Helen of Pasadena Read online

  Growing up, I knew my situation with my tie-dyed parents and my haphazard home schooling with the occasional semester in public school was not like the other kids. My best friend was Jessica Holstrom, who had a television (we didn’t), a mother who wore pantsuits (my mother wore Indian-print wraparound skirts long after their day) and a Brady Bunch lunchbox (I took my pita bread sandwiches to school in a string bag). I wanted that Brady Bunch existence. What a lovely home, Mrs. Brady.

  But the Castor household lacked anything resembling structure. Other families seemed to be executing a time-honored plan. They wore new clothes in September, not hand-me-downs, attended church on Sunday instead of selling crafts under a tent, wrote to Santa Claus instead of celebrating the winter solstice. I watched Jessica’s older brothers taking the SATs and getting into the University of Oregon. Slow, steady, completely expected steps that lead to an adult life circumscribed by order, not the Grateful Dead’s tour schedule.

  Even though my parents seemed uninterested in the calendar that the rest of society was following, I wanted to play along. I begged them to go to a regulation public high school in Sisters, Oregon, rather than “experience education through life,” which was their ill-conceived plan. (There’s only so many times a teenager can read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and On the Road before she asks, “Why don’t these people get jobs? What is wrong with them?”) I loved high school: the textbooks, the lockers and the ringing bells announcing class changes. My classmates were the sons and daughters of lumber mill workers, Forest Service and Department of Transportation employees, parents with uniforms and time clocks and permanent addresses. My teachers had full curriculums; we were busy every day.

  I gravitated to history and literature, soaking up the names, dates and patterns, taking honors classes and independent studies. I happened into Latin with a well-meaning teacher, Mr. Berman, who guessed I might like the precision of translation, and he was right. It was Mr. Berman who helped me get into Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, on an academic scholarship.

  At Willamette, a beautiful liberal arts college founded by the Methodists, I thrived. I discovered dorm food, plentiful and mediocre. I ate meat with abandon, after years of eating macrobiotic food before macrobiotic food was edible. I gained twenty pounds the first year, but not because of beer and pizza, the usual culprits. (My parents had been offering me home-brewed beer since the eighth grade.) I put on twenty pounds of bacon and chipped beef. I liked being surrounded by normal kids with normal traditions. Carol singing around the Christmas tree on the quad! Sign me up!

  I focused on classics immediately, never even considering another major. Classical Greek, history of religion, mythology, literature, philosophy. (My worst subject. Too theoretical for me. More facts, less rhetoric, please.) I reveled in my complete immersion in an ancient world filled with mystery, sex and romance. But also filled with discipline—the strict rules of classical architecture, the complicated but elegant language of the Greeks. It all got me. Like every other kid in America at the time, I wanted to be Indiana Jones, without the spiders, the giant rolling boulders or the theft of sacred ancient artifacts, which I was firmly against, of course.

  And I was on my way there in grad school at Berkeley when I met Merritt. He wasn’t exactly a Bronze Age hero, more like a favored king. But what he offered appealed to me: a life on schedule, on course, with a purpose.

  Now where is that beaten path that I loved so much? Now what the hell am I supposed to do?

  I’ve watched what divorced women do in Pasadena: They sell the big house, move to the lovely two-bedroom condo off South Lake Avenue and lose twenty pounds through a new regime of stress and yoga. Somehow, in that first year post-divorce, they find the will to blow dry their hair and attend the school holiday program solo, smiling a lot and laughing wildly at wildly unfunny comments. Eventually they get their real estate license or land a job at a local charity, hopeful that someday, once their kids are out of high school and through the eating-disorder/painkiller-addiction/low-GPA phase, they’ll meet a nice man, remarry and travel to Europe as a couple. Until then, they’ll tell you that they’re happy reconnecting with their women friends and going to the movies when the kids are at the ex’s (“Finally, after so many years of animated movies! One with real people in period dress! I love that James McAvoy. What else has he been in?”) Just like Nancy Taunton, the former real estate agent who was now Nancy Nelson, retired and living in a condo in Solana Beach with husband number #2. Good for Nancy; it only took her a decade to get there.

