Little Lies

by Cherie Bennett

  What a nightmare.

  My father asked the question. He kept his voice even. “Chad, you made it sound like you haven’t been talking to Lisa. Is the truth something else?”

  Chad studied his plate. “The truth is something else.”

  My folks looked at each other.

  “I think after we talk to Gemma, we need to talk to Chad,” my father told my mom.

  “I agree, but I do want to say where I think Chad is right,” my mother declared. “It’s not like it was when we were growing up. I hope that you guys are talking about that in Wait/Great.”

  She poured some creamer into her coffee and then took a swig. “So, Natalie. Anything you want to share this morning?” She said it in a joking way; I knew she’d never in a million years think I actually had something to confess that was on par with what Gemma and Chad had just said.

  Compared to what Gemma had said, and what Chad had said, what I could say wasn’t so awful. Was it?

  I didn’t want to find out. “Mom, Dad?” I stabbed a big eggy piece. “You really should make omelettes more often.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Friday evening. The night of my mom’s first live radio broadcast on KHLY, which could have been named for “holy” but more likely was named for Hollywood.

  She was doing the five-to-nine shift; the KHLY studio was on the Miracle Mile, not far from the CBS Television City complex. My whole family was going there with her for moral support … except for me. I had a shift of my own, at Whitehall.

  I did tune the Saturn’s radio to KHLY and heard numerous promos for my mother’s appearance as I drove to work. One of them had been recorded by my mother herself.

  “I’m Minister Marsha,” I heard her say. She always sounded more Midwest on the radio than in person. “I’m the minister of the Church of Beverly Hills, and I’ll be with you live at five on Friday to talk about God, morals, the issues in your life, the issues in my life, and what’s worth buying at the dollar store. In fact, I’ll talk about everything but tofu and the Middle Ages. Give me a call, Los Angeles. Let’s get to know each other.”

  Nice. Warm, welcoming, and nonthreatening.

  I could only imagine what the family drive to the studio was like. Gemma had told me that she’d had a serious yak with my parents about her wish to return to Minnesota for school. To her shock—and mine—my folks had not ruled it out. In return for their not ruling it out, though, Gemma had to do some activities they would arrange for her. What were those activities?

  “Wait and see,” was all my dad had said.

  With Chad, my parents also took a softer line than I’d expected. Chad’s argument had swayed them. There was no way in this day and age to keep him and Lisa Stevens apart. Maybe they could have done it thirty years earlier in the pre-cell, pre-Skype 1980s, but they couldn’t do it now. Which made me think that if Shakespeare had been born in our day instead of the sixteenth century, Romeo and Juliet would have been a nonstarter. They would have hooked up via Facebook, and that would have been that.

  But I digress.

  In any case, my folks decided to lift Chad’s grounding immediately, on the condition that he attended Wait/Great. And they warned that while they couldn’t keep him from Lisa, any “acting out”—read: sexual conduct, including make-out sessions—would result in Chad’s life being much less comfortable.

  When Chad had asked what that meant, they’d given him the same answer they’d given Gemma. “Wait and see.”

  Both my shift and my mother’s show started at five o’clock. After I parked my car, I texted her a quick Break a leg, you’ll be great! and then hustled to Whitehall. That night, I wore white linen pants, white Mary Jane shoes, and a white blazer over a white camisole. I had a nice thought as I went in the back entrance: this might be one of the last shifts I’d work without Mia on the floor with me.

  I’d arrived thirty minutes before opening, and the restaurant was bustling. Most of the waitstaff was reading the nightly bulletin Gabi posted by the bar. It listed the evening’s specials—where the ingredients came from, how they were prepared, et cetera. That night’s menu featured roast duck in a wild mushroom comfit with baby asparagus, and line-caught opal-eyed perch baked in its own skin, with new sweet potatoes and carrots. The fish was so fresh that we were invited to ask our guests if they would like to see it pre-scaled. Gabi’s note was that many restaurants weren’t always honest about the kinds of fish they served, substituting something like haddock filets for more expensive species. That would never happen at Whitehall.

