Underneath It All (4 page)

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Authors: Margo Candela

BOOK: Underneath It All
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7
Dr. N
“
J
acquelyn, how long have you been coming here?”
“Um?” I made my first appointment with Dr. N the day after I signed the divorce papers that ended my brief marriage to Nate, my college everything. “A while.”
“And?”
“Uh, it’s been very interesting?” I’m a lot past tipsy now. I sip my tub of coffee in hopes of sobering up before I head back to work. “And enlightening, of course. I’ve got such a better perspective on myself and my family and, uh, stuff.”
“Have you found your parents to be more supportive of your decisions in life because of our work together?”
“Supportive?”
If my family ever found out I was seeing a shrink they’d freak. In their view, one of the worst things a child can do is talk about family secrets and problems to a complete stranger who is not sitting on the other side of a darkened confessional screen. With all I’ve already put my family through, the last thing they need to hear is that my psychiatrist thinks they are codependent, antisocial, closed-minded traditionalists.
“As an adult you have a right to make decisions based on your needs. There is nothing wrong with that, Jacquelyn. It’s part of growing up and having your own life.”
“Of course! I completely agree.”
It’s my fault Dr. N has this impression of my family. If only I had been more selective about what I shared with her. Then she’d be able to see the good and other stuff I’m sure is relatively normal about them. Not that I think they’re crazy or bad people, they’re just—
“Jacquelyn?” My shrink, whom I’m paying $150 a minute to listen to me, sounds annoyed that I’ve drifted off.
“Sorry.” I take a swig of coffee and try to concentrate on what she wants me to say. “I’ve made a lot of progress, uh, with my family. I think.”
“Your communication with your parents and family is much more open?”
“You bet. We communicate so much more openly now.” I guess I’ve told them to get over it and accept me for who I am. Just not so directly, disrespectfully and definitely not in so many words.
“And how about your other issue?” Dr. N asks, arching a fuzzy eyebrow.
“Ah ... my inability to, uh ...” I should know this by now. I should be able to recite it backward and forward.
“Take responsibility for your own actions, assume control of your life and improve your chances for establishing a long-lasting, fulfilling relationship.”
“Yeah, that!”
I don’t mean to make Dr. N work for her fee, but I have lots on my mind. The last thing I need is to spend an hour in therapy.
“So do you think you’ve made progress toward those goals?”
“Well, sure. I can relate to my parents as an adult. I’m so over my divorce, and I’m not falling apart because Bina totally blindsided me with her getting married. I really feel as if my life is coming together. I might even be ready to start dating again. Soon.”
See? Calm, cool and collected. Dr. N nods and smiles. Good answer!
“And how about the issue of your work life encroaching on your private life?”
“Oh, that. Ha, I’ve managed to work out a balance.” One time, for lack of anything else to bitch about and forty minutes of therapy to fill, I talked about Mrs. Mayor and what I do all day, night and morning. Nothing major, nothing out of the ordinary, I just went through a normal 23-hour day on the job. Somehow she got the idea that I’m hiding behind my work and now it’s an issue, one of my many issues, as she puts it.
“I was hoping you’d say that. We seem to have gotten you to a good place in your life.”
“Absolutely.” Not.
“We should really evaluate where you want to go with your therapy.” Dr. N looks at me and smiles slightly. “At this point, I think we’ve come to a good place to think about scaling back or even stopping your sessions.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” Is Dr. N dumping me? If I’ve ever needed a therapist, it’s now. “Umm, but I think scaling back would be better for me. You know, to kind of wean me off. Like the patch when I quit smoking.”
I took up smoking for about a week after a messy breakup from a rebound jerk and stayed on the patch for six months. How was I supposed to know I had an addictive personality?
“I agree. So, instead of meeting once a week, let’s go to one session every other week and then go from there.” Dr. N makes a series of checks and scribbles on my chart. “I think we can safely say you’ll be out of therapy soon, Jacquelyn. Isn’t that great news?”
“Great. Great news. Thanks!” I never know if I should thank Dr. N; I mean, I
am
paying her for her time, and it’s not as if she’s doing me a favor, but I can’t seem to not thank her. “OK. See you next week. Thanks.”
“Very good. Good-bye, Jacquelyn.” Dr. N nods slightly, the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile, and she looks down at her notepad.
“Bye, thanks again.”
8
Yolie
T
hough I know my mother will still love me if she doesn’t hear from me this very moment, guilt outweighs my duty to both the woman who puts bread on my plate and to San Francisco’s traffic laws. Not by much, but still. I hate calling her after seeing my shrink. Even with the physical distance between us, I always feel she can sense when I’ve been up to no good, therapeutic or not.
