The women are friendly and have perfected that dewy-glow makeup that doesn’t look like makeup that I can never get right. These are women, I determine, who know the tricks to using bronzer and how to blend shimmery concealer into the inside corners of their eyes to make them pop. I feel dumpy and shapeless in my stinky black dress—the dark cloud, a sulky teen. The drop-waist dress has three-quarter-length raglan sleeves and an asymmetrical hem. It was a gift from the designer, a Japanese New Yorker whose fashion star is on the rise. You can’t even get this dress here. I know that these women wouldn’t know that and that makes me feel better, or as superior as a hungover woman wearing a stinky black dress on a hot summer day can feel.
I listen politely as the women talk about their babies. They all have something to say about training their husbands to do this or that. They sit on committees with Gen or live in the neighborhood. They complain about the traffic driving into The City and swap wine recommendations that they jot in leather-covered notebooks. I’m not sure if any of them work or not or did and now don’t and I couldn’t care. I claim a chair in a shady spot on the veranda and my headache dulls the horror of glowy makeup and implants.
I fuss with my camera. I promised Ted I’d take some shots of Olivier. I focus on Eva, who is relaxed and mingling effortlessly with the suburban sophisticates. I snap a few pictures of her and then all the ladies want their pictures taken—solo, in pairs, as a group, with babies, without. They summon their husbands and I’m a mobile Sears Portrait Studio, but not too mobile considering I refuse to budge from my shady veranda chair.
I’m trying to get a shot of Ted and Gen and Olivier. I release the shutter just as Eva comes into frame. Ted hands Gen the baby and slips inside the house. “I can do it,” Gen calls after him.
Eva touches the top of Olivier’s head. “You stay put and we’ll take care of everything,” she says to Gen.
The cake is dense and soggy with strawberries. I’m told it’s special-ordered from a popular organic bakery. It has no icing. Gen props Olivier on her lap and Ted starts everyone off with the birthday song, first in English, then in French. I hate my singing voice so I fidget with my camera and mouth the words and hope no one notices. Gen and Ted blow out the one candle. I get the shot. My work here is done.
Eva rushes around clearing plates, refilling glasses of lemonade and cooing over babies. I motion Ted over and ask when they’re going to open the presents. I want to see his face when they unwrap the gay sailor suit.
“We’ll do it later—after everyone leaves,” he says.
“What?”
“It’s a private thing.”
I stare at him unblinking, confused.
“It’s not like when we were kids, Sara. There’s a real movement toward not making a spectacle of opening gifts in front of the other kids.”
“A movement?”
“It promotes competition and places too much value on material things.” Ted sounds like he’s memorized this from some parenting textbook. He probably has.
“He’s one.”
“You’d be amazed how much information is imprinted before a child is two.”
I’m sure he’s right—I would be amazed. I would be amazed if upon hearing about this movement I didn’t want to turn my spare room into a workshop and take two copies of whatever book this present-opening behavior modification came from and use them to build a vise that I could wedge my head in and crank tighter and tighter until my skull cracked and the wormy soft spots of my brain matter oozed out onto the author’s photo and advance-praise blurbs.
Ted raises his glass of lemonade and clinks the side with a fork. Everyone stops talking. Ted’s eyes are teary as he thanks all of us, the wonderful friends, for coming. He toasts his wonderful son, his wonderful wife who’s a wonderful mother and it’s going to be wonderful to watch her perform again. Ted raises his glass higher. “J’taime Gen-Gen,” he says. “J’taime Gen-Gen!” the Wonderful Friends say and salute Genevieve with lemonade. I’m out of lemonade, but I rattle around the ice in the bottom of my glass.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it, about Gen’s new show?” Eva sits on the arm of my shady Adirondack chair and pours me another lemonade.
“Oh, it’s exciting,” I say.
“Do you think they’ll have cameras at the office?”
“I’m still not clear on the details,” I say, not wanting to admit that I have no details at all.
“I don’t suppose so, not unless Gen comes by,” Eva says.
