Five Women

by Rona Jaffe

  Nicole had determined she really did want to be an actress, so now she was going to chase her dream full time. That meant Eve wouldn’t have to pay for college, which was a great relief. She wanted acting classes, and Eve had told her she would have to get a job and pay for them herself. Eve didn’t know why Nicole wanted them anyway, when she herself had done very well without any. Nicole had enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Institute, and hoped later on someday to get into the Actors Studio. Eve wished her luck. Her daughter had always had two sides to her; the winsome extrovert and the serious part, and Eve knew if Nicole took after her she would get what she wanted.

  Not that she herself had really gotten what she wanted, or what she felt she deserved. After they had written her out of Brilliant Days she’d had to face the fact that she had been fired. No one had ever liked her there, not for a moment of the five years she had been on it. She was never able to get another soap opera role, and eventually even she heard the gossip. Eve Bader is too difficult. Eve Bader is a pain in the ass.

  Of course she told everyone that she had left by choice to pursue more serious work in the movies and even, although she was better than that, in television. She said it so often that eventually people accepted it. They may have thought it was a stupid career move to leave Brilliant Days, but they understood her need. Actors had themselves written out of TV all the time to try to get into films. When Eve told people the story she wanted them to believe she actually believed it herself. Life was a kind of acting. And then, as it always did, the public forgot her, forgot Xenia, her character, who had died somewhere in the South American jungle, the venue of the soap-opera writer’s last resort.

  After the graduation Eve had offered to take Nicole to dinner with her grandmother, and after dinner Nicole’s friends were having a party and she was going to go there and stay over with a friend. She had a lot of friends, far more than Eve had ever had. Nicole already had a job as a waitress, starting tomorrow night. She was going to continue to live with Eve until she could afford to get her own apartment.

  “You can stay with me and pay rent,” Eve had offered.

  “No,” Nicole said. She gave Eve a peculiar look. “Most parents would be glad to have their children live with them.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means if I have to pay rent I’d rather live by myself.”

  Eve was annoyed at this ingratitude. “I never had it easy and why should you?” she snapped.

  “I don’t want it easy,” Nicole said.

  “That’s not what it sounds like.”

  “No,” Nicole said. “I just want to know I’m loved.”

  “Since when does freeloading mean being loved?” Eve asked.

  “See, that’s the way you are all the time. You never say you love me.”

  “I’d like to love you with a machete,” Eve said.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I love you,” Eve said reluctantly, because she didn’t mean it.

  “I love you too,” Nicole said, “but the only reason I can think of why is because you’re my mother.”

  How extraordinary, Eve thought. Being a mother put you into an exclusive club in which you were loved just because you were there. “What about all the sacrifices I’ve made for you all your life?” Eve said.

  “I know. You’re always reminding me.”

  “I have to.”

  “I can’t win with you,” Nicole said. “If I try to tell you I respect you, you turn it into a fight.”

  “Nobody wins with me,” Eve said, “and don’t you forget it.”

  Who wanted children, anyway? She regretted the day Nicole was born, but sometimes, despite her resentment, she felt her unexpected love for her daughter coming through her defenses, a kind of leakage of the heart, and it made her feel so weak, so vulnerable, so frightened that she had to breathe deeply and meditate it away. What if something happened to Nicole? What if she died? If you let yourself become a victim of your feelings, loved someone too much, that person had too much power over you, and you could be devastated by a betrayal, by a loss.

  I have the power, Eve thought. It was almost her mantra. Sometimes when she meditated, which was an activity she had begun a few years ago, she actually used the words. I have the power. It was infinitely reassuring.

  She considered herself lucky that her own waitressing days were behind her. She had always saved her money carefully, even during the time that it was flowing in, and now when she went for an audition Eve knew there was no hint of desperation about her, only talent and ambition. She hadn’t made it to Broadway yet, although she had done off-Broadway, and she had done quite a few small one-shots on various TV series, which she preferred to refer to as guest star roles. She supposed if someone offered her a recurring part she would take it, even though her mind was still set on her movie break, and she went to every audition her agent set up. Sometimes the agent sent her under protest but gave in because Eve wouldn’t stop calling her.

  “If they said I’m wrong for the part let them see me anyway,” Eve would insist. “If they have their minds set on some stereotype then let them think of another part in the future that is right for me.” Eve never thought she was wrong for any part. She knew she could do whatever they wanted, if they would only tell her what it was. Stay in there. Fight.

  She was thirty-five now, too old to be considered young anymore in her world, but not old enough to have to complain the way the older actresses did that there was nothing for them. When she had to tell people that she had a daughter who had already graduated from high school she always added quickly that she had been younger than Nicole was now when Nicole was born.

  “I was twelve,” Eve would say, and laugh. She never told anyone how old she was, and thought how age discrimination was another burden women had to bear, and how unfair it was.

