Misty (11 page)

“My gardener tells me I'm going to have to tear out all those oleander bushes,” Doctor Marlowe said pausing and nodding toward the rear of her property. “Some disease is running rampant through the lot of them. He
wants me to plant something new now so it will all grow during the summer months.”

“Can't he just cure them?” Star asked.

“He doesn't think so.”

“Get another gardener,” Jade said.

Doctor Marlowe laughed.

“No, he's very good. He's been with me for years and years. It's easier to replace the plants than to replace the gardener.”

“Too bad we can't do the same with parents,” I said. They all looked back at me. I shrugged. “They don't work so we just replace them with ones that do.”

“None of us have any guarantees about anything in this life, Misty,” Doctor Marlowe said. “We've just got to learn how to deal with it and go forward.”

“It's always easier for someone else to say,” Jade muttered. Star nodded.

“That's right,” she said.

“I'm not someone else,” Doctor Marlowe declared.

“I'm not just your therapist,” she continued. “My parents divorced when I was just a little younger than you. I think that's what gave me the idea to go into psychiatry. . .my own pain.”

“Is that why you're not married?” Jade asked her.

“That's another story,” she said. “Besides, I'm the therapist here, remember? I ask the questions. Let's keep walking around the house and go back in,” she said.

Jade threw a conspiratorial smile at me and I threw one back.

“Come on, girl,” Star said as she waited for Cathy to catch up. “You walk slower than my grandma.”

Surprised that Star would pause, Cathy quickly caught up to her.

Everyone went to the bathroom again. I just wanted to rinse my face in cold water. We had to wait for Cathy, who took so long, we began to wonder if she had left.

“Sorry,” Cathy said when she finally came in and took her seat.

“Let's let Misty continue and finish out the session. It's getting late and I'm sure you all have other things to do with such a nice day.”

“I suppose what bothers me the most, what I think about a lot is what their divorce means about me. Before I visited Daddy in his new home, I met him for lunch one Saturday after he had moved out of the house. That was something we had never done before, had lunch together without my mother. He invited me since the plans he had made for me to visit him in his new apartment had to be canceled because of what he called an emergency business trip. Later, I found out he was going to San Francisco with his new girlfriend.

“But at the time, I was excited about meeting him at a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant. He sent a cab for me, which triggered one of my mother's familiar favorite chants about how he always manages to get someone else to fulfill his responsibilities.

“ ‘Why couldn't he pick you up himself? It's Saturday. He can't be meeting anyone for business. It's just inconvenient for him, that's all; so he sends a cab. Typical Jeffery Foster behavior,' she raved.

“ ‘How can you hate him so much now and have loved him before?' I asked her.

“ ‘That's what I keep asking myself,' she replied. She thought for a moment and then added, ‘I was just deliberately blind. I refused to admit to his weaknesses and failings. I didn't want to face the fact that I had made such a mistake. I don't know. I was just too young to get married,” she concluded. “I was a hopeless romantic who believed when a man said you were the earth, moon and stars to him, he meant it.'

“Self-pity, like evening shadows, came to darken her eyes,” I said, remembering.

“ ‘They put you on a throne until they marry you and live with you a while and then the throne turns to cardboard and all the jewels melt,' Mommy continued. ‘Don't believe anything any man tells you, even if he wants to write it in his blood,' she warned me.

“None of that made sense to me and it didn't take long for her to forget it and look for another man to make her promises. All I kept thinking was if my parents' relationship was such a colossal mistake, what am I, the product of that relationship? How can I be right? I bet someone who was born as a result of a rape doesn't feel that much different from the way I feel,” I said looking to the others for agreement.

“You know someone born out of a rape?” Star asked me.

“No.”

“It's not quite the same thing,” she said. Her eyes were cold with a wisdom beyond her age and mine, maybe even beyond Doctor Marlowe's.

