Find Me I'm Yours

by Hillary Carlip

  Chapter 41

  DAY 10—MORNING

  Nine-grain pancakes with melting butter and warmed maple syrup. Eggs Benedict on homemade biscuits with turkey bacon and fresh avocado. Tropical fruit salad with fresh lavender and mint. These are all things I DIDN’T have for breakfast.

  Though Mom offered to take me and S.H.A.R.I. and Jason out to eat on our way home from the hospital (in her PT Cruiser rental car), as much as I would have killed for a real meal, I couldn’t bear to sit there with those three.

  Since I couldn’t risk S.H.A.R.I. finding out about K & C Donut and taking that from me, too, instead we picked up some stuff from Winchell’s. What is it with logo revamps? Why do companies whose brands are solid and everlasting feel compelled to update and always add a WISP? It’s like they each had the same one designer redo their logos, and they directed the artist to “include that ultra-modern wisp!” Case in point:

  (Wisps worked into BOTH updated hairdo and collar!)

  Which do you prefer?

  Click here to take my poll:

  (If you didn’t go to my poll, here’s what I asked:)

  WHICH LOGOS DO YOU PREFER?

  Winchell’s before

  Winchell’s after with wisps

  Super 8 before

  Super 8 after with wisps

  Juicy Fruit before

  Juicy Fruit after with wisps

  Comfort Inn before

  Comfort Inn after with wisps

  KFC before

  KFC after with wisps

  When we got home, the kids were so glad to see me that they knocked my unsteady self onto the ground. I thanked Jason and S.H.A.R.I. for their help—the first nice words I had ever felt compelled to say to my roomie since the day I moved in and she stole my favorite lipstick then lied about having it, though I saw it tucked into her cleavage… a sight one doesn’t easily forget. When Jason said he had to go and kissed Boo, Toupee, and me goodbye, but not S.H.A.R.I., I felt some relief. Then I took my dogs, my mom, coffee, and donuts into my lair and closed the door.

  “I’m so happy you have such a fantastic roommate,” Mom said.

  I couldn’t help doing a spit take with my coffee.

  “What?” she asked. “She’s great!”

  I decided to leave it at that. If my mom saw that my entire life had fallen apart, I would like her to think there was at least one positive thing in it, and if it appeared to be S.H.A.R.I., however the fuck THAT happened, I’d go with it.

  “I’ll be right back.” I locked myself in the bathroom and called Mark. For all I knew he got roofied, too, and was lying in some alley.

  “Hello?” A totally groggy voice answered.

  “It’s Mags. You OK?”

  “Definitely hungover. I just woke up. You? We got pretty wasted.”

  “You don’t even know…” is all I said.

  “Well,” Mark was trying to sound all sexy, “don’t we need to go get some coffee?”

  Even though I still totally didn’t trust him, I really did like Mark. And it was hard to erase our very hot night together AND our very drunk night together—pre-roofie. But I couldn’t let him be a distraction at this point, and he could have so easily become that and more.

  “My mom came to town to surprise me, so I’m gonna spend time with her,” I answered. “Let’s talk in a few days.”

  I should have said FOUR days, to be exact. After 12:00 noon.

  “OK, I can deal. It might take me that long to get rid of this hangover,” he joked.

  We said goodbye and I returned to my room to eat donuts with my mom.

  I heard about everything going on in her life, finally ending (almost an hour later) with how embarrassed she was about Cooper. She used the word embarrassed. Not worried. She had no idea about the mortification that was bound to come once she found out Cooper got a girl pregnant.

  “I really need some air and the kids have to be walked,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Acch. Seeing as she just flew across the country to visit me for the first time since I moved out here, even if it was to lure me back home to make her life easier, I couldn’t have very well said I preferred to be alone. So we put the leashes on Boo and Toupee and headed out the door together.

  We walked down Sunset, me waving to some of the locals, including Lady Macmeth. Then I turned right on Micheltorena. I had to do a walk-by and see if Coco went to Florida or not. Why? Not a fucking clue, since I was hating on her now.