It’s not like I didn’t try the church route, in fact my shrink sessions are essentially sanctioned by the pope. Shortly before my divorce, when things were looking very bleak, I went to confession and after twenty minutes the priest suggested I consider talking to a professional. If I told this to my mom she’d only want to know what scandalous things I said to the poor priest.
“Hello? Hello?” The phone gives one more watery ring. I make an illegal right turn onto Market Street and am soundly beeped by at least five other drivers.
“¿Hola?”
I freeze. It’s my sister Yolie, the last person on earth I want to talk to. Ever.
“Hola!”
“Oh, hey, Yolie. It’s me.” I check my watch, a Cartier Panther Mrs. Mayor gave me. It’s yet another hand-me-down, but real. I made sure to inquire, discreetly, when I went in to get the battery changed the day after she gave it to me to make up for almost getting me arrested at Saks.
“Me?” Yolie’s mouth twists around the word. She knows who it is. Who else would be presumptuous enough to assume that she would know it was me except for me?
“Your sister, Jacquelyn.” I roll my eyes and run a red light. “Is Mom around?”
“
Mom
isn’t here.
Mamá
is running errands,” Yolie says. All of a sudden I am reminded how wonderful life can be when you’re not her.
“Whatever. Tell her I called.”
“Sure.” Click.
“Hello?” I make sure we’re disconnected. “Talk to you soon, you miserable bitch.”
9
Mr. Mayor
I
pull into the Mayors’s cavernous garage, behind Mr. Mayor’s new silver Audi, but leave the Neiman Marcus box in my car, underneath some of my own dry cleaning, as if trying to suffocate the poor, innocent bag for my guilt at not having the will to decline it. I try to do this casually. This place is wired tighter than the White House and I never know who’s watching or from where.
Last week, I was casually checking out the Audi and noticed it was open so I slid into the driver’s seat. I put my hands on the steering wheel and imagined I was driving up to Bodega Bay wearing sunglasses and wrapped in that luxurious cashmere coat Mrs. Mayor had me pick up from Neiman Marcus last week (where I spied the bag that I mentioned to George, which is now in my trunk). I was about to trail my hand out the window, letting the cool Pacific wind slip through my fingers when Danny sprang up behind me, cackling like a madman. I almost peed all over the buttery leather seats.
I hurry up the stairs and into the Kitchen. And this is a Kitchen with a capital
K.
Miles of polished concrete floors and marble counters and rich wood everywhere. Even the fridge has wood doors. Julia Childs could be interred in this Kitchen.
My parents’ kitchen back home on Idell Street is all about bleached linoleum and scuffed Formica. I thought that my flat’s kitchen, with its tile floor and Corian countertops, was pretty spiffy. But now I know better. I have seen the light gleaming off polished marble. It turns out a kitchen can be more than just where you cook and store food. It can be a place you want to hang out in, not one you avoid at all costs because your father will yell at you to wash the dishes because you happen to be dumb enough to get caught grabbing a Pepsi out of the fridge.
The Mayors’s Kitchen gets used only when they throw a dinner party or when Mr. Mayor pours his morning bowl of sugared oats. Mrs. Mayor doesn’t cook, big surprise, but has all her meals scientifically prepared for optimal nutrition and minimal fat by her diet guru, who delivers them several times a week. When they do throw a party, a caterer brings in the food already cooked. Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful space. Don’t even get me started on the master suite.
I can go to the suite one of two ways: through the foyer, past the library and up the main staircase, or up what Mrs. Mayor calls the butler’s stairs, which are right off the Kitchen and past Danny’s room.
I shift thousands of dollars of chiffon and silk onto my other shoulder and head out to the foyer. I’m in no mood to tangle with Danny right now. I hurry past the closed library door, trying to silence the clicking of my heels on the vast marble floor that covers the foyer leading to the upstairs staircase.
“Jacquelyn?” Mr. Mayor is standing in the open door, wearing his tuxedo with his bow tie undone. I almost let the miles of silk fall to the floor and puddle around my suddenly sweating feet.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor?” I ask with my stomach in my throat and flakey mascara on my cheeks.
“Can I trouble you for a moment?” he asks in his clipped, prep-school tone. He’s a weird but intoxicating mixture of Mel Gibson (pre-pre-pre-
Passion of the Christ
), with the suaveness of Jude Law and a dash of a young Robert Redford all rolled into one hunky man package with a brain the size of Minnesota.
“Sure. No trouble. What’s the matter?” Please let it be your loveless marriage and the lack of me in your life.
“Can you help me with this?” He gestures to his bow tie.
“Um. Well ...” I couldn’t be more shocked if he had gestured to his zipper.
