After Perfect (36 page)

I
heard once that when you hit bottom, you are really meeting yourself. I was listening to the product of an upbringing that paved the way for a sense of entitlement and narcissistic dreams. Though that is only how I heard it, the stories that my friends shared about me, even if they didn't see it (but I knew that they did), bless them for loving me anyway. They laughed and continued reminiscing, but I could hear only my flaws, all of the things I hated about myself and about where life had taken me, or where I had taken life. Changing my name wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't change
me
. I needed to bury all of those things that defined me from the inside out. My entitlement. My self-righteousness. My fantasy thinking. My judgment. My fear. My being and acting like a victim. And I needed to get rid of all the things—the possessions I had left—that I'd let define me, that represented a history of me that was not grounded in reality, in truth, or in my authentic self. I wanted to get back to the eleven-year-old who had not yet abandoned herself to fashion magazines, material possessions, drugs, stealing, promiscuity, and an obsession with wealth and fame. I wanted to get back to the eleven-year-old girl who didn't give a fuck what she wore to school that day because she had an endless curiosity for life, and for creating and going on adventures with friends rather than projecting an image for attention. I wanted to get back to the girl who felt so free to be her true self that she wasn't even conscious of it because she
lived.

One of the first things I did was apologize to Liam. I wanted him to know that my inability to love had nothing to do with him, but that it was time to let him go so I could grow into the person I had the potential to become. The person I wanted to be. It wasn't easy. There were some mornings when I didn't even get out of bed because I was so afraid to face the world alone with the knowledge that everything inside of me would have to change; that everything would have to be different if I wanted to create a new life for myself. I would start by taking action.

I had stolen money when I worked at Jerry's bar. I would need to pay him back even if he had illegally denied us breaks and fraudulently sold alcohol. This was about righting my wrong, not his. And the fake Hermès Birkin—I still had it in the back of my trunk. And my mother's Chanel bag, pearl necklaces, gold bracelets, my Tiffany watch, and designer clothes. After my amends, I would have to sell and give away everything.

I
had received a check in the mail for a few hundred dollars from a law firm or a corporation—I can't remember. But along with the check came a document that said several cocktail waitresses from the bar I worked at ended up suing the company for not giving us legal breaks and paying us wages owed. It was a sign: justice was on its way. And I could do my part. I sent him a financial amends along with an anonymous letter of apology.

A few days later, I drove with a girlfriend of mine to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Pacific Palisades called Kay 'N Dave's. I told her that I needed to make peace with the neighborhood where it all began. As we drove into the village, I noticed that the Wells Fargo bank on the corner was gone, replaced by Chase Bank. The stationery store, remodeled. The rental house, filled with another family, one that I hoped was happy. It all felt a little more real than the way I had remembered it.

We walked into Kay 'N Dave's and sat down at a little table near the front door. The restaurant was quaint and quiet. As the two of us were talking, in walked an older couple: a short man with white hair, and an elegant woman wearing a pink cashmere sweater with perfect blond hair and makeup.

Ralph Adler.

I leaned over the table and whispered, “Oh my God.” My friend looked at me and then at the couple, who stood no more than five feet away. “What?” she asked.

Ralph saw me and looked away quickly.

I could barely speak. I told my girlfriend everything that happened nearly ten years ago, about the porno and what he'd said to me: “because I know you need the money.” That he had helped my mother pro bono, and when I confronted his business partner about what Ralph had said to me, he refused to believe it—and then wrote me a letter “firing” me as a client. For so many years, how I fantasized about how I would get my revenge.

“Holy shit! You have to do something!” my girlfriend exclaimed as I watched the Adlers sit down two tables away: Ralph, with his back to me, and his wife looking almost straight at me. “Here, take my plate; dump it on his lap.”

“No,” I told her. “Look at him. He's so sad, and his poor wife. You have to be in a lot of pain to be living a lie like that.”

I would know.

“So what are you going to do?”

Our waitress came over to the table, and in her broken English asked how we were doing.

“Fine,” I said, “except can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Take my credit card. I'd like to pay for that man and his wife's dinner,” I told her. “He's an old friend of the family's.” I winked at my girlfriend. “But don't tell him I paid until I after I've left. I want it to be a surprise.”

