—
PULLING UP to a West Hollywood hot spot called Laurel Hardware, I feel expansive and fancy, in the flow of La-La life. In that spirit, I decide to pay the twelve bucks to valet, denying WeHo the joy of towing my car for a third time. The hostess leads me to a woodsy, romantic patio lit by strands of white bulbs woven through delicate, boxed olive trees. At French wicker tables, twenty- and thirtysomething guys in porkpie hats with bushy beards and girls wearing spiked gladiator sandals sip cocktails and push food around their plates.
Helena is sitting straight-backed at the best table in the house, right in the center of the beatific, buzzing crowd. As she watches me approach, her face is composed, the full moon lighting her artfully streaked, shoulder-length hair. She looks a little older than she did in her pictures, but then, so do I. She stands as I approach the table. I love her height, which is five-ten, as advertised. Helena puts out her hand, as if this is a business meeting. We shake.
A young waitress with Amy Winehouse hair materializes tableside. “Hey, are you a rock star?” she asks Helena. I examine the girl’s smooth face for irony. I find none. “You look like a rocker,” she adds.
Helena seems pleased. “I just play one on TV.”
The server squints at her.
“Kidding,” Helena says. “Meredith, what would you like?”
So she is planning to pay. Thank goddess, girl-chivalry is not dead.
I order a Manhattan. Helena orders sparkling water. “We’ll have the Brussels sprouts,” Helena tells our server, “and a beet salad for the table.” She puts the menu down. “We’ll decide about the rest in a bit.”
My Manhattan, paired with Helena’s self-confidence, smooths my nervous edges, and soon the two of us are talking and laughing again. We order ribs and salmon and a bunch of side dishes. It’s fun, ordering too much food. It reminds me of every restaurant meal I ever had with my dad. When I raise my eyebrows at the cavalcade of plates arriving at our table, Helena even says what my dad used to say. “You can take the leftovers home.”
“Why do I get the leftovers?” I ask her.
“I don’t eat them,” she answers. “And I have a feeling you’re the leftovers type.”
Is that an anti-Semitic dig? I don’t think so. I think Helena’s perceptive. This date is going really well. I chug my second Manhattan, wondering when Helena will kiss me. It’s kind of spoiling the fun, the wondering. I want to get it over with. I think of the scene in Annie Hall when Alvy Singer kisses Annie under a lamppost on their way to dinner, “So now we can digest our food.” I order another Manhattan. And then I reach my hands across the table and I pull Helena’s face to mine and I kiss her.
Helena jerks her head away. “We’re in public,” she says.
“So?”
“So I’m a private person.”
“Are you saying that because we’re women?” I ask, aware that I’m trying to provoke her, to distract us both from my embarrassment.
I consider apologizing. But then I’d be apologizing for what I want. And if there’s one good thing about being my age and single and pre-heartbroken, it’s not having to apologize for what I want.
Conversation resumes. Helena seems unrattled. My third Manhattan renders me incapable of being rattled. Helena grabs the check from our server before I can even make a purse-swipe. “Can I leave the tip, at least?” I ask.
“Absolutely not,” Helena says.
“Well, thank you,” I say, and in that moment I feel our dynamic forming. I’ll be the starving artist, she’ll be the bountiful businesswoman. She’ll be the reasonable grown-up, I’ll be the impetuous child. She’ll be the kisser, if indeed there is to be kissing. I’ll be the kissed, when she chooses to kiss me.
I follow Helena to the valet stand. Her ass looks great in her skinny jeans.
Under the light of the valet stand, Helena scrutinizes my face. “Are you okay to drive? I can get you an Uber, and you can pick up your car tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Helena shrugs, shaking her pretty head. “Your call. Give me your valet ticket.”
She hands my ticket and hers to the valet guy, along with a ten-dollar bill. This woman is way above my pay grade, and I like it. She’s got money, and she’s got class.
Helena gives me a stiff, brief hug and slides behind the wheel of a late-model black Mercedes coupe. She doesn’t leave until my car arrives and I’m safely tucked into the driver’s seat.
