by Jenny Mollen
Part of me wished Jason were in the room to see her communing with the Lord. The other part of me was relieved because he would have undoubtedly noted that Debora was a better mime than me.
“The Holy Ghost is on board. He wants me to have black caviar leather with gold hardware. Can you take me tomorrow?”
“Umm…”
I really didn’t want to take Debora to see Elan. In recent months I’d become convinced that I was going to be arrested for buying illegal merchandise from him. I even deleted his number from my cell phone, contacting him only through my friend Adele, who I didn’t really care what happened to. But Debora looked desperate and vulnerable and I had a way to help her. I could give her a gift Hollice couldn’t provide. It would almost be cruel not to, I reasoned.
The next morning, I called Adele and asked her to set up a meeting with Elan. Adele bitched and whined, less because she minded and more because those were the only noises her mouth was capable of making.
“Why do I have to do all this stuff for you? I’m not your assistant.”
“I know. If you were my assistant I’d never feel comfortable taking this much advantage of you.”
Adele told me she’d call Elan and call me right back. When my phone vibrated two minutes later, I picked it up without looking at it.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” a vaguely familiar voice said.
I looked at the caller ID. It was Hollice.
“Hollice! How are you? Sorry, I thought you were somebody else,” I said, trying to recover from the awkward pause.
“I’m gonna be in your neighborhood next week for a meeting and I have a gift I wanna drop off. Does Monday work for you?”
“Yes! That sounds great.” I paced around the kitchen, looking for something to stress-eat.
“Cool. Text me directions and I’ll swing by around noon. I can even bring lunch.”
I graciously accepted and told her we’d speak soon. After I hung up, I took a deep breath, then swallowed a half wheel of Brie. I reminded myself that Monday was a week away and that anything could happen between now and then. Maybe Hollice would have to cancel. Maybe my poodle, Mr. Teets, would get hit by a car. Maybe I’d need an emergency hysterectomy.
Seconds later, Adele called back and told me Elan could be at her work in thirty minutes. Desperate for a distraction, I ran upstairs and threw on a pair of sweats. Sid was asleep on Jason and I asked if it would be okay if we left them alone for an hour. I explained that I had some errands to run and I needed Debora to come with me. A woman might have questioned my motives, but a man tends to accept whatever you tell him if you talk about it fast enough. Jason didn’t even raise an eyebrow as I spewed a bunch of nonsense about Gelson’s having a sale on kohlrabi, and needing to find an eco-friendly dry cleaner, and the myth of the vaginal orgasm. He nodded and sipped his coffee, counting down the minutes until I shut up.
Debora was ecstatic as we got in the car and headed over to Adele’s work. My child was only weeks old and already I’d gone back to work; however, this time it wasn’t for myself. I was working for my baby nurse.
We arrived to find Adele waiting outside on a patch of fake grass in front of a large sign that read OCEANA APARTMENTS. She was a leasing agent at the West Hollywood complex (situated nowhere near the ocean), and I’d met her eight years prior when she overcharged me for a one-bedroom with a street-facing bedroom window. Over time we became close friends.
I chose not to write about Adele in my first book because we were in a massive fight at the time. I forget the details of the feud, but I think it originated with me using the back of one of my earrings to lance a cyst between her boobs while she was driving. Normally, I’d be afraid to divulge so much information about a friend, for fear that they might hold it against me later when they saw it in print, but the cool thing about Adele is that she doesn’t read. I mean, yes, she can read. But she chooses not to because she lacks the attention span. In fact, she still thinks she was mentioned in my first book, so if you happen to see her, please corroborate that story.
Adele was a voluptuous girl with a head of blond spiraled ringlets that framed her olive cheeks like a lion. She was a Jewish American Princess whose Bat Mitzvah theme was “Shopping at Neiman’s.” At sixteen, her parents bought her a white Volkswagen Cabriolet with the license plate TOY4ADY. When she turned forty, her father finally stopped footing the bill and cut her off financially. With a mountain of growing debt and a wallet full of maxed-out credit cards, Adele had no choice but to sell all her legitimate fancy bags and shoes to her dad’s new wife at a fraction of the cost. Once strongly opposed to the idea of fake bags, Adele reconsidered when her means dried up. Now she was not only Elan’s toughest critic, she was his best client.
