Skinnydipping

by Bethenny Frankel

  My heart fluttered again as I heard someone coming down the spiral stairs. I felt foolish, standing there in my messy cheap traveling dress, and I self-consciously smoothed it over my now-concave stomach, which growled lightly in response. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. I tapped my toe nervously on the tile, and froze when the sound echoed. I looked expectantly at the stairs, waiting for him to appear.

  But he didn’t appear. Instead, a girl about my age came down the stairs, her face eager. She had long blonde hair pulled back in a high ponytail and she wore pink lip gloss the exact color of her pink satin track shorts, a tight, capped-sleeved white T-shirt cropped short to show her midriff, and white running shoes. She was deeply tanned with muscular legs, great curves, firm arms, and a stomach as concave but a lot more ripped than mine. My hand brushed against my own stomach again, for reassurance. You could look like that, I thought, doubting that it was true. I was probably fifteen pounds heavier than she was, and I hated that I immediately put myself in competition with whoever this was. She looked like the type who probably went running every morning at six, before she freshly squeezed her own juice and got her B12 shot. I wondered for just a second if my father had some other daughter I didn’t know about. It took only a few more seconds for me to recognize that this was, of course, not his daughter.

  “I’m Brooke,” she said, extending a perfectly manicured hand.

  “Faith,” I said, extending my unmanicured one. Note to self: get manicure before seeing even one more human being!

  “I’m so happy to meet you finally!” she said, then pulled me into a California embrace. Her silky ponytail brushed my cheek. She smelled like jasmine. Is this how they make girls in California?

  “Right!” I said, as if I’d already heard all about her and had anticipated our meeting with her same level of exuberance. “Brooke. So nice to meet you.”

  “Frank will be down in a bit. We were … right in the middle of something.” She smiled slyly and winked at me. I felt the urge to retch. “Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea? Perrier? Chardonnay?”

  “Chardonnay,” I answered, too quickly. But it was urgent. Medicinal.

  She laughed. “Like father, like daughter.” Her voice sounded like pretty little chiming bells. Was this chick for real? “We just brought home a case from this beautiful little vineyard we visited last weekend.”

  My father visited vineyards? I remembered him as overweight and never wanting to do anything fun or laid-back. I had heard, though, through the extensive network of people I still knew at the track, that he was now into health and fitness and that he skied. It was hard for me to reconcile this version of my father with the one I remembered and the one so often and so vividly described by my mother. I looked at Brooke. I suppose if he wanted to keep up with girls like this….

  “I think you’re going to love this wine,” she said. She handed me a glass and took a sip out of hers.

  I tried not to gulp mine. The wine really was good—buttery with a rich fruity flavor. “Mmmm.”

  She smiled with relief. “I’m glad you like it!” she said. It amused me to realize that she might actually be trying to impress me. I straightened up a bit, wanting to earn her envy. “Your father has quite a collection,” she added.

  I looked around, noting the streamlined sculptures out by the pool. So this is what he was doing with his money instead of paying child support all those years? Buying wine and art and supporting girls the age of his daughter, but with perfect bodies and blonde hair and unchallenging personalities?

  Someone cleared his throat in the doorway and Brooke’s ponytail swung around, narrowly avoiding whipping me in the corneas. I turned slowly, almost afraid, almost overeager. Brooke skipped over to my father and threw her arms around his neck. He sized me up, and I squared my shoulders and gave it to him right back.

  “Faith,” he said.

  “Frank.”

  My father wore a pale gold silk sports jacket and ivory slacks. He had the olive skin and wide mouth I remembered, but his hairline was receding slightly and the temples were gray. He looked older, more weathered.

  I wondered which one of us would speak next. Brooke looked back and forth, as if realizing for the first time that I wasn’t going to call him Daddy and he wasn’t going to call me Kitten. She turned out to be the one who couldn’t take the silence.

  “Well!” she said, bouncing nervously into the space between us. “What should we do this afternoon?”

  He ignored her and addressed me directly for the first time. “If you’re going to live out here, you should probably get outside more,” he said, looking me up and down. He walked over to the counter and poured himself a glass of wine. “People are fit out here.” He glanced at Brooke, as if she was the proof. Which, I suppose, she was. “And don’t wear black. This isn’t New York.”

