“That’s an intriguing message you sent,” she said when Brittney answered. “What’s up?”
“For some reason, Sonny really liked you.”
Gena laughed. “That’s because I’m so likeable.”
“Well, actually, you are. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant that of all people, he’s picked you, even though you’ve had only a couple of days’ contact. Sonny could have given this story to any one of the thousands of media people in the whole world. And I mean: The. Whole. World. I don’t know what it was about you, but apparently he really trusts you.”
“Okay. Now I really am intrigued.”
“This is absolutely off the record.”
Gena laughed. “I figured.”
“You have to absolutely promise.”
“Brittney. You shouldn’t even say that to me.” She already had a yellow pad and pencil ready. “Of course. I promise. As long as it’s nothing immoral, or illegal.”
“Okay, okay. Here’s the thing: Sonny and Tim Fine have decided to give Lady Fair this story. Exclusive! We want Lady Fair to break this news on its pages well after the event. The public will not know until the issue appears weeks from now. Can you guys keep a secret that long?”
“Brittney, I’m proud to say that Lady Fair has earned its reputation for honorable journalism. We’re not a tabloid, and we value the trust our readers put in us.” On the yellow pad in front of her, Gena tapped her pencil a bit impatiently. “Did you ever hear a word about Gaby Rider’s pregnancy until we put that Axelrod photo of her showing off her big baby bump on our cover? That cover, and the story, were in preparation for weeks before we published it. And the collapse of the Gelson fashion empire? There’d have been repercussions on the stock market if we’d let that story leak before Gelson was ready to go public with it in our story last fall. He trusted us to keep it quiet until the agreed-upon time. And there are plenty more. There’s a reason women—and plenty of men—read Lady Fair. We are about beauty, sure. But we’re also about the truth. And you know what the poet said about truth and beauty.”
Brittney laughed. “Gena, I’m British. Every British kid learns those lines of Keats’s poem.”
“Right. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth.’”
“Beauty and truth are the same thing. You guys should have that on your masthead.”
“We do.”
There was silence for a moment or two while their exchange resonated between them. Then Brittney said, “Okay, Gena. Here’s what I’m giving you: next Monday, the twenty-sixth, the day you’d set for the photo shoot, Sonny and Tim are getting married.”
Gena’s pencil was already flying. She’d tipped to the story the moment Brittney mentioned Sonny and Tim in the same sentence. Good for them! she was thinking.
“Monday,” Brittney repeated. “It will be very quiet, a very private ceremony at Sonny’s cabin. Tim’s father got himself ordained as a minster and he’s flying in from Oregon to perform the ceremony. I’ll be there, of course, and you and I can be the official witnesses—if that’s okay with you. And the camera crew can get the whole thing as part of the coverage they were going to do anyway. But you will have to promise me that they will be silent until the story appears. There will be the usual nondisclosure papers to sign, of course. But Sonny and Tim—and I—are trusting there’ll be no leaks.”
“Brittney, it’s an honor. I am so flattered that Sonny and Tim put such trust in me, and in the Lady Fair people. You know we’ll handle this with complete discretion.”
“We’re counting on you.”
“I’ll meet with our photo editor, and he’ll handle the details with his crew from this end. I’ll be in touch in the next day or two to coordinate with you. And please tell Sonny I send my congratulations to him, and to Tim. Best wishes to them both.”
The conversation with Brittney lifted Gena’s spirits several notches up from the low level they’d been dropping to lately. Not only was the vote of confidence by Sonny and Tim a nice personal pat on the back, but the scoop for Lady Fair would earn her some professional points with Marge Webster. And in the meantime, till Marge got back from Italy, she could move ahead on Romy deVere’s story. She’d already set up the photo shoot in Connecticut for tomorrow, and had scheduled some extra time to spend with her subject to talk about the revelations her research had uncovered.
