Drama Is Her Middle Name (2 page)

Privately, Ritz was quite different—not at all confident
and self-assured. Some nights, after hosting a sold-out party
or being seen on television in an interview, Ritz would go
home to a beautiful, huge home with all the amenities, put
on her flannel pajamas, curl into a ball, and cry. Despite
everything she had, she felt very alone, and was very lonely.
The irony of talking for a living was that Ritz didn't really
have anyone to talk to. Chas was cool and he was like having a close girlfriend. But he wasn't. Tracee was the only one
who really understood—who had been there before Ritz was
the
Ritz Harper. When she was simply Ritgina (a combination of the name of her father, Ritchie, whom she never
knew, and her mother, Gina) Harper.

As Ritz crossed Madison Avenue heading toward the
garage near Park, she pulled her white Gucci sack tighter
over her shoulder, checked her watch again, and picked up
her pace. So did the Nissan. She could see the nose of her
V12 Vanquish in the entrance of the garage. Ritz loved Ramon for always having her car ready for her, no matter how
late she came down from the studio. She hated to wait. It was
almost seven-twenty, and she had an hour to get to Newark.

“Oh, shoot!” Ritz said to herself. “I better hurry the
hell up.”

She broke into a light trot. The Nissan pulled up beside
her, the power window rolling down on the passenger side
facing Ritz. She slowed down, thinking the car was another
fan. The windows of the car were tinted. It was New York,
and these days just about everyone had a tint darker than the
law allowed.

“Ritz Harper?” a gravelly voice spoke out.

In an instant, Ritz saw a flash of light from the window
and felt a burning sensation in her chest. She started to run.
She looked around in a panic, and there was no one in sight.
“Where the fuck are all the people?” she thought. Ritz wanted
to scream but nothing would come out.

“Just keep running!” she thought.

The garage was about a hundred feet away.

“I can make it,” she said silently to herself.

The car sped up and from the open passenger window Ritz
caught more flashes from her peripheral vision. The burning,
searing heat Ritz felt in her side and in her shoulder was now
pulsating. The Nissan's window went up slowly and the car
gradually picked up speed as the driver headed north, blending perfectly into the Midtown Tunnel traffic.

Still clutching her bag, Ritz fell hard to her knees, then
collapsed on her side and finally rolled onto her back and let
out a faint gasp. Her Gucci frames fell to the ground.

Up the street, a young Asian man stepped outside to
smoke a cigarette. He looked down the block a bit, squinted,
and noticed something that looked like a dog lying on the
ground. All he could make out from that distance was the animal's fur. As he got closer, he began frantically patting himself down in search of his cell phone.

A few more people started toward the object on the sidewalk, noticing the bloodstains on the concrete and the figure
on the ground.

“I think that's Ritz Harper!” a twentyish man said to his
friend. “That's fucking Ritz Harper! Oh, shit!”

The friend, a young girl, looked around and bent down
next to Ritz and slyly picked up her Gucci frames, slipping
them into the pocket of her leather jacket.

A crowd began to form.

As Ritz lay on the ground, she could hear faint voices.
People using camera phones began taking pictures. Ritz was
numb. She couldn't move. She was too angry to think about
death. Her anger had so much power that it kept her heart
pumping even when her vital signs were fading. She heard
sirens in the distance. Ritz felt like she was floating above her
own body. She was in and out, but one thought kept pounding through, replaying like a skipped record: “Who the fuck
did this to me?! Who the fuck did this?! Who the fuck . . . ?!”

2

Ritgina Harper was a little annoyed when the principal
called her to the office over the loudspeaker during Mrs.
Johnson's second-period class at George W. Carver Elementary School in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Ritgina loved
school and she particularly loved Mrs. Johnson's class. She
made her students do things like watch
Roots
and write a paper on how the miniseries changed their views, and she had
them memorize every capital of all fifty states.

Mrs. Johnson was having a competition that morning.
The student who could get the most state capitals correct
would win a special prize. Ritgina wanted the prize—she
didn't care what it was. She just loved to win. Her mother,
Gina, had stayed up late last night quizzing her.

