“Please, don’t go there again,” I moaned, thinking that hot bit of news hardly qualified as a change of subject. Though I realized it was merely her way of reminding me that my former Hockaday classmate—not someone I’d exactly call a “friend”—had managed four weddings and quite a few funerals (including geriatric hubbies number one and two) while I had yet to take a single stroll down the aisle as anything other than a bridesmaid.
“You really need to get out more, Andrea, instead of staying cooped up in your place with your paints and your computer. Practically the only men you ever see are the gas station attendants.”
“I use self-serve.”
“See what I mean?” She plucked at nonexistent lint on her blouse. “It’d be good for you to go to Marilee’s party and meet people.”
Meaning, go solo.
Malone-less.
I tossed my battered napkin on the table. “Okay, okay, I’ll do it, if it’ll make you happy.” And settle the score, I nearly added.
Besides, unless I acquiesced, she would continue to torture me with tales of oft’-married, heir-bearing school “chums” with whom I’d purposely lost touch.
“I’d be pleased as punch.” Her Cheshire-cat grin beamed across the table. She looked so damned self-assured that I knew she’d never doubted for an instant that I’d crumble under pressure. It was how things worked between us, more often than I wanted to admit.
And so it went.
That lunch was two weeks ago and as fresh in my mind as this morning’s breakfast. (A wheat bagel and low-fat cream cheese.)
I scratched an itchy spot on my elbow, thinking maybe, if I did have hives, I could get out of this mess and stay home this evening, curled up with a pizza and Brian Malone.
Though I sensed that Cissy would drag me to Marilee’s studio covered in calamine if she had to. It was embarrassing how easily Mother could manipulate me when it suited her, despite my best efforts.
I stared at the invitation to Marilee’s party, stuck with a magnet to my refrigerator door. The elaborate creation of calligraphy, tissue paper, and handmade parchment looked out of place beside my grocery list and menus from Take-Out Taxi.
“Sucker,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Chicken.”
Telling my mother, “no,” was a Herculean task. One I seemed to fail at, time and again, no matter what else I accomplished.
Though I knew I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.
Cissy Blevins Kendricks wasn’t the queen bee of Dallas society for nothing. The woman could make Ebenezer Scrooge open up his rusty lockbox for one of her many worthy causes. If ever the U.S. government could bottle her powers of persuasion, it would eliminate the need for tanks and bombs and still cause plenty of “shock and awe.”
“The gal’s got it,” as my father used to say.
And now she’d “got” me yet again, doing a job that I wasn’t so keen on doing—attending a party I’d rather skip—because I couldn’t turn her down.
Oh, and I was already suffering the consequences. Painful ones. From the moment I’d taken on Marilee’s web design project, the woman had become a big fat boil on my derriere.
I’d had to put aside my other jobs in order to cater to Marilee and Marilee alone, as she demanded the upgraded site be ready to launch by the gala. I’d been working on it night and day, and I’d just finished the last of the major tweaks. She’d wanted lots of splashy effects, including flash animation and hues outside the “web safe-color palette” that would make it hard for viewers with older browsers to load or read correctly. She’d insisted on pages so full of data that it would’ve made for slower loading than I would have liked, and it took all of my reserve of tact and patience to work something out with her that seemed do-able to us both. There were times when I wanted to follow in the footsteps of her last six web gurus and quit cold turkey.
In calmer moments, I imagined killing the woman with my bare hands, though I realized I’d have to take a number. From what I’d seen on my visits to Marilee’s studio the past few weeks, I wasn’t the only one who envisioned her face on the target of a dartboard. She had earned her reputation as a difficult boss, often reaming people out in front of a crowd of others. Though I’d gotten off easy with minor nitpicking, probably because I was the daughter of her only true friend.
Still, I didn’t want to extend my duties any longer than I had to. I kept reminding her that my work on her site was only temporary, until she could find a permanent webmaster to take over.
But I had a sinking feeling she wasn’t looking too hard for anyone. Not when she’d had six web designers before me, each only lasting a week.
Thank goodness I’d gotten most of what she wanted done, though not all of it, by far. Since she’d insisted on web cams at the party tonight for a live stream, I had to go early and make sure everything was properly set up.
The worst part of it was that I had no one to blame but myself. I could’ve stood my ground and soundly rejected Cissy’s proposal, and I hadn’t. It was residual guilt. It had to be. I seemed inclined to do anything to avoid upsetting my mother after breaking her heart years ago, because I didn’t want to see that happen again. I couldn’t afford it.
God help me.
I’d been eighteen and had declined to go through with my coming out (back when “coming out” had meant into society and not out of the closet, just to be clear). I’d done it for all the right reasons—because it wasn’t what I’d wanted, because my father had so recently passed away, because it had meant so much to her and so little to me—but she still had never fully forgiven me for becoming a debutante dropout.
The aftermath of that catastrophe continued to ripple through my life, even a dozen years later. I had a feeling it always would.
“She’ll actually pay you, Andrea,” I mimicked in my best imitation of Cissy’s honeyed drawl and, scowling, I pulled open the fridge door to peer inside, scavenging for lunch, or at least something to tide me over until the soiree tonight. I was sure there’d be enough food there to feed every starving philanthropist in Dallas.
