Being Audrey Hepburn

by Mitchell Kriegman

  I pulled the door tight. It was pretty comfy when I was little, almost like a walk-in, so it’s not like I was a total coffin freak. Although these days, I had to squeeze. Even though we didn’t have AC, the temp in my closet was pretty cool. Mashing the pillows around me like a nest, I pushed the big turquoise body pillow to the door, blocking the light and their voices.

  I grabbed a Coke out of the minifridge. Yes, I had a minifridge in my closet. I won it by selling more wrapping paper and chocolate than anyone in the history of my tenth-grade class. My secret weapon was to hit up old lady Conner down the street for a bundle. She smoked a lot of weed and bought my chocolates so I wouldn’t tell anyone. As if I would.

  I opened my laptop and thanked God for the Internet. There was always a new Web site to check out. I think the Internet was designed for people like me, who need somewhere to go to forget where they really are.

  Within a dozen clicks, I could get lost in the urgent need to know the most important details about all the stuff I couldn’t have, didn’t need, but couldn’t live without. There was an update on the hot young royals at Jezebel, Kate Bosworth’s ultrachic cocktail sheath, and red python-print heels at FabSugar, a rundown of who’s prematurely aging at TMZ for their “Celebs Without Makeup” feature, a sneak peek at Jason Wu’s unbelievable new designs for Fashion Week, and a fleeting look at Page Six, the old standby, where I saw the latest on Taylor Swift. Ugh. Did they pass a law requiring that every celebrity Web site had to have a feature on Taylor Swift’s crimped dos and her latest glitter-like-a-princess dress?

  Once that was out of my system, I clicked on the DVD in my computer—Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  As the mournful first chords played over the Paramount logo, I fell into a trance. I was there on the street as the lone cab crept up Fifth Avenue, the melancholy notes of “Moon River” weaving their way through my headphones, deep into my cerebral cortex and through my entire body, like the gas they give you at a dentist’s office when your wisdom teeth are removed.

  Sinking into the pillows, I melted away to be with Audrey as she stepped out of that yellow 1960 Ford Galaxie taxi wearing the exquisite Givenchy with those extravagant gloves and the four giant strands of pearls. We looked up at the chiseled Tiffany & Co. name above its Fifth Avenue entrance and gazed through the jewelry store window at those miniature chandeliers and floating bracelets, all the while sitting in my closet.

  Although I was completely addicted to all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my total fix.

  It was my IV drip bag.

  3

  Here’s the big secret—Audrey Hepburn is the cure for everything.

  Dumped by your lifelong crush? Sabrina. Want to escape your life and go incognito? Roman Holiday. Tired of being a bookworm? Funny Face. Crisis of conscience? The Nun’s Story. Family secrets to cover up? How to Steal a Million. Ready for a vacation escapade with a little intrigue in Paris? Charade.

  A movie cure for every need.

  Above them all is Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  I loved the flat-out glamour of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the false eyelashes, the roaring parties, the tiaras and pearls, and the “darlings.” I loved that Holly Golightly slept with a satin mask and turquoise earplugs with little tassels. I wished I could pull off a look like that.

  Edda van Heemstra, Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Audrey Hepburn-Ruston were some of her names, and each one was an evolution toward the Audrey we grew to love. From hours of obsessive online research in the confines of my closet, I knew she grew up during the Holocaust and World War II and was at one point forced to eat tulip bulbs and bake bread out of grass. If Audrey could do all that during a world war, you’d think that I, Lisbeth Anne Wachowicz, growing up in South End Montclair, New Jersey, could make something out of my life. Although the bread-out-of-grass thing seemed totally out of the question.

  Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the one-hour-and-fifty-five-minute version of my hopes and dreams and all the lurking dangers in-between. I’ll never forget the first time I ever heard Holly Golightly talk about the mean reds. I immediately realized that there were mean reds around me all the time.

  Everybody knew that you got the blues because you were stuck or you were depressed or you were being treated unfairly. But the mean reds were more unsettling, because when you have them, you don’t know what you’re afraid of, except that something bad was going to happen, and you didn’t know who to tell or what to do.

