But we did have a big dining table, by the French designer Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, which I had brought from my father’s house. It was the table where, later on, my friend and the mannequin man had sex.
Also, Aunt Jo did not stand aside, she gave me for the housewarming party, a large closet made of reddish wood, which at the moment stands in my room, right in front of the window.
And Miranda brought into our apartment, beautiful curtains with thin gold braid stitched at the bottom, and a coffee table, on which, food stands more often than on the dining room table. Well, you can see why now!
But our apartment was cozy only because every time the sun rose – and we lived on the sunny side – there was a pleasant feeling of light and warmth. And those who visited us said how much they liked our apartment, precisely because it was so sunny and bright.
My good friend from college, Bill Riley, helped me choose the neighborhood and the place. He was the only person I knew who worked as a realtor. So who else could I turn to but him?
In general, my idea to move out of the luxury house, into a separate two-room apartment, many relatives and acquaintances, perceived as a joke. And afterwards they said that I was insane and that I would not last forever. Now, only from time to time, someone, well, in passing, mentioned my action. Though, remembering my past shenanigans, a lot of people were happy about that change.
Because at this point, I was living a quiet and measured life, and there was no one to agonize over it. Amen!
Chapter 2
The first time I ran away from home was when I was fifteen.
It wasn’t exactly an escape, just a trip with friends, for a few days to the lake. We agreed not to say anything to our forefathers, so they would worry and all that. It’s not uncommon that after that, I got the first number from my parents. My mother later wept and cried over me for a long time, and my father called the parents of the other kids to keep it quiet.
My high school years, in fact, were the wildest and most reckless. Back then I thought it was cool to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and run out my bedroom window at night to go out with Bobby Miller.
I also loved to embarrass people with my actions or words. For example, I called my history teacher a «complete imbecile» during class and threw a notebook at him as I left the room.
At one time there was a video that I shot on my phone of a music teacher making out with a British teacher. I even posted flyers about it all over the school. Later, when it turned out that I had done it, it was hushed up, because my father sponsored both the school and the basketball team. My dad was always covering my ass for all sorts of things.
As for the appearance, here I was generally inventive.
At fifteen, I dressed like a young puttana: short skirts, high-heeled shoes, and fishnet tights. I wore very bright colors, liked piercings, and changed my hair color with constant frequency. By the way, there was one harsh case, because of which I was almost expelled from school. Even though my father sorted it out, I was still later shunned and even feared.
The thing is, I set Margaret Wilson’s hair on fire in chemistry class because she was spreading nasty gossip about me. She ended up being taken to the clinic with minor first-degree burns.
To say that my father was furious at the time is not to say anything. I was suspended from school for a month and not allowed out of the house. Even just going out for a walk around the house was forbidden. After that incident, I was routinely pointed at and looked at with judgmental eyes by everyone in town.
And later my mother became ill. My father came home less and less often. And I turned into the quiet one. Bobby and I broke up a year before graduation, and that was when I quit smoking and stopped being so provocative. I took off all the earrings on my own body and started dressing more modestly, discarding the short skirts and replacing them with sports tights and sweatshirts.
When the time came to decide on an institute, I told my father that I was going to be a doctor. Then my grandfather, my mother’s father, who lives in Germany, came to visit us. He was a professional neurosurgeon, who performed a huge number of successful surgeries and earned great respect among his colleagues. At the moment grandfather is already retired and from time to time, travels to different symposiums and conferences, where innovations in medicine are discussed. But he is still recognizable and authoritative, even in the eyes of the younger generation.
My grandfather was proud of my professional choice and began to pay a lot of attention to me so that I, too, would become a professional neurosurgeon. We spent hours at a time, exclusively in discussions. I promised him that I would become the best doctor in the world and cure my mother, and he said that everything can be only if you believe in it. And I did. But it took time to reach those heights, which unfortunately my mother didn’t have.
She was gone, two months before my graduation. She was gone, and with her came, from each of us, something alive, filling that void with unbearable pain. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and I turned into a recluse. My father drank routinely and stayed away for long periods of time, leaving me alone in the big cottage, which became torture for him and me. The memories of my mother were so colorful and vivid, and I imagined that she was still with us. That she was sitting beside me, pressing me against her, humming a familiar tune from her youth, as she had done before.
It took me a long time to start living a normal life. My dad and I were pretty much done talking. All our discussions lasted no more than a minute, where either of us would just say hello and go off to our own place.
And later came a period when I started traveling a lot, trying to find my newest self. During my prolonged absence, my father perked up, as if someone had replaced him. He, out of the blue, began to insist that I come home, and routinely told me that we should be a family now. And when I came back, he started telling me how I needed to live my life. I was under constant control. Because of this, I was again throwing everything away and going to another country to be away from him and his unnecessary tutelage. We quarreled a lot, we did not listen and understand each other enough. As I packed my own suitcase, my father hired people here to find me and bring me back.
At one point, when I went with the volunteer movement to India, the military came to our camp and took me against my will to some base, where I sat, in a damp and dirty room, for three days. Then my father’s men came and took me back home.
We fought wars for a long time, trying to get through to who we were when Mother was still alive. And the war between us would still be going on if I hadn’t given up. I was tired of running around and finding things that weren’t clear. That’s why I decided to put the brakes on what was still left, namely, my own father. He was just as miserable as I was. We were the cause of our own loneliness, so only we could help each other.
For my father’s sake, I reincarnated into an obedient daughter who did not rebel and did everything she was told. I went to college and devoted myself to the family business. I became a British lady and almost embroidered a cross.
I was