I tune Eva out and strain to cobble together pieces of Wonderful Friends chatter. Filming starts in three weeks. In the studio, at home. J’taime Gen-Gen: juggling motherhood, marriage and music. Working out every day. Still have a tiny bit of tummy to lose. Gen’s tummy is perfectly flat, so that last thing she said to one of her fellow sherbet-shirt Wonderful Friends is a total lie.
Ted twirls around lifting Olivier above his head, repeating J’taime Gen-Gen, J’taime Gen-Gen, until it’s so obnoxious I want to stick out my foot and trip him so the baby goes splat and nobody’s happy and twirly and making deals to star in tacky reality shows without consulting their so-called best friend anymore.
“I couldn’t believe it when Ted told me. It seems like such a strange thing to do when you think about it—you’re so exposed,” says Eva.
Ted told Eva? I think about changing the subject but I can’t think of anything else to talk about. I try to sound casual. “When did Ted tell you?” My voice cracks. I sound like a pubescent frog.
“He mentioned something about it last week.”
“He mentioned something about it last week.” I mimic Eva precisely as if she were the voice on a learn-a-foreign-language cassette. I want to leave. I want to walk the freeway back to the city in my stinky black dress, laden with heavy camera gear and my punishing hangover. I try again for casual. “You know what they say—if you’re not on TV these days, you don’t really exist,” I say. No one actually says this but me and every time I do I fancy myself quite clever.
“I like that,” Eva says. “It’s so true.”
I wish there was a breeze and that I was wearing a white linen suit and a Panama hat and could smoke as I impart all my wisdom to my eager young student who spends afternoons sitting astride me pouring lemonade and hanging wide-eyed and rapt on my every word.
“I think that’s your phone,” Eva says, interrupting my vision.
I scramble through my camera bag and flip my phone open. “Hello?” There’s no one there. “Hello?”
“Sara? Is that you?”
“This is Sara.”
“Hello, dear. This is Esther Lewis speaking. I hope I’m not catching you at an inconvenient time.”
“No. Not at all.” Esther Lewis? Esther Lewis. Esther Lewis of Esther and Lila. Lila of the magazines.
“Sara, dear, I hope you don’t mind me calling, but I found your card and your cellular telephone number in Lila’s pocketbook and I know she had meant to give you a ring. She was looking forward to having you by for tea.”
“I’d love to come by for tea!”
“Your enthusiasm is simply delightful, Sara, and I’d love to host you for tea if you’d still like to come. In fact, you could be a great help to me in regards to Lila’s things.”
“Lila’s things?”
“Oh, dear. I’m not explaining this well, am I? Sara, I’m afraid Lila passed away three days ago.”
There is nothing better than death to excuse yourself immediately from a party you don’t want to be at.
Overshare
“But you hate old people,” says Jack.
“I do not hate old people,” I say. I hate that he knows this about me.
“You do so. They freak you out,” he says.
“This is different,” I say. Esther has invited me to Lila’s funeral on Tuesday.
“You don’t have to go.”
“I think I do.”
“Why? To get first dibs on those magazines?”
“No.�
�
Jack laughs into the phone. “You’re such a bitch, Sara. I love it.”
“I am—” I start to protest but Jack cuts me off.
“Shit, baby. I gotta run—they need me on set. Can’t wait to see you. Ciao.”
I am not such a bitch. Planning to attend the funeral of an old lady I only met once, who happened to have had a mythical collection of vintage fashion magazines is not a bitchy thing to do. I am not a bitch. I know Jack likes me to be a bitch and that people say I’m a bitch, but I’m not—not really. It’s Ted who’s a bitch, for turning all parenting pundit and telling Eva about Gen’s tacky reality show before telling me. Gen could have, should have, told me, I know, so she’s a bitch, too, though not as much as her sherbet-T-shirted Wonderful Friends with their fake tits and the dewy glowing skin. And now Ted can’t come in Monday because of some meeting with lawyers for Gen’s show. There’s paperwork, he said when he called. It’s pressing. I’ll have to oversee production of this week’s issue alone tomorrow. Then Tuesday is Lila’s funeral and Wednesday I’m off to see Jack in Toronto for two weeks. I feel slightly better thinking about this. I’m busy and important. I’m the girl in the movies who smokes and gets impatient with taxi drivers. I dash off to see my younger, ridiculously attractive boyfriend. I drink too much coffee and tell people what to do. I have a personal assistant whom I could yell and throw things at, but it’s Eva and I’m grateful she’ll put up with me. She’s staying at my place while I’m gone. I’m sure she’d water plants and feed my cats if I had any. I’m a bitch with a soft head, a whore with a heart of gold.
