Nothing Left To Want (40 page)

I tried to swallow, couldn’t and just panted into the phone, listening to words that were burning down my life like the fire had burned down my house.

“
I am guessing that if you did not bother to insure a multi-million dollar property, you never bothered to insure what was inside of it. This is a great tragedy, Carolyn.”

“
But I didn’t know, I didn’t … Why didn’t you tell me?” I wailed into his ear.

He snapped back. “I am not an insurance salesman, Carolyn. Good God, perish the thought. I went above and beyond, as the case may be, in handling your tax situation with the last house; now of course … ” His voice trailed off.

Obediently I repeated, “Tax situation?”

“
Yes, of course, capital gains tax. I detailed all of this in a letter to you at the time, though I’m certain you chose to ignore it. What it means is that there was a two million dollar capital gain tax on the sale of your first California home. I deferred that because you purchased a home of greater value. Now there is no more home and no prospective home. In addition, I fear the clean up of the property in question will cost at least as much as you may hope to retrieve on any sale of a vacant lot. In short, Carolyn, last night’s debacle was a thirteen million dollar loss and you, my dear, are in rather dire straits.”

I struggled to think. There had to be a way out of this. I whimpered in Herbert’s ear, “My God, I’m … I’m so, I’m so stupid, but, Herbert, there is still some money, right? I mean, I’m not going to live on the streets, am I?”

I finished on a sobbing half-laugh. “No, Carolyn, and you may thank both God and the wisdom of your trustees for that mercy. I can only imagine, given your total disregard of even the modicum of financial responsibility, what would have become of you if we had turned over the entire amount in your trust. Your fortune is greatly diminished and can no longer be considered as the limitless security your father had hoped it would bring you, but if you live carefully, you should survive quite well. In that vein, we, the trustees, are removing all control from you and will henceforth give you a monthly allowance.”

“
How much?”

“
Fifteen thousand is the amount we have agreed upon. It should be more than adequate for a single mother and child. You should notify a local rental agency about finding a property to lease as I cannot imagine your mother will be willing to return her granddaughter ... ”

“ …
who she’s never met … ” I snapped.

Herbert said unperturbed, “Be that as it may, I do not think she will return your child as long as you are residing with Miss Tines. Once you have found a suitable abode, notify me and I will write the deposit checks. As to furnishings, well … ” He hesitated momentarily, stumped, I imagine, by how one furnished a home on his secretary’s salary. “As to furnishings, try to remember when buying the necessities that you have to live on a set monthly amount now. From that you will need to pay your rent, your utilities, gas and auto insurance, and provide food for yourself and your child.”

“
And child care, Herbert, what kind of childcare should I get, an illegal immigrant maybe? Would mother approve of that for her grandchild?”

He sighed. “I really must be going, Carolyn, but, before I do, some last advice: you are a mother now,” he said it in a kind of 'God help the kid' way before continuing, “and since you are unemployed and give every appearance of remaining that way, you might consider caring for your child yourself. If not, maybe you could sell your car, or any jewelry that can be recovered from the fire scene, and prepay a year or so of care. This, despite your rather sustained belief otherwise, is not my concern. Good day, Carolyn.”

'Good day,' he said. When Karmen came back into the bedroom, obviously expecting me to apologize to her for ignoring her earlier, she was arrested at the sight of my dead white face and shaking limbs. She sat down beside me and asked what was going on. When I was finished, she was quiet for awhile. She didn’t hug me or tell me everything was going to be okay. She just nodded and said, “Huh, well you’re pretty fucked now. Welcome to allowance world. It’s going to be rough with a kid, but at least there’s some good news.”

I stared at her dully. “What’s that?”

She grinned triumphantly, “Well, since you’re staying here with me until you find a place to live, you have to take me as your date to Milan’s housewarming now.”

Chapter 42

Milan stood by me, at her party, with her arm clamped firmly around my shoulders, standing at the base of her brand new curving staircase in the forty million dollar house that she had bought after signing on for Season three of
The Natural Life
.

She stood by me later downstairs in her disco room when Karmen drunkenly grabbed my arm to pull me away and make me bump and grind with her. Milan threw everyone her dazzler of a smile, acted like it was her own idea and joined us on the dance floor, raising her long arms and swaying back and forth seductively until we had a circle of people watching us with admiration and not disgust.

She stood by me when I needed her to help me to find a new place to live and, what could have been grim, she tried her hardest to make a blast. Milan and Christy, and Mrs. Marin and I, didn’t use a real estate agent this time. It turns out that when you are looking for rentals in the three to five thousand dollar a month area, the quality of service goes down, way down, and after meeting with the fattest man I had ever seen, and spending a day being driven around in his ten year old Ford Escort looking at what he called 'cozy properties' and what I called the nadir of despair, I asked Karmen if we could maybe start looking for a bigger place together long term.

She wasn’t enthused. It seemed to me, and maybe I’m wrong, but it seemed as though my desirability rating had dropped way down following the loss of my house and money, and once she had gotten her way about me taking her to Milan’s party, she turned downright mean. She didn’t like Petal, she didn’t like sharing her bathroom and she especially hated sharing her clothes with me, almost as much as I hated asking, since all her clothes made me look like a hooker. And, well, they were kind of tight on me too. I think I’ve always looked fat. I’m five feet nothing basically, and the minute I hit a pound over ninety-five I look like a big lumpy potato with feet, and all the starving and purging and liposuction in the world never made me look taller, which is what I needed to be to look truly thin.

