Helen of Pasadena Read online

  “You’re right, Mitsy. Give me two minutes. Thank you.”

  “Oh, and I told that awful newsperson Roshelle to leave. What kind of a name is that? Roshelle? She actually wanted a statement from the family. Can you imagine? Really, I knew her grandmother Cecilia. She once served cheese from a can! At a luncheon! Do something with your face, Helen.”

  And with that, Mitsy was gone, and the air returned to the ladies’ lounge.

  “Ohhh, that was good. You were magnificent!” Candy lauded, diving into her pocketbook in search of her touch-up bag. “She owes you and she knows it.”

  “Owes me? What do you mean?” I said through pursed lips, as Candy wielded her Bobbi Brown lip liner on my melted face.

  “Mitsy Fairchild would not have personally taken care of the ‘awful newsperson’ unless she had some suspicions. I’ve observed your mother-in-law for years at all those parties, and that is not her normal behavior. She never speaks to the press, not even to me. The Mitsy I know would have commanded Carmen at coat check to take care of the news van and the reporter. But Mitsy went and spoke to the news ho in person. And knew her name. That speaks volumes.”

  As usual, in matters of manners and mannerisms, Candy was on to something.

  “She won’t say a word. And she’s on your side,” Tina agreed. “That’s where you want her.”

  I had no idea how right they were.

  I was exhausted beyond words, drained literally and figuratively. Every tear, every smile, every sliver of polite conversation was sucked from my body. I was so grateful the day was over. Recently I’d read about a new business that planned funerals that were more of a party and less of a solemn occasion. Balloon drops, margarita machines, DJs spinning tunes. “Putting the Fun Back in Funeral” was their motto. At the time, it seemed like a great idea, like really buying into the eulogy cliché, “So-and-so would want us to all go out and have a beer instead of being here mourning!” But now I knew that kind of funeral would fall short, not allowing for the anger and the missing that follow any death.

  Even a death like Merritt’s so filled with contradictions. There was no way I could have toasted Merritt with a margarita today. And yet, here in the bed I’d shared with Merritt for so many years, I was unspeakably sad. The man I’d lived with for fifteen years, who had slept with me when my body was twenty pounds thinner and stretch-mark-free, was gone. Goddamn it, Merritt.

  Couldn’t you have died before you told me you were leaving?

  My parents and brother had come back to the house after the reception and put out a simple dinner. Aiden and I were too wrung out to eat much of my mother’s famous vegan carrot bisque. I let Aiden watch an inappropriate movie with Des while I collapsed on the couch, not saying much of anything. My mother, humming Joni Mitchell’s “Down to You,” quietly cleaned up, started some laundry, hustled my drunken father to bed and reassured me about the next day. “Sleep in, poor thing. Don’t get up for us. Do you need anything before we go to the airport? I can’t believe we have to get back for that felting symposium.”

  I said I’d be fine. If being fine meant living with murderous thoughts about TV newswomen. I kept that sentiment to myself.

  But now, lying in the dark, I couldn’t get that worked up about Roshelle. I hadn’t been married to her. I had been married to Merritt.

  “Mom?” Aiden’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Aiden, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just had a bad dream or something. Can I stay in your room? I have my sleeping bag.” At 13, he was too old to snuggle up in bed with me like he would have done two or three years ago. He knew it and I knew it, though I wished it wasn’t so.

  “Of course. Do you need a pillow?”

  “Sure.”

  I got up, tucked a pillow under his head and gave him a kiss on his shaggy bangs. Maybe I should have made him cut his hair before the funeral. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”

  “I know. ’Night.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The law offices of Owens and Hapstead were in a charming 1920s Craftsman bungalow just south of City Hall, restored to National Register of Historic Places standards while winning a Gold Arrow Award from Pasadena Heritage for the “reclamation of priceless period light fixtures.” Those kinds of honors led to a celebratory cocktail party and many photos in Candy’s column. Merritt and I had attended, of course, because Billy Owens, Esquire, an award-winning architectural reclaimer, was not just our lawyer, he was also like a brother to Merritt. Billy had been Merritt’s best friend since kindergarten at Millington right through graduation at USC. Without any of the drama that a lifelong female friendship endures, the two men had gone from sandbox to frat house to country club smoothly. They routinely played golf, drank martinis and tailgated at football games while calling each other by their frat nicknames, Billbo and Merles. Billy was the first person I called after the accident. I ended up comforting him.

