American Babe (3 page)

My dad seemed satisfied with that answer but he may have been trying to move things along, because he gave a little smile and then pulled his vibrating phone out of his pocket.

“I've got to take this, ladies. Excuse me.”

“He's in the middle of a big case?” I said.

“Yeah. Michael Jackson estate. Still.”

“Cute.”

“So . . .” Lizbeth looked nervous, which made me feel nervous because she is never nervous.

“So?”

“Are you okay, Babe?”

“What do you mean? I'm in the hospital. I'm as good as one can be considering I just sustained massive internal injuries due to a high-impact aerial accident while accomplishing a major life goal.”

“I know, but are you okay?”

“I'm still not sure I understand the question.”

But I totally understood the question. I was fully aware of what Lizbeth's vibe was in this moment. She wanted to get real with me. This is what she does for a living. She gets people to talk about themselves and improve upon who they are. But I was not about to have this conversation right now.

“Babe, you know, this is what I do for a living. I help people find their true path and help them realize their dreams. You have so much potential.”

Here we fucking go. I'm just going to listen. I'm not going to say a goddamn word until she is completely done.

“We're not that different, you and me. I too was pretty lost when I was your age.”

Of course you were lost. You lived in actual Wisconsin, Lizbeth. And we are not that alike because you are fucking my dad.

“I was jumping from job to job, relationship to relationship. I had no passions.”

Okay, first of all, I couldn't be more passionate. I am passionate about last fall's collection from The Row, passionate about not having kids until I'm thirty-five, passionate about making the lives of my friends more fun and making the lives of my frenemies more uncomfortable.

“You tried to work at your dad's law firm, which lasted a week. You started a fashion line that folded. You worked at
Vogue
for a minute, you even wrote two books that were successful, but you never even seemed that passionate about being a writer.”

This bitch.

“Like, Babe, what is your motivating force? What is your true passion? What makes you happy? You left Robert in the midst of what seemed like a very healthy relationship. Why? What is driving you to make those kind of choices?”

This person genuinely does not get who I am.

“I genuinely don't understand who you are. Like, you are one of the most confusing individuals. You're beautiful, extremely intelligent, driven when you want to be, effective in getting what you want.”

Now you're starting to make some sense, Liz.

“But somehow the most misguided human being I've ever met. What is your mantra? What do you want out of life?”

OMG, ask me
one
more question that doesn't have a real answer, and I'll lose it.

“I just don't want you to avoid the question of how you got to this place, mentally. What do you need to feel secure in your life? What does Babe need to be truly happy?”

Never speak again.

“I know this may feel like a lot to deal with right now, with you being in a hospital, but sometimes these rock-bottom moments are the only way to shift your journey toward a healthier path. To find a new mantra. I believe in you.”

I sat there in silence for a solid minute trying to craft a scathing response. This was a challenge because truthfully, it was impossible to miss the fact that she was speaking from the heart and actually trying to help.

“It's funny that you bring all this up now,” I said. “I'm kind of like ten steps ahead of you on this one. I've been thinking the same exact thing for a while now and I really actually do know what the fuck I'm doing with my life, coincidentally. I've just accepted an invitation from my real mother to go visit our extended family in scenic Maryland, for my maternal grandfather's eightieth birthday celebration.
Been feeling like I need to reconnect with my roots slash past in order to figure out where I'm going in the future. You know?”

“Yes. I do. That's amazing, Babe. Good for you.”

Lizbeth seemed genuinely impressed with my answer.

“Yeah. It is really good for me. I'm truly looking forward to it. I've heard Maryland has really chic . . . um . . . crustaceans.”

FUCK ME.

“I
'm going to the airport. Terminal Seven. United,” I said to the Uber driver as I hopped into her black SUV a couple days later.

“Sure,” she said, smiling back at me.

I love a lady driver. I normally ask them about cabbies' rights and about women in that workplace, in the city, safety issues, etc. I'll really go in sometimes. But not today. Today I was in a somber mood.

