A Total Waste of Makeup

by Gruenenfelder, Kim

  “Who’s this guy you’ve been waiting by the phone for? Jordan? Doug?”

  “No. A guy named Dave.”

  “How many dates did you have?”

  “Three. Well, four.” Hey—if you have sex with him, that should count as a date.

  “Then he didn’t think anything was wrong with you,” Drew assures me, then takes another drag from his cigarette. “And you didn’t do anything wrong, if you’re worried about that.”

  I was. “I’m also never going to be Jennifer Aniston,” I tell him.

  Drew looks at me, confused. “Why would you want to be?”

  The “duh” is definitely in my voice as I answer, “Because she’s beautiful, and successful, and she can buy whatever she wants, and go wherever she feels like going. And people will still remember her in a hundred years, so she’s immortal. And she still gets great jobs, even though she never has to work again. And I’ll bet she doesn’t wait by the phone.”

  Drew is silent, thinking. Shit! I shouldn’t have said she never has to work again. Why was I so desperate for a friend that I made the mistake of talking to my boss?

  “You ever read TV Guide?” Drew asks me, interrupting my thoughts.

  “I think read is a very figurative term. Why?”

  “Years ago, they did this issue honoring the fifty greatest TV stars of all time.”

  “And Jennifer Aniston wasn’t in it, and therefore I should feel better?” I say, sighing.

  “No, she wasn’t,” Drew says, “but that’s not where I’m going with this. I saved the issue because on the cover were the greats: Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Cosby, Carroll O’Connor. And inside were Johnny Carson and Carol Burnett and a bunch of others I’ve been honored to meet over the years. And you know what all these stars had in common?”

  “Money beyond their wildest dreams?” I ask, irritated and now getting even more depressed.

  “No.”

  “Fame and success beyond their wildest dreams?” I ask. God, how is this supposed to be cheering me up?

  Drew shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”

  “Then I don’t know, and this is making me feel worse, because there’s not one thing I can say about my life—”

  “They’ve all lost a child,” Drew says somberly.

  I stand there in stunned silence. Drew continues, “And I’ll bet every one of them would have given up all their money and success to have their kid back. I’ll bet they’d have given up every fucking thing in the world to hug their baby again.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Drew went on, “And that’s not including people like Oprah Winfrey, who was molested as a child, Roseanne Barr, who gave up a child for adoption, Lucille Ball divorcing her husband, the one great love of her life, after he had slept with half the women in Hollywood. Hell—how many divorces do you think came to those fifty people?”

  Drew went on, “Don’t be jealous of anyone. I guarantee you, if everyone walked into a room, and dumped their problems onto the floor, when they saw what everyone else’s problems were, they’d be scrambling to get their own problems back before someone else got to them first.”

  I thought about what he said. Pretty profound for Drew. I cocked my head at him. “That’s last line’s from a movie, isn’t it?”

  “Okay, yes. But the rest of it was me.”

  Drew and I talked until dawn that night. I guess I could be sad that the one man in my life I can talk to until dawn is my boss. But I’ll tell you, I sure felt a lot better. And the following morning, I had another bon mot for my book of advice:

  A good long talk can cure almost anything.

  Seventeen

  Life begins at 30.

  God, if this is the beginning of the rest of my life, I’m so screwed.

  Later that morning, bleary eyed and a bit hungover, I took a cab to my car, then headed over to the set. While en route in my car, my cell phone rings. I check the caller ID. It’s my mother. I put on my headset and pick up anyway.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  “Happy birthday, sweetie,” she says brightly.

  “Thank you. Happy birthday to you, too,” I say back. For some reason, when someone says “happy birthday” to me, it’s like “Merry Christmas” or “Happy New Year.” I always feel like I should respond, “To you, too.”

  “I want to warn you about your father’s gift so you don’t go all ballistic when you get it at dinner tonight,” Mom says.

  “Oka-ay,” I say cautiously.

  “I mean, your father loves you. He would never mean to hurt your feelings.”

