“Anne, dear Anne…” Karla looked at Anne, shaking her head in disappointment. “I see that you’re on your third glass of wine. From the look of those circles under your eyes, this has been a regular habit. We’ll put you on a healthy regimen during your stay.”
Anne set down her empty wine glass on the coffee table; her eyes shifted nervously around the group.
“Why don’t you leave her alone?” Jenna spoke up at last. “Haven’t you hurt her enough?”
Karla spun towards Jenna, taking a moment to look her up and down before she spoke. “Surely you’re not referring to the time I stole Anne’s boyfriend in high school. That was a hundred years ago, and I’m sure she’s gotten over it by now. But you, Jenna…” Karla took a step towards her. “You never forget a slight, do you?” Karla reached out and stroked Jenna’s cheek with a jewel-encrusted hand.
Jenna was surprised by the warmth and softness of her touch.
“Poor little Jenna,” Karla said with a cooing, sarcastic lilt to her voice. “I see you’re still struggling with your diet. Surely you’ve learned by now that starvation only makes you binge later. That’s apparent in your flabby muscle tone and dull coloring. Jorgé will improve your circulation immensely.”
Before Jenna could respond, Karla turned her attention to Chrissie. “Baby!” She said, throwing her arms wide open towards the youngest Mancusi.
Thrilled it was finally her turn, Chrissie jumped up to embrace her.
“You really must come to Europe with us. Bianca would be thrilled. But darling…” Karla held Chrissie at arm’s length and looked at her closely. “You’re getting carb face. We’ll have to do something about that while we’re here.”
“Bianca? Who’s that?” Mitch asked Anne.
“She’s Karla’s daughter,” Anne whispered to Mitch. “I read all about her in Star Gazer. She’s...”
“…studying at the finest finishing school in Europe. I won’t allow her to be corrupted by Hollywood.” Karla turned to face Anne, who nodded and looked away.
“Really? What is she studying?” Asked Jenna, not really interested but trying to steer the conversation to a banal topic. None of them, not even Chrissie, had ever met their niece. The only thing Jenna knew about her was from the few articles and photos she had gleaned from the tabloids.
Karla laughed and with a little flourish of her hand said, “Dramatic Arts. I’m against it, but she’s headstrong, like her mother. I hope she’ll outgrow it, but her instructors say she’s a natural, a real genius with an incredible range. I suppose she gets that from me as well.”
Warren at last saw an opening. He knew Karla’s one weakness was her insecurity about her acting abilities. “As far I am concerned there’s only one actress in this family, and that’s Jenna.”
“Jenna, an actress?” Feigning ignorance, Karla turned her attention back to Jenna. She picked a grape with delicate fingers from the fruit tray. “She used to dabble in amateur dramatics when she was in school, didn’t she?”
Warren persisted. “I’m sure you received the invitation to her Ophelia at Shakespeare in the Park. ”
Karla popped the grape into her mouth and thought for a second as she bit down, then smiled broadly. “Oh, that’s right. I remember I was on tour. Such a tragic character, Ophelia, and so perfect for you.” She faced Jenna and deadpanned, “You’re selling real estate now, aren’t you?”
“Only temporarily,” Jenna said through clenched teeth, furious that Warren had broached the tender topic. “I just got a new talent agent,” she added inanely.
“Ah, agents,” said Karla, with a dismissive way of her hand. “What crooks! They can be smart, but they’re not miracle workers.”
Jenna shot Warren a sharp look. He shrugged and finished his wine, slightly amused. In some odd way he had missed Karla’s bitchiness.
“Speaking of working miracles, you’ve all met Jorgé,” Karla said, gesturing towards the handsome dark man, now wearing a slim-cut tuxedo, who had silently joined the group and now held Karla’s chair for her.
“He is my personal trainer, and…” she sat, then ran her nails across his toned thigh. “…good friend.”
Anne leaned over and whispered to Jenna. “I can’t believe it. She looks ten years younger than all of us.”
