The scheme had some obvious pluses. It would be my chance to help out Kingman, avenge Neil’s mistreatment of me, and, potentially, take home buckets of ready cash. But Kingman made it clear I’d have to agree to a big publicity buildup in advance—the cover of TV Guide, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and appearances on all the major talk shows. The works! “No more hiding, Marcy. And that babushka thing you have on your head,” he said in reference to the purple bandanna from Cliff, “it has to go.”
“I’ll do it,” I found myself saying as the car came to a stop in front of the restaurant. “I’ll do it.”
I know this is not the sort of life-transforming decision you should make on impulse, or, in my case, without channeling Marcia Brady. But I really liked Kingman, and I wanted to help him prolong his stay at the top. Of course, I also wanted the money. And although personally clueless as to the likely ratings implications, I admit I also liked his plan to showcase me. Kingman’s idea for my triumphant return to Filthy Rich! struck me as a dignified act of redemption, in a wholly different league tastewise from Whoopi’s proffered Hollywood square. I was sure it would strike the public that way, too.
“But there’s one condition,” I added.
“Anything, Marcy,” Kingman said. “I liked you from the start. Your mother, too. The orthodontist, I don’t like that guy.” Funny, Kingman said exactly the same thing in my dream.
“The deal, Kingman, is I get to choose my own Lifeline,” I said, sounding alarmingly like Tom Cruise in the movie about the sports agent, Jerry Maguire, and providing a live example of Rule Number Six on Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Big elbows are always in fashion.”
“I mean it, Kingman. My Lifeline. Just like it was a regular show. You don’t choose for me.”
“Deal,” said Kingman as I started getting out of the car. “And, oh, one thing, Marcy. You may want to eat fast. Diane Sawyer will be at your apartment with a Good Morning America crew at about six A.M. to set up for a live interview. I took the liberty of arranging it to get things rolling this morning.”
How could Kingman be so presumptuous? I started to tell him he’d have to cancel Diane Sawyer. I couldn’t possibly get me and my place ready to welcome her and her cameras on so little notice. But I soon realized I was standing on the sidewalk talking to myself, Kingman and his navy blue Town Car having already disappeared into the night.
* * *
Eva Gabor, whose underrated comedic skills lit up Green Acres, had two sisters, the most famous of which, of course, was Zsa Zsa. What was her other sister’s name?
a. Jolie
b. Tina
c. Alessandra
d. Magda
See correct answer on back….
* * *
* * *
ANSWER
d. Magda
* * *
Eleven
“Oh shit. What have I done?”
I was so amazed and appalled by the commitment I had just made to Kingman Fenimore that I said the words out loud. Emphasis on “loud.” It was entirely involuntary.
“Oh shit.”
“Marcy, we’re back here,” yelled Norma equally loudly across the darkly lit and largely deserted restaurant. “What took you so long? You look like a walking train wreck.”
That’s why I love Norma, I thought. She’s always bucking me up.
Reaching the corner table she and Lois had staked out, I detected tiny corn chip crumbs on the large, otherwise barren plate sitting in front of Lois, suggesting that while I was being wooed by Kingman Fenimore for a ratings-smashing return to Filthy Rich!, she was devouring a large order of nachos with extra soy cheese. Another empty plate near Norma held the crusty remains of my feminist pal’s usual veggie burger and fries. A third plate near my seat held a half-eaten serving of the cafe’s tasty brown rice and tofu dish. Apparently, Norma and Lois had ordered it for me in the hope of getting me back on a healthy regimen following my three-day pig-out, only to pig out a wee bit themselves, jointly picking at my meal when I didn’t appear. Not that I could blame them. Their picking aside, I appreciated my friends’ gentle effort to remind me about Rule Number Two on Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Shun fattening foods.”
“You’re very late,” said Lois, still in her evening gown and three-inch Prada heels that make her walk like Bette Midler. “We couldn’t wait. I was starving.”
