by Rae Lawrence
It was a photograph from the Judy Garland medley that closed the first section of Neely’s show. The number opened with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which showed off what great shape Neely’s voice was in. It segued through a few bouncy show tunes, then through a few torch songs, and ended with the chorus line joining Neely for the last two songs. They reenacted the makeover scene from The Wizard of Oz, turning Neely from a cabaret singer wearing a simple black pantsuit into a Las Vegas showgirl in four-inch heels, black fishnet stockings, a gold lamé bathing suit, a vast glittering cape, and a towering headdress piled with plastic fruit and peacock feathers.
It was the campiest number in the show, and every night the crowd went crazy. It was like a big wink at the audience—Okay, I’m in Vegas, you’re in Vegas, but don’t I look great and don’t I sound great and aren’t we having fun?—and some nights Neely even got a standing ovation right in the middle of the set.
She hated wearing the chorus-girl outfit; it was uncomfortable, and the boning in the bathing suit left big red marks across her stomach, and the headdress was so heavy that she felt as though her neck would break. But she couldn’t argue with the applause. And she had to wear the headdress only for maybe ten seconds tops, right at the very end.
Who knew that would be the ten seconds that ended up in People?
“I mean, look at this, Gordo. You know the costume is a joke and I know the costume is a joke and everyone in the audience knows the costume is a joke, but the way they printed it here, it looks like Neely O’Hara has turned into a showgirl!”
“Neely, any publicity is good publicity.”
“The show doesn’t need any publicity, it’s sold out, remember? I want them to print a retraction.”
“There’s no such thing as a retraction for photographs.”
“Well, I want them to make it up to me. Why can’t they just run a nice interview with me, like the ones they do with everyone else? You know, I could hang out in my kitchen and flip waffles or something.”
“Pancakes. You flip pancakes, not waffles.”
“People hasn’t done me since I got out of rehab, what was that, more than five years ago.”
“The publicist calls them once a month, Neely. There has to be some kind of story. They’re happy to run a story about you, but first there has to be a story.”
“Like what? Like the rest of the losers they’re always writing about? Like I have to be drinking, or drugging, or getting arrested for shoplifting tampons, or what? I have to be banging some guy twenty years younger than me, or saving the whales, or be diagnosed with some horrible disease so everyone can feel sorry for me?”
When the show was over, Neely went home to Los Angeles and wrote two dozen checks, each for one thousand dollars, to twenty-four different political campaigns. Within two weeks the invitations started pouring in: to fund-raising lunches in Beverly Hills, to dinners in New York and Washington, to parties in Chicago and Miami.
She spent three days on Rodeo Drive getting made over. She bought four beige Armani suits with matching shoes. She got a new, sleek haircut and learned to use a lighter hand with her eye makeup. She kept the red lipstick and most of the jewelry, but the overall transformation was startling. She looked like the kind of woman who was married to a studio head, though when she opened her mouth, she was still pure Neely O’Hara.
She had a part to play. She wanted Madison Square Garden, not Las Vegas hotel theaters. She wanted her own hit songs, not covers of someone else’s standards. She wanted a man who could take her to all the respectable A-list parties, not some gay set designer who cared only about the hottest new restaurant. She wanted the kind of guy who had real power. Who would make people sit up and notice: Look who’s in love with Neely O’Hara now. Who had been to the best schools and knew all the best people. Who picked up the check.
The rules had changed. Broadway was over, movie musicals were over, one-night stands were over, even cocaine was almost over. Show business was full of lawyers and bankers and people with fancy business-school degrees. It was a different game now, but it was still a game.
And Neely would learn how to play it. She was going to get back on top again! She would show those fucking idiots at People just how classy she could be. They’d be begging to take her picture, to come to her house and take pictures of her bedroom, her garden, her newly redecorated formal living room with the French furniture and the Christmas tree in the corner. She would get what she wanted, because she always did. But first she had to find the right man.
Anne could feel herself beginning to shine. It was only seven blocks from her apartment on Fifth Avenue in the Seventies to the doctor’s office on Park in the Eighties, but the day was unseasonably hot. It was the middle of May, just before eleven in the morning, and already the temperature hovered at eighty degrees.
Anne resisted the impulse to get out her compact and apply a thin layer of sheer powder. No makeup, the nurse had told her. No moisturizer, no powder, no eye cream, no sunscreen, and please go light on the salt and go light on the alcohol for at least forty-eight hours before the appointment. It had all been pretty easy, except for the alcohol. Last night Lyon had asked her to come along for a business dinner with a client who was in from Los Angeles.
“Booze-ness dinners” is what Lyon called them. He always ordered a few bottles of wine, and by the end of the dinner everyone was happy, and telling their best stories, and feeling like best friends, and pretty much agreeing to whatever plan Lyon had unveiled sometime between when the main course was cleared and the coffee arrived. Anne could never manage to get through these dinners without at least one glass of Scotch and two or three glasses of wine. Invariably, she was the lightweight at the table.
The doctor’s office had a Park Avenue address, but its entrance was on a leafy side street, around the corner from the wide dark blue awning where residents came and went. There was a small brass nameplate and buzzer that turned like a large metal key.
