A New Lu

by Laura Castoro

  “It’s Jacob’s.”

  She makes a moue and shoves the sugar bowl aside. “Go on.”

  Very quickly I give her the scenario of last February.

  Her mouth is puckered like a prune by the time I’m finished. “I suppose this means you once hoped to win Jacob back.”

  “Definitely not. And it’s mutual.”

  She checks her perfectly manicured nails, then squeezes the tip of her left pinkie, as if to put a better curve in it. “Are you very sure?”

  “So sure that I’ve told no one except you and William that he’s the father. And the kids. And Mom and Dad. And Andrea and Cy. And Curran.”

  “That should insure secrecy.”

  “They had to know. At least the family. There’s going to be a new member, whether they like it or not.”

  “I hope you aren’t now going to try to tell me that Dr. Templeton’s interest in you is purely platonic.”

  I can’t find the words to lie about it.

  Reluctantly I relate the story of William and me, ending with Sunday’s fiasco of William and Jacob struggling like beached octopuses in my hall. My aunt limits her responses to the occasional “He didn’t?” or “Child, child, child” while I confess all.

  When I’m done, a smile tugs her straight-lipped expression off center. “All these years I’ve waited to see the reason why your mother named you Tallulah.”

  “Yes. Being named after a woman with a thick vein of wanton stupidity and self-destructive tendencies tends to take a toll.”

  “Tallulah, if that’s the way you felt, why didn’t you just change your name when you reached legal age?”

  I slump forward, elbows on table and my laced fingers making a hammock for my chin. “Because I always hoped that an unusual name would insure an unusual life. How sad is that to admit to at my age?”

  “Yes, I do see your point. Until now you’ve lived an absolutely unremarkable life. Much as I’d like to say so, Jacob’s not to blame for that. You are.” My aunt fingers the top of the half-and-half carton then pushes it aside. “After a brilliant start as a journalist, you let circumstance sidetrack you. Thankfully, you’re again breathing the air of the discovered woman.”

  “Discovered? It feels more like I’ve been exposed.”

  She is quiet for a moment as she stares at her iced coffee. “I don’t suppose you have any Baileys about?”

  I go in search of the Irish cream whiskey.

  When I return, Marvelle has powdered her face, and looks as cool as one of those slices of cold cucumber she uses to eliminate puffy eyes.

  “You must learn to pace yourself, Tallulah.” She says this as she pours a very indiscreet amount of liquor into her glass. “I believe in a woman keeping her private business private. However, you find yourself in a situation that won’t allow that. So then, how do you propose to keep your dignity?”

  It’s moments like this that remind me that my aunt maintains a more sophisticated, pre-reality-TV attitude. Dignity is a thing one works to preserve. Nowadays celebrities and presidential candidates trip over one another in the rush to prove they lack any shred of self-respect, hawking everything from Depends to Viagra.

  And then I realize that I better explain why I am about to be publishing’s newest gossip item, if my editor has her way.

  I quickly outline Five-O’s take on my pregnancy. “One thing I’m adamant about is that, for public consumption, this baby has only a mother. I know that’s inviting speculation. I thought, at first, I was shielding Jacob. Now I realize I’m doing this for me.”

  Aunt Marvelle puts down her iced Irish coffee after taking a satisfying sip. “Do you think people wasted their time in lurid speculation on how Jodi Foster got pregnant, not once but twice? No. The press couldn’t heap enough praise on her for simply saying paternity was nobody’s business but her child’s and hers. She got lots of positive press.”

  “Didn’t you remind me not long ago that I should keep my private business private?”

  She waves away the thought with a tinkle of her bracelets. “That was when you were living a conventional life. Now you’ve got other priorities, like earning a living. In this instance you need notoriety to do that. That’s not the same as caring what strangers think. Are you asking any of them to raise your child, feed it, educate it or even change a single diaper? So then, let them wonder. Celebrity life is about attitude, Tallulah. Once you make up your mind about how you feel on a matter, that will dictate how you handle it.”

