| |
Fittingly, this week’s bar is called CHRISTMAS. At first I thought it was a great idea—Christmas all year round, that majesty and charm, the spindly sprigs of mistletoe. I walked in and spent time by the hearth, alongside the twelve-foot Christmas tree, which was done up in the traditional style with ribbons and balls in red and gold. An angel watched over the top. Abut after an hour it was too much. We’d just had Christmas, and I left thinking maybe there’s a reason we only have it once a year.
—Velvet Rope Diaries, New York, New York
9:30 p.m., December 23
“I’m outside,” Mom said into the cell phone.
Ray and I were sitting on the couch. We’d been kissing. He was feeling inside my waistband as I promised her we’d be right down. I snapped the phone and tossed it behind me dramatically. I heard a crash.
“Ooops,” I said into his lips.
I could feel his smile against mine. “I love you,” he whispered. It was the first time he’d said it.
This might sound insane, but he was the first guy to say that to me for real. It sounded funny since I’d only ever heard it from Mom before, that I could remember. And so I laughed though that was the opposite of what I felt.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” I said. But I didn’t say it back. The words just didn’t come, though I wished them to. I recognized this barrier, this tightly stretched rubber that bounced all the good things back, far away from me. How many people have I hurt this way, not meaning to, but hurting all the same?
His nose creased, but he quickly steeled himself.
Great, this was going to be just perfect.
“I’ll get the bags,” he said and walked out the door two feet in front of me. He carried all our presents and our overnight bags, too. He tried to hold his head rigid atop his big, tall body, but his stiffly hair gelled noggin was no match for such hurt.
I did love Ray. I knew that.
“Ray!” Mom insisted he sit in front.
I stuffed myself into the back and craned around front to kiss her before settling back in the seat behind Ray. I could slightly see his face in the side-view.
“How’s work?” Mom asked him. She had on a red turtleneck with a snowflake pin. Her hair had been set.
“We’ve been working with a new tech stock that’s pretty hot. The guys are going nuts for it,” he said. My mother loved this shoptalk. For a short time she was a secretary at a Wall Street brokerage and had entered orders for the traders. She reminded him of this now, as she did every time she saw him.
She’d quit because I was having so many problems in school; she wanted to be nearby if I needed her if they called her to say, “Mrs. Walker, Anna is crumpled in the corner of the girl’s bathroom and she won’t get up.”
Mom would never say that though Ray already knew it. He knew it and loved me anyway.
“I just hated the commute,” she said though I remember her saying it was a great time to relax, read the paper, do some knitting.
All I want for Christmas is to stop hurting people, I thought.
“Don’t you two make a beautiful couple?” she said, regarding me in the rearview, and then clanking at Ray. She took his hand and I could see a couple of tears in her eye. I wove my hand through the space between Ray’s door and the seat and found his other hand and squeezed it myself, three times to the rhythm of “I. Love. You.” He smiled, a little distorted in the rearview, but more relaxed. He knew me.
My old bedroom still scared the crap out of me . . . but a little less so today. The stuffed pig appeared a little friendlier. There were all the high school photos of everyone we’d go and see later. We’d wonder what the hell had happened back on Thanksgiving, laugh over the things we couldn’t recall. Thomas would sulk in a corner and hook up with another girl in front of me. Ray wouldn't like him, but he’d say he did. And on the long, freezing walk home, I would turn to Ray and say, “I love you, too.”
We’d finish the walk in silence, have sex giggling wildly in my room, and yelling, “Shhh!” while we cupped each other’s mouths to drown out the laughter. My plush rabbit would tickle Ray’s butt so he screamed.
But before all that Roger would say, “Ray, you’re staying in the spare bedroom.”
Ray looked at the flowered bedspread, the quilt framed on the far wall and chortled. “Manly, isn’t it?”
Roger laughed and shrugged like there was nothing he could do.
The four of us went to dinner at Benihana. We sat at a large hibachi table with a young family of four. The daughter and so were somewhere between five and seven years old. “Dad!” the boy kept asking, “When is the guy going to throw the shrimp in the air?” the boy kept asking.
