Chapter 47
Dee wondered whether the nice linen napkin on her side table could serve as a sturdy enough receptacle for upchucked protein shake as the small Cessna Citation Mustang private jet dipped and climbed.
At least I’m alone if I have to suffer that particular indignity, she thought to herself.
“Hit some bumpy air there,” Captain Obvious announced. “We should be clear of it momentarily.”
Dee groaned, put in her earbuds so she could drown him out with white noise, and looked out the window, unhappy that New York City’s dense, gray landscape had fully receded into the distance.
She was going home. And she was not happy about it.
After the meeting with Dexter at MTV it became clear that Dee needed to take some steps to keep the details of her childhood buried somewhere deep. A friend who ran a very successful hedge fund gave her the name of his Fixer. She’d laughed at that, at first — what is this, a Quentin Tarantino movie? An episode of “Billions?” — but was quickly sold when told of his particular utility.
He was going to reach out to his contacts in law enforcement and the dark web (“that’s a real thing?” Dee had wondered) and see if he could erase all traces of Dee’s stepfather’s case. He didn’t tell her more than that. He said she didn’t want to know. She was instructed to pay him and wait. And one other thing:
“You need to go see your parents and do damage control,” the Fixer had said.
“First of all, he’s not my parent,” she’d said. “Second of all, no fucking way.”
“You don’t want me to do it,” he’d said, then hung up.
So Dee booked a private flight from New York to Little Falls-Morrison County-Lindbergh field, known for its flagpole in honor of hometown hero and noted anti-Semite Charles A. Lindbergh and the 70th anniversary of his transatlantic solo flight.
From the back of a Cadillac Escalade she didn’t pay attention as the driver took her past the Linden Hill historic home, and the Minnesota Military Museum, and her high school. This was not a trip down memory lane. She had not packed an overnight bag.
Dee looked up from her phone when she heard the car’s tires crunch over the crumbly gravel of her mother’s driveway. There was the house, in all of its dilapidated and sagging glory, just as Dee had left it when she went to college.
“Ma’am, do you need help with your things?” the driver asked.
Dee didn’t answer, didn’t move. She felt rooted to her seat by a childlike fear that at first surprised her, then infuriated her.
“No,” she snapped, grabbing her Louis Vuitton tote.
Dee was grateful she’d chosen to wear her deliberately beat-up Golden Goose Hi Star Bicolor Platform Script Sneakers as she made her way up the dirty, dusty driveway. A mangy-looking dog eyed her from a pile of rusty auto parts. Near the front door was a ripped bag of garbage that a nocturnal animal had clearly torn open and perused through.
She hadn’t remembered this place being such a white-trash cliché, yet here it was.
Dee looked down and saw dandelions struggling to grow through the cracks in the front steps. She thought back to how she would crouch down to pick them at their puffball stage, squeezing her eyes shut and making wish after wish as she blew the seeds into the air. Then she’d feel a hard smack on the back of her head and her stepfather yelling, “stop that, you moron! You’re spreading weeds!”
She took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. It played a tune like a haunted ice cream truck, just as she remembered.
“Dee,” Joanna Bradley said.
At least she’s lucid enough to remember me, Dee thought.
“Yes, mom,” Dee said.
“Come in,” Joanna said, stepping aside to reveal a home much messier and visually upsetting than the one Dee had lived in. Old newspapers were stacked high in the living room. Cans of cat food were scattered on the floor, pried open and half-eaten (did her mom have a cat?). Empty beer bottles were all over the coffee table, along with cigarettes that had been haphazardly stubbed out there. A bottle of Burnett’s Gin was tucked lovingly under a blanket on the recliner, three-quarters empty. Was that the faint smell of urine?
“You want something to drink?” Joanna asked, moving the bottle aside and easing down into the chair. She looked so old, so tired.
“No,” Dee said. “Is he here?”
“You sure cut right to the chase, don’t you? Yes, he’s home,” Joanna huffed, then yelled: “Franklin, come here!”
The place was so small, he most certainly would have heard the doorbell. But he did always like to make an entrance.
Dee swept some candy wrappers off the couch — are these people straight out of central casting? — and sat down.
She heard his heavy boots first and found herself immediately transported back to her closet, her small square of pink blanket covering her eyes, wishing on invisible dandelions that he would not find her this time.
“Well, look who it is,” he sneered. “How are you, Little Miss Dee?”
“Don’t call me that,” Dee said.
“Alright, you two,” Joanna said, as if speaking to two sweetly bickering siblings. “So to what do we owe the pleasure of this surprise, last-minute visit, Dierdre?”
Dee reached into her tote bag and pulled out a folder, then handed her mother a piece of paper. “I need you to sign this.”
Franklin snatched it away. “What is it?”
“In simple terms, it is a legally binding promise that you will never communicate with anyone about the case, or me, or anything related to any of that,” Dee said.
Franklin looked up and smiled. “Oh, really?”
“Yes, really,” Dee said, holding her ground.
“Do people want to talk to us about you?” Joanna asked. “I mean, I know you’re successful, but you’re not Oprah.”
Dee chewed on the cuticle of her left ring finger. “It doesn’t matter who or why or when or if someone wants to talk to you about me. You just cannot do it. Ever.”
“This is ridiculous,” Joanna scoffed. “You’re my daughter.”
“You ceased to have any parental authority over me when you let him put me in a cage,” Dee seethed.
Joanna’s eyes bulged. “How dare you? I …”
And then her face went blank. Oh, this is rich, Dee thought. Pretending to be senile at such a convenient moment. Dee turned her attentions to Franklin.
“Once you sign this, you will receive, from an intermediary, $250,000 in cash,” Dee said. “If you don’t sign, or you do and then you talk, this intermediary will come after you.”
“Come after me?” Franklin smirked. “Be real.”
“This is very, very real,” Dee said. “This guy does not mess around.”
Franklin looked skeptically at Dee, as if he were waiting for her to reveal this had all been a practical joke.
How could he ever think she would be playful with him?
“I know you need the money,” Dee said. “And you do not need to have my guy in your life. The only price you pay is keeping your mouth shut.”
“That, and being even more estranged from Little Miss Dee,” Franklin oozed.
Dee pressed on. “Yes, this would also mean that neither of you can ever call me again.”
Joanna continued to stare blankly at a dusty curio cabinet.
Franklin scoffed. “You haven’t been part of this family in a long time anyway. We’ve been doing just fine without you. So yeah, I’ll sign. Good riddance.”
Dee handed him a pen. He signed, then helped Joanna sign too.
“Keep the pen,” Dee said, standing up and taking the document from them. “Goodbye, Mom.”
Joanna did not move or say a word.
Dee tried to hide the unsteadiness in her steps as she walked out the door. Then, seeing the Escalade at the bottom of the driveway, she broke into a run, never looking back.