Best Enemies

by Jane Heller

  Yep, she’s still the Golden Girl, I marveled, observing Tara’s face, clothes, pose, whatever I could glean from that photo. It was true that I had just seen her in the flesh on the street, but I hadn’t really allowed myself to get a good, unmitigated look at her that day. I’d been too caught up in the surprise of seeing her, too caught up in the memory of her with Stuart, the confusion of having once been her devoted friend, the feeling of being thrust back into my role as second fiddle. I knew she’d looked great that day, but until I studied her photo, I hadn’t realized how great.

  Why great? What made her a standout? Why had she won Best Looking in high school, and how had she managed to keep the image going as an adult?

  Well, it wasn’t just that she was blond, because when we met in third grade, her golden hair had already begun to turn brown. It was how she’d brought it back around to golden, because the process reflected her flair and sophistication and ability to charm. Unlike the rest of us amateur-hour teens with our lemon juice and peroxide concoctions and our do-it-yourself home kits, Tara had consulted a professional at sixteen. She’d done her research by scouring all the fashion magazines, sought out the best colorist in New York, and, after pestering her mother for permission, ultimately won her over and got both the permission and the money to pay for the appointment. From then on, she was blond in that archetypal California blond way (long, straight locks streaked with thin, magical threads of strawberry and banana and copper and platinum, tresses that look like the work of a constant and benevolent sun). There’s nothing worse than a blonde with no shine, and Tara shone.

  And she didn’t simply have the hair; she used it as a prop. She shook her head a lot, which required that she reach up and finger-brush away the strands that fell into her eyes. She appeared to perspire heavily, which required that she lift her hair with both hands so she could air out the back of her neck. She was athletic, which required that she reconfigure her hair to suit each level of difficulty—a ponytail with barrettes for tennis, a French braid with a bow for volleyball, a half-up and half-down do for cheerleading. She parted it on the side—on either side—as well as in the middle, and sometimes pulled it straight back. She had the sort of even-featured face that allowed for such flexibility. Even-featured—yeah, right. An understatement.

  Tara’s face could accurately be described as heart-shaped, and everything was exactly where it was supposed to be on it—hazel eyes, slightly upturned nose, generous but not distracting mouth, assertive chin with a hint of a cleft.

  Her figure was always enviable, even back when I was still trying to shed my baby fat. She had thin hips, a reasonable bust, a flat stomach, and a graceful neck. And she had long legs, as I’ve already indicated, but there was trouble with those legs, which is to say they were the source of her single physical imperfection: Tara Messer was knock-kneed! Not obscenely, but enough to notice. I smiled when I remembered that this flaw existed and that not even the ever-glib, ever-persuasive, ever-magnetic Tara could talk her way out of it. Yep, she was knock-kneed and self-conscious about it, and as much as it pains me to admit this, I was ecstatic the day I first detected it, because I actually believed it might level the playing field.

  What else made Tara such a hit in life? She had style—the right clothes and accessories for every occasion. For example, she was on top of trends well before I even knew they were trends, and she could always pull them off, even the outrageous ones. She could go with a hippie, bohemian look one day and do a debutante-with-pearls look the next, while I was still preoccupied with whether hemlines were heading up or down.

  But the main reason she was so popular, at least when we were kids, was that she had energy, and I’m not talking about some New Agey type of flow. I mean she had bounce, stamina, liveliness. She was one of those people who initiated, stirred the pot, was never afraid of taking a risk. She was fun to be around back then—the silly, mischievous, giggle-till-you-drop kind of fun. “Let’s call boys and hang up,” she’d suggest. Or: “Let’s take the train into New York and not tell our parents.” Or: “Let’s go skinny-dipping.” My conflict in those days was that she made me feel special by virtue of the affection she showed me, but at the same time she made me feel inferior by virtue of the affection everyone showed her.

  I sighed as I flashed back yet again to the scene with her and Stuart in the bedroom. The ache was still there, but even more fresh was the bafflement. What I continued to wonder was this: Why does someone who has it all want what you have instead?

