CHAPTER SIX
When you’re the only daughter born into a wealthy family, life comes with certain advantages. It’s like being born on third base. I didn’t appreciate that fact of life until I’d already managed to waste a lot of those benefits.
Throughout my childhood I was a good student and a decent athlete, although nothing remarkable like my big brother, who never glanced at a trophy or a medal that didn’t end up in his possession. My family was a collection of diehard overachievers. My mother spent hours at the hospital or engaged with one of her various committees, leaving the big house always feeling empty. As for my father, he was always working hard at something very important, which I didn’t fully understand at the time. All I understood was that it was better to stay out of his way when he walked through the door until he had a chance to visit his study and suck back a highball. Or two. Or five. He couldn’t seem to handle being home for more than fifteen minutes without nursing a drink.
Aaron and Cindy Gordon weren’t naturally affectionate people, but I can’t say that I felt unloved. I attended great schools, owned fantastic wardrobes, and received the keys to a BMW convertible before I even officially had my license. But all that privilege can have its pitfalls, especially if no one ever explains that it’s a bad idea for a sixteen-year-old girl to drink a bottle of schnapps and play Lipstick Dick at a party. I quickly discovered that I liked drinking. I liked sex. And I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me from doing either one.
As it turned out, they didn’t even notice at first. Unless there was a high-profile event where I could be trotted out as the perfect daughter, my parents barely acknowledged my existence. I hadn’t realized how unhappy I was until I found some terrible distractions to dull the ache of their benign neglect.
Now when I think about those days, I’m horrified. I deserve to be horrified, deserve to wince as I remember my brother picking me up out of a puddle of vomit after Brynna Cole and I combined a bottle of tequila with some painkillers stolen from my mother’s medicine chest. No one was home at my house, as usual, so we had invited Clark Lutz over to party, whom I vaguely remember humping in my canopied bed before I started puking everywhere. Clark and Brynna got spooked and took off. So it was William who found me, William who drove me to the hospital, William who tried to convince my folks that I was at the point where I needed help.
But they weren’t convinced despite William’s pleas. Having a daughter go through rehab wasn’t an item on their bucket list. Plus, even though the Phoenix metro area is huge, all the rich people seem to know each other. The country club crowd would have found out and it would have been a source of humiliation for my parents. And as I sat there picking at my scratchy paper gown in a hospital bed while my mother stared out the window and my father angrily signed the discharge paperwork, I understood that potential gossip meant more to them than I did.
And so I responded as any petulant teen would.
I became even worse.
I ignored curfews. I stole from my brother’s wallet to supplement my new drinking habit. I nearly flunked out junior year and nearly flunked out senior year as well. My father must have made a payoff or called in some favors, because there was no way I earned that high school diploma. I was too busy getting drunk in the school parking lot and then riding good old Clark or his buddy Max Levine in the front seat of my BMW while waving to passersby. College wasn’t even on my radar. William was excelling at Stanford Law School and I was surrounded by bright young things who couldn’t wait to sprint into their exciting futures. Yet the future sounded boring to me; it sounded like some bullshit that parents and teachers spat at you to keep you in line. I’d stepped out of line a long time ago. I was a hot mess. And I knew it.
I couldn’t guess what my parents were planning to do with me at that point. My father slapped me across the face when I told him to go fuck himself after he presented me with an ASU catalog. He apologized. His big hands shook as he pressed a towel filled with ice cubes to my bleeding lip. I remembered thinking that it was weird how he was more upset than I was. I was so wasted at the time that the blow had scarcely even hurt.
Then William came home for a visit and put his foot down.
“Goddamn it, I don’t fucking care how it looks. We’re getting her some help now, because I swear I’m not fucking going back to school until I know Audrey’s being taken care of.”
Even though I was sleeping off a hangover in my bed, I could still hear him yelling from the other side of the house. William was shouting, but he was shouting for me, not at me. Someone cared. Someone was on my side. Someone didn’t hate me even though I hated myself most of the time. And I drifted back to sleep feeling a little less empty than I had in a while.
I awoke to daylight and the noise my mother made as she rummaged through my dresser.
“What’s going on?” My throat was so dry the words emerged as a croak. For the past year my mother had visited my bedroom about as often as she ventured into the gardener’s shed in the backyard, which was next to never. So the sight of her handling my underwear was a little unusual.
She glanced at me long enough for me to see that she was not wearing her usual mask of perfectly applied cosmetics. “We found a place for you,” she said in a bright voice that sounded too high pitched, artificial.
I yawned. “A place? Can I expect to see bars on the windows?”
I took note of the open suitcase on the floor. It was part of an old set that I last remembered using for a tenth-grade school trip to Washington, DC. My mother dropped a pair of bras into it and then opened my T-shirt drawer.
“Don’t be dramatic, Audrey,” she said with a sigh. “I just mean that you’re going to a place where you can get well.”
“Am I sick?” I asked. Stupid question, because I really did feel sick. I needed my mother to leave so I could reach into my nightstand and find the unopened bottle of vodka I knew was hidden beneath some old empty journals. After a few sips I would feel better, more clearheaded. I could talk my mother out of whatever plan she’d made.
But she wouldn’t leave. She closed the suitcase and approached my bed, reaching out a hand that seemed about to caress my check before it was abruptly pulled back. There was sadness in her eyes when she said, “Yes, you’re sick. Now get up. Your father is waiting in the car and we are leaving right this minute.”
