Aftermath of Dreaming (21 page)

Tonette is Bill's personal trainer, has been for a long time, so I knew her when I worked for him. As she leans in for a hug, I remember that I always felt that Tonette and I could have been friends if only I was more…L.A. somehow.

“I'm getting married. Did you hear?”

I hadn't, but I can tell. Prenup is written all over her, and I don't mean a contract. Tonette's ring is huge. A mammoth marquis that does not require a lifting of her hand for me to see, so in that sense it's discreet. Her dress is layers of whispering sheer creme chiffon culminating in a moment of silence on her amplified breasts, and tiny sparkly flowers dance in her hair.

“Oh, Tonette, I am so happy for you.”

“Are you getting married?” she says, scrutinizing Michael and me. I glance at Michael to see his response. He looks as if he has just gotten on his own personal inner rocket ship that is taking him far, far away.

“No,” I say to Tonette while still smiling, but not inside.

“Uh, you have no idea how awful the planning is, but we've only had one fight—which is practically unheard of.” Tonette leans in toward me as if she is about to dispense the secret to a long life. “It's 'cause I'm keeping those conversations sexy—that helps.”

I cannot imagine what she means. I immediately wonder if whenever I do get to plan that event, the wedding may not even happen because I
won't know how to be sexy discussing a guest list. What—something borrowed, something blue, something porno, something new?

At that moment, an annunciation is made by one of the pale-pinkshirted men that luncheon is to begin. Tonette says she'll see me later, and scurries over to unknown-movie-star-man, who I realize is her fiancé. Michael has already started walking over to fix a plate, so I hurry to catch up with him. The buffet table runs the length of the house and is overflowing with dishes of every culinary kind. Guarding it like angels ready to serve are ten of the pale-pink-shirted men, while ten more move about under the tent filling all hundred glasses with champagne. Tom, Bill's partner, is already in line waiting on the carving of a ham when Michael and I join him. After introducing Michael to him, I congratulate Tom on this great event.

“And we're having a second one next month,” Tom exults as glistening pork is piled high on his plate.

“Second what?” I ask, while thinking,
Isn't this celebration enough?

“Baby! We were picked eight times. That's never happened before. The adoption agency kept saying, ‘No couple has ever been picked eight times,' so we decided we'd get two—better for her not to grow up alone.”

I wonder if this is the start of some new maternal movement—single mothers everywhere choosing only men to raise their young. Maybe they figure that way they won't ever be replaced. Like the way Michael can't replace Andrew? Oh, good God, will you please stop thinking of him? Jesus.

“The other mother's fourteen,” Tom is saying as I pick up the conversation again. “Poor thing's having a baby soon because some guy molested her.”

Though he probably did a bit more than that unless it's the next baby Jesus they're getting.

“Is any of this kosher?” Sarah asks, appearing in line.

Michael and I take our overfilled plates to sit down and dine. As we settle at the nearest table, moving aside the swaddling-clothed babes,
Tonette and unknown-movie-star-man amble by and sit at a table alone on the tent's far side. The host who owns the home still has not arrived, but the trinity of parents makes a visitation before us.

“Mind if we join you?” Tom says as Bill pulls out a chair for Sarah.

The only other guest at the party—a woman we haven't met—pulls out a chair at our table and plops herself down without saying a word to anyone. Considering how little Michael has contributed to any conversation since we've been here, her behavior seems oddly normal for this event.

“So,” Bill says, turning to me. “How long have you two been going out?” He gestures at Michael and smiles, as if I might not be sure who he meant.

“For a little while now, and then a longer while last year, so all combined, I guess a good while now.” I glance at Michael to see what he thought of that, but his entire attention is focused on the pork on his plate. He seems to be adopting a strategy of “If I pretend this party isn't happening, it'll go away.” It almost makes me wish I hadn't brought him, but then I see Tonette and am glad I did anyway.

“Congratulations! In L.A., the way things go, that is so unusual.”

“What's unusual?” says the woman we still haven't met. “You two are engaged?”

