Looks to Die For

by Janice Kaplan

  “Better me than Dan,” I said. What would the paparazzi do with a shot of me, anyway? Sell it to Mad magazine? They definitely wouldn’t get a buck out of Real Simple, because my life had become way too complicated.

  I finished the conversation with Chauncey, and when I hung up, Grant put down his pencil. While pretending to work, he’d been listening to every word. “Mom, you’re very brave. I mean it. I’m really proud of you.”

  I gave him another hug. If every murder charge had a silver lining, then this was mine — sterling praise from my husband and son in one otherwise awful day.

  Chapter Three

  Instead of grabbing the newspaper off the front lawn as usual in my Natori nightgown the next morning, I threw on jeans and a Fire & Ice Ball sweatshirt to impress the local TV reporters with my humanity. But the street seemed quiet, with no news trucks in view. I didn’t hang outside long enough to check for telephoto lenses peeping out of the beech tree.

  Back inside, I took the Los Angeles Times out of its plastic bag. The story about Dan had made page 1, just below the fold, with a screaming headline:

  RESPECTED L.A. DOC ARRESTED

  ON MURDER CHARGE

  Underneath was a photo someone had snapped at a charity ball a few months ago, with Dan in his black Armani tuxedo and Harry Winston diamond studs. His blue eyes twinkled and his warm smile showed off his irresistible dimple. He looked heartbreakingly handsome — which explained why the picture filled most of the bottom of the page. So much for keeping Dan out of sight of the paparazzi last night.

  Never-made-it-actress Tasha Barlow, whose goal had been to have her face in front of the world, was relegated to a tiny square. In the high school graduation photo, her nose looked obviously bigger and her breasts strikingly smaller than in the head shot Chauncey had showed me. When she moved to the coast, Tasha had paid some plastic surgeon a wad of money to make her into a different person. But that didn’t mean Dan had held the knife.

  The type blurred in front of my eyes when I tried to read the article, so I shoved the newspaper under the sofa and flicked on the small Sony TV in the kitchen, flipping past Matt chatting with his new mate, Meredith, on NBC and the genial hosts bantering on CBS, until I caught a mention of Dan on one of the local news reports. The story was mercifully brief, a juicy headline but no sleazy footage to draw it out. But there was plenty of video for the next story, and I watched until Grant came downstairs.

  “Who’s Mikita?” I asked, as soon as he came into the kitchen.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at me blankly. “What?”

  “Have you ever heard of Mikita? She’s all over the news this morning. Come here.”

  Grant joined me at the countertop television, where the slo-mo footage of a gorgeous young woman running naked down Sunset Boulevard was being replayed for at least the third time.

  “She’s one of those models–turned–rock singers,” Grant said. “What happened?”

  “Apparently she took a little too much Ecstasy and coke last night and washed it all down with a bottle of champagne. She left the Viper Room, pulled off all her clothes, and…” I nodded at the TV. “The rest you’ve seen.”

  Grant laughed and went to the refrigerator for orange juice. “Did she push Dad off the news, at least?”

  “Mostly.” I cleared my throat. “Come eat.” I put Wheaties with strawberries on the table, but Grant looked around the kitchen.

  “Where’s the newspaper?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer immediately, and, misinterpreting, Grant said, “Want me to go outside and get it?”

  “I already did,” I admitted. I fished out the paper from under the sofa. “Unfortunately, the L.A. Times gets printed before two A.M., which is when Mikita did her strip act.”

  Grant grabbed the front section from me and sat down at the kitchen table, propping the paper between his cereal bowl and his glass of juice, just like he did every morning. But today, instead of analyzing the Lakers’ losing streak, he was perusing a story about a dead girl and a maybe murderous doctor — who happened to be his dad. Grant’s face grew paler and paler, and finally he folded up the newspaper and pushed it away.

  “I didn’t know she’d been strangled,” he said finally, his voice so broken and soft that I could barely make it out.

  “Strangled?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “I didn’t. It never came up.”

