by Jane Porter
“Good things come when we least expect it,” she adds.
I roll my eyes. Shey can say that because she’s known only good things. She comes from a stable, loving home. Her modeling career fell into her lap. Her brilliant, wealthy husband pursued her hard for two years before she capitulated. She has adorable boys, an Upper East Side apartment, a country estate, and a thriving business. In short, she has it all.
“I hope so,” I whisper.
Shey reaches out and squeezes my arm. “I know so.”
I glance at her, and she looks so serious and so sure of herself that some of the tension in me eases. How can I not believe Shey? Shey has a huge heart and more strength than any woman I know.
“So do you want to know where we’re going?” I ask, shooting her a quick smile.
“We’re not going to your place?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Thought we needed to do something totally escapist and self-indulgent.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Are we going to a spa?”
“In Palm Springs.”
Shey lets out a whoop and pumps her fist in the air. “Road trip!”
Chapter Eight
Our hotel, the Parker, has enjoyed an impressive list of owners and names, first as Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch Estate, then as the Merv Griffin Resort and then the Givenchy Hotel & Spa, and now the Parker. The villa walls are pale pink and draped with bougainvillea, and the gardens are as lush as a desert oasis. Restyled by designer Jonathan Adler, it’s also hip, stylish, and popular among celebrities fleeing Los Angeles for sun and fun.
Shey and I tumble onto the slipcovered living room couch with happy sighs. The doors to our private garden and pool are open. Fresh flowers and chilled champagne greet us. We even have our own “butler” on call for the next two days.
“It’s forty-five degrees in New York,” Shey says, wiggling her bare toes. She’s been talking about changing into her swimsuit to go lie out by the pool, but she still hasn’t moved from the overstuffed sofa. “My kids would die to be here. They’d love the pool.”
“The boys are good swimmers, aren’t they?”
“For city kids, yeah.” She stretches, yawns. “I love my boys, wouldn’t trade them for anything, but God, sometimes it’s all so much. Sometimes it seems like everyone needs so much from me.”
Shey turns her head, looks at me, her expression unusually serious. “You don’t know how badly I needed this. Two days of nothing. Two days to be lazy. Two days where I can just take care of me for a change.”
After an hour by the pool, we finish off the afternoon with massages and oxygenating facials before changing and making a ten-minute drive into downtown Palm Springs for dinner. The sun set behind the mountains an hour ago, and the desert city sparkles tonight. The night is calm and clear as we arrive at one of my favorite restaurants.
The maître d’ knows me on sight, welcomes me warmly, and finds us a table almost immediately. Not long after we’re seated, Brett, the owner, appears table side with a kiss for me and a complimentary bottle of champagne.
I introduce Shey, and he swears he recognizes her. She laughs, demurs, and then he snaps his fingers. “Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue 1991.”
“Yes,” she admits, cheeks dusky pink.
“I knew it. Green bikini in the waterfall. And then there was the lizard-skin one-piece against the sand. Right?”
Her jaw drops a little. It’s been a long time since she’s been recognized as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. “That’s impressive, sugar.”
He just grins. “I have two of the most beautiful women in America dining at my restaurant. Am I a lucky man, or what?”
As he walks away, Shey shakes her head. “That never happens anymore.”
“It’s because you’re always with your husband. Men aren’t going to trip over themselves in front of John.”
The exchange with Brett reminds me of my conversation with Christie on Thanksgiving when she told me that beautiful women get better reservations, tables, and services. They get attention and eye contact.
I tell Shey about the conversation Christie and I were having in Christie’s kitchen, and I ask Shey if she’d ever consider getting work done.
“Probably, at least my eyes,” she answers without much hesitation, but then adds, “But Marta would kill me. She’s so antisurgery, so anticaving to societal pressure.”
“You’ve discussed cosmetic surgery with Marta?”
She nods. “Marta just about took my head off. Wanted to know what kind of role model would I be for Eva? What kind of example was I setting for other girls?”
