After Perfect (11 page)

The greatest news was that Mara was able to receive some financial aid for the rest of her time at SMU. My mother continued working at the stationery store and had began taking classes part-time in hopes of starting an interior design business. Perfect sense, since she had spent the last fifteen years decorating our home in Virginia.

Meanwhile, Chloe would come home each day from school and complain about how much she hated it even though her grades were better than they had ever been. She was making straight As.

“Well, what the hell else am I supposed to do other than study? It's not like I have any friends.”

“What about Spencer?” I asked. “He's your friend.”

“Spencer doesn't count.”

Chloe came home one day crying because she had heard someone talking about a student who got stabbed in a fight the previous year. She was scared to go back after that, threatening to drop out and get her GED. I avoided being at the house as much as possible. And as much as my mother tried to re-create a home for us with the furniture we had left from the sale, it felt cold and lifeless. I knew we wouldn't be able to stay there much longer. We couldn't afford it. My mother said I needed to find another place to live as soon as possible because she and Chloe were going to have to move into a two-bedroom apartment.

I received a phone call from Emily, who had just finished filming the pilot episode of the
Partridge Family
remake. She invited me to come live with her at her apartment in Park La Brea, an enormous apartment complex that had been built in the heart of Los Angeles at the end of World War II. “Yes!” I told her. I wanted so desperately to have fun again, to be around friends again. These were supposed to be my wild college years, but I knew that leisure of mine was over. Maybe I could focus on acting more, and living with Emily would help inspire that. But I was worried about rent. I'd had only a few job leads. Josh's parents made a phone call to the manager they were friends with at an upscale restaurant called La Scala in Beverly Hills, but I hadn't heard back yet. Emily said that as long as I could manage $500 a month, I could have the smaller bedroom. I thanked her and told her it was a deal, and prayed that I would get hired for the restaurant job. In the meantime, my father had written a letter asking me to help him with a few things.

He had begun to write the screenplay of our life, but that it would remain top secret until he finished. He raved about
The Aviator
, obsessively, as his inspiration before he told me that I must go in search of his computer to download documents to a disk. “There are very, very important documents and information in this area and I am afraid I might lose them if something happens to the computer. Once the download is complete, please keep the disk in a safe place . . . Break a leg on your auditions . . . XXXOOO Dad.”

Josh was busy working on a new reality television show about flipping houses, so I went to the storage unit on my own to find my father's computer. I pulled up to the bleak building underneath the Santa Monica Freeway, punched in the code to the garage, and parked my car.

There were no windows inside. I walked down the fluorescent-lit corridor, passing numbers on consecutive metal doors, and wondered if prison looked like this. I turned the lock and yanked on the metal door, kicking up the smell of dust and old memories. My father's suits dumped on top of the brown boxes, just as I'd seen them in the front hallway a few weeks back. My mother hadn't bothered to cover them up. It was like she just wanted them to rot away with time. His wooden airplane propeller was leaning against the wall in the corner. He kept that propeller next to the giant globe in his library, which would light up when you touched it. It was the propeller of a prop airplane, and he refused to sell it with the estate sale, while the globe sold fast.

I threw his pile of suits to the side so I could get to the brown boxes. I searched, digging down for his computer. My mother had dumped all of our old framed family photos in these boxes. I found the photograph of my parents sitting in a booth together at Martin's Tavern in Georgetown, the landmark restaurant and frequent hangout for presidents like Nixon and Kennedy, where plaques with their engraved names hang above their designated booths. The picture used to be in our family room on the console next to the fireplace. My mother in her signature burgundy lipstick and gold Tiffany mesh bracelet, and my father in his pin-striped jacket and red Hermès tie; they were laughing, and they looked so happy. I set down the pictures in a neat stack. I couldn't look at them anymore.

I was coughing from the dust when finally I found the box with his computer in it and other work files. “BusyBox” had been written in black Sharpie on the side. I remember my father was so excited about the prospect of BusyBox. He had just finished talking to Steve Madden, the successful shoe company bearing his name. Only later would I learn that in 2002 Steve Madden was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for money laundering and securities fraud. I had bought my first pair of platform shoes from Steve Madden and was ecstatic at the thought of my father and him doing business together. My father also mentioned he was speaking with the Nantucket Nectars guys, Tom and Tom, about other potential businesses. We had boxes of their juices in the kitchen pantry. But BusyBox was what excited my father the most. It had something to do with selling digital pictures and videos online. He told me he was going to meet with Bill Gates about possibly investing. There were piles and piles of BusyBox pitches on the floor of the library, and every time I carried my juice box near them, he would yell at me and tell me to finish my juice before I entered so I wouldn't spill it on anything.

Most of the documents were leftover court papers and depositions full of legal jargon I didn't understand. I couldn't bother to keep reading all of it. I grabbed his computer, put the boxes back, and tossed his clothes back on top. I just wanted to get out of this storage unit. It was dark and felt haunted. I locked the door, and on my way home, I stopped off at Staples to pick up a disk so I could save all the necessary documents he'd wanted.

When I got back to the house, I closed the door behind me, sat on the floor in front of the TV, and opened up his laptop computer. I scrolled through “My Documents,” searching for something, but I didn't know what. I was curious. I found information on General Edward Ratkovich, my father's mentor, a decorated air force general who would visit the house with bags of Tootsie Rolls and Nerds when I was little. He was the director of intelligence in Stuttgart, Germany, for the US European Command. I didn't know it at the time, but the general had recently died. My father had never mentioned it. When I scrolled through the information, it said that he was the one who purchased MVSI Inc., a company taken public by a firm called Stratton Oakmont Inc. It said that he was the one who purchased Socrates Computer Systems, and when I Googled it, I wasn't sure if it had anything to do with the earlier Project Socrates: a classified US Defense Intelligence Agency program first started under the Reagan administration to determine America's economic competitiveness.
“It's the government's fault, Christina.”
So I kept scrolling through.