“I'm gonna close my eyes now and meditate until we get there, so please don't ask me anything or make any loud noises with your mouth or turn the car sharply. I so appreciate it. Thank you so much, you're the best. Thank you.”

“Sure,” she said again, in the same tone but without the smile.

I was mad.

And sad.

And bad.

And glad.

Just kidding, I wasn't glad, or bad, really, I just got caught up with the rhyming.

But seriously, I refused to sit there anymore and handle the dramatics. My family was acting like a soap opera. Like, what is everyone's damage? Because I just don't get it. I feel like I'm so super chill and really, really try to inspire an atmosphere of chillness around me, yet my family is always on level ten when they don't even need to be. No one died, right? Right? Right, Lizbeth? I'm not some fucking murderer or degenerate running willy-nilly through Los Angeles. I'm not hopeless. I don't need direction, okay? I Googled “Maryland,” and once I saw that it was definitely a continental United State, I booked a direct flight. I haven't flown internationally since the Malaysian flight disappeared—I refuse to go out like that.

I was going to be with my real family, a simple group of simple people who would probably be so confused by every thread my of being that they'd have no choice but to accept me for what I am: not simple. And I was genuinely
excited to meet these normals, so I'm not using “simple” as an insult. There was no prejudging going on. I left LA with an open mind. In fact, a heavy pour of simplicity is what I needed in my life.

We got to the airport annoyingly quickly, which probably meant that I needed more meditation than I got. I hate when I can't get enough in. Meditation is actually horrible, don't do it, or do, I don't know, meditate on it and then decide. But I was there: LAX. I was on my cute way to cute Maryland, and this was happening. The flight was bumpy, but I will say the flight attendants in first on a United flight to Maryland are way more put together than you'd imagine. The tallest and modeliest of them was doing a brown YSL lip with her aubergine hair top-knotted to absolute death.

When I slurred (1.5 Xanax and a glass of gin), “You're too chic for this,” she looked blankly at me, then smiled and exited the scene. Don't blame her for being caught off guard, it was challenging because it was true.

The airport smelled weird and dealing with the woman at the rental car place was tough. I'm sincerely sorry for anyone that's ever had to rent a car.

I made it to the address in Donna's email at around 7:30 p.m., and it was getting dark. I'd forgotten about the east coast being depressing with its short days. I slowly cracked the Chevrolet Malibu's window and peered out. The house
was on a street with other houses that looked the same as each other, a variation on chimney placement or door color here or there. It felt simple. And . . . safe.

I grabbed my royal blue Anya Hindmarch maxi tote (chic, holds everything, AND features a large, perforated smiley face across one side: a symbol that I had arrived in peace) in one hand and my rolling Goyard carry-on in the other and clomped my way up the path toward the front door. DING DONG DING DONG rang the doorbell. “They need to change that sound,” I whispered softly.

The door swung open, and I was greeted by a male child.

“Come on in!” he said as if I were the camera crew for his
Cribs
episode. I stepped back, trying to process the excessive and, mind you, blind hospitality, and noticed something . . .

“I'm sorry, male child, but are you wearing the Dior Fusion sneaker in navy with black sequin appliqués right now?”

“I'm not clear, is that a rhetorical question? You're looking at them,” he stated, truly confused, as if to ask if I was partially blind and needed help identifying the shoe.

“Wait,” I uttered.

“Wait what?”

“Wait, like, who are you?”

“What do you mean, who am I? I live here.”

“Are you me?”

“No . . .” he said with a tilt of his head. He looked
concerned now. “Who are you?” he asked. “You're not the babysitter tonight? Danielle or whatever?”

“What? Does it look like that word could be my name? And why would I be your babysitter? That's a LOLZ.”

We looked at each other.

“Are we fighting?” I asked His Highness.

“She's obviously not the babysitter. She has a suitcase,” said a girl walking up behind him, wiping her hands with a dishrag. Oh, there's no help here. She was cute in the face for a teenage girl, but her entire outfit was a size small for her build, which was not bad, in a SoulCycle way. “How can we help you?”

