Such a Pretty Face (39 page)

Yes, I nodded. Oh, yes. I gripped my giggles. “They must be soft.”

“Soft and big.” He cupped himself. “Mermaids big. Shells right there sometimes, so big.”

“Absolutely.”

“But not tonight. No shells. This art. Mermaid art.”

“Mermaid art!”

I snuck a peek over at Herbert, who was upbraiding one of the Hispanic employees of the catering company. “Herbert will pay double for your efforts.”

The Russian man beamed again, then said, “Masterpiece, no? She masterpiece. Those breasts! Perfect! Take long time.” He wiped his eyes.

I patted his shoulder.

“I miss her already,” he weeped.

Minutes later I was on the phone, frantically trying to get ahold of the quartet that had still not arrived. I finally reached them. They were not coming. On the way here, the driver had hit the accelerator instead of the brake and they’d driven through the front of an adults-only club. “We completely smashed a display of sex toys,” one of them said. Minor injuries, but all were in the hospital. “I had no idea those things even existed! Have you heard about this new toy for men called a Pink Princess? Guess I’ve been inside too much playing my violin. So sorry we can’t be there.”

Lance heard the conversation, saw my stricken face, and said, “I’ll take care of this,” and ambled off, phone to ear. I grabbed our neighbor, Mrs. Bunce, none too gently, and asked her to play piano for the vow part of the ceremony. The piano was right inside the door, in the living room, feet from the now-virginal-rose-drooped arbor on the deck where Herbert and Aunt Janet would renew their vows.

“Sure I will, darling, but this is not a happy day for me. Your aunt is simply retrapping herself, married to a rabid alligator. Virginia and I don’t get it. She should be tramping around the world with us on one of our trips.” She sighed, waved her hand. She was wearing beige pants and a beige shirt, her hair in a long beige braid, and hippie sandals. She was a multimillionaire. “I’ll do it, but I’d rather play the death march, that black and morbid song. I was hoping your aunt would make a break from that stiff-assed anteater….”

Herbert came up behind me seconds later, then signaled with his pointed finger for me to follow him. We ducked into the den. “Where the hell is the symphony quartet?”

“They were in a car accident.”

“Damn.” He shook his head. He did not even ask if they were hurt/mangled/dead/decapitated. He didn’t care. “Stevie, I was counting on you to do this, this one small thing for your aunt and me, to make a few calls to arrange my anniversary celebration, and apparently it’s too much for you, isn’t it?” He glowered at me. “After all that I have done for you, taking you in, raising you, dealing with your weight issues, your emotional issues, putting you through college—”

I was furious. Suddenly, stunningly furious. Maybe it was my weight loss that had given me confidence. Maybe it was dealing with Crystal and the Athertons and Polly and watching Aunt Janet finally grow a spine. Maybe it was because of Jake and this golden glow he’d brought to my insides, but I let that leechy cockroach have it.

“Let’s get something straight, Herbert, right now. First off, yes, you took me in. It’s my understanding that you didn’t want to, but Aunt Janet said she would divorce you if you didn’t.”

He paled. It was the truth. Polly had told me she’d overheard a conversation.

“So don’t pretend you’re this magnanimous, generous man. You made sure I never felt part of your family. You made me feel fat, dumb, and unwanted, a burden. I knew, from the second I stepped into your house, that you didn’t want me there. How do you think an eleven-year-old feels, knowing that?” My lungs constricted. “I was
a little girl,
Herbert. Helen had tried to kill me. She killed Sunshine.” My voice broke. “She killed herself. My grandparents died shortly after that, one after the other. I lost everything. Do you get that? Are you capable of getting that? You even took away my name after shaking me every night for months.”

Something flashed in his eyes. Maybe it was emotion, but it was too quick for me to catch, and he slammed his sausage lips together. “I provided for you—”

“You provided for me?” Can a body turn red-hot with anger? “Hardly. You received social security payments for me each month. You had the proceeds from Grandpa’s business. There was the Schoolhouse House and all the land that you sold. The farm equipment. The cars and trucks…”

“I told you, the business went bankrupt. I had to sell
everything.
” He shook his head sadly, but he was suddenly as pale as a mean ghost. “Your grandpa was not a businessman. Way too generous with his employees. He was in the…” Herbert coughed. “I know you don’t understand business, but your grandpa was operating in the red, and that’s why the company went…uh…under two years after he died.”

