Diamond Girl (31 page)

Clearly he picked up on my feelings and saw a way to make a quick buck for very little effort as he sold me the second house he showed me. I didn’t notice much about the place; real estate is not my thing. I did like the pretty red-bricked pool that Stephen daringly talked me into joining him in during the showing. He was pretty quick but it was the first underwater sex of my life, and the way he looked naked in the water with the sun on him made me feel like I was starring in some great romantic comedy. Afterward, when he said that he thought the house was perfect, I agreed.

I was positive that Stephen was giving me a subliminal message that the house was where he wanted to live one day, with me. I immediately told him I thought it was perfect for me too and said to draw up the papers and send them to Herbert’s office in New York. Stephen seemed ecstatic and I don’t think that part was an act because he had just cleared six percent on a five and a half million dollar house and gotten laid, all before noon. I’m sure he still tells the story at real estate dinners. I never heard from him again. A Sotheby’s assistant brought me the closing papers a week later. I could have backed out but there was no real reason to; Herbert had approved the purchase and each time I saw the house on Cherokee Lane, I liked it more.

Milan gave me her stamp of approval and managed to put the whole Stephen thing in a positive light. “That’s why Sotheby’s is so fabulous. Their customer service is really all-encompassing. Besides, Cares, did you really want to marry some poor Russell imitation who sells houses for a living? Come on, this place is adorable, and with the right look it could be amazing.”  The whole right look thing was beyond me. I never have had my own taste, really. I know what I was used to, antique French and English furniture, hand-painted silk walls and ceilings, and old master paintings, originals not reproductions, but I never thought about whether or not I liked any of it. It was just there, it’s how we had always lived.

Milan’s comment was a challenge to me. I had never had many of those and it felt novel. One thing being a Kelleher had taught me was that if I didn’t know what I wanted, I just had to say that out loud in a store and people would rush to help me find something I had always wanted, but hadn’t known I’d wanted till then. Leaning on Milan, like always, I asked her who she thought I should go to for design advice and, like always, despite having only been in L.A. for two weeks, she had it wired.

My pretty new house had been built in 1952 and was a semi-
traditional white pseudo-colonial that you reached after driving up a long private gated drive. It had been updated, of course, but it still had cool earlier times features and big airy glass rooms with vaulted beamed ceilings and wood burning fireplaces in most of the rooms, including the master suite. It also had a newly remodeled gourmet kitchen that was a little intimidating, but Milan reminded me it would be nice for my help as soon as I found some.

The house sat on a big lot with this great manicured garden and lots of old trees. To a New York girl it felt a little like I had just bought myself a small park. The two-car garage had an apartment over it which made me happy because I had already decided not to move in unless I had other people living there. Houses and the whole isolation, dead silence at night, thing that comes with them
are something I have never gotten used to. The little apartment meant that I could have my housekeeper or gardener live right on the property with me. Milan’s mom, who had become one of the nicest people in the world in her forties and who finally was acting like a real mom, took on the job of finding me someone and hired this wonderful Japanese couple, Mieko and Harin, to take care of me, the house and my new little park garden.

As soon as they moved in, I was ready to head to, at Milan’s directive, the amazing design store she had found for me, Ian Patrick Interiors. Stanley, my salesman, also became my new bff while we were doing the house, and he introduced me to a world of shopping I had not known existed. Buying furniture is a much bigger rush than purchasing, say, a Balmain distressed army t-shirt from Net-à- Porter. And, as Stanley helped me to see, unlike throwing away money on
clothes, purchasing items of furniture for your home is an investment.

I had entered a new world of fascinating, must-have objects. It was wonderful and, as Stanley pointed out when we flew to the pretty showrooms in North Carolina, I did after all have my own taste in interiors.

