A Girl's Best Friend

by Kristin Billerbeck

  “Whose taste, Dad? I’m not invited anywhere.”

  He waves me off. “You will be. Slide it on.”

  I put the ring on with a big sigh. “Happy?”

  “You sure you won’t wear it on the left hand? Then, the newspapers would wonder if you were engaged again, and—”

  “Dad!”

  “All right.”

  Lilly and Poppy are both staring at my dad with their mouths ready to catch the next fly that passes by. We’ve all known each other since college, but my dad isn’t usually in his sales mode when my friends are around. I guess he’s finally decided to tear the veil. All this time, everyone thought I was a princess. Well, even princesses have their calendar of duties.

  “I’m concentrating on my business just now, Mr. Malliard, but when the time comes, you’ll know.” Lilly winks at my dad.

  “I don’t understand this generation. Businesses, spa trips . .. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned getting married and having babies?”

  Silence.

  “So, Morgan,” Lilly finally says through the icy stillness. “The spa?”

  “I’ll pack my bags,” I say hastily as I reach for the newspaper in Lilly’s hands and head to my bedroom.

  Once inside, I let out a deep breath and slide to the floor on the Iranian carpet my father paid a fortune for. (“Six hundred knots per inch!” he boasted.) I lift the paper and look at Andy’s picture one last time. I keep thinking that with just one more glance, I’ll have the answers I need. But they aren’t there. Not before. Not now.

  Sure, there were signs he was slick like a water slide, but truthfully, I loved his quiet bravado and mistakenly took it for the nerve he’d need to face music rejection in Nashville. I pictured him standing up to the country version of Simon Cowell, and my heart clenched for him under such pressure. I was thankful for his solid personality and Bond-like arrogance.

  What a putz!

  Gazing around my professionally decorated room, I stare at all the “homey” touches given by the designer to generate the impression of warmth and comfort. In reality, someone could rip a picture out of Architectural Digest and it would feel more like home than this. I have lived my entire life like a piece of exquisite sculpture, careful not to disturb my surroundings or move from my appointed spot. I’m just one more piece of furniture.

  I know my friends are waiting, but I suddenly feel like there’s so much to be gleaned from this bedroom. So much about me that I need to understand before I venture out into the world again. I pull myself off the floor and cross the room to the oversized, arched window. It’s a gorgeous day. Sun beams into the room, and I can see clear to the Marin Headlands. One thing about San Francisco’s fog, when it’s gone, the view is unparalleled. No one has a truer appreciation for a clear view than a San Franciscan who generally spends her days buried in a misty gray world. At least, the beginning and the end of the day are spent in soggy bookends of clouds.

  From my window, I can observe the litany of city traffic below: the cable cars, the ferries on the Bay, even the halted cars lined up on the Golden Gate Bridge. I wonder how many of those people read the Chronicle this morning. I wonder how many know me only as the Jilted Jewelry Heiress.

  As I look across the water to Alcatraz, it suddenly dawns on me that the jail I’ve created for myself is probably harder to escape than that jutting hard rock in the middle of the frigid San Francisco Bay. Mine has Richard Malliard as the warden.

  I’ve waited up here on Russian Hill, hoping for Prince Charming to rescue me. And when I finally let down my hair, I placed it smack in the hands of a con artist. What I’m seeing for the first time in my bedroom, with the absence of anything I’d really call my own without the decorator’s help, is that I have no idea who I am. I’m not interesting enough to rescue is the sad fact of the matter, and I have made my own bed.

  Okay, not technically speaking—Mrs. Henry actually makes my bed. But my mental bed? That’s all mine. A tangled mass of 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets that no one wants to bother straightening. The thing is if I don’t do it, no one will.

  I stuff the newspaper into my desk drawer and pull out my designer luggage before realizing this is part of the problem. I hate this luggage. My father bought it in Paris, hoping to impress someone, I suppose. Tossing the fancy stuff back, I yank out a duffle bag I got as a freebie and fill it with a few T-shirts and some sweats. It looks like something Lilly would bring, and this makes me smile.

