“I have to call my sister,” I blurted out, turning around in circles, disoriented, trying to button my pants, not remembering where I put my cell phone. I searched for it, throwing pillows across the bed, lifting the top of my suitcase and throwing it over my pile of clothes spewing from all sides, shoving Blake’s skateboard upside down next to the door so it banged against the wall, and finally pulling the entire comforter over the bed with both hands, as if I were a magician getting ready to whip a tablecloth out from under the china. “Where is it?” I screamed. The comforter went flailing behind me with the sound of a pathetic thud as my cell phone hit the dresser and, at last, fell to the ground.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Blake rushed over, restraining me as I tried to get past him to pick up my phone. “Slow down. Breathe,” he said. I glared at him as he held my upper arms in place just below my shoulders. “Why don’t we go for a drive?” he suggested, knowing that nothing he could say would fix the overwhelming confusion that overtook any chance of my having a normal day.
“Okay,” I said, and then took a deep breath, “but don’t tell anyone about this. Not your dad—anyone.”
“I won’t,” Blake promised.
I didn’t know whom I could trust. I had known Blake for just over a year. We met at the Hollywood location of the New York Film Academy, a summer program that only the offspring of the affluent can afford, where students are given a vintage 33 millimeter film camera, all-access passes to the Universal Studios back lot, and a suite at the Oakwood Apartments, infamous for housing its rising Disney stars or the next Justin Biebers of the world. Blake was unfazed by it all. He broke all the rules, drove a fast car, smoked weed, had neon blue hair when I met him. He was the antithesis of Ralph Lauren, Ivy Leagues, and loafers—the guys I was surrounded by in Virginia. I was instantly drawn to him. He’d sneak me into forbidden places, like the haunted house from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, where we once found loose nails from a previous film set, then climbed to the rooftop and carved our names into the rotting wood. Blake’s carefree attitude came from being raised in a family of Hollywood lineage tracing back to the golden age. His father grew up next to the likes of Judy Garland and silent film stars such as Harold Lloyd, and was friends with Hugh Hefner.
One time at a private party at the Playboy Mansion when I was seventeen, I was pulled from the kids’ table (yes, there was a kids’ table) by one of the Playmates, who said to me, “Oh boy, when Hugh gets his eyes on you . . .” I remember staring down at my double-A-size breasts. “Oh, don’t worry about that, honey; he’d take care of it,” she said, like it was no big deal, like just another trip to the grocery store. By the end of the night, I found myself being chased by wild peacocks in the backyard amid naked, spray-painted Playboy bunnies while fireworks burst through the sky.
I was on the edge of adulthood in a city where your wildest fantasies become distorted realities; where boundaries become blurred lines. A far cry from the rigidity of a nine-to-five in public service in our nation’s capital for which I might have been destined otherwise. I longed to be a part of it all: the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll. Fame. My father had always told me I was going to be a movie star: a frail brunette beauty like Audrey Hepburn, he said.
Blake and I climbed into my BMW—a gift my father had given me the day before my high school graduation. Covered in a red bow, and tucked in the windshield was a note that read “Dear Christina Bambina, you owe me an airplane, Love Dad.” Later I found out my father had sold his airplane to buy the car. Money had been tight, but I never knew. My family, we never discussed that sort of thing. I never, ever had to think about money. In fact, I was told it was rude to discuss money.
Blake drove, and I sat in the passenger seat and called Mara, who was starting her junior year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Mara and I had always been close. Even after she left for boarding school when the the academic pressures at the National Cathedral School for girls became too intense and my parents decided it would be better if she finished high school in the Swiss Alps, where there were more snow days than school days. I never understood the choice to go from the culturally eclectic boarding school in Switzerland, with Saudi princes and princesses, and the future successors of oil tycoons, to the finest breeding ground for the next Mr. and Mrs. George Bush. I suppose there wasn’t a difference. Either way, she was my cool big sister who taught me how to freak dance and who cried when Kurt Cobain died.
The phone rang, and I knew I would feel better once we talked.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was raspy, as though she had been crying.
“Hey.”
“Did you talk to Mom?”
“Yeah, and I just talked to Dad.”
“You did? How?”
“Mr. Carl bailed him out. He’s going to call you when he can.”
Bernie Carl was one of my father’s wealthiest friends, a banker. He and his wife, Joan, a Washington socialite, and their three children were close family friends. We traveled together on each other’s private planes, spent summers in Southampton, Nantucket, and St. Barths, and Thanksgivings in London and Scotland.
“What else did he say?” I wanted to know everything.
“He said it’s all a misunderstanding and that the government is trying to make an example out of him.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “Okay,” I said. “Have you talked to Chloe?”
“No, she’s at school. I don’t think she knows yet.”
Chloe was a freshman in high school. She had become an avid lacrosse player with more friends than anyone could keep track of and a bit of a wild card, as no one ever knew whether she would bring home an A on an exam or hijack the Range Rover when our parents left town. Once, when she was five, she decided to swing from the gold chandelier in the family room with her best friend. Like two monkeys swinging from tree branches. The mischief ended in a near-fatal accident when the chandelier came crashing to the floor, shattering lightbulbs across the room. She and her friend were lucky they ran away unscathed.