  Aunt Marvelle looks away, crosses her legs and then, with a huff of impatience, uncrosses them. “Doctors! Telling me that I shouldn’t cross my legs because it cuts off circulation to the extremities.” She bends forward and traces an imaginary seam up the back of one trim calf. “At my age my legs are one of the few good parts left.”

  I sip my sugarless iced decaf. “I wish things were that simple for the kids. Davin is afraid of competition if I have a boy. Dallas is furious because…” I shrug. “She’s just been angry with me for a while.”

  “They are young.” Aunt Marvelle looks up from rearranging her skirt. “The young think life should be orderly and reasonable, even when they aren’t. But no woman worth calling herself female arrives at your age without a few skeletons. Attitude determines whether you hang them in the closet or put something fashionable on them and stick them in your front window as trophies.”

  I can’t long be unhappy around her. “I love Mom, but she’s never quite understood me. How do I get to be you?”

  “Stay awake in life.” She reaches for her purse and pulls out lipstick and mirror with practiced ease. “It will keep you from making some mistakes, and repeating those you do make.” She pauses to roll up a tube of Revlon Red. “For the rare instances when you might want to repeat a mistake, you’ll remember how it’s done.”

  She applies color to her lips, blots them with a napkin. “Now then, tell me more about your Dr. Templeton. Can he dance? I love a man who can dance.”

  33

  Tai tried being a caring and indulgent boss. It lasted a week. By nature she’s a heat-seeking missile, and we are all warm-body targets. No staff person has spoken above a whisper in days. We’re like ghosts, appearing and disappearing in silence, all but reduced to wearing Uggs in July to keep our footsteps a muffled secret. The August issue of Five-O hits the racks next week. But there’s a more immediate reason for nerves. The issue starts showing up in subscribers’ mailboxes today.

  There was no lead time for the usual “sell” before the launch of “The Pregnant Pause.” It is going out with all the fanfare of a late-breaking bulletin—on the WE Cable channel.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t keep that opinion to myself. Yesterday’s brainstorm session for next month’s column went from bad to worse. Tai had worn the nap off the carpet before turning snide, saying that it was too bad I’m so damn healthy, after all. The suspense of a disaster pregnancy would make for more sexy copy.

  When I suggested that we have time for interest in “The Pregnant Pause” to build, she went postal.

  “Build? A piece like this has to explode into popular consciousness. People have to feel they need to know more, and better yet, talk about it with everyone they meet.”

  “A good steady climb—”

  “Explode!”

  And so forth.

  She’s the hammer. I’m the nail. Her last words to me were “It’s your ass on my bottom line.”

  Right now I wish my bum were anywhere else other than in this photo meeting with Curran. We’re looking over a range of Tai-initiated maternity fashion photo-opsites.

  Tai decided we needed to look at me as a TKO, technical knockout, in the ring of life.

  “Lu’s wounded, lost a few rounds,” she said as she handed Curran the sketches. “She needs a method to cope. Equipage.”

  “Harnesses and halters?” Curran ventures uncertainly. “Is S and M bondage in the Five-O demographic?”

  Tai’s frowns last no longer than th
e bat of her lashes. “Equipage means accoutrements, Curran, darling.”

  The puzzlement doesn’t vanish from his incredibly open face.

  “Provisions, Curran. Supplies. High-end comfort items.”

  “Ah! Run up the credit cards!”

  Tai nods. “Madly expensive items, real perfume…silk pillowcases…mohair booties. Furs. Jewelry. Our tagline, “‘Unlucky in Love? Be Lucky in Lux!’”

  After observing the sketches, Curran pushes a handful of dreads back from his forehead. “Diesel!”

  “Are you joking? Tai wants me to pose at a pro-choice clinic, an adoption agency and a home for unwed mothers, to show off expensive shoes, bags and jewelry.”

  “It’s edgy.”

  “It’s freaky.” I push back from the table with a sigh. “I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Marc’s metrosexual approach to life. At least he would have been about the clothes, not the message.”

  Curran idly twists a dread. “I think Tai’s ideas are da bomb! Camera angles a-poppin’… The one of you in the stirrups, showing only the shoes on your feet? That’s phat!”