  After Nicole had been studying acting for a year she got an agent, and quickly ended up with a small role in a Broadway play. Eve went to the opening night and to the party afterward, where she spent her time introducing herself to theater people she thought might help her own career. When the New York Times review came in, Nicole was singled out for her “luminous presence.” Eve was proud of her, but she also couldn’t help feeling jealous. It had happened so fast, and had been so easy for her!

  Nicole had a boyfriend now, Eddie, and moved into her own apartment with him. Eve remembered her own early, struggling days in Hollywood, with the specter of her financially dependent baby always looming in the background, and although she felt she was above self-pity she nevertheless couldn’t help feeling sorry for herself. When Nicole’s show put up its closing notice after only five months she called Eve to tell her. Eve was concerned, but she also felt a little bit of vindictiveness sneaking into her heart. An actress was supposed to have disappointments.

  “I told you not to take on the burden of your own apartment,” Eve said. “Now what are you going to do? I hope Eddie has enough money to support you.”

  “I thought you were going to invite me back,” Nicole said, and laughed in a phony way.

  “Not with him. You’re an adult now. I’m not running a hotel, unless you both want to pay rent.”

  “Oh Mom, you’re so full of love.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll get another part somewhere,” Nicole said. “In the meantime I’m a terrific waitress.”

  “You have a good attitude,” Eve said.

  “I got it from you.”

  “Oh?” She was flattered.

  “I’ve always wondered why I’m so well adjusted with you for a mother,” Nicole said. “You never brought me up; I had to invent it. But I always knew to take the good from you and learn from the bad. Grandma taught me that.”

  “About me?” Eve said, insulted. “She said that about me?”

  “She said that about
life.”

  “She never told me anything about life,” Eve said. “All she did was plunk me in front of a television set.”

  “And widen your horizons.”

  “You are greatly mistaken if you think TV ever widened anybody’s horizons,” Eve said.

  “You told me it did all the time,” Nicole said. “When you had me watch.”

  Why did she and her daughter always have to get into these arguments? “‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless child,’” Eve said. “I gave up my career for you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Do you think I wanted to be in a soap? I did it for the money, for you. I was never lucky enough to have just myself to think about, the way you are.”

  “I can’t continue this discussion,” Nicole said. “I only called to tell you the news about my show before you read it in the newspaper.” She hung up.

  The next day she called again, of course. Nicole kept coming back like a yo-yo with a very short string. They argued and hung up on each other more often than not, but afterward Nicole was always there, full of news, wanting to share her life, never apologizing for being irritating the day before. No matter how often Eve told her to get lost, Nicole was convinced that they had an unbreakable bond, and Eve began to wonder if it wasn’t true, even though she wasn’t glad about it.

  Only a month after her show closed Nicole’s agent got her a part in a movie. Just another thing, Eve thought, to make me feel how hard my life has been. Eddie didn’t go to Hollywood with Nicole, because he was in graduate school at NYU, but when she came back to him after the shooting was over she was the same unaffected person she had ever been. Of course, Eve thought, the movie isn’t out yet. Just wait.

  It was a nice little movie, about four young friends, and although after it opened it didn’t stay around very long, Nicole got excellent reviews. They called her “a refreshing newcomer.” By then she was already in another play. Nicole was one of those lucky actresses who would always work, Eve decided. Even if she never became a star, which more than likely she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t have to worry either.

  She stayed with Eddie for a long time. “I want it to work,” Nicole told Eve. “It’s very important to me that I have a relationship that lasts.”

  “Not if it’s bad you don’t,” Eve said.

  “There are problems, sure, there always are, but overall it’s very good. We’re both working on it. Neither of us had a normal home life growing up, so we have no example to follow, but we’re making it up as we go and learning a lot.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t have a normal home life?” Eve said. “What did you want? Leave It To Beaver? Father Knows Best? You watched too many reruns. Those were only normal lives in people’s dreams.”

  “You know what I mean,” Nicole said.

  Nicole stayed in her play for a year, and then her agent got her another part in a movie. This time the publicity mills started to grind. There were glamorous pictures of Nicole, whose hair was now red, and interviews in magazines. They mentioned Eddie, who was working for a publisher, and the sheepdog named Melvin the young couple now had, and they mentioned Eve, and referred to her years as Xenia in Brilliant Days. Eve was thrilled to see her name in print.

  “This will do it!” Eve told her when she called.

  “That’s what my press agent says, if I can believe him.”

  “I mean for me,” Eve said. “People are going to see that. Didn’t you think it was a nice plug for me?”

  “Sure, Mom. That’s why I put it in.”

  “We should get parts in a movie as mother and daughter,” Eve said, excited. The adrenaline was beginning to flow, as it always did when she made plans. “I used to take you to the set and try to get you written into Brilliant Days, and it would be a great publicity gimmick if we worked together now that you’re grown up.”

