Good Sunday
By Melanie Locay
“I’ve never spoken to a convicted murderer before.” After an hour of silence, this is all my mother could come up with to say.
“Daddy was a criminal defense attorney. I’m sure you’ve spoken to at least one before.” I feel strange right after I say it. I haven’t really mentioned Daddy since the trial.
“I know that dear but he was very good. None of the murderers he defended were ever convicted. Ironically, I bet he could have been the only one to get you out of this mess.” This makes the nearby prison guard snicker.
I think she just noticed. I was hoping she would. My orange jump suit is a size four.
Prison has done wonders for my figure. If only I could get the word out to all the poor women wasting their money at Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig.
“Yes. It is true, Daddy was a fantastic lawyer.” I reply to her with my palms flat on the counter. The guard has requested I keep my hands there since last week’s incident with the hairpin.
I could really use a manicure.
“He wanted you to follow in his footsteps, Mia. Can you believe, after all this, USC is still badgering me to finish paying off your tuition? And I told them, if one of their top law students could be so unsuccessful in court, the fault obviously lies in their shoddy teaching. Then they came at me with that whole “pleaded guilty blah blah blah.” I wonder if she has a nail file in that small yet tacky beaded purse of hers. Maybe that wouldn’t be the smartest thing to have in front of the guard. Mommy’s nails are perfectly manicured, long and blood red. Is she still talking?
“Mommy, I never would have been an attorney of Daddy’s caliber. Oh, I said caliber!” I haven’t had such a good laugh in a long time. I can see through the Plexiglas window that divides us my mother and I; She isn’t getting the joke.
“No pun intended Mommy! Oh, come on, laugh. It’s funny.” Larry the guard is trying to control his laughter. He is standing about two feet away from me and I see his gun shaking as he holds in the giggles. Mom and I are the only ones in the visiting room. I’m sitting on the side with Larry and a single door that leads back to the cellblock. Mom is across from me; on her side there is a potted plant and a door that leads back to her Mercedes parked outside. This Plexiglas window dividing us is pretty familiar; it’s been here all my life really.
Nose twitching and eyes squinting, she says to me in her most scolding tone. “Mia, you’re right you never would of been good like him.” She has the nerve to look at me as if she is actually upset. No one has benefited more from this than her. But playing the role of the mourning widow suits her, attention craving moron.
“I never would have been as good as he? Is that what you are trying to say Mother?” It is so like her to see me in a good mood and have to just snatch it away.
“Here we go. I knew we couldn’t have a conversation without you correcting your stupid mom.” Let the record show she said that. “You and your father always did that. You two thought you were so above me. Look where you are now.” I feign looking around, dramatically surprised I am in a Prison visitation room and not standing in line at Bloomingdale’s.
Simple twit, Grandma was right she is nothing more than trailer trash. She could never understand why her only son turned a one-night-stand into his wife. Grandma would always say he could just never throw anything away.
“Mommy, I don’t want to argue with you. He and I, we’re not good people like you. He made money off the misery of others. He lost sight of what the word justice meant. It was replaced with phrases like plea bargain, reason of insanity, or anything else he could come up with just to get a client off, regardless of their innocent or guilt. He was an excellent pleader, Mommy. I would never have been able to plead as well has he did, Mommy. Do you want to hear about how he pleaded?” She follows my example and leans closely into the Plexiglas window. I lower my voice a bit to a whisper. “Oh, he pleaded up until the very end.”
Mommy didn’t want to attend the trial. She told me she hadn’t watched any of the news about it nor read any of the newspapers. Which isn’t hard to believe coming from this woman, whose number one source of news is Woman’s World magazine.
“I want to know. Tell me about how he pleaded, Mia.” The look in her eye could be categorized as one of morbid curiosity. I could see the white in her knuckles as she tightly clutches the tacky, small, beaded purse. That doesn’t exactly clash her tacky beaded Gucci jacket, at least the rest of the ensemble consist of a simple black linen blouse and pants. After all, she is in mourning. After twenty-two years of living amongst the wealthy upper class, she’s deflected any culture that may try to penetrate as if she were made of Teflon.
