Indie Girl (15 page)

“What is it?” she asked, her arms folded across her chest. “If you’ve come in here to blather on about how fabulous the magazine is, it’s not a good time.”

“It’s about Trixie Van Alden,” I replied, realizing how ridiculously out of context the words sounded. These were things that Aaralyn and I had never discussed.

“What about her?” she asked, a look of impatience on her face.

“You know there’s all that talk about where she’s getting her wedding dress?”

As I spoke, something inside me shifted. Suddenly I became more assertive and defined. There was a tone of maturity in my voice that even I had never noticed before. I was talking to Aaralyn as if I were her equal. I
knew this feeling was fleeting and transient, but for now, it was all I had.

Then I launched right into the story, leaving out all the extraneous details about Rinky and Madhu Sharma, and going straight to the heart of the matter: that Hollywood’s hottest star, who had French couture houses and renowned Italian designers begging her to wear one of their dresses, was heading to the villages of India to source a hand-beaded frock.

“Of course, she’s taking her own seamstress,” I said with a final flourish. “But the best part is—the craftswomen in India get paid directly, every dollar that they’re worth.”

Aaralyn was staring at me as if I had just told her that the world was about to self-destruct in eleven minutes.

“How do you know this?” she asked, a frown on her face.

“I can give you all my sources,” I continued.

“Hang on a second,” she said and went to her desk. She was about to pick up her phone until she saw the cordless handset, lying in a half dozen pieces, forlorn on the floor. So she reached into her handbag that sat on a couch, pulled out her cell phone, and punched in a few numbers.

“Meghan, hi, it’s Aaralyn,” she said. “I figured I’d find you in the office on a Sunday. Listen, I need you to check something out for me. It’s about …”

She stopped, shut her eyes for a minute, and bit her lip.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

As I watched, she sat down at her computer and pulled up her address book. There were hundreds of names and numbers. I was now standing right behind her and could read many of them. I saw her scroll down alphabetically past Selma Blair to Sandra Oh and Sharon Stone. Several more lines and she was at Trixie Van Alden, the name and number of her assistant right next to it.

This list must be worth gold,
I thought to myself.

“Hi, Janna? It’s Aaralyn Taylor,” she said, a smile now on her face, her voice all charm and friendliness. Who could have imagined that just minutes earlier, this woman was in full meltdown mode?

“I’m great, thanks, how are you?” She paused, listening thoughtfully to the response, concentrating so much on the conversation that she didn’t realize I was still standing there. Or maybe she didn’t care. But because she hadn’t dismissed me yet, I was standing firm. I wasn’t going to miss this for anything.

“Oh, right, that film was shot in Bulgaria, wasn’t it? That must have been quite a trip,” she continued. “I saw in
Variety
that it’s slated for an end-of-year release. Sounds like a good one.”

She paused again.

“Listen, Janna, I’m sorry to ring you on a Sunday. I’m sure you get a million calls a minute about Trixie’s
wedding gown. So I’m not going to ask you the same questions. But I
am
just going to ask you to confirm or deny something. India. Calcutta. Hand-beading. Village damsels. A stop at a charity mission. Any of this sounding familiar?”

Aaralyn was now smiling sneakily. She was in her element. This seemed to be what she most loved doing—asking questions, soliciting answers.

“Oh really?” she asked. She turned around to look at me and arched an eyebrow. Then she did something that I didn’t think I’d ever see Aaralyn do. She gave me a thumbs-up. Then she grabbed a pen and started scribbling down what Janna was telling her.

“Of course, it didn’t come from you,” she said. “And of course, we’ll play it big. But I need you to make sure that nobody else gets the scoop on this, okay? You let us break the news—and I promise you I will write it myself—and I give you my word that when Trixie’s new movie comes out, we’ll give her the cover.”

She nodded at Janna’s response, smiled broadly, and put the phone down.

Then she stood up and turned around to face me.

