22
Suzanne has insisted on coming by to try on her veil. There was no way I could stop her, she was like Sherman through Atlanta, to make a dreadful comparison, when she called me from her car, saying that she was in my neighborhood so was just going to drop by. I haven’t seen her in a little over a week, since her bridal shower, when she told me she wanted a fitting, and I know she thinks the veil is finished, which it really should be, so I am madly gluing seed pearls and tiny gems on it while hoping some bridal magic will occur that will transform it into incredibly lovely and finished before she gets here. But I’m not counting on it.
“Good God, I always forget how far east you are,” Suzanne says, panting mildly when I open my front door, as if the air over here away from the beach is thinner somehow.
“It’s not that far, Suzanne,” I say, leaning in for a hug. Instead she brushes an unfelt kiss on my cheek as she walks inside. “Some people even live farther east than me. Imagine.”
But Suzanne’s mind has moved on to other things. Like her veil. Which is placed neatly on the iron dressmaker’s stand in front of the wide living room windows, its backdrop a view of the large tree outside, all pearly green and fluttery leaves in the small April wind. The tree suddenly feels more like family than my sister does.
“Here it is. Finally.” Suzanne practically lunges for the soft, white confection, snatches it up, and without the aid of a mirror or an attendant, expertly puts it on her head, arranging it perfectly. I wonder when she learned to do that or if it is a skill that all brides receive along with the engagement ring, a whole host of abilities that see them through this life-changing phase. Suzanne twirls around, looking for a mirror, and upon seeing none, dashes out of the room and down the hall to my office. Her activity is a blur of nuptial beauty. Even with her business suit on, the second the veil touched her head, she became a bride, so lovely and complete, as if the unnatural state was her not being one. I suddenly want to cry. Maybe that spontaneous reaction I should have had upon seeing myself in the veil was saving itself for when the real bride showed up—as if it knew the whole time that it wasn’t meant for me.
“It’s not finished!” Suzanne suddenly yells from my studio. “Yvette, come in here, there are whole blotches of nothing, and what’s with all the pearls? What in Christ’s name have you been doing all this time?”
Thinking about Andrew and wishing I’d never told you that I’d make the goddamn thing. I wisely choose not to share that with her, and instead slowly walk myself down the hall to the studio. I feel as if I am going to the dentist, but one where not only will I have all the pain, but will do all the work, too.
“Okay, well,” I say, summoning my best soothing-an-irritated-customer tone. Not that I’ve had any irritated customers for my jewelry, frankly, but pretending my sister is one suddenly helps. “I was just waiting for this fitting to see how it played against your face.” Suzanne darts her eyes at me from the mirror, about to question the “played against your face” line, which doesn’t surprise me because I’m not even sure what that means, it just sounded designy, but thank God, she decides to accept it. “Because now I can fill in with beading here, and lift the netting up there with a little stiffening so it won’t be flat, and…” My hands are dancing around Suzanne’s head, lightly pinpointing spots on the headpiece, arranging netting, giving her lots of sisterly, maid-of-honor attention, which maybe was the whole point of all this stuff, I realize, so that the bride isn’t ever alone with her real fears, but is constantly with someone else who has to be worried about the superficial things that she is, too.
Suzanne starts to say something, then is quiet and looks back in the mirror. I can see her imagining her dress and the flowers and the church and the music and the attendants and the priest and the guests and, most importantly, Matt, waiting for her at the end of the aisle to carry her into a new and perfect life.
“You’re going to be a beautiful bride. You already are.”
She lets out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, sweetie. I think I just needed to see it, to make sure it was real.” She gazes at her reflection one more time, as if confirming the veil is there. “It’s going to be great. I’m so glad you’re making it. The ones in the stores were beautiful, but none were exactly how I always envisioned it.”
I look in the mirror at my sister, who is completely transformed by a few yards of silk netting and a peau-de-soie headpiece with gems and pearls, as if the object with magical powers that we longed for as small girls is finally in her life.
“But now you are going to fix this part, aren’t you?” Suzanne says with a small frown, pointing to a section of the veil.
Reggie has convinced me to play hooky by seeing a movie at eleven A.M. I do have some hours to kill before I pick up the order Dipen promised he’d have ready this afternoon, though I could be home working on commissions, getting invoices done, organizing new press kits, or, mainly, finishing Suzanne’s veil, particularly since she had the fitting for it only a few days ago, but the idea of escaping from what I should be doing in a dark room in the middle of Wednesday sounds heavenly. And reminds me of what it’s like seeing Michael, a little bit, really.
Reggie and I have reached a truce about Michael. I talk about him in a sanitized way, and he says very little, as if waiting for what he is thinking to appear in my brain. It already has; I’m just thinking that future events will prove him wrong. Though Reggie knows that it’s already in my brain, so a long silent conversation occurs between us after just a few spoken sentences about Michael.
