Being Audrey Hepburn

by Mitchell Kriegman

  She put down her paper and glared at me like she wanted to leap out of bed and strangle me. I could tell she was trying to keep from getting angry. Her whole body was tense.

  “It’s the plan,” she said.

  “I know, Mom, I…”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” she said, not letting me get a word in. “They’re keeping me here, and I don’t even know if anyone will let me work again.” Her eyes glistened, like there might be tears. But she was too tough to let it show. I could see that she couldn’t stand being weepy. She turned away to quietly wipe her eyes. For the first time, she seemed vulnerable.

  “Have they said that to you?”

  “Are you kidding? Now that they know, they’ll never hire me back. Why? Are you suddenly an expert?” she demanded.

  “Mom, they have to let you work. As long as you go into a program like AA and you get better, they can’t fire you.” I wanted to hold her hand or hug her. I started to move closer but wasn’t sure she’d let me.

  “Where did you get that?” Her belligerence resurfaced.

  I sat back.

  “I was talking to Nan. She’s at the house,” I said, knowing the impact.

  “What?!”

  “Yep, a regular staff sergeant, she’s whipping the house in shape for when you get home and getting Ryan to finish summer school. Courtney’s helping.”

  That made Mom go silent. We sat there for what seemed like ages.

  Mom kept shaking her head in small little nods, staring off into space. She was so tired that her eyes closed a couple of times. Everything seemed to weigh on her, and I realized I had no idea what was going through her mind.

  “Yeah, Nan tried to call a couple of times,” she added finally.

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “No,” she answered, as if my question was absurd.

  “Well, it’s time you guys start talking again because I can’t be there.” I waited for that to sink in. “You need her help.”

  “And where are you going to be?” Mom asked, but I didn’t have a chance to answer because Nurse Brynner came in.

  “Ella, isn’t it great to have your lovely daughter visit?” she said as she adjusted her pillows and settled her bed. Mom sat silent as a stone. “Don’t mind your mother’s grumpy face,” Nurse Brynner added. “It’s just stuck that way. She’s really happy you’re here.”

  I could imagine these two tough old battle-axes sitting around shooting the shit about everyone.

  Mom was silent as her friend handed her a cup of water and some pills, which I assumed were sedatives. I slid over to the side table, where Mom couldn’t see me, and slipped out my envelope of poker winnings. I peeled off twenty one-hundred-dollar bills and put them in her pocketbook, hoping that in some small way it would make up for whatever money she had wasted on my college tuition.

  As I got ready to leave, Mom was falling asleep.

  “We’re not done talking about this, Lisbeth,” she said, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  “I know, Mom. You rest. I’ll be back soon.”

  49

  Fried pickles, bacon grease, and cheese. Those were the first smells that hit me as I walked in the door at the Hole. Everyone was so busy that no one noticed me. It was like one of those scenes from the movies where you attend your own funeral. It was easy to see that the Finer Diner was moving along perfectly well without me, almost as if I had been erased and was never there.

  “Two cows with bacon and cheddar, table eleven,” I heard Buela say from the kitchen and ring that annoying little bell. Cheddar? That was new to the menu. I saw Jake pick up the order, and I felt my heart sink, wondering if he’d even talk to me this time.

  He was wearing one of his skinny Ts and loose-fitting jeans with no belt and the little white apron the guys got to wear instead of the pink one. I hated to admit it, because it’s just so weird, but something about a guy in an apron turned me on.

  Crystal was all hot in her tied-up work shirt, shredded Daisy Dukes, pink apron, and heels. Who could possibly wear heels while working in a diner? Me, I’d face plant into a plate of corned-beef hash in no time. But Crystal handled it with ease. It hurt to watch as she came by and leaned on Jake’s shoulder in that familiar way I used to.

  “What are you doing here?” Buela asked. I hadn’t seen her come up behind me.

  “Oh hi, Buela,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in. I came in to tell you that I have to quit, because my mom…”

  “You can’t quit,” she said. “I fired you two weeks ago.”

