“Millais,” she replied, enunciating his name clearly. “We haven’t seen Mom in since you played polo in Carpenteria. Why don’t you come along with us?”
“No, I have work to do. Have a good time in the entertainment capital of the world.” He headed for the door.
“Will you watch?” I asked.
Mill turned and looked at me for a moment. “If I get done mucking the barn in time, I’ll think about it.”
I don’t know why I had asked. I don’t know why I cared what he thought, but I did.
This day had been a nightmare from the beginning. I wished I hadn’t keeled over on the polo field. Would I ever live that down?
Would I ever get past my father being a bigamist and not in the least bit ashamed of himself?
Through what had been the worst day of my life so far, Mill had been there, a steadying presence even if a bit grouchy. And, in his favor, he hadn’t laughed at me once.
Chapter 6
“So does Mill have a girlfriend,” I asked as the limo took us to Los Angeles.
My mother stayed at the restaurant, predictably, and I barely had a chance to make sure Bijou was set for the rest of the day, shower and find my better clothes before the limo driver was beeping at us to hurry it up. The show began at six but that meant we had to be at the studio by five and it was a two hour drive to LA if traffic was light.
“Gia would love to be.”
“Was she the one on the expensive horse?”
Emma nodded. “Her father is a hyphenate.”
“What is he?” I was baffled.
“In Hollywood, that’s what they call some who does more than one job. Writer-director. Producer-director. Something like that. I don’t know exactly what Gia’s father does but he hit it big a couple years ago and now they have unlimited finances. They came up here and she’s been a pain in the neck ever since.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She sure is and doesn’t let us forget it for a minute. I don’t have a lot of patience for that. I don’t actually have time for much of anything between riding and the farm. My father insists we help and I like doing it, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it gives me a different viewpoint than some students have at Country Day.”
“Because your father’s a farmer?”
“Lots of students come from farming or ranching families. We have citrus, avocadoes, strawberries and beef in the valley. Not everyone is rich and drives to school in a sports car.”
Maybe I wouldn’t be so out of place there.
“Gia is...I guess you’d say privileged.”
“You wanted to say spoiled?”
“I wanted to but that’s not really fair. Sure, she gets everything she wants. You should have heard her talk about attending a movie premiere with Jared Jansen. There were even pictures of her on the red carpet. She looked fantastic, of course. ‘Did you see me on Entertainment Tonight, Mill? I stayed out partying until the sun came up!’ There she is in the hallway in front of the whole school, leaning up against him.”
It gave me a weird feeling in my stomach. “What did Mill say?”
“Was the movie any good?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Figures.”
He was so practical.
“So who is he dating then if not Gia?”
Emma shrugged. “Sometimes Mill goes out with Sonny from the polo team.”
Confused. “Is that a girl or a boy?”
“Sonata. Her father is a musician. Or thinks he is.”
“When Mill went out on that date, was it with her?”
Emma laughed. “Wow. You’re either super nosey or interested in him. Which is it?”
“I’m extremely nosey. I want to have a career as a gossip columnist.” It was as good as any explanation, even if not the truth.
“You won’t get much gossip from my brother. He’s boring.”
No. He was the opposite of boring.
Back home, I had been dating Theo Harrow for the entire school year. We were a couple. We did all the school events together. Went to the movies. Went to concerts. Went out for burgers. He came to my house for dinner. I went to his house for dinner.
Theo was filled with lethargy by the thought of attending any horse show of mine and didn’t even make an appearance at the last the hunter pace. He said he had a hay allergy and why wouldn’t I believe him?
Except I didn’t anymore.
We made all the promises to keep in touch when I was leaving, swearing I’d come back East as soon as possible. We even considered enrolling in the same college.
Sure, he emailed and texted me for a couple weeks. But Theo was busy. So he claimed.
He was busy all right. I heard he was lifeguarding at the lake and was enjoying, to put it mildly, all the girls up for the summer. It sounded like a bad remake of Dirty Dancing but with water instead of music. Theo was helping all the city girls experience the best of the country, a one-man entertainment committee.
But that’s not what made me get over him, although it didn’t hurt.
Theo made an adequate stand-in for the real thing. He didn’t expect anything of me and I didn’t expect very much of him. We had a good time together but I would have been fine on my own, too.
After getting past the initial shock of moving three thousand miles, I realized I didn’t miss him. I should have missed him. I should have been thinking about him. There should have been reasons why I wanted to be with him.
The more I thought about it, the less I thought of him.
And he didn’t even like horses.
Theo could have not liked horses and that would have been okay but it was that he didn’t understand the kind of life I wanted to lead. I wanted to be a part of the horse world. I didn’t know in what way. Maybe not as a career but, still, as a part of my life. Theo had such a minimal knowledge of me, he thought it was something I just did. Like a hobby. That I would give up horses when I went to college or got a job. He thought it was temporary when it was really who I was.
