by Terra Little
“Uncle Nate, stop hitting her so hard.” Nate shot Nikki a look over his shoulder and kept right on slapping Pam’s cheeks.
Pam’s arms came awake before her eyes opened. She moaned sleepily and then swatted at Nate’s hands, irritated. Her eyes came open slowly and darted around the room. When they landed on Jasper she jumped up from the sofa and almost fell over Nate.
“What the hell is he doing here? Who called him? Did you, Nate? Chad, did you?” Both men shook their heads wearily. Unlike Nikki, if Pam suddenly decided to go wild and start swinging it would take both of them to restrain her, and barely at that. Neither of them had the energy or the inclination to tangle with Pam right now.
“I came to talk to you, Pam. Moira called me and . . .”
“That bitch,” Pam gasped. “Tell her I said to stay the fuck out of my life. And you too, Jasper, you stay out. I trusted you, I believed in you. I thought of you as a father figure and all the time you really were my father. I hate you for that, and I never want to see you again.” She looked around wildly for her purse, couldn’t find it and heard the ringing start back up in her ears. “Both of you, feeding me cookies and patting me on the head. If Paris wasn’t already gone this would kill her for sure. Stay back!”
“Pam, please let me talk to you. I’m still the same Jasper you used to love. That ain’t changed. We used to talk about everything and we can talk about this.”
“Still the same? That’s a joke, right?” Pam backed away from Jasper’s outstretched hands and walked in a wide circle around him. “I thought I knew a man who would never lie to me, who was my friend, but you are a liar, Jasper. A liar and a coward. How did you sleep at night, knowing you had children down the road in a fucking home, standing in line waiting for dinner like slaves?”
“Pam . . .”
“Fuck you. Where is my goddamn purse?”
“Here it is, Aunt Pam.” Nikki came up behind Pam and held her purse and sunglasses out to her. Pam whirled around and reached for them at the same time that Nikki went to push them into her hands. Their hands collided and they both froze. Pam’s eyes flickered up to Nikki’s face and darted away from what she saw there. She looked at the wall for several seconds and then swallowed audibly.
“I have to go,” she said.
Chad caught up to her at the door. “Pam, you shouldn’t drive. Let me get my keys . . .”
“I’m fine, Chad. I learned a long time ago to roll with the punches and get back up swinging, so don’t worry about me.”
“If you won’t let me drive you, then I’m coming with you.”
“Unless you’re coming to California, no you’re not.” She spared him one last look and touched her palm to his chest over his heart. “I’ll be in touch.” She slipped out the door before he could think to stop her.
Chad returned to the living room looking like he was returning from a trip through the depths of hell. He sat next to Jasper on the sofa and covered his face. Nikki called out to him and he shook his head tiredly, telling her not to bother. He wasn’t listening, couldn’t listen to another thing. After a few minutes, he got to his feet and climbed the stairs to his room. The sound of his bedroom door slamming shut shook the house. Pam fished her cell phone from her purse as she sped down the road toward the B&B. “Gil, it’s me. I need you to make me a reservation on the first thing smoking out of Atlanta. Yes, tonight.” She listened for a moment. “I could care less. Coach, first class, the baggage hold, I don’t give a shit. Just get me the hell out of here.”
Dear Diary,
Aunt Pam is gone. She must’ve left in the middle of the night because Uncle Nate said that when he went to the B&B the next morning she was gone. I’ve never seen my dad so sad looking. It’s like Aunt Pam died, instead of my mom. He barely sleeps or eats and he’s drinking too much. Uncle Nate keeps saying not to worry, but I can’t help it. What if he’s not just sad, but so mad at me that he hates me now? What if he thinks I drove Aunt Pam away?
I don’t know what to think or what to say. I see now that my dad and Aunt Pam were in love and I’m confused about why my mom would marry him if she knew that. Even if he asked her she should’ve said no. I asked Uncle Nate why my dad asked my mom to marry him in the first place and he said that it was because I was already two-years-old when my dad found out about me and he didn’t want to miss anymore time with me. He knew my mom wouldn’t just give me to him.