Inside, the walls were covered with excellent copies of obscure paintings by famous Impressionists. Anne sat on a leather sofa and filled out the usual forms.
“My grandmother used to own that one,” said the woman sitting next to her. Her ash-blond hair was pulled back into a chignon, and on her ears were enormous square sapphires.
Anne looked up. “The original? I love Monet.”
“That is the original. Nonny had to sell it after the crash in ’twenty-nine.”
Anne gasped. “That’s a real Monet?”
“Everything here is real. With his kind of fees, the doctor can certainly afford it, don’t you think? Everything here is real except them,” the woman said, pointing to the two nurses standing at the reception desks.
The nurses were dressed in identical tight white shirtdresses, belted to reveal their tiny waists and narrow hips and opened an extra button or two to show a few inches of spectacular cleavage. Both had perfectly proportioned jawlines and elegant noses and flawless skin and the kind of wide cheekbones that made photographers swoon. Their legs, bare of stockings, were smooth and tanned and unmarked by age or experience.
The woman gave Anne a stage wink. “They get all the work they want, at no charge. Free advertising for the doctor, if you know what I mean. By the way, he did a gorgeous job on you. You don’t look a day over thirty-six.”
Anne folded her hands over her medical questionnaire, hiding her name, address, and age, which was thirty-four years and seven months. “Well, actually …”
The nurse called the woman’s name and she stood up, tucking her hair behind her ears. “He’s a genius, isn’t he? Not a scar on you.”
Anne sat alone, staring at the painting that was so perfect and so beautiful, she had just assumed it was a fake. All the scars are on the inside, she thought.
The nurse handed her a green cotton robe and insisted Anne strip down to her underpants, even though she was here only for a consultation about a little bit of face work.
“You never know,�
�� said the nurse, lifting her eyebrows.
I used to look ten times better than you do, and the only plastic surgeon I had was named Mother Nature, thought Anne.
The doctor looked like a casting agent’s idea of a kindhearted country doctor, except for his watch, which was French and worth at least three thousand dollars.
“So,” he said, pushing gently at the skin on her neck. “How does your husband feel about all of this?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Is he encouraging you to have a little work done?”
“We haven’t ever talked about it. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, sometimes the husband puts pressure on the wife, makes comments about how her body is changing, that sort of thing, and even though the woman isn’t crazy about surgery she might come to see me just to make him happy.”
“My husband isn’t like that. And I’m only thirty-four! Really, it’s just these little lines coming in around my eyes and on my forehead that I wanted you to take a look at. I’ve been reading about all these new procedures, and, well, I don’t know. I probably just should have gone to my dermatologist. My husband would probably laugh if I’d told him I was coming here. He thinks I’m perfect.”
“Those are the ones who put the most pressure on their wives. Men think they’re marrying a perfect physical specimen, they’re really into this idea of their wives being the most beautiful woman in the room, and then when things start changing, as they inevitably do, sometimes the men can’t make the transition.”
“My husband isn’t like that,” Anne said. “This is for me.”
“You used to model, didn’t you?” the doctor asked.
“You have a good memory,” Anne said. “That was a long time ago. I was the Gillian Girl. I did all their makeup and perfume ads for years. In the seventies? You might have seen me on television, in a little white bikini, dancing around to really bad disco music.”
“No, that isn’t it. People used to bring in your print ads. To show me what they wanted to look like. ‘I want Anne Welles’s nose’ is what every third woman used to ask. Elegant, not too small, absolutely straight.” He moved her chin to the side and inspected her profile. “I finally get to see the original.”
“You said ‘used to.’ What nose do they ask for now?”
“Oh, same nose, pretty much, just some other model’s name. Someone who’s in all the magazines this year.”
Someone a lot younger, Anne thought. Someone who still has everything ahead of her. Someone who still jumps out of bed in the morning looking forward to her day. Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to bury a best friend. Someone who hasn’t met her Lyon yet.
Anne decided against the injections recommended by the doctor and spent the summer covered in sunscreen, under a broad-brimmed hat, drinking gallons of water and eating huge salads and drinking only wine, only at night. It wasn’t so hard to do. Jenn was away at camp, and Lyon was up in Maine, where two of his most important clients were starring opposite each other in a movie about an archaeologist who falls in love with a prostitute.
Here in Southampton everyone looked like Anne’s mother, or one of Anne’s aunts, or someone Anne’s aunts would have approved of. The house was small, but the property was lovely and close to the ocean. Anne had bought it two years ago, right after Jenn’s seventh birthday. Lyon had argued for East Hampton, but Anne said there were too many movie people buying houses in East Hampton, which was another way of saying East Hampton was a place she was likely to run into someone who had slept with Lyon, or wanted to sleep with Lyon, or was friends with someone who knew the woman Lyon was thinking of sleeping with next. On bad days, Anne felt as if all the women in the world fell into one of these three categories.
Today was a bad day. Lyon hadn’t telephoned in nearly a week. She knew better than to try telephoning him in Maine. Ages ago, they had made an agreement never to call each other on a shoot. Anne hadn’t worked in years, but she still held up her end of the bargain. If she called his hotel, the receptionist would tell her that everyone was on the set. If she called the set, they would tell her that Lyon was in a meeting.