“No,” I say. “We're usual. I mean, we're dating. Usually. Anyway.” I wish the conversation had never started, so I turn my attention to Sarah. “You're having a nice stay?”

“Yeah, it's been great, although I didn't go to temple yesterday,” she says, while cutting the pork on her plate, then with a nervous laugh adds, “But what my mother doesn't know won't kill me.”

But does she know about any of this?
I think.

I actually have gone to temple, once, with Michael, on a High Holy Day the first year we were together. It was nice; a lovely informed—I mean, Reform—service. And I did fine. I didn't genuflect in the aisle, and I even followed along in the prayer book pretty well. I had to keep quiet during the Hebrew lines, but it was all pretty familiar in an Old Testament sort of way. The service was progressing along fine when
suddenly during the ram's horn time, it hit me that I was waiting for Mary to arrive. Not Jesus, and God clearly was their Big Guy, but Mary was who I wanted right nearby. Then I remembered that actually Mary was a Jew, and for the first time I wondered who she had prayed to. God? The One who needed her to have His son? I tried to imagine what that must have been like for her—to grow up without a mother figure to give her guidance. Sitting at the baby shower with a madonna soon to be bereft of child, I realize that years from now, the baby in the bassinet will have more of an answer to that than I ever will. Though I guess my own mother's immense and perpetual silence was kind of similar.

The quartet, which had disappeared during lunch, returns and, after getting settled, launches into Brahms's “Lullaby.” When they finish, Tom goes to the parquet floor and takes a microphone from a sound man standing nearby. He begins with some of the funnier lines from his last hit TV show, then proceeds to speak eloquently of the great honor he and Bill have received. It is the best acceptance speech I've heard, and God knows there are a lot in this town, although normally the object received isn't alive. As he expresses their deep gratitude to Sarah, none of us can keep a dry eye—his warmth and tenderness toward her are vibrant. But as he continues to glorify her, Sarah suddenly breaks down and deeply cries. As huge engulfing sobs capture her body, all the way over on the lawn's other side, the baby joins her with a wail. The quartet immediately starts playing the lullaby again but louder and faster this time, as Tom practically throws the microphone at the sound man, and he and Bill run to comfort their child, looking for all the world like they want to die.

The still-unintroduced woman at our table scoops Sarah up in her arms and gently leads her inside. Tonette is a blur of creme concern as she flies by, joining them away from our eyes. I look at Michael and the expression on his face says everything I thought it would—he is ready to take this opportunity to flee. We get up from the deserted table and walk over to Bill and Tom to say goodbye. I notice that unknown-movie-star-man is alone on the far side of the tent. All ten baby dolls
that were on his table are now sitting on the floor at his feet, like some infantile fan club turned plastic that he can keep.

“Thank you for having us.” I kiss each father on the cheek.

“Don't forget your baby,” Tom says as he goes to a table, grabs two dolls, and brings them to me, laying one in each of my arms. “In fact, there are so many, take two.”

As Michael and I walk back through the house to leave, Ken is still standing at the front door like a heavenly messenger whose announcement never arrived. When we get outside, Michael takes my ticket to the valet, and I see Sarah, the still-unmet female guest, and Tonette sitting on the curb, so I walk over to tell them goodbye.

But what comes blurting out of me instead is nothing I would have planned. To Sarah I say, “Congratulations,” then immediately deeply wish that I had not, then in a fluster I turn to the female guest I still have not met and give her a hug. After extricating myself from that mistake, I say to Tonette, “It was so nice to meet you—I mean, see you.”

The three of them stare at me as though I am stark raving mad and for a second I wonder if I am, or at least mad from this experience I've had. I briefly consider trying the goodbyes all over again, but I decide it is best to just go away.

Walking over to Michael, who is waiting for me next to my truck, I realize I have spoken to the three women the way I wish they really were: a mother who is happy about the situation with her child, a kind friend who has wished me marital bliss, and a woman I don't know and will never see again.

Michael slips his arms around me and I kiss him, as four fake baby hands dig into my breasts. He helps me into my truck, telling me that he has to get back to the station, but maybe later he'll come by. I start to offer one of the dolls to him, but I know that he doesn't have any use for it. Of course, neither do I.

