Sooner or later, as it always seemed to in a group susceptible to idle celebrity gossip. Jack Huxley came up.
“He’s into strippers. It’s an open secret.” This from the Seattle cousin who was on her third vodka.
Claire had missed how this started but now her ears were attuned. She affected disinterest.
“That sounds right,” the new mother next to her said. “He says in every single interview he’s just waiting for the one. He was on Entertainment Tonight and they asked about his love life. He squirmed around in his chair like a child.”
Claire doubted this. Jack never squirmed.
“He always gives the ‘I’m at a good place, happy, making movies I like.’” The new mother snorted. “Are you kidding me? He sounds like he just pledged a fraternity.”
“I hope he’s gay,” the gay man at the table said.
“He’s forty-one, never married,” the new mother’s mother said.
Claire tried to hold her peace.
“Maybe he likes to screw around.” This from Ethan. He smiled mischievously. Claire glared back.
“Who wouldn’t, if you could?” the photographer said, and laughed. “The only reason men get married is that most of them can’t live that life.” It was good he wasn’t giving the toast.
“Maybe he’s old-fashioned,” Claire said. A table of people who had forgotten she was there now all turned to her at once. “Maybe he takes commitment seriously.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the new mother said with derision, looking at Claire like she was crazy. “He’s just another gorgeous jerk who wants to have his cake and eat it, too.”
“Maybe he’s just misunderstood,” Claire went on.
Ethan gave Claire the cut sign across his neck.
“Maybe he’s waited so long because he wants to make sure it’s the real thing, maybe he’s looking for that but hasn’t found it yet. I mean, he could have been married five times by now. Maybe he’s more sincere than all of us. Maybe he’s just not settling.”
The wordless round of glances among them continued. The new mother took the reins and moved on.
“Well, whatever the case,” she said, “there is obviously something wrong with him, and it will surface eventually. It always does. Did you see who Emily sat at the head table?” She addressed this to her mother. And then the lot of them moved on.
RULE #15: The secret to marriage—separate bedrooms, and blow jobs.
36
“You would not believe what a bastard he turned out to be!” Sasha swore. She swept through the doors of Nico’s in an ermine cape. Claire followed in wool plaid. They’d met up on the sidewalk outside. February had roared into New York like a wet, shaggy lion.
Sasha lowered her oversized sunglasses and peered into the dimly lit restaurant. The maître d’ stepped back from his podium, startled.
“My God,” Claire said when Sasha turned her head. “What happened?” Beneath her left eye was a large and misshapen dark bruise.
Sasha returned the sunglasses to her nose and said to the maître d’, “Wyse. Reservation,” then turned back to Claire. She shook her head slightly, as if gathering courage, and Claire was certain she could hear tears in her voice. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? I can barely leave the house!”
They followed the maître d’ past white-clothed tables decorated with amaryllis, to a table near the window that looked out on Lexington.
“I have to get away from him,” Sasha continued. “I can’t let him do this to me. And my God, I can’t trust that it won’t happen again. How can I go back there?”
They removed capes and gloves, set purses near their feet. The maître d’ pulled out their chairs. He lingered a moment longer than necessary. With his burly build, slicked hair, and expensive suit, he looked like he was answering a casting call for The Sopranos.
Claire scanned the wine list. As soon as they were alone, she leaned across the table. “Thom did this?” she said, in a low, horrified voice.
“Honey. No, not Thom. Dr. Struck!” Sasha sniffled. Claire had never seen her so upset.
“Dr. Struck hit you? Oh shit, please don’t tell me you’re having an affair with him.”
Sasha shook her head. “I wish! He was supposed to inject a tiny bit of Juvéderm to smooth my undereyes, and this—this is what I end up with!”
“Oh,” Claire said, exhaling with relief. “Well, thank God. I thought…”
But Sasha started sobbing into her linen napkin. “I think—I think I have cancer. It’s my ovaries…”
“What? Oh, sweetie.” Claire reached a hand across the table. “No luck with Riva?”
