by Rona Jaffe
The next morning he drove her back as he had promised, and she said she would go away with him for Christmas. She told herself that sex wasn’t everything, but that maybe on their “second honeymoon” it would be better.
She had only two weeks to get ready for her departure. It should have been more than enough, but she was beginning to feel a sort of excited anticipation, as if she and Ken might really have a second chance. She spent a whole day finding two bathing suits that were both sexy and flattering. She had her hair cut, and a manicure and pedicure. She had to make sure that Peter could run the business without her. It no longer was a concern to her whether or not Peter and Kate would miss being with either of their parents at Christmas: she knew they would not. Kate had made one token visit to the store, one day when Emily was at their accountant’s office, and Peter had reported afterward with gleeful sibling rivalry that she’d seemed more taken with the help than the product.
“Attractive sales people never hurt,” Emily said.
Her friends were not surprised she was going to try it again with Ken. This was a difficult town for single women of their age. For all its Hollywood pretensions, it was really the suburbs; spread out, isolated, early-to-bed; a place for couples, for being at home at night. The other life here, the one Ken lived without her, was one Emily could not imagine and had neither the wish nor the qualifications to enter. Her friends believed in compromise, especially when it came with the trappings of “romance.”
Ken was busy too, getting ready for their trip, because he had so many patients who were upset that he was going to leave them, even though it was only for a week, and his time was fully booked. He phoned Emily every day, but he said it would be more like a second honeymoon if they didn’t see each other until the night they left. She knew he meant not sleep together, and she was amused. She wondered if he suddenly found her so irresistible that to take her to dinner would mean he couldn’t keep his hands off her, or if he was just trying to recapture something from their engagement. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could recapture something … anything … She intended to try. If it didn’t work, if it was a disaster, she could break off with him afterward. She refused to think that far ahead.
She arrived at his house—their house!—promptly at six o’clock, suitcase in hand. He opened the door, a drink in his. He seemed neither drunk nor surly, so Emily was reassured, and when he offered her a glass of wine she thought it was festive. He gave her a warm kiss hello and told her he wasn’t finished packing, so she went into the bedroom and sat on the bed, sipping her wine, watching him pack, and feeling pleased with herself for not offering to do it for him the way she would have in the old days.
“I hope you brought books,” he said. “There’s really nothing to do there. Lie on the beach, drink, talk …”
“I brought two,” she said, “but I’ll read yours when you’re through with them.”
Ken went into the bathroom to get some more things and she walked idly to his suitcase to see which books he had packed. Good; all the new novels she hadn’t had time to read. She picked one up, and underneath, slipping out from inside a folded beach robe, she saw the edge of a plastic bag of cocaine. Her heart crashed.
She took the bag out and looked at it. There was enough dope there to keep Ken out of his mind for the entire week. When he came out of the bathroom she was still standing there, but she had put the cocaine back in his suitcase, right on top of the books so he would know she had seen it.
“Oh,” he said, as if it was nothing. “I told you it’s totally deserted and peaceful there. This is just for a little recreational high.”
“You said you had given it up,” Emily said, trying to sound calm.
“Am I acting stoned?”
“No …”
“Well, I am. Just a little. I told you I’d get it under control.”
“Then why do you have to bring so much?”
“I’m a respectable citizen. I don’t intend to run around a strange place trying to buy this stuff.”
“Why do you need it at all?” She didn’t even know why she’d asked. Whatever answer he gave her would be the wrong one.
“I don’t need it,” he said, sounding irritated suddenly, like the old, feared Ken. “I want it.”
“So you can stand me,” she said dully. She should have known. Miracles were limited. She’d already had her share. Ken wasn’t going to change.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I want it so we can have fun. Don’t you want to have fun?”
She wondered if he had a gun in there too. She walked to the door. “I was willing to compromise,” she said. “I was willing even to dream again. But not this way. It’s not going to work. Not if you bring that stuff with you.”
They looked at each other. She wished he would take the coke out of the suitcase and say he would go away with her without it, but she knew he never would. He didn’t. “Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do,” he said.
“I don’t intend to,” Emily said. She walked down the stairs, trying to hide her fear, and picked up her suitcase. Ken had followed her. She glanced at him and saw he had no gun. It was not going to be a repeat of the last time. Not in any way. This time she had a place to go. “Enjoy your trip,” she said coldly. Then she walked out the door, leaving him standing there.
She drove away, but this time she was not crying, not shaking, no longer frightened: feeling only a deep, sad disappointment. And then, as she drove back to her own apartment, even the disappointment melted, and left the beginning of what she recognized as a shell of strength. She smiled. She would leave Ken with that damn house with all its memories, and his drugs, and his lies, and while she was cleaning out her life she might as well also leave him Adeline.
Yes, she would definitely leave him Adeline.
Emily laughed, feeling strong and free, and, for the first time, a little crazy in a way she knew was not crazy at all.
The next morning she showed up at work. Everyone was surprised to see her. She got Peter aside. “Your father is back on cocaine and we’re getting divorced,” she said gently. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s life,” Peter said. “Do you want to meet the potential press agent this week, as long as you’re here?”
