A Girl's Best Friend (22 page)
“He didn’t really care, Morgan, not in the important ways.”
This comment gives me pause as I think about my mother and her screeching voice calling after my father. But there’s one scene I’m seeing as if for the first time, and it’s my mother yelling at my father’s back.
“Did he pay attention to her?”
“Not after the first year. By then, she was like a worn toy to a child. He’d moved beyond being interested.”
I feel the tears sting my eyes as I think about hearing anything negative about my father. “I saw what he took from my mother. I saw what he endured. And he never abandoned her, Mrs. Henry. He made sure she had the best care her whole life.”
But even as I say it, I don’t fully believe it. The memories are coming back more vividly now. My mother crying after my father, begging him not to go to a meeting, and him slamming the door on her while she sobbed.
Mrs. Henry smiles condescendingly at me. “Sometimes, Morgan, people can be physically present and yet they still have abandoned you.”
I can’t speak. In my subconscious, I know what she says is true. My home has always had a layer of frost on its walls.
“I have something for you.” She exits my father’s office, and I start to rifle through all the paperwork, and I see my name on nearly every sheet. I am in so much trouble, it’s not even funny. As he lies alone in that hospital room, I have a hard time feeling anything toward my father. I search for the excuses that he had my best interests at heart, but right now, they’re not ringing true.
I look at the paperwork, and the shredder sitting behind it, and I cringe at the thought. For about one second I think of shredding everything. Not because it’s evidence of my guilt, but because it’s evidence that my father is not the man I have always thought him to be: hard-nosed and lacking emotion, but always, always the one who had my best interests at heart. Even when he wanted to exploit my publicity for the store, it was so my inheritance might grow. I know my father.
Mrs. Henry comes back and sees me hovering over the shredder. “Don’t do it, Morgan. Besides, the government has already been here. If they wanted it, they have it.”
I pull the papers away. “I only thought of it for a moment. I wouldn’t have done it.” And really, I wouldn’t have. God did give me a conscience.
Mrs. Henry hands me a pretty envelope in pink linen that reads “Mrs. Traci Malliard” in raised letters in the upper left-hand corner. My name is scrawled across the front. I run my fingers over the letters.
“Where did this come from?” I ask, knowing full well it’s my mother’s handwriting. Even though I was ten when she passed, I remember that much. Is there anything more personal when someone’s gone than her handwriting? Or her voice on the answering machine? It’s haunting, and yet you can’t bring yourself to erase it.
“I’ll leave you alone.” Mrs. Henry exits the room and shuts the office’s double doors behind her.
I stare at the envelope for a long time, wondering what my mother might possibly want to say to me all these years later, and why Mrs. Henry would keep it for so long.
Finally I jump up from the sofa and follow Mrs. Henry into the sterile kitchen, its granite countertops freshly gleaming, the strong scent of the polisher lingering. “Why now?” I ask, holding up the envelope.
“You’re finally ready to hear it. I hoped that day would come. Independence Day, I’ll call it. I needed to know that you saw the chink in your father’s armor.”
I look down at the envelope, and I say a small prayer. I can’t help but wonder what was behind my mother’s stunning façade, and if perhaps this holds the key. I want to tear into it, and be done, but I’m so worried I’ll be disappointed that I stuff it into my coat pocket. “I’ll read it at the spa.”
“You’re going to that spa? Again? Morgan, you have an obsession.”
“I do.” I square my shoulders, just to show her I mean it. The spa is the one place on earth I feel free.
She shakes her head as she walks away from me. “You’re your mother’s daughter, all right.”
“I think this is the kind of letter that should be followed with a hot-stone massage chaser.”
Mrs. Henry rolls her eyes, and I forage through her heavenly leftovers in the refrigerator. George is living in a fantasy world if he thought he could feed me better than this. I sigh dreamily.
“What’s the sighing about?”
“Do you think I’ll ever get married, Mrs. Henry?”
“I sure hope so, Miss Morgan, and I hope all these test runs you’ve taken have taught you a thing or two your mother never learned.” She doesn’t say this with a hint of loving-kindness or concern. It’s more of an attack. Sort of the equivalent of, “If you can find someone stupid enough, sure you can get married.”
