“Are you aware,” I say, “that I have now been married for over one year, so therefore whatever you want to say about me makes absolutely no difference?”
“Are you aware,” D.W. says, “that your marriage sucks and your husband is constantly considering filing for divorce?”
“My husband is madly in love with me. He won’t let me out of his sight.”
“And where is he tonight?”
“You know my philosophy, D.W. I always bite the hand that feeds me.”
“Is that so? Well, take a good look at yourself, dear. You’re a mess,” D.W. says. “You can hardly afford to have your name raked through the mud. Think about it. The photographers camped outside your door again, people going through your garbage, your face on the cover of the tabloids. You barely escaped last time. Just think of the . . . schadenfreude.”
“I think . . . I need . . . a Xanax,” I whisper.
“Oh, you’ll need much more than a Xanax by the time they’re through with you. I should think you’ll be on Librium by then. Which, incidentally, is what they give to schizophrenics. Just in case you’re not up on your pharmaceuticals.”
I slump in my chair.
“It’s not that bad,” D.W. says. “All I’m asking is for you to attend a few parties and a tea every now and then. Chair a couple of committees. Wear some designer dresses. Maybe a fur. You’re not against fur, are you? And then maybe host a trip to India, but by the time we arrange it, India might be passé, so maybe someplace like Ethiopia. We’ll do some photo shoots, get you signed on as a contributing editor at Vogue. It’s only the sort of life that every woman in America dreams of.”
“D.W.,” I say. “Society is . . . dead.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” he says. “You and I are going to revive it. We’ll both have our place in the annals of history.”
I wish I were in Massachusetts, riding around in the back of someone’s car.
Smoking a joint.
Listening to Tom Petty.
“Come, come,” D.W. says. “It’s not like I’m asking you to be a homeless person. No one’s asking you to urinate in subway stations. You’ve had a nice long rest, and now it’s time to go back to work. Because that’s what women in your position do. They work. Or did someone forget to tell you that?” He picks up his knife and smiles into the distorted reflection of his mouth. “People are relying on you, Cecelia. They’re relying on you not to fuck up.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” he says. “Number one. Start putting on a happy face. Happy, happy, happy. Weren’t you voted Most Popular in your high school class?”
“No.”
“But you were voted something,” he says.
“No,” I say definitely. “I wasn’t.”
“You showed me your yearbook, Cecelia. Years ago. I remember the evening. It was right after Tanner dumped you.”
“Tanner never dumped me. I dumped him. Remember? For my husband.”
“Rewrite history with other people, my dear. I was there. Now what was it?”
“Most Likely to Succeed,” I whisper.
But there were only forty people in my high school class. And ten of them barely graduated.
“And you have,” he says.
“You can’t use it.”
“You have to stop being so afraid of everything. Really. It’s embarrassing.”
“I’m just so . . . tired.”
“So go to bed. Number Two. We have to find you a charity. Something with children, I think; maybe encephalitic babies. And then maybe some lessons—cooking or Italian, because everyone’s going to be summering in Tuscany next year, and we should hook you up with some new spiritual trend thing . . . like druids. Druids could be very, very big, and you look like someone who could worship trees and get away with it.”
D.W. holds up his martini glass. “To you, my dear. We’re going to turn you into . . . into America’s very own Princess Di. What do you think?”
“I think,” I say, not even sarcastically, “Princess Di is dead.”
“That’s irrelevant,” he says. “Her spirit lives on.”
“And so is Princess Ava. Dead.”
“So is Marilyn Monroe. And Frank Sinatra. Who cares? They’re all dead. You’ve got to stop being so negative. Don’t you wake up some mornings and think, ‘By God, we did it.’ We accomplished our goal. You’re a princess. A real princess.”
“No,” I say glumly. “I always knew it would happen.”
Along with a lot of other things, I suppose.
“You’re never to say that. Ever again. To anyone,” D.W. says. “Good God, Cecelia. That’s why you’re so bad at this. You’ve got to stop telling the truth. When someone asks—and they are going to ask, you’ve managed to avoid doing interviews so far, but you’re going to have to start very soon—you’re to say that you had no idea who he was when you just happened to sell him that painting in a gallery—”
“But I did sell him that painting in a gallery.”
“That’s not the point. Destiny only works in Arab countries. In America, destiny makes you sound . . . calculating. Which,” he says, finishing his martini, “we know you are. But nobody else has to know that. Now about those S. sisters . . .”
“No,” I say. “They freak me out.”
“Why? They’re young, beautiful, rich, and married. Everyone wants to be their friend.”
I glare at him. I want to put my head in my hands, but I’m too tired. I can’t explain anything. What it was like sitting there in that big empty room—it had two Regency couches and a coffee table and a fireplace with a marble mantle—with that S. sister. The one who was married off at eighteen.
“Cecelia,” she had said. “Have you had a lot of lovers? You look like someone who has.”
“What’s a lot?” I said cautiously. I didn’t understand. What did she want from me? I hadn’t gone to private school in Europe.
