Calm, Cool, and Adjusted (8 page)

It’s everything I can do to stand up for my father’s “ceremony.” I can’t reach out for the keys. I look to Sharon, who is smiling as though to tell me she’s won. And I know it’s true— she has. She’ll take my father away, leaving me with a rundown house near the ocean to console me. And my father will parent her relatives—who I’m sure need it, but all the same . . .

Excuse me
, I think. But what I actually say is, “This is too much excitement for my bladder.” Then I jogged towards the restroom in my own live commercial for an incontinence narcotic.
I should have gone to dinner with Jeff.

Looking in the bathroom mirror, I’m struck by my wan appearance. The grown-up, Christian thing to do is be happy for my father starting the second half of his life—even if I do think it’s repeating the first half, which he wasn’t all that adept at. When it comes to parenting, my father is the weekend Disneyland dad.

Lord knows Daddy deserves some joy in his life at this point, but the small, little, whiny girl who seems to be so prevalent is upset that my other parent is riding off into the sunset. Captured in the clutches of a disease called Sharon and her do-gooder future. Of course, he wants to do a good deed, but he has no clue what his weaknesses are. And stability is definitely not a trait he embodies.

My cell phone is trilling again, echoing off the tile in the sickly-sweet-smelling bathroom. I find the little bench and slide down onto it, my legs no longer strong enough to hold me up.

“Hello?”

“Finally. Poppy, it’s Morgan.”

Just the sound of her voice makes my eyes well up. “I need help, Morgan.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I can’t begin to explain. It’s everything, and it’s nothing at all. How soon can you get down here?”

“I was on my way when you hung up on me. I’m almost there. Where are you, the condo?”

“I’m in Jackson’s. It’s a restaurant on Steven’s Creek by Vallco.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes. Lilly wanted to come, but she’s so tired at night with the pregnancy. She stayed home. I’ll be there soon. We knew you were having a bad day when you hung up. And you took the wedding stuff so badly and asked for Spa Date. Hang on, Poppy, I’m coming.”

I sit on the bench, drumming my fingernails along the fake leather and wondering what it is I should do next. I mean, it’s not like those people out there don’t know me. It’s not like they haven’t watched me run to the loo. At some point, I have to go back out there, plaster the best mohair smile of my life on my face, and tell them that under no circumstances am I coming back to live in Santa Cruz. My dad is the only one being launched at this party. I’m a grownup. This shouldn’t bother me, and yet I’m completely annoyed at myself that it does. I want to believe my father’s dream of an Arizona orphanage is a good idea. Of course it is. Unwanted children need homes.
What kind of Christian am I?

I love Santa Cruz, I remind myself. I grew up there under the blanket of fog and sunshiny days. I took hikes in the nearby redwoods, and I embraced all that was Santa Cruz. For crying out loud, look at my clothes. If that doesn’t tell you I have enough of the beachside city in my heart, I don’t know what will. But I am not going back to that house. I am not going to grow old beside Eloise and Kate. I am not going to run into Jed’s wife at the grocery store. Just because my father is leaving doesn’t mean that I’m stepping into his role. We should have sold that house a long time ago.

The bathroom door swings open and Sharon stands in front of me. “What are you doing?” she asks. “Your father is throwing you a party.” She says it with a warmth in her voice that reminds me she is not always the monster I make her out to be.

“Hello, Sharon.”

“Your father planned this party for you, and you’re the guest of honor.”

“I know that, Sharon. I went to Stanford,” I remind her. It’s my way of saying
duh!
without being rude.

She sits down beside me and sighs deeply. “You don’t have to live in the house. Is that what this is about?”

I look at her, totally shocked she has any clue what’s going on inside my head. “Sort of,” I say, keeping the truth close to my heart.

“I imagine it doesn’t bring up the best memories for you. You can get a reverse mortgage on it and take care of the financial effects that way. It needs a lot of work.” She pats my leg. “Your father isn’t into the maintenance side of things.” She laughs. “But I guess you know that.”

I shake my head. “I’ll figure it out.” With this statement, I succumb to the knowledge that I am, indeed, getting stuck with the house.

“Do you want me to put the house on the market for you? I have a friend in real estate.”

