“Why didn’t I see this movie?” I ask.
He pulls me to him and puts his arm around me. “Because you were sick. Remember?”
“I wasn’t sick,” I say. “I was only pretending to be sick because I hate movie theaters.”
“That’s right,” he says, to me and not to D.W., which actually makes me feel a tiny bit good, “because you think movie theaters are filled with germs.”
“Germs and sick people,” I say.
“She’s such a princess,” D.W. says. “I always told her that if she didn’t marry you, the only other person she could have married would have been Prince Charles.”
“I’d be dead then,” I say.
“That would be a terrible tragedy. Not just for Hubert, but for the world,” D.W. says unctuously.
“I’d like to be dead. I don’t think it would be bad at all,” I say, and I can see Hubert and D.W. exchange glances.
“Besides,” I say, pouring myself a cup of coffee even though coffee is yet another one of the FORTY MILLION things in the world that makes me VOMIT, “if I hadn’t married Hubert, I would have married a movie star.”
I hand my cup of coffee cup to D.W. “Try it.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Just try it.”
D.W. and Hubert exchange glances.
“It’s coffee,” he says, and hands it back to me.
“Thank you,” I say. I cautiously take a sip. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.”
My poor, poor husband. He ditched the European girl and got something much worse. Something crazy. Which he has to ignore.
“But you wouldn’t be happy,” Hubert says, again trading glances with D.W., “because a movie star wouldn’t love you as much as I do.”
“Well,” I say, “since you love me zero, what difference would it make?”
“Oh, come, come,” D.W. says.
“What do you know?” I ask hatefully. And I look over at Hubert and see that closed-down look has come over his face. Again. For the millionth time.
He empties the rest of his coffee in the sink and rinses his mug. “I’ve got to be going.”
“He’s always going to that stupid office,” I say casually.
“Studio,” D.W. says. “When a man is the executive producer of a hit TV show on a major network, he goes to a studio.”
Hubert kisses me on the forehead. “Bye, kiddo,” he says. “You two have fun today.”
I look at D.W. balefully.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say anything stupid. Especially after that completely pointless display.”
My poor husband.
I run into the living room and grab Mr. Smith, who is sniffling around the couch, and run for the door, passing the kitchen where D.W. spots me and shouts out, “Keep that beagle away from me!” And I run down the stairs, still clutching Mr. Smith, who has absolutely no idea what is going on, and I run onto Prince Street, where Hubert has just gotten into the limo (he supposedly told them he didn’t want a limo, but The Network insisted). I knock on the window and Hubert lowers the glass. He looks at me like “Oh God, here’s my crazy wife standing on the street barefoot in a wrinkled old negligee holding a beagle in her arms,” and he says (pleasantly enough), “Yes?” And I say, “You forgot to say good-bye to Mr. Smith.”
He says, “Good-bye, Mr. Smith,” and leans out and kisses Mr. Smith on the nose. It’s all so cute, and I actually think I might be okay for the next couple of hours, but then I hear that telltale click, click, click behind me, and I turn, and there’s that photographer in full combat fatigues, snapping away and yelling, “Smile!” and the limo takes off, and I hold Mr. Smith (who is struggling viciously now) over my face and run crazily down Prince Street, finally taking refuge in a news shop.
At which point the proprietor of this dirty shop with its overpriced cigarettes has the nerve to say, “No dogs. No dogs in the store.” And begins waving his arms like he’s just been attacked by an infestation of fleas.
I’m about to hurl a string of invectives at him (and, in fact, have opened my mouth to do so), when I see IT: the cover of Star magazine, which features photographs of a couple of actresses and ME, with my mouth open, wearing baggy shorts and a tank top, arms and legs akimbo. The photograph was taken a few months ago at a celebrity basketball game that Hubert not only made me attend but insisted I participate in (which ended up working in my favor, because I was such a horrendous basketball player and yet so high strung under the stress of competition that Hubert said I never had to do anything like it again), and underneath the photograph the caption reads: Princess Cecelia, 5’10” 117 lbs. And this raft of falsehoods is topped off with the headline: STARVING TO DEATH?, which really pisses me off because I’d actually eaten two hot dogs that day. I grab Mr. Smith and the Star, and I run down the street and back up the stairs and throw open the door to the loft. D.W. is sitting in the living room, calmly sipping a cup of coffee and perusing the photographs in New York magazine. I collapse onto a chair, hyperventilating madly.
