by Rona Jaffe
“Beautiful,” the doctor said. “Beautiful.”
That’s me, Emily thought, and went contentedly to sleep.
When she woke up in her room her private nurse was putting ice cubes on her eyes. There was so much bandaging around her face she felt as if she were wearing a gauze football helmet. She insisted she had to go to the bathroom, but when she got there, the nurse holding her arm because she was still so groggy, she went first to the mirror. She looked like the Easter bunny because of the bandages, and she could see so little of her face that she didn’t know what it looked like, except that it was various strange colors and her eyes were swollen slits.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“Don’t look,” the nurse said.
She was uncomfortable but not miserable. The pressure bandages felt scratchy. Her nurses gave her painkillers and acted thrilled when she asked for more ice cream, and she watched television all night. It was like being a child again, sick and allowed to stay home from school and have anything she wanted.
On the morning of the third day the bandages came off, some of the stitches came out, and Peter came to get her. He was polite enough not to look horrified. By now she was so swollen that her face looked like a round flat dish with an oriental face painted on it. It was still several colors, none of them attractive. Her ears were swollen and gigantic. There were metal staples in her scalp and crisscrossed black stitches all around her ears and knotted in various places in her head, and her hair was lank and greasy, coated with antibiotic ointment. She felt very vulnerable.
Dr. Winthrop came to look at her. “Very good,” he said, pleased. “Stay at home and rest, and come to my office Monday and I’ll start to take out more stitches.”
“I have only one question,” Emily said. “Did you take off my ears and sew them back?”
He laughed. “No, why?”
“Because I thought you replaced them with Lyndon Johnson’s.”
And to think she’d thought she would only look like a chipmunk.
For a week she had to sleep on her back, propped up on three pillows, the stitches hurting. Even after that, she wondered when she would ever be able to sleep comfortably on her ears again. But it was worth it. In ten days she looked almost normal, and in two weeks she was beginning to see what she was really going to look like. All the stitches and staples were out, and she no longer felt like something Dr. Winthrop had stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. In three weeks she was admiring herself. She looked sixteen. She knew that was because she was still so swollen that her normal expression lines hadn’t come back yet, but still there would be a great difference from before the operation.
Her rosy, innocent, almost poreless face smiled back at her in the mirror. Her eyes seemed enormous. She hardly even needed all those cosmetics Karen had gone with her to buy and showed her how to use; but she would want them for television, and newspaper photos. The glamorous new wardrobe that Annabel had helped her choose from the boutique was waiting for her in her closet. These clothes were certainly different from the ones that Ken had ripped up in his night of rage. And at long last she had finally been able to get out the last of the grease they’d put in her hair in the hospital. And then, since she had been feeling well enough to go anywhere she wanted to now, a month after the operation she went to the hairdresser to have her hair completely restyled, and as a final act of transformation, lightened a little; because the colorist said dark hair photographed like a lump.
The expanded Emily’s Cookies in Westwood was doing beautifully. She suddenly seemed to be surrounded by accountants, lawyers, advisors. Jared’s father was putting up more money, and everyone was talking about opening a new Emily’s Cookies in Beverly Hills. Imagine—Beverly Hills! Once it had seemed like a dream, the mark of final success. Now it seemed like a natural step.
And the next step was back to the press agent. The two months she had asked for were up.
She couldn’t wait to see his face when he saw hers.
“You did good, kiddo,” Freddie Glick said nodding, looking her over when she opened the door to her apartment. “A real good job.” She wondered if now that she was in her new incarnation she was henceforth to be addressed as Kiddo. “Now I’ve got something to work with,” he said.
“Well, then,” Emily said, “when do we begin?”
He started her with interviews on small local papers. It wasn’t hard for her to do these first ones; she remembered what Chris had told her and gave basically the same interview she’d done for Fashion and Entertainment West, leaving out anything she didn’t want to see in print. The women who interviewed her were younger than she, and seemed to find everything she said an interesting view of history. She supposed the beliefs of the times that had molded—and ruined—her life were indeed a part of modern history, and began to see her past in a more important light. Freddie made press kits containing photo offsets of these newspaper clippings, plus the one from F.E. W., included a biography he’d written and a new, very glamorous photograph, and sent the kits around. She got the Q&A column on the front page of the Herald-Examiner, which was a very big break, and then she started to do local radio.
She’d had no idea there was so much radio. She did interviews where she spoke into a tape recorder in a tiny room, and then she sat in other tiny rooms and spoke into a microphone. The first time she had to do live radio she was terrified. She didn’t tell any of her friends to listen, because somehow knowing nobody she actually knew was listening made it easier to pretend no one was listening at all. The interviewer was a man her age, and she was afraid he would be offended when she started to talk about how ludicrous the rules of the Fifties were for women, but to her surprise he agreed with her and said they were just as unfair for men. Soon they were having a conversation and she was actually having a good time, even though her palms were wet and at the back of her mind was the ever-present thought that if she said something outrageous and horrible and disgusting everybody would hear it.
