My Hollywood (20 page)

“No,” she said back. “We’re too old.”

“Like this, Esmeralda,” the hostess said, in the particular tone of bosses, scooping the contents of a white yam into the bowl of a food processor. I was hungry.

Several wives leaned so close they ran the risk of getting splattered. TV
wives
weren’t dorky. One wore turquoise loafers thin as a sock. Brownish calves, like two-by-fours, stuck out of cowboy boots next to red pumps on the kitchen floor. These women understood shopping. I suppose I was staring at the ground.

Two women compared architects. “Which stove?” one asked the other. “Do you care about convection?”

“I don’t know, should I? I like those red knobs on the Wolf.”

Copper pipes? Yes. Wool sisal for the kids’ rooms or something synthetic? Synthetic cleaned better, but was it just too icky? They concurred on gas tankless water heaters. They’d learned these names, features, potentials for durability. They spoke in burdened tones of complaint but underneath ran straight lines of pride. These young women assumed so much: a house and kids. One-two-three.

A redhead we’d once had over to dinner said, “Hey, where’re you guys now? Didn’t I see you in that open house on Latimer?”

“Oh, we’re still in the same place.” I looked down at my pumps. I’d bought three pairs of them almost a decade ago with Lil. I’d thought they were classic, but here they looked dowdy, too dressed up. I’d loved that shingled house on Latimer. In a narrow room with a straw crucifix over the bed, a daughter had lived all her life until college, the Realtor had told me.

“Why doesn’t he buy you a house?” the hostess asked, turning from her stove.

Then they were all looking at me. Every wife in that kitchen had a house. They nodded, defending my rights. But I felt exposed, as if Paul hadn’t given me a ring.

“Your place is great,” Helen said. “And you have an incredible deal.”

“Too bad they won’t sell you
that
house,” the redhead said.

But we could never afford it. These were the women I’d expected to be impressed by Paul’s pilot order. I had too little kick in me. “Excuse,” I said, without the “me,” a little homage to Lola.

I locked myself in the bathroom. I had a small yellow
Anna Karenina
in my purse. In long-ago Russia, Kitty dressed for a ball. I sat on the floor. According to Tolstoy, there was a time in a woman’s life for parties. For me, that time had passed. I slowed down, not wanting Kitty’s happiness to turn. Once, my friends and I talked about people in books as much as we talked about our parents, more than we talked about ourselves. Startled by a knock, I shoved up. Kitty was giving away dresses—the brown, the violet—to her maid.

The redhead slipped in. “When we get settled, I want to have you guys over. I still remember that pudding you made. Was it warm?”

I found myself in a hall, hearing the cymbal shimmer of pans from the kitchen, then roamed into what I later learned was called the library. There were no books. Shelves displayed casted figures from
Star Wars
and a spotlit artifact labeled
LUKE SKYWALKER’S LIGHT SABER.
William would love this, I thought. So would Lola. There were big chairs, an Oriental rug, ottomans. I wanted to sit and read. But I made myself go back in, passing narcissus sprouting in crates. Next to the Tolstoy, a notebook rested in my purse; I penciled in
narcissus
below the number of a woman on Camden Drive who did movie stars’ eyebrows.
I promise you
, Helen had told me,
there’s nothing that makes that big a difference on a face
.

I stood in line for the bar. How did you talk to people at parties? I couldn’t remember. I spoke to children more than grown-ups. And to Lola, whose first language was Tagalog.

I scanned the room. Paul coaxed a group into laughter like a conductor, bringing up the percussion.

“I’m their postmistress,” the woman in front of me said.

“In my kid’s school, they gossip about the
children,”
someone said. “This one cheats, that one bites. I’m more interested in the
parents’
cheating.”

“The parents’ biting.”

These women had large glasses, large noses, and interesting jewelry: style, in other words. Working moms. The stay-at-home moms tended to be better looking; they did their tinkering internally, their bodies tight from workouts, their skin from God knows what. They maintained regimens strict as those of actresses.

I sat down next to Helen.

“The tennis coach, the band leader, the math tutor, the speech therapist,” said a woman whose pants ended in fringe. “They all have to be birthdayed and Christmased.”

