After Perfect

by Christina McDowell

  I exhaled as the smoke billowed toward the blue Birkin bag sitting on the motel desk. Where had all of my friendships gone? I had pushed everyone away. Hiding in shame, the depth of my pain, reaching for the sky, my heart numb and high.

  That bag: it looked so fucking stupid.

  I held on to the red string, wobbling inside the bar the next night, my entire body aching, but I was drunk enough to the point where I stopped feeling the pain. I walked up to Liam and the cast, who were taking shots of whiskey. I had ripped the red string off the end of a balloon outside on the back patio and watched as it soared up into the sky before meeting its fatal pop. I grabbed Liam’s wrist and began wrapping the red string around it. Then I took my wrist and tied the other end of the string around it. I wanted him attached to me, so close that we could breathe only each other’s air.

  We stumbled up to my motel room, attached at the wrists, the string nearly cutting off our circulation, trying to take off our shirts every which way, leaving them loose and hanging in the middle of the string, our pants and underwear strewn about the floor. I shoved him onto the bed as we thrust forward together. “You can never leave me,” I said, abandoned, scared, closer to the truth. I slammed our wrists against the headboard. Liam grabbed the back of my head, so it bobbled back, meeting my unconscious, masochistic, spellbinding need to feel everything and nothing, enraptured in self-denial.

  “I’m not going to abandon you,” Liam whispered as we fucked each other for the first time so I could bind myself to him with nothing but misplaced gratification of trauma and pain.

  When the film ended, Liam took me wine tasting in Sonoma Valley. He showered me with lavish dinners and lied to the concierge of a quaint inn in Glen Ellen so that we could stay in the honeymoon suite. I knew it wasn’t right. I knew deep down that I should have never gotten myself into that relationship, that my motives were all screwed up and selfish and wrapped up in pain, and maybe his were too. It was at dinner one night that I told Liam about my father. He listened intently and then confided that he had taken his father to court over money. After Liam was accepted to Brown University, the only school he ever wanted to go to, his dream was shattered when a few months before first semester, the money in his account was gone. His father, a prominent brain surgeon, blew through the money on drugs and, shortly afterward, tried to kill himself. As a result, Liam couldn’t afford to enroll. “I sued my father,” he said, his resentment palpable. “That bastard stole my college tuition. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.” He was communicating the truth to me through his own story. But it was like listening with a thin, invisible blanket over my brain, the denial preventing the dots from connecting.

  A few days into our trip, Liam wanted to take me canoeing down the Russian River to clear my head.

  We pulled up to the wooden house along the dirt road to pick up our canoe paddles and life vests when my father called me. “My client sent a bad check, Bambina. It’ll be just a few more weeks before I can send you money.”

  The next day was August 1. I’d have to tell my roommates I couldn’t pay rent. It was the first time that I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay my share. I sat paralyzed, staring at my cell phone. It was a mistake to make the film with no job waiting for me back in Los Angeles. I couldn’t see beyond the fantasy of “stardom,” of making my father proud, of wanting to prove to everyone “I’ve made it.” And after the loss of Stone, and all that it represented—the loss of friendships and a life that was no longer mine—none of it mattered, and I ran to what I thought was safety when I knew that it wasn’t the truth.

  “Okay, Dad. Thanks for letting me know.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that every time I spoke to my father over the phone, each time I tried to ask him a question about something, I hung up feeling more confused than when I had initially called trying to sort things out or understand exactly what was going on with him and his “work.” I was perpetually lost in a circular loop of ambiguity, making me feel unable to understand anything.

  Liam turned off the car and turned to face me.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, tapping the brim of his yellow LA Lakers cap so he could see me.

  Liam had been skeptical all along, far from fooled by the man my father was. Here was his chance to serve me with the truth, and because of my recent fight with Atticus, a small window had already been cracked.

  “He told me his client sent a bad check.” I couldn’t look at him when I said it.

  Liam’s brow furrowed, and he gazed out the windshield.

  I wanted to read his thoughts, hoping they were anything but what I knew deep down they were.

  Liam took off his seat belt, put his elbow on the console, suddenly present for everything. Then he sighed, unsure of how to say it, and looked up at me, his lips pursed together.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you want the boyfriend answer? Or the real answer?”

  “Just be honest with me.”

  “Look, your father went to prison—”

  Quick to react, almost compulsively, I blurted out, “Yeah, but he took a plea deal! We don’t know for sure if he was actually guilty.”

  “Christina, let me finish . . .” he said gently. He spoke slowly, clearly, concisely. “Your father went to prison.”

  How many times was someone going to have to say it to me? It was clear that I had disassociated myself from this fact, even though I was there, even though I had stood inside the confines of his imprisonment. I could intellectualize it all I wanted, but I was still going to ignore my gut.

  “Whether your father actually committed the crime or if it was someone else who committed the crime, it doesn’t matter. You have to understand that, regardless, he was doing business with people who broke the law. He made the choice to associate with those people. There is something to be said for that. Something to be said about the fact that an investigation was warranted.”

  “Okay, then, where’s the proof? I need proof,” I demanded.

