The Stork Club (45 page)

Today she looked in the mirror at her body, which had been decimated on the inside by illness, and thought how miraculous it was that the exterior still looked good, well-formed, shapely. Thank God, she thought, for good genes. Her mother, who had never owned a pair of tights or sweatpants, never even took a long brisk walk, still had a taut, thin body.

"Arms up and breathe, and exhale. And again, breathe into it, ladies, and feet apart, bend the knees and stretch."

Christmas Eve without Mitch, and all their rituals of the night before Christmas would be wrenching. Last year they bought ornaments that said
Baby's First Christmas
, and took Rosie, who had no idea what was going on, to the May Company to see Santa. This year Lainie hadn't even bought a tree. After class she would pick Rosie up, take her home and feed her, and rock her to sleep. After all I've been through, she thought, that should be enough of a celebration. I am alive and well and I have a baby. Thank heaven for those blessings.

When the heavy aerobic part of the class got under way, the uncomfortable pounding made her want to drop out, to give the teacher a little good-bye wave and just leave. But instead she made herself stay, and after a few minutes the rhythm was getting to her, and her spirits were lifting. Maybe it was endorphins, something she'd read about that was released in the brain during physical exertion. Whatever it was, by the end of the class she felt strong and powerful and ready to handle anything.

"She's been as good as gold," her mother said, opening the door for Lainie. Rosie ignored Lainie's entrance. She was sitting and playing with a musical jack-in-the-box next to her grandmother's two-foot-tall Christmas tree. It was the kind of tree Margaret Dunn had bought for herself over the years since her husband died, as if she were making the statement that a woman alone only needs half a tree.

"Her father called here," Margaret said to Lainie quietly as they stood in the foyer of her Studio City house. "Said he called your place to check on her, but when you weren't there he figured you'd probably be at school, so he tried me. He was in a foul mood."

"Really?" Lainie asked. She knew she was skating on thin ice. That unless she and Mitch put their marriage back together soon, her current custody of Rose was a
limited privilege for which she would have to fight if there was a divorce. Mitch could drag her into court and say God knows what about the disposition of custody of the little baby girl he always referred to as "my daughter."

With a nod of her head Margaret invited Lainie into the living room, where she'd been all evening, watching the baby play from her recliner. "Join me?" she asked her daughter, gesturing at a bottle. Lainie rarely drank, because it was dangerous for a diabetic. Now and then she'd sometimes had a glass of champagne with Mitch to relax her in the days when she was trying to conceive, or to celebrate an anniversary.

"No . . . I don't think I can . . . " But the needy look on her mother's face made her reconsider.

"A short one?" Margaret asked.

It was Christmas Eve. Tomorrow Lainie would open gifts with Rosie in the morning, packages friends had sent over, toys she'd bought for the baby. Then Mitch would come to pick up the little angel and take her to one of his sister's houses where his family would be assembled. All of them would be glad, Lainie thought, that
she
was not among them. Then, because she'd promised she would, she would go over to her friend Sharon's Christmas party. It promised to be a time to get through, and move on to the new year. Barbara Singer had warned all the people in the group not to pin any expectations on the holidays. Well, Lainie thought, I should at least stay and have a glass of wine with my mother.

"All right," she said.

"We're both alone now," her mother said as she poured Lainie's wine. "I can only tell you that for me it's the way I like it."

"I
don't
like it that way, Mother. I just don't know how to change it right now."

"Well, it looks to me as if it's a package deal. You want that baby? You're going to have to take Mitch. Otherwise I can tell you for certain, he's going to pull her away from you."

"Did he say that to you?" Lainie asked, worried.

"Darling, you forget. I work in an office that specializes in divorces. I've seen perfectly nice men turn into fire-breathing maniacs fighting over belongings they didn't even know they had until some lawyer told them they should go after it. Decks of cards, fish forks, we had one pull a gun on his wife until she handed over the papier-mâché napkin rings they bought together in Tijuana. So you can imagine how weird they can get when it comes to what they're going to do about their children."

