Diamond Girl (20 page)

For Daddy, I wore little Ralph Lauren Black Label dresses. I bought them and wore them only for him. Nubby linen and tearoom was how he loved to see me, and that day at lunch I made sure to look like his perfect princess.

His eyes lit up when I walked in twenty minutes late. He kissed me. “There’s my girl. You look beautiful, sweetheart. Sit down and catch up your old father on what New York’s prettiest is doing.”

I laughed and kissed him again before I sat down. We exchanged our customary dimples and I stared at him with the pure one-of-a-kind pleasure seeing him gave me before gushing out my news.

“Well,
Daddy, it’s been a big month. First, I met the most wonderful boy and second I am in love - can you believe it?”

He shook his head bemused. “No, I can’t quite believe it. Who is this horrible boy that’s making my little girl so happy?”

“His name is Michael Annador. He has his own P.R. company. His parents are such nice people. His dad is over at Bear Sterns and his mother has a little art gallery. He has a sister at Cornell, no pets and he’s crazy about me.” I finished talking on a little bounce.

Daddy didn’t say anything for a minute. He gestured for our waiter and ordered for both of us like he always did.

When we were alone again he said. “Well, I’d like to meet him, then. You can fly out with him next week to watch the Lions in spring training. I’ve taken a place in Savannah for the season. I’m sure he would enjoy seeing the team.”

I nodded, waited for it, and he didn’t disappoint. “He knows who you are?” 

“He does, Daddy, and he doesn’t care. It’s just me he wants.”

He nodded with an expression that I couldn’t read then, but know now was pity.

“Then he is very smart and I will look forward to getting to know him better. Any other news, Carey K? Have you considered returning to Brown? I think I can sway the Board of Regents enough to let you live with Petal in off-campus housing after all.”

I was grateful he was willing to meet Michael, who I knew would love the whole toy football team deal, and hurt that he had moved on so quickly, but I didn’t protest. He didn’t like arguments. Instead, I used his question to ask him for career advice. “No, Daddy, I’m sorry but I just … well, Brown, the whole college thing, it’s not really me.”

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Oh no, Daddy, please don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad, Carolyn, I’m disappointed. There is a significant difference.”

I started to cry, and at The Brook of all places. Poor Daddy was horrified. “Sweetheart, stop that, calm down. Come on, Carey K, I told you I wasn’t angry at you. Don’t sweetheart. Please. People are looking at us.” Daddy really couldn’t bear emotion.

I tried to stop but it was him, he whose opinions made my sun rise or set. Still crying, I stuttered, “But … I … I don’t want you to … be … be diss … a … a … pointed in me, not ever, and you called me Carolyn.”

Daddy reached over and took my hand, showing unprecedented physical affection. “Good Lord
,  so I did, though it is your name, and my favorite name in the world. Still, if I promise never to utter it again, will you stop crying?”

I gave a little sob.
“Maybe.”

“Can I see it?”

I tried to keep a stern expression but flashed him a half-dimple anyway.  “Maybe.”

He showed me his in return and shook his head. “You are a great deal of trouble. Now I suppose I will have to apologize and buy you a present.”

Totally smiling by then, I nodded. “Definitely.”

He laughed. “Well it won’t be easy, Miss Kelleher. You have even amazed the imperturbable Herbert with your spending recently. What in the world is there left to buy in Manhattan from a poor father?”

“Are you mad about my bills, Daddy?”

“No, I’m not, I’m mad about you. I’m only disappointed.”

We both laughed.

“Disappointed that there is probably nothing left that you want that I can get for you.”  

“Daddy, I love you and, anyway, yes there is. I want a career.”

The waiter brought our entrées and we both fell silent until after he left. Daddy looked non-plussed.
“A career? Sweetheart, doing what, and why this sudden drive to work? I was joking about the bills you know.”

“Oh, I know, Daddy, though,” I sighed heavily, “shopping in Manhattan is no laughing matter, I’ll tell you.” His eyes twinkled. “But I really do want a career. Everybody I know has somewhere to go all day and I don’t.”