I am going to a dinner party tonight with Michael. Which actually I was really looking forward to because the last few dates with Michael—the baby shower practically doesn’t count because that was more him providing security for me, emotionally at least, or me hoping he would—have all ended rather abruptly with him going home to sleep alone, so since it’s a Friday, I feel sure he’ll stay this time. I think. He called just a few minutes before he was supposed to pick me up to say that he was running late, could I drive myself and meet him there? Considering that he met me at the baby shower, it would have been churlish to say no, but when he gave me the Hollywood Hills address, what I wanted to say was, “Oops, actually, I can’t. In fact, I never would have said yes at all if I had known that the evening included me, alone, on a hill, with my truck.” But I didn’t. I said, “Yeah, no, that’s fine,” and jotted down the address.
You see, I don’t believe in emergency brakes. I know they exist, I use the one in my truck, but I’m just not convinced that they have any effect at all. I have a very hard time believing that one little lift of my hand on a Fisher Price toy–sounding lever is actually sufficient to keep my truck from careening all the way down a hill and dragging everything else along with it.
Of course, I do make the sign of the cross every time I pass a Catholic church, which is another little lift of my hand, but that actually does prevent my soul from crashing down to hell, so it makes sense. But this—this emergency brake. Even the name cancels itself out; how can it be an emergency, if you’re able to use a brake?
But I continue to use it anyway, particularly when I have to visit people up in the hills, which I am supposed to find just charming as hell, but to be totally honest, the two words that instill terror and dread in my heart are “Hollywood Hills,” where I am now sitting in my to-a-terrifying-degree-incline-parked truck, hoping it doesn’t roll downhill.
I am waiting for Michael, who is running late, in front of his friends’ house, which is in that demurely named Greek-god section of the Hollywood Hills, Mt. Olympus. Michael has friends who live in a house that I hate. I am expecting to see Malcolm McDowell walk outside in a toga any minute now. I wonder if they know that their house inspires hate. I decide that they don’t. I decide to remember this, this fault Michael has of picking friends with homes like this—I think it will help the next time he doesn’t spend the night.
I have changed my shirt a few times now. First into the alternate one that I brought, then back again. Then a few minutes later, I change again.
I had an odd feeling this morning when Michael called to invite me to this dinner party that there is a list. That if I had said no, the next woman would just slide into place, like a bullet in a gun. I know that’s not true. Literally. It’s probably just those tons-of-women Andrew memories getting to me. I mean, I know Michael has strong feelings for me. I just still don’t have any idea what they are. Or what we are to each other. Sometimes I think, Well, we’ve been seeing each other altogether for over a year now—we just have big breaks between dates, that’s all. I am trying to think of it more that we’re on our own time frame with each other, and I’m sure that at some point we really will progress. I’m choosing to look at our relationship in stages. Though I’m wanting to move forward to the next one. But sometimes I have a little feeling that with Michael there isn’t another stage after this. Though clearly, going to this dinner party at his friends’ house is some kind of relationship-progressing event. I think. I am waiting to see what he introduces me as.
Finally Michael arrives. I get out of my truck after he parks, and he does that little laugh of his when he sees me, like my presence is some kind of anticipated surprise he feels obligated to pretend he didn’t know about. The moon is completely, urgently full. It is hanging above the hills in a rather menacing way. Light is everywhere. It could practically be afternoon, especially with the way sunlight is out here. No hard shadows, just gleaming, glowy, never-landing light, as if it’s been decided that we all need to be looked at through a soft-focus lens.
As we embrace for a kiss, I notice more silver in Michael’s hair than I ever have and I know that each strand represents deejays and shows and audience numbers, and I wonder if even three concerned hairs are about us.
He actually does not introduce me to his friends at all. I walk in first and am immediately surrounded by the host and hostess, who repeatedly ask me my name while pecking at me with their hands as if I have layers and layers of clothes needing to be shed, which I don’t, and I try to find out their names, but for some reason they don’t tell me, so I turn to the only other guest there, Kevin, whose name I already do know because years ago I spent three days with him at an odd little film festival in Spain.
He was there with his eight-year-old daughter, and I was there with Tim, who was busy with his professional friends, so I kinda latched onto Kevin’s kid, Kitty, who spent the whole time teaching me the Spanish she had learned from her Mexican maid here in L.A.
I haven’t seen Kevin since then, but I guess being with Michael in our relative-time relationship, I forget that Kevin and I basically are virtual strangers, so I hug him. A big hug. I think “full body” is the right term for it. Immediately I feel him completely freeze up, but instead of stopping, I commit further like some kind of terrible therapy exercise, then I start patting him on the back, like my grandmother would when you rate a really special hug, and I just cannot seem to stop. Finally, I pull my body back from this very forward motion and see that Kevin looks totally frozen, as if he can only move his mouth.
