Upside Down (9 page)

Next time
I woke, Mark was getting dressed. I sat and checked the alarm clock. It was almost four in the morning.

“I’m sorry I woke you up. I didn’t mean to,” he sat beside me and kissed me.

“It’s OK. I have to get up in a couple of hours, anyway.”

“Why?
What happened?”

I
opened my mouth to tell Mark about my father’s disease, my mother’s call and all the rest. Once again, I changed my mind. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to talk to him about those things. But, for some reason, I wasn’t and that was that.

“It’s nothing, really. I’ll drive to Boston to see my folks. It’s been a while.”

“It’s kind of a long drive. Would you like some company?”

Again, I hesitated for a fraction of a second before answering.

“Thanks but it’s not necessary. I love driving. I’ll be fine.”

I
watched Mark’s eyes turn a lighter shade of green with some emotion I didn’t recognize. The glint in their depths was unmistakable, though. He was hurt. He finished dressing, pecked my lips and walked to the door. There, he stopped and said goodbye without turning around to face me.

“See you on Monday, Ms. Sullivan
.”

When I heard his steps down the corridor,
I plopped on the bed, grabbed a pillow and covered my face with it as I shouted my frustration into the soft material. Why the hell did he have to say he was falling for me? Why did he have to screw everything up? I hadn’t cried since I was a little girl and I refused to cry then. I forced myself to sleep and rest for the long drive.

When I
got up to go to Boston, the weather was warm and it was a beautiful day so I decided to take the red convertible out on the road. It had been a while since I had had time to drive it. I had always liked fast, powerful cars and the shining limited edition Ferrari was my favorite one in the world – a V12 engine producing almost 800hp. In the U.S., I drove it within the speed limit but I loved driving it on the European highways where there was no such thing as a speed limit. Controlling a powerful machine like that was an awesome thrill. Besides, the car was a masterpiece in itself.

L
eaving Manhattan behind, taking the road towards Boston, feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my skin, I allowed my mind to wander as the devilish machine roared under me. My mind went straight back to Mark and our encounter the night before. I didn’t want to think about his behavior or how it would affect our relationship. So, I shifted my focus to my parents, instead.

My mother,
Catherine Laveaux Sullivan, was a Southern belle in the truest sense of the word. At fifty-nine, she was still a very beautiful lady but as a young girl she had been stunning. Born to a traditional, French-colonial family in Lafayette, Louisiana, she had been raised to marry well and be the proper wife of a proper gentleman. She had rebelled against those family expectations, had run away to New York and had found her calling with the American Ballet Theater where she got to be a soloist. Until she met my father, the dashing young William F. Sullivan, turned her back on her dancing career, got married and became the proper wife of a proper, very wealthy gentleman.

When
I was a very little girl, I used to watch my parents around the house, or at social gatherings, holding hands, laughing at each other, touching each other at any chance they had. I liked to see that and thought all couples behaved the same way, so passionate. When I grew up, I learned – the hardest way possible- that wasn’t true, though. My father was a businessman. He was CEO of the construction company his grandfather had started when he first came to Boston, escaping from the Great Famine in Ireland. My mother stayed home and took care of the army of maids, butlers, gardeners and chauffeurs. And me. She played with me and my dolls, she read bedtime stories for me, she rushed to my room whenever I woke up screaming during stormy nights.

Right after
I turned eight, my father was appointed commercial attaché to the American embassy in Angola, Africa. It was a great honor he couldn’t refuse; but, the unstable political situation in that country worried him and the educational system didn’t satisfy his high standards for his only daughter’s schooling. So, he decided my mother and I would stay in Boston and he would visit us as often as he could.

As it t
urned out, the political situation was much worse than he had anticipated which allowed him to return to Boston only twice during his first year in Africa. The second time he came home, my mother went to Angola with him. I stayed behind, in Boston, with the army of maids, butlers, gardeners and chauffeurs whenever I had a chance to come home from the Catholic boarding school they sent me to. For the following ten years, I would see my parents on Christmas and sometimes, for a week, during my summer vacation.

I looked around to admire the lush
forest surrounding the road and forced myself to return to the present. There was no point in revisiting the past. I hadn’t found the answers I was looking for in the other gazillion times I had relived those painful years in my head. I wasn’t likely to find them while speeding up a sports car on a summer morning through such a beautiful landscape. I should enjoy the ride and let those hurtful memories stay where they belonged – buried in the distant past. Since I had outgrown the hurt, I should be able to forget its source and forgive my parents. So, I told myself that, during that visit, things would be different. I would be more affectionate towards them. I would try to listen to them instead of quarreling. We would spend some quality time together – family time.

That was a great plan.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten to square it with my parents first.

I got to their house
around noon and was greeted at the door by an aging but still very handsome man. His face lit up and he opened up his arms for me.

“Hey,
freckles, long time no see! I missed you!”

I threw myself into his
embrace and hugged him tight.

“Oh, Bob, it’s so good to see you,” my voice was muffled by his wide chest
because that was about as high as my head would reach. Bob Hewson was an extremely tall man.

“It’s good to have you around again, little
rascal,” he kissed the top of my head and I dried a stubborn tear in the impeccable white shirt of his uniform before pulling away.

“Come, come, now. What is this nonsense?
Why are you crying?”

“Silly me!
” I sniffed and grinned at him, at the same time. “I’m happy to see an old friend, all right? You’re not going to hold it against me, are you?”

“Never, freckles. You know all your secrets are safe with me.”

