The Rise and Fall of Rocky Love

First thing in the morning, as always, Cat meets with Rocky in her office to begin their day. She perches on a footstool with a pad of paper balanced on her knees and a pen ready to write. Rocky sits across from her, crosslegged on the couch, in a pool of sunshine that would have been enough to blind Cat. But Rocky soaks it in, never so much as shielding her eyes. It is the start of Cat’s third week on the job and some things have come to be expected. For example, the day will revolve around the list they make now, together.

“Call back those pushy people who wanted me to talk at that boring thing,” Rocky says.

“I’m unable to speak, but I’m happy to make a donation. Send a hundred dollars.”

“Call Charlie.” Her manager. A man Cat has already spoken with numerous times though she has yet to meet him in person. “Tell him I’m thinking about our conversation. Tell him I think I like the idea. Tell him I’ll let him know.”

“Ask Annie to make sure she has Parker’s class curriculum meeting marked in her calendar. It’s some time next week. Tell her I can’t make it.”

“Call back the assistant to that editor at Vanity Fair and tell them I’ll do the interview, but they’ll have to book a hotel room. I’m tired of journalists criticizing my interior design. Cat, stop writing down everything I say. Just tell them to get the room.”

“It’s okay, you’re still new to this. You’ll learn how to separate the flotsam from the jetsam.”

“She’s having a bad time with her boyfriend. He won’t leave his wife. Connie’s feeling impatient, but hell, she’s only waited ten years!” Rocky’s laughter bursts out then quickly dies. “I probably shouldn’t have told you all that. Scratch that off your list. I’ll call her myself.”

“Almost done.” Rocky pulls apart her crossed legs and drops one of her feet onto Cat’s pad. Her toenails are craggy and yellowed. Cat forces herself not to push the foot off her lap. “I can’t seem to get rid of this fungus. It’s contagious, I think.”

“Nail polish doesn’t even cover it anymore. It just makes my toenails feel like they can’t breathe.”

“Oh, I thought maybe that was why you did your nails.” Over the past weekend, Rocky had her long fingernails squared at the tips and painted bright red. Up until now, Cat has only seen Rocky’s fingers decorated by a changing assortment of rings.

“You noticed.” Rocky splays her hands in front of her, examining her manicure. “I went with Connie to her salon. It was insanely expensive. Do you like it?”

“I guess so.” A safe unanswer. She likes it well enough, but not on Rocky Love.

“You know, I’ve always been hated for my sexuality,” Rocky says, as if her manicure is a call to arms. Cat almost buys the logic — she wants this bright gesture of femininity to be a show of strength and not just another mating call — but it doesn’t feel completely stable.

“Bullshit.” Rocky leans forward, her eyes sparkling. “Tell me what you really think.”

The invitation to share her mind surprises and delights Cat. “It’s just that I thought feminists don’t wear nail polish.”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought it was too silly for someone, you know, like you.”

“I guess I did. Wait a minute, is this conversation okay? I don’t mean to offend you. The nails themselves are very pretty. Maybe I should get a manicure.”

“Maybe you should.” The grin: wide and dazzling. “Men love bright objects, you know. You’ll want to hold on to that cute boyfriend of yours.”

“You’re probably right about most men,” Cat says. “But Teddy once told me that he thinks makeup on women is cheap.”

“Oh, I know I’m right. About all men.” Rocky shifts on the couch, coming closer, and Cat can smell her boss’s perfume. Musky. Seductive. “Let me tell you a little story. When I was in college, my friend Lizzie had two close friends, both guys. They were just friends until one day, on impulse, Lizzie got herself a makeover at a department store and came back to school looking pretty gaudy. We all thought it was funny. But the next day, she told me that both her just friends had separately tried to seduce her. So you tell me. Maybe Teddy likes makeup more than he’ll admit.”

“Maybe.” Cat’s pen moves down the edge of her list, doodling a starburst inside a three-dimensional cube, balanced in the palm of a hand. Obviously Rocky has never met a man like Teddy — brilliant, loving, deep, authentic, honest, fun, and sexy to boot. A man capable to seeing a woman as an equal human being. A man capable of real friendship with his lover. From what Cat has gleaned so far, all of Rocky’s relationships with men have been train wrecks.

“I will.” Cat stands, clipping her pen onto the pad of paper. “I should get started on all this if you want it done today.”

“She slept with the cutest one, but he couldn’t get it up. Then she slept with the other one, who stopped talking to her the next day. So there you have it. You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.”

“But if she hadn’t gotten the makeover,” Cat can’t resist pointing out, “and hadn’t slept with those guys, then maybe they’d still be friends.”

“Maybe,” Rocky says. “Maybe not. But fucking each other was a helluva lot more fun than pretending they didn’t want to.”

Cat settles into her office and gets to work. She has found that sometimes Rocky’s energy inspires her, but other times it has the opposite effect, leaving her depleted. This is one of those times, and she feels happy to be alone with her thoughts, the hours and a set of tangible goals.

Later that day, after crossing items off the list, going out to lunch, and returning to cross off some more, Rocky comes into the office cradling a stack of papers. Cat swivels to face her desk and sits upright, having been gazing out the window at the brightening hues of autumn in Central Park.

“Call Charlie,” Rocky says. “I’ve made a decision. I’m going to do it. I’m going to write my memoirs.” She drops the pages onto Cat’s desk. “This is the beginning of Chapter One. Can you type it up today? It’s brilliant and I’m dying to see it printed out.”

“You’ll be part of it, helping with everything except the writing itself.” Rocky clasps her hands, bright fingertips buckling over each other into a fancy double fist. “I love projects, don’t you?”

Cat nods, thinking how busy this will make her, on top of everything else. But she’d rather be busy than bored.

“And add this to your list: Find me a photographer. I’ll need an author photo.”

As soon as Rocky is gone, Cat begins to type. She is learning to hit the right letters without looking at the keyboard. Now that Rocky’s going to write a book, she figures she’ll become an expert typist when all is said and done. One of these days, she’ll borrow Annie’s kitchen timer and clock her actual speed so she can track her progress.

