52 Reasons to Hate My Father Page 12

  When I’ve tried all my usual tricks to clear my mind, I grab my iPad off my beside table and switch it on. Holly, who’s been asleep on the other pillow, picks up her head momentarily to check out what I’m doing and then after evidently deciding that it’s not something to be concerned about, goes back to sleep.

  Since I have no idea where my father keeps the old photographs of my mom, the only place I can see her is on the Internet. I type in the familiar search term Elizabeth Larrabee and wait patiently as Google spits back several pages of results. I click on Images and scroll through all the photographs of my mother from various newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and promotional photo shoots.

  My parents married young. My mom was nineteen and my father was twenty. He had only just started his first company and his headquarters were still located on the kitchen counter of my parents’ tiny apartment in Fresno.

  RJ was born two years after they got married and my father made his first million a year after that. By the time I came into the world, a little less than nine years later, Larrabee Media was a billion-dollar corporation and my father was already the poster child for success.

  Which is why most of the photographs that now stare back at me were taken in the last few years of my mother’s life, when the Larrabee family started to become a recognizable household name.

  I glimpse past the several red-carpet photos and promotional family portraits until I find my favorite picture. It’s from a sixteen-year-old issue of Better Homes and Gardens. The magazine dedicated an entire six-page spread to the Larrabee family’s brand new Bel Air mansion and the custom backyard my mother had designed to resemble her favorite French gardens at the Château de Villandry.

  The photo was taken shortly after my first birthday. My parents are teaching me how to walk, in the garden.

  I don’t have any reliable memories from the time my mother was alive—and no one in this family likes to talk about her—but I have to think that things used to be different back then. That there once was a time when we actually were a family. Maybe not a normal one, but at least a real one. Not this over-the-top propaganda that Caroline feeds to the press.

  I glance over at the gold-silk-covered chaise longue in the middle of my bedroom. The dress I wore to the engagement party is still slung haphazardly across the back from when I stripped it off in a mad rush to shed any and all reminders of the circus act that was going on downstairs.

  Then I look back at the little girl in the photograph in the frilly pink dress, matching bow, and white patent leather shoes. Taking those first wobbly steps while her parents crawl behind her with open arms, ready to catch her if she falls.

  I scrutinize every single detail of the picture-perfect composition and suddenly a cold chill creeps its way up my arm.

  What if I’m wrong?

  What if it has always been like this? And I was too young and naïve to realize it? What if I believed the lies and ate them up just as hungrily as the reporters that follow us around?

  Is that tiny dress not just another costume? Essentially identical to the one I wore tonight? Could this flawless family moment captured on film be just another show? Another dazzling performance for the press?

  After the photographer went home, did my mother and father stand up, dust the grass stains from their knees, and hand me off to some nanny so they could go their separate ways and live their separate lives?

  How well do I even know the woman in this photograph? The infamous Elizabeth Larrabee. Everyone tells me she was wonderful. Everyone gushes about how beautiful she was. How loving and supportive and maternal. The perfect wife. The perfect mother.

  But how do I know that’s not another script? Carefully constructed by a crafty publicist. Designed to make my father look good and the Larrabee family continue to shine in the spotlight.

  How do I know that drunk fool at the party isn’t the only one with the guts to tell the truth?

  The only one not being paid to lie.

  I set the iPad aside and reach for my cell phone, unplugging it from its charger. I find the toll-free, in-case-of-emergency-only number in my contact list and press call.

  It rings once before a friendly receptionist answers. “Thank you for calling Peace Corps. How may I help you?”

  “Hi,” I say, my voice fragile and thin. “I need to get in touch with Cooper Larrabee. I believe he’s in the Sudan.”

  “Is this an emergency?” she asks.

  I hesitate for a moment. “Yes. It’s a family emergency. I’m his sister.”

  I hear her typing furiously into a keyboard before she returns to the line. “I’ve sent a message to the local office there. They will get in touch with him and have him call you as quickly as possible.”

  I feel somewhat bad about lying but I really need to talk to someone right now and I can’t think of anyone else to call. My three other brothers are practically strangers to me. RJ is too wrapped up in my father’s company to bother himself with anything I have to say. The twins have always kind of stuck together in their own little clique, as I’ve heard twins often do. Cooper is the only one I’ve ever been able to talk to. Being a mere two years older than me, he’s the only one who gets me. Who’s ever gotten me. After our mother died, he was the one I crawled into bed with when the nightmares haunted me. He was the one who told me reassuring stories about angels and fluffy white clouds as I fell asleep.

  My cell phone trills beside me a few minutes later, causing me to jump. The caller ID says Unknown, and I scramble to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Lex,” my brother says, panicked, “what’s wrong?”

  The sound of his voice—even muffled by static and affected by a slight delay—instantly soothes me.

  “Hi, Coop,” I say softly.

  “They said it was an emergency.”

  “I know,” I begin regretfully. “Sorry. I might have exaggerated a bit. I just really needed to hear your voice.”