That my supposed boyfriend didn’t know who I was after nearly a year of dating astonished me. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it. Then I thought how little the relationship with Theo could have meant to me, if I hadn’t realized we really weren’t meant for anything but pizza and a movie. It was a convenient and temporary pairing, giving us both someone to be with and something to do.
“Mill isn’t interested in girls,” Emma said.
That woke me up and snapped my head around. “Excuse me?”
“No, I don’t mean it in that way.”
“What way do you mean it?”
The limo pulled up in front of a large building and stopped. “Here we are. I’ll wait for you to get finished with the show and drive you back to Cadiz,” the driver said.
Emma opened the door and got out.
I followed her. “What do you mean Mill doesn’t like girls?”
There was a woman waiting up ahead.
“Mom! You made it!” Emma called, running up to her for a big hug.
“Of course! Hi, I’m Genie Millais.”
She held out her hand to me and I took it for a hardy shake.
“That’s where he got the name,” I replied.
“That’s it,” Emma said.
Mill resembled her, while Emma looked more like Soule.
“So your presence has been requested on an international television show,” she said as we went through the door and past the guard station.
“Mom, take it easy on her. You don’t want Cap to get scared.”
“That won’t happen, will it?” She asked me.
“I’m too angry to get scared.”
“That’s what Mill said.”
An assistant caught up with us and hurried me into the makeup room while I was silently saying “Wait! Will someone please answer the question?”
Why did Mill speak to his mother about me?
I was pushed into a chair and the ha
ir person started dragging a brush through my hair. It was like something to be used on a dog with stiff metal bristles. At the same time, the makeup artist was dabbing me with foundation.
Searching the mirror, I tried to find Emma behind me. A moment later, she entered the room with Genie.
“Em, what did you mean...”
“You need to stop talking for a minute,” the makeup woman said as she nearly threatened me with a tube of lip tint.
I tried to sit still as I saw Emma leave.
Time to concentrate. I had been so sure in Cadiz what I was going to say when I got here but now that confidence had evaporated. Why was I here? This was madness.
I had never aspired to be on television. When the local cable outlet was producing a show on the high school, I made sure to stay home that day. From the time of the first grade play, performing in public had always been my least favorite thing to do. Other people enjoyed it but it wasn’t my thing. My wish would never have been to be famous and I made a mental note to make sure Mill understood that about me.
If he ever wanted to speak to me again and from the way this day had been going, there was no reason Mill should. Could it get any worse?
My cell phone started to ring.
“May I get that?”
The makeup person picked up her container of coffee. “Make it fast.”
I looked at the screen and clicked the phone on. “What?”
“Hi, babe.”
Chapter 7
“Don’t call me babe.”
“You’ll always be my little girl,” my father said.
“There’s nothing I can do about that unless you want to take back your DNA,” I replied.
I wouldn’t be opposed to that and was glad he called because it reminded me how furious I was with him.
“I just wanted to tell you what to say tonight.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s your first time on television. There will be lights and cameras. It might be hard to hear what’s transpiring in the New York studio. I just wanted to go over what you need to get across. It’s important to book sales.”
I tapped on the phone hard. “Are you still there? I’m having trouble hearing you.”
“Cap, are you losing your connection?”
I lost that long ago. “I can’t hear you.”
“Just say I was such a loving father.”
“I can’t tell if you’re still there,” I said. He never had been emotionally connected. My entire life, where he was concerned, was a sham. A lie.
“Caprice?”
“Hanging up now.” I clicked the phone off and used a couple words not often in my vocabulary.
“That wasn’t your favorite person, I gather,” the hairdresser said as she covered my eyes and blasted me with hair spray.
“Not quite. It was my father.”
The makeup woman and the hairdresser looked at each other in the mirror.
“This should be a fun show,” one said.
Practically pulled from the chair, I was rushed down a corridor, followed by Emma and Genie. Then I was pushed into another chair in front of a bank of small television screens. A microphone was clipped to my shirt by a young man in a tee shirt. He smiled. “This is not a fate worse than death.”
“Tell me that again if I survive,” I replied.
“You’ll be fine. There’s no audience, just me and the studio crew. We’re on your side.”
“That’s what you think. Hold off on making a judgment until you hear my side.”
“Just speak normally, like you’re doing now.”
“There’s no normal. There’s just unending crisis mode.”
“You’re funny,” he replied.
“My father’s a bigamist,” I said.
He laughed apparently thinking I made a joke. I had no idea in what context that could be perceived as amusing but maybe it was my delivery.
“Really. He had a complete second family.”
The audio technician stopped laughing. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
“Good luck now and later. When the red light on top of the camera lights up, that means you’re on.”
I shouldn’t be here. “Can I get up and leave?” I thought I could make it to the door and outside without much trouble but it would have to be this instant or not at all.
