by Laurie Graff
“You’re so aloof,” he said, with amazement. “Why are you so aloof?”
“I take the Fifth,” I said, thinking that a snappy reply to this lawyer who could only deal with his emotional life in as far as it could be outlined and bullet pointed.
“You think about me,” he said. “Admit it. Admit that you think about me.”
“I think the evidence is in that you have been thinking about me.”
It was a waste of time to deal with Edward because I didn’t know him well enough to even know the real issues. I had moved on! And here I was, moved on and into the dither of Doug. Why hadn’t he ever called? Better yet, why was I still hung up on a guy I had met a month ago at a wedding? I needed to understand these men, but how? That, I believed, was the $1,000,000 question, and felt I had used up all my life lines phoning for the answer.
“I understand, Anne,” I said, tearing off a piece of pizza crust and dipping into the red sauce on her plate. “It’s hard to find someone worthwhile. Hey, remember that computer guy you wanted me to meet?”
“Oh, God. Forget that. With Carl being so iffy and you so excited after you met Doug, I went out with him. He pinned me up against my door frame for a good-night kiss and told me it would be okay to sleep with him, he was really safe sex because he couldn’t have it! That he could only maintain an erection if I would command him not to come! I commanded him to get lost and gave my colleague quite an earful the next day. The men I’ve gone out with...” she said, finishing the sentence by taking a sip of her drink before she continued.
“I’d meet them and see that there was something a little off, and at first it wasn’t alarming, but I knew, I just knew there was some big dysfunction. And I would try to guess, but I couldn’t. And then when it would happen it was astounding. I wouldn’t have been able to guess it. I mean each person’s thing is so intricate, so incredible I wouldn’t even know how to make it up. So are you going to see Edward?”
“No.”
He called again last night and left a message saying I could call him if the spirit moved me. It wouldn’t.
Anne and I left Vinnie’s and walked down Broadway to Lincoln Center. It was the first half of the summer and New Yorkers’ faces had that openness of the possibilities that could still lie ahead. I had been fantasizing about Doug and me going up to the Cape with Brooke and Mitch. The disappointment I felt because that would not happen made me feel both empty and silly.
“What if Carl actually proposed to me?” said Anne as we passed a tall twentysomething blonde with a fortysomething nothing that neither Anne nor I would ever give a second glance. “I mean, wouldn’t that mean he was just settling and that he would always feel that there was really the perfect person for him, and I just wasn’t it?”
Did the men’s inability to even be consistent ultimately save me, or would Carl’s consistency ultimately bring him around to love?
“I think if Carl proposed to you, Anne, it would be because he really wanted to. That if he does it, it won’t be his defeat and it won’t be by default. It will be his victory of finally being able to come home.”
Was I talking about Carl or was I imposing what I had hoped might happen for me? My guess was that if Doug did call and we went out and it was great, he would then run away for the same reasons that stopped him from calling in the first place. Yet unlike Anne, I was not in love. I had not fallen in love with Albee or Edward, with Dirk or with Doug. I had fallen in lust and I had fallen in like. But the most powerful was that I had fallen in hope. Falling in hope was very powerful, and the loss of that hope was more painful for me than actually having loved and lost. Hope. One of the true underrated emotions.
How did all this happen? How had these men become this way? If I ever came to understand could I do anything to change it? And if I couldn’t, what could I do? Could I keep on believing there was one out there, warts and all, just for me? Did every pot really have a cover? What happened after you’d gone through the entire cupboard and nothing was going to fit?
Anne and I were both out there, trying. We were not looking for a bona fide prince, just our very own good frog. So why did it all go astray? What were you supposed to do with the encounters and the dates, the liaisons and the relationships? Where did they all go? And if they didn’t go anywhere, where were you supposed to put them?
I walked with Anne, as I obsessively talked to Anne. My mind, my mouth going a mile a minute laying one thought out after another. I had to get it out. It was beyond a specific man, beyond seeing or not seeing someone again, and beyond the, “you should have known betters,” because who says you should? It was simply about feelings and feeling appreciated. About understanding and being understood. So what if it didn’t work out? It had mattered. And I needed to know that all of the things that had mattered to me had really mattered. And not just to me but to each of the men, to both of us, and to all of us.
“What do you want me to say, Kar?” Anne asked in the bathroom of Lincoln Center. The conversation had started at the corner of Seventy-second and Broadway where I took note that Papaya King had raised the price of their recession lunch special in order to accommodate their raise in rent. It continued down Broadway, past the Loews Cineplex Lincoln Square, across the promenade at Lincoln Center, and into the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall where we found out that the bathroom on the lobby level was out of service, only to have to walk two flights down to the basement to another that was jammed, then down a long corridor to yet another.
Anne changed into her dance clothes while I watched and talked. I had planned to go back to my apartment and change, but now it was late. On top of everything else I would only get to watch, because in my high-heeled slides I would surely not be able to dance.
“If these things don’t turn into anything, I, at least, need to know that what I feel is real,” I said, watching Anne bend down to tie up the laces on her dance shoes. “I want you to tell me what you think.” Having already exchanged her tailored work skirt for a short little flare, she put her pumps inside her black vinyl bag, zipping it as we got up to go.
