Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls (17 page)

“And what does your mother say about that,” he asked.

“I wait till she goes to sleep, and then I sneak out,” Jenn said. Alice lived in a large apartment on Park Avenue, a series of rooms
strung along a hallway, so it was easy for her to fool her parents. “It’s easy,” Jenn said.

“I’ll think about it,” Dylan said.

Lyon took Jenn to a restaurant in Brentwood, and when they got back from dinner Gretchen was gone.

“Don’t you think it’s weird, Gretchen going out with a bunch of kids?” Jenn asked her father.

“What’s the age difference—four years? That really isn’t so much,” Lyon said.

“Dylan isn’t even old enough to drink,” Jenn said. “If they got in trouble, Gretchen could be arrested.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You shouldn’t let them go out,” Jenn said.

“She’s an adult, she can take care of herself,” Lyon said. “I’m certainly not going to spend my time worrying about Neely’s children. Any more than Neely worries herself.” He wished Jenn weren’t spending so much time at Neely’s house. At first he hadn’t minded—they had a lovely pool, and he didn’t have to be anxious about Jenn and Gretchen driving around a strange city with plenty of dangerous neighborhoods. But Jenn just came home grouchier every day. It was painful to watch her moon after Dylan, who Lyon guessed was encouraging this little crush. And once he thought he smelled pot on Gretchen’s clothes. Who knew what went on in that house, two unsupervised eighteen-year-old boys with too much money and too much time on their hands. Lyon remembered what he had been like at eighteen: the last person anyone would want one’s thirteen-year-old daughter to spend time around.

Jenn got into her pajamas and they watched a Steve Martin video until midnight. Lyon dozed off and began to snore.

“Daaaad,” she said, poking him. “Time to go to bed.”

She got into bed and waited half an hour, until she was sure he
would be fast asleep. Gretchen still wasn’t home. The rental car was in the driveway, so Jenn guessed they had taken Dylan’s car.

She put on a pair of jeans and running shoes and pulled a sweatshirt over her pajama top. She made a pile of pillows under the covers, just the way Alice had described to her, and tiptoed down the stairs.

On the way to Neely’s house she passed a woman walking a poodle, but other than that the streets were empty. The driveway was full of cars, and the lights were on in Judd’s room. The rest of the house was dark.

There were at least a dozen people around the pool, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. She didn’t recognize anyone.

“Hey, who are you?” someone asked.

“Jennifer Burke.”

“Are you a friend of Judd’s or Dylan’s?” someone else said.

“Both, I guess.”

“Really,” said a girl in a very short knit dress. “Well, that’s a new one. Have a beer.”

Jenn didn’t like the taste of beer, but she took one anyway. They were playing reggae on a boom box and gossiping about people she didn’t know. No one seemed to expect her to talk. When they passed the pot around, she shook her head.

“No, thank you.”

“Don’t like dope?” the girl asked.

Jenn had never smoked dope. “Actually, I’m allergic.”

“Oh really? I never heard of that.”

“Yes, it’s very rare. But I am allergic. If I had even one puff, I’d stop breathing and you’d have to take me to the hospital. I’ll have another beer, though.” The second beer tasted better.

“Let’s go swimming,” one of the girls said. She pulled off her clothes and jumped into the pool. Her breasts were enormous, and white against her tan body.

“You’re staring at her tits,” one of the boys said to Jenn.

“I am not!” Jenn said.

“You are too. So is everyone. Don’t worry, she loves it. She’s always the first one to take her clothes off.” He started to unzip his jeans.

“I have to go pee now,” Jenn said. She went to the bathroom off the kitchen, but the door was locked.

“Nobody’s home!” came a voice from behind the bathroom door.

“We don’t want any!” came another voice.

“Goddamn those Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

Jenn went upstairs. Judd was wearing headphones and playing a computer game.

“Hey Jenn, didn’t know you were here. Wanna play?” he asked.

“I’ll just watch,” she said.

“You weren’t hanging out with those cretins downstairs, I hope.”

“Sort of.”

“Ugh,” Judd said. “I can’t wait to go to college. This town sucks. Is that a beer in your hand?”

“I just took a sip,” she said.

