Love Always (18 page)

People’s little secrets. The things they would not even think of as being secrets, until someone, say, asked to borrow an ironing board.

She went over the high bump that led down a steep slope to the newspaper’s parking lot. It was Saturday and there were only two cars in the lot; out of habit, she pulled into her space, facing the Leglan River. Before the paper moved into the big brick building, it had been a medical facility; the doctors’ assigned parking place signs were still there. A friend on the paper who had gone to Disneyland had put a cavorting Minnie Mouse decal over hers. Previously she had been Dr. Trigowski. The water was muddy and almost flooded the banks. It had been a rainy summer. The dampness was still in the air, and the sky still looked like rain.

Nate Wells and Herb Walsh were in the newspaper office. Herb had pulled his chair up to Nate’s desk and was shaking his head, much amused by something, as Myra walked in. Nate held a hand up in greeting and picked up his cigarette from the ashtray (another non-ashtray ashtray: a brick with the center gouged out) and took a puff before continuing with what he was reading. There was a picture on Nate’s desk of his wife and child. His wife had left him and was remarried to Nate’s cousin. His child had gone on a camping trip in the Grand Canyon and never been heard from again. There were also two separate photographs of collies. Nate now lived with two collies. At Christmas he had sent out cards with a photograph
of the two collies sitting and facing the camera, one with a red bow around its neck and the other with a green bow. Below the picture was printed Greetings from Our House to Yours.

“Read this, read this,” Herb said, taking the piece of paper out of Nate’s hand. “This woman made up her own press release. This sounds like a story for you, Myra.” Herb loved to be amused. He often brought the
Enquirer
in to work. He especially liked the test in a recent issue that people could take to find out if their co-workers were space aliens.

Under a line of exclamation points,
Bulletin
had been written in calligraphy. It was an announcement of the founding of a feminist commune, subtitled
Deep Breathing Can Destroy the Enemy
. As best Myra could make out, it was a holistic approach to man-hating. Since she found these things more depressing than Herb, she was just about to sigh and hand it back when she caught the list of members. The first name on the list was Maureen Hildon’s. Myra’s eye went back to the text. The leader, Davina Cole, had recently acquired the long-abandoned old post office building, and by September I, would be ensconced with ten other women who wished to
save mankind from man. Mankind
could best be saved by
womankind
, but the
first step necessary
was to
recondition
through
relaxation. Self-awareness = satisfaction
. Apparently, through talking to yourself, hyperventilating, and examining your breasts, the
enemy
could be
subverted
. Potential members were urged to send a full-length black-and-white photograph or, preferably, negative, and $30 to Davina Cole.
Space may be limited
, Ms. Cole warned, though
psychic sisterhood is expansive
. There was a drawing in the lower left-hand corner of a woman with fingertips that looked like talons on her breast (nipple mid-center, like a bull’s eye), and an arrow around the breast, moving counterclockwise.
Women now embrace destiny not douche bag
, it concluded.

Myra handed it back to Herb, frowning. It was beginning to seem downright lethargic not to tackle the true story of the
Country Daze
staff. Whatever it was.

Herb fell over in the chair, laughing.

“Uh-oh,” Nate said. “We’ve offended her feminist sensibilities.”

“This is the wife of the editor of
Country Daze
,” Myra said, pointing to the piece of paper that Herb was now weeping into, like a handkerchief.

“You’re kidding? His wife belongs to this thing?”

“What do you think I ought to do?” Myra said.

“Infiltrate,” Herb said. “Oh God, look at this thing.”

“Run a side-bar,” Nate said. “Spill the facts and get some shrink to comment.”

“How about Joan Rivers?” Herb said.

“I’m serious,” Myra said. “These people are a
lot
stranger than they seem.”

“The poor guy,” Nate said. “What can he do about his wife being a lunatic?”

Myra looked at him. He meant it; he felt sorry for Hildon. And if she told him that Hildon was having an affair with Lucy Spenser/Cindi Coeur, he would shrug and say that was nothing. Men really did stick together. That was true.

It suddenly occurred to her that she hesitated to analyze people’s messy lives because that would be hypocritical. When had she analyzed her own? Nothing much was happening in her own life right now. She was waiting for more: a bigger city, a more prestigious job, some romantic involvement. That old, familiar complex that seemed overwhelming—the last thing she’d want to admit to people. It was as though it was a personal failure, a sign of weakness, not strength, to have effectively kept the world at bay. Going to New York would be a way to try to change that.

Herb called her a sissy and said he was going to infiltrate.

She left her piece on the editor’s desk, with a note asking him to call her in the morning to let her know if she could take off at the end of the week.

W
HEN
she heard the back door close, Nicole turned off the television and sat in the silence of her room. Though she would never let on to Lucy, she thought that she was beginning to figure out what quality Lucy had that she herself lacked. It was difficult to put into words. It was partly what Jane always said: that Lucy was solid. Lucy would make a good actress, because she really had a foundation; she didn’t have to invent one. Piggy always said that Marilyn Monroe was a great actress because people could tell that she was someone underneath, and the more she giggled and pursed her lips, the more real the hidden someone became.

Nicole envied her. She kept her own hours, didn’t have to dress any particular way, didn’t seem to care what people thought about her. Dropouts were interesting to Nicole (that was what her grandmother called Lucy and Jane): they didn’t have a lot of hype surrounding them; they were just out there, like nudists.

