Down to Vera business.
“I’ve already got some juice, and cereal’s fine. I was just about to get myself a bowl.” I make for the kitchen.
Within seconds, Vera has cut me off at the pass.
“No, no, no,” the clucking starts up once more. “You too skinny, Vanessa. So skinny. You need to eat. No cereal. Is all sugar. You need the protein. Too skinny. So skinny!”
I look down at my pajama-clad stomach, to see if I’ve magically lost weight overnight. Nope. And somehow, I don’t think that bulge I spy is bloating brought on by a severe case of malnutrition.
“See?” she says, her hand darting out to grab my hip-bone. “Nothing!” She gives my hip, and its ample padding, a good squeeze. “Need to eat! Too skinny. So skinny! Boys like the girl with something to hold on to.”
Can’t argue with that, I guess.
“How about waffles?” I suggest. Never mind the boys, you have to keep your housekeeper happy, right? As Holly’s always telling me, it’s hard to get good help in Manhattan, especially downtown. Waffles are the least I can do.
“Waffles! Yes! Good!” Vera claps her hands together.
“I can help . . .” I take a tentative step towards Vera’s kitchen. (When she’s here, you have to be very careful about entering. I swear I once heard her start growling when I went to get myself a glass of water.)
“No, no, no. You sit. Drink the juice.” And there’s the look. The Vera look. The “back away from my kitchen” look.
“Okay,” I squeak and take my seat at the breakfast bar again. “I’ll just, um, sit here and drink my juice.” Who knew that fixing yourself breakfast in your own home could be so dangerous?
“Yes. Good. Drink juice.”
Before I can even take a sip, the groceries have been put away and scary Vera has turned into happy waffle-making Vera.
“Morning, Vera! Hey kiddo!” My wicked (in the cool form of the word only) stepmother-to-be breezes into the kitchen.
“Holly, please,” I tut. “Hay’s what the horses eat.” I shoot her a look. “Vera’s just been telling me so.”
Holly laughs. “I wonder who passed that pearl of wisdom on?”
“Gee, I wonder,” I say. “The professor, perchance?” Ah yes, my dad, Professor William Mulholland, the most embarrassing man on the planet. Aside from the usual father-daughter embarrassment, my father couldn’t manage to be a professor of something normal, like mathematics or something. No, my father is a professor of sociology. And his specialty? Human mating rituals. Just my luck.
“Watch it, you. That’s my fiancé you’re talking about.” Holly chucks me under the chin.
Vera looks up from her waffle kingdom. “Ah, so beautiful . . .” She sighs as she looks at Holly. “So beautiful.”
“Oh, Vera, cut it out already.” Holly waves a hand, blushing.
As for me, I try not to snort my juice out of my nose. This it’s-such-a-tragedy-to-be-so-good-looking thing totally cracks me up. I take a look at Holly myself now. The sad thing about it is Vera’s right. It really is wrong to be that good-looking before 8 a.m. All Holly’s wearing is jeans and a white T-shirt, her long dark hair scraped back into a high ponytail. She must have taken all of fifteen minutes to get ready, and that includes a shower. Honestly. Couldn’t she wait till at least 10 a.m. to be beautiful?
“So beautiful. Now. What you want for the breakfast? You too skinny! So skinny!”
“Hey!” Marc Harris, Holly’s nephew, enters the scene like we’re all in some sort of sitcom. I wait for the applause to start . . . nothing. I guess that’s okay as long as it’s Marc entering and not me.
“You too skinny also! Everybody so skinny!” Vera wastes no time.
“Are they waffles?” Marc asks and fearlessly goes right on over to stand next to Vera. He scoops some batter up with his finger. “So good.”
“Yes. Good boy!” Vera says approvingly.
“Hey! How come you’re allowed in the kitchen?” I say.
Marc gives me a grin. “Because I eat like a horse.” Another scoop of waffle batter goes in his big mouth.
I grunt. “Yeah, well, you’ve got a point. There’re only so many waffles a thoroughbred can take. Unlike old nags headed for the glue factory.”
“He growing boy.” Vera shakes her ladle at me. “Needs many waffles.”
“I thought they were my waffles,” I protest.
“Now, now, you two. Play nicely,” Holly says.