I never spoke to Chloe that day, and it would be years before she would ever talk about what it was like for her when she found out about our father’s arrest.
Mara was rambling on about possible job options already. “Stripping?” she joked. Was it a joke, though? It was too overwhelming. I told her I had to hang up. For once, I didn’t want to keep talking.
Blake pulled the car over somewhere near the top of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive. We got out, and I hurdled the metal guardrail along the cliff and sat with my feet dangling over the edge. Blake hopped over and took a seat next to me. He pulled out a joint from his pocket and sparked the end.
“Here,” he said, passing it to me. I took a long drag, hoping that in minutes I would be numb to the world.
I squinted, looking out over the hazy Los Angeles skyline. The Hollywood sign was barely visible in the morning fog; its alluring presence waiting for the sun to shine before it mocked the dirty streets of Hollywood. It would be hours before the hustlers readied their star maps for tourists, before the dancing Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators sweated beneath their costumes, proclaiming their dreams of stardom next to a lone “Jesus Save Us! I Repent!” sign held by some angry protestor, each praying that one day they’ll be noticed.
Had I known what was to come, I would have been on my knees in the dirt praying for the answers, because the power of money—the loss of money, the need for money, what we would do for more money—would rip through my family, denying any chance of a resurrection. With each passing day, losing who I was and not knowing who I would become. I didn’t know how any of it would happen, how the truth would unravel, and how it would unravel me.
I passed Blake the joint. I thought about the possibility of my father being guilty. “But he wears Tommy Bahama T-shirts,” I declared. “My dad. He wears Tommy Bahama T-shirts.” Blake and I bent over laughing. Laughing so hard my stomach hurt.
-2-
Glor
y Days
My mother and father met in the heart of the aftermath of political unrest in the 1970s, when Washington, DC, was the place to be. The Vietnam War had ended; the civil rights and women’s rights movements were breaking barriers leading to a more just and equal society, creating a glimpse of change and promise for a more prosperous future. My mother grew up along the canals of Long Beach, California, running barefoot and drinking chocolate malts from Hof’s Hut Bakery. She longed to be a part of history, eventually leaving her beach town life behind to work on Capitol Hill for Republican congressman Robert Lagomarsino. A few months later, she met my father. They fell in love and were married six months after. When I was a little girl, I asked my mother over and over again to tell me their love story.
“Mom, how did Dad propose to you?” I sat on the couch, watching Roxana slide a black St. John knit over my mother’s head. Roxana, an exotic Iranian woman who wore clunky gold bracelets and bright red lipstick, was my mother’s personal stylist at Saks Fifth Avenue. She always had a Coke and a Snickers bar waiting for me on the coffee table next to the pink lilies.
Our private dressing area had its own kitchen and powder room, and was filled with racks of couture gowns, tailor-made suits, stilettos, jewelry, and purses for my mother to try on. After I was born, my father insisted he was making enough money so my mother didn’t have to work. She was now serving on the board of directors at the Columbia Hospital for Women, was vice president of Discovery Creek Children’s Museum, and was a member of the Junior League. In her new role as philanthropist, she always needed a rotation of outfits for benefits, meetings, and cocktail parties.
“Honey, you know this story,” my mother said, adjusting her bodysuit underneath the dress.
“Tell me again,” I said. I was playing hooky. Mara and Chloe were at school. I often lied so I could spend the day with her, watching episodes of General Hospital, shopping and running errands. I wanted to talk to her all day long about grown-up things. It was more fun than playing with Poggs and Beanie Babies on the playground.
“Well, I have to tell the whole story,” she began, “because of what happened a few days earlier.”
My father had been late coming home from law school when my mother showed up at his apartment on Nineteenth and R Streets. She began spending most evenings at his apartment, but he hadn’t given her a key yet. My mother was tired and frustrated after a long bus ride home from work and began picking at my father’s lock with one of her bobby pins. Without any luck, she pulled out the key to her apartment, intending to use it to continue picking at the lock. But instead, it slid right in, unlocking my father’s front door.
“Like fate,” my mother said, twirling left and then right in her new St. John knit. After my father arrived home, they had dinner, and when they were reading and lounging on the couch afterward, he said to her casually, with his head still buried in his book, “What do you think about getting married?” My mother had asked if that was a proposal. He looked at her; he was nervous. “Yeah,” he said. “Do you want to get married?” Mom smiled at him. “Yes! Let’s get married.”
“A few days later”—my mother was now standing in her bra and panty hose, waiting for Roxana to bring her an evening gown—“I walked into the apartment, and there was a sock lying in the middle of the living area, which was strange, because your dad always liked to have things clean and neat. I picked up the sock, reached my hand down inside of it, and pulled out a black velvet box. Inside was my diamond ring. But this diamond ring.” My mother gently lifted the small diamond to her gold necklace resting between her collarbones.
On a trip to Paris, my father had surprised her with a 9-carat-diamond upgrade from Tiffany. She turned her original diamond into the necklace she wore.
