Shadow of the Dolls

by Jacqueline Susann

  They drank the champagne from coffee mugs. “Gordo, I gotta start working again. I’m losing my mind just sitting around like this.”

  “Doctor’s orders.”

  “What does he know! With the twins, I was out rehearsing six hours a day right up to the last two weeks.”

  “You were twenty years younger then.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Miranda Claiborne is younger than you, and her doctor is making her spend her entire pregnancy flat on her back.”

  “Miranda Claiborne is pregnant?” Neely asked. “I thought she was making that Vermont movie with Perry Hayes.”

  “She was, and then the first week of shooting she announces she’s pregnant. Turns out she’s been trying for years. They thought they’d be able to shoot around it, but then her doctor ordered her straight to bed. Here, I’ve got a picture somewhere.” He pulled out a magazine. “See how jowly she looks?”

  “I thought that was just for the part. I read they made her gain twenty pounds to look more like a farm wife.”

  “That’s what everyone thought. The insurance company had a fit. They shot all the exteriors to get the snow, and now everything is suspended until April.”

  Neely read the article. Every major actress in Hollywood had fought for this plum role, a housewife in rural Vermont who falls in love with a famous artist who has come home to settle his grandmother’s estate. The film was based on a novel that had sold millions of copies. Neely had listened to it on tape, fast-forwarding through the sections about how maple syrup was made, replaying the famous sex scene, set in the attic where the grandmother’s quilts are stored.

  “It says here they’re looking for an unknown,” she said.

  “Who else can they get on such short notice? And anyway, with Perry Hayes in the lead, they could put Margie Parks in that role and still sell tickets.”

  “That’ll be one ugly kid,” Neely said. “I don’t know what would be worse—looking like Miranda Claiborne’s husband, or looking like Miranda Claiborne before she had her face fixed. Hey, it says here she’s due the same week as me!”

  “Lovely, you can get adjoining rooms at Cedars-Sinai.”

  “The bitch!” Neely cried. She imagined the publicity now: she would have to share the spotlight with Miranda Claiborne and who knew who else. People would run one of those “everyone is doing it” photo montages on its cover. Or even worse, Miranda Claiborne would get all the press and Neely would be relegated to a sidebar and one small photograph. What mother would want her baby to have that kind of start: upstaged at birth.

  “We certainly are cranky today, aren’t we,” said Gordon.

  “You’d be cranky too if you were shut up like an invalid, a prisoner in your own home.”

  “Listen, I have a great idea.” Gordon stood up and put out one hand like a traffic cop. “Promise me you won’t say a word until I’ve finished.”

  “Refill my mug and you have a deal.”

  “Okay. Here goes. Five nights in Las Vegas this October. An evening of standards. No dancing, no backup singers, just Neely O’Hara solo with a five-piece band. Stand-up bass, a real old-fashioned jazz-club feel. No sets, no costume changes. The Judy-Garland-in-a-tuxedo-jacket-and-tights look. You can start rehearsing right away, I’ll bring in a piano player. Throw in a holiday song, we’ll get a live single out in time for Christmas.” He watched her face. “Well?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. Let me think about it.”

  “If we want October dates, I have to start making calls pronto.”

  “I need to make another movie, Gordo. I’m going to lose all my momentum if I don’t.” She knew he didn’t want to hear it: Gordon made his money from her singing and her recordings but received nothing from her filmwork. “Don’t make a face. I’m not saying no. I just, I just thought things were going to work out differently.”

  If only she didn’t feel so tired. If only she weren’t getting so fat. If only the baby had come a year later. If only, if only, if only.

  Who sent us that atrocious punch bowl?” Lyon asked when he got home that evening.

  “It’s from Jenn and her mother,” Neely said. They were lying in bed, watching a detective show, trying to guess who the murderer was.

  “The mistress,” said Lyon.

