Diamond Girl (36 page)

It’s one of those smarmy things to say when the person saying it means exactly the opposite. What they are really saying is, it’s you who’s a mess, I’m fine, and I want to get away from you, but at least I’m trying to do it politely.

With Diana and me it was actually the truth, it wasn’t her, she’s perfect, there is nothing wrong with my little girl, but there are a great many things wrong with me, and the biggest one is that she came into my life too late, or maybe it was too early. Whatever, the timing was wrong. I wasn’t ready after all and I didn’t know what to do with her. I do love her, but its end times for me, so I need to be honest with myself. I may have loved the idea of her more. 

When Claudia left her with me I spent an hour just admiring her but babies, they need and they want a lot more than being stared at, and when she woke up and scrunched up her face, I started yelling for Mieko louder than Diana was yelling for whatever it was she wanted.  I had no idea that babies wanted so many things: food, changing, cuddling, and apparently all at the same time. I found out at six that night when Mieko tracked me down in the driveway.

I was just getting in my car. I had a full night planned. I was going to meet Christy for an early dinner on Melrose, then we were going to see her new house, and after that attend some cell phone company's party, after which we would end up over at Les Deux and meet up with Milan and whoever had followed her there.

So when I saw little Mieko, who being Asian, always moved slowly and gracefully, running towards me down the drive, my new baby jerking up and down in her arms, her face bright red and her mouth emitting this horrible car alarm like screech, I was taken aback, way back. I really, really liked Mieko and the last thing I wanted to have to do was fire her, especially since that would mean I’d lose Harin, my gardener, simultaneously, but even I knew you weren’t supposed to run with a baby.

I stepped away from the car and faced her, preparing to put enough fear of her position’s future into her to make sure this never happened again, but before I could say anything, she practically threw Diana at me. Awkwardly I caught my by-then purple-faced screaming new daughter and stared at Mieko shocked.
“Mieko, what the hell?” Seeing how strained she looked, I softened my voice. “Did you bring her out to say goodbye, because that’s really sweet, but I don’t want you to run with her, okay?” I looked down at Diana, who had miraculously stopped crying in my arms, I smiled at her and gave her a quick kiss on her little head and held her out to Mieko. “See, she really doesn’t like running. She’s going to be like her mama, a lazy girl. Okay, here you go, you two ladies have a good night.”

Mieko crossed her arms across her chest and stared at me through narrowed eyes. “Miss Carey, I no nanny, not be nanny, not want to be nanny, am not going to be nanny. You have baby, you take care of baby. Mieko, she take care of house, it is good.” 

Diana was squirming in my hands, trying to twist her little body towards me. Reluctantly I laid her against my shoulder. Diana, wanting me to hold her, gave me a strange feeling. I wish I could say it was pleasure and maybe I felt a little bit of that too, but mostly I felt trapped. I reasoned with myself that I needed time to adapt. Right then, though, I needed Mieko to adapt.

Trying for patience, I said. “Yes, Mieko, you do take care of the house and you do a great job, but now we have a baby in the house, so I want you to take care of her too, okay?” Again I held out Diana who immediately started screaming when I pulled her away from my shoulder.

Mieko’s expression was unyielding. “No, Miss Carey, Mieko had baby, she raised boy … he is good boy, is teacher now. Mieko is proud but Mieko is done with babies. I helped you today …” She seemed to be struggling for words. I didn’t help her. Her face started turning red as she continued. “Harin say, he say, Mieko, you help Miss Carey with baby, nanny she will come soon, but no nanny come. Now you leaving and Mieko is off work, so Miss Carey take baby with her if she goes.”

“Mieko,” I said warningly.

She shook her head and took a step back. “No, Miss Carey, you no like Mieko no more, I am sad, but Harin and Mieko we will find new jobs. We is good workers but Mieko not take care of baby. Mieko is tired now and is going home.”

Without giving me a chance to respond, she turned and I watched bemused as she headed, shoulders bowed, to the apartment she shared with Harin over the garage. 

