This One Is Mine: A Novel (20 page)

“Really?”

“Yeah. So I’m sure we know lots of the same people. Are you working on anything now?”

“Nope,” Violet said. “I’m out of TV. You know, raising the kid.”

“Your husband’s David Parry?”

“Yeah.” No matter how successful she was, it always came around to David.

“Did you see Django’s T-shirt?”

“It’s cute.”

“Maybe we can have a playdate sometime,” he said. “Django is always talking about Dot.”

“Maybe.” Violet pulled out her cell phone to make busy, then saw it: a red message light. She practically yelped. “I’ll get your number next week. Dot! Hurry!”

“W
E’RE
one minute away!” alerted the assistant director.

Jeremy sat at the anchor desk, all alone under the bright lights. He was full-fledged handsome in his Zegna suit and tie. Faye finished powdering his nose, then checked his hair. Jim sat at the next desk and gabbed on his cell phone.

And like a big dummy with nothing to do, Sally stood at the snack table, free falling. She had exhausted her arsenal of threats and emotional stunts. Never before had her wiles failed her like this. No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, she always had one more trick up her sleeve. Not this time. It had left her in such a state of panic that last night she needed something to help her sleep. But when she searched her medicine cabinet for a sleeping pill, anti-anxiety drug, or antidepressant — things she’d been prescribed over the years by doctors but had never actually taken — Sally remembered all the bottles were empty. Years back, she had dumped the contents of every one into her cupped hands and threatened to swallow them in front of Kurt. His reaction? He barely looked up from the TV. “Go ahead, take them. You don’t have nearly enough there to kill yourself. They might make you more tolerable.” In a frustrated rage, Sally had flushed them down the toilet.

So today, she came armed with her old standby, the single business card in her jacket pocket. She ran the edge of it between the flesh of her thumb and fingernail as she tried to catch Jim’s eye. Coming to her boyfriend’s first day of work with the purpose of hitting on his coworker: it wasn’t Sally’s proudest moment. But Jeremy had given her no choice.

“Twenty seconds!”

Maryam and her bosses settled onto their thrones in the control booth.

“Ten seconds!”

Jim, who hadn’t even seen Sally yet, clicked his cell phone shut. Like a quarterback, he held the phone behind his head with one hand, pointed forward with the other hand, then . . . spiraled it right at Sally! She snatched it out of the air like a bride’s bouquet and hugged it into her chest, suppressing a squeal of delight.

“Five, and four, and three,” the director announced.

One second before the light went on, Jim winked at Sally, then turned to the camera. “This week,” he said, “we have the pleasure of introducing our new feature, ‘Just the Stats.’ It’s brought to you courtesy of Jeremy White. And if you’ve never heard of Jeremy White, lucky you. You don’t have a gambling problem. Welcome, Jeremy.”

The red light on Jeremy’s camera came on. “Thank you, Jim,” he said.

Maryam flew onto the set. Since gambling was illegal, it was a humongous no-no to use words such as
betting, point spread,
or
money
on
Match-Ups
. Jim must have ad-libbed that part. Sally, who loved the bad boys, found it an auspicious start to their future together.

“With their rebound-to-turnover ratio,” Jeremy said, “I’d give Duke a big edge.”

Maryam stared daggers at Jim, who mocked her with a schoolmarm face, then winked at Sally. Maryam spun around and caught Sally mid-giggle. Sally quickly turned to watch Jeremy.

“My picks are Duke and Villanova,” he was saying. “Until next week, I’m Jeremy White and those are Just the Stats.”

Jim’s camera light came on and he turned to Jeremy. “I’m with you, Professor. The Duke D was impressive against the Wildcats.”

Jeremy responded by silently staring into his own camera.

“Yoo-hoo!” Jim gave Jeremy a wave. “Over here, Professor.”

An eternity passed as the studio hung on Jeremy’s silence.

“Hey.” Jim’s voice was tense. “You okay over there?”

“Jim, you know what they say,” Jeremy finally said. “Don’t get on the bus with Cinderella.”

“There you have it, boys and girls,” Jim said. “Jeremy White has spoken. Call your bookies before the line moves.”

“Cut!” boomed the director’s voice.

“Jim!” shrieked Maryam. “You can’t mention bookies!”

“Whoopsie daisy!” Jim cracked up.

“It’s not funny,” Maryam said.