  “The wife,” said Neely. “The mistress is too mean to have done it. It’s a setup. That’s what you’re supposed to think. It’s definitely the wife.”

  “Interesting casting,” Lyon said. “The wife is prettier than the mistress, don’t you think?”

  “And stupider.” She didn’t recognize the actress. “Who is she? She reminds me of someone.”

  “Looks a little like Jennifer North, don’t you think?”

  “She does!” Neely cried. “It’s spooky, almost. So, Gordon told me Miranda Claiborne is due the same week as me.”

  “What an ugly little baby that will be.”

  “I guess it’s time to tell people I’m pregnant.”

  “Whenever you’re ready, darling.”

  She patted her stomach. “I’m definitely starting to show. I can’t even fit into any of my shoes anymore.”

  “Foot rub?” he asked. She nodded. It continued to surprise her how utterly wonderful Lyon was being about the pregnancy. The massages, the errands for strange food at odd hours, the way he put up with her foulest moods, who would have guessed? He didn’t even go out at night anymore, he rushed home straight from the office, often with a huge bouquet of flowers under his arm.

  “I gotta tell you,” Neely said, “you really are Mr. Wonderful.”

  “That I am. Don’t let it get around.”

  “I mean it. You’re, like, the perfect husband.”

  He kissed her knees and rested his head just under her belly. An old song ran through his head, so easy to love, and he reached for her hand. It was easy to love Neely, to give her everything she wanted, because what she wanted was so easy to give. With Anne it had never been enough. Anne had wanted a hero, a soulmate, a knight in shining armor. Anne had wanted the kind of man he could never be.

  With Neely it was different. He and Neely were alike: neither one would ever be able to care about another person as much as they cared about themselves. How nice it is, Lyon thought, to come home to a woman who isn’t constantly disappointed. He began humming. He turned his mouth into the crease of her thin nightgown and hummed right into her.

  “Oh,” Neely said. “Wow. What are you doing? Oh my.”

  He lifted his head. “Name that tune.”

  She felt his tongue through the fabric. Ted hadn’t touched her during her first pregnancy, but Lyon was after her all the time. Afterward they turned the television back on and watched the final five minutes of the show.

  “I told you it was the wife,” she said.

  “You know everything.”

  “Lyon, I have to ask you a question. And you have to promise me an honest answer.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Really. What if—what if I hadn’t been pregnant? Do you think we still would have gotten married? I mean, I know we probably wouldn’t have so soon, but maybe, I don’t know, what do you think? What do you think would have happened?”

  “I hate ‘what if’ questions.”

  “I need to know. Because it’s so good between us. And not just here,” she said, patting the bed.

  “We belong together,” he said.

  “And if there hadn’t been a baby.”

  “Neely, these last few weeks … I’ve never been happier. I can’t explain it, but our life—our life together—it feels right to me.”

  He was the first to fall alseep. She watched him breathe. The house was so quiet, she could hear freshly made ice falling in the kitchen. Their life seemed almost too perfect.

  What would happen when the baby came? When there was crying in the middle of the night. When there were diapers to be changed.

  She thought back to the day Anne gave birth to Jenn. Wh
ere had Lyon been then? Thousands of miles away, in Los Angeles on business. That whole first year of Jenn’s life, where had Lyon been? Most nights he had been with Neely, in a series of forgotten hotel rooms, in too many cities to name. Neely remembered it well. He hadn’t felt that guilty. At the time, she had figured that Lyon just didn’t care for babies that much. Lots of men didn’t. Neely didn’t care what the experts said: men were men, they were made differently from women, it wasn’t natural for a man to feel the same way about a baby as most women did.

  What had she done? Lyon would have married her anyway. They would have had a wonderful marriage. Who needed more children? In two years she would be forty and Lyon would be fifty-one, what was she thinking? The house would smell of diapers. She would never get her body back. How long would it take for Lyon to find someone else?