“My wife is holed upstairs with a small army of people putting her face on. Please, Jacquelyn. I’m sorry, but I never could manage a decent knot.”
This is true. Many a time I’ve seen Mrs. Mayor undo his tie right at the front door and do it over again. I don’t know about any zipper action. That’s the one thing Mrs. Mayor is completely mum about: their sex life.
“Um, OK.” Why not? It’s just a tie.
“You’re a lifesaver.” Mr. Mayor’s long legs stride over to me and he takes the heaps of clothes out of my suddenly weak arms. God, he smells
so
good. Clean and powerful. He piles them onto a very expensive side chair as if it was a Pottery Barn floor sample and the clothes were Old Navy sweatpants. He stands straight up in front of me, his arms at his sides. “I’m all yours.”
“Yeah! Ha! Um. OK. Lift your chin?” He does. Like this is totally normal. I quickly tie his bow tie and step back. I can’t help but reach over and straighten it. “There! All done!”
“Many thanks, Jackie.” He casually checks himself out in the huge gilded mirror.
“Actually?” He looks over at me, straight into my eyes for the first time. I lick my lips and work up my courage. “Actually, Mr. Mayor, it’s Jacqs.”
I rush past him, gather up his wife’s dry cleaning and try not to fall face-first on the stairs.
10
Mrs. Mayor
I
try to tiptoe past Mrs. Mayor, hoping that she can’t see me through the cloud of face powder and hairspray. I get as far as her closet before she stops me cold.
“Jacquelyn, I hope you didn’t forget to pick up my studs?” Mrs. Mayor leans back so Natasha can apply false lashes with her huge but deft hands. “Reynold promised he’d have them ready today.”
“Uh ...” She never mentioned anything about any studs, but that’s not her fault. “Actually, I talked to Reynold about what you might be wearing and he suggested something else.”
“He did? And what does Reynold think I should be wearing?” She arches a brow and tilts her head.
“Yeah. Something new. They haven’t even been on display or in the catalog yet. He said he’d be happy to loan them to you for tonight.”
“That Reynold.” Mrs. Mayor tosses back her head and gives a throaty laugh. “Well, let me see them.”
“Uh, OK. Let me just go put these down.”
“I hope it’s nothing too garish,” Mrs. Mayor warns.
“No, no. Very classic,” I call over my shoulder as I scamper into her walk-in closet and hang up the dry-cleaned gowns with the other dry-cleaned gowns.
Trying to look like the picture of innocence (and it’s getting more difficult these days) I drop a pair of two-pairs-for-$10 earrings I picked up at Clair’s into Mrs. Mayor’s freshly manicured hand.
“Oh! So delicate. Who’s the designer?” Mrs. Mayor must be in a good mood. Usually she sits in stony silence as if she’s enduring a Pap smear and not getting pampered by a team of people who want only to make her happy.
“I, uh, Sanjay Gupta. He’s a new designer. Very new. These, in fact, are one of a kind.” This is all sort of true, if it weren’t a total lie.
“Is he ethnic? Oh, that should make Martin happy.” Mrs. Mayor doesn’t like Vivian. With her shampoo-commercial red curls and perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, she’s naturally beautiful, while Mrs. Mayor’s beauty is the work of modern science. “Make sure she knows, will you, Jacquelyn?”
“I’ll call her right now.” I actually think Vivian is really nice and competent but distractingly attractive, and therefore usually regarded with suspicion by her own gender. Especially by Mrs. Mayor, who doesn’t trust anyone who could be considered a smidgen better-looking than she is. Hey, what does that say about my looks?
In a beauty contest I think I’d come in a solid third. And that’s because Vivian was an actual Midwestern beauty pageant queen and Mrs. Mayor has spent so much money on her looks that she can’t help but look frightfully good. I’d come in first if the contest was based on raw potential.
“Oh, and Jacquelyn, can you also ask her to make sure the reporters keep their distance during the event?”
Mrs. Mayor pretends to ask, but we all know it’s an order. She once told me she hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be at the bottom. She was a waitress for a whole month before landing the role of Leslie Dumont, sexy nanny and eventually sexy brain surgeon on the long-running soap
Love and Lies.
I actually remember Mrs. Mayor’s first day on the show. I was fifteen years old and at home for a long, boring summer.
Love and Lies
was my favorite soap. I was in love with wild Colt Holmes, twenty-four-year-old widower with an infant daughter to care for. I had read about a new character being introduced but hadn’t paid much attention. Mrs. Mayor came on in the role of the baby’s nanny.
“I’m so ... so sorry ... Colt ... but I ... can’t.” Katherine/Leslie batted her eyelashes between each pause for effect. “You can’t ... We ... can’t.”