  My mother always says, “First things first,” which was a pretty funny personal credo for someone to whom the “first thing” used to be a cup of chamomile tea and a bong hit. But she was onto something. What I have here is Operation First Things First. I can do this, with enough coffee and denial.

  I took out my iPhone and texted Candy: need real estate agent pls advise

  There, first things first.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Don’t worry. I know the market is down, but not for a property like this. This is someone’s dream. We’ll get offers on the first day,” Rita Beghosian, my new Armenian real estate agent, told me. “Priced right. And such class.”

  Candy had recommended Rita. “She’s a killer. She’s the only one making money in the downturn. Armenians are tough and Rita is the toughest. You know, they are the best salespeople. They’ve taken over the sales floors at Macy’s and Nordstrom. They are good. They started at TJ Maxx and Mervyn’s and worked their way up right into DKNY. Rita started in apartment leasing, and now she’s selling $5 million homes. She won’t let you down.”

  Candy was right about the Armenians and about Rita. The Pasadena area now had the largest population of Armenians outside of their homeland. They brought their delicious chicken and their great bakeries, and they started taking over small businesses from limo driving to Pack N’ Posts. The women staked out retail sales for their territory, and now they dominated every department store and discount store in the area. Rita was a trailblazer in real estate, selling her way right into a top neighborhood, Anne Klein suits and a Cadillac STS. Who knew they made cars that color purple?

  Tina was doing the walk-through with me. “You are not signing another legal document without me, do you understand?” She’d put that dusty Yale Law degree to work and reviewed the stack of papers I’d gotten from Bill Owens’ office and shuddered. “You did some really stupid things. Merritt was setting you up for his next life and you fell for it. There’s nothing I can do now, but I won’t let it happen again. It just floors me how smart women like you can be duped. I say that with love.”

  And I took it with love.

  Tina wanted to check out that Rita was on the up-and-up, and I needed the moral support to walk through my house pointing out the special features as if I were a disinterested third party. In a steady voice I called out, “Here’s the temperature-controlled wine closet,” and “Make sure you include in the brochure that the tiles around the fireplace are Batchelders, original to the house and considered some of the finest in Pasadena.”

  This is not my beautiful house.

  When I told Aiden that we were going to have to make some immediate changes in our life, like selling the house, he didn’t understand.

  “Can I still have a graduation party here?”

  Merritt had promised that he would have a “kick-ass” eighth-grade graduation party, with a DJ, lights and deluxe taco cart. Now I’m wondering how he thought we would pay for all that, but I kept my mouth shut. Keep the myth alive.

  “Aiden, if we sell the house, we won’t be here when you graduate. We’ll get together with your friends, just not here.”

  “Can’t we just stay here until I finish at Millington? Why do we have to move now?”

  “Because we can’t. The house is a lot to keep up, and we just can’t manage it without Dad.”

  “Can’t you get a job?” His tone was increasingly angry, almost furious.

  I
was tempted to fire back, Yes, women who have spent many years raising their children and volunteering at pumpkin festivals are highly valued in the marketplace. But I didn’t. The school psychologist told me that a little dose of reality was fine, but giant waves of real emotion on my part could put a lot of pressure on Aiden. “Aiden is not your partner, he is your son. Don’t start treating him like he is a stand-in for Merritt.” So I continued carefully. “I will. But first things first. The house is a big financial drain, and we need to move into someplace more manageable,” I said in what I hope was a firm but gentle tone.

  “Here’s the list.”

  Rita handed me a to-do list (Yeah! I love a list!) of minor home repairs to complete before the open house. Did I really have to paint my red dining room?

  “Yes, red is very last millennium. Try blue, it’s soothing. It’s a new day. People want spa, not power. I’ll send my men over. Juan is in charge. He can do this all in about a week or two. We’ll have this on the market by the end of the month.” Rita squeezed my arm. “You’ll get through this, and we’ll find a place for you that you love, well, almost as much.” And off went the lilac Cadillac into the lilac sunset.

  Tina looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay” had become a relative term. I was okay in this minute, but maybe not five minutes from now.

