by Jill Kargman
“Ha. Can I talk to Miles?”
I wished him good night and he promised to go straight to bed after Spider-Man. I felt so happy that the two people I loved most were together; I just prayed Elliot could stay part of our little family.
I walked to the corner of Whitehall and Pearl, where I was instructed to knock on the trailer door marked “MAKEUP,” which I found instantly. Inside were two gorgeous gay guys, who had me step into their ministudio.
“We’re gonna make you a beautiful wound, my dear,” said one laughing, who had spikey platinum hair and about ten leather bracelets. “Sit down.” He pounded the back of a chair, which I plopped into as instructed and sat quietly as he began to clean my face. Only to add blood to it. I would have thought someone could just spray me with that fake vampire red stuff or even ketchup, but it was a painstaking process that took more than an hour.
“You’re all set, Holly!” He turned me around to the mirror and I started laughing—but it was nervous laughter.
“You’re . . . oh my gosh, you’re an artist. This is amazing!” I beheld the scarily realistic gash on my forehead, red liquid oozing down my face.
“We’ll refresh that blood before the shoot.”
I hung out marveling at my battered visage for a few more minutes until a team of people came in, all with fake blood, for retouches before their close-ups. A sweet-faced production assistant led me to Wardrobe, where I was given a pre-splattered beige coat to throw over my outfit.
I was walked down to the set, which was blindingly bright despite the nighttime shoot, with high-wattage lights everywhere; it was surreal and exciting and everything I’d hoped it would be. I was introduced to the director, who placed me with a bunch of extras, who, like me, would be staggering in pain toward ambulances after our ferry crashed.
“Okay, people, let’s do this!” he shouted through a speaker.
I would be panicked, shouting and sobbing, then wrapped up by the blanket of an EMT worker. Got it. We rehearsed only once and then were instructed to take our places.
“And . . . action!”
“Where is my husband!” I wailed in distress, turning my head in all directions in desperation. “I can’t find my husband!”
The medic threw a blanket around me and helped me into the ambulance.
“And . . . cut!” yelled the director. “Great. Let’s try it again.”
“Was that okay?”
“Sure. We just want to get a few takes. Love the panic.”
“Okay.” Yay. This was the most exciting thing ever.
“Action!”
We did it two more times with various technical pauses between each, and somehow being part of my favorite show was so exciting to me. I tapped into my emotional well and got more and more worked up for each take. I was amazed at the irony that here I was, bruised and blood splattered, a physical echo of my year from hell, all because Tim had gotten me this gift. It was incredible, really, especially considering my line. Finally, on the fifth and final one, I seriously delivered.
“Where is my husband! I can’t find my husband!”
I even produced real tears! Where’s that Emmy?
“Cut! Terrific.”
“Thank you so much, this was so much fun!”
I was “wrapped,” as they say, bid adieu to the nice people I’d spent the last few hours with, and started to walk north in hopes of finding a cab. Forgetting that I looked like I’d been bludgeoned by several blunt objects, I was at first alarmed when the rare pedestrian looked at me aghast with terror. The streets were empty since the financial district is abuzz only during the day, but almost every window in the looming buildings was lit. Worker bees inside were still toiling away for their various investment banks.
As I paused for a moment, looking skyward at the glass tops of the vertical structures that seemed to puncture the clouds, I heard something. A voice. A very familiar voice.
“So, Tracy, let me know, okay—”
“Okay, Elliot . . .”
I thought I had just been struck by lightning. Or was in cardiac arrest. Or got in a Staten Island Ferry crash. I ducked behind a humongous work of public art, a gargantuan sculpture to shield me.
No.
