Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  Mom wasn’t home. She hung up and played back messages.

  “Becca? It’s Gingher Wyatt. Larry Levine’s friend? Remember me? Larry gave me your number. Listen, I’m moving back East—which means I’m quitting my lovely job! Which means I need to find someone to replace me and thought maybe you would be interested. She doesn’t pay much because Viv Wembley’s a cheap cunt—ha!—and of course you would have to interview, which is always fun depending on what mood the lovely and talented Ms. Wembley is in—but I have a feeling she would really like you. Anyway, I already talked you up with her and she thought the look-alike thing was a crack-up. (I hope it’s OK I said that’s what you sometimes do.) She was laughin it up, which means she was probably completely loaded. Hey, were you at a birthday party at the Colony once? Cause Viv said something about a Drew look-alike being there a while back or whenever. I think it really got her nipples hard. I’m kidding. Anyway, I don’t want to use up your entire machine for this message, so if you’re interested in gainful employment call my cell, 892-3311. Three-ten. The good part is, if she likes you she’ll just hire you cause she’s weird that way. But really good—I mean, the part of her that’s trusting is good. Oh my God, it is so like the best part! Call me! Ciao for now!”

  Out of Hospital

  SHE NAMED THE boy Siddhama Kitchener McCadden. He was in the neonatal ICU for a month. Once he was able to breast-feed, Lisanne gave him her teat every two and a half hours. She did that for ten weeks.

  Reggie said she could come back whenever she felt strong and that it’d be fun having a newborn around the office (he had one of his own). The man was a saint. She was even visited by Wendy, Reggie’s wife. Mrs. Marck was on the board of a home for unwed moms, and suddenly, after all these years, she reached out. They sent flowers and sweet-tooth care packages and messenger-delivered all kinds of handy sundries. Wendy even sent her reflexologist to give Lisanne a foot massage.

  The Loewensteins became unofficial godparents. Roslynn arranged for a cleaning lady and a nanny too so that Lisanne wouldn’t be entirely housebound. They got her an amazing stroller and a $2,500 gift certificate at Fred Segal Baby. The studio sent over a ton of crazy reality shows and DVDs, and Tiff wrote Lisanne notes urging her to heal quickly so that he could exploit her natural-born talent as an award-show “walker.” “So many tributes,” he wrote, in surprisingly elegant cursive, “so little time.”

  She finally got the gumption to invite Philip to her apartment (that’s what she called him once the baby was born, as if to formalize and atone). Lisanne was generally mortified at having concealed her condition: in retrospect, she felt duplicitous even though the word wasn’t accurate. If the pregnancy had been unreal to her, how could she have made it real enough to have shared with Philip? She fruitlessly wondered if she might somehow have been forced to tell him the truth if only she had started to show. Maybe she’d have told him it was a fibroid tumor or just cut him off and fled. All she knew was that by hiding it from him, she had caused Philip tremendous pain. If she’d simply been honest (Lisanne used the word simply in her head and had to laugh), it probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal. She had become pregnant as the result of a fling with an old boyfriend—in the wake of her father’s death, no less, which actually, among excuses, was pretty much close to perfection—and couldn’t imagine Philip not being understanding. And if he wasn’t, so be it. Lisanne was frankly surprised that he still wanted her in his life at all. (He did, according to Roslynn.) She genuinely liked him, even if the physical attraction wasn’t there, though a selfish concupiscence lay in Lisanne’s suspicions that he got off on her obesity. She really did like the part of him that seemed damaged, the part that forced him to remain a goofy bachelor, the murky part he kept hidden—not so much that he was afraid to reveal himself but that he didn’t possess the language. She also enjoyed the part that was kind and inquisitive and gentlemanly, too.

  “I should have told you a long time ago,” she said.

  “It really doesn’t matter.”

  He hadn’t been able to look in her eyes. He watched Sidd nurse instead. Philip’s glance furtively darted from suckling teat to Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Wheel and back; from suckling teat to plastic hangie thing above the crib; from suckling teat to the proximity of Lisanne’s pale, implacable brow.

