The Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Robin Palmer

  “So are you waiting for your mom?” he asked.

  And just like that I no longer felt bad. He didn’t really want to talk to me. He was waiting for her, too. “Yeah.”

  “What time is her meeting over?”

  I pressed harder against the shelf to keep the book from slipping. “How do you know she’s at a meeting?” I demanded.

  “We were texting a little bit earlier.”

  I wasn’t sure if it pissed me off to watch his face turn red as he said that, or if I should be grateful that he felt somewhat weird telling me that. “Did you know that when you get sober, they suggest you don’t get into a relationship for, like, a year?” I blurted out.

  The way he stared at me made me think that he knew what I was saying with that little tidbit of information. “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” he replied. “I have a bunch of friends in the program. Sounds like it’s probably a good idea.”

  Radiohead’s “Creep” began to blare from his phone, which I remembered was Skye’s ringtone. He ignored it.

  “You sure you don’t want to get that?” I asked.

  “Nope, I’m good,” he said as he turned off the ringer.

  “It’s okay if you want to,” I said.

  “Nope, it can wait,” he said firmly.

  Right then my own phone beeped.

  OKAY ALL DONE CAN YOU COME GET ME BECAUSE I STILL CAN’T FIGURE MY WAY AROUND HERE!!!!! THANKS BUG XOXOXOXOXOX

  Reading my mother’s texts—almost always composed entirely of caps, Xs and Os, and zero punctuation marks, other than an overabundance of exclamation points—was sensory overload. “I need to go,” I said.

  “Right on,” he said. Maybe if you had a total crush on him (like 99 percent of the female population in the world), the “Right on” thing would seem cute, but every time he said it, I wanted to throttle him. “See you at that dinner thing tonight?” Usually, before a movie started shooting, the producers had a dinner so that the key cast members could meet and hang out with the director.

  “Oh, you’re going to that?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment. Of course he was going to that—he was the star. And what was I doing? It was one thing to think about how I had no interest in getting to know this guy, and even less interest in my mother getting to know him, but it was a whole other thing for the filter between my brain and mouth to break down so that he knew it as well.

  “Yeah,” he replied with a little laugh. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “I didn’t mean . . . you know, I think I’m still jet-lagged,” I mumbled.

  He looked at me for a second. “This is probably going to make me sound like a total ass, but whatever,” he said. “The fact that you don’t like me—”

  “I never said I didn’t like you.”

  “’It’s actually kind of awesome,” he went on. “I mean—again, gonna make me sound like a jerk—but when everyone is always kissing your ass? It gets boring real fast.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t really have that problem,” I said wryly.

  He smiled. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do everything I can to change your mind about me.”

  PLACES TO SHOP FOR MOVIE KICKOFF PARTY-APPROPRIATE OUTFITS IN L.A.

  Fred Segal

  Anthropologie

  Any boutique on West Third Street near the Grove

  The holy trinity of Saks/Neimans/Barneys

  PLACES TO SHOP FOR MOVIE KICKOFF PARTY-APPROPRIATE OUTFITS IN UPSTATE NEW YORK

  H&M

  Kohl’s

  T.J. Maxx

  Marshalls

  Target

  “Bug, you are so right—Target is incredible!” Mom exclaimed as we went through the racks of sundresses that in L.A. would have been considered too casual to wear anywhere else but to Target, but up here were totally appropriate to wear to a fancy dinner.

  “Mom, you’ve been to Target before,” I said quietly as two women over near the bathing suits looked over to check out who the nut was who was only just discovering the genius that was Target. “We used to go all the time before you got the show.”

  “I know, honey, but I don’t remember the clothes being this fabulous.” She laughed. “Not that I remember much of the last eight years, seeing that I was either passed out or doped up most of the time.”

  I cringed. Honesty was one thing. Honesty in front of complete strangers in a discount store about your deepest darkest secrets was a whole other.

  “Volume, Mom,” I whispered.