She sat back in her chair. She drank a few sips of her latte. She thought about secrets. Seems there are secrets everywhere, she thought. So many people have secrets. Romy. Sonny. So many public people—politicians, great artists, flash-in-the-pan celebrities, long-lost relatives. Close friends. There were secrets Viv had shared with Gena that Dan would probably never know about. And just as well.
The only secret Gena could think of in her own history was when she was seven and took a lipstick from a drugstore cosmetics display. It was a memory she returned to frequently. And again, as always, as she ran the mental tape of that memory, she corrected herself.
I didn’t “take” that lipstick. I stole it.
She hadn’t been caught, and to this day she hadn’t told anyone. But it was always with genuine shame and remorse that she thought of her theft. She’d long ago stopped making excuses for that bit of bad behavior. Even though she’d come to understand that a single episode of shoplifting of some small item is a fairly common childhood event, and even though she could no longer remember the store or where it was located, and she knew that neither the national economy nor the republic itself had collapsed as a result of her tiny thievery, it was morally unacceptable, and she felt she was owed a punishment.
But, oh, even these many years later, she still experienced the almost hypnotic power of that luscious, creamy, smoothly perfect object of scarlet seduction. It had spoken to little Gena of magic and power, of unlimited possibilities, of a world of excitement and dreams not even yet dreamed, of things to come—and yes, it spoke to her of beauty. She took it home and hid it under the scarf her grandmother had given her for Christmas.
She’d been disappointed that Grandma hadn’t given her something to play with—a toy, or a doll, a board game, perhaps—but Grandma had said, “But you can play with it, dear. If you’re careful not to damage it, you can play dress-up and pretend you’re having tea with the queen.” The scarf, with its multicolored sumptuousness in its ornately decorated box, was the perfect place to hide her illicit loot, and she slipped the gleaming black tube of fantasy under the silken fabric.
As she grew older, Gena did, indeed, often sit at the little vanity table in her bedroom and put on the lipstick and try out various ways to tie that scarf, to drape it dramatically about her shoulders, over her head, across her torso. Her dreams of loveliness were built on the luxury of the scarf and the excitement of the stolen lipstick, making herself “beautiful,” acting out scenarios and dialogues that she imagined were grown-up and alluring. But sadly, this game of make-believe died away by the time she left junior high, as she was confronted with a more mature understanding of the mirror’s reality.
By that time, she had reconciled herself to the inescapable truth: She was not beautiful. She was too tall, taller than the boys in her class. She was too thin, too thin to need a bra or to wear a bikini bathing suit. She was too sharp-elbowed to meet any conventional standard of femininity. Her charms, if she dared to call them “charms,” were her journalistic talent, her willingness to listen to other people’s life histories without feeling they needed to hear hers, and her scrupulous honesty. Except, of course, for her one tiny crime, for which she knew she should be sorry. With only one exception, she told no one, and kept it as the one secret in her life that she’d take to her grave.
The exception was Warren. Warren was special. They’d met in history class in their junior year back in high school. They’d sat next to each other, shared snide jokes about the teacher, criticized the
subject matter, exchanged notes occasionally, and by the end of the semester had become casually friendly. Not more than that. Maybe a “hi” or a nod in the hallway. A meeting, perhaps, at the local fast food hangout, along with other classmates.
And then, for some unexplained reason and to her great surprise, Warren Haglund singled her out when it was time for the boys to take a girl to senior prom. He asked her and she said yes, and when he took her home, he kissed her good night. It was a real kiss, Gena’s first, believe it or not, and when she went into her room—after a brief account of the evening to her mother, who had waited up for her—she took down the old, ornately decorated box, faded and scratched now, from the shelf at the top of the closet. The beautiful silk scarf had long ago been promoted to a place in her dresser drawer, but the lipstick, worn to a small nub, was still there. She took it to her vanity table, sat down, and put a light dash of red to her mouth, a mouth that had just felt, for the first time, a man’s hunger. She took a very deep breath, as though she could pull that sensation, the memory of it, deep into herself, to save it forever, and she decided she was in love with Warren Haglund. She was seventeen years old. And ready, she was sure, to be a woman.