It was a typical Southampton day. Jogging at seven, breakfast at eight, correspondence at nine. Lists at ten (a local girl came in for light cleaning and the grocery run), dance class at eleven, then lunch with friends, friends being the wives of men Lyon did business with, at a restaurant that served nothing but hamburgers and half a dozen salads chopped into pieces so fine that you could barely tell what was in them.
And then the afternoon, the long horrible August afternoon, the house too quiet, the telephone ringing every twenty minutes with an invitation to someplace she didn’t want to go, the sun beating through the wide picture windows (the sun was her enemy now; what she would give to undo those two California summers of tanning and gin), the beautiful beach spread out before her, and absolutely nothing to do.
The hour between three and four was the hardest. It was too early to start getting ready for dinner. It was too late to start anything new. In the city this was the best hour of the day; it was when Jenn came home from school, friends in tow, giggling, telling dumb jokes, spilling cookie crumbs across the carpets. Anne curled up on the couch and tried to read a book, but she kept falling asleep after just a page or two.
She smelled him before she saw him. Lime cologne, sandalwood soap, unfiltered cigarettes.
“Lyon,” she said. She opened her eyes. He was holding a small red box tied with a silky white ribbon.
“Darling.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost five. Happy to see me?”
“Oh darling, of course I’m happy to see you. I just—”
He sat on the edge of the couch and stroked her hair. “Kiss,” he said, leaning over. He tasted of cinnamon mouthwash. “Ah. I see. You’re angry with me.”
“I’m not angry. Just give me a minute. I just need to adjust. I wasn’t expecting—well, you haven’t called in over a week.”
“It’s hell on the set. A total disaster. You know what it’s like. We’re all wrecks. I’m a wreck.”
“Oh dear.”
“Here. I brought you this.”
It was a pair of enormous coral earrings, shaped like shells and swirled with gold.
“My God, Lyon, they’re gorgeous. I love them. What they must have cost.”
“You should read the business pages, darling,” he said. “We’re having a spectacular summer.”
“We are?”
“An unbelievably fantastically fabulous summer.”
“Lucky us,” said Anne. She had stopped following the stock market. They had long ago divided their labor. Lyon took care of the business and their stock portfolio and the taxes and all the insurance. Anne took care of Jenn’s trust fund, the co-op, and the house in Southampton.
“We are rich,” Lyon said.
Anne smiled. “We were rich before. We were rich in June.”
“Well, now we’re richer. Let’s go someplace wonderful for dinner.”
“Or let’s stay in. I’ll grill us some steaks.”
“I haven’t been to a decent restaurant all summer. Let’s go out. I’ve made a killing in the market, and I want to take my beautiful wife out to dinner.”
Anne changed into a white cotton piqué sundress and white high-heeled sandals. She twisted her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck and snapped the lever-back earrings into place. On each wrist, a wide gold bangle bracelet, and around her shoulders, a pale yellow sweater that set off her hair.
Lyon chose a restaurant in East Hampton that was crowded and noisy and filled with people they knew. They didn’t have a reservation and they hadn’t called ahead, but of course there was a table, in a good corner, with an excellent view of the room. The food was fair. The service was slow. The wine list was impeccable.
Every few minutes someone stopped by the table to say hello to Lyon, to exchange gossip, to ask how the movie was going, to introduce a
new girlfriend, to show off a new wife.
“We haven’t had ten uninterrupted minutes since we got here,” Anne said when the coffee arrived.
“I forgot what a scene this place can be.”
“It’s always a scene.”
“We’ll catch up when we get home,” said Lyon.
“Let’s have a nice quiet weekend, just the two of us.”
“How I wish. I fly back the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh Lyon, not really.”
“No choice. I shouldn’t even have come down at all.” He took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.
“Maybe I’ll fly back with you.”
“Darling, how I wish you could.” He told her how miserable it was in Maine, how everyone was fighting, how the two stars weren’t speaking to each other, how someone threatened to walk off the set at least once a day.
“She’s a spoiled brat,” said Anne.
“A spoiled brat getting paid two million dollars to grin and bear it.”
“Why can’t you ever manage any normal people?”
“They’re all normal when I find them. Sweet and normal and cooperative and grateful for everything I do. Then I ruin them.”
“You ruin them, or success ruins them?”
“Can’t have one without the other. Listen. I go to London for a week in September. Come with me then. I’ll get us a room at the Savoy.”
After dinner they went to a birthday party for the wife of a producer Lyon occasionally worked with. There was a bar in the dining room, a bar by the swimming pool, and a third bar in the formal garden that led down to the beach.
The producer greeted them both with hugs. “Lyon, my man, I knew you’d make it. Anne. You look like a dream. As always.”
Lyon led her out to the pool. Couples were dancing to old Burt Bacharach songs on a wooden deck that had been built on the lawn. People wandered over to say hello. It was a gift Lyon had always had, making the party come to him.
A woman Anne knew from the tennis club came over with a gin and tonic in each hand.
“Have you seen Arthur?” she asked. “I’ve lost Arthur.”