“You’re definitely not shy,” I said, smirking at her. “I think we can work something out.”
My stomach dipped as our plane began its descent into LAX, and, for the first time in several weeks, I was feeling optimistic. Esty could be my ticket back into the estates game.
CHAPTER 6
Descent into Hellwood
The nightmare had begun. Awaiting my arrival at LAX was my mother’s custom-made hot pink Bentley limousine circa 1978. She refused to trade it in for a newer model in a more normal colour. Big J — always a silver lining —was standing next to the monstrosity with a giant smile, immediately perking my mood.
“Hola chiquita!” Big J boomed, running toward me for one of his signature bear hugs. “How is my little avocado?”
I’ve spoken about wanting to be a lawyer since I turned five, prompting Big J to call me his “avocado.” Only when I started to learn Spanish did I realize he was saying “abogado.”
“I’m great now that you’re here,” I chuckled, pulling out of Big J’s warm embrace to take a look at my old friend. “I never thought I would be moving back to LA. Let alone without a career or husband.” I frowned, climbing into the backseat.
“No pity party here, chica! You’re in the land of opportunities. My people came to this country with ten pesos in our pockets and made a successful chauffeur business.” He stared me down in the rear-view mirror.
“Big J, you are third generation Mexican-American. Your great-grandfather may have only had ten pesos, but you grew up in Encino in a five-bedroom hacienda with a pool,” I said, staring right back. “What do you know about struggle?”
“No more than you do, Ms. Bel Air,” he said haughtily. Touché.
“So how are they?” I asked, knowing that I was in for an overwhelming return home.
“They’re good. As good as can be expected,” he said. “Mr. Armando is kept active by his ladies, and your mama is busy with her guru, spa visits and rejecting film roles because she says she is not old enough to play them.”
“Not old enough? Are they asking her to do a remake of Driving Miss Daisy? If not, then she isn’t too old,” I said.
“Miss Sylvia says she is young at heart and to play a mother is something she cannot relate to,” Big J said.
“Of course. How could she relate to being a mom when she’s never acted like one? Her plastic surgeon might have been able to make Mom’s 63-year-old face look 45, but nobody can fix her delusions.” I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“There is the feisty avocado! I know what buttons to push to get the lawyer in you to come out. You will see, this too will pass and you will be happy again,” Big J said, one big palm sweeping over the steering wheel.
As we pulled off the 405 onto Sunset Boulevard, I closed my eyes, trying to let the natural light that had worked so hard to break through thick layers of smog warm me through the car window. Before I knew it, we were pulling into my mother’s driveway on St. Cloud Road. The heavy wrought iron and gold-plated gates parted as we drove up the winding drive. I remembered the last time I’d left home, after graduating from high school, eager for what awaited me at Brown. Returning felt like stepping back to that day, but with far less to look forward to.
It had been thirteen years since I’d last been here, and the thought of walking back into this prison filled me with dread. Granted, my mother’s compound was a relatively luxe prison — the main property was almost 10,000 square feet, housing an indoor pool, gym and gourmet kitchen. The guest house rang in at a modest 4,000 square feet and sat adjacent to the outdoor pool house of almost half its size.
Before the car could even come to a halt, Sylvia burst out of the front doors of the house, dressed in a tooth floss-sized bikini, welcoming me with open arms and a heaping dose of Jewish motherly guilt.
“Dahling! Home at last, thank god almighty, you are home at last,” Sylvia exclaimed in her high-pitched drawl. “Come to mama bear!”
The welcome seemed more appropriate for somebody coming back from a tour of duty with the Peace Corps than a stint at one of New York City’s best law firms.
“Hi, Mom,” I said sheepishly as she pulled me into a hug. “I see that not much has changed.” I gave her bare skin a once-over.
“This little number has graced the covers of all of the glossies on the newsstands!” she said defensively, turning to walk back toward the house.
“Just because a twenty-something pop star is wearing it on the cover of US magazine doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate for a 63-year-old woman,” I advised.
“Harvey tells me I have just the right gams for a string bikini,” she said, taking each step with extra flourish.