“More like twenty years,” Warren piped in. “Darling, it’s so good to see you looking so well. I'm instantly flashing on all the good times we once had. It makes me…almost…forget what a shit you really are.”
Karla fixed her sapphire gaze on him. “I remember the old days too, Warren. We were friends for a long time, and then you turned on me and wrote that silly book.”
Warren met her gaze and this time held it. “That silly book made me rich.”
“Good. Now you’ll finally stop mooching off of me.”
“I’m actually working on a sequel. It was going to end with Karla, tragically turning fifty, losing both her beauty and her young lover...” Warren shot a look at Jorgé who raised a dark eyebrow in a silent gambit, “...and throwing herself, Sappho-like, from a cliff in the Greek isles. But now I see you’ve transformed yourself once again, and what a triumph it is. You are beautiful. I’m dying to meet your surgeon.”
Karla laughed softly and shook her head, making her platinum curls dance around her face. “Surgeon? It’s all done through diet and exercise…and a new therapy, which is why we’re all here.”
“Now, at last, we get to the meat of it.” Jenna set down her empty wine glass and folded her arms across her chest.
“Speaking of meat, is there anything else in the kitchen? That sushi didn’t fill me up at all,” Mitch said. The wine hadn’t put a dent in his alcohol craving either.
“There is no red meat on the premises, and the wine is just a special treat. From now on you’ll follow my strict regimen of diet and exercise, supervised by Jorgé. By the end of the month, you’ll be as good as new...almost.” Karla gazed at Mitch with a mixture of boredom and contempt.
“A month!” A stream of saliva flew from Mitch’s mouth. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“I don’t appreciate that language, Mitchell,” Karla said calmly. “And I won’t allow it, not even from a Neanderthal like you.”
“Neanderthal! Look at you putting on airs like you always did. You’re from Rochester, New York—same as me, baby, same as all of us, no better and no worse, and don’t you forget it!”
Jorgé started to rise from his chair in her defense, but Karla nudged him back down with a blasé wave of her hand. She took a deep breath and turned to address the group. “You will all be here one month.”
“You can’t hold us against our will, Karla,” Jenna stated calmly. “Not even you can do that.”
“Oh yes I can, and I’ll tell you why. Jorgé?”
Jumping at her command, Jorgé pulled a stack of envelopes from the pocket of his black dinner jacket and calmly handed one to each of them.
“In this envelope, you’ll find a contract. It clearly defines my terms.” Karla replaced the faux British accent with a more business-like tone.
Warren tore open the envelope. “What terms?” He pulled a pair of glasses from the pocket of his blazer.
Each sibling opened the contract and read silently.
“Every document is the same. I made sure my attorney drafted it in simple language so you all can understand. It says...”
“Each party member…” Warren read aloud, “…agrees to thirty days of physical conditioning, plus intensive group and individual psychotherapy; and in exchange each party member will receive a stipend of.... of...”.
“One million dollars,” Karla said triumphantly as each of them gasped in unison.
“One million dollars!” Anne fell back on the sofa in a near faint.
“One million dollars will buy a lot of pills, booze, and bad marriages,” Karla said, her eyes panning the group. “What you do with it is your business. If you complete the program you get the money. If not, you’ll get a ride
back to wherever you came from, and I shall never disturb you or your pathetic little lives ever again.”
The room fell coldly silent for a moment, an air of disbelief and distrust permeating its high ceilings.
Jenna found her voice. “What kind of therapy are we talking about, Karla?”
“Intensive psychotherapy to heal our family traumas,” Karla replied lightly.
Warren stood, facing her. “Wait a second, sister dear. Are you talking about your latest crackpot cult, Ostara or whatever it’s called?”
“Doing some research, Warren?”
“You’re not going to convert me to the Hollywood spiritual craze du jour. Forget it!” He threw down the contract on the coffee table. Karla wasn’t the only one in the family capable of dramatic gestures
Anne clasped his arm. “For a million dollars, Warren. Are you crazy!”
