by Jules Moulin
Ally studied the tenement building, its doorway arched with a mural of giraffes and a bonsai tree. Why giraffes in Stuyvesant Square? she asked herself. The world was so weird. New York was so weird. Everyone who passed was wearing scrubs. Navy-blue scrubs, bright-green scrubs, bright-blue scrubs. Everyone was talking or texting on the phone.
“It’s hard to see it—when you’re young. You’ve only had so much time on the planet. But when you’re older, you can look back—and see how one thing led to another and that thing led to something else.” She paused. “I don’t mean to lecture you, Bug. You’ve probably erased this message by now. All of them. Anyway, I’m at your building. Still. Call me back.”
Ally hung up and thought about it, then dialed 411 to find a number she didn’t have.
“CTA,” the operator answered. Lizzie’s talent agency.
“Cybil Stern, please,” Ally said. The operator connected her.
“Cybil Stern’s office.” It was Cybil’s assistant.
“Hi there. This is Allison Hughes, Lizzie’s mother. Is Cybil there?”
“Yes, she is, Mrs. Hughes. One moment, please.” The assistant then put Ally on hold. Ten seconds later, she picked up again. “Actually, Cybil is in a meeting right now. Can she return?”
“Return?”
“Your call?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Can you tell her it’s an emergency, please? That I need to speak to her immediately, please?” The assistant agreed and Ally hung up and dialed Weather.
—
Somewhere in Red Hook, out on the sidewalk, Weather sobbed. She couldn’t help it.
Lizzie consoled her as best she could as she pulled off her wig and then stuffed it into the bottom of her bag. “The American girl? The stateside girl? Fresh but willing? Hannah Montana, pre–‘Wrecking Ball,’ dancing around to Taylor Swift in front of a bunch of perverts? Please. That’s the job you’re crying about?”
“So?” sobbed Weather.
“Belgian bankers rubbing it out? Horny husbands in southern Connecticut, slumming in the pool house, fleeing with their laptops from Lululemon wives and whiny kids?” She was trying to make Weather laugh.
“He said they don’t serve the tristate area.”
“Yes, and I have a bridge to sell! Bridge! Bridge! Only a nickel!”
Weather giggled, but then her laughter turned into tears. More tears.
“You’re just like my mom,” Lizzie complained.
“I’m sorry! It hurts!”
Lizzie stopped walking. She made Weather stop. “Hold on, wait. Clean yourself up.” She dug into her bag and pulled out Kleenex. Ally had slipped them in there at some point with Band-Aids, safety pins, mints, and Mace . . .
Weather’s cheeks were flushed and her nose was running. She took a few tissues and wiped her face. “I’m feeling rejected,” she whined again.
“By porn producers?”
“You can’t talk! You got the job!”
“We’re not talking Marty or David O. Russell. We’re not talking Spielberg.”
“I know, but still! How will I get an acting job if I can’t get a porn job?”
“You don’t want a porn job! No one wants a porn job!”
“You do!”
“No! I want a nose job. I am doing this for six weeks. Eight weeks max, and that is it. Now, cheer up! Come on!”
Weather balled up the wet Kleenex and threw it like a brat onto the sidewalk. Lizzie bent over and picked it up, walked to a trash can, and threw it inside. She turned and scolded her friend. “Don’t litter.”
They started walking, and seconds later, Weather started sniveling again. “You think I’m too fat? They didn’t like the fat?”
“You’re gorgeous. Stop.”
“Maybe the tattoos? Some people hate cats.”
“You dyed your hair for your art, okay? I don’t think the gray hair helped.”
“Oh, I forgot. You’re right,” Weather said. She suddenly remembered and fingered a strand of her dyed gray hair.
“It ages you a little, but please. Please. They lost a future Oscar winner.”
“Where are we going?” Weather felt better and looked around. She had no idea where they were.
“I think toward my mom’s.” Lizzie looked skyward to gauge where they were. She looked for a bridge. She needed a bridge to know where they were, to find her way home.
“Can we stop by? Maybe she’s cooking.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” Lizzie said. “Listen to these.” She stopped and dug for her phone in her bag. It was under her wig. “Noah betrayed me. Listen and weep.” She pulled up her voice mail, scrolled through the messages, and gave the phone to Weather.
Weather listened.
“I just want to add,” Ally started, around four o’clock, “when something is sacred, it shouldn’t be exploited. Bought and sold. Children are sacred. Nature is sacred. Animals. Flowers. Flowers are sacred.”
“Flowers?” said Weather. She smiled. Lizzie smiled.
“Sex is sacred. It’s not sinful. That’s not the point. It’s not bad. The point is it’s sacred. Your body is sacred, Lizzie Bug. You might not know that yet. You’re twenty. You can ace a test on four hours’ sleep. Run ten miles. But wait until you wind down. Or watch me as I fall apart, like I did with Grandma. Then you’ll know.”
“Oh, sad,” Weather remarked and looked at Lizzie.
Lizzie nodded.
