The next afternoon, instead of eating my rightful meal which included my grandmother’s recipe for Ritz cracker stuffing, I sat on a white couch in the penthouse suite of the Mercer Hotel. My producer, Barbra Shapiro, pronounced Sha-PIE-ro, sat on one of the other couches.
Randi Apple had warned me that Barbra was in New York for a “medical procedure.”
A Tibetan woman was in the suite’s kitchen pan-roasting a whole fish, and the suite’s mahogany dining table that sat twelve, was set very grandly for one. Before joining me on the couches, Barbra had reminded the cook to steam the kale in Evian that she had gathered in tiny bottles from the minibar.
“The Tibetans are wonderful cooks,” Barbra said, swaying slightly as if we were on a boat.
"Did you bring her from L.A.?” I asked.
I was used, at these meetings, to talking about anything but the movie.
“No, I got her here.”
“From a catering company?”
“Huh?” She looked at me, helpless, swaying.
"How did you hire her?” I asked slowly and plainly, acting interested, as if I at any moment would be hiring my own Tibetan fish fry.
“No!” Barbra said. “You never do that. I found her in the park. You always just go to a park and look for anyone Asian and ask them to come to your hotel.”
I wondered if that was how she had found the new director too.
“Do you have any paper?” she asked.
I handed her the Mercer Hotel leather portfolio from the coffee table, which had stationery in it and a pen. “I was thinking that we could try to get Arthur Weeman to play the part of a law professor, as a cameo.” I knew he would never do it, but I felt like saying it anyway.
“Now,” she said, ignoring my idea. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and it took her a minute to come back to me. Whatever her medical procedure had been, it seemed to me they had given her crack for it. I had never seen her so high. Her white hotel robe fell open, and now she was naked, her breasts from a past medical procedure, taut and tanned, like separate people, producers in their own right. “Now. How does the father meet Semen?” She droned the question slowly, with long gaps of silence between each word. Her pupils were as painfully pointed as stingers in the center of big green irises.
My mind, in a seven-year turnaround of its own, had to think back to the book. “Semen?” I asked.
“Yes. Semen.”
I was fairly certain I did not have a character in my book called Semen. “Do you mean the character of Seamus?”
“Yes. How does the father meet Semen?”
“It’s Seamus,” I said. “It’s pronounced SHAY-mus.”
She nodded, struggling to keep her eyes open. “How does the father meet Semen?” she droned again.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter how the father meets SHAYMUS but since he’s one of the father’s law students, it’s safe to say they met in class, or maybe in a local bar near campus.”
She looked at me, holding the pen upside down, her robe now almost completely off her.
Then after a moment, she said simply, “How does the father meet Semen?”
“I just told you,” I said. “They meet in class. He’s a bright student who the father takes on as a substitute son.”
“How does the father meet Semen?” Barbra droned.
“I think they meet in class,” I said.
“How does the father meet Semen?”
“In class.”
“How does the father meet Semen?”
“Class.”
“How does the father meet Semen?”
I thought of Randi Apple eating her pumpkin pie with her three beautiful children, waiting to hear how my meeting went.
“How does the father meet Semen?”
The Tibetan woman came out of the kitchen with the fish on a large white china platter and placed it on the table.
“How does the father meet Semen?”
The Tibetan woman began to fillet the fish and spooned some on to the plate at the head of the table, on top of a pile of kale.
For one insane moment, I wondered if it was for me. I hadn’t been offered so much as a Diet Coke.
“I’m sorry, it’s time for my lunch now. Thank you for coming, ” Barbra said to me. “Sweetie, I think the film’s going to be soooo great.”
“Yes, I’m very excited that you’re writing it,” I said.
“It’s my baby,” she said. Then, though her eyes were open, she seemed to be asleep.