“I don’t know what I want to do.” I look at the keys in my hand. “Why does Daddy want me to go back there?”

“He thinks you need to break free of your childhood.” She pauses for a moment. “Trauma. He thinks going back will help.”

“It won’t.” I feel that familiar knot in my stomach and I wish with everything in me that I could run right now. I wish I had my workout gear, which I usually keep in my car, and could just run until I couldn’t go any farther.

She pats my leg again. “I’ve waited a long time to get out of that house, Poppy.”

I nod, thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, this woman hasn’t been quite the vixen I’ve created her to be in my mind. I still don’t like her, and it’s so much easier to believe my father was duped than that he actually left our lives and my mother in the recesses of his mind. But still . . . “You’ve been more than patient, Sharon.”

She smiles. “Come out and mingle with the hodgepodge of weirdos your father assembled. He went to big trouble.”

We laugh, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. Who am I kidding? I look like that group’s leader. There’s no getting around it. Suddenly, Morgan’s words today don’t seem that far-fetched.

As I follow Sharon out the door, Morgan is there. She’s wearing diamond earrings the size of peacoat toggles and is dressed to the nines. Her blonde hair is up in a perfect swirl.

“Wow, you look great.”

She smiles at me. “You’re not mad at me.”

“I’m a little miffed, but I have bigger fish to fry. Come smile with me.” I give her a toothy grin. “Like this.”

“I set up the spa weekend,” Morgan says as we walk the hallway. “We’re all set and Lilly’s coming too. I brought you a picture of your date.” Morgan looks down at the floor. “If you’re interested in meeting him. Otherwise, you come alone or with whomever you please. All right?”

I smile at her and put my head on her shoulder.

“You know, I’ve never heard you mad like that. Well, maybe that one time when I wouldn’t drink that orange slop you were giving me. But I realized I overstepped my bounds. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad I got mad. It helped me know what I want out of life, and being set up is not that thing. Come meet my other weirdo friends.” I pull her into the room of my history, where she is greeted with sheer astonishment. To say Morgan is beautiful is a vast understatement to her presence. She gives off an aura that acts as a magnet to all around her. You’re drawn to her like a lighthouse on a stormy night. “Everyone, this is my friend Morgan Malliard.”

Jed looks for a little too long, and I think his wife kicks him under the table, “What?” he asks in all innocence and I have to muffle my giggle.

I find us seats next to Dr. Amos. “Morgan, this is the woman who encouraged me to be a doctor. She was the only female doctor on the coast at that time, and I just worshiped her.” I smile at my mentor, and she speaks to Morgan.

“Poppy was always an interesting child. Interested in what everything did and how you diagnosed all the different diseases. I think she had the medical dictionary memorized by age twelve.”

Interesting.
Now there’s a word I’ve heard to describe me for years. I believe it’s a thesaurus word for
weirdo
. Not that I shun that title, either, but if you look around the table here, everyone’s a weirdo. Even Morgan’s a weirdo, though no one can tell because they’re too blinded by her beauty. But I’ve been one of her best friends since college, and trust me: she’s a weirdo too. She just dresses better. I wonder if I let my girlfriends dress me I’d hear the adjective
interesting
less often.

Morgan is laughing. It’s her
Get-me-out-of-here-now
laugh. But we still have dinner to sit through. A long and uncomfortable dinner. Full of my childhood foibles and quirks—and let me just say, I hardly needed to be reminded. I look at Sharon and suddenly see her as my alibi instead of my enemy. Get thee to a realtor. Poppy Clayton is leaving her shell, and her childhood, behind!

chapter 6

Home.

Desperation scale: 4

I
get home to the condo and drop my keys into the basket at the entry. Some days, it just feels better than others to be home. I flick on a sunlight lamp, and the house is illuminated with low-end energy and all the brightness of natural light. My answering machine is blinking, but the last thing I need is more negative energy, so I let it blink. I take my sweater off and with the recessed light overhead, it’s like I’m about to be beamed up. And when I go? I realize that I’m in a really bad skirt.

I wonder if aliens would notice.