No! Not again. My breathing mounted and surged into a full-on hyperventilation. I stood there motionless, like a squirrel in the road knowing a Hummer would run it over in seconds. But I would not be some mowed rodent. Maybe I didn’t save 10 percent for myself. Maybe I threw in everything, every fiber of my being, prematurely professing love and physically expressing my unedited adoration in every doting squeeze and dewy-eyed glance. That’s what I do. But unlike my Brooklyn beholding of Tim and Avery’s encircled limbs, I was stronger this time. I wasn’t going to cower behind the sculpture and sneak home this time. Instead I stormed out from behind the behemoth.
“Geneva, huh?” I stood, eyes ablaze, choking back tears.
“Tracy” looked at me like I was insane and walked away, as I stood quivering. Elliot took a step closer to me.
“Holly? Oh my God, are you okay?”
“I thought you were on a business trip—”
“I was. I got back early. I was just going to call you—are you hurt?”
“What are you doing here, Elliot?” I yelled, volume rising.
For a moment, he said nothing. Great. Busted.
He took a deep breath. He looked crushed and reached out to me, but I backed away. “Holly, I tried to tell you but we kept getting interrupted and then there was never a good time. Do we need to get you to a doctor?”
“No. It’s fake blood. I was just on Law & Order. It’s a long story.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Let me ask the questions,” I said, trying to force back tears. “As you know, after everything I’ve been through, I really, really can’t abide lies. Now, what is going on?”
Elliot exhaled and looked at his feet. “Holly, I have been in agony over this—”
I started to cry. Just drop the bomb, Elliot. Was he not really divorced? Did he have a kid with a supermodel? What?
“I’m not an art consultant,” he said, soberly. “I work for a hedge fund.”
You could have knocked me over with a BusinessWeek.
“What?”
“I wanted to tell you. I swear. I was only at the gallery that night because Lyle is my brother. Everything I know about art is from him.”
“LYLE IS YOUR BROTHER?” Now I was in surreal overdrive. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I—we have different fathers but grew up together in the same home. We have the same mom, he’s my brother. And in this crazy coincidence, when I met you in the park that time, I never thought I’d see you again but I’d noticed you and how you were with your son and it made an impression on me. I had been on my phone but was put on hold, and I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about how you would never ever date anyone in finance ever again and I thought to myself, wow, that might be the only woman in this city who thinks that,” he said, breathlessly. “Then, astonishingly, you guys turned up at my brother’s gallery, and once I started talking to you, I liked you. A lot. I remembered you’d said that and so without even thinking I just blurted out that I was in the art world.”
“I can’t even believe this. You’re not an art consultant? You’re a goddamn hedgie?”
“Listen, Holly, I really don’t want to lose you. I—”
“Forget it. How could I ever trust you again?” I spied a taxi driving by. “You’re way too good a liar. You deserve an Emmy for that performance, Elliot. You should be on Law & Order!”
And with that, I hailed the cab and screeched uptown.
44
“Marriage is not a word, it’s a sentence.”
Of course my strong front dissolved like aspirin the moment we turned the corner. I began to sob so convulsively, I seriously thought the driver was going to take me straight to the ER.
“Miss, you hurt? You want to
go hospital?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s just makeup,” I said, bawling.
“But, miss, why you cry? You hurt?”
“I’m fine, really, thank you—”
I looked out the window on the FDR Drive, watching the boats along the East River against the night sky, then the creepy former insane asylum on its own island, abandoned and crumbling. The pain of yet another heartbreak, raw and crushing, pushed its way up my chest into my throat, where what felt like a Wilson tennis ball was lodged in my esophageal passage. I had truly thought Elliot was everything I’d ever wanted:ELLIOT MATH
When I got home, my red face and full head wound struck a sound of alarm in my doorman, whom I quietly assured I was fine. I landed on my floor and opened the door. I just hoped and prayed that Kiki, the only person I felt I could turn to, was not in on this.
“I had no idea. NONE,” swore Kiki. She was shaking her head in shock. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”
“It’s the makeup from the show,” I said, wiping a tear and sitting down.
