Diamond Girl

Chapter 15



Announcing to Daddy that I had decided for sure to go to Brown cheered him up so much that, after I told him, I felt horrible an hour later when I was lying in my bathtub and I realized that I had no clue if I would be able to get into Brown.

I was graduating in three months, all the applications from my classmates had gone out at the end of the previous year and, with the Ivies, you were supposed to have pretty much been in training for them since you were like six years old. My grades weren’t awful but they weren’t Ivy material either. And the other stuff, like extracurricular activities and volunteerism, were not even on the table. I was beginning to worry. What would he think when I was inevitably rejected? He would be disappointed in me, which I would hate, and he would be embarrassed by my failure, which he would hate.

My head started to hurt imagining the look on his face. I dumped in more Peruvian Pink Salt to the water. Peruvian Pink is honestly not only the greatest bath salt on the planet but, because it’s from somewhere in South America and the crystals in it are like two thousand years old, it not only promotes peace and mental acuity, and smells so good, but whenever I soaked in it I got all my best ideas.

I have always been very in-tune with anything aroma therapy based. It worked like a charm that day too. While I was floating in my pink water, it came to me that I could offer a one-of-a-kind admissions essay to Brown that played to my particular strengths. In other words, how by shopping at politically correct companies I was helping to save the world, one animal cruelty-free product at a time.

I know some people thought the documentary I eventually produced for Brown was very Legally Blonde. My essay consisted of my videographer following me around the city for a day while I spoke about the good works that companies like Starbucks, and Origins, and a funky little designer called Myne Bianca who made great looking faux-fur jackets, did for our country. It was a serious piece and was nothing like that stupid video Elle Woods, aka Reese Witherspoon, made to get into Harvard Law.

First of all, I wasn’t floating around in a pool wearing a sequined bikini. I was out power shopping at the kind of companies that not only employ a lot of Americans but also sell great stuff to other Americans who have a well-developed sense of social consciousness.

When my videographer, Jackie, and my producer, Leon, had finished editing the film which we titled 'Shop with Reason', I was so impressed that I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t enter it at the Sundance Film Festival. Instead I held a private screening of it for Daddy.

He needed cheering up as he had never really recovered from having to return home and live with my mother again. I knew he had done it for me and that always worried me. Daddy wasn’t used to being told what to do or to being miserable and living with her. A thirty thousand square foot apartment pretty much guaranteed the latter, even if he ignored her attempting the former.

I don’t think he had been in love with Arianna but I know he had enjoyed her company more than he did my mother’s and, by coming home for me, he had sacrificed something important. Happiness is rare, so rare that it’s the one thing even people in my family can’t buy.

My father is a guy who holds his cards close to his chest and he is not naturally affectionate, but with me, who he did love and, even better in some ways, who he understood, he did try. When I say he understood, what I mean is that Daddy knew that while I looked like a Kelleher, and tried my best to act like one, I was somewhat defective, emotionally speaking.

I wanted to be liked. Oh f*ck it, I wanted to be loved. It was never enough for me to have people befriend me and do what I asked because of my name. I wanted them to care about me, this inner me, whoever that was, to want to be with me even if I didn’t buy them things. Worst of all, I was needy for tactile affection and that is something that just never happened for me. Elizando used to hug me, and sometimes, though never enough, Milan and Christy would hug and kiss me. Later on, of course, there was sex, but what I really wanted, really craved, was the kind of physical closeness to the people I loved that I saw on sitcoms, like on George Lopez where the parents were constantly touching their kids.

It was never going to happen in my family, in my world, but Daddy, who was the most reserved person in a world peopled by iron reserve, did try. He was verbally affectionate to me. He told me he loved me. He showed that he enjoyed my company. He went above and beyond the stilted way he had been raised, and had lived, to try and fill up some of the empty, hungry places inside me.

I would have died for him. I wish he knew that.

What had worried me a lot in the two years since he had come home and left his Italian bombshell, was that he would blame me for being stuck at 800 Fifth Avenue, home of his not-so-trophy wife. That he didn’t, or that if he did he didn’t show it, just shows how much he used to love me.

My mother was not only a self-obsessed shrew who was held together only by plastic and Botox and - at least in my opinion - by too small couturier outfits, she was also deadly boring, yet she seemed surprised that her ability to gossip endlessly about the same people they saw for dinner 364 nights a year - Christmas Day being for family - made him yawn and walk away.

I spent time trying to make things more fun for Daddy, the day I showed him my sure-fire Brown admission tape being no exception. The only other person alive whose company, besides mine, I knew Daddy enjoyed was Aunt Georgia’s. Those two were like Milan and Christy: tightly-bound sibling survivors of a childhood they never spoke of. He lit up around her, so it was to Aunt Georgia’s crazy over-the-top home theatre at Trump Towers that I took him for my screening.

I hadn’t invited Milan or Christy, so it was just the three of us in her comfortably pale yellow theatre that seats 100. Aunt Georgia is definitely an old-style New York heiress, très private and never speaks voluntarily to the press, but she loves movies and hosts an outrageous annual Academy Awards party once a year, which is, I’m pretty sure, the only time she uses her theatre.

