After Perfect

by Christina McDowell

  “Bambina!”

  He swung me around like I was his Olive again, and he was my Popeye. Sweating underneath my coat, I was coming down from an Adderall binge, anticipating his arrival. Adderall is a stimulant prescribed for Attention Deficit Disorder—and I was using it to get high. The closer my father got to reentering my life, the higher my drug intake became. I hadn’t eaten in days. I’d spent the last seventy-two hours manically cleaning the house, scrubbing the floors, toilets, sinks, and tubs so that everything looked perfect for his arrival. Noah had come home early from work and found me on my knees in prayer position in front of the opened refrigerator. “Are you cleaning out the fridge?” he asked, dumbfounded. “Yes,” I quipped, dumping ancient jars of mayonnaise and pickles into a garbage can next to me. “There is a God!” Noah cheered, jumping for joy. “I can’t wait to meet this mystery man called Daddy you speak of!”

  The boys were excited to meet him, after all the stories I’d told them of my enchanting childhood and subsequent fall from grace.

  As we made our way down Melrose Avenue, my father examined the interior of my car. “Your car looks good, Bambina. The outside could use a wax. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good, Dad.”

  “Do you need groceries?” He pointed to the Pavilions grocery store on the corner of Vine Street in Hollywood. “You’re lookin’ skinny minny,” he said.

  “Yes, but I don’t have a lot of money.” Before the holidays, I landed a job as a bottle-service girl at one of Hollywood’s hottest nightclubs where regulars included Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie, Jay Z, and other major celebrities. DJ AM spun every week before his tragic overdose the following summer. I was numb to it all. No celebrity fazed me anymore. Plus, they never tipped well. (Surprisingly, it was the Wall Street guys, business types, who tipped well.) Not even Slash from Guns N’ Roses fazed me. In fact, one of his “groupies,” a brunette in her late forties, yelled at me for spilling vodka on her suede shoes as I made them watermelon shots at their table. “Do you have any idea how much these cost me?” she screamed. I blinked at her and just walked away, remembering the time my ninth-grade boyfriend spilled chocolate milk on my cashmere sweater at the lunch table. I stood up in front of the entire class like the queen bee, looked down at the dribbled milk, and screamed, “This is cashmere!” It was pink and soft and beautiful, and made me feel special—a gift from my mother on my fifteenth birthday. While I observed and waited on the young privileged girls who trickled in with their Chanel handbags and Jimmy Choos, I began to analyze them instead of myself because it was easier and less painful. They’re not happy, trapped under the financial prison of their parents. They’re living in a box, getting ready to take over Mommy and Daddy’s company. They’re not free! I was jealous and repulsed thinking about it all at the same time. I was breaking down inside—the war between two different girls—holding on tightly to the one from my past; so scared to see what would happen and who I’d be if I let her go.

  Despite living in worldwide economic crisis, clubgoers continued spending thousands of dollars on bottles of Grey Goose just to be seen in all the right places. Most were 1 percenters, so I suppose it didn’t matter to them how much money they pissed away. I still wasn’t making enough to cover my expenses, as I was given only two shifts a week. You couldn’t hustle at a place like this one. Cameras and security guards were everywhere, tips were monitored strictly, and rarely was anything paid for with cash. I learned that hustling was common in the service industry, and only the bigger nightclubs run by corporations could keep it under control. I was so tired of ping-ponging and bargaining with myself on how I’d spend my money each week. Gas, cell phone bill, food, living under constant stress—at the rate my heart was always racing, I figured I’d die by age thirty.

  “Bambina.” My father looked at me, his chin down, eyes up over his aviators. “Don’t worry about it. Your dad’s back.”

  My father and I loaded our grocery cart with bananas, apples, kiwis, avocados, sugar snap peas, arugula, plastic containers of cashews and pistachios, and fancy cheeses. We bought pancake mix and bacon, and organic chicken, and wild salmon, and honey-baked ham. And potatoes and green beans, cranberry sauce, and cases of Corona and red wine. And garlic bread, Entenmann’s buttermilk donuts, Nantucket cookies, Diet Coke, Perrier, Carr’s crackers, caviar. In the last three years, I don’t think I’d spent so much time inside a grocery store. And my father hadn’t either.