“I think you and the person are the only people who have any clue as to what might have gone on between you,” said Anne, as we made our way up the stairs and out to the promenade. The plaza was filling up as Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra played Count Basie’s “Every Day I Have The Blues.”
“Karrie, whatever you feel—that’s inside you. But understand the closest you might get is in just honoring your own feelings, and owning your own truth.”
Anne swung her black bag over her shoulder as she got ready to meet her dance friends on the other side of the fountain that I would either hang around or throw myself in. Honoring my own feelings. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize. It was like missing out on the car behind door number one, and being sent home with a hundred boxes of Rice-a-Roni. But I guess no one could ever take away that you got a chance to play.
“Thank you, Anne. You’re certainly no idiot with a CSW, I’ll tell you that. So do what you say...not as I do. And do with Carl whatever feels right for you. Follow your heart.”
We hugged goodbye and promised to meet again soon. I looked around. It was a beautiful night. The stars were out, people were dancing, the music was sweet and I decided to stick around and try to meet someone the old-fashioned way. I was going to make eye contact and smile; except no one would smile back.
I walked through the crowd, at first only smiling at men I believed could be prospects. When neither of my two smiles were returned, I smiled at men who would never be prospects. When that didn’t work I wanted to make sure my smile still did, so I smiled at women. But they may have interpreted it differently because they, too, did not smile.
It was time to give it up and go to a movie. Lincoln Plaza Cinema was just across the street and I was sure there would be a torrid, romantic foreign film I could get lost in that would be a guarantee to keep me company, take me someplace new, and influence my mood.
As I made my way down the stairs, a man I considered smile-worthy brushed past me coming up. He was wearing tan khakis and carrying a soft brown leather briefcase. I got to the bottom, standing on the pavement no more than a second before turning back up. I followed him while I tried to figure out if I should go for the smile, or take a full fledged risk and say hello.
Smile Worthy walked across the promenade and got on line to buy a drink. A drink. That was a good idea. I’d get on line and I’d buy one, too. I stood in the back, a safe distance behind him. A little too safe, I thought, seeing him look at his watch and talking to a woman I guessed had a similar idea. Perhaps she moved it along more swiftly, incorporating the smile and the hello into, “Do you have the time?”
Stalling for some I walked to the side of the bar to check out the drink menu. I turned around, intending to strategically and nonchalantly join Smile Worthy in line before delivering mine. But I never got far because suddenly there she was, right in front of me.
“Oh my God! Don’t tell me your name, I know it. Karrie! My God, it’s been such a long time. I haven’t seen you for years. I haven’t been in the city for years. Maybe three, or maybe even four. How are you?”
Holding a drink in her right hand, she reached over to give me half a hug with her left. Her hand floated by and I saw the diamond I remembered so well. It was as beautiful today as it was a decade ago. The new DKNY perfume surrounded her, smelling both heavenly and expensive. I recognized both having recently been spritzed in Bloomingdale’s before a promotional postcard with the price was put into my pocket.
“Cecilia Keats, how are you?” I sang, thrust into this new scene, while glancing out of the corner of my eye at the old one, trying to sneak a peak at Smile Worthy, on line, still waiting.
“Oh, I’m fine. In Connecticut. Still. Still living in Westport. Good ole Westport, Connecticut.”
“I remember,” I said.
I sure did. I also remembered running into her at an audition several years ago, three, maybe even four, and afterwards riding the subway together uptown. She was on her way to Grand Central to catch the 4:07 home, me en route to an appointment with the gynecologist. On the three stop ride from Twenty-eighth Street up to Forty-second she managed to work the words au pair, personal trainer, housekeeper and husband into the conversation.
“My girls are getting big,” she said now, after telling me about a planned family trip to Nantucket in August where they’ll just drive up in their newly leased BMW SUV, and how the show biz biz was so bad it was hardly worth the effort to commute in anymore for a casting...it wasn’t as if she needed to work. Cecilia said all this with charm and ease, the faint traces of her silky smooth Savannah speech just catching me up on life’s recent events.
“Let me introduce you to everybody,” Cecilia said, stepping back to open up the social circle. “This is Charles Forester, a work associate of my husband, and this is his wife, Liz Forester.” Charles and Liz each raised an eye and a glass in acknowledgment. “This is my husband, Buck Harmon. I think we ran into you once when we still lived in the city in that sweet brownstone on the Upper West, right?”
“Yes, I remember you,” I said to Buck the banker, who reached out and shook my hand.
“And everyone, this is Karrie...” Cecilia paused for dramatic effect, looking at me as if the next question was crucial to her ability to finish the introduction. “Wait, is it still Kline?”
Cecilia smiled. In fact, I think she may have purred.
“Yes,” I said, smiling at everyone and using up the last of my smile reserve because Smile Worthy was now gone and after this conversation so was I. I wanted to run into the crowd, and pull Anne out of her two-step to tell her this story. Because during the time we talked about the insensitivity of men towards single women, we had never touched upon how women could also pay equal time.