“I understand what Misty means, though,” Jade said.
“I've had similar feelings.” Cathy nodded to indicate she had had them too.

“I know my mother hated it when I asked her all these questions and forced her to dwell on the situation,” I continued. “She wanted to treat the divorce as a chance to be young again and not as some great personal failure. She wanted to pretend she had been freed from some chains, released from some prison where she had been prevented from being as young and beautiful as she could be.

“If you can believe it because of what I've already told you about her,” I said to the girls, “after the divorce she was even more concerned about her appearance than before. She polished her nails so often, the house seemed to reek of the smell of polish remover. She was always at the hairstylist's and she piled up style and glamour magazines to the ceiling, spending hours reading and studying them to be confident she was in fashion.

“She even spoke differently, trying to make her voice sound younger, and not just in front of Charles Allen. I couldn't help thinking that if she wanted to forget she was ever married to Daddy, if she wanted to be young and free again, what did she feel and think when she looked at me? All I could be was a reminder of the failure.

“I was really very interested in how my father saw me now, too, so when he asked me to meet him for lunch, I couldn't help but be excited.

“It was really the first private conversation Daddy and I'd had since he and my mother told me they were getting a divorce. He wasn't at the restaurant when I arrived and I began to worry when he was more than fifteen
minutes late. The waiter kept asking me if I wanted to order and I didn't know what to do. I was considering calling my mother, which would set off a nuclear explosion in an already fractured family, so I tried to stay calm.

“Finally, he showed up, apologizing, claiming he was in traffic. He kissed me, which was something he hadn't done for a while, and sat.

“The first thing I noticed about him was how different he looked. He was letting his hair grow longer and he was dressed more informally than usual. He used to always wear a tie when he went out. He wasn't wearing a jacket and slacks either. He was wearing a sweat suit and sneakers. He explained he had come from the gym.

“ ‘This is a great place, one of my favorites,' he said gazing around. He held up the menu. ‘Everything is very good here.'

“ ‘Did you come here with Mommy?' I asked him.

“ ‘With your mother? No, I don't think so,' he said. He thought for a moment and added, ‘It's mostly where I meet people for business meetings.'

“ ‘I don't know what to order,' I said. ‘Everything is so expensive.'

He laughed and said he would order for me, but he really wasn't sure what I liked and he had to keep asking.

“ ‘I guess I should know,' he admitted, ‘but your mother always took care of the meals. So,' he said after we finally gave the waiter our order, ‘how's your school work? Any improvement?'

“ ‘Not really,' I told him.

“ ‘Maybe I should look into getting you a tutor,' he thought aloud.

“Mommy was right, I realized, Daddy always looks for ways to slip out from under his responsibilities.

“When his food came, he talked about his work and his new apartment and for a while I felt as if we were really two people who didn't know each other all that well and were just getting acquainted. I could see that he was as nervous as I was, too.

“Divorce was like some devastating illness that wiped away more than memories; it turned a father and a daughter into strangers.

“Halfway through our meal, I paused and looked directly into his eyes and asked, ‘Daddy, what happened? Why did you and Mommy break up after so many years together?'

“He looked very uncomfortable. He had taken me to lunch to do some small talk and then go off into his new life again, and here I was making him deal with our cold reality. Sort of what you try to do with us, Doctor Marlowe,” I said and she smiled and nodded.

“Very good, Misty. It's true, girls,” she continued, directing herself at the others. “Every one of you naturally practices some therapy.”

“Maybe we'll all follow in your footsteps, Doctor Marlowe,” Jade said. She had an underlying biting tone in her voice and I thought that despite her beauty and her style, she was in just as much pain if not more than I was.

“Worse things could happen,” Doctor Marlowe countered.

“And have,” Jade threw back.

She and Doctor Marlowe locked gazes for a moment and then Doctor Marlowe turned back to me.

“ ‘When you're young and in love, or at least think you're in love, sometimes you don't let yourself see the loved one's faults,' Daddy began.

