by Emma Forrest
I remember being so horrified by what that woman did to that silly little girl. I promised myself that I would never be jealous or spiteful to a girl who was younger than me. Furthermore, I would take it upon myself, should the opportunity arise, to educate them in the ways of men. I still believe in a kind of emotional networking between women. As an older woman, it is my duty to give her advice, listen to her and attempt to sort her out, just as I would expect a woman fifteen years older than I am to advise me.
I asked her to stay the next night and she did. It turned into a week. She was in my house right through the holidays. We didn’t go out on New Year’s Eve. We went out the day after Christmas to buy food and toilet paper. I bought her some clothes and a toothbrush because her credit card was maxed out. She made a big deal about swearing on her life to pay me back. I don’t really care. It’s all Scott’s money. I don’t feel guilty about spending his money. It’s like war reparations. He owes me serious cash for the shit he put me through.
I gave her a bunch of my own underwear. That was funny. I mean, it really was funny: this cuckold, this sex bomb, my husband’s mistress borrowing my panties. I gave her the nicest ones too. Beautiful silks and laces that Scott had bought me in France. Why did I do that? I was being nice and I wasn’t being nice. I was so relieved to be free of him and free of the struggle to be sexual and she was the one who took all that worry away for me. I wanted to be sure that when she finally walked out my front door, the lace and silk, the chore of sexual allure went with her.
I liked her straightaway, I really did. I liked her crazy, newborn-chicken haircut. I liked her half-moon eyebrows, stupid laugh, bitten fingernails. I liked the timbre of her voice and the way that she smelled. As screwed up as she was on all those awful pills and also, I’d venture, a good amount of alcohol, she still smelled of figs. Who smells of figs? I thought that was great! So undeserved, too! As if she’d worked out with free weights, showered, loofa’d and scrubbed before meeting me in Prada, prearranged and in perfect time. Instead of turning up unexpected, dragging snow through the store, a wild-eyed loon with claret-stained lips.
Liking her so much, I remembered what Scott and I had in common. I remembered that we shared the same tastes. It reminded me of the times he’d bring home a couple of head shots and ask me to pick which girl would be most believable for the role of a spirited lion tamer and who would make a good cheerleader with a dark secret. I knew he was fucking all of them. I knew it.
And yet my immediate, most prevalent instinct was to pick the best girl for the job. I’d pick the right girl for the part and only later I’d wonder if I’d also picked the best in bed, the hottest ass, the pertest breasts. It felt very strange. But not unpleasant. In an odd way, those were some of the times when I felt closest to Scott. He’d really listen to my choice, my reasons why a redhead could never be a believable lion tamer. I felt so close to him.
And with Ruby in my apartment and under my wing, I felt close to him again.
She asked me to help her pick a piece for an audition she had three days after Christmas. She didn’t seem to me to be in any state for it. Her skin was still a wreck and she was so over-excited about the role that she was bouncing around the room, incapable of memorizing her lines. She desperately wanted to do this play off Broadway, something her agent would never have told her about, let alone let her go up for.
It was a tragi-comedy the writer had penned about the film industry and he said he had created the female lead with her in mind. He had sent her a note suggesting it would be a perfect opportunity for her – ‘and not just in reference to the iconic bubble your agent seeks to trap you in’. He said he thought she was a brilliant actress and that she reminded him of Simone Signoret. It was the French name-drop that set her off.
Although I tried to dissuade her, she insisted on reading from Medea.
‘But it’s for a part in a comedy.’
‘A TRAGI-comedy,’ she replied pointedly. There was a lot of swearing, falling over, drug deals gone ‘hilariously wrong’ and some on-stage sex for good measure. It was pretty tragic.
‘Are you sure you want to do this, Ruby? I don’t even think it’s that funny.’
‘It’s not funny. That’s what I keep telling you.’
