Life Sentences Read online

  Pilar lifted her hair to the top of her ahead and then let it drop. “You know as well as I do,” she said to the vision in the mirror like a friend, “marriage is out of the question. The one-night stands I’ve known don’t want a doctor for a wife.” She leaned into the mirror to more closely examine her features. “Besides, only Barbara Streisand could love that nose.”

  Pilar thumped the mirror and headed out the door. By the time she got to the counter, her parents were in a booth eating Quarter Pounders and drinking coffee. When Pilar started to order her father yelled, “I have your hamburger here.”

  The clerk raised his eyebrows as though he knew what it was like to have a father like that. Pilar shrugged in response.

  “Marcus,” Celeste said with a hint of ire in her voice, “maybe Pilar would like to order for herself. She is capable.”

  Though shocked by her mother’s uncommon, forceful tone, Pilar didn’t turn away from the young man taking orders and asked for a grilled chicken sandwich and a diet Coke. She paid him with a ten-dollar bill she had tucked into her pocket. When the clerk finished the order, Pilar grabbed the tray and slid into the booth beside her mother, while the other customers, clad in shorts and T-shirts, eyedthe more formal trio with suspicion.

  On their way back to the car, Marcus announced, “We’ll drive straight home.”

  “What? We’re not stopping overnight?” Pilar shouted loud enough to draw the attention of the group parking nearby. How many hours would she be stuck with him? “How could you make that decision without asking Mother or me?” Pilar plopped into the car and again slammed the door.

  Marcus slid behind the wheel. “In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a democracy.”

  Celeste gingerly eased herself into the passenger’s seat as Marcus started the engine. “I thought I made it clear earlier,” he stated, and checked the lot for traffic. “I must get home.”

  Pilar curled up on the back seat. A familiar fatigue, induced by anger and depression, set in, as it had each time she’d gone home to Grosse Pointe Shores. Using her graduation robe as a pillow, she let the repetitive sound of the clicking tires along the highway lull her into a fitful sleep.

  MUTILATED WOMEN’S BODIES. PILES of them in a field. Murky light. A stench. Screams. Pilar woke with a start.

  Marcus tapped the brake. Everyone lunged forward. “What the hell,” he shouted.

  The screams were from Pilar.

  “Nightmare, Father,” she whispered, feeling as though she had had an out-of-body experience. “I had a nightmare.” Pilar looked out the window at the green-and-white road sign that read, “University of Michigan next right.” They must have passed the Ann Arbor exit.

  Why had she really left? Was it to defy her father’s insistence that she attend his alma mater? Susan’s smile appeared to Pilar as clearly as though her friend were in the car. Or had she really been afraid and fled because of the student murders? Had she been frightened that she would be Chad Wilbanks next victim? It was odd though, his face was plastered everywhere in the media, Pilar hardly remembered what he looked like.

  MARCUS HAD MET CELESTE at the University of Michigan. She had thought he was quite a catch – handsome, rich, and well-established in Michigan society. Somehow, Celeste managed to ignore his need to control others. Unlike Celeste, Pilar held the opinion that her father’s arrogance overshadowed any positive attributes. She often wondered why she saw that and her mother didn’t.

  As the new Mercedes sped on, Pilar stared at the back of her father’s head. Repulsed by his carefully tended hair, his manicured life, she wished that the burning in her eyes would become a laser beam and sear his locks. The wish was as dreamy and hopeless as a child’s on the evening’s first star.

  True, Marcus had never been violent to Celeste or Pilar. And true, he’d always made sure his smart, talenteddaughter had attended the best schools, had the best piano and ballet teachers, gone to the best arts camp. Yet childhood memories plagued Pilar, countless times of being ignored or worse, of being ridiculed for not “having what it takes like a boy does.”

  In imitation of her mother’s futile attempts with Marcus, Pilar spent the better part of her childhood trying, and failing, to please her father. Though he never said it outright, Pilar was convinced Marcus kept his distance from both of them because he harbored a deep resentment that Celeste had never given him a son, a boy he would have considered a rightful heir. That rancor spilled over into his feelings about Pilar. No matter how bright, gifted, or successful she was, she could never be the son he wanted.

