Catherine Coulter - Born To Be Wild

Kelly had been very busy. But why had she moved back home? To lick her wounds? But wouldn’t their mother be all over her? Well, maybe not. She’d see about that at dinner.

She hadn’t brought any dress-up clothes with her. Her mother would notice. Did she care?

If Mary Lisa had harbored the notion she could make it unscathed through a meal with her entire family plus her ex-fiancé, Mark Bridges, she knew now she’d been as bright as a Russian lightbulb. Three years was a long time, but since it appeared that no one and nothing ever changed, it ended up being like yesterday. The pot was still bubbling gaily under the lid.

MARYLisa chewed slowly and lovingly on a blackened shrimp so deliciously hot and spicy it set her mouth to smoking. Mrs. Abrams had studied Creole cooking under Paul Prudhomme himself. Mary Lisa couldn’t imagine the great man preparing the shrimp any better.

She sipped a crisp dry Chardonnay, one of her father’s favorites, as she listened to her sister Monica talk about a cocktail party in Salem that the party bigwigs were throwing in her honor in a couple of weeks to introduce her to the important political rollers. “But most of the money’s in Portland,” she said. “Mark knows enough of the big-money people there to give us a start.” She gave him a tender look, lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek, and then she smiled across the table at Mary Lisa.

“She can charm lemon juice out of an onion,” Mark said. He toasted his wife, taking her hand and kissing her palm.

You obnoxious snake, Mary Lisa thought, you shed your skin so well, I’ll bet no one ever notices all the rot you leave lying in your wake.

She caught herself, surprised her feelings were still so strong. She’d perhaps expected some lingering rage, perhaps a dollop of remembered humiliation, but no, this was bone-deep disgust. How nice. She gave all her attention to her father, George Beverly. Ah, but he was handsome, tall, lean, auburn haired, with eyes so blue that some people who met him for the first time thought they might be colored contacts. She watched her father continue the conversation with his eldest daughter. “What do you think your opponent will do? Might he retire?”

Bless her father for giving her his wonderful voice-melodic, light and dark by turns, always compelling. She remembered how he could always talk her and her sisters out of teenage snits. As if he felt her staring at him, he looked up and smiled. She gave him a thumbs-up. He was dressed in black slacks, a fine white chambray shirt, and an Italian geometric tie. She’d always thought he was the finest-looking Beverly. To the best of her knowledge he’d never strayed from her mother, though he owned one of the largest construction companies in northwestern Oregon and had spent nearly all of his fifty-five years surrounded by women at home, where all her mother’s friends congregated, playing bridge late, she knew, so they could see him when he got home from work. He’d been the only boy in a gaggle of five sisters, and then the father of three girls. His mother, Aurora, had given both her son and her granddaughter her red hair and blue eyes, and her height. And her acting ability as well had come through to Mary Lisa, thank the good Lord. Aurora had never been in a movie or on Broadway, but she’d always acted in local theater productions in Seattle. When Mary Lisa was five years old, her grandmother introduced her to the stage. It had been a love affair since that first magic moment when she’d looked at Bottom lying in mountains of soft greenery with beautiful Titania cooing over him, feeding him peeled grapes. Such a wonderful memory. Monica’s voice brought her back as she answered her father, “Champ Kuldak ready to retire? I don’t think so, Dad. I doubt he’d willingly retire until they bury his carcass. But you’re right, he’s old enough to retire and fish or putter in a garden, whatever old men do. And after all these years, he’s finally vulnerable. I don’t think he’s going to do much. Rest on his record that’s mediocre at best?”

Mary Lisa saw the brief ironic smile play over her father’s face, but he said nothing, only nodded. He turned to look at Mary Lisa. “As you can see, we’ve got lots of excitement going on here. I’m very glad you’re home, honey. It’s been too long and my Porsche is running a bit rough. Would you take a look at it?”

“At least it’s running,” she said, and laughed. “I’ll bet you it’s the plugs again. You and plugs, you’ve never learned to rub along well together.” She sat forward. “Do you guys know that when Dad visited me a couple of months ago, everyone wanted to know who the movie star was, and wanted to meet him?”

“How embarrassing for you, George,” Kathleen said with a delicate shudder.

“Not at all. I basked in the attention from all of Mary Lisa’s young friends. An old guy like me loves to have a couple of pretty girls smile at him.”

Mary Lisa laughed. “More like a dozen pretty girls, Dad.” She looked up at her sisters and Mark. “When I took him to the gym with me and my friends, I thought some of the women were going to jump him.”

Monica and Kelly beamed, but Kathleen frowned. Her husband said in a light voice, smiling toward his wife, “I tried not to sweat too much.”

Mary Lisa laughed again. “It’s great to see you, too, Dad. Don’t worry about your precious Porsche. I’ll look at it before you go to the office tomorrow morning.” She knew he was probably the only one in this elegant dining room who really loved her, and not only because she was the only one who was his female double in her coloring and body. They had spent so much time together when she was a girl that she could lay tile, set a window, fix a toilet, hang wallpaper with no visible seams, and coax his Porsche into running like it had when she was ten years old, the same year her grandmother had told her she was a born actress, shortly before she’d died of breast cancer.

It seemed the only thing her mother had given her was her supercilious eyebrows, which, as it turned out, Sunday Cavendish used often to excellent effect. Monica and Kelly, though, strongly resembled their mother-dark hair and eyes and willowy builds. Except Kelly was streaking her hair now. It was charming and sexy.

George Beverly said to Monica, “I hope you won’t spoil it for us, Monica. I’ve found over the years I rather like seeing both our federal and state governments gridlocked. That way it’s harder for the nincompoops to hurt us.”

Kathleen said, voice sharp, “Your daughter is not a nincompoop.”

Monica opened her mouth and shut it. Mary Lisa knew she wasn’t about to argue with anything her father said because she wanted money from him. Monica wasn’t stupid.

Mark laughed, his eyes on Mary Lisa. “True enough, sir, but at least if she does become a nincompoop, she’ll be the most beautiful of all of them. And Monica is your daughter after all. Maybe she’ll stay above the money-grubbing powermongers.” He continued seamlessly. “Mary Lisa, I haven’t congratulated you yet for all your success on Born to Be Wild . And you won another Emmy. Fabulous. I read in Variety you’re considered something of a phenomenon-the bitchier they make you, the more over-the-top you are, the more popular you become.”

Kathleen raised her now famous eyebrows in an incredulous and pitying look. “You actually read that sleaze, Mark dear?” Mary Lisa found herself studying her expression, and decided it was extraordinarily effective. Sunday should definitely take on that look.

Mark shrugged. “Naturally I’m interested in what Mary Lisa’s doing. But I haven’t quite stooped to buying the soap opera fanzines in the checkout line at the supermarket, except if Mary Lisa’s on the cover.”