  She held up a leopard-print dress. “What about this?”

  “We’re here to find something for me, remember?” I replied. “You have five suitcases full of stuff at home.”

  “I mean for you.”

  I wrinkled my nose. I was so not a leopard girl. Even a print was going out on a limb for me. I was all about solids. Solids were safe. They blended in. Didn’t call attention to themselves.

  Mom took me by the shoulders. “Honey, it’s time for you to shake it up a bit,” she said gently. “I know that up until now, most of your life has been spent taking care of me—”

  I felt my stomach start to flip-flop as her lip started to quiver. She had to pick here for one of her Moments? Really? “Mom, can we talk about this later?” I asked quietly.

  “Oh, God, Annabelle. I know I’m supposed to stop beating myself up for everything I put you through, but it’s just so hard,” she moaned, swiping at her eyes, which were now indeed leaking tears. “I mean, you’re my life, Bug.” She grabbed my arms tighter. “You know that, right?”

  Apparently, we could not talk about it later. “I do,” I said, trying to extract myself from her death grip. I looked around to see more people staring at us. “And now half of Target does as well.” I cringed as I moved her hand away and used her cardigan to dry off my now-sticky arm.

  “What was I saying?” she asked as she took out a mirror and checked to make sure her eye makeup hadn’t smeared. You had to give it to my mother—for someone who was a big crier, she had perfected the art of being able to do it so that it left no messy evidence.

  “How I was your life.”

  “No. Before that.”

  “That I need to shake things up a bit.”

  “Right.” She grabbed my arms again. “I’m serious, Bug. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I don’t want you to turn into one of those characters who ends up alone because she’s devoted her life to taking care of a parent. Like that woman in the English movie we watched last week. The one who snapped when they kept calling her a spinster.”

  “Mom, I’m only sixteen—”

  “I know, I know, but, sweetie, you need more of a social life,” she said. “The fact that you’ve never had a boyfriend . . . it’s not . . . normal.”

  I felt my stomach start to burn. I couldn’t believe she was bringing this up again. She knew the subject was off limits. As was my weight, and why I didn’t want to get a bikini wax. She grabbed a purple wrap dress and held it up to me. “What about this? This is cute.”

  I pushed it away. Only my mother could totally insult me and try to dress me in the same exact moment. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I snapped. “I guess I was too busy checking on, you know, whether you were still alive to worry about hooking up and getting pregnant like you did.”

  Her eyes flashed before she took a deep breath. “Okay. I deserve that,” she said quietly.

  “And what do you know about normal?” I demanded. “Our life is not and never has been normal, Mom.”

  “Hey, we barbecued last night,” she said. “That’s a normal thing to do—”

  “And we almost burned the house down because you didn’t check to make sure the propane tank was hooked up correctly!” I cried.

  “I meant the dinner after that part was normal,” she said.
“That salmon was excellent.” She examined the dress again. “Bug, seriously, why won’t you try this on? It’s adorable.”

  “Because I don’t want to. It’s too low-cut.”

  “Annabelle, I keep telling you—the body is nothing to be ashamed of! Especially since you’ve cut back on snacking,” she said. “I haven’t said anything because I know it makes you mad when I comment on your weight, but sweetie, you’re looking fabulous. Really.”

  My mother may not have won an Oscar yet, but she was the queen of backhanded compliments.

  She threw the dress in the cart. “Then if you don’t get it, I will. All I’m saying is that you don’t need to take care of me anymore, honey.” She moved my bangs out of my eyes. “I’m okay. I’m going to be okay,” she said gently.

  I wanted so badly to believe that, but it was hard. Why was it so hard?

  “It’s time for you to have fun again,” she said quietly. “I just want you to be open to it.”

