“She’s just a friend,” he says, dismissing the question. The dreaded f word. I take his answer as a conversation stopper, and sit on the roadside, hugging my knees, wondering what kind of car the savior from Ipanema will be driving. The answer flies around a curve coming to a hair-raising screech that creates a cloud of dust. She is behind the wheel of a fire-engine-red Mercedes with white leather upholstery.
“Get in,” she yells, “I can’t get out, I’m not dressed.”
Where was Tamara when I needed her? Taylor offers me the front seat, but I shake my head and climb into the back.
“Only for you,” Nicole says, flinging her orange Hermès Kelly bag from the front seat over into the back, barely missing my thigh as it barrels to the floor.
“I was about to go to sleep,” she says, reaching over to pull Taylor toward her by the back of his neck. She brushes his lips.
“Mmmm,” she says, licking her lips.
A moment later, she flicks on the ignition.
“Thanks for saving us,” Taylor says, patting her shoulder. “My car disappeared.” He turns back and introduces me.
Nicole nods perfunctorily without fully turning her head.
“Your place?”
“Thanks,” he says, nodding hastily.
I cross my legs and stare out the window. Did this man know any normal woman, except for me? His life was a fucking Victoria’s Secret runway show. I’m furious at myself for being mad. Why was it that these bimbos always brought out the worst in me? Ten years of therapy vitiated, without a trace. I was back in junior high school, watching the cheerleaders as I hid myself in the last row of the gym.
On the hill, Taylor jumps out and punches in the code. I glance at Nicole through the space between the seats. Is it my imagination or has the terry bathrobe inched down her shoulder? I catch a glimpse of a small heart-shaped tattoo, and then follow the drape of the robe and notice that it’s not doing a great job of covering her thighs. God, I hate this. I turn back to the landscape. Taylor is rambling on about who was cast in his new movie, and something about that is funny to Nicole, who offers a rich throaty laugh. I keep my finger pressed on the button to lower the window as far as it’ll go.
In front of the house, I climb out first. Taylor lingers a moment, turning to Nicole. “I really appreciate this. I owe you,” he says.
God, just slip her a twenty.
“I’ll remember that,” Nicole says, fucking him with her eyes.
I head toward the house. I better get used to it.
Should I call the office? It was overdue. I lift the receiver and hold it against my chest, staring off. Slowly, as though I’m coddling a Fabergé egg, I put it back in the cradle. What was there to say?
I heard Taylor leave for the studio after what seemed to be fifteen minutes, not a night’s sleep, and when I get up hours later, I walk around the house trying to acclimate myself again to where I’m now…staying? Living? I peer into room after room, trying to imagine that it’s mine. But that entails envisioning the accompanying lifestyle, and my imagination doesn’t stretch that far. I dream about a second bedroom or maybe a third. New countertops. A suede couch. No sane person imagines relocating to San Simeon.
I walk into the kitchen and yank open the heavy door. I stand bathed in the heavy blast of frigid air, and pick through the fruit bin until I find a firm apple. Should I take it upon myself to clean out all the now-aged gourmet treats, or was that something to jot down on the maid’s to-do list? I slam the door and walk upstairs to the desk where I left the laptop. I start making calls, but when the secretaries of sources ask for my number, I’m evasive.
There was the gym, and no excuse to not work out, so I spend New York’s lunch hour exercising. When it’s L.A. time for lunch, I start a column and make a note to check a few facts before sending it in. Now what? No office buddies to chat with. No Bloomingdale’s a cab ride away to buy mood-lifting cosmetics. So I do what everyone in L.A. does. Taylor’s castoff Lexus is parked in the Siberia section of his garage, and the keys, conveniently, are in the ignition.
The traffic on the Los Angeles Freeway is gridlocked due to a collision that seems to be a quarter of a mile ahead. Three or four cars have crashed into each other and there are flashing lights and the sirens of approaching police. If only I had the company of a book on tape. I check the glove compartment, but it’s empty, except for a half-empty bottle of Poland Springs and a pair of sunglasses.
