After Perfect (6 page)

Back in California, I felt free from the wreckage at home. I had managed to leave Washington, DC, unscathed from any outward ostracism. I was sleeping on an air mattress in an apartment in Brentwood with a few friends I'd stayed in touch with from college. I shared a room for $350 and managed to pay my rent when I auditioned and got the part of “girlfriend” in the Jimmy Eat World music video for the song “Pain.” It was the greatest distraction from everything going on at home, and it gave me something to brag about when I spoke to friends, deflecting any attention my father was getting. But when word spread about his trial, Ethan and Abby, two of my best friends from high school, flew out to Los Angeles to visit. I had broken up with Blake, believing I could get myself on track. My life had split in two, and I would forever associate him with reckless abandon, a time that, even though it was only a few weeks behind me, felt like a century ago. I wanted to be close to the friends I felt I could turn to, whom I was comfortable with, who knew my father and my family well, who just might believe me if I told them it was just one big misunderstanding. At nineteen, we were still young enough that the social hierarchy was fast asleep in our subconscious minds. No one had a high-pressure job yet or was a board member of a fancy charity. No reputation was at stake while everyone still danced upon Mom and Dad's credit cards.

When Ethan and Abby arrived, I took them and my roommate Marcie down to my family's beach club in San Diego for the day. The Spanish villa rests on the shores of La Jolla, an exclusive and wealthy beach town. Families stay in suites on the sand, play croquet and tennis and swim, and then dine along the peninsula extending out above the Pacific.

I leaned my head toward the direct sunlight, listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves. Ethan was lying next to me, the book
Writings o
n an Ethical Life
by Peter Singer was resting on his stomach. He had recently become a vegetarian and spent an hour on the drive down lecturing us on his decision. Marcie was on the other side of Ethan, sitting cross-legged and unscrewing mini whiskey bottles we'd bought with her fake ID. And Abby, with her pale skin and long, dark curls, was on her back tanning.

“Voilà!” Marcie said in her southern drawl. Marcie was from southern royalty, the equivalent to cave-dweller status but from Montgomery, Alabama, with long blond hair and tan, and she loved to drink expensive bottles of red wine while she wrote English term papers. She held out two red paper cups. Ethan and Abby sat up to take one and I took the other.

We held up our cups—“To friendship!”—and then chugged our drinks. I twisted my cup into the sand so it wouldn't fall over. Then Ethan and Abby turned to me. They were waiting for me to speak, as if I had something to say.

“What?” I asked.

They looked at each other, and then back to me.

“
What
, you guys? Stop being weird.”

“Really, Christina?” Ethan asked.

“Really, Ethan. What?”

“There isn't anything you want to talk about?”

“Um,
no
?” What did they want from me? I had already given them a few details about my father's trial. I didn't think there was anything left to talk about.

“Do you know what's going on with your dad?” Ethan asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He was on the front page of the
Washington Post
business section today,” he said. “My dad told me this morning.”

I didn't know. Ethan inched himself closer to me. I flinched back. “Stop,” I said.

“We just want to make sure you're okay,” Abby said.

I stared down at my empty cup, afraid to say anything for fear that if I did, the tears would come, and they might not stop.

“So your mom and dad didn't tell you?” Ethan was concerned for me now.

“Obviously not, dummy,” Abby said, as if I needed defending. Marcie was busy lathering her skin with suntan oil. She didn't know my family well. She had met my mother only on the day I moved into my dorm room. My father had been busy working.

“It says he could go to prison for up to fifty-seven months,” Ethan said. I remember doing the math in my head:
Fifty-seven months, fifty-seven months.
Twelve times four is forty-eight, so that would be nearly five years. I will be almost twenty-four when he gets out. Why didn't they tell me this?

“Can I see it?” I asked quickly.

“I don't have a copy of it, but I can email it to you when I'm back at my computer.”