  “But it does. It does matter. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “I do. I guess that I was, just, really confused.” Pause. “I’ve been confused about a lot of things lately. When I got pregnant, everything, just, kicked into overdrive. It’s probably a cliché to blame it on hormones, but I think maybe it’s true. Or partially. Maybe totally! I kind of ‘unhinged.’ I’m glad I’m not one of those women who drown their kids in the tub! I could be, but—anyway, I’m not, and I’m just, I’m just really sorry, Philip—that I didn’t talk to you. I mean, about it. And I think another issue is that I really kind of really like you. Being with you. Maybe more than like. Which is unusual for me. I hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable because I know it’s crazy what I did. Not talking about it with anyone, especially you. (But it wasn’t just you.) And I’m not trying to justify it. I think part of me was in shock. Disbelief. At the timing. You know? And it’s weird because I think I knew that I would never carry it to term. Which I ultimately didn’t. And maybe part of me thought that if I told you, you would have just run. I know that sounds like bullshit because I’m the one who was running. And I probably would have too if I were you. But you didn’t—or you haven’t. Yet. And that shocks me! Scares me but in a good way. I think. I mean, I’m just really kind of impressed. By that. Is any of this making sense?”

  “Are you still involved with the father?”

  “No,” she said, emphatically. “I never was! That’s what’s so ludicrous. He doesn’t even know. I haven’t told him—”

  “You haven’t told him?”

  “I called a few months ago to say I was pregnant. When I knew I was going to keep it.” She got tearful. “Philip . . . I’m going to be thirty-eight. I think that was definitely part of why I decided to go ahead and have it, knowing there wouldn’t be a dad. Because Robbie Sarsgaard is not dad material. Then you came along—”

  She wondered if she had spoken too much. Lisanne wasn’t sure why she’d said half of what she did (she realized she’d been talking like someone in a melodrama) but was pretty sure she meant most all of it.

  “Well, listen,” said Philip. She sighed deeply, ready for the Dear Jane. “I’ve been thinking—and I know this sounds, whatever it sounds. Here’s—well, this is just what’s been going on in my head. I have a house in Rustic Canyon. I have this house. There’s a bunch of rooms, mostly empty, except for the little part I live in. But you—if you wanted—could come stay. You’d have a full-time nanny and whatever you and the baby needed. You wouldn’t be alone, Lisanne. And that would make me more at ease.”

  She broke into sobs. He lurched forward, kissing her neck. It felt bruising, and the skin there got sweaty and hot. Then it happened, like a dream, head sinking down to breast while the infant worked beside him, Philip’s face beet red as they sucked and panted in tandem. He chewed hard on the already tender nipple, and Lisanne cried out as he quickly turned away, mouth open in a creamy, spastic glower as he came, lips fixed in a hellish hobbyist’s grin, shamed and sated. His entire body quickly shrank in retreat, as if dissolving into an aerosol of corpuscles soon to finely speckle the walls before passing, microbe-like, through board and stucco to emerge on the other side, evaporating in the noonday sun.

  A Successful Interview

  “IS YOUR CAR INSURED?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re gonna need to send a photocopy of proof of insurance to my business manager. Cause if you hit someone, I’m responsible. People love to sue a celebrity.”

  She sat in the living room of her new boss’s Beachwood Canyon home. The Together star had moved in just a few
years ago, and Becca made a mental note to go on-line and see if the transaction was ever listed in “Hot Property.” She was curious how much Viv had paid and which celebs if any had lived there prior. She enjoyed researching pedigree and provenance. The high-roofed concrete house sat on five acres; Becca felt like she was in Griffith Park. It was awesome, if a bit modern for her taste—not really in keeping with the surrounding environment. Architecturally, the place definitely had a “Kit” vibe and she bet he had influenced the purchase.

