The boys and Liam were watching me like three babysitters while I read it aloud to them, unsure of what I would do next. I was going down the rabbit hole with every passing sentence. “. . . You seem to have given up on your old Dad. That is a mistake. Because everything I am doing now is for the benefit of you and your sisters through a trust . . . I remain very optimistic and that is why I am here in Europe . . . I have always acted in good faith in the matters of our family. I have always been loyal. I have always loved you. . . . Stop being angry . . . you are not lying on a gurney in an oncology ward. We will overcome all of this but we must remain proactive despite having temporarily been dealt a poor hand of cards. Never, ever, give up. I love you very much, Dad.”
When I started Googling, the boys and Liam couldn’t stop me—my internet search fed an obsessive downward spiral of suspicion and anger: My father had said that he didn’t intentionally purchase a fake Birkin, so what if he was telling the truth? Why would he ever put me at risk of being sent to prison? I looked up counterfeiting laws, and you can go to prison for up to five years for such a crime. I was devastated, and I didn’t want to believe that he would put me in jeopardy, unless he actually believed that I’d be able to get away with selling the bag at full price—proud of his daughter for pocketing $17,000 for a bag really worth a few hundred. So he must have known the bag was fake, right?
Then I came across a New York Times article written by journalist Dana Thomas, “Terror’s Purse Strings,” which said that counterfeiting can be linked to terrorism, human trafficking, and child prostitution. Someone once told me that the Albanian government was infiltrated by the Mafia. I didn’t know anything about it, but if my father was telling the truth—that he didn’t intentionally purchase a fake; a fake purchased by the Albanian businessman—should I be worried for his life? Why was he entering into business with these people? I knew the only way I would survive this would be to cut him off until I discovered the truth. I would have no choice. In retrospect, the only fully rational part of my thought process was its conclusion: Something inside me was telling me to not give up on him yet—but run.
-23-
Couch Surfing
I was homeless.
No cash. No credit.
I watched Rob lift my MacKenzie-Childs desk out of my empty bedroom. Each drawer hand painted with green ivy and pink roses, and each knob had a different design: criss-crosses, polka dots, and stripes painted in different colors—lavender, yellow, and blue. It was the last piece to go. He would load it into the back of his pickup truck with the rest of my furniture and take it to the public storage unit near Pasadena that I was able to rent for $45 a month. I would not sell anything. I would not let it go. I had called the nightclub several times to see if I could get my job back, but they never returned my calls. Forced to move out, I couldn’t make my rent or afford to pay bills, and I couldn’t leave the boys in a bind. Finally, at the end of the month, I had a little over $100 for food and gas to get me through the week after the small amount of money that came in from the film. I was able to pay my rent the following month for the previous month, and the rest I’d have to figure out.
Mara had lost her job at the online shopping company after massive layoffs began occurring all over the country. Her instincts had been right. Shortly after she left Brian, she moved into my mother and Richard’s house because she didn’t have any income. So that was not an option for me. Things between my mother and me were still tense. I had gone as far as threatening not to show up on her wedding day. Chloe was still hostessing. She moved into a house and shared a room with her best friend as she continued trying to make ends meet. I called both of them and broke the news that the bags were counterfeit. If they were as hurt as I was by the dishonesty—that, like our life, the bag was just another knockoff—they didn’t show it. And as the weeks went by, we would casually bring up our father.
“Have you heard from Dad?”
“No. Have you?”
“Nope.”
Rob and I unloaded everything into the dark storage unit, a location that was becoming all too familiar. I looked at the possessions I had left: my dresser, two nightstands, my desk and chair, bed frame, lamp, and a few boxes of my childhood books and family photographs. We dumped my mattress in the back alley. It wouldn’t last in the storage unit, so it was better off being given to the homeless man behind the building. But I had my car, I had a few friends left, and I had Liam.