I ask him about Kitty, who, he says, is away at boarding school. I wonder if the child is ever allowed to stay in L.A., then Kevin locks his eyes onto Michael as if he never wants to look away. I suddenly remember him doing that in Spain to Tim, and for the first time, I understand why I spent all that time there with his daughter. I wish she’d come flying through the door this minute so I’d have someone to talk to.
Instead, there is Slim. The hostess. I have managed to figure out her name, because Michael kept saying it to her, and seeing as how I have never heard him say word one to me or anyone about physical appearance, I figure this must be what she goes by. The pressure of that name leaves me exhausted. I wonder if it does that to her, too. She has very clearly had a face-lift, and I’ve never been able to tell any of that stuff—nose jobs, eye lifts, I mean, Michael Jackson could get by me—but this one is very noticeable. What strikes me is that her skin actually looks more tired pulled up so tight, as if it was just allowed to fall, it could finally rest. I want to give her skin a Valium.
Slim herds us into the dining room, which she has decorated in the style of old Pompeii. I am feeling profoundly mortal in a way I never have before. We sit down, the five of us, spread around a lap pool of a table. Salads are already at each place.
Kevin, who somehow has managed to find his chair, fork, and plate, all the while staring straight at Michael, announces that he hasn’t eaten a raw tomato in over twenty-five years. If it’s put under the broiler for even thirty seconds, he’ll eat it right up, but not raw, not him. Slim starts in about how a tomato isn’t even a vegetable at all, you know, it really is fruit, to which I say, “Yes, in August, I eat them all the time just like an apple. You know, a little salt and you’re set.”
Then Michael starts waving his hands at Kevin in some pseudo Essa Pekka Salonen motion. “Just relax with the rawness,” he says. “Let yourself be open to the firmness of the flavor.”
“I think I’m going to do it,” Kevin says. “I think I am actually going to do it. My mother would die; she’s been trying for years.”
“Just experience the tomato in its natural form.”
So, as Michael guides him, Kevin puts the piece of tomato into his mouth and we all watch as he succumbs to the flavor, losing his long abstinence from that flesh.
“I think I can eat more,” Kevin finally says.
I have a sudden unwelcome image of him as a teenage boy coming up from a very deep dive.
“No, no, don’t…” Michael says. “That’s enough. I feel bad. Don’t eat the tomato; you don’t like it.”
“No, really, maybe just with some bread on it…” Kevin pleads.
At this moment, the maid comes in to clear the salads. The two remaining tomato slices on Kevin’s plate are squished under the weight of other plates, Kevin’s conquest of them thwarted forever.
I have an almost overpowering impulse to start speaking Spanish to the maid, but she is moving too quickly, and I have no idea what I’d say; in fact, I can’t remember any of the words Kitty taught me.
After dinner, we move out onto the terrace to look at houses jammed into the hillside. I know they don’t have emergency brakes on them, and I am astonished at the people who live in them, these high-rising, stilt-depending structures built on air. Does Isaac Newton mean nothing in this town?
Slim’s husband, I think, whose name I still don’t know, starts raving about the last kilo of pot he bought, then says, “You’d think the government would take the power back and legalize the goddamn stuff” to which Kevin replies that “pot is for pussies” and “LSD is where it’s at.”
Michael declares that “everyone should do hallucinogens at least twice in their life. No, make that twice a year, just to keep it fresh.” Then the four of them simultaneously expound on their many different trips, when abruptly Kevin looks at me for the second time in the entire evening and says, “What about your acid trip?” and they all stop talking to stare at me.
I have not said word one since my “tomato like an apple” disclosure, but before I can think, I find myself saying, “Oh, well, ever since I was fourteen and my friend took LSD and got gang-raped with a broomstick, I’ve only tried speed and cocaine. You know, aware and alert.”
Slim doesn’t skip a beat. “Oh, I’ve got some coke from the last diet I was on, you want some of that?”
Her husband, I think, says, “There’s cocaine in this house right now?”
He is suddenly sounding very Republican, as if it wasn’t him who just made a pitch for legalized marijuana. I wonder if his political alliances switch with the drug.
I look at Michael. I do not want any of this woman’s cocaine, and I really do not want to be around while her husband or whoever he is finds out about it. Michael takes my hint and we leave the palatial home.
The moon has climbed farther and farther up the sky. Before I get in my truck, I stand looking at it for a moment, wondering what it would be like to rise knowing exactly when and how you would fall.
I follow Michael’s car down the hill to my apartment. He has promised me that he’ll spend the night, but I’m not getting my hopes up. The street we are driving down angles sharply around blind curves; it is barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass.
L.A. defies gravity. The cars, the skin, the houses, the light. I keep waiting for it all to fall. A day when the cars will crash, the faces will drop, the houses will collapse, and the light will hit hard and direct like a black-and-white film shot in a wintry Midwest. But so far, its emergency brake continues to hold. I know I should be comforted by that; I’m just not.