“I’m not crazy, but you are if you sign that. She’ll give you a million dollars all right, and by the time you’ve been here a month, you’ll be so brainwashed you’ll give that money right back to her latest fad! It’s a setup. I’ve heard of creative tax dodging, but this takes the cake!”
“Warren, dear. You really need to stop reading the tabloids. It’s true I’ve been a member of Ostara for several years. It has helped me reach levels of success that you could never possibly imagine, but I don’t push it on anyone.”
“I’ll have my attorney look this over and get back to you with my decision,” Warren said with calm dignity, returning his reading glasses to his breast pocket.
Karla’s eyes darkened to a deep navy, asserting that she meant business. “I give you my word that this is not about any religious or spiritual beliefs I might hold.”
“Your word.” Warren huffed. Karla let his remark slide and kept her focus on the business at hand.
“My personal physician, Doctor Weiss, will oversee the therapy, for those who intend to stick it out.”
Chrissie finally piped in with a squeaky voice. “Doctor Weiss? Who’s that?”
“Seriously?” Karla said.
Chrissie shrugged and giggled nervously, looking around the group to check her goof.
“You’ve never heard of Wilhelm Weiss, the famous Swiss physician?” Karla asked, incredulous at the extent of their ignorance.
“Ah, Doctor Weiss. So that explains the face-lift.” Warren settled back in his seat with arms crossed. Karla's self-serving machinations never failed to astound and, on some level, amuse him.
“Doctor Weiss is an excellent surgeon. In fact, he’s the best in the world,” Karla said, smiling softly and sincerely.
“That’s quite evident and you can certainly afford the best,” Warren pressed. “Just like you can afford to throw away five million dollars to keep us in line, but why?”
Karla paused for a moment, taking a deep breath before she spoke. “You may think I’ve been living an incredible life as the greatest star in the world, making tons of money and having everything my heart desires, and on a certain level that’s of course true…but the deeper truth is that in spite of all my accomplishments, inside I’m in deep pain; and the reason for that is you.” She opened her arms towards the group in a dramatic gesture of inclusion.
Warren, Anne, Mitch, Jenna, and Chrissie eyed each other with varying degrees of confusion and skepticism.
Her voice quavering with emotion, Karla continued. "I know I’ve hurt each and every one of you, but now I’m ready to heal those painful wounds. Through this intensive therapy, I know we can get back to being a family again.”
“Cue the violins,” croaked Jenna.
“That hurts me, Jenna. Do you know that I’m jealous of you?”
Jenna hadn't expected this tactic. “You, jealous of me? Yeah right!”
“It’s true. I am. I know I can be a bitch sometimes.”
“That’s the understatement of the century."
If Karla heard Warren's caustic remark, she didn't respond. Her sparkling sapphire eyes focused only on Jenna, who struggled to meet her gaze. “I've always been jealous of your talent. It’s taken me years of therapy to even admit that I have insecurities like everyone else. I’ve had to be so strong, and I don’t think any of you ever really appreciated that.”
Mitch and Anne did a tandem eye roll to the other, anticipating a dramatic monologue.
“After mom and dad died,” Karla began, pausing a moment to gain her composure, then continued. “After they died…I bore all the responsibility. I made my way in the world with whatever talent I could muster…and sheer guts! And now, after all these years I’m ready to face these demons I’ve been suppressing, to heal my inner wounds. It’s part of the process that Doctor Weiss created to help me…to help all of us…become our best possible selves. He taught me that emotional trauma takes a tremendous toll on our physical bodies. Healthy living and…mild surgical procedures only go so far. If I want to keep working, and I do—not only for myself but for my daughter—I need to look good, to stay beautiful. I can’t do that unless my insides are clean again as they were when I was a young girl, before the trauma of losing our parents, before I became hard and had to carry the world on my shoulders. Yes, I’ve been cruel. I know I’ve hurt you and I want to change, but I can’t do it alone. I need you! I need your support.”
“Maybe we needed a little bit of your support over the years, Karla. And not just money,” Jenna said, thinking again of the Shakespeare in the Park incident.