  She got an inkling of how hopeless her efforts were the day she won the third grade spelling bee. Victorious, she flashed her parents a radiant smile. “Exclusionary” was a tough word.

  “You’ll have to do more than that if you want to make it in this world,” he said. Then he turned his attention to other fathers gathered in the auditorium, while Pilar savored what little comfort her mother’s ever-ready embrace gave her. Except for Pilar’s high school and college graduations, Marcus never attended another activity, feigning a burdensome work schedule. The same all-powerful timetable that had them speeding to Grosse Pointe Shores.

  Yet, she never gave up trying.

  PILAR RESTED HER HEAD against the car seat. As she listened to the click, click, click of the tires, she reviewed a scene that had played over and over in her mind during the past years. Shortly after she decided to change medical schools, Pilar, at home packing, heard angry words between her parents. It was the cocktail hour, normally a time when they made small talk and sipped their evening martinis in the library, a floor below. Her mother’s hurt tone drew Pilar to the edge of the stairs to eavesdrop. Without knowing how she got there, a few minutes later Pilar stood outside the library door listening to Celeste’s accusation, “You never cared about Pilar or me.”

  “Care!” Marcus’ enraged voice boomed. “Care! I’m a good provider for you and Pilar. I’ve spent my life providing for you. Look at this house, look at your clothes, your car, the servants. Look at Pilar’s education.”

  As Pilar listened, an image emerged in her mind’s eye of her father flailing his arms around while his face reddened with each thundering word.

  “That’s not love. And now,” Celeste stopped to take in air like an oxygen-deprived mountain climber, “now you confirm the dirty rumor spreading at the club.”

  Pilar hugged her chest to stop the shaking as the word “rumor” assaulted her. She couldn’t imagine her conservative, boring father would do anything to raise an eyebrow let alone become a rumor.

  Just as Pilar decided to knock and enter the library, Celeste amazed Pilar by screaming, “If you wanted a son of your own so badly why didn’t we adopt one?”

  “It wouldn’t be the same — from my making. I’ve tried to explain it to you before, but you don’t want to know.”

  Suddenly, Marcus opened the door. His face came within inches of Pilar’s as Celeste yelled after him, “It’s better to have a bastard born to some white trash?”

  Marcus pushed by Pilar. She didn’t exist.

  Pilar stood frozen, the confusing words whirling around in her head, a bastard son, a bastard son. All those days her father wasn’t with the family, her birthdays, her school honors and piano recitals, he must have been with his illegitimate son. Had he been with that son, too, when he didn’t take her to the father-daughter dance?

  Bracing a hand against the paneled wall, Pilar steadied herself. Her chest heaved with the slamming of the front door. She was positive her father’s cowardly departure was bitter proof that there could be more to the rumor than her mother knew.

  Celeste crossed the room and placed her hand on Pilar’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry you had to hear that,” she said in the same calm voice she used to console a young Pilar after she scraped her knee. “It means nothing. We’re still his real family.”

  Pilar glared and said, “He’s never hugged me, Mother. How real is that?”

  At th
at moment, Pilar vowed she would never drop another tear for her father. She finally understood that she no longer had to feel guilty about choosing a lifestyle different from her parents. In fact, Pilar began to find enjoyment goading her father into a frantic tirade about the responsibility to which a woman of her background should be committed. “Look at your mother,” he often shouted when Pilar pushed him over the brink. “She knows her place.”

  Over the years Pilar had looked at her mother, who was often cowering in some corner of their house. Tonight, as they sped homeward from graduation, it was no different. Her mother did know her place. There she sat, as far as she could from Marcus, using the window rather than his shoulder as a pillow. Marcus was totally clueless about Pilar’s need for independence and personal success. As to the idea of status, Pilar’s definition was the polar opposite of her father’s.

  So why was she still crying? Pilar covered her face in the robe.

