Misty (4 page)

“A what?” Doctor Marlowe asked.

I looked at the others. “An orphan with parents.”

Jade nodded, her eyes brighter. Star appeared very serious and Cathy suddenly lifted her head and looked at me like I had said something that made a lot of sense to her.

“My father works for a venture capital company and travels a great deal. It was always hard for me to explain what he did for a living. Other kids my age could tell you in a word or two what their parents did: lawyer, doctor, dentist, pharmacist, department store buyer, nurse.

“My father studies investments, puts money into businesses and somehow manages with his company to take over those businesses and then sell them at a profit. That's the way he explained it to me. I remember thinking that didn't sound fair. Taking over someone else's company and selling it didn't sound right. I asked him about that and he said, ‘You can't think of it like that. It's business.'

“Everything is business to him in one way or another. For him, that expression can explain everything that happens in the world. Maybe to him even love is business,” I said. “I know this whole divorce is business. My mother is always calling the accountant or her lawyer.

“Mommy was vicious about getting every trace of Daddy out of the house. For days after he had left, she searched the rooms for anything that was evidence of his having lived there. She actually took all the pictures of the two of them and cut him out if she thought she looked good in them. She sold or gave away many nice things because they were things he liked or used, right down to the expensive tools in the garage. I told her she
was just going to have to replace some of it, but she replied, ‘At least it won't have his stigma on it.'

“His stigma? I thought. What had his stigma on it more than me? I looked like him to some extent, didn't I? There were times I actually caught her staring at me, and I wondered if she wasn't thinking I looked too much like him. How could she change that? Maybe she would have me go to her plastic surgeon and ask him to get my father out of my face.

“However, we had a big, soft chair in the living room, the kind that has a footrest that pops out and goes back until you can practically lie down on it. Daddy loved that chair and spent most of the time in it when he was in the living room. I know it sounds weird, but in the early days of their divorce, before my mother purged the house of everything that even suggested him, I used to curl up in the chair and put my face against it to smell the scent of him and pretend he was still there and we were still a happy little family.

“Then, she gave the chair to the thrift store one afternoon while I was in school. There was nothing in its place for a while, just an empty space. You all feel that sometimes, that empty space when you're walking with just your mother or your father and there's no one on the other side where one of them used to be? I do!” I said before they could answer. Suddenly, my head filled with static.

I closed my eyes for a moment until it passed and then I took another breath.

“For a long time after I was born, I had a nanny. My mother needed to recuperate from my horrendous birth
and the nurse who came home with us turned into a fulltime caretaker. Her name was Mary Williams.”

I glanced at Star.

“She was a black woman. She was in her thirties when she lived with us and took care of me, but when I think about her now, I remember her as much older. She was with us until I was four and sent to preschool.”

I laughed.

“I remember my mother making a big deal about getting too much sun on her face because it causes wrinkles. I thought Mary's brown skin was from a suntan.

Star shook her head with her lips tight.

“I was always asking questions, I guess. My mother tells me that when I was little, I wore her out with why this and why that. She would literally try to run away with me trailing behind her like some baby duck going why, why, why, instead of quack, quack, quack!”

Cathy's smile widened, but she had what I would call only half a smile. . . just her mouth in it. Her eyes remained dark, cautious, even frightened. She really is like a cat, I thought. Cathy the cat.

“When my father wasn't traveling, we would have great family dinners. Sometimes, I think that's what I miss the most. We have this dining room that goes on forever. You sit on this coast at one end and you're on the East coast on the other end.”

Doctor Marlowe's blank stare brightened with a tiny smile on her lips.

“I was taught the best etiquette, of course, and my mother justified the effort by telling me I was going to be a beautiful young woman and mix with the best of
society so I had better behave that way. Beautiful young woman. What world does she live in? Right?” I glanced at Jade who nodded.

“Anyway, I couldn't have been a more polite child. I always said please and thank you and never interrupted adults.

“Usually, Daddy brought me dolls from every trip he made, some of them from other countries. I had enough toys to fill a small store. My closets were stuffed with fancy clothes, dozens and dozens of pairs of shoes and I have a vanity table with an ivory oval mirror. I have the best hair dryers and facial steamers, the newest skin lotions and herbal treatments. Being pretty is a very important thing in my house.”

I paused and gazed out the French doors for a moment.

“My daddy is a very handsome man. He takes good care of himself, too. He belongs to one of those fancy gyms. That's where he met Ariel, his live Barbie doll.

“Daddy has an even tan to go with his thick, flaxen blond hair. Lately, he wears it longer. My mother says he's trying to look twenty years younger so he can match his level of maturity. They both criticize each other like that all the time and I'm supposed to sit or stand there and pretend it doesn't bother me or else agree with one or the other.”

I could feel my eyes grow narrow and angry.

“I can't believe how I used to think my parents were both so perfect. I thought Mommy was as beautiful as any movie star. She spent as much time on her makeup and her clothing as any movie star would. She never, even to this day, sets foot out of the house unless her
hair is perfect and her clothes, shoes and jewelry are all coordinated. She complains about how my daddy tries to look and stay young, but she goes into a coma at the mere sight of a gray hair or the possibility of a wrinkle. She's had plastic surgery, or as she calls it, aesthetic surgery to tighten her skin under her chin and her eyes. I'm not supposed to tell anyone. She lives for someone to compliment her by saying how young she looks. Then she goes into this big act about how she watches her diet, only uses herbal medicines, has all this special skin cream and exercises regularly. She never tells the truth.

“It's funny how when you're little, you miss all the little lies. They float right past you, but you don't wonder about them much. For a long time, you think this is just something adults still do after being kids—pretend. Then one day you wake up and realize most of the world you're in is built on someone's make-believe. My parents lied to each other for years before they finally decided to admit it and get a divorce.

