The Ten Best Days of My Life

by Adena Halpern

  Now, I do remember dancing on the couch in my six-inch stilettos, swigging a bottle of Absolut vodka, so I know it was me who put the holes in the couch. I remember handing the vodka bottle to the guy dancing on the couch with me. We started jumping up and down and that’s when I guess he spilled the vodka all over the couch. Who was smoking the cigarette, though, I can’t remember. All I remember is Pen screaming, “Alex, you idiot, you set the couch on fire!” Pen grabbed the ice bucket, as we jumped off, and threw it on the couch, but it was a little late for that. The filling from the couch had already caught on fire and was flying up in the air, landing on the drapes and setting them on fire.

  It was at that moment, as I watched bits of flaming stuffing fly toward the ceiling of my Plaza suite, that the euphoria ended. I imagined myself going down in history as the girl who burned down Eloise’s home. Something changed in me at that moment.

  All of a sudden, the laughing and partying went away. The freedom from all cares and worries about my life was gone. It was like I suddenly saw the light and I was scared out of my mind. I remember trying to get through all the people. Everyone was laughing and treating the flames like a bonfire to be partied around. I grabbed the bedspread off the bed and ran over to the couch to try and smother the blaze. Penelope and I were the only ones trying to keep the fire in check, what did anyone else care? They didn’t know me; they weren’t responsible for the suite. Where should we go to party now? I remember screaming at these people, “GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!” But they didn’t. They were all laughing hysterically because I was so caught up in dragging that bedspread to the couch that I didn’t see the television cord wrapping itself in the bedspread. That’s when the television fell to the ground, taking the whole cabinet it was sitting in with it. People started to chant: “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

  It was an utter nightmare. It looked like a scene from a movie, one thing falling on another thing, everything catching on fire. But it was real. I just remember begging these people to help me get the flames out. Every time I broke a vase or toppled over a plant, the crowd screamed louder. What had begun as one of the best days of my life had become one of the worst, and it was because of my own stupidity. It took demolishing a beautiful hotel room for me to finally grow a conscience.

  And then morning came.

  When all was said and done, the damage to the room and all the food we ordered and all the bottles of liquor we drank and all the clothes that Pen and I bought and the dinner at I Tre Merli added up to a credit card bill of $55,000. Even my magical credit card couldn’t handle that.

  “Hello, Dad?” I sobbed into the phone from the Plaza Hotel manager’s office.

  My father never hit me or abused me in my life. I really think, though, that when he had to drive all the way to New York from Philadelphia that Sunday morning, if the manager of the hotel and Penelope and several security guards hadn’t been around, he would have slammed me across the room. His fists were clenched the entire time he apologized to the manager and signed the check for the damages. The man did not calm down for the whole car ride back to Philadelphia. I begged Pen to come with me, but even she was too scared and went back to her hotbox of an apartment.

  “Fifty-five thousand dollars!” he kept screaming. “Fifty-five thousand dollars! I’ll tell you something. You are going to pay me back every single cent of that money if you have to dig ditches to China!” he shouted as I sat next to him in the car.

  “Fifty-five thousand goddamned dollars!” He kept saying it through Newark and Trenton and Metro Park, all the way back to Philadelphia.

  When we got home, my dad got of the car, walked into the house, and went into his study and slammed the door shut.

  Even my mother, who was always on my side, couldn’t look at me.

  “I don’t even know who you are anymore, Alexandra,” she said as she went into her bedroom.

  Later that evening I was sitting in my old pink bedroom, under the old pink canopied bed, when my parents entered.

  “Alexandra,” my dad started. He had calmed down at this point, but you could see he was still on edge. “We need to have a real serious talk.”

  Don’t you hate it when someone announces that a serious conversation is about to take place? It’s the worst.

  “Alex, your mother and I don’t know what to do about you anymore. I can’t stress this strongly enough. You are going to have to get on the horns here. This is where you’re going to have to figure out what you’re doing with your life. You’re only twenty-two years old, so you’re lucky that you can change things around for the better. I don’t know, Maxine, did we spoil her too much? Did we give her too much freedom?”

  My mother said nothing and shrugged her shoulders. The tears in her eyes were enough.

  “From now on, though, it’s clear to both me and your mother that you can’t be trusted to be on your own anymore. I’m moving you out of your apartment and you’re going to move back in here.”

  “I’m not moving back in here!” I screamed.

  “It’s for the best, Alex,” my mother said. “We’re at our wits’ end.”

  “It’s enough already,” my dad said over her. He wasn’t shouting anymore, but his voice had a quiet finality to it that was even worse. “For all the money we put into getting you into Penn, you learned nothing. For all the freedom we’ve ever given you, you’ve done nothing but abuse it. The only thing you’ve proven is that you can’t do anything.”

  I sat on my bed and said nothing. I knew what I had done was wrong. I knew that I had been very stupid, but I didn’t need to hear it from them. I would get around this, too; that’s what I was thinking the whole time. This wouldn’t stick either— whatever punishment they were going to give me. So what if I had to live at home? I wasn’t in my apartment much anyway. I would still go out and have fun and live my life the way I wanted to. Twenty-two years old was the time to go out and have fun, but I just wouldn’t let things get so crazy. I had learned that much at least, but I wasn’t about to give up all the fun just yet. I wouldn’t have to think about where my life was going until I was around thirty (which, yes, I know, is ironic given the fact that I’m twenty-nine now and have to write this essay).