Michael walks to his car, and as I start to turn the truck around, I see Tom and Bill walk outside with their arms around each other and Bill carrying their now peaceful child. Sarah looks at them and smiles. I suddenly feel a terrible wave of sadness, then decide it is just that lonely
Sunday thing; if Michael were coming with me, I'd be fine. But a voice deep inside me tells me that's a lie.

The guards do not glance up when my truck drives out the tremendous gates. It is like leaving a heaven imagined by someone else. I take a left onto Sepulveda and am traveling a good ten minutes before I realize I am heading the wrong way to get home.

I moved to Los Angeles Labor Day
weekend of 1992 when I was twenty-three, a few months after graduating from SVA and breaking up with Tim. Moved and landed in Suzanne's guest room. Or rather the guest room of Marc, her boyfriend at that time, with whom she lived in his Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills. The house was large and cool with a pool I would take dips in on the long hot September afternoons while Suzanne and Marc were at work. Marc was a music agent and he introduced me to Bill, the music producer I worked for as an assistant a few days a week. Marc hooked me up with him right after I got to L.A., sending me up to Bill's home in Silverlake. I liked Bill immediately. He was originally from Detroit with an Ivy League yet groovy vibe about him. He had kind blue eyes, and offered me some of the fresh carrot juice he had just made before we sat outside on his terraced patio to talk about where I was from, the bands he was producing, and the things he needed done.

In my first few days after moving, I started adjusting to the sights of L.A., like the trees. I had never seen such odd ones before. Not that the palm trees were odd—okay, they were out of place, not even indigenous to the city, but they didn't look odd; their gaunt bodies and full plumes on top reminded me of the anorexic yet heavy-chested actresses everywhere. It was the other types of trees, the regular North American kind, that were so odd. They were small. Tiny. I figured maybe the desert climate kept them from growing full because it was hot here, blazing. The sun was at such a close angle—not the rays buffeted through the humidity that I grew up with in the South, or even the curved slant of it you'd get in New York City. This sun was right next to me, literally on my shoulder, like I'd bump into it if I turned around too fast. So a bunch of nice, full, shade-producing, sun-blocking trees would have been a huge help against that heat-inducing foe, but everywhere I went—Sunset Boulevard, Westwood, Beverly Hills—the trees were so curiously small. It made me long for the deep shade and towering fullness of the virtual forests at home in Pass Christian.

 

Two weeks after I started working for Bill, almost my third week in L.A., I finally called Andrew to let him know I had moved. I had been waiting to call him because I wanted to get more settled somehow, but the longing to hear his voice overpowered me. It had been a month since we had spoken on the phone, and that was in New York, so it was beginning to feel like something that had happened in a far-off distant land that wasn't connected to me but I needed it to be. Needed him to be. It was a Saturday morning, Suzanne and Marc and I had finished breakfast, and I was still sitting at their antique country pine kitchen table while the morning light bounced off the citron walls, studying the book-sized L.A. map to acquaint myself with routes around town. At least streets were clearly marked in this city, with one sign at the corner, and also a larger one a few yards ahead to give a pleasant warning of your future turn. I remembered the small street signs in Pass Christian, mostly hidden by full, luscious trees, and wondered how anyone ever
moved there and comfortably got around, but maybe that was the point. Suzanne and Marc came through the kitchen in tennis garb, and told me they'd be back in a few hours. I waved nonchalantly as if I couldn't care less that I had the house again to myself. And the phone.

I waited for the sounds of the garage door opening, the car doors shutting, the car starting and revving (it was a Porsche), and backing out of the drive, before I walked into the den where large sliding doors led out to the pool, sat down on the gargantuan denim-covered couch, picked up the phone on the side table, and dialed Andrew's number that I had known by heart for years, but had always had to dial long distance. Now, for the first time, it was local.

The operator answered, and upon hearing my name, told me to hold, so I knew she was getting him. It seemed as if only one person always answered his phone; no matter what hour it was or day of the week, the voice sounded exactly the same, as if there were a woman put on earth just to handle Andrew's phones. In the years I lived in New York, whenever I called Andrew, I always imagined this operator-woman somewhere in an almost bare, nondescript room, far away from his home, with plastic containers of food and a diet Coke on her desk, always there, never ever gone.