  “Hey, Mags.”

  Blake was in the driveway packing things into his pickup truck.

  “Hey, how ya doing?” We walked up to him. “My mom surprised me with a visit from New York. This is Nar—uh, MARcie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “You, too.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Um… I’m moving out. Thought it would be easier to do while Coco’s in Florida.”

  “WHAT?!?! Are you serious?”

  “Dead.”

  Oh, shit. It hit me. “You know, don’t you?”

  Blake just nodded.

  “OK, remember what you said to me about Jason? About giving second chances? I know how much Coco loves you. She just got so frustrated.”

  “Well, that’s some way to deal with it, isn’t it?”

  “I know,” I said, not exactly Coco’s biggest fan at this point. “So are you going back to Chicago?”

  “I’m not sure. Gonna go stay with a friend in Hollywood for now.”

  “You can work it out, I know you can.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I hugged Blake goodbye; both of us had tears welling up in our eyes. “I have faith in you guys,” I whispered.

  “Well, at least one person does,” he said, putting his guitar on the front seat.

  We walked some more and I told Mom about Coco and Blake and what had gone down with Mark. And, to her credit, she actually listened. Probably for the first time ever, she didn’t interject things about HER and make it all about HER. So I decided to go for broke. Before I did, however, I had some conditions.

  “So, if I tell you something, you promise to keep an open mind?”

  “Promise.”

  “You promise not to judge, and stay positive?”

  “Promise.”

  “You promise to never again, for the rest of your life, mention the Newman Curse?”

  She had to take a bit of time to really consider this one. “You know the only reason I’ve ever said that is that I never found anyone after your father, I’m sure Grandma Dotty will die of, or at least with, a broken heart, and her mother spent her last years in an asylum, a lonely spinster. So they always said the curse was passed down.”

  “Well, I’m about to break it and free us all.”

  I think I spotted a glimmer of hope in my mom’s eyes. That, or it was just sunlight reflecting off her contact lenses. (Yeah, I inherited her bad eyesight. Thanks, Mom!)

  “Then I promise.”

  So I told her everything. Well, except about quitting/getting fired. But I did tell her about finding the tape. The dog with the polka-dot tongue. The apartment in Venice. Sole Mates Shoe Repair. The DELHICATESSEN truck. The big rooster in Chinatown. Mr. La Salsa. The campsite in Malibu. The puppet show. The lost dog poster and website ploy, and where I left off with my giant donut research.

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!!!” she exclaimed. “Crazy in a good way,” she quickly added.

  “Right?”

  “So, are you ready?” she asked.

  “For what?”

  “To go to all the giant donut places. I’ll drive.”

  I wanted to weep again. My mom was finally doing something for ME.

  “Seriously?”

  “Of course. Anything to break that damn curse! I’m ready to get married, too!”

  Oh well. At least Narcie and I had one thing in common.

  Chapter 42

  DAY 10—DAY

  I sta
rted seeing Mom in a new way. Literally and figuratively. LITERALLY: Before we hit the giant donut spots, she took me to get new glasses. We found a place that filled prescriptions while you wait, so within an hour, I was once again seeing clearly! FIGURATIVELY: This was the first time in years that we really hung out together, and I got to see she was actually kinda cool. While growing up, she was so busy working by day and dating by night, when we saw each other, it was mostly about logistics. “Can you take Cooper to his dentist appointment after school?” “Will you pick up some toilet paper on your way home?” OR if she went out of her way to make a “special time” for Coop and me to go out with her, it always felt like an obligaysh.

  When it came time to pay for my new, black-rimmed, adorkable (without the A and ABLE—just the DORK) glasses, I was ready to do my “I left my wallet at home” spiel to buy time (since that’s all I could afford). Mom didn’t need to know that on top of all my other failures since moving to Los Angeles, when I quit/got fired I left without taking my last paycheck. But before I could even insist on paying, she did. I argued, wanting to convince her I was doing fine, and thankfully she bought it. The story AND the glasses.