Jenn still couldn’t figure out what made one identical twin so attractive and the other one so … so just plain normal. They had the same face, the same thick, dark eyebrows, the same gray eyes. Judd was paler and wore his hair short; Dylan was tan, and his hair reached the top of his collar. But other than that, they looked exactly the same. Except they were completely different.

Judd had been in her fantasies, too. Sometimes he was the best man at their wedding, a yellow rose tucked into the lapel of his fine gray suit. Sometimes he was sitting with Jenn by the side of a hospital bed, waiting for Dylan to come out of a coma after his plane crashed, the plane he had chartered so he could get home in time to accompany Jenn to the Academy Awards. Sometimes Judd was dying from some rare incurable disease, and Jenn was comforting Dylan, holding him in her arms, now she was all he had left in the world.

“You have a computer at home?” Judd asked.

“Sure, everyone has a computer,” Jenn said.

“Here, let me show you something cool.” He pressed a few keys, and fireworks exploded across the screen.

“I have to find a bathroom.”

“Use ours,” he said, pointing to a door. “And you shouldn’t drink beer, you’re too young for beer.”

Jenn ran the water while she peed. Dylan’s bathroom! Dylan’s razor, Dylan’s shampoo, Dylan’s deodorant! She pressed one of the towels to her face, but it just smelled like a towel with a little bit of hair conditioner on it.

There were two doors to the bathroom. Loud music was coming from the one that led to Dylan’s room, a metal band she couldn’t identify. She pushed the door open a little.

“Hello?” she whispered. “Anyone home?”

Two bodies were stretched horizontally across the bed. They didn’t hear her as she stepped into the room. They were doing … what were they doing? Dylan was on his back … Gretchen was facedown on top of him … but they weren’t kissing, their heads were in the wrong place, it was all turned around. Gretchen’s mouth was moving up and down … Dylan had one hand on Gretchen’s backside … his other hand was squeezing her breast … Gretchen was moaning with pleasure.…

The bottle of beer crashed to the floor. Dylan turned his head.

“You. Get out of here.”

She ran through the bathroom, past Judd, down the stairs, around the pool, now filled with naked people, she ran all the way home. She willed herself to forget what she had seen, but she could not forget, and she could not fall asleep. Was that what people did? Was that what men wanted? She could never … she would never … but Gretchen had liked it; it was a gross thing, and Gretchen liked it. Jenn wondered what they had done after she left. They had probably laughed about it, laughed at her.

An hour later there was a knock at the door.

“Jenn? Can I come in? I know you aren’t asleep.… Jenn? I know you’re mad at me. I’m coming in now.”

“I never want to see you again.”

“Jenn, let me explain. It isn’t what you think. I’m coming in.”

Jenn pulled the covers over her head. Gretchen sat on the edge of her bed.

“It wasn’t anything serious, Jenn. We were just having some fun. We were kind of drunk, and we were both feeling horny. I was just having fun.”

“I know! I saw! You were having a great time!”

“I didn’t mean for you to find out. I know how you feel about Dylan, I’m sorry.”

“You knew? You knew and you did it anyway? I wouldn’t kiss a boy if I thought you liked him. You’re a slut. You’re a filthy slut.”

“Hey, no fair. I haven’t been with anyone in months. It just happened, Jenn. It just … I don’t know … I’ve felt so shitty about myself for such a long time, and then Dylan started taking pictures, and telling me I was so beautiful …”

“He told you that? I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, Jenn. Come on. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“It’s too late,” Jenn said. “I never want to see you again.”

“Come on, look at me. Yell at me if you want to, but at least look at me.”

“No. Go away.”

“Okay, fine. We can talk tomorrow.”

“No, I mean go all the way away. This is my father’s house. You don’t belong here. I want you to leave.”

“And where exactly do you want me to go.”

“I don’t care. That’s your problem. We’re not friends anymore, I don’t care what you do.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

“And I’m going to tell my mother. Just wait till she finds out.”

“You know, you may not understand this, but what Dylan and I do, what Dylan and I did, it isn’t really wrong. It isn’t anything your mother doesn’t know all about.”

Jenn pulled the covers back. “You’re disgusting.”

“She won’t be shocked. Dylan and I are both old enough.”

“He’s just using you, he doesn’t really love you,” Jenn said.

