Dad: I would have loved you anyway, had you told me the truth. You know what I did when I got back to Los Angeles after digging through your court records? I held a funeral for myself. Yes, I still have a sense of humor. I get that from you. And after I changed my name, I let myself grieve. There were days I didn’t get out of bed because my body felt so heavy. My throat swelled up. I couldn’t eat. I felt so ashamed. And I allowed myself to cry and scream at the top of my lungs. And you know, things are getting better. I started volunteering at the Office of Restorative Justice. I went to prison and spoke to incarcerated fathers and told them my story. I was able to say all the things to them face-to-face that I could never say to you. And it has helped me heal. Sometimes I wonder what life would look like had you never broken the law and gone to prison. I wonder if we would have lived the same, how we would have lived. Would I learn the harsh truths of life another way? Or would I have remained blind? I try not to think about it too, too much. We’ll never know. Maybe fate does exist. But I do know the things I want out of life have shifted the more I discover my authentic self. For a long time, I stopped believing in love, and slowly I’ve regained my faith. It’s just that I have never experienced it before, that kind of love. I am looking forward to creating a family of my own someday—possibly even get married. The future for me now looks a lot brighter because I’m laying it down with a foundation of truth. And with that, I can forgive you, Dad. I forgive you. I accept that you will never change, and God, how angry and sad it makes me. But I get it now. I get it. We’re different. And I forgive you for all of it. I forgive you for not protecting me, for never telling me the truth. And you know what, Dad? Thank you. Thank you for being my greatest teacher. You have taught me a great deal about love. Because, goddamn it, I love you so much. But it’s done nothing but hurt me. And I can’t carry that kind of love anymore. So, here—take it. It’s all yours.
Christina
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The End
I had to go back, to get away, to experience once more the juxtaposition between Hollywood and politics, Los Angeles and Washington, DC, poverty and wealth. To take that clichéd trip down memory lane. To see from a new perspective how far I’d fallen from where I had come from. Had I missed anything? There is always some other subconscious story unfolding that we don’t know yet. And I wondered where it had gone. All that which divided me.
It was America’s birthday weekend; the year, 2014. American flags and banners hung from redbrick town houses and mansions along cobblestone streets. It was hot and muggy, and I was staying at the Palmers’ elegant home on the edge of Rock Creek Park, a neighborhood where embassies hang foreign flags. Where back in the day, Nancy’s daughters and I would run around the fish ponds and through the gardens of the Hillwood Museum, once home to cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Nancy and her youngest daughter—her name is Hope—were gracious hosts. They were grieving John’s death. Husband and father, an American journalist from another time. From the days of Carter and Clinton. As a little girl, I’d see him on the television screen reporting from the White House lawn while my mother cooked macaroni and cheese in the kitchen, and my sisters and I would shriek, “Look, it’s Mr. Palmer!”
The old neighborhoods I once roamed felt aged and weathered—eerie almost, as most young Washington families have pushed farther into the city toward Capitol Hill, or farther out into the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland for larger properties. The wealthy home owners of Spring Valley and Wesley Heights are now older, getting ready to retire if they are lucky. Their children grown and thriving somewhere. Maybe. And I wondered about Listrani’s, our family’s favorite neighborhood Italian place on MacArthur Boulevard, where we’d go every Sunday night for dinner. I had gone back there, and a sign was posted in the window:
Dearest Listrani’s Customers,
It is with a sad note we inform you that Listrani’s is permanently closed. On behalf of the staff, we thank each and every one of you for all of the years you have kept us in business.
With love, Listrani’s Staff.
I wondered if it took a hard hit when the economy fell, or if it was just the natural course in the evolution of time where nothing lasts forever. When I went back there, I was hoping for the angst-ridden feeling of rebellion I’d carried throughout my childhood, eager to move out west, to become a star! To stick my finger up at that town, and leave it all behind. Eager to point the finger at its classism, blame it for the disappearing middle class, and the reality that our country is broken. Divided.
And to think when I lost everything, all I wanted was to get it back. I went searching for it, yet I was rejecting it all at the same time—the definition of insanity. But what I came to realize going back there was that the narrative I’d told myself was only half true. We are all human. No cave dweller was out to get me. It was just the shame I had been carrying for far too long, wanting to blame it all on someone else. We’re all just looking out for ourselves, really. It wasn’t personal. I might not ever understand it fully. It’s a complicated world. Maybe I’m only supposed to understand my own mistakes, my own wreckage, to be accountable for that. To be honest.
I had gone back to our old house. I got a rental car and drove straight there. I crossed Chain Bridge over the Potomac River and into Virginia. Passing the mansion belonging to Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, remembering having read a year earlier that the Saudi compound nearby was being investigated for human trafficking. I shook my head. Things are not what they seem. I continued on down Dolly Madison Boulevard, where two hundred years ago the First Lady fled the burning of the White House at the hands of British troops during the War of 1812. I passed the CIA, just ten minutes outside of DC, on my right. And I passed what was left of abandoned farmhouses and the old nineteenth-century church house around the corner from the Kennedys’ Hickory Hill estate. What I noticed instead was the bulldozing of ancient trees and how the humble beginnings of America were being replaced with enormous megamansions. Ethel Kennedy sold her property a few years back for around $10 million—to a tech entrepreneur. I drove by. He’d gutted the house and made it bigger. Because the size it was before, once home to eleven of America’s most famous children, was now not big enough for four.
