Damned

XVII

Mere hours prior to the Academy Awards, my parents are fussing over which color of political action ribbon to pin on themselves. Pink, for breast cancer. Yellow, for Bring the Soldiers Home. Green, for climate change— except for my mom's gown arrived looking more orange than crimson, so any symbolic protest against climate change would clash. My mom folds a scrap of red ribbon, holding it against the bodice of her gown. Studying the effect in a mirror, she says, "Do people still get AIDS?" She says, "Don't laugh, but it just seems so… 1989."

The three of us, her, me, and my dad, are in the hotel suite, waiting in the lull between the siege of the stylist army and the launch of the Prius. My dad says, "Maddy?" In one hand, he holds out a pair of gold cuff links.

I step closer to him, my own hand extended, palm up.

My father drops his cuff links into my cupped palm. Then he shoots his shirt cuffs, French cuffs, extending both hands, turned wrist-up, for me to insert and fasten the cuff links. These are the teeny-tiny malachite cuff links some producer gave everyone as a wrap gift after shooting ended on my mom's last film.

My dad asks, "Maddy, do you know where babies come from?"

Theoretically, yes. I understand the messy ordeal of the egg and the sperm, plus all the ancient tropes about finding infants beneath cabbage leaves or storks bringing them, but just to force what's obviously an uncomfortable situation, I say, "Babies?" I say, "Mommy, Daddy…" Canting my head in a not-unappealing manner, I widen my eyes and say, "Doesn't the casting director bring them?"

My father bends one elbow, pulls back the shirt cuff on that hand, and looks at his wristwatch. He looks at my mother. He smiles wanly.

My mom drops her evening bag into a hotel chair and heaves a deep, heavy sigh. She settles herself into the chair and pats her knees in a gesture for me to move closer.

My father steps to stand immediately beside her chair, then bends his knees to sit on the chair's arm. The two of them create a tableau of elegant good looks. So meticulously outfitted in their tuxedo and gown. Every hair assigned its perfect place. The pair of them, so beautifully blocked for a two-shot, I can't resist messing with their Zen.

Dutifully, I cross the hotel room and sit on the Oriental carpet at my mother's feet. Already, I'm wearing the tweedy skort, the pink blouse and cardigan sweater for my long-planned rendezvous with Goran. I gaze up at my parents with guileless terrier eyes. Wide-open Japanese-animation eyes.

"Now, when a man loves a woman very, very much…" my dad says.

My mother retrieves the evening purse from the seat beside her. Snapping open the clasp, she reaches out a pill bottle, saying, "Would you like a Xanax, Maddy?"

I shake my head, No.

With her perfectly manicured hands, my mom executes the stage business of twisting open the pill bottle, then shaking two of the pills into her own hand. My father reaches down from his perch on the arm of her chair. Instead of giving him one of the two pills she holds, she shakes two more pills out of the bottle into his hand. Both my parents toss back the pills they hold and swallow them dry.

"Now," my dad says, "when a man loves a woman very, very much…"

"Or," my mom adds, shooting him a look, "when a man loves a man or a woman loves a woman." In the fingers of one hand, she still toys with the scrap of red grosgrain ribbon.

My father nods. "Your mother is right." He adds, "Or when a man loves two women, or three women, backstage after a big rock concert…"

"Or," my mom says, "when a whole cell block of male prisoners love one new inmate very, very much…"

"Or," my dad interjects, "when a motorcycle gang making a meth run across the Southwestern United States loves one drunken biker chick very, very much…"

Yes, I know their car is waiting. The Prius. At the awards venue, some poor talent wrangler is no doubt reshuffling their arrival time. Despite all of these stress factors, I merely furrow my preadolescent brow in a confused expression my Botoxed parents can only envy. I shift my gaze back and forth between my mom's eyes and my dad's even as the Xanax turns them glazed and glassy.

My mother looks up, casting her gaze over her shoulder so that her eyes meet my father's.

Finally, my dad says, "Oh, to hell with it." Reaching a hand into his tux jacket, he extracts a personal digital assistant, or PDA, from the inside pocket. He crouches next to the chair, bringing the tiny computer level with my face. Flipping the screen open, he keyboards Ctrl+Alt+P, and the screen fills with a view of our media room in Prague. He toggles until the wide-screen television fills the entire computer screen, then keys Ctrl+Alt+L and scrolls down through a list of movie titles. Tabbing down the list, my father selects a movie, and a keystroke later the computer screen fills with a tangle of arms and legs, dangling hairless testicles, and quivering silicone-enhanced breasts.

Yes, I may be a virgin, a dead virgin, with no knowledge of carnality beyond the soft-focus metaphors of Barbara Cartland novels, but I can well recognize a fake booby when I see one.

The camerawork is atrocious. Anywhere from two to twenty men and women grapple, frantically involved in violating every orifice present with every digit, phallus, and tongue available to them. Whole human bodies appear to be disappearing into other bodies. The lighting is abysmal, and the sound has obviously been looped by nonunion amateurs working without a decent final draft. What appears before me bears less resemblance to sexual congress than it does to the writhing, squirming, not-quite-dead-yet-already-partially-decomposed occupants of a mass grave.

My mom smiles. Nodding at the PDA screen, she says, "Do you understand, Maddy?" She says, "This is where babies come from."

My dad adds, 'And herpes."

"Antonio," my mother says, "let's not go down that road." To me, she says, "Young lady, are you absolutely sure you don't want a Xanax?"

In the center of the tiny pornographic movie, the hideous little orgy is interrupted. The words Incoming Call superimpose themselves over the grappling bodies. A red light blinks at the top of the PDA case, and a shrill bell rings. My dad says, "Wait," and he holds the PDA to his ear, where the gruesome assemblage of entwined limbs and genitals squirm against his cheek; videotaped penises erupt their vile sputum dangerously near his eye and mouth. Answering the call thus, he says, "Hello?" He says, "Fine. We'll be downstairs in a moment."

I shake my head again, No. No, thank you, to the Xanax.

Already, my mom starts poking around inside her evening purse. "This isn't your real birthday present," she says, "but just in case…" What she hands me is round, a rolled batch of shiny plastic or vinyl, printed with the repeating pattern of a cartoon cat face. The plastic or foil feels so slick that it could be wet, too slick to easily hold on to; thus when I reach to take it from her hand, the roll drops to the floor, unspooling itself to reveal a seemingly endless series of the same cartoon cat face. The long plastic strip, quilted into little squares, this trails from my hand to the floor. The length of it gives off a powdery, hospital smell of latex.

By then, my parents are gone; they've swept out the door of the hotel suite before I realize I'm holding a fifteen-foot-long supply of Hello Kitty condoms.