Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

15

Dumped by a Diva

Matt tried to think himself into the comfortable upholstered swivel chair at WCOO radio, the muffling earphones on his head, the glass walls of the booth a black, blanked-out image reflecting him, only the voices riding the airwaves, one on one, he and a caller, like Elvis, he’d never meet.

He felt a faint moisture at his hairline, realizing this moment was more important than any TV talk show gig, and maybe performing “live” and on camera wasn’t for him.

This would be the toughest audition for his vaunted step-up job, and nobody who counted in the network would see it. But he would know if he let any one of the major players down. He was like a judge. He had to be honest and fair, and make each and every one of them follow that path.

“That was so cool,” Mariah was saying as the front door opened and footsteps sounded in the hallway. “That wiggly effect on the soundboard,” Mariah’s voice continued. It had a pleasant mellow tone he hadn’t noticed when he both saw and heard her.

“The mic is your first and best friend,” Rafi’s signature baritone voice answered.

Right there Matt pegged why Mariah’s singing voice was so mature. She’d inherited it from both sides. There was nothing light and girlish about her singing already.

“Oh.” Now she was directing that slightly dismayed remark at Matt. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Rafi frowned behind her, not at Matt. “I thought your mother had errands to do this afternoon, or the session wouldn’t have run so long.” Rafi checked his cell phone screen, looking ready to bow out right now.

Matt now understood why Rafi, who had, only a week ago, physically extracted him from a mob nudie bar brawl with swift aplomb, was visibly itching to escape present company. To Rafi and Carmen, The Lie was always the invisible party pooper in the room and now Matt was in on it.

“Errands done,” Molina said, coming out from the kitchen. “Don’t run off, Rafi. Have some Dr Pepper. Good for the throat after a long vocal session, right?”

Nadir regarded Molina as if she were crazy, but took the offered bottle, as did Mariah, and Molina again ducked into the kitchen.

For once, the self-involved teen looked as ill at ease as her parents.

Her parents. Matt contemplated getting Mariah to make that leap in the course of an afternoon and felt like he was atop the Lake Mead dam attached to a bungee cord. Bungee cord. A doctored one had almost killed Max Kinsella. Matt decided he’d have to take the plunge too.

“Mariah—”

“She told you, didn’t she?” Mariah blurted. “I can tell. This is a setup.”

“What?” asked Rafi, pausing in sitting on the other chair flanking the couch.

Matt’s quick head shake “no” diverted him to the other side of the couch, next to Molina’s now empty place. Rafi, already well trained to house rules, leaned forward to put the Dr Pepper bottle on a coffee table coaster.

Matt and Mariah were now positioned in chairs opposite “the parents” sitting on the couch. A classic family confrontation arrangement.

Mariah was ignoring the adults to drink from the Dr Pepper bottle while slipping Matt nervous looks. She put the bottle on the coaster on the small end table between their two chairs. Matt mirrored the move.

He noticed Mariah’s fingernails were the short, rounded style he’d seen in TV ads, painted in the popular Goth-dark gel polishes He’d once described himself to Temple as “sixteen going on thirty”. Mariah was thirteen going on thirty.

“Mom told you, didn’t she,” Mariah whispered while Molina was still in the kitchen.

“Told me what? That you have an even better gig than backing up French Vanilla of Black & White?”

“No, silly. Oh.” She sighed as her mother came in and seated herself on the sofa with Rafi. “I’m sorry. It just seemed right.”

“Whatever it is,” Matt whispered back, “if it seems right at the time, you have to do it.”

“Even if someone might have their feelings hurt?”

“Hurt feelings aren’t pleasant, but you have to face up to them.”

“That’s what you get all that radio money telling people?”

“Depending.”

Molina spoke up, trying to sound jovial and only managing to sound suspicious. Cop talk was hard to moderate. “What are you and Matt whispering about?”

“Oh, Mom. I need to tell him…you know.”

Matt jumped in, sounding as suspicious as Mariah’s mom. “Mariah, what haven’t you been telling me?”

Carmen tried to soften the blow, even though Matt knew what was coming. “I don’t want you to feel slighted, Matt—there’s been a change in plans.”

Mariah overrode her. “You said I had to tell him personally.” She turned to Matt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Devine. I know I promised you forever and forever you could take me to the Dad-Daughter Dance.”