After our introductions, a cream-colored Toyota pulled up. Elan, an older Israeli dressed like Panama Jack, got out of the car.
“Jenny. Long time no talk,” he said coquettishly.
I introduced Debora and told Elan to show her all the fake Birkins. He opened up his trunk to reveal a sea of boxes and bags all labeled in Japanese. Reaching into a canvas sack tucked in the far-back corner, Elan pulled out a beautiful black Birkin knockoff.
“It has the authenticity card, the mini-lock, the leather tie,” he said. Debora tried the bag on, smiling from ear to ear.
“I love it!”
“It’s great, right? Adele? You agree?” I looked over at Adele, who’d crawled inside Elan’s trunk.
“I want the new Chanel Boy Bag, but these don’t look good enough,” Adele bitched, as if the bags’ shortcomings were Elan’s fault. “Do you have any Givenchy Mini Pandoras?”
“Adele! Get out of the trunk. You don’t need another bag,” I barked.
Knowing I was right, she pried her fingers free and crawled out of the trunk sheepishly, like a child who just got scolded for opening someone else’s birthday gifts. Debora handed her potential purchase to Adele, who held it to the light and scrutinized it closely. “Yeah, it looks good. You should get it.”
With Adele’s diva stamp of approval, Debora was sold. She paid Elan several hundred dollars cash and we bid him farewell. Adele returned to work and we headed back to Jason and Sid.
The whole ride home, Debora kept peeking into the box at her new purse, worried it might disappear if she didn’t check in on it. Everything was right in the world. Debora was filled with joy and I got to be a fairy godmother. If this didn’t tip the scales in my favor as “Best Boss Ever,” I didn’t know what would.
For the next few days, Debora’s Birkin sat untouched next to her bed, balanced on her Bible.
“Gotta fake it till ya make it!” became her new motto. I asked her whether she’d told her friends about the bag, but she insisted she hadn’t. Every time I checked in on her, I’d find her on the Hermès website.
“Did you know they make a raincoat for the bag? I just bid on one on eBay.” Debora moonwalked across the room, pushing her hands up at the ceiling in a “raise the roof” fashion.
I didn’t know anything about a Birkin raincoat, but I found it charming that Debora was so invested in decking out her new purse. Like a little girl with a fancy new doll, her excitement was contagious; I couldn’t help but indulge her.
“You need to get a scarf now to wrap around it.”
“Yaaaasss! I gotta get me a scarf. Maybe something purple.”
In the back of my head I started to fantasize about surprising Debora with a purple Hermès scarf for her upcoming birthday. I’d never bought myself anything from Hermès, but now I was as fully invested in Debora’s makeover as if it were my own.
Monday rolled around faster than I wanted it to, and there wasn’t a dead dog or prolapsed uterus in sight. Hollice was coming over and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
At around twelve-fifteen, the doorbell rang. Again, the dogs went ballistic, and again, Jason ran around the house Pavlovianly straightening things.
“Hollice’s here, Yummy!” Debora lif
ted Sid out of his swing and took him to the front door as if he was about to meet his real mother.
I’d debated all night whether to wear makeup for the visit. I was committed to wearing sweats, because I couldn’t have Hollice knowing I was trying too hard to impress her—I didn’t want to give away my power so easily. We were on my turf, after all, and I wanted her to feel just as uncomfortable as I did.
In a last-minute stroke of genius, I threw my hair up in a bun, exposing a scar on my forehead that only people who knew me in childhood have really ever seen: a lightly colored T-shaped incision above my right eyebrow, the remaining evidence of a car accident I’d been in at nine years old. The scar wouldn’t surprise Hollice; she’d undoubtedly seen it before. I’d even heard rumors that the rec-center commercial would have been mine if it weren’t for my mangled mug. Wearing my hair off my face would send a message: I was coming at her from a place of honesty, from a place of vulnerability. Maybe motherhood wasn’t just a new chapter for us as women, maybe it was also a new chapter for us as friends.