Lainie took a gulp of wine and it tasted good. She was so unused to the effects of alcohol that after another sip heat flushed through her. When Rosie crawled over to her and into her lap, she kissed the top of the baby's little head, inhaling the sweet baby smell of her, and felt overwhelmingly helpless. All the strength she'd felt after the exercise class was gone.

"Mother,'' she said." What are you doing for Christmas Day?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some of the girls at the office invited me to come by. But you know I'm not much for parties, so I'll probably stay put."

"Well, don't do that. I mean, you're right. We're both alone, and we shouldn't be." There was a loud plink, and then a screech of surprise as the jack-in-the-box popped out at Rosie, who slammed the lid of the box shut, and started turning the musical crank again.

"Why don't I stop at the Safeway near my house on my way home and pick up a turkey and some yams, I know you love yams, and tomorrow night you and I will have dinner together at my house. Mitch will bring
Rosie back at about seven-thirty. Please say yes. I don't want to go to any parties with strangers either. Let's do this."

Margaret Dunn was quiet, took another sip of wine as Lainie did too, then finally she answered. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"That I can make some baked apples for dessert." Baked apples. The one dessert Lainie loved and didn't feel guilty about eating. The dessert her mother started making for her years ago, after Lainie had been diagnosed as a diabetic. A gesture of love.

"It's a deal," Lainie said. She would have company when Rosie and Mitch went off to spend their Christmas without her. And maybe she and her mother could strengthen their relationship. Both those thoughts made it easier for her to gather up Rosie's things and know she was taking her home to a Christmas Eve without Mitch.

She was driving down Ventura Boulevard when she started to feel it. A tingling inside her mouth. My God, she thought, knowing she should stop the car, pull over, and get herself something to take care of it, but the baby was with her and she wasn't sure where to stop. And it was too late because . . . she put her hand up to her hair and her head was soaking wet. Perspiring. Maybe she should turn into one of those side streets and pull over. For some reason the wheel felt hard to turn, but something, probably it was knowing she had the baby in the backseat, made her able to manage. At least get the car around the . . . red light. There was a flashing red light behind her. No. Her foot pushed down on the gas to get away from the red light.

But the red light was staying with her. Following her, and then a loud voice from somewhere said, "Pull over." For a minute she couldn't even remember how
to pull over. So she turned the wheel hard and grazed a parked car and put her foot on the brake. And somehow she made her aching hand pull the emergency brake. The looming figure of a policeman was moving toward her. It had to be that he was coming over to save her from whatever was happening because she knew she was slipping away. The policeman stood next to the window now.

"Evening, ma'am. You seem to be having a problem."

Lainie was shaking and leaning against the steering wheel.

"May I please see your driver's license and registration?"

License was where? Purse. Yes.

"Um . . . I . . . "

"Ma'am, can I ask you to step out of the car?"

"Baby" was all she could get out.

"The baby will be all right," the officer said, opening Lainie's door, and Lainie, wobbly-legged, stepped out and fell against the policeman.

"Whoa, easy, lady," he said, steeling her, and a female officer got out of the car and came over to Lainie's car. She turned off the engine and Lainie could hear her talking gently to Rose. Most of what the policeman said to her next was a blur, about standing on one foot, which she knew she couldn't do even if she held on. To close her eyes and touch her finger to her nose. No, Mitch. Mother. Help. An insulin reaction. She should have eaten dinner before the exercise class, that was what the doctor warned her.

The policeman put handcuffs on her and edged her into the back of the police car, and said something to her about the fact that the woman officer was taking Lainie's car with Rosie in it, but Lainie was trembling
and still unable to tell him she wasn't drunk, just very close to death.

She didn't remember much about what happened after that except that it was a miracle that they took her to the Van Nuys police station because there was a medic there who knew right away she was having an insulin reaction. He gave her orange juice immediately, which brought her blood sugar back to normal. Not a drunk driver, insulin reaction. Little by little the world came back into focus and when she was feeling as though she was able to get up and walk around, they brought her Rosie, who screamed "Mammmma'' when she saw her, then buried her face in Lainie's neck and cried.