And that’s how she came to tell Warren the secret of her youthful crime. One evening, in that first lovely time of really getting to know each other, she revealed, oh so timidly, the dreadful truth about her wicked adventure, so long concealed. And Warren laughed, and told her he’d done something similar but so much worse: At fourteen, he and some other guys stole a pack of condoms from a drugstore. Actually, one boy was a lookout and the others had created a diversion, “accidentally” knocking over a display case, eliciting much noisy attention from shoppers and salesclerks, while it was Warren himself, the designated thief, who took the packet from the from the rack and then ran like hell.
Warren laughed a lot as he told the story, and Gena laughed with him, but privately she wasn’t so sure. It was still stealing, and she was sorry she’d told Warren about her bit of juvenile delinquency. The next day, she threw the lipstick away and she never mentioned the event again.
After high school, she and Warren went to different colleges, she to a small school upstate, where she majored in journalism, and Warren to NYU as a business major. They were in regular contact during those years, by phone and text mostly, and they spent all their time together when she came into the city for holidays and vacations. After graduation, Gena interned at a small local newspaper near her school, and Warren entered NYU’s MBA program. By this time, they were a serious and regular couple, and when Gena came back to New York and took the job at Lady Fair they agreed to move in together. It seemed the natural thing to do. That was four years ago—almost five.
Almost five years they’ve been living together, never talking about marriage, somehow feeling marriage just wasn’t a part of their future, and as she sat in her office, wandering down memory lane and wondering about the path ahead of them, she was aware of something secret happening inside herself. In her head? In her heart?
But her wandering and wondering were cut short. Ira Garlen from the art department needed some information about the Romy deVere shoot, and he arrived at Gena’s office with a knock-knock on her open door and a breezy “Can I come in?” as he entered. And that was the end of Gena’s thoughts about secrets and history and the future—at least for the time being.
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, when Gena needed to drive to Connecticut for the Romy deVere shoot, she had not yet been able to make arrangements for Wiley, and she couldn’t bear to put him in a kennel, where he’d be caged like a criminal—poor little nervous guy would freak out, she was sure—so there was nothing to do but take him along. One other thing Gena knew she’d let slide: Dr. Zweig had explained that the law required her to make a good-faith effort to find Wiley’s owner. While she hoped—fervently—that no owner would turn up to claim him, she knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t try. So she bought a doggie car seat to strap onto the front passenger seat of her car, and she packed up his snake and his bowls and some kibble, and she made up a batch of “Lost Dog” flyers with Wiley’s photo on them, packed the whole caravan into her car, and by seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, she was on her way to I-95 and Connecticut.
The drive to Romy’s cabin would take almost three hours, and the plan was to meet up with the photo crew at noon. But she had an additional plan that had nothing to do with the photo shoot. When she’d driven as far as Shanesville, she located the local veterinarian, whose name she’d found through Google. Dr. Bettina McCarron was sympathetic but, no, there had been no reports of a lost dog of any kind, let alone a male hairless Chinese Crested. She had nice things to say about the breed, and was impressed that Gena was trying to find the owner. “Around here we deal mostly with livestock, large animals, horses and cows. A dog like your Wiley is a pure pet and in the cold winters we get up here, he might not be a very satisfactory one. Definitely needs special care—lots of sunblock even when it’s not brilliant sunlight, and special little booties to fit over those skinny legs and long feet. And think how cold he’d be with no hair on him. He’d need a really warm coat to cover as much of his little body as possible.”
