Tonight’s list of auction items were the same usual dross. Gowns and designer sessions and diamonds and pearls. Vacations to some of the top venues in the world and a personalized song from one of the most bland A-list singers.
People lapped it up. My mother raised her hand to several of them, grinning away like a sugar plum fairy when she beat off the competition.
“For you,” she said to Lionel, once she’d won the trip to a London city boudoir hotel.
“What a darling sister-in-law I’m blessed with,” he said with a garish twinkle in his eye. “My brother was a lucky soul.”
That’s when my tongue burst free from my mouth.
“Your brother is a dead soul,” I spat, barely audible under my breath. “Your brother was a lucky soul enough to be murdered by someone who wanted what was his. If only we knew who that was. Hey, Uncle Lionel, do you know who that was?”
“Enough!” Mom hissed, then realized just how hard she’d snapped. She pasted on that grin of hers all the brighter, waiting a few long seconds before leaning into the table to give me more. “You’re not a child anymore, Elaine. Whatever it is you need to get over about your father’s death, it’s about time you did it. Grow up and stop being a nasty little bitch about your Uncle Lionel, too. I’ve told you enough. Plenty enough.”
I hated it when she spoke to me like that. I could feel our Constantine table all sinking inside, each one of us fully aware of the bristling tension between me and the head of the family.
Grace, Vivian, and Tinsley lined the table to my left, and Kingston and Harlow, on Lionel’s side, were on the right. Yeah. Everyone knew about the tension.
Everyone knew I was a failure. A compulsive, worthless failure. Why not just join in with the pitiful joke of the whole damn thing? So, I did. Just like usual, I did. I pasted on my own fake smile, and then I summoned up my finest bravado for the room.
I did it for me. I did it in the face of Uncle Lionel and all the shit he made me feel inside. I did it because I didn’t know what else to cling to, other than my own spectacle of glorifying myself somehow in this hell of a room.
I gave up on my mineral water and poured myself a glass of champagne, not giving a shit about waiting for the server. I glugged some back and put my hand in the air to bid on a penguin adoption at the local zoo, ignoring the pounding in my chest, knowing plenty fine that I was in too much debt already to give a shit about a few more thousand dollars. I could win this. I could win this and win the applause that went along with it. Just a pathetic little smattering of applause for the pathetic little soul who couldn’t do any better than adopt a fucking penguin.
But it wasn’t a few thousand dollars I was bidding, not after the first few seconds.
Five thousand . . . eight thousand . . . twelve . . .
Mom was scowling at me, but I was past it, downing more champagne and keeping my hand in the air.
I wasn’t going to lose this.
Harriet squeezed my knee under the table, but I took no notice.
Eighteen thousand dollars! Eighteen!
“Elaine,” Mom began, but I didn’t listen, just kept my hand up high.
Lionel attempted a laugh at me, trying to brush aside my efforts as nothing, and that made it burn all the harder in my chest, keeping my hand right on up there.
I didn’t have eighteen thousand dollars. I barely had anything left anymore. I’d used it on drugs, and partying, and running up debt in places I shouldn’t . . . in people I shouldn’t. Places and people I could never share with my family without them scoffing at me. The Power brothers were after me and my backlog, charging interest at an unbelievable rate and knowing full well I’d have to pay it without going begging to my mother since there were rumors everywhere she’d already written me off.
She had. Those rumors were true.
Twenty thousand dollars!
My mind was swimming in the fear and the shame and the insanity of not knowing my own heart anymore. It was swimming in the need to win, just to be someone, even if it was just for a few short moments of getting the cheers from the crowd.
“Elaine!” Mom tried again, but I didn’t listen.
Harriet squeezed my knee even tighter, but I didn’t listen.
Twenty-two thousand dollars!
The woman battling me was a celebrity wrestler’s daughter who was trying to make it as a model, and failing. I guess she was trying to prove herself to the room and the tabloids as much as I was.