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GRANDMÈRE
Okay, this is very weird because Grandmère actually gave me something else from my list. Only it wasn’t bungee cords, a cat brush, or new overalls. It was a letter declaring me the official sponsor of a real, live African orphan named Johanna!!!!!!! Grandmère said, “I can’t help you end world hunger, but I suppose I can help you send one little girl to bed every night with a good dinner.”
I was so surprised, I nearly blurted out, “But Grandmère! You hate poor people!” because it’s true, she totally does. Whenever she sees those runaway teen punk rockers who sit outside Lincoln Center in their leather jackets and Doc Martens, with those signs that say HOMELESS AND HUNGRY, she always snaps at them, “If you’d stop spending all your money on tattoos and navel rings, you’d be able to afford a nice sublet in NoLita!”
But I guess Johanna is a different story, seeing as how she doesn’t have parents back in Westchester who are sick with worry for her.
I don’t know what is going on with Grandmère. I fully expected her to give me a mink stole or something equally revolting for my birthday. But getting me something I actually wanted… helping me to sponsor a starving orphan… that is almost thoughtful of her. I must say, I am still in a bit of shock over the whole thing.
I think my mom and dad feel the same way. My dad ordered a Kettle One Gibson, up, after he saw what Grandmère had given me, and my mom just sat there in total silence for, like, the first time since she got pregnant. I am not kidding, either.
Then Lars gave me his gift, even though it is not correct Genovian protocol to receive gifts from one’s bodyguard (because look what happened to Princess Stephanie of Monaco: Her bodyguard gave her a birthday present, and she MARRIED him. Which would have been all right if they had had anything in common, but Stephanie’s bodyguard isn’t the least bit interested in eyebrow threading, and Stephanie clearly knows nothing about jujitsu, so the whole thing was off to a rocky start to begin with).
Anyway, you could tell Lars had really put a lot of thought into his gift.
LARS
An authentic New York Police Department Bomb Squad baseball cap, which Lars got from an actual NYPD Bomb Squad officer once, when he was sweeping Grandmère’s suite at the Plaza for incendiary devices prior to a visit from the Pope. Which I thought was SO sweet of Lars, because I know how much he treasured that hat, and the fact that he was willing to give it to me is true proof of his devotion, which I highly doubt is of the matrimonial variety, since I happen to know Lars loves Mademoiselle Klein, like all heterosexual men who come within seven feet of her.
But the best present of all was the one from Michael. He didn’t give it to me in front of everybody else. He waited until I got up to go to the bathroom just now, and followed me. Then, just as I was starting down the stairs to the ladies’, he went, “Mia, this is for you. Happy birthday,” and gave me this flat little box all wrapped up in gold foil.
I was really surprised—almost as surprised as I’d been over Grandmère’s gift. I was all, “Michael, but you already gave me a present! You wrote that song for me! You got detention for me!”
But Michael just went, “Oh, that. That wasn’t your present. This is.”
And I have to admit, the box was little and flat enough that I thought—I really did think—it might have prom tickets in it. I thought maybe, I don’t know, that Lilly had told Michael how much I wanted to go to the prom, and that he’d gone and bought the tickets to surprise me.
Well, he surprised me, all right. Because what was in the box wasn’t prom tickets.
But still, it was almost as good.
MICHAEL
A necklace with a tiny little silver snowflake hanging from it.
“From when we were at the Nondenominational Winter Dance,” he said, like he was worried I wouldn’t get it.
“Remember the paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling of the gym?”
Of course I remembered the snowflakes. I have one, in the drawer of my bedside table.
And okay, it isn’t a prom ticket or a charm with PROPERTY OF MICHAEL MOSCOVITZ written on it, but it comes really, really close.
So I gave Michael a great big kiss right there by the stairs to the ladies’ room, in front of all the Les Hautes Manger waiters and the hostess and the coat-check girl and everyone. I didn’t care who saw. For all I care, Us Weekly could have snapped all the shots of us they wanted—even run them on the front cover of next week’s edition with a caption that says MIA MAKES OUT!—and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. That’s how happy I was.
Am. That’s how happy I am. My fingers are trembling as I write this, because I think, for the first time in my life, it is possible that I have finally, finally reached the upper branches of the Jungian tree of self-actual—
Wait a minute. There is a lot of noise coming from the hallway. Like breaking dishes and a dog barking and someone screaming…
Oh, my God. That’s Grandmère screaming.
Friday, May 2, midnight, the loft
I should have known it was too good to be true. My birthday, I mean. It was all just going too well. I mean, no prom invitation or cancellation of my trip to Genovia, but, you know, everyone I love (well, almost everyone) sitting at one table, not fighting. Getting everything I wanted (well, almost everything). Michael writing that song about me. And the snowflake necklace. And the cell phone.
Oh, but wait. This is ME we’re talking about. I think that, at fifteen, it’s time I admitted what I’ve known for quite some time now: I am simply not destined to have a normal life. Not a normal life, not a normal family, and certainly not a normal birthday.
Granted, this one might have been the exception, if it hadn’t been for Grandmère. Grandmère and Rommel.