“Once, when I was about twelve, my mother found out that my father had had an affair with a woman in his company who had gone with him on a trip to Texas. He made some dumb mistakes with bills or receipts, something like that, and she was waiting for him when he came home, just sitting there in the corridor off the entryway with the evidence in her lap like a pistol she was preparing to turn on him.

“I was in my room on the telephone talking with my best friend Darlene Stratton when I heard something crash and shatter against the wall downstairs. She had heaved an expensive Chinese vase at him. There was a
moment of quiet and then the shouting began. I had to hang up the phone to go see what was happening. I practically tiptoed to the top of the stairway and listened to my mother screaming about the woman and my father and his deceit. He made some weak attempts to deny it, but when she confronted him with evidence, he blamed her.”

“How could he blame her?” Star asked, suddenly looking a lot more interested.

“That was when I first learned they were having sexual problems. He said she was too frigid most of the time and when they did make love, she was always complaining about the pain.

“ ‘That's not normal,' he said. ‘You've got to see a doctor about it.'

“ ‘I did see my gynecologist and he said nothing was wrong with me. You're just looking for an excuse.'

“ ‘I don't mean that kind of doctor. You should see a psychiatrist,' he said. ‘You make me feel like a rapist every time I want to make love.'

“She started to cry and he apologized for his affair, claiming some great moment of weakness after having had too much to drink.

“I sat quietly on the steps and listened. He said he had just been lonely.

“ ‘I swear I don't love her. She could have been anyone,' he said, but that only made my mother angrier.

“ ‘How do you think that makes me feel,' she screamed, ‘knowing you would sleep with anyone and then crawl beside me in our bed?'

“He apologized over and over and also pledged that it
would never again happen, but he begged her to see a psychiatrist.

“ ‘You're just trying to run away from blame,' she accused him again. ‘You're just trying to make me look like the bad one here. Well, it won't work! It won't work!'

“She was coming up the stairs, so I snuck back into my room.

“For days afterward, it was as if they had both turned into mutes. If I didn't talk at dinner when we were together, no one did. They both used silence like a knife, cutting into each other's hearts, until one day my mother bought an expensive dress for an affair they were to attend and my father told her she looked terrific in it.

“Suddenly the floodgates of forgiveness were opened and they pretended they had never had an argument. It made me feel like I was living in a dream where people, words, events just popped like bubbles and no one could say whether they ever happened. Of course, I didn't know how serious the problem really was.”

I paused.

Emma Marlowe came through the door with a tray upon which she carried a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses. There was a plate of chocolate chip cookies, too.

“I thought you might want this now, Doctor Marlowe,” she remarked. She always called her sister Doctor Marlowe in our presence. I had to wonder if she did so when we were gone, too.

“Thank you, Emma,” Doctor Marlowe said.

She placed it on the table, glanced at us all and flashed a smile before walking out.

“Help yourselves,” Doctor Marlowe said.

I took a glass of lemonade because my throat was dry from talking so much. Star poured herself a glass, but Jade and Cathy didn't. Doctor Marlowe helped herself and drank with her eyes on me. I thought for a moment. My talking about my parents had opened closets stuffed with memories I had labeled and filed away, memories I had thought were buried forever.

“I remember the cards, so many cards, cards for everything. Neither of them ever missed the other's birthday or their anniversaries.”

“Anniversaries?” Jade said. “How many times were they married to each other?”

“Not just that anniversary. They celebrated anniversaries for everything. . .first date, their engagement, stuff like that. Many of them were secret, but I could easily imagine what they were for,” I said, looking at Cat. “Like the first time they made love.”

Cathy turned a shade of pink.

“I also think they did get married twice,” I added for Jade. “The first time, they did it for themselves and the second time for the relatives. They always talked about renewing their vows when they were married twenty years. They made it sound so romantic and wonderful, I was even looking forward to it. I was supposed to be the maid of honor, carrying flowers. I might just go to someone's wedding that day.”

“What do you mean?” Star asked with a confused smile across her pretty face. “Whose wedding would you go to?”

“I don't care whose it is. Anyone's. I'll check the
newspapers and just show up and watch them get married and imagine the two people are my parents and everything was as wonderful as they said it would be.”

“But. . .”Jade uttered with a look of confusion.

“As beautiful as they said it would be!”
I screamed at her. She just stared. Everyone was quiet. Tears were burning under my lids.

“Take another drink of your lemonade,” Doctor Marlowe said softly. “Go ahead, Misty.”

I drew in my breath and did what she said. Everyone's eyes were on me. I closed my own for a moment, counted to five and opened them again. Doctor Marlowe nodded softly.

“You want to stop?” she asked.

“No,” I snapped. I drank some more lemonade.

“My mother still has those cards,” I continued. “She doesn't want me to know she still has them, but she does. I saw them in a box in the back of her closet. There are lots of funny cards, cards my daddy sent her for no special reason except to say how much he loved her or how beautiful he thought she was and how lucky he was to have her.”

I fixed my eyes on Doctor Marlowe.

“I've asked you before,” I said, my voice dripping with rage, “but how can people say such things to each other and mean it so much at the time and just forget they ever said them?”

I saw she wasn't going to offer me an answer, so before she could ask her usual “What do you think?” I just looked away again and continued.

“When I was a little girl, I did think I might become
as beautiful as my mother. People used to say I looked like her. We had the same nose or the same mouth. I've got Daddy's eyes. I know that, but that's okay because he has beautiful eyes. Mommy will reluctantly admit that too, even today. She doesn't want anyone to think that someone with her good looks would marry an ugly man. It's kind of a. . .what do you call it. . .”