There was so much truth in his playful words, and so much love in his blue eyes, that I almost choked and sobbed my heart out. Instead, I sighed and feigned boredom.

“Little girl’s secrets aren’t all that interesting, old man.”

“Yeah, right! Poor old Mrs. Pinkman wouldn’t agree with that! You used to drive her mad with your acting-up or when you went hiding from her for hours,” he chuckled.

“Oh, those were good times, huh?”

We both laughed and I squeezed his hand in a gesture of appreciation.

“Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan are in the upstairs library.
I’ll tell Peter to take your bags upstairs to you room. Is there anything else you need, my dear?”

“
I’ll go say hello to mom and dad but I’d love to see Mary, Joanne and Mrs. Pinkman, I mean, Iris,” I smiled at my slip of the tongue. I hadn’t called the dear old cook “Mrs. Pinkman” since I was a teenager. “Are they all here today?”

He stared at me in silence for a few seconds, his eyes got
misty and I saw the lump moving in his throat when he cleared it in order to speak.

“Oh, my
goodness! You don’t know, do you, freckles? My dear Iris passed away three months ago. I was going to call you, then. But, your mother noticed how distraught I was and I think he wanted to spare me the pain. She told me she’d call you herself. When you didn’t come for the funeral, I figured you were out of the country or something.”

My mind
went blank and I thought my heart would explode inside my chest. I had to sit down. There were two chairs under the huge mirror in the entrance hall. I sat on one and Bob sat on the other, beside me, holding my hand between his big ones. Thousands of flashbacks popped up in my head in fast succession. The small, dark-haired Iris Pinkman stamping her foot and waving her hands in the air when she finally found me inside a kitchen cupboard, after having looked for me around the house for more than an hour. The same generous woman trying to convince me to eat the healthy dinner she had cooked instead of a whole chocolate bar. I couldn’t believe she was gone.

“Bob, I’m so sorry.
I swear I didn’t know about it. I didn’t even know she was sick.”

“Thank God she wasn’t sick for long
. I mean, she didn’t suffer, dear,” he spoke to me but stared at the floor. I knew he was traveling down memory lane just like I was.

“
Oh, gosh! I gave that woman a hard time, didn’t I? Do you remember when I was ten? I thought I knew how to chop wood for the fireplace.”

“Of course I remember! I can still see the blood coming
out of the wound in your shin!”

“I remember that! I
hadn’t realized I had cut myself with the ax. Not until Dave pointed to my shin and passed out on the grass. I looked down, saw my bone through the mess of blood and cut flesh and started crying.”

“You
gave us quite a scare.”

“S
weet Iris would change the bandages around the wound every day, for almost ten days. Despite the fact she couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”

“She was a great woman.”

“Oh, I know you think so. Do you remember that night I caught naughty Iris sneaking out of your bedroom?”

“
She was a widow, I was single. There wasn’t any harm in us finding comfort in each other,” he blushed.

“My dear old fool, I’m not saying there was! You
deserved to be happy. Both of you. Besides, if your employers were thousands of miles away, having their own fun in Africa, who would have complaint if you and Iris were to have a little fun, too? I certainly wouldn’t.”

That reminded me
of the reason why I had missed my old cook’s funeral. I stood up to go talk to my parents but Bob held my wrist and stopped me.

“Calm down, Carol Anne. I know that glint in your big brown eyes much too well.
”

“I’m sorry, Bob. I can’t promise you that.”

“They are going through a rough patch now. They need their daughter.”

“T
oo bad! They should have thought about it all those years ago. They’ll be fine, tough, Bob. They always do. They have each other.”

I climbed
the stairs, two steps at a time, doing my best to control a murderous desire to twist somebody’s neck. I took a deep breath before opening the door to the library. My father was sitting behind his mahogany desk reading some business papers while my mother sat on a huge armchair facing him, reading a book. They both looked up when they heard the door banging against the paneled wall and smiled when they saw me. Their smiling faces turned to frowning at my angry expression. I walked up to my mother and stood in front of her.

“Haven’t you forgotten to tell me
anything, mom?”

My
harsh tone and venomous stare wrenched a loud gasp from my mother as she clenched at her blouse. My father slapped his hand on the table.

“I won’t have you talking to your mother like that, young lady.
Apologize to her right now.”

“I’m not twelve, dad!” I s
neered at him. “You can’t send me to bed without dinner for misbehaving. Oh, wait! You wouldn’t do that because, guess what? You weren’t around when I was twelve!”

“Carol,
dear. What’s gotten into you?”

M
y mother, the eternal mediator, tried to calm me down. Unfortunately, she asked the wrong question.

“Do you have to ask? Really, mom?
I’ll tell you what’s gotten into me, then.
You.
You didn’t find time in your very busy social life to call me and let me know Iris was sick. You also didn’t think I might want to know when she passed away,” my mother just sat there looking dumbfounded. It pissed me off even more. “You know Iris, right? The cook? Your cook for over thirty years? The person who was actually there for me when I was twelve?”

“Oh, dear, of course I know who she was. I was just trying to understand why you are so
angry. Besides, I did call your office but you were in a meeting. I talked to that nice young man, your assistant. What’s his name again?”

“Did you at least leave a message?”

“Of course I didn’t, honey. I wouldn’t leave this kind of message to you. I wanted to talk to you directly to prepare you for the news.”

“But you never called me again, did you?”

My mother just shook her head. I turned to my father. He looked back but kept his silence.