  I couldn’t even respond.

  Brooke laughed nervously. “I know, why don’t we all go out and have a drink by the pool.”

  “I’m going to the track,” my father said, not looking at either of us. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”

  I wanted to say something. I wanted to say, Did you seriously just call me pale, fat, and badly dressed? I wanted to say, Don’t you want to sit down and get reacquainted? Show me around the city? Show me around your own house? Ask me why I’m here? Ask me what I’ve been doing for the past fourteen years? Don’t you want to know me at all?

  Instead, I said nothing. I just stared at him, hoping to catch his eye for some kind of connection. Hoping for some sign that he was glad I had come, that we were even related, that he had ever loved me at all. I knew then that this was how it would be. It would only get worse. Startled, Brooke looked at me, then back at my father. “OK, sweetie,” she said to my father—an endearment I found almost humorously misapplied to this sullen, sour-faced man. “At seven o’clock?”

  “Eight,” he said, then turned back toward the stairs. With his back to me, he said, in a monotone, “See you later, Faith.”

  Brooke and I stood alone in what had seemed, five minutes earlier, like a dream kitchen. Now it seemed more like a mausoleum. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. That was it? He hadn’t seen me in fourteen years, and it was “You’re too fat for L.A.” and “See you later, Faith”? At least he’d said my name. I hung on to that one little scrap, the only sign that he cared, that he even knew who I was. I felt dizzy.

  Brooke must have noticed. She guided me over to the table by the window that viewed the pool. Lowering her voice, she said, “Before you came, you were all he could talk about. He was really excited. He kept telling me how smart you are, how you just graduated from NYU, how he hadn’t seen you in so long, and how much he missed you. He was looking at a picture of you just the other day, and he said, ‘She has great taste, just like her mother.’”

  I looked at her suspiciously. “Really?” I tried to look like I didn’t believe her, but I clung to the words, like they were a lifeline.

  “Yes, really!” she said, grabbing my forearm. “I was so nervous to meet you! You’re Frank Brightstone’s daughter! I’m so intimidated by you!”

  I smiled gratefully, thankful for her efforts, even if I didn’t really believe her. At least she acknowledged that I was his daughter, even if she was a gold-digging bimbo. I wondered if, when she met my father, she had asked him what he drove.

  “Do you want to go out?” she continued, clearly trying to cheer me up. “We could go shopping, and then I know this little bar down by the beach.” She paused. “You look like you could use some sun,” she said, confidentially. “And maybe a strong drink.”

  I laughed. She was probably no more than three years older than me, and my father was sleeping with her, and she was so gorgeous that she would outshine me in any public place, but she was the one with my father’s credit card and car keys and sympathy. If I ever wanted my father to acknowledge me, I was probably going to have to go through Brooke. Besides, she was my only friend in L.A.

>   “Brooke, you are absolutely right. I do need some sun. And a strong drink.”

  “Cool!” she said. “We’ll take the convertible.”

  I was beginning to feel better already.

  chapter three

  I had a headache that no amount of aspirin was going to fix, but I couldn’t lie in bed any longer. I needed to call Larry Todd’s office again. Try to get an answer. Try to get my life moving.

  I’d been at my father’s place three weeks now, and I could tell I was overstaying my welcome. Every morning, I came downstairs to make breakfast, and my father would be sitting at the table. He’d give me that “Are you still here?” look. My mere presence irritated him. When he was home, I was walking on eggshells, but cooking was my consolation. I kept my favorite cookbook of all time, the well-loved, much-used Domestic Goddess cookbook by Sybil Hunter and the one actual possession I’d brought with me from New York, in the beautiful kitchen.

  Every morning, I swam laps in the pool, trying desperately to work off the extra pounds my father so obviously disapproved of. Every afternoon, Brooke and I had cocktails, and my father made up some excuse not to join us.

  I’d enrolled in a week-long bartending class, putting the tuition on a new credit card. I figured, if all else failed, I could be the cool bartender making drinks in a hot club and raking in $500 a night. I could do that. Mixing drinks was fun, and so was bartending school. Every afternoon, I offered to make my father some of the new drinks I’d learned to prepare. He always said no. Scotch and soda or wine were all he would drink.