  Liam scoffed at the absurdity of my statement. As if prison wasn’t proof. As if a bad check wasn’t proof. As if all of the business deals of Matron Tequila and the $300,000 weren’t proof.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I turned to look out the window.

  “Okay,” Liam replied, backing off as if to say, “Fine. Go for it. Keep believing. See where it gets you.”

  We got out of the car, and walked over to rent our gear. A friendly old man came around the side of the house and led us to our canoe. I stepped foot inside it as it rocked back and forth, rippling the stillness of the Russian River and sat at the far end. Liam hopped in after me. He carried two paddles and handed me one.

  “Have you ever canoed before?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s hard work. I hope you’re ready.”

  -22-

  Bailout

  I wanted a bailout. I read all the news headlines: $29 billion for Bear Stearns, $350 billion for Citigroup, as the Fed printed fake money for corporations it felt needed it. And where was all that money coming from? Why were they so concerned with bailing them out when the majority of the people who needed it had already lost their homes, their jobs? Whom were they trying to protect? Because, frankly, I didn’t care about any of them: A-listers, cave dwellers, whatever.

  The money from my father never came. When I arrived back in Los Angeles with no job and no money, I called him again.

  “Bambina, why don’t you ask Mom for money?” he said.

  “Mom doesn’t have any money.”

  “Mom didn’t give you and your sisters any money?”

  “Dad, what are you talking about?”

  “Your mom was awarded five hundred thousand dollars in our lawsuit against Cohen Milstein.”

  I nearly fell out of my chair. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Jesus Christ,” my father said under his breath. “What on earth has been going on over there?” As if he weren’t a part o
f it.

  I had been so distraught over my mother’s engagement to Richard that I forgot to ask about the outcome of the trial. I got off the phone with my father and Googled my mother’s name to see if I could find anything written up about it. “The jury awarded $500,000 to Gayle Prousalis but did not find in favor of Thomas Prousalis. Thomas Prousalis, a former Washington lawyer, found himself in trouble with the law shortly after filing the complaint against Cohen Milstein.”

  I called my mother immediately, blood boiling. She picked up. She seemed distracted. In fact, every time I called, she seemed distracted, floating farther away from me each time we spoke.

  “Hi, honey,” she said.

  “Dad just told me you won five hundred thousand dollars in the Cohen Milstein lawsuit.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I need money for rent. Can you loan me some money for rent? Just this month? Please, Mom? I’m going to have to move out of my house.”

  “I gave what was left of the money—after taxes and the attorney’s fees—to Richard. I don’t have any money to give you, Christina.”

  “How could you give all of that money over to a man you’ve barely known two years?”

  “The money has been invested in a furniture business for Richard and me to build a financially stable life together.”

  “With a furniture business?”

  Furniture stores along Melrose and La Cienega Avenues sat vacant with foreclosure signs in windows. Each week it seemed as though another went under.

  “The money is not yours. I gave you the Lichtenstein, remember? You are twenty-four years old. I feel like the fucking Giving Tree. I’m a stump! I’m a fucking stump!”

  She was right. I was blaming everyone but myself as I continued to make bad choices, crippled by the illusion from my childhood that money and things could appear out of thin air.

  She hung up on me after I pleaded once more. I sat cross-legged on my bed, panicking, thinking about what I was going to do. Then I looked to my left, where the Birkin bag was perched on the end of my blue-and-white-striped chair, the gold lock shining in the reflective light, the keys looking beautiful and glorious. Had I been on mushrooms, I might have seen a halo above it.

  My saving grace, I said to myself. I’m gonna sell that goddamn Birkin bag.

  I had fifty cents in my bank account, was driving around in a bank-owned black BMW with a lien against it, carrying a Hermès Birkin bag worth $20,000 and looking like an asshole. Mara had mentioned that her boss’s wife owned an eBay consignment business that sold high-end clothing, shoes, purses, and other women’s accessories. When I told Mara I wanted to sell the bag, she said she’d look into it for me. After she got back to me to say that her boss’s wife would see the bag, I called my father to let him know. He’d been so excited when he gave me the gift, I would have felt guilty selling it without telling him first.

  “Dad, I have no job, no money. I can’t pay my rent. The bag is beautiful, but it doesn’t make sense for me to keep it. I love you, and I hope you understand, but I have to sell it,” I said nervously over the phone, hoping I wasn’t hurting his feelings.

  “All right, Bambina, I understand,” he replied. I was expecting him to try to talk me out of it, to tell me he had another deal coming in, but that was it. No further discussion.

  I stood in a little waiting area by the front door and clutched the Birkin wrapped in its orange dust bag, wondering if it would be beautiful enough to pass the test and worthy of sale. I probably looked eerily similar to a stage mother who brings her baby to an audition.

  “Come in, come in,” Carrie said, opening the door of her office. She was a petite brunette with long, silky hair, and looked every ounce a fashionista. Dresses with tags from Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Oscar de la Renta, and Vera Wang hung on racks along her wall, and boxes filled with Jimmy Choos and Stuart Weitzman heels were stacked below.