“Where are you?” Andrew said, his concerned voice and large presence suddenly on the line. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm good; I'm in L.A.”

“L.A.? Where?”

I gave him the details, leaving out the length of time I'd been here, until he asked.

“Why haven't you called me before? I've been worried, not hearing from you for weeks, and I couldn't call you because of Tim-my.” Andrew exaggerated the last syllable the way he had done since I first started seeing Tim. “Is he here, too?”

“No, that's all over.”

“Good.” He said it as if Tim were a phase I had needed to go through that he had always known would end, and that having done so
it signaled my growth. “Not calling me for weeks, no idea where you were—you are in such big trouble for this.”

Thank God.

“Do you still love me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then why aren't you up here already? Come on.” He gave me directions to his home in Bel Air, making sure I knew the right way to go. I almost told him I had a map, but I wanted his instructions. As we hung up, the tingly feeling that had been building in me all during the call settled inside, making me glow stronger than the sun outside. I was going to see Andrew. I hadn't expected that when I called him. I figured we'd just pick up our routine of talking every day, and maybe at some point, one day…But this was so immediate. I wondered what it meant and hoped it was huge and would become habitual.

I changed into a little floral dress I had bought on Melrose and put on some makeup, having to keep my hands steady while I thought back to the last time I had seen him. It was in his suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and we had been sitting on the yellow silk couch looking at pictures of Malaysia when that terrible Suzy girl arrived. Maybe seeing him now could be a fresh start, maybe he'd even ask about my art. I looked in the mirror of Marc's guest room one last time before I picked up my bag to go. I was finally going to see Andrew again after five years. Five years that in some ways felt like ten, but also felt like five minutes. I left a note for Suzanne, telling her I had borrowed her car to run some errands, and ran out the door.

On the drive up the road in Bel Air to Andrew's home, I passed huge houses with manicured lawns that became increasing large and more hidden from view the farther up I went. It felt like a dream, being on my way to see him again, real the way dreams feel while I'm having them, yet this one I didn't have to wake up from. The road kept winding around, then wound back one more time, and there at the very top, as if God had saved it for him, was Andrew's property. From the street, all I could see was a dense boundary of trees and shrubbery that I was
sure hid a tall and fierce fence topped with barbed wire. A large white gate was closed across a driveway that looked like a small road. I stopped the car on the street before I got any closer—I figured he had security cameras rigged all over the place—and checked my makeup in the rearview mirror, then with an expulsion of air from my gut that was meant to relax the butterflies in there but only made them worse, I drove into the driveway and stopped in front of the gate. I pushed the button on an intercom box that protruded toward my car like a land-bound periscope, and a few seconds later, the wide white gate silently swung open, and a camera swiveled, keeping my car in sight as I drove into the property. Access to Andrew's kingdom had been silently granted.

The curving roadway was flanked by large shady trees and strategically placed groups of shrubs through which I glimpsed tennis courts on the left, then farther up on the right a small house, then the driveway curved once again and his home came into view.

It could have been on the Mediterranean coast, the Italianate architecture was so perfect and grand. Opening the car door, I half expected to smell sea air. It was like an island, a retreat from the intrusion of city life below.

The front door's heavy wood muffled my knock, but I noticed a doorbell, so I pushed that, and a moment later, the door opened by inches and seconds and feet and minutes and Andrew appeared.

“Hi.” He said the word as only he could, not so much making it two syllables, but with enough space that there was a sunrise in the first part and a sunset in the last with a day in between for us.

I stood on the step taking him in. I'd seen his face and body in photographs and films countless times in the intervening years, but none of it compared to seeing him live. He was stripped down without the celluloid. Available, raw and real. Then our arms and lips and hands and tongues came together as if they had never not.