I was dying to tell my news, but I didn’t want to interrupt Lois, who was prattling on about a bright idea she had for improving the Democrats’ catering in the post-Clinton-Gore era. “Why is it that when my Jewish donors throw a party, there’s way too much food, yet at a Buddhist do like the one tonight, you’re lucky if you see a stale little pretzel stick with a tiny bowl of dip? Would it be politically incorrect if I sent a memo to the Democratic National Committee in Washington suggesting we combine our Jewish and Buddhist fund-raising divisions? People could mix, and we’d get the food just right.”
“Great idea, Lois,” said Norma rather dismissively. “You and your letters.” Norma proceeded to recall one Lois had written her sophomore year in college, chastising the Nobel committee for overlooking Maybelline’s introduction of new, waterproof, longer-lash mascara. “Let Marcy talk,” she said.
Personally, I thought Lois might be on to something this time. If the Dems are ever to regain the White House, big donors can’t be sent home hungry. Nonetheless, I was pleased to get the floor. I described my unexpected Town Car encounter with Kingman, and announced to my friends that I had agreed to return to Filthy Rich! in three weeks as a contestant. They both seemed pretty excited, although for different reasons. Norma saw it as my chance to show up Neil and advance the feminist cause. Lois thought it an opportunity to show up Neil and meet great guys.
“How about your Lifeline?” Norma asked. “If you want, I’ll be your Lifeline, even though you know I hate the show for having so few women contestants. It just reinforces stereotypes about women not being as smart or competitive as men, and helps perpetuate the discriminatory economic pecking order by creating all those new male millionaires.”
“Calm down, Norma. This is us you’re addressing, not some Nightline panel on the vital issue of sexism and TV game shows,” said Lois, adding, “If you ask me, I think the world could use a few more male millionaires.”
“And, Lois, that’s why the Democrats are lucky to have you,” said Norma.
“Go back to your corners, ladies,” I said.
“I didn’t start it,” said Norma. “I’m just thinking aloud that going on the show would make me look like a giant hypocrite, having just bashed the anti-feminist message of the so-called reality shows in The New York Review of Books. Come to think of it, Marcy, I can’t be your Lifeline, can I?”
“I’d be your Lifeline, if you want,” said Lois.
“Thanks,” I said. “The two of you would be great. But I wouldn’t take either of you as my Lifeline. Look what happened when I blew it for Neil.”
“You didn’t blow it. Neil’s the one who blew it,” said Lois.
“Thanks, but obviously Neil didn’t think so,” I said. “All I’m saying is that you’re my two best friends in the world and I don’t want to risk our friendship by relying on you as my Lifeline. Not to be sappy, but once burned, twice an idiot.”
“Neil’s the only idiot here,” said Lois.
“Right,” said Norma. “Marcy, I warned you about him from the start.”
I looked at my watch. It was just after 2 A.M.
“I’d love to continue this pleasant chitchat, ladies, but I have to go,” I said, rising from my chair.
“You practically just arrived,” said Norma. “Sit,” she ordered. “I have big news, too.”
Her news was that her publisher was so impressed by sales of her new feminist opus, the firm had decided to issue a new, updated audiotape edition of her controversial second best-seller, a feminist treatise on modern marriage called Fourth-Finger Itch. “They’ve hired Dame Judi Dench to be the reader.
I can’t wait to meet her,” said Norma.
“Exciting,” I said. Of course, what I was really thinking was that the very dignified Dame Judi obviously hadn’t read the book, or she would never have agreed to recite its racy section on unbiased ways to keep the fun in marital sex. I was also thinking that Diane Sawyer and her crew would be arriving at my apartment in exactly four hours and the place was a wreck. I was even more of a wreck. My right hand reached up to my scalp and began tugging hard on a clump of hair, much as it always does just as panic begins to set in.
I quickly explained my predicament, and stood to leave.
“Wait, kid, we’re coming,” said Lois, tugging at Norma’s sleeve to get her up. “We’re a team. Like in The Three Musketeers.”
