Fireside (4 page)

As she settled in and buckled her seat belt, Kim realized the story was too long and complicated and her brain too fried with fatigue and trouble to explain everything, so she went with the digest version.

“We had a huge falling-out at a party last night,” she said. “Double whammy—he both dumped me and fired me. It got…kind of loud and ugly, so I went straight to the airport with only the clothes on my back, and this little evening bag.” She touched her sunglasses, but decided to leave them on.

“It’s a lovely bag,” her mother commented, glancing over.

Kim flashed on the wolf-fur guy in the airport, handing it to her. How had he known it was a Judith Leiber? Was he gay? Judging by the way he’d hit on her, no. “Lloyd gave it to me for Christmas,” she told her mother.

“I bet you could sell it on eBay.” Her mother turned up the car’s heater.

Kim savored the hot air blasting from the vents. “Anyway, sorry I didn’t call first. I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”

“And now? Regrets?” her mother asked gently.

“No. Not yet, anyway. So here I am.”

“For good?”

“For the time being.” Kim knew she was in a state of shock. She had suffered a trauma. She’d been the victim of a very public attack. For all she knew, her breakup could be playing on YouTube right this moment.

People did recover from things like this. She’d lived in L.A. long enough to see people suffer career meltdown, only to rise again. These things happened. People got over them. She would get over this. But she just couldn’t imagine how.

“This move is permanent, Mom,” she heard herself say, and realized the decision had been made somewhere in the sky over the midwest. Maybe she hadn’t even been fully conscious of making it but now spoken aloud, it sounded like the only good decision she’d made in a long time. “The firm will let me go first thing Monday morning.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been the best publicist on the West Coast, and I’m sure everyone at your firm knows that.”

“Mom. It’s Lloyd Johnson. Of the Lakers. Biggest client who ever walked through the doors of the Will Ketcham Group. It’s their business to give him everything he demands. If he wanted the walls of the office painted plaid, it would be done the next day. Firing me is no bigger deal than changing bottled-water vendors.”

“Wouldn’t they opt to keep you on, just not working with Lloyd?”

“Not a chance. If their most important client wants me gone—and believe me, he does—then I’m gone. I’m a good publicist, but I’m not irreplaceable. Not in their eyes, anyway.”
Or Lloyd’s.

“Well. In that case, it’s their loss. They’ve done themselves out of an enormously talented publicist.”

Kim attempted a smile. “Thanks, Mom. I wish everyone in my life was as loyal as you.”

“What about all your things?” her mother asked.

“My stuff’s in storage, remember? I told you about that.” Just before Christmas, she had given up her apartment. “Lloyd and I were staying at the Heritage Arms in Century City while he house hunted. The plan was to move in together. I thought everything would be wonderful. Am I terminally stupid?”

“No. Just a romantic at heart.”

Was she? Romantic? Kim pondered the suggestion. She’d always considered herself a savvy businesswoman. Yet there was some truth in her mother’s statement. Because not quite hidden beneath Kim’s façade was a heart that believed in foolish things, like falling in love and staying that way forever, trusting the secrets of your soul to your best friend and lover. Like planning a future based on faith alone rather than expecting promises and guarantees.

So much for her romantic heart.

“Mom,” she said, “I am so done with athletes.”

“Sweetheart, you’ll never be done with athletes. They’re your passion.”

“Ha,” said Kimberly. “They’re not all alike. But it’s been so long since I’ve had a client who wasn’t a complete ass—er, jerk—”

“You can say
asshole,
dear.”

For the first time since last night’s debacle, Kim felt the stirrings of a smile. “Mom.”

“Sometimes there’s simply no polite way to put it.”

Kim studied her French manicure. “When I first started out, I loved it. I worked with boys who needed me. Lately all I’ve been doing is concocting lies and spin to cover up for clients who can’t behave. I’ve started to hate what I do. I persuade the media and fans that being good at a sport is a free pass for bad behavior. It wasn’t what I signed up for, and I’m tired of it.”

“Oh, now that’s unfortunate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her mother didn’t answer as she turned onto the street where she lived. King Street was a wide, stately boulevard divided by swaths of tall maple and chestnut trees. Well over a hundred years old, the grand homes had been built by railroad barons, bankers and shipping magnates of a bygone era. Each house was a masterpiece of gilded age splendor, surrounded by fences of wrought iron or stone. Nowadays, some of them belonged to people who were obsessed with preserving them. Others had fallen into disrepair, and a few—like Fairfield House—had been in the same family for generations.