“I'm Babe Walker.”

The boy's eyes lit up. He knew that name.

“No fucking way,” the girl said.

“Yes fucking way. Do you guys know who I am?”

“You're Donna's daughter,” said the boy, whose freckly face was now wrapped in a huge smile. “Babe Walker.”

“Right. That's my, um, name.”

I felt a little weird because I didn't know if he was just cheesing to meet his first cousin for the first time and also realize that she's an image of freshness and glows with a bright aura of grue (green/blue), OR . . . was he a superfan of my books? That could be cute, I guess. I was shocked ten-year-olds could even read. My memory of that age is shot.

“You're Knox, right? So that must mean you're Cara,” I said to them, proud of myself for remembering their names.

“Yep, exactly. And you're
the
Babe Walker. Wow,” Knox said kind of loudly. “This is cool.”

“He reads your books or whatever,” Cara said, uninterested. She clearly did not read my books because if she had she'd know not to wear a teal spaghetti-strap tank top. Knox, on the other hand, was giving me a complete fashion look. An almost minimal/Japanese approach to a classic ten-year-old laissez-faire aesthetic. And the Dior sneaker just slayed me. There was an undeniable and immediate connection between the two of us. I guess we did have some of the same blood.

Cara finally asked me if I wanted to come in, and they showed me the house. It was basic, but I wasn't there to judge. I told them about Donna's email and how I need family in my life for it to be complete and they told me blah blah blah where they went to school and what their favorite colors were, and it was a perfectly cute getting-to-know-you sesh. Soon it became clear that their babysitter was not showing up. Who does that? The kids could've literally starved if I hadn't dropped from the sky. And their mom, my aunt Veronica, whom I'd still never met at this point, was on a night shift at a hotel nearby where she worked the front desk. The kids told me she had two jobs
or something insane like that and their dad wasn't really in the picture.

“Do you know where he lives or if he's alive, et cetera?” I asked them, sitting at the kitchen island having a glass of water. I was parched and needed a liquid snack but the only other beverage options were Diet Coke, lemonade, milk (from a cow not an almond or a soy or a rice or even a hemp), and . . . hold on tight for this . . . Yoo-hoo.

“Yeah, Dad lives out in Virginia,” Knox told me. “He calls a couple times a year. He's a salesman of some kind or a recruiter maybe? We don't really know. But he travels a lot. Not to Maryland, though.”

“That's so douchey,” I said.

“We think so, too,” he said.

“Okay!” I blurted, trying to change the subject as quickly as possible. “So it looks like I'm the babysitter tonight because yours died on the way here or something.”

Cara offered a fake smile. “Looks like it,” she said, and went up to her room.

“Tell me, what exactly do babysitters do?”

“Make or take us to dinner,” Knox told me.

“Let's go out,” I suggested. “I don't make dinner. Only smoothies.”

“Perfect. I could use a going-out moment tonight anyways.” Knox said this with the slightest sparkle in his eye.
I knew that look: he had a new piece to wear, and tonight would be its inaugural wearing.

Cara, when we coaxed her from her room, was super stoked that my rental was a black Escalade with tints. Almost too stoked. It did, however, feel gratifying to see her smile genuinely for the first time since meeting her. I still thought she was acting like a twat, though. According to some obscure sibling law, it was her night to pick the restaurant, so we went to a place called Ledo Pizza, which sells pizza that's cut in small squares, not slices. Pizza's not chic in the first place, but square pizza? I dreaded the meal from the moment she said the name of the restaurant as we all got in the car, but it was my first night so I wasn't going to get into a fight with her about my dietary restrictions. The point was: we were doing stuff together. Cute.

“Sounds great!” I lied. “You just let me know how to get there. Also, I'm gonna smoke because you guys aren't babies so it's safe.” I started the car, backed out of that cozy little driveway, lit a Marlboro Light, and we were off. Babe and her first first cousins.