  Steven was behind the bar, setting up for the evening. “Hey, Nat?” he called. “Gabi wants to see you. In his office. I bet he’s got your clothes.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up. Excellent. With this job, I needed every white piece of my wardrobe at the ready.

  Gabi’s small office was between the restrooms and the kitchen. His door was halfway open. Though I could see him behind his desk, perusing wine catalogs, I tapped gently. He looked up and then spoke to me softly. “Natalie. I’m glad you’re here. Come in. And please shut the door.”

  I did. “My clothes are ready?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not yet, Natalie. I’ll send them to you when they come back from the cleaners, because I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go. Effective immediately.”

  What?

  Had he just said that I was fired? As in terminated? As in no longer a Whitehall employee?

  Then Gabi was on his feet, ushering me toward the door. “Experience tells me that the best thing for everyone is for you to use the rear exit and not stop to chitchat. We’ll mail your check.”

  Holy merde. It was true. I was history.

  Brooke. It had to be Brooke’s fault. The beeyotch.

  I held my ground, seething at Brooke and her minions. Obviously, despite Gabi’s assurances the previous night that everything was cool, everything hadn’t been cool. Maybe one of their parents had called and said that if I wasn’t fired, there’d be trouble. Maybe one of them was the big boss himself, and Gabi hadn’t found that out until that day.

  The right thing to do was leave, but I felt like I had nothing to lose. “Is this because of what happened last night? Someone’s making you fire me? And you’re going along with it because if you don’t, you’re gone, too? I’d understand if that was it.”

  Gabi shook his head. “It’s complicated. But the bottom line is the same. I have to let you go.”

  There it was. He’d practically confirmed my theory.

  Hate is not a good emotion. At the moment, I didn’t care. Multiply how much hate you think I had in my heart by a factor of ten, and that’s how I was feeling about Brooke.

  Gabi lowered his voice. “Natalie? If you ever need a reference, contact me. Really, I’d love to help you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to work anywhere else. I want to work here. Damn those kids. Damn them!”

  For a minister’s daughter? That’s very strong language.

  Gabi met my eyes with some reluctance. “That wasn’t what it was.”

  I told him that was bulldinky, except in harsher terms.

  “You need to leave, I mean it. If you need a reference, call me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I had no intention of calling him for a reference. Not now, not ever.

  I went straight to my car. When the valet brought it to me, I asked if I could make a quick phone call. He nodded and waved me into an open place right by the entrance.

  I called Brett.

  “Hello, beautiful girl,” he answered. “Shabbat shalom.”

  I was taken aback. “Huh?”

  “You are such a Christian from Minnesota,” he said, teasing me. “ ‘Shabbat shalom’ means ‘peaceful Sabbath’ in Hebrew. It starts on Friday night. Mostly it’s an excuse for a good meal and a family argument.”

  “I’m sorry; I’m a little brain-dead. I just got fired.”

  “You what?” Brett’s shock was palpable.

 
“What I said. I just got fired.” I gave Brett a quick rundown, including Gabi’s bald lie that it had nothing to do with Brooke Summers.

  “You don’t believe him,” Brett surmised.

  “Brett? Brooke having nothing to do with this is like clouds having nothing to do with rain.” I was getting wound up all over again.

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Brooke yet. You deserve to know the truth. I’ll look into it,” he promised. “You heading home?”

  I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  “I’m at my folks’, we’re having dinner with my aunt and uncle from Thousand Oaks. We still good for tomorrow night?”

  “Yep. And wherever we’re going? I’m taking you.”

  We said goodbye, and I pulled onto Melrose. Traffic was heavy on Friday evening, and it took me forever to get from Melrose to La Cienega to Sunset. I didn’t mind. It let me cool down from the horrible experience of being fired, and also let me listen to my mother’s radio show. All it took was five minutes for me to realize she was as comfortable with her California audience as she was with white-bread Minnesotans.