Did they even know when they did it? Did it make them feel better when they did? Someone like Cecilia could not have been feeling so great to begin with, because I believed it was a sprinkle of insecurity that caused the few drops of poison to drip from her saccharine smile. Yes, her words could be taken just as a comment, a throwaway for me to do just that. But I trusted my instincts and conscious, or unconscious, under the surface I knew it was more.
Did I do things like that? I’d assume some women somewhere must have thought that I had. I would be especially careful, because this subtle introduction just went into the core of me and churned and burned. I stood listening while Cecilia yapped away. Maggie the Cat. She was pleased as punch to have run into a fellow acting veteran. She had no idea how I felt. Or did she?
“So after the commercial strike the business just never came back, so I figured, why should I?”
Yes, it’s still Kline.
“I can’t believe I actually came up with your name, but I mean you do still look the same, Karrie, so when I saw you... Bingo!”
And Cecilia Keats, if names were so crucial to this passing conversation, why wasn’t I corrected when I didn’t call you Cecilia Harmon?
“I mean, I’m amazed I could come up with your name.”
Did it help you to make me still look the same?
“I’m just brain-dead out there in the burbs. Just brain-dead,” she said. Making a self-deprecating face, Cecilia took the pointer finger of her free hand and twirled it around pointing to her forehead, while giving her head a shake of disbelief.
Did you think that—wait, this was interesting. Very interesting.
“Yep. Just not thinking about much of anything. I really have to do something besides being brain-dead in the burbs.”
She’s apologizing! Not for a faux pas, but for her life. Why in the world would Cecilia need to apologize to me for her lovely life?
“So you still here, Karrie? In the city?”
“Yeah, just uptown. Seventy-eighth.”
“And what are you doing? Same old, same old?”
I looked at Cecilia all dressed up in suburban swing. One of her first nights out in the city in a long time. She looked great. Healthy, hearty, taken care of and well-groomed, but I knew that the short little skirt and matching headband must have looked a lot more hip and way cooler when she was standing in her driveway in Westport than it did when she arrived in Manhattan.
When I told her what I was doing, would that make her feel better about her life or worse? I still was Kline and Kline was still in the city. But the bigger question lurking was what I was doing there. Whether or not I was still acting? The dream. And if I was out there when she was not, what would that mean for Cecilia? Did our two lives together add up to perfect, or did each one stand fine on its own?
“Well, I’m doing this solo show over at My Theater Workshop called Frogaphobia,” I said. “It’s about fifteen years of bad dates in the life of a single, Jewish actress. Well... Me! It’s been doing well. Wow Women wrote a great story that changed everything, and now...hopefully now there’re possibilities. It’s been good. Great, actually.”
“I heard of that show!” Cecilia screamed. “I didn’t realize that was you! I heard someone talking about it in the supermarket while they were reading some woman’s magazine on the checkout line.”
I nodded my head and smiled because I was proud, and I felt that I had really earned this moment.
“I am so happy for you!” she said, and I felt she meant it. “God, I’ve got to do something. I am bored with the burbs and I’m going out of my mind. The truth is, after the strike I didn’t
leave the business,” Cecilia confessed. “It left me. My agent dropped me.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, suddenly forgetting every mean thought I’d had about her, feeling nothing now but camaraderie and compassion. “That stinks. You used to book a lot, too, more than me. But listen to this! Just a few weeks ago, my agent came to see the show and we went out for a drink after and I thought we were celebrating, but, instead, he took me out to drop me. Talk about crying into your beer.”
“That slime!”
“I know! After sixteen years, can you believe it?”
“Well, I do have to move on and I do have to get myself doing something,” she repeated.
“Cecilia, you know that thing they say about your hobby becoming your next career is kind of true, so take a look at your hobbies. I mean I talked incessantly about being single and having bad dates and look where it got me!” I laughed. Cecilia pointed to her skirt and her husband, and she laughed, too. We babbled about a few more things before saying goodbye and hoped it wouldn’t be another three, or even four years, till we’d see each other again.
By now I had not only missed the smile op, I had also missed the movie. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse, making a call and talking while I did one last circle around the plaza before leaving. This time for good.
Fred answered on the first ring, telling me he had just left an audition for a Taco Hell commercial where he was up to be the salsa. He had done well, but thought vocally he might have added hotter tones to his bottom register when he read the copy. He really wanted to read for the taco shell, but they were only seeing ethnics for that part. Fred was on a public bus riding down Sunset Boulevard, the only person I knew who managed to live in Los Angeles without a car.
“She probably wishes she was you!” he said after I told him about meeting Cecilia.
“Today I wish I was her,” I said, skipping over the Edward call and going straight to the one month update on what was now termed The Fox Fiasco. “So not only do I miss you, but no one will even smile at me anymore, Fred,” I said, talking and walking past the first prospect that had ignored me, watching him ignore me again. He got up to leave the same spot I had spotted him upon my arrival. “He probably spoke to no one all night and now he’s leaving here alone. And that was preferential to even smiling back at me? Maybe I’m giving off a very off vibe.”