  She wondered if the actress had been planning to move in with him once they got married. Now that things were up in the air, she’d probably stay put. But you never knew—sometimes celebrities changed properties just because they could. The great thing about having so much money was, you could ditch everything at a moment’s notice and check into any five-star hotel you liked. You could lease at the Colony or buy a ranch in Ojai or Idaho or Wyotana or wherever. Celebrities were always moving, sometimes upsizing, sometimes downsizing, but mostly they upsized. Still, Becca prided herself on being able to read between the lines of “Hot Property” blurbs to intuit when celebs were unloading because they needed cash—a sure sign being when a home was described as having been sold because so-and-so (faded rocker/older comedian/onetime game-show host) “found he wasn’t spending that much time in Los Angeles” or so-and-so (forties film star/fiftysomething model with fledgling cosmetics line/Broadway icon) exchanged her house for a Century City condo because “her children were now in college.” Anything going for under a million was another sign of trouble, though sometimes the charming “first home purchase” (usually Studio City or Silverlake) was inserted by the wily publicist of a young and up-and-coming USA or WB series star. Becca noticed that if a house was sold at more or less the same amount it was bought for, that was another sign of a celeb on the skids. All that being a far cry from the rarefied strata of perennially housenivorous dinosaurs like Stallone or Willis or Schwarzenegger, who still bought multiple lots (and even whole towns) with impunity, tearing down mansions so as to surround themselves with the luxury of undeveloped land. “Hot Property” said that Schwarzenegger and his wife had been looking for a place to stay while their home was being redone but couldn’t find “a suitable lease”—and wound up buying a place for $12 million instead, which they planned to sell upon completion of the makeover. Becca’s mom couldn’t believe it.

  “My business manager will have a confidentiality thing for you to sign. And they’ll probably run a background check. Ever been to jail?” Viv said, with a laugh.

  “Not that I know of!”

  “They’ll need a urine sample, for drug testing.” She saw that Becca was taking her seriously and laughed again. “I’m kidding! We’ll have fun. It won’t be so bad, contrary to whatever horror stories I’m sure Gingher told you.”

  “She said it was really great,” said Becca unconvincingly. “That you were great!” Viv only smirked. “I just really want to thank you,” she went on, in earnest. “I have so much respect for you. I’ve watched your show from the beginning. I always wanted to model myself on you.”

  “You’re not going to All About Eve me, are you?”

  “No!” said Becca, not knowing what the actress meant.

  “Anyway,” said Viv, impishly. “You’re not Eve Harrington, you’re Drew Junior. Which one’s worse?”

  Becca was too nervous to respond directly. “I just wanted to say that I’m going to do a great job for you. I am so motivated.”

  “Good,” said Viv, tartly. She lit a cigarette. “But I want to warn you: if you have a conflict—an audition or a whatever—and you can’t do what I ask you to do in that particular moment, that is so not going to work. OK? If I need you to go to Rexall for Tampax or pick up a tape or a script—messengers do that most of the time—and you happen to have a fourth callback for Steven Soderbergh’s amazing new film at the same time, uh, guess which one you’re going to do if you want to keep your job.”

  “I totally understand.”

  “So were you and Gingher big buddies?”

  “Not really. We met through a friend.”

  “You like her?”

  “She’s nice.”

  “I think she stole from me.”

  “Money?”

  “Oh yeah. Lots of it. But that’s not your problem. I’m not even sure whose problem it is because I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it. And I’d appreciate your not passing on that bit of information. What we say here, stays here.”

  Viv stood up as the Pilates teacher came from the back of the house in readiness.

  “Do you have my business manager’s address?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then see you Monday, Becca,” said Viv, shaking her hand.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Call me V. Don’t call me Viv.”

  Home Away from Home

  SADGE WAS BACK. He i-mailed someone in Europe while Becca flipped through a magazine. They were smoking weed.