I think back to my conversation with Tex, just after Taylor first called. The freeway, the freeway, what an oxymoron. Was this what I had to face every time I had to go somewhere? After ten minutes of immobility, with cars lined up all around, I’m growing more and more aware that I have to find a bathroom, and that any minute now the achy sensation I’m feeling below my waist could mean my period. Suddenly it feels as though a vise is tightening around my neck.
I have to get out of this, but how? I can’t just change my mind and make a U-turn. Absentmindedly, I turn on the radio. The sports reporter is giving the scores of college football games nationwide. One after another. Were they covering every damn game? Who cared if Delaware’s Blue Hens lost? I change the station—hating the damn digital dial—looking for music, calming music, but there is only rock, then country twanging about a lost love and the heartache. I switch it off and try to pay attention to the road. Nothing to get excited about, this is only temporary, the cars would be moving soon, but my heart isn’t buying it. What if it took hours? Could you airlift cars to get them out of the way?
All of a sudden I’m feeling these electronic pings in the middle of my chest that are like misguided bleeps on a heart monitor. I’ve never had this before. Is it PMS? Cardiac arrest? I see myself lying in an intensive care unit with only a black screen at my side; on it, a white electronic line is making scribbles that defy a predictable pattern. Wild needle lines. Next to that machine would be another that looks like the bowl of a Cuisinart with an air pump inside it, and a black screen with a pulsating needle that scribbled the kind of cardiac graffiti that would summon the entire staff if they needed to jump-start my ailing heart.
Take it easy, take it easy. This is probably what everybody out here goes through. It’s the workday version of their tension headache. So why is a film of sweat soaking my blouse? Even my armpits are stinging, as though the deodorant is acid, eating into my pores. Did I even remember to put it on this morning? I can’t remember now. I grope for some tissues in my purse and start mopping my forehead with a shredded, disintegrating wad, lint floating in the air like anthrax spores. Why didn’t I buy the nice neat pack of Kleenex? Why do I always end up with a wad? Is it my imagination or am I short of breath?
A wave of panic sweeps over me. Was this a heart attack, or just fear? The odds were against it being a heart attack, but why not? Things happened. Eighteen-year-old conditioned athletes keeled over inexplicably, even junior high school kids who were never sick in their lives. Heart valve problems, preexisting conditions, who knew what else? I start talking to myself as though I’m a small child. Do I look crazy to people in the next lane? Who cares, anyway, they probably think that I’m just on the phone. “You’re fine, you’re just fine,” I say out loud. “Just a little scared, that’s all. It will pass. You’re fifteen minutes from Taylor’s house, as soon as you’re there you’ll be fine. It has just been a tense week. It’s the Xanax, the lack of the sleep, the tension…. You can handle it, it will be over soon. You’ll have dinner with Taylor, wine, and everything will be fine.”
But then the questions. What would happen to me now? My throat tightens. What would my life be like here? Was this it? What kind of life would it be? And what about my mother? She was so far away. Who would take care of her? That tremor, oh God, what if she was developing Parkinson’s disease? It never occurred to me before. At a time like this, I leave New York and fly across the country? How selfish. What if she had to be moved to a home? And some of those places were so awful. The neglect. My heart starts to po
und harder. To calm myself, I try to take deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Relaxing breath. Does that nonsense do any good anyway?
When traffic finally starts to move, I get off at the next exit and at the first turn, I swerve the car to the curb. A sign says Dead End.
I reach frantically into my purse for my phone, throwing aside mints, a tampon, a compact. I dial Tamara, then start over. I forgot to punch in the area code. The battery is low. Did I even pack the charger? I must be losing my mind. Why the hell hadn’t I at least charged the phone overnight? I dial again.
“Maggie O’Leary’s office.”