  “Really? I didn’t know I…”

  “Save your breath. I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, heading back to the kitchen. “Your last check is in your locker. Take your things and leave. And don’t think you’re taking your pink apron. That stays here.” As if anyone would want to have one of those greasy pink aprons. Maybe somewhere they were much-sought-after authentic diners-of-America souvenirs. I passed Buela’s office and the freezer room, and then I ran into Jake. I wasn’t sure he’d say anything to me, so I tried not to make eye contact.

  “Hey Lizzy,” he said softly.

  “Hey Jake,” I said turning, afraid my knees might buckle if my eyes met his.

  “I heard about your mom,” he said.

  “She’s going to be okay. Thanks for asking.”

  “And you? How have you been?” Something about the softness in his voice, the way the words flowed, made me look up.

  “Good,” I said. Our eyes met. I had a lot to say, like how I loved that strand of black hair that he didn’t seem to be able to tame and the way his T-shirt hung on his shoulders, that I wondered if we could start all over again, but Jake’s smoky-blue eyes grew serious, and I worried what he might be thinking so I didn’t say all that.

  “We’ve missed you around here,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said and managed to smile. “Seems like everyone is doing just fine without me, but I’m glad to see you again.”

  “Yeah.” Then he got quiet, hanging his head, looking down at his feet as he always did when there was something serious he was thinking about. I was thinking, too, trying to find the right way to say that I was sorry for what happened and couldn’t we be friends.

  “About last time…” we both blurted out, speaking at the same time, fumbling over each other’s words.

  “You go ahead,” I said.

  “No you, sorry, I didn’t mean…” and he trailed off.

  “I’m the one that’s sorry,” I said finally. “I’m sorry I missed your gig. I’m sorry I came too late. I’m sorry we’re not friends, I miss being your friend. I miss you and me and Jess hanging out at the diner, but I guess Jess isn’t here anyway…”

  I spied Crystal checking us out from the restaurant.

  “Hey, I know you’ve moved on, and I just want you to know we’re cool, right? Are we? I mean, we were friends, right?”

  “Friends?” He acted surprised to hear that word. Like he hated it or something, and I got worried he was going to be mad.

  “That’s what you thought?” He shook his head side to side. “Lisbeth, you’ve got to understand…”

  “Hey, lover boy! I have a restaurant to run,” Buela called from the front.

  He looked over his shoulder. Crystal motioned him to hurry.

  “We’re cool, Lizzy,” he said, frustrated. “See you around. Gotta go.”

  “See you,” I said.

  Way to keep digging that hole, I thought.

  Maybe the Hamptons would be the best thing considering I had no job, Mom was in the hospital, and there was no Jake.

  I dialed Tabitha to tell her. She started squealing so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

  “The Hamptons are going to be so much fun!” she said and started squealing again.

  50

  “Are you sure?” Jess asked, holding her scissors and a hank of my hair.

  “Just cut.”

  S
he poised her scissors a few inches from the tips of my hair.

  “Here?” she asked.

  “Higher.”

  “But your hair … there’s so many other ways you can wear it,” she pleaded.

  In the cheapie full-length mirror she had propped up against the wall, she could see my expression.

  “Even more?” she asked.

  “Even more,” I said.

  Jess sighed. It wasn’t like she didn’t know how. Jess and her mom could cut any hairstyle on anybody; it’s just that in South End not a lot of the big ladies came in asking for pixies or elfin cuts. And though she had been chopping up her own hair for ages and dying it pink or turquoise, she had always admired my long hair, which I had kept that way since grade school.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m very sure. All off.”

  And it began, the first big chunks of my hair dropping to the floor.

  Sitting in the middle of Jess’s Chinatown loft as her scissors snipped away, I admired what she had done with her apartment. Everything was furnished almost entirely with things she found on the street. It all had a purpose that served her aesthetic and the clothing designs she was working on. You could tell she had spent long nights into early mornings working there. Doodles, drawings and Post-it notes dotted the whitewashed walls. All the scribbles were about one thing and one thing only—her new line of dresses.

