Bittersweet Dreams (5 page)

Just in case someone considering the school for his or her child didn't understand the name, the booklet explained it: “Spray blown up from an ocean wave is called spindrift. It is expected that our graduates will spray the world with their brilliance.” Can't you just see the faces of our proud parents? Who wouldn't want their child to spray the world with brilliance? Every word from their mouths would be dazzling.

From the booklet, I also knew that the motto above the main entrance read: “A brilliant mind wasted is a sin beyond redemption.” The quote belonged to Dr. Norman Lazarus, a biochemistry research scientist whose discoveries included a drug to treat bone cancer. As our school psychologist and guidance counselor had explained to me, Dr. Lazarus had donated most of his profits to educational institutions. He established this special school for gifted students, which was his favorite project. I supposed the motto was intended to make us all feel guilty if we didn't live up to our potential. If you were brilliant and lazy, you were like a person who had a talent to play the piano beautifully but wouldn't take a lesson or touch a key. People who lacked any talent could really despise you for that and hate the fates that wasted their powers on giving you the talent.

I wasn't afraid that I would enter Spindrift and fail to meet anyone's expectations for me. I was afraid that I would enter the special school and fail to meet my own expectations. The implication was very obvious. I could almost hear my own father saying it again: “If you can't be happy here among your own kind, Mayfair, you'll never be happy.”

My own kind? Even my father thought I belonged to a different species now.

I wasn't too happy and didn't expect that I would be the most pleasant new student. I was never good at hiding my displeasure, which goes back to my taking after my grandmother Lizzy. I should have taken lessons from Julie while I had the chance, I thought. Maybe that was really how you got along in this world.

I gazed out of the car window and saw that the few clouds streaming across the sky looked like white ribbons floating over a sea of Wedgwood blue. Whenever my real mother saw a sky like this, she would say something descriptive like that. She would often speak in beautiful metaphors, which were sometimes quite spiritual, even though she wasn't very religious. We would go to church only on holidays or for special occasions like weddings and funerals, but she believed in a holy spirit in us and around us.

She'd say, “Look, Mayfair, God is tying ribbons in earth's hair. Isn't she beautiful?”

“Why do you say ‘she'? How do we know the earth is female, Mother?” I would ask.

My father would laugh and say, “What a kid. Look at what she thinks of at this age.”

But my mother would stay serious and kiss my cheek or my forehead before running her fingers through my wheat-colored hair. She wanted me to wear it long then, and she enjoyed brushing it for me. I would look at her in the mirror while she sat or stood behind me, and I would study her face and wonder,
Do all mothers look at their daughters like this, with such pure love?

I thought that as long as I had my long hair, I would have my mother's deep love. It had grown to reach halfway down my back before she died. After that, I chopped it down to just at the nape of my neck and did such a bad job that I usually wore a hat, even when my father took me by the hand to a beauty salon for repairs.

“We know the earth is female because of all that's born from her,” she told me. “And you know mothers are the ones who give birth.”

That was logical, so I accepted it. I always appreciated that my mother would try to be logical when she answered my questions, even when I was only three. She never ascribed anything to fantasy. Just as there was no bogeyman, there were no good fairies. Mothers do seem to know their children better than fathers do. She knew early on that make-believe wouldn't work with me.

When my father wanted me to believe in Santa Claus, I simply told him that it was physically impossible for one man to deliver gifts to all the children in the world on one night, much less keep a record of who was naughty and who was nice.

“Not even FedEx can do that,” I said, and he roared with laughter.

“This kid's better than television,” he told my mother.

“Don't you want there to be a Santa Claus, Mayfair?” my mother asked.

Of course, I did, but I just couldn't believe in him.

“You can't believe in something unless it's true,” I said, and my father laughed again. He had such a wonderful laugh then, an infectious laugh that made anyone near him laugh along, including me.

“You poor dear,” my mother would say, embracing me. “I hope you can find something wonderful to believe in someday without worrying about whether it's true or not.”

“She will,” my father promised her. “This kid will do it all.”

He was so proud of me back then. If there was any possibility of taking me along with him when he visited someone involved with his public relations business or simply went shopping for something, he would. I knew even at age three that he was eager to show me off, almost the way Fish Face did, but I was eager to please him. And after my mother died, it was even more important to please him. In my mind, I was still pleasing her, too. It was as if part of her floated into him after her death. They were that close when she was alive, and that was as far as I would go in believing anything supernatural.

I was just as eager to please him now, but it had become more difficult, maybe even impossible, because once he married Julie Dunbar, I felt that the part of my mother that was in him had left. She'd have been the first to tell him, “There's not enough room in one heart for two lovers in your life, Roger.”

She wouldn't sound angry or upset. She would be smiling softly, her voice gentle and kind. I missed that voice and that smile. All the mirrors in our ten-room Bel Air hacienda-style home surely missed that smile as well. Everything lost its glitter and gleam when my mother died. This was so much her home, down to her choice of every color, every floor tile, every cabinet handle, and every light fixture. Almost without comment, my father had nodded and approved everything she planned or wanted. He had that much faith and trust in her judgment, but more important, he had that much of a desire to see her happy. She was as important to him as she was to me.

Whenever I thought of myself becoming romantically involved with someone someday, I'd think of what my parents were to each other. The parents of so many girls I knew just seemed to be sharing a place to live. I'd overhear their daughters complaining about how much their parents argued. Doors were always slamming in their homes. Parents were often sulking, sometimes for days and even weeks. These girls hated to be home and looked for every opportunity to keep themselves away.

