The Birthday Girl

by Melissa de la Cruz

  The audience tittered. Sterling beamed. “Singing ‘Habanera’ from Carmen, this is quite a treat. Everyone please give a warm welcome to . . .”

  * * *

  —

  The opera singer stepped up to the piano and began to sing. Ellie would tell people that it was from her favorite opera but in truth she had no such thing. It all sounded the same to her. She liked going to the opera only because of the champagne at intermission and to see her name as a donor on the program.

  The crowd seemed to love it, though, so that was something; they clapped heartily at the end. Ellie looked around and noticed her stepdaughter had come out of her room finally and joined the party. Sam had showered and brushed her hair, and had changed into one of the newest Wild & West dresses from the collection, a crinkly polyester knockoff of the latest Gucci party dress. On Sam, it looked like the real thing.

  “Sam!” she called.

  Sam looked guilty as she slunk over to her stepmother.

  “Honey, do you need to tell us something?” Ellie asked. “What’s going on?” She wanted to point out that Sam had already told Montserrat, so she might as well tell her too, but Ellie knew that was the wrong tactic. Sam would just get defensive and clam up, when she needed her to spill, to gush, to let it all out. “Is it school?”

  “Um . . .” Sam said, shifting her weight on each heel and looking like the insecure eight-year-old she’d been when they first met. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Ellie. “You know I never went to college, so I have no idea what it’s like, but I’m sure whatever it is, it’s not as bad as you think.” She took a glug from her wineglass. She’d moved seamlessly from vodka martinis to the white Burgundy, which was just a fancy name for Chardonnay, and she was starting to feel a little light-headed, but there was no excuse not to perform her mothering duties.

  Sam gnawed on a fingernail. “Okay, but you need to promise not to get mad. Coz it’s pretty bad.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “I’ve been on academic probation. If I don’t pull my grades up, I can’t come back in January.”

  Ellie almost dropped her wineglass but was too worried about what it would do to the floors, so she held on to the stem. But she could feel the smoke pouring out of her ears. “WHAT!”

  “Mom, you promised not to get mad!” Sam whined, sounding just like Otis when he wanted something from the toy store.

  “I’m not. I’m not. I’m not mad,” Ellie lied. She wasn’t mad, she was furious. Academic probation? Possibly kicked out in January? How on earth could Sam have fucked up that badly that she was—horror of horrors—flunking out of Stanford? This is our eldest, she flunked out of Stanford. This is our child, who got kicked out of Stanford. We never go to Stanford anymore, because Sam got expelled for having terrible grades. As her gays would say, it was not a cute look.

  “But how! What happened? Does Daddy know?” Ellie demanded.

  Sam didn’t answer the question. Instead, she said, “Um, that’s not everything.”

  “There’s more?” Ellie gripped the stem of her wineglass so hard it was in danger of shattering in her hand.

  “Yeah, the thing is . . .”

  But before Sam could finish her sentence, Ellie’s phone rang, and it was an international number. Korea. Mr. Harry Kim. Her investor. She swiped to answer it.

  “ELLIE!” yelled Sam. “ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TAKING A CALL RIGHT NOW?”

  Oh, so we were back to “Ellie” now, were we? Ellie held up a hand to shush her. “Sam, I’m so, so sorry but I have to take this.”

  “You always do! You always have to work! This is why I don’t tell you ANYTHING!” she said, stomping off and running into a waiter, who had to swivel lest he drop his tray of Victor’s undrinkable cocktails on the terrazzo.

  Ellie wanted to call after her, but this was too important. She turned up the volume so she could catch every word.

  “Harry darling!” she said. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all night!” She pressed the phone to her ear. “What text? What did it say? No, I can’t hear you! I’m losing you! Hold on, let me see if I can get a better signal in the other side of the house.”

  She ran across the grass to the east wing.

  But it was too late.

  The phone went dead.

  She’d alienated her sensitive stepdaughter, and she still didn’t know what Harry wanted to say to her. Ellie wanted to throw her phone into the pool, she was so frustrated. But she’d planned this party for a year and she HAD to enjoy it. Because it might just be her last chance to enjoy anything.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Watch That Scene

  October 19

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  10:30 P.M.

  Leo and Arnold didn’t have to find Mish and Brooks; they found them. “There you are,” Mish said, her hands on her waist. “We were looking for you everywhere!” She had an accusatory tone in her voice that Leo did not appreciate. Brooks looked a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. “Hey, man,” he said to Arnold, who nodded.

  “We’ve just been here the whole time,” Leo said. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing . . . OH FUCK ME!” Mish yelled all of a sudden, and she scooted down, crashing into Leo.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  Mish pointed.

  Leo froze.

  Mish’s dad was standing against the back wall, arms crossed, eyes hooded, surveying the scene, smoking a blunt. “We have to leave. Now,” said Mish, agitated.

  “Hey, chill,” said Arnold. He looked over to where the girls were looking. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Yeah,” Mish said tightly. “Let’s go.”