At the sound of Tamara’s voice, I try to speak, but all the tension rises up into my throat. Tears well up in my eyes, and the only sound that comes out is an odd cry, like the croak of some wounded creature. Then it turns into a sob.
“Maggie? MAGGIE? IS THAT YOU?”
Somehow, I get the word yes out.
“WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT, BABE? TAKE IT EASY, TAKE IT EASY.”
“I— I—” More crying.
“Maggie, TAKE A DEEP BREATH. CALM DOWN. YOU’RE OKAY. I’M HERE WITH YOU… Maggie? I don’t know if it’s the connection or you that’s breakin’ up.”
I catch my breath. “I’m okay, really.” Deep breath. “I think I was just having a meltdown.”
“Maggie, get on the next plane and come home. I never understood what the hell you left this place for anyway. Go directly to the airport and just wait for the next plane out. There’s gotta be fifty a day. Just book the first one and—”
“I’m okay, really. I can’t come home now…. I just can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t make sense. I just got here, I…we…have to give it time…. I can’t just go flying from one city to another like an unguided missile…”
“Yes, you can, Maggie. What are you saying? You have a life here…you’ll find another job….”
“What? I’ll find another what? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
“Maggie, you missed the column. There was nothing in the paper where your column was supposed to be.”
“You didn’t get the column I filed?”
“You heard me.”
“But I sent it, it went through…. I never got anything back from you.”
“Maggie, your head is somewhere else. There was a black hole where your column should have been. You haven’t returned Wharton’s thousand phone calls, and now the column’s kaput. Finito.”
“But I SENT IT, Tamara, I swear.”
“Wharton is thinking of having Justine write it and renaming it ‘Thin Chance’—”
“Did you hear me? I SENT—”
“Maggie, any day now, he’s going to put the announcement in the paper.”
“WHAT? WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
“He gave up on you, babe. Maybe you filed, but he never got it, and that did it. He was fed up. You’re out of touch, nowhere to be found and….” The line filled with static and went dead.
“You’re breakin’ up again,” Tamara said. “Maggie? Maggie, you there?”
I don’t remember starting the car, but I find myself driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, staring out at the ocean. Like an automaton, I turn off the ignition and walk down to the beach where Taylor and I had spent the afternoon. It’s familiar turf, like a tiny safe haven, only, now it’s just me. The weather is perfect, as if in ironic direct defiance of my state of being. As usual, I’m out of sync, living in some parallel universe. But I’m grateful that very few people are around. I don’t want to pretend to act normal.
Whenever I have to sort out my feelings, I write them down. It forces me to concretize the angst, gives it form, substance. I’m carrying a pen and paper and now it seems like a luxury to see my words on real paper instead of an electronic screen. There’s more comfort in the deliberation of the effort. It’s like sweeping a floor with a broom rather than using an electronic vacuum. More soothing, less mechanical. And if you didn’t get the words down on paper right, there was a certain satisfaction in crumpling up the sheet rather than deleting words as if there never was a paper trail of false starts at all.
SOS
This won’t be a comforting column, or one offering counseling or advice. It isn’t written with a steady hand in a sane frame of mind.
It’s a column about needing help in sorting out my life.
There are times when the body is smarter and quicker than the mind. It stops you in your tracks by sending out Mayday signs: Flashing red lights in the form of a quickened heart rate and an erratic beat. Biomechanical sirens like body sweat, nausea, pressure in the chest. A feeling of being cornered, panic-stricken and overwhelmed by the sensation of impending doom that cuts into your gut. It’s a biological meltdown, better known as a panic attack.
I was driving on the Los Angeles Freeway, trapped in my car, in a gridlock of traffic. I was overtired and overstressed, just a few days after crossing three time zones on the way from New York. I live a life based on deadlines and watching the clock, consumed with the world of being overweight, and negotiating a path to happiness and fulfillment despite the burden of such a handicap. No one knows better than me that bouncing between the worlds of the possible and the impossible is a rocky road.