Mrs. Henry shoos me out of the way and prepares something for me while I sit at the kitchen island wondering what kind of relationship my parents actually had. I thought Mrs. Henry held the key to my history, but it’s clear she’s not about to share it with me. My parents’ icy realm frosted all who lived here, apparently.
It’s really no wonder my father picked diamonds as his business. They are the hardest substance on the planet, and I imagine he feels a certain kinship to them.
B
efore we leave San Francisco, we go by the gym and pick up my Beamer. I think if you’re going to go to prison for extortion, fraud, and tax evasion, you should definitely go in a high-end German car. It shows that at least you have good taste and appreciate fine engineering. So we arrive at the Spa Del Mar in style, and let’s just say they aren’t surprised to see us. I’m struck by something I learned back in my church counseling days (when I actually thought I should be counseling, rather than realizing
I was more the counselee). Addictive behavior is a cycle. Something negative happens, it triggers a response in us, and we need instant gratification. And so we fill ourselves with whatever that gratification is, be it alcohol, caffeine, marriage proposals, etc.
Lilly is addicted to Lysol. Apparently, bad smells are her trigger.
Poppy is addicted to good, clean living and natural oils. I have no idea what her deal is. But I have a feeling it’s related to endorphins.
I’m addicted to needing someone, like your standard orphan puppy. My trigger is loneliness. I hate to be alone— and yet, generally speaking, I’ve always been alone. There were always people around, but no one ever paid much attention. My mother didn’t want me, and my father was too busy for me. Somehow I’ve always thought being married would solve this cycle, and my loneliness. But right now that seems like an exceptionally stupid way to go about things. Especially when I could’ve always just gone to the spa for fulfillment.
Or perhaps I should have just gone to the pound and gotten a little toy poodle to cart around in my bag at all times, like all the movie stars. Perhaps then I might have avoided the bad-engagement phase of life, which led to ignoring what my father was up to and the necessity of getting a job and moving out of my dad’s penthouse. To think a dog might have solved it all.
But the important thing in the addictive cycle is to break the response. So when I was completely tempted to kiss my lawyer? I didn’t. I fought the temptation with all that I’m made of, and I’ll continue to do so. This is what we call progress!
I’m addicted to Spa Del Mar, too, because this is the one place where I know my friends will always be here for me. Cell phones stop ringing (they don’t usually work out here, although once in a great while we get lucky–or unlucky as the case may be). I know that when I speak here at the spa, someone will listen. They won’t be running off to their next meeting, unless it’s a papaya facial, and I can totally forgive that. No one has anything more important to say than, “It’s time for your papaya facial.”
“I am pathetic, you know?” I toss my Coach overnight bag onto the bed.
“Sure, we know that. The three of us are pathetic. I do believe that’s what made us friends in the first place,” Lilly offers.
“I’ve discovered I’m addicted to people,” I say. “I can’t be alone.”
“Like a codependent?” Poppy asks.
“Sort of, but I can’t really find anyone to be codependent with, so I think I’m just dependent. ‘Insert current boyfriend here.’”
“You should get a dog,” Lilly says.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” I answer, amazed that my friends and I think so much alike.
“You might want to wait until you find out about the charges, though. They don’t let dogs in prison.”
“Lilly!” Poppy chastises. “Ixnay on the isonpray.”
“I may not be concierge material, but I do know my Pig Latin, Poppy.”
She laughs. “We really should have taken a language at Stanford.”
“Obviously.”
“So what are you going to do about this addiction to people?”
“We all have addictive behavior, Lilly. You’re addicted to Lysol, and maybe success, too. Poppy’s addicted to clean living, and getting everyone else to live her way. She’s a control freak of sorts.”
“As I said, now that you’ve figured us all out, what do you intend to do about it? And I don’t really see my Lysol addiction as all that upsetting, actually. Bacteria-scented rooms are worse. And how is Poppy running 10-Ks and living clean bad? I mean, have you seen the girl’s body lately?” Lilly looks over Poppy and lifts her skirt above her knees. “Now, if we could only get her to actually show that body off a bit.” Lilly sighs. “That’s her addiction—bad clothing. She’s got the body of Jessica Simpson in Daisy Dukes under the style of Whoopi Goldberg. That ain’t right.”
