Misty (Wildflowers 1)

Prologue

.We were brought separately to Doctor Marlowe's house. My mother drove me herself because it was on the way to meeting her friend Tammy for their weekly window-shopping and lunch with some of their girlfriends at one of the expensive restaurants near the beach in Santa Monica, California.

I think my mother believes she still has a chance to be discovered and put on the cover of a magazine. Even as recently as yesterday, she held a magazine with the cover beside her face and asked, "Don't you think I'm just as pretty as she is, Misty? And I'm at least ten years older."

Twenty years older was more like it, I thought, but I didn't dare say it. Aging is definitely considered a disease in our house. Minutes are treated like germs and days, months and years are diseases. My mother makes Ponce de Leon's search for the fabled Fountain of Youth. a mere Sunday-school picnic. There's nothing she wouldn't buy, no place she wouldn't go if it held the possibility of stopping Father Time. Most of her friends are the same and have similar fears. I can't help but wonder if I'll become just like them: terrified of gray hair, wrinkles and calcium

deficiencies.

If my mother wasn't going to Santa Monica today, she would have hired a car service for me as usual and mailed the bill to my father. She just loves sending bills to him. Every time she licks the envelope and closes it, she pounds it with a little closed fist and says, "Take that." I'm sure when Daddy sees it in his pile of mail, he grimaces and his wallet goes "Ouch."

I'm like a dart she throws at him now. "She needs new this; she needs new that. The dentist says she needs braces. She needs new school clothes. Here's the bill for her dermatologist visit, the one your insurance doesn't cover."

There is always another bull's-eye for Mom, who is punishing my father with my needs, whipping him with the costs of keeping me in designer jeans, straight teeth, and anything else she can buy. She pounces on a new expense and rushes to get the charges added up and sent to him ASAP, as she says. Once she sent a bill special delivery to his office even though he had days to pay it.

Daddy tries to keep the bills down, asking why sometimes and trying to find alternatives, but whenever he does that, Mommy waves his opinions in my face like a bullfighter with a red flag, crying, "See how much he thinks of you? He's always looking for a bargain. If he wants to find cheaper prices for the things you need, let him do all the shopping."

Daddy says he just wants to be sure I'm getting value for the dollars spent.

I'm so lucky to have such concerned parents. I have to count my blessings on my hands and feet, my nose and ears. Doesn't everyone wish their parents were divorced?

I couldn't help but wonder if the other girls who were coming to Doctor Marlowe's today had also been turned into whips their parents could snap at each other.

Jade's father's chauffeur drove her because it happened to be her father's weekend with her and he had a previous appointment. All of us members of the OWP, Orphans With Parents, just love to hear about "previous appointments." What our parents usually mean is "I've got something more important to do for myself than look after your needs. If I wasn't divorced, your father could help, but no, that's not the way it is. We're different. You're . . . like some wildflower growing out of the garden, untended, left to fend for yourself most of the time, to pray for the right amount of rain and sunshine because no one's there to water and nurture you."

"I must have had blinders on when I married your mother," Daddy says. Mommy says, "I was on drugs. There's no other possible explanation for such a stupid act."

Did the other girls' parents say things like that in front of them? Sometimes I felt like I was invisible or something and my parents simply forgot I was standing there when they ranted and raved. Doctor Marlowe was right about one thing. I really was interested in hearing what the other girls' experiences were. That, more than anything, brought me here today. Oh, I know other OWPs at school, but without the therapy, without a Doctor Marlowe shining a light in the dark corners, they don't really tell you what's in their hearts. They keep it all locked up, afraid or ashamed that someone might discover just how lost and alone they really are.

Star's grandmother brought her to Doctor Marlowe's house. She told us later on that her grandmother was actually sixty-eight and had inherited all the new responsibility for her and her little brother just when she was supposed to be rocking herself on some porch and knitting sweaters for her grandchildren. And then suddenly, guess what? She's a mother again.

Cathy's mother brought her, but it nearly took a crowbar to pry the information out of Cathy's mouth. Maybe she's afraid to hear the sound of her own voice and admit to herself she exists. Very quickly she reminded all of us of a terrified kitten, rolling itself into a furry ball. I was the one who decided to call her Cat instead of Cathy and after a while, guess what? She liked it better, too.

I was unloaded at the doctor's home and office on a warm early summer morning in Brentwood. The marine layer of morning fog was just lifting to reveal a California sky the color of faded jeans. It was going to be another one of those perfect days we all took for granted in Los Angeles. By afternoon, any clouds would resemble puffs of meringue. The breeze would feel like soft fingers on your cheeks and hair, and car windows would become glittering mirrors.

We live in such a perfect world. Why were we so imperfect? In all our homes there were shadows in corners and whispers behind doors, no matter how bright and glorious it was outside. I used to think everyone else was at peace while we were pawns in silent wars. There were no guns fired, although sometimes we all wondered if there would be. The wounded and the dead were only hopes and wishes and the bombs were just words, nasty words wrapped in cold smiles or printed on official documents that floated into our lives along with the ashes from the fires that burned up our families.

It was easy to see that Doctor Marlowe had a successful psychiatrist's practice, I thought. Her house was an enormous Tudor on a sizeable lot in an area of prime real estate. There was just her and her older sister Emma, so there was plenty of space for her offices.

Why shouldn't she have a profitable practice? I asked myself. After all, she won't ever have a shortage of clients. Even the kids I knew who didn't come from broken homes had problems and many of them were in therapy either at school or privately.

Maybe it was an epidemic Arthur Polk, one of the boys in my eleventh-grade class, said all this family dysfunction was a result of sunspots. He was a computer whiz and a science nerd, so some of my friends thought he might just be right. I thought he had a head filled with bees, each one a different thought buzzing, some stinging the others. Whenever I looked at him and he saw I was looking at him, his eyes seemed to roll like marbles in a teacup.

"Call me to tell me what time to come for you, Misty," my mother said as I opened the car door and stepped out.

"I already told you about what time to be here," I said.