American Beauty (18 page)
When Ben had first met Anna’s sister, she’d been consistently bouncing between very and totally fucked up. Now she was apparently sober.
“Yep, I’m different,” Susan acknowledged. “Welcome to the real me!”
A moment later, Jane Percy moved in toward Anna for a double French-style air kiss that came no closer than three inches to Anna’s cheeks. “Let me look at you, Anna.” She took her daughter by the shoulders and frowned, taking in the ancient white T-shirt/ancient khakis combination. “Have you been … beachcombing?”
Have you been beachcombing?
Quintessential Jane Percy.
“No, mother. Surfing.”
“Well then.” Her mother’s voice turned surprisingly upbeat. “Perhaps sometime you’ll show me to how to—how do they say it here?—hang … ten?”
Everyone laughed. The notion of Jane Percy on a long board—not to mention uttering a painful cliché like “hang ten”—was so comical as to be absurd. Then Anna rubbed both temples, as visions of the next few days
en famille
flashed through her head. She got along okay with her mother, but Jane Percy was always so judgmental, it was sometimes hard for Anna to maintain her sangfroid. As for her sister, Anna loved Susan fiercely. But Susan had a lot of problems—she always seemed to mess things up. Over the years, Anna had been the one to clean up those messes.
“Why don’t we all come in and get acquainted?” Jonathan suggested. “I’ve had Mimi put a little spread out in the living room.”
“Great idea,” Gordon exulted. His voice was high, almost girlish.
With a grand gesture, Jonathan pointed the way to the living room, and the pack moved off.
“So, Ben,” Jane began, bringing up the rear. “Anna has told me a bit about you. But I’d so much rather hear it in your own words. Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, I just finished my freshman year at Princeton.”
Anna’s eyes slid to her mother and saw that she was impressed. How nice. Wait until she found out that Ben’s father was in Gamblers Anonymous. Strike one. His mother had been hospitalized in January for a nervous breakdown. Strike three? He wouldn’t even need one.
When it came to Jane Percy, two strikes, and you were out.
Anna sat on the claw-footed beige couch in her father’s living room and watched as her family and their significant others helped themselves to the magnificent buffet brunch. The room itself was opulent enough, with its marble floors and Steinway grand piano. Light classical music tinkled out of the custom-installed sound system. What her father had referred to as a “little spread” was laid out on the Greek marble side table—the feast leaned heavily toward the cuisine of Ethiopia, because Jonathan’s latest cook was from that eastern African nation. There were soft, flat breads called injera, yesmir wat (made with spices and stewed lentils), yehabesha gomen (cooked collard greens with other spices), and kitfo—a very spicy concoction made of lightly cooked ground beef, which Anna had learned was most often served raw back in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, where Mimi was born. But Mimi had also added eggs Benedict and cheese omelets to the menu, along with an enormous crystal pitcher of Mimosas and a silver carafe of French-press coffee.
She saw Gordon tear off a morsel of injera and pop it into her sister’s mouth. Susan was beaming. Too weird. The Susan she knew and loved would never have eaten food from her boyfriend’s hand in front of her parents. Susan had been the rebel without a cause, the downtown rock ’n’ roller who never met a controlled substance she didn’t crave and who, according to Anna’s best friend, Cyn, changed boyfriends more often than Anne Heche changed sexual orientation.
Now look at her. After her last stint in rehab, she’d moved to the Kripalu Institute—a heavily spiritual hangout in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts—where she worked in the kitchen, ate macrobiotically, and attended as many yoga and meditation classes as possible. Gone were the seductive black eye makeup and the platinum-bleached spiky hair, the generous curves, and the overpriced black punk clothes with more rips than intact seams. In their place was a short, almost boyish haircut in her natural honey color, plus clothes that looked more Yoga Booty than CBGB—white linen drawstring pants like Gordon’s, Birkenstock sandals, and a blue cotton pullover top that was somewhere between tank top and short sleeved.
If the internal transformation was even a bare facsimile of the exterior, Anna felt confident she was looking at a completely new Susan.