I feel like a whore when I upload the weekend photos and see Rockabilly Ben’s face in frame after frame. The shots I took rolling around on the floor are useless. This is not a surprise. But the others, the ones I shot earlier of Ben, of Eva and her friends, impress me. The kids look great. If they’d been roaming the streets of downtown I’d have certainly stopped them and asked them to pose. There’s no doubt they’re DOs.
I resist the instinct to delete the pictures of Gen and Ted’s Wonderful Friends taken at the baby party. I crop and cut them on my computer and make a collage that has me laughing out loud. Identical bright white smiles, a row of headless fake tits, men’s bald spots and khakis, big diamond rings and a close-up of a pedicured foot with blotches of sloppily applied self-tanner. The feet and the hands, I have read in women’s magazines, are the hardest to get smooth and even with color.
My neck is stiff. I’ve been sitting for hours perfecting my scary suburban collage. Since Gen nixed our usual Sunday brunch via early-morning voice mail—too tired from Olivier’s party, too many imaginary inches to whittle off her stomach—I haven’t bothered to get dressed or shower. I groan and stretch and try to talk myself into going outside. Save for a shot of a lanky, tomboy skateboard chick who was behind me in line at the deli near the office the other day, I have no DOs. And I don’t have a single DON’T. The DON’Ts are easier to find, but the thought of chasing down fat people with fanny packs or skinny people in pleather is paralyzing. I ignore work and continue to play with my collage. The Wonderful Friends are, without question, DON’Ts. It’s more satisfying when I genuinely dislike my DON’Ts. I finish my collage and e-mail it, along with the best photos of her and her friends, to Eva. I do two sun salutations that exhaust me, then curl up on the couch for an afternoon nap.
I wake up after four to the phone ringing. I open one eye and check the call display. “Eva, hey!” I overcompensate for my drowsiness with extra perk.
“I got the pictures you sent—they’re a riot. Do you need me to get releases from everyone?”
Releases? I sit up and rub my eyes. Releases for the magazine, for the photos. “Maybe hold off on that.”
“There’s not much time before deadline, Sara. I could get all of my friends tonight, I think. You don’t need them from the people at Ted and Gen’s, do you? Since you didn’t show their faces. I love the collage concept by the way.”
I shuffle over to my computer. The Wonderful Friends collage is still on the screen. It’s good. I cradle the phone between my shoulder and ear and click through the shots of Eva and her friends. I could collage those, too, but keep their faces, make Rockabilly Ben the biggest or second biggest next to Eva, who is a genius. I’d hug her and tell her so but she’s out in Pointe-Claire. And I can’t very well have her know that this whole DOs/DON’Ts collage thing is a fluke and something I did because I was lazy and didn’t want to get dressed and go out on the street and take pictures, which is supposedly my job.
“On second thought, yes, get the releases from your friends. We don’t need to bother with the others since they can’t be readily identified.” I’m all businesslike and smart. I sound like I’m wearing my glasses and know about law. “I’m working on the DOs collage now, so I should run. I appreciate your doing this on a Sunday, Eva.”
“If there’s anything you need don’t hesitate to ask.”
What I need is a massage and for Ted to pull out a bottle of vodka from his desk on Mondays after the magazine is put to bed and talk to me in his geek way about how amazing it is, everything we do, while I pace around his office-before-it-was-an-office getting hyper about clothes and music. What I need is to dish with Gen about famous French-Canadian people who are only famous in Quebec and take complicated personality tests together that always result in me being labeled some kind of narcissistic introvert and get her advice about everything that’s happening in my life then not follow it and wish I had. What I need is to fuck Jack or someone but probably Jack because I’m too tired tonight to exercise the unconventional rules of our relationship and chase down what my gay friends would have, for a brief period in the nineties, called man-pussy.
