Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls (21 page)

Neely calculated what the gift had cost and what it could be
exchanged for: jewelry, of which there was never enough. She sighed. “I guess I gotta keep it. What with the kid visiting, and all.”

“And how are things with Little Miss Jailbait.”

“What a daddy’s girl. But I’m gonna make her like me if it kills us both. Not sure how I’m going to do it, but I’ll figure something out.”

“You always do.”

“And she’s spoiled rotten. You should see what Lyon gave her for Christmas! Fourteen years old, and she’s wearing an eight-hundred-dollar black leather jacket! And she’s never had to wash a dish in her life. When I was fourteen, I was already practically supporting myself.”

“Well, Lyon probably still feels guilty about the divorce,” Gordon said, knowing instantly that he had gone too far, wishing he could take it back.

Neely lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t forget, buster.
She
left
him
. Snuck out in the middle of the night like a call girl stealing a wristwatch.”

Gordon giggled.

“What’s in that box?” Neely asked.

It was a case of expensive champagne from a hotel in Atlantic City where Neely performed every few years. “Now
this
is a classy gift,” Neely said. “Get us some ice cubes and let’s open a bottle.”

“You’re not supposed to put ice cubes in champagne.”

“What are we, in France? It doesn’t change the taste.” Neely didn’t want to wait for the bottle to chill. She had been cheating nearly every day since Thanksgiving: a secret glass of wine when she was alone in the house, a Percocet from the last of her post-surgery stash, some codeine-laced Tylenol she had found in Lyon’s medicine cabinet.

They drank the champagne from coffee mugs. “Gordo, I gotta start working again. I’m losing my mind just sitting around like this.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

“What does he know! With the twins, I was out rehearsing six hours a day right up to the last two weeks.”

“You were twenty years younger then.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Miranda Claiborne is younger than you, and her doctor is making her spend her entire pregnancy flat on her back.”

“Miranda Claiborne is pregnant?” Neely asked. “I thought she was making that Vermont movie with Perry Hayes.”

“She was, and then the first week of shooting she announces she’s pregnant. Turns out she’s been trying for years. They thought they’d be able to shoot around it, but then her doctor ordered her straight to bed. Here, I’ve got a picture somewhere.” He pulled out a magazine. “See how jowly she looks?”

“I thought that was just for the part. I read they made her gain twenty pounds to look more like a farm wife.”

“That’s what everyone thought. The insurance company had a fit. They shot all the exteriors to get the snow, and now everything is suspended until April.”

Neely read the article. Every major actress in Hollywood had fought for this plum role, a housewife in rural Vermont who falls in love with a famous artist who has come home to settle his grandmother’s estate. The film was based on a novel that had sold millions of copies. Neely had listened to it on tape, fast-forwarding through the sections about how maple syrup was made, replaying the famous sex scene, set in the attic where the grandmother’s quilts are stored.

“It says here they’re looking for an unknown,” she said.

“Who else can they get on such short notice? And anyway, with Perry Hayes in the lead, they could put Margie Parks in that role and still sell tickets.”

“That’ll be one ugly kid,” Neely said. “I don’t know what would be worse—looking like Miranda Claiborne’s husband, or looking
like Miranda Claiborne before she had her face fixed. Hey, it says here she’s due the same week as me!”

“Lovely, you can get adjoining rooms at Cedars-Sinai.”

“The bitch!” Neely cried. She imagined the publicity now: she would have to share the spotlight with Miranda Claiborne and who knew who else.
People
would run one of those “everyone is doing it” photo montages on its cover. Or even worse, Miranda Claiborne would get all the press and Neely would be relegated to a sidebar and one small photograph. What mother would want her baby to have that kind of start: upstaged at birth.

“We certainly are cranky today, aren’t we,” said Gordon.

“You’d be cranky too if you were shut up like an invalid, a prisoner in your own home.”

“Listen, I have a great idea.” Gordon stood up and put out one hand like a traffic cop. “Promise me you won’t say a word until I’ve finished.”

“Refill my mug and you have a deal.”