“Yes, Mom. A personal trainer will tell you whatever you want to hear because you pay him,” I muttered, trying to keep up with her pace. Big J unloaded the bags and lagged behind me, attempting unsuccessfully to mask a giggle.
“What was that?” she snapped, turning around sharply.
“Nothing, Mother,” I said, stealing a playful glance at Big J.
“Fine,” she said, stopping suddenly. “I almost forgot! I bought you a little present to celebrate your return to LA.” She turned to walk toward the open garage. “I know how much you value your independence, so I thought ‘why should Joely rely on Juan all of the time?’”
“Tada!” She flicked a sheet to reveal a new car wrapped in a big bow. “You are the owner of a shiny new ruby red Lexus RX450h!” I had to admit that this was thoughtful. I didn’t want to rely on Big J to drive me everywhere.
“Thanks for the car, Mom.” My arrival had interrupted my mother’s in-home spray tan session, so I knew I could avoid forced intimacy — she feared a hug would make her tan uneven.
She waved off the thank you.
“Now that you’re back, let’s go over how things work around here. I’m ignoring the negative energy you are putting out right now. Dr. Feelgoodstein told me that the best way to get you over your minor setback is to not let you focus on yourself, so instead we can focus on moi! Anyhow, you will certainly be seeing him shortly,” she said, taking on a motherly tone.
Dr. Feelgoodstein was my mother’s personal psychiatrist. A Harvard-trained MD, he followed up his training with an interest in Eastern philosophies and touchy-feely psychic-based therapies, negating any Ivy League pedigree he claimed to have. Dr. Feelgoodstein’s brand of therapy focused on self-affirmation, but his real medicine kit was a variety of hallucinogenic drugs. Dr. Feelgoodstein was a short man with a sizeable beer belly, over which he stretched a tie-dyed “I love Jerry Garcia” T-shirt. Black bicycle shorts and Birkenstocks pulled the look together — not exactly the uniform of a board-certified psychiatrist.
“I’m not seeing that quack,” I told my mom, walking off in the direction of the pool house.
“Where do you think you are going?” Sylvia stomped behind me. “You haven’t forgotten where your room is, have you?”
“I’m going to be staying in the pool house,” I told her without stopping. She didn’t let up, screeching for me to return to the main house and to go to my room. Neither my age nor my absence clued my mother into the fact that I was too old to live in my childhood bedroom. The five-room, two-bedroom pool house had been completely renovated recently, which suited my need of putting as much space between my parents and me perfectly.
“Sylvia, I am staying here. Not in the main house. Here. If you have a problem with that, I’ll go find a studio apartment in Culver City and be guaranteed never to see you,” I said, shooting her a warning look.
“Fine,” Sylvia pouted. “I just don’t understand why you want to live in squalor when you could be in the main house with all of its comforts and luxury.” She flailed her arms in the air with exasperation. Squalor to my mother meant a space of less than 5,000 square feet.
“At 8:30 a.m. tomorrow, I have Guru Gupta coming to balance your chakras, followed by Dr. Feelgoodstein at ten to get you back on some happy meds. We have a one o’clock lunch at
the Ivy followed by a quick check in with Dr. Farber to see how we can pump a little air in these tires!” She reached out to squeeze my breasts.
“I am going to close these doors and lie down for a month. Knock on these doors before thirty days from today, and I will get on a bus and rent the first apartment I can find on the wrong side of the 405.”
“Fine for now,” she said, turning to leave. “But you had better call me Sylvia! Mash-aaaa!” Masha, my mother’s personal maid, had finished putting away my clothes just in time to follow my mother into the main house.
I quickly locked the doors to the pool house, making a call to the local locksmith to install a new deadbolt — one that did not come with a spare key for Sylvia.
CHAPTER 7
The Ties that Bind
Those first thirty days back home weren’t my finest. When I wasn’t sleeping eighteen hours a day, I was eating. When I wasn’t eating or sleeping, I was crying to Coco’s voice mail or calling psychic hotlines to find out if I would ever move out of the pool house and find a man to have sex with again. Littered throughout the living room, kitchenette and my bedroom were a variety of empty takeout boxes. A delivery from Sprinkle’s Cupcakes was the highlight of my day.