“Soon,” the dad said, wise in his knowledge of this.
We all ordered some type of stir-fry, and our waiter, “Steven,” stepped up to the sizzling hot grill and slathered on some oil with the back of his spatula.
“Oooooh,” the kids called when it started to bubble up. Steven juggled the spatula and ginsu knife like a carnival clown.
“Oh my,” my mother said, her hand at her heart. “That really is outrageous, isn’t it?” She loved Benihana. I could tell she was getting excited, by the way, she kept touching her hair.
“When’s the guy going to throw the shrimp in the air?” the boy yelled.
Steven looked at him and smiled big.
The boy beamed and then looked into his Coke. I didn’t allow myself to wish I were this innocent, carefree child. Instead, I appreciated his view of this spectacle and gathered it into my life bundle.
Steven sliced an onion into generous rings and piled them into a hill. He placed some butter on the grill, moved the hill over it, and transformed it into a volcano, erupting steam.
We all clapped at the feat.
“Did I hear someone say shrimp?” Steven asked.
The boy looked gingerly to his dad, suddenly shy, to check this was all right. His dad nodded.
The boy raised his hand and meekly uttered, “I did?”
Steven used his spatula to pull a silvery shrimp from a platter and tossed it up in the air, spun around, caught it behind his back, and then flipped it onto the hibachi. Within seconds, he turned it, lopped off the tail, which he scooped up with his trusty utensil, and then sent sailing way up high, only to nonchalantly lean back, hold his breast pocket open and catch the shrimp tail inside of it.
The boy was mesmerized. Steven was good.
“Now who ordered the steak?”
“Me!” I called, relaxed from the sweet plum wine, thinking there had to be hope if simple pleasures like this one still existed.
6:00 p.m. Saturday, December 24
The next day, Christmas Eve, was going to be the culmination of it all. A face off: me, the cemetery, the impossible thing I’d spent most of my life trying to finesse into something I could live with. Later, there’d be a honey glazed ham, mashed potatoes with white gravy, fresh asparagus spears, and homemade rolls that mom and I had prepared, our fingers through the lumpy, just-wet dough while Ray and Roger laughed over a football game and unflattering photos from my formative years.
Ray drove the SUV along the Southern State to the cemetery. We didn’t say much. There were abandoned road works here and there—crushed cones and dirt coating everything. I wasn’t going to leave my own projects this way, unfinished and unusable. Inside I felt strangely hopeful to see what might come. My hand curled around a bunch of amaryllis like a life preserver.
Santa baby, hurry down the chimney tonight.
I hated that I didn’t remember the exit or the plot number. I had to go to the little office that smelled like frankincense and ask, “Can you tell me where plot number C32 is?” I hated that I didn’t say, “my father’s plot,” because I was ashamed that I didn’t know where it was.
“Why of course I can,” the man said in a gentle voice. He was too young to be working at a cemetery. He wore pinstripes and a somber navy tie. From a pile on the table, he handed me a photocopied map and uncapped a yellow highlighter. On the sheet, he traced the path to my father’s grave. While he did, I realized what a silly thing I’d thought about this man; there was no appropriate age for death. There was just the randomness of it and the struggle to pick up the pieces.
“There is something almost alive about a fire. It needs food, it reacts to heat and cold, and it takes in oxygen. And when you’re trying to put it out, a fire even seems to have a mind of its own. In order to stop a fire, firefighters need to know exactly what keeps it alive.” I don’t know if it was cathartic, or my brain’s last ditch effort to keep me from going all the way, but I was bombarded with those childrens’ fire safety books I’d memorized back when, and it thickened the atmosphere of tension.
When I returned to the car, Ray looked uncomfortable but tried to cover it up. “Okay, so where we goin’? he asked too cheerfully.
I showed him the map. “I think you just go straight and make that last right.” We drove to Christmas music, completely oblivious to where it was being heard.