I tried to radically change my life three months ago. I wanted to get rid of all my excess weight. I wanted to look thinner, prettier, sexier and more appealing. I wanted to get to the point where I could attract a gorgeous-looking man. So I turned myself inside out. Every day, for three months, 24/7, I ate differently, exercised, tried every beauty treatment known to man, denied my body chemistry and vowed to triumph over nature. I thought that I had a new body and that made me a different person. That invincible new me sought to start a new life, and forget about the past. But you can’t deny who you are, and if you do, it will eventually come back to bite you.
I tried to run from myself and my problems by taking refuge somewhere else, but rather than saving myself, I was more lost than ever. My body knew that before my mind did.
What happened? I panicked.
I felt lost, abandoned, filled with a fear that was greater than any I ever felt before. I saw myself living in a world of imagination, an observer of the real world outside of myself.
Panic attacks don’t last forever, but they last long enough to give you a message that you can’t ignore. I can’t run away from who I am or where I live. That sounds so simple now, but it took me a three-thousand-mile trip that ended inside myself to see that.
My life started out like a windshield with a small crack in it. But rather than attending to that tiny fissure, I ignored it, and the crack wormed its way up, down and around until the damage was so widespread that just a final tap—a traffic jam on the freeway—was enough to shatter my fragile self to smithereens. But I’ve got the inner resources to survive a panic attack and learn from it. I’m stronger for it. And whatever else happens, the memory of it will be there to remind me of what happens when I’m at war with myself and I’m losing the battle.
I tear off the piece of paper, fold it up and wedge it into my pocket. It’s calming to just stroll along the beach, watching the water glittering in the sunlight. There’s an old discarded beer bottle sticking out of the wet sand and I pick it up. The glass is smooth as beach glass from the gritty wash of being pelted over and over and over by the wet sand. Beaten up by life. I hold it by the neck, then reach into my pocket and take out the paper. I wedge it down into the neck of the bottle, and then lift my arm into an arc and pitch it out to sea with as much power as a Roger Clemens fastball. It soars through the sky before dropping down into the water, disappearing below the surface.
Dear Mike:
I hate long portal goodbyes and anyway we did that. Thanks for the temporary safe haven, for the affection, and the willingness to put up with me. My job’s on the line in New York and if I’m not back by the morning, the only place my name will be appearing will be on unemployment che
cks. I’ll never forget the champagne on the beach, but I’ll try to forget Nicole and the disappearing bathrobe. I never was one to share my toys.
Love,
Maggie
P.S. I can’t wait to see Dangerous Lies. (Do I get a screen credit?)
P.P.S. Clean out your refrigerator before it turns to gourmet penicillin.
twenty-one
I head up to his office without stopping at my desk—if it’s still mine—and barge in. The shocked expression on his face makes it painfully clear I’m the last person on earth he expected to see.
“THIN CHANCE?” I blurt out in disbelief as I’m dropping into the Christmas-plaid chair directly facing Wharton. “You were going to give away MY column—or should I say OUR column—and call it ‘Thin Chance’?” I’m hyperventilating, pressing my hand at the base of my neck. What have I got to lose, either he’ll hire me back or call security and have me handcuffed. Wharton stares for a moment, a mixture of amazement giving way to relief. Finally his stern expression softens.
“Are you staying here now or have you become, in the jargon of the day, ‘bicoastal’?”
“I love this city, for God’s sake, you know me better than that, I would never ever leave.”
“Well, you could have fooled me. I tried to reach you over and over again but—”
“I’m back, Bill, back. I was exhausted. Back and forth over the time zones was just…the lines got crossed.” I wave my hand as if to clear the air.
“Lines got crossed? Maggie, we were waiting for a column—”
“Anyway that was then and this is now,” I say, not letting him finish because I couldn’t own up to the realization that I was so distracted that for the first time in my career I forgot to file. “And I’m so anxious to—”
“I don’t know, Maggie, I’ve started to set things in motion now to replace the column. I don’t know if I can just reverse—”
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