The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy

by David Handler

  Yes, we made a real father-daughter-basset hound day of it. It was a happy day, a day I had earned. After all, I had at long last finished Novel No. 3. It’s true, I’d done it. Seventeen years after The New York Times Book Review had labeled me “the first major new literary voice of the 1980s,” six years after they’d called my second novel “the most embarrassing act of public self-flagellation since Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech,” I’d finally done it. Not that I had a publisher for it yet, mind you. It was not exactly an easy sell, seeing as how it was a prime example of what’s known in publishing as a male menopause novel, a category that made it only slightly less commercial than, say, My Life and High Times by Neon Leon Spinks. Right now, it was making the rounds. Which meant I was having lunches with a lot of editors. Which is what they get paid to do and writers do not. Mostly, I was sorry to discover, they wanted to talk to me about my other, decidedly less distinguished career—the Claude Rains thing. When it comes to ghosting, I am The Man. The best of what’s around. Five number-one bestselling memoirs and someone else’s number-one bestselling novel to my noncredit. So I heard all about the basketball star who had just flunked his third drug test and his fourth reading test. The U.S. senator with presidential aspirations. Or perspirations. The actress who was finally ready to tell the world who she had and had not given the skin to—now that there was no one left alive in the world who cared. I certainly didn’t. None of that celebrity rubbernecking crap for me. No more. I was Stewart Stafford Hoag, novelist. I had slain my personal white whale. Someone in power would agree with me any day now. It would happen. It would sell. I knew it was good. I was not going to worry. I was going to enjoy the city, enjoy my daughter, enjoy my life. Life was good. Repeat after me: Life is good.

  Then again, maybe Joseph Wood Krutch was right. Maybe we moralists are never satisfied. Pay no attention to me. I’m just trying to give you an idea where my head was that day the first chapter came, okay?

  It came, as do seeds from Burpee and bad news from the Internal Revenue Service, in a plain manila envelope. But inside was not the makings of Better Boy tomatoes or news that my deductions for home-office expenses had once again been disallowed. Inside was a manuscript, eight pages in length, and a very polite cover letter. Both had been typed on an old manual typewriter, which you don’t see much of anymore, not unless you get a letter or a manuscript from me.

  I stood in the somewhat grand lobby of our building on Central Park West and read the letter under the suspicious gaze of Mario, the daytime doorman, who had never liked me and was liking me even less now that I’d taken to opening my mail down there before I went upstairs. Mario was positive that I was corresponding with some mystery woman. For the record, I wasn’t. For the record, I’d never liked Mario either. And Lulu liked him even less than I did. When it comes to hating petty authority figures, we always stick together.

  Like most authors who’ve had their names in the papers, I get my share of oddball mail. I get letters from droolers who are genuinely convinced they were captured by an alien or Elvis or Nicole Brown Simpson and need someone (me) to help them tell and sell their miraculous story. I get inquiries from dog lovers who are thinking of adopting a basset hound and wonder if they are easy to train. (You don’t train them—they train you.) And, yes, I get submissions from would-be novelists who want my advice. (Generally, I suggest going to dental school, which qualifies you to stick sharp objects in people’s mouths and hurt them and get paid a lot of money for it.) Some of these letters are forwarded to me by my agent or by the different publishers I’ve worked for through the years. Some of them, like this particular one, find their way directly to my home. I don’t know how these people get my address. They just do. I get Prison Life magazine every month, for instance, and I have no idea why or how. Aside from the fact that so many of the celebrities I’ve worked for are presently doing time.

  What I’m trying to say is there was nothing out of the ordinary about this letter. Except for one thing: There was no name on it—unless you count “the answer man.” Not so much as a clue as to who this budding author might be. Not on the letter, which was typed on plain white typing paper—no letterhead, no watermark. Not on the title page of the manuscript. Not on the nine-by-twelve manila envelope it came in. There was no return address on the envelope either. Just my name and address typed onto a stick-on label, the kind that come twenty to a sheet. Same typewriter. There were four 32-cent stamps affixed to it. It had been postmarked the day before somewhere in New York City, which is to say Manhattan, not Brooklyn or Queens or any of those other boroughs.