  Still, I’d found a kind of equilibrium, if not a fragile peace, as I adjusted to L.A. and my father’s house.

  But this weekend … oh no. This weekend had been bad. I’d really screwed up, and I had the headache to prove it.

  I was going to stay home on Friday night. I really was. I hadn’t slept much the night before because I’d been anxious about why Larry Todd hadn’t called me back. I kept making up excuses for him. He was traveling. He was in back-to-back meetings. He was trying to find the perfect position for me before he called. And I kept wondering whether I should call again. I didn’t want to seem obnoxious or needy, but what if my message had been lost?

  Just as I was thinking of crawling into bed to watch bad TV, or maybe try to sleep, Brooke called. She was in a club and I could barely hear her, except for the part when she yelled, “You have to come! Great prospects! Roxbury!”

  Although I was dead tired and stressed, I had a hard time saying no to Brooke. To me, she represented the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. She’d once dated one of the band members in Guns N’ Roses, and she seemed to know everybody in town. Brooke was the beginning of my journey, the key to my father’s heart, and my insider secret to Hollywood’s potential.

  I had an even harder time saying no to the fantasy of a potential soul mate. She knew she could get me with the lure of “great prospects.” I sighed.

  “How do I get down there?” I yelled back, even though the house was quiet and I was the only one there. I didn’t know where my father was.

  “Take the Mercedes!” she yelled back at me through the phone, club music thumping in the background. “The keys are on the hook!”

  My father has always had a Mercedes, and he kept his current vintage convertible sitting, protected, in the garage. I never saw him drive it, although it was the only extra car they had. Drive that car down Hollywood Boulevard? Don’t mind if I do. But if I was going to the Roxbury, I was going to have to look hot or I wouldn’t get in. I dragged myself off the couch and into my room, and looked in the mirror. Hot rollers, lip gloss, red dress, my highest heels. Maybe that would do the trick.

  As I dressed and worked on my hair, I thought about the so-called great prospects that might be at the club. Would I connect with the perfect guy? Would he be hot, rich, successful, maybe even famous? I knew Brooke wouldn’t steer me toward someone ugly or destitute—you can’t even get into the Roxbury if you’re ugly or destitute. But would she be able to help me find the one? I knew he was out there somewhere. And I was on my way to find him—in a vintage Mercedes convertible.

  Feeling flush with sex and power, I stepped into the club, which pulsed with blue light and a thumping bass. The chick DJ high up in the booth over the dance floor looked like she’d just finished her shoot for Penthouse, and the dance floor was crowded with cleavage and high heels, and guys dressed in fitted shirts that showed their chests and weight-lifter arms.

  I looked around, hoping to see Brooke, but the room was so crowded, I couldn’t see anyone beyond the people right in front of me. I pushed my way to the bar and caught the bartender’s eye. He asked me what I wanted. “Vodka and soda with a twist,” I shouted over the noise and music. He winked at me and grabbed a bottle of Stoli. I really wanted a margarita, but I knew where that would lead—I’d be fatter tomorrow. Maybe this time I could be good. I knew my pattern. I would start with the virtuous drinks, but the drunker I got, the more I’d lose my resolve, until I was swilling cosmopolitans and apple martinis and margaritas with sugar on the rim.

  I turned and surveyed the room. All the round booths were full of people, and people on people—women sitting on laps or lounging behind and draped over the men. In one dark corner, a thin, dark-haired rocker type chopped a mound of cocaine on the glass table, then handed a rolled-up bill to the girl beside him. Another girl with long blonde hair, tanned skin, and great legs had her shirt off and was dancing on top of a table in her bra. Then I saw them—Chloe and Isabel from Hollywood & Highland! Maybe this was a sign from the universe that Larry Todd was getting ready to call me back.

  The bartender handed me my vodka soda, and I squeezed over closer to Chloe and Isabel—their real names, of course, were not Chloe and Isabel—what an embarrassment if I actually called them the names of their TV characters! Susan Terence and Donna Shannon, I reminded myself. Their names are Susan and Donna.