I scan my outfit in the mirror, looking at the tinged, wild colors of the worn cotton, which I’ve taken to hand-washing so it won’t fall apart, and it occurs to me my statement is getting old. It used to be that I felt different, set apart and unique in a look that brought me joy. But tonight, being around my past, I see I’m really not all that different. I’m just your average product of Santa Cruz and a mother who loved all things natural. I am a human banana slug. Loveable, but a loner.

For a brief second, it dawns on me that perhaps I don’t want to look like my past anymore.

Morgan parks her car and follows me into the house and Safflower, my cat, goes straight for her nylons. Morgan is all politeness, but she hates that cat. Morgan sees me eyeing my skirt, and I know what she’s thinking, but she says nothing, like the loyal friend she is.

“Are you going back?” she asks me, meaning to my childhood home.

I shake my head.

“Your father thinks you should. At least for a little while. I’ve never known your father to ask you to do anything, Poppy. Maybe he’s on to something.”

“My father also thinks I should have five children and be homeschooling them on the beach in a jumper. Any questions?”

“I’m inclined to agree with him on this one.”

I look at her like the traitor she is. “You think I should go back to that house and drive the long commute over the hill? For what reason exactly?” I put a hand to my hip.
This I have to hear.

“Seriously, Poppy, you want to help everyone but yourself.” She looks at my skirt again. “I think it’s time you helped yourself. No offense, but you date weirdos. You dress like a beatnik in the Silicon Valley. And you know, Poppy, I’m beginning to think it’s all an act, quite frankly. No one who cares about her body-fat percentage as much as you do is oblivious to her body’s affect on men. I just don’t buy it. And I’ve seen the plastic surgeon. You’re blind, deaf, or dumb on him because he is hot. I know you believe in all things natural, but love chemistry is as natural as it comes and—”

“I’m a runner. I run to be healthy, not tease men. When have I ever been a man chaser, Morgan? Going back to that house will not help me. There’s so much negative energy there. I’ll bet even you could feel it. My father should have sold it a long time ago, regardless of what Mom said. My mother would not have wanted me to live there with all the ghosts of history. She would have wanted my father to handle it for me.”

“If that were true, she wouldn’t have left it to you, but to him.” Morgan flicks her hair triumphantly.

“I’m going on a date tomorrow with someone you would call normal,” I say out of the blue. When in trouble, it’s always best to avoid the conversation.

“What?”

“Is that so shocking that I have a date?” I ask.

“Not that someone asked you out, but that you said yes. Does he wear sandals in the winter?”

“No.”

“Parachute pants from 1984?”

“No!” I say with a little more force.

“Does he color plants for a living and call it art?”

“That was one date I went out with that guy. One date. You don’t need to keep bringing it up, do you?”

“But you can’t expect us to forget it,” Morgan says coolly. “He’s an adult who uses crayons and calls it a vocation. Me, I think of a vocation as something you actually make money at. How can you not see the humor in that? It was one for the ages, truly.”

I purse my lips at her. “Someone
you
would call normal asked me out and I’m saying yes. I just decided right now.” I glance again in the mirror. “I sort of already said yes, but now I know I’m going.”

“Who asked you?”

“The plastic surgeon who works next door. There’s no chemistry, so let’s not go there. It’s just a dinner with a colleague in the medical field.”

“You’re going out with Dr. Nip/Tuck?” Morgan laughs. “Poppy, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you need to sit back and light a candle or sip an elixir. You’re not thinking clearly.” She pauses. “And I like it. You’re doing something that just isn’t right. There’s hope for you yet.”

“I have always thought that people who aren’t afraid to be different are mavericks.” I punch my fist in the sky, “Mavericks! So now, I’m just saying that I’m going to try out one of the drones and see what life is like on the other side. Maybe I’ve been missing something.”

“I’d hardly call Dr. Nip/Tuck a drone.
Drone
implies boring, one of the pack, the worker bee. Not a real hottie with a medical degree.” Morgan shrugs. “Maybe it’s just me.” She shakes her head. “No. You’re human and you’re female. You’re so not immune. But if you can get me a discount on a facelift when I get older, I’m all for it!”

I head over to the stereo and turn on a little light jazz. “There will be no facelifts in your future. I’ll buy you a lifetime supply of
La Mer
before I let that happen.”