  Drew was number 61 on Premiere magazine’s Power List, but Sadge didn’t seem to give a shit. She was wedged between Michael Bay and Sandra Bullock. The tiny paragraph said that Drew “painted the living room of her new bachelorette pad a tawny color called Naturally Calm” and that her boutique production company was called Flower Films. Sandra’s paragraph informed that her company was Fortis Films. Becca said that she was going to have her own boutique one day too. Sadge kept taking hits off the joint and i-mailing. Becca thought, Probably someone he was fucking. A backpacking Serbian skeev. Blue Ridge Films, she said out loud. That’s a pretty name. But maybe she needed an F, like Drew and Sandra. “Fast Forward” popped into her head. Fast Forward Films was cute! Or Pass/Fail. That was really good. She asked Sadge what he thought but he wouldn’t talk.

  Sadge had diarrhea, something he’d picked up in the Canary Islands and couldn’t shake. A little bonus from the skeev-hump. Plus, he had some kind of worm in his foot. The doctor said the way you killed the worm was by freezing. You didn’t even try to extract it. It gave Sadge the willies to just leave it in there, and Becca thought that was why he seemed underwhelmed when she told him she got the Viv Wembley gig. Maybe he was just jealous.

  She slowly chewed an overdone cheese melt. It was too soon to talk about his moving out; she didn’t want to kick him while he was down. She read aloud another item, clipped from the L.A. Times for her “Drew archives,” about the former actor John Barrymore III getting beat up inside his “upscale Mountain View” home by a bunch of crazed teenagers who were after his pot stash. She wondered how Drew and John III were related—a half brother? Then she told Sadge about how she met this adorable young actress at the Coffee Bean who had actually grown up in the house where Drew and Tom Green lived before it went up in flames. The girl said her dad used to be Marlon Brando’s agent, and back then the property had four or five different houses on it. One of them was underground, with windows peeking through the hill—very Alice in Wonderland. Without looking up from his i-mail, Sadge said, “Would you please shut up?” Becca blithely ignored him. The girl said they had a screening room, and the mom, who was a painter, had fashioned a studio from inside a famous hamburger stand on La Brea that the dad bought lock, stock, and barrel and had trucked onto the grounds. The girl said she cried when the house burned down but then Ben Affleck had apparently bought the parcel and the girl and her dad drove by and all kinds of construction was already being done. Sadge literally threw his sandwich at her, and Becca burst into tears. She told him he could go fuck himself and that he wasn’t even supposed to be here, that he was supposed to find someplace else to live, and Sadge stopped typing, then sulked in that simmering way a man has of signaling a woman he is not a little boy but a coiled snake who by rights could rape and kill her if it weren’t for the fact that he was a good person, a good man, who conscientiously exercised extraordinary sobriety, discipline, and restraint. And that one day she would see with what wisdom he had held himself back and would r
ecognize her shrewish ways but by then it would be too late.

  She tossed some things into an overnight bag and cried all the way to the car. She was on her way to Annie’s, but Annie didn’t answer any of her phones so Becca took Fairfax to Washington and then turned and headed for the beach.

  The World of Mu

  LISANNE MOVED TO Rustic Canyon. The house was empty except for the few rooms Philip inhabited, just as he described. She had her own wing. Mattie took Lisanne on a Beverly-Melrose furniture outing and spent a small fortune. She liked the idea of finally having an excuse to decorate her eccentric brother’s house. She couldn’t have been kinder if Siddhama had been her blood nephew.

  Philip put thirty thousand dollars into an account for her to draw on for living expenses and whatever Sidd might need. They had sex twice a week. He liked taking her pants off and licking her there while she nursed. She remained passive, simply widening her legs. Anything he ever did made him come within a few minutes. He told her it had always been like that, he couldn’t hold it, and Lisanne said she didn’t mind, which she really didn’t. She was actually grateful. Philip became active only when the baby was nursing. As long as he did his business without involving Siddhama, she was OK with it. He drew comfort from her easeful indifference. That she never judged him made him less ashamed.

  • • •

  LISANNE RECEIVED AN e-mail from L.A. Dharma, a Buddhist Web site she corresponded with, announcing that a great teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, would be giving a series of talks at a Zen monastery in the West Adams area. She didn’t know those kinds of places even existed, locally. Something about his name looked familiar, so she confirmed on-line that Kit had once spent time at the Mount Baldy center where the roshi lived. He was almost a hundred years old.