Lala had been enjoying looking at her story in a new light.
“I’m thinking of it as a coming-of-age novel,” she explained to Yootza who, if his closed eyes and limp body snuggled deep within the folds of the couch were any indication, was not a rabid fan of her work. “A coming-of-age novel with a forty-year-old protagonist. Anyway, I’m having fun with it, so I think that’s good, huh?”
In her writing, Lala returned again to thoughts of David. Her writing sessions almost always began with a message to him, all of which she kept in a folder on her laptop.
“Wonderful David, I must confess to you that I’ve been untrue in my heart. And in my imagination. In that I gave some serious time and energy to envisioning my wedding to a total douchebag. I had picked out the appetizers and had settled on two flavors for the wedding cake: white chocolate raspberry and snickerdoodle. I am not proud of myself. I hope you can forgive me. I write to you in this moment, David, as I write to you always, now, knowing that our love was doomed from the start. For you are at sea. And I am adrift.”
_______________
Geraldine had been buying her niece’s excuses about why she couldn’t go to dinner with Geraldine and Monty, or why she couldn’t go for a walk on the beach, or why she couldn’t come over to watch Casablanca. Until she stopped buying them.
“I thought it was very clear what I meant when I said Act Two! This is absolutely NOT what I had in mind when I said Act Two!”
“If I pour you a drink, will you stop yelling at me?” Lala asked. Geraldine interrupted her pacing of Lala’s kitchen only long enough to glare at Lala.
“Why aren’t you dressed? I mean, in real clothes? When was the last time you dressed in real clothes?”
Lala sighed heavily and opened a bottle of red wine.
“Well, you might as well know now. It was bound to come out at some point. I’ve decided I’m going to be a hermit. Je suis une . . . hermite, or however you say that in French. My philosophy has always been, might just as well go ahead and pronounce it with a French accent and see if that flies. Because sometimes it does. And if that’s not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.”
“Gimme that,” Geraldine barked. She grabbed a full wine glass out of Lala’s hand and downed it. “You make me so mad sometimes.”
“Well, even in your enraged state, I think you have to agree that I’ve got to start doing things differently in my life. Because clearly what I have been doing up to now has not been working.”
Geraldine abruptly turned her back to Lala and snapped open a cabinet to stick her head in.
Lala called after her.
“Come on, you can’t be so angry with me that we can’t have a nice little chat about this.”
“I need some snacks,” Geraldine huffed.
“Oh, okay,” Lala said. “That’s a great idea. There’s a ton of stuff. I just had another delivery this morning. I’ll meet you in the living room.”
She settled herself comfortably on the welcoming couch, the couch that had been her coziest and most steadfast friend in this new stage of her life. Lala nuzzled her hounds while she waited for Geraldine to join her. Geraldine entered bearing a tray heaped with chips and dips and broccoli florets. She slammed the tray on the table and then slammed herself down on the couch.
“When I said Act Two, what I had in mind was you just letting it all go and having adventures and not fretting so much . . .”
“Okay, well, in my own defense,” Lala said, “that was more implied than specifically stated. So I don’t think I can be blamed for the misunderstanding.”
“I meant that you should just say ‘what the hell,’ and you should go out and stop worrying about what other people think or say or do and just have fun . . .”
“I am having fun. I’ve started my own little philanthropic organization. I make donations online. By way of a thank you for my life which is, by any reasonable standard, entirely blessed—a word I use not in any religious reference and a word I use despite the fact that I have no expectation of ever being kissed or schtupped or of approaching anything with unbridled, unabashed, unfettered—you see where I’m going with this—joy ever again.”
Geraldine stopped slamming air-popped chips into the tub of organic, all-natural French onion dip and aggressively shoveling them into her mouth between surly gulps of her second glass of wine, which she had refilled herself because she was too ticked at Lala to ask her for anything.
“It’s your good heart,” Geraldine whispered. “It’s your good heart that makes me love you and makes me want better things for you.”
