Claudia Davenport cautiously opens her front door.

Her neighbor, Lil D., stands there on the small porch fluffing her short blond hair with one hand and with the other holding a white brassiere on a limb she had broken off her sweet gum tree.

“Yes?” Claudia says.

“Look what somebody left in my mailbox,” Lil announces.

Claudia looks then quickly looks away. She recognizes the bra as her own.

“Size D no less,” Lil says.

Claudia reaches out to touch the bra. I deliberately do this in case police look for DNA and then I can say my DNA was there because I touched the bra when Lil brought it by.

“How did this get in your mailbox?” Claudia asks.

“Beats me! Is it a message? Is it a warning? Is my husband having an affair and this is his lady informing me? How the hell do I know how it got there?” Liz grumbles. She put her left hand on her hip. “Size D certainly tells me something,” she exclaims as she glances down at her own childish chest.

“Maybe the mailman…” Claudia suggests.

“Maybe the mailman is a transgender, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I have to go. Have an appointment. Goodbye.” Claudia slowly closes the door. How did my bra end up in that crazy woman’s mailbox?

Then she panics. What if Lil calls the police? Claudia rushes to her bedroom and scoops up her bras. She decides to burn them. But she is wearing one. She undoes her green top and takes off her bra and adds it to the pile. She replaces her green top. I look like hell with no bra. My breasts have fallen to my chest. I have to get new bras or I’ll be a mess at work tomorrow. She puts the bras in the fireplace and lights a match to them. Oh my god, it’s July. Will someone wonder why smoke is coming out of my chimney? I have to calm down.

She drives to the mall. She buys a size 36 C at Penney’s in pink. I’ll squeeze into it somehow. She walks to Sears where she buys a white size 38 E, too much cleavage for sure and then over at Nordstrom’s she chooses a gray 40 D. This one is so padded it looks like someone is already inside.

Claudia is twenty-nine. She is five feet nine with shoulder-length straight brunette hair. She dresses modestly, works in Midtown Bank as a teller and her hobby is building sets for the community theater. She has been working in various jobs in the theater (prompter, lighting, props) since she was a child as her mother was the star actress, Irene Davenport. Claudia was named after the play, Claudia. Irene had the lead role. Claudia was born the day of the final rehearsal. Irene did not miss the final rehearsal or any of the performances.  

When she gets home from the mall, Claudia thinks about security cameras and wonders if she was snapped buying bras everywhere in different sizes. She frowns and makes a cup of Earl Grey and plans her reasoning as she drinks her tea. “I’m thinking about plastic surgery. I may go smaller, or I may go larger.” “It is my custom to buy different sizes; I do the same thing with tee shirts.” Then I must buy some different size tee shirts! “I made a mistake. “The clerks made a mistake.” “I’ve lost weight.” “I’ve gained weight.”

But the question that lingers and disturbs her is... How did my bra get in Lil’s mailbox? Am I going senile like mother? Is it beginning? Did I talk a walk and undress and put my bra in the mailbox thinking I was home and getting ready for bed? Am I this far gone at almost thirty?

Claudia visits Ardennes Memory Care twice a week. It is a beautifully appointed place more like a Ritz Carlton than a nursing home for dementia patients. Her mother does not know her. The visits stir up resentment at life with Irene Davenport. Irene Davenport, local star actress, local celebrity, local society wannabee. Irene, Irene, Irene. Claudia, always quiet, good, non-assuming, non-awesome, shy, non-attractive, non-personality, is the opposite of her mother, Irene, Irene, Irene. Irene is a natural redhead who stayed a redhead with the help of the beauty parlor when the grays started to appear. Irene, the diminutive flirt, Irene the backstabber, Irene the upstager, and Irene who could pull in audiences and fill the community theatre with every performance so no wonder she got most of the leading parts. It is a wonder to all in Portland that she wasn’t scooped up long ago by Hollywood.

