The Year of Living Famously

by Laura Caldwell

  After college, I lived in the Village. In retrospect, I see that I was trying to distance myself from Emmie, not for any scandalous reasons like child prostitution or wire hangers, but rather a need to establish myself in my own little world. But what I quickly realized was that I missed Carnegie Hill. I missed being close to Emmie. I missed the sense of space the park lent the neighborhood. My sporadic income from the occasional sale of my clothing lines, freelance-de-sign gigs and temp jobs wouldn’t normally support a decent apartment here, but I had the very modest trust fund from my parents, which I used only for rent. I arranged for the bank to cut a check directly to my landlord every month, so I couldn’t screw it up, and I’d lived here ever since.

  As I turned the corner onto Madison, I saw him. He was standing outside the diner, looking both ways, back and forth. He had on dark jeans, black leather shoes and a short-sleeve, untucked gray shirt. I thought he looked adorable, although fairly panicked, with his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching. This somehow calmed me.

  His perplexed face broke into a smile when he saw me. “I thought maybe I had the wrong one,” he said as I neared. “There are a million diners on this street.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I’d reached him by then, and we both seemed unsure of what to do. Kiss? Shake hands? Throw ourselves on the sidewalk and have at it?

  Declan solved the problem. In a moment that was years long, but entirely too short, he put his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. I squeezed my eyes shut and hugged him back, letting him lift me off the sidewalk. His hair was wet at the back—he must have just taken a shower—and he smelled like shampoo and minty shaving cream. I hoped he would never put me down.

  But he did. We stared at each other, both a little taken aback, I think.

  “How are you?” I said, apropos of absolutely nothing.

  “Shaggered. But happy to see you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You look gorgeous.” He glanced at my outfit. “I love women in skirts.”

  I smiled like the shy girl in a fifties movie who has just met the football star.

  “What now?” Declan said.

  Our e-mails had been so suggestive, our phone calls so flirty, and the hug so intense, that sitting in a diner making benign talk seemed so very wrong. I wanted to bring him back to my apartment and into my bed, but that seemed a tad quick. So I took him to meet Emmie.

  Everyone adores Emmie, especially men. If she’d been younger, I might not have loved her as much because she would have constantly stolen my dates.

  Declan and I walked down Madison. When a crowd of high-school students poured out of a shop, nearly charging into us, he put his hand on the small of my back and drew me close. A few steps later, he slipped his hand in mine. I stopped breathing for a moment. I placed my sandaled feet one after another, and acted as if nothing were new, as if this was all very commonplace. But I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt the grin spread across my face and stay there. I squeezed his warm hand a little more. When I glanced at him, he was grinning, too.

  “All right, so you’ve mentioned Emmie before,” Declan said. “Is she your best pal?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  I hadn’t given him many details about Emmie or my family situation—it seemed too grave a story to drop on someone too quickly—but now I explained that Emmie had raised me after my parents died in a train wreck going from Manhattan to Philadelphia.

  Both of my parents were writers, my father an author of historical memoirs, usually on presidents or war heroes, my mother a fiction writer of short stories and young-adult stuff. On that day, when I was eight years old, my mother had a reading at the main library in Philadelphia for her new story collection. She and my father always tried to accompany each other to author events. They were the most supportive couple, Emmie said. The Philadelphia trip was also intended to be their twelfth-anniversary celebration. They’d been married ten years, but they always celebrated the day they met, rather than the day they tied the knot.

  They’d reserved seats in the first-class section. I imagine they went immediately to the dining car and ordered champagne, toasting each other as the concrete landscape gave way to the green hills of eastern Pennsylvania.

  A half hour before reaching Philadelphia, the train encountered a semi stalled on the tracks. Encountered. Probably too tame a word, because the train slammed into it, killing the truck driver instantly, and crushing the first six train cars, including the dining car, like flattened beer cans.

  “Jesus fecking Christ,” Declan said. He squeezed my hand tighter. “I’m so sorry. Is it still tough for you?”

