After Perfect (27 page)

“Only the wealthiest in the world have one, Bambina.”

It was this feeling of electricity, of adrenaline, of infinite possibilities and superiority, knowing you had made it.

I looked outside at cameras flashing, as a small crowd of paparazzi swarmed around some celebrity. Our waiter returned. “Two grilled shrimp salads,” and he set them on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”

“We're all set,” my father said, smiling.

His business deals, his promises: they felt so real, the way he talked about them; the way he described them with intricate knowledge and detail; the energy, electric and alive.
How could he just make up something like this
? He wouldn't just lie to me.

But then I thought about the $300,000 that never came. I thought about the Matron Tequila Company. I wondered what had happened to them; they seemed to have vanished.

I picked at my salad. “Awesome, Dad, I can't wait,” I replied.

I
t was our first Christmas together as a family despite my mother not being there. She and Richard were off in Costa Rica. After the trial, my father stopped asking about my mother and
“Le Asshole.”
I blamed money for the cause of the divorce. I didn't know yet that the truth was much deeper, and I wasn't ready to understand its dangerous nuances. Chloe was reluctant at first, but she started communicating with my father regularly after he began sending her small amounts of money. She was struggling to make ends meet while working as a receptionist at 24 Hour Fitness and wanted to take classes at the community college. In the weeks before his arrival, the four of us emailed one another our Christmas wish lists under the pretense that he would someday hit it big again. Each of us participated willingly in the fantasy.

Hi Girls,

The following is Dad's Christmas list. In case you have been wondering.

1. Gulfstream V, white with navy blue stripes and a light grey leather interior

2. Villa on Lake Geneva

3. Apartment in Paris

4. Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet, triple black

5. Wilson Pro Staff Leather Tennis Shoes, 8.5 M

Love,

Dad

Dear Dad,

As long as we're sharing, my wish list is as follows:

1. A 20,000,000 picture deal with Universal

2. A Spanish villa above the Hollywood sign

3. A villa on Lake Geneva (preferably the late Audrey Hepburn's)

4. A vintage Porsche like James Dean's

5. Last but not least, a gift certificate to the grocery store.

Love,

Christina Bambina

Dear Dad,

Hmm . . . this is easy . . .

1. A DBS Aston Martin in gunmetal

2. A ten-carat diamond eternity band for my right hand . . . so I look like a ballleeerrr

3. A house in Santa Barbara (with my own vineyard), Brentwood, and Paris

4. All the Jimmy Choos in the world

5. Also a gift certificate to the grocery store

Love,

Chlo-burger

Dear Dad,

Oh yay! My turn!

1. A compound in Santa Barbara, complete with a vineyard and swarm of papillons

2. A flat in Paris, down the street from Dad's

3. A new boyfriend for my boss, so she starts acting nice again

4. Dangly diamond earrings for New Year's! Not too heavy

5. A gift certificate to Bed Bath & Beyond

Love,

Marsie

A
few days later, on Christmas morning, I was sitting on the couch in our empty living room in the middle of East Los Angeles, staring at his gift in my lap.

The color was blue jean, the leather, clemence—made from the tanned cured skins of baby calves—but never mind that. Four gold feet were on the bottom; white stitching, thirty-five centimeters long, twenty-eight centimeters high, and eighteen centimeters deep; gold lock and keys; a dust bag; an orange cloth bag; a square box; and a receipt from Paris. To own a Hermès Birkin bag, one of the most coveted and desired bags in the world, serves as one of the highest symbols of status. Not just in America but also around the globe. They range anywhere from $7,400 to $150,000 each. All are handmade in Paris—and unless you have a connection, or you are a celebrity, be prepared to wait for up to seven years to get one. My father bought Chloe one too, in orange, and he bought Mara a classic black Chanel.

It didn't make sense. He was sleeping on my couch in a gang-ridden neighborhood and yet giving me a purse worth $20,000. I looked it up online before bed, and I had that unsettling feeling again, the feeling that I was splitting in two.
Something's wrong
. I had been making ends meet on my own to bridge the gap until my father got back. Had I experienced anything of value during that time that maybe I couldn't see yet? I was good at not communicating or asking many questions, because the answer was always the same: “Not to worry. I'll take care of it.” Money, possessions, and things had always appeared magically growing up; I was never privy to the process—the journey or the struggle of how one gets from A to B. It was:
Poo
f
!
Here's a puppy at the foot of your bed! But that other side of me loved the thought of being taken care of again; it was what I longed for, what I fantasized about while cleaning up puke at the bar and waiting on needy celebrities, wanting to be a part of this, not that. Whatever “this” was. And the splitting feeling wasn't just about me; it was about my father too. So, were the boys right? Did he have money hidden in Europe? Or was he lying? Or was he innocent? Or was he guilty?

“Dad, how did you get this?” I asked.

“Behar's connections in Paris,” he said.
Wait, Behar? The Albanian businessman?
I felt my blood pressure drop at the reminder of the email and the stabbing I'd read about all those years ago, like maybe I might pass out. But instead, I was possessed by some automatic lying reflex implanted somewhere within my subconscious and replied, “It's beautiful!”

I wasn't ready. I couldn't think about the “But what if?” Mara, Chloe, and I acted ecstatic. It brought back an association with all of the old feelings I had waking up on Christmas morning to extravagant presents underneath the tree. I was ashamed to admit it too: a part of me felt
safe
—my father's having money again was going to help me get back on track. I could act again. I could be everything he wanted me to be. I could be a
star
! I buried all of my fears in the back of my mind and jumped for joy, thanking him and forgetting all that I had learned—if I had learned anything at all.