  The dress designs were sometimes sketched directly on the walls, alongside fabric swatches taped or pinned beside them. Fragments from her journal that she later embroidered on the hems of her dresses were jotted nearby.

  Over the entrance to the apartment she had scrawled: She put on her thinking cap and stumbled through the door but only multiplication tables came to mind.

  And over the bathroom mirror: When your heart breaks, the pieces shatter. They show up unexpectedly at the bottom of the pit you’re digging, or sewn into the stitches of your dress.

  Sitting in the middle of Jess’s apartment was like being inside her brain.

  “Chin down, please,” Jess said, interrupting my thoughts with a poke in the back. “So? I’m sure you’ve got some kind of new adventure to tell me.”

  What was it was about getting a haircut that made you want to instantly confess your deepest darkest secrets? Sarrah the nosey-parker girlfriend was gone, just as Jess predicted, so I let it all pour out—the odd meeting at the St. Regis, the creepy image of Robert Francis in his bathrobe holding Morris in the light of the doorway, poker night with ZK and the taxi-cab kiss. I recounted it all. Jess responded with awe and cautious concern.

  “My mom says your mom came home,” Jess added, snipping away.

  “Yeah, they’ve given her three days to get stronger before they start the approval process for a new liver, if she can qualify at all. But she’s in the hospital rehab program and finally going to AA meetings twice a week. Incredible, really,” I said.

  “And Nan?” she asked, as I watched the last big chunk of hair fall to the floor.

  “She’s moved out of the manor and is staying in my room, if you can imagine. At least they’re talking,” I said. “Mom’s a tough customer, but so is Nan.”

  Now that the big chunks were gone, Jess gathered my hair in front of my face and started another round of cutting. I puffed the hair away and she combed it right back—I think she purposefully didn’t want me to see what she was doing. It reminded me of the way the Italian barber in Roman Holiday cut Audrey’s hair. Every Audrey fan knows that the haircut in the barbershop at via della Stamperia next to the Trevi Fountain made Audrey famous forever.

  Next to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday was my favorite Audrey fix. I had seen it almost as often. I would kill to go to Italy and ride around on a Vespa with a guy like Gregory Peck holding on to my waist. Of course, I would just kill to go to Italy. The movie was Audrey’s big break, but as in a lot of showbiz stories you read, the film wasn’t written for her. Elizabeth Taylor was slated to play the part, and instead of Gregory Peck, it was supposed to be Cary Grant.

  At the time, Audrey was simply an aspiring actress, auditioning for a director she didn’t know. I had even seen her screen test for Roman Holiday on YouTube. It showed a subdued, dignified Audrey performing an audition scene until the director yelled cut. Luckily the cameraman left the camera rolling and captured Audrey’s real personality as she chatted away about the war and ballet dancing to benefit the Resistance during World War II. Film historians have said that the candid footage won her the role.

  The most marvelous part of the movie, as far as I was concerned, was the haircut scene. In that scene, before your very eyes, she was transformed from the typically stuffy, boring Hollywood princess to a newly minted screen persona that redefined glamour. As each lock of hair fell to the floor, Audrey’s eyes grew round with delight, and her charm, innocence, and waiflike features were revealed. When the barber was finished, Audrey was liberated, and the starlet we’ve come to know was born.

  I didn’t have such lofty goals for my haircut. I just felt it was time for me to shed my good-girl image and become something more.

  Jess was circling back to shape and refine my hair, completely absorbed in the process. She didn’t do anything halfway. She moved around me, nipping with her scissors like a sculptor, forming my hair closely to the shape of my head. Each tiny cut created movement upward, off my neck, and forward, to frame my face.

  Through my bangs I could see the open closet where the dresses were hung. There were still dresses of Nan’s I hadn’t worn. Modified Chanel, Lilli Ann, Chez Ninon, and others. I figured I’d take those with me to the Hamptons.