  We spent the next two hours giant-donut-shop hopping, and found nothing at any of our stops except more caffeine and sugar. OH, and a shout-out to Amazon’s eBook reader:

  Parked outside on our last stop, the Donut Hole drive-through, Mom had me go through all the clues again carefully. When she hooked onto something, I was beginning to see that maybe my supah-sleuthing skillz were hereditary—in addition to the bad eyesight (but not THE CURSE, right, Liza?!).

  “So,” she said, “you keep getting led to these websites that end in L.A., right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Then let’s try some different names having to do with BIG and GIANT and end them in L.A.”

  “YOU’RE A GENIUS!! Who knew?”

  She gave me a sad look, not blaming me for not knowing, but blaming herself for not letting me know. We both turned the focus to our phones. We searched for things like, “big landmarks + LA,” “giant landmarks + LA,” “big statues + LA,” “giant statues + LA,” and did the same spelling out Los Angeles as well.

  We couldn’t find any specific sites, but we kept trying various combinations till we finally struck gold:

  www.GiantThingsLA.com, which then forwarded to www.GiantThings.com

  It featured, what else? Giant pics of giant things! And very funny captions on each. There was a search bar at top of the site, so I simply entered “Los Angeles.” There, two of the three giant things I had been to so far were pictured, and there were several new large landmarks I had no idea about before!

  “So, what should we hit first, the giant golf balls in Studio City?” Mom asked. “Get it? HIT?”

  “Funny, Mom. The giant light bulb would have been a bright idea,” I gave it back to her, “but the site says it’s no longer there. So let’s stay on course and go to the golf balls.”

  Thanks to my fave traffic-avoidng app, Waze, we found the quickest route to the Valley, and Weddington Golf & Tennis. When we pulled up and saw eight towering tees with giant balls (yeah, I said it), I was taken aback by their beauty. When we ran up to them we realized they were LIGHTS, which was even more brill! But we found no clues at all.

  “So where next?” my mother asked.

  “Well,” I pondered as I looked at more giant things on the GiantThings.com website, “like getting back on the horse after you’ve been thrown, maybe I had better conquer my newfound fear of tikis.”

  “Nice plan. Let’s go.”

  I just hoped the giant ones on Bronson wouldn’t be as tanked as I was the night before.

  Chapter 43

  DAY 10—AFTERNOON

  Good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?

  I’m always curious to see which people prefer, so…

  Go take my poll and let me know:

  WHICH DO YOU PREFER?

  I prefer to get GOOD NEWS first

  I prefer to get BAD NEWS first

  Personally, I like hearing GOOD NEWS first so I can be buoyed up enough to be able to make it through the bad news. So here goes.

  WE ACTUALLY FOUND A TAPE FROM MR. WTF AT THE TIKIS!!!!!!

  The bad news: There was only ONE tape there. Not THREE. Or even TWO.

  Could Whitney AND someone else have gained a lead? FUCK. While I was busy wreaking havoc at a crafts fair, getting roofied at a bar, having a slumber party in emergency, and checking out six giant donuts and eight enormous balls, two other potential MRS. WTFs could have totally gotten ahead of me.

  “STEP ON IT,” was all I said to my accomplice (would that be A-MOM-PLICE?!) “Back to the apartment and my camera, STAT!” (I had overheard STAT in the hospital, but not from a doctor or nurse—on a rerun of House coming from the TV behind the curtain next to me.)

  While Mom sped, NY taxi–style, I checked out www.ISpottedYourDog.com and found that seven pics had been uploaded!! But none looked much like the dog with the polka-dot tongue (one was even a poodle!?).

  Keep looking, people! Keep posting! There’s a reward involved!!!

  “Mom, I didn’t ask you, how long are you staying?”

