But first I have to deal with lunch. I check my watch. It’s getting late enough that we can probably just eat somewhere and then Helen and Jack can head back here for a nap before the evening’s festivities, such as they are, begin at Mr. Chow. Booking dinner at that tourist trap is my only nod to Amy and Barkley, who turned out to be a dog with a bone about the whole We-have-to-eat-at-Mr.-Chow-because-I-read-about-it-in-W thing. I mean, what heterosexual guy reads W, even if his wife does subscribe?
Given that overpriced MSG will be dinner, what to do about lunch? I run through the likely suspects. The Grill. The Palm. Barney Greengrass. Agents, managers, lawyers. Hollywood’s equivalent of lions, tigers, and bears. My parents would never know what hit them. Sushi in a valley mini-mall? No way. A.O.C. doesn’t serve lunch and besides, the idea of a wine bar and “small plates” would be lost on Jack and Helen. Four Seasons? Campanile? For one reason or another all the usual suspects seem wrong for a rainy, slow afternoon when most of L.A. has had the foresight to be in Hawaii. Oh, screw it, I’ll take them to Kate Mantilini. It’s a classic and has enough of an industry vibe that even Jack might notice it.
“You know, how about a great burger and a nice glass of wine at this really cool diner? They even shot a scene in Heat there,” I say brightly. If you smile at the baby, the baby will smile back.
“Oh honey, a burger the day before Thanksgiving?”
“Mom, they have salads and other—”
“And what’s Heat?” she adds, looking bewildered.
“Sounds great,” Jack says, tossing aside the paper. “Tell you what, I’ll even buy.”
“So what’s your goal with them this weekend?” Steven says, when I call him after dropping Helen and Jack at the hotel and have collapsed at home. My half-time respite in the locker room before suiting up for tonight’s game. Lunch turned out okay. Actually, better than okay. Like stealing home after two outs in the third. We got a booth overlooking Wilshire, Helen had her salad and iced tea—at least she’s on Hollywood’s wavelength with her beverage choices—and Jack, who loved the whole businessman-in-a-baseball-cap vibe, had a burger and two Anchor Steams. I can’t remember what I had, but just as we were leaving Al Pacino walked in, which, given that he’s probably one of the few celebrities my parents would recognize, allowed Helen to trot out another of her backhanded, inside-out compliment-and-reproaches all in one:
“Oh, he’s so much shorter than I thought.”
“Mom, they’re all shorter than you think. Except Nicole Kidman, who takes steroids or something so her height actually matches her self-regard.”
“Alex, I’m sure you’re used to seeing these people all the time and can afford to be blasé, but your dad and I aren’t.”
Game, Mom.
“What’s my goal?” I say to Steven. “To get through their visit in one piece.”
“I’m serious,” he says over the sound of chopping. Steven is already deep into preparations for his annual Thanksgiving-for-the-boys feast he does every year. “Do you want them to have fun? To realize Hollywood is the sham you know it to be? Or do you want them to think you have the most fabulous and difficult job and that you and not Amy are the brilliant, talented daughter they didn’t know they had?”
“You know, I’m sure you’re right. If I had a goal, this might all be clearer, but I am just honestly trying to get through this weekend pleasantly and with minimal explosions. Especially since Amy is here. If it was just my parents, I might be able to get in some of that. Like what I’m doing in Hollywood. But not with Amy around being her usual spoiled, superior self. She’s even better than Mom at peeing on everyone’s parade. So no, I do not have a goal except to get them in and out of town in one piece.”
“Denial, denial, denial,” he says, rhythmically whacking some poor vegetable. “You sound just like your mother when you talk like that.”
“How would you know? You haven’t even met her.”
“We’ve talked on the phone. Besides, it’s not for lack of trying,” he says, whacking away. “I invited you guys for Thanksgiving.”
“We went over that.”
“And I told you I would go out with you for a meal or a drink. Or come here on your way to dinner tonight. I’m just cooking for tomorrow. Just me and the twenty-pound tom. Home Alone with the Bird.”