“Whatever.”

“You better be out of here in the morning, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else, or else …” Jenn tried to think. “You know what I’m going to tell my mother? I’m going to tell her I walked in on you doing it with my father. Then she’ll be shocked. You’ll see what happens when I tell her that.”

“That’s crazy. You wouldn’t.”

“Oh yes, I would. I’ll say I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and I was feeling sick, so I went to get my father, and when I opened the door there you were. In his bed. Doing it. Doing it, doing it, doing it.”

“She won’t believe you.”

“Oh yeah? I’m her daughter. Who are you? You’re no one. You’re just some townie trash. Wait and see. She’ll believe me.”

“Until she talks to your father, and then she’ll find out you’re lying.”

“Oh man,” Jenn said. She’d stopped crying now. “You are so dumb. You’re even dumber than you look. I’ll tell her you’ve been flirting with my father all week, and parading around in that stupid little bikini, and I walked in on you … you … sucking each other. She’ll believe it. He’s done way worse. She hates my father. She’ll want to believe it.”

“You wouldn’t do that to your own mother.”

“Sucking,” Jenn whispered, “sucking, sucking.”

“You’re an evil little brat. I can’t believe this.”

“If you’re here in the morning, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Now get out, or I’ll pick up the phone and call her tonight.”

Gretchen stood up. “You know what? You don’t deserve Anne. If she knew what a bitch you really are, it would break her heart.”

“The only thing that’s gonna break her heart is when she finds out you’ve been fucking Lyon Burke all week.”

“That’s an ugly word. And I don’t care what you look like, you’re an ugly little girl.”

Gretchen went to her room and packed her bag. She counted her cash: sixty-three dollars and twenty cents. In the kitchen, there was an emergency stash of two hundred dollars rolled up in a cookie tin, and she took that, too. The gas tank in the rental car was nearly full—they hadn’t gone to Santa Monica, they hadn’t gone to Disneyland, they hadn’t gone anywhere they had planned. She backed out of the driveway without turning on the headlights and drove toward a city where she didn’t know a single soul. To the bottom of the hill, without braking, the lights turning green all the way down.

1991.

T
his wig is killing me,” Neely said. “I can’t take the itching anymore, someone get this fucking thing off me.”

“One more take,” the director said. “And then we can all go home. Jerry, she needs a little more powder.”

They weren’t even a third of the way through shooting
Stage Center
, and Neely’s nerves were already beginning to fray. She was constantly arguing with the director, who kept telling Neely to “go warmer” with her character. And he had never even met Helen Lawson! But he insisted they had to show the audience more of Helen’s sympathetic side.

At least the makeup people had gotten it right. They had redrawn her lips and her eyebrows and used false eyelashes and heavy black eyeliner to make Neely over into a glamorous 1950s screen vixen. It was the scene where Helen learns the love of her life has been shot down while flying over Korea. Neely was
pretty sure this guy had never existed or, if he had, was just another one of Helen’s flings, another pretty boy to keep her busy between shows. But the director was adamant that Neely play it like true love.

“Helen Lawson never loved anyone except herself,” Neely had told him.

“We’re not looking to win the Pulitzer Prize for biography,” the director replied. “We want to sell tickets. The audience has to love Helen.”

When the shot was over, Neely pulled off the wig without waiting for the hairdresser and stomped back to her trailer.

“Out! Out!” she yelled at the assistants. “I need some time alone. Geez, can’t a girl pee in peace?” She lay down on the sofa, exhausted. It would take them at least an hour to reassemble her—to take the pins out of her hair, to lift the wig tape from her neck and behind her ears, to remove the individual false lashes, to clean her face, arms, and chest of makeup, to put on the herbal mask that kept her from breaking out, to wash her hair and blow it out so that she’d look decent at dinner, to reapply her everyday makeup … The clock was running, but let them wait. What was the point of being a star if you didn’t get to make people wait?

There was a knock at the door.

“I said not yet!” she screamed. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Until then, hold your fucking horses.”

“Still in character, are we?” came a British accent.

Neely opened the door. “Lyon. What are you doing here?”

“Just popping in for a look.” He represented the actor who was playing Helen’s manager. “You were extraordinary in that last scene.”