“Your young man?”

“Him too.
I told you that he has a P.R. business.”

“Yes, of course, P.R. Hmm, well, what are you interested in?”

“Maybe acting or modeling. Of course, I’m so short so I guess acting if ...”

He was shaking his head. “No, I think not on the acting, sweetheart. Neither of us would be comfortable with that. Maybe you should take up collecting. That can be very rewarding and there are auctions, and that entai
ls travel, and personally I ...”

“Collecting? Daddy, I don’t want to collect anything but shoes.”

“Well Carey, I wasn’t speaking of collecting stamps. There are many ...”

I cut him off impatiently. “Oh, I know I could collect
art, that I don’t care about, or books, that I don’t read, or furniture, that I have, but I don’t want to. I want to do something fun and glamorous.”

In a quiet voice he said. “And this something fun and glamorous has to be in the papers?”

I hesitated and backed down. “No, I guess not. Maybe something behind the scenes would be fun too.”

He smiled then. “Well, let me ponder on this and make a few calls. I imagine I’ll have some thoughts before long. Meantime, if you are at all interested in m
aking your old father happy ...”

“Anything, Daddy.”
 

“Sweetheart, you are such a good girl. Well then, would you consider being my official hostess at some of the Diabetes Foundation events?”

“Of course, Daddy, I’d be happy to do it, you know that, but mother …”

He frowned. “Yes, she has become quite involved but I would prefer to see my own daughter, the girl the foundation was created for and named after, out in front more, and your mother rather less.”

“Fine, Daddy, happy to do it. Would you like to tell her or should I?”

“Oh I think … well, you see ...
”

“No problem, Daddy. I’m happy to be the one to tell her and,
Daddy, how is Sarah these days?”

His lips tightened. “She’s fine, Carey. Thank you for asking.”

“I didn’t mean to be nosy, Daddy. I like Sarah, I do. Please tell her I said hello and that I would love to get together for lunch, or shopping, sometime.”

His face softened. He groaned in pretended distress. “Oh no, I can’t pass on that message. Sarah is becoming quite competent at shopping, but if she gets in the hands of the ‘terror of Fifth Avenue, Miss Kelleher’, I
will  have to relocate to a park bench within the month.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not that bad, Daddy.”

He rolled his in return and signaled for the check. “You are, you are, but then look at you.” He sighed in pretend resignation. “I suppose you will need an entire new wardrobe of evening dresses for foundation work?”

I nodded.
“Oh, probably.” I glanced at my watch. “In fact I’d better go get started now.”

We stood. He kissed my cheek again. “So you’ll be calling your mother soon?” 

“Yup, right away. In fact, if I can make my daily run through at Bergdorf’s short …” He winced and laughed. “… I might surprise the old girl with a drop-in visit. It’s been a while.”

Daddy walked me as far as the curb and saw me to the car. Waving away the chauffeur, he opened the door and, when I was seated, leaned inside.
“Okay, sweetheart. You go beard the old lion.” We both laughed then, but speaking more seriously he said, “But be careful. She still has some teeth left and, by the way, young lady, when are you going to learn to drive?”

“Oh, almost immediately, Daddy.
Michael has been teaching me already. I'll even show you next week at training, okay? I don’t think there’s much I can run over in North Carolina.”

He shook his head, leaned out and waved off the driver who asked me where I wanted to go. I gave him the address of the home I’d grown up in.

Chapter 22

By the time I finally connected with my mother, Michael had already taught me how to drive, had attended two Lions games with Daddy and Sarah, and I had been working at my awesome new job for two weeks. I had left six messages for Mother with her secretary-social secretary, and dropped by eight hundred fifth twice, without finding her.

Her being unavailable to me was nothing new so, like always, I lived my life without her. What wasn’t like always is that during that time I was living it happily. Daddy had called one of his acquaintances, a very rich junk bond trader whose only daughter was a woman about ten years older than me who ran her own seriously successful PR firm in Manhattan. He had gotten me a position as assistant to Carly Goldstein.

