Cheap Diamonds

by Norris Church Mailer

  The little light flitted and twinkled and tears ran down my cheeks as I somehow tried to find the words to pray to God without Him thinking I was a horrible person, although I knew full well that He knew my heart better than I did, and I guess I fell asleep because the next thing I remembered was the sun coming in the window of my room and I had to get up to go do a job for Macy’s.

  50

  * * *

  THE HOGS

  Snow was falling on the glass roof of the pool house. It had been another bad weekend at Sneden’s Landing. Suzan had confronted Freddy about the latest model he was screwing and he had gone off on her again. Would she never learn to keep her mouth shut? Probably not. She didn’t care about the physical act anymore, but the girl was a newcomer who was beginning to flaunt herself all over the agency, treating Suzan with condescension, lording it over the other girls, who more than likely had screwed him themselves, but knew enough to keep their mouths shut about it. It didn’t look good, and she was going to have to let her go, which was too bad since she had the potential to be a good moneymaker. Unfortunately, Suzan’s tirade got a little heated and she made the mistake of slapping Freddy. Fortunately, her resulting bruises were all on her arms and back, not her face. She rubbed herself well with Arnica gel and put an ice pack on the worst of the bruises, then took a bottle of cold Chardonnay to the pool room to sit and look at the water as snowflakes began to cover the glass. It was her favorite place to think, and looking at the cool blue water soothed her. It had been a good Christmas, all in all. The party had been a tremendous success, a little bonus being Diana Vreeland discovering Cherry. Freddy had made a big show of giving Suzan a sable coat in front of everyone, which she could have bought herself if she had wanted to waste the money. It was her money that bought it. Her money, not Freddy’s, no matter whose name was on the secret bank account. How had this happened to her? How did it happen to any woman? You make a wrong decision and are too proud to let the world know the truth, so you stick it out. Except everybody in the industry knew. They all knew and they all felt sorry for her, but what could they do? Beauty was a trap. Everyone wanted to be you; everyone thought beauty was the magic elixir that led to happiness and wealth. If only they knew. She envied ugly girls sometimes. They never had to put up with men sniffing around them like dogs and using them as pretty accessories. Somebody once told her that the Jewish rabbis all had the most beautiful wives. It gave them more status. It wasn’t just rabbis who wanted beautiful wives. Every man did. The trouble was that once they were married, the beautiful girlfriend became the wife, and they had to pursue another, younger, more beautiful girlfriend. One was never enough. And once you got past the perfect features and perfume, every woman was the same. They all wanted a man who would love only them. They all had demands. Some of the lucky ones, the smart ones, the charming ones, lasted longer. But too bad if looks were all they had. Looks were a gift that came and went before you could say “face-lift.” She would be forty in a few days. After forty, no matter how beautiful or charming or smart you were, in the eyes of society you were off the board. Men might say, “Yes, she’s still beautiful, but I can get somebody just like her twenty years younger.” In the society columns, over the years, you went from being “the stunning Suzan Hartman,” to “the beautiful Suzan Hartman,” to “the handsome Suzan Hartman,” to “Suzan Hartman, the woman who used to be a model.” Your jowls begin to sag just that little bit and your eyes don’t seem as open and bright anymore. The enamel on your teeth gets thinner and yellowed, no matter how much you brush. If you manage to starve yourself and stay thin, your neck goes to granny strings, and your hands start to look veined and bony, like a Halloween witch’s. If you got a face-lift, like so many women she knew, it changed as you aged. Noses traveled off-center and continued to grow in unnatural ways, old faces pulled too tightly looked like masks. There were whole troops of them at Quo Vadis every day for lunch, little old mummies in Chanel suits, low-heeled patent-leather shoes, and baggy silk stockings. She could see it all starting now. She was too skinny. In the nude, her hip bones stuck out like the poles of a pup tent, her stomach slung low between them, her pubic bone jutting high. Her breasts were tiny sacks, useless appendages that would never suckle a baby. Her butt was beginning to go flat. She needed to put on a few pounds, but she couldn’t make herself eat. It was the habit of a lifetime, seeing food as her enemy, forcing herself to starve to fit the tiny clothes. Ah, well. Wine was full of calories. She had to allow for that. So what if she’d never be twenty again? Who wanted to go through all that crap endlessly? In fact, who wanted to do any of it anymore? She was so tired of playing the game. What would Freddy do, she mused, if she disappeared again? If she just packed her bags and moved so far away he would never find her? Where might that be? Alaska? Somewhere in the Amazon jungle? The Near East? She smiled, thinking of going to one of those places where the women wore coverings over their entire bodies, and nobody ever knew what they looked like at all. A whole half of the population were black ghosts. She could just see Freddy over there, running down the street, lifting all the sheets, looking for her under them, the women screaming and beating him over the head. She’d read of one country, Afghanistan or one of those, where the men would actually beat a woman if the wind happened to blow her sheet up and display a little ankle. The men in those places were horrors. Freddy would fit right in.

