the baby. Career and the family. A husband and a job. It's all too pat, Laura. I can't believe it's that simple."
Laura was icy. "Of course you'd say that, wouldn't you?"
Silence fell heavily. Her mother picked at the hem of her skirt. "Laura, I know my visit hasn't been easy for you. It's been a long time since we went our separate ways, you and I.
I hope we can change that now."
Laura said nothing. Her mother went on stubbornly. "Things have changed since your grandmother died. It's been two years, and she's not there for either of us now. Laura, I want to help you, if I can. If there's anything you need. Anything.
If you have to travel-it would be fine if you left Loretta with me. Or if you just need someone to talk to."
She hesitated, reaching out to touch the baby, a gesture of open need. For the first time, Laura truly saw her mother's hands. The wrinkled hands of an old woman. "I know you miss your grandmother. You named the baby after her. Lo- retta." She stroked the baby's cheek. "I can't take her place.
But I want to do something, Laura. For my grandchild's sake."
It seemed like a decent, old-fashioned family gesture, Laura thought. But it was an unwelcome favor. She knew she'd have to pay for her mother's help-with obligations and intimacy. Laura hadn't asked for that and didn't want it. And didn't even need it-she and David had the company behind them, after all, good solid Rizome gemeineschaft. "That's very nice, mother," she said. "Thank you for the offer.
David and I appreciate it." She turned her face away, to the window.
The road improved as the van reached a section zoned for redevelopment. They passed a long marina clustered with autopilot sailboats for hire. Then a fortresslike mall, built, like the Lodge, from concretized beach sand. Vans crowded its parking lot. The mall flashed past in bright commercial garishness: T-SHIRTS BEER WINE VIDEO Come On In, It's Cool Inside!
"Business is good, for a weekday," Laura said. The crowd was mostly middle-aged Houstonians, freed for the day from their high-rise warrens. Scores of them wandered the beach, aimlessly, staring out to sea, glad of an unobstructed horizon.
Her mother continued to press. "Laura, I worry about you.
I don't want to run your life for you, if that's what you're thinking. You've done very well for yourself, and I'm glad for it, truly. But things can happen, through no fault of your own." She hesitated. "I want you to learn from our experience-mine, my mother's. Neither of us had good luck-with our men, with our children. And it wasn't that we didn't try."
Laura's patience was eroding. Her mother's experience-it was something that had haunted Laura every day of her life.
For her mother to mention it now-as if it were something that might have slipped her daughter's mind-struck Laura as grossly thoughtless and crass. "It's not enough to try, Mother.
You have to plan ahead. That was something your generation was never any good at." She gestured at the window. "Don't you see that out there?"
The van had reached the southern end of the Galveston
Seawall. They were passing a suburb, once a commuter's haven with fresh green lawns and a golf course. Now it was a barrio, with sprawling houses subdivided, converted into bars and Latin groceries.
"The people who built this suburb knew they were ru
Her mother stared obediently out the window. It was noon, and windows were flung open from the heat. Inside them, the unemployed sweated before their subsidized televisions. The poor lived cheap these days. Low-grade scop, fresh from the vats and dried like cornmeal, cost only a few cents a pound.
Everyone in the ghetto suburbs ate scop, single-cell protein.
The national food of the Third World.
"But. that's what I'm trying to tell you, dear," her mother said. "Things change. You can't control that. And bad luck happens."
Laura spoke tightly. "Mother, people built these crappy tract homes, they didn't grow there. They were built for rip-off quick profit, with no sense of the long term. I know those places, I've helped David smash them up. Look at them!"
Her mother looked pained. "I don't understand. They're cheap houses where poor people live. At least they have shelter, don't they?"
"Mother, they're energy sieves! They're lathwork and sheetrock and cheap tinsel crap!"
Her mother shook her head. "I'm not an architect's wife, dear. I can see you're upset by these places, but you talk as if it were my fault."
The van turned west up 83rd Street, heading for the air- field. The baby was asleep against her chest; Laura hugged her tighter, feeling depressed and angry. She didn't know how she could make it any clearer to her mother without
-being bluntly rude. If she could say: Mother, your marriage was like one of these cheap houses; you used it up and moved on.... You threw my father out of your life like last year's car, and you gave me to Grandmother to raise, like a house plant that no longer fit your decor.... But she couldn't say that. She couldn't force the words out.