Then I came across a folder titled “Albania,” and I clicked on it.

I
remembered the purple orchid in the front hall. Classical music was echoing through each room in the house, and my mother had been anxious that morning, more uptight than usual. Behar and his wife were coming for dinner, and a translator would be present. Behar was a businessman running for office in Albania, and he and my father were orchestrating a deal to build an American university there. I was told to be on my best behavior that night. I was sixteen. My father had showed me the floor plans for the university a few nights earlier in the kitchen after school. I don't know how the deal was related to IPOs and the stock market. I never asked. I never asked my father about his work. The only time I did was in middle school. My religion teacher had asked me what he did for a living—I don't remember why she asked me this in the middle of class—but I told her he was a securities lawyer; not the kind that went to court. And I realized I had no idea what this meant. So that night at dinner, I asked him, and he explained to me about IPOs, the stock market, and taking companies public. But when I started asking too many questions because I didn't understand what he was talking about, he grew frustrated with me and snapped, “That's enough; finish your dinner,” making me feel that I wasn't smart enough to understand it—that I was better off not asking questions.

“Christina, darling, we're in the living room!” my mother called. I was wearing Mara's floral Betsey Johnson dress, one she left behind while studying in Switzerland. I always knew when my mother was faking it; when she was trying hard to exude European charm. When she showed us off, her voice extended into drawn-out vowels and ascended into a higher register that bugged me. I walked over to say hello and sat down on the yellow sofa in front of the Brie cheese and crackers as I watched Behar and his wife, in their black suits, sip Kir Royales in crystal flute glasses. They asked me about my “studies.” The translator, wearing a plain gray suit, sat quietly next to them.

I felt stiff the entire evening. I was pretending to be in another century with manners I didn't even know I had. The aura between us, foreign, the crystal chandelier dimmed to spotlight on lamb chops, green beans, and crescent rolls. I chewed with my mouth closed the entire time.

I
t was an old email exchange. The document opened up on the screen, and all I saw were words from Behar: “The deal off—the American university—everything off.” Someone had been killed.
Stabbed
was the word I saw printed in Times New Roman font. And it had something to do with money. Of course. I can't remember if the date was before or after the trial. It must have been after, because that was when my father was despondent, right before he left for prison. I thought it was just because he was afraid to leave. But maybe it was because the American university deal was the only one he had left. Now nothing was left. Any hope for a future business and making money for our family was gone.

I grabbed the new disk next to me and shoved it into the computer. I didn't believe what I saw, or I saw what I saw but didn't believe my father's business could involve violence. I slammed his laptop shut. I felt paralyzed by what I'd just seen. I couldn't erase the words from my mind. But I could bury them in an empty part of me where they would sit, and they would wait, while I told no one, while the possibility meant everything and nothing—a lie I would tell myself through sheer omission, because the terrifying truth was unacceptable.

I
started spending most nights at Josh's parents' house in Beverly Hills. It felt like the West Coast version of our former home. Perched halfway up Coldwater Canyon, it was a Spanish-style house with big glass windows, an alarm, a housekeeper, a fully stocked fridge, a swimming pool, and a mom who loved to cook. It was easy to live vicariously through them, as though nothing was changing for me.

When I fell asleep with Josh that night, that's when the first night terror hit.

I was standing, staring at the walls of the Yellow Oval Room in the White House. The same color yellow as our living room, my mother had said. Not too bright, not too dull, just right. Crystal, crystal vases, crystal service bells, crystal trinkets, crystal glasses, crystal bowls, and crystal statues engulfed me. My chest felt constricted, but the room itself was airy. The French doors opened to the balcony with towering willow trees whose branches grazed limestone columns and lace curtains drifted out in the humid air. I was stuck, paralyzed. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't cry, my tears and breath clogging my windpipe like lava. My young reflection stared back in the gold Louis XV French mirror, while the acanthus leaves curled around beveled glass. I was eleven years old and wearing my choir uniform. And when I turned my neck, General Ratkovich appeared before me like a ghost on the Persian rug. My patent leather shoes would not step near him. My uniform, green, like Kermit the frog. His uniform, blue and gold, like war.

He shook his head at me with great disappointment. My right arm was heavy as it reached for my mother's crystal rabbit. The general's eyes burned mine. When I grabbed the rabbit, I pitched it hard over and over until he disappeared. Then I pitched the vase, the service bell, the bowl, praying for relief from the sound of shattered glass, but nothing would break. I paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, wanting to cry. But I couldn't cry. I couldn't breathe. I was suffocating and shaking, my arms gripped when suddenly my unwavering screams, steady and deep in their grunt, woke me up. I shot up drenched in sweat. Josh grabbed me tight. We rocked back and forth as I sobbed, disoriented, in his arms. Until it was safe to look around the room, to remember where I was, Josh kept kissing my forehead and purring, “Shhh, it's okay. You're okay.” I held on to him as though I were falling off a cliff. “Don't let me go, just don't let me go.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder is what shrinks call this delayed unconscious feeling of terror. It appeared only in my dreams. Josh suggested I see a psychiatrist. I had never seen a psychiatrist before. “I don't need one,” I told him. “I'm fine.” He was seeing one for his parents' separation. His father had just leased an apartment down the street and was still seeing Becky.

“I like having a therapist. She gives you a safe place to unload all of your thoughts and feelings without being judged,” he said. But I was firm with him and held my ground. “No. I don't need it. I'm not interested.” My father was the one who had kept me safe.

W
earing my pink feety pajamas, I held on to my father's hand as we followed the beam of his flashlight down the back staircase.