More memories were bombarding me. I thought I remembered that twisted tree across the way. Could feel myself standing there with Mom, watching the dug grave as if it were more than just a hole. I remember hearing his name, Martin Walker, and understanding that he was in that black box being lowered. I remembered the thump of the dirt, how crude the gesture felt. But I couldn’t be sure that was exactly the way it had happened. But I knew from Dr. Fenwick that I didn’t need to be sure, might never be. I shouldn’t try to work it out. Whether there had been white roses or red, lots of tears or silent numbness, didn’t make any difference at all. And once I let the questions go, relief flooded me.
I liked that Ray didn’t ask, that he just came with me today. Because if he’d asked, I probably would have said, “No, you can stay in the car,” without having meant it. We walked slowly, carrying on a superfluous conversation over whether we should lock the doors.
“Come,” Ray said. He had my hand in his, and I saw how scared he was, too. When you open an oven door to remove fresh baked cookies, that oven is heated to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire burns almost three times hotter.
At the grave, the grass was wet, probably from the dusting of snow we’d had overnight. It surprised me to see my surname on a headstone.
Martin Walker
Loved by All
1953-1983
I wasn’t sure what to do. I fiddled with the cellophane around the flowers, and then lay them down. Then I bent over and pushed them over a little to the left. I stood and looked at the stone, and waited for something to happen. I tried to think of a time before he died—something we’d done together. But the only thing I could think then was him on the step with that coffee mug. It was really all I had of him, my obsessions had trampled over everything else. And then, with a start, I erupted like Steven’s volcano. Here was my father lying under there. Here was the five minutes I’d tethered myself to all these years. Could I leave it behind for good? Like a demon fighting in its death throes, the worst of my visions came whirling, and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself stand there, take the battering, my eyes shut tight, my body steely. I took the pummeling and didn’t try to soothe myself. After a long while, it slowed to a quiet roar. It was irritating but manageable.
Ray was wet-eyed, his freshly buzzed eyebrows jumpy. Inside his Wall Street wool coat, he pulled me, the silky lining cool and warm at the same time. Everything, up and down simultaneously. Good with awful. I love you. One day I would believe it. He held me there as long as I stood, and when I looked up, there was a beautiful thing. There was snow. And it was falling down around us like a miracle.
5:00 a.m., Sunday, December 25
We woke at the most uncivilized hour on Christmas morning, so that we could exchange gifts and then drive to New Jersey to join Ray’s family.
Mom was decked head to toe: Rudolph slippers with light-up noses, snowflake pajamas, and a Frosty scrunchy.
“She’s so unfestive,” Roger said. He was in black sweat suit and mismatched socks with a hole at the left big toe.
“Looks like Santa left you something in your stocking!” Mom said. “And Ray, too, and Roger, and someone named . . . Mom!” She lived for this, so we indulged.
“Who’s Mom?” I asked.
“Never heard of her,” Roger said.
“Was that the one on Three’s Company after Chrissy left?” Ray chimed in.
“Yeah, yeah, I think I know who you mean.” Roger pointed his finger, bingo and clucked his tongue.
I turned my stocking upside down exactly the same way I always did, and out tumbled snowflake socks and cherry Chapstick and knee-highs in a plastic egg, a package of Twizzlers, chewing gum, and a tiny book about kittens—no bigger than a cake of soap.
“How does Santa know that I love Twizzlers?” I asked. “I must be a very good girl for him to notice something like that.” I tore the cellophane, pulling apart one of the sticky ropes.
“You are,” Mom said. She grew somber and said, “you always have been.” Before the tear could come, she said, “Ray, you’re turn! Go ahead.”
He seemed a little shy to open up the gifts in front of everyone, which made me smile unexpectedly. I watched as he slowly pulled out one negligible item after another and reacted as if they’d brought him property in Malibu. “A new toothbrush!” he called out. “A jumbo pack of Double Mint gum!”
We were in stitches by the time he pulled the deck of cards from the very bottom of his stocking. “Plastic coated!”
