MARSH: Hell, no! And don’t make me look like that’s what I was saying. That’s another thing you journalists love to do. Put words in our mouths and make us look catty or stupid.
CELEBRITY: We would never…!
MARSH: No, you blame it on your editors for cutting out the parts that reflected what we really said!
CELEBRITY: I’ll ignore that. So…you’ve got a thriving new business that seems to know no limit. Do you ever run out of ideas?
MARSH: Are you asking if my creative wells run dry? Sure. I think that’s got to be true of any artist. But you know who my main inspiration is? Zoë.
ZOË: Me?
MARSH: You, kiddo. When you’re lucky enough to have an inquisitive young child and you try to experience life through their eyes, where every day is filled with myriad delightful discoveries, it tends to recharge your artistic batteries.
ZOË: Would you like another brownie, Miss…I forgot your name.
CELEBRITY: Carroll. Ms. Carroll. But you can call me Leslie.
ZOË: Do you want another brownie, Leslie? [interviewer helps herself to a second brownie.] Do you have a boyfriend?
CELEBRITY: Newspaper writers get to ask the questions, they don’t have to answer them.
ZOË: Oh. My mommy has a boyfriend. His name is Dennis. I think they’re going to get married like my Aunt MiMi did. I have a new uncle now. His name is Owen. He’s very nice. MiMi taught him how to dress nice, too, because I think he was color blond.
CELEBRITY: Excuse me?
MARSH: Color blind, Zoë. And I don’t think Owen is. I think he was just sartorially confused.
ZOË: What’s “sartorially” mean?
MARSH: It means pertaining to someone’s clothing or sense of style, or the way they dress.
ZOË: Oh. [to interviewer]. You’re sartorially nice. I like miniskirts, too. And your shoes are really pretty. Mommy won’t let me wear high heels like that.
MARSH: Because you’re still in grammar school. And will be for quite some time.
CELEBRITY: Thank you, Zoë. So, Claire, tell us about Dennis.
MARSH: He’s a New York City fireman—
ZOË: My mommy is dating a hero.
MARSH: [blushing]. I don’t think Dennis thinks of himself that way. [she lowers her voice to a near whisper.] He was down at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Lost a lot of buddies from his engine company.
CELEBRITY: Wow. That must still be very hard on him.
MARSH: I think it is.
CELEBRITY: Zoë seems to think there may be wedding bells in your future.
MARSH: I don’t like to jinx anything. The problem with giving an interview to you tabloids is that you blow stuff way out of proportion and then gloat like crazy when you do a follow-up report on the celebrity dust-up. Dennis and I are both very happy right now and we hope that continues to be the case. I refuse to give you any reasons to indulge in preliminary schadenfreüde.
ZOË: What’s—?
MARSH: Gleefully enjoying other people’s misery.
ZOË: It sounds like a kind of ice cream. Like Häagen-Dazs.
MARSH: It’s colder. You know, Leslie, there’s a funny thing about a personal life. See, it’s personal.
CELEBRITY: Then I’m running out of questions, here.
MARSH: I can tell.
CELEBRITY: Now that Claire Marsh Originals has become an enormous undertaking, how do you juggle the demands of career and motherhood? Do you still have the kind of flexibility you had when you started up as a cottage industry? You worked right out of this apartment, didn’t you?
MARSH: I did most of my beading right in there, on the table in the breakfast nook. In the mornings the room is just flooded with light. Believe it or not, I still design and make each piece by myself. I don’t consign any of the work to a subcontractor or rent my name to another designer who creates the jewelry for me. It’s all still me, and I’m very proud of that. Because the pieces are now regarded as high-end, part of that territory is exclusivity—which in fact translates to building fewer pieces as my business grows. I find that if I budget my time well, I can manage to meet all of my production demands and still work around Zoë’s social calendar.
CELEBRITY: And you still haven’t hired an au pair? You can afford one now, you know.
MARSH: Yes, I know. But Zoë and I are a good team, and we get along so well—most of the time—that I always fear introducing another person into the mix will end up being a detriment and not a benefit. However, I have hired a housekeeper to do the cleaning. I have always hated housework—detest it—with a passion, and not having to deal with laundry and vacuuming and scrubbing floors and changing beds and all that is the biggest blessing in the world. I think it’s even better than having a masseuse on call.
CELEBRITY: Then you have that now?
MARSH: The masseuse? [laughs]. I wish! I’m a spa slut. I do take time to unwind at Bliss or someplace like that a couple of times a month, usually when Zoë’s with her father, so I have a long stretch of time to myself.
CELEBRITY: Speaking of Zoë’s father, how does he feel about your stunning success with Claire Marsh Originals? I bet he’s kicking himself for screwing up your marriage.
MARSH: At the risk of sounding like my sister Mia, I no longer have an interest in checking out Scott’s butt to see if it’s bruised.
CELEBRITY: You may be the only woman I can think of whose husband left her for an older woman. How did you handle that?
MARSH: Badly.
CELEBRITY: They do say that living well is the best revenge. And you certainly have managed to do that.
MARSH: Yes, I have, but that’s not exactly why I did it. I didn’t set out to get revenge on my adulterous husband. I’m not Clytemnestra.
CELEBRITY: You tend to pepper your conversation with esoterica, don’t you?