I don’t know if I’m mad with my mom or not. She loved me and took care of me all these years, but I’m not sure it was because Aunt Pam didn’t want me, like I first thought. Part of me believes that my mom’s reasons were selfish and that Aunt Pam was cheated. I feel guilty for thinking bad things about my mom, but I can’t help it.
And, oh my God, what happened to Aunt Pam was terrible! It’s like something out of a horror movie, something I can only think of in my worst nightmares. Now I will look at every man in town, wondering if he is the one who did that to her. If he is the one who killed her spirit and made her run away.
Everything is so mixed up in my head. I love Aunt Pam and I miss her, but I don’t want to see her again, yet. Does that make sense? I love my mom and I miss her, but I’m angry with her, too. Some of the things she wrote in her diary are starting to make sense to me now, and I don’t like how they make me feel about her. I love my dad and I hate that he is so sad, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to accept seeing him and Aunt Pam together like that if he decides to go after her. It would be weird. Would I go with him, if he went? I don’t know.
Dad took the diary in his room with him and he hasn’t given it back. Nothing makes sense.
Nikki
PS: How can Aunt Pam expect me to understand what she did if she won’t even listen to Moira’s and Jasper’s side of the story? She said some mean things to Jasper. . . and I said some mean things to her, too, didn’t I? I don’t know what to do or what will happen next.
NINETEEN
Miles was emotionally wrung out by the time he’d settled Moira down and returned to his hotel room to pack his things. He assumed Pam would be headed back to California the first chance she got, and he was itching to get the hell away from Mercy too. He planned to spend a few more days with Moira at her house before leaving to make sure she was really all right, and then he would go.
He slid his room key card in the slot, saw the light turn green, and heard the automatic lock click. He knew something was different the instant he stepped inside his room and switched on the floor lamp. Nothing was visibly out of place and everything appeared to be just as he’d left it, but something was different.
He went over to the bed and lifted the bedspread, looking underneath for his briefcase. He couldn’t really say he was surprised to find it gone. Nor was he surprised, after he turned on his laptop and booted it up, to find that the entire memory had been erased, programs and all. It would have to be professionally rebuilt to even be useful again.
Miles crossed the room and pulled the nightstand drawer open. The standard issue Bible was still there, as was the box of tissues he’d dropped inside the drawer days ago. But the backup disk he’d slipped between the pages of the good book was gone and so was the one he’d pushed down inside the tissue box. He knew without having to look that the information he’d taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer was gone too, but he still checked to be sure.
Cocky idiot that he was, he had brought all the information and notes he’d made on Pamela to Mercy with him. He hadn’t bothered to make copies and ship them back to New York for safekeeping, which was his usual modus operandi. Backup, then backup again. Save and separate. He had always meant to, but he hadn’t quite gotten around to it.
Miles’s shoes were still lined up neatly along the bottom of the compact closet, but they were now pointed toward the door rather than the wall, the way he’d left them, a sign to him that every nook and cranny of his room had been swept clean. He pushed a hand inside a blazer pocket and breathed a sigh of relief as his fingers wra
pped around the wad of bills stashed there. He counted the money carefully, decided that all three thousand of it was present and accounted for, then headed to the bathroom.
He came up short in the doorway and stared at the mirror. His visitor had left a calling card. Back off was written in red lipstick across the glass. An involuntary smile took his lips.
Miles would bet all three thousand of his spare change money on the fact that Nate Woodberry hadn’t left a single fingerprint in his wake. He didn’t bother with calling the police to report the fact that someone had stolen from him that which he’d stolen from someone else.
It took Chad two weeks to work his way through Paris’s diary. He read late at night, before he rolled over and drifted into restless sleep. He was unable to talk about the things he read, not even with Nikki, who’d already read them. He walked through the endless days thinking about Paris’s words, processing them and trying to assimilate them into the image of the woman he thought he’d known.