She shifted her gaze to her mother, who was talking with Ben as she ate a small plateful of scrambled eggs—no injera or yesmir wot for her, since Ethiopian food was customarily eaten with one’s fingers. Her sleek blond hair was parted in the center and fell to her collarbone; her makeup was so subdued as to appear to be nonexistent. Her outfit was classic Upper East Side of Manhattan let’s-go-gallery-gazing Jane Percy: a cream Oscar de la Renta blouse that tied at the neck, a Caroline Herrera skirt that ended midcalf, opaque hosiery, classic camel Manolo Blahniks, and 4.48-karat flawless diamond stud earrings that that Anna knew had been insured for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Everything about Jane was understated, tasteful, and suffocatingly perfect.
It made Anna want to push Ben down on the couch, climb aboard, and give him a lap dance.
“You’re not eating,” Jonathan pointed out to his daughter when he returned to the living room from the kitchen, martini glass in hand. He was in a dressed-down phase, in Levi’s 505s and one of his white button-down cotton shirts. “What do you think of the big surprise?”
“When did you arrange this, Dad?”
Jonathan smiled slyly and raised his glass to Anna. “You don’t give your father enough credit. Here’s to you. It’s a big deal, graduating from high school.”
Anna shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”
Her dad took a swallow of his Grey Goose and vermouth. “You’re right. It isn’t. But when you get your doctorate at Yale in nineteenth-century European literature and a teaching fellowship at the University of Chicago, that’ll be a big deal—don’t look at me like that, I know you better than you think. Look, I just thought this would be a great excuse to have the whole family together.”
“I’m so appreciative, Dad.” Anna hugged him while sneaking another look at her mother and Ben. It made her remember the last time Jane was in Los Angeles—she and Anna’s father had embarked on a brief and torrid affair. Which was
so
disgusting. They didn’t even like each other.
“Are you and Mom … you know?”
Jonathan’s laugh boomed, but he didn’t answer.
Just then, Ben caught her eye and winked. He looked happy and perfectly comfortable talking to her mother … even more comfortable than Anna was most of the time. She knew she should be thrilled to have a family that cared enough show up for her graduation.
“Excuse me, Dad.” She got up and edged over to her mother—Susan and Gordon had just joined Jane and Ben’s conversation.
“Mom? Excuse me.”
“Yes?” Jane raised her eyebrows.
“I just wanted to say thank you for coming. It was really sweet of you.”
“You are absolutely welcome,” Jane replied, with a demure twinkle in her eye.
No subterfuge, no sideways dig, no subtle expression of disappointment. Wonder of wonders, Anna thought. She really means it.
S
am pulled her Hummer into the only open parking space left at Will Rogers State Park, one of the nicest beaches between Santa Monica and Malibu. She shifted the car into neutral as she took out her cell and left a long-overdue message for Anna.
“Hey, good morning. Why aren’t you answering your phone on a Wednesday morning? Busy with Ben? As for me, I’m sitting here like a beached whale in the parking lot at Will Rogers. I was thinking seriously about plunging into the Pacific to rejoin my brethren in the great blue. You know, Free Willy and all that.”
Sam rubbed her bottom lip as she cradled her Motorola between her MAC Studio-powdered cheek and silk-clad shoulder. “Anyway, the update is, still no word from Eduardo. Do you think he didn’t get that he was supposed to call me? Or do you think that nine dozen cell phones was overkill? Okay, so now I’m thinking about a billboard outside the Peruvian consulate. No. That’s a shitty idea. I could use some inspiration.”
She sighed morosely and glanced at her La D De Dior diamond watch, set with sixty diamonds and sapphire crystals.
“Okay. This sucks. I was really hoping he would come to graduation. But there is a mystery guest coming I want to tell you about. No,
not
a guy. But I’ll wait to tell you in person. Kiss kiss. Call me in a couple of hours. I’m not taking my cell to the beach.”
Well, that was the world’s longest voice-mail message
.
She stashed her cell in the glove box, opened the Hummer door, and stepped down to the gravel of the parking lot. Though the beach was usually ten degrees cooler than Beverly Hills, today was warm and there was practically no breeze. Sam was wore a strategically ripped Rock & Republic denim miniskirt, along with a pin-tucked Y&Kei cream silk cami and long gold David Yurman necklaces hanging to her navel—perfect clothes for a perfect June day.
When she’d awakened with still no word from Eduardo—what was wrong with him? He couldn’t take a goddamn hint like a life-size cardboard cutout? From a hundred cell phones?—she knew she had to do something to get her mind off things. She’d considered some of the prime hashish stashed in her father’s nightstand but had decided on ocean air instead.