I light a cigarette and proceed to tell her my story. I never smoked before, but here I guess, I want to live the cliché to its full extent and it makes me look cool.
It was a beautiful autumn day. There had been a storm the night before, a lot of wind. The day was so gorgeous and clear. You could see the snow on the mountains. It was sunny, yet chilly enough that you still needed to wear a coat, my favorite type of weather. I have always hated Sundays. But that morning I knew that day would be different, unlike any other Sunday. I left home pretty early I wanted to run some errands before I saw daddy for lunch, our traditional Sunday lunch. My first stop was the bank. The Washington Mutual near school was open one Sunday every month.
***
“Baby you shouldn’t have! What color is it? Aww pink! That is my favorite color. You know me so well. I can’t wait to see it. It’s an extra small right? Uh what?! You bought me a large!! Are you trying to be funny?? Really, that is so not funny. You think I’m a large! Do I look like a large to you?”
No, actually you look like a talking lollipop. You look like a stick with a head attached. In this day and age when it is more convenient to speak into a cracker-sized little box than talking to the actual living person next to you. It’s inevitable not to invite everyone around you into your personal conversations. In line at the Washington Mutual, on this beautiful Sunday, I have to become witness to one of the greatest injustices in American society. This girl, who proudly wears the emblem of XS, on every label, of every garment she owns, has been subjugated to today’s equivalent to the Scarlet Letter, an L! The more I look at her, the more infuriated I too become with the person on the other end of her multi-colored, gay disco club looking phone. It is undoubtedly her boyfriend, who is bewildered as to why he deserves this verbal lashing. He must be quite the Adonis himself to be with a girl like her. Tiny waist, perky littleÉ”Oh I’m so sorry.” She says as she falls into me. It feels like just the slightest movement of my hand would send her delicate frame flying into the nearby plastic fern.
“It is quite alright.” Where was I? I remember now, perky little nose, butt, breast. I’ll just go with perky little everything”Look what you made me do! I know you can’t look because you’re on the phone. But you’ve gotten me so upset. I’ve bumped into the lady behind me!” She screeches into her tiny multi-colored, gay disco club looking phone”Lady?” I can’t help but mumble it to myself. I’m sure I am the same age as she is, if not younger. I see those crow’s feet she is desperately trying to hide. Simply because I am not wearing a tight, pink, velour jumpsuit zippered just so that my huge, fake, cleavage is exposed (obviously the uniform of some atrocious tramp patrol) does not mean I am some sort of old, frumpy, matronly woman. Her boyfriend’s blunder is really a personal affront. Perfect body, long blonde hair, perfectly glossed and manicured. But yet perfect is not enough for this man? Then where do I lie on the spectrum of socially acceptable?? With my Gap size sixteen jeans and USC XL sweatshirt? This woman and her boyfriend could probably use my sweatshirt as a tent on their next camping trip.
“Hey!! Let go of my phone!” Ms. Pink Velour Suit screams.
She even has a perfect shriek. I grab her miniscule phone/slash gay disco.
“How dare you insult this freakishly thin and attractive woman and myself, mind you, by claiming that she would ever wear a large! If she is supposed to be a large, then I should be wearing some sort of car tarp size. And do I sound like an SUV to you? You ignorant, sizist bastard!”
***
“Mommy, I hadn’t cursed in years. I hadn’t yelled at anyone like that ever. It felt so invigorating. Why are you laughing? I really haven’t even gotten to the funny part. Which wasn’t very funny to me at the time.”
I wish I could say a Neanderthal sounding man, yelled profanity at me and told me that I did in fact sound like an SUV, or actually more like a mini van. But that was not the case.
***
“Hun, try to take a breath?” I wasn’t met with the voice of an Adonis. It was the voice of a woman, a kind sounding woman.
“Who is this?” I asked as if the phone were mine and the person I was supposed to have been talking to vanished.