  “From now on you’re going to work for me, and it won’t be some cushy job either. You’re going to start from the ground up, and you’re going to learn how to make it in this world or I’ve done nothing with any purpose in my own life.”

  “Work in your office?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate. “I’m not working in that place!”

  “You’re going to work there and you’re going to like it!” The cold, quiet tone stopped any further protest from me. “You start tomorrow at 7:00 a.m.! Now, get some sleep!” He and my mother left the room.

  I had a lot of feelings going through my head at that point. I was pissed off at my dad for yelling at me. I was pissed off at my mom for not being on my side. Mostly, though, I was pissed off at myself, but I was still too young and dumb to figure out that I was pissed off about the wrong things. Sure I felt bad about what had happened, but it was so much easier to focus on the fact that I was pissed off about getting up at seven the next morning. Facing my mistakes would have taken a maturity I now know I didn’t have then.

  When I look back on this time, if I could change anything, I would have apologized to my dad and at least tried to pay him back. Maybe we would have gotten along in later years.

  I can still honestly say, though, that everything that happened before I trashed the room at the Plaza was one of the best days of my life.

  When I think of it now, though, if I knew it was going to start this downward spiral in my relationship with my dad, I probably would have studied for the SATs all those years before. Though sometimes I do think that I had to go through all that in order to become the person I am (or was when I died). More about that person later though.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Dad said, coming back into my room.

&nbs
p; “What?” I grunted.

  “Hand it over,” he said, putting out his hand.

  “Hand what over?” I mumbled.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said like I didn’t care, when I was actually dying inside, not just from the fact that I was giving up the magical card, but because I had never seen my father look like that, and somewhere, way deep down, it hurt to see him look that way. I went over to my purse and opened my wallet.

  “Just the one, or all the others too?” I asked him.

  “We’ll start with the big one and see how you do.”

  “Fine, take it,” I said, handing the magical credit card to him.

  And with that, he shut the door.

  Far from Heaven

  I can’t talk right now.

  6

  Did I happen to mention that I was engaged once?

  Oh.

  Well, I was.

  I met him when I went to work for my dad, which turned out to be not so awful, and not even because I met my future fiancé there.

  The only thing that really sucked about working for my dad was his waking up at six thirty every morning. I actually think my dad got a kick out of waking me. The man did not think a soothing wake-up announcement was appropriate:

  “Alexandra!” he’d shout with one of his construction bullhorns. “It’s six thirty! You either get up or get out!”

  I always wondered what would happen if I chose not to wake up one morning.

  “Dad, I can’t make it today,” I’d groan from my bed.

  “Then have all your things packed and be out of here by the time I get home,” he’d say.

  I envisioned myself under some highway off-ramp with my pink-canopied bed and my dolls from around the world hung up on the headboard, on sale for a dollar each.

  That usually got me out of bed.

  My dad told people at the office, “She might be my daughter, but she’s not to be treated like it.” Yet it never worked. My father was the head of a multi-multimillion-dollar company and everyone felt the need to kiss his ass.

  Now, my job for those six months was working in the mailroom. The whole job consisted of getting the mail from the mailman in the morning, sorting it into slots, and then taking a cart and dropping off the mail at the different offices. I would arrive at the office with Dad promptly at seven every morning, but the thing was that the mail never arrived until about ten or eleven, so I napped in the mailroom until Damon the mailman arrived.

  My dad’s office is located in downtown Philadelphia; you might know it, the Dorenfield Building on South Fifteenth Street (not to be confused with the Dorenfield Towers on Eleventh Street or the Dorenfield Plaza on Eighth Street or any of the Dorenfield apartments and condos in and around the city). The Dorenfield Building has fifteen floors, and my dad’s company takes up all of it. At the time, there were two other mailroom people besides me. I was in charge of filing the mail for the top five floors. Tim Brody was in charge of the middle five floors, and Gary Harberth took the bottom five. Every day when Damon the mailman dropped off the mail, there were over ten duffels of mail to sort through. This would take the whole rest of the morning, and then if Tim and Gary and I weren’t goofing off, we could get the mail into our carts by two and have it delivered by five.

  I actually liked dropping off the mail for the people in the different offices. Like I said, no one was about to treat Bill Doren field’s daughter like a peon, so whenever I walked into their of fices it was always a big hello and an aside and/or a high five:

  “Is it true that you really trashed $55,000 worth of a hotel room at the Plaza?” most of them asked.

  I was a minor celebrity at the Dorenfield Building. As a joke, some of the secretaries put a jug in the coffee room, and threw a few pennies in, with a sign that said “Alex Dorenfield Trashed Hotel Fund.” My dad found out about it, though, and he called the entire company into the conference room on the top floor.

  “I don’t know who among you thought it would be funny to put that jug in the coffee room, but I’m telling you all right now that I’m gonna find out who did it and when I do, you’re going to be fired.”