Sasha shook her head.
“What did she say?”
Sasha waved a hand. “She went through the whole thing—speculum, swabbing, prodding. ‘Dere ees no cancer.’” Sasha imitated Dr. Riva’s stodgy German accent. “‘You don’t vant babies. Vhat they do to your body! Vee are meant to have baby at sixteen, not thirty-five.’”
This made them both laugh. Claire wondered, not for the first time, why Dr. Riva had chosen gynecology.
“I left there feeling worse than before, so I squeezed in a last-minute appointment with Dr. Struck. Life’s just not fair,” Sasha said. “You, at least, have the chance to find a man who will fall in love with your personality”—Claire’s brows arched; Thanks, Sasha, she thought—“not someone who expects you to look like you did at twenty, forever. God, I wish Thom were dead.”
The maître d’, approaching their table, stopped in his tracks. Around their table, silence descended. Sasha had spoken a bit louder than she’d intended.
Claire couldn’t help it—she laughed again. Then Sasha laughed, too. “You’re crazy, honey!” Claire whispered.
“We’ll never have Paris together,” Sasha deadpanned. “You stayed; I went and look what good it did. It got me an impotent husband and you a dead one.”
They were laughing so hard now, they gasped for breath. “Stop it, people are looking!”
The maître d’ smiled in relief; the din of innocuous conversation resumed. They ordered wine, then cassoulet. By the time they got to coffee, the conversation had turned to Claire. And, inevitably, to Jack.
“He was filming. I went down to Charleston for a weekend. We went to dinner with his friends. You know what he did?”
“What?” Sasha looked like she’d been anticipating something slightly more scandalous.
“He intercepted for me. God I forgot how nice it is. To have a buffer.”
“What did he buff?”
“Twice he did it. In the lobby, there was a big group of us just having drinks and someone asked me who I was. ‘Who are you?’ this woman asked. I can’t remember if the emphasis was on ‘are’ or ‘you,’ but you know. She probably just wanted to know what film I was in or what I was doing there. Anyway, he was standing next to me, talking to someone else and he intercepted. I love the intercept.”
“What’d he say?”
“‘Claire’s a writer. She’s extremely talented.’ I mean, who says that? And then he introduced me, and then he stayed there. He stayed in the conversation. You know, like he sensed hostility, something to protect me from, and he wasn’t going to let this snotty person have a shot at me alone, so he didn’t let himself get pulled into something else. Which is impressive in itself—everyone around him claws at him nonstop. I can’t tell you how nice that buffer is—it’s like sinking into a soft, feathery pillow bed.”
“How gallant.”
Claire frowned. “You sound snide.”
“I’m not.” She watched as Sasha clink-clink-clinked her spoon against the coffee mug, but she forged on.
“We left after that. I think he wanted to get me out of there. The first sign of danger and it’s like he thought, She doesn’t need this, and he took me away.”
“Like I said, how gallant.”
“Don’t make fun. Then we watched a documentary on the History Channel.”
“That’s not hot.”
“It was, though, that’s the thing. But the more I think about it, the more it’s like he’s an opener. This is what he does. He’s got the first act down, dazzles his audience, leaves them rapt. Then he tries with the second act, right? He tries to introduce conflict, some drama, a romantic obstacle. That’s why his calls are arbitrary.”
“I suppose.”
“And me, I’m just a sucker for the opening act. Charlie was an opening act, too.”
They pushed back their chairs and stood, donned their capes, and trailed back past white-clothed tables and coiffed hair.
On their way out of the restaurant, the maître d’ stopped Sasha and discreetly handed her a card.
“Please,” he said, “call this number.”
As they hailed taxis, Sasha preened. “Well, maybe I’ll give Dr. Struck another chance. Have to keep my options open, you know.”
Sasha headed uptown. Claire headed downtown, thinking about Jack Huxley and narcissists, the subjects of Charlie’s book. Narcissists, she reflected, do the best opening act ever. That’s how you can spot them, by their opening act.