  He exhales in relief and I half expect him to berate me for pulling this kind of stunt but he doesn’t. Instead I can hear the playful smile in his tone as he asks, “What’s wrong, baby sis?”

  “Things are just … hard.”

  “I heard about your new job. Or shall I say, jobs.” He chuckles. But I don’t get offended by his amusement. Anyone else, yes. But not Cooper. He always means well and I always know it.

  “Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “But actually I called to ask you about mom.”

  “Mom?” comes his confused reply. And I suppose I should have anticipated that. It’s not a conversation we broach often. It’s always been one of those unspoken rules between us. Between all of us.

  “How well do you remember her?” I ask.

  “Not that well,” he replies. “I remember she was wonderful. Loving and supportive and maternal.”

  Frustrated, I press my fingertips against my temple. “Do you really remember that or do you just remember people telling you that?”

  He falters for a moment and even from eight thousand miles away, I can almost hear the gears in his mind turning, trying, exactly as I have been doing, to sort the real memories from the implanted ones.

  “I’m not sure,” he finally admits.

  “Well, do you remember anything other than that? Anything … I don’t know … maybe unusual or strange or even … disturbing about her?”

  “Lex,” he warns. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I reply quickly, although I’m almost positive he won’t buy it. “I’ve just been thinking about her.”

  “Maybe you should call RJ. He would remember that kind of stuff. He was fourteen when she died.”

  “You know I can’t talk to RJ about anything.”

  He sighs. “Well, I do remember her being gone a lot. Especially at the end. You know, before she died.”

  “Gone?” I repeat skeptically.

  “Yeah,” he confirms. “Like on vacations.”

  “What kind of vacations?”

>   There’s an extended silence as Cooper reflects. “Cruises, I think.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he says, gaining momentum, as though he’s opened some kind of doorway and now he’s anxious to run through it and see what’s on the other side. “I remember now. She would go on these cruises for like a week or two. Sometimes longer. Horatio said it was so she could relax from the stress of raising five kids.” Then he lets out a jovial laugh. “I guess I can’t really blame her.”

  “I don’t remember any of that,” I marvel quietly.

  “Well you were five,” Cooper states. “I’m not surprised.”

  “How often did she go?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies nonchalantly. “But I remember she had just gotten back from a really long one when she had the accident.”

  I struggle to see through the fog in my mind as I think back to the day we got the news. I’ve worked so hard to block that day from my memory. Cooper and I were playing in the backyard with Horatio. Bruce appeared at the top of the stairs. He called us inside. RJ and the twins were already there. Bruce sat us down on the couch—or was it at the dining room table?—and told us that our mother had died in a car crash on the way home from the airport. I never thought to question why she was at the airport to begin with. I suppose the cruise story makes sense.

  But what if that’s all it was? A story. Some kind of cleverly concocted tale designed to cover up the truth. And if that’s the case, what exactly was it covering?

  “Lex.” Cooper’s voice snaps me back into the moment.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re asking these kinds of questions?”

  All this hypothesizing is starting to make my brain hurt. I suddenly feel very tired. And foolishly paranoid. I’m probably blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. So my mom liked to go on cruises. So what? Raising five children is very stressful. And that man at the party was really wasted. It was probably the scotch talking. He said he’d known my mother for a long time so maybe he’d always had some secret crush on her that was never requited. Maybe this was his way of getting back at her. By spreading rumors.

  In any case, there’s no point in getting Cooper worked up about it. Especially when he’s halfway across the world trying to deal with real problems.

  “Never mind,” I reply quietly. “It’s not important.” I transfer the phone to my other ear and sink farther down into the bed. “Tell me the latest about your trip. How is saving the world treating you?”

  Cooper laughs and launches into several stories about his adventures in the Sudan, including one about a boy named Chiumbo who has been teaching him how to rap. I smile as his warm, familiar voice envelops me and allow myself to drift away, if only momentarily, to the other side of the earth where my problems cease to exist and my mind is empty.

  * * *

  Sent: Friday, August 10, 10:40 p.m.

  To: Luke Carver

  From: Video-Blaze.com

  Subject: You have received a video message from Lexington Larrabee

  CLICK HERE TO PLAY MESSAGE

  Or read the free transcript from our automated speech-to-text service below.

  [BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

  Hey. Me again. This is going to be a short video because I have nothing official to report. I could show you some more bruises but I’m sure you’re over that by now.

  I know you want me to talk about what I’ve learned in the past few weeks but honestly there’s not a whole lot to say.

  Hold on, let me get out the list.

  Let’s see here. Where are we? Oh, right. Job #11. I milked cows at a dairy farm. Before that, I held up a stop sign while kids crossed the street on their way home from school. And I also gutted fish at a seafood market.

  That’s it. C’est tout.

  It’s probably going to be a while before I eat sushi again, but that’s about all I got.

  So … yeah. See ya.

