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bride. Bianca was at the house with me and, like, a billion bridesmaids.
Thomas Dworkin—have you heard of him?”
“No.”
“Famous fashion photographer. Got a curly moustache like Salvador
Dali? Anyway, he’d set up the living room to get the pre-wedding bridal
shots. And I’m ready. Hair up. Shoes on. Got this precious little powder
blue dress. And Bianca comes down the stairs in her white gown and one of
Daddy’s cleaning ladies holding up the train. Bridesmaids behind like a
bucket of giggling pale blue paint spilling down the stairs.”
“Giggling paint?”
“Whatever. So they all pile into the living room, and there’s this sliding
door. Dworkin’s about to close it when he says, ‘You coming?’ and I
realize, no. No, I’m not coming. I’m not taking a picture with my
stepmother and her fucking gaggle. I’m just not. I don’t know what I’m
going to do instead, but then I see my father’s office in the mirror. And up
on a high shelf, behind me? My mother’s urn. Her ashes, and it just makes
me mad that she’s got to be up there, watching this whole performance.”
“You look mad thinking about it.” He touched my chin with the pad of
his thumb.
“I don’t think I am, but maybe. I don’t know. So I tell Thomas my father
needs me and I have to go. I’m getting Roger—Roger was my Loranda—to
take me to Daddy, and I’d be in the reception pictures. Part of me wanted to
see if Bianca even noticed. The other part didn’t even care. And you know
what Thomas says? He says, ‘Basile is never wrong,’ which we always
said, and I believed it until Bianca showed up. Then I knew he got shit
wrong. He was needy and weak, and he let her poison him.”
“You’re turning red,” Logan said. “And you haven’t even gotten to the
bus yet.”
I smiled, looking away. My disappointment in my father had been hardearned
and well-hidden. I tried not to think about it, because my face gave
me away. I didn’t like who I was when I was angry at him. I enjoyed the
company of Loyal Ella more than the bitter ranting of Disillusioned Ella.
“When he closed the door,” I continued, “I took the urn off the shelf,
and—I don’t know if you know this, but I found out—ashes are pretty
heavy. I ran upstairs, changed into jeans, and took the bus to Griffith Park. I
dumped my mother’s ashes at the Observatory, where Pluto is closer to the
sun than Neptune, which—shit, this is our stop.”