Typical rehab wouldn’t do for a member of the Gordon family. No, a cot in a sterile building was for the unwashed addicted masses. My folks found a place that was equal parts resort and rehabilitation center in the pinewoods outside Prescott. The first time I was there I stayed for a month, suffered terrible withdrawal, and endured countless therapy sessions where I learned my promiscuous tendencies were connected to my addictive personality. The drinking, the sex. I had tied them together, and I needed to stop doing that or I would never have a meaningful relationship. But the caring counselors assured me I could overcome those things. I didn’t need to be a prisoner to my worst urges, and I agreed. I returned home and enrolled in a few classes at community college. I went on normal dates. It seemed like a happy ending. And I’d like to say that everything went smoothly from there on out, but life isn’t like that. As it turns out, I relapsed several times before I was sent back to the pinewoods.
My defining moment came one sunrise when I arose from bed as if someone had called me out of a deep sleep. Pushing aside the curtains of the private room’s lone window, I stared out at the magnificent green landscape as the sun stubbornly rose over the mountains.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I said out loud, and I wasn’t just talking about rehab. I didn’t want to be this person I’d become—this callous, self-hating brat who pissed away everything she’d ever been given just because she could.
My parents accepted me home with wariness. I was lucky they allowed me back into the house at all. By that time I was twenty and they were under no legal obligation to keep me any longer. My sorrow over everything I had put them through the past few years hung over me. They didn’t seem to believe my heartfelt apologies, possibly figuring they were just another manipulative tactic. I didn’t blame them. But I was confident that I’d win them over in time. They were my parents. They loved me, even if sometimes they couldn’t stand the sight of me.
Over the next two years I continued to attend classes at a nearby community college, earning my associate’s degree in business management. William, big brother and eternal champion, was in the audience for my graduation right beside his new fiancée, a pretty brunette named Jennifer who planned to be a psychologist.
William tried to convince me to continue and earn that coveted four-year degree, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable in school anymore. And besides, I’d spent so long in a fog of self-destruction, I wanted to work hard. I wanted to be like my big brother and be worthy of my own last name.
A series of temporary office positions around Phoenix gave me valuable experience, and then my father mentioned how he’d heard the prestigious construction firm Lester & Brown was searching for entry-level project assistants. The speed of my hiring stunned me a little, but I instantly loved the work. It took so much multitasking, so many things to be responsible for. I thrived. For the first time in my life I was actually participating in something that would yield a tangible result. Visiting the completed projects would actually bring tears to my eyes. These buildings all had a purpose. And I’d helped create them.
Shortly after I began working for Lester & Brown, I got my own apartment in Phoenix. My very first night there I wandered around the small, quiet rooms congratulating myself on finally reaching adulthood at age twenty-three. I was resolute. Never again would I allow such self-destructive impulses to consume me. I didn’t expect that it would be easy every day, and it wasn’t. In the beginning I struggled a lot. Sometimes I still did. Sometimes I was tempted to take a bottle of wine to bed and remain there for twelve hours. But I stayed clean. Some alcoholics find salvation in AA meetings with sponsors and sobriety coins. There was nothing wrong with that. I’d even tried going to meetings now and then, although I tended to stay in the back and say little as I wondered what I was doing there. Work was my salvation. Work was my constant when the old demons beckoned. I didn’t turn into a nun, but I did stop drunkenly screwing around with inappropriate partners. Other than the notable—and sober—Jason Roma blunder.
I dated occasionally and even had a few relationships. And if I never fell in love with any of them, then that was all right. I was busy enough with work. Wiser to avoid risking my heart after I’d so carelessly bruised it myself for so long. Even after all this time I wasn’t sure how fragile the thing was.
Now at age thirty I was able to look in the mirror and marvel over my reflection. I was a model employee. A satisfactory daughter, a devoted sister, and a loving aunt. I hadn’t done anything I was ashamed of in a very long time.
In fact, since I stepped out of that luxury rehab facility for the last time, determined to reform, I could think of only one thing I’d done since then that was reckless—a three-week fling with a colleague. It still bothered me because I was pretty sure I’d do it again. Jason had tapped into something basic and primal inside of me. I didn’t love him. I didn’t even really like him. But I still wanted him. Bad. Maybe even bad enough to toss away caution and my career in the process.
I was still stewing about the unexpected surprise that had been delivered at this morning’s meeting when I returned to the office. Lukas didn’t drive me crazy the way Jason did, but seeing him again had caught me off guard, and not in a good way.
Someone had made coffee in the break room, so I paused to indulge in a cup. Helen passed by with a pile of papers in her arms.
“Should I even ask about lunch?” she said with a laugh. “Or will you blow me off again like you have twice in the last week?”
I grimaced as I swallowed the last of the coffee. “I’m sorry. Got a ton of work to take care of today. Maybe next Wednesday?”
“Maybe nothing. Wednesday it is. I’m holding you to it, doll, and if you are nowhere to be found Wednesday at noon, I will enlist Jason Roma’s help to track you down.” She cocked her head and eyed me. “How are you guys getting along? Word around the office is there’s been some tension between you two.”
“There’s nothing between me and Jason,” I insisted. “Nothing but work anyway.”
Helen raised an eyebrow. I had never admitted to her that Jason and I had hooked up years ago, but I wondered how much she suspected.
“Okay,” she said. “But someone might wonder why you spit out the boy’s name like he’s a type of dangerous reptile.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I sighed. “I’m just in a bad mood. Jason definitely isn’t a reptile. And he isn’t dangerous.”
Helen dropped the subject and waved her papers at me before she said she needed to run because the CFO was waiting.
I waited until she was gone and then I crushed the paper coffee cup in my hand.
“Jason’s only as dangerous as the devil,” I muttered, still troubled by the private knowledge that I remained extremely attracted to him. I didn’t want to know what I’d be risking by going down that path again.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe everything.
I fired the cup at the wastebasket on my way out.