Thankfully, Armand hadn’t clued in to my presence since he was rarely home. He never could handle female emotions or problems, let alone fatherly parenting, but Big J had always filled that role seamlessly. Big J, the only person I’d see in that first month, told me about Armand’s escapades with his latest young tart all over the city. Sylvia and Armand had reached the agreement that his infidelities would be tolerated so long as they remained veiled and undisclosed, so as not to embarrass Sylvia. Unfortunately for my mother, his indiscretions were no longer discrete. This explained much of my mother’s recent behaviour: more acute melodramatic theatrics, a heightened depressive state and a surprising rush of maternal instinct. I would have liked to believe that her sudden interest in me sprang from our biological connection, but her attentiveness was more likely attributed to the fact that she could only handle one scandal at a time. For now, she let Armand be that indignity.
On the 29th day of my self-imposed exile, my sanctuary was infiltrated by a stealth attack I hadn’t seen coming. A few days earlier, my mother caught sight of the Sprinkles deliveryman coming to bring me my semi-weekly cupcake supply. I had timed all illicit food deliveries to coincide with Sylvia’s off-site visits to her various lifestyle guides. That morning, Sylvia had overslept, causing her to be late for her biweekly colonic. On his way out, Sylvia intercepted the delivery, paying off the deliveryman to come back the next day in hopes that the missing cupcakes would draw me out of my hole. When that didn’t work, she had the Sprinkles man return the following day to make the delivery at the main house and told him that, instead of leaving the cupcakes by the front door, he was to knock and tell me that there was a problem with payment on my account as my credit card had been denied and the cupcakes would only be left C.O.D. As soon as I unlocked my front door ready to give him another credit card, Sylvia jumped in front of him, ran into the pool house and ordered Masha to dispose of the cupcakes.
“How can you live like this?” Sylvia gaped at the pool house’s mess, pacing through each room methodically.
I dragged myself to the nearest sofa and fell into the cushions, drawing my knees up into the fetal position, and continued my self-pity party.
“No, no, do not attack her, Sylvia! Good morning, Mademoiselle Butterfly!” Dr. Feelgoodstein had appeared at the door, staring at me with a crazed grin. “Are you ready to face the day?”
“I sure am,” I said sarcastically. Dr. Feelgoodstein linked his arm with mine, pulling me up off the sofa and escorting me to the main house.
“Look who has come to join us,” Dr. Feelgoodstein chirped as he pushed the doors of the study open. Seated in a semi-circle were Sylvia, Big J, Masha, Ethan and Coco. At least Armand had not been invited.
Dr. Feelgoodstein ushered me toward a beanbag chair in the middle of the room. My mother, blocking the doors, was dressed in a white silk caftan. The cloth rippled behind her with every movement.
“Welcome to your intervention,” Sylvia said. “We are here out of a shared love for you. No longer will we sit idly by and let you self-destruct. We all have your best interests at heart.”
This is it. I’m in hell. At least there’s AC.
“Et tu Brutus,” I grunted at Coco and Ethan.
“Hey babe, we both flew in on red-eyes to be here for you. Don’t even try to give us shit,” Coco snapped.
“If I had known what that motherfucker did to you, I’d have hopped on the first plane to New York—” Ethan said stridently.
“Language! Please!” Dr. Feelgoodstein cut Ethan off with a wounded stare. “That will not help us create a serene environment for Joely’s enlightenment.”
“Yeah, easy there, Rambo,” Coco mockingly joined in on the admonishment.
“We’re here to help you realize your sense of worth and reintroduce you to Joely Zeller,” Dr. Feelgoodstein said, easing his voice into a slow, airy tone.
“Hi Joely, my name is Joely, too. Nice to meet you. It seems you were lost, but now that I’ve found you, we can grab a round of cupcakes together,” I said, moving my hands to mimic real conversation. “Now that I have been reunited with my recently rediscovered self, I think I will go back to the pool house.” I tried to get up out of the beanbag, but before I could gain my footing, two of Dr. Feelgoodstein’s aides came over to keep me seated.