Paris wrote about his parents, about when his father died years ago, and about Chad’s inconsolable grief when he’d had to place his mother in a nursing home after she had suffered from the stroke that ultimately killed her, in such a way that endeared her to him. In her words he recognized his best friend, the gentle and giving person she was. Yet, when she wrote about Pam he thought he could feel hostility propelling her words onto the pages. Almost like she was fighting a battle with herself, like she loved her sister, but couldn’t quite figure out why.
He couldn’t fathom the closeness and intensity of the relationship Pam and Paris had shared. He was an only child and the closest he’d ever come to being obsessed with someone was with Pam. She had spun a web around him and held him captive for half his life, but he quickly came to the realization that Paris must’ve been captivated by her long before he had ever come onto the scene. She must’ve wondered at her sister’s electrifying energy, fearless personality, and animal-like sexuality, and craved it for herself.
Chad brought an image of Paris to the front of his mind and looked at it long and hard. She could’ve been anything she wanted to be, could’ve done anything she wanted to do. There were times during their years together when he had glimpsed different aspects of her personality, sharp contrasts to the demure, dignified persona she’d always portrayed and he knew that she’d had more than she realized inside of her waiting to blossom. Only she had never accessed it. He was sorry he hadn’t cared enough to point those aspects out to her, so she would know they were there. And then he was sorry he was never able to love her the way she had imagined he would.
Paris might’ve looked like Pam, but he could, to this day, close his eyes and pick his lover out of a room full of clones. It was simple for him and it always had been. He had claimed Pam for his own the moment he set eyes on her. Anything and anyone else had simply been a diversion; temporary pacifiers who, in his mind, were incapable of holding a candle to the real thing.
Paris would have known she wasn’t even any of those things to him, she must have. She was a smart woman, and she had to have known that he had never seen what she wanted him to see in her eyes. She had used other things to hold him though. Nikki, for one, and her silence, for another. She could’ve set him free, but she had chosen not to.
Chad thought he could hate her for that alone. And then for the way she had wronged Pam, he thought he could quite cheerfully murder her. But she was already gone. He remembered and recalled his nasty thoughts. If for nothing else than the fact that Paris had helped him to raise a beautiful, confident, and talented daughter, he wished her a speedy crossing over.
He read the entry immediately following Pam’s attack and put his face between the pages to cry. Then he took the book down to the kitchen and out the back door with him. He stood over the incinerator and watched it burn until he could no longer recognize it. He took a step back from the smoke and squinted at Nikki. He hadn’t noticed her until just then.
“I burned it,” he told her.
She stepped up next to him and looked where he was looking, nodding slowly. Her fingers closed around his and she rested her head against his arm. “Good,” she said.
“She was crazy about you, you know.”
“I know. You too, Dad. She was crazy about you, too. That’s why she did what she did.”
“I know,” Chad said softly.
TWENTY
Gillian stuck her head inside Pam’s dressing room, saw Pam sitting at the make-up table, and came all the way into the room, closing the door softly at her back. “Hey, hey,” she sing-songed as she sashayed over to the table. “One more set and you’re out of here. You ready to go home to your own bed?”
“Like nobody’s business,” Pam sighed.
Gillian massaged her shoulders expertly and she purred like a kitten. “I feel like I’ve been to a hundred cities instead of nineteen.”
“You sang better than I’ve ever heard you sing, though.”
“Nobody sings sad songs better than a sad person, Gil. You know that.”
“Speaking of which, I was a little sad to see that luscious Nate Woodberry get on a plane this morning.” Gillian met Pam’s eyes in the mirror and they grinned at each other. “You sure know how to pick them, I’ll give you that.”