Debora opened the door and rushed straight toward Hollice without even looking. She embraced her hard, sandwiching Sid’s mini-body between them. Hollice looked simple and effortless in a pair of tight-fitting overall shorts and sandals. Her lips were stained coral and her long dark hair was knotted into one of those braids you need an instructional YouTube video to master. Instantly self-conscious about my scar, I tore out my bun and whipped my hair around like a porn star making the transition from uptight secretary to office whore. Then, pretending I needed to pee, I ran upstairs. Jason saw me coming.
“Where are you going?” he asked, cutting me off from the bathroom.
“I just want to get something out of my eye,” I said.
“No you don’t. You want to put on makeup. Don’t do it,” he cautioned. “Be the bigger person.”
“Don’t say that! It makes me sound fat.” I brushed past him, frantic.
A few minutes later I walked downstairs in a sundress and a sensible pair of heels. Hollice was busy gabbing with Debora in her room.
“It’s so crazy to have you here.” I leaned sexily against the door, biting my lips, now fire-engine red.
“Yeah. What a long, crazy journey we’ve had together, right?” There was no sarcasm, no resentment. She was honest and humble. She asked all about the baby and disclosed how hard it had been for her to breast-feed. She talked about her older son and how jealous he was when the second baby arrived. Hollice wasn’t trying to look good. She wasn’t trying to compete. She was just being real.
I offered her a drink before we walked back into the living room and sat down. She gave me a blanket she’d crocheted for Sid and a box of sandwiches from her favorite deli. Her generosity, coupled with my estrogen levels, made me want to cry. I was ashamed of all the times I’d felt jealous of her or fantasized about pushing her off a cliff. I didn’t address it because in a weird way, I didn’t have to. She already knew. Our acknowledgment of the past was unspoken, and whatever issues we’d previously brought up for each other were for the most part absolved.
Just as my defenses started to drop, I heard a scream from Debora in the back room. Hollice leapt out of her seat. I followed.
When we got to her room, Debora was on the phone, shrieking.
“Grandma! You are in the hospital? No-No-NOOOOOO!” she cried, with a blood-curdling scream. Like a loose tampon in a purse, she’d come undone.
Hollice grabbed Debora’s hand as she started sobbing. Reflexively I grabbed her other hand to show that I was just as invested in her meltdown as Hollice was.
Debora held the phone in the crook of her neck and continued. “Okay, Grandma, we gonna pray. Dear Lord Heavenly Father, I’m not asking you for ninety-three, not ninety-four, not ninety-five, I’m asking you for a huuuuuuuuundred years, sweet Jesus!” Debora’s eyes rolled to the back of her head as she swayed like an Evangelical preacher. Finally she hung up and buried her face in Hollice’s chest.
“You know Grammy, Hollice. I think we’re gonna lose her.”
“You need to go to her. Do you want me to drive you?” Hollice offered.
“I can also drive you.” I made a feeble attempt to make my lip quiver with concern while trying to wedge my way back into the conversation.
“No. I gotta go alone.” Debora directed her words to her former boss, instantly composed.
“Well, I don’t think you should drive,” Hollice said maternally.
“I’ll get you an Uber!” I interjected, even more maternal.
Hollice insisted Debora take me up on the Uber, and she agreed. I ordered an SUV, less for Debora than for Hollice. Debora went to the fridge and grabbed a Pellegrino before walking outside to wait for her ride.
Once she left, Hollice and I shared a look.
“Umm…What just happened?”
“She always did have a flair for the dramatic.” Hollice sighed.
“Yeah, she’s been great but…a little high-maintenance?” I cautiously tested the waters. After seeing how close they were, I had to choose my words carefully.
“Well, Jenny. When you buy someone a Birkin, it sort of sets the tone,” she teased.
“What was I supposed to do? She demanded one!”
“Jenny, I’m famous and I don’t even own a real Birkin,” Hollice said, suddenly serious.
The words “Jenny, I’m famous” cut so deep that I was momentarily unable to ingest the ones that followed. I paused for a beat before looking at Hollice, confused.