“Ok, I get it. If I don’t do what you say, I am off to the loony bin,” I said, hoping this would get me back to my little sanctuary. “I’m listening.”
“Don’t give us your bullshit. We know you think that this is crap,” Coco said. Dr. Feelgoodstein shot her a look for swearing. “Come off it. We’re attorneys; it’s our language.”
“Joely, I brought your two best friends in the whole world here to help you. If you won’t listen to me and you won’t listen to Dr. Feelgoodstein, then perhaps they can get through to you,” Sylvia said, her tone surprisingly kind. “You are my baby, and I don’t want to see you in pain.”
“Now I’m your baby?” I asked sarcastically. “You’ve never been a real mother to me. You’ve only wanted me to be like you and do what you want. And when I haven’t lived up to that, you’ve ignored me.”
“Joely, how can you say such things? Dr. Feelgoodstein, I don’t think this was a good idea. I told you, she hates me,” Sylvia said, her tone shifting back to theatrical. Fanning herself, she got up to leave. “I have scripts to read, so I’ll leave this in your hands.” The charade hadn’t played out for more than ten minutes and already my mother was ready to pack in the maternal bit.
“Sit down and take a Xanax,” Ethan said sharply. “You know you two have had a shitty relationship. You didn’t come to either of your daughter’s graduation ceremonies. This isn’t about you, so fuck your scripts and help your daughter.”
“Sylvie, I have to agree,” Dr. Feelgoodstein said, shaking his head dreamily. “Here’s something to get you through this session.” He folded a Xanax into Sylvia’s hand, and she threw it back with a gulp of her mimosa.
“I’ve been in therapy for years and the one conclusion I’ve come to is that, for my mental health, it’s best I seldom interact with my mother,” I said to Dr. Feelgoodstein. “Now I’m trying to put my life back together under her roof. How can you be surprised that I’m not in a better mental state?”
“Joely, this session is not about fixing your relationship with your mother. We’ll need considerably more time to do that. But you need to set those problems aside for now, so that you can resume living your life,” Dr. Feelgoodstein said.
“You need to face the past to move forward.”
“What do you mean, past?” Coco asked.
“It’s not like the girl is going to continue practicing law,” my mother said. “With this behind her, she’s going to settle down, get married an
d enjoy a relaxing life.”
“Like hell she is! Your daughter is a fantastic attorney. There’s no way she’s quitting,” Coco said, staring me in the eyes. “You are going to practice law again if I have to make a place for you at my desk or hold your hand through interviews.”
“This is crap! Joely did not graduate top of our class to be a Stepford wife,” Ethan said. “No fucking way! And so you know, Sylvia, the kind of men you’re talking about don’t care about the smart and dedicated woman that she is. The man you want your daughter to marry should respect and love her for her intelligence and substance. If she dates anyone you find for her, they will ultimately cheat on her because they only want a trophy wife they can trade in for a younger model when she turns 40! You know something about that now, don’t you?”
“That was a bit harsh,” I said, seeing that the comment had pained my mother. “And you should talk seeing as how you’ve given Gene Simmons a run for his money in the conquest department.”
“Thank you, dear,” my mother said, looking surprised at my intervention.
“Don’t read too much into my defending you. You’re the reason I’m so fucked up when it comes to men. Look at who you married,” I said to Sylvia. “Your marriage is the reason I’ve always been attracted to unavailable men.”
“I’d have to agree with Joely. Married professors and gay interior decorators are unavailable and inappropriate partners,” added Coco.
“Don’t get me started on you. You are just as bad as him,” I retorted, pointing at Ethan.
“We don’t presume to be able solve all of the issues in your love life today,” Dr. Feelgoodstein said, cutting off the brewing argument. “Let’s start with confronting your issues. Attacking your mother and friends for their choices is what we psychiatrists call a diversion tactic.”
“What word do psychiatrists have for bullshit artists wearing semi-transparent spandex who act like doctors but really have no clue what they’re doing?” I huffed.
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