The beach was just a few steps from the parking lot; she carried a white rattan beach mat under her right arm and kicked off her black flip-flops once she reached the sand. Everywhere she looked were people having fun—flying kites, playing Kadima with wooden paddles and a rubber ball, building sand castles. Out on the water, dozens of surfers waited for the perfect wave. Sam, who often thought in cinematic terms, realized it was the perfect establishing shot for an ocean-side movie scene, maybe that climactic moment of the film where the two star-crossed lovers finally reconciled after their long estrange—
Shit. Stop it, she told herself. Just stop.
Shit
. It wasn’t working.
It didn’t help that the sand seemed entirely populated by couples in various states of flirtation. She stopped for an errant Frisbee tossed by a pretty girl in a pink string bikini who was goofing around with her boyfriend, who looked like Chad Michael Murray, only younger and better looking. They had matching mandala tattoos—when Chad tackled his girlfriend lightly to the ground to tickle her, her shrieks of joy reverberated in Sam’s eardrums.
Double shit
.
Farther along was a cute blond girl vaguely in the Cammie Sheppard mold, pre-implants, who was posing for her baby-faced boyfriend. He was using his camera phone to snap a photo of her and an elaborate sand sculpture she’d created.
Everywhere she looked: couple, couple, couple.
Jesus. Everyone’s paired up like penguins. Except for me, still wandering across Antarctica by my jackass self
.
She stopped near a rock jetty and spread out her beach mat. She wouldn’t even look at people. She would just gaze at the water. Yeah. Maybe that would help.
It didn’t. Guys kept coming into her line of view—swimming in the ocean, fishing on the jetty. Each of them reminded her of Eduardo. One had his chiseled chin; another his piercing dark eyes. Even a guy walking along the tidal line maybe thirty feet away … same golden skin. Sexy crinkles around his eyes. Same elegant way of carrying his body, like something out of another era, one where dashing princes carried beautiful maidens off on white horses, where the girl got the guy and they went to live happily ever after. Unlike real fucking life, where—
The guy was just ten feet away.
Holy shit
.
He didn’t just look like Eduardo. He
was
Eduardo.
“Hello, Samantha.”
Eduardo was barefoot, just like Sam, wearing a maroon Randolph Duke shirt and casual white pants with a knife crease from Harrods. He gazed at her as if she was the most beautiful girl on the planet. Or was that part only her imagination; wishful thinking?
“What are you doing here?”
“An excellent question.” He turned to gaze at a sea-gull squawking overhead. “Perhaps you are wondering how we are on the same square meter of sand at the same time.” He said it as a statement, not a question. “It must be more than coincidence, don’t you think?”
She nodded, not quite believing this was actually happening.
He regarded her thoughtfully. “One theory is that a cosmic planetary alignment brought us both here, to this spot, at this moment. The same cosmic alignment that allowed us to meet in the first place.”
“Or maybe you have the Peruvian secret police tailing me,” Sam teased. She had to keep her edge. She couldn’t just stand there like a lovesick puppy, even though that was how she felt.
Eduardo laughed. “There is no one else quite like you. You realize that.”
“Yes,” Sam replied with mock seriousness. “I am utterly unique and completely without parallel in my ability to walk the fine line between the highly creative pursuit of something deeply desired and criminal stalking. It’s the reason that my father thinks I should run a studio instead of becoming an outstanding film director. And I still don’t know how you found me.”
“Not so complicated. Your highly creative pursuit succeeded. By the way, dinner the other night was excellent, though my dinner companion was a bit of a cardboard cutout. I called you this morning. You didn’t answer. I called Anna. She said you were here.”
Sam dug her toes into the sand. “I guess the next question is, what were you planning to say?” She kept her head down, afraid to hope. Because, God, it would hurt so much if she got her hopes up only to have them dashed again.
“I was determined to forget you, Samantha. But you’re a hard habit to break. Would you like to take a walk?”
Would she ever.
The beach was the same show as before: couples flying kites with multiple tails, drinking beer furtively out of bottles in paper bags, sunbathing and flirting. They were just a blur to Sam, background actors in a movie where she was one of the two leading stars.