  His voice broke into her reverie. He was calling for her. What now? What else could he do to her? She ignored him.

  “Susan? Where are you? Susan?” He was drunk. Well, that wasn’t unusual. She was well on her way, too. Another half bottle ought to do it.

  “Suzan, Freddy. I’m out here by the pool.”

  He came out, red-eyed and staggering, holding a bottle of gin.

  “Where is it, Suzan? What did you do with the money?”

  “What money, Freddy? What are you talking about?”

  “I had four thousand dollars in my desk and it’s gone. Don’t play innocent with me. It was in my locked drawer. You’ve been in my locked drawer.”

  “Maybe you forgot to lock it and one of the kids took it. You’re always flashing that wad of cash around them.”

  “No, the drawer was locked. Someone’s been in it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me. Go to bed and let me have my wine in peace. You owe me that much at least.”

  “You have that backward. It’s you who owe me. I made you what you are today. I’m the one who made Suzan Hartman! You were just one more pretty little twat—from Arkansas, no less. A high school dropout. You didn’t even go to that hick school where they called the Hogs. But you were a Hog caller. A phony Hog caller. That’s all you were, a pretty little phony Hog caller! Whoo, pig, sooooie!”

  “Don’t make fun of the Razorbacks, Freddy.”

  “Wooooooo, pig, pig pig pig, soooooooie! Whoooo, pig pig pig, sooooie!”

  He was standing beside her chaise, yelling right in her face. Mustering all the dignity she could, Suzan got up and walked away, leaving him standing there still calling after her, “Woooooooooooo, pig!!! Woooooooo, pig, sooooooooie!”

  He was so carried away with his rant, so staggeringly drunk, that he didn’t see the wine bottle sitting by the chaise. He stepped back and stumbled over it, his slipper falling off. The bottle of Bombay Sapphire he had been holding crashed to the floor, breaking into shards, and he stepped on a piece, cutting his foot. He tried to catch himself, but lost his balance, and, arms flailing, toppled into the pool, striking his head on the edge as he fell. A small slick of blood colored the tile where he hit, as he sank like a rock to the bottom of the deep end. Suzan turned, waited for a moment, then walked back to the pool.

  “Freddy? Stop fooling around. Come back up here this instant! Freddy?”

  Suzan stood looking down into the water, waiting for him to come back up, but he didn’t. Blood floated up through the water from his head in a lazy rivulet.

  “Well, stay there, then, if you’re going to be like t
hat. I told you not to make fun of the Razorbacks.”

  Then she picked up her bottle of wine and went to bed.

  51

  * * *

  MRS. DIGBY’S SECRET

  Lana and I were doing a shoot for Bausch & Lomb sunglasses with Neal Barr, the sweet, wonderful photographer who I’d worked with for Vanity Fair. The first shots were sophisticated, me in a black knit dress that molded to my figure, a wide-brimmed hat, and big black glasses, a cigarette in a long black holder, Lana in a gold evening dress, her hair in an up-do, wearing a pair of gold gradient lenses. Then we did girl-next-door ones, with pastel headbands and T-shirts. It was a routine job, but nice. I’d been a little anxious all day and Lana could sense something was the matter.

  “Are you okay, Cherry?” she asked when we were alone in the dressing room.

  “No. I’m not okay, Lana. I think I might be pregnant.”

  “Oh. That’s awful. Is it Aurelius?”

  “Of course it’s Aurelius! I haven’t been with anybody else.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He doesn’t know. I kind of sounded him out on getting married and he is in no way ready to do that.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “No. I’m just not ready. I have twelve pages coming out in Vogue and a big trip planned to Moscow. And I don’t think I love him enough to marry him. Oh, Lana, I’m so stupid! I’ve made such a mess out of things.” I started to cry, trying not to mess up the eye makeup that had just taken an hour to perfect. With an iron will, I pulled the tears back in. At least enough not to totally wreck the mascara.

  “Well, it’s no big deal. You’ll just get an abortion. I’ve had three.”

  “You’ve had three? Why?”

  “Oh, you know. I get sloppy sometimes. Heat of the moment and all. It’s really no worse than having a tooth extracted.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to go for one. What do you do?”

  “Are you kidding me? You mean you don’t know?”

  “Of course I don’t know. How would I know?”

  “You’re living in the house of the best abortionist in New York. I just thought you knew.”

  “Who? Mrs. Digby?”

  “Of course Mrs. Digby. She’s famous. All the girls go to her. She’s clean and discreet and she cares about us. You should talk to her about it.”

  Mrs. Digby. I had no clue. I mean, there were occasionally girls going in and out of her house, but that was to be expected with all the young people living there. Once late at night, I saw a girl leaving as I was coming in, but didn’t think anything about it. Now it all made sense. She had certainly been around the block enough to know the route. Mrs. Digby. Who would have thought?