Her baby, which had once been my baby, was as good as shoved in a garbage can in a high school girl’s bathroom while the prom was going on in the gym. What kind of mother was I? I’d had other offers and yet I’d chosen her. It always turned out like this and yet I always thought the movie was on the verge of getting made, Barbra ShapIro’s legs in stirrups, her cervix, like her eyes, completely dilated, the Tibetan cook telling her to push.
I said good-bye to the cook and took the elevator down to the street. At least I’d had a meeting. Most writers would kill to have a meeting like that. And it certainly hadn’t been the worst meeting I’d ever had.
I stopped by my apartment to pick up a few things before heading to Mrs. Williams’. On my way there, Isaac called me on my cell phone. I was sitting in the back of a cab looking through the week’s mail.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” he said, somewhat presumptuously.
“Me too,” I said, smiling.
“What are you thankful for?” he asked. The fact that I didn’t have to go to my father’s office for four whole days was top on my list. I was also thankful for Arthur Weeman, Mrs. Williams, and him, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I don’t know,” I said. “My apartment. Lotsa stuff. What are you thankful for.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Martinis, condoms, and Ivy Vohl.”
“Why those things?” I asked, bristling at the mention of Ivy.
“Because if it weren’t for Ivy, I wouldn’t have met you, and if it weren’t for martinis and condoms, you probably wouldn’t have let me have sex with you.”
While he talked I opened an envelope I was holding, and pulled out a folder of information about international adoption. A calendar fell out on my lap. January was a nine-month-old Chinese girl; February, a newborn Russian baby with a full head of black hair; March was a three-month-old Korean boy named Kyle.
I suddenly felt very thankful, but I wasn’t sure for what exactly, maybe something in the future. The Thanksgiving after my book came out, I’d gone to Woodstock and my mother had dragged me to some kind of a farm and I’d burned with jealousy at the sight of a pregnant goat. I’d cried bitterly up in my room while my mother did her best to try to calm me, but I couldn’t tell her that it was the goat’s good fortune that had set me off. I was probably the only published writer in history to be jealous of a goat. Now things seemed so much more promising. New York was crisp and Thanksgiving-empty. Nothing made me feel more lucky than watching tourists walking around in coats.
I said good-bye to Isaac and asked the cab to wait for me at the Edison Café so I could pick up dinner.
The Edison Café was no more than an old run-down diner, but it was the place I always went with my mother and her mother so it was the closest I could come to a family meal. I stood by the cash register under a crepe-paper turkey, and a waiter handed me an enormous plastic menu. A wedding ring sausaged his finger. He looked like the crumbling streets of Jerusalem in an apron.
“Turkey platter?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll take two turkey platters,” I said.
All around me tourists and old people ate turkey off oval plates. I couldn’t get away from old people.
I usually would have ordered the matzo-ball soup and my mother would have the matzo brei with extra applesauce, and my grandmother would have had cheese blintzes, extra sour cream.
I stopped the waiter before it was too late and changed my order to two matzo-bal
l soups, two matzo breis, two cheese blintzes, two slices of pumpkin pie, and two Diet Cokes. It made me miss my mother, so I called her to say I was sorry I hadn’t come see her.
“It’s better I didn’t come anyway. I’m sick,” I said. “I have a cold.”
“Maybe it’s allergies.”
No matter what I said I had, my mother always accused it of being something else. If I’d said I had allergies, she’d have insisted it was a cold.
“Why didn’t you have Thanksgiving with your father?” she asked.
“He said he had other plans,” I said. I looked up at the magnificently ornate pink and white ceiling. I didn’t want to tell her I was working for him because I knew it would upset her. “You know, the last time I talked to him he said Irmabelle quit.”
My mother was silent for a moment. “Well, that certainly doesn’t surprise me,” she said, sounding surprised. “So Irmabelle finally left him.”
The way she said it, it sounded like she knew they had been a couple.
“I’m not sure he’s doing so well,” I said. “He’s acting strange. Sort of forgetful and confused.” Maybe a part of me thought she might, in the true spirit of Thanksgiving, go to him if she knew he was in trouble, make like a wild Indian to his uptight Pilgrim.
