Filthy Rich (5 page)

We bonded instantly. Maybe it was just the powerful physical attraction. Or maybe it’s because we’re both tidy types who broadcast enthusiasm about our work. The right answer is probably all of the above.

Our first real date, an all-day excursion to the Hamptons on a sunny Saturday in early April, weeks before the summer crush, left me convinced that Neil and I also shared the same outlook on life. We drove around the posh Georgica Pond
area, where Steven Spielberg and Martha Stewart have their spreads, gawking at the giant houses with their gorgeous landscaping, and making jokes about the sick values of a community where the
average
house goes for several million, you need to be famous to get weekend reservations in a decent restaurant, the official family car is a fully loaded Lexus SUV, and the toy du jour is a high-tech device that allows drivers stuck in never-ending traffic on the Long Island Expressway to turn on the hot tub with a call from the cell phone.

In retrospect, I was so anxious to conclude that Neil was Dr. Right that I overlooked the signs that our values were really very different. Actually, I was the one making all the jokes and providing the negative cultural commentary on money and celebrity run amok that day in the Hamptons. Neil didn’t say much. He was too busy gawking, and I’ve since come to think, longing to party with Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley and the rest of the rich and glamorous Hamptons set.

But, as I said, I had blinders on. They were still on more than two years later, when
Filthy Rich!
first went on the air, emerging as a TV phenomenon, and Neil, newly obsessed with the idea of becoming a contestant, started exhibiting some odd behavior.

He began keeping a meticulously catalogued videotape library of every show, and then proceeded to watch his favorites over and over on nights no new segment of
Filthy Rich!
was on the schedule. Where previously he’d run on about dental matters, Neil now provided extensive quotes
from the hot game show when we went out to dinner with other couples, which he awkwardly interspersed with random pieces of trivia culled from an eclectic assortment of newly acquired atlases and world almanacs. He also purchased three dozen copies of Kingman Fenimore’s autobiography to hand out to patients, and had his secretary leave big blanks in his appointment book so he could keep calling the special 800 number for phone tryouts that could lead to a shot at the
Filthy Rich!
hot seat. The limit was two calls a day, but the line was always busy, Neil explained, and sometimes he’d defy the limit by using aliases. His favorite was Max Flax. For some reason, Neil was always amused by names that rhymed.

Probably I should have been alarmed by his odd transformation. But when it began, I didn’t see anything terribly amiss. To be entirely candid, I was just happy Neil had found something other than orthodontics that really interested him. I now suspect that I was also subconsciously afraid that if I began probing much into the mystery behind Neil’s new
Filthy Rich!
obsession, I might not like what I found.

What deep inner hunger was it that had Neil so upended? Was it simply monetary greed? A secret yearning for a big career change? Or was it the chance for momentary fame that intrigued him? In future years, cultural experts who study the societal impact of
Filthy Rich!
may come up with a definitive answer. While they’re at it, I suppose, they may also tell us whether Certs is really a breath mint or a candy.

Personally, I can’t wait.

I was awakened
by the dulcet tones of Frank, the morning doorman, alternately yelling my name, ringing my doorbell, and pounding on my apartment door.

“Ms. Mallowitz, Ms. Mallowitz, are you okay?” he shouted.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied, still lying in bed, and in the process of trying to prop open my right eyelid with an index finger.

“What’s that? Is that you, Ms. Mallowitz?”

“Yes, Frank. It’s me, unfortunately. You can stop banging.”

I threw on a terry bathrobe and plodded to the door in a bleary state located somewhere between dead and don’t bother to resuscitate.

“Some rough night,” Frank blurted out when he saw me, which I took to be as much a commentary on my disheveled appearance as the dire doings on
Filthy Rich!
“Your mom was getting worried because your phone was shut off, so she called downstairs and asked me to check on
you. She says she left a message on your machine you should play back right away.”

“Tell me, Frank, what time is it?”

“Almost ten o’clock.”

For my mother, the early bird, waiting until 10
A.M.
showed remarkable restraint. She thinks nothing of calling at 6 or 7
A.M.
when she has one of her brainstorms, as if saying she didn’t mean to wake me makes waking me okay.

“If she calls again, Frank, do me a favor and lie. Tell her you saw me and I looked just fine.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Oh, and I almost forgot. These flowers came for you. Two gigantic arrangements. Almost identical. From the same fancy Upper East Side florist. I took them up with me on the service elevator. Wait, I’ll fetch them.”

