Diamond Girl (21 page)

In addition, there were gondolas, though it was not 'a Night in Venice'. The gondolas would be filled by four thousand deep golden roses and, for entertainment, a performance by Harry Connick Jr., all to be followed by dancing and a silent auction.

The greatest thing up for bid was a private week at the Pitti Palace, which actually was in Florence. Given the evening’s overhead, the expected profit for the foundation would be around a hundred thousand dollars, but that wasn’t the point. The point, as Carly assured me, was to raise awareness for the plight of juvenile diabetics and, presumably, though I didn’t say it out loud, to raise awareness of Florence’s unfortunate lack of gondolas. 

I assured Carly that everything she had given me to do on her ten thousand point check list was done and in order. She rapped her hand against my little French desk, making Petal bark.

Carly rolled her eyes and snapped out. “Your mother is back and she is annoying me. She wants to know why she wasn’t in the loop on the
fundraiser and what her chairperson activities are? It’s bullshit, Carey, me having to deal with this shit right now since I didn’t know she had any fucking chairperson duties and I understood  that you were hostessing this event. So, since this can’t be my problem, it must be yours. Call her up and deal with it.” 

“Carly, I didn’t know my mother was gone, let alone
back, and I haven’t talked to her in months, so I have no idea why she is bothering you. What are you asking me?” 

She rolled her eyes. “I am asking you to do your job, Carey.”

“How is my mother my job?” 

“Your job is handling things I don’t want to, so that I can handle the important things for our clients, so that I can run a P.R. business, and so that you can have a job. Now, if you can’t handle calling up your own mother and telling her that this event is a done deal, and that you, not she - the apparently soon-to-be-no-longer-Mrs. Kells Kelleher, is the hostess, I will have to do it, and I don’t want to, and I will be extremely pissed if I have to. Handling little family dramas is not what I do and I shouldn’t have to tell you to handle this, you should want to.
So capisch, Carey?” 

I did love my new job, I loved having to be somewhere every day, and the way it made Daddy and Michael and Milan and Christy so proud of me, and Carly wasn’t being mean to me, she was just being Carly, the same way my mother was always being my mother and, anyway, I thought she was right. If I couldn’t handle telling my mother she was persona non grata, then I wasn’t tough enough to be in PR. Besides, I had
been wanting to hand my mother a rejection slip for years and now I had my chance. I had told Daddy I would do it weeks ago and I had tried. It wasn’t my fault that she didn’t tell me she was out of town or consider me important enough to call back.

The more I considered how degrading it was that she had called my boss instead of me to discuss the benefit, the angrier I got. I told Carly not to think of it again.

She responded curtly that she wouldn’t and breezed out of the office in a wave of platinum hair and black clothes, looking a little like the witch that people said she was. She could have had a bit part in 'The Devil Wears Prada' but, in her case, 'Satan wears Alexander McQueen' would have been more appropriate.

I picked up the phone and dialed my mother’s cell, preparing to leave a longer message than my previous ones.

To my surprise she answered. “Carey, there you are. Did you know I had to call your employer to reach you? Isn’t that ridiculous, my own daughter? How are you, darling? I’m so anxious to see you.” 

Darling?
Anxious to see me?
It was pretty easy to figure out that old Mumsy had gone round the bend.

I answered cautiously. “Great, Mom, then it’s a good thing you finally tracked me down by calling Carly. I know I’m hard to get a hold of - if you don’t call my home phone or the cell, that is. I have tried calling you a few times, and I even stopped by. Your maid and secretary both told me you were out of town and unavailable. So where have you been that has no cell service - Mongolia? - doing one of your Outward Bound climbs?”

Her irritating faux-laugh, which is her only laugh, rang in my ear. “Outward Bound? Aren’t you hysterical? No, I was in Switzerland. It’s so lovely this time of year, and ...”

“Oh, some more face work, Mom?
And Switzerland now? Is that because you’ve been - what do they call it? - over-served by anyone accredited by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, or do they just have laxer laws over there about being injected with unborn fetal tissue to help a girl keep that dewy soft look?”

I heard her inhale. “I see, Carolyn, that despite glowing reports from your father, you haven’t in reality matured a bit. I’m sorry to hear that. I was rather hoping
…”

“Rather hoping for what, Mumsy?” 

She sighed. “Well, I suppose that I was hoping for a chance to get to know my daughter now that she is a young woman and not a difficult, disturbed child, but clearly I will need to wait a few more years.”

My little office spun around me, the pink walls becoming red. How, how did she do it? No matter what, it was always me who was the fuck-up, the one in the wrong, never her. I couldn’t win with her. I couldn’t best her and I should have stopped trying years ago. Daddy was right; she still had teeth, big sharp ones. When I didn’t say anything, she spoke again, her voice the purr it always was when she knew she had drawn blood. That I didn’t hang up shows how mentally incompetent I am, I guess.

“Darling Carey, let’s not fight. I wish you weren’t always so hypersensitive. At any rate, I do want to see you and, of course, I’m dying to hear what I can do to help at the benefit. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you let me take you to lunch tomorrow? We can go anywhere you want. Well, of course I hope you’ll pick somewhere with a healthy diet, a mother worries. I have the most terrible visions of you eating all sorts of things that are bad for your condition, but never mind, you get to pick, name the place.”

Hating myself, I mumbled that anywhere was fine. She briskly told me to meet her at La Goulue at one the following day.

I rolled my eyes on hearing her pick. La Goulue was one of the many replacement restaurants for Mortimer’s. Mortimer’s had been the go-to restaurant for women like my mother for decades with bad food - not that they ate it - fawning service, a high turnaway rate for regular people and, most important, the ability to be seen by the same fifty women you had exchanged air kisses with the night before and would be doing so again that evening. Since the owner of Mort's had dropped dead suddenly, the East Side trophies and their mother-in-laws had been desperately scrambling, trying to decide on a new luncheon venue.