  Alongside Nan’s dresses were Designer X’s masterpieces. The closet burst with dresses made of sheer materials, like one chiffon dress I could see with a lace underlay. There were lots of floral detailing, ruffles, even sequins. Embroidered full-length gowns were interwoven with delicate knee-length tulle frocks. The dresses were starkly accented here and there with a studded belt or a biker jacket.

  I couldn’t believe how many dresses she had already finished. I wondered if she ever slept.

  “Isak won’t stop bothering me about you,” I said through the falling hair. I wanted to draw her out on how she felt about her show. “I don’t see how I can keep him away. He’s even demanding it on my blog. I mean, I don’t see why you won’t meet him now.”

  “I’m just not ready,” she said.

  “And when will you be ready?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding exhausted. “Maybe when it’s perfect. Depends on how the show goes, I guess.”

  “You’re crazy. He has to see your show.”

  “Lisbeth, you don’t understand. You only have one chance, and if you’re not ready when they see you, they’ll never come back,” Jess said. “It’s like a dress—it’s all first impression. If you have depth and talent and skill after that, great, but if the first impression fails, you’ve failed.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be ready.”

  “We’ll see. Now shut up for a minute while I try to finish your hair.”

  She cut the sides up around my ears, which was weird because I hadn’t felt my ears free of hair for longer than I could remember. The final strokes took away sections from my cherished bangs so they were lighter and shorter. There certainly was no going back now. I admired her work in the mirror: ultrashort, feminine, with a feathery touch.

  “This will be great in the Hamptons,” I said.

  “What?” Jess practically dropped her scissors.

  “The Hamptons,” I said. “Tabitha invited me for a few days.”

  “But the show…” she trailed off. She seemed tired. “You’re going to miss my show.” She had the sound of inevitability in her voice.

  “No, I’ll be back in time,” I insisted. “It’s not like I’m going to another country.” I hadn’t expected her reaction.

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “But you don’t have a dat
e yet or the space?”

  “Not yet, but when we do it will be sudden. It will all happen at once.”

  “And I’ll be there,” I added. “Besides, I’m doing all my posting and promotion online. I might make more connections this way. Donna Karan is out there, and everyone else.”

  “Lisbeth, what’s happening? You’re not becoming one of them, are you?” she asked, a sad glint in her eye. “You’re actually summering in the Hamptons. You’ll just get swept away with all of their million-dollar houses, their lives.”

  “No, I’ve handled it so far,” I said, wondering myself if it sounded true.

  “Listen, we’ll have to do it like a pop-up show anyway, don’t you think? We’ll get more attention that way,” I added.

  “Oh, I don’t know that kind of thing; you’re the queen of promotion. All I know is that I have two more dresses to finish. I have models to find and audition. I have to do fittings. All before Fashion Week starts. It’s too much.” She sounded hopeless.

  Walking over to the closet, I lifted a few dresses to see how she was doing.

  “These are amazing,” I said. “You’ve outdone yourself, Jess.” Each and every dress bore her trademark—the lines of her journal sewn into the hems of her designs.

  “You’ve created an entire vision. Oh my god, this one…” I picked up a soft orange chiffon dress with the tight blush silk skirt. Like the first patterned black one with the snowflakes, this was a dual dress—fairy-tale chiffon on the outside and sexy satin underneath. The asymmetric hem was gone, and the new color concept was eye-popping.

  “This is your signature dress,” I said, almost breathlessly. “I’ve never seen anything like this. You could do this in a thousand different colors and it would work. Isak will love it. Everyone will.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said, plopping down on the bed, sounding like she was in too much pain to think about it.

  Kicking off my shoes, I stripped down to my underwear. I had to see if it felt the way it looked. I slipped on the tight satin underskirt. It felt sculpted, almost the way Audrey’s Givenchy felt that first time. Pulling up the overskirt and blouse, I felt the intimacy of its illusion—body-shaping underneath but a freedom of movement—an absolute perfect construction.