An enormous feeling of relief came over me. Of course, I assumed the flowers were from Neil. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d resorted to sending flowers when he wanted to apologize for something and couldn’t think of an appropriate dental item.

Frank carried the mega-floral offerings to my kitchen counter and departed. I saw a little white card Scotch-taped to one of them, and I snatched it, fully expecting it to contain one of Neil’s schmaltzy messages, telling me, as he did once last year, that “Our fight last night left a cavity-size hole in my heart” or something equivalently gruesome. We’d get back together, and life would go on as before. At least that’s what I hoped would happen, or thought I hoped.

But never mind the speculation. The card was not from Neil, and there was no mention of a cavity-size anything. It was from Barbara Walters. She’d seen my
Filthy Rich!
gig and wanted me for an exclusive interview.

I’ll say that again in case you weren’t paying attention: BARBARA WALTERS! The legendary ABC newswoman who interviewed Monica Lewinsky, and no shortage of other major and mini-celebrities, wanted to talk to
me
.

“Dear Marcy,” her card said, “Admired your fortitude on
Filthy Rich!
You have a story to share with American women, and I’d like to help you do it. Feel free to call me at home, 555-5094. Your friend, Barbara Walters.”

The second group of flowers was from Barbara’s arch competitor at ABC, Diane Sawyer.

My God, I thought, DIANE SAWYER! Among her many other journalistic coups, she did the big interview with Darva Conger. That was the exclusive where Darva, the big phony, somberly lamented her loss of privacy and credibility shortly after she married a stranger for money on live TV, and just before she agreed to pose nude for
Playboy
. “The pictures,” Darva later explained, “have a feeling of innocence.” Yeah, sure.

Diane Sawyer’s friendly note gave me her home phone number, offered two passes to the opening of a new movie the next month by her director husband, Mike Nichols, and invited me and a guest to sit at their table at the opening-night party.

My first reaction was to feel flattered by the attention
from these two famous television journalists. After all, I’m only human. But within an hour, the initial excitement wore off, and I was feeling even more depressed than before. In my one appearance on national television, I had managed to make a fool of myself and lose the man I thought I’d marry. I had no desire to stage a television return in order to share more of my personal travails with the motley group of strangers who comprise the viewing public. This fame thing is vastly overrated. Besides, I couldn’t get past the question of who I would bring as a guest to Diane Sawyer’s soiree since Neil was no longer a possibility.

My quiet but secure existence as an obscure Personal Life Coach attached to a boring orthodontist with a monster-size ego was over. The looming challenge was coming to terms with that fact.

I pressed the playback button on my answering machine.

“Marcy, it’s your mother.”

Who else would I think it was?

“Everybody’s kvelling,” she said, obviously recovered from the demeaning events of the previous night. “You made the front page of the
New York Post
. You have to see it. You’re throwing the ring at that bastard Neil, and you look fabulous. That outfit we picked up at the Saks sale does wonders for your figure.”

I had reached rock bottom, my life was falling apart to such a degree that I felt as if I might never leave my apartment again, and all my mother seemed to care about was how thin I looked in the pictures.

That’s Mom. I could be arrested for crimes against humanity and her only comment would be how good I looked in the mug shot. A case of misplaced values or simple maternal loyalty? You make the call.

“And, dear, you’ll love the headline: ‘Marcy to Neil: Drop Dead.’ It’s all over TV, too. You know Matt Lauer, the adorable young man on the
Today
show? He talked about you today with the weatherman. You know, that big guy with the earmuffs who’s always out there in the cold with the tourists, whatsisname, Al Roker. He said Neil’s a nerd and it’s not your fault you missed the Sonny and Cher question. Who’d want to be friends with someone who keeps track of Teri Garr’s comings and goings? Listen carefully to me, Marcy, that Matt Lauer, I know he’s married. But maybe he has a brother. Get one of your well-connected friends to find out. Tell her it’s okay even if he’s a couple of years younger. Why be a stickler? Call me later.”

Click
.

The next message was from my friend Norma, just returned from a whirlwind national book tour promoting her trail-blazing new collection of essays on current feminist issues,
Raging Hormones and Other Outrages
.

“Sorry, Marcy,” she said. “But I told you so.”

