Lipstick Jungle

Wendy did not point out that Mrs. Minniver and the housecleaner did most of the heavy lifting.

“That’s good, Shane,” Dr. Vincent said, nodding her approval. “Acceptance, Appreciation, and Affection—those are our triple A’s of marriage. And what do they add up to?” she asked. “Awesomeness!”

Wendy cringed. She had looked over at Shane, hoping that he was finding Dr. Vincent as ridiculous as she was, and that this could become one of their private jokes. But Shane was staring intently at Dr. Vincent with the triumphant demeanor of a person who expects at any moment to be proven right. Apparently, in the last year, somehow their marriage had moved out of the private joke phase and into the stage of personal hell.

And now, standing in the tiny airplane toilet in her stockinged feet with her pants down around her ankles, she said, “I appreciate your appreciation, Angel.”

“Good,” he said petulantly, like a child who has just decided to concede a fight.

She sighed. “Shane, can we drop this stuff? Can’t we go back to being the way we were before?”

“That wasn’t working for me, Wendy. You know that,” he said, with a warning edge in his voice. “Will you be back on Saturday? It’s important.”

Commitment, Consultation, and Concession, Wendy thought, reminding herself of the three C’s to a cheery marriage that Dr. Vincent had talked about in their last session. “I’ll do my best,” she said. “I know it’s important.” She was supposed to leave it at that, and then show her commitment to its importance by being there. But goddammit, Shane had sprung this trip to Pennsylvania on her with no Consultation—on purpose, she thought, as he knew how crucial this movie was to her career.

“But the movie is important too, Shane,” she said, trying not to come off too strong and sounding whiny instead. Whining, Wavering, and Weakness—the no-no’s that make your marriage worse, she thought, hearing Dr. Vincent’s words in her head.

“Fine,” Shane said breezily, almost as if he’d been hoping for this response. He hung up.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. As soon as the plane lands,” Wendy said, into dead air.

She turned off the phone and tossed it into her valise.

She went back to her seat and sat down. Don’t think about it, she told herself, rifling through her bag. There’s nothing you can do. She took out a red silk sleep mask (a Christmas present from Magda last year), a small metal box containing wax earplugs, and a bottle of prescription sleeping pills, which she arranged in the small compartment in her armrest.

The plane pulled away from the Jetway with a small lurch. She leaned across the seat and pressed her forehead against the window. The plastic felt pleasantly cool. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She had seven hours of freedom ahead of her—seven blissful hours in which she couldn’t be reached by phone or e-mail . . .

She suddenly heard Shane’s voice in her head. “Without me, everything would fall apart. That’s why I left. To show Wendy what it would be like without me.”

He had revealed this startling piece of information to Dr. Vincent at the beginning of their first session. Wendy had only been able to smile sickly at this comment. The fact was, Shane was right.

Which she’d had to acknowledge the night she came home and found Tyler with a pile of poop in his underpants.

The plane sped down the runway and lifted off the ground, engines buzzing. The buzz became a low hum. “Pooooo. Pooooo,” they hummed, mocking her. The flight attendant brought her another glass of champagne. Wendy took one of the sleeping pills, swallowing it with a fizzy gulp. She pressed the buttons to lower the seat into the flat position, put two pillows under her head, arranged a puffy duvet cover on top of herself and closed her eyes.

“Pooooooo. Pooooooo,” she heard.

A dozen thoughts immediately crowded into her brain in no particular order: Selden Rose, Ragged Pilgrims, Bob Wayburn, Shane (and his increasingly weird behavior), Dr. Vincent, a spotted pony, Victory and Lyne Bennett (what the hell wa

s up with that?), the poop in Tyler’s pants . . .

That was really awful. He had taken off his pajama bottoms, and the poop had squished out the sides of his underpants and was all over his sheets. Tyler apparently hadn’t gone to the bathroom all day (he’d been holding on to it, Dr. Vincent explained, in an attempt to hold on to himself), and when he lay down in bed, had finally lost control.

That had been the worst day of all, the apotheosis of the result of Shane’s departure.

In the afternoon, the dailies for the first two days of shooting for Ragged Pilgrims had finally come in, three days behind schedule already, and she’d absolutely had to screen them. They weren’t good—four hours of shit that would probably have to be reshot (at a cost of half a million dollars—three days into shooting, and they were already overbudget)—and she’d spent the next two hours on frantic calls to both Romania and the Coast. She left the office at nine with nothing resolved and the sinking feeling that five years of work was about to unravel, and she had walked into more chaos at home. Tyler was standing on top of his bed, screaming; Magda was trying to drown him out by watching a reality show on plastic surgery turned up to full volume; Mrs. Minniver was in Tyler’s room with Chloe clinging to her leg, crying. And the super was knocking on the door—there were complaints from the downstairs neighbor.

Tyler’s room reeked of shit, and for a moment, Wendy thought she might vomit. Mrs. Minniver disengaged Chloe and handed her over to Wendy. “Young Tyler has had an accident in his pants,” she said accusingly, as if this were somehow Wendy’s fault, which, she supposed, it was. “People shouldn’t have so many children if they can’t take care of them. You’d better get your husband back, dear.”

“I want Daddy!” Tyler screamed.

Wendy looked at Mrs. Minniver as if to say, “You heartless woman, now look what you’ve done!” But Mrs. Minniver was not about to take any of the blame. She pinched her lips together and shook her head, secure in her belief that Wendy was a bad mother and that was that.

“Now that you’re home, I’m going to take my leave,” she said pointedly.

Wendy managed to get Chloe and Tyler into the bathroom and Tyler into the shower. She couldn’t deal with the sheets, so she let him sleep in her bed. This was considered a “no-no,” but the people who made up those rules could have never envisioned her situation. Tyler tossed and turned all night, alternatively clinging to her like a crab, or kicking her while he was asleep. Something had to be done, but what?

She was woken up at six a.m. with a phone call from Hank, her production assistant on Ragged Pilgrims. Hank had the thankless job of being in charge of production for the first couple of weeks, and part of his job was to report in every morning on what was happening on the location. She took the call in a haze of exhaustion. “Bob Wayburn’s drinking,” he said, referring to the brilliant but difficult director. “He was boozing until three a.m. with some locals. There’s already tension between Jenny Cadine and Bob. Jenny wants you to call her. She wants her sister to come to the set and Bob put down this rule, no visitors. She told one of the cameramen that she thinks Bob is trying to shoot her from bad angles on purpose. I know because the guy says he had sex with her last night, and she would only do it anally . . .” The recitation went on in this vein for another ten minutes, at the end of which Hank said, “Look, I can’t handle this anymore. You’re going to have to come over.”