Karla nodded solemnly. “I understand Jenna. While you were vying for bit parts in summer stock, I was starring in major Hollywood movies.” She walked over to the large Gothic peaked window, the drapes framing her in a red velvet proscenium.
“You could have shown some interest. Maybe the publicity would have helped my career,” Jenna said.
“Your career! Always playing the martyr, yet so selfish underneath, and so blind to the truth.” Karla was now fully on stage, front and center, all eyes on her.
“What truth?” Jenna said, a knot of emotion rising in her throat despite her effort to suppress it.
“Our truth Jenna. Mine, yours, our family’s truth! You want to know why I didn’t come to your Shakespeare in the Park…your Ophelia? You think I could sit through a play about a girl who drowns, when...” Karla pulled the drapery cord. The curtains parted to reveal the lake illuminated by lavender moonlight streaming through a scud of black clouds, “…our parents died here!”
For a split second a flare of lightning filled the window with white light followed by a crash of thunder that made the siblings jump in their seats. Anne cried out and buried her face in Mitch’s shoulder.
Jenna stood up. “That’s enough, Karla. It was painful for all of us. Why do we have to come back here? Why?”
Karla wheeled to face her. “Because I am the one who watched them drown, that’s why! I swam out to the boat and tried to save them, but I wasn’t strong enough. You were all on the shore, but I saw everything, and I was helpless. Now I work-out everyday because I never want to be weak again. I want to be healed!” Tears streamed down Karla’s face.
Chrissie, suddenly on her feet, ran to her. “Oh Karla, so do I! So do I!”
Karla embraced Chrissie tightly, her face buried in her soft hair. “And by God, we will! On our parent's souls, we will be!” Another bolt of lightning illuminated the lake, followed by a rumble of thunder.
Finding himself moved by Karla’s speech despite his better judgment, Warren cleared his throat. “Maybe this will be good for us. God knows it’s been a long time since we’ve been together. What exactly is this therapy?”
The tears quickly evaporated from Karla’s eyes as she patted Chrissie's shoulder dismissively and moved back to her slightly elevated, throne-like chair. Jorgé a silent sentry by her side, poured Ostara water into a crystal goblet and handed it to her. “Dr. Weiss will explain it to you. He is ready for your initial consultations…Herr Doktor?”
As if part of the stagecraft, a flash of lightning illumina
ted the foyer window, and revealed Doctor Weiss: a man of sixty, with a thick, towering physique like a large tree, topped with a massive head—shaved and shining. He wore a white doctor’s coat, and a gold-rimmed monocle glinted from his left eye.
In a thick German accent (pronouncing his w’s like v’s), he said, “Welcome to White Wolf Camp.” A roar of thunder followed his words like a low laugh. His forced smile revealed pointed, yellowed teeth.
5
Anne took a long bath after dinner and climbed into the high, four-poster bed. The storm that began during their odd family gathering had abated a bit, and she now waited in nervous anticipation for the heavy rain to return, knowing she’d get little sleep that night. She tried reading one of the books she found on her nightstand: a pop psychology manual on how to develop self-esteem, but gave up on it quickly.
Dependent on her nightly Ambien, she was distressed to discover it was missing from her purse along with the brandy she had also stashed there. She suspected someone had gone through her things. If she had the opportunity tomorrow she would broach the subject with Karla, she reasoned, but the last thing she wanted to do was ruffle anyone’s feathers, especially with a million dollars at stake.
As she settled into the soft bedding, she fingered the silk chiffon of her nightgown: a fluffy peignoir set expressly chosen for her by Karla. The champagne hue suited Anne’s complexion perfectly, and as incongruous as couture clothes were to the camp environment, the luxury items (like the toiletries she found in the bathroom) made her feel good—pampered—and she hadn't felt good in a long time. She thought about the million dollars Karla had promised and rubbed the sore spot on her arm where Doctor Weiss had taken a blood sample earlier—something about personality analysis based on blood types. She hadn’t paid much attention; it had been a long day.
Mitch popped his head into her room, causing her to jump out of her freshly bathed skin.
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