“Well, I think that’s what I should be asking. But it sounds like you’re kind of tense. So I’ll tell you that I’m Susan, Jenny’s girlfriend. And I honestly don’t comprehend woman’s sizes, seeing as I purchase my own attire at men’s and army surplus stores.”
Embarrassment is an understatement for what I was feeling. Susan went on to tell me that I, in fact, did not sound like any sort of vehicle, but rather quite cute and if I would be interested in spending an evening with Ms. Pink Velour Suit (Jenny) and herself. I am paraphrasing quite a bit.
Her proposal was much more colorful and graphic.
“Um, no thank you.” I handed the tiny phone/gay disco back to Jenny. Her face was so scrunched in confusion. I thought her perky little nose might break off.
“Next in line please.” The voice of the bank teller was like music to my ears. It took me a moment to catch my bearings and realize where I was. I quickly scuttled off to make my withdrawal. Walking to my car, it dawned on me that Susan thought I was cute and had propositioned me for sex. True, she did not see me in my full 200 plus-pound glory, but it’s nonetheless the first time I had ever been hit on. That brought a smile to my face. It was a going to be a good Sunday, one of “first-times”.
I didn’t need Daddy to give me another one of his lectures on how to dress seriously if I wanted to be taken seriously. I stopped back home to change before lunch. My roommate Lydia had papers strewn all over the living room floor and was in her favorite studying position, lying on her stomach on our shag-carpeted floor.
“Talk about a moment of insanity. Just imagine if you two would have gotten into a fistfight and were arrested. The steps taken by your attorney from that point on would be...” Lydia is relishing figuring out the steps to my imaginary case.
“Stop Lydia, please stop. I am having lunch with my father today. I am sure he will inundate me with law musings. I can’t bear to hear any now, not on an empty stomach.” Lydia was my best friend and only friend really. I felt so lucky to have her. When we met in college we became fast friends. We decided to become roommates at law school since we were both going to USC. She is the only person I could talk to openly. I could say things like, I feel hungry, even though she knew I had just secretly eaten in my bedroom closet. And she wouldn’t criticize me. I allowed her to laugh at my mistakes because it wasn’t the malicious laughter I’ve been so familiar with hearing throughout my life as the “fat girl”, but she laughed with me, and knew when not to laugh at all.
“You should be taking notes of everything that man tells you. He is a genius. Do you know how much people pay to have a consultation with him?” To Lydia, Daddy was a hero. Edward Rosen, one of the best criminal defense attorneys’s in the country. In college she recognized me by his name. She had read every article on him and new that I was his daughter. At first, I thought that was the only reason she was my friend, but then I convinced myself otherwise, believed we were true best friends.
“Lydia, you should be his daughter. You would benefit by it far more than I have. You’re going to be this incredible lawyer like he is. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing here. I think I’m not cut out for this. I don’t want to become a cold, heartless person like he is.”
***
“Mommy I swear I wasn’t intending to hurt her, at least not at that point. I didn’t think about it when I said it. But like I said, there was something about that Sunday. I wasn’t thinking about any of my actions before I did them.”
“No, you weren’t. But that little bitch deserved everything she got.” That was the smartest thing I’d heard her say all day.
***
“But you have no difficulty envisioning me cold and heartless?” She was so mad her voice was shaking. She threw a red cushion at me that we had bought at Ikea the day before. Our entire apartment was an Ikea wonderland. It was page 46 of the catalog. I was lucky it was the cushion that was closest to her and not the iron ashtray we had also purchased.
“No, Lydia that isn’t what I said.” Or was it?
“You are such an ungrateful little brat. I have to work for everything I have and you sit around getting fat while Daddy provides you with everything. And your daddy isn’t a drunken loser like mine. No, he is an incredible man that is so determined to see you succeed. I will be proud if I have half the career he’s had. I recognize his drive and conviction, those qualities your simple mind sees as cold and heartless.”
I was stunned. Was she still talking about Daddy? She was taking it so seriously. And she called me fat. “You called me fat. You skinny, bitch.”