When I was a little girl, and our house was under construction in the late eighties, we were one of the first families to build in that old neighborhood. At the time, it felt like the beginning of something extraordinary, a big tale of an American Dream. And that’s why it hurt to realize there is no such thing. Dreams are peaceful. Dreams contain serenity, not ambition, not greed. Dreams make you feel like you’re right where you’re supposed to be: in the middle, close to the pulse of real things where humility lives. So I don’t know what we’re striving for anymore as our so-called dreams have been razed to the ground by money.
Nancy had shared a letter with me that my father had written to her after he was placed in solitary confinement for ten days. He wrote: “Nancy . . . I’m sorry if my letter has appeared to be a bit grim, but it’s worse than I’ve presented. I’m the eternal optimist, but the ugliness demonstrated sometimes by the human condition is distressing. America has lost her way, and there’s no leadership on the horizon to straighten out these entrenched problems. But, Washington in the springtime is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and let’s be hopeful for the November elections. As Bob Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
My father was right. America has lost her way. If only he could see his part. Why was it so easy to point the finger? Why has it been so hard to look at ourselves?
I pulled up to the house and hopped out of the car. There was a new driveway built in front, covering half of our old front lawn, and fancy posts placed out front with streetlights. New flowers and bushes had been planted. I walked up to the front door and peered in the window. Gold furniture and frilly curtains covered the living room. No one seemed to be home. I sat down in the gra
ss next to the driveway. An airplane was passing overhead. Descending down the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport. I couldn’t make out any faces or see what airline it was. But I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare with my hand, and watched it fly by. And I missed Dad. I missed Mom. I missed Mara, and I missed Chloe. I missed my family. The way we were, or the way we could have been. Ten years had gone by. And for what? For love, my father would say. He did it for love. I said good-bye to my house; it didn’t belong to me anymore. It never did to begin with.
That night, I had a strange dream. I dreamt that we had come back. My father was outside watering the boxwood bushes with a green hose. Chloe swung on the yellow swing set, while Mara played in the swimming pool. My mother was playing the piano in the loggia, and I could see them all. I could see my mother swaying back and forth to the music through the lace curtains, and I started running with Coco, our black Labrador. I was eleven years old. And I ran chasing her down the street into the cul-de-sac, and everything was the way I remembered it before the turn of the twenty-first century. And we were happy, the stakes were high, and there was so much to lose. I kept running after Coco down through the woods toward the edge of the creek. And when I turned around to look back, I tried to find my father but he was gone. I turned around, and everything was gone—just endless land like an empty field. And there was a woman walking toward me in the flat light. It was Lois, the neighborhood gossip, with her ferret perched on her shoulder. I stood in front of her, suspended forward to the present time, as her words pierced through me: “I’m so glad, honey. You’re back.”
I woke up the next morning wanting to go for a run, to shake off the trip. I ran out the front door and jogged left instead of right, up the hill instead of down. I’m not sure why I did that, because the previous mornings, I had never done this. I felt a rush of anger soar through me when I thought about all that I had learned: all of my faults, how terrified I am of real love, and if it would ever be possible—the willingness to be vulnerable because I’ve been so afraid of getting hurt again. And I thought about the dream and what it meant, and I knew that everything being gone meant that I was letting go.
I kept running, and when I got to the top of the street, I ran to the left and saw steps leading to a stone altar of some kind next to an abandoned building at the top of a hill with what looked like graffiti tags all over. The steps seemed like a good idea. I paced myself up to the very top and caught my breath. It was early and quiet. I heard a rustling noise and walked over to a shattered window. Shutters still hung inside the empty room. They blew against each other from the wind. I tried to look inside, but the glass was jagged, and it was hard to see through. I continued walking around the balcony. The building resembled the Kennedy Center, the same pillared square. When I turned the corner, I saw that someone had scrawled “Fuck Society!” in glittering black letters across the side facing the United States Capitol. What was this building?
Around the next corner, through tinted glass, I saw peeled wallpaper, and abandoned books and documents in glass cases. It looked like an old library—a law library, maybe, because a sticker placed on the other side of the glass panel said “No Trespassing.” I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I kicked the wall, just because; because why would someone leave books like that to rot away. I kept running toward another building. A redbrick building that looked like a castle. What is this place? Finally, I looked up, and there was a giant white flag whipping in the wind: Howard University School of Law.
You have to be kidding me, I thought. There is no way that I ran to the front lawn of Dad’s law school. The universe is fucking with me. I bent over laughing. I laughed so hard that I started to cry. I had never been there before. It occurred to me that my father had never taken me there. I kept running through the courtyard and around the building as class was being let out. I didn’t want anyone to see me crying so I ran through the parking lot toward the edge of the cliff where the woods began.