  LIGHTS FROM A FREIGHTER defined the dark, placid waters of Lake Saint Clare. The Mercedes turned up the driveway marked by an electric gate with The Brookstones etched in brass. Pilar opened a window. The familiar damp air had been one of few comforts during her bleak childhood, and brought back memories of a little girl awakened by the sun shimmering off the water and across her bedroom wall. Back then, she raced down the manicured front lawn to play with Bud, her yellow lab, in the waves lapping the beach.

  Pilar raised her still sore body to an upright position and rubbed her eyes with her fists the way that child would have done. Marcus rounded the circle of the drive and parked in front of the nine-foot mahogany entrance doors. The gray stone building, Marcus’ inheritance, loomed in the darkness, as cold and brooding as a Gothic mansion from a Daphne du Maurier novel. Pilar remembered no casual visits from friends dropping by, ever.

  There had been little honest cheerfulness here. Yet Pilar couldn’t help smile at the one thing that once had brightened each homecoming – Bud jumping up to lick her face. He was the only dog her father allowed in the echoing house. Bud died when Pilar was 12.

  THE NEXT MORNING, PILAR awakened to the mauve curtains fluttering in the open window opposite her bed. She stretched and inhaled. The breeze from the lake came sweetened with spring fragrances, and when she threw the bed covers off, the lemon scent of fresh laundry filled the air. Pilar grinned, thinking how her mother wanted everything perfect and sometimes that wasn’t a bad trait. Her smile faded when she scanned the day-lit room. Her mother tried too hard to ensconce Pilar in their old ways.

  Nothing had changed except for a fresh coat of soft pink paint on the walls. The antique white canopy bed in thecenter was anchored by identical tables on either side. As a child, when Pilar lay in bed, the canopy of mauve and plum flowers spread above and sheltered her like a secret garden. A large chest snugged its foot. Pilar knew her childhood toys would be neatly stored inside. An American Girl doll collection sat like rows of ladies-in-waiting on shelves that lined the walls. Pilar long ago had stuffed the Barbie Dolls in boxes and packed them away in her closet.

  On the dresser sat a silver-framed photo of a ten-year-old Pilar and her parents. She and her mother were smiling and squinting into the sun. They had their arms around each other’s waist, while Marcus, thin lipped, stood stiffly off to the side. He didn’t touch either Pilar or Celeste. “Like the old saying goes,” Pilar commented as she glowered at the photograph, “a picture says a thousand words.”

  Reluctant to get out of her garden bed, Pilar finally sat up, back propped against a pillow, and gazed out the window at the sun-rays streaking like glass ribbons across the lake. She doubted her mother would ever come to grips with the reality that Pilar wouldn’t stay longer than the three years she contracted with Detroit Receiving.

  It was a compromise, because Pilar had been accepted and wanted to attend the Cleveland Clinic. But, that four-hour drive wasn’t close enough for her mother. Though disappointed, Pilar again gave into her mother’s appeal. “You’ll be gone from me soon enough,” Celeste said. “Just stay with me a few more years.” Pilar felt her mothersounded as though once Pilar was finished with her residency, they would soon be forever separated. Had Celeste feared facing an empty nest with her distant husband? Or had she seen something in Pilar’s future?

  Pilar shivered about her mother’s unusual premonitions. For instance, Celeste often knew the grades Pilar got on important tests before she could tell her. Like the time Pilar raced home to show Celeste her grade on her biology test. “You got a 98 on that test. Good for you,” Celeste blurted out. She tried to cover up her insight by adding, “Let me see it.”

  “How did you know my exact grade?” Pilar asked, stunned by her mother’s uncanny ability to always know things before she could tell or show her. “Did you call the school?”

  “No, dear. A lucky guess.”

  “You have a lot of those, Mom.” Pilar handed her the test.

  Pilar shuffled to the window and breathed another gulp of lake air. For that moment she only wanted to enjoy the short two weeks before she embarked on her residency. She planned to fill the hours reading good books and making up for sleep lost during exams.