  52

  * * *

  CASSIE AND LALE

  Lale saw the old T-bird sitting outside the Chelsea Hotel. Sal hadn’t been kidding. Cassie was here. What had he been thinking all these months—that she was just going to quietly fade away and he would never have to see her again or face what he did? His heart pounded as he stood in the lobby and asked for her. The desk clerk, a small, bored man in a striped shirt, looked in a ledger and gave him a room number. Instead of taking the elevator, to give himself more time, he climbed the huge vertical tunnel of stairs, each stair seeming like it was ten feet high. The hallway floor was black-and-white tile, and the door was painted a dark brown, thick paint, a hundred coats of paint, like you could peel it off and roof a house with it. He listened, and there were small sounds coming from inside. She was there. He knocked. The door opened and a woman who he had never seen before answered. She had cornflower eyes like Cassie, but they had makeup on them that made them look twice their size. She was slim. Her cheekbones jutted out, her nose thin and high. She stared at him as if she didn’t recognize him, either. Then she stood back and he walked in.

  “Cassie? Is that you?”

  “You knocked on my door. Who were you expecting? How did you know I was here?”

  “Sal’s a friend of mine.”

  “Oh. Really? Small world. Well, come in and find a place to sit. It’s not very big.”

  She was slightly in shock and nervous, but trying not to let on. It was unreal that he would just come knocking on her door. She had rehearsed this moment so many times, but now that it was here, she wasn’t ready for it. He pulled out a chair from the table. She sat in the one by the window. Golden afternoon light came in and highlighted her long honey hair, touched the shoulders of her blouse, a white cotton lisle embroidered with flowers of red and green and blue.

  “You look so…so different.” He couldn’t think of any words big enough to say how beautiful she looked, and didn’t think she’d believe he meant it anyhow.

  “So do you.”

  There was a long silence. They sat and stared at each other, like strangers who had wandered into the wrong room at a party.

  “Sal said you were modeling for Richard Avedon. After you’d been in town two days?”

  “Yeah. It was kind of a fluke. It’s a long story.”

  “I have time.”

  “Do you? You never had time before.”

  “Just tell me how you got Avedon to take your picture.”

  “I told you, it was a fluke. Diana Vreeland saw me and sent me over to Dick….”

  “Dick? You’re calling him Dick?”

  “That’s his name. Anyhow, I went up to Vogue, trying to track down Cherry, since I didn’t have your address, and Diana Vreeland saw me and sent me over to Dick to do a picture for the magazine. It was no big deal.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You walked into Vogue and Diana Vreeland decided to put you in the magazine, just like that? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Pretty much. Yeah.”

  “Is that why you lost all that weight? To come up here and be a model, too?”

  “No…I lost weight because my baby was sick and died and I didn’t have much of an appetite. You do know we had a baby girl and she died, don’t you? Aren’t you interested in that? What does it matter that somebody took my picture?” There was nothing he could say. “Were you ever going to call me, Lale? Ever? Or did you think it would just all go away and I’d forget about it?”

  “I thought about you a lot. I did. I sent money.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the money. I mean it. I couldn’t have paid the hospital or doctors without it. But you made me feel like I was nothing, Lale. Like I was just some girl you happened to knock up. You didn’t leave much of a trail, did you? You made sure I didn’t have any address or phone number for you. So I figured I’d find Cherry, who at least gave me her address, and then she’d lead me to you. The two of you seemed to know each other pretty well. Funny, isn’t it? The two people who were my best friends in tiny little ol’ Buchanan, Arkansas, come to New York and find each other.”

  “You have the wrong idea about me and Cherry. We’re just friends. I swear.”

  “That’s what she’d say, too. But I know what I saw on the TV. I saw it in your eyes, Lale. You don’t have to lie to me. Not anymore.”

  “I’m not lying. I like her a lot, but, Cassie, that was acting. We were what they call ‘in the moment.’ At that moment we were in love, for the cameras, and…I can’t really explain it…when the camera turned off, so did we.”

  “It’s okay. I understand. If I had to choose between Cherry and me, I’d take Cherry, too. The only thing is, I just wish you had told me you didn’t want to get married instead of letting it get so far and then running off and leaving me like you did. I wish you had written me one time to say you were sorry, or that you were okay, or to acknowledge I was there. You’ll never know what I went through. Half the town thought the baby wasn’t yours. Your mother saw to that, and where did she get that idea?”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” She reached for her purse. He flinched, as if he was afraid she was going to pull out a gun. Instead, she handed him a small stack of pictu
res.

  “What are these?”

  “All that’s left of Lalea. I thought you ought to at least see what she looked like.”

  The first picture was a shock. He stared at the little ruined face, trying to keep the horror out of his eyes. There were four, each one slightly worse than the one before, as more tubes and needles were added. Tears came into his eyes. He handed them back to her.