Suddenly, invisible lashes from the fire touching me, I was happy. I had Lola’s gift in my desk drawer. I’d found a beautiful pair of old diamond earrings at Jack’s Jewelry, set in white gold from the fifties. A little bit, I wanted them myself.

“You can tell she’d be beautiful,” a man behind us said, “if she wasn’t pregnant.”

Helen’s hand went to her tummy. “Bing and I made wrapping paper this afternoon. Potato prints. And I sent off my out-of-state packages, so that’s all done, and after, I asked the parking attendant if he’d like a cup of coffee. He’s just cooped up in that little booth all day. I still had to pick up brandy and check Fred Segal for my mom, but I drove and got two fresh coffees. He was so surprised when I came back. I haven’t gotten that much gratitude from anyone for years.”

When I thought of Christmas, I thought of women alone in cars.

“For me, it was from nursing my dad before he died,” someone behind me said.

The woman had freckles, which seemed to clash with her pumps and sheer stockings. Her face had a symmetry I caught glimpses of but then lost again. Freckles. Maybe she’s only half black, I thought.

“Tuesday, Thursdays, I see patients without health insurance. I can do that without jeopardizing my kids’ tuitions, because of my husband. I want to work more than I did ten years ago.”

“I want to too,” I said, “but I don’t.”

The front door opened and a man ushered in two girls in ballet costumes and a nanny wearing dirty running shoes and a parka. “Melissa’s in Connecticut,” he offered, by way of explanation.

Jeff walked toward us. Helen’s spine straightened, breasts perking. I felt my hips unmold too.

“How’d you decide on ob-gyn?” I made myself ask the freckled doctor.

“One night I was in ER, and we lost every single person. I decided I wanted life.”

Jeff could change a conversation; I’d seen it often enough to recognize the sudden lidding of fun. But the woman in the fringed pants stood with her back to the fire, recounting a series of disastrous presents from her mother-in-law. A sweater stretcher. An errant cotton-candy maker. “Her next gift was alive …”

Jeff assessed her, looking down her front with a flat glance, like a blade separating peel from a fruit. “Anyone know where I can get a Santa suit?”

“I do,” she said, facing him. Then he touched her chest with the back of his hand. Helen looked down. In front of us, her husband was enjoying this woman’s body.

Now I understood:
he just did this
. It wasn’t me. It probably wasn’t ever me.

Paul came up and started rubbing my shoulders. The fire still shifted, murmuring.

“Hey, what about you?” Jeff asked the freckled doctor. “You work Christmas?”

“A big day in maternity. Lot of little Jesuses.”

Across the room, girls in tutus minced out, arms tuliped above their heads.

“A long long time ago, in a place where it snowed,” a girl stood reading, “the Queen ran away. Her daughters went to find her.”

Two Asian girls titied out on point, their legs so even they looked as if they’d been turned on lathes.

“We should have brought Will,” I whispered.

“No, we shouldn’t have,” Paul said.

Jeff sat on the arm of Helen’s chair. “‘In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.’”

“You wish,” I said.

“The King didn’t have time to find his wife. But he gave his daughters money and their nanny packed lunch.”

A man behind us said, “Eight o’clock was up sixteen percent in eighteen-to-thirty-four, but dipped at nine in eighteen-to-forty-nine.”

“Lost how much of the demo lead-in?”

“The head of Sony,” Paul whispered. “And my agent’s boss.”

One small girl strayed out into the audience to find her mother (who turned out to be the freckled doctor). Oh.
The Chinese Adopteds
. The hostess stood and clapped. “I’ll feed the kids now in the kitchen. They can take their plates to the library and we’ll put on
The Sound of Music.”

Around the room, sharp whispered conversations ensued.

Alison North stood adamant, hands on hips. Soon, Andy carried the kids out to the car. “I’m a sleep Nazi,” Alison said. “And we have a twice-a-week video policy.” None of the directors’ wives allowed their kids to watch TV.

“I’m easy,” the freckled doctor said.

Before I lived here, if I’d heard the words
Hollywood party
, I’d have pictured ball gowns and men in tuxedos. If I’d imagined servants at all, they’d have been in black and white too. But the men here turned their baseball caps backward. The nannies wore everyday clothes. Aleph Sargent, the only movie star I recognized, had on jeans.