The day of the audition she couldn’t eat, which was something of a relief because it meant she didn’t throw up either. Her hair was almost all its real color, a beautiful dark brown that only made her frazzled skin look worse. We pulled on our boots and mittens and I even tied her scarf in the doorway before we rode the subway downtown. There was a man on the subway play-acting being destitute but honest and Ruby watched his performance intensely.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. I am sorry to interrupt your journey. I am collecting money for babies with AIDS.’
Ruby pulled out her diary and scribbled down ‘Babies with AIDS’ in her girlish cursive.
‘During this season of goodwill, please think of those less fortunate than yourselves. I am doing a sponsored walk to raise money for these helpless, afflicted babies, God’s most precious gift to us: the next generation.’
Ruby wrote down: ‘Star Trek.’
‘Please, brothers and sisters, give whatever you can to help me help those who cannot help themselves.’
‘Repetition,’ tutted Ruby.
Then he went from person to person collecting money. Some studiously ignored the man. Others gave him a dollar or two to make him go away. Ruby did not give him money and she did not ignore him either. As he held out his hand, she shook her head and loudly announced, ‘I’m not feeling it.’
All those who had ignored him now turned her way, hissing, ‘Babies with AIDS!’
I hung my head in shame, staring at my reflection in my shiny leather boots. She stared fixedly ahead.
When we got out of the subway, she took my arm in hers and huddled close for warmth. Outside the theater, I asked her if she wanted me to meet her somewhere, but she told me that she wanted me to watch the audition.
rachel loses it
‘This theater looks like someone’s apartment!’ she chirruped.
‘Actually, it is someone’s apartment,’ sneered the whey-faced director, cutting off Ruby’s attempt to make small talk. ‘I live in the basement.’
Because of the note from the playwright, she had gone in there thinking the part was already hers. But the writer was not there and the director seemed to resent her very presence.
‘Right, I can’t say I know your work. I’m not familiar with my local multiplex, so do excuse me.’
She did excuse him, although I wished she hadn’t.
The other actresses were skinny Lower East Side types. They looked sicker – but hipper – than Ruby. Their gamine hairdos were carefully planned and paid for, unlike Ruby’s which was a by-product of her instability. These were tough, happy chicks wearing weak, melancholic faces they spent hours in the mirror creating.
The girl directly in front of Ruby was a hard-faced little bitch who kept staring us out. She must have been five years older than Ruby but she was wearing a pink ra-ra skirt with pale pink tights, ballet slippers and a long-sleeved thermal vest. Her tiny breasts were braless, barely denting the fabric of her top. She wore clear lip-gloss and sparkly black mascara on her lashes. She looked like Edie Sedgwick without the millions.
To match her Medea reading, Ruby had opted for a Maria Callas ensemble: severe red lipstick, white pancake and cat eyeliner. She looked terrifying. So here were two girls in their twenties, going up against each other, both rocking two types of crazy.
Edie read pretty well, I’ll give her that. Her set piece was well chosen, too: a monologue from Bash. Her timing was great and I just managed to stop myself from clapping when she finished.
Ruby went on next. Under the bright lights, her pancake started to melt and leak onto her black poloneck. She tried her best to read without looking at the page, but she still hadn’t managed to memorize the lines and so she continued her performance
with her eyes cast downwards. Her timing was off, since she thought she was reading for a tragedy, and her rendition of Medea was hysterical; she was having hysterics, shrieking, rolling around on the floor. If she had have been Bjork, everyone would have called her an avantgarde genius. Instead, there was deathly silence. Ruby came down from the stage exhilarated but, seeing the director’s face, her shoulders slumped. She started to say something like, ‘Well, thanks for the …’ but he cut her short: ‘We’ll call you.’ She had been fucked. And he never would ring her.
Edie started laughing before we were even out the door. Ruby didn’t break pace. She said she wanted a sandwich and walked into a nail salon. ‘I mean a manicure.’
‘OK, sweetheart. I’m going to buy some cigarettes. I’ll be back in a minute.’ Then I walked back up the block to the theater and slipped in the back to find the director focused, rapt, on the fluffy waif taking the stage. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Edie going into the toilet. I followed her in, click-clacking deliciously in my patent boots. I knew then why they had been so expensive. It was just the right tone of menace they gave off each time a heel hit the floor. I caught Edie as she came out of the stall. Before she knew what hit her, I had her shoved against the wall. I couldn’t help it. I held my arm under her throat.