Matt smiled at how she interpreted “pestered” as “promised”.

“Well, yes. I thought it was a done deal,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t go?” he asked.

“Oh, I have to go. Just not with you.”

Matt raised his eyebrows.

“It’s not that you’re not cute or anything else, like that ex-priest thing. But…you’re moving out of town and are doing things like getting married and even though you’re sort of famous, I really, really think I need to ask Rafi because he’s been so cool and is teaching me all sorts of really hot singing stuff to follow up on my Black & White gig with a Justin-Beiber-level breakout music video—we promise, Mom, no Miley Cyrus stuff. I’m still too young for that.”

“What a relief,” Molina said, electric-blue fire in her eyes.

Mariah missed the sarcasm.

Rafi pointed a finger at Mariah. “Disney Clean. That’s where the film breaks are.”

Matt couldn’t believe they were discussing teen career choices.

Mariah turned to him. “See. Rafi knows music business stuff. I’m going to premiere a line-dance song at the D-D-D. I saw you dancing with, uh, Miss Barr, at the club after the B&W show opening, and, sorry, that’s not what’s happening. And, like, she’s way too not the prime age group anymore. Even that Zoe Chloe Ozone shtick is so over…”

Her childish pseudo-sophisticated chatter had shocked her mother almost much as Matt. “Mariah! You’re sounding like a brat.”

Not the way to win over a kid you’re going to knock off her platform shoes any minute now. Matt cleared his throat to intervene, but Rafi beat him to the punch, as he’d done outside the nudie bar not long before.

“Your mom and me are even older than those people.” He took Mariah’s hands and pulled her to stand before him. “What’s bugging you, kid? Everything you want is going great.”

She shrugged, looking down at her purple-painted toenails in their peep-toe platform sandals. Matt smiled at what he’d learned from Temple’s shoe collection.

“I have to do school and all that stupid stuff Disney kid stars don’t have to waste time doing. I’ll be too old to be interesting pretty soon. I guess you’re all so old you don’t get that.” She eyed everyone desperately. “I’m losing time to be discovered.”

“Is that what you think your singing is for?” Rafi asked. “Not for the joy of learning and doing it, but for getting somewhere, anywhere? Anyhow? Your mother never had those selfish dreams that made no one around her good enough.”

“That was ages ago, Rafi. She was never going anywhere. I mean, she was a cop.”

“She’s not ‘a cop’,” Rafi said. “She’s a lieutenant, and a damn good one. I used to be a cop too. Are we both not good enough?”

“No, no! You’ve been great. It’s just that you’re not, like, on the brink of something. Like I am. You’ve brinked out.”

“You’re on the brink of a good kick in the pants of reality.” Rafi’s face was grim. He was speaking generalities, Matt knew, but he’d accidentally nailed the imminent reality for his daughter.

“I’ve gotta do what I’ve got to do,” she was saying. “You’re just too old to understand and maybe I need a more hip manager, anyway.”

Matt found his fists clenching. “Brat” was too kind.

Mariah tossed her product-rich curled and blow-dried mane of hair. “I bet Nilla knows somebody who isn’t just…a, an amateur. If Mom’s your only track record, it doesn’t look good. Nilla says my voice is special. She likes me.”

“Well, we don’t,” Molina said, standing. “Forget me, which you apparently have. You will stop dissing your father like that after all he’s done for you!”

Carmen registered that she was using a trite parental line only after she realized she’d given away the game. She and Rafi locked gazes, each surprised at defending the other, then mutually dismayed.

“Adults always gang up on kids,” Mariah ranted, not even absorbing her mother’s slip.

Matt had forgotten the deep fears and the conflicting overconfidence leavened by self-doubt that drives teens, and he ought to know. He’d seriously wanted to kill someone at that stage.

The household tabby cats, spooked by overwrought emotions, picked that time to race through the living room, bounding over Carmen’s and Rafi’s laps on the couch and using the armrest as a springboard to dig into Matt’s khaki-covered knees.

Amid the diversion and exclamations, including ouch! Mariah’s stormy expression cleared. “Father?” she said, plucking out the word from the current sound and fury. “Are you talking about Matt? Mr. Devine? He’s an ex-father.”

All three adults eyed each other, obviously eager to use that misconception as an excuse. Molina had simply gotten rattled and referred to Matt by his former title.