Do not start crying, Lala thought.
“Hey, if you start crying, then I will, and then what?” Lala said. “I’m fine. I’m getting a lot of writing done, and I’m really, really, really enjoying myself.”
“I’m delighted you’re enjoying yourself. Why can’t you enjoy yourself and also go outside and be involved with people and meet someone nice and get married again, and maybe we could even make it a double wedding if you hurry up, and that’s what I meant when I said Act Two. I don’t know, for some reason I’m not feeling this red wine. Let’s have champagne instead.”
Geraldine sprinted toward the kitchen.
“I’m not letting new hope into my life,” Lala said solemnly, or with as much solemnity as one can convey when one is shouting through a living room and down a hallway and into a kitchen to be heard.
I should just get up and go talk to her in the kitchen, Lala thought. Fuck it, I’m too lazy.
“I can’t let myself be disappointed again. If, as you suggest, I go out on anything but the most furtive jaunts, I will indeed see people, and I’ll most likely engage with them, as you recommend, and I’ll maybe even meet new people, which you also seem to want me to do, and I’ll start to get ideas about the future, and I can’t do that. I can’t let myself hope for anything again. I think I’m hurting my voice with all this shouting. Maybe permanently.”
Geraldine came back brandishing a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, which she proceeded to open dramatically. The cork ricocheted off the ceiling and bounced off Petunia’s tummy, which, amply cushioned by a layer of subcutaneous fat, absorbed the brunt of the assault without waking the beagle. Geraldine was ready for the overflow of the bubbly, which she gracefully gathered in one of two flutes, as she balanced everything on her way back to the couch.
“I’m sorry it took so long. I couldn’t find the Veuve because you have that refrigerator packed so damn full.”
“Life is amazing nowadays,” Lala said, smiling. “I can go on this website and order anything. I just have to check off the boxes for what I want and then stuff is brought right to me, right away. Really, I think this is a positive step for me. I’m looking at myself as a twenty-first-century Salinger. A Garbo for the New Millennium. Except without the talent and the acclaim and the cheekbones that could cut glass.”
Geraldine raised her champagne flute in a toast to her beloved niece.
“What are the last three words of The Count of Monte Cristo?” she barked.
“Shut up,” Lala said. “I knew you were going to bring up the one thing that renders my new philosophy of life to be essentially full of crap.”
“What are they?” Geraldine demanded.
“Wait and hope! Wait and hope! Okay? The last three words of The Count of Monte Cristo are the Count exhorting his young charges that all of life’s wisdom can be summed up in three words. Fucking wait and fucking hope! Okay? Are you happy now?”
Geraldine gave her niece a smug little smirk of self-righteous satisfaction.
“Well, I’m happier,” she drawled.
“I don’t care what he wrote!” Lala yelled, smiling despite herself at her aunt because her aunt loved her, and her aunt refused to give up hope, and that was both heartbreaking and delightful. “And I don’t know why I’m on the verge of g
iggling because, when you think about it, it’s very sad that I’m choosing to live without thoughts of yearnings fulfilled and probably without any yearnings themselves for the rest of my life, however long or short that may be, but I am, nonetheless, thinking Edmund Dantes and Dumas, père, should both just jump up and kiss my sans espoir tuchus, and that is giving me a chuckle despite myself and despite everything else.”
_______________
Lala hadn’t heard from Helene since what she described with her mind’s voice as “our break-up.”
Lala was both relieved to not have to deal with Helene since that last night and sad and insulted that Helene had not contacted her since their split.
And then an e-mail from Helene arrived with the subject line, “Miss you!”
Merde, Lala thought.
Lala was grateful to be on the couch surrounded by hounds when she saw the e-mail. The warm and somewhat rank presence of the old beasts was always a soothing and protective influence. Despite the moat of fur, Lala did wince as though she were being swatted in the face when she finally forced herself to open Helene’s e-mail.
“Listen,” it began.