  “Is it déclassé to tell you that you look thinner? I think you’ve lost weight,” Tina said, climbing into her new Prius. “I’ve gotta go get the girls at school then we’re off to ballet. Do you need me to get Aiden?”

  I shook my head no. “He’s covered. Jan Gamble is bringing him home. She’s been a saint. I just hope she doesn’t show up with another casserole.”

  Every day for the last week, Jan had arrived at my house bearing a covered dish and bag of salad from some well-meaning Millington mother. Word had gotten around that Jan was taking Aiden to school, and she’d become the de facto Courier of Casseroles. I’d come to think of the dinners as the currency of the uncomfortable. Apparently, people who wanted to say, “I’m sorry for your loss” found that lasagna did the job much better than a sympathy card or a phone call. My housekeeper, Emilia Sanchez, now spent an hour a day organizing and redistributing the casserole overload to her large family with my blessing.

  “Well, obviously you haven’t been eating all those carbs because you are slimming down. Silver lining!” Tina was a big believer in the silver lining. When she was blackballed by the Junior League by a former high school foe? Silver lining, more time for kickboxing! And when she totaled her husband’s new black Jaguar on its maiden voyage? Silver lining, she could now get the blue one she really wanted! So the fact that she viewed my husband’s death and my subsequent financial ruin as a weight-loss opportunity only made me laugh. Everybody needs an optimist on the payroll.

  Just as Tina was heading out, a black Range Rover was heading in. Melanie Martin, former exec now turned benefit chair, crunched her way down the gravel driveway, tooting the horn slightly to signal her arrival. Candy referred to women like Melanie as a Neutron Mom: once-powerful business executives, now at-home mothers whose loss in status results in instability and possible implosion at any minute.

  Melanie Martin was a poster girl for the Neutron Mom Syndrome.

  Despite what that doctor on the radio says, some mothers should not leave the workplace. The transition from business to parenting is too much for their ego. Meet Melanie. She was the senior VP of marketing for the Langham Luxury Hotel Group until the birth of her twins, Dustin and Denzel. As the VP of marketing, she’d enjoyed high-level strategic thinking, exciting travel and lavish budgets for events that only the very best attended. As the at-home mother of twins, she enjoyed almost none of those things. At her big job in her big office, she had a big support staff: underlings getting her coffee, scheduling her day, filing her expense reports and making things happen when Melanie uttered her favorite phrase, “Make it happen.” At home, she had only the nanny to boss around, and as a result, she’d spent years watching lovely women from Central America quit after a month because, as they would tell my Emilia, “Mrs. Melanie is crazy.”

  Melanie used the Scorch and Burn Method to reach the top of the Pasadena charity chain. Melanie was so controlling, so unpleasant to work with, that fellow volunteers just got out of her way. Mind you, these moms had Stanford MBAs or law degrees, too, but they had made the adjustment to civilian life better than Melanie. If Melanie wanted to do everything herself, from choosing the typeface for the invitations to designing centerpieces, then so be it—such was the prevailing attitude of others. Why dig your heels in with someone that power-hungry? Now Melanie had risen to the chair of the Five Schools Benefit, and her minions included everyone else on the committee, like me.

  The Five Schools Benefit was held every May in Pasadena. It was the event of the season. In short, the parents from five predominant private schools held an auction to raise money for the city’s public schools. The tradition was more than 75 years old, which tells you a lot about how long the public school system has been underfunded and how long the parents from the private schools have waged rivalries. Hundreds of thousands of dollars come pouring in, the fruit of tremendous labor, delicate inter-school diplomacy and generous alcohol distribution. Millington, Cloverfield, Redwood, Martindale and Raleigh rotated the cochairmanship, each school getting it once every five years. The result was a nomination coveted by many because it came around so rarely. Typically, only once or twice in your child’s educational career at say, Redwood—the school with no grades and no uniforms but an enormous tuition for all that freedom—would your name even be eligible to be considered to run the benefit. A secret nominating committee comprised of the schools’ development people and former co-chairs tightly guarded the selection process, like Skull and Bones for the socially upward suburban set.