She remembered sitting in a screening room with Piggy, watching Marilyn Monroe movies. When Marilyn smiled, Piggy would point out how much sadder that made her look. When Marilyn cried, you knew she was going to pull through. Piggy also had photographs of Marilyn Monroe in an album: when she was half naked she looked ladylike; when she was dressed in a suit she looked like a sex object. Piggy was hoping that Nicole could grow up to be more like Marilyn Monroe. If she didn’t, he wanted her to try to fake it. As far as Nicole was concerned, that was impossible. Even Marilyn Monroe would
have found faking it too much of a chore. She thought that a lot of it had to do with how close the camera came in. That made people’s eyes look large, and when people saw big eyes, they assumed that there was depth. It was a trick. It was probably a more interesting world for people who were myopic.

Nicole was feeling sorry for herself. Her mother hadn’t called for days. Edward was back in California. He had been a friend, and look what happened: people butted in. He probably wouldn’t have been around much longer anyway. It wasn’t like she was going to New York with him. He wasn’t Jerry Lee Lewis.

She went downstairs. Lucy’s new column was finished, so she read that:

Nicole got her Walkman, found the Madonna tape, and put it on and went out into the yard. Lucy’s house was on top of a hill, but everywhere Nicole looked, it was flat. It wasn’t late enough in the afternoon for the cows to have been herded into the pasture, so Nicole could see in all directions, and there was nothing in sight. It was windy and overcast. Lucy and Hildon were going to be cold at the waterfall.

Nicole tapped one foot on the chaise, keeping time with the music and keeping a fly away at the same time. She began to tap both feet. The sky brightened a little. This early in the day, the moon was already visible. The moon had been full, huge and orange over the weekend; it looked like a special effect, something seen through the window of a spacecraft, instead of the real moon seen through the windshield of Lucy’s car. Nicole missed driving. That was the one thing Bobby Blue had taught her to do: he had taught her to drive. His chauffeur, really. Out at the beach. Not on the freeways or anything. She tried to think of Bobby as a friend. She actually liked the chauffeur better. He was going to be an actor. When he got off work he hung out, waiting to be discovered. He had turned her on to Madonna long before Madonna had a hit song; he was a friend of hers, and he’d recorded her. Now, he said, she wouldn’t even speak to him.

A butterfly flew past. It was a Monarch butterfly. Nicole knew that because she had read for a part in a TV movie called
Monarch
. She lost out to some kid who wasn’t even around Hollywood six months later. Somebody said she cracked up, but Piggy’s wife said she’d heard she went back to Montana. Maybe it was the same story, but Piggy’s wife just filled in the detail.

She wondered what it was going to be like, living with her mother and Steven when she got back to L.A. She hoped her mother wasn’t in some lovey-dovey mind-set.

When the tape was over, she got up and went in the house. Brooke Shields was on the cover of one of Lucy’s magazines. Nicole couldn’t imagine why they didn’t make her pluck her eyebrows. Nicole flipped through the magazine. Brooke Shields with Michael Jackson. That was about as convincing as
Liberace with Farrah Fawcett. She carried the magazine, and a couple of others, upstairs. She started the water in the tub and dropped in champagne bath beads. She probably should have gone to the waterfall. There was nothing to do.

Nicole rummaged around in her Sportsac. She took out a cigarette case Piggy had given her years ago. She liked it because it had a mirror inside, and because of the inlay: a mother-of-pearl Christmas tree with rhinestone lights. The engraving beneath it said: “Merry Christmas, 1960—Michael and Ginger.” Nicole kept her joints in it. She took the radio into the bathroom, put it on the back of the sink, and turned up the volume: Cyndi Lauper, singing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It was weird, Nicole thought: what would be background noise in L.A. was noticeable in the country. Out the window, what looked like a funnel of butterflies spread out and flew away. Nicole looked down at the ground, but there was nothing. After a few minutes a swallow swooped low over the lawn and shot away. Nicole dumped the little pink conch-shaped soaps out of the clamshell-shaped soap dish and used it for an ashtray. Naturally, the minute she took the pack of matches out of the cigarette case, struck one, lit the joint and sat down, static started on the radio. The radio station was playing “Here Comes the Sun” throughout the day, and the first listener to call when it began would get a bottle of orange soda. Through the static she could hear Walter Mondale saying that he did not think he was unexciting.

She stretched out in the tub, raising her toes under the stream of water. She wondered who Piggy was going to vote for in the election. Piggy always said that he supported whoever buttered his bread. Piggy’s way of talking made the whole world seem like an enormous restaurant.

The talk with Lucy had upset her. She turned off the water and slid forward until her shoulders were under water. She puffed on the last of the joint. She was remembering an episode of
Passionate Intensity
when Cora, her adoptive doctor-mother, took her aside and told her that she was being given an award at the hospital. She wanted Stephanie to go, but she had to think of a way to leave Gerald at home: the constant acclaim
was too much for him—he needed friends of his own, not her friends. Gerald was lost in his fictional world; he didn’t know how to deal with people any longer. And Cora was beginning to feel guilty; of course her lover would be there, and she didn’t want her big night spoiled by having to shun him to protect Gerald’s feelings. Pauline, who played Cora, was always catching flies, wringing her hands and improvising—anything to hog the camera. In real life, she was having an affair with the main scriptwriter, so she always had monologues anyway.