For example, when I saw the aged Eglomise Glass Dresser, I knew I wanted it, and that wasn’t so bad; it was on sale for ten thousand. The gorgeous, one-of-a-kind tangerine velvet chaise, that I would make infamous in Vanity Fair a year later, was only eighty-five hundred dollars. And I think I would have been all right but I became fascinated with things for my house and began researching them, much as I had Chanel bags back in my starter shopping days. When I found Limestone Gallery in London, I insisted that Stanley and I fly out there, and I couldn’t resist ordering their solid Ivory Stone bathtub, the most magnificent bathtub I had ever seen, a one-of-a-kind scooped ivory sled made from a single piece of stone. It was eighty-five thousand dollars.

Saying that “Since we are in London anyway, we might as well drop in”, Stanley introduced me to the “most amusing” store. “You have to see this, Carey darling. They’re outrageous.
So bad. Their designs are stunning but the audacity!”

He had my number, I did have to see it, and that began my affair with Europe by Net, where every item of furniture is a flat one hundred thousand dollars, shipping not included.

When I hesitated briefly over the carved iron canopy bed, or the stone and distressed wooden daybeds for the pool, Stanley reminded me, truthfully enough, that for a girl who had grown up with thirty million dollar Fragonards in the library, it wasn’t all that much. In the end my new little place was really beautiful and each room made me sigh with pleasure. The house  was very me,  the very me I hadn’t even known  I was, and my burst of self-expression had cost nearly five million dollars.

Shopping on the grand scale is a high, and I liked being high again, so when my twenty-fifth birthday came, I threw a combination house warming/birthday party and invited one hundred of Milan’s newest friends. It was a great evening and I made the newspaper the next day. Looking beautiful and wanting to stave off my post shopping and party binge let down, I called for a car service and had them take me to the Mercedes dealership. If I was going to be an independent L.A. girl, I had to drive, and buying the largest S.U.V. model they had made me feel safe.

While I was finally starting to drive myself around, I didn’t do it very well. Stopping off at Harry Winston on Rodeo Dr., and sauntering in announcing that I wanted to buy myself a birthday present from my father since he had forgotten to do it, assured me of  a warm welcome. After two glasses of Veuve, deciding on the three carat ascher cut canary diamond studs didn’t seem unreasonable at the time. Later I wondered if Daddy would have spent quite that much on me and I felt the first tremors of buyer’s remorse.  That night at home, lying on my pretty pale green Epoca couch, I finally started to worry.

I didn’t understand my trust and I don’t think I ever understood that an arbitrary amount like twenty-five million was all there was. Vaguely I
guess I always thought I must have at least a hundred million sitting in some bank somewhere. I did know about interest accumulating on money after all, and if I was twenty-five and the money had been set up for me twenty-five years before, then it wasn’t all that crazy to think it must have grown a great deal.

When I thought about it at all, I kind of assumed that the amount Herbert had mentioned was the amount available to actually spend and that, after that, I would need to start living on a monthly amount, that amount being amorphous to me. But the night following my birthday spree, I guessed that when Herbert saw the bills, especially the one for my new earrings, I would be getting a call.

I didn’t want any more calls from Herbert. I didn’t feel like I could stand being made to feel like some defective loser who was the family failure again. I would have rather called up all the stores and slept on a mattress on my newly installed marble floors before that happened, though obviously that seemed like a pretty drastic idea too.

Then I had what I considered an epiphany. I could pay cash to all of my vendors and tell them to stop the bills. I didn’t have access to cash, of course, but I knew someone who did, my darling Aunt Georgia.

I picked up the phone and dialed her cell.

Chapter 34

“Carey, this sort of mad spending is only amusing if you actually have the money to spend madly.”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Far be it from me, the apparently poor relation, to remind Aunt Georgia of her various unvisited vacation palaces, the cheapest of which cost far more than my entire trust. I didn’t think that while I was asking her for money, I should point out that my bedroom furniture was still less expensive than, say, her sunglasses.

Begging, oddly enough, wasn’t new to me. Thanks to my mother’s strange view of maternal affection, I had been begging for one thing or another since birth.
Carey the hungry heiress. I drew down on my prior embarrassing experiences in asking for stuff during the phone call. Trying to laugh like I thought Aunt Georgia’s observations on money were the wittiest, I said, “You’re right, Aunt Georgia. I don’t know what I was thinking.  I ...”