“Oh, who cares about him,” she said.
When I got to Mrs. Williams’, I hung the adoption calendar on her refrigerator and opened it to November, a two-year-old girl from Kazakhstan. Mrs. Williams and I sat at the table eating our Thanksgiving feast. I looked across the way for Arthur Weeman, and then down at the deserted playground. Thalia would have just finished dinner, I thought. She would have stuffed herself with apple pie and gone to her room to write Arthur a letter. When Mrs. Williams went to lie down, I took a sheet of Mercer stationery out of my bag and began.
Turkey Day
Dear Awful Writer,
Happy Thanksgiving! I am so full. My grandmother made a delicious sumptuous feast and then my parents dropped a bombshell and announced that they are adopting a baby from China. Maybe they’re trying to save there failing marriage. I have to clean my room because a woman from the adoption agency is coming to look at it and ask me if I would like to have another sister. I took the news very well but my older sister Lucy, whose sixteen, ran out of the dining room crying. Did I tell you I have a sister?
I hope you’re not too sick to enjoy your turkey. Hmmm . . . how do I know you’re sick? you might be asking yourself. Because I have your cold! Isn’t that romantic? I happened to be at the Carnegie last week when you were there and you left your handkerchief on your chair and I picked it up and my father got mad at me because you were sneezing and then the next day I was sneezing! I wanted to go up to you and say, “Hi, I’m the girl who keeps writing you dumb letters,” but I decided to remain a mystery. Uh oh, I hope you don’t feel like I’m stalking you or something now.
Anyway you have to take me seriously because I might very well be your muse. My name Thalia means Muse of Comedy but I know my letters haven’t been funny at all. I was named Thalia because I was almost born at the Thalia Movie Theater. My parents were seeing War and Peace and my mother went into laber and she barely made it to the hospital. It’s lucky she wasn’t at the Lowes or the Ziegfeld or they probably would have named me that.
Get well soon! Drink plenty of honey tea and gingerale and eat a lot of chicken soup. Thanks to you I got to miss school and spend two sensuous days in bed!
Your secret germ sharer,
Thalia
P.S. I have enclosed your handkerchief to prove to you that I am real.
P.P.S I have come up with the solution to my problems. Solution: You kidnap me. I will stay out of your way when you are writing your awful movies and I promise you won’t get caught. I won’t even have to leave your house, I just need food, Diet Coke, and a TV. I also need movies but you probably have a screening room in your townhouse. Please, A.W., I am begging you, come and get me preferably before my math test on Tuesday. I WILL DO WHATEVER YOU SAY.
My P.S. was reckless. It was a hard decision to part with the handkerchief. It was my gift from Isaac and I loved it, but for Arthur Weeman, it seemed like a small offering. I’d lovingly taken it to the Koreans to have it washed and pressed, but I put it to my nose one last time. Then I sealed the envelope with the handkerchief inside.
As soon as I did that I became instantly jealous of my new older sister and bitterly regretted her. I imagined her life at sixteen was a lot more interesting than mine at twelve. I agonized over her for a minute, but there was nothing I could do. It was as if she now existed. Arthur Weeman, I knew, was fascinated by sisters. He’d had sisters, usually three sisters, in several of his films. I knew he’d be intrigued by Lucy. I just hoped he wouldn’t like her better than me.
When Isaac got home from Florida, we made a plan to go to dinner in Chinatown. I got off the phone and told Mrs. Williams. “What should I wear?” I asked her.
She opened the coat closet in the foyer and pulled out dress after dress from the forties. Black lace with rhinestone buttons on the sleeves, silk prints, red crepe and velvets. Everything was my size, just an inch or two too long. I put on a black-and-white velvet double-breasted dress with mother-of-pearl square buttons.
Then my phone rang. “I have to cancel,” Isaac said. “I’m so sorry.”