  I liked Billy. Funny, smart, not too smug for a Trojan. Though his insistence at getting completely drunk at USC football games had begun to bother me more and more the closer my own son got to college age. Isn’t he getting too old for that, I’d ask Merritt, who would roll his eyes. What was I missing? I’ve never understood midday drinking. Where’s the appeal to being tired and cranky at 4 in the afternoon? And in a football stadium, no less.

  Billy’s wife, Lacey, was a California blond from San Diego, full of energy and good intentions, fueled by Diet Coke and an addiction to spin class. My God, she must spin two hours a day! Where does she find the time with those three kids? Lacey also worked in fundraising at Crown City Hospital, putting her genuine spirit to good use. We’d been out a million times with the Owenses, but the call I got from Billy the day after the funeral gave me an uneasy feeling.

  Please meet me at the office. Bruno will be there, Billy had said in a somber tone. Bruno is our, well, now my accountant. I knew I’d have to face the money issues soon enough, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.

  “Helen, come in. You’re here. Good, good. How are you? Are you okay? Patrice, get Helen a latte. You look like you need a latte. Patrice will get you a latte,” Billy said in a rush.

  How unusual. Billy was like a well-educated maitre d’-at-large, cool and casual in any social or business situation, always appearing to be in charge of hospitality even if the get-together was not his to supervise. But not today. Was he nervous? “Obviously, you know Bruno Purcelli,” he said.

  Bruno nodded. So solid, that Bruno. Merritt had said you should always have an Italian accountant because they understand blood money. An Italian accountant would never cheat you because he knew that someday, you’d get him back. Bruno had been doing our books for years, but I only saw him every April, when we met to get the tax rundown. I’d done a lot of nodding in those meetings, understanding about 30 percent of the information. I had Merritt. Why get all worked up over the particulars? Now I was regretting not paying closer attention. But I had confidence in Bruno. He would help me get through the next few years. I knew there would have to be changes, but Merritt had always assured me that he “was covered,” whatever that meant.

  “Helen, I don’t know how to say this,” Billy stammered. Now I knew he really was nervous.

  Shit, this was not good.

  “You are not in good shape—I mean financially, not physically. As you know, this is a tough time and the economy is a mess. Merritt made some bad investments, and when the credit meltdown happened, he got caught short. Really, really short. You are in a pretty deep hole.”

  Bruno nodded confirmation.

  Breathe, breathe. Speak.

  “I don’t understand. How could this have happened? Merritt didn’t say a word. Nothing. Not ‘stop spending.’ Nothing. Obviously we talked about the stock market plunging and the recession and his business, but he just kept saying that he would be fine. How bad is it, Bruno?”

  Bruno painted a picture that included a wiped-out stock portfolio, an overleveraged ho
me-equity line, high credit-card debt and unpaid insurance premiums. Personally, our finances were in shambles. And thanks to the stock market decline and clients fleeing like rats, Merritt’s stake in Fairchild Capital was virtually worthless. Even if Merritt were alive, we’d be in trouble.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucking Merritt. “The house?” I asked. “You’ll have to sell. Hopefully, you can get the price you need to cover your debt and have money left over for a down payment on, you know, something, somewhere.”

  “Aiden’s school?’

  “They have financial aid. Or maybe Mitsy can help.”

  This is what it feels like to get punched in the gut. Fantastic, I am now a 40-year-old widow with half a masters degree in an arcane subject who has to rely on her mother-in-law to pay the bills. It’s like a freaking Jane Austen novel. Maybe I can get a parson to marry me. I was going to lose it.

  “How did this happen?” I repeated over and over again. I was met with silence. In my mind, I replayed conversations with Merritt over the past few years, and none reflected anything more than slight concern over our finances. Sure, it had been a bad eighteen months, but Merritt was not concerned. We’re good, Merritt had said when I’d asked him weekly about the economy crashing down around us.

