Stilettos & Scoundrels (6 page)

My
fingers went back to keeping time with the mu
sic on the steering wheel as I
considered the senator’s stay in Alkon.
Why Alkon?
It was
such a small town. The Senator was from some town outside of Sacramento
,
but his wife, Helen,
had been
born in Alkon.
She was from
old-family money. Her grandfather, Tobias Davis, had been some type of land developer and
he
had just raked in the bucks. He was also the type of man who had to do everything on the grandest scale imaginable
—h
uge house, expensive cars,
and a library, school,
wing at the hospital,
all
named after him
, of course
. His son, Helen’s dad, was just a playboy with more interest in spending money than making
it
. That was how the story went anyway. He was killed in a drunk driving car crash, with the stereotypical mistress, when Helen was twelve. Tobias had been dead for close to twenty years and had left most everything to Helen’s mother
,
Cherise.
Tobias
had two other sons
, so his choice of heir
had surprised some people
,
but the rumor mill said
that
it was because he thought all his sons were lazy scoundrels. Helen’s mother never remarried and still lived in
Tobias’ house, as far as I knew. I
would have to ask her parents. It might
provide some interesting background for my story on the Senator. I
wondered if Helen realized she ended up marrying someone who
seemed
to be just like her daddy
—
a womanizing drunk who couldn’t be trusted.
That was m
ore rumor mill talking
,
but if you believed everything you heard about Tom Daniels
,
it did make the two men very similar.

On
the campaign trail, the
Senator always talked about
his
small town connection; he
claimed to be
a small town guy with small town values.
S
ince he wasn’t
actually
from a small town
at all, I
wasn’t sure why people bought into that. It would be interesting to get to know him in person to see
how he compared with his media image
.

I thought about how excited my
parents had been
on the phone last night when I had told them I
was coming to stay with them for a few days. Well
,
they were excited
afte
r they got over the shock of me losing my
job and
after my mother had given me the
third degree
about not coming home often
.
Why didn’t I come home more often? Me, my
mom,
and my
dad
all had
differ
ent
opinions on the subject
. I felt
constantly guilty
about it because I loved my
paren
ts and did miss them dearly. I
just wasn’t a small town person and felt stifled in Alkon after about twenty-four hours.
Compounding that urge to flee was that,
after about twenty-four minutes,
my mother got on my
last nerve.

I
thought about how nice it would be to relax and enjoy
being free from the stress of my
old job, where inevitably any
time I
was gone
for
a few days
, some crisis would occur that I
felt compelled to rush back and fix. The more
I
thought about not working at
my
old job
, the freer I felt. I
would
,
of course
, miss my
work friends dearly
, but it wasn’t as if I
wouldn’t still
s
ee them
, and the pleasure of seeing them daily wasn’t worth
putting up with all the crap. These next fe
w days were going to be fun. I
could catch up with Katy and maybe
some other old school friends I
hadn’t seen in a
while.

Katy Smythe had been my
best friend all through high school, in that
“
together 24-7
”
type relationship all high school girls have
—
the kind where you share all your secrets and talk on the phone all night about boys. It was funny to think of what was high drama back then, though sometimes eighteen
-
year-old
-
boy drama was
remarkably similar to
thirty
-
something
-
boy drama. Lately, their relationship was relegated to the occasional Christmas card, which
I
felt bad about because Ka
ty had always been there for me
. Time just seemed to get away, and before
I
knew it, months
passed. I
was horrible abou
t keeping up with old friends. I spent
a
ll my time working to reach my
professional goals
.
Lot of fucking good that did.
However, I
was reforming and resolved to change
my priorities. I
hadn’t seen Katy in a long time and looked forward to catching up and staying caught up.
I didn’t want to be the friend who was the hardest to reach anymore
.

