She came out of the rest room, looking like her usual sprayed-in-place self. She’d been inside over 30 minutes, ice-packing her fingers to make sure she frostbit anyone stupid enough to shake hands. She wobbled over in ankle-busting shoes & said, “Hello girls.”
*
In the ’90s, Hurricane Bob tore up boats & houses & drove the battered locals north. Carys had no memory of it, but now, at the Power family cottage–once a rival of Newport glamor–she found only rubble, the marble & metal spirited away along with her father’s ghost.
*
*After the arrest of Anderson & presumably her father, Carys fulfilled her mom’s promise to donate the O’Keefe to the museum. The dining room looked bleak; nothing new could match O’Keefe’s color, her seasoning of their every meal eaten together.
*
After I came along, Mom created a gilded cage, & I mean 24-carat gold, so Tansy & I turned out pampered muckety-mucks. But w/ heart. Mom slaved at work, despite her inheritance, but our insouciant aura was a con. All those years, we allowed nobody in.
*
Carys used to get to her knees to scrub floors w/ an actual brush, her mom’s ploy to instill adult virtues that Carys’ inner wild child had ignored. That strictness, what little Mom exerted, had just the right kick, like salt in dark chocolate.
*
Mom was no Cordon Bleu chef but her gourmet food business kept Tansy and me in princess splendor. We vacationed in places teeming with celebrities & graduated from Ivy League schools. So why did we drift in fitful winds when Mom had shown us how to fly?
*
It struck her later how she’d drunk the honey in Rand’s voice long before he stopped her for dangerous driving, whatever. First time was in the cafe. She’d been incognito, posing as a vintage actress in Mom’s fur, wanting information w/ her coffee.
*
Christmas meant modest indulgence but New Year promised total annihilation.
When Tansy collapsed outside Club Raunch, she moaned, “Medical researchers snatched my vital organs.”
Carys said, “Just hooked them up to life support. Your legs still work?”
*
At Christmas, Mom, Tansy & I were never too few to celebrate riotously, drunk on games & laughter. Tansy & I opened presents together because they were mostly the same, so when I found her effects in the closet and I cried, the tears fell happy-sad.
*
He sips his mint tea, eyes sliding anywhere but my way. I tamp down a nauseating adrenaline rush. God, I want to get out of his place. I hurt everywhere but need a sign that I screwed up, that love isn’t the sick con job I suspect it is.
*
To others, Mom came off as pure bougie: Boston Brahmin, furs, Jags, diamonds, & connections. But she was no silver-spoon elitist, happiest–gayest is the apter word–when we were caught in sudden downpours, a family of dripping dancing pluviophiles.
*
(Only 11) She’s mad for Rand but alone in bed she’ll linger in the aftermath of Sven, his tongue sliding down her neck, his crushing her to him, into him, for midnight kisses over the Seine, when the moon shadow of distorted spires was everything.
*
Mom’s got hangry issues, calls it her 5-finger-discount reward for domestic trauma. Really, she’s a klepto junkie for candy & chips, and no store clerk watches her unless she’s bruised & that’s diff. But Dad trashes her stash, she mans up & trashes him.
*
PITCH: She is rich, sassy and single, but life’s been throwing her curve balls and she’s more than ready for a few home runs. A double-play of sex and vengeance sounds about right, but it will take more than two graves to bury the bodies.
*
*
*