And of course, Irene was always ON. Everyone called her the Drama Queen behind her back. Even in her dementia she performs old plays. Irene often performs “The Yellow Wallpaper” that Edna Wilkins of the community theatre had adapted from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story where the wife goes crazy and claws at the wallpaper. Tonight Claudia watches Irene being Penny in You Can’t Take It with You. She is funny, coy. She giggles. She says some lines. How can she remember her lines when she doesn’t remember me? And Irene, as always, clutching that blue portfolio. She’s been known to kick and bite if any of the nurses or pink uniformed aides try to take it from her. That precious blue portfolio, Claudia knows, contains her playbills and good reviews, headshots of the young and beautiful Irene, everything precious to the drama queen.

None of Claudia’s new bras fit and the one from Penney’s has bone stays at the sides that dig into her ribs. She finds some old four-inch sports tape and winds it around her back and chest. She thinks of Chinese women of old who bound their feet. She feels a kinship. At least nothing is hanging to her waist now. On the way to work she drops the new bras, secure in black plastic bags, into dumpsters that are several miles apart. She hopes there are not security cameras at dumpsters, but she thinks there might be because murderers love to hide evidence and bodies in them. She doesn’t know what happens to people who dump new bras in them.

It’s always underwear that leads to the final diagnosis. With Irene it was underpants. She wore them on top of her slacks instead of under. That is when Claudia took her to be examined. Her MRI showed early onset Alzheimer’s. Sure, Irene would forget words or where she parked her car, but when she insisted on wearing those lacy white panties for grocery shopping, that was the certainty.  Claudia took care of her at home until she started the hitting and cursing and throwing food and throwing and smearing her …well Claudia did not want to remember that. She put the youthful-looking fifty-year-old Irene in Ardennes.

Uncle Joe, their lawyer, paid for it all. He wasn’t a relative but they called him Uncle Joe. He was a friend of Aunt Patsy’s. Aunt Patsy was not a relative either but she popped in a few times, Claudia vaguely recalls, taking them to Disneyland and once to Hawaii. She apparently had money, as in capital MONEY. Once Aunt Patsy was a guest actress at the community theater. The show was the musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the only show where Irene got second billing. She played Dorothy, the brunette. Aunt Patsy played the blonde.

Tonight at Ardennes Irene is quite serious, kind, and speaks softly. Claudia recognizes Linda in “Death of a Salesman.” Claudia had been the prompter on that show, but Irene never needed prompting. She always memorized the entire play. Irene would drive the director nuts because she would correct the other actors if they missed a line or an entrance. In fact, right now, Irene is calling out, “STAGE LEFT! YOUR ENTRANCE IS STAGE LEFT. NOW DO IT RIGHT!”

Claudia goes to Irene and gives her a hug. “It’s alright, Mother.”

Irene stares at Claudia and goes back to playing Linda. “Did you know my daughter?”

“I am your daughter,” Claudia says.

Irene looks baffled, then pathetic. Then she asks again. “Do you know I had a daughter?”

“Yes,” Claudia says.

“THEN WOULD YOU PLEASE MAKE YOUR ENTRANCE AT STAGE LEFT!” Irene screams. She slams down her blue portfolio and stomps on it.

Claudia calls an aide who gives Irene a shot. The aide retrieves the blue portfolio and hands it to Irene who cries and kisses the crushed portfolio, then cradles it like a baby.

Claudia thanks the aide. “She’d be lost without her reviews.”

“Where is Biff?” Irene (Linda) whispers.

Claudia stays until Irene sleeps.

When Claudia gets home she finds neighbor Lil D. coming out of Irene’s bedroom. “What are you doing here?”

“I put an angel food cake in your refrigerator. I thought you could take it to Irene.”

“How did you get in?”

“Irene gave me a key years ago when you went on a trip. I was to check on things.”

“I don’t want you checking on things.”

“What about Irene?”

“Irene is senile, Lil.”

Lil shrugs. “Who cares? Take your old key then if that’s how you feel.” She pretends to give the key to Claudia but then purposefully drops it. “Oops.”

The next day Claudia has all the locks changed just in case Lil had made a copy. Calvin, from KEYS UNLIMITED, changes the locks. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” Claudia asks.