I noticed then that my new baby smelled terrible.

Scared in a way I hadn’t been before, I reluctantly headed back into
the house. I figured out how to change her, and it was worse and more disgusting than anything I had ever done previously, worse even than my diabetes needles were. Frantic for support, I called Christy and told her about my domestic crisis, hoping that she would agree to change our plans and come over and offer not only moral support but baby care support.

She was sweet and sympathetic and advised me to call her mother right away for a nanny referral agency, but said, “I can’t, I just can’t change my plans for tonight. You two girls have a good night, though, Cares, and don’t forget to call Mom. Okay, love you, bye.”

Diana and I were alone. I think she sensed our situation wasn’t good either because she screamed all night, or maybe it was my attempt at feeding her. What did I know? I knew babies drank milk; too bad the only milk I had in the house was the skim I had Mieko buy for my coffee. Mieko had left a can of formula on the counter but I was too stressed by Diana’s non-stop screaming to read the instructions, and when she didn’t like the lumpy cold mess I made for her any more than she had liked the ice cold skim milk, I threw her bottle across the dining room and laid her down on the floor while I stayed bent over in my chair, moaning in fear.

I called Mrs. Marin at two am, waking up her household, and when she came to the phone, I hysterically blurted out my situation and she began laughing. “Carey, Carey, Carey, don’t worry about a thing
…  Mama Marin is on her way to the rescue.”

She came screeching up to my gates an hour later. I met her in the driveway and thrust my nearly apoplectic baby at her. By ten that
morning, Mrs. Marin had used her considerable clout with L.A.’s premier domestic agency, Ellen Violet, to hire two full-time nannies for Diana. She had also rousted Mieko and sent her off with a mile long list of baby necessities, and once Diana was finally settled into her nursery with her brand new daytime nanny, Lisa, then Mrs. Marin settled me into mine, pulling up my covers and kissing my forehead.

As I fell asleep, I wondered what it would be like to have a real mother like her. Never seeing the irony in my thinking, never understanding that I had already begun, with my handing off of my own child, to mirror the patterns of the childhood I had hated. 

I don’t know why, but after Diana came, I never spent another night at home. Years of being nearly housebound ended abruptly. Maybe it was my fear of ever having to attempt real mothering again, or maybe it was something even less admirable than that. Having a baby made me feel tied down, which in turn made me want to rebel, as though my sweet little girl was some disapproving parent trying to keep me from having fun.

Remembering this makes me feel even sicker than dying does. Anyway, the reason doesn’t matter, the result does, and the result was that I went out every night. If an envelope was being opened at a restaurant or club, I was there.

In the month of February I attended the so-important launch of the Razor Chocolate and then the Verizon launch of the new mirrored phone and two parties that I’m pretty sure were fundraisers for people who didn’t have cell phones.

I went to every hot club on Sunset and waved and smiled and
flashed peace signs for the paparazzi, and when they asked me how I liked being a mother, I gave them the dimple and said I’d never been happier in my life.

At almost every stupid event I went to, there was the awful Karmen with a K. Like me, she had too much money and too much time but, unlike me, L.A. was her home turf. And the more I saw of her, the less disgusting I found her and the more I started to admire the confident way she swaggered through the crowds, throwing a grin here and a one-liner there.

If I had been an infamous heiress in New York, she was the girl people loved to hate in L.A.. A self-proclaimed lesbian lothario, she ruled the nights in L.A.’s endless ‘have a good time or die trying’ frantic atmosphere. Her filthy mouth and provocative flaunting of her great body and ugly face made her appear differently to me in the context of California’s ‘wilder is better’ attitude.

I liked watching her and trying to be unobtrusive. I would move closer to wherever she was standing. Outside at valet parking I would listen to her bantering with photographers and laugh along with them at her outrageous remarks.