  When I tuned in, she was taking a question from a man with a gravelly voice. “Do you think the whole world would be better if everyone was a Christian?”

  My mother laughed gently. Reassuringly. “Do I think the world would be better if everyone was a Christian? That depends on what version of Christian we’re talking about. ‘Christian’ meaning trying with every fiber of your being to live the way He did? It wouldn’t hurt. ‘Christian’ meaning you put the best of your own faith up against the worst of everyone else’s? Maybe not so much. What think you, listeners? Let’s take another call.”

  I was at the top of the hill near Sunset Boulevard when the next caller came through. She was a girl my age. “A friend of mine is in the Wait/Great group you’re doing at your church. Can you talk about that?”

  You didn’t have to ask my mother twice. In her usual style, she made it personal. She talked about the group, fortunately not mentioning the members by name, and the new temptations and challenges we faced here in L.A.

  “Saturday night at our church, we’ll have our first meeting of a group designed to support its members in making smart choices. It believes the smart choice is to wait.”

  I thought she should quit there. We were just getting started. No sense in being overwhelmed. We’d hoped for a good turnout of our kids and representatives from a few other churches, and that would be that.

  My mother, though, pressed on. “So no matter where you are in Southern California, if your church wants to send some teens, or you’re a kid who wants to see what it’s all about, we’d love to have you on Saturday night. All the info is on the church website.”

  Well. So much for our first meeting’s being small. It made me extra-glad that all I’d be doing was handing out programs. Or so I thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Natalie! You’re famous!”

  My sister shook me awake. I pulled the blanket over my head.

  “What time is it?” I croaked.

  “Seven-fifteen! Look at the paper!”

  “Lemme sleep,” I told her. The night before, I’d been so wound up by what had happened at Whitehall that I hadn’t fallen asleep until two, and that was after a long phone yak with Brett. I needed three more hours of shut-eye. Two for sleep deficit and one for emotional coddling.

  It was a lost cause. Gemma was going to show me an article in the Los Angeles Times whether I wanted to see it or not. She stood over me in boys’ gym shorts and a bra top, waving a section of the paper.

  Yes, my parents still took the newspaper in hard copy. Old habits die hard.

  “Come on, Nat. Wake up!” she commanded. “You’re famous! Get up, get up, get up!”

  Like I said, lost cause.

  “Okay, okay.”

  I rubbed sleep from my eyes and took the Times. It was the weekend “Religion” section.

  Whoa.

  Gemma was right. There I was, in a big candid photo that had been snapped at some moment during the interview earlier in the week. I was in my Whitehall whites; my mom had her arm around my shoulder. For a moment, it was unnerving to see the two of us like that. Like I would probably grow up to look like her. We have the same roundish face, the same bone structure, the same dirty-blond hair. Mine was enhanced by extensions; hers by Clairol Nice ’n Easy.

  The caption read “Like mother, like daughter. Minister Marsha Shelton inspires both celebrity congregants and her eldest daughter, Natalie.”

  As Gemma stood by expectantly, I scanned the long feature, which was about my mom and her new pulpit at the Church of Beverly Hills. It also mentioned us kids and how my father’s book was a hot Hollywood literary property. There was a big section about the first Wait/Great meeting.

  Then I read the final paragraph.

  Minister Marsha brings a message of hope and joy to her congregation.

  She believes that church should be not just a place where you go on Sunday, but a sacred space that you can carry with you through the rest of the week. Her message seems to be taking. When asked directly whether they were virgins, the three teen girls—including her daughter Natalie—all answered emphatically, “Yes.”

  Oh no. There it was, for all of Los Angeles to see. My little lie wasn’t so little anymore.

  I did my best to cover with Gemma.

  “Wow. This wasn’t supposed to run until after our meeting!”

  “Yep,” Gemma acknowledged. “That’s what Mom said. Anyway, there’ll be a zillion people there, tonight.”

  The Wait/Great organizers had to prep for maybe five hundred people instead of fifty. We might even have to revamp the program. There was so much to do now. I tried to push the Times article out of my mind as I got dressed, with my sister still in my room.

