Bittersweet Dreams Page 4

“Don’t you want there to be a Santa Claus, Mayfair?” my mother asked.

  Of course, I did, but I just couldn’t believe in him.

  “You can’t believe in something unless it’s true,” I said, and my father laughed again. He had such a wonderful laugh then, an infectious laugh that made anyone near him laugh along, including me.

  “You poor dear,” my mother would say, embracing me. “I hope you can find something wonderful to believe in someday without worrying about whether it’s true or not.”

  “She will,” my father promised her. “This kid will do it all.”

  He was so proud of me back then. If there was any possibility of taking me along with him when he visited someone involved with his public relations business or simply went shopping for something, he would. I knew even at age three that he was eager to show me off, almost the way Fish Face did, but I was eager to please him. And after my mother died, it was even more important to please him. In my mind, I was still pleasing her, too. It was as if part of her floated into him after her death. They were that close when she was alive, and that was as far as I would go in believing anything supernatural.

  I was just as eager to please him now, but it had become more difficult, maybe even impossible, because once he married Julie Dunbar, I felt that the part of my mother that was in him had left. She’d have been the first to tell him, “There’s not enough room in one heart for two lovers in your life, Roger.”

  She wouldn’t sound angry or upset. She would be smiling softly, her voice gentle and kind. I missed that voice and that smile. All the mirrors in our ten-room Bel Air hacienda-style home surely missed that smile as well. Everything lost its glitter and gleam when my mother died. This was so much her home, down to her choice of every color, every floor tile, every cabinet handle, and every light fixture. Almost without comment, my father had nodded and approved everything she planned or wanted. He had that much faith and trust in her judgment, but more important, he had that much of a desire to see her happy. She was as important to him as she was to me.

  Whenever I thought of myself becoming romantically involved with someone someday, I’d think of what my parents were to each other. The parents of so many girls I knew just seemed to be sharing a place to live. I’d overhear their daughters complaining about how much their parents argued. Doors were always slamming in their homes. Parents were often sulking, sometimes for days and even weeks. These girls hated to be home and looked for every opportunity to keep themselves away.

  I never felt this way about my home when my mother was alive, and I couldn’t remember any doors slamming, nor could I recall my parents being so angry at each other that one would sulk. If either upset the other, he or she became almost desperate to make it better. Love in our house wasn’t a goal; it was a reality, the status quo. I could feel it, and that feeling gave me a sense of security. I loved being with them. It was because of them that I was less skeptical about people actually loving each other, caring more for each other than they cared for themselves.

  I was always skeptical about almost everything in my life, from when I was an infant until now, but one thing I always trusted was my mother’s hand holding mine. I knew she would rather have her arm separate from her shoulder than let go if I needed her. After she died, life without her was like a bird without a voice, just something that glided silently along, jealous even of the screech of a cat.

  There were no birds singing now, and I knew a good part of the reason was my own fault. Julie wasn’t all wrong. Just because you were brilliant, that didn’t mean you couldn’t do something terribly wrong, something that would hurt the one person you loved the most in the world. I liked to think that I had more control of my emotions than most people because I was so intelligent, but emotions really did come from another place. Anger and jealousy could be more like viruses eating away at you until you did something you regretted.

  And I did.

  All the way up to Spindrift, Daddy watched me in the rearview mirror. I saw the sadness in his eyes, but I also saw him anticipating my doing or saying something to show my resistance and maybe cause another serious blowup between my stepmother and me. I knew he was tired of being a referee, and frankly, I was tired of it, too. I wanted out of this game as much as he did.

  I caught the hesitation and sadness in his eyes. At times along the way, I thought he was going to stop and turn around, even though I knew that if he didn’t go through with this, he’d surely end up in a divorce. Julie had been through a nasty divorce, so she was a veteran of the marital wars and might be quicker to pull the trigger. It was always easier to do something the second time, although even for Julie, it had to be terrible to face the fact that it was difficult for her to hold on to a relationship. I had yet to hold on to any, even a silly little high-school romance, but I knew what disappointment a failure like that could be. No matter what, deep inside, you’d always blame yourself. Surely there was one more thing you could have done, could have said, one more thing that would have saved the relationship.

  Although my father didn’t say it in so many words, it was obvious to me soon after he married Julie that he was sensitive to the possibility of her eventually wanting a divorce solely because of me. That would be so unfair to him. He was as good a father to her daughter, Allison, as he could be, maybe too good. The blame for any problem between my stepsister and me would always be on me, “because you know better.” Most of the time, he would say something like that to please Julie. I realized that was his sole reason and he didn’t always believe it. My father had a good poker face, except with me. He knew I could see through any mask he put on.

  He would be the first to admit that most things were not what they seemed to be. That was his business, after all, often putting lipstick on a pig. He had no false illusions about it. It was still a pig. Both of us pretended and put on an act for each other when he finally agreed with Julie that I should be sent somewhere far away.

  The night before we left for the school, he had come into my room while I was packing and stood silently for a few moments watching me. I knew he was there, but I ignored him. Finally, I paused, and we looked at each other. I saw how difficult this was for him.