“Okay. So tell him pretty brunette girl pay for dinner. But after you leave.”

“Exactly,” I said, grinning.

Ten minutes later, the waitress brought me his check. After paying it, I took the itemized receipt and wrote in red pen at the top: “. . . Because I know you need the money. Xo Christina Prousalis.” I folded the receipt, handed it to the waitress, and said, “Give this to him for me, will you? It's a little note.”

The waitress thought this was so cute. “Yes, of course.” I gave her a $20 tip. “Let's get out of here,” my girlfriend said.

“A little bit of forgiveness mixed with a little bit of revenge never hurt anybody, right?” I fantasized about the questions his wife might ask him: “
Who
paid our bill?”

My girlfriend couldn't stop laughing. “You're so crazy.” We high-fived each other, and I walked out the door with my head held high and thought,
Eh, Pacific Palisades ain't so bad anymore
.

A
few days later, I threw on jeans and a T-shirt and ransacked my closet. Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, Stuart Weitzman, Prada, Burberry, and Ralph Lauren went flying into a pile on the floor. I threw my Tiffany watch, Michele watch, pearls, and gold bracelets into a pile on my bed. I grabbed the fake Birkin, the classic Chanel, and the Yves Saint Laurent handbags I had forgotten about, and dumped them in another pile. With each item I discarded it felt like I was peeling away a layer of dead skin. I threw everything into trash bags and lugged them downstairs and out to my car. I had made a deal with myself: I would sell half to pay my bills for the month, and I would donate the rest to Goodwill.

There is no greater feeling than watching all of these expensive name-brand fashions and accessories being dumped into a dirty blue tub at the Goodwill in Hollywood, knowing that they would go to people who actually needed it. And I don't mean they needed a Chanel purse; I mean simply a purse. Or a pair of shoes—no, not Stuart Weitzman shoes. Just shoes. Not because they needed to prove to someone that they were of a certain class or that they were more beautiful or better than other people, but because they needed it for a job interview so they could put food on the table for their three-year-old. The old man who handed me my receipt didn't say “Wow, thank you for these designer labels!” No. That would never even cross his mind. He was grateful for the donation of functional clothing and accessories. I thanked him, and I was off to the next location.

Wasteland is a hip vintage clothing store on Melrose where you can sell used clothing and accessories. I walked up to the counter and dumped the Hermès purse in front of a tall hipster wearing suspenders. “It's a fake,” I said. “How much is it worth?” He told me to wait a minute, took the bag, and showed it to his boss, who seemed interested. After a minute of looking at it, the hipster came back and said, “We'll mark it at three hundred seventy-five dollars. You get thirty-five percent of that price.”

“Sold.” I didn't care about selling it myself online or pocketing the full amount; I just wanted it out of my life. Gone! Good-bye! I couldn't believe I had kept it for that long. The hipster wrote me a check for $131.25, and I was out of there. On to the next location. That bag had no emotional significance. I had wept over it long enough.

The pawnshop on the corner of Melrose and Cahuenga Boulevard was a little terrifying on the outside: bright yellow with bars on its blacked-out windows and a doorbell you had to press to be let inside. A young Native American man with a long ponytail opened the door. I had never been inside of a pawnshop before. I imagined it would feel dark and sleazy; maybe gangsters smoking cigars in the back. But I looked around at all the old trinkets and things, guitars and old music equipment displayed on high shelves, and it felt completely the opposite. Shoppers strolled around, and the staff was friendly. I scanned the jewelry cases filled with old watches and silver bracelets as I made my way to the bulletproof glass window to have my Tiffany watch appraised. The man came back through the side door and said, “I can give you a hundred.”

“One hundred dollars, that's it?” I replied, dumbfounded at how worthless it was. But given the way I responded, it didn't feel so worthless. “Yeah,” he said. “I'll probably only be able to sell it for around a hundred and fifty.” I paused.

“If you need cash now, I can always give you the loan with interest, and as long as you give it back by a certain date, the watch is yours again.” I felt tears coming on and a lump rising in my throat. “I need a minute to decide,” I told him. Was I just doing all of this out of anger, and would I be sorry later? Or was I really ready to let go, and be happy and free from all of these possessions and gifts from my past that I thought meant something? Even if I decided to keep the watch, it would never feel the same on my wrist. I would feel the shame from the possibility that it was bought with stolen money, and maybe at somebody else's expense. And if it wasn't bought with stolen money, was it really a symbol of my father's love for me? Was this what love meant to me?