Two months go by; Rocky’s memoirs grow; and finally, Cat meets Rocky’s manager, Charlie Webb, in person. Fiftyish, shortish and pot-bellied, he is nothing like what she imagined. But isn’t that always the case when you’ve known someone solely on the phone? What is left of his graying hair flies freely around his head. Wearing round wire-rimmed glasses and a casual suit, he is dumpy and faded, yet he has a natural charisma that defies his looks and Cat decides that she likes him more in person, for the paradox, than she did when all she had was the smooth voice and the fast words.

Rocky is running late, as usual, and so Charlie hovers in Cat’s office, making calls on the second phone and occasionally turning to her to speak.

Cat has ascertained that Rocky had a problem with drugs in the past. “I think so.”

“Good. Gotta keep her clean. She gets nuts, you don’t know, it’s bad. Five years ago it wasn’t so hard selling someone who wasn’t clean and sober. But now? Forget it. Shit’s out.”

“Just tell me one thing. These memoirs. She’s actually sitting down and writing them? Rocky the rocket?”

“I’m typing it.” What she cannot bear to tell him, but wonders if he’s already figured out, is that the memoirs are anything but coherent prose. Rocky can’t write to save her life.

Rocky walks in, wearing a designer sweatsuit. She has been working out in her study with her personal trainer. She pauses a moment, apparently unnerved to see her agent and assistant in a tête à tête. Then Rocky proffers what Cat has come to recognize as one of her specialties, the celebrity smile — wide and quick, all teeth.

“It’s a perfume for intelligent-women-of-a-certain-age kind of thing. They want an original libber.”

That’s not why I came over. I’m in the neighborhood and I realize I haven’t feasted my eyes on my Rocky for too long, that’s all.”

“A metaphor, Charlie?” She laughs. “Your thoughts are beginning to cohere in your old age.”

“Don’t push,” he says. “So, Rocky, when do I get to see these famous memoirs?”

“I can copy it right now,” Cat says. “It’ll just take a minute, there are only about twenty pages.”

Rocky glares at her. Cat faces the computer and opens a file she doesn’t need. Charlie looks at his watch and abruptly stands, saying, “I gotta be somewhere ten minutes ago,” then kisses Rocky and is gone.

Rocky rifles distractedly through some papers on the desk. Then she focuses a stern look on Cat. “Never offer to give someone a copy of something unless I tell you to. It doesn’t matter what it is.”

Cat clamps her lips and sits back in her chair. This is the first time Rocky has used that tone of voice with her. That dismissive, castigatory, get-in-line tone. That unedited tone that instantly reduces Cat from woman to girl.

Rocky leaves without offering an apology, instantly changing the terms between them. They had been friendly, if not exactly friends. Now Cat isn’t so sure.

It is five o’clock, a whole hour to go before the end of the day. Cat lifts her hands to cradle her face. If there is a name for this heavy feeling, she doesn’t know it, but she recognizes it well. It is the feeling of blind defeat that has riddled the stem of her life. The feeling of helplessness when your beloved big brother rebels too hard and is sent away before you’re finished worshiping him. The feeling of loneliness when you’re eight years old and you find your mother passed out drunk (again) on the couch when you get home from school. The feeling of danger when you’re twelve and your father spends most of his time working or out and you’re alone with a woman you love-and-hate, a woman who hardly notices you. The feeling of out-of-proportion desire when you grow up and every man who smiles at you looks like an island in a storm. The feeling of foolishness when you take a job for security and your boss reduces you to utter insecurity with the tone of her voice. Because you expected more of this job and of her, and when this feeling hits you, you are reminded of how stupid you were to expect anything at all.

Cat’s emotions rise higher than her head and she needs to find the horizon line, to focus, to stay calm at work. Beside the new computer file she just opened, she types in her initials, CRG. Then she double-clicks the file, opening a blank page, and begins her own memoirs. Even as she does it, she recognizes it as a desperate impulse. But she needs, right now, to find the vibrant thread of her self. A thread that is too easily lost.

The Legend of My Birth

It seems as if all my life things have happened in pairs, starting with the moment of my birth. The story goes like this.

It was November 22, 1963. Janet went into labor while watching a television announcer say that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, and Cat was born at the moment a nurse ran into the delivery room to cry, “President Kennedy is dead!”

The doctor stood there holding the tiny baby who screamed and screamed, and the nurses were like statues. Everyone was frozen, except the baby, who shivered and cried. Janet strained to see the baby. She counted two arms and two legs, one head, eyes ears nose mouth all in place, ten fingers and ten tiny toes. Janet was stunned from childbirth, knocked out, dragged down, exhausted, yet a wave of euphoria swept through her. Her long brown hair was stuck to the side of her face. She wished someone would comfort her, or at least hand over her new baby. One nurse was crying. The baby was crying. Finally, Janet said, “May I please have my baby?”

Everyone awoke. The doctor carefully handed the baby to a nurse, who solemnly showed her to Janet. The baby had a tiny face with squeezed shut eyes. Her tiny fists shivered by her shoulders.

“We’ll clean her up,” the nurse said. “You rest.”

Janet fell asleep and woke two hours later. Mort’s parents were there, loyal and involved as always. Rose and Ben Gold weren’t even her own parents, but they cared more. Janet’s parents had never even met Eddie, her first child, who was already ten. Now, two hours after giving birth to her second child, Janet wondered if maybe her parents had been right — too extreme, certainly, in their reaction — but right perhaps in rejecting Morton Gold as their son-in-law. He had been as unreliable as they had predicted. When she had told him to leave, eight months ago, to “go live with that flit downtown!” she didn’t think he really would. Especially since she was pregnant.