The flowers from
Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer were just the beginning. By four o’clock of The Day After, poor Frank and his afternoon counterpart, hunky Jonathan, heartthrob of the building’s over-sixty set, had made at least a dozen deliveries to my apartment—all gifts from prominent people I’d never met trying to ingratiate themselves with Marcy now that she’d been rejected by her obnoxious orthodontist.

Think about that for a moment. People who less than a day before wouldn’t have bothered to give me the right, or even the wrong, time of day, for that matter, were now plying me with choice items charged to their expense accounts all because another person they knew only by his unappealing television performance decided he was too good for me. Bizarre, no?

But even more bizarre from my standpoint was the odd, floating sensation all of this largesse induced in me. I can’t remember all of the gifts, which I sincerely regret because I
really should have appreciated the care that went into each and every card and present. But I do recall the giant Godiva assortments sent by Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, Maury Povich, and Larry King as bribes to try to get me to agree to an interview. I remember them mainly because I ended up eating every precious morsel the boxes contained, breaking my personal record for chocolate consumption—part of a sickening three-day binge that did nothing to restore the self-esteem badly damaged by Neil’s bad behavior, but did succeed in adding seven unsightly pounds of pure flab to what the
Daily News
had previously described as my “compact but not pudgy athletic frame.”

Montel’s shipment of giant hand-dipped strawberries from Dean & Deluca also hit the spot, but endeavoring to trick my fat cells, I overlooked their thick bittersweet-chocolate coating and counted them as fruit.

The generous gift basket of assorted gourmet salamis and cheeses from Balducci’s, the fancy Village food shop, didn’t do any wonders for my waistline either. It came with a lovely card from Tina Brown, the powerhouse editor whose trendy magazine,
Talk
, has tons of financing from Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, and is
the
source for fascinating scoops about his films. “Marcy, you were riveting,” she scribbled hastily, possibly on her way to one of those gaudy celebrity shindigs she’s always tossing on a yacht. “Can you do lunch next week, just the two of us and Gwyneth? I’m thinking our next cover with a movie tie-in. Have to run, Tina.”

Gwyneth Paltrow might play
me
in the movies? Does that mean I get to meet Ben Affleck? I wondered. Then I got worried. They better not cast him as Neil. He’d be too sympathetic.

Tom Brokaw sent no salamis. But he did send me a handwritten letter tendering an invitation to his Montana ranch if I’d appear on his
NBC Nightly News
broadcast. There was also an autographed boxing glove from Geraldo, inscribed “Round One to Marcy,” Hostess Ding Dongs, Twinkies, and an incredibly soft and comfortable jogging suit in pale pink from Rosie O’Donnell, and a large canvas public television tote bag from Charlie Rose filled with videotapes of opera highlights from
This Evening at the Met
. I confess I don’t like opera, but the fact that Charlie Rose believed I was sufficiently highbrow to like opera won him my loyalty forever. As for Rosie’s jogging suit with the tastefully small imprint of her smiling likeness for its logo, I put it on the moment it arrived and didn’t take it off for my entire binge period.

But probably the most thoughtful gift came from—who else?—Oprah Winfrey. It was as if she’d seen me in Rosie’s sweats and knew my depression had me eating for fifteen. Oprah’s care package included several low-fat dinners prepared by her personal chef and flash-frozen for my dining pleasure, a basket of fruit and other low-fat snacks, two motivational audiotapes made especially for me by Oprah’s Life Coaching guru, Dr. Phil, and, as if that weren’t enough, a copy of every book she had ever recommended for
“Oprah’s Book Club.” “Let’s talk,” her note said simply. A handwritten P.S. provided her phone number.

I was deeply touched. But at that particular moment, I had no intention of granting interviews or appearing on anyone’s TV show, not even my new pal Oprah’s. My immediate objective was to ease the pain and embarrassment of the televised breakup by gorging my way into oblivion. And, just to be certain this strategy succeeded in defeating any hope of reinvigorating my social life, I had defiantly draped my rapidly expanding body in my Rosie sweats and foresworn civilized standards of personal hygiene.