  “What?” I asked softly.

  “This is a really good idea, Mayfair. You need the challenge this school will give you,” he said. “You need the personal attention and the chance to go at your own pace.”

  “Right,” I said, even though both of us knew nothing had ever stopped me from going at my own pace and I always enjoyed personal attention when I needed it.

  “And as your guidance counselor, Mr. Martin, says, it will be good for you to be with students with abilities like yours. You’ll feel more comfortable, and you’ll have some competition. You’re the one who told me runners go faster when they have someone right on their heels.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You’re right. I’m wasting my time here with these Yahoos.”

  “Yahoos?” he said, smiling.

  “In Gulliver’s Travels, remember? They were disgusting, stupid creatures that resembled human beings.”

  He stopped smiling. “I don’t like it when you’re so condescending, Mayfair. Don’t look down on people who aren’t as brilliant as you are. A little humility is important, especially now,” he said. “You should know why better than I do.”

  Even though he was right, I hated it when he saw something wrong with me. My fear was that perhaps he would love me less, although I would never admit to that fear. I believed that admitting to any fear gives that fear more power over you. “Stuff it” was my motto. I would never show that I was afraid of the dark or of being alone when I was little. And there wasn’t another girl or even a boy who could make me cower and retreat. They could see the resistance in my eyes, and they’d usually be the ones who backed off. But it was always different when it came to my father. I could defeat him in an argument, frustrate him with my logic, but it never made me feel any better. The truth was, it always made me f
eel worse.

  I turned away so he wouldn’t see my eyes burn with tears. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, Daddy. I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “Okay,” he said, and came up behind me to kiss me softly and pat my hair. I watched him walk away, slouching like someone in defeat. What had happened to all those wonderful predictions for me, for our family, when I was younger and something of a star not only at school but at home and everywhere we went as a family? I was sure he was wondering where he had failed and that he was troubled with the thought that my mother would be very disappointed.

  I packed faster. I owed it to my mother to make it easier for him, I thought. I could just imagine her watching the two of us and looking disappointed in my behavior. That was all she ever had to do, look disappointed. I could practically feel her thoughts. Don’t hurt him, Mayfair. Please, she would think. It’s not easy for him, either. Help him get through it.

  I was still trying to do that now in the car as we drew closer to Spindrift. I hid any displeasure or regret and acted quite indifferent about it all. I wasn’t going to give Julie any satisfaction by pleading for mercy or promising to improve my behavior toward her. To me, promises were like colorful bubbles, pretty but quick to pop and disappear, especially if they came from someone like her. If she had half a brain, which I didn’t think she had, she would be able to see through my false face, which I couldn’t help but have. After all, as Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, False face must hide what the false heart doth know. And when it came to agreeing to all of this with any resemblance of enthusiasm, I had a false heart.

  She should have been able to see that easily. Didn’t it take one to know one, and who better to see a phony than a phony? That was why my father couldn’t see through her. He was too trusting and honest, despite the work he had to do. He was desperate for happiness since my mother’s death. I didn’t like it, but I had to forgive him. I had to make myself understand and accept.

  My stepmother sat with her shoulders hunched up, which made the skin at the back of her neck crinkle like cellophane. She would lower her chin and cramp up tightly when she was nervous. I could imagine all the organs inside her crowding together like frightened mice. And when she was very, very nervous, she would hold her breath until her face turned red. Right now, it was as if she felt that if she made a sound or moved a muscle, it would all go bad, and my father would take my side, turn the car around, and blame it all on her. All the way home, she would think, So close. There I was, so close to getting rid of her, and I screwed up.

  I knew the silence in the car was driving her bonkers, however. My father wasn’t his talkative self. Julie didn’t want the radio on, because the chatter made her even more nervous, and I certainly had nothing to say to her. I hadn’t said anything to either of them after we had left Los Angeles. I was sure she thought I was just being spiteful, my old spoiled self. I wasn’t, but I couldn’t help my silence. Maybe I was sadder than I would admit, and I wasn’t sulking as much as I was crying inside. But that was something I would never reveal to her.

  Everyone talked to himself or herself. Perhaps I did it more than most people, because I had running conversations going as if my brain was on Facebook or something. It was probably another reason so many other students kept their distance at my old school. To them, I always looked as if I were on another planet, in another dimension, listening to some other voices. It bugged some of my teachers, because they thought I wasn’t paying attention to their important comments, but when they questioned me to catch me so they could bawl me out, I always had the answer.

  Was I very sad about leaving my home? I knew that any other girl would have looked back at the house and gotten all choked up inside. It wasn’t only because of what the house was, an eight-thousand-square-foot, two-story Spanish-style hacienda in Bel Air, complete with a beautiful oval pool, a cabana with a built-in barbecue grill, and a clay tennis court. I’d heard my father say the house and the grounds were estimated to be worth upward of twelve million dollars. He bought it when he was promoted to CEO of Pacifica Advertising, which had contracts with major pharmaceutical companies and some entertainment firms. He was now a major stockholder in the company, a fact I was sure was not lost on Julie.