Ben Gold was a stocky handsome man of sixty who took pride in his appearance of affluence. He always wore a suit, even on the weekends. She knew from Mort that his father had been unfaithful to his wife. Janet assumed Rose didn’t know, unless she had decided to live with it. She had been protective of Janet these last eight months, a violent critic of her son’s adultery. Maybe Rose clung to her security for fear of slipping back to the old days, when she and Ben had grown up and met on the Lower East Side, poor immigrant working children. Rose still looked like an Eastern European Jew: short and heavy, with blue-tinted gray hair and a utilitarian way of wearing her expensive clothes. She was a woman who meant business. Janet suspected Rose had made a career of possessing her husband, and in a funny way respected that even though Janet herself did not feel capable of such deliberate blindness and unspoken forgiveness. Rose could have survived alone but chose not to. Janet could not survive alone but had cast off the man who had vowed to protect her.

“What a gorgeous baby she is, that one!” Rose huddled by the side of Janet’s bed. She had brought homemade rugelach which filled a coffee can on the nightstand. “She has every single digit,” said Rose, “I counted. Do you know she weighs only six pounds? Less than six pounds and you have an underweight baby, they incubate.”

“Don’t frighten her, Rose,” Ben said. “The baby’s perfectly healthy. Two healthy children —”

“—is worth more than you realize,” Rose said.

“More important than money —” Ben said.

“—or even marriage.”

Janet had always appreciated Rose’s acceptance of the love that propelled her to marry Mort. They had known each other three months at the time, were students, and Janet was five weeks pregnant. So they married, it was as simple as that. Rose was supportive of them from the beginning and Ben wasn’t far behind. It was her own parents, John and Ellen, the Superior Phillipses, the oil-rich Golden Mile couple, who refused to acknowledge the marriage. Janet understood then that she had been an investment and marrying a musician and a Jew was defaulting on that investment. She was a stock gone bust. So she named her son Edward Avery, after her paternal grandfather Avery Edward Phillips, who was a failure and a drunk and deeply hated by his son. She sent her parents a birth announcement: Edward Avery Gold, born July 6, 1953, at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. She had not spoken with them for ten years. But she would send them another announcement: Catharine Rose Gold, born November 22, 1963, at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.

On Thanksgiving Day, Ben took the limousine to pick up Janet and Catharine and bring them the thirty blocks downtown to the Park Avenue maze they called home. Ben joked, “I once counted twelve rooms, but who knows?” They had been kind enough to situate Janet and Eddie — and now Catharine — at the far end of the apartment, where they could have some privacy. Rose said, “You are welcome here, remember that,” and had never made Janet feel otherwise. Rose treated Janet like another daughter, a tall sharp-nosed WASP daughter, the kind she would have called a shiksa if she saw her on the street.

Janet stood in the creamy marble hallway, her arms full of Catharine, while Ben unlocked the door. She felt like she’d gone out shopping. Funny, the difference ten years made. With Eddie, she had felt like she was coming home from war.

The front door swung open. Eddie was standing there, waiting. He looked confused.

Ben said, “Here we are! Where’s Rosie?” and disappeared down the long hall to the left.

Janet thought Eddie looked tall, that this four-foot ten-inch manboy could hardly be the baby she birthed ten years ago. The time had flashed by so fast. Eddie had golden hair that hugged his head like a tightly curled rug. It was neither her hair nor Mort’s but Eddie’s own. He was so much his own person, a separate entity, and it amazed her. Rose had made him dress up for Thanksgiving in a navy blue suit and brown tie. His soft brown eyes, shaded by tender lashes, looked pleadingly at Janet.

“Mommy, can I change my clothes?”

“How about a kiss?” She approached him carefully with the baby. He smirked and forced himself to kiss Janet on the cheek. Then, like a boy at a social embarrassed by the presence of a girl, he glanced at his sister for the first time and stared, mortified. Then he looked at his mother.

“What’s her name?”

“Catharine.”

He peered into the folds of the blanket, at the little pink face that peeked through. “I’m Eddie,” he said, “your big brother, so you better listen to me.” He blew her a kiss then looked up at Janet. “Can I take off this stupid monkey suit, Mommy, please?”

“After dinner,” she said.

“Please?”

“Keep it on for Grandma, honey, okay?”

Eddie skulked off dramatically. Janet pushed the front door closed with her hip. She was surprised that Rose had not appeared yet; she must have been in the kitchen, far at the other end of the apartment, supervising the big meal. Janet was glad for this unexpected moment of privacy. It gave her a chance to settle in. She needed to collect herself, to poise herself somehow so that the darkness she felt inside did not show.

She was wearing the purple-flowered maternity dress she had packed in her overnight bag, and felt ugly. She didn’t know where this little baby had come from.

They were just flukes, anyway, she thought as she carried the restless bundle down the long hallway to her room. It had nothing to do with her, or Mort, or either of their wishes. Pregnancy was just a forceful act of nature, the arbitrary continuation of the human race. Why, women even bore children from rape. How to explain that to your children, or even to yourself? How to go on living with the needy fruit of a haphazard seed?

Her room had been neatened since she rushed off three days ago. The bed was made, the clothes she had thrown over the chair next to the dresser were all put away, the shoes she’d strewn around the floor by the closet were also gone. A vase of white roses, dozens of them, sat on the round glass table by her bed. A tiny card was propped next to the vase.

A white cradle with eyelet ruffles stood against the wall near the bed. Janet herself would have chosen something simpler and cheaper. Ten years with Mort had taught her austerity. But Rose had insisted on this cradle and Janet was grateful. At least the new baby wouldn’t have to sleep in a dresser drawer, like Eddie did, courtesy of Mort’s struggling career. He was still struggling. Only now he had a twenty-year-old girl to struggle with him, a girl too young to understand how meaningless that kind of struggle really was. Janet took the baby to the bathroom, hoisted her up to let the blanket fall off, and carefully set her down on the changing table. She removed the dirty diaper from this tiny soft baby who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, from nothing, cleaned her up and wrapped her in a fresh diaper.

“How’s that?” Janet cooed.

The baby blinked her eyes.

“Hungry?” Janet lifted her up with slow, careful hands. She settled into an upholstered antique chair and unbuttoned the top of her dress. One large breast tumbled out of her bra. The baby’s mouth latched onto the nipple and sucked.

Eddie wandered in, his tie loose but still technically on, one shirttail hanging out of his pants. He stood in front of Janet. “What’re you doing?”