  There wasn’t a time I can remember when I didn’t feel that way. Something bad was always about to happen. Mom and Dad were building to a fight. Dad was itching to leave. Mom was getting plastered, and Courtney was nowhere around. Ryan … well, who knew what lurked inside that poor boy’s soul? And me, what could I do about it all?

  When the mean red panic light inside me flashed, I found myself further and further away from who I was or could hope to be. It all just made me want to put everything on hold, keep to myself, and be quiet as a mouse.

  I loved Holly Golightly’s Tiffany cure. It wasn’t about the merchandise. Even Holly said that—she didn’t give a hoot about jewelry. “Diamonds are for old elegant white-haired ladies,” she said famously.

  Have you been to Tiffany’s? I don’t mean the mall stores like the ones in Short Hills or Hackensack. Fifth Avenue is the only one that will do. Just walk in sometime and experience its tranquility, harmony, and splendor. You don’t have to buy anything. Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend, they’re a sparkling tonic for the soul, like summer rain, gazing at the Milky Way, or snowflakes that land on your tongue.

  Tiffany’s was a state of mind, exquisitely removed from fear and panic. That’s what made it medicinal. When Holly Golightly took me on my first Tiffany’s tour, I realized that I’d finally found someone who felt what I felt.

  Pretty much since my ninth birthday, I’d been watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s continuously. That’s when Nan gave me my first VHS tape of the movie.

  I watched that one nonstop until the tape became hopelessly entangled in our secondhand VCR. The replacement copy lasted longer, but I was limited by family viewing time, which meant I couldn’t watch when Ryan was mainlining SpongeBob and Fairly Odd Parents. Thank God for laptops with DVD drives. My closet became my own personal multiplex, my ticket to a world that I lived in more than this one. And it was really all because of Nan.

  Nan was my grandmother, my mom’s mom. She was so different from Mom; it was hard to believe they could possibly share the same DNA.

  Nan laughed all the time and had a totally wicked-smart sense of humor. Tiny and elegant, everything she wore was from the 1960s. She never left her house without a touch of rouge, lipstick, and her classic double strand of pearls—a look she’d been wearing since her debutante days—though she worried about the punks on the street trying to snatch them.

  Oh crap! Nan!

  I grabbed my phone and checked the time—5:04. Crap, crap, crap. I was supposed to have been at Nan’s at five. Yanking off my headphones, I scrambled out of the closet on my knees and dug through the piles of laundry in my room for my favorite pair of jeans, a blouse, and shoes. I slid my laptop into my bag, tossed the bag over my shoulder, and bounded down the stairs toward the kitchen. How was I going to make an exit without getting stuck?

  As I tiptoed into the kitchen, I saw Mom at the table in the breakfast nook, her face puffy and red from crying. No sign of Courtney. I couldn’t just ignore her, could I?

  “Mom, uh, are you okay?” I asked.

  Big mistake. She turned full bore on me.

  “You better not turn out like your sister.” I nodded my head no.

  “Good. There’s leftover lasagna. Make us something to eat,” she said and walked over to the paper towels, wiping her nose. “I’m too upset.”

  Shit.

  I forced myself to say something.

  “I have to go.”

  “What?” She was inspecting me, in that way of hers, like I was under a m
icroscope. Mom has this way of picking on people’s sensitive points. Like in second grade, when I used to invite Sarah Policki, our next-door neighbor, over to play, and we’d ask for a snack, Mom would laugh and say that Sarah looked like she’d had too many snacks already. Just like she made fun of my bony knees. Eventually Sarah stopped coming over. Mom wasn’t exactly great for your self-esteem, especially when she was drinking.

  I saw the wheels turning in her head. There was still too much fight in her.

  “Mom, I’m already late for Nan’s.” I hated that I sounded like I was begging. She paused for a second, probably debating whether she should strike and go for the kill.

  “Nan’s waiting, Mom. I’ve gotta go,” I said. Seizing the moment, I pushed open the kitchen door.

  “We need to have that talk,” Mom yelled after me.

  I didn’t know and didn’t want to know what “that talk” was.