  Somewhat strange. But not so strange as to intrigue me. I just dismissed it as terminal shyness or forgetfulness or any one of the other million endearing little tics that tend to take root in authors, would-be and otherwise. I tucked the chapter back in its envelope. I stuck it under my arm with the rest of that day’s mail. I rode the elevator up to our floor with Tracy and Lulu.

  Merilee was home from rehearsal. I knew this because I walked through the door into utter and complete blackness, the kind of darkness that can be achieved in New York City only if you install Levolor blinds in every window and then cloak these behind heavy floor-to-ceiling blackout drapery. This, in case you were wondering, is why I’d taken to opening my mail downstairs. This, in case you were wondering, is what it means to have an ex-wife who is an actress.

  Mine was deep into rehearsing the role of Susy Hendrix for a revival of Wait Until Dark, the Broadway stage thriller by Frederick Knott. Lee Remick had originated the role on stage thirty years back. Audrey Hepburn had played it on film. And now it was Merilee Nash’s turn. She and her semi-notable co-star in the role of the heavy, Harry Roat. Susy, as you may recall, is blind. Merilee, so as to get into character, had turned our world into Susy’s world. She spent hours every day stumbling around in the dark, eyes wide open, seeing nothing. Occasionally, she even moved the furniture around so as to make it that much harder. All of which was fine for her but hard on me. I kept bumping into our heavy Stickley originals, leaving me with welts on my knees and shins—hence the limp. It was also hard on Lulu, who had been recruited for much-hated doggie-on-a-string detail so Merilee could try walking down the street without benefit of sight. She wore a mask over her eyes for that. Merilee, that is. I voted that she wear one inside, too, so that the rest of us could enjoy the healthy benefits of light. Not to mention our million-dollar view of Central Park. No sir. Merilee was Susy now, and Susy’s world was a dark one. Plus she claimed that practicing this way was sharpening her other senses.

  My own sense of smell as I stood there, blind, in the entry hall, told me that Pamela, our silver-haired British housekeeper, had made Daube à la Niçoise for dinner. For dessert she had baked a walnut loaf made with black walnuts from our own tree in Lyme. My own sense of hearing told me that my stomach was growling.

  She heard us come in, Pam did, and started down the long, dark hallway toward us from The Safe Zone, her brightly lit kitchen. She had a Petzl zoom headlamp strapped to her head, and looked somewhat like a cheery, pink-cheeked coal miner. Lulu stayed put in between my feet, whimpering mournfully. She’s afraid of the dark. Only dog I know of who is. Tracy, she didn’t seem to care much one way or the other.

  “Yes, yes, here we are, Miss Lulu,” Pam called to her soothingly from under the light beam. “Help is on the way. Here we come. Here we are. Did we all have a lovely day? Of course we did. Now we’ll see that Miss Tracy has a proper bath and to bed, won’t we?”

  “Where is the divine Lady M?” I asked, handing over Tracy.

  “Off wandering somewhere in the living room.” Pam lowered her voice discreetly. “Poor dear’s gone and moved the settee again.”

  And with that we heard a loud thud from somewhere off in the blackness. Followed by “Oh, sugar! Shirley Temple! Succotash!” And then a hurried “I’m all right, Pam! It wasn’t an important toe! I’m all right!”

  “Fine, dear!” Pam called back to her. Clucking
, she turned her headbeam on the entry closet so I could hang up my coat. “Poor girl’s positively covered with bruises. The sacrifices she makes for her art. Unless, that is, you’ve been hitting her.”

  “I have not. Besides, how would that explain all of my bruises?”

  “She’s been hitting you back,” Pam sniffed. “High time, if you ask me. Victor wanted words with you.” Victor being Vic Early, celebrity bodyguard extraordinaire, who doubled as caretaker of our Connecticut farm. “Did he get hold of you?”