“I’m one of those women who must be in love to have sex. If I’m in love with a man, I can have an orgasm from him touching my toe.”
I didn’t know what to say.
A baby started crying from somewhere in that vast, cavernous Tribeca loft she shared with her husband, an aspiring American politician, and four in help.
“I’m going to let him cry,” she said, not ashamed.
I got out of there as fast as I could. “I have childbearing hips. What can I do?” she asked and I felt soiled.
She’d told me a dirty little secret I didn’t want to hear.
The waitress comes over with two plates. She puts one of them down in front of me. On it is chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes.
“You need to eat,” D.W. says.
I pick up one of the green beans with my fingers. I put it into my mouth. Chew. I manage to swallow it.
I immediately feel full.
“The chicken,” D.W. says, “is delicious.”
It has some kind of brownish glaze on it. It’s shiny.
It’s a dead piece of meat.
I cut into it. It’s a little pink inside. Like a pink little baby.
“Oh GOD,” I say. I put down my utensils, pick up my napkin, and throw up into it.
II
LA LA LA LA LA LA
Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.
Not.
I’m getting worse and worse.
And who can blame me?
Everyone.
Everyone blames me.
I can’t handle fame. I’m really, really bad at it.
My husband knows this. Isn’t that one of the reasons he married me in the first place? I don’t care about fame. Or money. I don’t want to be famous. I only want to be with him.
He is everything to me.
And I am nothing.
Without him.
“Leave my wife alone!” Hubert had shouted at the photographers during our honeymoon in Paris and Rome and then on a remote island off Tunisia. “Q
uittez ma femme. Quittez ma femme,” he had said over and over, with his arm wrapped around me protectively as I bowed my head and we walked quickly from the hotel to the car, from the car to the museum, from the museum to the boutique, until it became a sort of joke mantra. I’d be in the tub, under heaps of bubbles, and Hubert would come in, and I’d say, “Quittez ma femme” and we’d both crack up.
We haven’t cracked up in a long time now.
I think it was the food in Tunisia that first put me off my feed. You had to eat unidentifiable stews—God only knows what was in them—yak?—with soggy pieces of bread, and I couldn’t do it. Not in front of Hubert. I suddenly felt like he was watching me. And secretly criticizing me. Wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have married me after all.
Okay. So I’ll starve.
Nobody likes me. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t sit for hours and hours, partly because they’re feeding me all these pills all the time (they say they’re going to kick in any day now, and then I won’t be depressed anymore, but I doubt it), agonizing over every slight, knowing there are people out there laughing behind my back, saying, “Why doesn’t she get a clue . . . what a tragedy . . . what a bummer for him having married her it sure didn’t turn out the way he expected I bet and I bet he’s miserable,” when I’m the one who’s miserable, but you can’t tell people that, can you?
Especially if you’re a woman. Because marriage is supposed to make you happy, not make you feel like a rat trapped in a very glamorous cage with twenty-thousand-dollar silk draperies.
And this is the best there is. It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?
Because this is it. The crown. The dream. The brass ring. No more worries. Not a care in the world. Your mother will never starve in her old age. Your sister will have her new car. Your children will go to private school, have nannies, and all the toys they want, including a pony. Honor will be restored to your family name. Your mother will be proud of you. Your father, wherever he is, the bastard, will realize he made a terrible mistake.
And you will have: 1) A castle. 2) Houses around the world. 3) A chauffeur. 4) Lots of clothes with matching shoes and handbags. 5) Jewelry. 6) A horse. 7) A saddle(s) from Hermès. And 8) No friends.
Now here’s what really pisses me off: Everybody thinks they could live my life so much better than me. They think, if they had my life, they’d be so happy to be me that they’d do everything perfectly. But they just don’t get it. They don’t have a clue. They couldn’t get this life unless they had my personality and looked the way I do. If you changed one thing, the destiny part wouldn’t work at all.
For instance, Hubert would only be with a woman who was tall, blond, thin, and had large breasts. And was younger. And had a certain kind of face. Classy. He never wanted to be with a model, because he doesn’t want to be with a woman other guys might masturbate to.
And personality. You have to really know how to work guys. You have to be able to manipulate them, except “manipulate” isn’t really the right word, because it has negative connotations. What you have to do is you always have to be different. You have to be unpredictable. Some days, you’re really really nice and sweet and loving, and other days, you’re a total bitch and steely. They keep coming back because they never know what they’re going to get. You have to be able to be aloof, and you have to be willing to make a man jealous. But you can’t do any of this unless you have the right physique, because otherwise the guy will just say you’re a bitch and who needs it and dump you.
Of course, there are women without the physique who do marry well, but they don’t marry men like Hubert.
In fact, right up until I married him, Hubert wasn’t totally sure that I was going to marry him. You’ve seen his face in the wedding photographs. How happy he looked when we came out of the church.