Then came the big gifts. Roger had bought Mom a new computerized sewing machine that does all kinds of fancy quilting stitches on its own. Mom gave Roger a fancy saw that does dozens of notches on its own. I had bought Roger a tiny television for the garage where he’s always working on something. And for my mother, I bought a gift certificate for a spa day. Ray presented them both with a gift certificate to a little Italian restaurant they love; I hadn’t even known he’d done that. They gave him a green fleece with a zipper and a hood. I received a portable music device and a blue cashmere scarf.
They loaned us Roger’s tan Taurus to drive to New Jersey. They were going to pick it up in Manhattan the following day. It was unbelievable to me—their bottomless generosity. Roger had a Maroon 5 CD in the player, and we played it the whole way, without knowing most of the words, the hangovers starting to sink in, drying up our mouths and energy.
Ray’s hand covered mine, and I thought, as we approached the New Jersey Turnpike, that we looked quite beautiful that way—his one purple nail and my dried, peeling cuticles, and all.
8:00 a.m., Sunday, December 25
Ray’s family is loud. They speak loudly, clap loudly, and even walk loudly.
“ANNA, THAT PURSE IS PERFECT FOR YOU!” Mrs. Right exclaimed. We were all on the floor—around the tree, which was weighed down with ornaments of every color imaginable, on every single branch. It was fake, but they sprayed it with Christmas tree scent, so it smelled like a mix of pine forest and the inside of a wine bottle. It was very generous of them to buy me a pricey Captain purse. They really shouldn’t have. But they did everything big—it was their way.
Ray smiled at me. He knew I could clam up in a situation like that. After gifts, we moved to the dining room for a huge lunch. There was turkey and sweet potatoes and stuffing, just like Thanksgiving all over again. We were all wearing our gifts—that’s how they did it in the Right family. I had my purse over my shoulder. Ray’s sister, Rita, had strung my arm through the strap. Rita had a fluffy multicolor scarf with glittery bits, around her neck, and a cowboy hat on her head; there were black stiletto boots on her feet. Her new lip gloss was slicked on. Mrs. Right brought out the turkey, wearing a brand-new purple silk robe and a diamond bracelet, which she showed off by rolling up her right sleeve to the elbow. And Mr. Right had reindeer boxers pulled on right over his jeans. He spun suggestively so we could all laugh so hard we choked on our sodas. Ray got a flat-screen television, and since that was difficult to wear, he had the cord wrapped around his waist like a belt.
“So, you two are finally going out, huh?” Rita said, stuffing a potato roll into her mouth.
Ray shot her a look like she should shut the hell up. I kept quiet.
“We all had bets, you know,” she said.
“Ha ha,” Ray said. He grabbed my hand under the table.
“No really. Mom had last May, Dad had two years ago New Year’s, and I actually won with the closest—September of this year. I got three hundred bucks.”
Mr. and Mrs. Right looked down to their plates. Rita had a big mouth and a sense of embitterment, with her divorce still fresh. We all knew that. Still there were certain things you didn’t say to people’s faces. The thing was, Rita didn’t care to know it.
“Hey, don’t worry, Mom and Dad. It’s fine. It’s funny. I probably would have done the same thing. We know it took us a long time to figure it out.” Ray was being extra understanding; Rita had suffered. Holidays were difficult under those circumstances.
“And about three hundred girls,” Rita mumbled into her fist, then cleared her throat.
My face burned. I knew this already and it scared the shit out of me. But I didn’t want to think about it now. I knew Rita was just acting out. I searched for words, but they sounded condescending, simple from where I sat.
“What the heck are you trying to do here, Rita? It’s Christmas, in case you haven’t noticed.” Ray wasn’t exactly yelling, but you could feel the anger in his voice. The mood changed. In between Mr. Right’s underwear show and my first bite of turkey, the ice age had come upon us. A fork dropped on a plate; it made everyone jump.
