This Is My Life (20 page)

There ought to have been a club, Erica thought, for children of the famous. They could call themselves SOFA—the Society for the Offspring of Famous Adults—and they could all meet once a week in someone's apartment and have long, cathartic rebirthing sessions. She imagined herself part of a circle, swaying back and forth, her arms around the two Kennedy children.

Yes, let it all out, Caroline, everyone says. We know it's been
hard, we know it's been rough. All those photographers around you like flies, and all those terrible collectible plates and calendars and beer steins with your father's face on them. Let it out, Caroline, go back to your earliest memories, back to that green-velvet lawn with the fence all around, and your pony—Macaroni, wasn't it?—and the way you ran in a little tulle dress across the lawn toward those great bending knees, those powerful waiting arms.

Erica's own problems would seem insignificant compared with these. When it is Erica's turn to be rebirthed, Caroline and her brother stand up and stretch a bit, wander in boredom over to the bowl of nacho chips on the table, check the time, whisper in the hallway. But Erica perseveres; the others hold her, cradle her in their arms, and take her back as far as she can go.

Imagine you are very small; Harry Belafonte's daughter says, her voice low and soothing.

Erica pictures herself at twelve, watching her mother on television. Dottie is telling a joke about raiding the refrigerator in the middle of the night. Everyone in the audience is laughing so loud, it seems as though they may never stop. Now Erica starts to thrash, but they hold her down.

Go with it, Erica, says one of the Truffaut brood.

So she goes back even further, and now she is seven. Her mother isn't famous yet, only fat; she is stepping daintily into a swimming pool, dipping one toe in first. How is it that she manages to be so big and still look
dainty
when she chooses? Dottie tucks her hair into a bathing cap: one of those caps exclusive to mothers, with huge, floppy rubber flowers clinging to it like lichen. Then she plunges into the water, parting it
evenly with her big body. She swims with her head above the surface, like a sea elephant. As she moves, pool water flies out everywhere, and now Erica recoils.

Keep going! shouts Margaret Mead's daughter, her voice excited. Go back as far as you can!

Finally Erica is back inside her mother's great body, floating somewhere in the birth canal, pushing herself against the walls, her own body vibrating in time to the heartbeat. Now Erica starts to flail around more violently, and everyone moves in closer to help her. Even Caroline and John grow a little interested, and amble back over to the circle. I'm coming out! Erica cries, and then, as though she's on a water slide at an amusement park, out she comes.

S
o it's the eighties and everybody's getting into shape,” Dottie began. “All you hear about are these Jane Fonda Workout videos. Well, I've decided to make my own video, and I'm calling it the Dottie Engels
Pigout
video.” She paused, looking around her. “There will be three different levels of difficulty,” she continued. “Piglet, Porker, and Porker Plus. The video will show you my very own technique for mastering the fine art of gluttony. All you need is a comfortable leotard, a floor mat, and an invitation to a bar mitzvah where there's guaranteed to be smorgasbord and a Viennese table.”

She went on for ten minutes more, and when the routine was finished, Dottie stood still for a moment in the middle of the large office. “Well, that's it,” she said, twisting her hands together. “Just a few things I've been putting together.”

Opal glanced to the side without turning her head. No one was moving or whispering or even scribbling notes on a pad.
Everyone was just sitting still. Finally Joel Macklin stood up slowly, his swivel chair creaking. “All right then,” he said, and the effort in his voice was perceptible. “Thank you, Dottie. It's a treat to hear you again. Ross, we'll talk in a few days. Things are crazy around here. We've got the whole season lined up, and we're swamped. But I'll call you this week.”

In the elevator going down, no one said a word. Opal felt terrible for having encouraged Dottie to audition for
Rush Hour
in the first place. Mia had made the preliminary overtures to the director, and then Ross had put in a few calls. Dottie had been extremely skeptical from the start. “Oh, what would they want with me?” she asked. “That show is for young people; they wouldn't be interested.”

“Don't you want to perform again?” Opal said. “Don't you want to work before a live audience?” And finally Dottie had agreed, and had put together an entirely new routine. As soon as Dottie stood up there and started talking, Opal knew it would not work. She had been allowed into the audition, but within minutes she wished she had been banned from the room, and would not have to witness the living enactment of her mother's failure.

Now the elevator opened at the white lobby, and they all stepped out. “Look,” Ross tried, “let's all go get some coffee and talk about this.” He leaned against the wall beside the bank of elevators. “I'm sure they would be willing to audition you again, Dottie. We can think about ways to make the routine crisper.”

“A crisper is for lettuce,” Dottie said. “Please don't patronize me.” She shook her head slowly. “It was one of life's embarrassing moments,” she went on. “I wish you'd never encouraged me.
God knows what they're up there saying right now. I can just hear it: ‘She's too campy. Too
shticky
. She's better known for those late-night TV commercials; we might as well have on the guy who sells the Ginsu Knife, or that other guy from Wall Unit World.'”

