Spanish Disco (22 page)

31

I
stared at my electronic ticket as it spat out from my printer. No turning back, I told myself even as my teeth chattered from nerves and lack of a decent meal since my father’s death. I had the tequila shakes, and a long hot shower was in order. I stripped naked and started running the water. Then I heard a knock on my door.

“Fuck.” I stopped the shower, threw on a robe and walked out to the living room to open my door.

“Hello, Lou,” I said, unenthusiastically. But instead of Lou, I was staring at my mother.

“Mother? What the hell are you doing here?”

She was dressed in black, for mourning or fashion I had no idea. A Cartier watch flickered with diamonds on her wrist, and her blond highlights were freshly done. She re
minded people of a famous French actress, and despite her age, she still turned heads.

“I’d invite you in, but I’m busy.”

“I can see that by your bathrobe. Please, dahling,” she murmured, “we need to talk.”

“Fine,” I said, tersely, and stepped aside. She click-clacked her way across the tile of my condo, her four-inch alligator pumps carrying her to my couch.

“I’m so very sorry about your father, Cassandra.”

“I’m sure you are.” I rolled my eyes and folded my arms. Somehow, she always brought out the fifteen-year-old in me.

“I am. I’ve been leaving messages for you like crazy at the office.”

“They know better than to give them to me.”

Her lips pursed in annoyance. “You’ve always been like this with me, Cassandra. Your father was always first in your life, and you never had room for me. Not even a tiny little bit.”

I thought back to the missed school recitals and Saturday visits when she never showed. The time my father sent the housekeeper into my bedroom to talk to me about getting your first period and she awkwardly shoved a box of sanitary napkins at me while blushing and sweating. And I realized I was tired of fighting my mother. Tired of fighting life.

“I was never first in your life, Mother. I suppose it’s payback.”

“I left my marriage, not my child. But I could never
compete with the God who was your father. He was your Zeus atop Mount Olympus. Greater than mere mortals…and so I stayed away. I’m a former beauty queen, after all. I know competition. And if you know you can’t win, there’s no sense in playing.”

I looked at my mother, this woman I barely knew but hated with all my being. It was all a fantasy. She had woven a tale so she could live with what she had done, which wasn’t so different from the rest of us. What had I woven in my life to keep me away from Michael? That we could never be? That I could never love? Bedtime stories to get you through the long night. My mother was playing a game, and I had played it with her all these years. “What do you want, Mother?”

“I remember being pregnant with you—”

“Please,” I implored her. “Now isn’t the time to wax poetic over your morning sickness.”

“Indulge me, Cassandra. I remember it like it was yesterday. How thrilled we were to have this life growing inside of me, how very much in love we were. I know you think I don’t mourn for him, but I do. It was a long time ago, but it was a part of me.”

“I’m sure wherever he is—” I felt a thickening in my throat “—he appreciates that. So have we said all there is to say?”

“Not by a long shot. You’ve thought the worst of me. That all this time all I wanted was the percentage of the estate. That’s such nonsense. I have all I could ever need or want.”

“Five husbands will do that for you.”

“For your information, I am married to my
fourth
husband, and I was widowed once. It’s not so terrible.”

“Anyway…you’ll get your percentage after the lawyers probate.”

“I don’t want it. I’m giving it back to you. I suppose years ago, I thought you’d have children by now. So I had these grand images of putting the money in a trust and leaving my grandchild a small fortune. But at the rate you’re going, Cassandra, I’ll be long dead before you have a child.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

“Oh…I just mean that girls these days don’t get married right after college. They take some time to figure out who they are and what they want. I wish I had done that.”

“You did. You just had me first and
then
tried to figure out your life.”

“I can see it was a waste of time to come here. I wanted you to know I am giving you back the money. I don’t want it and never have. I came to tell you I am sorry he died. I am sorry I was not a perfect mother. I came to see if you might be interested in getting to know each other, but I can see you’re not.”

She stood up and smoothed her Chanel suit. She took a pair of Jackie O sunglasses from her purse and snapped the clasp of her Fendi handbag shut again with a perfect click. Perhaps that was why I hated her. Everything about her was so perfect. So concise. And I was so far from perfect. Everything about me from my hair to my bathroom to my love life was messy.

“It’s too late, Mother. We’ve had our soup moment.”

“Our what?”

“Our last straw.”

“As long as I am still alive, I won’t believe that. Maybe when you do have a child someday, if she’s a daughter, you’ll understand how complicated it can all be.”

She click-clacked her way to the door and showed herself out. For a moment, I wanted to run after her. I wanted to be consoled and held by someone who once loved my father. I didn’t want to be an orphan.

But the moment passed. I was alone.

32

“S
pit?” Lou looked at me incredulously, as we sat in the front seat of his Jag. “You’re trying to swallow that pill with spit?”

I nodded as the pill’s bitterness seemed to spread across my tongue.

“Have you heard of this amazing new discovery called water?”

I swallowed. “Mmm-hmm. But we don’t have any right now, and I felt like if I didn’t take another Xanax this second I would puke.”

“I know you know you’re crazy so I will not point out the obvious.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “Appreciate it.”

I had made my reservations to London with just two
days’ notice and managed to pay an exorbitant sum of money for an otherwise empty transatlantic seat. Two days did not leave me much time to chicken out. I asked Lou to drive me to the airport because I planned on medicating myself into blindness. I hate to fly.

“Does Michael Pearton even know you’re coming?”

I shook my head.

“So what if he’s on vacation?”

“Then he’ll have missed his chance.”

“Just like that. The guy isn’t home, and you say forget it?”

“It’s either fate that we end up together or fate that we never meet.”

“Fate.”

“Yeah. God. Fate. Destiny.”