“You know what, Herbert?” I could barely speak, but I was finally going to voice what I had always suspected. I had checked up on my grandpa’s business online. It was sold two years after Herbert got his hands on it, and it was still there. “I don’t believe you. It was a thriving business. I think you ran it into the ground, that’s what I think happened.”

He turned a sickly white-green color.

“I think you’re the one who’s not a businessman. You’re the one who ruined it all. When your own father died ten years ago he specified who was to run each section of your family’s company, and you were not named. Yes, I know that, we all do. You’re a figurehead. That’s it.”

He stumbled back, stunned.

“You probably went into my grandpa’s company, and when the employees hated you and your smug, superior attitude, you probably cut their pay, fired the older people, brought in your own people, and sank the place. That’s what happened, right?”

His head jerked, right and left. “I won’t discuss this with you. You don’t have a head for business. You wouldn’t understand the mess that I found there. I have acted as your father for years—”

“No, you haven’t. I know what a father is, what he does, because I had Grandpa. You’re not a father to me. You’re not even an uncle I want to claim as my own. The only reason I have contact with you at all is because of Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly.”

“You ungrateful—”

“Ungrateful? I am ungrateful?” I fought back tears. “I wish that you had refused to take me in. I wish you’d let me stay in Ashville with The Family. Me, Lance, Aunt Janet, and Polly would have been better off without you, even if we lived in a tiny house and had no toilet. I might never have had the extreme eating addiction I did, and Polly wouldn’t have anorexia. Am I grateful for you? No, I’m not. You have hurt me thousands of times, and I’m done. I am done with you. You are a toxic person, and I will not have contact with you again after tonight.”

“You’re done with me after tonight,” he scoffed, but he looked scared. His eyelid twitched and his hand shook when he pushed his white hair back.

“Yes. I am. I regret all these years that I’ve put up with your cruelty, your overbearing, critical personality. I regret that I didn’t have the self-confidence to walk away from you. But what I regret the most is not being part of a healthy family, and now I’m fixing that.” I could hardly believe what I was saying. Was I ready for this? Could I do it?

“What are you talking about now? More nonsense.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m going back to Ashville.”

He sucked in his breath, his head snapping back as if I’d slugged him.

“My family has tried to contact me as an adult, through letters and phone calls, but I avoided them because I was huge and fat and I didn’t think I could stand the pain of talking to them again, remembering. I thought I was a disgrace to Grandma and Grandpa. You’ve told me that for years. ‘You’re a disgrace, Stevie.’” I mocked his voice. “I closed them out as I closed out all my grief, but I am done closing anyone or anything out, no matter how much it hurts. I’m going home, Herbert. Home to Ashville.”

He staggered back and put a hand on his desk for balance. “You can’t.”

“Why can’t I?” Why was he so…
scared?

“Because…” He cleared his throat. “It’s not necessary, Stevie. We’re your family. Put your past behind you. Put those people behind you. They were all odd, strange. Your grandparents’ people are backwoods, uneducated, uncouth people.”

“No, they aren’t. I knew them. That’s what you forget. I knew them and I loved them. I loved The Family. I belonged in Ashville.”

He sank into his leather chair, knees collapsing.

What was going on? Why was he so averse to my returning? Then it dawned on me: He was afraid I would find out the truth, wasn’t he? There were secrets in Ashville he didn’t want me to know.

“No good will come of it.”

“Yes, it will. Even if it’s painful, good will come of it. I’m disgusted with myself for not going sooner, but I let your lies become my truth.”

“Don’t go, Stevie. I’m warning you. Stay away from that town. They don’t want to see you.”

That hit me in the gut, but I no longer believed it, no longer believed what he’d told me as a kid. “You’re lying. I know that. I think you’ve lied to me since I set foot inside your front door, but I was too grief stricken and young and lost, and then as an adult I was too screwed up and miserable to see it, to deal with it. But I am strong enough now. You’re a liar, and I am going to Ashville.”