Carly was a loaded gun of a woman, as completely opposite from me as if we came from different planets. Her own parents, not coming from a long line of people who had been bred to breed and then distance, had had their first and been weirdly, in my experience, so delighted by having a child, a girl even, that they made her the center of their lives. Following her birth in the wild days of eighties trading and takeovers, her own father made a billion or so and both her parents dedicated themselves to having fun and including their child in that fun.

Like I said, they were aliens.

Apparently, and I can only state this from observation not personal knowledge, having your parents want you around gives you a freakishly high level of self-confidence, because Carly Goldstein was the single most forceful person I have ever met. Luckily she liked me, so I was never on the receiving end of her ‘bulldoze over everybody’ tirades.

She treated me like a pet, like I treated Petal, and, speaking of Petal, Carly let me bring her to the office every day.

So I was grateful to her, and in awe of her, and that created the sort of dynamic she was comfortable with, so she in turn was kind to me. Milan was super self-confident too, but in a much different way. Her blood was as blue and icy as mine, as was her father’s, so her belief in herself is a little hard to figure out. My theory is that as a lonely little girl, like I was, she stood in front of her own mirror and, instead of asking 'Why am I alone,  what’s wrong with me?', she took stock of her amazing genetic gifts and decided to love herself. That’s some powerful juju. I never got there personally.

Carly was nothing like Milan. She was short, obviously Jewish, with strong rather than pretty features, and she was notoriously continuously tanned, seemingly oblivious to the aging that came along with worshipping the sun. She had her hair bleached almost white, spoke in a gravelly voice, smoked openly while the rest of us hid it, and ordered everyone around regardless of who they were. She didn’t give a crap if people hated her or not. Mostly people did hate her but she was so focused on running the hottest PR firm in town that she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, maybe both.

She piled on the star clients: P.Diddy, Madonna, you name ‘em. She had them in her closely guarded Rolodex. My 'job' was to answer emails for her, run across town with gift baskets for clients or venues, and trail her around at media functions looking pretty and smiling at people when she wouldn’t. My experience as Milan’s bff made me a natural at this.

At night and on weekends there was Michael, my Michael, with his navy eyes and shaggy hair, his half-grin, his hands and his funny stories about his clients.

He wasn’t living with me officially but he really was. All his clothes were at my place. It’s just that he still held onto his own apartment, which I hated, but taking Milan’s advice, never told him I hated it.

He liked my new job. Carly was
the
PR person in town and he would ask me about everything she was doing and probably copied half of it, not that I cared. Carly was pissed that I couldn’t bring her Milan, but love is thicker than a paycheck, especially a paycheck that barely kept Petal in shoes, let alone me. And though I was positive that Michael loved me for me, and not for Milan’s patronage, or for the lifestyle I gave him, I wasn’t so positive that I was willing to test that theory. 

I did
bring her the Diabetes Foundation account, or Daddy did. I think that was how I was hired, and it was Carly who was inadvertently responsible for me finally connecting with my mother, and also for the bizarre new turn our relationship took.

The Friday before Memorial Day, Petal and I were in the little rose-colored alcove outside Carly’s ginormous office. Funnily, the office of Carly Goldstein PR was all done in cream and rose, a sharp contrast to her own style that tended to be
black, or blacker if it was an evening event.

Anyway, her door flew open and she barked at me. “Carey, did you confirm the Met for 'Evening in Florence'?” 'Evening in Florence' was the fall fundraiser for the foundation. In typical haute New York style, three hundred tables at five thousand a head would be fêted on free range animals and their former livers – well, pâté - and Cristal - though not vintage, this being for charity, after all - and small individual cakes that each mirrored an Italian masterpiece, the last being because it was an 'Evening in Florence'. Now I realize cake is a strange thing for a Diabetes Foundation, but I didn’t worry because I knew at least none of the women would touch dessert.