“Lyle just called and said Elliot is despondent and said he never told me because Elliot made him cover for him and then it just dragged out. I’m so pissed. I ripped him a new one, if you want to know the truth. I’m ripshit.”
“I don’t know what the truth is anymore,” I sputtered in a sad daze.
“Listen, Holly,” Kiki said, kneeling down next to me. “It was a shitty thing to do. Elliot lied, they both lied. But . . . the feelings that were there are true.”
“I have to go to bed. This is, was between me and Elliot, so I don’t want you and Lyle mired in this—”
“Hey, I’ve got news for you: I am mired in it. You are like my sister, and if you want me to never see him again—”
“No, that’s ridiculous, we’re adults here. I don’t need high school-style solidarity.”
Kiki followed me to my room, where I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed. She sat beside me on the comforter. “Holly. It was an assholic thing for him to do. Lying is always bad. But in his defense, you wouldn’t have even given him a chance if he’d told the truth, right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just tired. Of dating. Of men. Everything. I have to go to sleep.”
Kiki leaned down and gave me a hug. “Call me in the morning.”
After dropping Miles off at school, I took the train, zombie-like, downtown to work. I was amused that all the craziness of the awful previous night had played out with wounds all over my face. How perfect: an outward manifestation of what was now bleeding on the inside.
At work, Randy and Tristin immediately asked me if I was okay due to my sullen demeanor, but I shrugged everything off and just said I was tired and hit my desk, where I jammed in a trance for hours straight without a break. The one silver lining was that I was in a deep groove with the writing, and every e-mail I got back from Noah and Randy was a cyber thumbs-up.
I felt distant not only from the world I’d been in as Tim’s wife, but also from the new self I’d forged in my time alone. The only thing I could do was throw myself into quality time with Miles and kicking absolute ass at work, which I did, arriving early, right after Miles’s school started, and staying late when he had soccer after school. When I saw Elliot’s number on the called ID, I blew it off. When I got a voice mail from him, I deleted it before I could even hear what he had to say. I couldn’t let myself be open to heartbreak again. I was almost a robot; that’s how much my grief and surprise about his revelation rocked me. I couldn’t imagine that someone I had bonded with that deeply had a whole other life than the one presented to me.
I stayed home and made dinner for Miles every night, or took him ice-skating or to a museum. I did everything that I had been meaning to do, and got into a good solid routine with work, Miles, and his school. One night I came home and found a delivery at my doorstep. It was a Kermit the Frog felt muppet with a little sign that simply said, “I miss you.” I took the sign off, threw it in the trash, gave the toy to Miles, and flushed thoughts of Elliot out of my mind as hard as I could.
I tried to focus on myself. I did things I loved. I finally made a dent in the leaning-tower-of-Pisa-style stack of books to be read on my bedside table. The more I disappeared into the stories of other people in other eras, the more I melted in dreams of faraway lives not my own. I watched countless movies, took long walks to and from Miles’s school, and worked up a storm. I was fully immersed in the writing and the music. Sometimes, when I heard an amazing song, it would trigger thoughts of Elliot. But even though I was subdued as the weeks passed, I felt that eventually things would all be okay. I wasn’t ready to get back out there just yet, but when the time came, I knew I’d be all right. My defenses would be up this time.
About two months after the fateful night in the financial district, Kiki came over to cook dinner with Miles and me. I had seen her for lunch two weeks before, and she had attempted to make a plea on Elliot’s behalf, but I shut her down so quickly, she knew not to mention his name. So when she walked in and said she had to tell me something, I swiftly replied, “It better not have to do with Elliot.”
“It doesn’t. It has to do with his brother,” she said, smiling as she took my hand. “Lyle proposed to me last night,” she said, clearly trying to hold back her excitement. “We’re getting married.”
“Oh my gosh!” I screamed, getting up to hug her, despite my utter and complete shock. “Are you sure?! You’ve only known each other five months. . . .”