  But what I did know was that she hadn’t found out yet.

  You know my “plan”? The whole thing I told you about, the one thing Mom was counting on and Courtney almost as much? The Mama’s “good girl going to school at Essex and becoming a nurse-practitioner” plan?

  I wasn’t going.

  I hadn’t told Mom or Courtney yet. Mostly because I was chicken. But also because I had no idea what I was going to do instead.

  I just knew I wanted out. Out of that house, out of that life, out of New Jersey.

  As much as I loved my closet, I couldn’t do another four years in there.

  “I know, Mom. We’ll talk later for sure,” I shouted back, already out the door.

  “I mean it, Lisbeth,” she said. “You can’t avoid this forever!”

  Maybe not.

  But I could try.

  I ran out the door and headed toward my car as fast as I could.

  4

  The Purple Beast wouldn’t start.

  Pumping the gas pedal, I turned the key—holding it more forcefully this time. I had to show my 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville who was boss. The starter whined as it cranked. It whined again and finally turned over. The car roared. The Caddy was Nan’s, but the lavender paint job was all mine. Twice the size of a normal car, I knew it was environmentally incorrect, ugly, and ate a hole in my pocket because it took two days’ worth of tips to fill the purple monster up with gas every week. But if you asked me, it was worth it. Probably the only cool thing about me. I would have gone insane without it.

  Grandpa kept the car in perfect shape all those years, so it usually ran like a dream, even if I forgot to change the oil. The only thing that didn’t work was the convertible top and the left-turn signal. Hey, nobody in New Jersey uses turn signals anyway.

  I threw it in reverse. The car jerked as I backed out of the driveway, swinging narrowly past Mom’s old Corolla and rolling over the trash cans at the bottom near the street. Damn, the car had a mind of its own. Shifting it into drive, I made my way up our street toward Nan’s part of town.

  Nan lived at a retirement village called Montclair Manor. When I was younger, it sounded to me like a really fancy estate with servants in black uniforms and crisp white aprons, tea and cucumber sandwiches at 3:00 in the afternoon—only it wasn’t.

  The actual Montclair Manor was a dreary cluster of tiny, tumbledown, smog-gray minihouses surrounding a big parking lot and a community house. It had a lovely view of the Barclay’s Vinyl Window plant on Route 495 complete with the factory’s toxic aroma.

  To hear Nan, you’d think she was living at the Waldorf, but this place was depressing as hell. I don’t think she’s ever complained about it once. She didn’t even complain about the fact that the Montclair Manor community dining room smelled like old people’s feet. She never complained about any of the aches and creepy diseases that most old people wanted to discuss. And she never complained once about the fact that I was the only one who visited her. My mom and sister hadn’t been there in years. Ryan barely knew she existed.

  Mom and Nan didn’t see eye to eye. That’s the nicest way to put it. I wondered if that was something that ran in our family, like nonexistent boobs. There was totally this history of moms and daughters not getting along.

  Montclair Manor was an assisted-living home, which meant that the old people were basically on their own, but there was a nurse named Betty and a couple of staffers who checked on the residents every day to make sure that no one had fallen down or, you know, snuffed out in their sleep. I wouldn’t mention it, except it happened—twice last year and three times the year before. Sometimes you got a run where these old people dropped like flies.

  A crusty old guy two doors down from Nan died in his ratty plaid recliner while reading a romance novel called The Blackmailed Heiress. His name was Sarge, Army Retired. His name wasn’t actually “Sarge Army Retired.” That’s just the way he said it every time, and how Nan and I would refer to him. He was eighty-three and still trimmed what little hair he had left in a crew cut. He would drop down for fifty push-ups every morning.

  Poor Sarge must have been cringing in his grave, because every one of those old ladies he worked so hard to impress with his macho push-up routine found out, in excruciating detail, about his girly Harlequin-romance-novel habit. Personally, I thought it was cute. When the aides cleaned out his place, they found tons of paperback romances everywhere, stashed under the bed, in his old army footlocker, and under the kitchen counter. Sort of like my mom with booze. Anyway, I guess he didn’t want anyone to know that there was a starry-eyed romantic hiding underneath that tough GI exterior.

