It was another relationship with a man who wasn’t free—an English pop star with a girlfriend back home—but I kept it locked in a treasure chest, just like the cards and letters he wrote me that I tied in black ribbon. Our affection for each other would never come to anything, but it was fun being on his arm, if only for an evening, and he made me feel unique. Out of all the girls, he had chosen me.
• • •
Nina’s Broadway show, The Curse of an Aching Heart, starring the ultra-famous Faye Dunaway, was now in previews, about to open. Nina left a message on my service about coming to the play. I didn’t have anything else to do and she was a pal, so I trotted off to get the subway to Forty-second Street. We met before the show at Charley O’s, a local restaurant popular with the pretheater crowd. After we drank Chablis and shared a chicken breast, her boyfriend, Paul, met us and we walked across Forty-fourth Street to the Little Theatre.
The play was a bit flimsy and saccharine, I thought, though the supporting cast gave some good performances. Miss Dunaway, sometimes calling for her lines, struggled valiantly to embody a woman much younger than herself, as she traveled through the story of her character, Frances Duffy, and her life of heartbreak and disappointment in a lower-class Irish Catholic family. Mommie Dearest had just come out in movie theaters six months before, so perhaps she was trying to erase “worst Hollywood mom ever” from all our memories by portraying this sweet, sad, and unlucky woman onstage. Apparently, Dunaway was difficult to work with, had quit once, and had driven everyone crazy with her tantrums and demands.
The stress had been too much for Nina’s boss, Gerry Gutierrez, a dumpling-shaped gay guy with a big, bushy mustache, so part of Nina’s job description began to include acquiring marijuana and cocaine for him—to calm him down or to keep him going. She’d be dispatched in a cab to an address, pick up the drugs, and bring them either to his place or to the theater. I went on one of the runs with her, waiting in the taxi while she ran up the steps next to a crepe restaurant to make the score. It had added an air of paranoia to her lately. She was always closing curtains and making sure doors were locked, as if she expected the narcs to burst into the room any minute.
One night, I hung out at Nina’s mom’s apartment after the show. In the Eighties between Park and Lexington, it was not far from one of my childhood homes on Park Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street. Her mom was out of town; Nina shuttled back and forth between this place and Paul’s. The apartment was very seventies with floor-to-ceiling mirrored walls and white shag carpeting in the living room. A leather sofa and a brown-tinted glass coffee table sat in the center of the room, where you could almost imagine Jack and Anjelica lounging before they headed out to the bar at the Pierre. French doors led to a small galley kitchen on one end of the flat, and the bedrooms and bathrooms were on the other. A few actors from the cast joined in, and then Paul arrived with a woman I didn’t recognize, a willowy, generically pretty blonde.
“Hey, everybody,” Paul addressed the room, “this is Sandy. I met her at the gym.”
“Hello, Sandy,” the crowd said in unison. Then, everyone went back to their drinks and conversations except for Nina, who walked swiftly to the windows and pulled the curtains shut. Then she turned off a few of the lights so that it was even darker.
“Hey, guys, Gerry gave me some of his coke—like a work bonus.” Nina giggled. She went over to the Danish teak credenza, slid open one side panel, and pulled out something wrapped in silk scarf. She unraveled it while walking to the coffee table, revealing a small plastic bag filled with white stuff, rolled up in a tube. Paul opened the bag and, in perfect American Gigolo mode, began cutting the coke into thin lines on the surface of the coffee table. Oh my God, I thought, everyone’s about to do drugs!
My exposure to narcotics had been limited, to say the least. I had smoked pot once with two girlfriends from high school when I was eighteen. I remembered laughing quite a bit and then eating an entire carton of chocolate ice cream. It was fun, but I hadn’t done it since.
With a flourish, Paul produced a bill from his jacket pocket and rolled it up. People began circling the table and taking turns snorting up a line or two. Someone put on music, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and I heard a wine-bottle cork pop free.
“Wendy, want some?” Nina ran her index finger under her nose, sniffing in deeply.