  “No. I wish I could say it was, but it was a long time ago. It gets harder to remember them all the time.”

  I told Declan that Emmie was my godmother, as well as the literary agent for both my parents. I’m sure Emmie never thought that anything would happen to them. I mean, who ever truly envisions a married couple will die together? Emmie was single by choice. It must have been a great shock to her when she had to take delivery of a tiny eight-year-old too smart for her own good.

  I didn’t tell Declan right then, but I found out years after my parents died that there was a custody battle for me. A few, actually. My mother’s sister, Donna, who lived in my mother’s hometown of Plano, Texas, lobbied the courts with her husband to take me into their home with their four boys. My father’s parents made a plea, too. They lived in New Jersey. But my parents’ wills had stipulated that Emmie be my guardian, and Emmie spent about a year’s salary making sure she got to keep me. As I said, I never knew this at the time, but I wish I had. It would have been nice to know, in that weird, confusing time after my parents died, that I was wanted so desperately.

  My father’s parents died within a few years of his death, so it’s a good thing I didn’t live with them. I’ve visited my aunt Donna and her family a number of times. She is an unnaturally thin woman who grinds her teeth whenever her husband, a bearish man who owns a chain of gas stations, speaks in his loud drawl. Her sons seem to scare her. I can see now that she probably didn’t want me for the sake of taking care of her sister’s child, for my well-being. I think she just wanted a friend, some kind of buffer in that house full of testosterone.

  Whenever I visit Aunt Donna, I take her old Ford Escort (her husband drives a Mercedes) and drive around her town, wondering what I would be like if I had been raised by her. Would I still be a designer? Would I be living in Manhattan? Or would I be working in the home office of my uncle Larry’s gas stations? Would I still be creative and sarcastic and melancholy at times, or would I have adopted a nonstop sunny, albeit fake, personality to offset Aunt Donna?

  Anyway, by the end of my explanation about Emmie, Declan and I had reached her building, a place called Hortense Court on East 92nd, right by the park. Through the glass pane of the front door, you could see the lobby. The marble was chipping, and the paint on the ceiling peeled in thin strips, giving nothing away about what the apartments inside were really like.

  “She’s like your mum, then?” Declan said. He had one foot on the stoop, but it seemed as if the other might be ready to run.

  I almost laughed at his wary face. I could see him thinking that he’d only just got here and already he was forced to meet my de facto parent.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “She fed and clothed me. She got me into school and signed me up for ballet classes. You know what I mean?”

  “I understand food,” Declan said, “but not the ballet.”

  “Well, she’s not really the mothering type, and believe me, she’s someone you should meet. She is the grande dame of New York.”

  “I thought that was you.”

  “I’m the second one.”

  “Ah,” Declan said. “So I might fall for Emmie.”

  I stood above him on the stoop so that I was a little taller than he. “I’ll fight her for you.”

  His eyes widened in mock delight. “It’s what I’ve always
dreamed of,” he said.

  “C’mon.” I used my key and opened the lobby door.

  He still didn’t move. “A little kiss for strength?”

  I looked him up and down. “Why do I get the feeling you’ll want a grope next for good luck?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “I better just hold your hand for now,” I said coyly. I took his hand and pulled him inside.

  “Emmie, it’s me!” I yelled as I stepped into her place.

  “Kyra, sweetie!” I heard her call from the bedroom. “I’ll be there in a minute.” I hadn’t phoned Emmie to let her know we were coming, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. She was used to people stopping by all the time. She thrived on it.

  “Come in,” I said to Declan.

  He took a step in, glancing around the place.

  Emmie has owned her apartment since the sixties. Sometime before I came along, she bought the apartment next to hers, knocked out the center wall and created a large, eclectic space where nothing matched, but everything had its place. One half of her living room, her original living room before she bought the other side, was lined with dark wood bookshelves from floor to ceiling. But even with all those shelves, books were stacked everywhere—under end tables, at the sides of the maroon velvet couches, on the wide round coffee table. This was Emmie’s side of the apartment. Her bedroom and kitchen lay behind the living-room wall.

