Lipstick Jungle

“Why are you being so mean, Mother?” she asked.

“It’s just that I see all these nice couples in town,” her mother said. “Lots of couples your age, with children. The men are professionals. And the women work. But they also have time to take their kids to sports . . .”

“If you’re saying my children are deprived . . . ” Wendy began.

“Oh, I know they have everything, Wendy,” her mother snapped. “Too much. But that isn’t the point. These couples seem happy.”

“But who are they? What do they do? Are they the president of a major motion picture company?”

“That isn’t really important,” her mother said primly.

“It is important,” Wendy snapped. “It’s the only thing that’s important. It makes all the difference—”

“It doesn’t mean you can’t have a normal relationship,” her mother said.

“I had a normal relationship.”

“With a man who provides,” her mother said. “Men have egos. This business about the woman being in control . . . of everything . . . it doesn’t really work in a marriage.”

Wendy paused. “How many men are out there who are more successful than I am?” she asked, and for some bizarre reason, immediately thought of Selden Rose.

“Maybe you don’t need to be so successful.”

This was so completely unfathomable that Wendy didn’t trust herself to respond. She hung up.

She hated fighting with her mother. It hurt too much. It actually pained her. And all these years, she’d been working her ass off not just to provide for Shane and her children, but to make sure she could take care of her mother in her old age.

Wendy picked up her coffee cup and walked to the window. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since she’d hung up on her, and this was yet another burdensome boulder of pain. Why was she losing everyone who was close to her? Why was she being punished?

She peered out into the gray gloom of dawn. She wanted to dismiss everything her mother had said, but instead she found herself thinking about certain uncomfortable and inevitable truths. If she’d been able to find a guy who would have supported her and “provided” for her (ugh, she hated that word, “provided”), would she have made that choice? She didn’t know the answer, because the possibility had never seemed like an option—a painful truth she now realized her mother would never comprehend.

Everyone always said that women had choices, but it wasn’t exactly true. Women didn’t really have the grab bag of options everyone said they did—an itchy reality Wendy began to understand in college. By her sophomore year, she had decided that there were basically two types of women in the world: women for whom men went crazy, fell in love with, and eventually would marry and pay for; and women who, for whatever reason, didn’t inspire much ardor in men—at least not the kind of grand passions that would cause a man to “provide.” She’d understood immediately that she fell into the latter category, and if she were to get a commitment from a man, she’d need to have something extra to offer.

Her plan had always been to distract men from her lack of beauty with her hardworking efficiency, her independence, her ability to take care of herself—and, in turn, them.

And it worked. Along with all those hours spent being an assistant, taking abuse, working till midnight, schlepping screenplays and, eventually, moving up the entertainment ladder, came the spoils of success. Money and apartments and decent clothing and cars, all proudly paid for by her alone. She told herself she didn’t “need” a man, didn’t “need” to play games.

But that too was a lie.

She had played games. She had worked on Shane from the beginning, despite her suspicions that he didn’t inherently want to be with her. She’d convinced herself that she would be able to wear him down and make him see her value. When he understood how much she could do for him, he would have to love her. In the beginning, when she was convincing him to be with her, she had looked the other way when she suspected he had dalliances with other women. She never criticized him; always told him he was a genius (when, really, he should have been telling her that she was the genius). She was motherly. And more. She

was always good for a hot meal and hot pussy. And eventually, he had given in. She told him she loved him after the first two months. It took him two years to say the words.

She had bought him, and as the purchaser, she’d thought she was safe.

Her mother was right. What an arrogant fool she’d been.

She sat stiffly, this dreadful reality permeating her being like poison.

She’d always insisted that she and Shane had a new, modern type of marriage—the marriage of the future! But in reality, it was nothing more than a reversal of a traditional marriage—and hadn’t there been times when she’d jokingly referred to Shane as the “perfect movie executive wife”?

The line always elicited titters of amusement from her fellow male executives and nods of appreciation from her female friends. She had always been careful never to say it in front of Shane, but he must have sensed these subtle attacks to his male ego. And he wouldn’t have liked it.

She put her head in her hands. How had their relationship turned into such a mess? It wasn’t like she hadn’t wanted Shane to work. She’d supported him in everything he’d tried to do. The problem was that he just wasn’t very good at anything. He had no staying power and unrealistic expectations, and couldn’t take criticism. He was arrogant. People gave him a chance (usually as a favor to her), and after he didn’t deliver on time and argued and grandstanded, they simply refused to work with him again. She’d wanted to explain to him that he wasn’t talented enough to pull those kinds of histrionics, but how could you say that to someone, especially someone you were married to?

And if they’d been dependent on his income? She shook her head. They would have starved. They certainly wouldn’t have had all this . . .

She looked around the pathetic, cluttered office with wry distaste. The rest of the apartment was just like this—little more than raw space with thin plasterboard walls slapped up to create a semblance of rooms. As part of her deal with Parador, the studio (or, rather, Splatch-Verner) was supposed to pay fifty percent of the cost of a renovation up to half a million dollars; on top of that, they were obligated to put in a screening room. Two years ago, she had put Shane in charge of the renovation (thinking it would be good for him, giving him something constructive and manly and ego-boosting to do), but Shane had dropped the ball. He’d immediately started fighting with each of the three contractors he’d hired, so they’d all quit within two weeks; then he said he could do a better job himself. Then he did nothing.