29

Wow. That is awful. In your father’s defense, he likely had no idea Mimi said that to you. He probably thought his own words were enough, and that you’d get over them.”

Kelli didn’t care about what details her father did or didn’t know. “Maybe, maybe not, but it was still his idea to shut me down.” Kelli wiped at her eyes. “I have spent my entire adult life too embarrassed to sing around people. It has been a wound and a feeling that I wasn’t good enough, and now I find out that maybe I actually am good enough—was in fact, a little too good, so my father and his wife decided to kill every bit of my self-esteem to keep themselves safe.”

Denice was silent for a moment, and Kelli knew some kind of psychoanalysis was about to be bestowed. “I think we both know that I think—and have thought all along—that you are not ready to deal with all of this right now. Why don’t you come home?”

“No! If I come home now, then he wins. And Mimi wins. I’ve got to stay here until . . . I’m not sure until what, exactly, but until I can leave here feeling as if I’ve done enough.”

“Okay, if that’s how you feel, we’re going to have to work our way through it as best we can. Let’s try to focus on some positive, shall we?”

“I’d love to hear this one.”

“Your father, like every other human on the planet, is like a giant gemstone—there are many facets to each of us, and when we are focused on a particular facet in a person, many others are hidden on the back side of the gem. Thankfully for you, the facet of your father you saw most was his love for you and his kindness. However, there was another side, dark and hidden, that he did his best to protect you from. That doesn’t make him a completely bad man, it just makes him human.”

“Facets maybe, but this is more like complete forgery.”

“Admittedly, there are some very dark facets to your father, some that we’ve never seen before now. We all have some dark facets of our own—that is not to say I excuse your father one bit, or Mimi either, although in Mimi’s defense, she was fighting for her life, or at least she believed she was.”

“Yeah, she was fighting to keep the fact that she’d run away with a married man and his daughter a secret, so she decided to say something so hurtful to that daughter that she would never be the same again, all in the name of protecting herself.”

“Mimi has always had more than her share of self-interested facets, and we both know it. We also both know that Opal wasn’t exactly the warmest of mothers, and Mimi never had a father. Wounded people tend to create more wounded people. Baby, you’re wounded to the point of wrecked now, so you’re going to have to make conscious decisions with everything you do and say from here on out not to continue the cycle on those around you.”

“You mean my mother and sister?”

“Partly. And anyone you might love in the future.”

“Assuming that’s even possible for me now. How can I trust anyone ever again?”

Mimi woke me up on Saturday, which was something she’d never done before. Mimi appreciated sleeping late on weekends. She was positively giddy about the whole thing, though. She kept saying “Out of bed, sleepyhead,” and then she’d giggle at her little rhyme and say something to the effect of, “It’s going to be a big day. We’ve got to get moving.”

Today was the day she was taking me shopping for prom dresses. It was my senior year, and Ken Bastion had already asked me to prom. There were a couple of stores in Santa Barbara and then another couple about thirty miles away that carried nice dresses, but Mimi had been insistent from the beginning. “This is one of your most important high school memories, and we are going to do this right.”

I rolled out of bed and took a quick shower. I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen and found that she’d scrambled some egg whites and cooked some meatless “sausage” patties. She was so excited, and kept talking about us needing our protein to keep our energy up.

It was pouring rain, so the usual two-hour drive to Los Angeles ended up taking more like three. I can still remember how fast her windshield wipers were moving, trying to keep up with one of the heaviest downpours I’ve ever seen. I told her that we could turn back, but she wouldn’t even talk about it.

We finally arrived at this place. Mimi had apparently made an appointment several weeks ago (I’d had no idea until we arrived). They hurried me back to this really nice dressing room and put Mimi in a chair in the area just outside—complete with a pedestal and full-length three-way mirror. The sales lady asked me all about colors and styles, and then she brought me dress after dress.

“I want to see, I want to see,” Mimi would say with each new arrival.

There was one dress that was this absolutely beautiful ice-blue satin thing. As soon as I saw it, I just flipped. But when I put it on, it clung to my thighs just a little too tight, making them look bigger than they are, then sort of hung loosely at my chest, making me look even flatter than I am. It was an obvious no-go so I hollered out the door that it was a dud. Mimi insisted on seeing it anyway, and I can still remember how embarrassed I was as I walked out in it. Especially in front of Mimi. Everything about her was so perfectly proportioned (part of that was surgically induced, but that doesn’t really matter when you’re looking in the mirror, does it?). I braced myself for whatever she would say, because Mimi was famous for not-quite-filtered comments, even when she meant no harm. She learned that from Opal, who took bluntness to a whole new level.

She took one look and shook her head. “Now that’s a downright shame.” I have never forgotten one single word of her answer, not one single inflection in her voice, not one single movement as she spoke. She flipped her perfectly highlighted blond hair over her shoulder, still shaking her head. “You are hands down the prettiest girl who will ever put on that dress, and the idea of that dress is so perfect, it’s just a shame that the designer didn’t pay a little more attention to detail in the way that it is cut. It’s his loss, but it’s a shame he’ll never know it.”

I was stunned. It was perhaps the most direct compliment I’d ever heard from Mimi, or ever have since, I suppose. But she was completely serious, it wasn’t that silly little flattering thing that she and her friends would sometimes get into. “You look beautiful.” “Oh no, you look so much better.” None of that nonsense.

She did love me. I know that she did, in her own way, and this memory is one that I will always cherish. We ate lunch in Malibu that day, and then walked through some shops before driving home. We laughed and chatted the whole way. I remember thinking at the time that she maybe was my best friend.

Now, in retrospect, I see that even though the two of us didn’t get along all that great, and Dad and I were always such pals, it appears that in actuality she may have been the better person. At least she didn’t leave a spouse and children behind to take care of her invalid mother. She was a part of it, no doubt, but they weren’t people that she knew and loved—they were people that HE knew and supposedly loved. What kind of monster does that?

Surely there is more to the story. Something that I’m missing. I’ve got to find it, if I’m ever going to feel even remotely okay about my father again.