“Since when did you start believing in fate?”

I thought of Roland Riggs and how his wife had been killed by a gunshot. I thought of Maria and how she had been brought to a tiny island by a bastard of a husband—who happened to like to fish. For empty years she and Roland walked among the living but were really dead. And in that house, thanks to a dose of disco, a Pulitzer winner had wooed his ladylove. They found each other. Fate.

“I don’t know. I just do. Now. It’s all too complicated to explain, and my head is getting fuzzy. I think I need another Xanax.”

“How many have you taken?” Lou asked.

“Five.”

“Christ almighty, Cassie, that’s enough to put down a horse.”

“I’m a thoroughbred, and I’m not down yet.”

Lou reached across the creamy-beige soft leather seats and squeezed my hand.

“When you get to London, Cassie, I think he’s going to be there. And I think if you would let it happen the way it’s supposed to, then maybe it will all fall into place.”

I looked Lou in the eyes. “Or I could fucking hate him. I could look at the way he folds the newspaper after breakfast in the morning and decide he’s entirely too anal-retentive and be filled with loathing for him. Relationships happen that way, you know.”

“
Your
relationships happen that way. Look at me and Helen, God rest her soul.”

“Well, there you go.”

“What?”

“You can fall in love and be together forever and then the person dies on you. They leave you in the end, one way or the other.”

Lou was still holding my hand. He took it away and moved it to my face, pushing back a curl from my right eye. “Cassie,” he whispered, “it isn’t your mother you’re mad at. It’s
life
you’re angry at. People leave. Period. They move on; they get sick; they die. That’s life, darling. That’s life. But if you let that stop you from living, then what’s the point of it all?”

I looked at him until I couldn’t anymore because I thought I might cry. I moved away from him and stared down at my watch, trying to focus on the numbers, which seemed to be swimming.

“I need a drink before I get on that plane.”

“It’s 11:00 a.m.”

“It’s happy hour in London.”

He sighed. “All right then, let’s go buy you a cocktail. I pray to God you land in London alive.”

“Tell that to my pilot.”

Lou popped open the trunk of his car and took out my lone suitcase. A small one with enough clothes for four days. I figured I didn’t want to push my luck by staying too long that I might get sick of Michael just for the sake of getting sick of him.

We walked a long way to the terminal and sought out a bar.

“Tequila. Up, in a shot glass,” I muttered to the bartender, a flat-nosed guy with a pock-marked face who looked like he’d been beat up a few times too many. The noise and hubbub of the airport was making my head feel like I was underwater. That and the Xanax. I receded into myself, falling into the warm ocean of Florida in August and letting the saltwater keep me buoyant. I tossed back my tequila, slammed down the shot glass, and made my way to the security checkpoint, Lou at my side with my carry-on.

On the line for security, Lou faced me, my bag on the floor between us. “Without Roland’s book, we’re in deep dog-shit this coming season. But don’t feel any pressure to get Michael to finish his book or anything.”

“I won’t.” I smiled at him. My teeth were buzzing.

“Be careful. Tell the stewardess to poke you every once in a while to make sure you’re still breathing.”

“Sure thing, Lou,” I said from somewhere under the water. I thought I saw a mermaid swim by. A mermaid who looked like my mother. Hallucinations. Now I was having hallucinations. Just what I needed pre-flight.

Lou pulled me close. “I love you, Cass. Now get the fuck out of here. Leave the country already.”

I allowed him to envelop me, and I enjoyed his scent. An old-man scent, sort of like my father’s. Aqua Velva…and I even thought I smelled the dry-cleaning chemicals on his shirt. From an underwater canyon, I heard myself whisper, “I love you, too.” When the words left my lips, I wondered who had said them.

Lou stepped away from me and smiled. Then, wiping his eyes, he headed up the ramp and back into the main terminal.

When I could no longer see him in the crowd, I went through the metal detector and then down to my gate to check in at the desk. I had asked for an aisle seat in first class. I felt my breathing grow heavier as I talked to the counter agent.

“We’ll be boarding in an hour and fifteen minutes. We’re scheduled to leave on time.”

“Nearest pay phone?”

“Right over there, past the bathrooms, there’s a bank of them.”

“Thanks.” I smiled back and headed over to the phones. Taking out my calling card, I dialed my mother.

“Hello?” A woman’s accented voice answered the phone.

“Is Sophia there, please?”

“May I tell her who’s calling?”

“Cassie Hayes.”

My mother’s maid put the telephone down, and I heard an assortment of footsteps and clicking heels on marble.

“Cassandra?”

“Hello, Sophia.”

“I’ve been thinking about our visit.”

“It was too short to call a visit, Mother.”

“See…there you go again. Is it so hard to be nice to me?”

“Yes.”

She was silent. After a long sigh, she said, softly, “I know you don’t believe this, but I really do want to be a part of your life.”

I wanted, almost more than anything, to say, “Well, then where were you all these years?” But I heard Lou’s voice. What was I really angry at? I heard my own breath, like a diver listening to the regulator. Breathe in. Breathe in. The mermaid floated by again, looking at me. I said, instead, “Don’t you think it’s too late?”

“Never. It’s never too late. Where are you calling me from?”

“The airport. I’m leaving for London, and I just, inexplicably, wanted to say goodbye. In case the plane crashes.”

“Heavens no. It won’t, dear. Don’t you know flying is safer than driving? Stan and I fly all the time. He has a Gulf-stream, you know.”

“Fascinating.”

“When will you be back?”

“Not sure. But I’ll call you. Maybe we can have dinner.”

Her voice grew tremulous. “I would really like that, Cassandra. I really would.” She sounded happy. “Ha-have a good trip. A safe trip. Be…careful.”