  When the cashier announced the total—more than $300—I looked nervously at my father. He didn’t blink. He removed a platinum Capital One card from his wallet. Huh? How did he get a credit card so fast?

  As we loaded the bags into my trunk, I mustered up the courage to ask him about my credit. He had promised that once he got out, he would work on fixing it. I still hadn’t figured out that it was impossible to repair your credit without obtaining a new card and suffering through timely payments at high interest rates. He made me believe that I could simply transfer my debt into his name when he got out. Can’t he just make a quick phone call?

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, Bambina,” he said, setting down the last grocery bag and closing the trunk.

  “When can we go over my credit?”

  “I’ve been meaning to do that. Why don’t you give me a copy of your credit report this week, and I will go over it as soon as possible?”

  “Okay.” I was proud that I’d addressed it and relieved it would be taken care of soon. My father managed to minimize everything, making it seem so easy. My problems? Not worth the stress. So I continued ignoring the way I felt: the anxiety, the voice that was trying to tell me “This is not okay.”

  When we arrived back at the house, the boys were in the garage playing Ping-Pong. We unloaded the groceries and then carried the cases of Corona into the garage. My father, without having introduced himself, announced, “Whoever beats me in a round of Ping-Pong wins a free case of Corona and a hundred bucks!” Rob and Noah looked at each other and then set down their paddles. “All right! Game on!”

  Noah tossed my father a paddle. In that moment, it felt so good to have him back. All my friends in high school always loved him. Jolly was the word they used to describe him walking around the house on a Saturday in his Sebago boat shoes and Tommy Bahama T-shirt.

  Atticus and Dave watched from atop the washer and dryer, scarfing down In-N-Out burgers, waiting their turns. A hundred bucks? He couldn’t have been serious. He was. Dad didn’t expect Rob to be so good. “Goddamn it!” he kept yelling and throwing down his paddle. Rob beat him, so my father was forced to pull a crisp Benjamin from his wallet. He glared at Rob and said, “Good game,” adding, “I was undefeated in the pen, you know.” Rob laughed a little uneasily and gently took the money.

  My father rubbed his hands together. “All right, who’s next? Atticus, you want to play?”

  Atticus looked frightened. “No, no. I’m good, thanks.”

  Later that night, after everyone was asleep, I remembered that I’d forgotten to put clean towels in the bathroom for my father. I tiptoed down the stairs and was passing through the living room when I saw him asleep on the couch, his toes hanging off the edge and a blanket pulled up to his chin. We didn’t have a spare bedroom in the house, but I invited him to stay with us anyway, assuming that he couldn’t afford a hotel. Mara and Brian didn’t have room for him in their one-bedroom apartment. As I had predicted, things weren’t going well for them. Brian had called my cell phone one night while I was working. I hid in one of the bathroom stalls to take his call while Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” blared in the background. “Christina, I came home, and Mara was passed out on the couch. An empty bottle of Grey Goose was on the floor next to her,” he said. “She left the stove on, Christina. I’m worried about her, and I don’t know what to do.” I couldn’t believe that Brian was calling me for help. I don’t remember giving him any advice because I didn’t have any to give except that I knew the truth was unraveling,
and Mara’s semblance of a perfect life wasn’t so perfect after all. I remember only that my intrusive thoughts came roaring back, the ones I had about my mother and all the different ways I imagined her trying to kill herself in the early days of my father’s imprisonment. Accidentally lighting the house on fire while passed out drunk on the couch had not been one of them. I shook my head and got off the phone. I knew it was the end for them. I knew Mara would leave Brian; maybe that’s why I didn’t have anything left to say. And I felt a perverse satisfaction when I hung up—comforted, really—in knowing that I wasn’t the only one falling completely apart.

