The Curious Case of Miranda Priestly 4/?
Title: The Curious Case of Miranda Priestly
Pairing: well....I think it becomes obvious...
Rating: Pretty much G
Disclaimer: I don't own Cassidy, Caroline, Miranda, or Andy. But I claim Max and Graham
Summary: Cassidy uncovers the truth about why her mother's been so unhappy.
S'il vous plait reviewo. I know I've been spamming you all with Miranda Rides a Unicorn (crazy, silly name, right?) But this is my other work right now and it deserves some comments, right? Why just today it was like, "Mommy, please post me so I can see if anyone likes me." So I said, "Of course, darling. Let's get you posted.". I know you're all around reading, so you might as well just read and then review. My story would really appreciate it. :) Yup...I think that sounds like a tres bien idea. Right?
Exhibit 4
At dinner that evening, I twirled the bracelet around in my pocket, feeling the fake plastic beneath my fingers. Our dinner was not my favorite; grilled chicken with a side of mashed-potatoes, green beans, and some steamed carrots. I was distracted by thoughts of where the bracelet could possibly have come from, when my mother’s voice cut through my deliberation.
“I’m leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow. The trip was pushed up.” She seemingly stated absentmindedly, as if we should know that she would already be leaving the following day.
I knew she had pushed the date up. I knew she thought something was horribly wrong with the shoot, and she wanted to get there to fire some models and a couple of designers until she had it her way. But I did not mention it. I only felt a slight bit of anger well up inside of me, for she always did this. She always left.
“Kristin will be here, and I will not be back in time to see you off to your father’s on Friday evening.” She attempted to sound regretful, but instead it came off as a bit too relieved.
My sister groaned on the other side of the table. “I don’t want Kristin to stay here.” She half-mumbled under her breath, but my mother heard, as she always did.
“Caroline Paige van Ziegler,” my mother’s icy tone sent shivers down my spine. “Kristin will be staying here. Let’s not forget what happened the last time I was only going to be away a couple of days and Kristin was not here,” my mother tilted her head as if recalling those horrendous two days. They had been disastrous. My sister had decided to sneak out and had subsequently ended up in jail for being linked to a robbery. My mother had swooped in and had kept it from going public, but my sister was beginning to earn a reputation. One my mother was not very proud of. “And that will not happen again, or I will seriously look in to that boarding school in France.”
Caroline huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. She hated our mother most of the time.
But I knew my mother was just trying to protect her, keep her on the straight and narrow path. She didn’t want either of her children to be failures, or rather, to let her down. We were her pride and joy, though she had trouble vocalizing that to us. But deep down we knew.
Or at least I knew.
“What is that?” I heard my mother’s voice slice through the air, and I realized she was addressing me.
“What?” I quickly glanced at her, surprise etched in my voice, having been taken off guard.
I followed her line of vision, and found that her eyes were firmly planted on the bracelet I had unconsciously extracted from my pocket.
“Oh,” I clamped my hand over it and shrugged, “it’s nothing.”
“Give it to me.” My mother’s even tone returned, her hand extending for the bracelet.
“Why?” I gathered the courage to look up at her again.
“Because…” she barely hesitated, her eyes did not lose their intensity, but I could tell she was coming up with a faux excuse. “I don’t have to come up with an excuse for you, give it to me.” Her words were icily precise. I found myself handing the cheap, scratched bracelet over to her and she quickly examined it. Realizing she had sounded as if she were over-reacting, she tried to explain herself, but it sounded rather unconvincing. “My assistant lost a bracelet today.”
I, amused, nodded and turned back to my food. Something very strange had gotten in to my mother.
Why in the world did she care about that hideous bracelet?
And then suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. A quick recollection of a past event that had to have happened nights ago. Words, my mother had been talking on the phone…I’d overheard…
“We will have lunch on Monday.”
A lunch…she’d had a lunch today. A lunch that had ended in the backseat of her car?
“I would also like to remind you that your shoot for Darling will be next Wednesday. I’ve already contacted Dalton and they know that you will not be in class that morning.” She once again bared my train of thought with her words. I was immediately thrown off by this announcement. I hadn’t known the shoot would happen so soon. What if I had a test next Wednesday?
“A morning shoot?” Caroline groaned.
