Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls (11 page)

“I knew I was going to fuck you the minute I saw you.”

“I have to get back to the party.”

“Right, the party. Hey, how well do you know Jamie Walters?”

“Well enough. We’ve worked together on a couple of things.”

“I’m auditioning for him next week. A cable show, women’s lifestyle
stuff? Gardening, cooking, decorating, like that. Maybe you could put in a word?”

“I thought you lived in Phoenix.”

“I’m thinking of moving back here. If I got this job. We could be neighbors. You could come by and borrow a cup of sugar any old time.”

“Let me think about it,” Dave said, unlocking the door. “You wait a minute here, I don’t want anyone seeing us together.”

The woman went to Neely’s dressing table and fluffed up her bangs. She picked up a few perfume bottles, examined their labels, and then dabbed some Chanel No. 22 behind her knees. Neely lay down on the floor of the closet. It wasn’t fair; it was her party and everything was turning out wrong. All the vitamins in the world couldn’t make this feeling go away.

D
ownstairs, Anne had snuck into the back bathroom behind the kitchen to pop another half tab of Xanax. She ran the tap water with the lights off, drinking from her cupped hands.

Through the open window she could see the couples dancing, hear the old Cole Porter tune that Lyon used to hum in her ear. She watched Stella and Arthur taking a dip in the corner of the floor. She watched people who had called once or twice, inviting her to a lunch or afternoon at the ballet. She watched people who had invited her daughter over for a play date, sharing a quick and awkward cup of coffee with her when she came to pick up Jenn. She watched people who had never called at all.

Not that she had found any of these parties so thrilling when she was invited to them. But now, leaning against the cold porcelain in a small, dark bathroom, she felt the bright red rage of a woman who has been overlooked. She was Cinderella without glass slippers,
without a Prince Charming to carry her away. She was stuck, and no one seemed to notice.

When the pill kicked in, she turned on the light and looked in the mirror. Back to work. The check would help cover her real estate taxes, and maybe even a facial. She sure needed one.

Neely came down to find Anne counting out soup spoons, humming along with the band.

“There you are,” Anne said. “Dave was looking for you.”

“I bet. Get me a glass of champagne, will ya?”

Anne lifted an eyebrow.

“It’s just champagne. Oh, all right, never mind, I’ll get it myself.” Neely poured herself a glass and sat down at the table. “So, how’s the auditioning going?” No matter how bad things were for Neely, they were worse for Anne. This little chat would be just the thing to cheer Neely up.

“Could be better. I almost had a great commercial, but then they canceled the campaign.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“Well, something else will come along. Hey, I have an idea. I know about this great job.”

“Neely, you don’t have to. A deal’s a deal.” Anne noticed how quickly Neely went through the champagne. “Happy thirtieth birthday, kiddo.”

“Yeah, right. Listen. I know a guy in cable, he’s auditioning for someone to host a women’s lifestyle show. Cooking, gardening, decorating, like that. Want me to put in a word?”

“That’s okay.”

“What, an old friend can’t do you a favor?”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Fine, whatever,” Neely said. “You know, make a point if you want to, but you know who you’re really hurting? That ten-year-old
kid upstairs. Anyway. Never keep the photographers waiting,” she said, chugging the last of her champagne.

Fifteen minutes later a fat man with thick gray hair came in, holding a freshly lit cigar.

“Are you Anne Welles? What am I saying. Of course you are. You haven’t changed a bit.” He held out his hand. “Jamie Walters.”

“Hello. I’m sorry, I can’t quite place you.”

“Neely sent me in here to meet you. She said you might be interested in a little cable project I’m working on.” He gave her his business card. “Can you call me on Monday? What am I saying. Of course you can call me on Monday.” He left without waiting for her answer.

After the plates were cleared, after the band went home, after the final cup of coffee was served and the last few guests wandered down the long driveway, after Gretchen carried a dozing Jenn piggyback to her car, after Neely and Dave went upstairs and the staff packed up, Anne went outside to find Curtis smoking a cigarette and looking through one of the telescopes.

“What a beautiful night,” he said. “Have a peek.”