“Sorry, Aunty Holly.” Marc turns to face me, his mouth full of waffle batter. “Hey Nessa, what do you call a smart blond?”
I groan. Marc hasn’t been able to stop with the dumb blond jokes ever since he learned a while back that I’m just a tad obsessed with Marilyn Monroe movies.
“What?” I reply.
“A golden retriever.”
“Ha ha ha.”
Holly groans. “When are you going to give up on those dumb blond jokes, Marc?”
Um, it’s looking like never, I think to myself. As if your hair color means anything, anyway. And another thing—liking Marilyn Monroe, I mean, what’s wrong with that? Who could not like her? That’s the real question.
Right. I guess I should explain . . . The thing is, I have a bit of a passion for the big double M. So, why do I have a thing for Marilyn Monroe? Well, because the woman is (was) amazing, of course! I’ve seen every one of her movies, including the last one that was never finished. And not just once, but about a million times over. Each.
“Right. You ready?” I look up to see Holly glance at her watch. “The car will be here any minute.”
Marc nods as he licks his fingers. “I’m ready, but my stomach isn’t. Vera . . .” he says, “can I get those waffles to go?”
“Marc! Vera’s not your food slave. You can eat something on the plane,” Holly tells him.
“But Vera’s waffles are so good and I’m so hungry, and plane food is so bad and . . .”
“Marc!”
Oh, come on, Holly. As if Marc’s leaving here without an extra suitcase full of waffles. Vera would rather die first.
Behind me, a breeze blows into the room and I vaguely register that it really feels like summer now. Summer. I can hardly believe it. I zone out as I start to think about what I was doing last summer. It’s so weird. This time last year I was living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with my dad all the way uptown on the Upper West Side. And now, a year later, well, let’s just say life is a little different. Now my dad is engaged to Holly Isles. Yes, the Holly Isles, one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors. And yes, that’s my dad, the professor. The guy who actually wears those corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows. (If I ever find out where he gets those from, I swear I’ll be partaking in a little exercise in arson.)
Sometimes it’s hard to get my head around how much has changed in twelve months. Some mornings I still have to pinch myself when I wake up, just to check that it’s all for real. I mean, Holly Isles and my dad? It’s like something out of an actual movie.
Holly and my dad’s story is pretty romantic. They were from different worlds. He was the geeky professor and she was Hollywood’s darling. Their eyes met across the crowded deck of the cruise ship where she was “honeymooning” (without a husband, because her fiancé ditched her at the altar) and he was studying cruise ship mating rituals. Within months she’d begged him to move himself and his “people” (that’s me) into her Tribeca penthouse. Soon after, she asked him to marry her. (Pretty cool, huh?)
And so, now, here I am.
I look behind me as another breeze blows into the room. Yes. Here I am. In a Tribeca penthouse. Needless to say, it’s pretty much nothing like our old apartment on the Upper West Side (unless you stand in the penthouse’s hall cupboard, in the dark, where there’s a faint musty old-shoe smell, and then it’s similar). My eyes practically popped out of their sockets when I realized this was going to be my new home. Holly calls her penthouse apartment “the chateau”, as a joke. She’s told me the stor
y plenty of times. How she went Tribeca apartment shopping (as a girl does on a rainy Saturday) and the real estate agents kept showing her all these boring loft-style warehouse conversions. Then one of the agents took her up to this place, and she said it simply blew her mind.
She’s right. It is pretty mind-blowing. The rest of the building is quite plain, but perched on top is this miniature castle. Apparently it’s “French Provincial” style, whatever that means. I think the best way to describe it is the way I first felt when I stood out on the huge balcony: with its gigantic, intricately carved white plaster pots and curly oversize plaster chairs and benches, the huge oval windows behind looming above me, I swore a gargoyle was going to fly in and carry me away at any moment. Dad says it’s like living at Versailles, but in the sky. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been to Versailles, but Dad showed me some pictures and I think he’s pretty close. Inside the penthouse, thankfully, there’s no guillotine set up in the living room. The inside is actually quite modern—lots of light blond wood, white furnishings and big gilt mirrors.
