After Perfect (23 page)

The little black Lab rolled over stretching her hind legs as she yawned. Then she leapt into my lap and began licking my face. Chloe giggled and jumped from her bed to my bed so she could pet our new furry friend.

Through her lace curtains, I could see the bare trees and white sky preparing for the snowstorm that was coming our way.

“Mara! Wake up!” Chloe cried.

A note dangled from the puppy's red ribbon: “To Mara, Christina, and Chloe—Take care of her for me. Merry Christmas. Love, Santa.”

We ran downstairs as our new puppy tumbled after us. We skipped through the dining room, through the loggia, and into the family room, where the cookies and carrots had been eaten and the milk had been drunk. Dozens of presents swallowed the tree, and our stockings were stuffed to the brim. Like clockwork, Dad would make us his famous pancakes before we opened presents.

“Dad, it's going to hit the ceiling!” we cried.

“One more time, one more time,” he insisted. He expertly flipped the pancake high in the air, shuffled his feet while concentrating on the airborne pancake, and then, falling to his knees, caught it in the pan before it hit the floor.

“Perfecto!” Dad yelled.

Once the video camera was recording and my mother had her cup of coffee, we ravaged through presents like three Tasmanian devils, “Nintendo 64!” “Look at my dollhouse!” “Life-size Barbie!” “Mom, look! It's Addy! The new American Girl doll!” My parents would laugh and look at each other, knowing they had done their job well.

With snowflakes falling from the sky, we stayed in our pajamas all day by the fire in the family room, playing with our new toys. But what I remember the most was my father sitting by the fire with his reading glasses on, a cup of hot tea in front of him. He was reading
The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas. The 1844 classic novel tells the story of a young Frenchman who is wrongfully incarcerated, escapes from prison, and obtains a fortune while plotting his revenge.

It was his favorite book.

I
washed my hands over and over again with the pink soap that made the skin of my fingers crack, and I missed Josh. Since we'd visited my father in prison, we hadn't seen each other often. It had been the longest we were apart from each other. He had meant it in Sheryl's office when he said that his going with me to see my father didn't mean we were getting back together. But I didn't want to be alone on Christmas.

J
osh opened the front door, surprised to see me. He wiped his eyes, bloodshot and sleepy. It was three in the morning by the time I showed up.

“Christina,” he sighed, looking at me shivering on his doorstep in my black hoodie.

My mother had heard from Madeline that Josh was trying to move on and was dating other people. At the time, I said I didn't care, even when I did. I knew he wouldn't turn me away, because it was Christmas. It didn't matter to me how anyone loved me that night. Just as long as I didn't have to listen to the stillness inside me for fear of what it might say.

I bent over the bathroom sink and lifted my skirt, as if Josh taking me in were a favor he'd done, and this was how I wanted to return it. I remember looking into the bathroom mirror and seeing his reflection behind me. It was as though we were trying to will ourselves back to love, back to the days of
The Partridge Family
where we still felt innocent, where my heart beat fast at the thought of sitting next to him at the lunch table, before the affairs, before the divorces, before the lying and the stealing and the cheating—before prison.

“What's wrong with you?” one of us had said, both of us sweating and shocked that neither one could come.

“Nothing.”

It was everything. Josh walked away, wiping the sweat off his face. I knew that the kind of love we'd had for each other wasn't sustainable anymore and that running back there had been a mistake. But I followed him into the bedroom, where we crawled into bed without saying a word. I would hold on to him for one more night, hoping that I would wake up and feel something different.

The next morning, I woke up hungover, my hair reeking of cigarette smoke. I put on my Corona belly shirt that smelled of Patrón and was sticky with specks of salt, when Josh sat up in bed and looked at me. “So what does this mean? Do you want to get back together?” Finally, the words I wanted to hear, but just as they became real, I looked at him and couldn't give him an answer. Afraid to say no—afraid of who I'd be without him. And afraid to say yes—afraid of who I'd become if I stayed with him. Wishing ambiguity could be our answer.