This purse would fill my wounds twofold with how much attention I received from it. “Oh my God, is this a Birkin bag? I've always wanted one. Victoria Beckham has, like, a hundred!” Later that week, I spent a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror with it. Holding it, deciding whether it looked cooler if the clasp was loose and undone, or giving it a more bohemian look, or a more A-line look, all buckled and crisp looking. I often rubbed the bag and inhaled its smell of fine leather. And I never put anything dirty in it, like pennies or receipts. I made sure the bottom was always clean and visible. Each time I got into the car with it, I had the urge to strap a seat belt over it, like it was my baby, so it wouldn't go flying forward and get scratched if I slammed on my breaks. It was so expensive; it was worth more than anything I owned, including my BMW. But, really, I felt ashamed because I knew I could barely pay my rent. Still, at the same time, in those moments with my father, I felt we were inching closer to going back to the way things used to be—how they remained in my memory.

T
he day before my father left to go back to Virginia, we went to see
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
As we stood in line at the Grove theater, Mara, Chloe, and I clad in our most fashionable articles of clothing and clutching our new designer bags (making sure each label faced outward), a kind gentleman in a white polo walked up to us and said to my father, “What a beautiful family you have, sir.”

“Why, thank you,” he replied.

It had been a long time since I had heard anyone say those words:
what a beautiful family
. No one had to know anything about us, or that my father was just released from prison. It was just more fuel for the belief that everything would be okay now. And even though my mother wasn't around for Christmas, I actually had hope that maybe she'd be around for the next. These were the kinds of gifts my father had showered my mother with: Chanel, Hermès, the $1,000 under the table—they were explosive time bombs hiding under the guise of love, a love I believed to be real, just waiting to explode. Mara, Chloe, and I, we were becoming triplet substitutes for my father's need to hook us, fish to bait, because our mother had disappeared, and maybe my father was afraid he would lose us too.

On the morning I took him back to the airport, we were walking out the front door, the Birkin dangling from my arm. “I love it, Dad!” I said, petting it again. He asked me if I had been dating anyone since Josh and I had broken up. “No one worth mentioning,” I said. I threw him my keys and hopped into the passenger seat. My father revved the engine, placed his hand on the stick shift, put on his aviators, and said, “You're never going to find a man as cool as your dad, Bambina.”

I kissed him good-bye and merged onto the exit ramp of LAX when it suddenly occurred to me: we never went over my credit.

“I need another one.” I looked at Atticus, begging him, my eyes like fire, mascara smeared, and beads of sweat forming along my forehead, underneath my arms, my back, in between my legs. Atticus's head flung down, and then up, and then shook from side to side as his fingers fluttered and melted into the keyboard in front of him. He was writing a song, a beautiful love song called “The Sweetest Love Song Ever Written,” and I wanted more of his Adderall.

I had just impulsively bought a plane ticket to New York City in a moment of overwhelming drug-fueled joy to be with Atticus while he auditioned for a new Broadway musical. My father had just wired a few hundred dollars into my bank account. It was the first time he had done this since he returned from prison, and I was happy to let him. Instead of getting a second job, I went ahead and let my father begin to take care of me again. On some self-inflicting, vengeful level, I felt he owed this to me. I knew my credit score wasn't going anywhere—he wasn't “fixing it” even when I reminded him—and I wanted to continue cutting corners and blaming him for my lack of financial responsibility while my drug intake escalated. I should have known better by then, but I continued walking through my life with my head turned the other way, and so I did it anyway. I also believed that on some level, the money, along with the Birkin bag and the way our lives were reweaving into each other, was bringing my father and me closer together.

Finally, I told Atticus about the credit cards in my name, and the debt. And then I told him about the email my father had recently sent asking my sisters and me to apply for dual citizenship in Greece. “Girls, as the great-grandchildren of Greek immigrants with a Greek surname, you are eligible under Greek law to become a Greek citizen and have a Greek passport . . . I have retained Jennie Giannakopoulou, Esq., a lawyer in Athens, Greece, to manage our entire application for Greek citizenship . . . I have attached a PDF (open with Adobe) of the legal services agreement that we all need to sign . . . XOXO Dad.”

Atticus listened without saying a word except that he loved me. “Tini, I love you,” he said. I thought it was a strange time to say this, and in hindsight, he knew that deep down I didn't believe I was loveable. I had expected Atticus to express some kind of an opinion about my father; maybe a part of me was hoping he would, but he didn't. And then my drug-induced narcissistic self thought that maybe he was falling in love with me, or I was falling in love with him. It was the drugs; I couldn't tell. Until he saw that it scared me, and then he grabbed my shoulders, sober and abrupt. “I'm gay, Christina. I love you, but I'm gay, and I'll
never
hurt you. I'm gay.” And I remember shaking my head and thinking,
Right, yeah. I
know. My ability to decipher reality from fantasy, right from wrong, fact from fiction was becoming increasingly distorted and disturbed.

“That's the last one I'm giving you,” Atticus said, handing me one of his prescribed pills. “You're too little.” Adderall had replaced pot smoking for me because I didn't want to sleep anymore, because my nightmares were getting worse. My father kept dying in front of me. I would find him lying on the ground, bleeding to death over and over again, and all I could do was stand there and watch it happen, paralyzed, unable to move my legs or cry for help. Then I'd wake up—this time with the lights on, because I'd known it would come and had been prepared—crying, clutching my chest. I'd take off my nightgown and stumble to the bathroom sink to run cold water over my arms and face to remind myself that I was alive. My subconscious was thundering with truth, and in those waking moments, the closer I got to it, the more intensely I wanted to annihilate it with drugs.

We hopped off the L train at Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when I started talking again about Dad's wanting me to get dual citizenship. I'd taken almost twenty milligrams of Adderall by noon that day. Since Atticus had stopped giving me his pills, I picked them up from a girlfriend I'd met at the nightclub.