  “Why?” asked Brooks, who was oblivious to what was happening. “I just opened these bottles.”

  “I thought this was your night to deal,” said Leo.

  “Yeah, I did too,” said Arnold, his jaw clenched. “But whatever. Let’s go.”

  “Babe? What’s going on?” Brooks kept asking.

  Leo knew Mish didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to tell him the truth about her father. That he was at the club because he was dealing, just like Arnold. He was probably the other house dealer. Brooks didn’t know that much about Mish other than the fact that she was pretty, and that she was a sophomore. Sure, he knew she lived in a not-so-great part of town, but not what that entailed. And Mish didn’t want him to know that the guy standing against the wall of the club, with his tatted arms and greasy hair, who was so far from what his own parents looked like, was actually her father. He was so incredibly different from Donald and Judy Overton, with their fleece vests and hiking boots and dorky secret marital language complete with sickly sweet nicknames.

  Mish liked to say the only nicknames her dad ever used were for his collection of firearms. Greta the German Luger, and Rosanne the rifle; oh but he was so clever.

  How could Mish explain who that man was, and what he was to her, to someone who came from a loving and stable upper-middle-class household? It was too large an expanse to breach, and too humiliating.

  “Let’s go, before he sees us,” whispered Mish, when Brooks turned away to set the beer bottles on a nearby table. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” agreed Leo, who didn’t look back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Mish shot her a grateful look. When Brooks returned, she said, “Let’s go to Stacey’s.”

  “Really?” said Brooks. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Leo, you want to go, right? I mean, the night is young and so are we,” said Mish.

  Leo turned to Arnold. “You want to come to Stacey’s?” she asked.

  Arnold pulled her to a quiet corner before answering. “Who’s this Stacey chick? That kid from school? The snotty one?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But you should
come with.”

  Arnold shook his head. He laughed. “Yeah, me at Stacey’s. Sure.”

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said. He lifted her chin with his hand. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll hit you when this place closes. But I got to work still.”

  “Okay.”

  He rubbed his thumb on her cheek. He leaned closer and so did she, and this time, when he kissed her, he didn’t just brush against her lips. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, tugging on his T-shirt to pull him closer.

  “Later, okay?” he asked.

  “Okay. You know where I live, right.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  They said goodbye and she met her friends.

  “Ready now?” asked Mish.

  Leo laughed. There was nothing she’d wanted more than to go to Stacey’s all night. She said yes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Slideshow and Tears

  October 19

  The Present

  11:00 P.M.

  Dinner was over, the fat lady had sung. (The opera singer actually wasn’t fat at all, but Ellie liked the expression.) Dessert had been served—a luscious buffet of delectable treats, not that anyone was partaking of any as this was mostly a fat-phobic Los Angeles–based crowd after all. But still, all that spun sugar was nice to look at.

  The soprano was a hit; all the gays and a few of the grays were clustered around the singer, gushing and paying tribute. Ellie had hoped the famous diva would stay for a digestif and had hinted as much to the woman’s manager, but apparently when you booked the famous, you booked only the performance; they were not behooved to actually socialize with you. She’d never seen anyone leave a party so fast—truly, it was impressive. A few arias and twenty thousand dollars later, the soprano was gone, trailing chiffon scarves in her wake.

  Now everyone was invited to gather outside, in front of the back wall, where the slideshow was about to start. The party planner was in an intense huddle with Ellie’s assistant, both of them working on the projector, hooking it up to the outdoor speakers. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do; she and Todd had always showed movies in the back of the house when they had birthday parties for the kids in LA, but they’d never done it in Palm Springs before, and Nathaniel was having trouble getting the speakers to work.

  Madison caught sight of Ellie and motioned her over. “Is Todd ready?”

  Todd was supposed to make a speech before the slideshow. Everything had been planned to the second. But of course he was nowhere to be found.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she told them. “Can you get that thing to work?”

  Nathaniel frowned. “It should work. I plugged in the right cable. I’m not really sure what’s wrong.”

  “Where’s Todd?” Madison asked again.

  “I don’t know!” said Ellie. “Just start without him! Forget the speech!”

  Todd was probably in some dark corner with that young piece of tail he’d been flirting with earlier. Ellie thought of her friend Jacklyn, who had slipped out of her wedding to screw the hot bartender in the bathroom. No one had been the wiser, least of all the groom, especially since the bride was back in time for the toasts. It was the least Todd could do, Ellie thought, if he was doing the same. Finish fucking the bitch and get back in time to toast your wife, goddammit.

  Madison tapped her watch. “If we delay any longer, we’ll be late for drag bingo,” she said.

  “I said get on with it,” Ellie said, seething. “Nathaniel! Get that thing working already!”

  “I’m trying,” he said, furiously tapping the keyboard on his laptop.

  The crowd was getting listless, and Ellie knew they would dissipate soon, wander off to separate corners to smoke cigarettes or gossip about her family. She wanted them all here. She had demanded a captive audience and her husband couldn’t even do her the courtesy to show up for the speech he was supposed to give before the slideshow celebrating her life. She stabbed her fingernails into the palms of her hands.

