The Fixer Upper (3 page)

A
s usual, the minute I stepped out of the Miami airport, I began to have regrets. My black slacks and cashmere sweater set had seemed like a good idea that morning, when temperatures in D.C. hovered in the upper twenties. I’d stripped off my jacket the minute I got off the plane, but now the sweater clung to my back, the tight turtleneck choking my windpipe, and my ankles, encased in high-heeled black leather boots, were swimming in perspiration. My thick hair hung limply around my shoulders. Everywhere around me, people swept by in their shorts and sandals, chattering in Spanish and English. I felt like a polar bear trapped in the flamingo exhibit at the zoo.

“Dempsey!” I heard childish voices cry. I looked up, and a white Mercedes SUV zoomed up and over the curb, barely grazing the suitcase I’d just set down. One of the twins hung out the rear window, waving madly at me.

My stepmother hopped out of the car, leaving the motor running. “Come on, for God’s sake,” she said breathlessly. “This is the fourth time I’ve come around looking for you. The cops will give me a ticket if they see me stopping here again.”

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, then popped open the rear hatch, leaving me to heft my bag up and inside. I slammed the door, then ran around to get in the front seat.

“Oh,” Pilar exclaimed, “Get in back, will you? I promised the boys you’d sit with them.”

“Fine,” I said, slightly annoyed. I hopped into the backseat and glanced over at the preschoolers strapped into their car seats. Garrett was sound asleep.

“How are you, Gavin?” I asked, smiling broadly at the child on my left.

“No!” he exclaimed. “No Dempsey.” He clapped both hands over his eyes.

Pilar jerked the car off the curb and we sped away from the airport.

“Sorry,” Pilar said, weaving in and out of the thick traffic. “They seem to be in a holding pattern from the terrible twos. Whatever Garrett wants, Gavin wants the opposite. After lunch, they were so excited about coming to pick you up, they refused to go to play group. Now, as you can see, Gavin is in his negative phase.”

“No Dempsey!” Gavin said, as if on cue. “Go away!”

Pilar handed me a small bottle of apple juice and a plastic Baggie of animal crackers. “Here. Give him these. His blood sugar gets low and he gets cranky.” She turned halfway around in the seat and fixed her son with a dazzling smile. “See what Sissy has for you?”

Gavin took his hands away from his face long enough to swat the bottle out of her hand, spilling juice down the front of my sweater.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Pilar cried. “Apple juice on the leather seats I just had cleaned. Papí will be very angry! Mommy is very angry.”

Dempsey was soaked in apple juice and not feeling especially perky herself. I helped myself to an animal cracker and chewed in silence.

“Is Dad working today?” I asked.

She sighed deeply. “It’s Saturday, but yes, of course, he had to go into the office to finish some paperwork. Then golf. Client golf, he calls it.” She muttered something else under her breath in Spanish. She glanced at the thin gold watch on her deeply tanned wrist. “Four now, if we hit traffic right, maybe we’re home by five. Maybe he’s home then too.”

For the next hour Pilar gave me a running update on her tennis game—really showing marked improvement, according to her doubles partner—and progress on the house they were building in Coral Gables.

“I have to keep Mitch away from the contractor.
Ay Dios Mio!
When he got a look at the invoices last night, I thought he would have a heart attack. I went over there Wednesday, and the idiots had installed the
marble for the boys’ bathroom in the maid’s bathroom. Can you believe it? I made them rip it all up, and of course, most of it was ruined. The light fixtures for your dad’s study came, and they were all wrong. French bronze, I tol’ them, like a million times. What do they send? Brass!”

Finally, we pulled into the driveway at the house, a low-slung white stucco ranch that Pilar told me they were renting while the new house was being built. Pilar punched a button and the double garage doors slowly slid open. A gleaming black Porsche was parked on the right side, a set of golf clubs poking out over the open convertible top.

“Good,” Pilar said, cutting off the engine. “He’s home.” She glanced over at Garrett, who was still asleep, and back over at Gavin, who’d drifted off too. “Can you help me get them into the house? Mitch is having lower back spasms, and I don’t want to bother him.”

Somehow, we managed to get the sleeping boys out of their car seats and into the house, where we dumped them down in their beds in a bedroom just off the back hallway.

