by Renée Rosen
When I got to the corner of Broadway and 57th, a taxicab pulled up alongside me. The rear window rolled down and I saw strands of silver-white hair blowing out, caught in the wind.
“Got time for a drink? C’mon, get in.”
I opened the door and scooted in next to Elaine Sloan. She smelled faintly of Vivara, cigarettes and gin. “I have a dinner appointment, but not till eight. Have you been to the St. Regis yet?”
And off we went, arriving ten minutes later at 54th and Fifth Avenue. The lobby looked like a marble palace with just enough gilded accents and crystal chandeliers to keep it on the opulent side of gaudy. I followed Elaine as she swept past the scores of hotel guests and entered the King Cole Bar.
“You see that?” She pointed to a playful painting behind the bar, stretching from one end to the other. “That’s the Old King Cole mural. I just love it. Let’s go sit at the bar. I want you to see it up close.” Elaine was as animated as I’d ever seen her. “I’m so glad I ran into you,” she said, ordering two martinis for us. “Sorry, but I just can’t hold off until eight to start celebrating.”
“What are you celebrating?” I didn’t want to mention it but it seemed as though she’d already started before she picked me up.
“I’m finally done. Finished with Valley of the Dolls.”
“Is it out yet?”
“No. No.” She pinched open her pocketbook and pulled out her gold cigarette case and lighter, setting them on the bar. “No, the pub date isn’t until February, but at least my part’s finally done. There’s not one word left to edit. Not that Jackie let me do much editing anyway.” She laughed to herself. “No more frantic phone calls from her, no more bursting into my office unannounced. Jackie Susann is one of the toughest authors I’ve ever worked with. She just about wore me out.”
The bartender poured our martinis with a great flourish and Elaine raised her glass to me. “I heard you saw Christopher recently,” she said. “Tell me, how did he seem to you?”
“Fine.” I took a sip of the best gin martini I’d ever tasted, wondering what he’d told her about that day in his darkroom.
“I worry about him. I just want him to be happy. He’s like a son to me, you know.” She reached over and lit a cigarette. “I’m going to tell you something. Not many people know this—I’m not even sure Christopher knows—but when I was younger—just twenty-six—I got pregnant.”
“You did?” She had to have been drunk. I had no idea why she was telling me this.
“Uh-huh. I was young and scared. I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s mother. When I told Viv, your mother, that I found a doctor and was going to have a procedure, well, she begged me not to do it. She did everything she could to try talking me out of it. She was sure I’d regret it. But see, unlike your mother, I didn’t love the baby’s father.”
Unlike your mother? That was an odd thing to say, but Elaine was in the middle of her story, going full force so I couldn’t have interrupted her if I’d tried.
“And you know what? It turns out your mother was right. I still regret doing it.” She stared into the mural and said wistfully, “If I’d kept the baby, I’d have a fifteen-year-old child now.” She gazed straight ahead at the mural, her blue eyes misting up. “Your mother was right. I wish I hadn’t gone through with it. The doctor—he was in New Jersey, not that that had anything to do with it. But, well, turns out he wasn’t all that careful. Not that safe. I could have died.”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, and frankly, I wasn’t even sure she heard me. She just kept talking.
“After I recovered, they told me I couldn’t have children.” She turned and looked at me, a sad, thin smile cresting her lips. “So now you know why I’m so protective of Christopher. He’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a child of my own.”
Now I really didn’t know what to say so I took another sip of my drink.
Elaine flicked her cigarette ash and sighed. “I probably shouldn’t say this to you—of all people—but I remember when your mother found out she was pregnant, I actually asked her what she wanted to do.”
Another odd thing for her to say, but at least she recognized that fact. I’d never seen Elaine quite like this before. I was certain she had to be drunk.
“Well, Viv just looked at me like I was crazy. There was never a doubt in her mind about keeping you. She never, not for a second, considered going out and doing—”
The look on my face stopped her mid-sentence. “Oh God, Ali.” She reached for my hand. Her voice hung there for a moment. “I thought you knew. I’m sor—”
“Knew what?” She didn’t have to spell it out. I’d always known I was born almost nine months to the date of my parents’ wedding, but I never questioned it. Until now. I felt sick and took a gulp from my martini.
“Are you okay?” she asked, gesturing to the bartender for another round.
I nodded and drained the rest of my drink.
“It doesn’t change a thing. You know your mother and father loved you.”
I did know that, but I couldn’t verbalize a thing. All I could do was nod while she kept talking.
“Oh, Ali.” She shook her head. “I really thought you knew.” She lit her cigarette, and I watched her whole body give way as she exhaled.
I heard a group of people entering the bar and did a quarter turn, watching them get situated at a nearby table.
A cloud of Elaine’s smoke drifted toward me. She sighed and said, “I remember when Viv first met your father. It was here in New York. Right after the war. He was this good-looking sailor. Really, like a movie star, he was. He swept her off her feet. I’d never seen your mother so crazy for a fella before. It was so romantic. They had a whirlwind affair. I think it took them both by surprise.” Her voice trailed off.