  Hormones, she told herself. Go to sleep, it’s just hormones. She rolled over toward her husband, felt the wet spot beneath her, and then rolled back away.

  Liza came over the next afternoon, looking skinnier than ever. They sat in the dining room, a plate of crisp ginger cookies between them. Only Neely was eating.

  “So,” Neely said after they’d gone through the list of scripts that had come in. “Give me the scoop on Miranda Claiborne.”

  “Well,” said Liza. “The official story is that it was an unplanned pregnancy. They’d been trying so long with no luck, blah blah blah, when she missed her first period she just thought it was stress. She gave Perry Hayes this whole long sob story, and you know he’s such a big family man, the wife back in Texas and eight kids running around, he just gave her a big hug and said he was happy for her. He’s the one who told the studio, she was too chicken to do it, he said they better not kick up a fuss, blah blah blah.” Liza’s best friend from college worked for Perry Hayes.

  “But a friend of mine’s cousin saw her at the ob-gyn last fall,” Liza continued, “and she says Miranda Claiborne had been taking fertility drugs for months. The rumor is that the insurance company thinks she had artificial insemination, in which case they don’t owe the studio one penny. So the lawyers are going at it. Meanwhile the studio is having a fit trying to hold on to people for another two months. Now they’re saying Miranda Claiborne was never right for the part, they never wanted a movie star, Perry Hayes can carry the box office on his own, blah blah blah. That’s just bullshit. The fact is, if the insurance company doesn’t pay up, they can’t afford a big name.”

  Neely nibbled at a cookie. “It’s a great part,” she said.

  “Totally great,” Liza said. “Everyone who’s seen the script says it’s even better than the novel. They’re trolling for a stage actress they can get on the cheap. Perry Hayes is in New York, he saw four plays last week.”

  “Listen,” Neely said. “I want you to set up a lunch with Perry Hayes right away. I have to fly to New York next week anyway.”

  “A lunch?”

  “Yeah, you know. The meal in the middle of the day, the one that comes after breakfast and before dinner.”

  “Oh. I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Of course you can do that. Call your little friend.”

  “You’re not thinking … but Neely, we already tried, they said, they said they wanted …”

  “I know what they said. That was then. This is now. And right now they’re up shit’s creek without an actress.”

  “Neely, please don’t shoot the messenger, but I think they’re looking for someone more, more …”

  “More what? What is it? They don’t think I’m right for this role? Look at me.” Neely stood up and turned on the overhead light. “Do I look glamorous to you?” Her hair, unwashed for three days, was pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore no makeup, and her face had filled out with the extra weight.

  “The thing is,” Liza said, “they’re looking for someone younger.”

  “How much younger?”

  “Young younger. Oh God, don’t look at me that way.”

  “How old is Perry Hayes?”

  “He’ll be sixty in November.”

  “Let me get this straight, he’ll be sixty in November, and I’m too old to play this part? That’s pretty fucked up, don’t you think? How old are you, Liza?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Twenty-eight,” Neely said. “So, have you dated any sixty-year-old guys lately?”

  “Neely, it’s the movies.”

  “You know what a sixty-year-old is like in the kip? Let me tell you. It takes them about an hour to get it up. And their bodies, you definitely want to turn out the lights. And the hair, let me tell you about the hair!”

  “Neely, stop, I get the point.”

  “Perry Hayes is a grandfather. So don’t tell me I’m too old for this part. Are you gonna set up this lunch or what?”

  “I’ll, I’ll make a call. I’ll try.”

  “Good girl,” Neely said. “Have a cookie.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Have a cookie anyway.”

  Liza took a tiny bite.

  “Delicious, aren’t they? By the way, I love your jacket. Is it new?”

  Liza nodded.

  “You look good in blue. You shouldn’t wear so much gray. It washes you out. Blue is much better. Men like to see a little color on a woman.” She looked at Liza’s pale, ringless hands. “You use sunscreen? What SPF?”

  “Ten.”