“Sure, I mean, I’ve never tried it.”
Nina looked at me, clearly shocked. I think because I’d lived abroad, had traveled, and dressed kind of downtown, people assumed I was more sophisticated than I was. Despite, or because of, having been raised by a woman who overindulged in all things—sex, alcohol, money, and drugs—I was kind of an avowed dork. “Very cool, I wish I was you,” a guy said to me as he nodded in approval.
I got down on my knees, closed one nostril, as instructed by Paul, and snorted it up. Then, I switched sides. It burned, and I tasted something bitter and slightly metallic on the back of my tongue.
“Amazing, huh?” the nodding guy said.
I didn’t feel anything; maybe it took a while to kick in. “Um, yeah.” I poured myself a glass of red wine and walked over to an armchair in the corner near the window.
The evening went on—people got their coats and left. The stragglers, of which I was one, sat on the floor or plopped on the couch, smoking cigarettes and drinking more wine. The records kept changing. Nina was telling crazy-train stories about weird Faye Dunaway, such as how she had showed up at rehearsal with a newborn baby she claimed to have just given birth to.
“Like she expected us all of a sudden to believe that she’d been pregnant with this baby during rehearsals—which is impossible—and then just had it on her day off and brought it to work. It was so bizarre!”
“Instant baby.” Paul nodded.
Things seemed to be winding down; I looked at my watch and it read 2:15 a.m. Deciding to head out, I got my coat and walked over to Nina to say good night and thanks. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the bathroom, pulling me inside and closing the door. A moment later, Paul came in. We stood there lit up in the bright lights that ringed the wall mirror.
“What is it?” They were both looking at me intently. I wondered if they wanted to borrow money from me or something.
“Well”—Nina looked at Paul, and he sort of smirked—“we have a question for you.”
I looked back and forth between them. Nina told me that she and Paul wanted to sleep with me—and include the girl from the gym, Beth. I wasn’t sure if Nina thought I was bi or gay or just a decadent European; maybe the suits and ties made me look that way? I wasn’t shocked by the ménage à quatre idea—and didn’t want to seem prudish and disapproving. Nina had been generous to me, but I wasn’t willing to go that far to repay her.
“Um, no, thanks,” I said to Nina. “Just not my thing, but you guys go ahead. I’m going home. Great party.” I opened the door and turned to say good-bye over my shoulder before heading out the front door, smiling to show them it was no big deal.
The next day my phone rang. When I answered, I was surprised to hear Nina’s brother Lincoln. He asked me if I’d meet him for drink and said he had something to tell me, something about Nina. He sounded weirdly terse, but I agreed.
We met at the Grassroots Tavern on St. Mark’s Place. It was a seedy dive in the bottom of a tenement house, with a low tin ceiling and, for some reason, a grimy glass case full of dusty trophies, sports memorabilia, and tchotchkes. When I arrived, Lincoln was sitting in a booth at the back, and I slid onto the bench across from him. An open pack of Winstons lay on the table, and he was drinking a Bud out of a bottle.
As I sat down, he lit a cigarette. “So, Wendy, I wanted to tell you this in person, not on the phone. Nina went to the ER last night.”
“What? What happened?”
“Well, I was hoping you could tell me.” He raised his eyebrows.
“I have
no idea what you are talking about, I swear.” The waitress came by and I ordered a bourbon. “We were at a party together last night, there were a bunch of people there, I left around two thirty or so.”
“Yeah, well, she told me you left with some guy and she was worried about you—and followed you downstairs and that’s when it happened. She was tapping on the glass to get your attention.”
Stunned into silence, I gaped at him.
It turned out that right after I left, Nina had had some kind of freak-out, run downstairs to the lobby, and put her arm through the glass panel in the front door, shattering it, and slicing a twelve-inch gash along the underside of her arm. She was rushed to the hospital by Paul, where she received over sixty stitches and a blood transfusion.
I sipped my bourbon, trying to process this. I guessed that Nina had got upset about the whole foursome thing and maybe became afraid that I’d tell someone. Drugged-up and paranoid, she’d freaked out. I never would have said anything; I certainly wouldn’t tell her brother.