“Okay. Here goes. Five nights in Las Vegas this October. An evening of standards. No dancing, no backup singers, just Neely O’Hara solo with a five-piece band. Stand-up bass, a real old-fashioned jazz-club feel. No sets, no costume changes. The Judy-Garland-in-a-tuxedo-jacket-and-tights look. You can start rehearsing right away, I’ll bring in a piano player. Throw in a holiday song, we’ll get a live single out in time for Christmas.” He watched her face. “Well?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. Let me think about it.”

“If we want October dates, I have to start making calls pronto.”

“I need to make another movie, Gordo. I’m going to lose all my momentum if I don’t.” She knew he didn’t want to hear it: Gordon made his money from her singing and her recordings but received nothing from her filmwork. “Don’t make a face. I’m not saying no. I just, I just thought things were going to work out differently.”

If only she didn’t feel so tired. If only she weren’t getting so fat. If only the baby had come a year later. If only, if only, if only.

W
ho sent us that atrocious punch bowl?” Lyon asked when he got home that evening.

“It’s from Jenn and her mother,” Neely said. They were lying in bed, watching a detective show, trying to guess who the murderer was.

“The mistress,” said Lyon.

“The wife,” said Neely. “The mistress is too mean to have done it. It’s a setup. That’s what you’re supposed to think. It’s definitely the wife.”

“Interesting casting,” Lyon said. “The wife is prettier than the mistress, don’t you think?”

“And stupider.” She didn’t recognize the actress. “Who is she? She reminds me of someone.”

“Looks a little like Jennifer North, don’t you think?”

“She does!” Neely cried. “It’s spooky, almost. So, Gordon told me Miranda Claiborne is due the same week as me.”

“What an ugly little baby that will be.”

“I guess it’s time to tell people I’m pregnant.”

“Whenever you’re ready, darling.”

She patted her stomach. “I’m definitely starting to show. I can’t even fit into any of my shoes anymore.”

“Foot rub?” he asked. She nodded. It continued to surprise her how utterly wonderful Lyon was being about the pregnancy. The massages, the errands for strange food at odd hours, the way he put up with her foulest moods, who would have guessed? He didn’t even go out at night anymore, he rushed home straight from the office, often with a huge bouquet of flowers under his arm.

“I gotta tell you,” Neely said, “you really are Mr. Wonderful.”

“That I am. Don’t let it get around.”

“I mean it. You’re, like, the perfect husband.”

He kissed her knees and rested his head just under her belly. An old song ran through his head,
so easy to love
, and he reached for her hand. It was easy to love Neely, to give her everything she wanted, because what she wanted was so easy to give. With Anne it had never been enough. Anne had wanted a hero, a soulmate, a knight in shining armor. Anne had wanted the kind of man he could never be.

With Neely it was different. He and Neely were alike: neither one would ever be able to care about another person as much as they cared about themselves. How nice it is, Lyon thought, to come home to a woman who isn’t constantly disappointed. He began humming. He turned his mouth into the crease of her thin nightgown and hummed right into her.

“Oh,” Neely said. “Wow. What are you doing? Oh my.”

He lifted his head. “Name that tune.”

She felt his tongue through the fabric. Ted hadn’t touched her during her first pregnancy, but Lyon was after her all the time. Afterward they turned the television back on and watched the final five minutes of the show.

“I told you it was the wife,” she said.

“You know everything.”

“Lyon, I have to ask you a question. And you have to promise me an honest answer.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Really. What if—what if I hadn’t been pregnant? Do you think we still would have gotten married? I mean, I know we probably wouldn’t have so soon, but maybe, I don’t know, what do you think? What do you think would have happened?”

“I hate ‘what if’ questions.”

“I need to know. Because it’s so good between us. And not just here,” she said, patting the bed.

“We belong together,” he said.

“And if there hadn’t been a baby.”

“Neely, these last few weeks … I’ve never been happier. I can’t explain it, but our life—our life together—it feels right to me.”

He was the first to fall alseep. She watched him breathe. The house was so quiet, she could hear freshly made ice falling in the kitchen. Their life seemed almost too perfect.

What would happen when the baby came? When there was crying in the middle of the night. When there were diapers to be changed.