  “No, he didn’t. What’s it about?”

  “I really couldn’t say, dear boy,” she replied airily, heading back to her clean, well-lit kitchen with Tracy in her arms and a grateful Lulu on her heel. And leaving me there in the total dark.

  “Honey, I’m home!” I called out, groping my way blindly toward the living room. Wham. That was me colliding with the umbrella stand. Wham. That was the door to the powder room. “Merilee?” Wham. That was the umbrella stand again. Cursing, I moved forward, arms waving wildly at my sides. I felt like I was playing the childhood game of Dare. Which I suppose is as good a description of my on-again, off-again nonrelationship with Merilee Gilbert Nash as any other. “Merilee, are you there?”

  “Darling, in here,” she whispered urgently from the blackness, her hand grabbing me by the wrist and tugging me toward the powder room. Into the powder room. She locked the door behind us. “Oh, God, Hoagy, you smell so good,” she murmured in my ear.

  “That’s Floris, Merilee. I’ve been wearing it forever.”

  “But my other senses are so keen now. So aroused.” She let out a startled gasp. “I want you, Hoagy.” Her lips were on mine now, her breath hot on my face. I heard the slithering of her silk dressing gown as it fell to the floor. Her hands took deadly aim at my belt, my zipper. “I want you this instant!”

  “But Pam is right in the other—”

  “Now, Hoagy!” she cried, flinging herself against me. She was brazen. She was wild. She was not wearing a stitch under that dressing gown. And, well, there was no talking her out of it. Not that I tried, mind you.

  Hmmm … I suppose I should explain this recent and somewhat lubricious phenomenon. Or try to. I didn’t know if it was Merilee’s fortysomething hormones or some really interesting form of postpartum depression or just this role she was rehearsing—but something about being in the darkness had unleashed her untamed side. No sooner would I hang up my coat then she’d whisper, “Psst, over here, darling!” and faster than you can say Charlie Sheen we’d be locked in just this sort of feverish, teeth-clanking embrace. I never knew where or when the mood would strike her. I only knew that to date we’d consecrated the entry hall floor, the dining table and the coat closet. All of this made for quite some departure from Merilee’s usual prim-and-proper Miss Porter’s School self. But I’d decided not to ask why. And to just go along with it for as long as I could keep it up, as it were.

  Afterward, I made us a pitcher of dry martinis, heavy on the olives, and made straight for a steaming bubble bath in the vast master bathroom tub, where I collapsed, limp in every known sense of the word. Merilee’s Oscar could be found in there, mounted ceremoniously over the toilet tank. Lulu could be found in there, too, sprawled out on her back under the sink with her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. She likes the steam. More than I like sharing it with her, being that she will eat only that which swims or scuttles or inhabits the ocean floor. For dinner she’d just enjoyed some of her 9-Lives canned mackerel for cats and culinarily challenged dogs. Sharing steam with Lulu is like hanging out in the kitchen of a fish house.

  Merilee came bustling in for her hairbrush, humming gaily to herself, her green eyes bright and animated, a healthy glow to her patrician features. They really are the stronger sex, you know. She had slipped into the black velvet Ralph Lauren for dinner, the one that makes her look willowy as a schoolgirl. This had to do with a certain pact we’d made. No nightshirts or jammies at the dinner table. No Jeopardy on the TV. None of those things that boring married couples do. We dress. We light candles. We use the good silver and the linen napkins. We are not a boring married couple. Repeat after me: We are not a boring married couple.

  She remained there in the doorway, brushing out her shimmering waist-length golden hair. That’s a sight I will never, ever grow tired of. “Demi turned down the new Brad Pitt. They’ve offered it to me.”

  “Congratulations, Merilee.”

  “Not so fast, darling. There’s a problem with it. Rather large one. There’s, well, this nude scene …”

  “You and Brad?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You and Brad in bed together?”

