CHAPTER 1
Clara
“Loves fades, and sex gets old,” Mom said as she took a sip of her gin and bitters. “But money lasts forever.”
You’ve only just met my mom, yet you already understand why every story I tell about my childhood begins with the wordsI swear to God I’m not making this up.
My brain tried to forge a passage through the vodka and find a dry spot where it could do things like think and remember and see straight. But it was no use. I could hold my liquor about as well as I could hold on to a man, and thus it was that after four vodka cranberries at Mom’s favorite watering hole on East 63rdStreet, I was completely plastered.
With great effort, I lifted my sticky cheek off the bar counter. “You’re saying I should become a gold digger?”
“No,” Mom said, signaling to her favorite bartender to bring her another drink. “I’m saying that there are qualities a smart girl looks for in a husband and poverty isn’t one of them. If you’re hell-bent on continuing this PhD thing and becoming a bird doctor—”
“Ornithologist.”
“—and insist on spending half your life volunteering for Eco-Justice, you need to find a viable secondary source of income. Your worthless failure of an ex-fiancé certainly wasn’t it.”
I wasn’t sure which was more offensive, my mother referring to Tyler as a “worthless failure” or to the holy institute of marriage as “a viable secondary source of income.”
“I loved Tyler for Tyler,” I said. “I didn’t care about his money.”
“How could you?” Mom said. “There wasn’t any money to care about.”
“He was only two years out of law school. He just needed more time to establish himself.” I felt a pounding in my forehead.The vodka was starting to sink in. Deep.
“Why are you still defending that prick?” Mom said, slamming down her glass. “Do I need to remind you what the day after tomorrow is?”
“Please don’t.”
“It’s the day of your cancelled wedding, Clara. The one that sonofabitch called off over fifteen extra pounds.Fifteen. Your education and intelligence didn’t mean anything to him.”
I gestured to the ridiculous getup I was wearing: a skintight miniskirt, equally skintight red blouse with a neckline down to my chest cavity, five-inch heels, and a pair of black fishnet stockings. All loaners from my mom. “If you want me to find a man who respects my intelligence,” I said, forcing myself upright, “why did you pick this outfit for me?”
Mom’s original plan for our girls’ night had been to stay in and watch anything that involved male Marvel characters. But when I arrived at her house in Jersey, she suggested that we drive to the city and find ourselves some real men instead. But I’d come straight from a conservation rally in Ocean County and was wearing a T-shirt that said “I Love Piping Plovers” across the chest. Mom thought “piping plovers” sounded more like a reference to butt sex than a threatened bird species and was worried it would attract the wrong kind of guy. So she lent me some clothes that would attract the right kind of guy, i.e., the kind who liked his women drunk, stupid, and wearing blouses that showcased their underboobs.
“Who said anything about finding a man who respects your intelligence?” Mom said. “I lent you that outfit to help you get laid quick.” She took my face in her hands, holding my drunken head so that I could look her three faces in their six eyes. “I’m going to say something, Clara. And I need you to listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.”
She was about to say,You’re a beautiful woman. And when a man looks at a beautiful woman, he sees one thing and one thing only. A trophy.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” Mom said. “And when a man looks at a beautiful woman, he sees one thing and one thing only. A trophy.”
“I know,” I said. “I remember from the last hundred times you only said it once.”
“I wasn’t finished yet, wiseass,” Mom said. “My point is that once a man sees that gorgeous face of yours, he’s never going to see past it to that brain of yours. And once he sees those fabulous tits of yours, he’s never even going totryto see past them to that heart of yours.”
She let go of my head, and it flopped back onto the bar.
“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“I’m sorry that reality is depressing,” Mom said, returning to her drink. “But the cold hard truth is that there are two kinds of men in this world. Rich bastards and poor bastards. One of them can pay you fifty thousand a month in alimony and the other can give you the five dollars in spare change he found under the couch cushions. Neither will give a shit about your brains or your personality, so you may as well go for the one with the money.”
If I actually thought there was any real chance of finding a man who would someday pay me over half a million dollars a year in alimony, I might take Mom’s advice and start searching for Mr. Wrong. It had certainly worked out well for her. A former lingerie model, she could wrap any guy around her finger by batting an eyelash. Her last divorce had been years ago, but she was still bringing in twenty thousand a month in alimony. Those funds, combined with her ample freelance earnings, afforded her an extremely comfortable lifestyle.
But I wasn’t my mom. And I didn’t want to be. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her to smithereens, and in her own unorthodox way, she was a great mother. I would go so far as to say that we were best friends. We talked almost every day on the phone, got together in person at least once a week, and vacationed together twice a year. We couldn’t get enough of each other, but we bickered constantly and didn’t see eye to eye on anything. Particularly men.
Besides, even if I were willing to sell myself out as a trophy wife, there weren’t nearly as many millionaires and billionaires out there as popular fiction would have you believe. And who the hell were all these women looking at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and saying,I gotta score me a piece of that?Real billionaires weren’t hot. Real billionaires weren’t sexy. And real women didn’t just bump into them walking down the street.
“Can I please go home now?” I said.Can I pleath go home now?