So, yes, as I was saying, this summer is shaping up to be . . . how should I put it? A little different? Just a tad. I take a thoughtful sip of my juice. Still, it’s good different. Really good different. In fact, I have to say, everything is perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Dad is the happiest he’s been in a long, long time. Probably since my mother died. And Holly . . . well, there’s no denying she kind of has this glow when Dad’s around (despite him being the most embarrassing guy in the world). It’s nice.
I take another sip of juice, smell the waffles cooking in front of me and then pause as my gut gives a twinge. Nice . . . perfect . . . hmmm. They’re words that have been coming up a bit lately. And when they come up that much, I sort of start to worry. You know, worry that things are too nice. Too perfect. That everyone’s too happy.
Sometimes I worry that things can’t go on like this forever because, the thing is, I can’t actually remember being this happy before. Like I said, there was my mother dying then after that, we moved around a lot because of Dad’s work at various colleges and universities.
Anyway, now . . . well, sometimes everything being so “right” all of a sudden seems almost too good to be true. My gut gives another twinge with this thought and I remind myself that I’m not supposed to think like this. I pause to remember something my psychiatrist spoke to me about a long time ago, after my mother died. I’d been really worried about my dad dying too. I’d expected that the psychiatrist, like everyone else, would just tell me that my dad wasn’t going anywhere, that he’d be around forever and blah, blah, blah. (And he probably will be, but people telling me that all the time didn’t help any. I mean, I thought my mother would be around forever too, right?)
But no, what he said was totally different. He told me that nothing is certain in life and that I won’t be able to control a lot of things, however hard I try. So, there isn’t much use in worrying about what will, or won’t, happen tomorrow, or in trying to force things to be one way or another. I just have to ride the wave, enjoy the good times and believe in myself enough to know that I can deal with the bad times that come my way. I kind of liked him saying that, because it made me feel like I had some control again, like I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for more bad things to happen to me.
“Nessa?” Marc’s face is in front of mine.
My eyes meet his and still in my where-has-the-past-year-gone? daze, I register that it’s going to be weird not having him around after the wedding, once the summer break’s over. He’s moving right across the country after that, having been accepted into film school in LA. And me? Well, I guess I’ll still have Vera. And my waffles. Maybe pancakes tomorrow. Maybe bacon and eggs. Mmm. Yummy. Bacon and eggs and maybe a little hash brown on the side.
“NESSA!” Marc’s face can’t get any closer than this.
“What?” I wake up to myself to see that everyone is looking at me. Marc, Holly, Vera, my dad and . . . oh, who’s that? There’s a new face in the line-up.
“Nessa,” my dad speaks up. “As I’ve already said, er, thrice now, this is Susannah. She’s my research assistant for the new project.”
I’m not sure what to focus on—the fact that my dad just used the word “thrice” or on Susannah herself. I end up choosing Susannah. “Um, hi,” I say.
Susannah is standing right next to Holly and my eyes can’t help flitting from one to the other. The contrast almost makes my retinas hurt. Susannah is the exact opposite of tall, dark, curvy Holly. She’s blond and teeny tiny.
Right. Everyone’s really looking at me now. Don’t they know it’s rude to stare? Here I am, troll-haired, pajama-ed, on a Monday morning, surrounded by a bevy of beauties—or at least people who have showered—with a towering plate of waffles in front of me. Looking good, Nessa, looking good. But wait. Something’s wrong.
My eyes move swiftly to find Vera, and I instantly wonder why, when there’s an underfed guest in the room, that she hasn’t tied Susannah down to a chair and started the process of force-feeding (kind of like those geese they force-feed in France so they can make foie gras out of their little livers).
“Hmpf,” Vera snorts, giving Susannah the eye. Then she goes back to watching the waffle-maker like a hawk. (It would be a brave waffle that dared to burn on Vera’s shift.)
“Ah . . .” My dad looks a little perturbed at the reaction Susannah’s getting here. “It’s great that you got to meet Holly,” he says to Susannah. “Holly, Susannah used to be an actor herself. Before she found sociology, that is.”
“Really? That’s interesting,” Holly says.
Susannah holds up one hand. “Oh, no. You’re embarrassing me. I was in a couple of off-Broadway plays. It was nothing.”