How was she supposed to feel, she wondered, as she passed a corner newsstand, when Jack Huxley was on the cover of every tabloid flanked by models. Should she wish him happiness, or wish he’d call?
But she didn’t have long to wrestle with that thought.
A month after Claire flew home from Charleston, Jack Huxley resurfaced, and Claire’s regularly scheduled menstruation did not.
37
When Huxley resurfaced it was two in the morning and Claire was struggling through Edna Ferber. Charlie had always insisted: if you want to be a writer, read a writer you don’t understand. So Claire was reading a portion of the same sentence in a loop: Selina DeJong, darting expertly about her kitchen, from washtub to baking board, from stove to table, or, if at work in the fields of the truck farm. Ferber’s long and laborious sentences wore Claire out. All those words to convey one thought: at work in the fields of the truck farm. What does that even mean?
And then the bell sounded, loud and clear and startling, on her cell phone. Dinggg. It sounded like a promise, like silver striking crystal—she never tired of it.
Dinggg …
what r u wearing? Elmer Gantry
It took Claire a few long seconds to process. Then she felt someone was watching her and looked around. It’s a setup, a trick. Adrenalin, followed by a nervous but not unpleasant fluttering in her lower abdomen.
Elmer Gantry was the first role Jack Huxley ever played. He told her about it the night they’d met, at the premiere. LaSalle High’s spring production of Main Street.
What are you wearing?
The warm little fluttering that crept low.
Oh God, Claire thought. It was eleven o’clock if he was sitting in L.A. It was some other time if he was not. He didn’t typically stay up late. It was Saturday. Eleven o’clock. What is he doing? Is he home? Bored at dinner?
Dinggg …
whatevr it is take it off
Dinggg …
ive been thinking about you.
If Claire had not been paralyzed with fear and, at the same time, a base animal lust—if, too, she were the sort of impulsive, carefree girl she wanted to be—she would have grabbed a trench coat and overnight bag and taken a cab to the airport. She would have walked up to the ticket counter at American—no, wait, JetBlue had a better flight to L.A. Oh, but it went to Burbank and American didn’t have food and she’d be hungry. Nothing was open in the airport this late, though, maybe she’d sleep, but then they always woke her on JetBlue. American would have the best red-eye. Regardless, you see, a moot point. She wasn’t that girl.
So here she was with neither spontaneity nor snappy comeback. Her face washed clean, her hair in a ponytail, over here.
And Jack Huxley, with his aw-shucks smile and strong hands, was over there.
Thinking about me …
There was nothing to say. Claire turned off her phone and went to bed.
38
Stendhal syndrome: a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion, and even hallucinations when the individual is exposed to an overdose of beautiful art, paintings, and artistic masterpieces.
Jack Huxley called the next day. “I need to see you,” he said. “I’m in Toronto but want to see you when I’m back.”
Claire’s heart skipped. She wished it didn’t. “That sounds great,” she said.
Miss me. She had a note from him leaned up against a stack of books on her desk: Widows in Contemporary Time; The Widow Wears Black: How to Bury the Past; Widows and Sexuality.
Two words: Miss me. A directive. Simple. Neat. No promises, no plans.
“I feel like a cat,” Claire had said the night before she left Charleston.
“On a hot tin roof,” said Jack.
“Should I jump?” she asked, and then hoped he hadn’t heard.
“Not yet.”
She couldn’t stop talking about him. “We read Death in the Afternoon in a big bubbly tub.”
She was walking with Ethan through the park. He wanted a hot dog. He had a favorite vendor near Strawberry Fields, and the late February day was sunny and unseasonably warm.
“What?”
“We took turns. He read a chapter, I read a chapter. We had a bottle of wine.”
“Who is that, Thomas Mann?”
“Hemingway.”
“Oh, Hemingway. That’s original.”
“Don’t be patronizing.”
“Sweetie, you screwed him in the bathtub. You need to start calling this thing what it is.”