“Lois, get it straight,” said Norma, resurrecting an old tiff. “They didn’t allow female musketeers. Why is it your literary references include no women authors?”
“Because there were only two Brontë sisters, okay?” said Lois. “And because the alternate choice was The Three Little Pigs. Besides, I meant Three Musketeers only in a metaphorical sense. Right, Marcy?”
I decided it was best not to take sides.
“Look, I could use your help,” I said. “But don’t feel obligated, guys.”
“Are you kidding, Marcy? I wouldn’t miss it,” said Norma, reaching over to grab the check from the middle of the table and hand it to Lois. “I believe it’s your turn, my chivalrous musketeer. I’ll do the tip.”
As we exited the restaurant together, a Daily News truck pulled alongside the newsstand on the corner and dropped two big bundles of the morning paper on the sidewalk. I walked over to check out the front page, and when I saw it, I almost plotzed.
There in glorious black and white was the picture of me posing with the owner of that Chinese restaurant in Astoria, the one Cliff Jentzen had taken me to. And to think I assumed the photo would just hang by the front entrance, with Tony Bennett. Boy, was I ever naive. Norma, who is normally pretty canny when it comes to such matters, observed that the money the News paid for the shot would buy a lot of Moo Goo Gai Pan.
In the picture, I was smiling. At least that was some consolation.
Underneath it was a big caption, “Marcy’s Day Out,” followed by this little tidbit of non-news: “Just three days after getting dumped by her orthodontist boyfriend on the top-rated So You Want to Be Filthy Rich! Marcy Lee Mallowitz finally left her apartment yesterday to make a secret lunch stop at a Chinese restaurant in Queens. The owner (shown here) says she was accompanied by an unidentified male friend, and the two of them huddled close and shared dishes. How long can Marcy hide the identity of this mystery man?”
Probably forever, I thought, since he’ll never call me now. He said he hates this celebrity stuff, and with my imminent return to Filthy Rich! about to be announced, it was going to get a lot worse.
“So who’s the guy?” Lois said. “Someone we know? Were you two-timing Neil? Good for you, girl. Go, Marcy.”
“No, I never cheated on Neil when we were together. It’s nothing that interesting. The guy is just someone I met. No big deal. If our lunch didn’t scare him off, I’m sure this will.”
We decided to hail a taxi, husbanding our strength to prepare for my imminent rendezvous with Diane Sawyer.
Once ensconced in the cab’s backseat, Lois and I fell into our old, loopy game of trying to decide the Brady Bunch episode most applicable to the current situation. Lois nominated the episode where Marcia wants to be in the school variety show, and her mom, dad, and brother Greg somehow wind up in it, too. Episode Eighty-one.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “Just substitute me for Marcia, and Good Morning America for the school show, and you have a pretty similar plot. And I guess you two symbolize the other Bradys, only instead of actually being in the show, you’re just helping me straighten. Makes sense.”
“Can someone open a window, please?” said Norma, squeezed uncomfortably between the two of us. “This conversation is making me carsick.”
* * *
What was the name of the Brooklyn high school where the John Travolta character Vinnie Barbarino and the other underachieving “sweathogs” enlivened classes on Welcome Back, Kotter?
a. Millard Fillmore High
b. George Washington High
c. James Buchanan High
d. Grover Cleveland High
See correct answer on back….
* * *
* * *
ANSWER
c. James Buchanan High
* * *
Twelve
“It’s a disaster area,” I cautioned my two intrepid sidekicks as we entered my apartment. “Don’t make fun. It’s been a bad week.”
“I’ve seen worse,” said Norma, coolly eyeing the empty Godiva boxes, fancy cookie tins, wilted floral offerings, rotting fruit baskets, crumbled chips bags, plates of half-eaten pizza slices, and cellophane sandwich wrappers bespeaking multiple deli deliveries that now constituted my home decor. Oh, and I forgot the ample scattering of white pistachio shells and plastic twenty-ounce bottles of Coke. When I’m depressed, only The Real Thing will do. For medicinal powers, I find, Diet Coke just can’t compete, though for three years I refrained from acting on that observation out of respect for Neil’s crusade against sugary sodas and their nefarious role in promoting tooth decay.