“The place is a mess,” Pilar said, leading me and my suitcase into the kitchen, past a pile of plastic toys and a basket of unfolded laundry. “I can’t wait till we get into the new house. I tol’ Mitch, if I have to cook one more Thanksgiving dinner in this place—”

“You’ll what?” my dad asked, turning around from the sink with a full martini glass in each hand.

“Kill you,” Pilar said, taking a glass and giving him a lingering kiss. “I’m full on Cuban, you know. We’re a very hot-blooded people.”

He kissed her back, handed me a martini, and slid an arm around his wife’s waist. “That’s why I married you. That, and your cooking.”

“Hi, Daddy,” I said, giving him a peck on the cheek. I set the martini glass down on the kitchen counter. Gin and I don’t really get along. “How was golf?”

“Fine,” he said. “Was the flight okay? What’d you think of your little brothers? Aren’t they the biggest little ballbusters you’ve ever seen?”

“Gavin threw apple juice on her,” Pilar reported. “Now I’m gonna have to have the car detailed again.”

While my father and Pilar caught each other up on their day’s events, I excused myself to clean up for dinner.

“You’re on the pull-out sofa in the television room,” Pilar informed me. “You can put your suitcase in your dad’s study, but you’ll have to share the boys’ bathroom. Sorry about that. I can’t wait to get out of this dump. In the new house, we’ll have a guest suite…”

I left her detailing all the fine points of the new house. I pulled a pair of jeans and a top out of my suitcase, along with my cosmetics case, and headed for the shower. I unzipped the case, set it on the bathroom counter, and pulled out my shampoo and conditioner. My hair was already a ball of frizz from the Miami humidity.

When I stepped out of the shower, Garrett was sitting on the commode, naked except for his
Pirates of the Caribbean
T-shirt, which was how I knew he was Garrett. Gavin had been wearing a white-and-orange Miami Dolphins T-shirt. Garrett looked me up and down. “Boobies,” he pronounced. “Boys like boobies.”

“I know,” I said, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around me. “Are you almost done here?” I asked politely.

He grunted loudly. “Uh-uh. I make poops.”

“Good for you,” I said.

I grabbed my clothes and made a run for the study, where I quickly toweled off and dressed.

Pilar’s cooking, as my dad had promised, was spectacular. She’d pulled out all the stops at dinner, starting with a scallop seviche, then romaine salad with avocado and pink-grapefruit sections, pan-seared grouper, and a vanilla bean flan for dessert.

They made a good couple, I thought, watching them from my end of the oval table. Pilar was much younger, of course, only four years older than me, which made her thirty-two. She’d been a flight attendant, but had stopped working when she and my dad married. Her straight black hair was cut in a short bob. She had a long neck, and huge brown eyes that seemed focused most of the time on either her boys or her man.

Daddy was worth looking at. I was taken by surprise with that realization. He wasn’t movie-star handsome or anything. But he took good
care of himself. He was tanned, with an unlined face, those wide Killebrew cheekbones, and only a touch of gray around the temples marked his otherwise dark hair. He did have, as Lynda had pointed out, a firm chin. I wondered, idly, if that had gotten Pilar into bed with him on
their
first date.

After Pilar brought in coffee, the boys started fussing. “Isn’t it their bedtime?” Dad asked pointedly.

“Story time!” Garrett cried, throwing his plastic sippy cup into the middle of the table.

“I want
Olive the Reindeer,
” Gavin said. “Read that, Papí.”

“That’s a Christmas book,” Pilar said. “But Papí will find you another good story.”

“Not tonight,” Dad said, pushing back from the table. “Dempsey and I have some things to work out.” He gave each of the boys a kiss on the top of his head. “Be good boys and give your mommy a short story tonight, all right?”

Pilar shot him a dirty look. “I did story time last night. You promised you’d take them tonight.” She turned toward me. “Mitch is a very involved father. He reads to the boys every night. It’s their little ritual.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, standing up and starting to gather the dishes. I didn’t tell her that in all my own growing-up years, the only thing Mitch ever read to me was the list of house rules he’d posted on the refrigerator door when I went to live with him at the age of eight.