Poppy sighs and rolls her eyes. “No one wants to see me in Daisy Dukes.”
“No one wants to see anyone in Daisy Dukes,” Lilly says.
“What about your inability to commit to a good man, for fear you might miss the success boat?” I ask Lilly pointedly. “As if getting married will get in your way?”
“I’m not afraid to get married,” Lilly says, dismissing me, because clearly she doesn’t want to talk about Max. “Poppy, at least let me make you a pair of jeans. You would rule the sidewalk in a pair of my jeans.”
Poppy shakes her head. “Too stiff. I don’t like denim.”
“Oh no, my jeans are like butter. They will hug you and your curves like buttah, I tell you.” Lilly raises her eyebrow and rethinks her strategy. “Natural fibers. All-natural fibers, and you look good, too. How bad could it be?”
“You’re avoiding the subject Lilly. I’m on to you.”
“I’m not avoiding the subject. I’m changing the subject. I just don’t understand what your delving into addictions has to do with me. Let’s focus on why you have to have a boyfriend, all right?”
She looks at me and sees my frustration, and I can see her guilt well up on her expression. “I’m sorry, Morgan. You’re addicted to people. That’s a good step for you to figure that out. We just need to find you a decent person to be addicted to.”
“I think I’m going to stick with my faith from here on out. I wonder if being an evangelical Christian, I’m eligible to be a nun.”
“Nuns don’t get pedicures every week,” Poppy reminds me.
“It’s that whole living simply thing,” Lilly agrees.
“I might be living more simply than the nuns if the feds get their way.”
“Would you stop?”
“We’re here for you Morgan. This could be your—” Poppy cuts herself off.
“You can say it. My last shot at freedom. My last visit to Spa Del Mar for a very long time.” I put my head down. “Well, you know Martha Stewart lost weight in prison; maybe that will happen for me. I’m going to be an optimist. Maybe I’ll meet a cute prison guard.”
“Martha wasn’t a six to begin with, Morgan.” Lilly shakes her head. “And aren’t the prison guards women?”
“How would I know?” I pull the pink envelope from my jacket pocket. “I have a letter here from my mother.”
After a moment in which both Lilly and Poppy blink at my non sequitur, Lilly shakes her head. “Oh, be careful with that. My biological mother came to visit me, and I only got abandoned all over again.” She takes the envelope from my hand. “Do you want me to read it to you?”
“Will you tell me what it really says?” I ask.
“Maybe.” Lilly opens the envelope carefully, and I watch as her eyes scan the contents. The letter is short, and when she’s done Lilly looks up at me with tears in her eyes. “Your mother experience is better than mine.”
“Let me see it!” I grab the letter from her hands and allow myself to focus first on the beautiful script my mother had. “She was such an artist,” I say. It’s so strange to think after all these years my mother had something she wanted to say to me.
May 7, 1985
Dear Morgan:
If you’re reading this, most likely the cancer finished its job,
and I am on to the next level of living. I have asked Grace Henry
to give this to you when she thinks you are old enough to hear it.
There
is so much I want to apologize for, so much I should have
done for you, but I suppose this is the way it’s supposed to be. Your
father will marry again, and find another woman to fill in where I
was so inadequate. I wanted to be a good mother, but there was
nothing in me, no reserves and no motherly instincts. Everyone told
me that I’d find them, they were there dormant in me, but I found
that this wasn’t true. Being a mother involved offering something of
myself that simply wasn’t there.
You probably remember that your father and I had a combative
marriage. We were not in love when we married, but I thought
his care of me would fulfill something I’d been missing in my own
experience. He thought he might train me to be the right kind of
wife who would be accepted into his world. For the most part, I
think we achieved our goals, but the crack in our great plan was
you. We could fool the whole of San Francisco, but we could never
fool you, my love. You saw who we really were. I wish that I’d taken
the time to grab you up in my arms and hug you with all my
strength. It’s what I wanted to do, but it was too late for you. You
were afraid of me, and I can’t say I blame you.