In the kitchen, nannies hovered around the table where the kids ate. I thought I recognized the one with the adopted Chinese girls.

“When they’re done, serve yourselves,” the hostess called over to the nannies. Mothers stood near the stove, too, excitedly discussing a cooking teacher for their help. This took place in front of Esmeralda, who removed dirty pans from under the hostess’s ministrations and washed them, so that the elaborate dishes, being carried out on platters by college kids in white smocks, seemed to come from a clean, dry kitchen.

“Count me in,” said the woman in turquoise loafers.

“My housekeeper just tears. I’d like things to be a little more seemly. Once she’s done with a chicken—” The redhead stopped and shuddered.

“My nanny cuts great,” Helen blurted. Lucy arranged their takeout food on platters, added lemon slices and parsley.

Just so it’s a little pretty
, I’d heard Lucy say.

Lights lowered in the dining room, and people found their seats.

A man to the right of the hostess had seen a civil war in Africa with real slaves. He had the footage—“Well, a third of it, anyway”—for a documentary.

The reigning comedy wife, Katie Jacobs, whose husband, Jack, created
Danny
ten years ago, listened with her head cocked in a way that meant
We’d contribute
. Katie pointed her fork at Jeff. “Your movie’s about Africa too, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s kind of a personal story. About sex, mostly.” He shrugged, shooting a nervous glance at the documentarian, who was talking about clitorectomies. “About a woman learning how to have sex without props.”

“Learning how to
love,”
Helen corrected.

College kids set down platters of salmon, tureens of mashed yams, and bowls of the greens we’d watched wither. The documentarian was going on about a slave encampment. Annoyance showed around Katie’s mouth; I hoped he’d stop, for the sake of his budget. Two women to my left talked about getting their nannies to do more. Helen glanced over to Jeff as he leaned in to hear the freckled doctor. “When the women had kids, they quit.” But Helen didn’t seem to mind. Maybe she knew he wouldn’t fall for a black woman. Or a doctor.

“I never put in gas anymore. I tell her,
Check it every night and take Brookie and Kate to the car wash.”

“How many times a week does she change the sheets?”

Since Will started school, Lola had begun to watch
As the World Turns
, the whine filtering up through the pipes. Should I be getting her to do more? I felt sorry for the nannies showing up to work tomorrow, or waking up at work, more likely.

The documentarian was still describing his slaves. But by now everyone had had enough of Africa.

“You can’t imagine how many manuscripts I get from the wives,” the agent said to the studio guy.

Jeff’s hands steepled. “How many babies you think you’ve delivered?”

“These yams are no fat,” the hostess called out. “No butter.”

Men on both sides of me marveled, forking the potatoes. Jeff took seconds.

“I wish I’d paid more attention in the kitchen,” I said to Helen.

Then the hostess, beseeched by the persistent, thin agent, listed ingredients: “Thyme, garlic, salt, olive oil.”

“Darling. Oil is not nonfat.” His fork, bearing a lump, returned to the plate.

“I told my nine-year-old if he didn’t make his bed, I’d dock his allowance,” said the woman with the fringed pants. “So now I’m making beds for a nickel a day.”

“I don’t know when I stopped remembering their names,” the doctor said.

Two men joined the conversation about housekeepers. They sounded satisfied, reporting audacities.

“And then she …”

“Well, ours …”

A thousand-dollar dress had been tossed in the dryer. “Brookie’s American Girl doll’s wearing it now.” An Ansel Adams mural was Windexed.

“Oh, we get a detective,” a bearded screenwriter said. “Have him tail her.”

Lights went off and the hostess floated through the dark carrying a flaming baked Alaska. “Homemade ice cream,” she called. “Pumpkin from a real pumpkin.” She raised a champagne flute. “I want to thank Roger, who allows me to do all this.”

Years after that night, Paul would mimic her, arms spread. “All
this
.”

“None of them were lactating at their eight-week checkup. These women are garment workers; they can’t afford formula. So I found out. They pay brokers to take their babies back to China. One asked me to make a scar on her preemie’s foot so her mother in Xian could recognize him.”

Helen listened to the woman with fringe talk about managing children with no help. I listened too, though I had only one child, a nanny, and not infrequently I cried in my closet.