I pulled out a banana yogurt and plucked off the foil top, thinking a little food in my belly might brighten my mood. It nearly worked—that and Yo-Yo Ma on my CD player—and I was humming along to Yo-Yo’s cello going at Rhapsody in Blue, when the phone rang.
I caught the number on my Caller ID as I snatched up the receiver and groaned, “What is it now? Did you betroth me to some Saudi sheik?”
“Andrea, darlin’, is that you?”
“Hello, Mother,” I started over, jamming a spoonful of Dannon past my lips, mostly because I knew how she despised my talking with my mouth full. “I had a feeling I’d hear from you.”
Mother and I had this psychic connection. She always called whenever I felt the least like talking to her.
“Sweetie, do you have food in your mouth?”
“Me? Unh-unh,” I lied and swallowed. “Don’t worry, I’ll be at the party,” I assured her through another mouthful of yogurt, knowing that was the reason she’d speed-dialed my number. “I’ll even comb my hair and put on a new pair of panties just in case I’m in a pileup and they take my lifeless body to the emergency room. ’Cuz, god help me, if I die in ratty drawers.”
“Don’t be silly.” She didn’t even chastise me for being a smart ass. In fact, she seemed altogether too tolerant of my attitude. Which didn’t bode well. Something was clearly up. “I’ll send the car around for you at eight-thirty.”
“I don’t need a car, Mother. I’m taking the Jeep.”
“You might find it hard to shift gears in the dress you’ll be wearing.”
“What dress?”
“Well, I was shopping at Highland Park Village and happened to drop by Escada. They’d just gotten in some new things, and this little number just screamed your name from the moment I laid eyes on it. But you’ll have to see for yourself. Come over, sweetie, and try it on, though I know it’ll fit because they double-checked your measurements with
your file at the Bridal Salon at Stanley Korshak.”
My file at the Bridal Salon at Stanley Korshak?
What the heck was she babbling about?
For a moment, my mind went blank. Then it hit me like a stucco wall. Cissy had dragged me into the posh shop at the Crescent Atrium when I’d let her prod me into doing a trunk show charity event for a brain injury foundation, two or three years ago. I recall sometime after she’d mentioned having the wedding consultant Nina Nichols Austin hold on to my measurements, “for future reference.”
Geez, Louise.
Enough was enough.
“What if I’ve already got an outfit in mind?” I told her, though I didn’t. My closet wasn’t exactly loaded with high fashion.
“What outfit?” she prodded. “A pair of sweatpants? Or something speckled with paint?” She chuckled. “You’re a card, darling. You remind me of your father’s Aunt Edna who thought she was an opera diva and ended up in a mental hospital in Wichita Falls, singing Aida to her padded walls.”
I reminded her of an insane (and deceased) great-aunt?
Super.
“You’d better hurry, sweetie, I’ve got a date at the salon in about an hour, so I won’t be home much longer.”
“Mother, really, I don’t need a dress . . . Mother?”
The dial tone hummed in my ear.
I swallowed a lump of yogurt and felt it slime its way down my throat to my belly. How had that happened?
Unbelievable.
I held the receiver for a moment, simply staring at it, amazed that I’d let myself get snared in yet another of Mother’s webs. You’d think I’d have known better, but it was like Groundhog Day, the movie with Bill Murray, where the same things occurred over and over again. I’d say “like a broken record,” only nobody had records anymore, just CDs with antiskid mechanisms.
Frustration bubbled inside me, and I seriously considered dialing Mother back and telling her exactly what she could do with the designer dress and chauffeured car, but that was the wrong approach entirely. I had to deal with this directly, take a stand for myself, like Daddy had always advised.
“Be a woman, not a weenie.”
Okay, my father hadn’t exactly put it that way, but I knew that’s what he’d meant.
This was one of those situations that called for the Band-Aid approach. Better to rip it off in one quick yank than tug a little bit at a time.
I turned off Yo-Yo, grabbed my keys and headed down to Mother’s house on Beverly Drive.
Chapter 3
Ah, summer in Dallas.
Not exactly tourist season.
The days averaged a hundred degrees. Cloudless blue skies stretched from one horizon to the next, providing no relief from the blistering rays. Baking asphalt sent waves of heat simmering like a mirage. The sidewalks emptied, turning neighborhoods into ghost towns. Folks with any sense stayed inside and donned cardigans over T-shirts, the AC set to “arctic,” not budging until the first cool front in October.
I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t really that hot.
Mind over matter, see?
It worked for all of about a minute, until I touched the door handle of my Jeep, shimmering beneath the sun in the shadeless parking lot. I muttered, “ouch, ouch,” under my breath as I got inside as fast as possible, still not prepared for the unbearably hot air that smothered me like an invisible electric blanket.
While the AC in my Wrangler took its time to cool off, the back of my bare legs stuck to the leather and trickles of sweat swam down my back. The steering wheel scorched my skin, so I couldn’t bear to touch it with more than the tips of two fingers. I was already longing for Christmas, praying for an early frost.
As if.
