Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls

by Rae Lawrence

  “Oh, we all learned how to tango,” Patrick said. “Or at least whatever cleaned-up version of the tango was considered suitable at dancing school. Bill’s just the only one who remembers everything he was ever taught.”

  “I like him,” Anne said. “If you don’t mind. I like him a lot.” They pulled past the tollbooth, onto the bridge, back into Manhattan.

  “He’s a great guy,” Patrick said. “He’s so, he’s so something.”

  “What is the word.”

  “What is the word?” he asked.

  “I have it,” she said. “He’s so grown-up.”

  Neely was pregnant. She told Lyon the day she got back from New York, where she’d spent Thanksgiving weekend with Dave and his friends.

  “Congratulations,” Lyon said. “Dave must be thrilled.” They were having dinner at Neely’s house, grilling steaks on the deck.

  “Oh, I haven’t told him yet,” Neely said. “I wanted to tell you first.”

  “Well, we’ve had a great ride,” Lyon said. “I hope we can stay friends.”

  “I got plenty of friends, I don’t need any more friends,” Neely said. “You don’t get it, do you?” She broke into a big smile.

  Lyon just stared at her. “Neely, you can’t be serious. I thought … but you said … it can’t be possible.”

  “I guess I forgot to tell you that Dave had a vasectomy years ago. So it’s definitely your kid, if that’s what you were about to ask.” She rubbed her stomach. “I’m six weeks along. And this isn’t going to be like last time. I’m not going to work, I’m just going to lie around looking at my big fat belly. And it better not be twins again!”

  Lyon poured himself a fresh glass of bourbon. “I’m in shock.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t worry. I won’t show for another month or so.” Shooting was over, and the publicity work was swinging into high gear. Interviews had already been lined up with the glossy magazines that had the longest lead times to press. In another week, Neely would go back into the studio to start recording the songs. If everything worked out right, she’d have her baby right around the time the picture was released. She couldn’t wait to tell her publicist about the pregnancy; she’d get everything—everyone loved a pregnant celebrity—all the talk shows would be fighting over her, and she’d get some fabulous new clothes to show off her big belly. And then, when the baby came, she’d finally get the cover of People!

  “Neely, I can’t do this. I’m too old. I can’t do this. We can’t do this.” It was the oldest trick, the simplest trick there was, and he couldn’t believe he had let it happen to him.

  “Baby, I got news for you, we’ve already done it. I thought you’d be happy.”

  “Why would I be happy? You told me you were using something.”

  “Don’t give me that look. I wasn’t lying, if that’s what you think. People get pregnant using diaphragms all the time. Maybe I got a little careless once or twice.…”

  “Careless doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  She had never seen him so angry. She had thought he would sweep her into his arms, and ask her how she was feeling, and lay his head against her stomach, and tell her he loved her. She had been waiting for him to say it, waiting for weeks, and now everything was going wrong. She burst into tears and ran inside.

  “Neely!” he shouted, running after her. “Neely, let’s talk about this, we can work something out.”

  She raced to her bedroom and slammed the door, locking it behind her. “Forget about it! Just forget about it! There’s nothing to work out. I can have this baby by myself, I have plenty of money, you can just wash your hands of the whole thing if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s not what I want. Let me in.”

  “Why should I?”

  “We have to talk.”

  “I’m not getting an abortion. Don’t think you can talk me into one, that is definitely not happening.”

  “Let me in.”

  “I mean it, Lyon. Don’t even bring it up.”

  “I won’t, I promise. Now let me in.”

  She unlocked the door and lay down on the bed. “Say what you have to say, and then I want you to leave.”

  “I just need some time to get used to this,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. “Neely, I care for you, I care for you deeply.” He was past the point of being able to fall in love—he couldn’t even say that he had ever really loved a woman, not all the way, not the way they wanted to be loved, not the way Anne had once loved him. “I just never saw us this way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “As … as a couple. The way you and Dave are a couple.”