“She means me, kid,” Rafi said, rubbing at his black denim-protected knees. “Those cats come armed with switchblades.”

Mariah bent to pick up one of the lean striped cats, now calm. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was half order and half hope. She looked back and forth at the couple on the couch.

“I was surprised when I first figured it out too,” Rafi said.

Molina bit her lip and kept silent, wisely not making it a mother-daughter blow-up.

“You? Surprised?” Mariah looked from Rafi to Matt next.

“It’s true,” Matt said.

“Then there’s a whole lot of things that aren’t true!” Mariah looked around wildly, clutching the cat that was about to use its flailing claws to escape her grip.

“What about my dead hero cop father, who died when I was two?” She stared at her mother. “You have that old clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper with the lousy-quality photo. You kept your maiden name because your married name would always remind you of what you’d lost.”

And you!” She whirled to face Rafi. “Why’d you show up so late? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know when I first saw you at the teen reality show. We hit it off, remember? Without me even knowing you were my daughter.”

“But you must have found out, oh, not before long. You didn’t tell me for a long time.”

“No…I wanted to, Mariah, I did, but I’d been, not my best self, and when we started working together, I really enjoyed it and—”

“And,” came Carmen’s voice, strong and certain. “I wouldn’t let Rafi continue to tutor you unless he swore not to tell you. That was my job.”

“Well, it’s a big fat fail, isn’t it? You not good at your job? Big freaking too bad.” Mariah turned a bitter, angry face on her mother. “You know what’s best for everybody, but it’s all lies with you. I don’t ever want to see either of you again. You should have stayed lost,” she yelled to Rafi as she charged down the hall to the bedrooms, the two cats fleeing from her clomping platform shoes.

A door slammed, then slammed again.

“I need to talk to her privately,” Matt said. “Someplace away from you two, out of the house. In the yard?”

“There’s a swinging bench on the back porch. In the shade.”

“A swinging bench, Carmen? Really?” Matt asked. “You don’t strike me as the type.”

“I’m not. It came with the house.”

Matt eyed each of them in turn. “Both of you two settle down, drink a little beer, exchange some low-key recriminations and realize you only did what you thought best at the time and Mariah is going to have to grow up fast to see that. I’ll do my best to get her there.”

“Why did you drag me out of the house?” Mariah lounged almost off one end of the double-seated swing set, as if Matt had rabies.

Matt was amazed to think how fast a guy could go from hot to not with a teen girl.

“The one thing you don’t want to do now, Mariah,” Matt told her, “because it is so clichéd and a Disney heroine would die before doing it, is to throw yourself across your bed, sob your heart out, and call all your BFFs to B&M.”

Her eyes widened in the dark, owl-like makeup outline of what he’d seen advertised as “the smoky eye”.

“Can a priest even say those initials?”

“Ex-priest. I assume you’re referring to Bitch and Moan. I just did. And I can also tell you that Best Friends aren’t Forever and last about six minutes at your age. You’ve already got a cool singing gig going and the green eyes in school are out there looking for you. Envy is a Cardinal Sin and it runs wild among tween and teen girls.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I spent eight years at a parish school that went from kindergarten to senior high school and I would rather fight Isis than Mean Girls, who are shortly going to gang up on you in junior high because you’ve got ‘too much’.”

Mariah did not look enviable, though. She was a mess. Her hair was tangled and looked “over” everything. Her red-rimmed dark eyes had a horror movie poster rawness and any makeup she used had smeared.

“Am I wrong?” Matt prodded.

“Everybody lies to me. Did you know about Them before?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know why until your mom ’fessed up to me this afternoon.”

Mariah’s ridiculously high platform shoes easily reached the concrete patio floor and pushed the swing into gentle motion.

Las Vegas was hot in the summer, but not very windy. Dry desert air pressed down with the sensation of ironing, although Matt knew Mariah wouldn’t know the clean, sharp smell of it. His mother had always had an ancient steam iron swathed in its electric cord at the back of a shelf in a closet.

It was a pity some hearts and minds were sometimes consigned to the back of shelves and wouldn’t ever be smoothed into a wrinkleless state.

Matt’s shoe toe scuffed the concrete to keep the swing’s soothing maternal rhythm going. “Your mom didn’t know her own father. Hasn’t. Ever,” Matt said.