Driving home, I decide that Helena will never call me again, thanks to my grabby move. At least the date was good practice.
My phone rings as I walk through my front door. “Just making sure you got home safely,” Helena says.
More girl-chivalry! I like it. “I hope we can see each other again,” I say. There’s something about this woman that makes me feel safe and secure, and those are some feelings I’ve been really wanting to have.
“I’d like that,” Helena says distantly. Despite her lack of enthusiasm, a few days later I call and invite her to be my plus one at a friend’s book launch party at the ultra-posh West Hollywood Soho House.
“I’ll go on one condition,” Helena says. “Do you think you can behave yourself this time?”
Behave myself? If a man said that to me, I’d read him the feminist riot act. But coming from Helena’s mouth, it sounds affectionate. Admiring, almost. And very adult.
“What’s so bad about bad behavior?” I say. I’m going for flirty, but I hear myself sounding like an impish child instead.
“Three words,” Helena answers. “D. U. I.”
“I’ll behave,” I promise. Helena’s ten years younger than I am, but she seems older. I like that.
I kind of hoped Helena would be at least a bit intimidated by the party—its exclusive venue, its guest list, the fact that I was invited to it. No such luck. She shows up at Soho House in her glossy black car wearing a tight black miniskirt and black high-heeled boots that make her a full head taller than I am. “I brought out the legs,” she says, stating the obvious. As we enter the elegantly appointed room, she tells me, “Go do your networking. Don’t worry about me. I know how to have fun at a party.”
So she does. Helena circulates among the glitterati, ignoring the lavish spread (always my first stop and main attraction), refusing the proffered cocktails, chatting with household-name writers and publicists. Twice I check in with her to find a writer friend of mine in the process of telling Helena that I’ve recently had my heart broken, and that if Helena hurts me, she’ll be run out of town, or worse. Smiling her confident smile, Helena tells one and then the other friend not to worry. “Your friend is in good hands. I promise.” Hearing this sends a little shiver of delight through my heavily Spanxed body.
—
HELENA AND I text incessantly through the week. She’s a little heavy on the emoticons and LOLs, but bantering with her is fun. And she’s so there. I feel like I can make mistakes and she won’t disappear. It seems unlikely that she’s looking for a threesome or a quick fuck. Weeks go by, and she makes zero moves, and it starts to seem unlikely that she’s looking for a twosome or any kind of fuck.
A bit more gently this time, I take matters into my own hands. I invite Helena to hike a trail near her house on Sunday, and use that excuse to invoke the L.A. Rule: geography trumps all. As we’re slogging down the dusty path toward the trail head parking lot, I tell her that driving long distances gives me a backache, which is true, and I ask if I can spend the night at her place after our hike, to break up the one-hour trip, which is not true.
“Sure,” Helena says with zero affect.
Gulp. So I’ve got myself a girl who doesn’t respond well to sexual aggression or sexual subtext. That doesn’t leave me many options. I’m scrambling to come up with a winning strategy as I follow Helena to her place, a midcentury ranch house, fronted by manicured ferns and a p
urple statice hedge, bright green grass, immaculate porch, spotless sidewalk, someone’s suburban dream come true.
“We painted our front door red, too,” I say, standing next to Helena on the porch, looking for common ground, nervously waiting for her to turn her key in the lock. “My wife and I, I mean,” I add.
I regret my words as soon they leave my mouth. Saying “my wife” as I’m trying to take someone else to bed feels like spitting glass.
Helena doesn’t seem to have heard me. She walks around the pitch-dark living room, opening drapes and shutters. The room is sparsely decorated, with velvet chairs and couches in interesting, vaguely vintage colors and shapes.
Helena carries my overnight bag into a small, dark bedroom. “Fresh towels,” she says, pointing to a neatly stacked, fluffy pile on the brown bedspread. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
WTF? “Um. Is this the guest room?” I ask her.
Helena nods.
“You want me to sleep in the guest room?”
For the first time, I see discomfort on Helena’s face. “I thought you’d like to have your own space.”
Helena is from Mars, I think. I’m from Venus. How is this ever going to work? “You think I drove to Sherman Oaks for space?”