  My father’s gifts never hurt my feelings—they’re just weird. Last year he gave me a blowtorch. Apparently it’s to make crème brûlée without having to put it in an ice bath in your oven. I don’t make crème brûlée, and I use my oven for storage.

  The year before that he got me surfing lessons. Me, with my horrible, debilitating fear of sharks. (It goes well with my fear of snakes and fear of commitment.)

  “I’m sure whatever he gave me is fine,” I say. My cell phone beeps. “Mom, hold on a sec….” I click on. “Hello.”

  “Hi, it’s Dad. I just wanted to give you a heads up on your mother’s gift. It was bought with the best of intentions.”

  The road to hell was paved with the best of intentions.

  I’m paraphrasing—but you get the point.

  “Dad, I’m on the other line. Let me call you right back,” I say, then click back to Mom. “All right, I’m back.”

  “He got you an appointment with Ramone at Frederic Fekkai,” my mother says, her tone expressing outrage.

  “The hair salon?” I ask, confused.

  “One and the same,” Mom says, now getting angry. “I told him you didn’t want to change your hair color, but he insisted. He said with how gray your hair is getting…”

  “Whoa, whoa…Whoa!” I sputter out.

  “I know. How insulting, right? I mean, it’s not your fault you got that early gray gene of his. It’s from his side of the family, you know….”

  “I am not going gray!” I belt out as I slam on my brakes to allow a Lincoln Navigator to cut me off.

  “Honey, please, I’m your mother. I love you, but don’t you think we all know why you’ve chosen to be a blonde these past few years?”

  I swear, she’s chiding me. “I chose to be a blonde because I felt like doing something different with my hair!”

  “Sweetie, you shouldn’t be embarrassed by it. Valerie Bertinelli turned gray at twenty-seven, and look at how successful she turned out,” my mother informs me. “She used to be blonde, but now she’s back to that beautiful dark hair she had when she was on One Day at a Time.”

  I’m speechless. It’s just too early. “Mom, I’m almost at the studio. I gotta go.”

  “Okay. Have fun on your special day,” Mom says cheerfully. “Oh, and when your father calls and tries to warn you about the present I got you, tell him that I am totally right, that it’s for your own good, and that at least my gift was well thought out.”

  Never give someone a present that’s “for their own good.”

  “Dad’s not going to call,” I insist as my phone beeps again. Speak of the devil.

  “At least I got you something practical. And it’s something you would never buy for yourself,” Mom says, then clicks off before I can say good-bye.

  I click back to my dad. “Whatever Mom got me, I’m sure she meant well…”

  “She got you Botox injections.”

  “Excuse me?” I say, slamming on my brakes to let a Ford Expedition cut me off.

  “From her dermatologist. You know, for that wrinkle in between your eyes from scowling at her all these years? This’ll get rid of that in time for your sister’s wedding.”

  Botox, for anyone living in a cave, is the poison botulinum toxin (yeah, as in botulism), diluted and put in a vial, then injected into your forehead to make your wrinkles go away. I look at my forehead in my rearview mirror. I’ll be damned! I do have a wrinkle b
etween my brows. And, now that I’m looking at it, one big horizontal line across my forehead. Happy birthday to me. “Oh. My. God. I do have a wrinkle between my brows.”

  “It’s hardly noticeable,” Dad assures me.

  “Yeah,” I say bitterly, “so unnoticeable, my mother wants to poison me to get rid of it.”

  “You sound upset,” Dad says.

  Nothing gets by him. “Yeah, well, this day is sucking already, and it’s not even eight o’clock. Shit!” I slam on my brakes as a Mercedes SUV cuts me off.

  “Are you upset about turning thirty?” Dad asks.

  “Yes…No…I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, changing lanes and making a right turn into the studio lot.

  “I would give my left ball to be thirty again,” Dad tells me.

  “Charming,” I say dryly as I ease past the guard gate and wave to the guards who I see every morning. “Do you know by the time John Lennon was my age, the Beatles had already broken up?”

  “Cheer up,” Dad says. “When John Lennon was my age, he’d already been dead for more than ten years.”

  No matter who you are, and what’s going on in your life, there’s always someone out there worse off than you.