  On the other side of the living room, the books continued their dominance, but there the decor was more functional. Groupings of chairs and coffee tables took up most of the space, and the kitchen had been decked out with restaurant appliances for entertaining purposes. This side was where Emmie had her “salons,” as she called them, the gatherings of the crème de la crème of the New York publishing world. Famous authors, editors and fellow agents from work—they all came here to talk books, to gossip.

  When I moved in as a child, Emmie gave me the tiny bedroom on the salon side of the apartment. That room was my own, papered with clippings from Vogue and my own childish sketches, but the rest of the place was decidedly Emmie’s. I knew how quickly people could be wrenched from your life, and I didn’t want to lose Emmie, too. So I learned fast to tiptoe around the Dresden figures on the end table and to always make sure there was scotch in the crystal decanters, ice in the silver bucket. There was no official bedtime at Emmie’s. If one of her salons was in full swing, I could slip through the apartment and stay up as late as I wanted. I liked it better when there was no one there with us, but that wasn’t often.

  “Kyra, Kyra.” Emmie’s voice trilled from the hallway.

  She stepped into the living room, wearing gray wool slacks pressed to a fine point and a black cashmere turtleneck. At that time, Emmie only worked two days a week, acting more as a figurehead at the literary agency than anything else, but she always dressed for the day like a professional. No bathrobes or sweats for Emmie. She has very short auburn-red hair (“I dye it, sweetie, so that I’ll die a redhead” is what she’s always said), and her eyes are still the most striking teal blue.

  “Oh, and you’ve brought a friend! Delightful!” She wafted into the room and kissed me on the cheek, then Declan. “Welcome,” she said. “I’ll get tea.” And then she was gone just as quickly, puttering away in her service kitchen.

  “Nice to meet…” Declan said to her retreating back. He turned to me quizzically.

  “She has a lot of visitors,” I said.

  Soon Emmie was back, carrying a tea tray. Declan jumped off the couch to take it from her.

  “Gallantry,” she said. “It’s so rare these days.”

  She sat on a maroon velvet chair, “the queen’s chair” I used to call it as a kid, and began pouring tea. Her signature ring, a sapphire set in a gold braided band, glinted in the afternoon light that streamed in the windows. “I detected an accent,” she said to Declan. “Tell, tell.”

  “Oh,” Declan said. He looked at me, then back at her. I nodded in encouragement. Emmie always just jumped right into conversations like this—she abhorred pleasantries—and I was used to her running the conversation from the get-go.

  “All right,” Declan said. “Well, I’m Declan McKenna, and—”

  “Declan McKenna? Oh!” Emmie interrupted. She looked at me and smiled. I had told her only a little about our Internet and phone flirtations, but Emmie could read me well enough to know I’d been delighted.

  I shot Declan an embarrassed smile. “We’re just stopping by to say hello, Emmie.”

  “Of course.” She handed Declan a cup. “Are you a writer?”

  “No,” Declan said.

  “Pity. You have the perfect name.”

  “I’m an actor.”

  “Ah.” Emmie sounded disappointed, and Declan, as all men do, rushed in to appease her, telling her how he’d moved to the States from Ireland and how he was in town shooting a film.

  “Mmm,” Emmie said, sounding more impressed now. “And remind me how you two know each other.” Emmie would cut off an arm before she would read the National Enquirer, and I hadn’t told her about my photo.

  “We met in Vegas,” I said.

  “When you were with darling Bobby?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Interesting.” She patted the chair next to her. “Declan, move over here, won’t you?”

  I groaned a little, but God love him, he crossed the room without hesitation and sat next to her. I remember thinking they looked lovely together: Emmie with her cap of ginger hair and her lined, pale face; Declan with his amused grin, his white teeth, his golden-brown eyes.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Emmie said.

  “Christ, no. I’ll have one with you.” Out of his pocket, Declan pulled a red book of matches.