I never felt this way about my home when my mother was alive, and I couldn't remember any doors slamming, nor could I recall my parents being so angry at each other that one would sulk. If either upset the other, he or she became almost desperate to make it better. Love in our house wasn't a goal; it was a reality, the status quo. I could feel it, and that feeling gave me a sense of security. I loved being with them. It was because of them that I was less skeptical about people actually loving each other, caring more for each other than they cared for themselves.

I was always skeptical about almost everything in my life, from when I was an infant until now, but one thing I always trusted was my mother's hand holding mine. I knew she would rather have her arm separate from her shoulder than let go if I needed her. After she died, life without her was like a bird without a voice, just something that glided silently along, jealous even of the screech of a cat.

There were no birds singing now, and I knew a good part of the reason was my own fault. Julie wasn't all wrong. Just because you were brilliant, that didn't mean you couldn't do something terribly wrong, something that would hurt the one person you loved the most in the world. I liked to think that I had more control of my emotions than most people because I was so intelligent, but emotions really did come from another place. Anger and jealousy could be more like viruses eating away at you until you did something you regretted.

And I did.

All the way up to Spindrift, Daddy watched me in the rearview mirror. I saw the sadness in his eyes, but I also saw him anticipating my doing or saying something to show my resistance and maybe cause another serious blowup between my stepmother and me. I knew he was tired of being a referee, and frankly, I was tired of it, too. I wanted out of this game as much as he did.

I caught the hesitation and sadness in his eyes. At times along the way, I thought he was going to stop and turn around, even though I knew that if he didn't go through with this, he'd surely end up in a divorce. Julie had been through a nasty divorce, so she was a veteran of the marital wars and might be quicker to pull the trigger. It was always easier to do something the second time, although even for Julie, it had to be terrible to face the fact that it was difficult for her to hold on to a relationship. I had yet to hold on to any, even a silly little high-school romance, but I knew what disappointment a failure like that could be. No matter what, deep inside, you'd always blame yourself. Surely there was one more thing you could have done, could have said, one more thing that would have saved the relationship.

Although my father didn't say it in so many words, it was obvious to me soon after he married Julie that he was sensitive to the possibility of her eventually wanting a divorce solely because of me. That would be so unfair to him. He was as good a father to her daughter, Allison, as he could be, maybe too good. The blame for any problem between my stepsister and me would always be on me, “because you know better.” Most of the time, he would say something like that to please Julie. I realized that was his sole reason and he didn't always believe it. My father had a good poker face, except with me. He knew I could see through any mask he put on.

He would be the first to admit that most things were not what they seemed to be. That was his business, after all, often putting lipstick on a pig. He had no false illusions about it. It was still a pig. Both of us pretended and put on an act for each other when he finally agreed with Julie that I should be sent somewhere far away
.

The night before we left for the school, he had come into my room while I was packing and stood silently for a few moments watching me. I knew he was there, but I ignored him. Finally, I paused, and we looked at each other. I saw how difficult this was for him.

“What?” I asked softly.

“This is a really good idea, Mayfair. You need the challenge this school will give you,” he said. “You need the personal attention and the chance to go at your own pace.”

“Right,” I said, even though both of us knew nothing had ever stopped me from going at my own pace and I always enjoyed personal attention when I needed it.

“And as your guidance counselor, Mr. Martin, says, it will be good for you to be with students with abilities like yours. You'll feel more comfortable, and you'll have some competition. You're the one who told me runners go faster when they have someone right on their heels.”

“Fine,” I said. “You're right. I'm wasting my time here with these Yahoos.”

“Yahoos?” he said, smiling.

“In
Gulliver's Travels
, remember? They were disgusting, stupid creatures that resembled human beings.”

He stopped smiling. “I don't like it when you're so condescending, Mayfair. Don't look down on people who aren't as brilliant as you are. A little humility is important, especially now,” he said. “You should know why better than I do.”

Even though he was right, I hated it when he saw something wrong with me. My fear was that perhaps he would love me less, although I would never admit to that fear. I believed that admitting to any fear gives that fear more power over you. “Stuff it” was my motto. I would never show that I was afraid of the dark or of being alone when I was little. And there wasn't another girl or even a boy who could make me cower and retreat. They could see the resistance in my eyes, and they'd usually be the ones who backed off. But it was always different when it came to my father. I could defeat him in an argument, frustrate him with my logic, but it never made me feel any better. The truth was, it always made me feel worse.

I turned away so he wouldn't see my eyes burn with tears. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, Daddy. I'm sorry. You're right.”

“Okay,” he said, and came up behind me to kiss me softly and pat my hair. I watched him walk away, slouching like someone in defeat. What had happened to all those wonderful predictions for me, for our family, when I was younger and something of a star not only at school but at home and everywhere we went as a family? I was sure he was wondering where he had failed and that he was troubled with the thought that my mother would be very disappointed.

I packed faster. I owed it to my mother to make it easier for him, I thought. I could just imagine her watching the two of us and looking disappointed in my behavior. That was all she ever had to do, look disappointed. I could practically feel her thoughts.
Don't hurt him, Mayfair. Please
, she would think.
It's not easy for him, either. Help him get through it.

I was still trying to do that now in the car as we drew closer to Spindrift. I hid any displeasure or regret and acted quite indifferent about it all. I wasn't going to give Julie any satisfaction by pleading for mercy or promising to improve my behavior toward her. To me, promises were like colorful bubbles, pretty but quick to pop and disappear, especially if they came from someone like her. If she had half a brain, which I didn't think she had, she would be able to see through my false face, which I couldn't help but have. After all, as Shakespeare wrote in
Macbeth
,
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
And when it came to agreeing to all of this with any resemblance of enthusiasm, I had a false heart.