“Nursing the baby.”

“But she’s...” He stared at his mother’s swollen breast.

“How do you think you ate when you were born?”

“You mean she’s eating you?”

“She’s drinking the milk from my breast, just like I explained to you before. Look.” Janet released the other breast and squeezed her nipple between two fingers. Cloudy milk dribbled out.

“Yuck.”

Janet laughed.

“Daddy’s here,” Eddie said. “He said did you see the flowers.” He walked over to the vase of roses, picked up the card and read aloud: “Dearest Janet and Catharine, I love you both, Daddy Mort. Hey, what about me?”

Janet stared at Eddie with no thought of him at all, or even of baby Catharine in her arms sucking hard at her breast. “He’s here, now?”

“Yeah, he’s out there smoking cigars with Grandpa.”

Janet wished the baby would stop feeding so she could put her down and go find Rose.

“Go get Grandma, honey. I want to see her.”

Eddie went off and in a few minutes Rose came in, her fancy holiday clothes covered by a stained apron.

“Oy, sweetie, when did you come in? I’m in the kitchen with the chestnut stuffing and Eddie comes in with the suit I bought him at Saks such a mess and he says to me, Grandma, he says, Mommy’s been home for hours and she wants to see you! For hours! And so how is my little bubbeleh?” She folded at the knees to inspect the baby, paying no attention to Janet’s huge breast.

“I got here about twenty minutes ago,” Janet said. “I changed Catharine and just started feeding her.”

“This place,” Rose said, “it’s too big. No one knows who comes and goes. So? How do you feel today?”

“Rose? Eddie said Mort’s here.”

Rose’s squarish face pulled in like a dehydrated prune. She nodded quickly, once. “That he is. I suppose it’s some kind of reflex action, him coming here on Thanksgiving.”

Rose was only too happy to take up the gauntlet of betrayed wife for Janet, even against her own son. But deep down, Janet wondered, wouldn’t she have liked to see Mort happy?

“Do you think he came to see the baby?” Janet asked.

“What do I think? I think he came for a free meal, that’s what I think. Who knows? Maybe he had some pangs of regret.” Rose shrugged dramatically. “So! You? What do you want? You want I should send him away?”

“No,” Janet said quickly. “But don’t let him back here. I want to put the baby down and clean myself up. He’ll have to see me before he sees her.”

“Good thinking,” Rose said. “In the meantime, I’ll make sure that boy of Mort’s tucks in his shirt.”

That’s how it was with Rose: wayward sons belonged to their fathers, and obedient daughters to their mothers.

After a while, Catharine relaxed her grip on Janet’s breast and lay her little head down. Janet paced for a few minutes until the baby emitted a tiny burp, then wrapped her in a soft white blanket and set her carefully, like fragile glass, in the center of the cradle. The baby sighed, and slept.

Now it was Janet’s turn. She washed at the sink, powdered and perfumed herself, and looked for something to wear. She chose an electric blue and orange print dress, with short sleeves and a square neckline, and put it on. Mort particularly disliked this dress. She clipped her hair into a long ponytail that dangled between her shoulder blades, then applied a touch of makeup. She decided at the last minute to take the extra time to polish her nails orange-red.

She left her door slightly ajar, in case the baby cried, and walked quietly down the hall which was lined with photographs of the Gold family she had seen so many times she no longer noticed them.

At the end of the hall, the apartment flowered into the communal living quarters. Down another hall to the right was the kitchen and dining room, and to the left were the foyer and front door, book-lined reception room and enormous living room. Janet could hear the low rumbling of male voices and smell the thick woodsy odor of cigars. She heard Rose’s squawky laughter.

As Janet entered the living room, she quickly took in the relatives who had come for the annual feast: Ethel, the oldest Gold, and her husband Jon Wasserstein; Warren, Mort’s brother, a widower, was here with his teenage daughter Emily; and Becky, the youngest Gold, who had divorced her husband at the age of twenty-three, gone to law school at Columbia, and at twenty-eight was the first woman associate at a prestigious law firm in midtown. This was the whole family. Ben’s and Rose’s parents had all died, Ben had no siblings, and Rose’s only relative in America was her cousin Katinka Lehman who had lived with them in their early marriage and whose twin sons, George and Henry Lehman, had reputedly been fathered by Ben.

Eddie stood next to Emily, his cousin. When Janet walked into the room, Emily said, “Hi Aunt Janet!” and everyone turned. Mort watched her carefully, to detect her mood before doing or saying anything.

“Doesn’t she look wonderful?” Rose said loudly, and glanced at Mort.

“Even in the hospital,” said Ben, “after the birth, she was beautiful!”

Becky rose and came over to hug Janet. “Hiya kid,” Becky said. She was Janet’s favorite. When Becky married at the age of nineteen and within the first year realized it had been a mistake, it was Janet who urged her to leave. Becky soared beyond Janet, who at that time had been a young new mother, happily married. Now Becky was happy. She was small and blond, a little on the heavy side but still attractive. Janet envied her — if only she too had had her marital downfall early instead of too late, after children.

Becky put an arm around Janet’s waist and they walked across the room, over the enormous Oriental carpet, past two cozy enclaves of sofas and chairs, to the main formal area arranged with antiques and glassed-in bookcases housing Ben’s collection of first editions.

Mort was seated on the salmon-pink feather-filled couch. He wore a brown corduroy suit, a pale yellow shirt and a Western tie. His thick brown hair had grown slightly long, curling down behind his ears. Janet yearned to suggest he cut it, then wondered if he had worn it long today on purpose, to involve her in his inability to care for himself, to indicate to her that his new woman was not caring well for him. His round, ruddy face opened to her in appeal.

“You really look good, Janet,” he said.

She turned away. After greeting everyone individually and accepting their congratulations, she sat across the room, with Becky, on an embroidered divan. Janet listened as the relatives discussed the assassination of the president with tones of anger, confusion and remorse. Her depression had melted naturally into the communal state of shock, and only now did she begin to fully realize what had happened.

After a few minutes, Mort got up and came over. He stood in front of her and asked, “How are you?”