I turned and left the den. I briefly thought about being classy and shutting the door quietly, but I didn’t. I slammed it so hard I heard something fall off his shelves and break.

I would not associate again with Herbert. Not ever.

Family is the most difficult relationship of all, I think. There are some family members we love dearly. We believe we can’t live without their kindness, wisdom, humor, insight, their very presence. With others, they’re irritating and disagreeable but we can suck it up, limit contact, and smile now and then. And then there are family members that we cannot stand. They’re verbally abusive, unkind, or throw barbs and darts while smiling. They subtly or blatantly put us down, criticize, destroy, and destruct.

Society says we should keep in contact with them. Set up boundaries, try to control how we respond to them, be friendly and civil. They are, after all, family.

This is what I now believe: That is bullshit.

Complete bullshit.

No one should be around anyone who is abusive, mean, or dickheaded. Life is too short. I could have easily died when I had my heart attack, and thinking of all the time I’d spent with Herbert, hurting or angry from what he’d said or done…well, I was done with that.

As I left the den, crossed the deck, and glared at the “virginal white roses” climbing up the makeshift arch for the ceremony that Herbert had ordered, I was hit in the shoulder. I stared at the eye shadow container that clattered to the ground, then up at the window. I heard Aunt Janet shriek, “Heavens to shit,” and ran on up to her bedroom.

There would be trouble tonight, I knew it.

And it certainly would not be limited to the big-nippled mermaid and blow-up dolls.

But my, Sabrina Dina was spectacular!

Herbert stormed into their bedroom about fifteen minutes later. He was grossly, sickly white. He glared, pointed at me, and shook his head. I swear I saw rampant fear in his expression, his hands shaking. “Dammit! What’s going on? How long does it take you to get ready, woman?”

Aunt Janet sat up in bed in her robe and said, “There had better be no newspaper reporters and no photographers down there, Herbert. I have told you how I feel.”

“Why aren’t you in your damn dress,” he thundered. “You’re supposed to be ready!”

“Did you hear me, Herbert?”

“Hear what? All I need to hear is that you’re going to be ready in five minutes. You got that, Janet? We’re starting in five minutes with or with—”

She raised her eyebrows. “With or without me?” Her whole body shook. “Herbert, you will listen to me. I have already told you, and I told the quartet over the phone last week, that I do not want them playing ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ I’m too old for that.”

“Get ahold of yourself!” He threw a trembling hand in his wife’s direction. “Polly, why are you lying on the bed? Stop this laziness this instant.”

“I’m lying here because I’m hoping Mom will change her mind and avoid the public spectacle of a marital hanging,” she drawled. “Then we can all take a nap or get drunk. I vote for drunk.”

“We are renewing our vows, young lady, and our commitment to each other.”

“No, you’re making a political statement. You’re a whack job, you know that, right, Dad?”

Herbert was so mad I thought he might hit Polly, so I scrambled to stand in front of her. “Get out, Herbert,” I said.

“Yes, do,” Polly drawled. “You can take yourself, your own self-made whack job, and go whack.”

“I have told you, Herbert, I’ll have no political statements,” Aunt Janet said. “Do not make any of your anti-gay speeches. This is not a campaign rally.”

“Woman, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you will stop speaking to your husband in that manner and accept my authority. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.” Aunt Janet threw her foundation bottle at him. “Tell me, Herbie, what would you do if I walked out? Right now. Would you care?”

“He would pop a gasket in his head and die,” Polly said. “Not because you left him but because of the humiliation and waste of political capital it would cause. He’s a pillar! He’s running for reelection!”

He scoffed. “You won’t leave me. You know the consequences of that action. I’ve told you before, I have been clear, so I won’t even entertain the notion.”

“Entertain it, Dad,” Polly drawled. “Please.”

“I’m sick of you telling me what to do,” Aunt Janet said. “Sick of you ordering me around. Sick of your disapproval and disappointment. Sick of you running my life, and I’m sick of myself for letting you run it. I am sick of myself!”

Now Herbert’s jaw dropped open.

“And I don’t want to do this. I don’t even know why I’m here and not in…” She put a hand to her mouth.

“You will not embarrass this family with all of our friends here—”