  “It would,” Nicole said, but she didn’t sound excited about it—more neutral, as if it had little chance of happening.

  “Who do we talk to?”

  “I’m not that famous,” Nicole said. “I just play the parts and I’m lucky to get them. I don’t tell people what to do.”

  “Why not?” Eve snapped. “Didn’t I teach you anything?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Nicole said dryly. “You taught me a lot about being demanding and pushy. A lot.”

  This time Eve couldn’t understand why Nicole hung up.

  After that Eve started on her campaign for a mother-daughter movie for the two of them. She called up every writer she had ever met and asked if he or she had such a script at home already, or the idea in mind, or perhaps could be persuaded to write one for them. She would have written it herself, she told them, but she didn’t have time to write, what with pursuing her acting career. Sometimes, as an afterthought, she mentioned that actually she couldn’t write. “But I will some day,” she said. “I have a novel in me. I know that. Maybe my life.”

  After Nicole’s new movie came out she began to be even more well known. The reviewers called her “charming,” and “appealing.” None of these were adjectives that had ever been applied to Eve in her life—she had always been only the bitch on the soap—and she thought how unfair it was that she had always been typecast.

  Nicole got an even bigger part in another movie and began to commute to Hollywood, and eventually she broke up with Eddie and started seeing an actor she had met on her new film, a very good-looking young man named Brian, who looked particularly good with his shirt off. Eve hadn’t much liked Eddie, for no particular reason she could think of except that he was her daughter’s lover and probably a mother wasn’t going to approve of any of her daughter’s lovers until she was forced to get used to a husband, and she didn’t much like Brian either.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Eddie,” Nicole told her. “We both tried. I guess I was too young and still had a lot of growing up to do.”

  “Of course,” Eve said. “And you’re not an adult now, either.”

  “Well, you’ll never think I am.”

  “Not until you prove you are.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Whatever you think.”

  Eve had a new lover of her own now, the first time she had ever had a relationship with a man who wasn’t in show business. He was, in fact, in the shoe business, and he was impressed that she was an actress. He was a burly and hairy Jewish man her age named Ben. She called him Ben the Bear. He had been divorced for several years, he loved to go out to restaurants, he had a good sense of humor, and he gave her all the shoes she wanted. She had almost a hundred pairs, in all styles and colors. Ben had money and his own apartment, so there was no question of his living with her.

  Eve was getting quite fond of him. He was a conventional man in many ways. He still had both his parents and he brought her to his large family for Passover and Yom Kippur. In the summer he took her to his house on Fire Island, where they socialized with married couples who were not in show business either. His children were in college, and when they were home they lived with their mother, so they were not a problem. Although he was a lusty man he wouldn’t let her tie him up in bed, no matter how often she tried, and when they had sex whatever they started out doing always ended up with him on top . . . well, nobody was perfect.

  She was forty now, and the birthday made her wonder if she should look for more stability in her life, and if perhaps that stability would come from marrying Ben. She would never again have to worry about money or dating. She would make him buy a co-op for them to live in, and she would make him put it in her name, just in case he decided to leave. She was sure she could get him to propose, and if he didn’t, then she would tell him marriage was what she wanted. She knew he would be flattered. He was quite in awe of her.

  From time to time when she was in the neighborhood Eve dropped by Tiffany’s to look at engag
ement rings, just for the styling. When Ben got her one she would have him buy it wholesale so it could be bigger. She wanted a rock. When she pictured herself committed to this conventional man she saw him as a kind of anchor around which her energy would flow, his admiration and normalcy giving her the security to spend even more effort on her career.

  She was browsing at the wedding ring counter, looking for something that would go with her fantasy rock, when she looked up directly into the round brown eyes of Ben the Bear.

  He looked startled. She smiled. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” Eve said.

  Then she noticed that there was a short, dark-haired woman with him, who had her left hand out and who was inspecting a circle of sapphires and diamonds on her third finger.

  “Who is this?” Eve asked. She supposed the woman was a relative or a friend.

  “Rhoda, this is Eve,” he said, looking and sounding very uncomfortable. “Eve is a . . . uh . . . friend.”

  “Friend?” Eve said. “Who is Rhoda?”

  “I’m his once and future wife,” Rhoda said, and smiled with little white teeth.

  “Future?” Eve said.

  “We have to go,” he said to Rhoda, looking frightened. “Eve, I’ll call you when I get back to the office.”

  “Are you still seeing her?” Rhoda asked him, indicating Eve.

  “Have you been going out with your ex-wife behind my back?” Eve demanded.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said to Eve.

  “Then tell her now,” Rhoda said.

  He looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor. “I . . .”

  “It was his womanizing that broke up our marriage in the first place,” Rhoda said, confiding in Eve, this stranger, as if she were not his girlfriend but simply another woman who would understand these things. “Ben has a roving eye.”