“Of course that is the only thing you heard. Your mind can’t ever go beyond your fat ass.
Well then do something about it Mia. Take some of Daddy’s money and join a gym. You better go, you’re going to be late for your lunch date.” With that, she stormed off into her room. I could hear her talking on the phone, yelling and swearing about how I had treated her, but I couldn’t make out to whom she was talking to.
“Thanks for the stupendous advice buddy! I’ll make sure to tell Edward Rosen his number one fan says hello,” I yelled at her bedroom door.
I was so mad on the drive from my place to Daddy’s favorite French bistro. But for once I felt truly proud to be Edward Rosen’s daughter because it made me the source of envy for Lydia.
“Hi daddy, how are you?” The Sunday lunch thing had become more of a chore than a pleasantry. I think he felt the same. But like Lydia so astutely put it he was the man that financed my studies and pretty much my life. Not to say I wasn’t grateful, as Lydia liked to think. But.
“Hello Mia. I am doing very well, thank you. I hope you’re not squandering away any of my money. Your education is an investment in your future. I am giving you the greatest gift a parent can give their child. My worries lie with your spending on other frivolous things. How is your diet going?” By his reasoning my frivolous spending was on food. When I walked up to his favorite patio table he was snapping his cell phone shut. Talking to an important client no doubt, it must not have been good news. He seemed to be quite upset and he’d been eyeing me up and down closely, knowing perfectly well I hadn’t lost any weight since the last time he saw me. The Sunday before at that same spot. But I was very grateful because he was an excellent father and he cared about me. The man was a genius. Lydia was right. What kind of selfish, stupid, fat idiot would I had been to not be grateful to him?
“It’s coming along alright, Daddy. I was really busy this week with school and wasn’t able to get to the gym. I didn’t really lose any weight this week. I maintained.” I can’t look him in the eye when we discuss my weight. I made that mistake before and what I saw looking back at me were eyes filled with disappointment and longing for the thin, pretty, daughter he never had.
“You’ve maintained huh?” His voice was getting an angry tone I hadn’t heard him use ever outside of the courtroom.
“What exactly are you maintaining Mia, your fat ass!!” The slamming of his fist against the table caused my glass of diet coke to spill onto my lap. I could feel the cold liquid penetrating into my pants onto my bulging thighs and untouched crouch. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.
“Daddy I’m sorry.” I could manage to gurgle out between sobs. This outburst caught me off guard. I was accustomed to his silent disgust but he had never spoken to me this way before. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t directed at me. The stupid client he had been talking to upset him, Daddy loved me, and he didn’t mean this.
The waiter was cleaning my spilt soda off the table, off the floor, everywhere except for off me. I cursed Daddy in my head for always having to sit in the patio of the restaurant; particularly that day, that sunny, gorgeous Sunday in southern California. It is wasn’t enough that all of Sous Le Nez En Ville was staring at me, but the people strolling by with babies or dogs at toe all got a show as well. Trying to figure out our scenario, were we a quarreling couple? Most obviously not. Daddy was often compared to George Clooney with his dark and ruggedly handsome features. If it’s impossible to believe that I could be his offspring, it’s even more preposterous to believe we could have been lovers.
“Stop crying,” he said, his teeth tightly clenched in a frighteningly controlled voice. “I have many colleagues that come here and I will not be made a fool of nor the source of trashy gossip.
Do you hear me Mia? You’re becoming more of a whimpering fool like your mother everyday.
But at least she isn’t fat too.”
If the outburst had caught me off guard, this was a turn I definitely was not expecting. It was always he and I against my mommy. I may have not gotten his looks but I had his intellect.
“You listen to me. I may be fat and not the size two Hollywood attorney you dream of me being.
But I am not the piece of dumb trash you married. That is what grandma calls her, isn’t it?”
***
“Sorry MommyÉ” I meant it when I said it and I still think it today, but it felt necessary to apologize nonetheless. She just silently nodded. I knew she wanted me to get to the good part.