She thought back to the day Anne gave birth to Jenn. Where had Lyon been then? Thousands of miles away, in Los Angeles on business. That whole first year of Jenn’s life, where had Lyon been? Most nights he had been with Neely, in a series of forgotten hotel rooms, in too many cities to name. Neely remembered it well. He hadn’t felt that guilty. At the time, she had figured that Lyon just didn’t care for babies that much. Lots of men didn’t. Neely didn’t care what the experts said: men were men, they were made differently from women, it wasn’t natural for a man to feel the same way about a baby as most women did.

What had she done? Lyon would have married her anyway. They would have had a wonderful marriage. Who needed more children? In two years she would be forty and Lyon would be fifty-one, what was she thinking? The house would smell of diapers. She would never get her body back. How long would it take for Lyon to find someone else?

Hormones
, she told herself.
Go to sleep, it’s just hormones
. She rolled over toward her husband, felt the wet spot beneath her, and then rolled back away.

L
iza came over the next afternoon, looking skinnier than ever. They sat in the dining room, a plate of crisp ginger cookies between them. Only Neely was eating.

“So,” Neely said after they’d gone through the list of scripts that had come in. “Give me the scoop on Miranda Claiborne.”

“Well,” said Liza. “The official story is that it was an unplanned pregnancy. They’d been trying so long with no luck, blah blah blah, when she missed her first period she just thought it was stress. She gave Perry Hayes this whole long sob story, and you know he’s such a big family man, the wife back in Texas and eight kids running around, he just gave her a big hug and said he was happy for her. He’s the one who told the studio, she was too chicken to do it, he said they better not kick up a fuss, blah blah blah.” Liza’s best friend from college worked for Perry Hayes.

“But a friend of mine’s cousin saw her at the ob-gyn last fall,” Liza continued, “and she says Miranda Claiborne had been taking fertility drugs for months. The rumor is that the insurance company thinks she had artificial insemination, in which case they don’t owe the studio one penny. So the lawyers are going at it. Meanwhile the studio is having a fit trying to hold on to people for another two months. Now they’re saying Miranda Claiborne was never right for the part, they never wanted a movie star, Perry Hayes can carry the box office on his own, blah blah blah. That’s just bullshit. The fact is, if the insurance company doesn’t pay up, they can’t afford a big name.”

Neely nibbled at a cookie. “It’s a great part,” she said.

“Totally great,” Liza said. “Everyone who’s seen the script says it’s even better than the novel. They’re trolling for a stage actress they can get on the cheap. Perry Hayes is in New York, he saw four plays last week.”

“Listen,” Neely said. “I want you to set up a lunch with Perry Hayes right away. I have to fly to New York next week anyway.”

“A lunch?”

“Yeah, you know. The meal in the middle of the day, the one that comes after breakfast and before dinner.”

“Oh. I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Of course you can do that. Call your little friend.”

“You’re not thinking … but Neely, we already tried, they said, they said they wanted …”

“I know what they said. That was then. This is now. And right now they’re up shit’s creek without an actress.”

“Neely, please don’t shoot the messenger, but I think they’re looking for someone more, more …”

“More what? What is it? They don’t think I’m right for this role? Look at me.” Neely stood up and turned on the overhead light. “Do I look glamorous to you?” Her hair, unwashed for three days, was pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore no makeup, and her face had filled out with the extra weight.

“The thing is,” Liza said, “they’re looking for someone younger.”

“How much younger?”

“
Young
younger. Oh God, don’t look at me that way.”

“How old is Perry Hayes?”

“He’ll be sixty in November.”

“Let me get this straight, he’ll be sixty in November, and I’m too old to play this part? That’s pretty fucked up, don’t you think? How old are you, Liza?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight,” Neely said. “So, have you dated any sixty-year-old guys lately?”

“Neely, it’s the movies.”

“You know what a sixty-year-old is like in the kip? Let me tell you. It takes them about an hour to get it up. And their bodies, you definitely want to turn out the lights. And the hair, let me tell you about the hair!”

“Neely, stop, I get the point.”

“Perry Hayes is a
grandfather
. So don’t tell me I’m too old for this part. Are you gonna set up this lunch or what?”