“Something’s fishy in Blairville,” I whispered to no one.
Didn’t see my father. Super moony over family therapy, didn’t make sense he’d miss. My mother. She’d bail. So why was she here? Why didn’t I know?
My mother’s driver picked her up in the Town Car that never got dirty. Say what you want about Harrison Blair, but she could pick a serf. Chauffeur jumped out from behind the wheel to open her door. God forbid Mother should exert energy on the mundane. She leaned in to fold herself into the backseat, swayed like she might fall but caught herself before buckling under the weight of knowing everything.
Chapter Five
Isabel
“Hey.” I stood in Jonathan’s office doorway.
He swiveled around in his chair to face me, checked me out from shoes to head. I wanted to cut his wanderings off at the root with a withering comment but didn’t. The quiet swelled. I didn’t intervene.
“Hey to you too,” he finally said.
“Blair Fitzgerald family therapy started today.”
I could feel his relief that I’d come to talk shop. The stink of something rotten clung to us.
“Mom arrived solo, District Attorney Dad couldn’t make it, or so she said.”
“Harrison wears the pants,” Jonathan said. “Todd Fitzgerald probably doesn’t even own pants. You’d think as DA he’d follow the court order though.”
“Judge Seward’s their patsy.” I leaned against the doorjamb, munched on my fingernail.
“I can’t understand you with your fingers in your mouth,” Jonathan said.
I jerked them out. My thumb burned where I’d gnawed it to the quick.
“I gave Harrison a stern reminder. She gave no shits.” I lowered my chin to growl out my best Harrison Blair imitation. “The court doesn’t order me. My father served as the attorney general of this state, my grandfather the governor, Todd’s brother the senator—”
“Mom’s James Earl Jones?”
“Voice box damage,” I said. “Harrison wants Preston committed for life.”
“Why’d she bail the kid out in the first place?”
“She didn’t. Todd did. Harrison stayed in the hospital for months, thinks Todd’s view of the situation is optimistically skewed.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m inclined to agree. Preston doesn’t want help. I can’t get excited about treating her. Going through the motions. So far, she talks a lot about another patient. Preston swiped her doll, stepped on its head. The patient with the doll fished a photo out of the trash that Preston had thrown away.”
“What’s in the picture?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Supervising nurse just told me.”
“You drive here with all the windows rolled down?”
I smoothed my mussed hair with open palms.
“The Blair girls,” Jonathan said. “Big chips on their shoulders, all named for men. Family ran out of boys. Don’t change their name when they marry.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you not know?”
Jonathan loved to show off his endless capacity for trivia.
“Like everyone does?”
“Google them,” he said. “They’re Virginia’s version of the Kennedys. Everything they do is news. Although, Preston’s last fandango sprinted through the press, must’ve cost ’em a load in payoffs.”
“I live under a rock,” I said.
He whirled around in his chair again, his back to me.
“I wish.”
Chapter Six
Preston
“Lots of books,” Isabel waved at the floor of my private room.
“Think I’m illiterate?”
“Of course not. I’m just—”
“I went to Harvard, Brown, Yale,” I said.
“Three schools. Wow.”
“Didn’t graduate from any.”
Isabel fell silent so I poked at her.
“Only one of us in this room attended community college,” I said. “On scholarship.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Isabel said. “Paid my way through a top-tier school with loans like the rest of us working-class schmucks.”
“Since when is clown college top tier?”
To my surprise, Isabel laughed. Out loud.
“Now that was funny,” she said.
I didn’t see that coming.
She reached in her vinyl bag, scored a notebook, put her therapist look back on and started in again.
“Didn’t you want to finish college?” she said. “Learn a profession?”
Caught off guard by Isabel’s laugh, a hearty and (if I’m truth telling) kind of sexy one, it took me a bit to answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “But not the college or profession my parents chose.”
“What’d they choose?”
“Law. Like we need another lawyer.”
“What would you have chosen?”
“You don’t care about the answer any more than they did,” I said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Matricidal mania,” I said. “I’d have stayed for that class.”
There she went again. Laughing. Definitely on the sexy side.
“I know I shouldn’t spur you on, but you’re a clever girl, Preston. And funny. Fucked up but funny. So why’d you quit?”
“Isn’t there some shrink rule about not telling a patient they’re fucked up?”
This chick got my attention.
“What were you saying about schools?” she said, her face unreadable.
“Quit one.” I’d go along. “Two kicked me out. They don’t like you to bring drugs on campus. Or smoke ’em in class.” I took a happy trot down memory lane. “Guess I did kick that one wimp’s ass but he owed me money.”
“Is violence your usual response to unhappiness?” Isabel said.
“Black eye’s hardly violent. No one got hurt. Well, not really.”
Isabel sat back, stared at me. I’m sure she expected I’d wade right in to the deep end, erupt like Mount Vesuvius, a gush of hair-raising confessions. I took her measure instead.
“Those lashes come with glue or no?” I said.
Apparently made of Teflon, Isabel still stared, mum. I made another run at her.