  “That’s a good way to look at it, I suppose,” I say (because, frankly, I have no comeback to that). As I park my car, I see the P.A.’s car pull up, with a comatose Drew inside. “Dad, Drew’s here. I gotta go.”

  “Loveyoubye,” Dad says in one word, and hangs up.

  I get out of my car just as Drew gets out of the P.A.’s car, wearing dark glasses, and looking like death warmed over. Actually no, not even warmed over. Just death. I’m starting to feel guilty for keeping him up so late.

  “Good morning,” I say. “How was your night?”

  He yawns. “I stayed up all night with a girl, and I didn’t even get any.”

  “That’s a shame,” I say, playing along. “Was she cute?”

  He covers his mouth as he yawns again, this time rather loudly. “Very. But if I ever hit on her, she’d sue my ass. Can you go to Craft Service and get me a venti cappuccino?”

  “You mean a large,” I remind him as we walk to the Makeup trailers. “Ventis are from Starbucks.”

  He rubs his red eyes. “Sweetie, no disrespect, but I don’t mean a large. I mean an extra, extra large. I mean, have them take the biggest container they can find, hose it down, then fill it with coffee. I want a trough of coffee, if they have it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I say, chuckling.

  I head over to Craft Service, which is the caterer for the morning food and the snacks throughout the day, and see that they have a cake set out for me—a big Costco birthday cake with “Happy 30th Charlie!” written on it.

  Well, this day’s just getting better and better.

  From behind me, someone puts his hands over my eyes.

  “Guess who?” Jordan’s voice demands.

  “Hmmm…,” I say. “Helen Gurley Brown.”

  “Taller,” he says, keeping his hands over my eyes.

  “Heidi Klum?” I guess.

  “No. But if you know Heidi Klum, I’d like an introduction.”

  “Kobe LeBron.”

  Jordan takes down his hands. “Who?”

  I turn around. “Now you know how I feel whenever you name professional athletes. How are you doing?”

  For some reason, as I talk to him this morning, I can’t believe how calm I am. This is Jordan. The Jordan. And I’m talking to him like he’s a normal person.

  “I’m good,” Jordan says. “I just got your e-mail this morning. I’m sorry you got bumped offline. I should have waited for you to come back, but I was tired.”

  The middle-aged man from the Craft Service truck yells, “Next!”

  I turn to him. “Good morning, Juan. Can you get me a regular cappuccino, and a huge one for Drew?”

  “Of course,” Juan says happily. “Nonfat milk, no sugar.”

  “Thanks,” I say brightly, then turn back to Jordan. “So, what did you do with your weekend?”

  I try to keep the question light and breezy. What I really wanted to say was “Where the hell were you?”

  “I went up north,” Jordan says as he pours himself a regular coffee from a huge urn on one of the tables. “It was a spur-of-the-moment idea.”

  “Did you have fun?” I ask, still lightheartedly. I want to grill him for details, but I don’t want to look too interested.

  Jordan gives a weird look that I can’t decipher, and says, “Not really. It was okay, I guess.”

  I don’t know what that means, so I don’t respond.

  Jordan takes a sip from his Styrofoam cup and says, “Anyway, can you follow me over to my gear? I want to give Drew the proofs from his party.”

  “Sure,” I say, taking my two cappuccinos and following Jordan over to his gear of cameras, tripods, lights and lenses, and various packs of film. Jordan pulls out a large white envelope and a medium-sized box wrapped in light purple paper.

  “Happy birthday!” he says, handing me the purple box.

  “Oh my God!” I say, beyond excited. “You shouldn’t have!”

  “Open it.”

  I rip off the paper voraciously. It’s a beautiful, antique silver frame. Inside is an 8" × 10" black-and-white photo of Dawn and me from the party. She’s saying something that’s making me laugh, and neither of us knows our picture is being taken, so we are totally at ease, and totally ourselves.

  It’s an amazing picture. He’s somehow managed to capture a real moment in my life. You know how, with most pictures, you smile your stewardess smile for the camera, no matter how you’re feeling inside? Well, this picture isn’t like that at all. We’re both just being ourselves—this is just how we are when no one’s looking. And he’s somehow managed to capture the spirit of Dawn and our friendship in one split-second shot.