Oh. And one other thing. You can never think that your husband, or anyone he introduces you to, is better than you. Just because your husband is a prince does not mean he’s better than you are. You could meet a guy who’s just won the Nobel Prize, and you have to know that he isn’t any better than you are or more accomplished. I’ve always thought that I was just as good as anyone, no matter what they’ve done or how many hit songs they’ve had or how hard they say they’ve worked. One day, Tanner told me I had no sense of proportion because I wasn’t fawning all over his acting career, and I broke up with him on the spot. Life just isn’t like that, you know?
I feel better now. I think I can go to sleep.
III
I am confused.
About a small point, really.
Going back to last year, right after Hubert and I were married.
I asked him for money to buy clothes.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Hubert,” I said. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“What’s all that in your closet?”
“I need new clothes,” I said, as tears began forming in the outer corners of my eyes. It was the first time my husband had openly refused me, proof that he didn’t love me anymore.
“I never saw my father give my mother money for clothes.”
“She had an allowance,” I said, not knowing whether this was true, and also knowing that this statement was very brave indeed, as Hubert would probably take it as a criticism against his mother, which he did.
“What are you saying about my mother?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Then why did you bring her up?”
“I didn’t. You did.”
“You brought her up. You said, ‘she had an allowance.’ Didn’t you say that?”
“Ye-e-e-e-s,” I said. “But—oh, fuck you,” I said mildly, and ran into the bedroom crying. He didn’t come in right away the way he usually did, and when he did, he pretended to be getting a tie out of the closet.
“Hubert,” I said patiently. “I need clothes.”
“I don’t want a bunch of reporters following my wife around and writing stories on how much my wife spends on dresses. Do you want that?” he said. “Do you want to be the laughingstock of the papers?”
“No-o-o-o-o,” I sobbed, not wanting to point out that I was already beginning to be the laughingstock of the papers, so what difference did it make? I rocked back and forth on the bed, crying and crying like my heart was breaking, (which it was) thinking, What am I going to do now? What am I supposed to do now?
And now—ha ha—I am sitting here surrounded by strange new clothes. So in other words, everything that I was doing in the last year has finally resulted in getting my way. Which was wearing the same old simple black-and-white pieces I always wore before my marriage, until some fashion reporter wrote: “Can’t someone get this princess a new frock?” Which I didn’t have to point out to Hubert, because it was in the Styles section of The New York Times, and that’s the section he reads first on Sundays. Believe it or not. (I didn’t believe it myself, when I first met him: that and the way he secretly reads all the gossip columns, scanning the items for his name. No matter what is written, he never says anything about it; and his face always remains impassive, like he’s reading about somebody else, someone whom he doesn’t know.)
And yet, there is something insulting about all this. As if Hubert didn’t want to spend money on me for the first year of our marriage because he wasn’t sure he was going to keep me around.
(I so wish that we could talk about these things openly. I really did believe, when we first got married, that we would talk about everything honestly, but the opposite has occurred: We’re like two people on separate islands, with only tin cans and string as a means of communication.)
And so I must act slightly displeased by it all. Especially since it’s really D.W.’s doing. Including the short hair. I have short white hair, and when I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself. It’s part of their plan to wipe me out and start over.
And my husband is all for it.
“I’m on board,” he said.
(Ugh. I hate that expression. It’s so corporate America, which Hubert is not but likes to pretend he is.) “I’m on board. It’s good for you.”
“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to EXERCISE next,” I said.
“Exercise is good for you,” he said. At which point I told him that it’s very difficult to exercise when you’re so doped up you can barely lift your hand to your mouth.
When I said this, he said (suspiciously, I thought), “There is no reason to lift your hand to your mouth unless you’re putting food in it.” To which I smartly replied, “Actually, you have to lift your hand to your mouth to apply lipstick,” and that shut him up for a minute.
We were having this conversation yesterday morning while I was still in bed, and in the middle of it the apartment buzzer began ringing incessantly. I put several pillows over my head, but it’s no use. Hubert goes downstairs, then comes back up and says, “Get up. D.W. is here.” Instead of staying to comfort me, he goes back downstairs and makes another pot of coffee, like he’s some kind of real person (he actually takes pride in this), which I can never help but believe is a total act.
I hear some kind of commotion downstairs, and voices, and Hubert calling, “Come on, sleepyhead, come downstairs.” And then D.W.’s voice: “Get up! Get up, you lazy thing!” I therefore have no choice but to wrench my drugged and tired bones from the comfort of my bed. I go immediately (do not pass bathroom) downstairs with my hair in a mess, still wearing my silk spaghetti-strap negligee, which is all wrinkled and has tiny stains on it because I’ve basically been wearing it for four days.
Just as I enter the kitchen, I hear D.W. say, “I declare, Hubert, you get more handsome every time I see you,” which nearly sets me off, because who does D.W. think he is, acting like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind?
Hubert is dressed in a gray suit with a white oxford-cloth shirt and a yellow tie, and unless you’re actually married to him, I suppose he does look pretty amazing, pouring coffee into large mugs, smiling and making light conversation about a movie he’s seen called The Seventh Sense.
Four Blondes Page 17