He led me through rooms of highly polished dark wood floors, satiny cream walls, and exquisite museum-quality antiques. Kellys, Baselitzes, Lichtensteins, Freuds, Twomblys, Johns, and Richters lined
the walls. I thought of my sculptures in Momma's attic and fantasized about one of them being there as we continued through more rooms past more art, then into his bedroom where Andrew sat down on the bed. It was huge. A room of its own. No words were spoken as our garments were removed.

The sex we had didn't feel like only the second time. It was a continuation, an “and then,” as if the movement and rhythm and heat had been present all along, just under our skin. We fell in.

After a couple of hours, we got up and went to the kitchen for food, bringing a tray of gourmet dishes his chef had made back to the bed with ice-cold bottles of Pellegrino and beer.

“I'm glad you're here. I've missed seeing your beautiful face,” Andrew said. We were lying back on the bed content after feeding each other and devouring the food. I didn't say anything. It was a huge admission from him. One that I knew he might not have said if he'd thought much about it beforehand. It had come out on its own, unable to stay in, and I let it roll over my skin like the sensations of him during sex.

Andrew reached over to the bedside table and pressed a button, making the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall heavy silk cream-colored curtains slowly open, as if the day outside were a performance for us. The slightest cast of shadow was reaching toward his house. I realized it had to be past three and suddenly remembered Suzanne's car sitting outside. It seemed ages ago since I had left that note for her. She was probably frantic, but mostly mad.

“Will I see you again soon or is it going to be years?” I said as I reluctantly got up and started to dress.

“What do you think?” He looked at me from his bed, his eyes on mine as if they had never left.

And I knew what he meant.

He kissed me at the front door. “Call me later, sweet-y-vette.”

Despite the annoyance of having to deal with an angry, carless Suzanne, I was ecstatically happy as I flew down the hill in Bel Air. As I
turned onto Sunset, speeding into the curves to take them tight and fast, it felt as if Andrew's arms were still holding me close.

 

And we were back. Not in the way it had been before, because we weren't sexually involved before. Okay, once, I know, but that didn't really count in terms of defining the relationship because the relationship wasn't sexual. It was parental in a way. But now it was going to be different, that was clear. Though I wasn't sure what change had suddenly allowed it. But I didn't care. Andrew was back in my life; that was all that mattered.

 

Andrew and I started talking a few times every day. He'd call in the morning after Suzanne and Marc had left for work; I'd call him in the afternoon or night. Our New York habit but with the addition that we also talked about the sex we were regularly having. I'd go up to his house late at night, a wind was always high and restless in the trees around his estate even when it had been still as death in L.A. below, and he'd greet me at the front door, the same small “hi” every time before we kissed. Then we'd go into the kitchen if he had to finish up a call he was on with other movie people, I figured, who also conducted business at all hours of the night. The calls sounded important and concerned money or positions of power changing around. I'd sit on a stool waiting for him, listening to him talk and trying to fill in what the other person was saying, clues to Andrew's life and what consumed him.

The kitchen was completely different from the rest of the house with its dark woods, important paintings, and astonishing antiques; it was a modernist's dream. Steel and chrome and white and beams. Reflective surfaces absent of color except for an eternally present, exquisitely fresh bowl of fruit whose type of occupant changed every few days and a David Hockney behind glass, one of the Mulholland Drive series, spreading itself across the large kitchen wall like a bird unable to take full flight. Once the calls were done or would no longer be answered,
since calls never ceased to come in for him, we would walk the path to his bedroom, the dark and beautiful art-filled journey into the place where his jeans would come down, my clothes would be taken off, usually with him lying on the bed watching, then I would get on top of him and work my way down to the beginning of bliss for both of us.

 

After a couple more weeks of living at Marc and Suzanne's when I thought Suzanne and I were going to tear each other's hair out, I bought an old Chevy truck (good for hauling my sculptures, I thought) and put down a deposit plus first month's rent on a five-hundred-dollar-a-month rent-controlled studio apartment on a pretty street in Beverly Hills. I had sold most of the work I did for the graduation show at SVA in New York back in May, so I had that money, and I had gotten a waitressing job at a restaurant to supplement my income since a few days a week working for Bill wasn't covering everything.