He laughed again.
I had a future in show business—as a comic.
“Watch this monitor, you’ll see the show as it airs,” he said and disappeared into the darkness.
“Give him hell, Cap,” Emma called.
“Shh,” Genie replied.
In a few moments, the show began in New York. As with all of them, there was music then Howard Sharpe welcomed the audience and promised a terrific program so everyone was harangued to stay tuned.
I’d never seen the show before. Sharpe looked to be about my father’s age but with a decent haircut and a good suit. There was a brief explanation of the situation and then my father was introduced.
“He couldn’t even dress for this,” I said to Emma when he appeared on the screen wearing a casual shirt.
“Shh!” The entire studio hissed at me.
“Something as important as a national television appearance. My mother always told me to dress for the occasion but apparently he needed the advice more than I did.”
“Shh!”
His other wife appeared on the monitor. She looked nothing like my mother. My mother was a fashion plate, even in a food-stained apron, compared to this woman who obviously spent too much time basting in the sun.
Note to self: Remember to wear sunscreen every day unless you want to look like a pair of old paddock boots when you’re her age.
Someone was snapping their fingers at me. I looked up. In front of me, the light on the camera was glowing.
“Caprice, are you there?” Howard asked.
“Yes, sorry.”
“This is Caprice Rydell, daughter of Greg Rydell.”
Sometime early tomorrow morning, I had to remember to change my last name to my mother’s maiden name. Maybe he wouldn’t disown me, but I’d do everything I could to distance myself from him.
“Your father has written a book about his remarkable love life,” Howard started.
“I didn’t know he could write,” I replied.
“It’s a terrific read.”
A read, huh? “Twelve hours ago I didn’t know it existed. I didn’t know his other family existed,” I said.
“You must be very excited,” Howard continued not heeding me in the least. But I was used to that since that’s how my father had treated me for the better part of my life.
“I must be?”
“Caprice,” my father interjected. “Tell Howard...”
I glared into the camera. “Tell him what you coached me to say or what I really want to say?”
This got Howard’s attention. “Do I detect some rancor between you two?”
“No,” my father answered.
“Yes,” I said.
“What seems to be the problem?” Howard used his best talk show host voice.
“Besides having another family,” I asked “because that’s plenty for me.”
“Share with the audience how you feel,” Howard encouraged me with a grin.
Maybe this was the kind of show that if we were in the studio together, chairs would start flying.
“Cap is thrilled to be part of an even bigger family, aren’t you, babe?”
“Thrill is not the emotion I’m feeling. Disgust is more accurate.”
“She’s in shock,” my father said. “It’s too much for her to absorb.”
“It’s too much all right. Now I understand where you were when you didn’t show up for my graduations and horse events. I understand why you were always distracted. I thought it was me, that I wasn’t fascinating enough or talented enough or pretty enough. But now I understand that one family wasn’t enough. You had to have two because you’
re such a freaking narcissist. You think the world revolves around you. You think you deserve to be loved because you love you.”
“People should be loved for who they are.”
“That’s true but you don’t love me for who I am. You don’t know who I am. I’m just someone from your spare family.”
“There is no pecking order,” two-timing Greg insisted.
“What an asinine thing to say. You’re not with us, you’re with them. You were always more with them than with us. Because you have such an exalted opinion of yourself, you thought that should be enough for us. You didn’t have to give of yourself. You didn’t have to be a real father. You didn’t have to be a real husband. All you wanted to be was the great Greg Rydell, cardboard cut-out of a man.”
The lavalier mic came off with a tug, then I pulled the earwig out of my ear, dropped in on the console in front of me and walked out of the control room.
***
I was in bed staring at the ceiling when my phone rang. I hadn’t said a word since the interview, why should I start now. Maybe I would never speak again. In a historical novel, the main character would go mute. Everyone would pat her hand and explain that her condition was due to the great shock she had received. Then she would begin dressing in black, mourning the loss of her life, which she would do for the next seventy years until she died. The townspeople would say her life was a waste.
The phone stopped ringing.
Good.
There would be a large headstone for her in the cemetery. “Here lies she who was lied to. She never recovered.”
The phone started ringing again.
I picked it up, still angry enough to tell the caller to go to Hades. “Hello?” I practically snarled.
“Caprice?”
“Sorry, she’s not here. She went to the San Pedro docks and caught the first tramp steamer to the Orient. She’ll be gone for fourteen years.”
“Cap, it’s me, Mill.”
I stopped breathing.
“Are you still there?”
“Depends on your definition of there.”
“I saw the show,” he said.
“I’ll never live it down.”
I was certain everyone in the school had seen the show or would by the end of the week. Someone would have DVR’ed it and would make it available for the enjoyment of the entire student body.
If Wishes Were Horses Page 4