She was as always happy to see Daddy, and me too I think, and had her butler serve us her own idea of movie junk food: Cristal Brut champagne and popcorn, with sides of pâté or peanut M & Ms. After a short fight, Daddy okayed me having one glass of champagne as he figured it was the lesser of two evils, M & Ms being strictly on the list of ten million things Yype One diabetics can’t have.

Aunt Georgia and Daddy watched my Shop with Reason film with occasional muffled laughs and applauded wildly at the end. I stood up, flushed and happy, and took a bow.

I looked eagerly at them. “You really liked it? Honestly?”

They both nodded enthusiastically and Daddy said, “We loved it, sweetheart.” He turned to Aunt Georgia. “Didn’t you think that was an awfully good film, George? I mean, she’s not even eighteen yet.”

Aunt Georgia smiled at both of us. “I thought it was brilliant, Kells. I think our little Carey should study screenwriting when she gets up to Brown in the fall, or I don’t know, Kells, do you think with her being so creative, she maybe shouldn’t go out west, to … oh, I always forget the names of those California schools.”

Daddy laughed comfortably. “Of course you forget them, George. We don’t attend them and, no, she doesn’t need to go to the middle of nowhere. Brown has a fine drama department. Good Lord, don’t you remember when the young Kennedy boy got so caught up in it that he nearly became an actor?”

“Oh God, Kells, you’re right. I’d forgotten all about that and I’m sure you’re right, Carey will be fine at Brown, and …” she looked at me piercingly, “… don’t forget, darling, beautiful and talented as you are, we stay on the other side of the camera.”

Until Aunt Georgia said that I had never even thought about trying to become an actress. I wanted to ask her the obvious question as to why I couldn’t be one since, naturally, the minute she said I couldn’t, I suddenly realized that being an actress was after all my lifelong dream. At seventeen, lifelong and ten minutes are pretty much the same thing.

I didn’t want to ruin our fun day though by arguing. I could wait to tell them about my new plans after I landed my first film role. I just smiled modestly. “Thanks, Aunt Georgia. You too, Daddy. I’m just glad you like my stupid little movie. I only hope it’s good enough for Brown. Otherwise, Daddy, I might end up at one of those colleges you are talking about in the middle of nowhere and have to major in … well, uhm, teaching or dog walking, or something.”

Daddy and Aunt Georgia looked at each other and burst out laughing. Daddy stood and walked over to me, putting his arm around me. He guided me back to my seat and Aunt Georgia, still wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes, leaned over and kissed me. Speaking to Daddy she said, “Kells, what is she talking about, getting into Brown?” She looked at me. “Carey, is that what your darling little film is for? I thought it was a present for Kells.”

Daddy interjected laughing. “I did too.”

I stared at both of them, non-plussed. “You guys, what are you talking about?” I looked at Daddy. “Daddy, I made the film as my admissions essay. I’ve worked on the script and the editing for the last three months, I even …” I was starting to have trouble speaking because of the lump in my throat, “… I even sold one of my horses in secret so I could pay for the essay myself. I wanted, I mean you wanted me to go to Brown and I wanted you to see I could do this. I did it for you and I don’t understand why you guys are laughing at me.”

Daddy looked helplessly at Aunt Georgia. More messy, needy emotion from his apparently clueless daughter. Aunt Georgia grabbed my waving hands, stilling them in her own. “Carey, there’s nothing to be upset about, darling. Your father and I weren’t laughing at you. We were laughing because you thought you had to do all this to get into Brown.”

Daddy explained further. “You see, Carey, sweetheart, Kellehers and a few of our better colleges, well it’s always been …” He shrugged helplessly and Aunt Georgia continued for him. “What your father is trying, and failing, to say, Carey, is that a Kelleher is always welcomed. We don’t apply for entrance, not to Brown nor to Harvard, nor to silly organizations. We don’t ask because it’s understood that we enhance the places we choose to be.”

“But Aunt Georgia, if any idiot with an old name can get into any one of the Ivies, wouldn’t they be kind of, I don’t know, academic disasters, I mean ranking wise? I know they do have colleges for rich morons, but Harvard and Brown?”

Daddy laughed, relieved that I was calm again. “Of course they do, Carey K, but first of all you’re no moron, and secondly the great institutions are not going to open wide the doors to anyone with a checkbook. Take Harvard as an example. It’s not famous merely for the level of its education, sterling though that might be, it’s famous because the sons, and more recently the daughters, of the great founding families have always attended its hallowed halls. Millions dream every year of those places more for the cachet of sharing the classrooms where John Kennedy and Vincent Astor, and now Carey Kelleher, will roam than they do of receiving a first class education. Do you see now, sweetheart?”

I nodded, managing a smile. “I do, Daddy, and aren’t I lucky because, grades or not, I’ll still enhance Brown just by my name, right?”

They nodded a little doubtfully.

Aunt Georgia was getting bored and replied briskly. “Yes, that’s right, Carey, or right enough anyway. You don’t need to over-think everything … and, Carey …?”

“Yes, Aunt Georgia?”

“Give the tape of your little movie to your father as a present. Kellehers don’t hand out videos of themselves, no matter what the reasoning might be.”