I flip-flopped between Liam’s apartment and my friend Audra’s living room couch for the first few months. I’d met Audra when I worked at the nightclub. A Lithuanian-born Jew who was raised in Michigan by her immigrant parents, she had the best work ethic of anyone our age I’d ever seen. She worked full-time at a talent agency while putting herself through UCLA and before that always had multiple jobs. Her parents brought her to America when she was a toddler. They instilled in her at a very young age the value of hard work. When her mother came to town, she would yell things at me in her thick Russian accent, like, “Vhen you get real job?” Then she would hold me captive in the kitchen to help her cook some kind of sausage medley or teach me how to fold sheets properly.
I drove Audra crazy, stealing her Adderall, eating out of her fridge. She used to come home and ask me, “Are you sober today? Have you eaten? Yes or no?” She would pester me but never judge me about looking for more work, which I had been doing every day on Craigslist, going on restaurant interviews, and reaching out to some of the girls I’d worked with. But nothing was panning out; competition was steep. I filed for unemployment as soon as I moved out of the McMansion, hoping that my check would arrive quickly so I could continue paying my bills and pay Audra a little rent. I was attracted to her for all the things that I lacked, watching her in awe. My nickname for her was Little Phenomenon. She would go on to become one of the youngest talent agents in Hollywood.
When November rolled around, I let guilt get the best of me and went to my mother’s wedding. My feelings for her ran the spectrum. There were days I loathed her and days I was filled with endless compassion. She had married my father so young, without any father of her own. My mother’s father had emancipated her when she was seventeen to start a new family. He didn’t want to be held financially responsible for her anymore. My mother worked her way through college and then met my father, who promised to take care of her. It felt as though I were watching her in her midfifties make the same choice all over again, just with a different man, wondering if I could trust Richard at all.
I held myself together with a combination of Adderall, marijuana, whiskey, and allergy medication that had me seeing only what I wanted to see, throwing up and blacking out each night. The things I remember: Tripping as I walked my mother down the aisle. The baby voice she used as she read her vows. It was startling because, standing there in front of her, I remembered it as the voice she used when she read to me as a little girl, and it used to make me anxious. I would yell at her, “Mommy, use your real voice!” because I thought she was pretending. She was acting out the characters, and I wanted her to be her.
The wedding was an eclectic mix of old friends from my mother’s upbringing in Long Beach, a few Washington, DC, couples who hadn’t abandoned her, and Richard’s motorcycle friends. Michele was my mother’s maid of honor. She came with her investment-banker husband and by the end of the night had to be carried off to bed. Poor thing beat me to it. Passed out from all the booze when suddenly her patent leather Chanel heels went whisking by me in the air while I danced with my sunglasses on, wondering if she wore her nine-carat yellow diamond to work. She was a psychologist. And then there was Richard’s friend, the one who kept grabbing my waist all night, handing me whiskey gingers while trying to take selfies of me with his cell phone. Madeline was there with a man she had started dating. On the dance floor, she came over and wrapped her arms around me, and for that moment, I missed Josh. I couldn’t believe that after all we had gone through together, he wasn’t by my side when I walked
my mother down the aisle. But he was moving on. He had already found the woman he would spend the rest of his life with, while I was a walking catastrophe.
The morning after the wedding, I woke up facedown on top of a bare mattress in my bridesmaid dress, with fifty-six missed calls from Liam. I don’t remember why the sheets were crumpled in a pile in the corner. Apparently I had called him and told him to drive to Palm Springs so I could have sex with him, but blacked out, and locked myself in my hotel room before he could get there. I had invited Liam to the wedding, and then disinvited Liam; and then invited Liam again, and then ultimately disinvited Liam to the wedding. I had confessed to cheating on him the week before with a guy I met at a nightclub. Obliterated by the booze, it could have been anyone.