“She thought it was hilarious.” Jim pointed at Sally. All eyes turned to her.

“I did not!” Sally shook Jim’s cell phone at him. She marched over to whack him, but tripped over Jeremy, who hadn’t budged from his chair. His face was twisted, his eyes fixed to the floor. “Jeremy,” Sally said, “the segment is over.” He was unresponsive. She jiggled his chair. “Get up.”

“I’m hearing something,” yelled a sound guy. “It started at the end of the last segment. I need everyone to be quiet.” The studio went silent and everybody stood still. “There it is,” said the sound guy.

First, Sally smelled it: a pungent odor.

Then she heard it: a strange gurgling sound . . .

Sally looked down. It was coming from Jeremy. A brown stain spread down the inside of his pant leg. He looked up at her, helpless.

In an interview about his secret to success, David said that you only needed to get lucky once; after that, you had to get really smart, really fast. Sally had gotten lucky by capturing the imagination of that visiting Russian choreographer. But she hadn’t followed David’s advice. It was a mistake she was still paying for.

Standing in the studio, Sally recognized that luck had once again presented itself. This time, she was going to get really smart, really fast.

“My bad!” she said to the crew as she touched her stomach. “I forgot to eat this morning.” With a big smile, she tossed her purse into Jeremy’s lap. “Let’s go get some breakfast, sweetheart.” She swiveled his chair and gave it a playful push toward his dressing room.

T
HE
SUV that had been lurking for Violet’s parking space honked, and honked again. Violet didn’t care how long the bitch had been waiting, nor that Dot was crying because her shoe had fallen off, nor that it was boiling hot in the car with the windows rolled up. Teddy had finally called after thirty-six long hours. Violet replayed the message, to pillage it for meaning.

“Violet, Violet, Violet,” her lover said. “Poor little rich Violet. Where y’at, woman? I just set up for my nonpaying big-band gig at a totally lame AA Sober Picnic in the valley. We’re going on at eleven and playing for half an hour. There are like a thousand people here, and that rocks, but I had to haul my upright and amp across an entire soccer field to set up. These morons found the place farthest from the parking lot and decided, Hey, let’s put the stage here. That’s alcoholics for you. Maybe if David Parry managed me he could get some roadies written into my contract. But what am I saying? La la la la la la. I’m saying that I’m going to marry you. And you’re going to cook for me and I’ll golf in Pebble Beach and I’ll never have to suffer through these ridiculous gigs again. Holler back, baby.”

Violet shifted into drive and headed up the hill.

S
ALLY
stood at the teeny sink in Jeremy’s dressing room and scrubbed his underwear with warm water and a bar of soap.

Jeremy sat on the loveseat, a throw pillow covering his manhood. “I was fine when I was looking at the camera,” he said to the floor.

“This is nothing to be ashamed of, my love.” Sally rinsed and wrung out his underwear, then rifled through the drawers for a hair dryer. “Bingo!”

“I like looking at the camera,” Jeremy said. “It was when I had to look over at Jim —”

Sally turned on the hair dryer and aimed it at the undies. Jeremy sat frozen, as if in a shock-induced trance. She held the underwear to her cheek. They were dry enough. “Here you go,” she said. She glanced up and caught her reflection in the mirror.

Her face, tilted slightly downward and her arms outstretched, reminded her of the replica of Michelangelo’s
Pietà
in St. Martin’s church in Denver. As a child, Sally would stare at it during mass. She’d grow enraptured by the Virgin’s look of sorrow, cradling her dying son. After receiving communion, Sally would pass by the statue and try to stop in Mary’s direct line of vision. But the Virgin’s flat marble eyes made it impossible. Sally spent her whole life secretly cuddling the feeling that love such as Mary’s was her destiny.

Sally turned to Jeremy. He still wasn’t getting dressed. “Get up,” she clucked. “Turn around. I want to make sure all the poop is off.” Jeremy shuddered, then complied. There was a trace of brown on the inside of his right knee. She wetted a paper towel and scrubbed it. “As good as new,” she said. “I think it’s best if we bring the suit to the dry cleaners ourselves. She stuffed the offending Zegna into a plastic shopping bag.” Jeremy stepped into his khakis. Sally removed his blazer from the hook and helped him into it. She felt the pocket. The ring box was still there.