  Melanie Martin’s kids went to Raleigh, the pre-K through 12 school famed for an Ivy League acceptance rate so high it warranted mention on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. (The article created an e-mail frenzy in Pasadena, and hundreds of hours of discussion continue to this day.) Melanie neutroned her way to the top of the Raleigh mothers by leading a shining capital campaign for the new student center. (Yes, every school does need a sushi bar in the cafeteria.) Now she was expending all that pent-up executive energy on Save the Date cards to announce this year’s theme for the Five Schools Benefit: The Best and the Brightest.

  A small cadre of mothers from each school was chosen to fill out the all-important committees: everything from Decorations to Invitations to Menu. Tina, Candy and I had been selected to represent Cloverfield on the executive committee, the result of our wildly successful, and now fateful, Save the Deodar Pines Fundraiser. Tina was in charge of Invitations, Candy was honcho-ing Public Relations, and I was chairing Corporate Sponsorship. Honestly, in the past ten days, I hadn’t given Melanie or the benefit a single thought.

  So what was Melanie doing here?

  We were friends because I’d quickly concluded that being her enemy could be life-threatening, but we’re not close. A couple of soccer teams together when the kids were little and many encounters at the gym and hair salon. She liked me because I humored her, asking her opinion about everything from finding the best math tutors to buying organic turkey. Like many Type A men, Neutron Moms were happiest when they were highlighting their own accomplishments. Finding the best math tutor was an accomplishment in Melanie’s world. But I would never drop by her house to say hello.

  Frankly, she scared me.

  As a freshly coiffed Melanie hopped out of the SUV, the answer became clear. She had a casserole dish. “Helen, I just can’t believe it. I cannot stop thinking about you and Aiden. My heart breaks. How are you doing? Did you see me at the funeral? I had to leave before the reception. Can I give this to your girl?” she said, not pausing for an answer to the question about my well-being. She headed into the house, waving around the frozen spinach lasagna from Viv
ienne’s Gourmet Shoppe and calling for Emilia.

  Yes, Melanie, I did see you at the funeral, and my first and only thought about you was, What are you doing in the third row?

  The lasagna stored in the Hall of Casseroles and a fresh cup of coffee in our hands, Melanie and I settled into the chairs in the eat-in kitchen. I noticed Melanie turned over the pillow as she sat down, looking for some sort of label that my pillow was lacking. She took a big sip of coffee, put the cup down dramatically and turned to me with her best “I’m-the boss-and-I-know-what’s-best” look of empathy.

  “Helen, the executive committee of the benefit had an emergency meeting today to discuss your situation, that’s how concerned we are about you.”

  What meeting? As far as I knew, Tina and Candy hadn’t been contacted about any emergency meeting.

  “You do not have to worry about a thing. Jennifer Braham is stepping right in to fill your shoes for Corporate Sponsorship. Do you know her? She’s a Martindale mom, lives near the Arroyo, husband is at Nestle in marketing. She’ll be great! She did Corporate Sponsorship for the Colorado Street Bridge Summerfest. She’s on top of it and I’m sure you’ll send her your notes and contacts so we won’t miss a beat. This is going to be a tough year to bring back those sponsors and we don’t want you to stress one bit with everything else going on in your life.” Melanie paused briefly for air intake. “I know what you’re thinking, and yes, your name will still be on the invitation as ‘Honorary Committee Chair.’ We like that language, don’t you? Are you so relieved?”

  Actually, I was so stunned.

  The chair of the Corporate Sponsorship Committee usually went to a woman who could do the math and write the proposals and who enjoyed taking mid-level corporate executives to lunch because the Big Boss said it was good for the company image. But the key factor in getting such a prestigious post was your husband. Yes, even in this day and age, your husband’s connections created your value. A powerful and successful husband could make the phone calls to the Big Bosses and get the corporate commitment. The lunches with the company PR person or the community marketing person? Simple follow-up and paperwork that any on-the-ball corporate wife could handle. When IndyMac Bank melted down in 2008, Chrissie Sears resigned her post on Corporate Sponsorship because her husband had lost his job at the bank. And their big, beautiful house. Tongues wagged, but everyone understood that Chrissie had done the right thing for the good of the benefit. Chrissie retained some personal dignity and slinked away to Orange County to live with her parents “to care for them in their old age.” Sure.