“Oh, fuck them,” Ross said quietly, and Opal and Dottie looked at him in mild surprise. “What I mean,” he said quickly, “is that I
will
get you something, Dottie. So they weren't particularly impressed; so what? They don't have a monopoly on comedy. I'll make sure you get work somewhere; it's been too long, and I want to see you back on TV. I promise you, I will find you something.”

One of the elevator doors opened then and a new crowd flooded out and dispersed. “I should go,” Dottie said. “It's going to be murder getting a cab. I forgot what it's like, not having a car.”

“No coffee?” Ross said, and Dottie shook her head. She leaned in and kissed him lightly. “I'll find you something, Dottie,” he said again. “You'll be in the city for a while?”

She nodded. “Sy is going to Hong Kong tomorrow on business,” she said. “I'll be home all the time. A war widow. Where else would I go? Dinner at the Rockefellers'? No, you know where to find me.”

Back in the apartment, Dottie went immediately into her bedroom and sat down at the vanity. “I've got to get this garbage off my face,” she said. “I wasted all this Lancôme makeup on those rude people.” She saturated a cotton ball in witch hazel and ran it along her cheeks. The cotton came away a startling bright orange. “This is really hell on my skin,” she muttered.

Opal looked at the makeup table. It was covered with a
variety of bright bottles and jars and powders, but everything was lying in disarray, as though someone had broken in, and searched frantically for a certain rare shade of lip gloss.

Dottie suddenly turned to her. “You never wear makeup, do you?” she asked.

Opal shook her head.

“You'd look nice,” Dottie said. She opened a paintbox of colors. “Do you want to try some on?” she asked.

Opal had no interest in this, but somehow her mother seemed so depressed that Opal agreed. She sat down on the bench beside her.

“Here,” Dottie said, and she tipped Opal's face up toward her, as though they were about to kiss. “I'll just use a light foundation, nothing heavy.” She seemed to be talking to herself. “Your skin is young; it doesn't need to be steamrolled over, like mine does.”

“Your skin is nice,” Opal murmured.

“Yeah, yeah, as nice as the smoke of a thousand nightclubs,” said Dottie. She turned Opal's head to the side. “That's what being on the road does to you. And the lights; I wouldn't be surprised if they cause sterility. I've read about that with fluorescent lights, anyway. Lucky for me I already had you girls before I went into the business.”

“Oh, so lucky,” said Opal.

“Don't you think I'm happy I had you?” Dottie asked.

“I guess,” said Opal. “Happier with me than Erica, anyway.”

“I love your sister just as much,” Dottie said quickly. “It's just that things are more problematic with her. She hasn't been easy; she never was. Even as a baby, she was so colicky she kept us up all night.”

“Was I an easy baby?” Opal asked, but she knew the answer and was just fishing.

Dottie's voice became soft and reflective and pleased. “Oh, yes,” she said. “The best.”

The pads of her fingers pressed down gently onto Opal's closed eyes as she applied smoke-gray eyeshadow. Dottie moved in close, and her breath came in soft releases against Opal's neck. “I'm just going to even this out, nice and smooth,” Dottie was saying to herself.

When she finished, Opal opened her eyes and stared into the big mirror, which was ringed with lights like a marquee. She saw herself and her mother at once, took them both in at the same moment, and for the first time in her life, she thought they looked alike. Makeup could steer you in any direction; Dottie had steered Opal right into her own arms, practically into her own image. Opal's face had filled out; rose blusher brought her cheeks into rounded relief, and a light orange lipstick made her mouth look somehow alive and sort of frightening, like those puppets you make by curling your fist and painting lips on the side of your hand. Not quite human, but still somehow of the flesh. And she held herself like Dottie, she saw. They were both peering into the mirror anxiously now, heads leaning forward like two turtles waking up and looking around.

“Do you like it?” Dottie asked.

Opal thought of the first time she had seen
Persona
, in a Friday-night crowd at Yale, and how excited she had been by the big scene in which Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersen's faces merge onscreen. “Yes,” she finally answered, but her voice sounded different; was it her mother's voice now? Did she hear
a laugh track somewhere in the back of her head, an audience prepared to laugh faithfully no matter what?

“You know, men like makeup,” Dottie said.

“What?” Opal pictured a public restroom full of businessmen, each of them dressed in a suit and leaning over a mirror at the sink, painstakingly applying eye shadow.

“Yes,” Dottie went on. “It can look very sexy on a woman. I think you look terrific with a little color in your face.” She paused. “Do you ever think about dating?” she asked. “Is this an appropriate question for me to ask? We never talk about this; I just wondered. You don't have to answer.”

