Imperfect Bliss by Susan Fales-Hill

Author:Susan Fales-Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

chapter twenty-three

The Hotel Imperial’s piano bar was nearly empty, save for a few tables occupied by businessmen, Japanese at one and heavily cologned, cigar-smoking Qataris in Saville Row suits at another. Bliss sat with her father, nursing a Viennese coffee and cringing as Forsythia, squeezed into a red cocktail dress and teetering on a pair of spangled pumps, belted out the third stanza of “Santa Baby,” the Eartha Kitt come-hither holiday classic. Running a manicured hand through the stunned middle-aged pianist’s comb-over she purred, “Boodoobeedoo/ Santa Baby, I wanna yacht/And really that’s not a lot,” accenting her delivery with a suggestive roll of her well-padded hips. The Qataris let out amused wolf whistles, egging her on. The pianist did his best not to stumble on the keys as a result of her erotic offensive. This sexual teasing was the flip side of her mother’s stiff-upper-lip propriety, the Ms. Hoochie to her Our Lady of Perpetual Primness persona. Bliss had come downstairs to enjoy a moment’s peace while her sister Victoria watched Bella, and instead she’d stumbled upon one of her mother’s one-woman freak shows. And Charlotte sat nearby, impatiently tapping the tabletop as she awaited her turn to shine on stage. Bliss reflected that regrettably, the exhibitionist gene had not skipped a generation. She didn’t have the heart to walk out.

Growing up, as she gleaned bits and pieces of her mother’s painful personal history from the comments she would let drop in unguarded moments, she came to understand that posturing and aspiring to grandeur were Forsythia’s refuge from the harrowing reality of her childhood. Still, when her mother took the proverbial show on the road, Bliss wanted to die of embarrassment. And other than suffering the usual neglect of the youngest child in a large family, she felt Charlotte had little excuse for making a spectacle of herself.

“Papa, you’ve got to get her to stop,” Bliss pleaded. Her anxiety heightened when she saw Sue Minors enter the bar, toting her ever-present BlackBerry, and Charlotte perk up at the sight of her. It would only be a moment, Bliss feared, before Sue summoned the crew to put Forsythia on camera, or worse yet, had Charlotte join her in a mother-daughter duet. These antics were disturbing enough in the confines of their home, but they didn’t need to go viral. She could see the TV Guide headline now: VIRGIN MOTHER AND CHILD DO KARAOKE, accompanied by a shot of Forsythia shimmying for the shell-shocked piano man and Charlotte exposing her cleavage to the salivating businessmen. To Bliss’s astonishment though, she realized her father’s embarrassment was superseded by a high degree of arousal at his wife’s ghoulish display. The one hold Forsythia still had over Harold was the sexual, and as their nest emptied, her coquettish antics increased in frequency. It was a depressing window into long-term marriage. Did it all boil down to this, Bliss thought, becoming a caricature of yourself? Her horror redoubled when Dario appeared at the entrance.

“Shit,” she said under her breath, then chided herself that it didn’t matter what he thought.

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