The Botox Diaries (37 page)

Zelda smiles. “I remember my own dad saying that he’d had twenty-five good years of marriage. And that was on his thirtieth anniversary.”

“What an awful thing to say,” I complain.

“Exactly what I thought back then,” says Zelda. “Now I realize my parents were luckier than most. That’s a pretty good record.”

“Do you think Dan will come back?” Lucy asks anxiously.

“I know he still loves you,” says Zelda.

“And I love him,” says Lucy.

“Does he make your heart go pitter-patter?” I ask, applying my new Richter Scale for Relationships.

“He does. You wouldn’t think so after twenty years,” she says,
smiling. “But I’d always look at him in the mornings and think how handsome he is. He still makes my heart skip a beat.”

“Then you belong together,” says Zelda simply.

“What if he thinks I’ve been too awful? Aren’t I supposed to end up throwing myself under a train or something?”

“So you
did
read
Anna Karenina!”
I say, impressed.

“It’s not the nineteenth century anymore,” says Zelda. “It’s not even the twentieth. Men have been having their little flings since Zeus. And women have been forgiving them. So now the tables are turned. Not a good thing when anyone strays, but not so awful that it can’t be excused.”

“Can you talk to Dan and tell him that?” Lucy asks.

“No. But you’ll figure out what to do.”

We spend a few more minutes admiring a de Kooning and Zelda’s favorite Jim Dine—painting of a heart, so this one I understand—and wind our way down to the restaurant on the Guggenheim’s first floor. It’s packed with Upper East Side mothers and their children who apparently prefer muffins to Modiglianis. They come to the museum only to eat. And they probably go to the Public Library only to use the bathrooms.

The moment we settle into our seats, Lucy’s BlackBerry starts beeping. “E-mails,” she reports apologetically. “Must have been no reception upstairs.”

She flicks through the messages. “Lily won the backstroke at her swim meet,” she says with a smile. “Dean’s going to be late at his tennis match. Dave wants to know what time I’ll be home and whether he can have the car tonight.”

Zelda laughs. “I guess the days of sitting by the phone and wondering where your kids are have vanished,” she says.

But instead of extolling the virtues of modern technology versus the time when you had to pray your kids could find a dime and a telephone booth, Lucy lets out a whoop of delight.

“An e-mail from Len Sunshine!” she reports excitedly. She frantically scrolls down to get the entire message. “He loves my new treatment.
Says he wants to do the show I proposed. Most creative idea he’s heard in months. Well, today anyway.”

“That’s wonderful,” says Zelda, having no idea who Len Sunshine is or what Lucy is talking about, but knowing when a mother-in-law should be supportive.

“So what was the idea?” I ask. But Lucy is wildly typing onto the BlackBerry’s tiny keys. Finally she looks up, clearly thrilled. “It’s something completely different for me. A sitcom about two women in their forties. One married, one divorced.”

“You’re doing a show about
us,”
I squeal, somewhere between horrified and thrilled. “Who’s going to play me?”

“It’s not you,” Lucy laughs. “Not really me, either. Just about the things every woman our age has to cope with. Like bake sales and Botox. Not to mention sex and cellulite.”

“And shopping,” I offer, ready to co-produce.

“You got it,” says Lucy, grinning. “My pitch to Len was that there really is life between
The Gilmore Girls
and
The Golden Girls
. I’m calling it
The Botox Diaries
.”

“If Dahlia Hammerschmidt plays me I’m going to kill myself,” I say.

“That’s television,” Lucy says with a mock sigh. “The show is four minutes old and already everybody has an opinion.”

WORD OF LUCY’S NEW SITCOM
makes it into
Variety
and I expect her to rush out to L.A. for casting. Instead, she stays put in Pine Hills.

“Something more important to do first,” she says, sitting in her library in full producer mode. She’s made a list of twelve possible scenarios. For the next scene between her and Dan.

“First idea to get him back,” she says, consulting her yellow legal pad. “I go to his corporate apartment tonight, take off my trench coat, and I have on nothing underneath but fishnets and a garter belt.”

“Naked under a raincoat? You sound like a flasher,” I say, shaking my head.

“It’s a Burberry,” Lucy argues.

“Okay, an upscale flasher. Besides, the All-Star Game is on. You could be Striparella come to life and you wouldn’t get his attention.”