  Reality . . . here I come.

  chapter 2

  I emerge from my room to find Lilly and Poppy wringing their hands over me. Not physically, but they stop talking when I enter and grin at me in a placating way. As if I’m in the “special” classroom.

  “I’m fine,” I announce. “Are you fine, Lilly?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I haven’t been the best friend to you lately.”

  Lilly shrugs. “Whatever. Max and I took a cab, no big deal. You have bigger fish to fry. The fact that we haven’t seen you in two months was more nerve-racking.”

  “Be sure and smile for the cameras, girls. And Lilly, you should make sure they spell your name right in case there are any fashionistas wanting to buy your stuff.”

  “What should I do?” Poppy, our gauze-wearing chiropractic friend asks.

  “Tell them you’re the ‘Before,’” Lilly jokes. “Or the Glamour ‘Don’t,’ and we’re on our way to make you over.”

  “You know,” Poppy says angrily, “people just really don’t think that much about what you wear, Lilly. You have an over-inflated ego or a deep-rooted insecurity that should be addressed.”

  Lilly gasps. “Heresy! You’re speaking to a designer. In my world, people care what you wear. If they didn’t, I’d still be poring over spreadsheets in finance.”

  “I’m just saying, I show up like this everywhere,” Poppy lifts her gauzy, Nightmare-on-Polk-Street skirt. “People don’t really care.”

  “That’s because you look like Nicole Kidman, Poppy.” Lilly shakes her head. “People don’t care because you’re gorgeous. Don’t kid yourself—you make it acceptable. Try being homely and dressing like that and see how far you get. Quasimodo in gauze does not have the same reactions. Case in point? If I went on Oprah and jumped on her couch to tell her I was in love? They’d come out with a straightjacket. Tom Cruise gets away with it because he’s gorgeous.”

  “You both worry too much what people think,” Poppy accuses. Then she gets her natural-healing expression on and takes her Zen tone. Here it comes. “Self-esteem comes from the Lord, not other people. Why should we care what others think?”

  “Well, my church congregation seemed to care,” I say, recalling with too much emotion my Sunday experience. “When I walked into church, there were whispers, and they didn’t even try to mask their disdain that I should enter a holy place. They’d convicted me, painted me the scandalous woman, and I never even had the chance to defend myself.”

  Lilly nods. “Yeah, your church always stunk, though. You just never saw it. I knew when we showed up that night to your singles group that that gang didn’t feel the love.”

  Lilly is right. She usually is. True, she’s often right without much thought given to tact, but still.

  “It would be really nice to believe people didn’t care.” I sling my bag over my shoulder. “That they gave you the benefit of the doubt. But people love to witness failure.”

  “You didn’t fail,” Poppy says. “You made a mistake. Anger doesn’t do any good.”

  I feel said anger well up within me like a marshmallow boiling over an open flame. “You know, if it was Johnny Depp I was accused of adultery with, well, so be it, gossip away. But a guy without a job, who was living off his wife in Daly City while I thought he was off in Nashville making his way as a Christian artist? Now that’s just humiliating. Scandal with Brad Pitt is one thing, but it takes on a whole different feeling with Andy Mattingly, bigamist and small-time con artist.�
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  My friends just let me rant. They know scandal with Brad Pitt really holds no better appeal. Scandal is an ugly word for a reason, and the scarlet letter is alive and well in today’s free society. Even in liberal San Francisco.

  Poppy grabs my duffle from me and nearly knocks herself over. “What do you have in here? Are you toting pickles now, too?”

  She opens my bag, and I look away.

  “Need a little self-help fix, Morgan?” Poppy pulls out the first book: The Purpose-Driven Life. The second: Dr. Phil’s Life Strategies. The third: Making Peace with Your Parents. And the fourth: Max Lucado’s It’s Not about You. Both of them are staring at me as though I’m a complete stranger now, as I’m not exactly the inner-search type. I’m all about the outer search and heading to Nordstrom when the pressure mounts.

  “Have you been watching Oprah again?” Lilly asks.