My other best friend, perky Lois Torno (affectionately dubbed “the White Tornado” years ago by Norma), stopped by around six to try to cheer me up on her way to yet another soft-money fund-raiser she’d helped organize for the Democrats. Lois, who roomed with Norma and me all through Barnard, was always being stopped on the street for her uncanny resemblance to Jennifer Grey in
Dirty Dancing
, before the bad nose job. She couldn’t care less about politics. But no dope, Lois had discovered a few years ago that hitting up rich donors for campaigns was a great way to meet eligible, or at least semi-eligible men of means. She’d hitched her welcome wagon to the Democrats, figuring the more socially progressive Dems would be less likely to be frightened off by her two failed marriages (no children, thank goodness). Lois claimed that at one of her political soirees last year, she was
propositioned by President Clinton but turned down his invitation to “do it” on
Air Force One
. I believe the first part, but I’ve known Lois too long to believe the second.

Lois, the lucky girl, doesn’t have to hold down a real, paying job because a few years back, Husband Number Two handed her a bundle in exchange for her agreeing to seek an annulment from the Vatican on the hazy grounds that their marriage was a case of mistaken identity. The annulment was granted, which makes you wonder how the Pope got to be Pope given that he believed the tripe Lois served up to erase the union from whatever official scorebook it is they keep in Rome. In any event, the annulment allowed the son of a bitch—the husband, not the Pope—to drop Lois for an MIT-trained programming expert at his fabulously successful dot.com company without breaking the heart of his eighty-three-year-old Italian mama, who adored Lois and taught my friend, a descendant of the only Italian mother who can’t boil pasta, how to make great lasagna.

I should probably add that political fund-raising is but the latest creative strategy Lois has deployed in her never-ending quest to meet guys. I remember back in our junior year, she joined a knitting class at the 92nd Street Y to cultivate a softer image that might be more appealing to men than that of a Seven Sisters intellectual. Much to her credit, however, Lois quit in the middle of the second class when the woman seated next to her went into serious math panic counting stitches. She’s man crazy, but she’s no bimbo.

“What’s going on?” asked Lois, eyeing my incredible haul
for the day, which was now lined up along the walls of my vestibule, piled on my large oak dining table, and distributed to numerous sites around the living room, transforming my humdrum quarters into a festive explosion of multicolored cellophane wrapping. But the first thing that struck her was that Neil’s horrendous dental chair was gone. “You didn’t lose a man, Marcy,” she commented, “you lost an eyesore.”

“Apple?” I said, offering her an impressively polished McIntosh from Oprah’s basket of goodies. “It’s organic. Oprah sent it.”

“Right, your friend Oprah.”

I handed her the card. “See for yourself.”

“This is crazy,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and Brokaw also sent stuff. And please, let’s not forget Geraldo’s boxing glove.”

“It’s a nice color for the room,” Lois commented, fingering the glove’s soft red leather and then returning it to the center of the coffee table by the sofa, where I’d previously placed it as a conversation piece. “Very thoughtful.”

“And Charlie Rose sent this tote,” I said, lifting his canvas offering from its nearby resting place on the rug, and taking its full measure. “It looks cheap,” I told Lois, “but in fairness, it’s Public Television. After last night, suddenly everyone wants me to be on their show. In show-biz lingo, I’m hot. You know Mrs. Schwartz downstairs? The one whose dog has a bad bladder problem? She caught me coming in last night and asked for my autograph.”

“Impressive. I guess that means Norma and I will have to stop claiming Neil never gave you anything—apart from that cheap ring and those tacky spritzers, I mean,” Lois said before turning serious. “It’s your due, Marcy, after all your time with that schmuck. Enjoy the ride. Which will it be, Diane or Barbara?”

“Neither,” I said, matter-of-factly.

“Geraldo would be a gas,” Norma continued, ignoring my response. “I hear he may be dating again. Maybe you could introduce us. I bet he’d love to go out with a gorgeous, independently wealthy Mediterranean with a fabulous body. Also a fabulous mind, of course.”

“Stop showing off, Lois,” I kidded back, and then pointed at her slinky black dress. “It’s a Lawrence Steele, right? I saw it in
Vogue
and thought for two thousand dollars, he should throw in a little more fabric on top. It’s so low-cut your boobs could fall out. Then again, I suppose nothing’s too good for the Democrats.”

“Very funny, Marcy. Now I’ll be self-conscious.”

“And, Lois, who did your hair? It looks great.”

“Your Giovanni, of course. Adding the subtle blond streaks was his idea. Also putting it up. He said it would make me look in my twenties.”