“A for effort on that combover though, Baby Jane.”
She touched the loose lashes, then her hair. No laughing this time.
“Does insulting me make you feel better?”
“No, but it’s a start.”
“I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Do you believe your pancake makeup covers those bruises?”
Her fingers bolted to her jawline, lingered a few seconds but she didn’t miss a beat.
“Did trying to kill your mother make you feel better?”
“You don’t know shit from shinola about me and my mother.”
****
Isabel’s further attempts to discuss my mother fell flat. She went another way. “Let’s talk about something else then. Why do you feel you can’t get along with the other patients?
“I thought we agreed. Who gives a shit what I feel?”
“We didn’t agree to any such thing,” she said. “How you feel determines your behavior.”
I almost admired her attempt to propel me back to what happened with my mother. Before anything offensive rolled off my tongue she said, “Feelings are not behaviors. You don’t have to behave the way you feel.”
“Like that’s news,” I said. “Doesn’t take an Einstein to know my behaving the way I feel got me in quite a pickle.”
“Why smash Rosalie’s doll?”
“Why not?”
“Because of a picture?”
“Because she’s a drooling moron,” I said.
“We talked about how to harness your anxiety without lashing out.”
“I forgot.”
“Why’d you throw the photograph away?”
“What’s it to you? It’s no one’s business what I trash.”
“That’s it?” With her pen, Isabel pointed out the lone, crinkled photo, a bit worse for the trashing but intact, taped above my bed. “Is that you?” She’d gotten up for a closer look. “Holding a baby?”
“Well, it’s not one of the Olsen twins.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven or eight, I think.”
“Who’s the baby?”
“My brother, Cooper.”
“How old?”
“I dunno. A year maybe.”
Isabel crept closer still. “Thought you were an only child.”
“I am now.”
“He died?” She touched the photo with her fingertip.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“He was dead in that photo. Been dead half that day.”
Chapter Seven
Isabel
The dealer threw a jack of diamonds.
“Shit.”
I flipped my cards so the table could see my loss, snatched my empty glass off the felt. Thank every god in the universe—club members drank free if they gambled. I passed the tumbler to the cocktail waitress.
“Scotch,” I said. Her glittered acrylic nails barely made contact. “Never mind, I’ll get it in the bar.”
“You in or out?” the dealer said.
“Out.” I jumped down from the stool.
Some loudmouthed jackass, whose toupee looked like a squirrel had crawled up his scalp, held court in the lounge. To avoid him and his ilk, I veered toward the slots, sure I could win big before calling it a night. I’d hit a bad patch. No one got lucky all the time.
Except, the Blairs.
Unlike me, who scratched and clawed for every single thing, they hit the jackpot every day of their useless Town & Country lives. Never worked, married important men, or lived on daddy’s largesse, didn’t go to jail no matter the crime. Flitted about with their golden spoons, rolling sevens every time they shot the dice. Their only accomplishment was being born to the right family. Their existence bored under my skin like ticks.
I perched the tumbler I’d meant to fill, but forgotten about, atop the first available slot machine, scrounged around my purse. In it to win it, I bet my last two dollars.
Shit. Shit.
The club hummed with losers like me looking to score. Shrill bells, whistles, winning sounds, the whine of the air conditioners, and the onslaught from the 1970s cover band consumed me. I felt sick, trudged for the exit, head hung low like someone snapped my neck. Aimed for the blackened doors, the dark quiet a 180-degree shift to my overstimulated senses.
I drove away broken and broke.
****
“Ms. Warner, we need to discuss a financial matter.”
“Call at your earliest convenience to make arrangements.”
“This is Frank from Honda leasing. I’m sure it’s an oversight.”
Skipped through the collectors’ threats on my cell, tossed the unopened mail in the trash. More demands for payment.
My near-empty apartment didn’t uplift me. My financial priorities didn’t include furniture. A few thrift shop essentials did me fine.
I staggered to the bedroom. About to fling myself on the bed in a tantrum of toddler proportions, I remembered the rigid mattress, thought better of it. I fretted at the edge of the bed. Preston Blair posed with her dead brother zipped through my mind, struck me like a slap. How did I not know about that baby? Ghoulish freaks.
I doubted Preston’s story was true, but even so, what kind of mother would Harrison Blair have to be to inspire her daughter to tell such a lie? What if it wasn’t a lie? Preston’s insults came to mind. Rude? Sure, but still funny as hell. Every therapist knows humor is pain’s prettier cousin. Jonathan nailed it. Preston did need help. If anyone could understand Preston Blair’s mother situation, it was me.
With every intention of calling time on this fresh hell of a day—I didn’t.
****
“What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you too.”
“My wife—”
“Doesn’t live here. Don’t you think I know that?” I wriggled around him, forced myself into the foyer. He called it that, a foyer in an ugly American, French accent. My heels clacked on the marble floor. I could fit my apartment in the oxblood varnished entry.
“This isn’t allowed. There are rules—”
“Don’t talk,” I said.