“I told you, my parents are from Philly. They wouldn’t understand the concept of my having a gay male friend.”
“They’ve seen Will & Grace.”
“That’s set in New York. Not Philadelphia. And they wouldn’t get it with their daughter. Not when she can’t manage to find herself a nice heterosexual male to be her friend.”
“So Charles is on the need-to-know basis as well?”
“Uh, yeah, when I don’t even know where we stand. Look, there’s only so much I can deal with over a holiday weekend, and right now my parents are it.”
“Then just tell your parents I’m your assistant.”
“Who happens to live in a house bigger than the White House? No, they wouldn’t get that either.”
“Okay,” he says, sighing, and I can tell he’s getting bored with me and my parents. God knows I am. “Well, I’m here if you need me.”
We hang up and I check the time. Going on five-thirty. I’m not due back at the Chateau until seven, when we’ll all pile into the Lincoln Navigator Barkley insisted on renting and head to Bev-erly Hills for humiliation and dim sum. Time enough for a soak in the tub and maybe a little predinner drink. Just to keep my game face on.
Heading downstairs to the bath, I try to remember where I was last Thanksgiving. Home? Here? I’m drawing a blank. What about Christmas? Home, I think. As if it mattered. It seems like ages since a holiday meant anything. Maybe that’s what happens when you get older. It all runs together. Maybe if I had kids, it would be different. Home to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. God knows Jack and Helen’s Colonial on their 2.2 acres of prime Main Line real estate fits the bill, especially when it’s snowing, which is fairly frequently, according to Jack. But I can’t remember the last time I felt any joy being back there.
I must have at one time. I do remember that. It’s there at the back of my mind, like a name just out of reach. Or a taste you vaguely recall. Like the cones at the Dairy Queen, where Jack used to take me and our old boxer, Bull, on Saturday nights when I was still a kid. Or the smell of the cedar closet in the guest bedroom, where Helen keeps her mink jacket wrapped in tissue and where I used to hide out during those long summers home from college.
I know it’s there because I remember one Thanksgiving, one of the last ones when Grandma was there. I took a nap upstairs in the guest room after dinner, with our white cat, Blue, and with the ticking clock on the bedside table. I’d fallen asleep with the watery winter sun bathing the room. But when I awoke, the room was muffled in dusk and my heart was pounding. How long had I been asleep? Hours? It felt like days. I lay there without any sense of time or place, just the metronome of the clock ticking.
And then I heard them. Downstairs. My mother talking to her mother in the kitchen. No words. Just their voices. The music of their voices rising through the house. I looked over at Blue, who was cleaning herself, oblivious to my little resurrection.
That’s what I miss. Feeling safe. Not trapped. Safe.
“Alex, I think Barkley can find it on his own,” Helen says.
I’m in the passenger seat next to my brother-in-law, who’s punching at the satellite navigation button on the Navigator’s roof. A boy with his toys. “Mr. Chow’s,” he repeats in his robotically slow voice. “In Beverly Hills on Canon.”
“Camden,” I say.
“That’s what I said,” Barkley says without looking at me.
“It’s Cam-den, not Can-on,” I say again.
“Alex, let Barkley do it. He wants to test out the system.”
“Okay, I won’t say another word.” I flop back in the seat and turn my attention to the rain-sloshed Chateau driveway.
&nb
sp; “You know, the one we have in the Volvo at home works great. Your mother can even find her way into the city with it,” says Jack, who is wedged in the backseat between Helen and Amy. Amy, who’s in full I’m-just-a-devoted-suburban-wife-and-daughter mode. Talk about denial. She doesn’t remotely understand her life any more than I understand mine—how we wound up on opposite ends of the parental-expectations gauge—but unlike me, she refuses to question it, even when I can tell her patience for her doltish Ken-Doll-of-an-attorney husband is wearing thin. I know that about her, just like I know that even if I stay out of her way, keep our conversations banal and upbeat this weekend, the dam will eventually give way. It’s just a question of when and where.
“Jack, I’ve been finding my way into the city since before we got the Volvo,” Helen says, slightly miffed. “I don’t know why you say things like that.”
