“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say anything stupid. Especially after that completely pointless display.”
My poor husband.
I run into the living room and grab Mr. Smith, who is sniffling around the couch, and run for the door, passing the kitchen where D.W. spots me and shouts out, “Keep that beagle away from me!” And I run down the stairs, still clutching Mr. Smith, who has absolutely no idea what is going on, and I run onto Prince Street, where Hubert has just gotten into the limo (he supposedly told them he didn’t want a limo, but The Network insisted). I knock on the window and Hubert lowers the glass. He looks at me like “Oh God, here’s my crazy wife standing on the street barefoot in a wrinkled old negligee holding a beagle in her arms,” and he says (pleasantly enough), “Yes?” And I say, “You forgot to say good-bye to Mr. Smith.”
He says, “Good-bye, Mr. Smith,” and leans out and kisses Mr. Smith on the nose. It’s all so cute, and I actually think I might be okay for the next couple of hours, but then I hear that telltale click, click, click behind me, and I turn, and there’s that photographer in full combat fatigues, snapping away and yelling, “Smile!” and the limo takes off, and I hold Mr. Smith (who is struggling viciously now) over my face and run crazily down Prince Street, finally taking refuge in a news shop.
At which point the proprietor of this dirty shop with its overpriced cigarettes has the nerve to say, “No dogs. No dogs in the store.” And begins waving his arms like he’s just been attacked by an infestation of fleas.
I’m about to hurl a string of invectives at him (and, in fact, have opened my mouth to do so), when I see IT: the cover of Star magazine, which features photographs of a couple of actresses and ME, with my mouth open, wearing baggy shorts and a tank top, arms and legs akimbo. The photograph was taken a few months ago at a celebrity basketball game that Hubert not only made me attend but insisted I participate in (which ended up working in my favor, because I was such a horrendous basketball player and yet so high strung under the stress of competition that Hubert said I never had to do anything like it again), and underneath the photograph the caption reads: Princess Cecelia, 5’10” 117 lbs. And this raft of falsehoods is topped off with the headline: STARVING TO DEATH?, which really pisses me off because I’d actually eaten two hot dogs that day. I grab Mr. Smith and the Star, and I run down the street and back up the stairs and throw open the door to the loft. D.W. is sitting in the living room, calmly sipping a cup of coffee and perusing the photographs in New York magazine. I collapse onto a chair, hyperventilating madly.
“Really, Cecelia,” he says. He looks at his watch. “It’s eight-forty-three. Don’t you think you ought to get dressed?”
I really do not know what to say to this, so I fall to the floor, shaking and clawing at my throat, until D.W. throws a glass of water on my face.
Riding uptown, wearing sunglasses and a head scarf and clutching Mr. Smith to my chest, I felt the sinking weight of depression, like someone has placed a board piled with cement blocks on top of my body. When I’m in this state I find it hard to move, difficult to make even the slightest gesture—like lighting a cigarette—and sometimes, since I spend so much time alone in the apartment, I end up sitting for hours and hours, occasionally on the stairs or on the kitchen floor, staring into space. I don’t want anyone to know how bad it is, so I lie and say, Oh, I’ve been reading magazines all day or running errands, like picking up a spool of thread at the dry cleaner, but quite often I find myself scratching “help me help me” on the palm of my hand with an old ballpoint pen, but by the end of the day, I have invariably washed it off. My thoughts always run along the same lines, like a small electric train going back and forth, back and forth: Everyone hates me and may or may not be laughing at me behind my back, waiting for me to fuck up, to say something stupid (or anything at all, because when people are judging you that closely, almost anything you say sounds stupid) or give them an evil eye, so they can run to their friends and colleagues and say, “I met Princess Cecelia and it’s true what they say. She’s a bitch.”
And then everywhere you go, people look at you like they expect to hate you, and their reactions are like stones, hitting you again and again until finally you shut down, you stop, you put your arms over your head and then you begin to slowly disappear.
D.W. is drumming his nails on the armrest. “I’ve been married . . .” he says. “Twice.”
“Yes,” I say blandly. “I know,” in a small voice, truly upset now by that photograph in Star and the accompanying article that accuses me of being an anorexic, which I’m NOT, but what I am is so complicated that I can’t begin to explain it to myself.
“I’ve been married,” D.W. says again, “and the one thing I’ve found is that the superficialities of marriage are the most important. In other words, pleasant conversation at breakfast, amusing banter at parties, and a compliment once or twice during the day matter more than whatever one is actually feeling, which, frankly, no one really cares about anyway.”