Anne took a look. “I don’t know what anything is,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Anne walked to her car through the damp grass. It was a half-hour ride home. Trees arched over the road like a canopy. Van Morrison was on the radio, a song she had heard a hundred times without really listening to it. She turned up the volume and it felt as though he were singing directly to her, in a wise, clear voice full of sadness and hope and magic.

She had been down this road a hundred times, too, more than a hundred times, but it looked different to her now, as if every little thing—the street lamps twinkling between the trees, a white balloon caught on a traffic signal, a bouquet of roses abandoned on the hood of a parked car—had a special message for her.
I never noticed
anything when I was with Lyon
, she thought,
and here it all is, here it all is
.

She was home by three. Jenn and Gretchen were eating blueberry pie straight from the tin.

“We can’t sleep, Mom,” Jenn said. “So we’re going to stay up all night.”

“I tried,” Gretchen said.

“That’s okay. Give me a fork,” Anne said.

Gretchen could not stop talking about all the famous people she had seen, what they had worn and said and how much they had drunk. A rock-and-roll singer had given her his autograph on the back of a menu card … a soap opera actress had told her she had pretty eyes … had Anne noticed that the radio talk-show host was wearing a toupee? …

“I would have worked for free,” Gretchen said.

“Don’t tell Curtis that.”

“And I got a tip!” she said, taking a hundred-dollar bill out of her pocket.

Jenn was all sugared up and giggling. She described everything in Judd’s room: his computer, his collection of CDs, his science-fiction posters. “And he gave me this shirt!”

It was an old plaid-flannel shirt, coming apart at the elbows.

“I guess he must have liked you,” Anne said.

“It’s called Black Watch,” Jenn said. “He’s almost sixteen, but I still beat him at Monopoly two times.”

The sky was beginning to brighten. They had nearly finished a second pie.

“When does the sun come up, Mom?”

“Soon, sweetie.” When was the last time she had seen the sun come up? She thought back: months ago, the night she left Lyon. A beautiful thing happened every day, a million beautiful things; you only had to go looking for them.

“Let’s get the sleeping bags and go outside to watch,” Anne said. They made cocoa and dragged the deck chairs out onto the lawn.

“We have to whisper,” Jenn said. “Everyone is sleeping.”

“But we’re wide awake,” Gretchen said.

Anne pulled her sleeping bag just up to her eyes. Underneath the soft down, she was smiling.
So: this is my life. So: this is my family
. It wasn’t very much, but right now it seemed like more than enough. Right now it seemed perfect.

1989.

N
eely closed the script and tossed it on the floor. There was no point in finishing it—it was like all the other movie scripts she was getting these days, junk that everyone else had already turned down. Mothers, mob wives, and hookers. Like she was going to play the mother of some twenty-three-year-old brat with two pictures under his belt!

She stretched her legs under the covers and took another sip of herbal tea. It was already eleven in the morning, but she still hadn’t gotten dressed or checked her telephone messages. What was the point? There was nothing to do in Los Angeles during the day except have lunch and shop. She didn’t want to eat with anyone; the Oscars were in three weeks and she really needed to lose five pounds. And she didn’t feel like shopping—not until she was back down to her target weight.

She had turned off the ringer on the telephone, but she could hear the little click of someone leaving a message. Probably just
Gordon, good old Gordon. He had booked her for three weeks in Las Vegas at the end of May, and it was the best contract she had ever gotten.

At least someone was out there working for her. Her new film agency wasn’t doing anything except sending her lousy scripts, as far as she could tell. Neely didn’t like these new guys, even if everyone said they were the best. Their office gave her the creeps—it was all pale colors and polished surfaces and Abstract art on the walls. It was like visiting a law firm. She missed the good old days, the autographed pictures and the men in bad toupees who offered you hugs and dirty jokes. The new guys wore thousand-dollar suits and two-hundred-dollar sunglasses, and behind the glasses their eyes were cold and expressionless. They were like the FBI, but with better haircuts.