“Nate is the quintessential playboy. The day he finally decides he’s ready to limit himself to one woman will be the day hell truly freezes over.” Pam picked up a pot of lip gloss and swirled a brush across the surface. She leaned forward and began applying the color to her lips. Gillian pulled up a stool and plopped down next to her at the table. “You ever been in love with two men at the same time, Gil? One you want and the other you need?”
She considered the question carefully. “Once I was. Couldn’t figure out what the hell to do about it either. Which one is the one you want and which is the one you need?”
“I don’t want to answer that,” Pam decided. She shuffled tubes and bottles around on the vanity and slid an envelope from under her makeup case. “Look, I want to show you something.”
Gillian studied the photos Pam handed her for several seconds. “This is your mom?”
“I never had a mother, but yes, that’s the woman who gave birth to me. Moira.”
“And the old dude with your mouth? This is your father?”
Pam caught her breath and nodded hesitantly. She couldn’t say she’d never had a father, just not one she had officially recognized as such. “Yeah,” she breathed.
Gillian flipped back to the photo of Moira and divided looks between it and Pam’s face. She tsk-tsked and shook her head knowingly, a wide grin on her face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She handed the photos back to Pam, stood and pushed the stool under the table with her foot. “It’s just . . . I always told you, you had some white girl in you. Now I know why you can’t dance.”
Pam laid her head back and roared with laughter.
There was a knock at the door and Gillian went to answer it. She talked in hushed tones to a stage assistant and then eased the door closed. “Freckles says we have ten minutes.”
“Okay.” Pam moved around the room gathering her things and dropping them carelessly in the duffel lying open on the floor. She tossed Jimmy Choos in with Manolos and topped them off with DKNY blouses and Kenneth Cole skirts. As an afterthought, she stuffed the photos back in the envelope and zipped them in a side compartment.
“Woodberry brought you those pictures?” Gillian asked from the doorway.
“Yeah.” Pam swished a makeup brush loaded with face powder across her nose, forehead, and cheeks, then stepped back to survey her handiwork in the mirror. She thought she looked like a circus clown. Stage lighting was harsh, though. “Nate always knows when I need him.” She missed Gillian’s knowing look.
The tour wrapped up in Oakland, a little over three hours away from where Pam lived in Los Angeles. Just past two in the morning, she and Gillian boarded a private plane headed home. A limousine w
as waiting for them at Los Angeles International and they both slept stretched out on the backseats until the driver buzzed them awake after they pulled to a stop in Pam’s circular driveway. She shook herself awake and said her goodbyes to Gillian, then went inside to reacquaint herself with her house and her bed. Too many nights in hotel beds had made her neck stiff and her back cranky as hell. She walked from room to room, making sure that all the windows were closed and latched and that she was the only person in the house.
It wasn’t a large house by celebrity standards, but it was enough for Pam. When she was shopping for houses, this one was the fourth on the list, and as soon as she had walked in and felt its aura, she knew it was the one for her. There were five bedrooms, each with private baths, a formal dining room, an exercise room, and a den with a fireplace. She had converted the attic into an all-purpose studio, where she indulged in whatever pastime that currently struck her fancy. Some years back it was yoga, then painting and then it was dancing. These days she wiled away her free time curled up on a chaise, reading or simply staring at the sky through the skylight. It was her tranquility room and the only one she barred the interior decorator she’d hired from transforming.
Off the eat-in kitchen at the back of the house was a sunroom, which looked out over the pool and modest backyard. She took a long bubble bath, dropped a floor length caftan over her head, and took her mail there to read. She switched on a small lamp and began flipping through the envelopes methodically. There was the usual credit card offers and those she tossed into a rattan trash can. A leather bustier in one of the mail order catalogs caught her eye and she considered it at length before deciding against it and tossing all the catalogs, too. She perused her bank statement carefully, noting each debit and credit and checking that the balance was in the vicinity of where she thought it should be. She employed an accountant to handle all the pesky details surrounding the money she made and she had an excellent portfolio, but she still paid careful attention to where her money went and on whose authority.