  “In an abandoned root cellar, actually.” She tossed her hair back, a gesture that has always quickened my pulse, and stood there with her hip thrown out. “I’ve never believed in them, you know.”

  “Abandoned root cellars?”

  “Nude scenes. I’ve always said no. But there’s no getting around this one. It’s pivotal to the story.”

  “Wait, what about that nude scene you did in Romeo and Juliet for Papp?”

  “That was different, darling.”

  “Why, because it was Art?”

  “No, because I was twenty-three when I played Juliet. Or, more specifically, my thighs were.”

  “Merilee, your thighs are lovely.”

  She took a sip of her martini, her forehead creasing fretfully. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you just do what every other actress your age does?”

  “What, go in for tumescent liposculpture?”

  “No, silly. Use a body double. Some twenty-year-old who’s six-feet-three and works out on a Stairmaster fourteen hours a day. I’ll sit in on the casting sessions, if you like. That way we’ll be sure she’s got a butt just like—” Somehow, her hairbrush bounced off my left ear. “Ow, that hurt!”

  “It was supposed to, mister. A body double’s out of the question.”

  “I don’t see why. You used a stunt double when you jumped out of that helicopter in the Bruce Willis picture.”

  “Because I’m an actress, not a paratrooper. This is different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m forty, that’s why. I know it, the audience knows it and Mr. Gravity sure as sugar knows it. Let’s face it, darling, from the neck down I’m starting to resemble one of those cute baby elephants you see at the circus, the ones they dress up in little pink pinafores.”

  “I believe it’s the monkeys they do that with.”

  “I’ll know it’s not me. Everyone will know it’s not me. It’s cheating. It’s fake. It’s—”

  “It’s a movie, Merilee.”

  “Oh, beans, I’m sorry I even mentioned it. Forget it, I’m not doing it. Let Sharon do it. What am I saying? She’s probably turned it down already.” She sighed grandly, tragically. “Oh God, I hate this business.”

  “Merilee,” I said, reaching for her hand, “you’re still one of the most beautiful women in the world.” Which she is. Not that she’s conventionally pretty. Never has been. Her jaw is too strong. Her nose too long. Her forehead too high. But on her it all adds up to beautiful. She was beautiful at twenty-five. She was beautiful at forty. And she would be beautiful at sixty.

  “Bless you for that, darling. But you and I both know that I’m getting to be a card-carrying grown-up, and they don’t believe in those out there. Not if you happen to be a she.” She came over to freshen my martini from the pitcher. Two is my limit these days. After that I become incoherent, unless there is a language where the phrase “oot-groot” is considered intelligent conversation. “Did Vic get hold of you, by the way?”

  “Pam asked me that, too. What’s this all about?”

  “Heavens, I wouldn’t know. He phoned from the country this afternoon. I assumed it was to do with the furnace or the roof or something.”

  “Ah, a guy matter.”

  “Well, you are a guy, darling.”
From the doorway, she gave me her up-from-under look. “At least you were the last time I looked.”

  “Looking isn’t all you did, Miss Nash.”

  That one drove her back out to the bedroom, where she started tearing at the mail I’d left on the bed. “My brother has invited us out to Aspen for Christmas,” she announced gravely. “Please tell me we can’t go.”

  I lay back in the tub with my martini, groaning comfortably. “Merilee …”

  “Yes, darling?” she said, voice breathless with anticipation.

  “We can’t go to Aspen.”

  “Oh, what a relief. I hate that place. Especially over the holidays, when it’s overrun by Sly and Barbra and all of those horrid sweaty men from CAA and their snarly, muscular little wives. Darling, let’s spend it at the farm with our own little tree and Grandmother’s decorations and a stuffed goose and Tracy and Lulu. We’ll stuff a goose. We’ll—”

  “I’d prefer a large one.”

  “A large one, darling?”

  “The tree. I want a large one.”

  “Oh, I see. And I suppose just because you want a large one we have to have a large one. Gosh, you’re a brute. I’m so glad I didn’t marry you.”