“Really, Cecelia,” he says. He looks at his watch. “It’s eight-forty-three. Don’t you think you ought to get dressed?”
I really do not know what to say to this, so I fall to the floor, shaking and clawing at my throat, until D.W. throws a glass of water on my face.
Riding uptown, wearing sunglasses and a head scarf and clutching Mr. Smith to my chest, I felt the sinking weight of depression, like someone has placed a board piled with cement blocks on top of my body. When I’m in this state I find it hard to move, difficult to make even the slightest gesture—like lighting a cigarette—and sometimes, since I spend so much time alone in the apartment, I end up sitting for hours and hours, occasionally on the stairs or on the kitchen floor, staring into space. I don’t want anyone to know how bad it is, so I lie and say, Oh, I’ve been reading magazines all day or running errands, like picking up a spool of thread at the dry cleaner, but quite often I find myself scratching “help me help me” on the palm of my hand with an old ballpoint pen, but by the end of the day, I have invariably washed it off. My thoughts always run along the same lines, like a small electric train going back and forth, back and forth: Everyone hates me and may or may not be laughing at me behind my back, waiting for me to fuck up, to say something stupid (or anything at all, because when people are judging you that closely, almost anything you say sounds stupid) or give them an evil eye, so they can run to their friends and colleagues and say, “I met Princess Cecelia and it’s true what they say. She’s a bitch.”
And then everywhere you go, people look at you like they expect to hate you, and their reactions are like stones, hitting you again and again until finally you shut down, you stop, you put your arms over your head and then you begin to slowly disappear.
D.W. is drumming his nails on the armrest. “I’ve been married . . .” he says. “Twice.”
“Yes,” I say blandly. “I know,” in a small voice, truly upset now by that photograph in Star and the accompanying article that accuses me of being an anorexic, which I’m NOT, but what I am is so complicated that I can’t begin to explain it to myself.
“I’ve been married,” D.W. says again, “and the one thing I’ve found is that the superficialities of marriage are the most important. In other words, pleasant conversation at breakfast, amusing banter at parties, and a compliment once or twice during the day matter more than whatever one is actually feeling, which, frankly, no one really cares about anyway.”
I nod mutely, wondering why it is that D.W. and I have the same conversations over and over again, so that I don’t even have to point out that D.W.’s last marriage ended so horrendously (in a war on Page Six) that his wife, who is at least eighty now but has had a dozen or so face-lifts and always wears rose-colored sunglasses, will leave a party if his name is mentioned.
“In fact,” D.W. continues, oblivious, “I would say that the superficialities are the most important thing in every aspect of life. I mean, who cares th
at you’re really a piece of shit if you’re sitting at a dinner with lovely flowers and a fabulous person on your left and a fabulous person on your right, and the photographers are taking your picture, and your socks, for God’s sake, are cashmere, and you’re smiling just so, and the photograph ends up in the society pages of Vogue. That’s what really counts, isn’t it? Of course, you probably wouldn’t understand that because, like all people with mental problems, you’re completely obsessed with yourself. You don’t really care anything about me, or the fact that that dog of yours is liable to dribble on my Prada suit at any moment.”
“Mr. Smith doesn’t dribble,” I say, unable to even get angry because of the aforementioned state I’m in.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I meant you,” D.W. says.
I allow myself (still clutching Mr. Smith) to be led from the town car out onto Madison Avenue, where someone is jackhammering the sidewalk, and a Mercedes sport-utility vehicle passes blaring rap music, and people walk by all emitting high-frequency vibrations of “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” so that even in this brief moment the noise of the city is crushing and I feel like everything is collapsing in on me. We walk up narrow terra-cotta stairs and enter the beauty salon, which is all skylights and marble columns with a fountain in the middle (meant, I believe, to be some kind of imitation Roman baths), around which women in white robes with turbans on their heads lounge reading magazines. I’m whisked off to the private area, where they minister to “celebrities,” and someone dressed in a sari keeps trying to give me coffee, tea, or water (when I ask for a Bloody Mary, they all look shocked) and keeps shoving bowls of water with lemon slices floating on top under Mr. Smith’s nose, which he sensibly refuses.