  “That’s what the article says.” Grant’s chest heaved with emotion and he rubbed his eyes.

  “I didn’t read the article. I’m not as brave as you thought.”

  Grant jabbed his spoon at the few shreds still floating in his bowl. “All night I thought about how Dad doesn’t have a gun,” Grant said in a pained rasp. “He couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder because he’s just like you — he hates guns and wouldn’t know what to do with one. But I guess now that doesn’t matter.”

  I slid the newspaper closer, more to get it away from Grant than to look at it myself.

  “None of it matters. However that girl died, Daddy doesn’t even know who she is. You can’t forget that.”

  “Sure,” Grant said, but his voice was still weak.

  “This is going to be over,” I said, maybe a little too loudly. “The police are going to apologize to Daddy. I hope that’ll be on the front page, too.”

  Grant nodded but didn’t look at me as he stood up and went over to the sink. Instead of slipping his bowl into the dish-washer — housekeeper or not, I insisted the kids clean up — he ran the warm water for a long time, slowly running a sponge around and around his one dish. Even from the back, I could see him making a huge effort to get under control. And he did it. When he finally turned around again, his voice sounded normal. “I’m going to school, Mom. I guess Ashley’s not coming?”

  “School?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I do, remember?”

  How quickly I forgot. Maybe you can make the transition from murder to math more easily at sixteen. “You’re done with your midterms, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Finally.”

  “Then stay home. The reporters can’t chase Mikita forever. I don’t want them to reappear and swarm you with questions.”

  Grant shrugged. “I’m going, Mom.”

  “Let me call Chauncey and see what he thinks.”

  “Chauncey should be thinking about Dad’s problems, not mine. I don’t need a lawyer to tell me I can go to school.”

  Grant picked up his North Face backpack and strode toward the door. He was decisive, and once he took a stance, he remained resolute. And what could I say, anyway? The only firm position I could take right now was that I was completely and totally confounded. Arguing with Grant would be like planting a flag in Jell-O.

  I stood by the window as Grant steered his shiny black Jeep down the long driveway, neatly avoiding the shrubbery hedge on one side and the carefully planted beds of white irises and pink anemones on the other. The outside border of red coleus was wildly overgrown and I half hoped he’d run it over and spare me from gardening shears. But Grant pulled carefully into the street, not using his horsepower for a hedge clipper. For now, all remained quiet — nobody was waiting to follow him.

  Trudging back upstairs, I heard Dan on the phone in our bedroom. I peeked in and saw him pacing across the carpet, his head down and his hand cupped protectively around the receiver. He seemed to be listening more than talking, and after he said a gloomy good-bye, I came into the room.

  “Everything okay?” I asked worriedly.

  “Sure, A-OK, as the astronauts say.” Dan sounded disconsolate and he kept pacing across the carpet, arms folded, not looking at me.

  “They also say, ‘Houston, we have a problem,’” I reminded him gently.

  “Call it a challenge,” said Dan.

  “A challenge, but not the Challenger,” I added.

  Dan gave me a halfhearted smile and I briefly felt better. Maybe if we could still banter, everyt
hing would be normal again. But only for a moment.

  “That was Brandon Jackson on the phone,” Dan said, bringing us both back to earth.

  I waited. Jackson was the high-profile president at Cedars Medical Center, the prestigious hospital to which Dan had dedicated his life the last ten years. I knew him from Christmas parties and charity events, but this had to be the first time he’d called our house at 8:00 A.M.

  “He’d already heard the whole story and he said I have his complete support,” Dan said morosely.

  “Great,” I said hopefully, since nothing in Dan’s tone suggested great, good, or even mediocre.

  “One little hitch. I’m temporarily suspended from the hospital. At least until the directors’ meeting in a couple of weeks. Brandon wants to get a sense of how the board feels.”