  Dave, Schmave, she wanted to say. Her publicist had insisted she stop being photographed with Dave so much. “He just looks like some old Jewish guy. It ages you to be photographed next to him,” Neely was told. They had set up her escorts for the last couple of parties she had attended. In the last few weeks, she had been photographed at movie openings with the star of last summer’s big action-adventure movie (his homosexuality a well-protected secret) and a television actor who had just quit a hit series in the hopes of getting established in film. Photographs from both evenings had been picked up and printed widely. Each time she was in the same pose: a half step ahead of her date, their left hands clasped, his right hand around her waist, both of them looking at a spot a few inches to the left of the camera.

  “Right, me and Dave, the perfect couple. You want to know about me and Dave?” She went to her dresser and opened the top drawer, taking out a large leather jewelry box. “Here’s what Dave gave me for my last birthday,” she said, throwing a long strand of baroque pearls onto the bed.

  “And the birthday before that,” she said, tossing a Cartier tank watch on top of the pearls.

  “And the birthday before that, and last Christmas, and the Christmas before that.” A pair of emerald earrings, a heavy gold rope bracelet, an amethyst necklace with a diamond clasp in front. “And to celebrate my album, and our second anniversary, and oh yeah, Valentine’s Day year before last.” A Rolex, two more pairs of earrings.

  She reached into the pile of jewelry and held half of it up in her fist. “How much do you think this cost?”

  “I have no idea,” Lyon said. “A lot. Quite a lot of money.”

  “Guess,” she said, lifting the jewelry higher.

  “I can’t guess,” he said. He hadn’t bought jewelry for a woman in years, not since Anne. He had gotten Jenn a pair of pearl stud earrings from Tiffany’s for her thirteenth birthday, and that had been it since the divorce.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you, it’s no secret, the whole mess is insured. Two hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars! Almost a quarter of a million dollars in jewelry! And you know what?”

  “What.”

  “No fucking ring!” she screamed. She threw the jewelry onto the floor. Lyon watched it hit the wood, the smaller pieces rolling under furniture. “All I want is a little three-hundred-dollar gold ring.” She fell on the bed, covered her head with a pillow, and began to sob. “No one loves me,” she said. “No one loves me enough.”

  Lyon curled himself around her, rubbing her shoulder. “I love you,” he said. It was a thin love, and it was all he had, and he knew it was all Neely had, too.

  She turned to him. “Oh Lyon, I love you, too. Don’t I make you happy? Aren’t we good together?” She took his hand and placed it on her belly. “That’s our baby. A little boy, or a little girl, a baby we made together.”

  Six weeks … he tried to figure out the night, which night … Images came to him, images of Neely in bed, the things she did to him, the things they did to each other … and now she had her hand on his chest, she was unbuttoning his shirt, and he felt his body responding, his body betraying him again … and there was nothing tender in it, he didn’t kiss her, this time it was all about power, she was wild and angry, she pulled at his hair and bit him on the chest … pieces of jewelry were still in the bed, h
e felt them cut into his skin … in the end, he pinned her arms over her head and took her hard, not thinking about anything except his own pleasure.

  Afterward he lit a cigarette, flicking the ashes in the last of his bourbon.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  “I know I can make you happy, I know we can make each other so happy,” Neely said.

  “No one can make me happy. And I doubt any man can make you happy. Marry me anyway.”

  In the morning, he woke up hungover, the taste of liquor still in his mouth. He took a long shower, the hot water scalding his scalp. Down his back were little red welts from the pieces Dave had given her, the marks that the gold had left behind.

  1992.

  Lyon and Neely were married in a private ceremony two days before New Year’s Eve. The only witnesses were a partner of Lyon’s from the agency and Gordon Stein. Lyon wore a navy-blue suit and a red Ferragamo tie printed in a pattern of little champagne glasses. Neely wore a red silk suit and no jewelry except the pair of cushion-cut sapphire earrings Lyon had bought her for Christmas. She hired a photographer, who was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement and to photograph Neely only from certain angles. She had already gained fifteen pounds. They had told no one about the pregnancy.