“Easy for her to say. She’s not in front of a camera, not like you or me.”
“Which is why she was livid I’d consider it. Apparently I’d be perpetuating Madison Avenue’s propaganda, that only young and beautiful women are valuable.”
A little heavy-handed, but that’s Marta for you. And although heavy-handed, Marta’s usually right. I don’t know if it’s because she’s the mother of a daughter or a rebel at heart, but Marta just doesn’t succumb to society pressure the way many beautiful women do. But maybe that’s what makes Marta beautiful. She’s strong, different, unique.
“If you were to take Marta out of the equation, surgery wouldn’t be an issue then? You’d have the surgery tomorrow?”
She starts to answer and then stops, shakes her head. “No. Not tomorrow. Maybe in five years, maybe ten. I’d do it when I wanted to do it, when I felt comfortable with it. I certainly wouldn’t do it because I was being told to do it.”
“I don’t want to be told to do it, either. It’s one thing to want to do something. It’s another when it’s forced on you. Besides, I don’t want to be a clown.”
Shey shudders. “There’s that. I’ve seen some bad work, too. I guess the bottom line is that people should feel good about themselves, and that includes taking responsibility for themselves. There’s nothing worse than being unhappy and blaming everyone else for your unhappiness.” She looks up at me, and her gaze meets mine. “If you’re not happy, fix it. Life’s short, you know?”
The expression in her eyes is sad, and I realize we’re not talking about plastic surgery anymore. I reach out, take her hand, and give it a squeeze. Something’s going on with Shey, but she’s clearly not ready to share. Shey might be our sunshine, but she’s also damn stubborn. When she’s ready to talk, she will, but until then, I’ll just keep letting her know I love her.
After dinner we return to the hotel, where we change into PJs and lounge around the living room with the TV on mute so we can talk. Shey and I haven’t had this kind of time alone in years, and we make the most of it. She brings me up to speed on her boys and some of the issues they’re facing in school. The youngest one is very tall and very thin, and kids make fun of him for having a stork neck.
“It brings back all the feelings of inferiority I had as a girl growing up. Giraffe, stilts, daddy longlegs.” Shey shudders and runs a hand through her blonde hair, thick and tawny as a lion’s mane. “Being a kid was horrible. Did anybody have a good time growing up?”
“I hear a few people did. But for the majority it’s rough.”
“Can you imagine being pretty and popular in school?” She laughs her low, husky laugh, and then her laughter dies. “It’s funny how just when you get old enough to take the hits, the hits go to your kids instead, and they don’t know what the hell to do.” She sees my face. “Am I going on too much about the parent thing?”
“No. I like it. You make me feel normal again.” And it’s true. It feels so good to be around someone who has known me for over half my life. It feels even better to be myself and accepted and understood. No matter what I do in life, no matter what career I choose, I’ll always have Shey and Marta. Real friends, true friends, are worth their weight in gold.
“Ah, honey, you are normal. It’s your industry that isn’t.”
She gives me a crooked smile and it’s
a little country, a little cowgirl, and I love it. It’s her real smile, not her model smile and I suddenly lay all my cards on the table. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire.”
Shey looks at me for a long moment, her blue eyes narrowed. “You don’t really mean that, do you? If you were to ask me, I’d say you’re just pissed off right now.”
She’s right. I am pissed off. How can I be valuable only if I look young and unlined? How can they really replace me just because I’m closer to forty than twenty?
I roll over onto my back, cross one leg at the knee, and swing my foot. “Why didn’t I see any of this coming? During the summer I thought I had it made. Hot guy, great career, steady income. But it was an illusion. I’m in trouble.”
“What would you do if you weren’t with the show anymore?”
I pause, think. “No idea.”
“But you’ve always had a plan. Even back in high school, at St. Pious, you were the only one of us who knew for sure what she wanted to do.”
