SHE STOPPED CALLING ME. She wasn’t inviting me over to her house anymore. Of course she wasn’t staying at her house at this point, but we could’ve gone out for pizza. We could’ve hung out. Just so I could see her.
I brought a flower arrangement to the memorial service. Pink carnations. That color always seemed to fit with her. After the service there was this line you went through, shaking hands with everybody in the family and saying how terrible you felt. Naturally I didn’t have that much to say to the parents, but when I got to her, I just threw my arms around her and started bawling. We’d been through so much together. And I felt like it was just the beginning.
“It means so much to me that you’d come,” she said to me. Same thing I heard her say to the guy right ahead in the line, and the one in front of him.
Well, I’m thinking, this just isn’t the place to talk. She’s got to keep up appearances here. It’s like she’s acting in a play here. Later on, we’ll go to the mall and try on silly hats and stuff, blow bubbles, sing songs from The Wizard of Oz. We’ll just be a couple of crazy girls together again. So I wait to hear from her. I sit around at home thinking any minute now I’m going to see the Datsun pull up and she’ll hop out and say, “How about we go over to the mall, Liddy?”
I just sit there in my room, waiting. I hear the TV, one soap after another. Hear that damn Dexatrim commercial nine million times. My mom screaming on the phone to her sister all about what a jerk Chester was. Kid next door playing Super Mario. But never her.
After she moved back from her parents’ place to her condo, when the police were done looking for fingerprints and stuff, I went over right away. “I missed you so bad,” I say. “My life was just unbearable when you weren’t around.”
She laughs. Pokes me in the stomach—just lightly, you know? “You hitting the ice cream again, Liddy?” she says. That’s Suzanne for you. She knows me so well, she notices everything.
I tell her I was thinking maybe we could go drive around. Like before. There’s so much I want to tell her. And naturally I want to know how things are going with Jimmy. And what about our trip to Florida this summer?
“Gee, I don’t know,” she says. “There’s a lot going on right now. It’s a crazy time, you know?”
“How’s Walter doing?” I say.
She says, “Poor little guy. He keeps sniffing around like he’s looking for Larry.” The blouse she was wearing the night she found Larry, that got blood on it. One day he dragged it out of the hamper and brought it into her bed. Like he recognized the smell. Another time it was a pair of Larry’s old dirty gym socks. She didn’t have the heart to wash them.
“So,” I said. “Whatever happened to that TV job you tried out for the night Larry, you know. Got killed.”
“It didn’t work out,” she told me. They were crazy to get her on their news team, only the terms of the contract were just too unreasonable. She’d be locked into the same station for two years. She explained to me she had to keep her options more open than that.
“I guess you’re going to take that workshop out in California this summer,” I said.
“Yeah,” she says. “They’re going to have this woman there that hosts a morning talk show out of Portland, Oregon. Also some talent scouts who handle placing people like her in some of your midrange television market cities.” Which is the place a person has to start.
“That sounds exciting,” I say. “You know,” I say, “I don’t have to stick around this town.” I mean, anytime she wanted me to come be her secretary, it wouldn’t matter where, I’d drop everything and do it. She wouldn’t even have to pay me, until she was up in the big time.
“I’ve been reading about Kathy Lee Gifford,” she says. “The one that’s on mornings with Regis Philbin? And how she married this old guy that was a sportscaster, and even though he was twenty years older than her, they decided to have a baby. She stayed on the air right through her pregnancy and everything. Looked great. She even demonstrated these exercises so women at home who were expecting—which is a big part of your target audience after all—could do them right along with her. The day she came back to work after having the baby—which was like, two weeks after he was born—Regis Philbin got the highest ratings in the entire history of his show. She’s doing baby food commercials and stuff. Everything’s worked out great for her. Deborah Norville now, she was a different story. Talk about water weight gain. No wonder they fired her.”
Cody. That was Kathy Lee’s baby’s name. Cute.
“How’s Jimmy doing?” I asked her. “He hasn’t been around.”
“James?” she says. “Gee, how would I know?”
I said I thought they were in love and stuff. I figured he’d be with her every second he could now.
“Oh, boys,” she said. “They get some pretty crazy ideas. I mean, they really lose their perspective. Someday you’ll understand.”
“What about—you know,” I said. “What happened.”
“Let me give you some advice, Lydia,” she says to me. “Get back on your diet. Throw away all the M-and-M’s you’ve probably got hidden away in your locker. Throw those dorky glasses out. And if you think Jimmy’s so great, go after him yourself. Be my guest.”
“He’d never look at me,” I said. “He’ll never look at anyone else as long as he lives. He told me.”
“Well then I guess he’s going to have a lonely life,” she said. “Because frankly, he’s just not my type.”