“They’re fine once you get used to them,” Amy says, retying the sweater around her neck. “I finally got used to ours and it’s great.”
“I was just commenting on the system,” Jack says, raising his hands. “Frankly, I consider it a safety feature. Like a cell phone.”
Barkley punches the button again. “Mr. Chow’s,” he repeats.
“It’s Chow, not Chow’s,” I say, without thinking.
“Ciao?” says Helen. “I thought we were eating Chinese.”
“We are eating Chinese,” says Amy, still fiddling with her sweater.
We’ve been at this for at least five minutes, parked on or rather blocking the hotel’s slip of a driveway. Out the window, I see two cars behind us in the garage, three in front of us trying to get up the drive, and the valet heading our way. I’m about to suggest that Barkley just fucking chill with the high-tech directions and drive, at least off the hotel property, when the navigation system springs to life: “Mr. Harbinger, your directions.” A glowing list flashes onto the tiny screen. I don’t even bother to look. If it sends us to Pasadena, I could care less as long as we get off this driveway.
“Okay, here we go,” says Barkley, peering at the screen. He studies it for a second and then puts the Navigator in gear. “Next stop, Mr. Chow’s,” he says, heading down the rain-slicked drive, honking wildly at the cars we’ve blocked.
“No, no. This table good. Good one. Banquet. You sit here.”
We are in the back at Mr. Chow. Five of us wedged around a four-top in a banquette, squeezed between two couples, one of which looks to be two male models on their first date, given the number of aqua-colored martinis going down, and the other a couple of stunned-looking tourists with Zagat guides and uncolored hair. Across from us is a party of some British band, or wannabe band, and their groupies, who are already whooping it up in that annoyingly loud Oy, mate way Cockneys love to do in America. So far, it’s exactly what I predicted. Siberia. And all its lovely denizens.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t sit in the front room where Tony Curtis was,” Helen says, looking mournfully over her shoulder. “I thought I saw an empty table there.”
“Mom, there were three empty tables, but that’s how it works here,” I say, fishing out a menu from the pile the waiter dropped on the table. “If you’re not a star or a regular, they dump you back here.”
“I’ll talk to them,” says Jack, pushing back his chair.
I have visions of a ten changing hands. Like that would do anything.
“Dad, don’t even bother. They’ll just tell you they’re reserved. Let’s just stay here.”
“I’ll never understand this town,” Helen says with a shake of her head, reaching across me for a menu. “You’d think they’d want people to sit next to Tony Curtis, for goodness’s sake. So you’d know he was there.”
“So how was the visit to the animation studio?” I say, as I stare, or pretend to stare, at the menu. Eating is the least of my concerns.
“Fine. If you’re into animation,” says Amy, behind her menu. She and Barkley spent the afternoon taking a private tour of Disney’s animation building because an old college buddy of Barkley’s worked in marketing or something and arranged it.
“Fantastic. You should see the way they do computer graphics up close,” says Barkley. “It’s so amazing. Nothing like you’d expect. You know, they actually have to get the actor to perform the role first, film it, and then do the animating. That’s why it takes so long.”
“Yeah, I heard that,” I say, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Christ, every kid with a PlayStation knows that. “Dad, what are you going to have?” I say, changing tactics. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can get out of here.
“Well, what’s good here?”
“You know, I don’t eat here that often—”
“No, no,” Barkley interrupts. “We have to let them order for us. For the table. That’s the way to do it.”
“Was that in the article too?” I get out before Amy elbows me sharply in the ribs.
“Honey, then you do it,” Amy says, laying aside her menu with a flicker of impatience, the first cracks in the dam. “We’ll let you take care of it.”
“Okay, but make sure there’s some fish dish. And a chicken,” Helen says, eyeing Jack over her menu. “We’re trying to eat less red meat these days.”
Jack tosses down his menu. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use a drink. And I can order that for myself.”