  “I see this getting out of hand. Next thing, Tai will want me in my ninth month in a full-length fur on the cover saying, “Daddy’s a Hound So We’re Dressed in Fox!”

  I turn to the next sketch and groan. It’s one of me standing on the railing of the George Washington Bridge. “Oh, bother! I mean, what do you wear to a drowning?”

  Curran grins. “Ralph Drown-in? Nine Vest? Chan-nel wear?”

  “Bad, Cur. Bad!” I pick up the notes to swat him. He retaliates by trying to tweak my nose. We are halfheartedly struggling when the door opens.

  “Oh.” KaZi’s gaze cuts like a laser between us. “I came to talk about makeup options. I didn’t know he was here.”

  “Come in.” I’m determined to be friendly with KaZi. She’s been avoiding me for weeks. But before I can add another word, she’s gone, the door shut behind her.

  I look at Curran. “What’s going on?”

  Curran ducks my look. “She’s just trippin’.”

  “That much I got. You’re a man. I can think of a dozen good reasons why she might be annoyed with you. But why is she angry with me?”

  “She’s not, exactly.”

  I grab a single dread and tug it. “Don’t make me torture you.”

  “Gotta be all up in a bro’s business—ouch!”

  “That’s for switching syntax on me. Now, tell me, in boring English, what’s going on.”

  He looks put out. “She’s mad on account of the time I spend with you.”

  “I can understand that. I’m annoyed, too, by the amount of time you spend following me around with your camera. So knock it off.” But Curran’s not meeting my gaze. “There’s more?”

  “Girl’s outta control. Says you’re always on my jock.”

  I release his hair. “That better not translate as obscenely as it sounds.”

  “It mean’s like flirting.”

  “Me flirting with you? That’s what KaZi thinks? You told her that’s ridiculous, right?”

  “Damn straight. I tried.” Curran tests his dreads for smoothness. “She says it doesn’t matter what I say ’cause what I do is follow you around like I’m jonesing.”

  The idea isn’t totally a shock. I’m smart enough to know that a lonely young man is likely to develop inappropriate attachments. That’s why I’ve tried to keep things light between us. But I thought, with KaZi to take up his time…

  “Curran, you don’t…?” I pick my words carefully. “You aren’t…?”

  “No, ’course not.” Oh, damn. Curran isn’t looking me in the face, and if his ears were any redder, he’d need first aid for burns.

  For a second I’m nonplussed, but I know if I don’t stomp on this right now it will smolder like some sad secret until Curran and I won’t be able to be in the same space anymore without the specter of unauthorized affection threatening our friendship. So I do what impulse drives me to.

  I put a hand on the back of his neck, and when he turns to look at me, I kiss him hard, on the cheek. “Thank you. You’ve made my week. And tell her if she doesn’t treat you right after this, she’s definitely going to lose you to the better woman.”

  Curran just stares at me. I know he doesn’t know what to think. I don’t, either, but I just nod and grin and keep on grinning until he begins to smile back. “So, what’s it going to be first? The bridge, or the home for unwed mothers?”

  Tai joins us a little later. Curran tries to steer her away from the Planned Parenthood clinic. I cite the average age of our readership to try to skip over the home for unwed mothers. But Tai’s adamant.

  “Our new advertisers are looking at us as a fresh but one-time market. We need to deliver a spread that will make a lasting impression.”

  I check out of the debate to glance at my watch. I’ve got fifteen minutes to get out of here and meet Andrea, or I’ll be late for my second ultrasound. It’s chancy but I decide, for the welfare of the magazine’s vested interest in me, to mention this to Tai.

  She looks annoyed. “Can’t you take care of that sort of thing after hours?”

  “I’d be fine with that, but the clinic keeps regular office hours.”

  “God! I’ve got to get back to the city where people have priorities!” Tai tosses her notes on the table and stomps out, practically knocking over Brenda, who’s passing by in the hall.

  A few minutes later, Brenda joins me to wait for the elevator. “Let me guess what’s eating Tai.”

  Rhonda, who’s already standing there with an armful of mail, says, “Maybe that’s the problem. No one is.”