I nod mutely, wondering why it is that D.W. and I have the same conversations over and over again, so that I don’t even have to point out that D.W.’s last marriage ended so horrendously (in a war on Page Six) that his wife, who is at least eighty now but has had a dozen or so face-lifts and always wears rose-colored sunglasses, will leave a party if his name is mentioned.
“In fact,” D.W. continues, oblivious, “I would say that the superficialities are the most important thing in every aspect of life. I mean, who cares th
at you’re really a piece of shit if you’re sitting at a dinner with lovely flowers and a fabulous person on your left and a fabulous person on your right, and the photographers are taking your picture, and your socks, for God’s sake, are cashmere, and you’re smiling just so, and the photograph ends up in the society pages of Vogue. That’s what really counts, isn’t it? Of course, you probably wouldn’t understand that because, like all people with mental problems, you’re completely obsessed with yourself. You don’t really care anything about me, or the fact that that dog of yours is liable to dribble on my Prada suit at any moment.”
“Mr. Smith doesn’t dribble,” I say, unable to even get angry because of the aforementioned state I’m in.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I meant you,” D.W. says.
I allow myself (still clutching Mr. Smith) to be led from the town car out onto Madison Avenue, where someone is jackhammering the sidewalk, and a Mercedes sport-utility vehicle passes blaring rap music, and people walk by all emitting high-frequency vibrations of “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” so that even in this brief moment the noise of the city is crushing and I feel like everything is collapsing in on me. We walk up narrow terra-cotta stairs and enter the beauty salon, which is all skylights and marble columns with a fountain in the middle (meant, I believe, to be some kind of imitation Roman baths), around which women in white robes with turbans on their heads lounge reading magazines. I’m whisked off to the private area, where they minister to “celebrities,” and someone dressed in a sari keeps trying to give me coffee, tea, or water (when I ask for a Bloody Mary, they all look shocked) and keeps shoving bowls of water with lemon slices floating on top under Mr. Smith’s nose, which he sensibly refuses.
And then they begin cutting. Cutting away my long hair which I’ve had all my life (which is my life—long hair, men love it), and which has gone through various and sundry colors of blond, depending on whether or not I actually had money at the time to pay someone to color it or if I had to do it myself with Sun-In or if one of my gay friends took pity on me and arranged for someone to do it for free (that was easy, as soon as it came out in the gossip columns that I was dating the prince of Luxenstein), and D.W. comes over and says, “So many people have worked so hard to get you here, Cecelia,” blowing smoke out of his nostrils. I say, “So I am supposed to feel guilty?”
“Just grateful,” he says, and walks away.
And I swear, as they’re cutting, I keep hearing people talking about me. Whispering my name. Until finally, it’s too much and I scream, “Will everybody please shut up?” And they all do, except for one unfortunate soul who goes on and on, speaking into his cell phone in a high-pitched nasally voice, “. . . that’s right, Dick. She’s here now. Complete makeover. And completely loony. She won’t let go of that dog. Won’t speak to anyone. She’s got the worst energy of anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe she should try crystals. . . .” Finally, he looks up, and after that, nobody says anything at all.
“What did I ever do to you?” I whisper hoarsely.
I stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are very wide and blue. Very wide because I KNOW this isn’t a good time to start crying, not with all these PEOPLE (if you can even call them that) standing around in various forms of emotional attitude, ranging from disdain to shocked horror to pity, reminding me of the first time I had to go to that school in Massachusetts when I was ten years old and taller than all of them and they stood around in the playground and called me—
“Miss . . . Cecelia,” the colorist says. She has a long face and large teeth and she looks like a talking horse, but a kindly one. “I hope you don’t think that was a reflection of . . . our salon. He’s new. I’m going to fire him immediately.”
I could have someone fired?
“Oh,” I say softly, nodding over the top of Mr. Smith’s head.
“That was very, very wrong of him,” she says, pumping the back of my chair so it goes up and down. “David,” she snaps. “Pack your things and don’t come back.”
This David person, who is lurking around the edges, is thin and dark-haired and sloe-eyed with dark circles, and he reeks of anonymous sex.
“Whatever,” he says haughtily. Our eyes meet for one second in the mirror and I see his whole pitiful story: fresh off the bus from some lousy town in the Midwest, ambitious and a born hustler, will do anyone for a piggyback to the next rung (for fun or profit), anything to erase his dirty origins and make believe he is someone else. Mostly, though, he’ll talk about how I got him fired, and talk and talk, and he’ll spread this topic of conversation among his acquaintances like a virus.