“Come on, Ritz! You know Mommy has to get up early in
the morning,” her mother complained after going through
all fifty for the eighth time. “You are going to do fine, I just
know it.”

“Mommy, just one more time, please, please, please!” Ritgina said. “I'll give you extra kisses and I'll get up extra early
and make your coffee for you.”

“You sure drive a hard bargain, young lady,” her mother
said, rubbing her weary eyes. “Okay, okay. What is the capital of Alaska?”

“Anchorage! That one was easy, Mommy. Give me a hard
one.”

“How about South Dakota?” A minute passed. “Ah-ha! I
stumped you. It's Pierre. Write it down and study it. I'll grill
you some more after you make my coffee in the morning.
Now take your little tail to bed.”

Ritz kissed her mother good night, and grabbed her notebook, in which she wrote Pierre, South Dakota; Montpelier,
Vermont; and Concord, New Hampshire—the three states
that stumped her, which she had to master by the morning.
And master them she would.

“I love you, Mommy!”

“I love
you,
my beautiful young lady!”

Gina doted on her daughter. It was just the two of them
since Ritgina was a baby. Ritchie didn't stick around but a
week after Ritgina was born, leaving the eighteen-year-old
Gina to fend for herself and her baby. Gina hated Ritchie for
that and didn't want to be reminded of him. So she started
calling her little girl Ritz. As early as she could, Gina started
filling Ritz's head with survival skills.

Around the age of nine, Ritz's mother started talking to
her about adult issues: “Don't let no man take advantage
of you, sweet talking you to try and get funny with you! I
haven't met a man yet who wasn't up to no good.”

“Maaaaaa!” Ritz would protest. “Nobody's even thinking
about all of that.”

“You'd be surprised, young lady, what these men are thinking about,” her mother would say. “I don't want you ever to
be dependent on no man for nothing. You are going to use
that brain of yours, get an education, and take care of yourself. And maybe you'll even make enough money to take care
of your old mother one day.”

“You are a smart little girl,” her mother said on another occasion. “But if you want to be the best, you have to work
hard—outwork everyone. Hard work is what separates the
good from the best. And you will be the best!”

Gina led by example. She never finished high school, but
she always worked at least two jobs. She refused to be a statistic. She was a single mother, but she wasn't going to be a
poor single mother on welfare whose children grow up to follow in her footsteps. For one, she was determined to make
sure that Ritgina would be an only child. It was hard enough
taking care of one child; she was not going to have any more.
To make sure, Gina didn't date. There would never be a man
to come in between her and her daughter. There would never
be any threat to break that bond. She had plans for her baby
girl, and those plans started with a solid education. Gina
started saving early for Ritgina's college education, even
though she knew her little girl would qualify for a scholarship. Just in case, though, Gina would make sure she had not
only enough for school, but for books and any other incidentals her child would need.

With every paycheck, Gina bought a savings bond. It
wasn't much but she had been doing that since Ritgina was a
baby and had more than ten thousand dollars in saving
bonds—not including interest.

Gina was determined to have the best of everything for
herself and her daughter. Her day job as a café waitress started
at six-thirty in the morning. She finished work there at two
in the afternoon, giving her enough time to meet Ritz at
school and walk her home, help her with her homework,
cook dinner, and get her ready for the next day. She had an
evening job from seven until ten, cleaning offices. During
those hours Ritz was a latchkey kid. She was mature enough
to take care of herself for about three hours, and she knew the
rules: “Don't answer the phone or the door for nothing!”
Gina and Ritz had a special code. Gina would let the phone
ring once, hang up, and then call back. Then and only then
was Ritz to answer the phone.

Ritz spent the three hours reading. She loved to read—
everything from Judy Bloom to V. C. Andrews. She also
loved mythology.

By the time Ritz's mother dragged herself into their tiny
three-room apartment around ten-thirty, Ritz would usually
be asleep. Gina would never turn in herself until she grabbed
her little girl and gave her a big hug and a sloppy kiss on her
pudgy, dimpled cheek. Gina loved her little girl's dimples and
her smooth, perfect chocolaty complexion.