“Maybe even younger,” I replied, still bitter over his broken promise to accentuate my cheekbones. “What did you have to do to get him to stop yapping on the cell phone and pay attention, sleep with him?”

“Well, you’re in some great mood I see,” Lois replied. “I
don’t take it personally. But you know in your heart I’m right about the TV offers. You’d be a fool to blow them off. I’m sure Norma will tell you the same thing.”

Lois picked out a large green grape from Oprah’s fruit basket and placed it in her mouth, careful not to touch her meticulously applied red lip gloss. As she slowly chewed it, she looked me over. “I can’t believe the hideous getup you’re in,” she said after a swallow. “I’ll be in charge of your wardrobe and makeup.”

“I’m not doing any shows,” I announced. “This may come as a shock, Lois, but I don’t want to make a career of being America’s most famous and pathetic dumpee, even if it’s only a short career, which I’m sure it would be. And for your information, Rosie sent this outfit. I like it.”

“Don’t get all insulted, sweetie,” Lois said, reclaiming the elegant black beaded evening bag she’d nonchalantly tossed on a chair while checking out my loot. “I have nothing against Rosie. All I’m saying is, you should do her show, and some of the others, too. Live it up. Find yourself an agent who can pocket you some endorsement money before this all disappears. Neil would die seeing you on TV being treated like a star.”

Lois plucked another grape from Oprah’s fruit offering. “And what’s this drivel about you being ‘pathetic’?” she continued after consuming it. “Have you forgotten Episode Twenty? The famous one where Marcia gets braces?”

I knew immediately where she was heading. Lois was slipping back into our old
Brady Bunch
mode. Back in col
lege, the two of us spent endless fun hours debating the deeper meaning of
Brady
plot lines, and trying to decide which of the 116 half-hour episodes most fit whatever pressing dilemma we found ourselves facing—the underlying assumption being, of course, that the show’s five seasons of inane stories, dialogue, and costumes pretty thoroughly encompassed Life in all of its many complicated variations. This little game used to drive Norma nuts, not just because to her the show epitomized the worst of mass culture, or because Lois and I should have been studying, but because she suspected that to some indefinable degree, we weren’t joking.

Come to think of it, Norma’s distaste for
The Brady Bunch
and its supposed effect on me wasn’t that much different from my mother’s, except, unlike Mom, Norma never tried to bolster her case by talking up the comparative virtues of
The Lucy Show
.

“The braces episode,” Lois prodded when I didn’t answer immediately. “It’s quintessential
Brady
, to use a favorite Q word I learned for the SATs.”

“Yeah, it’s a quintessential episode,” I agreed. “But I’m not sure I’m up for the Bradys today. They’re too upbeat. Besides, I fail to see how rehashing Marcia’s orthodontic problem is supposed to help me forget my jerky orthodontist boyfriend. After last night, I’m taking a mental-health break from all things orthodontic. The way I’m feeling right now, I may even boycott my next dental cleaning.”

“Marcy, think about it,” Lois insisted. “You’re saying
you’re too pathetic to go on TV is exactly the same as Marcia Brady obsessing that her braces made her too ugly to keep her date for the school dance. Remember the ending? Her date turned out to have braces, too. So you see, she didn’t have to worry. She wound up going to the dance and having a great time. Just like you should. Anyway, you can’t sit home ad infinitum.”

“Lois, it’s been less than twenty-four hours,” I said. “I have no immediate plans to leave this apartment, but to say ‘ad infinitum’ is a tad premature, don’t you think?”

“I know just the thing,” she said. “Why don’t you get out of those yucky duds and come with me? Maybe we can find you a rich Democrat.”

“Thanks, Lois. But if I go out, I’ll just be followed by swarms of reporters and photographers. It will be exactly like Monica. I won’t be able to enjoy the hors d’oeuvres in peace. They’ll catch me reaching for a pig in a blanket and the next day’s tabloids will be full of unflattering snapshots with captions playing off the word ‘pig,’ and lots of expert speculation about the amount of calories I consumed, and whether the breakup with Neil, the creep, is sapping my dietary willpower, which I can tell you with confidence, it surely is.” To emphasize the point, I picked up a Godiva chocolate from Bryant Gumbel’s box and tossed it into my wide-open mouth. “My current plan is to lie low for a while. I’ll let you know if it changes.”