Karmen pointed that out a couple of times. I don’t like arguing so I didn’t point out to her in return that, despite a pretty great size two body and beautiful hair, she was also missing a chin, or that her nose was as big as my head, practically.

It’s funny because her almost deliberate ugliness was one of the things I both liked and hated about her. I mean, you can pare down your nose and buy a chin pretty easily. That she didn’t made her seem edgy and different to me. I had grown up surrounded by some seriously good inherited looks and then, in L.A., everyone looks like either a Malibu or a Princess Barbie by design, so Karmen’s monkey features made her stand out, not in a way I would have wanted to, but she seemed more than happy with her appearance and used up a ton more mirror time than I ever did. Maybe she saw something different than the rest of us when she stared at herself so intently.

I read once that you can never really see yourself. That’s kind of deep. I wonder how people saw me. I guess they must have seen an ugly fat girl. People are never kind to ugly fat girls, so that would explain a lot.

I knew Milan didn’t like Karmen and I knew too that she didn’t have clue one what to say to me about my recent transition to lesbianhood, so she handled it the way she did every unpleasant topic, she ignored it.

When she told me she and Christy wanted to house hunt with me, she didn’t say it was because she couldn’t deal with me living with Karmen, she said it was because I needed to get a place and get Diana home. I knew she was right but I just wasn’t sure. I did love my little girl, I do love my daughter, but being a mother had been strange and scary to me. Diana and I had been living in a fairly good-sized house with round-the-clock help, and I had no idea how we would manage in some small rental house with maybe no nanny at all.

Milan brushed aside my concerns but this was one area where I didn’t immediately glom onto her advice. She wasn’t a mother; she couldn’t possibly understand the twenty-four seven sheer neediness of having a baby. She thought she got it because of her in-house menagerie of pets - six dogs, two bunnies and a llama she had named George Clooney - but pets aren’t children. To be fair, though, I didn’t really get that myself until after I adopted a baby.

Sometimes in life it’s easier to just go along and pretend because there are some things inside yourself that are so bad and so shameful that even if you are doing something that makes you unhappy, it’s better to front and live your life as a big fraud than to tell the truth. Or maybe not. What do I know about good choices?

I did what Milan suggested because she loved me; because she was the only person alive who really did love me, and always had.

Christy is a sweetie but she is an emotionally distant girl. If she feels any real love, it’s only for her sister. But not Milan. The lifetime of friendship she gave me was real.

And I couldn’t look at her beautiful face and tell her I didn’t really want Diana back.

I was afraid that if I said that she might start listening to what I was sure other people were saying to her, that I was a loser, that I was dragging her down. I don’t know if she would have willingly heard that, but admitting I was a bad mother on top of having just very, very reluctantly admitted that I was gay, might have forced her to withdraw from me. And it wasn’t only Milan’s beautiful face I was thinking of when I put on a determined smile and climbed into the car with her and Christy for a fun-filled day of house hunting; it was Diana’s small, beautiful face, her tiny face that always, no matter what, stared into mine with all the love and trust in the world. For her I needed to act better, even if I couldn’t be better.

When Milan, after getting lost for two hours, mainly because she couldn’t figure out how to program her GPS system, finally pulled up in front of what would be my last home, my present home, I was so car sick and irritable that I vowed to take it sight-unseen.

Meeting my new landlady almost changed my mind.

She was small like me, Asian unlike me, as flashy as Karmen and she seemed to have as much contempt for me on sight as Karmen was showing most days too.

“
You are the Kelleher girl?” Before I could answer, she continued, “You’re late. I’ve been here for over an hour. This is a great house, it's going fast. I had a guy here last night, good guy, single guy, he wants the house. I think I’d better rent the house to him. Late on appointment, late on rent, I say. You better look for something else, okay?”

I couldn’t believe I was being rejected as a potential tenant. First of all I’d never been a renter of any kind, nor had I ever planned to be one. I hadn’t even seen the house and this creepy little woman was saying I wasn’t good enough?

I would have just gotten back into the car, maybe had a good cry and asked Milan to take me back to Karmen’s unloving arms, if it hadn’t been for the landlady’s utter and immediate change of heart upon espying Milan’s five foot eleven length unfolding from the driver’s seat.

Milan had overheard her remarks and was already on full charm offensive by the time she walked over to the woman. She flashed her her mega watt smile and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m so sorry we were late. It’s all my fault. I got lost. I’m terrible, and here you were, you poor thing, stuck waiting for us. Please don’t be mad at Carey. She’s never late for anything, I promise.” I was never on time for anything, but I admired her balls for saying it with a straight face. She continued pouting adorably at the transfixed woman. “Cant we see the house, please?”

Christy, who was standing behind my prospective landlady, rolled her eyes but I couldn’t return her disdainful gesture, much as I wanted to. I was in a new position, I was a supplicant. I needn’t have worried. At the first sight of Milan, the woman had melted into a sycophantic, celebrity-worshipping mass of ass kissing.

“
Oh Miss Marin, I can’t believe it’s you, I mean right here with me. Do you know
The Natural Life
is my favorite show?” At that Christy lost it and started laughing out loud.

Milan threw her an annoyed look and went into her gracious star, girl of the people, act. “Really? That’s awesome of you to say so and please call me Milan. So can we see the house? You know Carey here is my oldest friend in the world, and her little girl is my sister’s goddaughter. Oh, and this is my sister, Christy.”

Christy didn’t bother to hold out her hand. Rudely she lit a cigarette and muttered hello. It didn’t matter, the landlady was a goner.