Becky looked at Janet, patted her knee and left. Mort sat down.

Janet said, “I’m fine.”

“But after the baby, I mean. Are you feeling all right?”

She recalled her depression after Eddie was born. Yes, she was feeling darkness invade her now, too. But it was her darkness, not a hiding place for strangers, deserters.

“I feel fine,” she said.

“So, how is she, the baby?”

Janet couldn’t help smiling. “Catharine is wonderful.”

“I’d like to see her.”

Now Janet looked at him fully. How many times had she seen his face inches away, full of panic, of holding-on as he approached orgasm? Somehow that face had gotten into her, invaded her, filled her hips with boys and girls was a line she recalled from an E.E. Cummings poem, she couldn’t remember which. This was the man who had given her her children, whether she wanted them or not. The man who had left her pregnant, broke, alone.

She didn’t answer him. When she looked up, she saw Rose watching them.

It was Eddie who broke the silence, strutting over in his suit and tie. He walked right between his father’s legs, leaned heavily into one thigh and looped a small arm over Mort’s neck.

“Did ya see her yet?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“She looks just like me, I mean when I was her age,” Eddie said.

“No kidding!”

“Except she’s a girl and all.”

“She must be very good looking, then,” Mort said.

Eddie smiled. “Catherine’s a dumb name, don’t you think?”

Mort shrugged heavily. “Oh, I don’t know. I think your mommy found a good name.”

“But can we call her something else?”

Mort thought. “How about Kitty?”

“Oh, no!” Janet said. She had not meant to involve herself in this conversation, as if they were a family. She quickly retreated, but Mort took up her small thread.

“No, no, not Kitty, you’re right.”

“How ’bout Cat?” Eddie said. “Kitty Cat. But just Cat? I mean, she’s so teensy and all.”

“Cat,” Mort nodded. “Cat Gold.”

Janet thought it sounded too easy, but wouldn’t say so. She sat silently, like a shadow, and pretended indifference.

“Want me to show her to you?” Eddie said.

Mort turned to Janet. “Is that all right?”

“She’s sleeping now. It’ll have to wait.”

The dinner table, which was long enough to seat twenty-five, was covered with Rose’s best lace cloth. The silver candlesticks had been specially polished, along with the good silverware. Rose’s best china — which she had bought as a gift for herself ten years after her marriage to Ben — was laid out in full regalia at one end of the table where the family sat for Thanksgiving dinner. Ben was at the head of the table, Rose at his right, Janet next to Rose, Eddie next to Janet, and Mort all the way at the end where, gratefully, Janet could not see him.

But she could hear him, talking, and his deep voice stirred memories in her body, somewhere in the cave of her chest where she had loved him. Echoes of her past feelings resonated, disturbing her. She knew, just knew, that if she let him he would stay. She had two children now, no job, no skills, no money of her own. How long could she go on living off her in-laws?

Janet was surprised by her appetite. She ate everything offered: turkey, chestnut stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, challah bread with sweet butter, Brussels sprouts, salad, pumpkin pie and coffee. From time to time she noticed Mort straining forward to see her. Her appetite must have pleased him because, just as she had cleared her plate, he leaned forward, caught her eye and said, “Good work!”

They were still at the table when the baby’s cries were heard faintly from way down the hall. Janet responded as if a cord had tugged her center; she rose and hurried away. Eddie jumped up and followed. And so did Mort.

Eddie moved with Janet like a shadow as she hovered over the cradle, gently peeled back the blanket and undid the top snap of Cat’s fuzzy pink suit. The baby eyes fluttered.

“Why’s she spitting?” Eddie said.

“That’s just drool. You did that too.”

Eddie was mildly indignant, but said nothing. His father was hovering over the cradle now, too, and he wanted to see what was going to happen.

Mort’s face bloomed into a huge smile. “I don’t believe it!” he said. Janet lifted the baby from the cradle and held her against her shoulder. Mort and Eddie followed their females across the room. Janet sat to nurse Cat, then hesitated. Mort.

But he didn’t recognize her discomfort and pulled up another chair to sit near them. Eddie hopped onto Mort’s knee.

“She’s a real beauty,” Mort said. “I’d like to hold her.”

“Well, maybe just for a second before feeding.”

Janet stood and brought Cat to him. Eddie got up from Mort’s lap and Mort rose halfway to meet Janet as she lowered the baby into his cradled arms.

“Me next,” said Eddie.

Janet thought he was asking for some attention so she went to hug him, but he squirmed away.

“No, I want to hold her.”

For an instant she felt rejected, then realized that his acceptance of the new baby was a gift. So she sat back down and waited.

Mort cooed over Cat, touching her tiny face with his hairy stocky forefinger, holding her tiny hand in his large fleshy palm. “Catharine Rose Gold,” he whispered to his baby, “that’s your name. I’m Morton Gold, your father. I helped make you.”

Eddie, hovering over Mort’s shoulder, looked at Cat and said, “And remember me, your big brother? Eddie’s the name. You have to listen to me. Don’t forget that.”

Every afternoon, Parker comes home from second grade, has a snack, does his homework and watches TV. He never has a friend over. One day, on impulse,

Cat brings him one of her old Marvel comics. She has hundreds and as collectors’ items they actually have some value. But the real value, she knows, is their link to the imagination. She recalls how happily she had burrowed into the bright worlds of the comics, with their clear-cut conflicts and dramatic resolutions, nothing like the murky emotional life of her family in which the proverbial elephant — her mother’s drinking — overshadowed everything and was never discussed. She understands how a child can be loved and yet ignored, and when she hands Parker the old comic book his smile is ample compensation.

They squeeze together into the comfy guest chair opposite Cat’s desk and page by page she leads this sweet boy on a tour of an alternate universe. The intensity of his concentration thrills her. When they reach the last page, she asks, “Want to draw with me?”

Cat free associates, jotting as she thinks. “If I were a crystal ball... there would be no poverty, no pollution, no violence in the entire future of the whole wide world... there would be no need for money... there would be no disappointment, no pain, no dust....”