  I had mixed feelings about leaving, because I grew up in this house. My best memories of my mother took place in this house, and now I was being deported from it. Deported was the right word. How often I had felt like a foreigner now in my own home. But when I looked back and thought about it more, it was like cutting the umbilical cord again. I wasn’t just separating from my father and my mother’s memory. I was losing them. They were drifting off like smoke in the wind, falling behind as we drove on. I was never so afraid of being alone.

  Nevertheless, I refused to let myself get emotional. I had talents and skills few people had, number one of which was harvesting the most value from any experience. What I had in that house I was taking with me. I was able to internalize all of it. I treasured all the memories, no matter how small or insignificant someone else might think they were. Not Julie, not the school administrators who had come down on me, no one could take any of it from me.

  “How much longer?” Julie asked, as if she were being waterboarded.

  “Not far now,” Daddy said. He turned and flashed one of his rah-rah, sis-boom-bah, high-octane, successful-advertising-executive smiles at her.

  “You sure you know where you’re going, Roger?”

  “He has it on the GPS,” I muttered. “If he makes a wrong turn or something, it will let him know.”

  She ignored me, but my father said, “Mayfair’s right. We can’t get lost.”

  “I don’t trust those things,” Julie said, and I laughed a little too loudly for her. She didn’t trust the GPS because she couldn’t grasp how to use it. The one in her car was never turned on. She had trouble with a television remote. It was a wonder she could work her blow-dryer, and if it did get too hot and shut off, she’d scream, “Roger, the electricity in the house is off!”

  “Try to figure it out yourself, Julie,” I would tell her. “How can the electricity be off if the lights are on?”

  Just like back then, she glared at me angrily now in the car and then turned quickly away. I didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking. She had made that perfectly clear many times. Almost from the day she and my father had married, she’d always accused me of ridiculing her in one way or another. Why should it be any different even after what I had done? I was irretrievable, unrepentant, and impossible to change or improve. You didn’t just give up on someone like me, she might say. You shook her completely out of your memory. I was sure she was chafing at the bit just thinking of the free rein she would have in our house now, never worrying about any comment I might make about something she had done or wanted to do.

  The midafternoon Southern California freeway traffic suddenly began to swell. Somewhere along the highway artery, there was a blood clot, I thought. We slowed to a crawl. It didn’t bother me. Whenever we were on the freeways and traffic slowed to a crawl or came to a standstill, I would continue reading or researching something on the internet. My father had bought me my first laptop when I was just a little more than three, and later he made sure I was always hooked into a satellite or had a PDA so I could get onto the internet. Whenever we had company and someone asked a question no one could answer, he would turn to me and say, “Mayfair, why don’t you look that up for us?”

  Like a father watching his son in a Little League game, he’d sit back with pride and watch me, at three or four years old, get the right website and come up with the answer, usually in less than a minute.

  I was on the internet now, researching the community where Spindrift was located. It was in the Coachella Valley, just outside the small city of Piñon Pine Grove, named for the piñon pine trees that populated its borders. There were some small factories providing building materials and one that made store racks, plus some industrial farms. Not exactly an exciting new co
mmunity, I thought, but I didn’t exactly enjoy Los Angeles, either. I rarely visited the museums or the parks.

  Researching the community and the school, I was quite content with the delay, but I knew the traffic jam put butterflies and worms in Julie’s stomach. If anyone wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, it was she. I imagined the only reason she’d come along was to make sure my father didn’t change his mind. Of course, she acted as if she was concerned and cared about me, at least for his sake. She was concerned, all right, concerned that I would somehow be rejected at the door and end up back at home with Allison, who had been left behind with the maid. After what I had done, the faster and the farther we were separated, the better it would be in Julie’s eyes.

  “How do people do this every day?” Julie asked, nodding at the traffic.

  “Is that a hypothetical question?”

  “What?” she said, turning around to me again. She had to struggle to make it look like a painful effort. She was that tightly wrapped.

  “Hypothetical means you really don’t expect a specific answer. You ask it to begin a conversation, a larger discussion. Do you want an answer?”

  She stared a moment. “You have an answer?”

  “People do this every day because they have little choice, Julie. Their jobs are far away from their homes. They want their kids to go to better schools. They want to live in safer neighborhoods. The commute and all this traffic on weekends to get to malls or stores,” I said, waving at the cars in front of us, “are the trade-off. It’s probably far worse on weekday mornings and late afternoons.”

  She dropped the corners of her mouth and pressed her lower lip under her upper one. “Well, I couldn’t do it,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do it. You don’t even have to shop for food.”

  “Mayfair,” Daddy said, with that little upturn in his voice to indicate that I should go into retreat.

  I knew that the whole episode at school, including what had recently occurred between me and the girls I called the “bitches from Macbeth,” had exhausted him. He looked like he had aged years. He was afraid of any conversation between Julie and me continuing for more than a few seconds. He was quite aware of how easily I could belittle her in any argument. I was always good at winning arguments, whether it be with her or with my teachers.