“Point taken,” says Lucy, crossing that one off her list. “How about this. A little more subtle. I go to Sitting Pretty in SoHo and have my portrait done. Full-length.”

“That’s nice,” I say with a shrug, “if you think the problem is that Dan’s forgotten what you look like.”

“Please, darling, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of SP. Everyone’s
going. Perfect present for your husband. They specialize in nude photos of middle-aged ladies.”

I make a face. “That sounds disgusting.”

“Not when they’re finished with you. They make you look fabulous. Body makeup artists. Great lighting. And they have Otto, the best air-brush artist east of Las Vegas. Forget lipo. Otto’s much cheaper and safer. He did wonders with Madonna’s thighs.”

“I thought that was Astanga yoga. Or Kabbalah.”

“Kabbalah. That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of,” says Lucy, jotting it down on her list. “Maybe I should join a prayer group.”

“Save the praying for world peace. Or November sweeps on your new show.”

“Oh, come on, I have to do something,” says Lucy, throwing her pad aside in frustration. “I’ve tried visualization. You know, imagining Dan’s coming back to me.”

“That’s called wishful thinking.”

“Something’s got to work. Last night I left a message on his cell phone. Played him the entire track of Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Darling Be Home Soon.’ He never even called me back.”

“I wouldn’t call you back, either, if you played me the Lovin’ Spoonful,” I say.

“I guess Dan’s more of a Bob Dylan kind of guy,” she admits. “But ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ didn’t seem like the right message.”

“So tell me how a bike race fits into this whole plan?” I ask.

“That’s right,” says Lucy, looking at her watch and jumping up. “It’s late. We have to get to Grant’s Tomb.”

“I thought we were going to praise Dan, not to bury him,” I quip.

We rush to Lucy’s garage and climb into the car. We’re hurtling down the Henry Hudson Parkway when it suddenly dawns on me that my legs aren’t cramped and I’m not fearing for my life.

“Hey, what’s with the Volvo?” I ask. “What happened to your Porsche?”

“Wrong image. Traded it in,” Lucy says, driving at a sedate fifty-five. “The Volvo is so much more family, don’t you think? I thought this would make a real statement to Dan.”

“What statement? That you’re insane?” I ask. “You change cars the way other people change underwear.”

“Damn, I forgot to put on nice underwear,” Lucy says. “Think I’ll need it? We could make a La Perla pit stop.”

I wish I could answer yes, but I’m not sure what to think anymore. Dan’s not responding to Lucy’s advances, and he sure seemed ready to move on at the party the other night. I don’t kid myself that he was looking at me as his next One and Only. But the fact that he’s even thinking about being with someone other than Lucy makes me nervous for her.

The streets around upper Broadway are closed off for the bike race, but Lucy sweet-talks the guard at the security stop into letting her park in the Racers Only area.

“Can understand why he let you in,” I say as Lucy minces from the car in her tight pencil skirt and open-backed mules. “Definitely look like you just got off the Tour de France.”

“That’s what I was going for. The outfit’s French. Dior,” says Lucy, pulling Persol sunglasses from her pocketbook. Naturally a different pair of sunglasses than she wore when she drove the Porsche.

“This is the first time I’ve been to one of Dan’s races,” Lucy says as we head toward the starting line where a group of spectators is starting to gather near the base of the monument. “Pretty spot. All these years living in New York and I’ve never seen this place.”

“Reminds me of the old joke,” I say, looking up at the large marble building in the center of the small park. “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

“Grant,” Lucy says.

“Nope. Nobody’s buried in Grant’s Tomb.”

“Of course Grant. It’s Grant’s Tomb.”

“Gotcha,” I say, laughing as happily as I did in second grade. The last time I told this joke. “He’s not
buried
. He’s
entombed
. In that big building. Aboveground. Ha-ha. See? Nobody’s buried in Grant’s Tomb. Get it?”

Lucy sighs. “Yes, Jess. I get it. And I also know the one about not opening the refrigerator door because the salad’s dressing. And throwing
the alarm clock out the window to see time fly. But knock-knock. We came here to watch the race.”

We both turn our attention to the bikers in their carnival-colored spandex who are taking their last gulps of Gatorade and lining up on their Treks and Cannondales. For a weekend hobby, this looks pretty serious.