“There would be no mothers, no fathers, no grandparents. In the future there would be just us kids and we’d be magic and our powers would be as big as the biggest chocolate chips in the whole wide world forever.”

Parker’s round face glows in smile. He leans over the paper on which Cat has sketched a little boy in a spaceship soaring amongst stars and planets.

His purple pencil gets busy, then he throws the purple down for green, orange, blue. She leans in closer, admiring his work, when Annie comes in.

“Oh, honey,” Annie says, towering over him in her pale blue sweatshirt that says take it or leave it. “Come on, you can have a snack.”

Cat laughs. “Hey, at least you don’t have eight hours of homework every day, like me.”

Parker gathers his pencils, paper and the Marvel in heavy disappointment. Then he walks over to Cat, back at her desk, and gives her back the comic book.

He kisses her cheek, she tickles him and he bursts into cacophonous giggles... which stop abruptly at the sound of the penthouse’s front door opening and smacking shut. A cascade of footsteps and voices approach the office. Annie grabs Parker’s hand before he has a chance to collect his comic book and Cat’s drawing. Quickly, Cat gathers the afternoon’s phone messages into a neat pile.

The office door swings open and there is Rocky in her fur coat, carrying a shiny white shopping bag with LL stamped in big purple script on both sides. Her face is pinkish from the winter chill. Directly behind her is another woman in a fur coat with a matching fur hat. The woman is short and all the fur makes her look like an animal, a cute chubby Koala bear, an effect ruined by sunglasses and heavy red lipstick.

“A little tired, but you know. Well, you girls are busy. I’ll just get Parker started on his homework.”

Rocky watches Annie and Parker go — not even acknowledging her child, Cat notices with a pang — then drops the shopping bag on the desk, strips off her coat

and flings it over the footstool. Connie lumbers over to the armchair and nearly falls into it. “I shouldn’t do lunch anymore. It’s too exhausting.”

Rocky stands at the desk and looks through the day’s mail. “Connie saved my life,” she tells Cat. “Without Connie, I’d be a basket case today.”

Connie removes her fur hat and shakes out her short blond hair. “It’s hot under there.”

Cat hands her the pile of phone messages. Rocky reads through them quickly until she comes to one, a message from Charlie, at which she stares. Needs to talk to you about the memoirs. Wants you to meet with John Paglia.

“Connie,” Rocky says, her eyes still glued to the message slip. “You know John Paglia, don’t you?”

“I used to see him around. Dark hair, kinda cute, kinda funny. Worked on that soap. What was it called?”

“Rising Tides. He’s a TV writer. Why would Charlie want me to meet with him about my memoirs?”

“He left the network before I did,” Connie says. “I think he was freelancing around.”

To Cat, Rocky says, “Give me five minutes then get Charlie on the phone.” She plucks a piece of paper from the desk, a lined sheet scribbled with notes Cat has written to herself as reminders, balls it up and tosses it into the trash can under the desk. Then she notices the whimsical drawings and the comic book, which she picks up, declaring, “Lowbrow crap.” The Marvel hits the bottom of the can, on top of Cat’s crumpled To Do list, with a thwunk. Cat cannot bring herself to look down at the discarded treasures at her feet. Instead, she keeps focused on Rocky’s face. Too much makeup glopped over wrinkles. Age spots. Tiny bulges of fat beneath her eyes.

Rocky hands Cat the drawings. “Doesn’t Annie have some place she keeps Parker’s stuff?”

“I’ll give them to her,” Cat says, holding the drawings so they hover above the desk, not sullying the surface where so-called real work is done.

“John Paglia,” she hums, shakes her head and looks at Connie. “Coming? I’ve got some calls.”

“Honey, I love you, but I’ve got better things to do than sit around watching you talk on the phone.” Connie hoists herself out of the chair and pulls the hat back on her head. “Call me after your date. I want to know how it went.”

“You’ll love Larry. He might seem a little eccentric at first but he’s a great guy and I’ve known him forever — before he was famous. Did you know he’s won three Tonys for his work on Broadway?”

They touch cheeks and part ways, Connie heading to the front door and Rocky to her suite. Cat swivels around and digs through the trash for the comic book and her notes, which she unballs and flattens on the desk. She dials Charlie and puts the call through to Rocky. The button for line-one burns red for twenty minutes with whatever plans they are hatching. One thing Cat has grown sure of during her time here is that Rocky will never be able to write her memoirs without help. A soap opera writer. Perfect. Charlie Webb must be a genius to think of a soap opera writer to tell the story of a fallen star whose life seems more cartoon-ish than any cartoon Cat has ever drawn. More cartoonish than any of the heroic quests in a classic comic book. Lowbrow crap. Rocky doesn’t even know what she’s talking about, Cat thinks, slipping the comic book into a large envelope on which she sketches a little boy beneath Parker in riotous bubble-lettering.

Annie stands in the kitchen, watching the kettle on the ring of blue gas flames. Everything has been ready for a good half-hour, but as usual, when Rocky’s guests arrived she had just stepped into the shower. If she were Annie’s daughter, she would catch hell. Sometimes Annie feels like giving it to her anyway.

“A watched pot doesn’t boil, or something like that,” Charlie says. He is standing in the kitchen doorway, hands shoved into his pockets, smiling.

“Sometimes when I was a kid, but I don’t know. Chuck Chucky Upchuck. I don’t know, it doesn’t hit me right.”

“Nah, I’m not much of a Charles, either. Charles is too serious, and Chuck is too —”

Charlie looks at his watch, then veers back into the dining room. Annie follows him to the doorway and watches as he circles the dining room table, inspecting its bounty. Shrimp salad, turkey breast, sliced tomatoes, crusty French bread and a salad of apples, oranges, pineapple, raspberries and kiwi. For lunches she always uses the black and white zigzag china from Rocky’s first marriage to Dr. Bobby Love. For dinners she uses the floral Wedgwood from Rocky’s marriage to Jason Barthoff, Esq. Charlie looks at his watch again. “She’s now twenty minutes late.”

John Paglia stands by the window, absorbed by the dramatic view. He turns to Charlie. “Is she always this late?”