Monday is not so bad. Production is long but nearly effortless, like I imagine it would be working on the assembly line in a doll factory. Ted calls every half hour to make sure things are running smoothly. I take the first two calls, but have Eva deal with him after that. I have other things—more pressing things—to consider, such as what do I wear to a funeral of a woman I met only once. The one thing I’m certain of is that I’ll wear gloves so that when the old people start to touch me, and it’s been my experience that old people are awfully touchy, I can sort of touch them or pat them or whatever without having to feel their loose stretch-wrap skin or the wet clamminess of their hands. At lunch I dispatch Eva to a vintage store to pick me up a pair of black, funeral-appropriate gloves. On her way out she asks if she could talk to me later about something, but won’t say what. Just an idea I have is all she’ll say.
I want Eva to have ideas, lots of ideas, mainly about making my life better. But as it turns out I don’t have the time today to listen to any ideas, I’m so caught up in this funeral thing and getting the magazine off to the printer. I promise her we’ll talk when she drives me to the airport on Wednesday like she offered to but now suddenly can’t because of a dentist appointment she forgot about. I’m not coming in tomorrow as I’ve decided that a funeral is an all-day affair so I give her the spare set of keys to my apartment and make a lame joke about not getting up to any funny business. She makes a sour face and tells me to give Esther her sincere condolences. I feel bad and tell her to e-mail me her idea or call me at Jack’s.
“Will you be doing the DOs and DON’Ts from there?” Eva asks.
“Not this time. I think I’ll take an actual break.”
“I could do them for you,” she says. The sour face melts away.
“That’s okay, Eva. But thanks for the offer.” I smile, but it’s fakey. Eva’s sour face returns. What did she think? That I was just going to say, Sure, Eva, you’ve worked here for about five fucking minutes and gee, it would be great if you could put together the most important pages in the magazine for two weeks while I’m gone and you’re completely on your own. She knows that no one does the DOs and DON’Ts but me—everyone in the city, and in the other cities that count, knows that no one does the DOs and DON’Ts but me
. So, no, Eva, you can’t fill in for me, neither can Ted or Brian or any of the new people I’ve seen around but haven’t met yet and am not sure what they do—they can’t fill in, either. So enough with the sour face, bring back the my-goodness-Sara-you’re-my-hero face and change your last name so people can stop asking me if you’re my fucking sister because I guess you’ve been calling yourself Eva B., which I thought was cute and still do sometimes but not right now.
A minion from the art department knocks at my open office door. I wave him in and he hands me the proofs of this week’s DOs and DON’Ts: West Island edition. Everything looks great.
Eva leans over my shoulder as I sign off on the pages. “I still can’t believe Ted’s okay with this.” She points to the full-page collage of the Wonderful Friends’ body parts.
“He hasn’t seen it,” I say. I’m sly and naughty and should wear frilly panties and get spanked by Rockabilly Ben.
Eva’s eyes bug. “Are you sure he won’t mind? They’re his friends.”
“Don’t worry about Ted. We used to do this kind of thing all the time.”
We did do this kind of thing a lot. Ted wouldn’t like a guy I was dating so he’d write pseudonymous rants about whatever he thought was wrong with them, like if the guy’s head was too big for his body or he wore Doc Martens with shorts and wool socks or he was dumb and didn’t know that to impress me he should read books, not mousse his hair, and that he should never wear plaid. I retaliated by taking pictures of the girls Ted dated who were often preppy McGill students who wore red-and-white McGill sweatshirts and leather letterman jackets and track pants and whenever they’d come by the office I’d say, “Wow! Do you go to McGill?” And these girls who were supposed to be so smart that they were double majors in math and music or linguistics and medicine wouldn’t pick up on my sarcasm and say, “Oh my God, yeah, I do go to McGill!” Then I’d tell them how cool that was and ask to take their picture and they’d pose in their ugly sweatshirts and I’d make them a DON’T in the next issue and neither Ted nor I would ever have to see them again, which must have sucked for Ted because he didn’t go out with very many girls.
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