Shadow of the Dolls

by Jacqueline Susann

  “Definitely not,” she said. “Are you?”

  “I was until I ran into you. Walk with me. I need to pick up a house present for these people I’m staying with. I could use your help.”

  She had no place to be. They went down the street and settled on an antique tea set. He asked her to dinner.

  She wiggled her finger. “You know I’m getting married in about two minutes.”

  “It’s just dinner. I’ll have you home by nine.”

  Anne knew she shouldn’t go, but how often did one get invited to dinner by someone like Terry Abernathy? He was so different from the men she knew in the Hamptons. He carried himself with a confidence that didn’t come from money, or power that derived from his job. His confidence was different: she imagined he had always had it, even as a child. He seemed to say whatever was on his mind, without caring what anyone thought. She had spent the last year almost entirely in Connecticut, living with Bill, going out with his friends. A year of dinners with Mary and Jim, Diana and Dickie. A year of parties at the club. A year of salads at lunch, girl talk with Gretchen and Stella. That would be her whole world soon enough.

  They met at a restaurant in Bridgehampton. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a tan suede jacket. He carried a cowboy hat but didn’t wear it. He ordered a bottle of wine but didn’t drink any. He told stories about growing up in Wyoming, and the early days of cable. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed so hard.

  “Everyone said I was crazy,” he said. “And they’re right, I am crazy. But I knew right away what cable would turn into. I always know right away.”

  “I’m just the opposite,” Anne said. “I never know until it’s too late.”

  “Give me an example.”

  She told him a story about a piece she had done on the Everglades and a source who had gotten away. “Now you. What else did you know right away.”

  “I knew about you right away.”

  “Stop,” she said.

  “The minute I met you. At that terrible party. I was just about to leave, and then George introduced us.”

  “I told you,” she said. “No flirting allowed.”

  “You have to let me flirt. How can I get you to marry me if I don’t flirt a little?” He said it in a way that made her laugh.

  “You keep laughing,” he said. “But I’m always right. I’ve been right five times! And I’ve got five ex-wives to prove it.”

  She laughed some more. He walked her to her car. “Now you’re going to let me kiss you,” he said.

  “I am not,” she said. But he leaned in and kissed her right on the mouth. “Hey,” she said. “No fair. Thanks for dinner. Don’t call.” She found herself laughing as she said it. She felt giddy, but she knew it wasn’t the wine; when she saw he wasn’t drinking she had stopped after one glass.

  “I’m not like these eastern gentlemen you’re used to. I know how to get what I want.” He kissed her again, and this time she kissed him back. It was too nice to stop. She felt something leap up inside her, something that she thought had been long gone.

  He took the car keys out of her hand. “I’ll drive,” he told her. “I said I’d have you home by nine.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “We can’t.”

  “Honey, you have no idea just how crazy I am. Now get in.”

  At the first red light, he leaned over and kissed her again. She couldn’t get enough of it. Every couple of minutes he pulled over—into a gas station, into a parking lot—and they kissed some more.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said. “This isn’t like me at all.”

  “I cast a spell on you,” he said. He carried her upstairs. It was the easiest thing in the world. She felt as if she were melting.

  “I’ll want pancakes in the morning,” he said afterward.

  She laughed. “You’re out of your mind. I want you out of here by sunup. I’ll call you a cab. I’m getting married in nine weeks. This was just … I don’t know what this was. It wasn’t even a fling. It must be some kind of pre-wedding jitters.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me how much you love your fiancé.”

  “But I do.” She felt utterly ridiculous, protesting her devotion to Bill as she lay naked in bed with another man’s cowboy hat on her head.

  “Darlin’,” he said, her stomach leaping at the sound of the dropped G, “you haven’t been laid right in quite a while.”

  In the morning she made him pancakes.

  “These are quite fine,” Abernathy said. “I won’t be expecting you to do this every day, just on special occasions. I already have a cook.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Anne asked.

  “After we get married, of course.” He winked and held out his cup for more coffee. “After I make you my bride.”

  Lyon was spending a week in East Hampton visiting clients and came over for lunch a few days later. She made ham sandwiches, and they sat in the garden.

  “You look … different,” he said.

  “I had a facial,” she said. She tried desperately hard not to smile.

  “Look at me,” Lyon said. But she wouldn’t. “Come on, look at me.” He broke into a wide grin. “Well, well, well. I haven’t seen that expression in years.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I hope you can fool Bill more easily than you fool me,” Lyon said. “You sly vixen.”

  “Don’t make jokes,” Anne said. “I’ve done something awful. What should I do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want everything to be exactly the way it was a week ago. Before.”

  “Simple: then don’t tell Bill.”

  “God, this is awful. Let’s change the subject,” she said.

  “Easy enough,” said Lyon. “I have some big news.” He was writing a book. He was more than halfway through, and it had just been accepted by a publisher in New York.

  Anne brought out a bottle of champagne. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she said as she poured.