“At the time, your dad didn’t have a penny to his name. He sold his blue Austin-Healey the day after I said yes so he could buy me this ring,” my mother said proudly. “And believe me, he loved that Austin-Healey.” My father wanted to make sure she said yes before he sold it.
“But he loved you more than the car,” I always assured her.
My father started making what he ironically called “real money” in the late eighties and early nineties. We moved from our quaint town house across from American University, a community called Westover Place, to the white brick Georgian house on Lowell Street across from the Mexican Embassy, where we held Fourth of July block parties and Halloween parties with the neighbors. Local firemen drove their trucks down to let us kids honk the horn and sound the sirens. We attended Christmas parties and birthday parties with guests named (Joe and Jim) Biden, (Arianna) Huffington, and (David) Rubenstein—before they carried the power they do today.
For my tenth birthday party, my mother hired a wild-animal trainer. He arrived dressed in safari gear and brought a wild alligator for us to play with. I didn’t care about any of the other wild animals he brought, like the African dwarf frogs and baby goats. I spent the entire afternoon chasing that wild alligator around the playroom in my plaid skirt while the mothers were upstairs in the family room gossiping over bottles of Pinot Grigio, Carr’s crackers, and caviar.
When we moved from the city to our estate in Virginia, our birthday parties and Christmases became even more extravagant as my parents’ wealth grew along with their position in the social hierarchy of Washington.
One year, the Woman’s Club of McLean selected our home to showcase Christmas decorations and interior design as part of the Holiday Homes Tour. (One of the others chosen was Merrywood, the fifty-acre estate on which Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy grew up.) It was a tour where wealthy women wore booties on their shoes as they walked around the decorated mansions oohing and aahing at the décor with the comfort that the money they donated would go toward a designated charity.
For weeks, my mother and the interior designers spent all day hanging red ribbons and green wreaths from each window above the green boxwood bushes and lush ivy. Candles shimmered in the center of each windowsill. White lights swirled around the Corinthian columns illuminating the front door, making it look like a winter wonderland when it snowed. Inside, the house smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, poinsettias clumped in every corner of every room next to antiques, and mistletoe swung in the loggia. Each room a vision of warm perfection. My mother had come to develop the most sophisticated and exquisite taste, moving further and further away from her laid-back California upbringing.
I was fourteen years old, and I’ll never forget the gifts I received that year on Christmas morning. Stacks of presents covered the lower third of our twelve-foot Christmas tree in red-and-white Santa wrapping paper. But before we opened presents, we had already been led by footprints made from fake snow down into the playroom to find a Ping-Pong table and a pool table placed under the hanging green Tiffany lamps. The room was big enough for both.
My father had given me a $2,000 steel watch from Tiffany and had bought me a background role on my favorite TV show, Dawson’s Creek. He bid the most money during the silent auction at a charity event for the Choral Arts Society of Washington. Eight weeks later, on my fifteenth birthday, my father flew me in his Beechcraft King Air twin turboprop down to Wilmington, North Carolina, where they filmed the show. I hung out on set all day with stars Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson and had them autograph my yellow North Face backpack.
During those years, we had nannies and housekeepers, painters and gardeners, private chefs and academic tutors. And every six months, it seemed, I’d come home from school to see the newest model of a red or black Porsche being driven off the flatbed of a truck. I’d see Dad standing in the driveway in his white polo and khakis, his arms in the air, directing the landing of the Porsche safely onto the gravel.
My father insisted on buying sports cars with manual transmissions only. “Automatic is for sissies,” he would say. My BMW was a stick shift, and when I asked him why he bought me a stick, he said with a laugh, “Because, Bambina, you’ll drive all the boys wild. I bet half of them won’t
know how to drive your car.” He was right, except Blake knew how to drive a stick.
When I arrived in Los Angeles a week after my high school graduation, Blake and I would race his friends—the sons of directors, movie stars, and studio moguls—across Mulholland Drive. One of his best friends, the son of an executive at Viacom, flipped his BMW in one of the canyons. He was lucky to have walked away alive. But a few weeks later, he showed up at a party in Bel Air with a brand-new GMC Denali: black rims, blacked-out lights, and tinted windows. High-end cars for the kids who come from “real money” were disposable.
During my summer at the New York Film Academy, I met Steven Spielberg’s son, who was a friend of Blake’s. He took me to DreamWorks Studios for lunch one day. We ate salmon and Caesar salad and played Grand Theft Auto the entire afternoon in Mr. Spielberg’s office. When I got up to use the bathroom and came back, Mr. Spielberg was standing in front of his desk. He looked at me, smiled, and introduced himself. I wiped my hands along my red Marc Jacobs skirt and then shook his hand. He asked where I was from and where I was planning on going to college. I couldn’t believe how normal he was. I wanted him to be the vicious director yelling at me through an old-fashioned megaphone. But he was just like any other dad, which thoroughly disappointed me. He had hundreds of awards that followed the entire length of his office. I was oblivious to his being considered the greatest film director of our time. Jaws made me nauseous, and E.T. scared me so much that I refused to even walk into the family room when Mara or Chloe was watching it. But I wanted to touch one of his awards. So when he wasn’t looking, I picked up his Golden Globe for Saving Private Ryan.
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