She wasn’t telling me anything new. I’d heard the story of how my parents had met in New York City. I knew he was a sailor, and even at the age of forty-seven, my father was still a handsome man. “Go on.”
“And then, well, your mother found out she was pregnant. With you. And that’s when everything started to . . .” She stopped and started over. “Well, when your mother told her parents, that was it. They didn’t want anything more to do with her. They disowned her. The whole family turned their back on her. Your mother didn’t know where to go, what to do. Your father was from Youngstown so that’s where she went. And he did the right thing by her. He married her.”
* * *
• • •
I left Elaine at the St. Regis, my head pounding from gin and too much new information. I kept repeating but not quite believing: My parents had to get married because my mother got pregnant. With me. I was an accident. A mistake. At least now I knew what that terrible thing was that my mother’s father had done. He’d done that, too, because of me.
When I got home, it was warm and stuffy inside even with the windows open. Those martinis were sloshing around inside me, and I desperately needed to put something in my stomach but there wasn’t much to choose from. I opted for a sleeve of saltines and a jar of peanut butter, which two crackers in proved to be the wrong choice. I switched to a bottle of orange soda, thinking in my drunkenness how they called it pop, not soda, back home in Youngstown.
Home. Youngstown . . .
This new knowledge about me and my parents carried a heavy burden. I felt responsible for changing the course of two people’s lives. If it hadn’t been for me, my mother would have stayed in New York, would have possibly continued her modeling career—despite what her father thought of it. She would have met another man, married him and had a different child. Maybe more than one. And what about my father? He would have come back from the war, returned to Youngstown and married some other woman, and he, too, would have had a different life with her and with a different family.
And yet, if my parents had resented me for chan
ging their destinies, they never let on. Learning the truth about my parents didn’t make me question if I’d been loved. Elaine had tried to impress that fact upon me, but it wasn’t necessary. I already knew my mother and father loved me. But still, it required a mental shift, a reframing of how I thought about them, my parents. At least I didn’t have to rewrite their love story. I had plenty of memories of them holding hands, stealing kisses when they thought no one was looking, slow dancing in the living room to the radio, my mother singing in his ear. They were happy as far as I could tell. So it was just a shift I had to do, by myself, for myself.
I knew at some point I would need to say something to my father, but a conversation like that was better had in person, rather than over the phone. Especially with Faye hovering in the background and him watching the clock above the stove, calculating the long-distance charges.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I hardly slept that night, backsliding in my thoughts and coming up plagued by the notion that I’d ruined my mother’s life. My father’s, too. And my dread intensified as the hour grew later. I finally surrendered and dozed off about half an hour before my alarm went off, and for a brief second, all was well. It was Thursday morning, June 24th. Our July issue was on sale. But then snippets of my conversation with Elaine came rushing back with the force of a body blow. After twenty minutes of wallowing, I peeled back the covers, and forced myself to get on with the day.
I bathed, dressed in a hurry and was out the door before seven o’clock. I stopped at the diner on the corner of 76th and Lexington and got a cup of coffee. On my way to the train station, I passed a newsstand filled with magazines and papers, cigarettes and chewing gum. I looked and looked—McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Esquire, Time and Life. I saw just about every magazine but Cosmopolitan.
It was still early, though, and it was possible that the newsstand operator hadn’t set out the new magazines yet, which didn’t seem very smart since he’d miss the morning commuters. There was a second newsstand near the subway stop but I didn’t see Cosmopolitan there, either. I wondered if Erik and Bridget had managed to get in one final hurrah and did something to interfere with the distribution from the warehouse.
I was anticipating how I was going to deal with Helen that morning, envisioning her in tears while her downtrodden staff packed up their desks in search of new opportunities. I was running this exodus through my mind as I boarded the subway. All the seats were taken so I stood in the crowded car, holding on to a filthy pole. I was staring at the tops of my shoes, a pair of powder blue sling-backs that I now regretted purchasing, considering I’d probably be out of a job.
When my train began to slow, brakes screeching as it approached the 68th Street station, I looked up and a flicker of something caught my eye. There it was—Renata’s perfectly seductive pout and heaving bosom. Proof that it was at least on sale. Somewhere. A young woman—the exact girl Helen had pictured all along—was greedily going through the pages. She was absorbed to the point that she almost missed her stop, bolting up from her seat with a start and racing for the sliding doors.
I watched as more commuters came on board and settled in. Looking down the train, breaking up the continuous wave of black-and-white newsprint, I saw a few bursts of color. It was one, two, three copies of Cosmopolitan in the hands of Helen’s girls. When I got off at 57th Street, I looked for it at the newsstand, but again, it was nowhere to be found.
I asked the man behind the window and he shook his head. “No. All gone. No more. Sold out.”
Sold out? Sold out!