  “Just an inch, I’ve got tennis this afternoon.” He had started writing again when Neely went into rehab. “I didn’t feel like seeing anyone,” he told her. “I went home every night to that wretched condo in Brentwood. Neely has the television on all the time, but when she’s not around I never turn it on. The first few weeks I read like a fiend. And then one night it just came to me.” Anne remembered his first two novels. The first one had gotten wonderful reviews but hadn’t even sold enough to earn back his advance. The second just disappeared without a trace.

  “That was always your first love,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.” She had bought him a typewriter years ago: her first gift.

  “I’m leaving the agency,” Lyon said. “We can afford it now, with the way the market is going.”

  “What does Neely say?”

  “She loves that I’ll be around all day.” Lyon lifted his glass to the light. “I haven’t told the agency yet, just you and Neely. Do you miss it—the action?” he asked.

  “Never,” she said.

  “I don’t think I will, either. I never meant to stay in it so long. Twenty-two years is an awfully long detour.”

  “Sometimes I think life is nothing but the detours,” Anne said.

  “In four years I’ll be sixty,” said Lyon. “I’m too old to be doing anything other than exactly what I want.”

  “You’re in a rare philosophical mood. How is Neely,” she asked.

  “Her usual spectacular self. Can you believe we’ve been together almost eight years? And they said it wouldn’t last,” he joked. “I really do love her, you know. My precious monster.”

  “I believe you. I don’t quite understand it, but I believe you.”

  “It’s simple,” he said. “She’s the only woman who doesn’t want more of me than I can give. Everyone else was always so … disappointed.” He leaned back. “I suppose that isn’t a very nice thing to say to the e
x-wife.”

  “No, you’re right. I expected too much of you.”

  “You expected me to be someone else. In every relationship, there’s the lover. And then there’s the person who is loved. I was always the latter. You would think that’s the better position to play. But it turns out the greater reward is in doing the loving.”

  They sat for a while, gossiping about people they both knew in the Hamptons, talking about Jenn.

  “Twenty-one years old,” Lyon said. “Unbelievable.”

  “If she’d gone to college, she’d be going into her senior year.”

  “You never give up. I don’t know what Jenn is going to do after this, but I can’t picture her at college.”

  “She says she wants to act,” Anne said.

  “Lord help us, anything but that.” Jenn looked like her mother, but lately when she spoke Lyon was reminded of someone else: Neely. Neely with a Park Avenue accent. He looked at his watch and stood up. “Well, I’ve got one last thing to do before I quit this lousy business.” He picked up his tennis racket. “For all the agents and actors and writers everywhere in the world, I’ve got to drive up to East Hampton and kick George Dunbar’s saggy ass.” He tossed an imaginary ball into the air and swung at it with his racket. “Beware the spike of a free man.”

  “Free at last,” Anne said.

  “Utterly, thoroughly, delightfully free,” he said.

  He drove up to East Hampton, humming along to Beethoven. The day had grown hot. George could not stop talking about Terry Abernathy.

  “The studio’s in a panic,” George said. He laid it out for Lyon, who was positioning for what. Lyon did his best to act interested, but it felt like reading a news article about something terrible that was happening in a small country far away. By the time the deal went through, he and Neely would have already moved to London.

  “Time to play,” Lyon said. He won the first set in straight games. He hadn’t played this well in years.

  “I want to know what you had for breakfast,” George said, dripping with sweat. “Man, is it ever hot.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” said Lyon. He was on fire now. The ball came at him, and he hit it with all the saved-up anger he had. Anger at the years he had wasted, doing things that didn’t matter, for people he didn’t like. He could picture his victory: he would slaughter George Dunbar, and then they would shake hands at the net, and then Lyon would give him the news.

  Halfway through the second set he felt it: a ping, as if a bolt had loosened in his chest, and then the pain, as if his heart had caught on fire. He fell hard to the ground. George came racing around the net. It was impossible to breathe.

  Not now, not here, not now, not yet. There was so much left to do. There was so much left to say. He thought of Neely, how she had called him last night and sung him good night, an old standard, changing the words around because she couldn’t quite remember them anymore. My funny valentine. Sweet, handsome valentine. You make a smile in your heart.

  It was the kind of funeral Lyon had always hated: too many flowers, too many people, too much fuss. Anne and Bill went back to their hotel to pack quickly before catching the red-eye back to New York. Jenn was staying on with Neely in Malibu.

  There had been a reception immediately before the service, in a large, sunny room just to the left of the chapel. Neely and Jenn stood in a corner, greeting the long line of mourners. It was Jenn’s first funeral. She wasn’t sure how to act, but very little seemed to be expected of her. People came up, taking her hands in theirs, offering sympathy. She did not know most of them—they were movie people, California people, from the part of her father’s life that she had been left out of after the divorce.

  She watched Dylan and Judd across the room, in dark gray suits that nearly matched. A studio head pulled them both in for a group hug. An actress kissed them on both cheeks, then wiped away her lipstick stains with a pale pink handkerchief. These were the people who ran Hollywood, and they had watched Judd and Dylan grow up.