  “You said this was a gift?” Carrie asked. She had removed the Birkin from the dust bag and was examining it.

  “Yes, from my father,” I said.

  “Wow, lucky girl. You don’t hear that every day.”

  Carrie set the bag on the carpet and began snapping photographs. “Six pics ain’t gonna cut it for a twenty-thousand-dollar item.” Her voice was quick and direct, like a Hollywood agent’s. She snapped a few more photographs of the receipt from Paris, the keys, and the dust bags, and told me we would start the bidding at $17,000.

  “I’ll contact you as soon as we get a bidder.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Seventeen thousand dollars. It was my chance to get it right. To make up for all the dumb mistakes I’d made. The money from the Lichtenstein, quitting my job to make the movie, not getting a second job, doing too many drugs, depending on both Liam and my parents.

  I walked out of the consignment shop fantasizing about what I could do with all that money: pay my rent, find a job, stop eating Dave’s food, save, save, save. Determined now to turn around my life once and for all, prove to myself and the world that I could do it on my own and start behaving like an adult.

  A few days later I received an email on my phone from Carrie:

  “Hi Christina, I’m sorry to share this with you but the Hermès Trademark Infringement Team has ended my listing for your Birkin under the pretense that it is a replica. My apologies that I will not be able to sell it for you. Best, Carrie.”

  After I read it ten times, I had that feeling of immediate hyperawareness of only what was around me. The way I moved my hands, the sound of my breath, Rob editing in his bedroom, the sound of a broken record, voices scratching, music stopping, replaying, over and again, over and again, Carrie’s words, over and again.

  I ran toward Rob’s room and burst through the door. I stood in front of him. Breathing. Starting to sweat.

  Rob, startled, swiveled around in his chair.

  “What, Christina?” He seemed annoyed. I was always interrupting him, mad about something. Panting now, in and out.

  “Christina, are you okay? What happened?”

  “It’s fake.”

  “What?” I could see that he was trying not to laugh. I could hear Rhett Butler’s voice from Gone with the Wind in my head: “I’ve always thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would benefit you immensely.”

  I’m sure I appeared unhinged.

  “The Birkin—” I began to hyperventilate, the words coming out of me like the sound of a fading whistle. “My life . . . My father—” Collapsing into a dramatic heap on the floor before the ugly tears and snot came out. Poor Rob didn’t know what to do with me. He kneeled down beside me to rub my back while I gasped into his hardwood floor.

  “What’s going on in here?” Dave walked in, looking concerned.

  Rob whispered, “That blue bag she has? It’s fake.” He shrugged his shoulders like he wasn’t sure if what he had said made any sense.

  “Oh boy,” Dave replied.

  I called my mother first, before I did anything, hoping she would sympathize, hoping she would understand that I understood now why she had left my father. I wanted this fact to bring us closer. I wanted to talk about all of those times she called me asking questions about him: “What’s your father up to? What’s he doing for work?”

  Which is why I was so shocked when she replied impatiently, “I don’t have time to listen to you have a meltdown, Christina.” She and Richard were on their way to Palm Springs to plan their wedding. I wanted her to tell me that it would be okay, that she understood. I wanted her to say “Welcome, dear,” like being initiated into some secret club of mutual understanding, but she was not interested.

  Then I called my father. I would confront him, get him to admit all that he had lied about, get him to tell me the truth.

  “You’ve reached the voice mailbox of Tom—” I didn’t hear from him until three days later, after I’d sent him an email.

  September 25, 2009

  Dad—I am beyond
heartbroken and disappointed to find that the Hermès bag you gave me is, in fact, a fake. I almost caused the poor woman’s business to be shut down because the Hermès Infringement Team contacted her. Not to mention embarrassing Mara at work, as this is her boss’s wife’s business. Knowing this was not my fault, she let it go, and no one is in trouble. Just like the bag, you have been trying to create some replica of our old life, which does not exist anymore, nor do I believe it existed in a pure, open, and honest way from the beginning. You have not fixed my credit like you said you would. Now I am left without a home, or a car, because you lied to me and said you had the money when you did not. I am sad because you have the inability to be truthful. All I needed was for you to fix my credit, tell me you’re sorry that you don’t have the money (because had I had enough time, I would have been prepared; over the last 5 years, I have never missed a rent check), and that you love me. And I would forgive you. But you have not. I see you as a man who has emotionally abused his children and taken credit cards out in their names for the sake of yourself and has lied. I am angry.

  Three days later I received his response. The boys called Liam to come over to the house because I was so distraught over it. “Christina, I have been in Eastern Europe since Friday and I have not had the opportunity to respond to your e-mail . . . You have every right to be angry at our present circumstances because, quite frankly, they have been crummy. Your Hermès bag and Chloe’s were purchased in Paris by a friend’s wife from a boutique in Paris as a favor to me . . . I have never in my life purchased a fake anything. Secondly, the American Express Cards and Visa cards that were opened for you and Mara were done so for your personal benefit. However, when the family experienced a financial emergency as a result of the government’s unwarranted case against me . . . we used the cards to benefit you and our family. I did not use the cards to benefit myself.”