I look up. Nailing a waiter in here is about as difficult as getting an agent to return your call. Chinese guys and the occasional whippet-thin Caucasian are rushing around, beads of sweat gleaming on their brows. It’s so humid with the crowd and the rain that steam is gathering on the glass divider atop the banquette. The noise is deafening, the Cockneys are shrieking with laughter, and I’m starting to get a crick in my back from sitting jammed in between Amy and Helen.
“You know, our firm just opened a branch in L.A.,” Barkley says over the din. “It looks like we’ll be starting to do some entertainment business. I’m probably going to be coming back out.”
I suddenly have a horrifying vision of Barkley and Amy moving to L.A. Pasadena. No, the Palisades is more their style, especially given what Barkley could earn as an entertainment lawyer. I look over at Amy, but she has the hatches battened down. What am I worried about? It would take a nuclear explosion, or some serious therapy, to get Amy out of Philly permanently. Barkley may come out, but he will go back. Still, of all my family, the guy who is least equipped to leave Bucks County is the one who loves L.A. Go figure.
“Really,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Well, that would be great.”
“Yeah, so I might even be able to help you the next time one of your clients has to go to court.”
I can’t tell if this is a dig about Troy and my job or if Barkley is just being his eager, clueless self. Before I can parse it, a waiter miraculously stumbles to a stop at our table.
“Drink. You want drinks?”
We practically fall over one another to get our orders out. Scotch for Jack. Barkley wants a Tsingtao. Helen and I go for white wine.
“Amy?” I say, turning to her.
“I’ll have a mineral water with a lime,” she says, smiling up at the waiter.
“You’re having water?” My sister isn’t much of a drinker, but she always has a glass of red wine. For the antioxidants.
“Didn’t Mom tell you? I’m pregnant.”
“Honey, do you want to say grace?”
“No, Mom, not here I don’t,” I say, looking around the Getty’s dining room. I’m not inclined to indulge my mother’s holiday traditions under her own roof, let alone in public, and at 3 P.M., Thanksgiving afternoon, this place is packed.
“We could have said it in the car in the garage,” says Barkley. I look over at him. He’s either serious or doing some major sucking up. You’d think he’d be beyond that, having fathered what will be the family’s first grandchild.
“Oh well, I just thought it being Thanksgiving and all . . .” says Helen, letting
her voice trail off. Normally her poor-me strategies don’t guilt-trip me anymore, but she looks so disappointed—I know the trip has largely been a letdown with the rain and the hotel, or maybe I’m just still so obviously a letdown, still divorced, and now not with child—that I relent.
“But I will propose a toast,” I say, picking up my glass of the Veuve Clicquot Jack has ordered. “To us,” I say, as we all clink glasses. “To the first Bradford family—sorry, Bradford-Harbinger family—gathering in Los Angeles. Thank you all for coming. And for the meal we are about to share,” I say, dropping my voice on the last part. “May it be the first of many.”
“Thank you, Alex,” Helen says, smiling at me over her glass. “That was lovely, although I don’t know about the first of many.”
“Really?” I say, sticking my toe in that frigid water. “You wouldn’t come back? I mean, I know the rain has cramped our plans, but I think L.A. has its charms.”
“Well, yes, of course,” says Helen. “And we haven’t even seen your new office yet. Or met your friends.” She lets the last part hang in the air.
“Well, everyone is away for the holiday,” I say, foolishly taking the bait. The unspoken accusation that my life, however tricked up with celebrities and movies and limos and court trials, is just compensatory Plan B. Plan B because I willfully fucked up Plan A, which was pretty fucked up to begin with.
“It’s been fine,” says Jack. “Next time, might even get in a little golf. I think a couple of the guys at the club back home know somebody at Riviera. Get in a round that way.”
“I’m sure our firm will be having some sort of local club membership,” Barkley pipes up. “I’m sure I could work something out there.”
“No, I just meant that with Amy expecting the baby in June, we won’t be traveling much in the immediate future,” Helen says, unfolding her napkin like she’s opening a hymnal.
“Mother, I’ve already said that you and Daddy do not need to turn your lives upside down just because I’m having a baby,” Amy says, taking a sip of her water. Evian with lime and no ice.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 21
