Diamond Girl

Chapter 42



Milan stood by me, at her party, with her arm clamped firmly around my shoulders, standing at the base of her brand new curving staircase in the forty million dollar house that she had bought after signing on for Season three of The Natural Life.

She stood by me later downstairs in her disco room when Karmen drunkenly grabbed my arm to pull me away and make me bump and grind with her. Milan threw everyone her dazzler of a smile, acted like it was her own idea and joined us on the dance floor, raising her long arms and swaying back and forth seductively until we had a circle of people watching us with admiration and not disgust.

She stood by me when I needed her to help me to find a new place to live and, what could have been grim, she tried her hardest to make a blast. Milan and Christy, and Mrs. Marin and I, didn’t use a real estate agent this time. It turns out that when you are looking for rentals in the three to five thousand dollar a month area, the quality of service goes down, way down, and after meeting with the fattest man I had ever seen, and spending a day being driven around in his ten year old Ford Escort looking at what he called 'cozy properties' and what I called the nadir of despair, I asked Karmen if we could maybe start looking for a bigger place together long term.

She wasn’t enthused. It seemed to me, and maybe I’m wrong, but it seemed as though my desirability rating had dropped way down following the loss of my house and money, and once she had gotten her way about me taking her to Milan’s party, she turned downright mean. She didn’t like Petal, she didn’t like sharing her bathroom and she especially hated sharing her clothes with me, almost as much as I hated asking, since all her clothes made me look like a hooker. And, well, they were kind of tight on me too. I think I’ve always looked fat. I’m five feet nothing basically, and the minute I hit a pound over ninety-five I look like a big lumpy potato with feet, and all the starving and purging and liposuction in the world never made me look taller, which is what I needed to be to look truly thin.

Karmen pointed that out a couple of times. I don’t like arguing so I didn’t point out to her in return that, despite a pretty great size two body and beautiful hair, she was also missing a chin, or that her nose was as big as my head, practically.

It’s funny because her almost deliberate ugliness was one of the things I both liked and hated about her. I mean, you can pare down your nose and buy a chin pretty easily. That she didn’t made her seem edgy and different to me. I had grown up surrounded by some seriously good inherited looks and then, in L.A., everyone looks like either a Malibu or a Princess Barbie by design, so Karmen’s monkey features made her stand out, not in a way I would have wanted to, but she seemed more than happy with her appearance and used up a ton more mirror time than I ever did. Maybe she saw something different than the rest of us when she stared at herself so intently.

I read once that you can never really see yourself. That’s kind of deep. I wonder how people saw me. I guess they must have seen an ugly fat girl. People are never kind to ugly fat girls, so that would explain a lot.

I knew Milan didn’t like Karmen and I knew too that she didn’t have clue one what to say to me about my recent transition to lesbianhood, so she handled it the way she did every unpleasant topic, she ignored it.

When she told me she and Christy wanted to house hunt with me, she didn’t say it was because she couldn’t deal with me living with Karmen, she said it was because I needed to get a place and get Diana home. I knew she was right but I just wasn’t sure. I did love my little girl, I do love my daughter, but being a mother had been strange and scary to me. Diana and I had been living in a fairly good-sized house with round-the-clock help, and I had no idea how we would manage in some small rental house with maybe no nanny at all.

Milan brushed aside my concerns but this was one area where I didn’t immediately glom onto her advice. She wasn’t a mother; she couldn’t possibly understand the twenty-four seven sheer neediness of having a baby. She thought she got it because of her in-house menagerie of pets - six dogs, two bunnies and a llama she had named George Clooney - but pets aren’t children. To be fair, though, I didn’t really get that myself until after I adopted a baby.

Sometimes in life it’s easier to just go along and pretend because there are some things inside yourself that are so bad and so shameful that even if you are doing something that makes you unhappy, it’s better to front and live your life as a big fraud than to tell the truth. Or maybe not. What do I know about good choices?

I did what Milan suggested because she loved me; because she was the only person alive who really did love me, and always had.

Christy is a sweetie but she is an emotionally distant girl. If she feels any real love, it’s only for her sister. But not Milan. The lifetime of friendship she gave me was real.