“I know. If I were you, I’d tell me not to. It’s crazy, but Holly, I’ve never been so sure of anything. This guy is . . . everything to me. With you and Miles and my family, of course. I just love him so much.”
“I’ve never seen you so happy.”
We hugged again and cried.
“Can you believe it?” she asked, wiping a tear. “Me? The one who never wanted to remarry. And now I can’t imagine not being with Lyle forever. It’s so weird.”
“I’m elated for you, really.”
“Will you be my maid of honor?”
“I’d be honored.”
45
“I just got back from the best trip. I drove my husband to the airport.”
The small wedding was set for two months away. Between total work immersion and spending all my free time with Miles, I helped Kiki gear up for her intimate nuptials. While she regularly planned events for a living, her own wedding was much more of a challenge to be original. Plus, she was so busy with her clients that I decided to repay the favor of her being my social quarterback by taking over some elements of the wedding, for example, all the paper: invitations, table cards, place cards, and menus. I’d found a hundred-year-old letterpress by South Street Seaport years back during my jury duty break, and when I showed Kiki the proofs, she ran her finger over the delicate grooves of the embossed lettering and got dewy-eyed.
“Holly, this is beyond anything I could have imagined. I remember when Sherry Von insisted on her Dempsey & Carroll engraving and the invitation looked like everyone else, and this is so . . . me.”
Next she enlisted me to be the sole judge and jury on her dress.
“I’m thinking Vera is so omni,” she said as we hit the Seventy-eighth Street salon last after a tour of every other bridal atelier in town. And yet, the second we walked upstairs and Kiki saw what would be The Dress, she knew she had to have it. She disappeared into the dressing room, and I almost burst into tears when the bride emerged. She was so transcendently beautiful in her ethereal lace gown, I thought she’d float away. I knew that Lyle would melt into a Wicked Witch of the West-style puddle on the floor when he saw her.
I just hoped I could hold it together seeing Elliot, whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since confronting him. Whenever I thought of him, I got a pressing sadness in my chest, but I strongly forced it all out of my mind. Only when I was straightening up Miles’s room and caught a glimpse of that smiling green froggie did I occasionally wonder if maybe he was truly a goo
d person despite that lie.
“Holl, you okay?” she asked, looking concerned. I nodded; I didn’t want to ruin the sparkling moment with glum selfish thoughts on her big night, mixing my blue state with her shining white.
“You’re stressed about seeing Elliot, aren’t you?”
As usual, she nailed it, but we were adults and I had to suck it up and be strong. I’d gotten over a marriage, I could get through this. Or so I thought . . . why was it so hard to flush thoughts of our time together out of my mind when it had all been such a brief whirlwind? Well, I figured, a real tornado takes only a few seconds too and ravages all those homes, taking eons to rebuild.
“Okay, I know I said we wouldn’t talk about this,” Kiki said, taking my hand. “But he’s a great guy, like heart of fucking gold, he feels awful about lying to you, but he knew you wouldn’t give him the time of day after your monologues against the Wall Street Boys Club.”
I looked down, comforted at least that he felt guilt, something Tim was lacking during our demise.
“Holly, listen to me: Elliot’s amazing. You were onto something. Remember when you told me he felt so familiar to you? Well, that was the tip of the iceberg: He is you.”
“How do you know he’s me?”
“Where do I start?” Kiki laughed. “He uses red felt-tip pens just like you. He quotes Woody Allen. He bounds up a flight of stairs two at a time. At the movies, he holds up the Jujubes against the screen to see the color and then chucks the black ones.”
“Oh my God, I do that!” I marveled. “I never trusted anyone who liked licorice.”
“Give him another chance,” begged Kiki, squeezing my hand.
“And I guess I climb stairs like that?” I thought aloud.
“Holl: he is your mirror.”
I was just so gun-shy after Tim that I was too freaked out; I’d sealed myself off emotionally and wasn’t sure I could feel vulnerable again for a while.