Peter showed her the sales reports and told her the publicity was having an effect. They had started renovation on what was to be their Beverly Hills store, and it was important that when it opened they do well because the rent was so expensive.
“I want to do television too,” Emily told Freddie Glick. “You insisted I make myself over—well, I didn’t do it for radio where they can’t see me.”
“I’m trying,” he said. A week later he called her up triumphantly to tell her he had booked her on a local TV interview show. She watched it beforehand to see what was expected of her. Like most of those shows they had nonstop guests, each for about five to ten minutes, and none of them looked nervous. Why weren’t they nervous? She was.
As always, she went to the interview with Pat, the young girl from Freddie’s office. Freddie never came along in person unless it was a major show. The producers always made Pat sit outside anyway, because there wasn’t enough room, so it was just like being all alone and deserted except for having someone to drive her there and back and tell her she hadn’t been terrible.
Emily and Pat sat on chairs in the hall outside the studio and watched the show on a television set next to the ever-present coffee machine. Emily never drank anything before a show because she was afraid she would have to go to the ladies’ room right in the middle of it, and what would she do? The guest who was on right before her was a man who hypnotized himself and then thrust a long skewer through one cheek and out the other without losing a drop of blood or feeling any pain. His performance seemed endless, and Emily started to feel queasy. How could she talk about cookies after this? She wanted to run away.
“And you wanted to be in show business?” Pat said.
It was her turn. As she entered the studio she passed the skewer man, recovered from his trance, who was wiping a small drop of blood off his face. She looked away. She sat down primly next to the host, who looked pale under his television makeup, and they smiled at each other.
“That was
disgusting,” Emily said.
“How would you have liked to be sitting right next to him? I don’t know if I can do this next segment—I feel too sick.”
“Oh, don’t be sick!” Emily said, suddenly so concerned for the poor man that she forgot how frightened she was. “We’ll just talk … I’ll tell you about necking at college … I won’t even mention Emily’s Cookies.”
“Ah, yes, necking,” he said. “I went to college in the late Sixties; we didn’t do that anymore.”
Emily laughed, and somewhere in the darkness in front of her she heard the staff laughing too. “When do I go on?” she asked.
“You are on. See that little red light?” He pointed to the camera, which of course she couldn’t see there in the dark with all those bright lights shining down on her, and there was its heartlessly recording little red eye.
“Oh, my … gosh.” She had almost said Oh My God, but she caught herself in time. You probably weren’t allowed to on television; you might offend somebody. She pulled herself together, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. She couldn’t even remember this man’s name—it had gone right out of her head. But he was looking at her with such friendly ease that she thought if she just kept looking back at him that she might be able to survive. “This is my first television appearance,” she said.
“Yes, all this success has happened very fast for you,” he said kindly. “Tell us about it.”
That, at least, she knew how to do. She had done it before. She did it again. When the red light went out and the commercial went on she wiped her perspiring hands on her skirt, because they had taken her handbag with her handkerchief in it away before she went on the set, for some reason she couldn’t understand, and then she shook the host’s hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so bad.”
“You were charming,” he said. “And I thank you.”
She went back to Pat, who was holding her vanished handbag, and they left. “I stunk,” Emily said, mortified. “Freddie Glick is going to kill me.”
“I thought you were cute,” Pat said. “They liked you. You were a real person.”
“That’s just what Freddie doesn’t want, a real person.”
“Well, fuck Freddie,” Pat said.
Apparently she hadn’t disgraced herself too much after all, because the next week Freddie booked her on two cable shows which were syndicated nationally, and the week after that he put her on A.M. Los Angeles. That one really frightened her, because she knew how important it was, but she had planned what she was going to say and everyone was very kind. Five minutes wasn’t long, but when you were on the air it seemed endless. And she still had the same feeling that she was going to do something unforgivable, and that it would be irrevocable. She wondered whether that had something to do with her upbringing, all the guilt for things she hadn’t even done, or whether everyone who went on TV felt that way.
Freddie came to this one, because it was a big show. He spent all the time he was there trying to sell another one of his clients for a future show and didn’t pay any attention to her. Still, after her segment was over, Emily waited for him to tell her if she had been all right. When he didn’t say anything she asked him.
“Sure,” he said, looking surprised that she had doubted it. “You were fine. Terry held up the cookie tin twice, that’s the main thing.”
“And how did I look?”
“You looked beautiful. You’re very photogenic.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I guess.” She wondered when she would ever be able to know if she had been good or not without having to ask people. Or maybe it didn’t matter, as long as they held up the cookie tin twice. But she couldn’t really believe that, no matter what he said.
She was so busy with her life and her new career that the divorce from Ken, when it became final, seemed only another event and not the trauma she had thought it might be. Their marriage had ended long ago; this was only a formality. When he saw her in court he looked surprised at her changed appearance.
“You’re looking very well,” he said mildly. “I guess getting away from me has done you good.”