She led Jeremy to the parking lot. Words weren’t necessary. From this point on, no matter how rich or famous Jeremy became, Sally would be the only one who knew that he had diarrhea on camera and she had saved him from career-ending public humiliation. He knew that she knew. It never had to be spoken of again.

Sally drove them straight to the Ivy. The maître d’ had seen Jeremy on TV this morning. With great fanfare, he led them to a table, on the patio this time, where they dined on crab legs and mimosas. Over dessert of flourless chocolate cake — the tarte tatin wasn’t as great as everyone had made it out to be — Jeremy proposed.

V
IOLET
stepped out of the shower and did the unthinkable: stood squarely in the mirror and examined her naked body. Over the years, she had perfected the art of getting out of the shower without catching even a fleeting glimpse of herself in the mirror. But it was imperative to know what Teddy would be seeing tonight so she could offer him only the most flattering angles. She had lost fifteen pounds in the past month and a half, but God she was fat! She might
feel
thinner, but that didn’t mean she was objectively
thin
. And the skin on her cheeks hung off her high cheekbones. Sometimes her face looked plump and youthful; sometimes it looked like an arid hide. This is what happened when you were forty-two: sometimes it all came together and you looked okay; sometimes you looked fifty.

It was noon. On his message, Teddy had said he was going onstage at eleven to play for half an hour. It would take another half hour to load his gear back into his car. He was in the valley, but where exactly? Violet figured it would take him half an hour to drive home. Assuming that he
didn’t
loiter at the gig — and why would he, he had called it lame in his message — that would put his estimated time of arrival back home anywhere between twelve thirty and one. Violet had to leave pronto if she wanted to catch him.

She picked up the phone on the wall to call him. The message light was flashing. Violet’s whole body seized up.

“Hi, girls.” It was David! “I’m leaving early so I can come home and see my two favorite people. I miss you both and can’t wait for a group hug.”
Beep.
“Received Tuesday, 4:35 AM.”
Shit
. Violet hadn’t reset the date and time since the power went out last month. If David had left this message an hour and a half ago, she was in good shape. But if he had called just after she left for RIE class, he might burst through the door any minute.

“LadyGo!” Violet screamed. “LadyGo!” She had told the nanny to pack the car for a trip, but there was no way to tell how much LadyGo actually understood. LadyGo’s English seemed to have somehow gotten worse over the past fifteen years. All Violet could do was instruct her and hope. Violet called LadyGo’s cell phone. The one reliable law of the universe: nothing got between LadyGo and her cell phone.

“
Allo
?” LadyGo said.

“Could you please come into my bathroom?” Violet hung up. She grabbed a duffel bag and pell-mell crammed it with handfuls of underwear, pants, and shirts.

LadyGo plodded in. “Yes,
meesuz?
” Violet had relinquished command of the household to the El Salvadorian, who hadn’t missed a day of cleaning in fifteen years and who now reigned supreme as the nanny. Violet had never enjoyed a relationship as simple as this, where the more she paid someone, the happier they were. Most people turned on her and got resentful for the vulgar wealth on display, but never LadyGo. She lived in an apartment in Pasadena with a rotating cast of sisters and cousins fresh from, as she’d wistfully say, “my country.”

“When did Mister David call?” Violet asked. “Did you hear the message?”

“I don’t know,
meesuz
.” LadyGo smiled. Violet never knew what LadyGo was always smiling about. It had even occurred to her that LadyGo wasn’t smiling at all. Rather, it was just the deepening contours of her Indian face. There was no use trying to wring information out of the inscrutable nanny.

“Did you pack Dot’s things like I asked?”

“Yes,
meesuz
.”

“Please have her in the car and ready to go in five minutes.”

“Yes,
meesuz
.”

“We’re going away in the car. For a trip. In five minutes. You understand?”

“Yes,
meesuz
.” LadyGo wasn’t moving.

“We’re going to the Ritz-Carlton.” Perhaps the lure of purloined shoe mitts and sewing kits would light a fire under LadyGo’s ass.

“Ritz-Carlton,
meesuz?
” Indeed, the name enlivened LadyGo. “Ritz-Carlton is
spencie
.”

“Yes, very expensive.”

“Club floor?” asked LadyGo. The club floor with its twenty-four-hour buffet of shrimp, Coca-Cola, and miniature pastries was a veritable pleasure dome to the El Salvadorian.

“Yes. And we need to be out the door in five minutes.” Violet held up five fingers.