Penelope navigated down a long, fence-lined lane and steered the car into the driveway, causing the back end to fishtail around the curve.

Kim regarded the house, one of the largest and best-known historic properties in town, with her mouth agape. “Mom?”

“I’ve made some changes around the place,” her mother said.

“I can see that.” It was not the stately house-at-the-end-of-the-lane she remembered from her girlhood.

“Isn’t it wonderful, dear? We finished painting it at the end of summer. I meant to send you pictures, but I haven’t quite figured out how to send them in e-mail. What do you think?”

There were no words. The actual structure had not changed. The vast grounds, though currently blanketed in record amounts of snow, did not appear much different, either, except that some of the larger shrubberies appeared to have been sculpted into topiary shapes.

The house itself was a different story. The Fairfield House Kim remembered, the one where her grandparents had lived, had been an understated white with neat black trim. Now it was painted with colors not found in nature. With colors not found anywhere except maybe on Barbie’s dream house, or in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Kim blinked, but the image didn’t go away. She couldn’t take her eyes off the garishly painted house. The house, with its rotunda, turrets and gables, stood out like a wedding cake frosted in DayGlo colors. The carriage house and garden gazebo also wore shades of lavender and fuchsia, stark against the white snow.

Maybe it was an undercoat. Sometimes the primer coat came in weird colors, didn’t it? “Sorry, Mom, did you say you’d
finished
painting it?”

“Yes, finally. It took the Hornets all summer.” Her mother parked under the elaborate porte cochère that arched above the driveway at the side entrance. The gleaming coral trim was offset by lime sherbet, with sky blue on the domed roof of the arch.

“The Hornets painted the house,” Kim echoed.

“Indeed, they did. The players are always in need of work, after all. And a fine job they did, too.”

The Hornets were Avalon’s very own baseball team, a professional club affiliated with the Can-Am League. The entire community had embraced the team when it had arrived a few years before, transforming the sleepy lakeside hamlet into a legitimate baseball town. The fact that the league operated on a tight budget meant that local boosters were vital. Families offered jobs, room and board, and sometimes even moral support to the players.

“Mom, isn’t there some neighborhood covenant against bright colors?”

“Certainly not,” Penelope said. “Or if there is, no one’s ever told me about it.”

Kim entered the house. The dizzying kaleidoscope of colors was not limited to the outside. The walls of the entryway, and the curved stairway sweeping up through the center of the house, were all as crayon bright as the outside.

Her mother hung her coat in the hall closet. “The colors are a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“A bit.”

“I simply thought, if I’m going to go crazy with color, I should go big.”

Kim summoned up a smile. “Words to live by.”

“To be perfectly honest, it was a matter of economics,” her mother said. “These are discontinued colors, so the paint cost me next to nothing. I simply used a little of this, a little of that…and I encouraged the painters to be creative.”

There were probably worse color schemes than those created by baseball players, but at the moment, Kim couldn’t think of any.

“Speaking of going big, are you sure you’re done with Lloyd?” her mother asked.

That, of course, was Kim’s chief function—to make Lloyd and all her clients seem nice. Personable. Worthy of their insanely huge salaries. Sometimes she did her job so well, it became impossible to separate the media-trained persona from the real man. Maybe that was why she hadn’t seen the incident with Lloyd coming. She’d started to believe the hype she herself had created.

“Kimberly?” Her mother’s voice startled her.

“Absolutely,” she said. “This is for good.” In that instant, she felt a dull blow of shock, an echo of last night, and she began to tremble.

“You’re as white as a ghost.” Her mother took her arm, making her sit on the hall bench. “Do you need something?”

The words sounded as though they’d been shouted down a tube. Kim reminded herself that the humiliating, horrifying, confusing incident was behind her now. She often told clients with injuries to move past the pain, focus on the healing. Time to take her own advice.

“I’ll be all right,” she told her mother in a voice that was soft, but firm. Then she gingerly removed her dark glasses, set them aside and used the corner of her shawl to gently wipe off the makeup.