“God, you are so unoriginal. We read to each other, in the bathtub.”
“Fascinating.” Ethan squeezed mustard onto his hot dog.
“For two hours, maybe three, I think.”
“Doesn’t the water get cold? And is that even sanitary?”
“Are you jealous or just being mean?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” he said. Ethan missed Charlie; these conversations were difficult for him on many levels. “It’s great. You’re moving on. It really is.”
“I’m having fun. Who cares?”
“I care, honey. I’m just having trouble with the visual. And I really don’t know if I like him, to be honest with you. I liked him months ago when I thought he was a onetime thing. Where is he right now?”
“I don’t know. His schedule is not like yours or mine.”
“You’ve become one of those girls, you know.”
“What does that mean?” Claire stopped short and grabbed his arm.
“One of those girls who turn a few dates into a meaningful relationship as if he may be the one. We hate those girls.”
“That’s not fair, Ethan. I only have you to talk to. Sasha feigns disinterest. She can’t bear that I live out some fantasy she still clings to. She mentioned our thwarted Paris plans the other day.”
“Clarissa.”
“What?” Claire felt like she was going to cry.
“Let me take you to dinner and remind you how remarkable you are.”
“No.”
“Then let’s go to the zoo.”
The Central Park Zoo was only a few hundred feet away.
“Okay.”
“And you can tell me how remarkable I am.”
Claire laughed.
“You haven’t been around much lately. Can I guess it’s because your airline steward is reading you Hemingway in the bath?”
Ethan smiled. He looped his arm into Claire’s and they walked while he ate a second hot dog.
“My period is a week late,” she said.
Without skipping a beat, he said, “You’ll have the most famous kid in the world.”
39
He called after Toronto, and Claire went to L.A. The flight was delayed and she arrived late so they slept in, and then he brought a tray with fruits and sparkling wine and said, “I hate it when people say this to me, swe
etheart. But I want you to meet someone.” He laughed at the cliché. “I’ve been promising lunch to her for months. I really want you to meet her.”
They dressed and he drove them to Ann Holloway’s house.
Ann Holloway had a notorious home in the Hills because she was a notorious woman. She was a Hollywood legend, tucked back into jacaranda trees and rosebushes. Although she’d long ago retired, lines still formed at her door. Her name was still passed around town in hushed tones.
Her home gave off an eerie sense of remoteness. Jack’s small, dark sports car hummed up the hill, hugging the windy driveway, and neither of them spoke. He looked happy, relaxed. Claire was half giddy, half anxious, at this unexpected adventure with him.
* * *
ANN HOLLOWAY’S NAME, in certain circles, could open and shut more doors than any of the past four presidents. She was retired, yes, technically. She rarely if ever left her house, but from up here, in her dark rooms, in her hilltop house with its quiet servants attending to all her unspoken needs, she could still topple careers on a whim. She was Zeus, Apollo, Athena all rolled up into one feisty Jewish ball.
Her home was the sort of out-of-reach and altered universe where someone like Jack Huxley could while away an afternoon unnoticed. The first step through Ann Holloway’s front door exposed the trappings of a recluse—ornate columns, shag carpets, deep-red upholstery. There were windows, but it looked as though they hadn’t worked in years. The decor’s primary function, it seemed, was to soak up the light.
The man who let them into the house was dressed in black tie. Jack shook his hand and clapped another hand on his back.
“Alfred, how’ve you been?”
Alfred? Could that be his real name? He took their coats and Jack peeked out of the foyer, dutifully standing put. Claire glanced down a long unlit hallway, a series of doors. She was waiting for Rubirosa to step from one, a disheveled Monroe from another.
Nothing in the house projected warmth, yet Ann Holloway herself, sitting solid and square amid a swirling cloud of smoke like a sorceress or genie in a floor-length caftan, her cigarette waving around in the air, was oddly—despite the reputation and barking voice—inviting. In her prime, she’d been routinely referred to as “the cunt”—so much that it seemed an endearment.
The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating Page 19