“Well you weren’t thinking at all, obviously.”

Gritting my teeth, I replied, “Right again, Aunty George, but the house is so great now and I think I could pretty much stay out here now and be happy, so ...”

“Well I am glad to hear you say that. I’ve been worried when we’ve spoken. I’ll tell you now that I didn’t think Los Angeles was a wise choice. Your mother is hopeless, and of course Kells is a wonderful father but he seems to have lost some of his family focus since Sarah. Why, at the time I said
...”

“I like Sarah, Aunt George, don’t you?”

Her voice chilled. “Oh, I don’t dislike her, but since she appeared on the scene, it’s been increasingly hard to spend time alone with my own brother. It seems I’ve barely seen him at all this summer and ...”

“Yeah, I know how you feel, Aunt George. I’ve only seen Daddy twice in the last two years and he forgot my birthday, but I’m still glad for him if Sarah makes him happy.” 

A little silence ensued and then, “I’m sorry to hear that about your birthday, Carey. I’ll tell you what, I will help you out. I’ll call Kells myself and tell him to talk to Herbert, tell him to remind Herbert that he does indeed work for us and not the other way around. Even I’ve been plagued by him on occasion. As for the earrings, I’ll make sure your father covers that little extravagance. I’ll tell him it’s the price of being forgetful.” She laughed and so did I, with relief. Then she began lecturing me again. “You know, Carolyn, being a Kelleher is not all about showing other people what they don’t have. it carries social responsibility with it, my orphanage for example.” I rolled my eyes. Her famous Indonesian orphanage, for which tout New York called her a saint, was, according to my mother, a tax shelter that 'Queen Georgia' had only deigned to visit twice in the years since she had opened it.

I wasn’t stupid enough to say that though. “I know, Aunt George. The orphanage is fantastic. Have you been over there much this year?”

“Well, no, I’m always meaning to go but things come up, though I am planning a trip this coming January. Possibly you could join me and see the work I’m doing over there. That isn’t the point I was trying to make, though, Carey. My point is that you need something of your own that defines your life and gives it meaning, such as my work with those poor children defines mine.”

It was a good thing Aunt Georgia couldn’t see my face.
Her work? But I wasn’t in total disagreement with what she was saying because she wasn’t the first person to mention this whole 'get a cause, get a life' idea to me. Michael had been the first, and remembering that made the old longing for him wash through me. Plaintively I asked her what she thought I should do. Of course, she ate it up. “That’s an excellent question, Carey, and I am going to tell Kells when I talk to him how glad I am that you are finally searching for a deeper purpose to your existence. We are all seekers on the road to light, Carey. You may not be aware of this, but I’ve been attending some Kabbalah classes recently, you know, to help me deal with Trump and his horrible arbitrary restrictions on my tranquility pond and ...”

“Tranquility pond, Aunt George?
I thought you just wanted a swimming pool and he said that the floors would ...”

Her voice hardened. “You’ve been gone a long time now, Carolyn. I gave up my selfish need for a swimming pool ages ago. That is a ridiculous desire for one person. I am speaking about my tranquility pool, I mean pond, which, while having the same size and water dimensions of an Olympic pool, is an ancient Tibetan cleansing temple which, if I am granted permission for, I will fill with only pure water from the springs of Thailand. I can assure you that Trump will have to give in or face court action on the grounds of interfering with my right to practice my chosen religion and I believe
...”

I had to shut her up. A few more minutes of this and I was afraid I
would end up giving away the rest of my own paltry fortune and joining a socialist commune. “You’re right, Aunt George, the guy's a dick. I totally hope you win and get your pool, I mean, uhm, your tranquility thingamajigger. So anyway, listen, it’s been so wonderful getting to talk to you, and thank you so much for saying you’d talk to Daddy and everything. I can’t wait till you get back to me and tell me what you think I should do, but I have to go right now because I’m late for a driving class. It turns out my old New York license expired and I ...”