***
By now our table had been completely cleared. The waiters were drawing straws to see who had to be the ones to ask us to leave or at least move to a more inconspicuous table.
“Mia.” Daddy began to laugh. The malicious laugh from my childhood that I loathed.
“Kiddo I think we’ve both said some stuff we didn’t mean. I have a meeting to get to. You know, I have to go be the cold and heartless lawyer I am. Go get yourself some ice cream or something.”
He got up from the table, threw a twenty at me and was off. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I realized at that moment that Lydia was daddy’s biggest fan.
***
“I can’t go too much into detail of what happened next, Mommy. You know, where I went after the restaurant or how I got the gun. My lawyer needs me to keep all that confidential for the appeal. But I know the part you’re dying to hear. I knew where I could find them because you were going to be out of town until Tuesday. It was close to sunset when I got to the house. The sky was that shade of pink it gets right before the sun completely disappears on the horizon.”
***
“Hello?” I don’t know why I said that as I walked into the house. I couldn’t believe my key still worked. Daddy was a maniac about changing the locks. Afraid of some of his not so trustworthy clients I am sure. All of the staff was off because it was Sunday, such a special Sunday. My old room was just as I had left it. A huge picture of Daddy and me in front of the Supreme Court stood on my dresser. I was small then and he could carry me on his shoulders. He told me how one day I would work there, the Supreme Court.
“Maybe I’ll be tried there instead, Daddy.” I whispered to the photograph. Just then I heard their moaning coming from his room.
“Oh my god Mia. What are you doing here?” Daddy frantically covered himself with the sheets. Lydia’s body was as I always envisioned it would be naked. Perfectly tanned and toned.
“They didn’t have the kind of ice cream I wanted Daddy. I got this instead.” I pointed the gun toward them like I had seen them do in Reservoir Dogs. That movie had given me nightmares for days. It was one of Lydia’s favorites. I was sure she would enjoy the pose. But all she could do was cry.
“Please don’t do this Mia. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to call you fat. You’re my best friend. I don’t want to die!”
“Your laying stark naked, with my father, in my parents’ bed, in the sheets I helped my mother pick out at Linens N Things and you think I am mad about you calling me fat? You’re right.” I shot her first, once in the stomach then in the face.
“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. Mia put the gun down. Honey Daddy can get you out of this.
We’ll plead reason of insanity. We’ll portray her as a whore that broke up my family and was threatening me. It will be okay. Please put the gun down. Please!” He was a lawyer to the end.
He was standing next to the bed now splattered in Lydia’s blood. The sheet had fallen and he was naked.
“Do you love me Daddy?”
“Yes, of course sweetheart. Give Daddy the gun.” He was inching closer to me. I had never seen a naked man in person before much less that close up, or splattered in blood for that matter. He was shaking uncontrollably. At first I thought he was cold. But it was fear he exuded.
The room filled with an odor of fear and blood.
“Do you think I’m sexy Daddy?” His eyes widened. For once in his life he was speechless.
“I think you’re beautiful princess.”
“That isn’t what I asked!” I yelled back at him waving the gun around.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Yes I think you’re very sexy. The sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”
For once you could tell he was lying. He spoke the words as if he were choking on his own vomit.
“Well then give me a kiss daddy.” We got closer to one another. He touched my face with his bloody hand. I had never kissed a man before. His tongue felt strange in my mouth, but I won’t lie. I enjoyed it. I could feel his hand go for the gun. I pushed him away.
“You liar!” I yelled at him and kept firing until there were no bullets left in the gun.
***
And the rest of the story you know because you were the one that found us. Sorry about using your Egyptian cotton towels to clean off the blood. They were just the first things I grabbed.
Be glad it wasn’t your Prada raincoat that was on the chair, am I right?”
“Why did I have to come home early?” Mommy says it aloud to herself. She looks like she’s about to be sick. We sat in silence for what seemed like hours. Not really but I love how that sounds.
“So Mommy did you notice I lost weight in here?”