A cashmere pullover clung to him with casual elegance. His arms drooped in a lazy, passive, defense move.
Pushed him toward the library, knew right where it was.
“Please,” he stumbled backward. “We’re supposed to be anonymous. We’re not in a real relationship. Stop. I mean it. After last time we promised.”
His rambling annoyed me but not enough to stop.
“How did you know I was alone?”
Didn’t bother to answer.
“Stop, I mean it. I don’t think—”
“Shut up,” I didn’t need him to think. Didn’t fuck him for his brain. Got my own brain, thanks. I didn’t have my own cock. Pulled his out while he squeaked like a mouse, mumbled about his wife again.
Nothing like the feel of a hard dick in your hand—the universal symbol of power—sleek, smooth, the tip sticky and wet. Ran my hand up and down the stiff shaft. He moaned, collapsed on the desktop, elbowed desk crap out of harm’s way. I shoved it all to the ground with a crash. Flat on his back, he yelped something about broken glass and the maid, pants and briefs were already hunkered down mid-thigh. Skirt bunched around my waist, I mounted him. Before he could throw me off or come, I yanked him forward, my mouth against his ear.
“Hit me.”
Chapter Eight
Preston’s Blog
Musings from the Dented Throne
Ghostbusters
I don’t like bringing up the dead. It riles the living.
So, my Dented Throne followers, I’m not sure why I told the new shrink about my brother. I wanted to shock. If you’d seen Shrinky, you’d know why—a hot mess—like someone dragged her to our session on the back of a bumper.
She tried to muscle more info out of me. Regretted my blurt, so I clammed up. Hate to say I drank my mother’s therapist Haterade, but this one intrigues. She thinks yours truly is a comedian, actually laughed at some of my nastiest bits. And get this—she cusses at me like a teamster.
I suspect she’s one tick away from an explosion.
Unless you’ve guessed my identity (despite my ingenious blogosphere ruse) and have an ear to the ground, you didn’t know about my brother either. If you’d stumbled across a blip on Wikipedia or dredged up dirt on the interwebz, you’d know he’d been born, then died, a long time ago. That’s it—but not nearly all of it.
No one ever said for sure how he died, that I can remember, but I suspect perhaps the Royal She committed an unfortunate act. As attached as she was, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’d accidentally smothered the poor thing. Afterwards, you couldn’t blame me for not asking. The Queen holed up with my brother for a couple of days before he’d expired and hours after, in the Royal suite, door locked. Didn’t want anyone, especially her parents, to know the only son born to a Blair in generations died on her watch. You’ve probably caught the hints I’ve dropped about my grandparents’ peculiarities. In fairness, the Queen didn’t want her son to be dead either.
She loved that baby like crazy. (Me too, when I wasn’t withered inside with jealousy. I know that now.)
My father banged on their bedroom door.
“Let me in! You’ve got to let me call someone.”
I’d never heard my father raise his voice, much less yell like a madman. I didn’t wonder at the time why anyone had to let a father call someone when his own son died.
“You keep that man’s balls in your purse,” my grandmother used to say to my mother. “A change purse.”
Police chief hustled in, so Dad must’ve finally sent up the flares without the Queen’s permission.
I didn’t know he was the chief of police back in the day. He’d always been just an FOD (friend of dad) to me. He came to the super-festive Christmas party and the Fourth of July barbecue my parents threw every year with his chain-smoking wife and their freckled yowling brat of a son.
Between the police chief and the Jester they coaxed the Queen into giving up my poor, dead brother. On one condition—she’d get a photo of the two of us together. For the Christmas card.
“Be careful, you’ll drop him.”
Dad held me down, kneeing me into the wingback chair to keep me from squirming out from under the small corpse. I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled. I remember that like yesterday.
“He stinks,” I told them.
“He does not.” The Queen rewarded my observation with a hard pinch to the soft part of my arm.
I did my best to keep from bawling my head off or barfing. The Littlest Heir felt icy, unnaturally stiff, a cold dead thing. Chief took the photo but didn’t ask me to say cheese. After, he carried my brother away, wrapped in a little blanket embroidered with his own little monogram, of course.
One could argue that offering up this story to a therapist might help me, might give context to my bad behavior but I’d argue back—nothing doing. I already know what she’d say. “No wonder the girl’s a head case,” or some twaddle like that. Besides, my feelings for my brother belong only to me. Feelings are like dollar bills—the more of them you put out for public circulation, the less valuable they become.
I never stopped missing him. If he’d survived I wouldn’t have felt so alone in the unhappiest house in the world, the only living witness to the fossilization of my parent’s marriage. One that was once easy (if the honeymoon photos don’t lie) but turned hard. Hebrew-slaves-building-the-pyramids hard. Drugs helped me deal later. Without them, now I feel the shock of my brother’s death all over again. My gut churns so much I fear it’ll turn to butter.
“I don’t know how I’ll bear the heartbreak,” I’d heard Mother say at his funeral.
The Invisible Heiress Page 2