For a few minutes she sat holding the baby, trying to decide what to do. Christmas Eve in the police station. All she wanted to do was to be with Mitch. To be with Mitch and Rosie, her family. At the pay telephone she dialed her sister-in-law Betsy's number. When Betsy answered, Lainie heard the sounds of laughter and loud music in the background.

"Betsy," Lainie said from the pay phone of the police station. She was holding her baby on her hip and looking back at three people who were waiting in line to use the phone. "Let me talk to Mitch, please."

"Who
is
this?" Betsy asked with that bitchy edge she always had in her voice.

"It's his wife," Lainie answered.

She listened to the music and laughter in the background at Betsy's as she looked around the police station. A couple of hookers were being booked at the desk. When it took Mitch a very long time to get to the phone, Lainie imagined that his sisters were detaining him on his way to take the call, telling him what to say to her.

"Hello,'' Mitch said into the phone at last, and Lainie
was so moved by how it felt just hearing his voice that she had to catch her breath so she could talk.

"It's me," she said. "I'm at the Van Nuys police station. I had an insulin reaction which the police who stopped me thought was drunk driving, so they brought me in. Rose's fine, I'm fine. But Mitchie, in those few minutes when I was sure I was dying, all I could think about was that I miss you and I love you and I don't want to spend another minute of my life without you. And all the stuff with Jackie is going to have to be thought out and worked out and made right. But I know we can do it together. So, I think I can get us home from here all right, but what I want is for you to be there too, so we can work it all out."

"Baby," he said, "I'm there."

"Mitchie, I love you," she said.

"Oh, Lainie," he said, "God knows I love you like crazy."

Before Margaret Dunn came for Christmas dinner the next day, Lainie called to warn her that the evening would be a little different than she had described the night before. And that she should make four baked apples, because at dinner there wouldn't just be Lainie and Rosie waiting to see her, but Mitch too. And it would be a special Christmas for all of them.

41

T
HE AIRPORT NEWSSTAND was decorated for Christmas, and spread across the back wall once again were several magazine covers with pictures of Kate Sullivan in various attire and poses.
Ladies' Home Journal, Vanity Fair, People
, and
Los Angeles
. On
Los Angeles
she was wearing a red sweater and red tights and a Santa Claus hat. Her photograph was everywhere because she was promoting her new film,
Always a Lady
, the project that had once been Rick's; it was the studio's hot Christmas release. They were putting countless millions in advertising and publicity behind it, and she had directed it herself.

Last night every time Rick flicked the TV remote control, she was there. On CNN, on "Entertainment Tonight." "This is your first time out as a director," Leeza Gibbons was saying, Wendy Tush was saying, Larry King was saying. Kate Sullivan got exactly what
she'd wanted all along. Not for Rick to direct her in the film, but to make the situation so intolerable for him that he'd be forced to walk away from it. Then she could say to the studio, "There's no one left to direct this, so I guess I'll have to do it myself."

What does it matter, he thought, knowing that the minute the holiday was over he'd be stepping back into the cold editing room where he'd spent the last few weeks and would spend the next several months cutting his own new film. And the months would only be broken in their intensity by daily visits from the nanny bringing David to visit, or by midnight dinners with Patty, who understood the director's life-style so well from her years with Charlie Fall.

Patty, bless her pretty face, was so solid. Some nights she just showed up at the editing room with a picnic basket of food she'd prepared. And she'd not only cater for Rick, but the editors too. Then she'd slip away, leaving a flower or a funny note. David's nanny said Patty stopped by the house now and then to check on the little boy too.

When the editing process was complete, Rick would have to wait through that agonizing trying-not-to-think-about-it time until his film was released and he learned what the audiences thought of it and what the critics thought of it. What did it matter? This morning he'd spent three hours lying on his stomach on the floor of his living room, setting up an electric train underneath the eight-foot-tall Christmas tree. And
that
was the kind of thing that felt important to him these days.