  And who was she? Lyon’s first wife’s daughter, the one he had left behind in New York. The one who came to California twice a year. They knew her as a model, not as extended family. Jenn wondered what would have happened if she’d moved in with Lyon instead of staying with Anne, not that there had ever been a whisper of a choice. She would have had everything the twins had now: a roomful of powerful people leaning in to murmur, If there is anything I can do. It was so unfair! They were only stepsons, and barely that.

  On a table by the door was a leatherbound guestbook that people signed as they came in. The man from the chapel said they would send it to Neely right after the service. Jenn would have to figure out a way to get the book for herself. She would write a nice long note to everyone who had signed it. They would remember, and they would help her later on.

  “That’s better, you were looking way too gloomy,” Neely said.

  “What?” said Jenn. “Sorry, I spaced for a minute.”

  “You don’t want to look depressed. You want to act as classy as your father.” Neely brushed back a loose strand of Jenn’s hair.

  They were taken to the cemetery in separate cars: Neely and the twins, Anne and Jenn. Anne didn’t recognize most of the mourners. They dressed for death differently here: the men in fashionably tailored black suits, and many of the women in hats. She spoke to Neely for only a few moments, just before the burial service began. Neely had dressed with the help of a stylist. She did not lift her heavy black veil to say hello. Anne took Neely’s hand, gave it a soft squeeze, and felt Neely’s arm stiffen: she did not want to be held.

  “They’re all gone now,” Neely said. “Except you. Everyone who remembers.”

  “He was so happy,” Anne said. “The happiest I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Geez, Anne. You can cut the bereaved widow act. He was my husband, okay? I know what he was feeling, you don’t have to tell me.” She would never forgive Anne for being the one to see him last.

  Casey came for lunch a few days later. “Give me the long version,” she said. Anne was surprised to discover how much better it made her feel to talk about the funeral as if it were just another party: who was there and who wasn’t, what they wore, what music had been played. The best of Hollywood had turned out to say goodbye. Lyon’s cousins had flown in from England. Anne had finally gotten a look at the famous Dr. Mitchell. Stella had pointed out various old girlfriends. Three retired studio heads had stood together in one of the front rows. When the minister announced a silent moment of prayer, they bent their heads together and murmured kaddish. Judd’s fiancée was easily in her late thirties, and pregnant. Dylan’s head was shaved. Many people got up to speak. There was music: “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipe, and one of Lyon’s favorite pieces of Puccini. At the end a mezzo-soprano sang a soft, slow version of “My Funny Valentine.”

  “Not a dry eye,” said Anne.

  They talked about a new movie Casey was thinking of doing and how everyone in town was grumbling about the stock market.

  “You seem distracted,” Casey said.

  “I have to tell you something,” said Anne. “A secret.”

  Casey listened without interrupting. “Wow,” she said when Anne was through. “Good for you.”

  “But what do I do now?”

  “You don’t do anything now. And you can never tell Bill, no matter how much you’re tempted to. It was just sex, Anne. Great sex, but just sex.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “You’re getting married in less than two months.”

  “I know, I know, you don’t have to remind me.”

  “But don’t you want to?” Casey asked.

  “I don’t know anymore.” She felt awful saying it. “With Bill it hasn’t been … you know … in a long time.”

  “Well, of course not. Look how long you waited. Nothing ever stays that hot.”

  “But even in the beginning,” Anne confessed, “it w
as never really …”

  Casey lifted an eyebrow. “Not even in the beginning?” Anne shook her head. “But the way you guys dance together,” Casey said. “I just assumed.”

  “I suppose we put on a good show.”

  “But you love him, right?” Casey asked.

  “I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure I ever really did. He’s just, he’s just so exactly who I’m supposed to marry.”

  “But he loves you, you know that, right?”

  “Yes. I know that.” Anne thought of what Lyon had told her on that final afternoon: You could love or be loved, it was always uneven. Anne had loved Lyon. Now Bill loved her. And it was a wonderful feeling: to be loved, to be safe, to know someone would always take care of you no matter what, that Bill loved her at her best and at her worst.

  “Don’t blow it,” Casey said. “Promise me you won’t blow it. Remember what it was like? To be alone? God, Anne, remember dating? And, don’t kill me for bringing this up, but how old are you now?”

  “Forty-six.”

  “You know what kind of women forty-six-year-old men go out with? I’m thirty, and I’m already too old for most of them. That’s if you go out at all. Trust me, there isn’t anything out there that’s better than Bill.”

  “I know, I know,” said Anne.

  “I mean, Terry Abernathy, everyone knows about Terry Abernathy. He’s totally crazy. If he weren’t so rich, no one would put up with him. He’s only been married about a million times. He makes Keith Enright look like a choirboy. I’m sure he’s incredibly charming, but you know what it would be like. You’d lose your mind. It would be like Lyon all over again.”

  That night they went to the club to celebrate Diana’s birthday. There was coconut cake and dancing. Bill waltzed her out onto the patio.

  “Remember,” he said, “our first kiss?” He kissed her again. She kissed him back with everything she had, hoping, waiting, praying that she would feel something, anything, feel just the littlest bit. But it was like always. Nothing.

  “Wow,” he said. “I can’t wait to get you home.”

  In the bathroom, the women were reapplying their lipstick.