  4

  Tara’s manuscript was entitled Simply Beautiful, and I should never have read it on an empty stomach. It was a book that oozed with warmed-over, recycled ideas belonging to both well-known sages on the subject of inner beauty—like the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and, it goes without saying, Oprah—and to well-known sages on the subject of outer beauty—like makeup artist Bobbi Brown and that pioneer of pulchritude, Cher. There were tips on how to feel beautiful when you’re paying bills (put some Enya on the stereo and an arrangement of flowers on your desk and wear a “happy color” like yellow), how to feel beautiful when you’ve got the blahs (go out and buy yourself a trinket such as a seashell, a letter opener, or a spanking new toothbrush), and, of course, how to feel beautiful while taking a bath (sprinkle fresh lemon juice in the bathwater, along with, perhaps, some Shalimar, use a terry-cloth face mitt and some delicious lavender soap, and give yourself at least an hour in order to have a truly restorative soak). There were suggestions on coating the mouthpiece of your telephone with vanilla, making up your shopping list with a fountain pen instead of a standard-issue Bic, and studying up on your constellations and then going for a stargazing walk when the moon is full. No kidding. Most painful for me was the long discussion of how Tara herself practiced the art of living beautifully with her simply beautiful husband, Stuart. She explained how she kept him enchanted by writing him flirtatious little notes and leaving them where he least expected them; by applying a few drops of orange-blossom oil on the special ring she fitted atop the lightbulbs in the lamps in their bedroom; and by—get this—reading him poetry before they fell asleep at night. Oh, and she recommended that we women invest in a pair of lacy black stockings and a garter belt.

  What I found amazing was that the old Tara, the wild and crazy party girl turned sedate surburban princess, seemed to have reinvented herself yet again. She was still self-involved, as well as enterprising, it was plain to see, but with a sort of “feng shui meets the Happy Hooker” approach. What killed me was that she was going to make money off the crap she was peddling. What also killed me was that I was going to help her make money off it. She’d be a shoo-in for talk shows and women’s magazines and newspaper features, and by the time I was done publicizing her, she’d be a best-selling author. A best-selling author who was married to the man I was supposed to have married. You can understand why I was so grossed out about all this, right?

  I went to work on Monday, knowing I’d have to bite the bullet, call Tara and arrange a meeting. Since we were publishing Simply Beautiful in only six months, there was no time to waste when it came to formulating a publicity campaign. After a conversation with Betsy, during which we discussed the budget for the book, I sketched out a plan, which she endorsed in her own special way. “This looks good on paper,” she said, “but it’s pie in the sky unless you get results.” Yeah, so you can take the bow, I thought to myself.

  When I got back to my office, my assistant, Scott Poland, a gay man in his twenties, told me I’d had a phone call.

  “Do we know a Tara Messer?” he asked. Scott was very proprietary with his “we” this and “we” that, and I found it extremely touching. He made me feel as if he and I were in the wacky world of promoting authors together, as opposed to me being the one who did the heavy lifting and him being the one who watched me do it, which was the reality. I don’t mean to suggest that he was lazy, but, unlike the other three members of my department, he was more interested in schmoozing than working.
He was a championship-caliber gossip, someone who knew everything—from who was taking whose job to who was sleeping with whose boss. He had the ear-to-the-ground radar that I lacked, and I had the skill and experience that he lacked, so between the two of us, we made a damn good publicity director.

  “Tara called?” I said. Couldn’t she at least have let me be the one to call her first?

  “Yeah. A few minutes ago,” said Scott. “Who is she? Oh, wait.” He nodded, stroked his goatee. “She’s the author Julie Farrell just signed up. I heard about the book last week.”

  “Of course you did.” If a bird farted in Estonia, Scott heard about it. “We’ll be doing a big campaign for the book, so Tara was probably calling to set up a meeting, God help me.”