“Hey, Karmen, what’s up tonight?” She’d toss her one good feature, her long black hair, and say teasingly. “Probably you if you’re looking at me.” They would laugh and snap her picture as she deliberately flashed too much thigh getting in and out of her blood-red Maserati. Inevitably, one night at Green Door, she caught me staring at her. Her black brows arched and she raised her glass to me. Surprised, I raised mine back and gave her what I hoped was a knock-out smile. Maybe it was. She told me later that she fell in love with my dimple first.

Anyway she strode over to me. “Well, Carey Kelleher, here you are, alone again, naturally. Where’s your boss, Milan, tonight?”

I shrugged uncomfortably; banter isn’t my thing. She smiled. “Never mind. I saw you looking at me. What were you thinking?”

I tried to think of something cool to say and instead mumbled. “I was just … I don’t know ... I really like your dress.”

That was a lie. Her dress was some horrible tacky silver metallic thing that barely covered her ass, but she must have bought it, because her next move was fierce. In one motion she sat her drink down beside mine and leaned both arms on the bar, trapping me within her embrace and very slowly leaned forward and pressed her mouth onto mine.

I didn’t react, I didn’t resist. I can’t say I felt much beyond shock but I did like how aggressive she was. I’ve always responded to people who take charge of situations. When she pulled back, she was smiling widely and I decided that she wasn’t ugly, just really different looking.

“I like your dress too, Carey. I like what’s inside it, I always have, but I didn’t know you played on my team.”

I thought about it. Was I gay? Should I be gay? Would being gay mean not being alone anymore?

I grinned back and tossed down my drink. “I didn’t know I did either.” 

She stroked my arm and I shivered, but whether from desire or disgust I’m still not sure. “I hear you adopted a kid, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah, Diana, she’s beautiful. I really love her.”

Her brown eyes sparkled. “That’s cool. I love kids too. Maybe you’d like to introduce us sometime?”

In a voice that didn’t sound like mine I said, “How about now?”

That’s how we started, and even for lesbian relationships, which are famed for the meet, hook up and then get a U-Haul and move in together, we went fast. Of course we had to move fast because a week after our first hook up, I burned down my house, and when Karmen said Diana and I could stay with her, I said yes because nobody else was offering.

Chapter 40

There’s no way to burn down your house and not come out of the whole thing looking like either a total moron or a total criminal. Despite what some people have said, in the disaster with my pretty house no one accused me of being a criminal, though I think the phrase 'criminally stupid' was thrown around a little bit.

As always, my parents when hearing of anything distressing in my life jumped in with offers of support, support in their case being another FedEx’d envelope filled with more treatment brochures. I have really tried to understand why, when anything bad happened to me, or when I messed up, they immediately jumped on the idea of sending me to treatment.

I did use coke for a year or so when I was twenty and living in New York, and I tried Karmen’s Oxycontin with her a couple of times, but I’m no drug addict and I barely drink since I have diabetes. I don’t much enjoy going into comas and waking up in a pool of my own pee with ambulance attendants staring down at me, though, right now I wouldn’t mind that.

I guess my parents work under the school of thought that its preferable believing I’m a drug addict rather than admitting that I might need help just living, need their help specifically. If I’m a junkie, they are great, involved, supportive folks offering their sad little girl the best treatment money can buy, whereas if I’m not a drug addict, then maybe some of the bad things that happen to me are their fault.

I burnt my beautiful house down by accident. Karmen had spent most of the night with me and, for a while, it had been going pretty good. Karmen really did seem to like Diana, and with someone else there, I felt comfortable enough with my baby to let the nanny take an hour and keep Diana with me in the living room.

I totally loved having a girlfriend who seemed to want to be with me all the time. Of course I understood that Karmen, funny, ballsy, super-confident Karmen, wasn’t just my new girlfriend, she was
my
new girlfriend and I was really trying to make the transition into a gay girl life. I got the calling her 'honey' part down, but choked a little on calling her 'baby', and I wished she would call me anything else but that.