They would try different East Side eateries, their already tightened faces more tight than usual with suspicion. Would the new restaurant try to overcharge them? Would the waiters understand who they were? Worst of all, was the possibility that the maître d’ might just let in anyone. It was a difficult transitional time for them.

Finally, a great many of the women settled down at La Goulue, feeling that, though it could never be Mortimer’s, it would do. I don’t know why I said yes. I mean I had Carly’s orders to pass on a message but I could have done it by phone. I guess I said yes because she had finished her order to meet by saying, “Good, darling. I can’t wait to show off my beautiful daughter.”

Pathetic as always, and with much less dignity than my Petal who was much fussier about whom she let stroke her, I left a note for Carly and, grabbing Petal, set off for Bergdorf’s to find the perfect outfit for our mother-daughter lunch.

Pippa’s replacement was the gorgeous Denise, my new PS, and when I told her what I needed, she was a whirl of efficiency. Even I felt a little bad walking home later, dropping five figures on a luncheon outfit was over the top, even for me. Michael laughed when he saw it and made me put it on for him, and then he made me take it off for him, giving a running commentary.

“Miss Kelleher, ladies and gentleman, is now removing the jacket of her ... what is it, baby?”

I laughed trying to be sexy in a non-sexy outfit. “You peasant. Miss Kelleher is now removing the jacket of her Dolce and Gabbana floral matealasse jacket. She is trying to do so very quickly so that her horny boyfriend can remove the matching dress underneath.” 

“Ahh yes, of course, the floral matealasse. How could I forget? Please continue, Miss Kelleher - remove, remove.”

I did and stood before him in the sleeveless pink and cream dress. He walked over, turned me around, lowered the zipper, and let the dress fall to my ankles. I stepped over the pile, wearing only a garter, black silk stockings and the new black Loubotin heels Denise had insisted I buy despite my protest that I had thirty identical pairs at home.

Michael was breathing shallowly. I dimpled at him.

“Now Miss Kelleher is wearing a garter and stockings by Agent Provocateur, and heels by Loubotin. Should she remove them, Mr. Annador?”

He crowded me back towards the bed. “She should not remove them.” 

I didn’t.

*  *  *

The next day when I walked into La Goulue, several of the women sitting near my mother’s table eyed me with admiration.

Mother tilted her face for a kiss and smiled at me. “Darling, wonderful to see you and I do love that suit. I nearly ordered it for myself at the collections this year, but one mustn’t be too extravagant. Of course, I suppose your father is still paying your bills, so it’s not a concern.” I remained standing, planning to turn right around and leave, but she put her hand on my arm.  “Please, Carey, sit down, it really is so good to see you and you look beautiful, darling. I couldn’t be prouder of you. Please, can’t we have a nice lunch together?”

I stayed and I was lost.

Chapter 23

After that, I guess Mom and I were best friends; at least that is what anyone would think if they studied the pictures taken of us during that couple of years. Of course, no one would be able to see the pictures unless they collected clippings from Page Six and W.

I was so flattered that she suddenly wanted to be with me that I began attending all the usual fundraisers open to a girl from my world: an evening with Don Giovanni for Lupus research, a ball in honor of an endangered purse.

I made that up but, honestly, in New York you can go out nearly every night of the winter to some event that requires an opulent dress and be photographed for having done nothing more than attending. So, for a while, in my own tiny world I was as much photographed in ballrooms as Milan was in the clubs.

Since pictures of women of a certain age, with their dead white skin stretched too tightly over bones, wearing dresses that only they think are flattering, are not very appetizing, I was one of the girls who was photographed a lot and, in almost every frame, there is my mother, her long fingers with their blood red nails resting on my shoulder, her head tilted towards mine, lips stretched back as far as her remaining skin allowed, in a smile.

She was the very essence of a loving mother in every single two second photo-op.

Neither Michael nor Daddy was thrilled at my new closeness to her. Michael had detested her on sight and Daddy, well, he had learned to detest her long before. I kept attending though. I couldn’t say no when she would call me up and ask me to be her 'date' for the evening. 

Michael thought I should. “Just tell the old bitch to go away. She didn’t want you before this, so why should you run to her now? Jesus, Carey, come on, baby, can’t you tell when you’re being punked? She’s just using you to get her picture taken and to piss off your dad at t
he same time,” said the boy whose mother had always adored him.

He was right about one thing, though. Daddy was pissed about it.

“Carey, why is it every time I pick up the paper there is a photo of you with your mother? And why have you taken to including her in foundation events after I specifically asked you not to and, moreover, you promised me that you would handle removing her?”

Carly didn’t say anything after I showed up for the first foundation event arm-in-arm with my mother. She just shook her head. I could tell she thought I was skating on thin ice, not emotionally, which is something she wouldn’t have cared about, but with my father’s good will, and, brash and noisy though she was, her own father’s good will was something she worked hard at maintaining. P.R. companies come and go, she once told me, but family is forever, and by that I understood family money is forever, if there is a lot of it, and it is the smart heiress who remembers that.

I hated having Michael mad at me. I hated letting him go out at night without me. He said he had to be out at night, his whole business was networking and, up until I became my mother’s escort, I had almost always gone with him, but more and more I was on call for her.

I think I believed him, or mostly believed him, that he had to be out
at night. Well, I wanted to believe him. I asked Carly once that winter if she ever got tired of having to go out night after night, schmoozing the clients.

Carly was always sharp-as-nails in every way. She tilted her head and gave me a half smile. “Is that what your little boyfriend is telling you, Carey, that he has to be out at night for
…” she made quote marks in the air, “… public relations?”