  I left them alone for a moment. When I returned, Emmie was in her prime entertainer mode, telling the story of a dinner she’d had with Prince Charles when he was a teenager. Declan’s quirky, rolling laugh filled the room. He cracked a joke about the royal family “splitting heirs.”

  Emmie laughed and clapped her hands. Then she gave me a little bow of her head. Declan had been accepted.

  When cocktail hour arrived (5:30 p.m., sharp, for Emmie), she whisked the tea tray away and brought out a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket.

  “To Declan,” she said, raising her glass, “and the success of his film.”

  Declan beamed. We all touched glasses.

  Two hours and another bottle of champagne later, Declan and I left Emmie’s apartment. It was dark already, in that strange, sudden way that darkness falls when you’ve been drinking in the late afternoon.

  “She’s fantastic,” Declan said. His hand was in mine again, and we were walking up Madison. We were moving in the direction of my apartment, although we hadn’t planned anything yet.

  “I’m glad you like her,” I said.

  “Now don’t get me wrong, here. She doesn’t hold a candle to you.”

  I sneaked a sideways glance at him. “Is that right?”

  There was a second’s pause, during which we kept walking, both of us looking straight ahead. “I don’t mean to give you a fright saying that,” Declan said. “I’m not usually like this, you see?”

  Have I already said that I was smiling so much that afternoon? It seemed I couldn’t drag that grin off my lips, and right then it became wider. “Sure, I see,” I said.

  Another pause. Declan held my hand tighter. “Where are we going?”

  We’d reached my apartment by then. Without a word, I tugged him toward the door.

  “Yeah?” he said, looking up at my brick building.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Afterward, when we were lying in bed, he stared at my face. How strange to be studied like that, when there hadn’t been a man in my bed for so long, but how amazing to be there next to him. It was simply right.

  “What kind of name is Felis?” he said, surprising me. I thought he was working up to something sexier.

  “It’
s Puerto Rican. My father was from there. My mother was Irish.” I said this proudly, though I’d never been to Ireland or even Puerto Rico, and I knew so little about my heritage.

  “Thank God you’re half-Irish! Now I can marry you,” he said in a jokey tone.

  His words sent a zing up my spine—terror and thrill in equal parts.

  The next morning, Declan slept later than me, and when he came into the kitchen, he found me standing naked at the counter, eating my normal breakfast—pickles and peanuts.

  “Nude breakfast?” he said.

  I nodded. He growled in return.

  “Christ, what’s this?” he said, walking to the counter. He glanced down at the two jars side by side. I had a small serving of peanuts poured into a cap. The pickles I pulled out one by one.

  “Breakfast, just like you said.”

  “What happened to oatmeal and runny eggs and slabs of bacon?”

  “You must be thinking of breakfast in Dublin. But what you’re seeing here is the perfect start to a morning.” I picked up the jar of pickles and waved my hand under it like a game-show hostess. “Vegetables,” I proclaimed. Then I lifted the peanuts, and with the same underwave, said, “Protein.”

  “You can get vegetables and protein by having tomatoes and eggs.”

  “Ah,” I said, popping a peanut in my mouth, “but those foods only keep for a week or two. Meanwhile, my breakfast foods last for months.”

  “You mean you eat this every day?”

  “Pretty much.” I offered him a pickle.

  It snapped as he took a bite. “You’re fecking weird,” he said between chews. “And I like it.”

  chapter 5

  To: Kyra Felis

  From: Margaux Hutters

  Hey, girl, what’s up with no return phone calls? Don’t you love me anymore? Wait, don’t tell me—you’re still running around with that actor. I thought he was leaving after a month or two. Hmm. Well, do tell, because I’m so bored. Peter is away again on a trial in Delaware, and he doesn’t even know when it will end. Work is painfully dull. Meanwhile, Manuel, my massage therapist, still wants to help me “relieve more tension,” if you know what I mean. And I’m starting to consider taking him up on that offer.