  If that’s how Brandon defined “complete support,” it was a good thing he wasn’t president of La Perla.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything personal. It’s probably just standard procedure,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. Though I had to wonder which farsighted hospital administrator would have written the protocol for dealing with a doctor accused of murder. Most didn’t know how to handle a physician who ordered aspirin when the in-house pharmacy offered Advil.

  “You know hospitals — all those crazy rules,” I continued, determined to show my husband what support really meant. “You can’t say a patient’s name on the elevator because of privacy codes. No flower arrangements allowed on the maternity floor in case peonies make someone sneeze. And Brandon’s a bureaucrat. Isn’t he the one who wanted to ban balloons? I guess he’s worried about allergies to air.”

  Dan sighed. “Nobody’s planning on sending me flowers. Or balloons.” He slumped down onto the bed and let his shoulders sag.

  I sat down next to him, sidled close, and rubbed his cheek. “What can I do, honey? What do you need?” I asked softly.

  “I don’t need anything,” Dan said, more brusquely than he probably intended. Being vulnerable or needy had never made it into his emotional repertoire. Still, I put my arms around him and he kissed me briskly on the cheek — less a prelude to passion than the tap of a worried woodpecker.

  “Did Brandon say anything else?” I asked.

  “Nope.” Dan shook his head. Continuing in his stoic mode, he was done with the subject. If I wanted to indulge in extended analysis of who-said-what-to-whom and what-it-all-means, I could marry someone without a Y chromosome. Though I’d have to move to Massachusetts.

  “What’s going on with the kids?” Dan asked, changing subjects about as gracefully as Karl Rove discussing a CIA press leak.

  “Grant went to school this morning, but Ashley didn’t,” I said evenly. “She’s sleeping. Jimmy just got up. We need to talk to him about what he saw the other night. I think he’s too scared to ask.”

  “I’m not up for talking. But let me drive him to kindergarten. I guess I have some time.”

  I knew the proper reply was “Thank you, darling” — which would make my husband feel needed and encourage his continued participation in the kindergarten carpool. But I also knew it was a bad plan. How to say this nicely?

  “Oh, let’s let him miss a few days of finger painting,” I said sweetly.

  Too sweetly. Dan looked at me, puzzled. “Why would we do that?”

  I bit my lower lip. If sweet didn’t work, maybe blunt would. “Because you shouldn’t go out this morning and neither should Jimmy.”

  Dan jerked his head back, as if he’d been slapped. Maybe I should have stuck with “Thank you, darling.”

  “I don’t go to the hospital and the kids stay home. We’ll go into hiding. Is that what Chauncey wanted?” he asked sharply.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I said softly. “We can’t pretend life is normal. Everything’s changed, Dan. Aren’t we going to face it?”

  So much for A-OK. Dan’s blue eyes blackened in anger. Without an additional word, he stood, turned on his heel, and walked out of the room.

  Whether or not it was what Chauncey wanted, going into hiding was more or less what we did for the next four days. Except for Grant, who refused to make any changes in his life, none of us went farther than a hundred feet from the front door. A couple of reporters kept ringing our doorbell and leaving messages on the phone, and one news truck reappeared half a dozen times. But a wildfire in the Valley that destroyed two celebrity homes, along with endless analysis of the naked-Mikita tape, filled the schadenfreude quotient for the local media.

  “Which doesn’t mean the attention is over,” Chauncey warned us on the phone. “As soon as there’s a new development, they’ll be back. For now, just live your normal lives.”

  “We don’t have normal lives,” I told Chauncey.

  “I understand how you feel. But just go ahead with whatever would be on your calendar if none of this had happened.”

  I checked the Treo where I kept my schedule. “A meeting of the benefit ball committee at Dan’s hospital,” I told him. “I’m supposed to be head of the decorations committee.”

  Chauncey cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose with Dan banned from the hospital right now, you’ll have to give that up.”

  Not that anybody would mind. As head of the committee last year, I’d imported thirty-five brightly colored parrots from Peru and had them perch on gilded branches during the dinner dance. A truly original touch — but nobody told me that parrots like sparkles. Or that they’d start dive-bombing for diamonds on the jewel-bedecked necks of L.A.’s wealthiest women. But I’d learned my lesson.