And it was costing her a fortune, even if she didn’t shoot a single frame. Dave had made her set up her own production company—that was the way it worked, everyone did it, you had to get a piece of the pie. So now she paid some girl three minutes out of film school a ridiculously high salary to sit in an office all day and do God knew what. It seemed to Neely that she was basically paying someone to sit around reading magazines. Liza wore little black eyeglasses and size 38 Armani jackets. When Neely visited the office, all she could think about was how much those jackets cost and where the money had come from. Plus the secretary, plus the expense account, plus the fresh flowers, plus the rent. It drove her crazy, so now she went by only once or twice a month. It was just a very expensive place to go for a pee if you were driving around and needed a place to stop.

She felt as though she were stalled in bad traffic on a hot summer day: angry and impatient, with nowhere to go.

“Take it easy,” Dave had told her. “You have plenty of work and plenty of money and two great kids. And me. Life is to be enjoyed.”

“Maybe you’re exactly where you want to be, but I want more,” she told him. “There’ll be plenty of time to stop and smell the roses when I’m old and fat and my voice is gone. I remember what it used to be like. I want to make movies again. I want another Oscar.”

“Be patient. It’ll happen.”

“Not if I don’t make it happen. Cher got a fucking Oscar. Cher! That part shoulda been mine.”

“Come on, Neely.”

“Someone should have sent me that script.”

“Neely, the movie took place in Little Italy. Not Little Ireland.”

“Well, Cher isn’t Italian. She’s Albanian.”

“Armenian.”

“Stop correcting me, you’re always correcting me. Pardon me if I didn’t go to college, I was too busy making two hit records and winning an Oscar and, oh yeah, having a couple of babies.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yes, you did. You never let me forget it. You and your fancy friends. Looking down your noses at me because maybe I had to work my way up to get where I am, it wasn’t just handed to me on a silver platter.”

“Neely, come on. Everyone loves you just the way you are.”

What amazed her was this: Dave actually seemed to mean it. No matter how crazy she got, Dave would just ride it out until her temper tantrum passed. He seemed to be able to laugh off her moods without ever making her feel that he was laughing at her.

Neely had always been attracted to men who were older than she, who took care of her and gave her advice and looked after her every need. After a while, the more they did for her, the less respect she had for them. She stopped looking up to them. And one thing she knew: guys like that would always be able to find another woman—someone who didn’t know them as well as the woman they were with—to look up to them. Neely never actually had
to dump a guy. What she did instead was drive them away. That’s what her shrink told her. Dr. Mitchell called it passive-aggressive behavior.

So Dave had the occasional little fling; that was just how men were. So he was fifty-two, and more than a little overweight, and no superstar in the kip. He was appealing in a sort of big Jewish teddy-bear kind of way, and he looked after her, and he was wonderful with the twins, and no matter what she did he kept on loving her. He was also the first man whose success was entirely independent of her own—he had never tried to make a single nickel off her talent.

Neely realized that there was always going to be a better man out there … someone more attractive … someone richer … someone more powerful … she would always be able to talk herself into waiting until the perfect man came along. She didn’t want to end up like Helen Lawson, dying alone in her suite at the Pierre with nothing but a shelf of awards and four Persian cats to keep her company.

Neely wanted to get married; Dave didn’t.

“Why ruin a good thing?” he said. “Marriage changes everything.”

But Neely was sick of the magazine captions that described Dave as her “steady”—it was so undignified! She hated all the little phrases they had to use when they traveled together (“my friend” … “my guest” … “the lady will have”) because they couldn’t say “my husband,” “my wife.” Most of all, she was tired of going out with friends and being the only woman at the table who wasn’t wearing a ring. She swore she would find a way to get Dave to propose to her. Maybe in June. He was taking her to Greece, a little vacation on a romantic island that Neely kept forgetting the name of. It would be fun to get engaged before the summer, to show off her diamond at all those parties in the Hamptons. And then a Thanksgiving wedding: perfect.

Neely turned on the television and flipped around. There was Anne, arranging flowers and talking about the history of Holland’s obsession with the tulip. The set for
A Woman’s Touch
was a huge kitchen with a wide pine table in the center. Guests sat on high stools and drank coffee out of enormous mugs and talked to Anne about cooking and gardening and how to construct fabulous window treatments out of department-store bedsheets. As if Anne had ever had to lift a finger herself. Still, Neely had to admit that Anne looked pretty good on camera.