“Susannah’s thesis centers on fame,” my dad continues.
My ears perk up at this. Fame. Now that is interesting. I give her a really good once-over to see how she’s reacting to being around Holly.
It’s weird, the fame thing. People react in all kinds of different ways when they meet Holly. Some people freak out and tell her they love her, like they’ve known her forever. Other people pretend they don’t know who she is when they obviously do. Once, when we were going to the bathroom at the Museum of Natural History, a woman slipped a piece of paper and a pen under Holly’s stall and asked for her autograph! It’s really rare for someone to act normal the first time they meet Holly.
But, to give Susannah her credit, she does act pretty normal, and she and Holly end up chatting for a good few minutes about her thesis. Marc, of course, gives his usual “You gotta get through me to get to Holly, lady” glare. He is such a scream. As her nephew, he’s lived with the fame thing for a very long time. And while we’re all protective of Holly, Marc takes it to another level. When it comes to his aunt, in fact, Marc can be like a yappy little terrier.
I tune in again to hear Dad still raving on about Susannah’s thesis.
“Dumpling, I’m so sorry,” Holly cuts him off at the chase, “but we’ve got to run or we’ll miss our plane. I’ll call you tonight so you can tell me all about it, okay?”
“Oh, of course,” Dad says.
Holly turns to Susannah. “Now, you’ve got to promise that you’re going to work him hard, Susannah. We’ve got to have that study proposal finished and submitted before the wedding and the honeymoon.” Holly sighs. “If it wasn’t for that stupid Kent . . .” And then off she goes on her Kent rant.
We’ve all heard it a lot lately. Kent Sweetman is her ex-fiancé (real name: Kenneth Mananopolous!) and the reason she and Marc are now headed to LA. Holly thought she’d finished shooting this movie months ago, but now Kent, as co-star and one of the film’s producers, has decided he’s not happy with a whole heap of scenes and has insisted that they re-shoot them. I think everyone, including Kent, knows he’s just doing this to annoy Holly in the lead-up to her wedding, but as a co-producer, he’s got the clout to call the shots, even when it comes to Holly
Isles.
“Anyway, what was I saying?” Holly interrupts herself. “Oh yes . . . Work hard, sweet-cheeks.” She skips forward to kiss my dad and everyone looks away. (Retch. I mean, I love that they’re happy, but my internal organs have their limits.)
“And you work hard too, sweet-cheeks the second,” Holly says, grinning in my direction.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Work. I’ve got to go there today. Dad got me a part-time job over the summer, working two days a week re-shelving books in the library at his college. I glance at Marc now, standing beside Holly, and wish I hadn’t said yes so quickly when Dad first offered. Marc ended up getting the better job, going to LA to work as Holly’s PA. “I’ll try,” I tell her as Marc returns my jealous look with a “Have fun, I’m sure I will!” grin.
Like Vera said before, “Hmpf.”
“Okay, then. We’re off.” Holly says, she and Marc heading for the elevator.
As they go, Vera presses a huge container of waffles on them, loaded with strawberries, maple syrup and a dusting of icing sugar. “Here. The waffles. You too skinny! So skinny! Eat! Eat!”
Holly laughs. “You’re a star, Vera.”
Vera pauses. “No. You the star,” she deadpans.
Holly takes the time to crack open the lid of the container and fish out a strawberry. “Mmm. Good!”
“Yes! Eat! Too skinny! So skinny!” Vera repeats her favorite phrase over and over, even when the elevator doors have closed behind Marc and Holly.
And then, they’re gone. Vera turns back to see Susannah right in her path. “Hmpf,” she says again and returns to the kitchen.
“Oh! And don’t forget . . .” Everyone whips around at the sound of Holly’s voice, as the elevator pings and the doors start to slide open. “Plan me a fabulous wedding, dahling!”
“I will!” I yell back as the doors shut once more. And I can’t help but smile as I swivel back around on my seat again.
Get this. Dad and Holly are letting me plan their wedding! They’ve given me a budget and a basic idea of what they’d like, and are letting me run with it. I keep scaring them by casually leaving brochures for nudist wedding ceremonies and six-foot-tall swan-shaped marshmallow sculptures around the apartment. I just can’t help myself.