  “Nathaniel, I swear . . .” she began, just as the speakers overhead boomed to life with Green Day’s “Time of Your Life.”

  Nathaniel gave her a thumbs-up. She looked around one last time for Todd. Where the hell was he?

  Madison frantically gestured with the clicker.

  Ellie threw up her hands. Yes, I know. The drag queens. We’ll be late for bingo. Fine.

  The slideshow started.

  Click. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELLIE!

  There was the photo of her and Todd when they were first dating, from the Emmys. He’d been so handsome, even with his bad frosted highlights. She still teased him about that, a straight man with highlights. He’d been so vain. And now he was probably fucking some twenty-year-old in the bathroom to make up for all the weight he’d gained. It was all an ego stroke, right? Pun definitely intended.

  Another photo: of her and Sam, all of ten, the age Giggy was now. Sam had been such an awkward child. Oh, Sam. What had she confessed? That she was on probation, and there was something about not being able to come back in January? And there was more? WHAT? Did Todd know about this? He was supposed to deal with Samantha; that kid was part of his job. How could he let this happen? Ellie was trying to keep everything together and all Todd had to do was make sure everything in the family was fine, and he couldn’t even do that.

  Sam was mad at her and she wasn’t anywhere in the crowd. Ellie couldn’t find her. She wasn’t watching the slideshow. Sam was mad because Ellie had to take a work call, and this wasn’t the first time that had happened, but maybe the worst. Ellie sighed. Now, because her husband hadn’t dealt with it, she would have to do it. She’d have to find Sam and figure out what was happening and, more important, why it happened in the first place. Ellie often felt pulled in so many different directions, and now look, she had taken her eye off the ball and Sam was flunking out of Stanford.

  Ellie looked around. No Sam. No Todd. The busty girl was nowhere to be found either. Ellie’s life was literally flashing before her eyes. Maybe this was what death was like, she thought and shuddered, remembering.

  Where was he? Surely, he’d be at the party by now? What did he look like now? Why did he reach out now? What did he want? He better not want money. She didn’t have any. Oh my god, what if he wanted money?

  She wrestled her thoughts away from the past.

  More photos.

  The family in Park City (the stupid house that cost too much money and was filled with ants). She would have to sell that house as soon as possible.

  A sweet picture of Giggy.

  Ellie loved her child with an ache. She knew she wasn’t doing well at school, with all her issues, plus she was being bullied. The girls in her class were mean—why had Ellie even invited their parents? And some boy was hitting her, and they knew exactly who it was—the principal’s kid. Todd said they had to go to the headmaster, not the principal, to deal with it. He was furious, and they’d have to figure out a strategy when they got back to Los Angeles.

  Now there were photos from Wild & West shoots, as well as pictures of her company—the warehouses, all the employees waving. The company she had built from scratch, from sheer will. The company that might not exist by next week if she didn’t get Mr. Harry Kim to put down his money to save them.

  Her husband was having an affair, her stepdaughter was flunking out of college, her ten-year-old was being hazed, and the twins were out of control.

  But hey, it all looked perfect on camera, didn’t it? And wasn’t that the point?

  The lights came back on.

  Ellie wiped her cheeks, and only then realized she’d been crying. She had a beautiful life. Why hadn’t she appreciated it more? Why had she ever complained about it?

  She loved it so much, but it was over, f
or so many reasons. Everything was over.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Truth or Dare

  October 19

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  11:00 P.M.

  Stacey lived in one of the biggest houses Leo had ever seen. From afar, it looked almost like a castle, up on a hill, with a huge circular driveway. Leo had never been in this neighborhood before, and tried not to feel intimidated by the size and scale of the place. The house was surrounded by acres of trees, and she couldn’t imagine what it was like, to have no neighbors on either side, to have all that space, all that land, to yourself and your family. Where she and Mish lived, people were crammed so tightly in a small space, there wasn’t enough room for all of them, their pets, and all their junk. This is what it meant to be rich, to be wealthy, to have so much of everything, even air—it felt like there was more oxygen up here, like the air was cleaner (it was).

  Brooks parked the car and they walked toward the house; they could hear the muffled sound of rap music coming from inside. Leo headed toward the front door, but Brooks shook his head. “Party’s out in the guesthouse. Stacey’s not dumb enough to have everyone in their main house; her parents would freak.”

  He led them through the side gate, out toward the pool, which was covered for the season. The guesthouse was a smaller version of the main house, but its doors were open to the night, and its porch was filled with popular teens from their school, all the hot seniors, and even a few freshmen. Leo felt as if there was a spotlight on her as everyone craned to see who had arrived.

  Mish seemed to know everyone, as she waved and said hello to several people standing in bunches, holding cans of beer, a few of the girls holding bottles of wine coolers. There was a Styrofoam ice chest full of drinks near the door, and Brooks added the remaining beers to the party haul. An entrance fee, or simply an offering to the party gods. A few more soccer players arrived and did the same thing.