‘I know you’re just jealous because Ruby’s prettier than you and a bigger star. And because she’s a woman and men have to fuck you from behind so they don’t have to look at your bony chest.’
I heard my words reverberate off the bathroom wall and I dropped her. Dropped her! Flat on the floor! I felt like a lioness gone insane for its cub.
Then I went back to meet Ruby, pulling from my pocket the cigarettes I had had all along. She acted like she didn’t give a fuck. She had her eyes closed as the girl filed her nails. She used their bathroom to wash off her crazy face. Then she went right out and bought herself a new sweater. She put on a great show, had us go out for margaritas, laughed about what had happened. I kept repeating, ‘Fuck ’em!’ because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She said she wanted to go back to her apartment, but I made her stay with me that night. She slept in my bed with me. I cried a little onto her shoulder blade after she went to sleep. I tried really hard not to but I couldn’t help it. She woke up and put her arms around me and I guess we drifted off that way.
thank you
Rachel was … sweet to me. I can admit now that I was wasted when I bumped into her at Prada. I didn’t know who the hell she was. I could barely remember who Scott was. The Sebastian thing was long over. Aslan didn’t give a fuck. He was warded off by the aura of despair that surrounded me like a force field, protecting others but not me. My heart was aching and my belief is that when things are bad, it’s better to make them worse. I just wanted to rip my heart out, throw it on the sidewalk and stamp, stamp, stamp, until it smooshed like a cockroach. I wanted to hear it squelch. If I was going to self-destruct, I wanted to watch it happen along with everyone else.
So I had been walking about thirty blocks through New York City, kicking my heart in front of me. It was snowing and of course I was crying. I was gone when she found me. It seemed so ridiculous to me that she was going on about Scott, who I never ever gave a fuck about, when I was thinking about Sebastian and how badly I’d screwed myself by letting him go. But I guess she gave a fuck about Scott. And over the course of the week I stayed with her, it started to flood back. I felt like shit. I felt like shit for what I had done to her. And I also felt physically awful. I was coming off months of Vicodin, Xanax and Valium. She weaned me off it without even meaning to. When I could see clearly I knew I wanted to be more like her. And when I could see very, very clearly, I saw through her. I saw that she was every bit as lonely as I was.
I guess I didn’t notice it for a few days because she has that shiny hair and a lot of truth bounces off it. I kept asking if I could touch it. Sometimes I wouldn’t even ask. I’d just reach out and pet her hair when she was on the phone or lighting a cigarette. I thought that the shininess might travel through my fingers, up my arm and into my own head. And from my head down into my heart.
Hair comes out of your head so I do believe it is a reflection of what’s inside. People with curly hair have curly thoughts and that’s why it grows that way. But it is possible to double-cross your own hair follicles, until they believe themselves to be a reflection of what’s inside. You can make it so. I looked through Rachel’s photo albums and this woman has had the exact same hair since she was a kid. Never had bangs, never had a chin-length bob, never had a disaster with a home perming kit, and never had it cut into a shag.
How can you be lonely if you truly know yourself?
Well, understanding is a lonesome place to be. When you know something about yourself and still don’t act on it, you can get pretty sad. I’m lucky. I don’t know myself at all. Every time I screw up, it isn’t really my fault. Not really. Rachel tries so hard to be a good person. Sometimes she falls short. And those sometimes wrap around her throat like a chiffon scarf in a sports-car door.
I thought it was hilarious that she had a statue of Buddha by her bed. It was such bullshit; I had to call her on it. ‘Does Buddha tell you to do an hour on the Stairmaster every morning?’