“Yes, you both will be awake by six and there by seven thirty. I will come and check on you around noon and you will be the wonderful girls I know you are.” She gave us a half-hearted, rather disdainful looking smile and we both nodded. “And I wouldn’t hesitate to start using our private gym some more, I’m sure I can get Bradley to make you both some light workouts to help tone you up before next Wednesday.” She added, eyeing both of us with that critical fashion eye she had sworn was only for work, but it had somehow become part of our home life as well.
I glanced down at my slender frame and wondered if my mother wanted me to become anorexic. I couldn’t see that anything else needed to be lost, ballet kept me quite in shape. But I would oblige my mother, I would allow Bradley, her personal trainer, to give me a workout and I would do it for the week.
By the time the meal was finished, Caroline quickly stormed off, thoroughly pissed at our mom. My mother sat, sipping her wine, consumed once more by an Italian magazine that I hadn’t caught the name of. I knew she was skimming pictures; she was always looking for something new to bring to America, feature in an American magazine. She liked to look at layouts, color schemes, mood schemes, anything that would give her ideas for her next magazine.
I realized I’d been studying her, and when I looked up, I met her eyes.
She gave me a rather blank expression and I took it as her having nothing to say. I gave her a slight, scared smile and then excused myself from the table. Just as I was about to leave the room, her voice caught me.
“Thank you for finding this bracelet. It, apparently, means a great deal to my assistant.” I could sense she was looking at it again, for I heard her mumble under her breath, “though I have no idea why.”
I turned to her and smiled. “You’re welcome.” And before I could walk away again, I went to my mother and I wrapped my arms around her. At first she tensed up, not accustom to such random displays of affection, but soon she awkwardly wrapped her arm around me. “I’ll miss you this week.” I blurted out, feeling like a silly little five-year-old again.
She didn’t respond at first. Instead I felt her nodding against my shoulder. When words came, they seemed forced and almost unsure, “I’m sure you will be just fine with Kristin.” She didn’t know how to show motherly love. She had no idea. And I suppose it shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, for it couldn’t really be helped. She had never had a mother; and thus, she had never known the love of a mother.
I stepped away and nodded. “I will.”
“Oh and Cassidy,” I half expected her to say I love you or I’ll miss you, too, but instead she pointedly added, “keep an eye on your sister.”
I nodded again and she knew I’d keep my word. And with that I turned to go, slightly disappointed by my mother’s lack of mothering skill.
~*~
That night I fell asleep surrounded by copies of official government documents that pertained to the Cold War. I had an essay exam that Friday and I knew I had to do these readings. I suppose I’d dosed off during a reading about American safety during the time, for I had an unpleasant dream about a bomb threat and my sister, Andy Sachs (completely random), and my mother all had to go down to our secret underground house that was completely safe from nuclear bombs. It looked almost exactly like our home in Connecticut, only the walls were all cement and the décor looked hard and uncomfortable.
We’d had to pile into a small room, what looked like it could, perhaps, be a bathroom, and we waited for a bomb to go off.
Instead of a bomb, I heard a distant alarm sound.
Before I knew it, my eyes flashed open and I had to cup my hand over my mouth before I screamed.
It took several minutes to realize that we were, in fact, not being bombed by the Soviet Union, nor did we have a bomb shelter, and also that it was five in the morning. I shifted in my bed, willing myself to go back to sleep. I didn’t want to be awake so early. I had at least another good hour and thirty minutes before I had to be up for school.
But just as I began dozing off again, I heard the light patter of heels clicking up the stairs.
Mom was awake.
I listened, with my eyes closed, as I heard her attempting to quiet her heels on the floor outside my room. I heard my door slowly open and I could feel the presence of my mother in my room, her perfume invading my senses.
I felt her hovering over my bed, and I willed myself to look as if I were asleep.
This was new; I didn’t know she did this. Had she always come into my room before she left early in the morning?
And then to add even more of a surprise to this already surprising moment, she leaned down and kissed my cheek, her manicured fingernails whisking a stray strand of red hair out of my face.
Then she said the three words I had begun to think she’d forgotten how to say, “I love you.”
I tried to keep the grin from settling on my face, and so I feigned discomfort in my position and rolled over so that my face was well hidden in the pillow and blankets.