“Or get sick yourself someday or make a baby—with your body—it’s a miracle. Reproduction. The respiratory system. The brain, honey. I know I sound nuts, but we, as a species, we invent nothing—nothing nearing the beauty of the body. So to prance yourself around and shake your boobs for a bunch of jerks—it’s an affront to any grateful, deep-feeling person and— Oh shoot! Are you kidding? Oh, man! Did I just step in—goddammit!”
Weather looked at Lizzie. “Did she step in dog poo?”
“I think,” Lizzie said and took the phone back. They both laughed.
“You know you can’t erase that ever. I mean ever.”
Lizzie smiled and nodded. She knew. “Can I sleep over?”
Weather nodded. “I cannot believe she’s camping out! In front of your house!”
—
When the sun began to set four hours later, Ally got up and walked a few blocks the other way. She bought another coffee, this time hot, at Irving Farm. Then she returned to the stoop and called Ted. He didn’t pick up. She left a message:
“About the weekend, Ted, it’s Ally. I’m in a bit of a—you cannot believe— Have you ever heard of sex-camming? Maybe you have. It’s an Internet thing.” Ally cringed. “Suffice to say, my whole life is unraveling. No Nantucket. Sorry. Call me.”
She sat on the stoop across from Lizzie’s and sipped that coffee for two more hours.
At one point, a woman and a girl walked by. A mother and daughter, Ally thought. She tried not to stare. She tried not to judge.
The mother, of course, was busy texting, and the girl, around ten, showed no pudgy limbs or budding, or hips. And yet she wore a mini skirt, heels, a see-through T-shirt that fell from her shoulder, and lipstick and blush.
What happened to clothes? What happened to lining? Ally wondered. When did material turn so sheer?
Then she thought: Wait, what’s wrong with sheer? Women should wear what they want. Of course. Then she saw the girl had a book. Oh, she reads. Good, Ally thought. Well, of course she reads! Shit!
At what point had Ally turned into Claire?
After all, Lizzie had worn short skirts, and Ally had never worried back then.
That’s because Lizzie was into balls and computers and guns. She refused to wear dresses, collected weapons; dozens of lightsabers, caches of Nerf. She played with the Dreamhouse but mostly she’d rendered it under siege.
She never cared about looking pretty.
Ally remembered when Lizzie was ten, or around ten. She left camp sulking, stomping her feet. “Avery said—”
“What did Avery say?”
“I can only have a baby if a man puts his penis—in my vagina.” Ally opened the car door for her and she climbed inside. “Is that true?” She sounded betrayed.
“That’s one way. There are others.” She swung the door shut and rounded the car.
Well, there it was. It was time for the talk. She opened the driver’s side door and climbed in.
“Is that what you did?” Lizzie demanded.
“Yes,” Ally said. “Seat belt, please.” She started the car and pulled on her own.
“Disgusting!”
“Seat belt.”
“I’m never doing that! Ever! Ever!” Lizzie pulled on her belt.
“You don’t have to. Science is changing. There are lots of ways—to skin a cat.”
“What? Skin a cat? What does that mean?”
“It’s an expression.” Ally glanced into the mirror to check for cars. “It means there are ways—different ways—to do the same thing. Sorry. That’s all.” She pulled out.
Lizzie sat back and slapped her bare thighs. “You said the fishes come out the mouth! You said the dad squirts them out when you kiss!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did!”
She did. Ally remembered. Lizzie was in the bath. She was four. Maybe even three. The fish, as she called them, instead of sperm, “swam down the throat into the tummy and landed on an egg, and a baby hatched.”
“Exactly,” said Ally, assuming Lizzie would soon forget.
She was wrong.
“Okay, I said that,” Ally admitted. “But you were three. It was cute.”
“I am adopting.” Lizzie reached for the radio dial. “I am adopting.”
“Fine. Do. But you have some time. You might change your mind.”
“I will never change my mind.”
—
At ten, in the dark, Ally got up and went home.
—
At ten the next day, she woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing.
Frank, from UPS, again. “Whole load today.”
“Morning, Frank.”
He turned and revealed eleven boxes descending in size like a tower on his trolley.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, surprised. “What is this?”
“Two more in the truck.”
“Two? More?”
“Where would you like them?”
“Wait— Can I?— Wait. Can I not sign? Can you take them back to sender or something? I wasn’t expecting—”
“You don’t want them?”
“Um,” Ally said. She wasn’t sure.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, no, forget it. I’ll sign. Sorry.” She took a deep breath, took the stylus and signed.
She and Frank brought the boxes inside. They piled them at the base of the stairs, next to the unopened box from La Perla.
Frank walked out, back to his truck, to fetch the two others, and Ally skimmed the return addresses. “Oh, man,” she said, reading the labels: Cartier, Godiva, Chanel, Blahnik. Gaultier, Gucci, Barneys, Saks.
After Frank left, she found the phone and called the St. Regis.
She asked for Jake Bean.
“Certainly, ma’am. One moment, please,” the operator said and then disappeared. When she came back, she said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. No one is registered under that name.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ally said. “I meant Noah. Noah Bean, please.”
“Certainly, ma’am,” the operator said. “Hold one moment.” She went away again and came back. “I’m sorry, ma’am. No reservation under that name.”