  “God help me? What’s this?” Scott cocked his head at me. He was adorable, with spiky sandy hair, bright blue eyes, and a tall, thin body. Like me, he wasn’t in a romantic relationship or even dating anybody. The difference was that he hadn’t bragged to anybody that he was. “I detect a note of resentment, Amy. We’re not wild about this Tara person, are we?”

  “Nope,” I admitted. No point in trying to hide anything from Scott. “She and I were best friends growing up, but we had a falling-out a few years ago.”

  “About?”

  “Guess.”

  “A guy.”

  “A cliché, I know.”

  “She was your best friend and she stole your guy and we hate her now?”

  “We do. Or maybe we just hate what she did. Either way, we’re not looking forward to working on her book, but we’re going to do it anyway because we’re professionals.”

  He considered this for a second. “You’re the professional, honey. Say the word and you’ll be in charge of working on her book and I’ll be in charge of sabotaging your efforts.”

  I shook my head. “If the book doesn’t sell, everybody here will blame me. So we’ll do our best with it. Both of us.”

  “Your choice. Just one question.”

  “What?”

  “How does someone not on a daytime soap opera come to have the name Tara?”

  “Her parents were watching Gone With the Wind the night she was conceived.”

  “Sweet, but why didn’t they name her Scarlett, or Melanie, or—what was the Butterfly McQueen character?—Prissy?”

  I laughed for the first time in days. “Oh, she’s definitely not a Prissy. Her parents named her after the house because it represented security, and Tara is the most secure woman you’ll ever meet.”

  “Are we talking about a diva?”

  “No, not a diva. Just a prom queen. An ambitious prom queen, who always gets what she’s after.”

  “Call her immediately,” said Scott, passing me the Post-it note with Tara’s number on it. “I must see this treasure for myself.”

  I closed the door to my office, took a few deep breaths and called Tara at her nouveau Tara in Westchester. A woman answered.

  “Ms. Messer’s office.”

  Ms. Messer’s office? Give me a break. Tara was a local radio host, not the CEO of an international corporation, and her “office” was probably a guest room. Assuming the person on the other end of the phone was her secretary, what did this secretary do? Pay her Neiman Marcus bills? With Enya playing on the stereo? How simply beautiful.

  “Is Tara there, please?” I said. “This is Amy Sherman, returning her call.”

  “Oh, right. I’ll see if she’s free. Would you hold?”

  Hold this, I thought, wondering if Tara was busy soaking in a tub of Shalimar or perhaps leaving a flirtatious little note in one of Stuart’s jockstraps. Or, since it was nearly noon, perhaps he had dashed home from work for a matinee and now they were soaking together in the tub of Shalimar.

  After a minute or so, Tara picked up. “Amy. Hi, hi, hi.”

  “You sound rushed,” I said, aware that my speech was sort of deadpan. I suppose I was trying to hold my emotions in check. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No, not at all. I’m just so glad you called me back. I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Of course I called you back,” I said. “We’re going to be working together, Tara. I must say I was surprised when I heard you’d written a book and that L and T would be publishing it. You didn’t mention it when we ran into each other on the street.”

  “I know, but I thought it would be better if you didn’t hear about it from me. Look, Amy, the last thing I want to do is force myself on you. Not after what happened between us.”

  I had no interest in rehashing what had happened between us. More to the point, I didn’t believe for a second that the last thing she wanted to do was force herself on me. She must have jumped for joy when she found out I was in charge of publicity at the publishing house that had acquired her book. Now she had a brand-new way to make me feel like her slave.

  “Why don’t we put the past behind us and concentrate on Simply Beautiful,” I said, a declaration that Marianne would have applauded. “I’ve read the manuscript and—”

  “Did you like it?” she asked, breathless with the possibility of being fawned over.

  “It’s very commercial,” I said, avoiding the question. “I think it will sell extremely well. We’re living in a precarious world, Tara—a time of genuine uncertainty, a time when women are yearning to get in touch with their, uh, inner beauty.” Vomit. Vomit. Vomit. “The climate couldn’t be better for a book like yours.”