Christ, Lala thought, I hate it when people write e-mails in that folksy, I’m-just-talkin’-to-ya, kind of style. What am I listening to? You’re writing words. So what exactly is it that I’m listening to? Your writer’s voice? Jesus.
Kelly told me all about it. Are you avoiding me because you feel ashamed? Look, it’s not algebra. One man’s meat, you know all the clichés. Let me read your script. I bet I’ll love it. Rejection isn’t easy, I know. I was rejected quite a few times when I started out. I remember a couple times when . . .
Oh, God, Lala thought. It’s a couple OF times. Jesus. Didn’t they teach you anything at Wesleyan?
Lala skimmed the paragraph about the couple things Helene remembered.
Anyway, I’m writing to tell you that I got the Paramount deal and also to say that I’m sure one day the same kind of triumph will happen for you, so I want you to take heart that it can happen, big things can happen, and I want you to share in my joy, and I won’t take no for an answer.
Well, actually, yes, you will, Lala thought. Because, what? I say “no,” and then you hit me and I’m forced to change my answer to “yes?” Nuh uh, babe.
Lala read the details about the intimate, but not small, dinner party Helene was going to be throwing in Los Angeles the following week to celebrate her conquest of the movie kingdom. Then Lala slammed her laptop shut, picked up Yootza because he was the only dog she had who was small enough to seize, and turned up the volume on Say Yes to the Dress until the voices of the consultants and customers drowned out the voices in her head.
Lala remained still on the couch, staring at but not seeing the parade of strapless white dresses on the screen, hearing but not listening to the parade of brides’ stories.
Merde, Lala finally thought when she started thinking again, an activity that was not entirely by choice and was not welcomed with complete enthusiasm. Silence implies consent. Now I have to write back to her.
Lala opened her laptop and brought up the blank page of a new Word document. She planned to write to Helene until she had nothing more left to write and, having been burned once too often before by a glitch in the ether of the Internet that made her lengthy e-mail and all its contents disappear when she hit “Send,” Lala decided to write to Helene in a document that she knew how to save on her laptop, and that she could append to her e-mail to Helene as an attachment.
“Dear Helene,” she typed.
Mmm. Looks a bit cold, Lala thought.
“Hi, Helene, thanks for your e-mail.”
“Could I come across as more insincere?” Lala asked Petunia and Yootza and Chester. “Like I’m thanking her because I’m so freakin’ happy I got her flippin’ e-mail?”
“I’m very happy for your success. I really am. But, as you’ve noticed . . .”
Lala paused.
It’s not really a “But” situation, Lala thought. It’s more of an “And” situation.
She hit the delete key and then typed anew.
“And, as you’ve noticed, I’m in a bit of a skunky place in my own life.”
My own life, Lala thought. As opposed to my someone else’s life. Christ, am I a lazy scribe or what?
Lala typed and typed and typed her heart onto the screen, and, when she was done, the Word document encompassed four single-spaced pages.
Lala scanned her work. Lala reread her work. Lala laughed aloud at her work.
Someone is taking someone’s self far too seriously, Lala thought.
Lala made a copy of the document just in case she had an aneurism and subsequently decided to embrace the overblown after all. She titled her new communication Lala.Gets.Over.Herself.But.Good.doc.
“Okay, let’s take it down several notches, shall we?” Lala asked her beloved pets, whose responsive silence, she inferred, implied a great big “Guh head.”
Lala deleted the part wherein she thanked Helene for her e-mail because it really was too insincere to stand, and then she reread the new first sentence of her missive about being happy for Helene’s success.
“I’m not sure where this is coming from,” Lala said, “but I think I’m actually genuinely happy for her. Seriously, I have no idea how that’s possible, but I think I’m not kidding her or myself about that. Okay. Onward.”