  We’re good? We were screwed, and we’d been screwed for some time.

  “Billy, I just don’t understand. Even if Merritt were here, alive, how was he going to get out of this?” Billy looked down for a moment, like a frat boy caught in a hazing ritual by campus security, and I knew. Oh, I knew. He knew about Roshelle. It was written all over his face, his truly shame-filled face.

  Now I understood. “Did she have money?” I leveled at Billy. “Was that how Merritt was going to get out of this? Dump me, marry her, blame his financial mess on our divorce and live off her money?”

  Bruno pretended not to hear and looked out the window, suddenly fascinated by the drought-tolerant California native sage garden recognized by Sunset magazine as “One of the 10 Best in 2006.”

  Then I remembered what Candy had sniped at the funeral. Her real name was Slusky. Of course! She was Shelly Slusky of Slusky’s Wash & Wipe, 64 stores strong, the awful ads always clamored. I’d learned from my years in the Golden State that if you were the first at anything in California—from car washes to orange juice bottlers to real estate development—you were loaded. That was it! Merritt was trading in our debt for her fortune. In turn, she would become the proper Roshelle Fairchild, rather than the unfortunately named Shelly Slusky.

  Billy was not so calm and cool now. He was now the reluctant apologist for his dead best friend, a lying, cheating and financially reckless father. “Helen, I tried to tell him. I tried to get him to slow down with everything. To think. Just stop and think. The investments, the, umm, changes in his life. He just made one bad decision after another. Lots of guys did, Helen, guys in the capital business went nuts. Everybody went crazy. Merritt was just one of them.”

  “Changes? Is that what you boys call leaving a wife and child broke and humiliated for a weathergirl? And nuts? He borrowed against his life insurance policy. That’s not nuts, that’s mean. That’s crazy. My God, poor Aiden. How can we afford high school, never mind college?”

  He shook his head, afraid to meet my eyes. All the anger I’d felt toward Merritt about his betrayal, I now wanted to dump on Billy for things that were absolutely not his fault, yet somehow he had allowed.

  “Billy, all the tailgating, the dinners, the laughs … I thought you were my friend too, not just his. How could you let this happen and not even tell me? And you,” I whirled around to Bruno. “Didn’t I have a right to know that everything was gone? Wasn’t my name on those papers, too?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  Bruno looked me straight in the eyes, like the good Italian accountant he was. “You signed away everything years ago. All those papers you signed, turning everything over to Merritt, I never understood why you did it.”

  Because Merritt told me he would take care of everything, and I believed him.

  By the time I was 12, I was the financially responsible one in our family. I paid the bills, balanced the checkbook and made sure my brother had lunch money. I kept the books for the craft business as soon as I figured out Nell and Peter were on the verge of doing time for tax evasion. (My parents weren’t criminals, just woefully disorganized.) When I became Mrs. Fairchild, I gratefully gave up the business of life. Let somebody else worry about money; I’ve got a million other things on my worry list.

  That was the unsaid deal Merritt and I had struck. Like lots of husbands and wives. I kept up my end, leaving my studies, raising a family, creating a home. I thought Merritt was keeping up his end.

  I trusted my husband. That’s why, Bruno, but you would never understand.

  “I wish you had asked more questions, Helen.”

  “So do I, Bruno, so do I.”

  Patrice knocked and entered, bearing a latte in a tall mug on a William Morris reproduction tray. “Here’s your coffee, Mrs. Fairchild. Can I get you anything else?”

  “Yes,” I said standing up and downing the beverage like a shot of courage. “Make copies of every document in that stack and send them to my house. Better send them today. I may not have a house tomorrow, Patrice.”

  Poor Patrice, in her Talbots tweed skirt and cardigan. She looked like someone had just asked to borrow her toothbrush. I was not usually this forceful in this office.

  Billy stood up. “Helen, I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do.…”

  I cut him off. “No. No, thank you. Remember, I grew up in a yurt, not Pasadena. I’m used to having nothing.”