“Yeah, so?” Christmas sucks when your husband left you and picked up a new wife the very next week at a speed-dating event. I tried to be festive, but . . . it’s just not going to work. I’m sorry.” She pushed her chair out. The screech of it echoed in the open format house, seemed to cycle through the living room and kitchen, and hit us again from behind. Then she slammed her bedroom door, the one she was living in again, and we all let out our breath.
Ray and I watched It’s a Wonderful Life back to back because we were too lazy to change the channel. During the second viewing, right after Henry Travers says, “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” Rita came down to the TV room—the one unfinished room in the Right house, the one that still felt like it hadn’t changed in about fifteen years, with its paneling and institutional ceiling tiles and faded-out corduroy sofa.
She plopped down in the space between Ray and me, which was pretty small, so that she was half-sitting on the both of us. She put both her arms out, behind our shoulders and pulled us in tightly. I thought of a time in college, when she’d gone to a keg party with us and done acrobatics on the lawn. After each move, she arched her back severely and flung her arms up until people cheered.
Now she started to cry. Her back heaved against my chest and Ray’s too so that her misery shook us both.
“Welcome home, Mr. Bailey,” Donna Reed said warmly.
In a quiet hour, I began a pitch letter about my advice column. If there was something I’d learned this holiday, it was that people needed help—lots of it.
10:30 p.m., December 25
Ray’s friend Peter picked us up in front of the house in an old diesel Volvo station wagon. “Peter, this is Anna,” Ray introduced us and opened the door for me to sit in front.
“Hi, Peter.” I stuck my hand through the door but insisted Ray take the front.
“No, you go,” Ray said.
“No, you,” I said.
“One of you get in the friggin’ car! In case you haven’t noticed, it’s freezing out there!”
Ray climbed in finally. “Well, I guess I do have long legs,” he said.
“Geez,” Peter said. “When did you become such a pansy?”
“He’s always been a pansy,” I offered. “He even watches Lifetime with me sometimes,” I said, sticking my body through the space between the two front seats. I instantly liked Peter, his tone, his relaxed way.
“Nice!” Peter said, smiling wickedly at me in the rearview.
“So what’s up?” Ray asked his friend.
“Ah, you know,” he said. And it was, I could tell right off the bat, the “you know” of still living with your parents, of never having had anything work out quite the way you’d thought it would, and now seeing everyone for whom it had and acting like it didn’t bother you.
The party was at the house of Ray’s friend Linus, who was married and owned the brick, 1940s Cape-style house—with its curved entryways and thick plaster walls—with his wife, Francine, who had a bump the size of a seedless watermelon beneath her red sweater. Her hair was swingy and very black, and she smiled like crazy.
“Have some wine, lord knows I wish I could,” she said, shuttling me off to the kitchen to select a bottle and a glass, strung with a red charm, from the lineup on the counter. We were all victims of the Pottery Barn culture.
“When are you due?” I asked, feeling the social burden of being the new person.
“Oh, in March,” she said.
“Do you know the sex?” I asked, and chose a nice-looking cabernet with a duck on the label, and poured it into the cavernous glass.
“It’s a boy. Lord help us, the world is going to have another one,” she said, sliding her hair back over her shoulder.
“Yeah, men,” I said, for lack of anything else.
“It’s funny to see Ray in a relationship,” she said, cocking her head. “I just hope you don’t take it all too seriously because you never know with him. He’s such a Don Juan.” She turned around, and when she turned back, she had a tray of cocktail franks in blankets. “Weenie?” she asked as if she hadn’t just hurled a stake at my heart.
“No thanks.” I walked back to find Ray. There were too many people suddenly, and I wound up in the outer rim of a circle of guys talking about renting a beach house on Long Beach Island. I’d never been and didn’t recognize any of the guys. The one in front of me turned and craned his head to see who was breathing on his neck. I took that as a signal and made my way outside. Though it was cold, I still had my coat on, and the new scarf. I still had no gloves, so I held onto the wine with both hands, as if it were a portable heater.