  I was almost able to get myself next to them and in hearing distance of their conversation. Chloe/Susan was rail thin with platinum blonde hair and big brown eyes. Her red lip gloss was slightly smeared at the side of her mouth and she had a silky, wispy little lavender dress that hung on her skeletal shoulders. Isabel/Donna was raven haired with full pouty lips, jet-black eyeliner, a sprinkle of girl-next-door freckles, and curves to die for. She wore high-heeled patent-leather stilettos and a tight black dress with a scoop neck that showed off the efforts of her push-up bra.

  I cleared my throat. I would befriend them by telling them I was waiting for a callback from Larry Todd about a job. Or maybe I should say I’m a friend of Larry Todd’s. Or something more casual? “Excuse me,” I said as loudly as I could without sounding like I was yelling. Neither of them turned.

  “Excuse me, Susan?” I tried again. “I thought you might want to know your lipstick is a little smeared there in the corner.” I smiled in a friendly, confidential, girlfriend way, but the bitch didn’t even look at me. She did, however, daintily wipe the corner of her mouth.

  Maybe Donna would be more receptive. I moved in closer. “Excuse me, Donna?”

  Donna did turn to look at me, but her eyes were like ice. She checked me out, up and down, exactly the way the flight attendant had evaluated my human worth with a cursory glance on my way to L.A. She began to turn away again, so I reached out and lightly touched her forearm. “No, wait! I don’t mean to bother you, but I just wanted to say hello because I’m a friend of Larry Todd’s, and …”

  “Did you just touch me?”

  “What?” I was taken aback by her tone and the way she recoiled from me, like I was some venomous creature she wanted to crush with her spike heel.

  She looked at me with pure disdain. “I said, did you just touch me? Don’t you ever touch me again. What’s wrong with you?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned her back to me. Out of nowhere, a huge, muscle-bound man in a tight black T-shirt stepped between us and crossed his arms. Susan giggled and rolled her e
yes, and they resumed their conversation.

  I was humiliated. I felt ridiculous standing there in my cheap red dress with some lame TV star’s personal bodyguard staring me down. I turned away and plunged into the crowd. This was going to ruin my entire week. I’d been smacked down and I wanted to get as far away from those two bitches as possible. And yet something inside me bucked against this treatment. I’d show them who was worthy. I’d get a job on their show, and soon, they’d know exactly who I was, and they would be sorry they ever treated me that way. They had the chance to befriend me on my way up, and they blew it. Screw them both.

  Just as I was considering turning around and going right back home, Brooke appeared in front of me. “There you are!” She was breathless, and had obviously been dancing. Her blonde hair was mussed in a sexy way and her cheeks were pink. A lusty-looking man with sandy, feathered hair and a beautiful face stood behind her, his hands lingering around her waist.

  “Is that Rob Lowe?” I whispered.

  “Who, him?” she said, looking behind her. “Nah, that’s Brett Jones. He’s an actor. I told him I’m not interested, but he’s following me around like a puppy.” She laughed. Surely Brett Jones had heard her, but he didn’t seem deterred. “We’ve been friends for ages. Where have you been?” I wondered if she was cheating on my father. I almost hoped she was. He was probably cheating on her, if the stories my mother told me were true, and I couldn’t help wanting him to be punished for being such a crappy father.

  “Getting dissed by Donna Shannon at the bar,” I said. “I can’t believe what an asshole she is. Susan Terence, too. I’m so embarrassed. And pissed off!”

  “Fuck her, who even watches that show,” Brooke said loyally. “C’mon, you’ve got to meet this guy, he’s your perfect match. He’s just an actor, but I think you’ll like him.” Just an actor! I couldn’t help being impressed by actors, even though Brooke kept telling me to go for the producers. Brooke had access to an older, wealthier, more powerful crowd, and she understood who had the real power, but she also knew me and she knew what I liked. Once, when we saw Christian Slater in a bar, I was drooling over him. “Christian Slater would probably love to be sitting next to someone like your friend Larry Todd,” she told me. “It’s the producers who have all the power, you know. It’s not the actors.” But I still found it hard to believe. The actors were so beautiful and glamorous.