John nods and shrugs his shoulders. He glances through the window again then turns to smile at Annie.

She smiles back. He’s a nice young man, polite, and he reminds her of someone but she can’t think of who. He’s not exactly tall so much as large, big boned, well fed. His dark brown hair is neatly trimmed, as if he just came from the barber. He looks boyishly uncomfortable in a tie and jacket, and though he is wearing blue jeans, they are pressed. Finally, it hits her. She snaps her fingers and says, “You remind me of Orson Welles when he was just starting out. Oh, what a nice looking man he was before he put on the weight.”

“I’m flattered!” John smiles, a big unselfconscious smile, and Annie sees that he is not just polite and nice looking, but friendly too. “There’s no way you could possibly know this, but Orson Welles was my spiritual mentor when I was a kid, I mean, he was this amazing genius, and he was in charge of his own destiny, he wanted to make movies so he did it, he got out there and he did it and he did it brilliantly. I mean, back then, you had Hollywood and it was full of stars, but Welles, he was the northern lights.”

“That’s good,” Charlie says. “The sky’s full of stars, but this guy, he’s the northern lights. You should write that down, you should use that somewhere.”

John whips a pen and a small spiral notebook out of his jacket pocket, and jots it down.

“Well,” Annie says, “I guess I hit a nerve or something.” She can hear the kettle rattling on the stove. “Would you boys like some tea while you wait?”

“Thanks,” John says. “Why not?” He pulls out a chair and sits at one of the place settings. Charlie sits beside him. From inside the kitchen, Annie can hear them chattering about Rocky’s memoirs. She hears John’s enthusiasm pouring out in every direction, and then finally when he says something about a “rise and fall story,” Charlie stops him. “Listen, whatever you do, don’t you say that to her. She doesn’t see it that way. Fall? What fall? This is a rise story, understand?”

Annie pours boiling water over the basket of loose tea suspended in the teapot, then carries it to the table and puts it on a trivet. “Rocky’s not the kind of person you can set your watch by, is she?”

Rocky appears, dressed in black from head to toe, with a black turban wound around her head. Charlie and the writer are already installed at her table. She hates lunch meetings; and the nerve, sitting down before she arrived.

“So good to meet you,” she greets John. “I understand we were at the TV studio at the same time.”

“My office was just down the hall,” John says. “I used to see you walking by. You came in one day, I don’t know if you remember —”

“Wow, nothing,” Charlie says. “You were the best writer they ever had on Rising Tides.”

“You flatter me,” John says. “There was a lot of talent on that show in the early days, a lot of people made it great.”

“Seventeen Emmys in the six years John wrote the show,” Charlie says to Rocky. “It was the best daytime drama on the air.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Charlie says. “People like you don’t watch TV in the day, you’re too busy being who you are, am I right?”

Charlie finishes erecting a triple-decker turkey sandwich. He places his hands around it and lifts it an inch above his plate. “Rocky, I have a great feeling about this. What you are is a great personality with a great life, you have lived a fascinating and brilliant existence, you have everything it takes. But what you’re not, the one thing you’re not, is a writer. This I think you know, in your gut, am I right?” He lifts the sandwich and jams one corner into his mouth.

“Really!” John leans forward, his face shining with energy. He flips open the little pad he has placed beside his lunch, and holds a clear plastic pen above a blank sheet. “When did it come out? Who published it? How did it do? My God, what was it called?”

“Poetsong. You know, it was a brilliant novel, better than my columns, but it was never published.”

“One editor saw it, at Scribner’s, a really pathetic man, an alcoholic. Actually I may have shown it to a few other editors, I can’t recall, but in the end I decided to keep it to myself.”

Suddenly the years reel in and she is a young woman again, full of pride at her accomplishment, her brilliance, her novel. She can still feel each rejection, each jolt testing her confidence, raising the obstacle higher until she could no longer see beyond it. They were idiots and fools, those editors, telling her no, telling her no. She won’t set herself up for that again. She is smarter now, a grown woman with resources. This time she will position herself to fly right over obstacles before they appear.

“You know something, Charlie, you’re right. I always knew I wasn’t a writer. I always knew I needed a larger stage, as it were. I’m just not someone who has the time to write, that’s why the immediacy of radio and television is so, well, perfect for me.” She shines a smile at John, who, she notes, receives it with an adoring gaze.

“Of course you’re right. I never expected to write my memoirs without a collaborator, I was just priming the pump.”

“You’re too smart, babe, and do I love you.” Charlie reaches out to squeeze her arm. “Lemme tell you something else. Lemme tell you why John is the perfect guy for the job.”

“Exactly my feeling,” John says, “that you should hear about me from me. Who am I? Who is this guy sitting in your dining room, anyway? I’ll tell you who I am. Rocky — can I call you that?”

“Rocky, I may be your biggest fan. That’s the truth. I’m old enough to know who you are and young enough to know you’re the role model for every woman I’ve ever loved. It’s true. I knew that before I started working for the network. But once I was there, wow, I really understood the power of TV, how it’s the happening place, it’s where our real idols come to life, it’s where you go to find out what’s happening. You’re TV, I’m TV. So now we have to ask ourselves, why a book? Good question! I’ll tell you why a book. Because a book you do once, it’s a one-time punch, and it’s a loaded punch. In a book you get to the Rocky underneath the gorgeous woman, you get to break out the whole story, tell about where greatness comes from, and everyone wants to know this. This is probably the biggest question people ask today: Where do celebrities come from? What makes a celebrity? Why them? Why not me? Why am I such a putz when this person is a celebrity? That is why a book.”

“Exactly,” Charlie says. “Honey, do you know the market out there for a book like this? The kind of book John can write for you? A book that says fame, TV, wow, punch, grab you by the throat? Not one of those wordy books full of wind blowing on cornstalks. We’re talking about a book with a ready-made market, a real money-maker.”

“A book about you, done with that Rocky edge, with that TV kind of edge that nobody can do better than John Paglia, seventeen Emmys for Rising Tides. Honey, you tell me.”