“It’s not real. I took her to my fake-bag guy.” I stopped myself short, suddenly realizing that telling Hollice I took Debora to my fake-bag guy was also telling Hollice I had a fake-bag guy.
“What do you mean? The Birkin is fake? She told everyone it’s real and that you got it for her. I heard about it through my friend Beyoncé. Debora is friends with her baby nurse.” She said it nonchalantly, as if being friends with Beyoncé was the most natural thing ever. As if she didn’t want me to confuse her friend Beyoncé with any other Beyoncés I might possibly know—like Beyoncé the dog groomer or Beyoncé the Rite Aid cashier or any of the many Beyoncés I might be acquainted with from college.
On one hand, I was angry at Debora for spreading the rumor that I bought her such an outrageous gift, which I could now see made me look like a frivolous psychopath. On the other hand, I was pissed that I’d outed myself to Hollice—now she knew my Birkin was a fake. Why had Debora put me in such an uncomfortable position? Hadn’t she suspected that lying to Uzo would get back to her? Was she that desperate for approval?
I glanced down at my phone, which was flashing me a notification that Debora had arrived at her destination. After hearing Hollice’s story, I didn’t know what to believe: Did she really get dropped off at the hospital? Was her grandmother really sick? Was she even alive?
Hollice encouraged me to set the record straight with Debora when she returned. She also promised she would make things right with her friend Beyoncé. I smiled weakly, as Hollice whipped out her phone and shot someone a text.
“You’re all good.” She looked back up at me and smiled. “I know you really don’t want rumors like that going around, but do try to be empathetic when you speak to Debora. Put yourself in her position,” Hollice said as she grabbed her things to go. (Probably to Beyoncé’s house.)
Debora returned five hours later. She smelled like roast beef and strawberry shake as she explained that, mercifully, Grandma would have to spend only one more night in the hospital before coming home. Apparently, she’d made a full recovery. I probed deeper, asking questions I suspected she wouldn’t be able to answer. But the more I pushed, the more elaborate her story grew.
“So you’re saying it was a stroke?” I asked.
“They thought so…but now maybe not. Since I was in my baby-nurse scrubs they mistook me for a real nurse and had me scrub in to help. I wasn’t gonna stop them, since I wanted to be there if anything happened to Grammy. But at the end of
the day, I think it was just a love tap from the Lord. A wake-up call for the whole family, you know?”
“No. I don’t know,” I said sharply, sitting on a bar stool at my laptop, on the verge of making five nonreturnable purchases I was sure to regret.
Debora was unfazed by my frustration. “Uzo called and I made her FaceTime me so she could see me in an SUV. I’m really styling now! Big-time baby nurse, say whaa?” she asked the empty room rhetorically.
I spun around on my bar stool, ready to confront Debora, when I stopped myself. Her face was giddy with joy. She pranced around the room with pride. In that moment I knew exactly why she’d lied—not about Grandma but about the bag. It was the same reason I covered my scar when Hollice came over. I wanted to appear cool, confident, and more like her—or at least how I pictured her.
Maybe Debora and I were the same—okay, she was a tad more pathological and a dash more religious. But at our core, we both just wanted to feel like we were good enough. I understood her feelings of inadequacy too well to be the one to call her out.
Confronting Debora about her lie would only humiliate her. Fake or not, the bag was providing her with some kind of defense against her own inadequacies. Debora wanted the baby-nurse world to think she was good enough to work for some Birkin-buying billionaire the same way I wanted Hollice to believe I had a flawless forehead capable of landing me a Neutrogena campaign. I didn’t need to put myself in Debora’s shoes to understand her need to feel worthy. I was in those shoes every day. I thought about Hollice and what insecurities she secretly harbored. I replayed our visit in my head, wondering if she felt the need to prove anything to me. Maybe she wasn’t even friends with Beyoncé. Maybe the B she texted in her phone was actually Bai Ling. I’d likely never know.
As Debora’s dancing slowed, I began to see her in a different light. She wasn’t ready to accept everything about herself and neither was I. We were both still striving to be something more, something better. And while I knew I couldn’t fight her battles for her, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt anyone if I affected the outcome of a few small ones.