  My father’s shoes and a few articles of clothing were folded on top of the coffee table next to him, his toiletries placed on the other side.

  I wondered if this is what he looked like sleeping in prison.

  “Bambina?” He startled me. One eye opened as he lifted his head an inch off the pillow.

  “Sorry, Dad, I was just putting clean towels in the bathroom for you.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” he said, resting his head back down on the pillow. Earlier, when I had walked downstairs to say good night, he was taking off his pants. I spun around, embarrassed; he appeared so vulnerable: no bedroom, no place to change. I suppose he could have used the bathroom, but everyone else had gone on up to bed; he probably wasn’t expecting me to come back down to say good night. And he was used to changing in front of other people—for years he had been forced to do it. I tried to shake the thought out of my head while my guts felt like critters crawling around inside of me.

  “Good night, Dad.”

  “Good night, Bambina. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  The Ivy is an iconic Beverly Hills restaurant known for exclusivity and high-status celebrity customers, with a mob of paparazzi always waiting out front. You go there to be looked at, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

  The next day, my father and I pulled up to the valet under the white umbrellas in my newly waxed BMW, top down, aviators on—me in my father’s vintage pair, he in his new pair—like father, like daughter, ready to take on the world together.

  We sat at a corner table in the main dining room next to the grand fireplace. I was staring at the two famed American flags hanging on the wall above my father’s head, when he leaned forward and handed me $1,000—cash—underneath the table. I gasped, but before I could say anything, a handsome waiter approached to take our order.

  “How are you two doing this fine afternoon?”

  My father smiled at me. “Fantastic, sir,” he said.

  “What can I get for you today?”

  “I’ll have the famous grilled shrimp salad,” my father said.

  “Make that two,” I said with a smile.

  I looked at my father, leaned over the table, and whispered, with a mix of confusion and excitement in my voice, “Dad, where did you get this money?”

  “I told you, don’t worry about it, Bambina. Your dad’s making money again. You just tell me what you need, and I’ll take care of it.” I began wondering how it was possible to have spent nearly five years in prison, and then to be out and acting as if nothing had happened. As if he’d never gone away. As if we hadn’t just spent all that time apart, our lives completely upended. He was so coy, so sure, so calm. And I started thinking about the email he had sent me before he arrived in Los Angeles. It was a summary packet. It said above the heading: “Initial Public Offering.” The amount, “$500,000,000,” and underneath it: Legends, Americana Library: A Library of 20th Century American and Classical Music. It was his latest IPO. I remember reading an extraordinary number of famous American musicians: Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Willie Nelson. In addition to a list of famous classical rock musicians: the Who, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono. And then below that a list of famous conductors and orchestras of the twentieth century such as Arthur Rubinstein, George Gershwin, Arturo Toscanini, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It said something about a musical library and selling it to Apple or Google.

  I wondered if the people he was working with were skeptical. To be working on such a huge business deal with someone who’d just been released from prison, wouldn’t it raise questions? Wouldn’t they want to know things? Why was it so easy for him? And wasn’t he disbarred? He couldn’t practice law anymore. So what was he doing?

  While we waited for our salads, I decided to ask him about the IPO.

  “So, I don’t really understand what you’re doing with the music library, Dad. Are you, like, the agent for it?”

  “Sort of,” he said, aloof, fixing the handkerchief in his sports jacket. Then he sipped his iced tea and looked up at me.

  “This stays between you and me. I’ll tell your sisters on Christmas. Everything I’m doing now is being set up under a trust in your names. So what this means, Bambina, is that the money is yours. We’ll be able to buy a mansion in Beverly Hills before you know it.”

  It was so seductive. It sounded so good. The energy between us felt the same way it did the morning I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal at the breakfast table, and my father walked in and handed me a black American Express card.

  “Check this out, Bambina.” I was fourteen. “It’s the most exclusive credit card in the world, and your dad has one.” I remember how heavy and sharp it was as I traced my index finger along its edge. I looked at the center logo, its classic centurion; the profile of a Roman military leader. To me, he looked like some kind of gladiator, exiled from society to be left bloodied and dead for entertainment. “You could really hurt someone with this thing,” I said.