Rocky nods, her eyes resting on John. He is an attractive man, enthusiastic and adoring, and he seems to understand the perfect angle as she herself had not. They’re right, of course, to package the memoirs in a television spirit. She had been way off the mark in thinking she could try it on her own.

“I have to lay it on the line,” John says. “I’ll only do this for a credit and a percentage.”

John flips shut his pad and drops it into his jacket pocket. He sits back in his chair. “Sorry, but I don’t ghost. My understanding was that I would co-write.”

“Co-write, Rocky,” Charlie says. “That’s the big thing these days. Ghostwriters, they’re a dime-a-dozen, any college dropout can ghostwrite a book for cheap. All the celebrities get their books done by co-writers these days. Now, John, what you want is a small percentage, am I right? You’re not asking for a lot, and Rocky gets all the publicity when the book comes out, you take a back seat.”

“Now that may be pushing it,” Charlie says. “Everything is a lot, that’s all advances and royalties for hardcover, softcover, North American rights, and subsidiary rights, media and foreign subs — you’ve got a small fortune right there alone.”

“Ten percent of hard and soft,” John says. “And five percent of film and electronic media options.”

“Okay, here’s what’s a good deal for you both. Rocky, you want John’s help making this book what it needs to be, then you gotta give him something. And John, you’re good, you’re the best, but let’s face it, it’s Rocky’s life and it’s her name, without her there is no book. So here’s a good deal for both of you. Fifteen percent of advances on hard and soft, ten percent of advances on sub rights, all royalties going to Rocky.”

John shakes his head. “That’s setting me up as a writer-for-hire and you know it. Listen, I want to do this, I love this project, so how about this as a compromise. I’ll take ten percent on hard and soft, advances and royalties both, and I’ll let you get away with five percent on all sub rights, electronic, film and foreign sales.”

“Where did you learn this?” Rocky asks. “Who’s your agent? Shouldn’t he be doing this?”

“That depends,” Charlie says. “Celebrities as big as Rocky Love cannot go it alone, big mistake, no way.”

“That’s right,” Rocky says. “Charlie protects me. What do you think, Charlie? Is that a good deal?”

“I’ll tell you what. We agree the project’s a go, we finish our lunch, we change the subject, we go home and we sleep on it. Tomorrow, we finish the deal.”

By the following week, contracts are signed, sealed and delivered, and John Paglia is standing in Cat’s office next to Rocky, holding a bottle of champagne.

“You,” Rocky says to Cat, “are going to keep typing up my pages, which you will then fax to John.”

“I’ll use conversations and interviews, along with Rocky’s free associations to help build the official version of the memoirs,” John says.

Cat knows better by now than to add her two cents, which would be to say that the sheets Rocky scrawls out are indeed not free associations, but worse — they are self-congratulatory ramblings.

“Free associations,” John says with verve, “but not in that sense, Rocky, not in the sense of disconnected thoughts. Free association is the heart of true writing. Writing the truth. Getting at the heart. Let’s call it free writing, self discovery, discovery of the self through a freely written inner dialogue that shines the light on the path you need to follow to get to the heart of the real story.”

Cat bolts from the room, down the hall and to the bathroom, where she lets out a hiss of laughter. This guy is just amazing, she loves this guy. She had not realized how satisfying it would be to watch someone manipulate Rocky. Yet at the same time Cat feels a sizzle of guilt. Whatever Rocky is now, she was once a trailblazing feminist who took personal risks exposing hypocrisy. She spoke up when most people were afraid to challenge the status quo. Rocky Love once inspired other women to expect more from the world — to demand it. Even if she has softened over time and maybe even abandoned the battle, doesn’t she still deserve respect? Shouldn’t Cat, as her assistant, serve and protect the idea of Rocky Love, regardless of her personal feelings? Sobered, she flushes the toilet and returns to her office. Rocky is seated in the leather armchair and John is hunched on the ottoman, leaning eagerly toward her as if fascinated.

“I guess I just have a small bladder,” Cat says. “So, John, I should take your fax number.”

John gets up and comes around to join Cat at the desk, where he starts jabbing at keys until he is at the DOS screen. He types in codes which cause other codes to scroll quickly down. Finally, he says, “No, I thought there could be an internal modem, but no dice. If you get one, I can install it for you, then we can electronically transmit our documents back and forth. I mean, hey, it’s 1989.”

“That sounds so exciting,” Rocky says. John looks at her, clearly on the verge of agreeing, then he sees her lips tilt into a sarcastic half smile. He rolls his eyes and backs away from the computer.

“You mean,” Cat says, “that we could just zap each other and skip all the other steps, save trees and everything?”

“I don’t think we need to fill the computer up with all that hocus pocus,” Rocky says. “We have a copier and a fax machine, that’s good enough.”

“Right,” John says. “When I have a chapter finished, I’ll get the disk to you, Cat, and then you can print it out here. If Rocky has minor changes, you can make them directly. In the end, I’ll blue pencil the final draft and you can enter

the changes. So that’s how we’ll do it. You’ll fax me her pages, and then you’ll work directly off a copy of my disk.”

“Okay,” Cat says, a little disappointed. She has heard good things about modems.

“Forget about all that stuff,” Rocky says. “Let’s celebrate! Cat, buzz Annie and ask her to bring in four champagne glasses and a can of diet soda.”

In minutes, Annie arrives with four tulip glasses upside down on a tray, along with Rocky’s sobriety soda. John pops the cork across the room and champagne fizzes into a glass Annie holds up just in time.

Rocky toasts, “To our brilliant future!” and the four of them happily drink.

The relay of rough drafts begins, with Rocky writing her pages and John writing his chapters which arrive on three-inch diskettes in the mail. Months whiz by as Cat types and faxes and prints and corrects. As the book takes shape, it becomes clear that they are writing two different stories. One is a free writing extravaganza, a pouring out of self-discovery, an embarrassing spiral of redundancy and fully blossomed narcissism. The other is a TV movie of the week, a rise and fall story in which the rise is spectacular with an edge of destiny, and the fall is foreshadowed at every turn.

Chapter 3

Celebrity Smile