  I’m caught off guard by this observation. Crude, but shrewd. Tai does seem like a woman without any joy in her life. Is that possible?

  She has all the diva dimensions of sex appeal. Yards of leg, lots of tanned, toned torso, impossibly luxuriant hair, coupled with a temper of tsarina proportions and a hot job. Okay, not as hot as her last. But, six figures can cushion the loss of a Big Apple business address. I imagine her apartment in Manhattan is some comfort. She’s still in the society pages on a regular basis, schmoozing with some Euro celeb or boyish executive type. Yet I must admit, I never think of Tai in terms of romance.

  “I don’t recall hearing who she’s dating.”

  “She isn’t.” Rhonda leans in to whisper. “Not since Marc.”

  “Marc and Tai?” I ask, and am immediately shushed by my companions, who glance warily over their shoulders.

  I vaguely recall Rhonda hinting at this before, but I was in the midst of imploding, career and all, and it didn’t register.

  “It could just be rumor,” I offer. Why I should feel loyalty to Tai is beyond me. Maybe it’s the single status we share.

  “No one ever dared ask her,” Rhonda admits.

  “Some of us didn’t have to,” Brenda says as the elevator doors part. “I almost stepped in her business. Literally.”

  She waits until we’ve entered the empty elevator before erupting in deep chuckles. “A few weeks back Tai asked me to deliver this article the minute I was done. The door to her office was shut so I knocked. It swung open, exposing more than I ever wanted to see of people I need to respect in the boardroom.”

  “Get out!” Rhonda shrieks in laughter.

  I, too, try to picture it. Two fabulously dressed image-conscious people going at it like a pair of hormonally inflamed teens. The image won’t cue. In my imagination they are much too sophisticated and put-together to ruin the “image” with sweating, sticky, messy sex.

  Brenda bends a seriously sober gaze on us as the elevator doors open one floor below. “You did not hear that from me. Un. Der. Stand?”

  Rhonda and I nod in unison. If I had to pick a side in a fight, Brenda’s my girl.

  * * *

  “The doctor says everything is going quite well,” I say into my cell phone. “Gotta go now, Aunt Marvelle.” These cell calls to Alaska better be on my one
-price, all-calls-all-the-time minutes.

  As good as her promise, Aunt Marvelle’s friend Jane came up with last-minute fares for an Alaskan cruise. After five days of smothering, Aunt Marvelle was as ready as I was to see her turn her talents to other, more interesting ventures. She’s accustomed to brunches and lunches and bridge parties and afternoon cocktails. These days, after a day on the job, all I’m good for is supper and bed.

  Because I feel in need of more down time, I decide to play hooky after my appointment long enough to have lunch on my own. It’s a beautiful summer day, the kind that makes you want to have lunch in the park. I order takeout and walk over to sit on a bench near a pond to watch the ducks, and the toddlers feeding the ducks, and the mothers herding the toddlers feeding the ducks.

  I can see myself doing this next summer, and many summers to follow. I might not have been the best wife ever, but I am a good mother. Even if Dallas hasn’t completely forgiven me for having a life. She called me the day after Aunt Marvelle arrived. I suspect Aunt Marvelle called her first. Not even Dallas would stand a chance against her.

  Since then, our calls are frequent, short and oh so polite. We don’t talk baby and we don’t talk Jacob. There have been a lot of wedding details to share. As long as I listen and say soothing things, we’re okay.

  The wedding is in exactly eight weeks. On most days I manage to ignore that fact. Not because I don’t eagerly anticipate seeing my daughter commit to wedded bliss, but because it means I’ll have to be pleasant to Jacob for a whole day.

  There’s been no word from the man since I ordered him out of the ER, and my life, a little more than two weeks ago. I should be grateful, but I’m suspicious. Jacob doesn’t like to lose, even if he’s not particularly interested in playing the game.

  By the time I return to my office, I’ve mellowed out to the point that not even the sight of Tai can derail my giddiness.

  “Oh, there you are!” She sashays her way over to me in impossibly high heels she’s donned since lunch. “Babs has called you a dozen times but keeps getting your answering service.”