I told Liam I couldn’t be with him; that I was, in fact, defective, and he should stay far, far away from me because I was an F-5 tornado blazing through the fields of other people’s hearts, hating my own, destroying any possibility of love. But he was still fighting for me, still trying to make things work between us, while I continued doing what I did best: testing his love, wanting him to prove to me how much he loved me, pushing him farther and farther to see just how hard he would try to love me because I felt my father didn’t. And I knew he wouldn’t be able to make up for both. The task at hand was impossible for any human being. There were no more superheroes in my story anymore; no more saviors, no more knights, no more Prince Charmings, no more Popeyes—none of it was real. I had built them up in my head and had blown them all to pieces with my own heart.
“It doesn’t exist, Liam. It doesn’t exist.”
What was love? I’d ask. Love didn’t have meaning. Love was empty or love was pain, obsession, ambiguity, and rushes of toxic energy spiraling into an endless sea of shit. That was my definition of love.
When I called Liam the next morning, he said he almost broke down the door but decided against it. Instead, he sat out by the swimming pool eating Cheetos and drinking leftover champagne with my cousin Alex before he got into his car and drove back to Los Angeles.
After my mother’s wedding, I received the last email I would ever receive from my father. The subject title: Redemption. “Bambina . . . I just returned from a two week trip overseas . . . I know you may be still mad at me (for various and sundry reasons), but give your Dad a chance to redeem himself. Love, Dad.”
“For various and sundry reasons.” That is all that I saw, that is all that I read. He wanted to silence me; he wanted to minimize all that was brewing inside of me. I could feel him taking me down. And I couldn’t risk it. I had taken myself down far enough. I would not respond. I wasn’t ready to forgive him when I still didn’t know the truth.
Within the span of about a year and a half, I moved five times. Liam and I remained on and off, depending on the week. I didn’t want to be at Whole Foods with his credit card, strolling for things like lamb and chicken—things to roast. To roast. I’d never cooked in my life and had always wanted to be the kind of woman who didn’t spend her time in the kitchen, the kind of woman who dined in leather booths at power lunches. I wanted to be one of those women who could take care of herself, a woman with a career. All my life, I wanted to be an actress. It was the way I received attention growing up, the solution to expressing all of the repressed feelings of uncertainty I’d had as a child, repressed by good manners and expectations, and if I expressed any kind of an opinion other than the one my father agreed to, I was put down for it. I wanted to unleash myself somehow. My being an actress had been inextricably linked to my father’s approval, and now I had no sense of who I was or who I wanted to become. And when I was with Liam I found myself looking up recipes online, and setting the dinner table, so unsure of what to do with my life. We fought over things—things I can’t remember; mostly just my endless loop of unhappiness. And at the same time, I was so in need of love that I began to stray, looking for the very thing that was killing me to begin with.
After my unemployment check arrived, I moved in with an actor friend named Dillon. His apartment was off of Pico Boulevard near La Brea Avenue. He said I could live there for $600 a month. I didn’t have to sign a lease or put down a deposit. We lived above a nice man who loved to smoke crack. He was missing two teeth on the right side of his mouth and liked to pace around the courtyard. Each time I came home, he offered to carry my purse upstairs for me.
“Hi, beautiful, you need any help with your purse?”
I would bolt upstairs and lock the door behind me. He must have had five other people living with him in the studio apartment below us. Long whiffs of crack billowed up through my window screens at night. I would spend my days looking for cocktailing jobs and occasionally going on an audition—sometimes drunk if Dillon had leftover beer in the refrigerator. After a few months went by, my roommate came home one day and announced that he had eloped—drove down to the courthouse on a whim with a girl he’d met at a nightclub—and that I needed to be out of the apartment in three weeks.
After Dillon came the Creative Artists Agency talent agent. I had met him at Audra’s friend’s birthday party. It was a Hollywood miracle he didn’t try to sleep with me. We remained platonic, and I lived in his cottage by the beach for two months while he was housesitting for one of his clients in Nichols Canyon.