I pulled into my
parents
’
driveway and c
ouldn’t help smiling at what I
saw. The landscape was beautiful. It
was moments like these, when I
came back home to visit
,
that I realized why my
parents loved living here so much. The driveway, lined with huge oak trees just starting to develop small green buds with the onset of warm spring weather, was long and twisty.
My
mother
had
already planted some beautiful red and
pink flowers. Gardening was my
mother’s
source of pride
,
and she spent hours outside in the yard making sure things were perfect
, a
lthough, truth be told, she never felt they were perfect.
Eve
ry year she tried to out-do herself
in
making the yard look even better
.
And while it always looked great to
me
, neither
me
nor my dad could ever convince my
mom of that.
Sue
, he always said,
those other women don’t have anything on you. You’re the only one who can grow roses as high and bountiful as you do
. In my
opinion, it was the pressure
applied by
th
e
women in
the Junior League that made my
mom feel
constantly
inadequate. They were worse than a bunch of truckers fighting over the last country-fried steak at the all
-
you
-
can
-
eat buffet.
They spent all their time
trying to one
-
up each other
, though I
could never see why. Did it really matter who had better flowers? Flowers died and you had to grow them again the next year
;
it
seemed pointless to me.

I
never shared
my mother’s
passion
for
gardening
, much to my
mother’s disappointment.
I
t ruined a manicure quicker than anything, except maybe painting
—and I
didn’t do that either, and digging in the dirt and having to patiently watch for things to grow wasn’t exactly
my idea of high excitement. I
felt
a pang of guilt,
however, because I
didn’t even know what kind of flowers t
hose red and pink ones were. I was sure my mother had told me
a million times
; I
just didn’t pay attention.
I didn’t need to know their names to
enjoy the fact
that
they were beautiful.

As I took in the sight of my
parents
’
house, memories of being a kid flooded back. Walking to the school bus had always been a chore. In bad weather
,
it seemed to take forever to get to the protection of the little dollhouse-like
bus stop house my
dad had built
to shelter me while I waited. The little house
was now an ornamental part of its surroundings.
And when
I
was late for the bus
, whi
ch was often, I
had to run down the entire length of the driveway, screaming all the way, so the bus wouldn’t leave
me
.

My
parents, Clark and Sue Thurman
,
had
lived in the same two-story white Colonial house for over thirty years. This was always a loving home
;
people could sense it the moment they walked in, and
as I approached the familiar white house,
a feeling of calmness washed over
me
. There is something to be said about coming back to a place that, for eighteen years, had been a sour
ce of comfort. Although I
couldn’t wait to get
out of this small town when I
turned eight
een and went off to college, I
could appreciate the p
eace
of my home
now
. I
wanted to slow down and enjoy
it now—after adding
one more crappy boyfriend
to my
string of losers and
after losing my
job.
I needed some tranquility.
Maybe this visit could be the start of a
harmonious relationship with my
mother, like the one
I
had
always envisioned.
I envied the way my
fr
iend Julie from the city was with her mom
, a
lways shopping and
gossiping
on the phone
. J
ulie’s mom seemed interested in what she was doing
,. not so critical
.
Nah…that wasn’t going to happen
to me and my mom. T
his was reality
,
not a fairy tale. The proverbial pigs had a better chance of flying.

As my
black Kia Sportage rolled to a stop in f
ront of the detached garage, my
parents walked out onto the wrap-around porch
. My
dad
had
built
the porch himself
. Carpentry wasn’t one of his best talents, but at the time
, my
parents couldn’t afford to have some
one build it for them. My
mother wanted a porch so badly
—
of course, because many of her friends had one
—
that dad spent all of his spare time researching how to build it. It was really sweet when you think about it. Many weekends and
a few injuries
later, she had her porch
,
which she loved
—
crooked boards and all.
She told my
dad
that those minor imperfections
gave it more character than if it was perfectly constructed by professional carpenters.

I hoped I
would get a great guy like that so
meday. After that jerk Rick, I knew I deserved more. I stepped out of my
car as
my
dad walked up and gave
me
a big hug.
I smelled comfort in my
dad’s tried and true Old Spice cologne.

“We’re so glad that you’re here,”
he said, kissing me
on the cheek
. He then went and grabbed my
hot pink suitcase out of the back of
my car. I grabbed the rest of my stuff, a carry-on tote and my
computer bag, which was excessive for a
weekend with the folks, but I
never knew what might come up.
I
needed to
have the right shoes for every situation, even
in Alkon
. Shoes, bags,
and
accessories of all kinds
were j
ust as important as
food
; actually,
they were
probably more important than
food
. Right after coffee and before
food
was probably the perfect p
riority for accessories
.