She sat on the stairs and dialed Anna. She had to call her three times.
—
“He sent me presents.”
“Who?”
“Jake Bean. The UPS man showed up with boxes. A dozen boxes. Saks, Cartier. I haven’t opened them.”
“How do you know it wasn’t Ted?”
“Ted buys for Ted. Golf clubs. Scuba gear. Squash rackets.”
“And the problem?”
“What does he want? What is he doing? I haven’t seen him in ten years.”
“Is this about age? Because there was a woman last week in the news. She married her truck.”
“And?”
“Ally. Mary-Kate Olsen, the toddler from Full House. The toddler twin. Remember that show? She’s with Sarkozy.”
“The French president?”
“No. His brother. But still, the guy’s a thousand years old. And then there’s Woody—”
“Please don’t go there—and you know it’s different for women. “There’s still a double standard out there. We think it’s changed, but it hasn’t, Anna—”
“Yes, it has. Jennifer Lopez, Casper Smart. Joan Collins is seventy-seven. Her boyfriend is—”
“Please. How do you know this? How do you even—?”
“I looked it up! And you know what I think? You’ve been comparing every man—for the last ten years—to Noah Bean. Or Jake. Or whatever.”
“No.”
“Like I did with John, you fell in love at first fuck.”
“Don’t be so crass! We didn’t fuck. The whole thing was tender—and loving. He said so!”
“See? You loved him! I knew it! Ha!”
“I didn’t say that. I said the sex—was loving.”
“Fine.”
“By the way, Lizzie is doing porn.”
“What?”
THEY DROVE AND DROVE as night fell, until they spotted the perfect bar with neon signs and a pebble-strewn lot set back from the road.
Friar Tuck’s.
This was the place, they both agreed, as Jake pulled in. They could practically smell the draft beer, the frozen potato fries soused in tallow, the greasy cod, twenty-cent wings, fried oysters, and cheap cologne. They could hear Megadeth on the jukebox.
Jake parked his Chevy in a dark, empty corner at the edge of an even darker wood.
“This is so strange,” Ally said. “I’m never out at night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m never outside, outdoors, at night. It’s so easy on the eyes. I forgot.” She turned to him. “Remember the first time you went out at night? With your friends? How exciting that was? That’s how this feels.”
Jake smiled and turned off the radio. “I’m going in. You head inside in, like, twenty minutes?”
“Great.”
“You okay out here by yourself?”
Ally looked around the lot. “Of course.” She peered into the woods.
“Okay,” Jake said. “See you inside.”
—
Ten minutes later, alone in the car, Ally rolled down the window and looked up into the clear night.
Off the coast that far out, the sky was awash with thousands of stars. She opened her phone to check Meer’s message but dialed New York instead and waited.
After some seconds, Lizzie picked up, loud and clear. “Mommy?” she answered. She knew it was Ally.
“Hi, sweetie! How’s it going?”
“I’m going to bed. I’m tired,” Lizzie said. She sounded weary.
“How was the shopping?”
“Good.”
“Only good?”
“Where are you now?” Lizzie said, yawning.
“Home,” Ally said.
“No, you’re not.”
“What?” How could she know?
“We tried you at home.”
“Oh. No, I’m home. I didn’t hear it. The phone ring. Sorry.” She changed the subject. “See you at
the station tomorrow? Yay!”
“Do you want Grandma? She’s downstairs.”
“No, I’m here,” Claire said. At some point, she’d picked up the line.
“Oh!” Ally laughed. “Hi, Mom.”
“Night, Mommy,” Lizzie said and yawned again.
“Night, honey. Did you get your hair cut?”
Lizzie hung up.
“Lizzie? Mom? You still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. We’ll see you at one?”
“One with bells on,” Ally said. “Did she get a haircut?”
“No. She didn’t. Did you get your work done?”
“Almost there,” Ally lied. “Just a few more.”
Claire paused. “See you tomorrow.”
“Great,” Ally said. “How did the shopping go?”
Without replying, Claire hung up.
Ally stared at the phone for a moment. That was odd. She sat there wondering what was wrong. Maybe the reception? Or something else?
She turned on the radio, and after some minutes, she looked toward the bar and wondered suddenly if she was safe, sitting in a parking lot alone.
She gazed around the lot again. No one was out among the cars, and the music was playing so loud inside that no one would hear her if she screamed. If she screamed. If she had to scream for some reason.
She decided she’d waited long enough. Surely Jake had a soda by now and had picked up a game of darts or whatever.
She grabbed her purse, took the keys from the ignition, and climbed from the Chevy. She locked it twice and walked off quickly toward the bar.
THE STUDIO AT THE end of the hall was designed to look like a teenager’s room: cheerleading pendants, One Direction posters, Hello Kitty sheets.
The MacBook Pro sat on a desk across from a mirror so clients could enjoy two different angles at the same time.
“Will it work?” Fishman asked and held the door.
Lizzie stepped in. “Perfect,” she said, looking around. “You thought of everything.” She was impressed. She slipped a CD out of her pocket and turned to him. “Rihanna? Usher?”
“Perfect,” he said, imitating her and turning to leave.