She’d do her hour, take a shower and make herself a smoothie. Then she’d talk nonsense to Buddha. Then she’d lie on her bed and smoke, as if Buddha and her had just had sex. The cigarettes. The Buddhist shrine. The Stairmaster. The hours spent straightening her hair with a blowdryer. If that doesn’t spell lonely I don’t know what does.
She told me that since Scott she had been on a few dates with a fellow Buddhist she met at yoga. He was a lot younger than her, though, and before every date she would worry that he was used to hanging around with nineteen-year-old models. All those models are Buddhists. That’s how they come to work in a profession of such profound enlightenment. I know my job is just as scuzzy, but at least my face moves when you look at it. At least I know I’m a fool.
So Rachel told me that she was really into this young Buddhist. But worrying about her weight, her wrinkles and other people’s pre-teens just wasn’t worth it. She decided she was willing to forsake romance if it means not having to be anxious. It’s the eternal choice.
When she flipped out after the audition, I knew she was hiding a lot. I think she was upset as much for herself as for me. If they weren’t going to be nice to me then she had to and that’s a lot of responsibility – even I can see that. I can see it, but I can’t change. I felt that there was more she hadn’t told me. I asked if she had ever wanted to act. She said she kind of had, that Scott had persuaded her it might be a good idea. But she wasn’t any good at it so she kind of slunk back to photography. After that audition we went back to her house and, before we went to bed, she took my photo for the first time. I think she was crying a little.
fat ass
I had asked Rachel about her history with Scott so that I wouldn’t have to tell her about Liev. I knew it would be a week of pain and revelation for one of us and, frankly, I’m glad it was her. I wish I had never told Scott about Liev. If I hadn’t told him, I might not have begun to think that maybe it wasn’t all right. Of course, I dismissed Sebastian’s bombastic response almost immediately as that of an over-protective boyfriend. He was always extremely easy to dismiss, until he took my persistent suggestion and dismissed me from his life.
I didn’t want to tell Rachel about Liev because I had an inkling that, though eminently sensible, she was just left of center enough to understand how much I loved him and how much he had loved me. If she had told me that I hadn’t loved him, worse that she didn’t think it possible that he had loved me, I would have taken it very much to heart. If I told her about my twelfth year, she might have asked questions. Like, was it all true?
I don’t know. I think so. It feels true. I need it so.
How could your parents have let it happen?
They didn’t know. T
hey couldn’t have. Because if they did … how could they have let it happen?
If he loved you so much, how come he left without saying goodbye?
Because he did something bad. Because he would have been punished if he had stayed.
Why did you never try to find him?
I was too young. By the time I was old enough, it was too late.
Have you ever loved truly since?
I’ve tried to. I’ve even fooled myself a few times.
I would have had to have told her about Sebastian. Sebastian! A PA! A man who mopped his pizza with a paper towel so he wouldn’t absorb extra grease, so his precious six-pack would remain intact. I would have had to have told her about Aslan. Aslan, for fuck’s sake! Who talks to cobwebs and drinks green tea. Beautiful Aslan, who bedazzled me with his pretty vacancy. Who put his fingers inside me and pulled them out knowing the truth, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I would have had to have told her about the dark inside me, how it itched and jumped and kept me up at night. I would have had to have told her that I would not listen to my mother and that all my life has been about the pursuit of beauty and the ingestion of ugliness.
Rachel said that what I needed was a room-mate. The twins said they would love to have me move in with them but that it just wasn’t practical. They were already cramped, what with the dogs, ferret, alligator and iguana. I stayed a few nights on the sofa next door, but I didn’t like being woken by peering dogs, sitting on my chest, staring silent and serious at my face.
I called Rachel back and asked if I could live with her. I thought maybe that’s what she was trying to suggest and was just waiting for me to suggest it myself. But she wasn’t. She said that was way too weird and could she please have her underwear back. I think most of the time Rachel forgets how and why we met. When it comes to her, it comes with a jolt that derails the train of our friendship. That week I had with Rachel was as much of an affair – more intense, in fact – than the time I spent with her husband. Only Rachel is a lot smarter than Scott is. Smart enough to let good things go before they get taken away.