All of a sudden, I was overcome with the idea that maybe people like me were never, “better”. I’d gone and done everything he’d told me to. I’d changed my life and fallen in love with my best friend and gone to my father’s grave and told myself hundreds of times that I was just fine with having murdered him. But those were tears like raindrops, disturbing the surface of my wine all the same. Was I weak and doubtful, impotent as ever?
Someone else’s girlfriend, a fellow outsider, came to stand near me. She lit a cigarette. Her long sheet of hair swung as she fanned the match flame out.
“Great party, huh?” She grimaced, sucked in a big puff, let it go loudly—so different than Belinda, her refined smoking mannerisms as if she’d invented it.
“Yeah,” I mimicked her tone—sarcastic, condescending.
She looked at me strangely. “Hey, wait. Are you that Anna Walker chick?”
“I was, I guess.” No matter how un-fun this party might be, tomorrow I’d be back in New York City without a job—a failure, starting all over again. I’d have to take all this kindling thought and build it into a raging fire of activity. Could I?
“I’m sorry your column was pulled,” she said. “I really enjoyed it.”
“Yeah,” I said, stupidly.
“But you can do anything. I’m sure you’ll be fine. People like you always are.”
Something about her tone intrigued me. “As opposed to people like you?” I asked tenderly.
“Me? I’ll never do anything. Believe me, I’d love to, but I’m not exactly what you’d call a go-getter.”
Something about this girl was all too familiar. I thought of all those months ago when everything seemed impossible. “Listen,” I said. “I’ve got a story for you . . .”
When I finished speaking with Ingrid Swenson, when I saw the sparkle of hope, I knew for sure that my advice column idea was the right one for me.
When we parted ways, I took a couple of deep breaths, shook my hair out, and went back to find Ray. “You have to take the risk,” Fenwick said in my head, “because there are no guarantees. Even if you stand still, you could still get hurt. That’s the unknown we all have to live with.”
“Hey there, sexy,” Ray said kissing me with a sweet-and-sour beer tasted.
I’d finally found him just where I’d left him. There were no guarantees, but there was this, wonderful this.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I know you did.” My words were topped with hearts.
1:30 p.m., Thursday, December 29
It was odd at first, to enter Christmas, the bar, after we’d just had Christmas, the real thing. Maybe my Christmas hadn’t been perfect, but it was real, and mine. This was my last bar. I felt like the American Idol loser of the week who had to muster up everything to sing her lungs out, the she knew she’d lost.
There was no publicist meeting me this time. He was away somewhere and didn’t feel it was important to come back for me now—since I’d likely be a nobody in a week or two.
I sat with my hot cinnamon cider cocktail, twisting the warm glass.
“The holidays are hard,” people say, and I thought of the significance of that to a place like this, where it’s all holidays all the time.
“Oh, it’s so cute in there!”
I was surprised from my thoughts by my mother, returning from the bathroom. I knew she’d love a place named after her favorite thing on earth. And that’s why I called her to meet me here. “What’s it look like?”
“Well, there are little angels everywhere, and they’ve got evergreen air freshener, and the toilet paper holder is a tiny wreath, and antique ornaments are hung all around the mirror.”
That does sound great.”
“So how do you feel, now that Christmas is over?” I asked her. She was retired, and her time was free to do what she liked.
“Well, Roger and I were talking about taking a vacation . . . to Bora Bora.”
“You? Bora Bora!” My mother never went on vacation. Never. And here she was going straight around the world.
“It’s just, you seem . . . well, you seem like you can handle things on your own now,” she said, rowing serious, squeezing my hand.
“You never went away all those years, because of me?”
“You never stop being a mother,” she said.
“All my blessings, everything, under my nose all along. We went to Bloomingdales after, tried on expensive clothing didn’t buy any of it, had a fancy tea at the Plaza, and when we parted, Mom and I didn’t say good-bye. We said, “So long. I’ll see you next week for outlet shopping.”