“Norma’s right,” said Lois. “We’ve seen worse. Remember the mess after the all-night year-end party we threw in our dorm suite with those Columbia guys freshman year?”
“How could I forget?” I said. Barnard’s dean put us on academic probation until we ponied up for the large window accidentally broken when some brainy male guests got the bright idea of playing catch blindfolded using an empty beer keg. The guys who co-sponsored this elegant soiree received no reprimand from the Columbia dean, a galling injustice that I believe was influential in shaping Norma’s feminist ideology.
“This is nothing compared to that,” said Lois. “You haven’t broken any windows.”
“Great,” I said, stepping carefully around the empty pints of Ben & Jerry’s Double Chocolate Chocolate Chip that dotted the floor of my living room and bedroom like so many gooey grenades. Why is it that some intelligent, highly educated career women react to personal traumas by turning their normally neat living quarters into veritable pigpens? Maybe Norma can examine the phenomenon in her next book, I started thinking, only to be interrupted by the feminist author herself.
“Marcy, snap out of it,” she roared. “Get a grip. You’re a Personal Life Coach. Tell us what to do.”
I was grateful for the reprimand. “You’re right,” I said. “Let’s get busy.”
I assigned Lois to work with me picking up the pieces of debris defiling my apartment, and tossing them in a large green trash bag. Except, that is, for the Coke bottles, which we tossed into a special blue plastic bag for recyclables, mindful that the environment shouldn’t suffer just because of my fragile emotional state. Lois performed this pickup without complaint, notwithstanding the sheer volume, and the obvious difficulty she had bending in her tight designer gown. Moreover, it was a wonder she avoided slipping and breaking a limb traipsing around the littered floors in her stockinged feet. That’s loyalty, I thought, working beside her. I was very touched.
But if there were a Gold Medal for loyalty, it would have to go to Norma. She followed Lois and me around with the vacuum, amiably performing a form of tedious low-level housework—generally considered “women’s work”—that surely would have offended her feminist sensibilities, potentially inspiring a picket line, were it not for our bond of friendship.
When that was done, Norma made the command decision to rejuvenate our flagging energy by loading my Grease sound track into the stereo, and turning up the volume until the whole place seemed to vibrate. The three of us picked up dust rags and began to bop around the apartment to the sound of the young Travolta, mouthing the words and pausing regularly to aggre
ssively polish all adjacent surfaces. By about 4 A.M., the place was looking a lot better and reeking of lemon Pledge.
It was about this time that Lois unilaterally decided that pausing during my interview to offer Diane Sawyer home-baked cookies would add a homey touch that could only enhance my standing with viewers. After a quick trip to an all-night Korean market for ingredients, Lois took over my small kitchen, sending the smell of baking Toll House cookies wafting through the apartment and weakening my newly renewed resolve to observe the oft-violated Rule Number Two of Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Shun fattening foods.”
While Lois was contentedly playing Betty Crocker in the kitchen, Norma, by now an old TV hand, started briefing me on the questions Diane Sawyer was likely to ask, and telling me how I should answer. The briefing continued once I got out of the shower, and Lois, in between batches of cookies, was blow-drying my hair, which made it kind of hard to hear.
Wielding a round styling brush, Lois was trying to undo the great Giovanni’s damage by tucking under the ends of my multilayered shoulder-length mop, an uphill quest she hoped would eventually reveal my missing cheekbones, and achieve the youthful yet sophisticated fashion look my celebrated stylist had promised in that lilting Italian accent of his, and then woefully failed to deliver. But my hair wouldn’t cooperate. The right side went under all right, but on the left, each defiant layer kept separately popping up, creating multiple flips that left me looking like a stranded extra from an old Elvis movie.
Filthy Rich Page 10