She leaned close to me, her vodka breath an unpleasant vapor.
“Fasten your shoulder harness, Dorothy,” I quietly said.
“What you’ve done to my daughter. My only child. You never had a child because you’ve always been too busy. So you took mine,” she blasted me with her boozy breath. “I should have never, never, ever let her visit you. Where was my brain when I let her stay summers with you?”
She dramatically clutched her head in both hands.
“You filled her with all this guns and ammo and crimesolving shit! You turned her into a fucking little computer nerd by the time she was ten, when little girls should be going to birthday parties and riding ‘ponies and making friends!”
I let her rail on, paying attention to the road.
“You exposed her to a big, ugly redneck cop, and let’s face it. He’s really your only close relationship with a man. I hope like hell you don’t sleep with a pig like that. And I have to tell you, as sorry as I am about what happened to Benton, he was weak. Not enough sap in that tree, oh no. No yolk in that egg.
“Huh. You were the man in that relationship, Miss doctor-lawyer-chief. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, you’re nothing but a man, with big tits. You fool everybody because you look so elegant in your Ralph Lauren and ritzy-titzy car. You think you’re so fucking sexy with those big tits, always making me feel something’s wrong with me and making fun of me when I ordered Mark Eden and all those other contraptions. And remember what Mother said?
“She gave me a photograph of a man’s hairy hand and said, “That’s what makes a woman’s breasts get big.”‘
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“We were teenagers and you made fun of me!”
“I never made fun of you”
“You made me feel stupid and ugly. And you had this blond hair and a chest and all the boys talked about you. Especially since you were smart, too. Oh, you’ve always thought you’re so fucking smart because I couldn’t do anything but English.”
“Stop it, Dorothy.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t, Dorothy.”
“But you don’t fool me. Oh, no.”
She shook her head from side to side, wagging her finger in my face.
“Oh, no. You can’t fool me. I’ve always suspected the truth about you.”
I was parked in front of the Berkeley Hotel, and she didn’t even notice. She was screaming, -tears streaming down her face.
“You’re a closet diesel dyke,” she said hatefully. “And you turned my daughter into one! And now she almost gets killed and she thinks I’m lower than a sewer!”
“Why don’t you go inside your hotel and get some sleep,” I said to her.
She wiped her eyes and looked out the window, surprised to see her hotel, as if it were a spaceship that had silently landed.
“I’m not dumping you out on the roadside, Dorothy. But right now I think it’s best we’re not together.”
She sniffled, her rage fading like fireworks in the night. “I’ll get you to your room,” I said.
She shook her head, her hands motionless in her lap, tears sliding down her miserable face.
“She didn’t want to see me,” she said in a voice as quiet as a breath. “The minute I came off the elevator in that hospital, she looked as if someone had just spat on her food.”
A group of people were walking out of the Tobacco Company. I recognized the men who had been at Dorothy’s table. They were walking unsteadily and laughing too loudly.
“She’s always wanted to be just like you, Kay. Do you have any idea how that feels?” she cried. “I’m a somebody, too. Why can’t she want to be like me?”
She suddenly moved over and hugged me. She cried into my neck, sobbing, shaking. I wanted to love her. But I didn’t. I never had.
“I want her to adore me, too!” she exclaimed, carried away by emotion and alcohol and her own addiction to drama. “I want her to admire me, too! I want her to brag about me like she does you! I want her to think I’m brilliant and strong, that everyone turns around and looks at me when I walk into a room. I want her to think and say all those things-she thinks and says about you! I want her to ask my advice and want to grow up to be just like me.”