It was while I was living at the cottage that my mother ended up at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It started with a high fever and then vomiting; she was so weak she couldn’t walk. Mara picked her up off the bathroom floor and took her to the hospital while Richard was at work. They diagnosed her with a severe kidney infection. When she called me from the hospital, her voice, soft, fragile, childlike again, and asked if I would visit her, I hesitated. I didn’t want to watch Richard stand there cosigning the denial as the replacement patriarch for my withering family when not just my mother but each and every one of us needed help. I knew my mother’s lethal combination of antidepressants and bottles of Chardonnay were more than partly to blame, and I was afraid to look at her being even more vulnerable than I knew she already was, because it wasn’t just a reflection of her but a reflection of all of us. I was so afraid of losing her, even if it felt like she was already gone.
I went to the hospital for only an hour. I sat in the corner, in a wooden chair below the window overlooking the bleak parking lot, watching the antibiotics drip into her bloodstream. She would need to stay there for two weeks. Her stomach was so swollen that she looked pregnant. Pregnant with untouched grief, all these years trapped inside her. She looked at me, her face opaque yet smiling, her body covered in white sheets, when she told me that she loved me and that my coming to visit her was the best part of her day. I sat there holding back gut-wrenching sobs. I wanted to climb into bed with her, press my cheek to hers. I wanted to say “Please stop drinking, Mom. We need help. We need help from everything we are too afraid to talk about.”
A few weeks later, when it was time for me to move out of the cottage, I was in luck. I received a Facebook message from an old family friend, the daughter of billionaire David Rubenstein. Ellie had just graduated from Harvard and moved to Los Angeles. Her father, whom I began referring to as Daddy Warbucks, had leased her a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Ellie said she had five spare bedrooms, and to come on over and pick one. They were always generous. Always donating millions to charity.
When my father was indicted, they didn’t care. The Rubensteins threw a joint birthday party for Chloe and Ellie on a yacht in the middle of the Potomac River. This kind of money—Daddy Warbucks money—trumps cave dwellers, A-listers, celebrities, and even presidents. The Rubensteins have so much money that reputation doesn’t matter. But it mattered to me, and I could not tell Ellie the truth when I finally got another job at a nightclub downtown—because of what really went on there. After all, the Rubensteins owned the Magna Carta.
The “urban nightclub,” as they called it, was a few blocks west of skid row. I never understood the term “urban nightclub.” As in “a nightclu
b for black people”? I stood in line behind the metal detectors, wearing patent leather thigh-high boots that laced around silver hooks all the way up to the top, a black miniskirt, and a red leather corset that zipped in the front, for the first time making it look like I had cleavage.
The metal detectors were new. A few nights earlier, rapper Rick Ross had showed up with his entourage. Apparently someone put a gun to a security guard’s head. All hell broke loose on the second level. People were beaten to a pulp near the deejay booth in the VIP section. I escaped after being groped by a three-hundred-pound man with gold rings on every finger. I ran as fast as I could down the back stairwell, kicking open the back door, and sprinting into the alley toward my car. The club was owned by an Armenian family. Each night, the theme catered to a different race or sexual orientation: Tuesdays could be Asian night, or Fridays could be gay night. Even after all the years working in nightlife, only then did the segregation of nightlife culture occur to me.
It was spring of 2001. I sat wearing my white terrycloth bathrobe at my mother’s vanity table with my eyes closed as she swiped her soft makeup brush back and forth along the crease of my eyelid, her sweet breath inches from me. My hands were carefully placed, fingers spread along my thighs, as I let my new Hard Candy nail polish dry. The color was called “Sky.” My corsage and Sam’s boutonniere were downstairs in the refrigerator, waiting. My heart thumped thinking about him. He was the captain of the varsity soccer team, a straight-A student, and the principal’s son. He, a senior, and I, a young sophomore. The day he asked me to the prom, I came home, my stomach filled with soaring butterflies.
With the prom just hours away my mother asked, “Do we need to talk about the birds and the bees?” I could feel her smiling at me.
“Mom!” I cried, humiliated, with my eyes still closed, and wanting to keep them that way.
After Perfect Page 23