I stood there, and I remembered what happened the only time my father ever physically hurt me. I was eight or nine. Mara and I were fighting over a hairbrush in the bathroom. My father was in the other room on a business call. He heard us, threw down the phone, stormed through the door, grabbed me up by my arms, threw me up against the bathroom wall, and screamed at me. When he dropped me, I curled up in a ball on the bath mat, heaving and crying so hard that my mother ran in to see if I was all right, but I was covering my face—I wouldn't let her see my face—and my mother kept yelling, “Let me see your face! Let me see your face!” until she had to pry my fingers away. She was so afraid he had hit me and that I was bleeding and didn't want her to see. My father was gone for a few hours after that. I remember the sound of his engine as he peeled out of the driveway.

And when he came back, he brought me a present. It was wrapped in white paper with a velvet green bow on top. I opened it up while sitting on his lap. It was a Madame Alexander doll of Scarlett O'Hara from
Gone w
ith the Wind
.

I
dumped the watch back on the counter. “Take the watch,” I said. “I don't want it anymore.”

“You sure? You don't want a loan?”

“No. Take it.”

The only possession left was my BMW. But I wasn't planning on giving that away. I wanted to keep it. And not just because I thought it made me look cool and sexy. That it got me attention, and made me feel good enough. But because it meant I could still hang on to my father, and to my story. The truth was that my mother had sold the Chagall painting to pay off the lien a few years earlier but had forgotten to tell me. I was living with my actor friend Dillon above the crack addict's apartment when she told me.

“I sold my Chagall to pay off your car,” my mother had said.

“Wait, what? When did you do that?”

“I don't know, Christina.” The question made her exhausted just thinking about it.

“So, I've been able to sell my car this whole time?”

“You have to get the title back first.”

“What's a title?”

“Proof you own your car. The bank has it.”

“Which bank?”

“I don't remember. Whoever we were banking with.”

“How am
I
supposed to remember?”

“Washington Mutual?”

“Washington Mutual doesn't even
exist
anymore, Mom!”

“Well, it was over a year ago, because that's when I got the money.”

“I was homeless and driving around in a BMW! How could you not tell me this?”

I had to retrace my steps to the Wells Fargo bank in Pacific Palisades where it all began. A banker pulled my credit history, and I was able to get proof that the lien had been paid. After filling out a series of paperwork and going to the DMV, the title was finally mailed to me. But when I got it, I didn't sell the car. My father taught me how to drive stick in that car. It was one of our last moments alone together before he left for prison, and I wasn't ready to let go. I wanted to keep it forever, for as long as I could, until I was an old lady and it would be declared a vintage. But, the universe had a different plan.

A few days before I was to appear in court for my name change, I was driving along the 101 Freeway near Coldwater Canyon. I remember feeling numb. There was so much change happening in me. I was driving the car but I
wasn't
driving the car—someone else was driving the car, and I remember it was quiet. I wasn't listening to any music, and I wasn't on my cell phone or even looking at my cell phone, which was buried somewhere in my purse. It was clear and sunny, and I was cruising at forty-five miles an hour in light traffic. I put on my right blinker and moved into the right lane. The freeway was splitting ahead and I continued on toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard. I needed to move over into the right lane, so I checked my wing mirrors and put on my blinker again, then looked over my right shoulder. Before I could glance back at the car in front of me, all I remember seeing was the blue, white, and black BMW logo on the steering wheel before my head smashed against it, accompanied by the sound of crunching metal. Breathing hard, I lifted my head. I touched my face, my nose, to see if I was bleeding. There was no blood. I looked at myself in the mirror. I had hit my head. A bump growing on the left side of my forehead. I looked up and could see the hood of my car smashed like a folded accordion. In a daze, I stepped out of the car and into the middle of the freeway, I began walking into the mirage wavering off the asphalt, squinting my eyes, cars whipping past me blowing my skirt and hair all about. No one stopped to see if I was okay. Then I spun around. The person I hit was sitting in his car. It was a Toyota Sierra. There was only a small dent in his bumper, and he never got out of the car.