Lala once again reread all the paragraphs she had written, which, she had to admit, sounded a bit like the ravings of a madwoman, especially the part where she conveyed to Helene the truth of her sometimes-almost-impossible-to-suppress urge to delete all the files on her hard drive—everything she had ever written and every other piece of information her computer contained—which Lala likened to a despondent writer’s version of that cutting-their-own-skin thing that she had read teenagers did in alarming numbers.
Lala held her index finger down on the delete key until nothing remained on the screen but the salutation and the good wishes. And then she began typing again.
I really do wish I could go to your dinner party, but I just can’t. I will be celebrating with you in spirit. In a spirit form of me that is stronger than the actual me is right now. I hope you understand.
_______________
“Open up, please, dear,” Geraldine yelled from the other side of Lala’s front door. “I know you’re in there.”
Duh, Sherlock, Lala thought. I more or less never go anywhere, so, yeah, duh, I’m in here. Big fat A-plus on the deductive reasoning.
Lala opened the door and greeted her aunt with a welcoming smile.
“Look who’s with you!” she said.
Standing next to Geraldine and sporting a grin both sheepish and bemused, was their neighbor Thomas Gallagher, a.k.a. Salman Rushdie. Geraldine had her arm tightly entwined with Thomas’s, and she plowed into Lala’s apartment towing him closely.
“Salman, I’m sorry, Thomas, knows everything about you being a hermit and the rest of everything you’re doing to your life, which is absolutely not what I had in mind when I said the Act Two of your life, except the part about the grassroots, de facto philanthropic organization, which I think is so lovely and kind that I get teary whenever I think about it. Don’t even get me started right now.”
Geraldine made dramatic air quotation marks with one of her arms still violently hooked through Thomas’s, so that he was lifted slightly onto his tiptoes as she raised her four fingers to frame the ensuing proper noun.
“‘Thomas’ would like to talk to you about courage,” Geraldine announced.
Geraldine released Thomas, and he wobbled slightly from unexpectedly being at large. He caught his footing and stood there as Geraldine smiled at him with wide-open, encouraging eyes and with her head bobbing nonstop.
“Go on, honey,” Geraldine trilled. “Speak the truth. T
ell her what it’s really like.”
Cool, Lala thought. This oughta be good.
“Well,” Thomas began. And then he dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Geraldine’s face was, instantly and without any previous training in the theatrical arts, a textbook example of how to show a changing range of emotions and make your audience believe you’re genuinely experiencing each distinct and contrasting feeling. She looked perplexed. What is Salman up to? And then her twisted mouth and scrunched right eye of confusion seamlessly morphed into the raised chin and open mouth of comprehending skepticism. I’m thinking Salman’s up to something and maybe it’s no good. Finally, that stance became the semi-closed eyes and sucked-in upper lip of compassionate understanding.
“That’s nervous energy,” Geraldine whispered to Lala.
Of course it is, Lala thought. God, this is great.
She hugged her aunt and smiled at Thomas.
“You were saying?”
“It’s . . . It’s just that . . .” Thomas stammered.
“He had a FATWA on his keppie, for the love of God!” Geraldine screeched. “He went out with a FATWA on his KEPPIE, for the LOVE of GOD! And now that the FATWA has been removed or whatever you do to a FATWA—cancelled, rescinded, I don’t know what they call it when the fatwa stops—he can look back and maybe agree that it was nuts of him to go anywhere with a FATWA hanging over him. But that’s courage. Crazy courage.”
Geraldine paused dramatically and puffed herself up. Lala and Thomas looked down at the floor and waited, trying desperately not to giggle.
“And you,” Geraldine began, glaring down her nose at Lala who, thankfully for the sake of the effect, was much shorter than her aunt. “You have no excuse. No excuse for acting like a crazy person in cotton. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.”
There was another dramatic pause. Lala and Thomas wondered if Geraldine had concluded her remarks. They made the mistake of lifting their eyes but not their heads at the same time and catching a glimpse of each other. They both, then, did a mediocre job of trying to cover up their giggle fits by pretending they were, in fact, coughing jags.
Lala Pettibone's Act Two Page 19
