McDowell Christina - After perfect: a daughters memoir

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Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed, whether or not so noted in the text. The timeline for certain events has been reordered or compressed.

Copyright 2015 by Christina McDowell

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition June 2015

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Regina Starace

Jacket image courtesy of Christina McDoweel; airplane by Getty Images

Author photograph by Elisabeth Caren

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McDowell, Christina.

After perfect : a memoir / by Christina McDowell.

pages cm

1.McDowell, Christina.2.McDowell, ChristinaChildhood and youth.3.Prousalis, Tom.4.Fathers and daughtersBiography.5.Securities fraudUnited States.6.Securities industryUnited States.I.Title.

CT275.M465358A3 2015

306.874'2dc23

2014039144

ISBN 978-1-4767-8532-5

ISBN 978-1-4767-8542-4 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to the children of the incarcerated and to the children who are incarcerated.

Spit out the venom from their bite. Calmly and confidently know you can have the only thing that matters in this illusory world. They will always struggle, but the open heart needs nothing. Build a private mansion with your own hands out of what others ignore. That is the unassailable castle.

Anonymous

MEMORIAL DAY, 1993

McLEAN, VIRGINIA

I took a bucket of chalk and told my little sister Chloe to lie down.

Lie down.

Why? Chloe asked, cautiously for a five-year-old.

Im a detective, and Im going to sketch your body. Pretend like youre dead.

Okay, but Moms going to be mad. We were in our matching Laura Ashley party dresses.

Mara, my older sister, rode her banana-seat bike in circles on the stone walkway, ignoring us as usual.

As I began smearing yellow chalk along the side of Chloes dress, we heard the sound of rumbling and buzzing coming toward us from a distance, louder with each passing second. I looked over at Mara, who had dragged her bike onto the grass. Her head was tilted toward the sky, watching birds fly out of the trees. Then Chloe jumped up and placed both hands over her ears to block the deafening sound. Seconds later, my mother flew out the front door, barefoot in her pink Chanel suit. Her red hair was pulled back with a pearl headband, and she was fumbling with the family video camera.

Girls! she cried. Theres Daddy! Wave!

Chloe and I darted toward our mother, who had run into the middle of the street, spinning around with the camera. We looked up into the sky, and there was dad circling the rooftop of our Georgian estate in his red and yellow single-engine prop Porsche Mooney airplane. He flew so low to the ground that we could see him laughing and waving to us in his aviator sunglasses.

Daddy! we screamed, his engine drowning our voices. We danced and twirled and threw our arms up into the air, waving to him as we watched. The red wings of his plane swayed from side to side with each passing turn before coming back around again to surprise us even closer to the rooftop of our house. Our American flag whipped in the wind when he came back around once more before disappearing into the distant sky.

He was my superhero.

Chloe and I spun around and around, falling dizzily into the grass, and Mara, who seemed concerned, ran over to our mother.

Mom? She tugged on her arm.

Yeah, sweetheart? The video camera was still recording.

Is Dad going to get in trouble?

My mother laughed at the thought. I hope not.

The roads were quiet, and white frost covered the otherwise green hills of Virginia. No one could hear the engines of several government-marked SUVs traveling one before the other, like soldiers down Dolley Madison Boulevard.

Like every other typical morning in our house, my father was the first awake. He was leaning over the marble sink in the master bathroom in his boxer shorts shaving the outer edges of his Clark Gable mustache with an electric razor. His collection of Herms ties hung on a rack alongside the open closet door opposite his collection of Brooks Brothers suits. In the background, CNN reported on the television screen behind him: Jury selection began Tuesday in the Martha Stewart criminal trial, where the self-made lifestyle maven will try to defend herself against charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements, and securities fraud. The NASDAQ and Dow Jones numbers crawled along the bottom. I asked my father once what the numbers meant. He replied, Dont worry about it, thats your dads job.

My mother was sitting in front of the gold-framed mirror at her vanity table just down the corridor. Her hair pulled back with a navy scrunchy, she was examining her wrinkles and moving her skin with her hands to see how she would look with a face-lift.

Sometimes she forgot how beautiful she was. As a little girl, strangers would pull me aside at the market and ask, Hey, kid, is your mom a movie star?

She wrapped her silk bathrobe around her nightgown and headed to the kitchen to put on the morning coffee.

Chloe was upstairs grabbing her gym bag and lacrosse stick. Her boyfriend kept honking the horn of his Jeep Grand Cherokee out front.

Coming! she yelled as if he could hear her.

T he SUVs continued on, passing an unmarked security house where, next to it in the gravel path, a sign had been planted: George Bush Center for Intelligence CIA Next Right. Hardly noticeable for the average tourist passing by on the way to Dulles International Airport, intentionally inconspicuous as all of the secret intelligence of the world lies just a mile down what looks to be a harmless suburban road. It was the winter of 1993 when I found out what it was, in the car with my mother on the way to school, and a secret agent stopped us at the red light. He questioned her. I remember asking what for, and she explained to me what was hidden down the street. A gunman had opened fire on several cars entering the CIA headquarters, wounding three and killing two employees. I understood then, despite the quiet feeling in our neighborhood, that things happened all around us every day that we werent privy to.

The SUVs turned onto Georgetown Pike, gaining speed, passing the Kennedys Hickory Hill estate to the left down Chain Bridge Road, and the little yellow schoolhouse on the hill to the right, a place my sisters and I used to march to with our Fisher-Price sleds each winter. But when the vehicles approached the corner to our street, Kedleston Court, a quiet cul-de-sac of mansions, Chloe flew out the front door, struggling to whip her backpack over her shoulder and lugging her lacrosse stick and gym bag in her other hand. She hopped into the passengers side of her boyfriends Jeep, and they took off, passing the SUVs without a second thought. It had been three years since 9/11; since US Air Force F-16 fighter jets flew so low to the ground they shook our beds at night. The days of my father flying his airplane above our home were long gone. We had become accustomed to this quiet feeling. We trusted that we were safe.