“Which one is Dan?” I ask,

“The one in the silver helmet,” Lucy says confidently. “I bought it for him myself.”

“I think it’s a popular model,” I say, craning my neck to look over the crowd of muscular, well-built racers who are all wearing identical silver helmets and who all, from this distance, are indistinguishable.

The starting gun pops and the racers take off. In no more than a moment, the throng of bikers has disappeared around a corner.

“That was fast. Now what?” I ask.

Lucy shrugs. “No idea. Guess we go have lunch until they’re done. Where do you think is good to eat around here?”

I look around at the trees and grass and the Hudson River sparkling a block away. “Hot dog vendor?” I suggest.

Lucy looks at me like I’ve proposed we pluck a couple of leaves from the tree and forage for acorns.

“Maybe we should skip lunch and go to the finish line,” she says, looking around. “Where do you think it could be? I hope we don’t have to take a subway.”

The woman in front of us turns around. She’s wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a picture of a racing bike and the slogan
RICHARD MAKES MY HEART RACE
. Now there’s a good wife. Or else a stalker.

“New at this, girls?” she asks. “This race is a criterium. Twelve laps. Two miles each. They go in circles. The finish line’s right here.”

Twenty-four miles of biking? Wish I’d lugged along the Sunday
Times
. Sounds like it’s going to be a long afternoon.

But suddenly there’s a roar from the crowd and the racers reappear. The bikers are packed together so tightly that if one of them swerves two inches, the whole thing will end up like the chariot race in
Ben-Hur
. And I think the treadmill is dangerous.

“Did you see Dan?” I ask when they’ve disappeared again in a colorful blur.

“I’m not sure,” Lucy says. But always assuming the best she adds, “He must have been the one in the lead.”

“Bad tactical move,” says Richard’s wife or stalker, shaking her head. “Shouldn’t be out front this early. Need to save your energy for a sprint at the end.”

“Sore loser,” Lucy snipes, now confident that Dan is the leader of the pack.

“A very sore loser is what your husband is going to be,” snaps Richard’s rooter, turning her back on us.

The racers come around and are gone again so fast that Lucy’s belated screams of “Go, Dan! Go!” echo in their wake.

“Enough talking. I’ve got to focus,” Lucy says. “Want to be prepared next time they pass.” She unties the Hermès scarf from her Hamptons Coach bag—Lucy’s idea of going downscale for a weekend bike race—and stands at the ready.

This time we know that the bikers will be back in a blink so we never take our eyes off the curve where they reappear.

“That’s Dan!” Lucy screams as soon as she spots him on the outside of the pack, close to the curb where we’re standing.

“Dan darling, Dan darling, go, GO!” she shrieks as he approaches at breakneck speed.

Head down, crouched over the handlebars, he of course doesn’t look up.

“Dan, GO!” Lucy screams again, waving her scarf practically in his face.

Well, that gets him. Distracted for a split second, he hesitates and goes sprawling off his bike, skidding ten feet across the pavement. Three bikers behind him, unable to stop, crash headlong into each other. A fourth manages to escape the collision, but can’t avoid Dan. His Cannondale races straight across Dan’s prone body.

“Ohmygod!” Lucy screams. “Don’t die!”

I’m pondering whether widowhood is better or worse than divorce—probably better since it’s more sympathetic—when Dan stands up and
brushes the tire marks off his chest. Two of the three other wrecked riders also get up, pulling their now-bent bikes off the course and slamming their helmets in anger. The third one doesn’t move. Maybe his wife will be the widow. Finally the downed rider rouses himself, surveying his torn and bleeding legs. “How the fuck did this happen?” he bellows.

“She did it,” calls out Richard’s wife, pointing an accusing finger at Lucy.

Dan, still dazed, looks up and for the first time sees Lucy. And realizes who brought him down.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asks, rushing to his side.

“Would have been,” Dan says, disgustedly kicking the tire on his mangled bike. “Thought I could take this race. First time I’ve fallen this season.”

“All my fault,” Lucy says, suddenly abashed. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Dan slowly pulls off his biking gloves and rubs his scraped knee. “Surprised to see you,” he admits. “You’ve never been a big fan.”

“My mistake. It’s a pretty cool sport,” Lucy says. “I guess there are a lot of things I’ve been missing out on these days.”