“Sure. The sooner the better.”
“His name is Freddie Glick.”
“Oh good,” Emily said. “Like Sammy Glick.”
“Who’s that?”
“Never mind. It’s from a novel.”
The press agent wanted to meet them at the Polo Lounge for breakfast. He was wearing an open-necked red shirt, a black sport jacket, three gold chains nestled in his chest hair, and he looked like a middle-aged Las Vegas comic. He ordered two fried eggs and slurped them up while Emily and Peter drank coffee. She thought breakfast meetings were barbaric: people should eat breakfast alone at home in peace. While Glick drank his coffee he recited an impressive list of his celebrity clients and revealed his expensive fee. “But I don’t think I can do anything for you,” he said.
“Why not?” Emily said.
“So you make cookies. So what? What’s the gimmick? You’re not a sweet old granny, you’re not a glamorous young thing in her twenties like Mrs. Fields. You’re a normal, average, real person. How am I going to get you on television? Even newspaper and magazine interviews? I can start with the local papers, but eventually I’d want to go national. How am I going to sell a real person? I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I’m not going to waste your time.”
“How glamorous do you want me to be?” Emily asked.
“Hey, Mom, you’re fine,” Peter said. “Let’s go.”
“No. I’m asking a question.”
Freddie Glick looked at her appraisingly. “Sort of a Joan Collins type might suit you. Could you do that?”
“Could you give me two months?”
He nodded slowly. “You really want this, don’t you?”
“If I look the way you want, can you get me publicit
y?”
“Sure. I read that piece in F.E. W. You do a good interview. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“We have a meeting in two months,” Emily said, and called for the check.
When she and Peter went back to the store Emily disappeared into the little office they’d opened in the rear. She started to make phone calls. First to her friend Karen, to find the name of the best plastic surgeon in town for a facelift. Karen was an authority on such matters, including the best hair colorist, the best makeup artist; but first things first. Karen said the best plastic surgeon this year was Dr. Harley Winthrop.
“I thought you were in Hawaii with Ken,” Karen said.
“Change of plan. Call you later.”
Next Emily called Dr. Winthrop’s office. Even though it was Christmas week there was an appointment nurse there. “The first appointment for an interview would be at the end of February,” the nurse said.
“I need it right away,” Emily said.
“I’m sorry.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m Dr. Kenneth Buchman’s wife.”
“Oh. Well then, just hold on a minute and let me see if we have any cancellations.”
The nurse was back in a few seconds with an appointment for the beginning of the first week in January. Doctors’ wives always got preference, especially when they were the wives of doctors as well known as Ken. “And I can schedule your surgery for the week after that,” the nurse said in a new, very friendly voice. “I’ll book the hospital room too. You want a private room, of course?”
“Of course,” Emily said. “And private nurses.”
“Fine, Mrs. Buchman. See you in ten days.”
She had two months. That was more than enough time for everything. Emily looked in the mirror of her compact and imagined herself looking like something on the order of Joan Collins. She wondered if Ken had gone to Hawaii alone, or if he had taken someone. She couldn’t care less. Fine, Mrs. Buchman. Of course, Mrs. Buchman. I’ve just found a cancellation and can fit you in, Mrs. Buchman. Aren’t you lucky, Mrs. Buchman!
Emily smiled at her image in the mirror. This is the last time I’ll ever have to say I’m Ken’s wife to get what I want, she thought. The next time I’ll get it because I’m Emily.
Chapter Twenty-three
At the beginning of December Kit found out that Zack Shepard was casting a new movie. She made her agent get her the script, and as soon as she read it she knew that she had to have the supporting role, she had to be that girl; if she couldn’t have that part she would die. It was her. It wasn’t one of those airhead bimbos she was always playing, or those smartass teenagers—it was a real person, with layers and layers of complexity, strengths, weaknesses, everything. When she read the script she almost cried she wanted that part so much. Before, she’d always had to improve a part with her own complexities, but these were right here. Even the movie she’d finished last month was shit compared to this.
The truth was she was a little disappointed about the last movie. She wondered what would happen when it was released. The director had kept cutting her part because the fat bitch star she had most of her scenes with was jealous. The bitch kept saying: “Oh, I can’t say that line. What’s my motivation?”
Your motivation, Kit wanted to say, is that you’re here.
But the director was a weakling who wanted everybody to love him, especially stars, and he kept letting the bitch change the lines, or making the screenwriter do it. The poor screenwriter kept chewing Maalox, and he always had a white rim around his mouth. When the scene was rewritten to everyone’s satisfaction (except Kit’s, of course), it naturally turned out that Kit’s best lines were the ones that had to go so the star could have her motivation.
On her list of the things she would have when she herself became a powerful star, Kit added “Approval of cast, director, and script at all times.” Well, she could dream, couldn’t she?