  I wanted that, too. I just didn’t know how.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  She smiled. “Good. And we’re cutting your bangs before the dinner tonight. You never know who you might meet.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HOW THE EVENING BEGAN

  Five outfit changes (Mom)

  Three warnings that if she changed her outfit one more time we’d be lucky if we made it there for dessert (me)

  Four different variations on the same hairstyle (Mom)

  Two mumbled recitations of the Serenity Prayer in order to ward off a fight (me)

  One tearful call to her sponsor saying she didn’t know how she was going to make it through the dinner without a drink because post-rehab her evenings had been spent either in meetings or at home (Mom)

  Numerous updates on what time it was (me)

  “Honey, forty-five minutes is not late,” Mom announced as we walked into the back garden of Ca’Mea on Warren Street after I had finally wrangled her into the car. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think your obsession with being on time has to do with the whole being-a-child-of-an-alcoholic thing.”

  The last part just happened to coincide with a lull in the conversation so that you would have had to have a hearing problem not to have heard it clearly. Which meant that pretty much everyone in the garden—about twenty people—all turned to stare at us.

  “What she say? Alcoholic? I thought she stopped with the drinking, that one,” said Giovanni, the Italian cinematographer who I came to find out later that evening had twenty-five grandchildren because his family was very Catholic and didn’t believe in birth control.

  “Oh, she did,” said a tall thin guy with little round glasses who was so pasty that I wanted to shove him in a tanning bed with a few sandwiches. From his English accent and some photos I had come across during a Google search, I could tell this was Alistair, the director. He was wearing peach-colored linen pants and a tight white tank top—which was way better than the very tiny, very tight Speedo he’d been photographed in while he was on vacation in Ibiza with his florist-to-the-stars boyfriend, Henrik. “I saw a photo of her coming out of an AA meeting on one of the blogs.” He turned to Barry, a fat bearded guy who was chewing on a straw. Barry was one of the producers, and from the few times I had met him, I now realized the pained expression on his face—a cross between indigestion and nausea—seemed to be his resting state.

  “Barry, she is still sober, is she not?” I heard Alistair ask. (I’m not sure if there was any scientific evidence to back it up, but, like me, Walter also had supersonic hearing, which led me to believe that that was a by-product of the whole kid-of-an-alcoholic thing.) “Because I’m telling you right now—my healer said my nervous system is still recovering from that last film I did, and I refuse to put my health in jeopardy. Even for a Billy Barrett movie.”

  “Of course she’s still sober,” Barry assured him, not even bothering to take the straw out of his mouth. At dinner, he had mentioned that the straw was because he was quitting smoking. (“Yeah, for the last five years,” Dina, his ex-assistant/now-wife/co-producer said, rolling her eyes.) He turned to Dina as she popped a piece of bruschetta into her mouth whole. The other night, after watching her scarf down not just her own meal but also Barry’s—not to mention part of Mom’s—Mom and I had decided that her gazellelike appearance was maintained with some good old-fashioned bulimia. “You didn’t see her drink anything at dinner the other night, did you?” he asked her.

  “Nope. Just club soda,” I heard Dina reply. “I even picked up her glass and took a sip when she was in the bathroom to check.”

  By this time they weren’t trying too hard to keep their voices down. Not that it mattered, as Mom was busy oohing and aahing over Giovanni’s wife’s little dog, which looked like a drowned rat. One actress cliché that Mom did not fall into was a love of small, bedazzled dogs that could be carried around in designer carriers—in fact, she sometimes had nightmares about them. (“Usually when I overdid it on the Klonopin,” she said.) Like any good actress, however, she knew that even more important than the director, the person to win over was the cinematographer. You did not want to piss off the person who was in charge of filters and lighting, unless you wanted every wrinkle and mark on your face to be magnified.

  I grabbed a red juicy tomato topped with basil and mozzarella off the tray of a passing waiter and bit into it. Not having to lie awake anymore worrying about whether Mom was going to be able to pay the rent with tampon voice-overs was great, but my second favorite thing about her doing the movie was that between the party and the on-set catering, I could eat as much as I wanted and not have to worry about how much it cost.