I met Nina at Maryann’s to pick out a bridesmaid dress. Maryann was again in taupe, and her glasses were pushed up on her head. She and Nina were fussing over rhinestone tiaras like a couple of teenagers.
“What have you got there?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ve got to try one,” said Maryann. “Everyone goes nuts when you put one on.” And she stuck one—with pink rhinestone flowers and golden twisted wire branches with emerald leaves—on top of my head, my jacket and Captain bag still on, my face a strawberry patch. I looked like me . . . with a tiara. The pimple on my chin had faded to a faint dot.
“Anna! You’re breathtaking,” Nina said.
“Absolutely, Just breathtaking,” Maryann agreed.
“She could be next!” Nina cheered, shrugging her shoulders, smiling wildly.
“Is that so?” Maryann had dollar signs in her eyes.
I pulled the tiara’s teeth away slowly and gently handed it back to Maryann. “Who knows, right?” I turned to pull off my jacket so my face wouldn’t give away how much I was unconvinced.
“What’s wrong?” Nina asked.
“It’s just, well, how could it all work? There’s so much baggage.”
“Oh, that’s normal!” Nina said.
“She’s right,” Maryann said. I guessed now that we’d officially spent money there, she assumed this more casual identity. “This is what they call really falling in love—it’s reality settling in after the infatuation stage dissipates. It’s fitting all the pieces in, the more difficult ones you saved for last. The magical thing is that now you really get to know each other, the real true stuff deep down. And then you love each other even more.”
“Remember when I said that thing to you about Bernard a while back?” Nina said.
I nodded. Nina was here today, and talked over me every time I tried to ask about it, so I’d figured everything was okay, and she’d decided to pretend the momentary lapse had never happened in the first place.
“Well, that was my first encounter with it. And now, I don’t know it’s like everything is refreshed, like a re-start, a more meaningful beginning.” She must have meant it because her eyes glassed and she took a great swallow. Maryann was blinking like she wanted to contain emotion, too.
“Here, try this one,” Maryann suggested of one rose strapless dress. We’d narrowed it down to three the last time, and I liked them all. But ultimately it was Nina’s choice. I was her doll, and she chose the outfits. Maryanne zippered up each one, and if she couldn’t, then she pinned it and straightened out the waistline and hem with her palm. “Beautiful,” she said each time. “Just beautiful.”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Nina said after the third. It was chiffon with delicate little layers like rose petals, fluttering all the way down an A-line skirt, so beautiful it was almost like a bride’s dress itself.
I’d never had something so fine on my body, and it was strange to see myself this way—no spot on my blouse or missing button, just perfection.
“Aren’t I supposed to wear something hideous?”
She came right up to my face and said, “You are my best friend and I love you dearly. Let me buy you this dress.” I wasn’t going to cry again. I wasn’t going to think this had everything to do with me having no job, and Nina being afraid I couldn’t make the payments. I gulped loudly. “Okay.”
11:30 a.m. Friday, December 30
“Weight Watchers magazine.”
“Can I speak with Trudy,” I asked the woman on the other end of the line. I’d known this particular editor since I first started working at New York, New York.
“Please hold.”
“Anna! My dear! I can’t believe your column was cut! What can I do for you? Anything . . . you name it.”
“Well, I’m going to try to start a new column over there, and I’m looking for a little help generating buzz.”
“I like where you’re going . . .”
“So, I’m looking to bombard Ed with calls from editors, producers, and advertisers who want to know about Anna’s new advice column.”
“Anna has a new advice column?”
“If this plan works, she does.”
“Sign me up. I think our readers would love an interview with the brave girl who can reinvent herself this way.”
Over the next week, I called Channel 3 News, the local news channel, E! Entertainment, ten magazines, and three of Judy’s advertisers. I chose the best letters and offered sincere advice. I wrote my own troubles out, including the embarrassing and ugly bits, and solicited advice in return. I set up a website so that I could instantly receive inquiries in the future. I was exhausted, broke, and nervous, but I felt I was working toward something important. And that kept me going.