MARSH: I’m well educated. I have absolutely no reason to apologize for that or to dumb down my vocabulary for people who haven’t read Oscar Wilde or Greek mythology. You may not know this, but my father, Brendan Marsh, was poet laureate of New York for a time. He was also a professor of literature up at Columbia. So Mia and I grew up in a kind of rarefied atmosphere when it came to that sort of thing.
CELEBRITY: And yet you girls didn’t go right on to college yourselves.
CLAIRE: Our parents wanted us to feel free to explore our own avenues, to follow our blisses, as it were, without a timetable. It was so different for the two of us compared to the way kids are raised nowadays. Actually, who am I kidding? Mia and I were even weird among our peers. We were super-dorks for the longest time because our mom, Tulia, made us into her guinea pigs and sent us off to school in her one-off clothing designs. We were teased mercilessly.
CELEBRITY: What was it you started to say about raising kids today?
MARSH: They’re like video games. They’re totally overprogrammed. There is such an insane emphasis on getting into Harvard from the time the umbilicus is sealed that there isn’t a minute for kids to have time to explore and wonder. They’re not even allowed to make mistakes, which are a natural part of the learning process. What is it they say—the ubiquitous “they”—about Edison taking ten thousand tries before he got the lightbulb right? If little Tommy Alva were growing up on the Upper West Side today, right in this neighborhood, or even worse, across the park on the East Side, we’d be conducting this interview by gaslight because he never would have been allowed to fail even once, let alone ten thousand times. Zoë, remember when you were in second grade and Mrs. Hennepin gave you an Unsatisfactory on one of your projects because she said it looked like a child did it? I mean, a child DID do it! What the heck was she thinking?! And that’s the prevailing mentality, and the private schools and the parents encourage it. I would transfer Zoë to a public school, but the ones in this area are not exactly stellar and Thackeray is actually a relatively progressive school with excellent academics, despite a few wacko teachers, like Mrs. Hennepin. At least they still have the funds for the arts clas
ses, which I think are an absolute necessity. Even the best public schools in Manhattan have had to slice and dice, if not totally abandon, their arts curriculum. I’m on my soapbox here, but where would any culture be without its freedom of expression? Honestly, I think the worst thing that can happen to kids today is to have no background in music and art and no opportunity to express it in the schools, since opportunities at home are probably even more limited for most families. So that’s one reason why I keep Zoë in that inordinately expensive private school.
CELEBRITY: But now you can afford it without your parents’ support.
MARSH: True, but it’s still obscene. I think my tuition at Columbia was less than Zoë’s at Thackeray.
CELEBRITY: You mentioned earlier about the overprogramming of kids. How do you feel about all those after-school activities?
MARSH: It’s a double-edged sword. First of all, if the kid shows no interest in participating in an activity, the parents ought to be flogged for pushing him into it. That’s really a form of child abuse. If parents are trying to create a resumé for their child, that’s nuts. But if the parents and the kids use the after-school and weekend programs to broaden the child’s horizons in a way that isn’t offered in school or is something the kid is really into doing, then the activities can be wonderful, and great venues for them to learn things like cooperation and teamwork as well as karate or ballet or swimming. You want to raise well-rounded kids, not neurotic ones.
CELEBRITY: Do you think you’re a good mom?
MARSH: I’m not the right person to answer that. I think we need to ask the person my “mom-dom” most affects.
CELEBRITY: Zoë, is your mother a good mom?
ZOË: Yes.
CELEBRITY: That’s it? Just “yes”?
ZOË: Yes. Except I still have to clean up my room and I don’t like doing that. Especially since now we have a housekeeper to clean the apartment.
CELEBRITY: Maybe your mommy doesn’t want you to grow up to act like a princess and not know how to do anything for yourself. If your mommy hadn’t learned how to do things for herself, then where do you think you would be today?
ZOË: [looking at her mother] Living in a cardboard refrigerator box in Central Park. [she giggles.]
CELEBRITY: So, learning how to be independent can be a very good thing, right?
ZOË: Uh-hunh. I mean yes.
CELEBRITY: Are you proud of your mommy? I know she’s proud of you.
ZOË: Well…after my daddy left us we didn’t used to always get along but when she started her jewelry-making business and she met Fireman Dennis, she got really happy and then we got along better. When Mommy is happy, that makes me happy too. When I grow up I want to be just like her.
CELEBRITY: Well, thank you both for sharing your time and airing your views with Celebrity. And we’ll look forward to the upcoming Oscar telecast for a veritable fashion show of Claire Marsh Originals. Just one last question, Claire. Do you worry about what Joan Rivers will say about your pieces?
MARSH: Not a bit. She’ll be wearing them herself.
About the Author
Native New Yorker LESLIE CARROLL is also a professional actress, dramatist, and journalist. She is the author of the novel Temporary Insanity, as well as two contemporary romantic comedies. Leslie has worked more temp jobs than she cares to remember, in politics, advertising, public relations, and—far too frequently—law. Visit Leslie’s web page at www.tlt.com/ authors/lesliecarroll.htm.
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By Leslie Carroll
PLAY DATES
TEMPORARY INSANITY
Copyright
PLAY DATES. Copyright © 2005 by Leslie Carroll. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition February 2007 ISBN 9780061736605
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