From there, Gena stopped at the gas station, where a different empty-headed teenager looked blankly at her and said she could leave the flyer on the counter if she liked, but, no, he didn’t hear nothing about no lost dog, but maybe she could ask at the diner down the road. Which she did. A nice, elderly, rather rustic-looking gentleman, who was sitting at the counter having a late breakfast, overheard her inquiry. He looked at Wiley’s photo on the flyer, said he was sorry but he hadn’t seen the dog, and then told her the following:
“Musta been about two weeks ago, that time we had three straight days of pouring rain, a family come in here, mom and daddy and three kids. They didn’t have a dog with them, but I could tell they were talking about a dog. And the youngest kid, a little boy, maybe seven years old, kept saying, ‘You said I could keep him. You did. You said.’ And the daddy said, ‘No way. I said when you found him, you could keep him while we were on our vacation, but no way was that dog coming all the way back to Moline with us. Funny looking thing he is, I’d be ashamed for the neighbors to see us with a weird dog like that.’ And he told the kid to just put him out in the parking lot and someone would probably pick him up. And the kid was crying some, but I guess that’s what he did. Too bad about that, leaving a little animal out in the rain all alone.”
Well, you certainly didn’t do anything to save him. Gena kept the thought to herself, but now the man didn’t look so nice to her. People can be full of compassion until it’s time to get up out of their seat and actually do something.
The man handed the flyer back to her and said, “I don’t see any way that dog belongs to anyone. Just purely an orphan.”
She was pretty well convinced now that there was no way to find Wiley’s owner. But just to complete her effort, she taped up the flyers on a handful of trees and telephone poles in the area, and then drove into the woods to continue with her plans to meet with Romy deVere and explore her astonishing past. And when they drove past the place in the woods where she’d found Wiley in the middle of the night—could it really have been not even two weeks ago?—she looked over at him. He had his head down, and his tail had curled tightly between his hind legs. She reached a hand to him and stroked the soft Mohawk of hair on his head, then stroked down his back to comfort him. She could feel the quiver that ran through his whole body, and she was sure he knew where he was, and remembered—or certainly felt—the terror and abandonment of that night when he’d been put out, alone and helpless, probably to die, by people who should have known better.
Maybe, she thought, if they’d found a beautiful dog, a dog they could have shown off to their friends and relatives back in Moline, a dog everyone would have admired, then maybe they’d have been eager to keep
him and thought themselves lucky to have acquired something valuable instead of an ugly liability.
“But the little boy wanted you, Wiley. The little boy knew your value. And I bet that little boy will grow up to be a better man than his father!”
It was a rebellious thought, but it made Gena feel good. And by the time they were driving into the clearing in front of Romy deVere’s cabin, Wiley was alert and happy
Chapter Nineteen
The photo crew’s van was already there, and they were setting up their equipment inside the cabin. The front door was open and they were in and out, getting light and speed settings, measuring distances, adjusting for the sun and the shadows. In the little bedroom at the back, Nell and the hairdressers were tending to Romy’s makeup and hair, getting her ready to be photographed.
“So many years it’s been,” Romy said, with a wave of greeting to Gena as she came into the room. “I thought I was finished with this. This fussing with my face—don’t they realize—‘Let her paint an inch thick,’ Hamlet said, and he was right, ‘to this favor she must come.’” She paused, gazing into the mirror for a long minute, as though she was remembering how it was so long ago, when this was her life every day, makeup artists preparing her for the camera. “Well. Shakespeare is always right. All the paint in the world won’t keep you from the grave.”
“Ms. deVere,” Nell said, dusting a thick makeup brush across those famous cheekbones, “you have an exquisite face. I don’t care if it was sixty years ago or today, you are an incredibly beautiful woman. What’s more, you know the old saying: ‘At fifty, every woman has the face she deserves.’ And it’s true. I’ve made up some of the most famous women in America, and I can tell you must have lived a good life, because yours is still the face of a great beauty.”
Romy laughed. “Then why all this fuss?”
“Because,” Gena said as she put down her bag and took a seat in a spot out of the way, “you are making some wonderful art, and it is as though a whole new and remarkable life has begun in a life that was already full and fulfilling.”
Who Do You Love? Page 9