  Neely had broken off with Dave in a ten-minute telephone call. She had all the jewelry he had given her reappraised, reinsured, and delivered to the safety-deposit box where she kept her birth certificate, various legal documents, and her first two wedding rings.

  Lyon told Anne in a slightly longer phone call, the day before Christmas Eve. Neely had poured him a tall glass of bourbon, then snuck downstairs to listen in on an extension. Anne fought against the gathering tears, her voice trembling, the telephone held slightly away as she sniffled into a tissue. No matter what, she would not cry. They argued over who would tell Jenn, Anne insisting she could do a better job of it, Lyon insisting it was best left to him, both of them hoping in the end it would fall to the other.

  Anne finally agreed to call Jenn to the phone. Anne sat at the edge of the bed and watched her daughter crumple. This is what divorced fathers do, Anne thought. They ruin Christmas for their children.

  “It’s your fault,” Jenn said to Anne afterward. “Everything is your fault.” It seemed impossible that Jenn could still be hoping that her parents would get back together. But there it was. Jenn sulked her way through Christmas, unpleased by her presents, even the buttery leather jacket Lyon had shipped out by overnight courier. Jenn had hinted and begged for months, ripping photographs of black leather jackets out of fashion magazines and mailing them to Lyon; but now the expensive gift, so clearly purchased to soften the blow, was tossed back into the large cardboard box and left under the tree.

  Anne and Jenn spent Christmas break tiptoeing around each other’s moods. It was too cold to take walks, and everyone they knew had gone away for the holidays. They spent entire days without getting dressed, eating take-out Chinese food at odd hours. They watched old black-and-white movies on their new VCR. Anne knit a sweater; Jenn changed her nail polish daily, from one dark violet to another, piling the smeared cotton balls in an ashtray on the floor. At night Anne broke a Valium in two and gave half to Jenn, leaving the other half in a tissue on top of the television set. In the morning the tissue and pill would be gone.

  On New Year’s Eve, Anne slept late, waking up to find Jenn in the kitchen, two tabloid newspapers spread open on the table. Both papers carried the same photograph: Neely smiling into the camera, holding a small bouquet of roses, Lyon behind her with his hands on her shoulders, his eyes closed, kissing her just above the ear.

  “We should get them a present,” Jenn said. They bundled up and fought their way through crowds of tourists on Fifth Avenue. Inside Tiffany’s, they kept their sunglasses on. The floor was filled with couples looking at china patterns. Jenn pointed out a large crystal punch bowl with matching glasses, a design of leaves engraved around the rims.

  “No one serves punch anymore,” Anne said.

  “It’s ugly, isn’t it,” Jenn said. She smiled for the first time in days. “Let’s,” she said. Anne got out her credit card; Jenn gave the clerk Neely’s address. In the elevator on the way down, Jenn took Anne’s hand.

  They went to Bergdorf’s and spent hundreds of dollars on makeup, working their way from counter to counter, each little purple bag being put into a larger purple bag. Then they walked over to Madison Avenue and kept on spending, a red cashmere sweater for Jenn, a striped silk scarf for Anne, black boots for both of them. The spending made them giddy and hungry.

  When they reached the Seventies they stopped for a late lunch. Jenn took out all of the lipsticks and lined them up on the table. They tried on each one, passing Anne’s mirrored compact back and forth between them, blotting and wiping on pale blue tissues.

  Jenn held a lipstick under Anne’s nose. “What is this supposed to smell like?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Anne said. “It’s just lipstick smell. You know, I can only remember my mother having one tube of lipstick, this pinky-coral color that you hardly ever see anymore. She only wore it for special occasions, I think that one tube must have lasted for thirty years. She put it on with a little gold brush. I don’t think the tube itself ever touched her lips. Brush, blot, brush, blot. And it smelled exactly the same way.”

  “You hardly ever talk about her,” Jenn said. “I don’t really know very much about any of my grandparents. What was she like?”