Maybe tunes would help, I thought and turned on the radio, bypassing ads and chatter. After some poking around, I found an oldie by Alanis and sung at the top of my lungs, trying to take my mind off the perspiration sticking my shirt to my back.
“Life is a funny thing . . . isn’t it ironic, don’t you think,” I crooned off-key and gazed out the windshield at the familiar route, though there wasn’t much in the way of scenery going south on Hillcrest from Belt Line, merely row after row of brick ranch houses, high board-on-board fences, occasional strip malls and shopping centers, gas stations, a deserted park (it was even too hot for kids to play).
It took a good twenty minutes before I rolled into Highland Park, one of the city’s older residential areas and unquestionably one of its loveliest, with stately homes that reeked of old money, clipped green lawns with discreet inground sprinkler systems that went off in the wee hours to conserve water, and trees tall enough to provide shade, the thick boughs stretching above cobbled driveways.
It was no wonder HP had been nicknamed “the Bubble.” It sat apart from the real world, from the images of crime and poverty and war on the six o’clock news. Everything was lush and beautiful—property and people—even in the hellish Texas heat. I had yet to see a flower wilt or a Park Cities woman sweat. Maybe part of the reason I’d never truly felt like I’d belonged. I wasn’t near perfect enough, too quirky, too prone to human error.
I was the deb-to-be who’d worn Army fatigues and pink high-topped sneakers to afternoon tea at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. I was the quietly rebellious child who had preferred to paint rather than attend tennis lessons at the club, who’d left the state to attend art school in Chicago instead of going through rush at a proper Texas college, never to end up with my mother’s treasured Pi Phi arrow pin.
“I’ll just have to put it away and save it for my granddaughter,” she’d insisted, which didn’t exactly ease my conscience.
I squirmed in my seat the closer I got to the house on Beverly, and I realized that driving back to Mother’s sometimes felt less like a coming home and more like a return to Cissy’s turf.
It’s not that I wasn’t welcome—because I was, always—but rather I was a little like Cinderella in reverse. If I didn’t escape back to North Dallas and my cozy condo before midnight, Mother might wield her magic wand and turn my Jeep into a Beamer, my flip-flops into spiky Manolo Blahniks, and my Operation Kindness No Kill Shelter T-shirt into a Carolyne Roehm gown.
I shuddered at the thought of it.
There were moments when I couldn’t help but wonder if the hospital hadn’t made a mix-up when I was born, and if a true Highland Park princess hadn’t been raised in a modest home in Grand Prairie, all the while wondering why she dreamed of Gorham silver patterns and cocktail dresses with shoes dyed to match, while I lived in a 1920s-era mansion, dreaming of how to get away from exactly that.
There’d been no switch, of course, and I’d never really believed it.
Despite our bipolar existence, I did love my mother, and she loved me. I’d never doubted that for a minute.
I actually didn’t mind going home once in a while. I likened it to staying in touch with my roots, so I would never forget the girl-trying-to-find-herself I’d once been and the independent woman I’d become. There was something about returning to the old house on Beverly that reminded me how lucky I was, despite the pains of growing up in the shadow of Cissy Kendricks.
The place had been my refuge back then. Strangely enough, I knew it had been Mother’s as well and still was. A respite from her endless calendar of bridge clubs, Junior League, church, and charities. She and my father had bought the property soon after they’d married, when Cissy was fresh out of SMU with her “MRS” degree and Daddy with his MBA, someday to take over my Paw Paw’s drug company.
I was raised there, had celebrated eighteen birthdays inside those French-papered walls before I’d moved out after prep school and headed to the Windy City. Four years away from Dallas—with only holiday visits home—had given me much more than I could ever put into words. I’d found a sense of who I was, the kind of person I was meant to be. I’d learned to be comfortable in my own skin without feeling the pressure to follow in my mother’s—or father’s—footsteps.
I never wanted to lose that, no matter what.
Despite the time I’d spent away from Mother’s—both living in Chicago and in North Dallas—nothing much had changed. I’d thought at one point she might sell her place, but ultimately she couldn’t bear to leave. “Too many memories,” she’d told me, ones she wasn’t ready to relinquish.
A part of me was relieved.
There was still so much of my father there, especially in his book-lined study that Mother hadn’t touched except to allow for weekly cleanings. The leather of his desk chair smelled of his Cuban cigars and of the Old Spice he used to wear because I’d given it to him for Christmas so often when I was a child.
He’d hung several paintings I’d done in high school—Impressionist images of Mother’s garden—on the wall behind his desk, bookending an original John Singer Sargent landscape. That simple act had made me burst with love for him, thinking that my art had meant as much to him as it did to me. I would never, ever forget that or anything else about him.
He’d been everything.
“Follow your heart,” he used to tell me, so often that I repeated it in my head like a mantra whenever I needed a boost. “It’s your life, pumpkin, so live it. Don’t try to be someone you’re not.”
Someone, he’d meant, like my mother.
If I stood in his study, closed my eyes and breathed in, I could still imagine he hadn’t left my life so abruptly, that he was with me.
The Good Girl's Guide to Murder: A Debutante Dropout Mystery Page 3