Her mother stared, cycling fast from horror to fury. Penelope van Dorn was not the sort to anger easily, but when she did, it was as swift as a sudden fire. “Dear God. How long has this been going on?”

Kim hung her head. “Mom. I’m an idiot, but not that big an idiot. I had no idea he was capable of hitting anyone. Then last night, we had this terrible fight about something stupid, and it escalated.” She swallowed a wave of nausea, remembering the gawking crowd at the reception, and her walking out, Lloyd following her to the parking lot. His fist didn’t seem like a human appendage at all, but a weapon of blunt trauma. It had come out of nowhere, powered by anger.

There was one thing about Kim. She was a quick study. She was gone before he even remembered to straighten his tie.

Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “Kimberly, I’m so sorry.”

“I know, Mom. Don’t worry. He’s history,” Kim said firmly.

“You must press charges.”

“I thought about that. But I won’t do it. Given who he is, I’d never stand a chance. I’d have to relive the whole thing and for what? Nothing would happen to him.”

“But—”

“Please, Mom, don’t pity me or call the authorities. I want to pretend Lloyd Johnson never happened. This is the best way—coming here. Starting over.”

Then her mother’s arms were around her, at once soft and sturdy, and Kim was engulfed by a faint, ineffable element she hadn’t realized she’d been missing so much. It was the mom smell, and when she shut her eyes and inhaled, an old, sweet sense of security bloomed inside her. Yet it was a piercing sweetness, breaking ever so gently through her pain and shock. Sobs came from deep within her, erupting against the pillowy shoulder of her mother. They sat together, her mother stroking her hair and making soothing sounds until Kim felt empty—and cleansed.

Her mother gave her a wad of Kleenex to wipe her face. Kim blotted at her eyes. “I’ll be all right. I’ve had worse injuries playing sports.”

“But being hurt by someone you love and trust strikes deeper than any injury.” Her mother spoke softly, with a conviction that worried Kim.

“Mom?”

“Let’s get you settled,” her mother said, her manner suddenly brisk.

Kim followed her mother past the front parlor—apple green—to the main vestibule—pumpkin.

“You’ll be in the same room where you used to stay when you visited your grandparents as a little girl. Won’t that be nice? I’ve kept it virtually the same. You’ve even got a few things to wear, in the closet, so you can get comfortable. You don’t look as if you’ve gained a pound since high school.”

Living in L.A., Kim hadn’t dared gain an ounce. And still, as a size six, she had felt like a linebacker next to most other women out there. She liked how comfortable her mother seemed in her own skin here.

In this huge, quiet house filled with so many childhood memories, Kim entered the world of her past. The second-story hallway made a T in the center; to the right lay Kimberly’s domain. As the only grandchild, she’d had the wing all to herself.

“What’s that face?” her mother asked.

“I’m not making a face.”

“Yes, you are. You’re making the defeated face,” her mother insisted.

“Well, look at me. I’m supposed to have a fabulous life. Instead, I’m moving back in with my mother.” She paused. “Assuming that’s all right with you.”

“All right? It’s going to be exactly what we both need. I’m sure of it. Think of this as coming full circle. It’s going to be wonderful, you’ll see.”

What’s going to be wonderful? Kim wanted to know, but she didn’t ask.

“I’ll run you a bath. That’ll be just the thing,” her mother said, bustling into the adjacent bathroom.

“A bath would be heavenly,” Kim agreed.

Hearing the rusty groan of the plumbing, she set down her bag, dropped the silk wrap on the end of the bed and finally—dear heaven,
finally
—took off her shoes. She spent a few minutes poking around the room, reacquainting herself with things she thought she’d forgotten—the collection of memorabilia from Camp Kioga, a rustic summer camp at the far northern end of Willow Lake. Kim had gone to camp there as a child, and as a teenager she’d worked as a counselor. Her ties to the small town were tenuous, but vivid memories stood out. Each summer she’d spent at Camp Kioga had been a magical string of endless golden days on Willow Lake, a world apart from the Upper Manhattan life she lived the rest of the year. Those ten weeks of summer had loomed large every year, shaping her as definitively as her expensive Manhattan prep school had attempted to do. The painted oar, autographed by all the girls in her cabin, brought back a rush of memories of ghost stories and giggles. The row of trophies on a shelf had belonged to a girl who was good at sports.