“
You
broke up with
me
, Christina. Why are you doing this? Why do you do this to me? You come over here to be with me, and now you're just leaving without a word.”

Josh's lips were quivering. He tried hard not to cry in front of me, because one time I'd told him it made him less of a man. I never saw my father cry. A part of me actually believed that men didn't have feelings. And vulnerability meant that Josh would have to know the truth about me; it would mean admitting the ugliness I felt growing inside of me, and I wouldn't dare do that. I was devoid of any courage, seeping in half-truths. It was easier to trample on somebody else's heart than risk my own.

“Are you seeing someone else?” I asked accusatorily. Wanting a reason to resent him, to push me over the edge, to grab one more moment between us and obliterate it because I needed love proved to me infinitely; because the love we had wouldn't ever be enough. Even when it was. It was over, sabotaged successfully. Josh hung his head. “I have nothing left to say to you, Christina. You got what you wanted. You always do. You should leave now.”

I grabbed my purse, its bottom bulging from the hidden rolls of toilet paper. I stepped into my black boots and wrapped myself up in my hoodie. I looked at Josh one last time. I wouldn't let him see me cry, refusing to swallow my pride. I walked out of that apartment building for the last time. I walked along the dewy grass in the cold morning air at the bottom of the canyon. Up above me, glass houses stirred with families and lovers and gifts from Santa. But I kept my eyes steady on the cracks in the sidewalk, knowing I had pushed him away. Josh was gone. As was everyone else.

D
uring the summer, fall, and into the new year of 2008, I never spoke to anyone about the $300,000 my father said would be wired into my bank account. After Father's Day he sent me a letter explaining that his early release date wasn't going to happen like he had hoped, but that I shouldn't worry because I had money coming my way. “Next week, you should receive wire transfers from two of my clients of $150,000. And at the end of August, you should receive an additional $150,000 for a total of $300,000. Keep this information
confidential
until I tell you otherwise. And
do not
speak about it to me on the telephone except in very general terms . . . Instead of a 911 Turbo Porsche, maybe I'll get an Aston Martin. XOXO, Dad.”

I never told anyone. The money never came. And maybe I couldn't tell anyone for fear that the truth would eventually come from someone else's reasoning other than my own—because I didn't want to see it or believe it. I was tethered to the debt in my name, and I was tethered to the hope that once my father got out of prison, the money would come. But the difference between the two was that I chose to tether myself to my father's hopes and promises because had it not been true, who would I have left? What would I have left? I would have nothing left to hold on to.

A few weeks before I moved out of Mara and Brian's place, I came home from work one night and heard my sister on the phone in her bedroom, the crack of light underneath the door peering out into the hallway. It was four in the morning, and she was never up that late. I listened but couldn't make out what she was saying. A few minutes later, she knocked on my door. I knew it was bad because we hadn't said a word to each other since the night of the Nantucket basket incident.

“Chloe's been arrested for a DUI. The police pulled her over after she was swerving on the 101 Freeway with a broken taillight.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, no one got hurt. But she's wasted; the police won't let me talk to her. She's refusing to talk to Mom and Richard, and wants us to go get her.”

Mara and I flew into sister autopilot. No matter how much we fought, we would be there for one another, wearing the other's pain on top of our own.

Mara threw me her keys. “You drive,” she said. “I'm tired.” I was so concerned about Chloe that I didn't pause to think it might not be such a good idea for me to drive after having had several shots at work.

We drove up the Pacific Coast Highway, windows down, our hair blowing in the wind as I chugged a cup of coffee. It was like nothing had happened between us.

When we were about twenty minutes from the police station, Chloe called Mara's cell phone.

“Isn't she in jail? How does she have her cell phone?”

“Pick it up,” I said.

Chloe was laughing through the speakerphone. “They let me go!” she cried as if she were the freest bird in the world.

“What?” Mara asked, confused. “What do you mean, they let you go?” The police officer apparently thought Chloe was “too cute” to spend the night in jail, and though she had been charged with a DUI and would have to appear in court, they allowed her best friend to come and pick her up from the police station to take her home.