“She looks so much like her father,” she thought. “Damn
him! He is missing the best part of himself—the best thing he
has ever done.”

“You know Mommy loves you, don't you?”

“Yes, Mommy,” Ritz would say. “I love you, too.”

Ritgina Harper, please come to the principal's office immediately!

“Oooooh!” a chorus rang out among her classmates. Ritz
Harper was apparently in big trouble.

A puzzled look crossed Ritz's face. She was mischievous
and loved to play practical jokes, but never during school
hours. In school she was all-business and was never in
trouble.

She collected her books and put them in her book bag,
then shot another puzzled look at Mrs. Johnson, who was
preparing the class for the contest.

“Don't worry, Ritgina, you will have a chance at the prize
when you come back,” said Mrs. Johnson, not knowing why
the principal wanted Ritz but couldn't imagine it was anything to worry about. “Okay, class, settled down. Let's have a
practice round. Let's start from the beginning. What is the
capital of Alabama?”

Ritz walked out of the classroom, down the long corridor,
and headed to the left, to the west end of the building where
the principal's office was. She kept trying to think “What did
I do? What could I have done?” She kept coming up blank.
But as soon as she entered the office, she knew it was something really bad.

Her aunt Madalyn was there with reddened, swollen
eyes. Her bottom lip began to tremble as she grabbed Ritz in
a tight hug and started crying uncontrollably. Trying to
collect herself, Aunt Madalyn finally managed to speak.
“Sweetie . . . there has been a terrible, terrible accident.
Your—your mother . . . your mother is . . . she's gone.” Aunt
Madalyn lost it.

Aunt Madalyn's words didn't register immediately. Gone?
Gone where?

Gina had used her thirty-minute break from the café at
ten A.M. to rush a couple of blocks to the local bookstore. She
wanted to surprise Ritz with the next V. C. Andrews book as
a reward for the hard work she had been doing in school. On
her way back to work, Gina ran in the middle of the street.
A Budweiser beer truck came whipping around the corner at
the same time. The impact was so horrific that witnesses
hoped that her heart stopped immediately. Gina was, however, alive for an hour after the accident, but she never regained consciousness.

The funeral and the weeks that followed were a blur for
Ritz. She was eleven years old and had lost her best friend,
her biggest champion. She loved Aunt Madalyn and her husband of twenty-two years, Uncle Cecil. But they weren't a
substitute for her mother. Her mother was still vibrant and
young. Uncle Cecil and Aunt Madalyn were only in their
mid-forties, but they were raised in a time when forty was
more like sixty. Aunt Madalyn was fifteen years older than
her sister Gina. She was more like a great-aunt. And she had
old-fashioned ways, which in the long run benefited Ritz by
refining her. But a girl of eleven didn't appreciate that refining process. On one of her few days off, it wasn't unusual for
Gina to take Ritz to a water park or on a picnic. Aunt Madalyn would take her to the theater. Her mom was young and
hip and didn't mind Ritz dressing like a kid. Gina sometimes
dressed like a kid herself. Aunt Madalyn had Ritz dressing
like a “lady”—an
old
lady. But even though Ritz didn't realize
it until later, living with Aunt Madalyn and Uncle Cecil was
one of the best things to happen to her.

Ritz got to see that all men weren't really that bad, as her
mother had led her to believe they were. Uncle Cecil was not
only one of the nicest people Ritz had ever met, he absolutely
adored Aunt Madalyn and said all the time that he was “tickled pink” to have a daughter, because he and Aunt Madalyn
couldn't have kids. Ritz never knew whose “fault” it was, but
she did know that living there, she was treated like a porcelain doll, a little princess. While her mother worked hard to
give her little things, it seemed like Uncle Cecil and Aunt
Madalyn always had money for big things. Aunt Madalyn
didn't work. Uncle Cecil owned a contracting company and
while he kept long hours, he always had a pocket full of cash.
When he got home, he would take his ladies out for ice
cream after dinner. Aunt Madalyn always had dinner ready
for him when he came home. To Ritz, it seemed that Aunt
Madalyn and Uncle Cecil were a throwback to those 1950s
shows like
Leave It to Beaver,
except they were dipped in
sepia.