  “This is the best present I’ve gotten in I don’t know how long,” I say. And I mean it.

  “It’s just a little something,” Jordan says, shrugging. “I love how the shot turned out. You’re both so amazingly photogenic.”

  I’m amazingly photogenic? I think in disbelief. Me? I have hated almost every picture I’ve ever been in. But this one I love. “It’s really wonderful. I know just where I’m going to put it—on my fireplace mantle in the living room,” I say as I give Jordan a big hug.

  He hugs me back, and man does it feel wonderful! We stay in the hug for a few seconds too long (well, define “too long”). He rubs my back lightly, and I feel like I could spend the rest of my life in those arms.

  Finally, suddenly feeling a little nervous and self-conscious, I break from the hug. “Drew’s in Makeup. Do you want to follow me?”

  “Sure.”

  We walk over to the Makeup trailer, and open the door to the smell of lotions, powders, and hair spray, combined with lots of coffee.

  Vic, Drew’s makeup artist, an effeminate black man in his early thirties, rubs concealer under Drew’s eyes.

  Drew tells him, “I’m sorry, you have your work cut out for you today. I know I look like crap.”

  “Honey, if I can make Barbra Streisand look good, you know I’ll have no problem with you.”

  “Thanks,” Drew says, and puts his hand out to Jordan. “Hey man, how’s it going?”

  “Good,” Jordan says, and they do the new handshake. “The pictures from your party turned out great.”

  He hands Drew the white envelope. Drew opens it and pulls out the proof sheets as Jordan says, “I didn’t know which ones to blow up for you. I figured you would want to choose your favorites, then tell me which sizes you need.”

  “These are excellent!” says Drew. “I particularly like the ones of Dawn.”

  Thanks, I think sarcastically.

  Drew scans through the sheets pretty quickly. When he gets to the last sheet, he pulls it up close to his face and scrutinizes a particular shot. “Oh, I like this one of Dawn and Charlie.”


  Drew hands me the sheet, and points to the shot. “Charlie, look at this one. You look amazing! Jordan, doesn’t Charlie look amazing?!”

  I’m not sure I like the tone of shock that comes with the question (which, to me, sort of sounded like, “Can you believe such a Quasimodo could look normal?”), but I did like Jordan’s answer. “She was the most beautiful woman at the party.”

  I think I am starting to swoon. What does swooning feel like?

  “Yes, she was,” Drew confirms, lying through his teeth. “And, can you believe it…she’s still single.”

  “Drew…,” I say under my breath.

  “I mean, Jordan, don’t you just wonder how it’s possible that some man hasn’t just snatched this woman up?”

  “I know I do,” Vic agrees, brushing powder over Drew’s nose. “Beautiful woman like that. I’m telling you, straight men are just ignorant.”

  “We are,” Drew agrees vehemently.

  “Drew…,” I say, still under my breath, but starting to let a little anger creep into my voice.

  Drew ignores me, choosing to address Jordan. “I ask you, how can a man chance letting a woman like this get away? I’m telling you, it’s a mystery, wrapped in a conundrum, cloaked in a riddle…”

  “Oh honey, it is a mystery wrapped in bacon,” Vic says, “because that girl is so delicious, if I were a straight man, I’d eat her up. Know what I’m saying?” He snaps once in the air. “Oka-ay?”

  Drew snaps in the air in agreement. “Oka-ay!”

  “Okay…,” I interrupt, wanting to bitchslap both of them. “So, Jordan has to leave now, and go to work,” I say pointedly to Drew. “And you’ll pick out some pictures later, right?”

  “Oh,” Drew says, looking at the pictures again and spouting off a list. “I can pick them now. One of each, in a four-by-six. Anything with Dawn or Charlie in it, give me doubles. I want the one of Dawn and me alone in a five-by-seven, and can you make a five-by-seven of the one of Dawn and Charlie?”

  I got to hand it to him—the man knows what he wants.