“Fine,” Mara said. “We're coming to your house, then.” Chloe had been living in Isla Vista, known for its excessive partying, with a bunch of students who went to Santa Barbara City College, while she worked a hostessing job in town.

We pulled up to the house. Beer cans were flung about in the street, and red party cups were wedged in the bushes. Chloe stumbled out of the front door, clapping and waving to us as if we were there to continue the party with her, completely unaware of the fact that she had just been arrested.

“Sisters!” she cried, and did a little twirl on the front walkway. I got out of the car and ran to her. I hugged her as tightly as I could. She reeked of vodka. “You are in so much fucking trouble!” I scolded. “You could have killed someone or killed yourself.” Here was I, having just driven up the 101 Freeway after multiple shots at work, telling Chloe the hard truth as if I were talking to myself.

“Where's my ID?” Mara asked. She had given Chloe her old ID as a gift, since they looked alike. “You've lost your privileges,” she said, also trying to act the parent. “Hand it over.”

“Oh, please, I lost your ID a
looooong
time ago,” Chloe slurred. Her eyes were glassy, and I knew she wouldn't remember any of this the next morning. And it wouldn't matter even if she did, because I wasn't any better. I wasn't Mom, and I wasn't Dad—the way we remembered them and wanted them to be. And neither was Mara. The three of us just stood there, a triangle of hypocrisy under the streetlamps as the sun began to rise without any answers. Driving up had been pointless. We couldn't help one another even if we had convinced ourselves we could.

“You don't have to sign a lease,” Dave told me. He had called me a few weeks before the new year to let me know he'd just moved into a McMansion with a few friends, and they were looking for a fifth roommate. The McMansion was on Melrose Hill Street, in a neighborhood east of Western Avenue between Sunset Boulevard and Melrose Avenue. A neighborhood notorious for its drug busts, burglaries, shootings, and prostitution—a poverty-ridden pocket between the wealthy neighborhoods of Los Feliz and Hancock Park. Brisas Beauty Salon sat on the corner, with white bars and tinted windows. Across the street, the auto body shop fixed vehicles with platinum- and chrome-rimmed wheels while it bumped rap music throughout the day. Next door was Winchell's Donut House, where the prostitutes, the drug dealers, and the occasional police officer hung out. When I drove home from work at night, I had to keep my windows rolled up and my eyes on the red light, so that I wouldn't be propositioned for sex. I learned to ignore it; I never got involved; I just kept driving by with my blinders on and prayed that no one would pull out a gun. The McMansion was two blocks behind Winchell's, past the dilapidated bungalows with chain-link fences, the street filled with abandoned cars and shopping carts full of garbage. Rent was cheap. There was only one problem: “You don't have to sign a lease,
but
you have to put down a two-thousand-dollar deposit,” Dave said. I never had more than five hundred dollars in my bank account at a time, except for the few days leading up to when I had to pay rent.

I'd have to come up with the money somehow, as Mara and Brian had already found a new apartment in Beverly Hills. I phoned my mother and begged her to lend me the money. “I'll pay you back,” I promised. She would have to ask Richard for the money, and she was not willing to do that. “I'm not asking Richard for the money,” she said firmly. “He's already done enough for me.”

I remember sitting in my car as Mara and Brian packed up the apartment, not knowing what I was going to do. My last resort: I would call my godparents in Washington, DC. I felt so ashamed to ask them for help. They had no idea what was happening all the way out west, because we had kept in touch only minimally. They were dealing with their own set of crises and losses. My godmother's best friend had passed away from cancer. She had a schizophrenic son who was acting out, his father estranged, and so they were consumed daily by trying to raise him. But I was desperate. I never told them about the credit cards, and the debt. Everything had remained a secret. Finally, I called them, and tried not to cry when I asked if I could borrow $2,000. I was ready to be rejected, ready to be sleeping in the backseat of my car and on friends' couches, when my godfather said, “Yes, no problem,” and I started to cry. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” A few days later, I had a place to live.