“How come?” I asked. "Ivy called and said she wants me to go to L.A. with her, to a premiere at Mann’s and a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She’s thinking of expanding the column to include L.A., so I’m going to have to stay a few days.”
“So no Chinatown for me, but Mann’s Chinese Theater for you,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Rebekah. I’ll make it up to you as soon as I get back.”
“By the way,” I asked, “did Ivy say she wanted you to go to L.A. with her before or after you told her we had a date tonight?”
“Uh, after. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, just like Ivy would have said it.
“So I hope this isn’t going to ruin your night. What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Oh, no, it won’t ruin my night.” Mrs. Williams had put on a flesh-colored organza gown and wanted me to zip her up in the back. “I’m with my friend Mrs. . . .” I stopped myself because it sounded sort of pathetic to have a friend called Mrs. Williams. “Mississa. We’ll probably go out and do something.”
I couldn’t budge the zipper but she kept it on anyway and sat on the sectional in it, with a matching clutch.
“Mississa?” he said. “You’re not really going to go out with your English boyfriend, Hugh, are you?”
“What?” I said. I hadn’t mentioned Hugh Nickelby to him.
“Ivy told me you had a boyfriend in Eng-land.” He said “England” in an annoyed-sounding English accent.
“I don’t have a boyfriend in England, Isaac. I just told Ivy that to get her off my back.” I wondered why Ivy had bothered setting me up with someone just to do everything possible to break us up.
“But you really do have a friend named Mississa?”
“Why did Ivy tell you that, anyway?” I asked, outraged.
“I think she’s just looking out for my best interest,” he actually said. “Look, Rebekah, I really like you, but if you’re seeing someone you should tell me.”
“I’m not seeing anyone,” I said, miserably.
The conversation unraveled from there, and I got off the phone Chinese-foodless and unsure of whether I would see him again. Isaac had said that he had to do his work. He’d said it a few times. His work. His work. I had to do my work too, I thought. All that seemed to be left of my old self was one paperback copy of my book on the book bum’s table on Lafayette. It was still there, as he continually pointed out every time I walked by, braving the late-November weather like a trouper. I wanted to write, but all I could do was write to Arthur Weeman.
November 30
Dear Awful Writer,
Do you want to know what I w
ish? I wish I could buy you the green cashmere sweater I saw in the window of Barneys and give it to you for Christmas. You would look so good in it, and you never wear any color other than grey and brown. Are you a medium or a large? I would like to go there after school tomorrow and the man behind the counter wouldn’t pay any attention to me because he would think I was just a child, but then I would say, “I’ll take that sweater in green and gift wrap it please,” and he would say “Who is the lucky man?” and I would say “It’s for my boyfriend” and I’d march out of there with it.
Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to afford it on $25 a week allowance, but it’s the thought that counts! And I am certainly a very nice muse to give you writing advice and fashion advice, don’t you think?
Yours very generously,
Thalia
Writing the letter turned me inside out, Peter Panned me right out the window and into the night sky. It didn’t just make me feel young, I realized, it made me feel like a writer again.
12.
At 33, she is seen frequenting such literary hot spots as Michael’s and Elaine’s
A week later I was at my father’s office, taping one lone Christmas card—Season’s Greetings from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals— to the mantle, when Isaac finally called and announced that he wanted a do-over. “Alone this time. Without Ivy,” he said.
Relief burst over me like a parachute. The words “without Ivy” sounded unbelievably good to me. “Okay,” I said.
“Great. Where are you?”
“I’m on East Eighty-sixth Street,” I said.
“That’s perfect! We’ll go to Elaine’s. Maybe you’ll get your first Arthur Weeman sighting there. My source told me he was having an early dinner there. I want to be the one with you when you finally get to see him in person.”
It was so thoughtful of Isaac to want to take me to a place where I might have an Arthur Weeman sighting that I didn’t tell him I had seen him in his own kitchen.
“So when can you meet me there?” he asked.
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