  “My flight leaves tomorrow morning at 8:00. Got to get back to work and Cooper. Make sure that while I was gone he didn’t turn the apartment into a meth lab! So, are you going to come home with me?”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, I really can’t. I’m there for Cooper. We talk all the time. But I can’t just uproot my life because you need help.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  I think she actually meant it. In a good way.

  “But thanks for coming, Mom. It means a lot to me.”

  “Of course. You’re my daughter and I love you no matter what.”

  I wasn’t sure what the “no matter what” was about, but I didn’t really want to know.

  “I love you too, Mom. Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. I do. I know I’ve been an awful mother, but I’ve tried my best, Mags.”

  “You haven’t been awful,” I lied. It was so hard to hear my mom acknowledge her faults. I actually preferred her to stay strong, even if it meant her being oblivious and narcie. “And it wasn’t your fault.”

  She looked broken and I couldn’t take it, so I tried to find something posi to say, Liza-style. “Hey, you’re worried about me and Cooper. So that makes you a great mother.”

  My mom hugged me. Maybe that was all either one of us ever wanted from each other. Just a little acknowledgment.

  Chapter 44

  DAY 10—EVENING

  “Very impressive so far.”

  That’s how the tape started. I was on my bed watching first, using my earbuds so S.H.A.R.I. couldn’t overhear anything. Then it would be my mom’s turn to see—as close to in the flesh as possible—who her future son-in-law might be.

  Click the pic to watch the video:

  If you didn’t go watch it, here’s what it said:

  Very impressive so far. You’ve had to be clever and think big in order to figure out the clues. This time, I’m gonna make it easy on you.

  For your next clue, you’re gonna look somewhere on a website. All you have to do is find a four-star review of an all-star revue and you’ll be four steps closer to finding me. But you only have four days left to do so. So what are you waiting for?

  Right time, right place, at 12:00 noon.

  I’M X-CITED TO MEET YOU.

  [www.stripteasela.com comes on the screen.]

  OK, this tape was off the hook! Mr. WTF was wearing THE HUNT SHIRT! And these killer marquee lights surrounded him. Damn, he was so damn genius!!

  After my mom watched, I could tell she was also taken by his charms. Who wouldn’t be? “Oh, Mags, he’s darling!” But she was also wary. “But triple XXX? And a website for strip joints?”

  Well, she may have had a point.
Especially when Mom squeezed on the bed with Toupee, Boo, and me, and we found out we had to register to even see anything on the website. Was Mr. WTF now showing a dark side? I put in my email address and was redirected. Of course the site was kitschy and cool, not like the cheesy Spearmint Rhino billboards that line the freeways, sandwiched between lap-band surgery signs. It featured listings and awesome pics of local burlesque shows and venues.

  “So,” I said, clicking around, “let’s find a four-star review for an all-star revue.”

  “How do we know which one he’s talking about?” Mom asked.

  “Exactly. He NEVER makes it easy,” I answered. “What fun would that be?!”

  “Are there certain words you could look for that might stand out?”

  “Well, let’s do a strip search! Hahaha, get it!” I searched for words on the site.

  Clue

  Hunt

  Giant

  Dog

  Spotted tongue

  Match

  Mate

  Soul mate

  Destiny

  Serendipity

  Fate

  The only word that came up was DESTINY, and it was the name of a featured stripper in a revue called “Peep-A-Boo” at a venue named the Herlesque Club. Could that have been it? It did get a four-star review. “WAIT, LOOK!!!” I squealed!

  “What? I don’t see what you’re seeing,” Mom said.

  I dragged a pic of the Herlesque stage onto my desktop, then opened it wide.

  “Look in the video screen. It’s the graphic of the shirt he was wearing in the tape,” I explained, as I went into the back of my closet. “It’s the same shirt I was given and instructed to wear during the hunt.” I pulled mine out of hiding and showed her.

  I put my hand up and for the first time ever, high-fived my mom. Good thing we connected on the second attempt, cuz I wasn’t about to do it more than two times with her.

  “So, when are we going?” Mom asked.