  “I’m so glad,” she said. “Now, what can I do to help the cause? I’m up for anything.”

  Up for anything. Yes, I remember that about you, I thought, replaying the night that Tara was supposed to sleep over at my house and invited half the school to stop by. My parents were in Arizona, looking at condos (they moved there a few years later, due to my mother’s asthma), and since Tara and I had reached the ripe old age of sixteen, they figured we could take care of ourselves. Imagine their surprise when they got home and found the house destroyed. Well, not destroyed, but not the way they’d left it. Tara was the one who spread the word that there’d be a party and I was the one who was grounded for a month. Typical. She had this uncanny knack for stirring up trouble and leaving me to pick up the pieces. Even after I explained to my parents that it was she who’d broken their rules, it was I who’d been punished. She’d just bat her eyelashes, flip her golden hair, say the right thing, and then—presto—you couldn’t stay mad at her.

  Only I did stay mad at her, I thought, pulling myself back to the present. I’d stayed mad at her for nearly four years, since the second I walked in on her and Stuart. It wasn’t a lifetime, but it was probably a record.

  5

  Tara and I agreed that we should meet to discuss her book. We just couldn’t agree on where to meet. I suggested my office. She suggested her house. I suggested Julie Farrell’s office. She suggested her house. I suggested a restaurant—any restaurant. She suggested her house.

  “You’re the public-relations expert, Amy, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to tell you how to do your job,” she said, “but if you’re going to be pitching me to the media as someone who’s written a book about a simply beautiful lifestyle, shouldn’t you come up here and see my simply beautiful lifestyle? I could show you the whole enchilada and then you’d have a genuine understanding of the simply beautiful idiom.”

  Of the simply beautiful idiot, too, I thought, wondering how Tara had conned L and T into buying the book in the first place.

  She did have a point about my going up to see her house, however. As much as I hated to admit it and as much as I had no desire to set foot inside the love nest she and Stuart shared, it was true that I’d get a better handle on her whole enchilada if I witnessed it for myself.

  “Okay, Tara,” I said. “I’ll drive up.”

  “Fabulous,” she said. “I’ll have Michelle make us lunch.”

  “Michelle?”

  “Yes, my cook.”

  Her cook. Please. “I don’t eat peppers,” I said, jus
t to be annoying. “Or anything with curry in it.”

  “I already know that, Amy,” she said. “We were best friends once, remember? You don’t eat peppers, curry, or hearts of palm. I have it all written down in my Hostess Diary.”

  “Your what?”

  “My Hostess Diary. It’s in the book. In order to be a simply beautiful hostess, you have to note the foods your guests like and dislike, so you don’t offend them or, God forbid, make them sick.”

  Tara offended me and made me sick, but a job was a job.

  I told Connie I was having lunch chez Tara, and she suggested I take along a little arsenic and force it down Tara’s simply beautiful throat. I told Scott, too, and he suggested I tape our conversation so that he wouldn’t miss a single simply beautiful word. But it was my mother’s reaction to the forthcoming lunch that floored me. When she called from Arizona that night for her weekly check-in and I explained that Tara and I had not only spoken after our four-year estrangement but made a date, she was actually happy about it.

  “I’m delighted that you girls are friends again,” she said, then cupped her hand over the phone and yelled at my father to turn down the TV.

  “We’re not friends again,” I said emphatically. “We’re stuck with each other because of her book. But why would you be delighted in any case? Tara married Stuart, the man who was supposed to be my husband and your son-in-law. Has that little detail slipped your mind, Mom?”

  “Of course, it hasn’t,” she said. “I was as heartbroken as you were when it happened. Your father and I were paying for the wedding, don’t forget. We lost our deposit on the flowers and the DJ, although the people at the Elm Creek Inn let us off the hook.”

  “Okay, so you lost money on the deal. But how about your disappointment, your anger at Tara for what she did? How can you want me to be friendly with her now?”