And I couldn’t look at her beautiful face and tell her I didn’t really want Diana back.

I was afraid that if I said that she might start listening to what I was sure other people were saying to her, that I was a loser, that I was dragging her down. I don’t know if she would have willingly heard that, but admitting I was a bad mother on top of having just very, very reluctantly admitted that I was gay, might have forced her to withdraw from me. And it wasn’t only Milan’s beautiful face I was thinking of when I put on a determined smile and climbed into the car with her and Christy for a fun-filled day of house hunting; it was Diana’s small, beautiful face, her tiny face that always, no matter what, stared into mine with all the love and trust in the world. For her I needed to act better, even if I couldn’t be better.

When Milan, after getting lost for two hours, mainly because she couldn’t figure out how to program her GPS system, finally pulled up in front of what would be my last home, my present home, I was so car sick and irritable that I vowed to take it sight-unseen.

Meeting my new landlady almost changed my mind.

She was small like me, Asian unlike me, as flashy as Karmen and she seemed to have as much contempt for me on sight as Karmen was showing most days too.

“You are the Kelleher girl?” Before I could answer, she continued, “You’re late. I’ve been here for over an hour. This is a great house, it's going fast. I had a guy here last night, good guy, single guy, he wants the house. I think I’d better rent the house to him. Late on appointment, late on rent, I say. You better look for something else, okay?”

I couldn’t believe I was being rejected as a potential tenant. First of all I’d never been a renter of any kind, nor had I ever planned to be one. I hadn’t even seen the house and this creepy little woman was saying I wasn’t good enough?

I would have just gotten back into the car, maybe had a good cry and asked Milan to take me back to Karmen’s unloving arms, if it hadn’t been for the landlady’s utter and immediate change of heart upon espying Milan’s five foot eleven length unfolding from the driver’s seat.

Milan had overheard her remarks and was already on full charm offensive by the time she walked over to the woman. She flashed her mega-watt smile and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m so sorry we were late. It’s all my fault. I got lost. I’m terrible, and here you were, you poor thing, stuck waiting for us. Please don’t be mad at Carey. She’s never late for anything, I promise.” I was never on time for anything, but I admired her balls for saying it with a straight face. She continued pouting adorably at the transfixed woman. “Can’t we see the house, please?”

Christy, who was standing behind my prospective landlady, rolled her eyes but I couldn’t return her disdainful gesture, much as I wanted to. I was in a new position, I was a supplicant. I needn’t have worried. At the first sight of Milan, the woman had melted into a sycophantic, celebrity-worshipping mass of ass kissing.

“Oh Miss Marin, I can’t believe it’s you, I mean right here with me. Do you know The Natural Life is my favorite show?” At that Christy lost it and started laughing out loud.

Milan threw her an annoyed look and went into her gracious star, girl of the people, act. “Really? That’s awesome of you to say so and please call me Milan. So can we see the house? You know Carey here is my oldest friend in the world, and her little girl is my sister’s goddaughter. Oh, and this is my sister, Christy.”

Christy didn’t bother to hold out her hand. Rudely she lit a cigarette and muttered hello. It didn’t matter, the landlady was a goner.

“Oh, of course, oh it would be an honor to have Miss Kelleher, your friend, living here, and where are my manners? My name is Delilah, Delilah Kwan, but please call me Delilah, Milan.”

If it hadn’t all been so icky, the rental house, the rude then slimily ingratiating woman, I would have cracked up along with Christy at the ridiculous name. As it was, I just said, “Delilah, I’m Carey, and I’d like to see the place first, then we can ...”

Delilah interrupted me. “Oh yes, yes of course, Carey. You have to see the house first but I know you will love it. It’s a good house. Please ladies, Miss Milan, all of you follow me.”

It was then I first noticed the unusual wooden gates behind us. They were tall and long, stretching across the width of the driveway, and burned in the old wood were the words 'Sorrow Not'.

I glanced askance at Delilah and she smiled widely. “Interesting, isn’t it? This is an old house. I bought it for an investment last year. I thought about having the words sanded out, but then I am Asian and we believe in luck and the words seem to me to say that the people who have lived here, and who will live here, should be happy, so I left it. It’s nice, yes?”