And then they begin cutting. Cutting away my long hair which I’ve had all my life (which is my life—long hair, men love it), and which has gone through various and sundry colors of blond, depending on whether or not I actually had money at the time to pay someone to color it or if I had to do it myself with Sun-In or if one of my gay friends took pity on me and arranged for someone to do it for free (that was easy, as soon as it came out in the gossip columns that I was dating the prince of Luxenstein), and D.W. comes over and says, “So many people have worked so hard to get you here, Cecelia,” blowing smoke out of his nostrils. I say, “So I am supposed to feel guilty?”
“Just grateful,” he says, and walks away.
And I swear, as they’re cutting, I keep hearing people talking about me. Whispering my name. Until finally, it’s too much and I scream, “Will everybody please shut up?” And they all do, except for one unfortunate soul who goes on and on, speaking into his cell phone in a high-pitched nasally voice, “. . . that’s right, Dick. She’s here now. Complete makeover. And completely loony. She won’t let go of that dog. Won’t speak to anyone. She’s got the worst energy of anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe she should try crystals. . . .” Finally, he looks up, and after that, nobody says anything at all.
“What did I ever do to you?” I whisper hoarsely.
I stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are very wide and blue. Very wide because I KNOW this isn’t a good time to start crying, not with all these PEOPLE (if you can even call them that) standing around in various forms of emotional attitude, ranging from disdain to shocked horror to pity, reminding me of the first time I had to go to that school in Massachusetts when I was ten years old and taller than all of them and they stood around in the playground and called me—
“Miss . . . Cecelia,” the colorist says. She has a long face and large teeth and she looks like a talking horse, but a kindly one. “I hope you don’t think that was a reflection of . . . our salon. He’s new. I’m going to fire him immediately.”
I could have someone fired?
“Oh,” I say softly, nodding over the top of Mr. Smith’s head.
“That was very, very wrong of him,” she says, pumping the back of my chair so it goes up and down. “David,” she snaps. “Pack your things and don’t come back.”
This David person, who is lurking around the edges, is thin and dark-haired and sloe-eyed with dark circles, and he reeks of anonymous sex.
“Whatever,” he says haughtily. Our eyes meet for one second in the mirror and I see his whole pitiful story: fresh off the bus from some lousy town in the Midwest, ambitious and a born hustler, will do anyone for a piggyback to the next rung (for fun or profit), anything to erase his dirty origins and make believe he is someone else. Mostly, though, he’ll talk about how I got him fired, and talk and talk, and he’ll spread this topic of conversation among his acquaintances like a virus.
I know. I used to hang out with people like that.
I used to be like people like that.
I can deny it. Even to myself.
“I’m really very . . . normal,” I say softly.
And isn’t this one of my problems? I’m normal?
“Oh yes. I can see that,” the colorist says.
I’m just like a million other girls in New York.
“Aren’t you from . . .?”
“Massachusetts,” I say.
“My grandmother was from Massachusetts.”
“That’s nice,” I say. Realizing that for the first time in—what? weeks?—I’m having a normal conversation.
She paints white goop on my hair.
“What’s your doggie’s name?” she asks.
IV
Dr. Q. licks the tip of his pencil.
“You think that . . .,” he says, consulting his notebook, “your husband and this, this friend of yours, D.W., the publicity man, have formed a conspiracy against you and are forcing you to become . . . let me see here . . . the American version of Princess Di. Who, you so adroitly pointed out, is dead. Meaning . . . you believe that, consciously or subconsciously, your husband secretly wants . . . you dead.” Pause. “Well?”
“I heard them discussing it on the phone.”
“Your death.”