  I knew it was a couple of secretaries on the third floor, and rather than get them fired, I did the only logical thing I could do.

  “It was me!” I shouted in front of the whole company. “I did it, Dad! I’ll have my things out by noon!”

  The place erupted into laughter. My dad was so embarrassed that he let the whole thing drop and even though I got a big talking to at home, at the office I was a star. Everyone loved me. I was Bill Dorenfield’s devious daughter and they loved it when I got under my dad’s skin. I never told him the truth. The secretaries I saved were so grateful, but truthfully I was embarrassed by their gratitude. True, I did it to help them and I did get in trouble for it, but by then I was in so much trouble anyway, it was hardly a sacrifice.

  When I look back on the whole experience, even though I got millions of paper cuts, I might have stayed and worked my way up through the company, but fate intervened.

  Yeah, I met the guy who I almost married.

  Charles Kitteredge didn’t work for my dad. He worked for his dad at Kitteredge, Kitteredge, and Kitteredge, his family’s law firm. They specialized in real estate and also happened to be my dad’s attorneys. Their offices were located in the building next to ours. Charles was only twenty-seven years old, but he had graduated from Harvard Law first in his class and had already won some major legal cases. He had just been made partner in the firm. He wanted no special treatment because he was “the son,” and he didn’t get it. He was just so good at what he did that he deserved to make partner. I guess you could say it was a case of opposite attraction.

  I didn’t know any of this, though, when I first laid eyes on Charles. To me, he was just the gorgeous guy at the salad bar.

  See, I had seen Charles a bunch of times on my lunch break. Charles and I were both big fans of the salad place on Fifteenth Street. He was damn fine picking out lettuce and cucumbers for lunch. I even started to time my lunch break to the times I knew he’d be there. Remember, I didn’t know he was one of my dad’s lawyers, I just thought he was some cute guy. Sometimes I’d even be in the middle of sorting the mail and I’d leave everything where it was (something I was forbidden to do by Tim, who not only dropped off the mail to the middle floors but was also the lead mail boy, but I was Bill Dorenfield’s daughter with the underhanded ways so all rules were off) and spend the next half hour primping to make it just in time to run into Charles.

  Charles always had on the finest Armani and Hugo Boss suits, and his hair was always neatly combed back. His shirts all came from Hong Kong and all of them were specially tailored for him. Something about the fact that his initials, CGK, were embroidered on the cuffs of his shirts turned me on like you wouldn’t believe. I admit it. I’ve always been a sucker for a guy in a nice suit.

  Anyway, after months of “accidentally” running into him at the salad place and little smiles here and little glances there, I was standing next to him, getting my fix of roughage for the day, when he finally spoke to me:

  “Alexandra,” he said in this deep, assertive voice, “don’t you think it’s time that we finally meet?”

  Now, it wasn’t the nice suit he was wearing, though that was a part of it. It wasn’t the way his dark hair was always perfectly in place or the way his blue eyes glistened when he looked at me when he said those words. That was the stuff of a crush. It was the way he said my name in this deep, confident voice: “Alexandra, don’t you think it’s time that we finally meet?”

  Do you get where I’m coming from? I fell for a guy because it was almost exactly the way my dad met my mom.

  So I played the part of my grandmother.

  “No, I don’t think it’s time that we finally meet,” I said and took my salad to go while wondering how he knew my name. Who was this guy? He didn’t work in my building. Had
he been doing some detective work on me?

  And then he did something my father didn’t do right away. Instead of sending the roses and the perfume and the tickets to concerts, he called my dad and asked if he could take me on a date.

  My father was practically doing cartwheels.

  “Charlie Kitteredge!” he exclaimed. “What he wants you for, I don’t know, but you’re gonna goddamned go out with him, that’s for sure.”

  And, as you can imagine, that was where my passion for Charles ended. It was just my luck that the cute guy from the salad place would be one of my father’s lawyers. Of all the men in Philadelphia, I had to get a crush on someone who worked for my dad. That’s when my crush was crushed.

  Charles, however, was smitten. I guess it was because I couldn’t have cared less, you know how that is. Though I hemmed and hawed to my father, “He’s not my type, I don’t want to go,” he made me. Charles in turn took me to the most amazing places. We went to the best restaurants in town (and got right in without a reservation). We went to opening night of all the new Broadway shows in New York. When Charles wanted to take me away for two weeks to Venice and Rome, I told him I couldn’t because of work.

  “Forget work,” my father said. “If you’re going with Charles Kitteredge, I don’t care what happens to the mail.”

  Now, I have to admit, I was torn when Dad said to forget work. It wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time, sorting mail. And let’s face it, a trip to Italy with a gorgeous guy is every girl’s dream. But part of me was also starting to like how my dad looked at me now, like he had gotten back some of the respect he had for me because I was showing up to work every day. I liked the fact that everyone in the office said hello. I know it was just mail, but I did feel like I had a place of my own. Then I thought about how my dad would feel if I said I wanted to stay in the mailroom and skip Venice. I knew he’d be disappointed. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he want me to go with a Kitteredge? That was the choice that would gain his respect back. So, of course I went.