  “You know, there are hundreds of folding chairs in the basement,” I recalled. I pulled on a plain white T-shirt. “I think we’ll need them all.”

  “If you guys need help, I’m there,” Gemma told me.

  “We could definitely use you.”

  Gemma made a face. “Mom talked to me this morning. She said if there’s going to be any chance of me going back to Minnesota, I have to do five things a day for other people that I wouldn’t normally do. For the whole rest of the summer! Some of them will be her idea, and some I have to think of on my own.”

  I dug out a pair of flip-flops. Coffee, quick breakfast, and then straight to the church with Gemma. That was my agenda. “Helping us set up for the meeting tonight is hers, or yours?”

  “Mine,” Gemma declared. “This afternoon I’m doing one of hers. I’m supposed to start volunteer training at the children’s museum. I think it’s called the Zummer or something.”

  Huh. Interesting parental strategy with my sister. Get her out of thinking just about herself, and get her thinking about other people. Smart, no matter how it turned out.

  As opposed to having so many people at the first Wait/Great meeting. I wasn’t sure that was smart at all.

  Gemma and I rode with my mom to church. My mother went to her office; Gemma and I met the rest of the organizing committee in the social hall. We were about a dozen kids, and we worked straight through to 1:30 p.m.—scrubbing the social hall itself, setting up folding chairs, reorganizing the audiovisual system, doing sound checks, revising and printing more programs, and revamping our presentation to account for what would be an overflow crowd. At one-thirty p.m., when we broke for a brown-bag lunch, Gemma’s driver took her to the museum for training. The plan was for the rest of us to work until three, go home to clean up, and be back at the church by six. I was sweaty from mopping the social hall floor and arranging folding chairs. A shower sounded like heaven.

  The revamped presentation for the evening was still simple. There’d be a welcome and prayer from my mother, introduced by our junior minister, Mr. Bienvenu. Then Shep Samuels would play a co
uple of acoustic songs, which would be followed by the keynote address from Sandra. Then the organizing committee would be introduced, we’d show a short film about our church and its history, and Gisela would explain the Wait/Great calendar for the next couple of months. My mother would speak again at the very end, and we’d aim to finish seventy-five minutes after we started.

  Oh yeah. Being the Church of Beverly Hills, we’d finish with refreshments in the courtyard. Really nice refreshments. Fortunately, we were using the same catering company that did Craft Service for Working Stiff. It was no problem for them to adjust from an expected crowd of fifty to an expected crowd of five hundred.

  Just before we broke for the afternoon at three o’clock, we hit our first snag. Sandra got a surprise text from her mom. Her beloved aunt in Washington, D.C., had been diagnosed that afternoon with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Stage four. It had a crappy prognosis, and Sandra’s mom wanted to go back east immediately.

  It was terrible news for Sandra, but fortunately not catastrophic for us. Courtney would take over as keynoter and chair for the evening. She would read Sandra’s prepared remarks, with a few minor changes of her own. We all hugged Sandra, said we’d pray for her aunt—though again, I had my doubts about whether God had anything to do with either someone’s getting cancer or that person’s being cured—and left feeling somber. Wait/Great wasn’t life and death. This was.

  Before we headed out, we also figured out our jobs for the evening. Because people would recognize my face from the newspaper article, Courtney asked me to be the official greeter as people entered the social hall. She gave me a huge Church of Beverly Hills name badge and a blue Wait/Great organizer baseball cap; we’d all wear them before the meeting started.

  So much for a low profile. I drafted Mia to help me.

  We went home, showered and changed, and returned to the church at six. Again, I rode over with my mom, while Gemma and Chad would come later with my dad. Mia and I went to the social hall double doors. She wore a short black silk skirt, a gray silk top, and a black-and-silver choker that looked amazing with her dreadlocks. I was wearing a short blue skirt and a dark blue high-collared top. Alex would have approved: the baseball cap and name tag matched perfectly with my outfit.