  “I’m remaking my life.” I shrug. “Those are books I’ve collected over the years.” But never actually read, I add silently. Confession: I usually go to a boutique until the feelings of “Daddy angst” dissipate, as his Visa payment expands. Mission accomplished.

  Poppy shrugs. “You got a Bible in here?”

  “Oh! I’ll be right back!” I run and grab the Bible that Lilly covered for my wedding that never happened. She made it out of the shantung silk I bought for the gown, and it’s one of my very favorite things. First, because she made it, and next because I think of Marcus when I see it.

  Thinking of my almost-first marriage helps take some of the sting out of my recent sort-of-second marriage. Marcus and I may not have been getting married for love, but we did love each other in a very special way. His death from liver disease really put me into a place of mass confusion.

  “So we’re ready?” Poppy asks when I run back out.

  “We are.”

  The scent of my father’s expensive cologne lingers in the room like an invisible cloud of his very being. I can almost make out his shape. “Did my father leave?” They nod and I feel relief that I can just disappear under the radar.

  Mrs. Henry is nowhere to be seen, and that’s just as well too. We have never actually liked each other, but from what my father tells me, she was good to my mother. I vaguely remember that, but Mrs. Henry’s rudeness to our surviving family has far outweighed anything good I remember. I was too young, and my father was too desperate at the time. All I know is the woman hovers like a ghost and is just as creepy.

  “Let’s go,” Lilly says, and she wears her anxiety by shaking her hands nervously. Lilly has a difficult time sitting still. I’m still not sure why she comes with us to the spa; she practically has to force herself to sit through a treatment—like she’s getting tortured. She has the personality of a hamster on a running wheel, as if slowing down will leave her hovering between up and down, so she can’t stop.

  “Okay, one more thing before we go,” I add as we head towards the elevator. I take a deep breath and say out loud what I’ve been thinking since they hauled Andy off to the pokey. “I’ve decided that part of the reason I fell for Andy again was that I’d created a false image in my mind.”

  “Sure,” Poppy says.

  “You’re just figuring this out?” Lilly adds.

  “So, in order to prevent that in the future, I’ve decided I need to learn what it’s like to live in the real world. So I was thinking maybe we should take Lilly’s car.”

  Now granted, calling Lilly’s car a car is a stretch. It’s definitely what you might call authentic living, in that it was purchased from a neighbor when she crashed it, and proudly it displays all the reminders of that day. Once upon a time, it came into this world as a Saab. Now she calls it the Slob, and it’s my Cinderella carriage into my new life.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Lilly asks. “I’m not sure my car will actually make it to the spa, Morgan. It’s a five-hour drive. Isn’t there some other way to start? Like maybe getting drugstore lipstick versus Bloomie’s or something?”

  “Come on, it will be fun!” I enthuse, anxious to get on with Life in the Real World. “I need to have a dose of authenticity. To experience what the rest of you have struggled for. Otherwise, I don’t know if I can give this all up, and I have to give it all up or I’ll never be able to tell the Andys from the Princes.”

  “So you want to slum it, is that right?” Lilly asks.

  “Slum is a harsh word. I want to know what it feels like to drive in a normal car where you’re not garnering attention for your ride.”

  “Oh, we’ll garner attention, all right.” Lilly shrugs. “But sure, whatever.”

  We take the elevator down to the parking garage where Lilly’s car has been hidden by the doorman to keep its “realness” away from my fellow penthouse dwellers. The bellman brings the car around, and I get another glimpse of the Slob. Oh dear, I don’t remember it being quite that bad. I start to nibble on my lower lip, knowing full well my snootiness is going to get me nowhere in the real world. I sing that song in my head about stepping out of my comfort zone, into the realm of the unknown, and the doorman opens the Slob door.

  “So let’s go!” I pile into the back and see the earthy leather seats, ripped by its former owner’s dog. I also smell cleaning supplies. Lilly has a little issue with Lysol—an addiction, you might say. The air is stifling, hanging heavy with the deep, antiseptic aroma I’ve grown to associate with her (and the hospital during my mother’s illness).

  “Feeling real yet?” Lilly laughs.