  A large crystal vase, an anniversary gift from Pilar’s father to her mother, (no doubt purchased by his secretary) today filled with vibrant pink roses, adorned the desk beneath the window. So many nights her teen self had satthere talking on the telephone, rather than doing homework. In that at least she’d felt normal. Now, she swept her hand across the polished wood top and thought about her best childhood friend, Trish. Pilar never kept in touch. They had drifted in such different directions. Trish, with her stuffy stockbroker husband, was more like their mothers than Pilar would ever be. Julie on the other hand — well. Pilar already missed her.

  The sight of her father maneuvering his Lexus past the silver Mercedes onto Lake Shore Road was as familiar as the view of the lake: Pilar had often stood in the same window and watched him drive away, even after her mother begged him to stay. The result was always the same; he’d rather go to the club or wherever — maybe with his son.

  Today, when his car vanished into the trees along the road, she imagined her father and the Lexus had been swallowed by the leaves as if by a giant man-eating plant. Most likely he was listening to his cherished tapes of Rush Limbaugh. “Perhaps Father and Rush will never come back,” she chirped like a bird after a summer rain, then shrugged. “Too bad. He’ll only be gone a week to a conference.”

  His absence would allow just enough time for Pilar and her mother to share quiet times without interruptions from his confrontations. Pilar daydreamed of renewing the friendship she once had with her mother, one where they confided their deepest secrets to each other. Pilar scrunched her face. All she really foresaw was her mother repeatingher father’s party line: “You think you can get anywhere without a man. Just try it.”

  “Well, guess what?” Pilar said to her father’s departing car, “I will.”

  Pilar turned from the window to clench Emma, a fuzzy white rabbit, tightly to her chest. Emma had come as an Easter gift from her father, or so Celeste said, when Pilar was six. Pilar’s father, who was out of town that Easter, would never have selected the rabbit. Marcus would have found Emma frivolous. He would also have admonished Celeste for acknowledging a Christian occasion, though the Brookstones only participated in their faith on special Jewish occasions like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Pilar suspected her father worked hard at not attracting attention to his ethnicity. He wanted to blend in at the club.

  Though Pilar was well aware her mother had bought Emma, she reacted with the proper amount of joy about her father remembering her, while she hid her hurt over his absence. Emma became Pilar’s favorite toy. She believed the rabbit had the power to chase away all her pre-teen-age pimples, help capture the heart of her latest crush, stop her from covering her head in lightning storms, and scare off any sadness. Emma and Pilar spent hours dancing and singing in the bedroom to Bruce Springsteen. One night Pil
ar must have gotten carried away to “Born in the USA”, because her loud renditions brought her father to the place he so rarely ventured.

  “Turn that damn thing off and practice your Mozart,” he shouted.

  Pilar was more stupefied by his knowledge of her piano skills than his vocal intrusion.

  Emma also accompanied Pilar on walks along the shores of Lake Michigan where she and her mother spent their annual two weeks at the summer home of Celeste’s brother in Harbor Springs. Pilar left Emma on the cottage bed when she turned thirteen, though, and traded in her make-believe affection for the real thing, holding hands with Joey, Pilar’s first boyfriend. He summered with his parents in the cottage next door. Even at gawky thirteen, Joey squeezed Pilar’s hand in his as they haunted the beach front. Emma couldn’t match that.

  Other teenagers also shared Harbor Springs cottages with their families, while Marcus rarely joined Pilar and Celeste on any vacation. In fact, for Pilar’s high school graduation, he sent Celeste and her on a two-month tour of Europe.

  Pilar confided to Emma, “It probably gave him more time for the Tiger baseball games with his son, whoever he is.”

  Though Pilar left Emma behind when she headed off to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, there were many times Pilar thought she needed the funny rabbit. Now, Pilar hugged Emma and, petting her velvet fur, swayed as she hummed Madonna’s song “Boy Toy.” Emma’s lankylegs and pink satin lined ears and feet bounced to Pilar’s body’s motion. “Remember this song, Emma?” Pilar asked the mute stuffed toy.