He squashed his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.
“Can I bum one?” I took a Winston out of the pack and lit it with his book of matches. The smoke felt strong and harsh, and I had an immediate head rush from the nicotine. I was purely a social smoker—occasionally at a bar or a party. Or in this case, to stall for time when I didn’t know what to say to my former lover and the brother of the woman who’d propositioned me for a foursome the previous night. “I guess I didn’t hear her, I didn’t hear any sounds after I left the building.” I shrugged, hoping I would look more clueless than I was.
“You should go to see her. I mean, in a way, it’s kind of your fault, don’t you think?”
“Um . . .”
“I sort of blame you,” he said. “I mean, she was just looking out for you.”
“I’ll go see her.”
“And don’t go home with strange guys. This city is full of fucking maniacs.” He shook his head in distaste, smoke pluming from his nostrils.
“Right. Good advice.” I tossed a few dollar bills on the table, got up, and left. The temptation to say anything more was too great to stay any longer.
When I took Nina flowers at her mom’s place one morning later that week, the housekeeper let me in and ushered me into the bedroom where Nina was tucked into a single bed and propped up on pillows. The shades were drawn, shutting out the sunlight, which gave the room a sort of hushed Blanche DuBois, Chinese-lantern feel. I sat by her bedside on a little brocade chair. Her arm was along her side on top of the coverlet in a sling, bandaged from her wrist up to her shoulder, and she was on pain meds.
“The show’s closing,” she told me somewhat woozily.
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, Gerry’s bummed because it was his first Broadway show.”
I nodded sympathetically; she was out of a job, too. But I knew it wouldn’t be for long. She was mercurial and always went after what she wanted and usually got it—the fancy education, the handsome boyfriend, the impressive job that would lead to something bigger. A part of me had always wanted to crawl up her butt and be her, to be Nina Franco, to feel so certain about it all—what she wanted, where she was going, and what her next project would be. But I was the sort of girl who didn’t ask the person in the aisle seat on the airplane to stand up when I had to go to the bathroom. I was way behind Nina in lots of ways; I didn’t know if I’d ever catch up. But if lying in a dark bedroom with sixty stitches and a drug hangover was the price of catching up, I wasn’t positive I wanted to get there anymore. My mother had always shot first and asked questions later—going after the brass ring, or at least the guy who was holding it, and the endings had never been happy. After my time with the high-flying crowd of New York theater, I saw that maybe it was okay that I was making my own way, even if it was in baby steps.
chapter seven
GET OUT OF TOWN, GIRL
I decided to escape from New York after another round of auditions, during which I was criticized by, well, everyone I tried out for. My boobs were too small—I should consider having implants. I wasn’t pretty enough—I should have a nose job. I should dye my hair blond. I could afford to lose ten pounds. I was too funny. I wasn’t sexy. And what the hell was I wearing a suit and tie for? Just a month before, I’d read for a part in a John Sayles movie and had been told by the doyenne of New York casting, Bonnie Timmermann—who got Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson their first acting gigs—that I was going to be a star. The role went to Rosanna Arquette, and it seemed now that I was the dog girl that no one wanted to hire.
Everyone, except for me, seemed to have something going on that enhanced his or her life in a major way. Pete and Jenny had each other. Nina had applied and gotten into the graduate program at NYU. My old BU roommate Julie had bought a loft in an industrial building in Dumbo, underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and begun fixing it up with her boyfriend. I was an out-of-work actress who answered the phone in a deli. Having inherited a strong cut-and-run gene from my mother, the urge to skip town was fierce. I felt like Toby Tyler—the little orphan boy in the Disney movie who runs away to join the circus—except I always seemed to be one town away from where the circus was playing, trying to find where there might be a place for me.