  “Very strict. Very Yankee. Very old-fashioned. She wore her gray hair pulled back into the same little bun every day of her life. After she died, I found this photograph, she would have been just out of high school, she was wearing this amazing chiffon dress with beading around the neck. I barely recognized her. She looked so beautiful and so happy, like a movie star, almost. But I never knew her that way. I guess it all ended when she married.”

  Anne lit a cigarette. “She hated New York. She was so angry that I left Lawrenceville.”

  “Why?”

  “She thought nothing good would come of it.” Anne realized her mother may have been right. “She wanted a different kind of life for me.”

  “A different husband,” Jenn said. “Not Daddy.”

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t even think it. Then I wouldn’t have you.”

  “Are you going to get married again?” Jenn asked, the tears coming back into her voice. “Are you going to marry Bill?”

  “Bill? We’ve only been out on two dates. It’s a little early to be thinking of marriage.”

  “Alice’s mom says all women are looking for the same thing: Prince Charming.”

  There is no Prince Charming, Anne wanted to say. Only Prince Charming-Enough.

  Jenn outlined her mouth in hot pink. “I’m never going to get married. I’m just going to fall in love a million times and have lots of romantic adventures.” She held the lipstick up to her nose and closed her eyes.

  My beautiful daughter, Anne thought, the most beautiful girl in the world. “And what does it make you think of?” she said.

  Jenn inhaled. “Kissing. Getting ready for a party. Being grown-up.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “You.”

  The punch bowl arrived a week later. Neely opened the enormous box and inspected the punch glasses one by one, looking for cracks.

  “I didn’t know people still served punch at parties,” she said to Gordon.

  “Me neither,” he said. They were sitting in Neely’s big bedroom, opening wedding presents. She had told only a few people that she was pregnant—Gordon, her film agent, her dermatologist—and hadn’t left the house since the wedding. Gordon came to visit her each morning, bringing gossip and glossy magazines. Liza came in the late afternoons, bringing different gossip and news about the Helen Lawson picture, which was getting terrific advance press. Judd was at Harvard, and Dylan was up in San Francisco, taking photography classes and living in a rambling apartment with three friends from high school. Lyon left
for work early each morning, returning in the evenings to find Neely asleep in front of the television set.

  “Maybe punch is making a comeback,” Gordon said. “The pattern is gorgeous.”

  “Well, Anne would know,” Neely said.

  “I have some great old punch recipes from this New Orleans cookbook. Heavy on the rum.”

  “I wonder how much this cost.”

  “A lot,” Gordon said. The small pile of things that Neely would keep was to his left. The larger stack, of what would be returned, sat to his right. On his lap was a pad of paper with a list of who had given what. It had fallen to Gordon to write all the thank-you notes. He had perfected an imitation of Neely’s rounded, girlish scrawl years ago.

  Neely calculated what the gift had cost and what it could be exchanged for: jewelry, of which there was never enough. She sighed. “I guess I gotta keep it. What with the kid visiting, and all.”

  “And how are things with Little Miss Jailbait.”

  “What a daddy’s girl. But I’m gonna make her like me if it kills us both. Not sure how I’m going to do it, but I’ll figure something out.”

  “You always do.”

  “And she’s spoiled rotten. You should see what Lyon gave her for Christmas! Fourteen years old, and she’s wearing an eight-hundred-dollar black leather jacket! And she’s never had to wash a dish in her life. When I was fourteen, I was already practically supporting myself.”

  “Well, Lyon probably still feels guilty about the divorce,” Gordon said, knowing instantly that he had gone too far, wishing he could take it back.

  Neely lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t forget, buster. She left him. Snuck out in the middle of the night like a call girl stealing a wristwatch.”

  Gordon giggled.

  “What’s in that box?” Neely asked.

  It was a case of expensive champagne from a hotel in Atlantic City where Neely performed every few years. “Now this is a classy gift,” Neely said. “Get us some ice cubes and let’s open a bottle.”

  “You’re not supposed to put ice cubes in champagne.”