Funny, it had been twenty years, but I still lived by those rules. I could even see the neat block letters he’d written them in. Make bed. Tidy room. Clean bathtub and sink each morning. Sweep kitchen floor. Put dishes in dishwasher. Fold and put away clothes. No whining.

Mitch ignored Pilar’s pouting and picked up his own plate and hers. “You go ahead with the boys. Dempsey and I will clean up the kitchen.”

We’d gone into Mitch’s study, which consisted of his scarred old mahogany desk and leather chair, and two leather club chairs facing the desk, one of which held my open suitcase.

When my dad’s eyes flickered meaningfully over the suitcase, with a
bra hanging out of it, I quickly tucked the clothes inside, snapped it shut, and stuck it in the corner.

Dad sat behind the desk, picked up a remote control, and pointed it at the small portable television sitting on the bookcase behind me. “You don’t mind, right?” he said. “It’s the Doral open. I just wanna see how Tiger’s doing.

“So,” he said, putting the remote down. “Let’s talk about your future.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Well. Right now, things aren’t so good. But one of my roommates dates a guy who works for a firm that does a lot with environmental issues. It’s something I’m interested in—”

“Damn,” he said, staring up at the television. “Double bogey.” He looked over at me without missing a beat. “Environmental issues? I thought you were a lobbyist, not a tree hugger.”

“Green issues are a hot button right now,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a tree hugger. I happen to care about this planet. After all, I’ve got two half brothers.”

He frowned. “Don’t call them that. They’re not half of anything. Is that how you think of them? Only half related to you?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I was just saying I care about the world they’ll grow up in.”

“Good,” Dad said. He picked up the remote and pushed the mute button. “The guy at this firm. Do you know that they have openings? What the pay scale is like?”

“No, but—”

“Would there be anything wrong with your practicing law?” He tilted back in his chair. “You do have a degree from a very expensive law school.”

“Yes,” I started. “But I’ve been working on policy since I got out of school. Even my internships were with trade associations and public relations firms.”

“Which, if you remember, I was against at the time,” Dad said. “You’re a lawyer, dammit. Go for the big bucks, none of this dicking around with politics.”

“Well, I’m done with politics for now,” I said ruefully. “Thanks to Congressman Licata.”

“Don’t get me started on that asshole,” Dad said. “Anyway, that’s all water over the dam, right? So, what’s your plan?”

He was staring at the television again.

“I haven’t managed to save a lot of money,” I admitted. “Everything’s so expensive in the district. My share of the rent alone is two thousand a month—”

“Two thousand a month?” Pilar walked into the room and handed Mitch another martini. “To share a closet with two other girls? One bathroom? A kitchen the size of my bathtub? You need to move down to Miami, Dempsey. Enough!”

“Pilar,” Dad said, a note of warning in his voice.

“Ridiculous!” she said, waving her hand to signal that she’d had her say.

I forged ahead. “My share of the rent’s paid up for this month, and the girls have offered to let me stay for at least another month, since we did that for Lindsay last year after she was out of work.”

“But long term?” Dad asked.

“I just got fired yesterday,” I pointed out. “It’s not as if I was planning on my boss being investigated by the FBI.”

“Failure to plan equals planning to fail,” Dad intoned. I gritted my teeth. How many times had I heard that little maxim over the length of my lifetime?

A diabolical thought occurred to me.

“Lynda called, right after it happened,” I said innocently. “She wants to fly me out to L.A. to stay with her for a while. She has a lot of contacts—”

“Contacts!” Dad slammed his martini glass so hard the contents sloshed over the edge of the glass. “By contacts, she means that boyfriend of hers has plenty of money—and rich friends.”

“Leonard has a lot of clients in the film business,” I said, deliberately twisting the knife. “I don’t know that I’d want to do entertainment law forever, but it might be interesting for a while—”

“How long has your mother been living with that character, anyway?” Mitch demanded.

“About four years,” I guessed. “Leonard is really good to Lynda. And let’s face it, they get along way better than she ever did with anybody she was ever married to.”

Pilar helped herself to a sip of the martini. “Did she offer to help you financially?”

“No,” I admitted. “But if I asked—”

“Forget it,” Mitch said. “We don’t want you owing money to that slick Hollywood character. No telling what kind of shady deals he’d get you involved with. Your mother always was a terrible judge of character.”