“I was just being courteous,” Helena says.
Courteous? Who even uses that word? What does that word even mean?
Helena and I stare at each other across the miles of sky between our respective planets.
“I guess I misunderstood.” I pick up my overnight bag.
“Don’t be such a drama queen.” Helena takes my bag out of my hands and beckons me to follow her to her bedroom. Outside the windows is a kidney-shaped swimming pool surrounded by a neat row of bird-of-paradise, their orange-and-purple faces leering at the turquoise tile. Helena sits on the edge of the king-sized bed and pats the Frette duvet cover next to her. “Okay, then. Come here.”
Fortunately, sex with Helena is less traumatic than sex with Maya was. Unfortunately, sex with Helena isn’t very . . . sexy. First time is never the best, I tell myself. And she’s beautiful, with baby-soft skin.
Helena falls asleep curled around me, her arm across my chest. As the hours tick by, I lie on my back with my eyes wide open and my heart pounding, waiting for dawn, trying to will an Ambien out of my bag and into my mouth. Finally the room lightens; the sky turns the swimming pool pink. Helena sits up and pulls on the T-shirt I pulled off her last night. “Coffee? Tea?” she says.
“Tea, please,” I say.
I hear a kettle whistling and I smell bread toasting and then Helena appears in the doorway in her Rag & Bone T-shirt and her long legs and nothing else, carrying two plates of scrambled eggs and avocado toast and a mug of Earl Grey tea. She hands me my plate and settles into bed next to me.
Staring down at my plate, I realize that, with rare exceptions, no lover has ever brought me breakfast in bed. Not my boyfriends, not my husband, not my girlfriend, not my wife. Not my wife!
How have I lived this long making breakfast in bed for every lover I’ve ever had, and none of them, until this morning, has ever done that for me?
Is it possible that Helena is different from my wife not only in ways that make me sad, but also in ways that could make me happy?
I decide to stay at Helena’s until it’s warm enough for a swim. Helena clicks on the TV, turns on America’s Top Model. “My guilty pleasure,” she says, eyes glued to the screen. Weird, I think, and I eat my breakfast, savoring every bite.
—
SUDDENLY I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND.
True to the lesbian stereotype—“What do lesbians bring to their second date? A U-Haul”—Helena starts sleeping over at the Bungalito several nights a week. It’s good for both of us. I get to sleep with her, and she cuts half of her commute to the seven a.m. “click-in” at SoulCycle in Beverly Hills.
I clear a couple of drawers for Helena’s Invisalign trays and her backup SoulCycle sweats and Prada sunglasses. I stock her fat-free yogurt and her fresh-ground peanut butter in my fridge. I learn to spread my homemade orange marmalade paper-thin on her 80-calorie Ezekiel toast. Weeknights we sleep in Silver Lake. Weekends we hang out at her house, eating takeout, watching TV, floating in her pool.
Except for that first sleepless night in Helena’s bed, for reasons I don’t understand, I sleep more deeply than I ever have when Helena spoons me all night. On Sundays she picks me up after my Al-Anon meeting and we take the 101 to the 110 to the 10 to the 405 to the Westside to meet her sister for a two-hour ocean-view hike. Helena and her sister are very grown-up—sunscreened and REI-attired, successful, financially secure, their closets full of pumps and skirt suits, primed for affluent retirements. Sometimes, chugging up the mountain between them with my bare, sun-spotted face and my thrift-store yoga pants, I feel like a child on a nature outing with her parents.
My fridge dies, and Helena sends me a link for the perfect replacement. My laptop crashes, and she drives from Sherman Oaks to Silver Lake to lend me hers. Helena’s a businesswoman, but she loves that I’m a writer, and she loves my writer’s life and my writer friends, and she loves my writing. When I get home from a month at an artists’ colony she begs to read the terrible first draft of my new novel, a draft not even my agent has seen. I leave her at the Bungalito, reading, and go out to get my nails done so I don’t hang over her, watching her face. While I’m sitting in the salon’s vibrating chair, my phone keeps lighting up with texts from Helena, screenshots of the paragraphs she loves most.