Opal and Dottie were still looking in the mirror, addressing each other's reflection. It was hard to stop, to look away from the mirror at the real thing. Opal strained closer to gaze at her own face. The makeup base had been applied so thickly that she couldn't see her pores; she seemed to have been cast in some kind of durable plastic. She ran a hand across her face and felt an involuntary shiver. What kind of man would want to touch such a surface? she wondered. What kind of man wanted to feel polyethylene instead of skin? She thought of her mother's lovers over the years, men who waited for her in hotel rooms after a performance. Did Dottie take off all her makeup before she went to them? Did she come up to the room smelling freshly of cold cream and witch hazel, her face raw and clean and open? Or did she leave it on, because the men who liked Dottie liked the image of her they knew from television: the clown makeup, the bouffant sprayed stiff as doll hair? Opal had an unpleasant vision of her mother lying in a big hotel bed with one of these nameless men; the man was lapping at her face as though it were a plate of milk. Makeup tasted good, Opal realized. Her own
lips, she thought, pressing them together, gave off a warm hint of fruit gum.

“I've told you about Walt, the other intern,” Opal tried, her voice breaking a little in the middle. “He's very nice, but I just don't know. I can't decide if he likes me or not.”

“What's not to like?” Dottie asked. “You're a beautiful girl, Opal, and you've got brains, too. Maybe he's threatened by you; that could be it. Sometimes men are threatened by accomplished women; believe me, I know.”

Opal paused. “You mean Dad?” she tried.

Dottie turned to her. “No,” she said, “I wasn't thinking of your father in particular, but he certainly fits the bill.”

Opal remembered the way her father used to act—how whenever Dottie entered a local talent contest at a school gym, Norm would wait in the car. It was too much for him; he couldn't take it. And it wasn't just Dottie, either; it was Opal and Erica as well. She thought of the last day they had seen him, and how he had taken them to a nearby park for the afternoon. He hadn't known what to
do
with them that day. Both girls were restless, and finally Norm had gotten angry, and said something about how they were both going to grow up to be fidgety.

Now Dottie was looking at her. “I don't
think
anyone is threatened by me,” Opal said. “You should
see
the people I go to school with: women with double-800s on their S.A.T.s, women who have already been flown to Sweden for
physics
festivals or something. There's this one woman I know—Jeanette Kovelman—who just had her first novel accepted. Actually, it's a trilogy; they're going to publish it in a boxed set. She's supposed to write like Virginia Woolf or something. And she's
nineteen, and beautiful, too. Believe me,” Opal said, “no one is threatened by
me
.”

“Well,” said Dottie, “you know more about it than I do. But really, Opal, if any romance should happen to crop up, I'd love to be informed.” She paused. “I try not to be nosy,” she said, “but you never tell me anything about your life. I want to know things about you.”

“All right,” said Opal. “But you know, we never knew about
your
life, either.”

“What is it you wanted to know?” Dottie asked.

Opal didn't answer right away. “About the men,” she finally said. “We always wondered.”

Dottie smiled. “Ah yes, my mystery love life,” she said. “It was a mystery to me as well.” She was quiet a minute. “I always liked having men around,” she said. “Back when I was on the road all the time, I would grow very lonely late at night. If there wasn't a man around, I would call down for room service and eat an entire three-course meal in the middle of the night. A nice man or a nice piece of veal—the satisfaction was the same. Anything so I wouldn't be bored.” She paused. “But I never was with anyone I was serious about. I would have told you girls. At the hotels in Vegas, the men were gamblers, mostly. No gangster types, just businessmen who claimed to be big fans, and occasionally men who were at the hotel for a convention. There was an anaesthesiologist once, I remember. They were sweet to me, brought flowers to the room. It was certainly more romantic than anything I'd known. We had fun together; it was a very giddy time. But I never had a real
relationship
. I was running around too much; it wasn't possible. I only hope you can have more than what I had,” she said. “Now I've got Sy, and I suppose it's enough
for me.” Her voice was strained. “He wants to get married,” she said.

“Really?” Opal asked. “What did you say?”

“What do I need with another marriage, at my age?” Dottie said. “He's always talking about ‘setting down,' but I said, ‘And do what, Sy, have a
family
?' Like Sarah in the Bible?” She broke off abruptly, switching gears. “Enough,” Dottie said, “enough of my life. It's not very interesting, not even to me. Tell me something about you now. What is it with this Walt person? How can we give him a little kick-start in the romance department? How can we get him to ask you out on a date?”

Opal shrugged. “Nobody calls it a ‘date' anymore,” she said. “You just spend time together, go out to dinner or something. But you don't call it a date.”

“Maybe that's my problem,” said Dottie. “I'm not up on the current lingo. I guess the whole world is different from the way I thought,” she said. “You can say things now that you never used to be able to, and you
can't
say things that you once
could
. Like about my weight,” she said. “Those casting people today looked at me as though I was making jokes about handicapped children. I guess what they're looking for is this new kind of comedy. Like that Unidentified Flying Comic.”