Helen was already in her office, scribbling red ink all over an article Nora Ephron had delivered on How to Start a Conversation with a Stranger for the August issue. When I told her that the newsstand had sold all their copies, she said, “That’s easy to do when they probably only ordered three to begin with.”
She sounded defeated, and yet if she’d truly felt that way, why was she still editing Nora’s article? Maybe it was a distraction? A last burst of hope? But as the day progressed, Helen found she couldn’t concentrate. She was petrified that it was all coming to an end. I found her in her office doing isometric exercises and frantic leg lifts.
At half past eleven, she phoned David, who arrived to take her on one of their nooners. She didn’t come back that day. I waited until eight o’clock but still there was no sign of her. I tried their apartment but there was no answer there, either.
* * *
• • •
I walked home that night, wishing I had my camera with me to capture the last bits of sunlight streaming in through the treetops. It was a warm summer evening, and as I stepped over a subway grate, I was greeted by even more hot air. A thin layer of sweat collected along the back of my neck, and every now and again I’d get a strong whiff of urine and sweltering garbage. That was the thing about New York. It was either gritty ugliness or beauty and elegance. One block over, I was in another land, passing by flower boxes blooming with geraniums, the curtains caught in the breeze blowing through the open apartment windows. All the outdoor cafés were full with upbeat, happy people. I wasn’t one of them.
Instead, I found myself worrying about Helen’s state of mind. She must have been in a bad way if she hadn’t returned to work. If she hadn’t even called in for her messages. She was the one we all looked to now and we needed her to be optimistic. I felt the insides of Cosmo already beginning to crumble and couldn’t help but wonder where that left me.
As I passed by different newsstands, I took note of the magazines, both pleased and discouraged whenever I saw Renata looking back. That morning I’d been concerned about distribution, about getting the magazine on the stands. Now all I cared about was selling copies and moving the magazine off the stands. I wondered how soon we’d get sales numbers. I was so distracted, I almost tumbled into a cellar doorway, wide open and looking like a bomb shelter.
Turning down 74th Street, I pulled the keys from my pocketbook just as a man reached out and tried to grab my arm. A shot of adrenaline rushed through me. I was about to scream until I turned and saw his face. It was Erik.
I didn’t say anything. My heart was firing like a jackhammer. He looked terrible. His hair had no part; his eyes had dark circles beneath them. He was in a pair of blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than a suit. I got the sense that he’d been pacing back and forth, waiting for me. I was sure he blamed me for his being fired.
“Can I come up?”
I hesitated.
“Please? I need to talk to you.”
Despite everything he’d done, I found myself feeling sorry for him. Neither one of us said a word as I unlocked the front door and we climbed the stairs.
“Listen,” he said as he stepped inside my apartment and dropped to the sofa, his hands raking through his hair. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and well,” he sighed, not looking at me, “the thing is, I don’t want to lose you.”
“What? Erik—”
“Just let me get this out before I lose my nerve.” Fresh beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I know we weren’t looking for anything serious. But well—and believe me, I’m as surprised by this as anyone—but I can’t stop thinking about you, Ali.”
If it weren’t for the look on his face, I would have thought he was joking.
“I mean it,” he said. “Let’s put everything that happened behind us and give this another chance.”
“Erik, c’mon. This is—”
“I want to be with you. I don’t want to see anyone else, and I don’t want you seeing anyone else.”
All I could do was shake my head. “No. We can’t—”
“Is it because I’m out of work now? I’ve got money in the bank. Lots of money. And I’ll get another job. It may not be with a magazine. I’m talking to some publishing houses. But I’ll land on my feet.”
“This is crazy. You only want me now because you can’t have me.”
“I want you because I’m falling in love with you. I’m in love with you. Don’t you get it? I want to marry you.”
I was stunned. And speechless. Helen hadn’t prepared me for this. Don Juans weren’t supposed to fall in love. They weren’t supposed to want marriage. I took a deep breath and collected my thoughts. I sat down beside him and made him look me in the eye. “I know you’re going through a hard time right now, but this”—I indicated the two of us—“is not real. You’re just saying this because you can’t have me and because—”
“That’s not what this is about.” He looked flabbergasted. “Do you know how many girls I’ve invited home to meet my family?” He formed an O with his hand. “Ali, I swear, I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”
I wanted him to stop talking. I didn’t want to hear any more.
“I’m in love with you,” he said again. “I want to take care of you. You won’t have to work anymore. We’ll get a bigger apartment, a nicer one. Hell, I’ll get us a penthouse on Fifth Avenue—I can afford it. And you, you can hire any decorator you want and—”
“Erik, please, stop trying to sell me. This is not a business negotiation.”
But he wasn’t listening. “You don’t need to do the photography stuff anymore, either.”
“Please don’t say anything more.”
He looked at me, the hint of a smile rising up. “So, is that a yes?”
“My God”—I clasped the sides of my head—“haven’t you heard anything I said?”
“What? You’re saying you don’t want to marry me?” He sounded incredulous.