  “I wondered if I’d run into you again,” a voice said. A male voice. With a twinge of a New York accent. The very voice that I had played over in my head the last few nights before attempting to convince myself that the sweet and funny things it might be capable of saying were probably reserved for another girl.

  I turned around to see Matt, in jeans and a cornflower-blue button-down shirt that made his blue eyes even bluer.

  “Well, I guess you don’t have to wonder anymore,” I said. Was that lame? It sounded lame. And was I going to second-guess everything I said to him? If so, that would be exhausting.

  “It’s Matt,” he reminded me, as if there had been any chance I had forgotten.

  “Oh, I know,” I said quickly. Too quickly. Way too quickly. This is why I stayed away from guys. Well, this and the fact that I didn’t need to fall for someone and be let down by him. My mother had broken my heart enough times over the course of my life that I didn’t need anyone else doing it. “Annabelle. I mean, I’m Annabelle.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I know.”

  Yet again the gap between his teeth did it to me, and I smiled back. “Are you—” I started to say.

  “A guest here?” he finished. He smiled. “Nope, I’m working. I find that cater-waitering really informs the process of painting. All the great ones did it. Rumor has it Picasso could balance four trays at a time.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” I said. “And when he dropped them, that was the start of cubism.”

  He laughed. “Nice,” he said, impressed.

  What was I doing coming up with comebacks on the spot? And, like, semi-smart ones at that? That was so not me. “So you’re a painter?”

  “Yeah. Well, studying it at Bard. Just finished my freshman year,” he replied. “But mostly I just sit there staring at the canvas paralyzed with anxiety over the fact that I’ve chosen a career where, after thousands of dollars of debt in student loans, I’ll probably never make any money, forcing me to ultimately take a job as a telemarketer and move home and live in my mother’s basement.”

  I cringed. “Wow. That sounds—”

  “Like your worst nightmare?” he suggested. �
��’Cause it’s mine. Especially the moving-home-with-my-mother part.”

  I laughed before looking over at my own mother, who was now demonstrating her signature pratfall for a couple who looked to be in their early forties, both dressed in black, with matching hip nerd glasses. I had a feeling they were the couple who wrote the movie. And who, from the way they exchanged a baffled look, didn’t seem to find it as funny as most of America had.

  “Your mother’s very . . . colorful,” Matt said.

  “That’s one word for it,” I sighed. “And she’s not even drunk.”

  He motioned to my cheek. “You have some basil on your cheek.”

  Of course I did. I swiped at it.

  “The other side.”

  I swiped again.

  “Still there.”

  I swiped harder. Actually, it was more like I scrubbed at it.

  “Got it,” Matt said.

  “Actually, it’s part of my outfit,” I said. “I thought the green went well with the red.” I motioned to the jersey dress that Mom and I had found when we stopped at Kohl’s post-Target crisis. It was cleavage-lite, which made me happy, but short enough to please Mom. “Kind of a Christmas-in-July theme.”

  “Well, the outfit’s working.” He smiled. “Even without the basil.”

  I was too busy turning the same color as my dress to be able to think of a comeback—witty or not—to that. But even if I could have, I wouldn’t have gotten it out because just then Billy arrived.

  “Hey, Annabelle,” he said with a smile.

  “Hey,” I replied. “Billy, this is Matt. He’s a painter.”

  “And your cater-waiter for the evening,” Matt added.

  Billy laughed. “Been there, dude. A lot. Back in the day when everyone in L.A. was on a Middle Eastern kick. Do you know how hard it is to get the smell of baba ghanoush out of your hair?”

  He definitely got an A in charm.

  As he told us a story about dropping a tray full of two thousand dollars’ worth of caviar at an Oscar party, Mom looked over from her conversation across the garden. When she saw Billy, her smile got so big that it erased all of the little stubborn lines that Botox never seemed to be able to get.