Antsy and trying to come up with a plan to find my own circus, I decided to go to Minneapolis for a while. I had only spent a few days with my father since our reunion. Maybe if I lived nearby, I could have quality time and get to know him better. And perhaps I would have more luck finding acting work there, since nothing had panned out in the city. I was also anxious to escape a furtive love affair I was having with a handsome, cerebral Italian American actor, who had the most gorgeous black hair that sprang in lush curls from his head. His name was Mark, and as in my last relationship, he had a girlfriend. I was worried that this was becoming a pattern—or maybe New York was just filled with guys who were taken and wanted to cheat on their women. I had met him at a party, and we ended up standing fully clothed in the bathtub, singing “The Girl from Ipanema” and drinking bourbon on the rocks out of highball glasses. Oddly, it turned out he had worked with my dad at the Denver Center in Colorado.
“I can’t believe you are Jimmy’s daughter,” he’d told me that night. “What a great guy! I spent many an evening after the show in the bar with him.”
Mark drove me to his apartment in Inwood in his snazzy vintage Lincoln Continental—it was black and had suicide doors, which I had never seen before. The sex was fraught with angst: he seemed to be enjoying himself but in the most tortured way. Maybe it was some kind of Catholic thing. I just hung in there and waited for it to be over. Men who seemed to need a road map of the female form still amazed me.
Afterward, he kindly drove me home. I had seen him one more time, and we had the same Kafkaesque sex, but now he wanted me to meet his girlfriend. He seemed to think we could all go to a movie together or something—which I thought was just plain weird. After I’d decided to bolt, I left a message on his service, saying good-bye and that I was moving to Minneapolis to hang with my dad. Neither of us would be brokenhearted.
A few days before, I’d gone down to Didi’s office to let her know I was splitting.
“Minneapolis in February? Are you fucking insane?”
“I’m gonna live with my dad—get to know him better.”
“Okay, keep in touch, though. Don’t disappear—write, call, whatever.”
I promised that I would. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tightly.
So I packed up my possessions, leaving some books and the futon behind. I kissed Jenny and Pete good-bye and promised to write and call them, too.
Minneapolis in late February was gray and freezing cold, but I didn’t care because I’d made my escape. It felt like a new adventure—and I’d be with my father.
Dad drove me to his house from the airport on wet
roads banked with dirty snow and ice. It occurred to me that, aside from Christmas, I had never been here in the depth of winter; Robbie and I had spent only summers with our dad. They were days of carefree fun, playing outside, swimming in the lake, or riding our bikes along the sidewalk. Dad drove us past Seven Pools, where our babysitter had sometimes taken us on a hot day. Now it was frozen over and buried in white.
“I have a job prospect for you, sweetheart,” Daddy said as he confidently maneuvered his Buick LeSabre on the slushy streets. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure you were coming.”
“What is it?”
“A wonderful man, a good friend of mine, Lou Salerni, runs a small theater downtown, and he’s found a play he thinks we could do together.”
“Wow! That would be great.” Work as an actor again and with my father? My imagination raced.
“Now, you’d have to read for the part—but I saw you in action, so I know you can do it.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I beamed.
“I’m very glad you’re here.” His blue eyes got a little moisty.
“Me, too.” I reached over and squeezed his hand where it rested on the gearshift.
I was staying in the guest room, on the second floor across the landing from my father and Sarah’s bedroom. A big, comfy bed was covered with a puffy white duvet, and a built-in window seat with floral-patterned cushions looked out over the side garden. The wallpaper was a navy-blue-and-white geometric pattern, and a bookcase filled with novels, plays, mysteries, and assorted knickknacks, along with a large white wicker chair in one corner, and a dresser with a mirror on top, rounded out the furnishings.
I unpacked my things, hung up my James Dean calendar, and placed a framed picture of my sister and my little red paisley makeup bag on the dresser. A little at sea in my unfamiliar surroundings, I was also giddy to be here. I had slept in this room once before, but now I felt more that I belonged. Determined to leave all those sad feelings behind, I was going to spend quality time with my new family. If I could make a home with Jenny and Pete, perhaps I could find one here with my dad and stepmother. I practically skipped to the bathroom to put my toothbrush in the little silver rack above the sink.
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