For our first Christmas I give Helena a silly wool hat for “chilly” SoulCycle mornings. She gives me La Perla lingerie. She makes me a set of keys to her house and I make her a set of keys to mine. She invites me to spend days writing beside her pool, and on those days she fills her fridge with my favorite treats. When my frozen East Coast friends come to town for a book tour or a Southern California thaw-out, Helena buys good steaks and good booze and throws them pool parties and goes to their events and buys multiple copies of their books.
—
HELENA PRIDES HERSELF on not having had “work done.” But one night she shows up at the Bungalito looking several years younger than she did two nights earlier. When I comment on that, she tells me that a nurse friend came over for dinner and injected some filler into her cheeks.
“You got shots? In your face?”
“Of course I did. Everyone you know gets filler and Botox. You think Darcy was born with those lips? Didn’t you ever notice that Lolly’s forehead never moves?”
Helena squints at my face. “You could get rid of those laugh lines, you know,” she says.
“I’m never doing that. I earned my wrinkles. I’m not getting shots in my face to hide them.”
“Okay, Berkeley.” Helena calls me “Berkeley” whenever I express an opinion that’s more radical than hers, which happens pretty much all the time. “Trust me,” she says. “It’s only a matter of time.”
I’ve always been overly influenced by my lovers, one of many bad habits I’m trying to break this time around. Despite my best intentions, though, I can’t seem to stop staring into the mirror, pulling back the loose skin on my face to see what I’d look like without those laugh lines. I start asking my friends if they’ve had filler or Botox. Except for Charlotte, every one of them confesses to that and more.
Gorgeous forty-year-old Darcy tells me she stops by her dermatologist’s office for “booster shots” at least once a month “on my way home from Whole Foods.” Forty-five-year-old Geneen, a women’s empowerment coach, tells me she’s been getting Botox since she was twenty-seven. Lolly flips through her phone and shows me photos of her neck before and after surgery. Even Hannah confesses to having had a face-lift at age forty-five, when she was working in Hollywood, “sitting in writers’ rooms full of thirty-year-olds.”
I Google “feminism and plastic surg
ery” and discover, to my mortification, that Gloria Steinem has had what she describes as “a little nip/tuck.”
“A few years ago, during a brief stint hosting the Today show on NBC,” The Guardian reported in November 2011, “she had a little fat removed from around her eyes so, as she once put it, ‘I didn’t look like Mao Tse-tung and I could wear my contacts.’” But she looked worse afterward, which confirmed Steinem’s decision not to have more extensive surgery. “And what I care about is the message, and I realize that if I had plastic surgery, it would just distract people. It would be like having a bad toupee; they wouldn’t listen.”
In 2009, the National Organization for Women, which once campaigned against plastic surgery, reversed its position. “Middle-aged women are struggling to compete in the job market,” NOW president Terry O’Neill told The Nation, “and cosmetic surgery can help them appeal to employers.”
In my favorite “aging humorously” memoir, I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50, I find this.
“It wasn’t until I hit forty that I started to look at my face critically,” author Annabelle Gurwitch writes, and I think, Forty? Apparently I’m twenty years late. No wonder Helena’s on my case. “I’ve had things injected in my face that I wouldn’t clean my house with.”
Of her decision to surrender to the knife, Gurwitch writes, “It only took forty minutes to take out the bags I had spent forty years accumulating . . . I wrestled with a case of buyer’s remorse. Had I tampered with an essential part of myself?”
Gurwitch’s reflections don’t scare me off. I’ve spent the past couple of years deliberately tampering with—and becoming more intimate with—inner parts of myself, so the thought of tampering with the outside doesn’t worry me as much as it might.
Once I know what’s keeping not only my beautiful friends but also my feminist icons beautiful, I can’t un-know it. If it works for them, politics notwithstanding, why would I deprive myself of putting it to work for me?
Of all my “fixed” friends, Lolly is closest to my age, and her “work” looks the most natural, so I make an appointment with her plastic surgeon, whose office is on Rodeo Drive.
The New Old Me Page 17