Black and blue clouds floating above and toward me. Hurricane Arthur was rolling his way up the coast, but I didn’t care. I ran along the grassy path next to towering oak trees, listening to the quiet rumbling of thunder in the distance. I slowed down to wipe my tears, and that’s when I saw them: a buck and his fawn. How odd. Weren’t fawns born in the spring? It was the middle of summer. The buck and his fawn walked toward me in the grass. I was waiting for them to leap back into the woods, but they didn’t. They didn’t. They stopped five feet from me, and that’s when I locked eyes with the buck. His eyes were dark and steady, both of us frozen. He turned his head toward the woods and suddenly went galloping into the trees without a second thought. But the little fawn with her white spots and golden tale didn’t follow right away. She stood there, staring at me. I looked at her fragile eyes, and I lost it. It was like she wanted to make sure I was okay. And I was okay, more than okay despite my uncontrollable sobbing—snot everywhere. (It wasn’t cute.) Then all of a sudden thunder roared, and the fawn took one last look at me and then hopped off into the woods to find her papa. This story was so much greater than me; so much greater than anything I could have ever anticipated. And I was powerless over it.
I sat down at the top of the grassy hill. I let the rain fall down and let the wind blow through me. I thought about the stories my father had told me as a young girl: about the Greek tragedies, about Zeus and Athena. I knew this was the end. It was so dramatic; it had to be this way. I could feel the wounds inside me were healing. I don’t know what my father and I might have been to each other in a past life or if we’ll meet each other in a future one. If this was supposed to be my lesson—our Greek tragedy—then so be it. Let the thunder roar and lightning strike! I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I felt so fucking free as I sat on top of that hill where his story began and where mine ended.
It was perfect.
-ACKNOWLEDGMENTS-
I would like to thank the army of women in my life who protected me and kept me steady as I trudged through deep waters. My deepest gratitude goes to Melissa Randall, whose guidance steered me through grief, where on the other side I found truth, whose ears and voice of support led me to reclaim my life. It would have been impossible without my mentor, Jill Schary Robinson, and her passion for writing, her wisdom and generosity, and for reminding me that writing is like magic. To Amalia Molina at the Center for Restorative Justice Works, for her brave and inspiring advocacy work for the children and families of the incarcerated, and for being a voice for the voiceless. To Jan Eliasberg, who has taught me a great deal about what it means to be a fearless, self-supporting woman, and who has held my hand every step of this journey. To Leslye Headland, for keeping me on track, and who suffered many of my phone calls filled with anger and tears, yet never failed to make me laugh. To the Palmer girls, Nancy, Molly, Carter, and Hope, for their lifetime of love and unwavering support; also for their kindness and acknowledgment during the most difficult years and for giving me a safe place to write, where I unexpectedly wrote the ending of my story. Thank you.
I am incredibly grateful to everyone at Gallery Books, beginning with my amazing editor, Alison Callahan, who, from our very first phone call, understood exactly how I wanted to tell my story. I am in awe of her work, always managing to pull more truth from me, propelling me to dig deeper and “go there,” and for her support on the other side. Thank you to Louise Burke, Jennifer Bergstrom, Nina Cordes, Philip Bashe, Meagan Brown, Elisa Rivlin, Alexandre Su, and Susan Rella for their dedication and hard work.
I am forever indebted to Todd Rubenstein, who believed I could write this story on my own, and for his love and dedication to InsideOUT Writers. A huge thank-you to the InsideOUT Writers’s family: teachers and staff. To the alumni, who know more about resilience and courage than I ever will. And a special shout-out to my Girls D Unit at Central Juvenile Hall, for their extraordinary voices that keep me inspired and humble every week. A big thank-you to Scott Budnick, for introducing me to InsideOUT Writers
and for his inspiring work at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.
I would like to thank the wonderful team at Foundry Literary + Media: my agent, Peter McGuigan, who believed in After Perfect in its earliest stages four years ago when it was just a messy scrapbook of stories, and who showed up for me when I was finally ready to write it. Many thanks to Matt Wise and Kirsten Neuhaus. And a special thank-you to Aaron Karo, for guiding me through the proposal process, and Dan Farah, for stepping in when chaos ensued.
Thank you to Jill Schary Robinson’s Wimpole Street Writers—my writer’s group—for their camaraderie and fellowship, and whose stories and words inspire me to be a better writer. I owe a special thank-you to Hannah Sward, Tiffany Bushnell, Craig Robinson, and George Jordan.
There’s nothing like having four brothers looking out for you with unconditional love and brutal honesty. David Petruzzi, Robert Krauss, Noah Gonzalez, and Max Crumm, words cannot express my love and thanks.
Thank you to Milana Rabkin, who was the first to say, “You should write a book.” An enormous thank-you to Alice Fox, neighbor and friend, who spent hours listening to pages and making me fresh pots of coffee. France Demoulin, Samantha Colicchio, Claire Woolner, Blaire Borkowski, Kara Froula, and Melanie Thomas, for listening. Cole Williams, for keeping me fit and mindful. The Seidlitz family, Auntie Anne, Uncle Pete, Ashley and Elizabeth, and the McDowell family, Uncle Larry, Alex, and Brianne, for being there.
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