  “It’s fine,” I lie, holding my breath while I pump the button to open the window.

  “Oh, that window doesn’t work. The wreck, you know,” Lilly informs me. I gasp for air since I’ve been holding my breath too long.

  “It is not fine,” Poppy says as she slides in. “When are you going to get married, Lilly, and have Max buy you a decent car? This thing was a piece a decade ago.”

  “I can’t believe you said that, Poppy! Since when do I need a man to take care of me?”

  We both look around the car, but neither one of us says what we’re thinking to Lilly. She’s a sadist, but at least she has good taste in men.

  “Sorry, you’re absolutely right.” Poppy slinks down in her seat. “It just seems like an obvious decision. You two adore each other. You drive a complete piece of trash and live in a dump. He’s wealthy, gorgeous, lives in the Marina, puts up with your nana, and is dying to get married. You do the math.”

  “Getting married would only add more stress. This business is going to be my success. No one is going to say I married into it.”

  I understand Lilly’s feelings. She loves Max Schwartz, heir to a San Francisco hotel dynasty, and she won’t have anyone belittling their love by saying she wants his money. But it does make me wonder. Then I see the faintest sign of a tear in her eye. Lilly is not the tear-shedding type. “It will work out.”

  As someone who has been slowly seduced by and is now officially owned by my father’s money, I can’t say I fault her. But I don’t know that I’d take such drastic steps to prove it. Driving in the Slob for one day is a big enough step for me.

  “Morgan was born into prosperity, Lilly. No one minds that she drives a BMW. It’s expected of her.”

  Yeah, so my father buys me a new BMW nearly every year. Not so much for me, but so his reputation for being the finest father in all of San Francisco isn’t harmed. I look up to tell them this, but they’re talking amongst themselves, not interested in my input, so I go back to looking out the window, staring at Bob the bellman, who’s patiently waiting for us to haul this thing out of here.

  “Since when have I ever done what was expected of me?” Lilly points out. “And besides, now Morgan wants out of her prosperity, and we’re in the Slob. So it can’t be all that great.”

  They both turn around and look at me.

  “Can we go now?” I ask. “You two bicker like an old couple. We’re supposed to be relaxing this weekend, getting me away from all the turmoil, remember? Poppy, you k
now better. Spray some essential oils or something. Chill.” I cross my arms and sit back against the open wound of the seat.

  Lilly starts up the car, and I bet they heard it on the top floor. This thing sounds like a turbo-diesel jet!

  We drive out onto the busy street, where reporters are waiting by leaning against their cars, ankles crossed, cigarettes poised. But they take one look at the car, decipher that one of the maids is leaving the building, and go back to smoking. We are home free!

  Until Lilly sticks her head out the window and blows a raspberry at them. With a rush of double-takes, they all chuck their cigarette butts and dash to their cars. But they’re parked the wrong way on the street, and Lilly and Poppy laugh all the way down the hill.

  “Very funny,” I say. Poppy and Lilly are still laughing, until the Slob starts to sputter and coast unnaturally roughly down the hill. Lilly rolls to the edge of the street and double parks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m pulling over, Morgan. The car stopped working. This is what us real folk call ‘car trouble.’ Adam Ant wrote a song about it in the eighties. You might want to download it on your iPod.” Then she giggles. “Oh wait, real people can’t afford those.”

  “Start it up again!” I demand. When I hear myself, it sounds amazingly like Veruca Salt. Daddy, I want it now!

  “Listen, at least the Slob didn’t do this to us on 101 in the middle of nowhere,” Poppy says brightly.

  “No kidding,” Lilly agrees. Then she turns around, after pulling on the emergency brake, and faces me. “Need I remind you whose brilliant idea this was? Two blocks, that’s how far we got. You drive a 645i convertible, Morgan. And in the real world, that’s better than a piece of junk. First word of advice: real people are practical. They take the good car.”

  We clamber out of the car and gather around it like a casket at a funeral. People are honking as though we actually have any control over the situation. I get out my cell phone and press a button.

  “What are you doing?” Lilly asks, snapping my phone shut.