  Dan announced that getting back to normal was just fine with him. With his usual skill at denial, he explained that being away from the hospital gave him some time to write an article on facial reconstruction for the Annals of Plastic Surgery.

  Ashley had a different perspective.

  “That lawyer can go screw himself,” she said angrily on Friday night, when I told her Chauncey’s advice. “I’m not going to school to have everyone insult me because my dad’s a killer.”

  “Your dad is being questioned in connection with an event he knows nothing about,” I said stoically. “That’s all you have to say to anybody who asks.”

  “Nobody’s going to ask. They’re just going to talk behind my back.”

  “Welcome to eighth grade. Talking behind your back is the coin of the realm.”

  She glowered at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “All I’m trying to say is that kids gossip about everything. Real, made up, it doesn’t matter. Don’t make a big deal about this and neither will they.”

  “Oh my God, you’re so fake!” she yelled. “This is a murder, not an acne breakout! You have no idea the crap I’ll get! It’s almost as big a scandal as when Sandy’s father got fired from Fox!”

  Now wasn’t the moment to marvel that a homicide investigation reached the same rung on the mortification meter as a network shake-up. “I’ll drive you to school on Monday and we’ll go to Mr. Morland’s office and talk about how you should handle yourself,” I said calmly.

  “I know how to handle myself!” she yelled. “I don’t need an idiot principal to tell me how to face my friends! And I don’t need your idiotic advice, either!”

  She stormed out and slammed the door.

  Ashley kept herself scarce all weekend, but Monday morning, I peeled her out of bed and announced that she needed to be in my car in thirty minutes, period. Twenty-five minutes later, my clothes-conscious Fred Segal–shopping daughter clomped down to the kitchen and paused in the doorway in baggy black jeans, a three-inch-wide leather belt with metal studs, and a shapeless black DEATH BAND T-shirt probably scrounged from a Goodwill drop-off box. Instead of her usual dainty pink sandals, she’d tied on scuffed Doc Martens over thick woolen socks. Her fingernails looked like they’d been polished with burnt cork and she’d lined her lips with a dark, ghoulish pencil. Some strange gel had turned her hair from blond and fluffy to murky
and Goth straight.

  She glared at me, daring me to say something. So I did.

  “Can I get you some toast?”

  “No.”

  “Bagel? Orange juice? A waffle?”

  “Nothing. I’m not eating.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  In the car, she turned on the CD player so Eminem was blaring from the speakers and sat with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. I snuck a few worried sideways glances at her. The coal-black getup was as frightening as she’d intended — much more disturbing to me than the sex-kitten couture she’d been sporting a few weeks ago. If only I’d appreciated how good life had been before it got so bad. Right now, I wouldn’t mind seeing Ashley preening again in pink Pucci, and I could even cope with a bare midriff (though I still wouldn’t give in on the navel piercing). In this new Goth getup, Ashley didn’t have to worry about people nattering about Dan. They’d be too busy gossiping about her.

  A few blocks before the school, I flipped off the CD. “Anything you want to discuss?” I asked. “Anything we should go over before you get to school?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go over how you can be so fucking hypocritical.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  Okay, I did. Fucking. Hypocritical. I couldn’t criticize every word she said, so I went for the more offensive part.

  “How am I hypocritical?”

  “Oh God.” She rapped her black fingernails against the side window. “I get sent off to school, but you haven’t left the house all week. I’m supposed to face my friends but you can’t face yours.”

  “Of course I can,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. You get dinner delivered every night so you don’t have to see anyone at the grocery store. You skipped your stupid book club last night because you couldn’t bear people asking you questions. Your best friend Molly’s left ten messages and you haven’t answered one. Now you complain about what I’m wearing, but look at you — sunglasses and a floppy hat and huge scarf to drive to school. Since when do you wear hats?”