“I knew what I wanted to be, not do.” My lips twist ruefully. “I was going to be famous. I wanted everyone to know me.” Who knows why I thought being a celebrity would solve anything.
“And everyone does.”
“And now look where I am.”
“Sugar, maybe that’s what this is really all about. You met your goal. You’re famous. You’ve spent ten years on TV. Perhaps it’s time to change direction. Make some new plans.”
“Leave America Tonight?”
She reaches out, strokes my hair, smoothing it as though I were a little girl. “There are other shows, and you could do more than just TV.”
“But I like TV. I love TV.”
“Then at least you have part of your answer.”
I turn my head to look at her. My gaze holds hers. “I’m glad you’re here, Shey. I needed this.”
“I’m always here for you, and Tits, don’t worry so much. You have a great brain and amazing drive. You can do whatever you want to do. You just have to know what you want to do.”
The next morning, we get trail maps and directions from the concierge and head off on a hike in the San Jacinto Mountains.
It’s a cool morning and we’re both bundled up, but in layers so we can strip down as we heat up.
We’ve been walking about fifteen minutes when Shey glances at me. “Do you really miss Trevor? It sounds as if you’ve taken the breakup hard.”
“I don’t think I miss him, but I do miss being in a relationship.”
“Even if the relationship doesn’t work?”
“The real question is, when do you know it’s not working? How long does it take to figure out that things just won’t ever get better?” I unscrew the cap from my bottle, take a quick drink, and put it back on. “What’s sad is I didn’t feel that happy with Trevor, but I don’t think I would have been the one to end it. I liked believing someone, somewhere, cared for me. I liked pretending I’m not alone.”
“But you’re not alone. You have friends who love you to pieces.”
I flash her a smile. “Call me greedy, but I want both. Friends and romance.”
“I get that.” She unzips her green jacket and ties it around her waist. “And we should have both in our lives. Men are great, but they’re not women. Men will love us, but they’ll never really understand us, not the way our girlfriends do. And our men see us and love us in a way our girlfriends can’t. That’s why we need both.”
“Research shows that women with close friendships live longer and healthier lives than women without. Spending time with girlfriends is supposed to be one of the best stress busters out there.”
“I believe it.” Shey takes a long drink from her water bottle. “I already feel a hundred times better than I did when I arrived in L.A. Just hanging out talking about life makes life easier. Less overwhelming.”
I study her profile with the high, strong brow, straight nose, prominent cheekbones. Her face is one of those genetic wonders, yet there’s no drama attached to her, no air of superiority. She’s still a country girl at heart. “You’ve never found life overwhelming. You’re the most grounded woman I know.”
She turns to look at me, and her eyes are clouded with emotion. There’s a hint of panic in her voice when she answers, “I think I’m losing my bounce! Those little things that never used to bother me, they don’t seem so little anymore.”
“Like what?”
“Everything.” She laughs, but the sound is hollow. “What do you say we pick up our pace, really show these mountains a thing or two?”
Two hours later, back down off the mountain we stop at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in downtown Palm Springs for iced chai tea and sit on one of the low brick walls, sipping our tea and relaxing. The temperature is perfect, mid-seventies, with just a hint of a breeze. I don’t remember when I last felt so good, so happy.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow before we leave,” I say, flexing my toes to savor the stretch in my calves. “That was amazing. Exactly what I needed.”
“Such a different feeling than running in Central Park,” she agrees. “I need to get back to nature more than I do.”
I tip my face to the sun, lashes closing. “I used to. For a couple years Christie and I hiked once a month in the Santa Monica Mountains, but we’ve gotten out of the habit. Between trying to meet up with Trevor on weekends and Christie working on her latest film, we stopped scheduling the hikes, but I’m inspired to make it a priority again.”
She pushes up her sunglasses. “Me too. I think I better step up my workouts. Exercise is a great way to cope with stress.”
“So enough of this. Talk to me. What’s going on at home? What’s making you so sad?”
