make it to her stylist in time. I loved to point each one out when that happened.
“I went to get my nails done with Marley and Madison. Yesterday was the follow up for filming, remember?” Really? How could she forget? She was, in fact, the reason why I had done the show in the first place. I had been totally against it. The opportunity came at probably the worst time of my life, but she had insisted I needed to do it. My dad wasn’t around much, so he just went along with whatever my mom said.
Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, I had been in heaven. I had two parents that loved, and life seemed golden. We lived in a tiny two-bedroom ranch-style house and often ended up shopping at the thrift stores, but I didn’t care. We didn’t have anything we wanted, but we had everything we needed.
Then my mother had to go and ruin it all.
She always had an air about her, like she was better than everyone else, but she didn’t let that façade slip too often. Well, I guess she finally decided that my father wasn’t good enough for her fancy ass. One day, when he came home from work, she informed him that we were leaving, and handed him divorce papers. I think she only took me away from him to rub it in his face.
My father and I had always been close, and it was like she was putting the final nail in the coffin that contained their marriage. I was upset, to say the least. My dad didn’t even put up a fight for me though, so after awhile, I just figured he didn’t want me either.
Little did I know, my mother had another marriage all lined up. This one was more her style. My step-father, Gerald R. Conklin the third, was the CEO of a marketing company that had been in his family for generations in Connecticut. That was definitely a bit of a culture shock when my mother whisked me away from our humble surroundings and moved me into an extravagant mansion. It was a whole new world.
My mother on the other hand, had always been a frigidly cold and uncaring, acting as if I was more of a nuisance than anything. She fit in perfectly.
I started to act out once I hit high school; I think mainly to try to get her attention. I had been threatened at least three times to be thrown out of the fancy private school that Gerald shelled out a ton of money for. When bad behavior at school just seemed to make things worse in our relationship, I turned to boys and drinking.
When Chris came along, she seemed to warm up to me just a little. One, because I had stopped acting out and two, because he was from an even richer family than ours. It was all about the social ladder with my mother. But any warm feelings from her soon cooled off again once my life was completely flipped upside down, something that I had never expected would happen to me.
“Oh, thank god. I’m glad that is finally over,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “I don’t think you completely understand how difficult it was to cover up your little…indiscretion. I guess you have your mother to thank for that one. Just think how your reputation would have been ruined the minute anyone got air of that. So I could only assume you were sniffing the nail polish while you were there,” she added sarcastically and pointed at my eyes, which I could only guess were bloodshot.
I pushed down the urge to roll my eyes. If she had tried to cover up my little indiscretion, as she put it, it was solely for her benefit. Whatever would her friends at the country club think if they knew what her daughter had done? People would be gossiping about it for years.
“Anyway, what exactly did you need to talk to me about? I have some applications to fill out and then I need to get ready for the day.”
“Oh please, don’t try and lie to me. Do you think I’m stupid? I need to hear exactly what your plans are now that you’ve finished up with that silly little community college you insisted on attending. How do you think that made me look while everyone else’s children were going off to Yale or Harvard, actually putting their private