  “Only the wealthiest in the world have one, Bambina.”

  It was this feeling of electricity, of adrenaline, of infinite possibilities and superiority, knowing you had made it.

  I looked outside at cameras flashing, as a small crowd of paparazzi swarmed around some celebrity. Our waiter returned. “Two grilled shrimp salads,” and he set them on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “We’re all set,” my father said, smiling.

  His business deals, his promises: they felt so real, the way he talked about them; the way he described them with intricate knowledge and detail; the energy, electric and alive. How could he just make up something like this? He wouldn’t just lie to me.

  But then I thought about the $300,000 that never came. I thought about the Matron Tequila Company. I wondered what had happened to them; they seemed to have vanished.

  I picked at my salad. “Awesome, Dad, I can’t wait,” I replied.

  It was our first Christmas together as a family despite my mother not being there. She and Richard were off in Costa Rica. After the trial, my father stopped asking about my mother and “Le Asshole.” I blamed money for the cause of the divorce. I didn’t know yet that the truth was much deeper, and I wasn’t ready to understand its dangerous nuances. Chloe was reluctant at first, but she started communicating with my father regularly after he began sending her small amounts of money. She was struggling to make ends meet while working as a receptionist at 24 Hour Fitness and wanted to take classes at the community college. In the weeks before his arrival, the four of us emailed one another our Christmas wish lists under the pretense that he would someday hit it big again. Each of us participated willingly in the fantasy.

  Hi Girls,

  The following is Dad’s Christmas list. In case you have been wondering.

  1. Gulfstream V, white with navy blue stripes and a light grey leather interior

  2. Villa on Lake Geneva

  3. Apartment in Paris

  4. Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet, triple black

  5. Wilson Pro Staff Leather Tennis Shoes, 8.5 M

  Love,

  Dad

  Dear Dad,

  As long as we’re sharing, my wish list is as follows:

  1. A 20,000,000 picture deal with Universal

 
2. A Spanish villa above the Hollywood sign

  3. A villa on Lake Geneva (preferably the late Audrey Hepburn’s)

  4. A vintage Porsche like James Dean’s

  5. Last but not least, a gift certificate to the grocery store.

  Love,

  Christina Bambina

  Dear Dad,

  Hmm . . . this is easy . . .

  1. A DBS Aston Martin in gunmetal

  2. A ten-carat diamond eternity band for my right hand . . . so I look like a ballleeerrr

  3. A house in Santa Barbara (with my own vineyard), Brentwood, and Paris

  4. All the Jimmy Choos in the world

  5. Also a gift certificate to the grocery store

  Love,

  Chlo-burger

  Dear Dad,

  Oh yay! My turn!

  1. A compound in Santa Barbara, complete with a vineyard and swarm of papillons

  2. A flat in Paris, down the street from Dad’s

  3. A new boyfriend for my boss, so she starts acting nice again

  4. Dangly diamond earrings for New Year’s! Not too heavy

  5. A gift certificate to Bed Bath & Beyond

  Love,

  Marsie

  A few days later, on Christmas morning, I was sitting on the couch in our empty living room in the middle of East Los Angeles, staring at his gift in my lap.

  The color was blue jean, the leather, clemence—made from the tanned cured skins of baby calves—but never mind that. Four gold feet were on the bottom; white stitching, thirty-five centimeters long, twenty-eight centimeters high, and eighteen centimeters deep; gold lock and keys; a dust bag; an orange cloth bag; a square box; and a receipt from Paris. To own a Hermès Birkin bag, one of the most coveted and desired bags in the world, serves as one of the highest symbols of status. Not just in America but also around the globe. They range anywhere from $7,400 to $150,000 each. All are handmade in Paris—and unless you have a connection, or you are a celebrity, be prepared to wait for up to seven years to get one. My father bought Chloe one too, in orange, and he bought Mara a classic black Chanel.