“NOOOO,” I scream. “The conspiracy.”
“Oh. The conspiracy.”
“D.W. told me there was that tell-all book.”
“Cecelia,” Dr. Q. says. “Why would anyone want to write a book—an ‘unauthorized biography’—about you?”
“Because the press . . . they’re always after me . . . and there’s that girl, Amanda. The one who . . . died.”
“You call someone who was, according to you, your best friend ‘that girl’?”
“She wasn’t my best friend by then.”
“That girl?”
“Okay. That woman.” Pause. “My photograph was in all the newspapers this morning. From last night. At the ballet . . .,” I whisper.
“Was that you, Cecelia? That girl with the short white hair, running down the stairs, looking over her shoulder, laughing, holding the hand of an unknown boy?”
“Yes! YES. Didn’t you see my NAME . . .? Princess Cecelia. . . .” I’m breaking down, crying, covering my face with tissues. “There are photographers outside the window!”
Dr. Q. stands up and pulls back the blind. “There’s no one there. Except the doorman and old Mrs. Blooberstein and that disgusting Chihuahua.”
“M-m-maybe the doorman sent them away.”
“Cecelia,” Dr. Q. says, returning to his chair. “Where were you in August 1969?”
“You know where I was.”
“Where were you?”
“Yazgur’s Farm,” I say defiantly.
“And what were you doing there? Gonna join in a rock ‘n’ roll band?”
“Dr. Q. I was three years old. My mother dragged me there. No one paid attention to me. I had shit in my pants for hours. My mother was on an acid trip.”
“And everywhere was a song and a celebration”
“It wasn’t a celebration . . .the hippies made me dance . . . I was lost . . . my mother was on an acid trip. . . .”
Dr. Q. turns into Mrs. Spickel, the guidance counselor. “Hello, Cecelia. Your mother is dead. Aren’t you lucky it happen
ed now, when you’re seventeen, and not when you were a little girl. I hear your mother was very wild. . . .”
I’m crying. I’m crying hysterically like I’m going to break in two. I wake up.
Of course, it’s Hubert’s mother who is dead, not mine.
She died in a freak skiing accident when Hubert was seventeen.
Poor little lost prince, standing on the deck of his twenty-two-foot racing sloop, one hand on the rudder, staring out at the sea, wistful and a little bit fierce (like someone training himself to hold back tears), a forelock of dark hair falling over his forehead. He is a teenage girl’s dream: hurt, in need of rescue, a prince, a teen idol.
“I can save him,” I think, staring at the black-and-white photograph on the cover of Time magazine, sitting on the cheap, Scandinavian-wood coffee table in the living room with the nubbly green polyester couch in the house in Lawrenceville, Massachusetts, where my mother has decided to settle with the man who works in the fish business.
“I can save you, little prince,” I think, although he is not little (six-two) and just on the edge of manhood, and forever away, staying at the home of rich society people in the Caribbean and planning to attend Harvard in the fall. I stare at the photograph and fantasize that he is in the hospital, felled by an accident, with bandages on his head, and he says, “I want Cecelia. I must have Cecelia,” and I rush into the hospital room and he kisses my face.
I am ten years old.
What has happened to me?
I used to be so strong. And determined. And aggressive, people said. They were scared of me. It was obvious that I wanted something, but no one knew what.
I knew.
I wanted the prince.
Ever since I was ten, I worked at putting myself in the path of the oncoming train of destiny. How did I know that I should major in art history in college? (I just knew.) And that I should finagle a job at a famous SoHo art gallery where I would meet rich and glamorous men and women (mostly men), who would embrace a beautiful young girl with attitude and a sense of humor and take her up and show her off on the town, so that, even without the approbation of family money or name, her picture would appear in the newspapers and magazines as having attended this or that event? And how did I know, when Tanner walked into the gallery that day, that I must do everything in my power to become his girlfriend, so that when my real object of desire walked in, which I knew he would eventually, given the laws of consequence, those being that he lived in SoHo and bought art, I would already be taken by a worthy opponent and this would make me more valuable in his eyes?
Four Blondes Page 18