“ ‘That's exactly what Mommy says,' I told him.

“His eyes became steely cold.

“ ‘Is that what she said? What were my faults?” he demanded to know, raising his voice, “I was always a very good provider, wasn't I? She never lacked for anything she wanted no matter how frivolous it was,' he whined.

“The way he was dressed, the way he was talking, all made me see him suddenly as much less mature. I felt all my respect for him, as well as for my mother, sliding out of my hands like a wet bar of soap.

“ ‘Maybe you were too busy and didn't pay enough attention to her,' I suggested.

“ ‘Is that what she said?' he demanded, sitting back.

“ ‘No. I just thought that might be a reason.'

“He stared at me as if he was readjusting his thoughts a moment and then looked calmer and went back to his food.

“ ‘No, that's not it,' he said. ‘I never neglected her. If I was away too long, I called and called and always brought something nice back for her. Besides, if I wasn't out there busting my hump, she wouldn't have been able to spend so much money on the things she wanted.

“ ‘She's spoiled,' he offered as an explanation. ‘I take the blame. I spoiled her. No, Misty, there's nothing to be said
about me being neglectful. In fact, it's the exact opposite. I spent too much time and money on her and she took it all for granted. When I asked her to step back and reevaluate what she was doing, she accused me of being selfish and uncaring.'

“ ‘Then what could be so terrible, Daddy? Why did this happen?' I demanded.

“I didn't think he was going to answer. He sat there quietly for a long, long moment, debating about it in his own mind, I imagine. Then he looked at me with such a serious expression, it made my heart hiccup.

“ ‘Your mother and I haven't enjoyed each other for some time now. I don't want to put some kind of stain on your image of her. She is still your mother and she will always love you, I'm sure, but she's a disturbed woman. She has a serious psychological problem that rears its ugly head in our bed'.

“I'm sure I looked terribly confused.

“ ‘Technically, it's called functional dyspareunia,' he said.

“I could hardly breathe. It sounded so serious.

“ ‘What is that?' I asked him.

“ ‘Whenever we make love, made love, I should say, she suffered persistent genital pain. I finally forced her to see her gynecologist, but he said that there was nothing physically wrong with her. In other words, it's psychological and that's what it's called. I took the time to find out for myself what it's called and I told her. She refused to face that, refused to see a psychiatrist and things only got worse.

“ ‘Sex isn't and shouldn't be all there is in a marriage,
but it's a big part of it, Misty. I think you're old enough to understand this.'

“I didn't know what to say. It felt so hot around me and I had such trouble breathing, I thought I might faint at the table and embarrass him.

“ ‘You all right?' he asked.

“I nodded and quickly took a drink of water to swallow down the lump of tension in my throat.

“ ‘Why is she like that?' I finally asked him. He shook his head, smirked and then looked angry again.

“I'm no psychiatrist,' he said, ‘but my guess is she fell in love with someone else.'

“ ‘What? Who?' I quickly asked. Mommy had a lover all this time, I thought. Where was I?

“ ‘Herself,' he said. ‘If there was ever a case of narcissism, she's got it. You ever wonder why our house has so many mirrors? There is hardly a wall, a corner, a space without a mirror on it or near it so she can check her face and hair and be sure she didn't age a day. She's obsessed with it. It's madness.

“ ‘Whenever I told her she needed professional help, she went into a rage.'

“ ‘You were unfaithful to her, Daddy,' I said. ‘I even heard you admit it.'

“I really felt like jumping up and running out of the restaurant. It hurt to hear him say such nasty things about Mommy and it always hurt when she said nasty things about him. I usually end up defending the one who isn't present. Doctor Marlowe and I have spoken about this a lot. I feel I have to do it, but I hate doing it. I hate it!”

The others all wore faces of understanding. I took a deep breath. Once again I felt like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb. Sooner or later, I would explode.

“ ‘Now you know why. A man has needs,' he said.