  “You should get at least fifteen. And on your hands? The hands are just as important as the face. Don’t forget to put sunscreen on your hands. I wish I had been more careful in my twenties. You know what they say about the sun. Most of the damage is already done by the time you graduate from high school. Twenty-eight. You’ll notice it first around the eyes. That’s where it starts. You want to call your friend from here? You can use the phone in the kitchen.”

  For her lunch with Perry Hayes, Neely wore a vintage flowered rayon dress that fell loosely around her waist and no jewelry except for her wedding band and a pair of pearl stud earrings. He talked about his ranch in Texas; she talked about her grandparents’ farm in Maryland, what it was like to walk to the outhouse in the middle of the winter, how she had milked cows every day before breakfast.

  “You know I want this part,” she said.

  “It’s not up to me,” he said.

  She knew he was lying. The next afternoon they sat with the director, the scripts open on their laps. Neely had listened to a dialogue tape on the plane flight out, practicing a Vermont accent, dropping her R’s and swallowing her T’s.

  “We’ll call you in a few weeks,” the director said.

  After the audition, she went back to her hotel and telephoned Lyon.

  “It sounds like it went terrifically well,” he said.

  “I’d take this role for nothing,” Neely said. “Listen, I think I’m going to stay back here a few days. I’m not feeling so hot, I don’t want to get back on a plane right away.”

  “Darling, shall I come out and fetch you?”

  “No, that’s okay, it’s nothing serious. I just don’t want to fly right now.”

  In the late afternoon it began to snow. The streets were icy, and all the flights to California were canceled. A wasted lie, Neely thought, watching the storm from her window. She fell asleep early, waking at dawn to the sound of shovels scraping against the sidewalk. Her appointment wasn’t for another five hours. She tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She turned on the television and flipped around. At nine she telephoned the doctor’s office.

  “Neither rain nor snow,” the receptionist said. “Bundle up, the wind is fierce.”

  She paid for the abortion with cash. Afterward there was cramping, and pills that made her feel as though she were floating on a cloud. She had rented a suite in a little hotel in the East Eighties that specialized in guests recovering from plastic surgery. There was a big bedroom for Neely and a smaller bedroom for the nurse. A private elevator at the end of the hall took special guests down, on
e at a time, to a side entrance where they could come and go without having to walk through the main lobby.

  She took an extra pill before she called Lyon. “Sometimes a miscarriage means there was something wrong with the baby,” she said. She talked him out of flying to New York, the airports were still a mess, and promised him she would hire a nurse to accompany her on the flight back to Los Angeles.

  He met her flight two days later. She stayed in bed until there was just one pill left. On the sixth day, she booked five hours at a day spa: facial, manicure, pedicure, haircut. She had already lost five pounds. She put on a tight black dress and took Lyon to a small Italian restaurant that served veal eight different ways.

  “We can try again,” she said. “If you want.”

  He shook his head. “All I want is you.” He was on his third glass of wine. She knew the signs.

  They got into bed and turned on the television. Neely had taken her last pill just after brushing her teeth.

  “The accountant did it,” Lyon guessed.

  “No, it’s the sister,” Neely said. She kissed him on the ear, pulled at him with her teeth. “You be still,” she said. “I have plans for you.” She took him in her mouth, teased him to the brink, then stopped, then started again.

  “Wait,” he said, grabbing her under the shoulders, pulling her back up. “Not like that, not tonight.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “Sssh,” he said. “I’ll be careful.” His hand was between her legs. “Come on, come on.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He took her hair in his fist and twisted her head back. His mouth looked mean. “Everything your way,” he said. “Everything your way, all the time.”

  “Ow,” she said, twisting her head away. “You’re hurting me. Stop it.”

  “Tonight it’s going to be my way,” he said. “Turn over.”

  He pulled her down to the edge of the bed and stood behind her. He had never taken her this way before. He started slowly; she had forgotten how much it hurt.