I was waiting for the hug, for the big glorious “thank you,” the slap on the back, the compliments. Almost instantaneously, my mind went to the summer that lay just at my doorstep, to the internship that would be naturally granted to me because, quite honestly, who else
could possibly compete for it now? In my mind’s eye, I could see everything unfolding so vividly after that; within a week of being an intern at Aaralyn’s magazine, I would move swiftly up the ladder to become a staff writer. I would be the youngest fashion writer anywhere and would become the one that everyone wanted to talk to. Mediabistro.com would feature me as a wunderkind journalist. Everyone would know me as the girl who started out as a babysitter and who went on to land the hottest internship going. I would start getting offers from every other magazine, but would remain eternally loyal to Aaralyn. My star was about to rise. I could feel it.

But when I faced Aaralyn, she was just staring at me, the smile now completely gone from her face.

“How did you know this?” she asked, frowning. “How is it that I have paid insiders at all the best boutiques and fashion houses, and they couldn’t get me this information, yet you pull it out of your hat? What do you know that I don’t?”

Was she angry at me? I had just done her a huge favor, yet here she was, talking to me in this really accusing tone.

“Someone at the wedding this morning told me,” I said, speaking softly. I recounted my conversation with Rinky, and how she was told something by someone close to an Indian charitable organization.

“I know it seems a bit roundabout, but as you see, it’s all true.”

She stared at me blankly, her head somewhere else. “Thanks,” she said tersely. “You can go now.”

I turned to walk out the door.

“Just a sec, Indie,” Aaralyn said. This was it. This was going to be the big congratulatory expression of gratitude. And then she’d offer me the job. I knew she would.

“Kyle barely touched his lunch. Make sure he eats something, will you?”

Five days later, a brand-new issue of
Celebrity Style
was in our mailbox.

My first reaction was to throw it away.

Ordinarily, that would be sacrilege. After all, I had hoarded every copy of the last three years.

But after that last Sunday at Aaralyn’s house, I wanted nothing more to do with her or the magazine.

I had not realized the extent of my bitterness until I saw the issue, the same one that contained a lead story on Trixie Van Alden, a story that Aaralyn wouldn’t even have if it hadn’t been for me.

When I had left her house that Sunday, she hadn’t even said “thank you.” She had paid me for babysitting Kyle, like she always did, and said she’d call me again if she needed my services. Then she had shut the door on me, leaving me to wait outside for my father to come and pick me up. I had stood there, wearing her hand-me-downs, carrying in my left hand a bag containing my glittery clothes from earlier. I had fought back tears because I didn’t want my father to see me upset. But I felt hollow inside. I felt like I had been used.

Grudgingly, now, I took the magazine out of the mailbox with the rest of that day’s delivery and went upstairs with it. I glanced at the cover as I treaded up the flight of steps: On the upper right-hand corner was a cropped picture of Trixie Van Alden. Underneath were the words:
EXCLUSIVE TO CS: TRIXIE’S SECRET WEDDING DRESS REVEALED!

I was feeling so resentful, I had to read the story. Sitting on my bed, with a steaming-hot cup of cocoa and tiny white marshmallows bobbing around on top, I went straight to the contents section, saw what page the story was on and immediately leafed to it.

There was a full-length picture of Trixie across the page, and next to it a detailed story about the dress that she was going to wear at her upcoming wedding. The “source close to the star,” I figured, must have been Janna. But there were numerous other people quoted, including Madhu Sharma. I guessed that Aaralyn must have been paying attention when I mentioned all these names to her. I thought of how Aunty Madhu must have felt, being called by an important magazine, and then seeing her name in print. Aaralyn had even tracked down a travel agent in Calcutta that was arranging Trixie’s visit with her entourage. And there was even a photograph of
a cluster of village women sitting in a thatched hut, surrounded by spindles and old-style weaving machines. A caption underneath said:
NATIVE CRAFTSWOMEN AT WORK.

I closed my eyes for a minute and started to tell myself that I should feel proud. All along, for all these years, I had dreamed of one day being able to contribute to a publication like
Celebrity Style.
Now, I had actually done it; sure, it was in a roundabout way, and I certainly got no credit for it. But it was better than nothing.