I wanted more whiskey. I held out my cup. Marcie pulled out another bottle from her purse and emptied it. I chugged the rest. “I'm going swimming,” I said.

I stood up abruptly, and the world went black until I regained my balance. It felt like I didn't have the right to feel what I felt. The stigma and shame of having a parent sentenced to prison was slowly injecting itself into me like poison, silencing me. In a strange way, it felt like a death. I was losing my father, but he wasn't dying. Yet he wouldn't be there on my twentieth birthday, Father's Day, or Christmas. I would have only my memory of him. Unlike death, the loss was ambiguous, not knowing when I would ever see him again and how things would change. I didn't know how to comprehend any of it, and my emotions were isolated—floating and free-falling inside of an infinite possibility of feeling, cementing a trifling numbness in me.

And I couldn't say this to Ethan, Abby, or Marcie. Marcie had lost her father to leukemia when she was five, and I felt ashamed for even thinking about comparing the loss. I couldn't. There were no condolence cards to be sent or sympathy expressed for children of the damned, only humiliating and awkward conversations to be had like this one, yet deep down, the pain somehow felt equal.

I ran as fast as I could toward the freezing Pacific and plowed into the waves, pushing hard against the current. I dove until my adrenaline subsided and the alcohol made its way through my bloodstream, providing some relief.

When I got out of the water, I noticed a woman talking to my friends in the distance. I ran toward them and saw it was an employee. As I got closer, the name tag pinned to her white sweater read “General Manager.”
Shit.

“Are you Christina Prousalis?” she asked
.

“Yes?” I said it as a question, as if maybe I wasn't.

“Can you come with me, please?”

“Hold on a minute. What is this regarding?” Ethan sounded stern, like his father, a force to be reckoned with.

“I'm not at liberty to say, but the president of the club would like to speak with you in his office.”

“No problem,” I said, casually stumbling backward.

“I'm coming with her,” Ethan said.

“That's fine.”

The general manager stood patiently like a correctional officer while I stepped into my yellow sundress, still sopping wet. I tripped as one of the straps caught my right foot.

Ethan and I trailed behind her and up into the main clubhouse while Abby and Marcie waited with our things.

I grabbed hold of Ethan's arm. “I'm wasted,” I whispered.

“I know,” he whispered back.

“What do I do?”

“Just don't talk.”

The general manager glanced back at us. I smiled at her and then leaned back into Ethan. “It's like that time in eighth grade we were sent to the principal's office for walking to McDonald's.”

“
Shhh
,” Ethan whispered.

We approached the front door to the president's office. I unlinked arms with Ethan and attempted to stand on my own, the alcohol making me dizzy. I brushed my hair, which was slowly turning into sand-filled dreadlocks, out of my eyes.

“Ms. Prousalis, have a seat.”

The president stood tall, with an authoritative presence. He wore a yellow collared shirt and navy blazer with a gold club pin, little crisscrossed flags below his handkerchief.

Ethan stood next to me, and I sat. I could feel my wet butt leaving an imprint on the felt seat cushion. There were gold trophies on his bookshelf. They looked like stupid kid trophies, I thought. My eyes wandered up toward the ceiling as the president accused me of stealing cheeseburgers and Cobb salads. What was he talking about? I had given them our club number. Wasn't he upset that I was drunk? Maybe he didn't notice. I was playing it cool. I stared at the fluorescent lights. I wondered if I stared at them long enough, would I go blind?

“Ms. Prousalis. Ms. Prousalis.” The president tried to get my attention.

“Yeah.” I blinked heavily in his direction. It was hard to see him. His face was covered by a giant black dot.

“Where are your parents?” he asked.

Where
were
my parents?
I hadn't seen or spoken to them in weeks. I knew they must have known that the trial would be written about in the
Washington Post.
They were busy packing up the house, selling family heirlooms, doing things I didn't want to think about, but did they honestly think that I wouldn't find out? They could have at least warned me. It's one thing not to tell me about a Chagall being sold; it's another when Dad is being painted as a criminal in the
Washington Post
for all of my friends and their families to read about.