I didn’t know if it was nice or not, so I just nodded.

She pulled out a gate opener, pressed it and we followed her into a very cool lot.

The property was obviously old because the trees were huge and thick and made the yard look a little shadowy and mysterious. There were some beautiful old azalea and rose bushes clustered around. The house had a small shaded pool and a tiny little white stucco guest house that matched the main house.

The main house was a typical forties California Mission-style home. Inside it had three small bedrooms, all of which, including the main living areas, were carpeted in the ugliest cheap beige carpet I had ever seen. To make matters worse, the house was furnished with what were obviously decorating mistakes too ugly even for Delilah, and it stunk of mildew.

After walking inside, Milan and Christy had immediately turned around and gone back outside, where they were waiting for me. It was obvious they expected me to politely thank Delilah for the tour and say thanks but no thanks. I looked around at the dim living room and stared at the lavender and gold velour furniture and nodded. “I’ll take it.”

The ugly old house was perfect for me. It was just the sort of place that would make my entire family shudder in horror. As I was writing Delilah a check for twelve thousand dollars, first, last and a month’s security, I hoped with bitter satisfaction that one day my parents would come to visit me there and see what they had done to me. When I got back out to the car, holding my rental lease, it was obvious from their overly-solicitous tones that Christy and Milan had been talking about me. I showed them my lease and tried to smile.

Christy leaned over from the back and kissed my cheek. “Milan and I were just talking about how we could help out, you know, with the house and everything. Tell her, Mills.”

Milan squeezed my shoulder. “I’m going to fly out to New York with you when you pick up Diana and ...” She shook her head cutting off my protest. “No, I want to, I have to be out there anyway for some … some stuff. I already called my assistant and had her book us tickets and, while we’re there, I’m going to throw her the most kick-ass first birthday party any baby girl ever had. Christy is going to stay here and get the nursery ready and find you a nanny, so this’ll be okay, Carebears, it really will. Your parents are going to come around. You just need to …” her voice drifted off, unsure as to what I needed to do exactly, then smiling determinedly she finished, “… you just need to lay low for a while, not be in the papers, maybe not club for a while, spend some time with Diana. Then they’ll see how great you are, they will, I know it.”

Christy chimed in from the back. “She’s right, Carey, Milan’s always right, and you wait till you see the awesome nursery I’ll put together for my goddaughter. At least there will be one pretty room in that craphole, uhm, sorry, my bad, I mean house.”

We all laughed and it was good that I had that moment with my sweet girls because when I told Karmen my plans, she went off on me. “You’re moving, just like that, with no notice, and you’re going to New York with that f*cking stuck up bitch, Milan?”

I nodded tiredly and stroked Petal, hoping she wasn’t going to do this all night. I was so tired. She laughed nastily. “Okay, well I’m coming too. You can introduce me to Mommy and Daddy.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t really saying no, I was just thinking of my parents' obvious reaction to that idea, of Milan’s reaction.

Karmen didn’t give me a chance to explain that. Abruptly, and without warning, she reached over and slugged me in the shoulder hard enough to knock me back off the bed and make Petal fall out of my arms. Petal yipped and cowered. So did I. No one had ever hit either of us.

Karmen sneered. “You’re f*cking pathetic and if I’m not good enough to be with you in public, you’re not good enough to stay here, so take your f*cking dog that pisses all over my house, and your sad crying ass, and get the f*ck out.”

Stunned and hurt, all I could manage was, “You mean right now?”

She nodded. “Right now.”

Shaking, I picked up Petal and left her condo. I didn’t want Christy or Milan to know, so I drove to a nearby Marriott and checked in. Petal and I stayed there for two days until we flew east with Milan.

Diana’s birthday party at Dylan’s Candy Bar was indeed a kick-ass event. Diana looked like a princess in the pink hand-smocked dress my mother had bought for her and they all came: my mother, her new husband, Daddy and Sarah and little Kells VI, even my long-estranged sisters. Despite my feeling that I was living in a flashback of my old life, my real life, I let myself be happy that day, and it was a happy day, probably my last happy day.

It was also the last time my father ever spoke to me.