Right now her dream was that new Zack Shepard movie. She wondered if he remembered her from the part she’d read for but didn’t get. He probably saw thousands of actresses. He was reputed to be thorough. She remembered him very well. He was dark: dark hair, dark crackling eyes, and slim but very nicely built, with an intensity that was intellectual and sexual and something else she couldn’t quite read. She thought it might have to do with his dedication to his private artistic furies. She liked that idea. He was only about five feet ten, but that was because he hadn’t grown up in California. He was extremely attractive, in a way you wouldn’t get easily tired of. She thought she could be perfectly happy living with him. He would make her a star, and their life together would never be boring.
She would even marry him …
Her fantasies were, she realized, getting out of hand. She wouldn’t mind fucking him, anyway. That, at least, was plausible. But more vital was getting a reading. Her agent arranged it without any trouble.
Everyone was auditioning the same scene; a confrontation between mother and daughter. It was the confrontation Kit had never had, but was certainly prepared for. She had been prepared for it all her life. In the short scene the two women talked about how they had betrayed each other, the mother doing it when the girl was a child, the daughter doing it to her in return when she grew up. Kit was aware that she wasn’t a very loving daughter in her own life, but it was something she had never bothered to think about until she began rehearsing this scene. What a part! It was the supporting role, but it was just as important as the lead. She knew that if she got it and some egomaniac got the mother’s part, Zack Shepard wouldn’t let that actress start messing around with the script. He had balls.
She arrived at the reading looking fantastic. Zack Shepard seemed to remember her right away; he smiled and stood up to shake hands and said it was nice to see her again. He made her feel comfortable and talented. Kit knew that was probably one of his own talents, and that she didn’t mean anything to him, but it worked just the same by making her loosen up and do what she thought was her best work. Afterward he said, “Terrific!” and smiled again when he dismissed her, but Kit knew most of them did that. It was the same kind of polite, meaningless shit like kissing people hello and good-bye. Still, she felt high. She’d been good, she knew she had been good. She drove home in a fog.
She wished Emma was working on this picture too so she could ask her how she’d done, but with the credit from the last Zack Shepard film Emma had gone right into a low-budget picture as Production Manager. She wanted the big credit. You had to make choices: you could stay with one person and work your way up if that person liked you, or you could keep moving around and move up that way. Emma was impatient. Besides, she said Zack Shepard told her she could always come back another time.
Now the hard thing started: the waiting.
Kit called her agent every day. He liked her or he wouldn’t have put up with it. Had anybody said anything about her reading? Had the part been cast? Were there going to be call-backs? No, no, and he didn’t know. Kit told herself Zack (she was thinking of him as that now, “Zack, my friend”) had to cast the mother first before he could cast the daughter. The mother was the starring part, and they had to be a good mix.
But she was so perfect—she’d be perfect with anybody.
Maybe he didn’t like her after all.
Maybe she should have dressed for the part, like a frump, instead of looking like herself. The actress who had read before her was wearing a sloppy dress with embroidery on the yoke and had long hair under her arms. Red hair. Maybe they wanted a redhead, not someone with dark hair like her. But she had such fair skin, and gray eyes; she could color her hair if they wanted that. What difference did it make? It was the quality that counted, wasn’t it?
Kit thought it was a good thing she was between boyfriends because she was so irritable and single-minded these days that she wouldn’t have been able to stand having anyone around. Whenever she needed some recreational sex she found it how and where she always did; easily, and at partie
s. Seth from class had told everyone about the cop walking in on them in almost flagrante delicto, but it hadn’t dried up her source of supply there either. Maybe they were hoping to get shot.
In the midst of this anxious musing about her career, Kit received an invitation to a fancy poolside brunch party in Bel-Air given by a producer she knew. Everybody was pretending it was winter, just because Christmas was coming. Santa Claus and silver stars were flying over Rodeo Drive. Kit knew there would be poinsettia plants beside the pool, and that the water would be properly heated so they could swim. She wore her bikini, with a gauzy sarong wrapped around her waist.
She walked out to the pool, and there among the Christmas decorations and the pâté and champagne and fresh fruit and glossy turkey the size of a small child, and the fifty people who had been chosen for their fame or ability or beauty or charm, was Zack Shepard.
She had never seen him in real life, since she considered auditions not real life at all but simply an extension of that other dimension which was the movies. Here he was, right in front of her, in his tiny little swim trunks: both the god of the casting office and the mortal with his clothes off. The people he was talking to turned away to greet some other people, and in that split second when he was alone and looking at her, Kit smiled. He smiled back in a friendly way. She walked over to him. Not only did he not have a girl friend hanging on his arm, she didn’t see one who was talking to anyone else with her eyes darting around in that aggressive, paranoid way girl friends had whenever their tenuous property talked to someone attractive.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
A waiter came by carrying a tray of glasses filled with champagne. She took one. Zack put his empty glass on the tray and took a full one. He looked perfectly sober, but relaxed. “I’m Kit Barnett,” Kit said.
“I remember.”
For just an instant she panicked. She had never had to go after a man who was very important to her life. Then she remembered that no man had ever rejected her either, unless he was patently worthless and she hadn’t wanted him much anyway, and she drew herself together and proceeded to be herself. “Those plants are said to be poisonous,” she said, gesturing at the red-flowered poinsettias.