Chapter Eleven: Rebecca
After spending all week negotiating the Julian Kingsley deal—but still not getting it closed out—I’m pretty frazzled by the time Friday night rolls around. I sure hope my overprotective mom doesn’t notice; not if I don’t want another round of proving how okay I am during our dinner tonight. It’s not that she means to hover, but lately all the concerned phone calls and searching glances are wearing thin. I guess worrying about me has become a way of life for both my parents.
They came from Georgia to take care of me after my attack, when I was vulnerable and broken, and that’s not an image easily dismissed from anyone’s mind, especially not a parent’s. If I’d sat by my daughter’s bed, listening to the hissing click and groan of the ventilator, brushing her hair every day, praying to God that she’d wake up… well, I don’t think I’d have gotten over that memory either. No wonder they hired a permanent caretaker for their farm back in Dorian, and never went home again.
For some reason, imagining my soft-spoken mother by my bedside, counting each stroke aloud as she brushed my hair, makes me think of Michael. Of how he longs to reach Andrea, but can’t quite make that bridge, and I feel an answering hollow twist of pain in my chest. His anxious love for her is a vivid reflection of my own parents’ worry for me—of all parents throughout the ages, I guess. Sure, sometimes I get frustrated that Judy and Benton won’t go back to Georgia, and I feel smothered and fussed over. But I will be grateful until my dying day that they helped me do this on my terms, my way here in Los Angeles, where I could recover with self-respect. Even though acting is a shadow dream for me now, at least I’m staring at the empty canvas of possibility here in L.A.—not withering away back in Dorian, wondering what might have been.
With as long as it took me to find a parking space, my mom’s already seated on the patio of the French restaurant where we’re meeting for dinner. Her tapered pianist’s fingers tap a rhythm on her date book as she waits, and she’s unaware of my stealthy approach. The date book is not a promising sign. Translation: I’m about to be shanghaied into something. Somebody’s godson who works at Universal and is oh-so-single and oh-so-adorable, that kind of thing; my mother is a firm believer that everyone on the planet should be knit together, all by the work of her gentle, effortless hands. She doesn’t know about Michael—not yet, because I’m still trying to figure out how to explain him into my picture.
“Hey, Mom.” I lean down to kiss her cheek, catching a whiff of Estee Lauder, her signature fragrance for as long as I can remember. Embracing me, she holds on a few seconds too long, unwilling to let go until I make the move to pull away.
“Hey, precious. You look so pretty!” She gestures at my Ann Taylor sundress enthusiastically. “Is that new?”
“I got it a while ago.” I wave off the compliment, grabbing the drinks menu; I sometimes think if I showed up in a flour sack my mom would beam about it.
“You seem shaky.”
“Mom, I am fine,” I assure her, nodding my head vigorously for emphasis. “Totally great. It’s been a very hectic work week, that’s all.” Anything so she won’t worry after we part ways later tonight.
Her gray eyes narrow in appraisal. “I ran into Dr. Nunnally at Vons.”
I offer an unrevealing, “Really?”
“He said you aren’t going to group anymore.”
“He’s not supposed to tell you that!” Without meaning to, my fingers trace the outline of my facial scars.
“Oh, Rebecca.” She leans forward, patting my other hand in loving reassurance. “Precious, he knows how worried I stay about you, that’s all. Don’t blame him.”
“I’m his patient,” I remind her, wriggling my hand free. “He’s not supposed to tell my mother what I’m doing. Actually, Mom, he’s not supposed to tell anyone.”
“He thinks you should get a roommate. Did you know that? He thinks living alone isn’t a good fit for someone like you.” She sips thoughtfully from her Perrier. “I think that’s how he put it. A good fit.”
“Well, so I’ll get married.” I watch a daddy with his toddler daughter, chasing after her in the crowd, grasping at the hem of her flowing April Cornell dress. A lifetime of pursuit captured in a single image. If Keats came back, he’d be a screenwriter.
“Please don’t be sarcastic, Rebecca,” she says, frowning slightly. “I would like to have a real conversation about this for once.”
“All right, how’s this,” I say, meeting her serious gaze. “And please don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But you and Daddy are like these house guests that came to stay forever.”