  [END TRANSCRIPT]

  * * *

  I GET THAT A LOT

  Today is my first day working at the fine establishment of Don Juan’s Tacos, a popular fast food chain famous for their creative use of nacho cheese. Not to mention an entire menu of delectable food items available for under a dollar. As if that’s supposed to be a good thing.

  The uniform is a whole other issue. Let’s start with the color of this shirt. Hideous. Fashion rule number one: No one looks good in mustard. Not even me. And I’ve been known to pull off some pretty risqué colors in my day. And what’s with the elastic waistband on these pants? Are they maternity pants? Or have they just been designed to stretch to accommodate the weight you’re guaranteed to gain from working at this place and eating the food?

  And don’t get me started on the sombrero.

  Not even my beautiful blond wig with its sleek, straight, shoulder-length layers can improve this thing.

  I’ve never actually been inside a Don Juan’s Tacos before but I’m somewhat familiar with at least a few of their menu items from the never-ending string of commercials on TV. Although apparently not familiar enough to make any of the items from scratch.

  Javier, the supervisor who is training me on the food line, is getting really frustrated at my burrito-building ineptness. So far, I’ve proven myself completely incapable of wrapping a tortilla around half a pound of beans and cheese without ripping it.

  And judging by the way he’s yelling at me, he seems to be taking the whole thing very personally. I’m not sure what that’s about but it’s giving me a serious headache.

  I grab a handful of lettuce and dump it into the open tortilla in front of me.

  “Oh dios mio!” Javier screams again, throwing in a few random Spanish curse words that I recognize from eighteen years of witnessing Horatio attempt to repair things around the house.

  “How on earth are you going to wrap it with that much lettuce in there?” he asks. “Huh? Huh?”

  He’s glaring at me now as though he really expects me to answer.

  I’m starting to think this guy might be related to Fidel Castro.

  “You can’t!” he bellows back before I can utter a single word. “That’s how.”

  He scoops up half of the lettuce and violently throws it back in the bin. Then he shoves me to the side, mumbles for me to go up front and have Jenna train me on the register, and hastily wraps the burrito in waxed paper and drops it onto the tray.

  It’s hard to believe, after all I’ve been through so far, that I’m only on job number fifteen. Which means I have thirty-seven weeks left to go.

  I stagger out to the front of the store and find a small blond girl with dramatic aquamarine eyeliner, a bad perm, and a name tag that reads: JENNA. I introduce myself with my code name for the week—Alicia—and unenthusiastically inform her that she’s supposed to train me on the register.

  “Don’t worry about Javier,” she says, reading my defeated expression. “He’s like that with all new people. But he’s actually pretty nice once you get to know him.”

  “Oh yeah,” I jest. “I can tell we’re gonna be BFFs.”

  She giggles and then stops suddenly as a strange expression comes over her face. She’s staring at me really curiously and I feel my heart start to accelerate.

  I know that look.

  I’ve seen it a million times. In a thousand different places. It’s that bewildered expression people get when they think they recognize you but can’t quite figure out why. And now it’ll only be a matter of seconds before the gears click into place, the lightbulb goes off, her face lights up with recognition, and she goes …

  “Oh my God!” she exclaims, pointing at my face and jumping up and down excitedly.

  I close my eyes and swear under my breath.

  So this is going to be my ultimate undoing, huh? Don Juan’s Tacos is going to be my Waterloo. So much for flying under the radar. For being “out of context.” I knew it was wishful thinking. That someone was bound to recognize me eventual
ly.

  “Do you know who you look like?” the girl bubbles excitedly.

  I cautiously open my eyes. “Huh?”

  “I bet you get it all the time.”

  I squint inquisitively at her. “Get what all the time?”

  “That you look exactly like Lexington Larrabee!”

  The tall and lanky employee cleaning up the salsa bar stops wiping for a moment and curiously shifts his gaze toward us.

  “You know,” Jenna prompts, “that spoiled-brat heiress that’s always in the tabloids.”

  I exhale loudly and force a smile. “Oh. Right. Her.”

  “You look exactly like her,” she compliments, like she’s expecting her comment to make my day. Although, to be honest, it did. Only not in the way she would think.

  She turns to the teenage boy at the salsa bar. “Rolando, doesn’t she look exactly like Lexington Larrabee?”

  He nods hurriedly and then goes back to wiping.

  “You could totally, like, be her,” Jenna continues. “Except for, you know, the hair.”

  I reach up and stroke a lock of my ash-blond wig, saying a silent prayer of thanks to the online wig warehouse that supplied it. “Yeah.” I nod vehemently. “I get that a lot.”

  “You know who I get?” she asks.

  “Um…” I begin, staring intently. Truthfully, with that crunchy, over-gelled perm on her head, I can’t imagine people thinking she looks like any celebrity. “Hmm.” I attempt to buy time while I rack my brain for a name. Fortunately, I’m saved when two customers walk through the door and she turns to greet them.

  “Welcome to Don Juan’s!” she says with a slight bounce. “What can I get for you today?”