“Leslie, I’ve never met a woman like you. When I look into your eyes I feel like I could drown.” Colt (I don’t remember his real name) was shirtless for some reason. Actually, as I remember, he spent most of his time on screen shirtless or in the process of taking off his shirt.
“Like your ... late wife ... drowned?” She stared up at him, letting each word drip like honey from her lips.
“Yes, but in a good way.” He growled and pulled her into a meaty embrace and then they sucked face. It didn’t get much better than that.
I was sure she would be one of those bit characters who’d be around for a while and then disappear. And she did, sort of. Her character turned out to be way more scheming and soon dyed her hair blonde and got bigger lips and boobs, and so a star was born/manufactured. Colt Holmes was eventually killed off, and Mrs. Mayor went on to become one of the most hated and beloved soap opera actresses of her time. And now I work for her. How weird is that?
“Jacquelyn?” Mrs. Mayor never calls me Jacqs, and I never call her anything but Katherine (to her face). I accidentally called her Leslie and she laughed it off, but her look told me I’d get away with it only once. “What do you think?”
She waves her hands toward a selection of dresses spread out on the bed. (None of which is the gown she specifically had me pick up from the dry cleaner for this event.) I run my eyes quickly over the dresses and, as if I’m pulled by a magnet, my eyes land on a pink gown with spaghetti straps, plunging neckline and delicate beading. It’s the kind of dress I wouldn’t mind being buried in.
I pick it up, imagining myself slipping it on and then having Mr. Mayor come up behind me, putting his big, warm hands on my shoulders and slowly turning me around ...
“Mr. Mayor ... we can’t. Please ...” Naturally long and lush lashes sweep against my flushed cheeks.
“We can and we will. Jacqs, I’ve never wanted a woman more than I’ve wanted you.” His hands undo the impossibly long row of tiny buttons with deft fingers. “Oh, and by the way, call me Mr. Baxter.”
“O ... K ...” My toned arms entwine around—
“Didn’t I tell you, Natasha? I knew she’d pick that one. It’s like I can read her mind.”
Mrs. Mayor laughs. Natasha giggles, and from the dressing room the new stylist chortles well after the moment.
“Yeah, like you can read my mind, ha!” I busy myself with smoothing out the dress.
“Did you see the latest?” Mrs. Mayor gestures to the Post-it-thick issue of
Home & Garden
where one of the many Baxter residences and its fabulous furniture is anonymously featured in a ten-page spread.
The Mayors are décor poor since his mother emptied the Mansion of every stick of family furniture when her son stuck to his guns and married his soap star. Now it’s furnished and decorated nicely, very nicely even. Way beyond Pottery Barn, but not heirloom quality. I don’t care how old-timey Restoration Hardware tries to be, it’s not Chippendale and never will be. This much I’ve learned from all my Mrs. Mayor-required reading.
“Make sure to file it with the others after you input the particulars into the computer. Thank you, Jacquelyn.”
“Of course,” I say, not hinting at the sheer paranoia and pettiness of one of my many Mrs. Mayor tasks.
Part of my job is to sit and listen to Mrs. Mayor talk about the Baxter family sideboards that came over on the second or third ship after the
Mayflower
. The Chippendale chairs presidents have sat on, and the many houses, sorry, estates, where all this stuff resides safely out of her reach since invitations have been few and far between. I have turned all of this information into a complex spreadsheet, which she studies with the intensity of a federal prosecutor on her first big case.
Before she married Mr. Mayor she lived in a two-bedroom condo in Studio City.
“About this event tonight, what can you tell me? I need some interesting insights.” She looks over at me or, actually, above my head.
“Um ...” I wrote up her crib sheet, as usual, and I know she read it, so why is she asking for more information? “What kind of insights, Katherine?”
“Your family is from Mexico, right? This is a benefit for the Mexican Art Museum, correct?” Mrs. Mayor is getting annoyed, and I’m too flabbergasted to be offended.
“Yeah, at some point my family came from Mexico and before that over the Bering Strait, but that’s debatable. I, uh, I didn’t major in art in college, Katherine. I took Art 101 and, of course, we covered Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, just the basics, and I’ve put those in your memo. As for interesting insights, I’m afraid I’m as clueless as you are,” I say before realizing I’ve called Mrs. Mayor clueless to her face.
Natasha pretends to cough, but her face is red and her eyes are bulging out from holding back laughter.
“Can you let the Mayor know I’ll be down shortly?” That means at least another half hour. And, yes, she calls her own husband the Mayor.
“Of course.” Last thing I want to do is face Mr. Mayor again after my “Actually, it’s Jacqs” incident.
Christ, I’ll never live that down in my own mind.

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