“Sure,” Calvin says.

“I mean really personal,” Claudia persists.

“Shoot.”

“What kind of underwear do men wear lately?”

“Whoa!” Calvin says. He wipes slobber off his goatee.

“No seriously, I don’t know. I don’t mean you. I mean in general.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I’m probably going crazy,” Claudia admits.

“Let me tell you, sister, don’t go asking guys that, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Claudia gives Calvin the angel food cake and hopes it doesn’t kill him, and then she hopes it does.

Around 7:30 p.m. Claudia goes to the mall and buys a men’s red thong. When she gets home it is dusk so she puts it in Lil’s mailbox with a note that reads, “I want you, signed The Mailman.”

When the Administrator of Ardennes calls Claudia at work to tell her Irene has passed, Claudia is shocked. She thought Irene would go on for years. Claudia wonders if her death scene had been as theatrical as Irene would have wanted. Maybe Irene played Juliet.

She doesn’t cry. She leaves work and goes home to choose a dress that Irene will wear in the casket, her last performance. She isn’t happy with the choices in Irene’s closet so she drives to the Costume Shoppe and buys a bejeweled blue and green dress, very ancient Egypt, very low cut, very sexy, very Cleopatra, perfect.

Three weeks after the funeral, the Administrator of Ardennes drops by to see Claudia. She brings Irene’s blue portfolio. “I think you should have this. Please forgive me for reading it.”

“Oh. I know what’s in there,” Claudia says, “but thanks. Mother loved to look at her old headshots and playbills. She loved reliving those days.”

“There are no headshots or playbills, Claudia. I probably shouldn’t interfere but I do think when you are ready, you should give it a read.” Aileen, the administrator, hugs Claudia and then departs after explaining, “We have two new patients today and I think I should be around if needed. It’s not easy moving into a facility. You remember it wasn’t easy for Irene.”

Claudia puts the blue portfolio on the living room mantel. She has things to do. She has to finally write to Aunt Patsy and tell her about Irene’s death. She is very overdue on that letter. She has to make an appointment with the lingerie department of Penney’s to schedule a fitting with a bra consultant. She is getting very tired of taping her chest and then pulling off the tape every few days. Besides it’s excruciatingly painful. She also has to speak to Lil D.’s husband and say how sorry she is that Lil has run off with the mailman. Claudia is determined to not confess her part in this development but on the other hand she thinks maybe he has a sense of humor.

So Claudia does all those tasks, and she learns that Aunt Patsy is devastated about her friend’s death and would have committed suicide, but she didn’t have enough pills; that it feels good to have bras that fit properly; and that Lil D.’s husband does not have a sense of humor.

Then and only then, weeks later, Claudia opens the blue portfolio and finds photos of herself through the years. She also finds her birth certificate. And no wonder Irene could “go on” after her birth because Claudia’s mother was Aunt Patsy (now known to the world as the international star of stage and screen, Ava Wirth). There are also letters from famous producers, Jerry Weintraub and the Coen brothers, begging Irene to come to Hollywood. She was being offered top dollar to star in movies with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas. Then there is the note that Irene wrote to Claudia. The date was about the time Irene was questioning her mental abilities.

My darling, don’t go thinking I gave all this up for you even though I would have (might have) if you needed me. Darling, I gave it up because I’m a small town girl and I was afraid I wouldn’t survive in Hollywood. Aunt Patsy was always tough but not me. I put on a tough act because I was so un-tough. So, darling Claudia, I loved you to pieces but don’t ever think I gave this up for you because I’m not a saint but still I love you more than you will ever know. Love, Irene… or Mommy, whatever.

P.S. Bury me in the costume I wore as Alice in Alice in Wonderland. I want God to first see me as sweet and innocent but up for adventures. Don’t tell Aunt Patsy I’m dead. We have a pact that she would die first. Keep up your theatre work—try directing because I think you would be quite insightful as a director. (Your father was a director.) Check out the dating sites on the internet. I want you to marry and give me grandchildren. And for the thousandth time will you please stand up straight and smile!