“I guess so,” she answered lightly, and smiled. He hadn’t even realized she’d had anything done, and he was a doctor! But maybe he was too upset about the financial settlement to pay attention.
She had a lot of money now. Ken wanted to keep the house, so he had to give her half of what it was worth, plus half of whatever he’d saved since they’d lived in California. He didn’t have to support Kate and Peter, because they were both over eighteen, but neither of them really needed help anymore. Kate was working regularly, and Peter had a good salary from the business. Now that she could move, and live anywhere, suddenly Emily didn’t know what she wanted. She did know that she didn’t want another house; she wanted to be free.
She rented a two-bedroom apartment near the one where she had been living, this one unfurnished; had it painted, and bought a few things—just the essentials, but nice things that she would want to keep. She thought of it gleefully as a selfish apartment, meant for an adult living alone, everything clean and white and neatly in its place. She had not taken any objects from their marriage, and it delighted her that Ken was stuck with those hideous gold-painted dishes his mother had forced on them when they were first married. They hadn’t used them, and now he wouldn’t. But she really didn’t bear him any ill will anymore: he was the past. They had both been victims of The Rules.
Freddie Glick called her up triumphantly. “Okay, kiddo,” he said, “I’ve got a big one for you. I’ve got you booked on The Merv Griffin Show.”
“Oh my God,” Emily gasped. “Why me?”
“They’re doing a segment on the cookie craze, and they’re having some people who started their own cookie business and made it.”
“But I’m not famous … I mean, Merv Griffin, oh my God.” She was both excited and totally terrified.
“Yeah, but you do a good interview. I haven’t been having any trouble getting things for you lately.”
“Who else is on? What am I supposed to talk about?”
“Stop babbling,” he said. “Somebody from the show will call you before for a pre-interview.”
“I’m going to faint,” Emily said.
“You don’t want to do it?”
“Of course I want to do it,” she said.
So here she was, a week later, sitting in the Green Room backstage at the studio, waiting to go on a nationally syndicated television show she had been watching for years; Freddie Glick beside her, actually wearing a suit for the occasion. Somebody had told her it was called the Green Room because the performers who waited there turned green with anxiety, and Emily knew just what they meant. She watched the show on the monitor.
“And here is Wally Amos, whose company, Famous Amos, makes nearly five tons of chocolate chip cookies a day …”
Five tons … I hope nobody asks me how many I make. Look how happy and self-possessed and perky that man looks.… I would too if I made five tons of cookies a day.
“And here’s Debbi Fields, who is only twenty-seven years old and has a hundred and fifty Mrs. Fields cookie outlets, and a new baby. That’s three children now, right?”
At twenty-seven I was having a nervous breakdown, Emily thought. God, she’s gorgeous; she looks like a model.…
“David Leiderman of David’s Cookies nationwide, who just opened a new outlet in Tokyo!”
And Emily, who hopes to open her new outlet in Beverly Hills …
Emily peered at the monitor to see if the audience looked friendly. Maybe they would like her because she had started so late, sort of a role model or something for the women who had never done anything. She didn’t like the idea of real people sitting there looking at her, expecting her to be interesting. She had never done a show in front of a live audience before … she had never done anything in front of an audience. She had been too petrified even to try out for the school play. Peter had wanted to come to the tapi
ng but she wouldn’t let him. It was the same dynamic that made her afraid to have her friends watch her when she was performing. And that was what it was, really, a performance. If she just kept telling herself that, and remembering her lines, she would be all right.
But she couldn’t remember a thing she had ever said.
Her mind was a total blank, and now someone was leading her out onto the stage, where the hot, bright lights hit her, and she was on the set that looked like a living room, or perhaps an office, with Merv Griffin at his desk, and all those cameras, and the audience sitting there looking at her. She sat down and crossed her legs and smiled, wondering if the microphone would pick up the sound of her thumping heart.
“This is Emily Buchman of Emily’s Cookies,” Merv Griffin said. “A newcomer on the cookie scene. She opened her first factory last summer, in Westwood Village in California, and it was an overnight success. Now she’s going to open another one in Beverly Hills, with plans for several more this year. Prior to this she was a homemaker with no business experience at all. When you were back at Radcliffe, Emily, did you ever think that this would happen?”
“No,” Emily said. “I wanted to be a doctor. But my career advisor told me that if I wanted so badly to be a doctor I should marry one instead, so I married the first doctor who asked me.”
There were some chuckles from the audience; the laughter of recognition, and a few gasps of disbelief. “Well, actually,” she said, “he was in premed.” More chuckles. They were liking her! She allowed herself to look back at the audience for the first time, and fastened on an attractive woman of about her own age, sitting in the first row, who was smiling at her and nodding encouragement. “In those days,” Emily said, “back in the Fifties, we married what we wanted to be. I guess it was supposed to rub off or something.”
More laughter—she had apparently said something mildly risqué. The woman in the front row gave her an ironic grin. “Then I guess it wouldn’t have helped if you’d married a baker,” Merv Griffin said, smiling.