“I don’t know. But everything’s just off. My family doesn’t feel like my family. And I can’t stand to have the boys bullied like this at school. Nothing John or I do seems to make a difference, and we’ve had endless meetings with the principal.”
“All three boys are being bullied?”
“Mainly Coop. But then Bo tries to stick up for him and he gets made fun of, too. Makes me crazy, the name calling, the ridiculing. What’s wrong with kids? Why do they have to do it?”
I think of Eva and how she struggled in her Bellevue school the first couple of years after moving from New York to Washington. Marta was sick with worry. Even tried to become a PTA mom to help Eva fit in. “Kids can be horrible. Remember how Eva suffered after they moved?”
Shey nods. “At least Eva was plucky. Cooper’s not. He’s withdrawing more and more, and we’ve talked to the school and talked to professionals and everyone’s doing what they can, but he’s disappearing right before my eyes. John says it’s a phase and that eventually this will pass, but I don’t know. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“For the past year. It gets better, then it gets worse. New York’s so different from where I grew up. Boys are different. They’re just so competitive and everything is about status and money and that’s not how I was raised. Sometimes I fantasize about packing us up and moving us back to Texas. It’d be good for the kids to grow up on the ranch. They’d realize that God gave them hands for things other than Nintendo games.”
“Can you do it?”
She laughs incredulously. “John leave New York? Never. He loves the city. He’d die of boredom in the country, and now that he’s transitioning from being a fashion photographer to owning his own gallery, he’s even more into the arts and culture scene.”
Shey and I didn’t just go to St. Pious together, we roomed together at Stanford. I know her better than I know any woman, and I’ve never heard her sound like this. Not about her marriage. Or her kids. “Are you okay?”
She doesn’t speak. Eventually she nods. “Yeah.”
But she’s not. “This is more than the boys, isn’t it.”
Her chest rises and falls as she takes a deep breath and then another. “No one ever said marriage would be easy,
right?”
“Right.”
She forces a smile. “We’re going to be fine. It’s just a blip, a bump in the road. We’ve had them before. Nothing to worry about.”
I smile back, hiding my worry. “You’re tough. You can handle whatever life throws at you.”
“Of course I can. Piece of cake.” She stands, tosses her now empty plastic cup in the trash bin. “I say a visit to the spa is in order. Whirlpool. Sauna. Maybe another massage.”
“I say, yes.”
Shey doesn’t bring up John or the problems at home again, and although I’m worried, I don’t press, waiting for her to talk when she’s ready.
So instead of talking, we hike, swim, suntan, and eat. And we eat a lot. Shey has the fastest metabolism of anyone I know. She can eat what two men can and not put on an ounce. Marta and I once talked about Shey’s ridiculous metabolism and we agreed if she weren’t so funny and warm and wonderful, we’d hate her. Sad fact, but true.
Sunday afternoon I drive her back to LAX for her flight. Shey, who rarely gets emotional, gets choked up when it’s time to say good-bye. She hugs me extra hard. “Thanks for the best weekend ever,” she says, her voice husky. “It’s exactly what I needed.”
“Me too.” I hug her back. “Call me if you ever want to talk. I can be a good listener.”
“I know you can. Love you, Tits.”
“Love you, too. See you in Seattle in a couple weeks.”
And just when I think she’s going to walk away, she puts her hands on my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “We can’t lose faith. We don’t always know why life happens the way it does, but we can handle it. We are strong enough. Right?”
“Right,” I agree, and as she walks into the terminal I know those words were for her as much as they were for me.
When I return to work Monday morning, I discover the show’s art directors have unveiled our holiday set and Clarence, our stage manager, wants my feedback. I love it. The stage looks like fantasyland with decorated wreaths and Christmas trees, candy canes, and nutcrackers. There is even faux snow outside the faux window. It looks deliciously wintery— and feels that way on the stage with the forty-degree temperature, too.