  I sat in the driveway of the Monterey Colonial that Merritt and I had bought twelve years ago, when the market was down and we were flush. “It’s a fixer, but what a neighborhood!” said our agent, Nancy Taunton, a striking, early 50s divorcée in a size-6 Dana Buchman suit. Nancy enjoyed stating the obvious, as the house was a wreck inside but on a picture-perfect street. The Oak Knoll neighborhood of Pasadena was filled with traditional landscaping and long, curving driveways leading to architecturally significant homes of the 1920s and ’30s. To say it was a dream neighborhood for someone like me was an understatement. It’s not like a movie set, it was a movie set. Father of the Bride, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Brothers & Sisters—all shot on this street. As a kid, I hadn’t known anyone who lived like this, and now, somehow, it was me. When I started to cry, Merritt and Nancy pretended not to notice.

  “It’s our forever house,” I said, repeating a phrase I’d heard Cissy Montague use at Mommy and Me aerobics. Cissy and her husband, Bart, childhood sweethearts and one-time Cloverfield classmates, had just purchased an enormous house in the same neighborhood on fashionable Jordan Road. A house on Jordan was the big time, another realm of real estate, within reach to only a select few. And that select few included Cissy McMurphy Montague and her prematurely balding but decent husband.

  Thankfully, Cissy had full-time help, so she could spend many hours a week chasing down highboys and hand-printed toile wall-paper with her decorator, Pierce DeVine, while the nanny Maria watched McMurphy Montague, first-born son. The renovations had been rumored to be in the millions, which was a lot of money in the mid-’90s, and included moving the pool. Move a pool? I didn’t even know that was possible, but Cissy wanted that pool to get more sun, so she moved it.

  “She’s only 30. How can they afford a place like that?” I’d asked Candy at the time. Hey, Merritt and I had some money, but not move-a-pool money.

  “Oh, aren’t you cute, little wood nymph from Oregon! Cissy’s family founded Standard Oil. She’s loaded, and she wants to move the pool. So she’s moving it.”

  I would later learn that when I asked about the origin of someone’s wealth in town, the response always seemed to be “they were a founding family of Standard Oil.” If only my family had known that crude oil was more profitable than patchouli oil. At the time, this bit of int
el about Standard Oil seemed like incredible good fortune for someone like Cissy, who was not exactly a rocket scientist.

  “Bart and I decided that this is our forever house,” Cissy announced to all of us in aerobics one day, using little McMurphy for a bicep curl. My heart had opened up to Cissy. So she moved a pool, and she had a full-time nanny and a cleaning woman. That’s okay. She wanted to make a home for her family. I could forgive her the endless supply of Cole Haan loafers. Such confidence in the future, such security in her husband’s love. In that moment, I wanted to be Cissy more than anything.

  Now my forever house would go on the market and be sold at a huge loss, financially and emotionally. So would the iceberg rose hedge, the portico with the Brown Jordan furniture where I loved to read, Aiden’s giant tree swing and my white-tiled Pierce DeVine kitchen with the Viking stove, the Miele dishwasher and the hand-blown Italian light fixtures. Goodbye to the red dining room that Tina insisted was the “must paint” color of 1999 and the ridiculous upscale urinal Merritt put in the poolhouse loo. Maybe this was why my parents eschewed traditional housing situations. It was hard to get emotionally attached to a seasonal rental.

  I mourned my real estate more than my late husband. I’d truly become a Californian.

  How was I going to tell Aiden? What was I going to tell Aiden? Well, son, you’re a teenager now, and I know you thought your dad driving into a panda was as bad as it could get, but I have worse news. Your father lost all his money and most of yours, he took up with a woman who got a boob job for her 21st birthday, and you may not be able to go to college. So get over the grieving, cause we’ve gotta pack!

  Cynicism in a time of anger can be like prayer.

  Where was my road map? I needed some sort of agreed-upon timeline for my situation: Recently Betrayed and Bereaved and Bereft. I was not a big fan of forging new paths. Me, I’ll take the road more traveled and be satisfied with the result.