But no matter how hard I tried to tell myself this, something inside still hurt. I realized then that giving Aaralyn the story was only half my objective that day; the rest was winning her approval. I thought one would give me the other. Obviously I was wrong. And the fact that I was wrong on something so elemental left me with a dull ache inside.

Almost obsessively, I turned back to the magazine. At the end of the feature, a small-print italicized line said:
MORE ON PAGE
60.
I flipped to that page and was astonished at what I saw there. It was a double-page spread on Indian-inspired clothing that had been worn by movie and television stars in the last few years: There was television actress Kelli Williams and British actress Helen Mirren both wearing saris at different awards shows and Cate Blanchett in rich gold Indian jewelry at the Oscars. There was a shot of Madonna in her
mehendi
and
bindis,
and pictures of Indian designer Ritu Beri, who
shows her collections in Paris and dressed Nicole Kidman for the premiere of
Moulin Rouge.
There were photos of Judi Dench in an elegant embroidered tunic-and-pant set that could have come from Armani, but was instead from famous Indian design duo Abu-Sandeep. My heart swelled with pride. Right then, for me, it felt cool to be Indian.

That night, as my father and I sat in front of the television before dinner, I turned to
Access Hollywood.
There was a story that was basically a repeat of the piece in
Celebrity Style
on Trixie Van Alden.
Entertainment Weekly
and
The Insider
had done the same, as I gathered by all my flicking back and forth. They all cited Celebrity Style as having broken the news. I could just imagine Aaralyn, smug and self-satisfied, taking all the congratulations that were no doubt coming her way, not even giving me a second thought.

My father was half watching, not really paying attention, until he heard the name of the magazine, and of Aaralyn.

“That’s your lady, nah?” he said, reclining against a dark red velvet cushion on the couch. “She’s done well with this.”

“Actually, Dad,” I started. “I gave her that story.”

He looked over at me, a puzzled expression on his face. I told him about that day at Aditya’s wedding and
my conversation with Rinky. All the while, my head was telling me to shut up, that I was telling him more than I needed to, that I was just giving him ammunition. But I wanted to prove to him that I knew vaguely what I was doing, even if I hadn’t exactly gotten any credit for it.

“You know, a lot of magazines
pay
for that kind of information,” he said. “These magazines need regular, ordinary people to feed them stories. Without assistants and waitresses and hairdressers, those pages would be empty. One of my patients was a concierge at a five-star hotel and used to call these gossip rags with information about movie stars. He would get hundreds of dollars in return.”

“Which probably helped him pay
your
bills,” I said under my breath. My father was right, which is why I was so upset with him. The odd thing was, I didn’t want any money from Aaralyn. I knew that if I went to any other competing publication or TV news show, I probably could have lined my pockets with some cash. But I wasn’t in it for that. I just wanted Aaralyn to take me seriously. And the fact that she hadn’t, after what I had just done for her, made me feel stupid.

I got up and went into the kitchen, to see how dinner was progressing. I could smell one of my favorite meals, just about done, in the oven: chicken baked with water chestnuts, almonds, and peas. My mother made it extra rich with lots of cheese and milk and cream soup. No
wonder it was so hard for me to lose weight in this house. The way I looked had never been an issue for my parents; to them, a few pounds extra here and there were “healthy.” There were no gym memberships and complicated diet regimens. My parents believed only in fresh food and walks around the block a few evenings a week.

Now, my mother looked at me oddly.

“What?” I asked her, grabbing a glass out of a cabinet and pouring in some lemonade from the fridge.

“Indie, I just heard what your father said to you.”

I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly.

“Indie,” my mother continued. I could tell by her tone that this was going to be one of her “serious conversations.” We had them every so often, like when I was ten and my maternal grandmother was about to have an angioplasty, or a year later when an uncle came to stay with us because he was going through a divorce. Or, the worst of all, when I was twelve and my mother had taken it upon herself to explain the birds and the bees to me. She had asked me if we had “sex education” in school. I nodded, squirming, wanting desperately to change the subject. But she had decided to forge on, basically repeating everything I was learning at school, with the horrifyingly embarrassing addition of diagrams and illustrations that she had drawn herself. I had wanted to crawl under the table and die.