“You’re kidding.”

“I didn’t know my birth father until I found him several months ago.”

“And you’re a priest!”

“Was a priest. That’s part of the reason I became a priest. My mom was ashamed of getting pregnant out of wedlock, so she married the only creep who’d have a woman with a kid.”

“My mom didn’t marry anyone.”

Matt nodded. “My mom’s quite a bit older than yours. She didn’t have a way to make a living and support a child. So she married an abusive man.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yes, it was. I try hard not to blame her for her decision.”

“He hurt you too.”

Matt nodded. “People didn’t talk about domestic violence then. I know, Mariah, girls get told the facts of life early nowadays, so you know that girls and women can get ‘caught’ without ‘protection’. A lot of single mothers now are wary of letting men live with their children.”

“But Rafi is my father!”

“It’s complicated. It was a tragic case of miscommunication. Each one was trying to do the best thing, but they were young and under pressure. Your mom will tell you it’s her fault. I know she was acting on the most instinctive motive women have: to save and protect her child.”

“Rafi was abusive?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, nooo. I mean he’s been really standing up for my singing with my mom…oh. Because she lied, she was afraid to have him around. How did that happen? He said he didn’t know who I was at first.”

“I’ll say it plain and simple. They’d been thinking of getting married, but their jobs were shaky because they were both minorities. They wanted to postpone kids. Your mom got pregnant, and thought she saw evidence Rafi had sabotaged the birth control so she’d have to quit her job.”

“So he wanted me.”

“But for the wrong reason, she thought. So she ran, Disappeared. He didn’t know why. She could have been killed. He was devastated and left the L.A. police force, drifting until he ran into you and found a reason to pull himself together again.”

“Wow. That’s a Lifetime movie. And I brought them back together again. Do you think they’ll get married? That would be even cooler. I could star in the movie.”

“They’ve both been through whole Lifetime movies separately. It’s hard to say what they’d want to do now. What would really be cool is you giving them a chance to make peace with each other and you.”

She nodded, her distant eyes envisioning the autobio pic.

“And you can start, Mariah, by dropping the diva act. You’re a smart, pretty, talented girl, on the way to wise, if you understand you now have what your mom and my mom and I never had, real parents trying to do the best for you.”

Mariah regarded him sideways. “I think you’re leaving something out.”

“No. What?”

She gave him a small smile. “I think you think I was being pretty dumb and spoiled and that all the rest of those good things don’t matter if I go that way.”

“A-plus.”

They did a high five.

“I’m sorry I dumped you for the Dad-Daughter Dance, especially since you and your mom had a hard time early on. You really are pretty cool and cute, but I think it’s better if I go with my father.”

“I do too,” Matt said.

“Did you like your real father?”

“Yes. He’s a great guy. My mom remarried. She married his brother.”

“No! That is so Lifetime movie un-be-lieve-able.”

“Anything can happen with those crazy adults.”

“I guess,” said Mariah. “We just have to understand they’re going through a stage.”

When Matt took Mariah back to the living room, Rafi and Carmen were lounging in separate chairs, looking away from each other.

Matt had no idea how to start the conversation back here in the common yet emotionally claustrophobic living room.

“Do you have any questions, Mariah?” Rafi asked. He looked at Carmen, desperate for a clue.

Mariah shifted her weight on the tippy platform shoes, uneasy for once at being the focus of everyone’s attention.

Then she ventured a response.

“Is there anybody I know who isn’t a, you know, bastard?”

The stunned silence was answered with Rafi’s bellow of laughter.

“Me,” Rafi said. “I have a large Greek Orthodox Christian family. Our roots go back to the Phoenicians. They’ve been unhappy I’ve been so distant. They’d love to meet you. You have many cousins.”

“Oodles of half cousins on my mother’s side,” Molina added, “if you want to go to a family reunion.”

“Well, maybe we can try that out in not too long,” Mariah said, “because I have a secret too.”

“And what’s that?” Matt asked because the parents were afraid, very afraid. He was too, but he hid it better.

“Your fiancée has asked me to sing at your wedding,” she told Matt.

“I thought she was ‘over’,” Matt said while Carmen and Rafi stared in shock.

“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have good taste.”

“D-I-V-A,” Matt warned.

“Just kidding. What? I am still a kid, you keep telling me.”