  Nan knew he was a softie. Sarge had a crush on my Nan; he’d tried to flirt with her in that gruff way of his. All of the old guys there did. They would ask Nan out to dinner at Mama Luigi’s or line up to dance with her on Copacabana Night. Her eyes still had a twinkle of enchantment in them. I didn’t know how she kept it going in that dreadful place.

  Betty the nurse was leaving as I walked up the crumbly path to Nan’s house. I tried not to laugh when I saw her. She had to be pushing seventy herself. She wore a push-up bra, a bucket of foundation and blush, and she dyed her hair unnaturally jet-black. It shined like the coat on Black Beauty, the horse. She also must have worn an industrial version of Spanx under her uniform. Who knew how she breathed in that thing or how she worked there when she should have been an inmate herself. It was pretty funny when she walked around all day checking on “the old folks” as she referred to the residents, calling them “old dear” and “ma’am” and speaking very loudly while emphasizing every syllable: “HOW ARE YOUR BOW-ELS? DID YOU HAVE A BOW-EL MOVE-MENT TO-DAY?” Please somebody kill me when I get so old people start asking me about the last time I pooped.

  “Nan, I’m here,” I yelled. I stepped into the living room and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of rose oil and Joy perfume, which I loved—Nan’s patented antidote to wallowing in your own worries.

  “On my way, Lisbeth,” Nan said. She was precariously balancing a giant cheesecake on a silver platter from the kitchen. “Grab forks and plates, will you please, dear?”

  My phone buzzed. It was Mom. I hit IGNORE and stuck the phone back in my pocket.

  I dropped my backpack on the dilapidated gold velvet slipper chair by the front door. Nan’s place was the same as always—time-warped and tidy. Most of her furniture dated around the 1960s—an eclectically elegant mix of things from her life with Grandpa and the graceful Park Avenue furnishings she inherited when my great-grandmother and great-grandfather died, way before I was born. The rich burgundy embroidery was now yellowed and the silk draperies were probably older, maybe from the forties—and totally oversize for the tiny windows they now framed. But Nan made it all work.

  “What is this?” I asked. Nan’s eyes twinkled mischievously as she set the giant cheesecake down in front of me on the coffee table.

  “I was thinking, if you don’t mind, we should skip dinner tonight and go straight to dessert?” Nan was my kind of girl.

  I nodded and contemplated
the cheesecake, which was smothered in chocolate and caramel and pecans. “It does have nuts on it…” I said.

  “Yes, and pecans are a good source of protein,” Nan added.

  “Totally, and you can’t beat chocolate for antioxidants!” I said.

  “Just what I was thinking!” Nan said, delighted. “It’s practically health food.”

  I gave Nan a hug, and she squeezed me tightly.

  You have to understand what it was like to be hugged by Nan. You didn’t just hug Nan, you melded with her. It felt like your heart and her heart found each other, all perfectly lined up, and they started to beat together. As she hugged you, you noticed her tiny heartbeats grow stronger and stronger with every beat. It was total bliss.

  She was petite, as Nan would say, probably five foot five, maybe shorter. Nan did yoga and Aquacise and tap, plus she went ballroom dancing every Thursday. She was as fit as she could be. Once she actually did a headstand right in the middle of her living room. I could hardly believe it. It’s not every day you see an octogenarian upside down.

  But lately every time I saw her, it seemed as though she was shrinking a bit. I think that really happens—old people just get smaller because they’re so wrinkly. You know like how your shirt looks when you take it out of the dryer after a couple of days?

  “May I?” I said, cutting us each slices and delicately placing them on two small china plates, giving the biggest one to Nan. Nan always ate on china, even if it was just moo goo gai pan from Ping Chong’s Chinese. According to Nan, every day she had left on the planet was a special occasion. She certainly made it feel that way. She was leaving the china to me in her will, probably because I was her favorite and the only person in the family who wouldn’t pimp it on eBay.

  “Dear, do you prefer milk or champagne with your cheesecake?” Nan asked as she headed toward the kitchen. I laughed.