“Your father owes us money, Christina,” the president continued.

It was then I realized he had pulled me into his office not because we had snuck alcohol onto the premises but because my father owed them money. We had been suspended from the club, and I didn't know.

“Unfortunately, you and your family are no longer welcome here. Please exit the property immediately upon leaving my office.” The president removed himself from behind his desk and walked to the office door. He opened it like a gentleman.

I sat for a moment; my thoughts clouded with denial.
Is he kicking me out? Why didn't Mom and Dad tell me not to come here? California was supposed to be safe; a
place where being sent to prison gives you street cred, not exile. Why didn't they have a discussion with me about Dad's sentencing? What it means, how long he will be gone for. I had to find out that Dad is leaving for prison from
two best friends whose parents told them right away—before I even knew the article existed. Mom and Dad could have at least spared me the humiliation; the kind of humiliation everyone spends his or her whole life avoiding, no matter how much money there is in the bank.

My cheeks felt flushed, and my temples pounded above my ears. My family had always had a veneer of respect and order around money, as we never discussed it—
because it was rude, because it was none of my business, because it was being taken care of
. Sitting in that chair was the first time I became aware of the fact that Abby's father was a partner at a major Washington, DC, law firm. Ethan's father was a senior executive at a Fortune 100 company. Marcie's grandfather was a prominent judge, and her grandmother was a descendant of old railroad money. They spent summers on Jupiter Island, where Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Fords, Doubledays, and Bushes mingle. Where ordinarily I felt I could tell my friends the truth, this time I couldn't. I felt the divide. I was embarrassed. I had no idea it was just the beginning of a seismic shift that would split me in two. I was about to drift so far away from the only life I ever knew, and the insecurity and anxiety of the unknown left me sitting there with nothing to say.

The president stood in the doorway, waiting for me to exit. I got up and shoved the chair behind me, leaving it awkwardly in the center of his office. Ethan reached for my hand.

“You didn't have to be a prick about it,” he said to the president's face. It was the bravest I'd seen him since the night he lit his desk on fire in the ninth grade.

“Yeah,” I said. “Nice trophies.”

Ethan pulled me through the parking lot. We called Abby on her cell phone, and she and Marcie met us by my car. They sauntered over with our beach bags in tow looking like two bag ladies—if bag ladies could afford YSL. Marcie pulled out a Corona and handed it to me.

“Where'd you get that?”

“Don't ask. Just drink.”

I threw Ethan my keys, and we lugged our bags over into the backseat of my convertible.

We peeled out of the parking lot and made our way down the club's elegant driveway, skinny palm trees on either side of us, families playing croquet by a lake filled with swans as we approached the exit gates. Abby threw her hands into the air and howled, “Fuck country clubs!”

Once when we were little, I brought Abby to our country club in Washington, DC. Before we left, she said, “My parents don't mind this country club, because they allow Jews here. The Chevy Chase Club didn't used to allow Jews.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
Fuck country clubs.
So many memories from my childhood had happened there, and it felt as though the president had taken them all back. Like they meant nothing. I tried not to think about my parents when we drove off the private property. I never told them what had happened. What was the use? Instead, I flicked my membership card out the window and kissed that country club good-bye. I didn't belong there anymore. Where I did belong, I didn't know. And I wouldn't know for years.

Ethan put his hand on top of mine as we merged onto the 405 freeway. We would never talk about that day at the beach club. Eventually my friends would go back to their respective universities, and we would all lose touch. They would graduate, climb their way into the upper-class scuffle of corporate America, and make new friends, beginning new chapters of their lives, while I was just beginning to spin backward into mine.

“Meet me at the pink Starbucks on the corner of Sunset and Swarthmore,” my mother said. I shifted gears, speeding past the iron gates of Bel Air toward Pacific Palisades. It sounded urgent.