She took this as her time to leave, and I heard the soft click of heels moving out of my room and up the stairs to my sister’s bedroom.
Completely taken aback, I’m not sure if I ever fell back to sleep that morning.
~*~
That night after a grueling two hour ballet practice, followed by a quick strengthening workout in our gym down in the basement of our townhome, I took a nice long shower. The day had been crazy, but I’d happily gone through it, my mother’s morning words having stuck with me all day.
I only wished she could be there this evening.
But instead of our mother seated at the dinner table, it was Kristin. She’d even claimed mom’s chair. I frowned at the idea of her occupying my mother’s seat and turned away from her in disgust. Dinner was quiet except for some light twin chatter that perhaps made no sense to anyone except me and Caroline. We had mastered the art of talking without making sense to others, and it drove our mother crazy and made Kristin quite flustered.
Dinner that night went by very quickly, and neither of us lingered at the table for too long. I was up and about as soon as my plate was cleared. I thought I could hear Kristin calling after me, but I feigned homework, and raced up to my room.
I pulled out my French Runway and flipped it open to the page I had left off on. It was always good to keep up on my French. I never knew when mom would announce a trip over to Paris, and those Parisians were picky about their French. Kristin had been hired based on her refined French skills. She had been an au pair in France up until my mother hired her.
Thus, it was quite a match, in my mother’s mind at least, that Kristin become our “babysitter”. But personally I couldn’t stand her and I knew my sister didn’t like her any better.
Speaking of my sister, I heard the soft click of a window and I knew she was heading out for the night. She had mastered this strange climb down and up the side of our townhome. Using fire escapes on buildings down the block, she was able to sneak out rather easily.
And as I thought about her sneaking away, I sure hoped she’d locked her bedroom door because I did not feel like covering for her tonight.
And luckily Kristin took it as Caroline was asleep and so after getting no response from my sister, she came to say good night to me, warning me to go to bed because I had school tomorrow. I rolled my eyes at her and nodded. But just as I began sleepily heading towards the bathroom to brush my teeth, I heard my phone vibrating against the wood of my desk.
I quickly lunged at the phone, realizing, as my fingers gripped the cool plastic surface, that it was my mother calling. It was almost eleven. She never called me this late. Though she usually called at some point when she got to her travel destination, so I didn’t find it that odd. That was until I heard her on the other end of the line.
She sounded distracted and breathless. Her voice was lower than usual.
“I have not been able to stop thinking about you all day. Could you not hear the phone ringing? Are you that incompetent?” My mother was in a foul mood, not what I had expected from her, not today. The day she had sweetly whispered I love you to me before leaving me for an entire week. With my sister. And Kristin.
“Sorry,” I weakly apologized, hoping my mother would soon realize whom she was talking to.
“Cassidy?” She had clearly called the wrong number. “Oh…how was your day, bubsy?” She had asked without missing a beat, as if she hadn’t just called the wrong number, and hadn’t been caught off guard. And she actually sounded genuine, like she cared.
“Long. I’m exhausted.” I sighed, settling on the edge of my bed, my toothbrush in hand with toothpaste already on the bristled end.
“As was mine and as am I.” My mother sympathized for a moment.
“How was your flight?” I asked, feeling odd, knowing that my mother had meant to call someone else. Who could she be calling that she’d been thinking about all day?
“Very long and uncomfortable.” She answered, annoyance creeping back into her voice and I knew she wanted to call whomever she had meant to call in the first place. Though I wasn’t sure I wanted to let her, and I was very tempted to ask her whom she had meant to call, but… “You should go to bed, darling. You have school tomorrow and mommy has to go help the helpless fashion disasters in Los Angeles so I must go to bed too.”
“All right,” I hoped the disappointment didn’t show in my voice. “Good night, mom.”
“Good night, Cassidy.”
I heard a quick click on the other line and I knew she’d hung up as fast as she could. And just as I began brushing my teeth, while plugging my phone into its charger, I realized that my mother was not about to go to bed at all.
California was three hours behind New York.
It was only 8:00 there.
She had lied.
And in actuality, as I thought about it, she never slept.
What was going on? Why had she lied? And who had she been thinking about? All day?
I sighed and spat my mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.
What the hell was she doing?