27
I went through three different outfits this morning deciding what to wear to Greeley’s, and even called Suzanne for her opinion because Reggie is useless in that area. I needed critical truth about how best to project the creative-yet-business vibe that is essential for this sales call. The outfit Suzanne and I came up with—me describing clothes over the phone, her asking questions about hem lengths and necklines—felt so right that I didn’t even feel the need to change in my truck into the backup shirt that I brought along.
In the sales office of Greeley’s department store, an older thin-haired receptionist who looks as though she has seen decades of trends and designers come and go tells me to have a seat, she’ll buzz Ms. Beckman. I sit down on the low-slung couch. The office is done in peach with touches of chrome, soft but modern. Full-blown photographs of accessories and jewelry from the store’s catalogue are framed on the wall like modern art. I suddenly think of Tory. Of waiting in the gallery for her to get off the phone on that day I first met her so long ago in New York, and of Andrew setting the whole thing up. It feels like a memory I’ve only heard about, like things that happened prekindergarten during that age of not knowing how to do things that in ensuing years were easily learned.
The receptionist tells me I can go in and waves her hand to a door on the left. Linda Beckman is sitting behind her desk in an all-cream room. Her blond hair and pale suit perfectly complement her softly made-up face. She would not be described as beautiful, but has made the most of what God gave her on a level that most women only dream about.
She puts her hand out to me and offers me a seat. “Is that from your new line you were telling me about on the phone?”
She has noticed the necklace I am wearing, as I hoped she would. It is a thin chain of braided eighteen-karat gold from which hangs a large green-gray Tahitian pearl that has an even thinner band of braided gold encircling it with a spray of green peridot dangling on a short chain underneath it. I do what I do with women in their homes; I take the necklace off and hand it to her. I have found that it has the same effect as when a little girl lets a new friend play with her favorite doll. Linda looks surprised for a split second, then I see her eyes light up when the pearl is in her hands. She stands up and moves across the room to put the necklace on in the reflection of the glass of a framed photograph from the store’s catalogue.
When she comes back to her desk still wearing my necklace, I pull out the trays of pins and necklaces and bracelets and rings from my faux Vuitton bag, and Linda picks up and plays with or tries on almost everything. She glances through my press kit as she tells me that she wants the order in for January, and I try to contain my euphoria as she explains the terms.
Driving home on Wilshire Boulevard, I pass the other department stores that dominate this section of Beverly Hills, and I can barely believe what’s just happened. My jewelry is going to be in one of these, on display and for sale in a national store. And in Greeley’s catalogue, The Style Journal, a renowned quarterly that years ago set the bar for all other high-end retail. I have to get the samples of my entire new line of South Sea pearls held with braided gold while peridot, tourmaline, and citrine dance around them to a photography studio next Monday for them to be included in the spring catalogue. Talk about tear sheets for my press kit. The shoots they do are notorious for being beautiful, yet exotically decadent. I can’t wait to see my work immortalized that way. I silently bless Suzanne and her wedding for inspiring me to work with pearls.
“That’s great, honey, I’m so happy for you. Matt, you have time to squeeze Yvette in tomorrow to look at her contract, don’t you, love?” Suzanne has addressed the last part to her financial-whiz husband, but I know it was mostly intended for me.
“Thanks, Suzanne, but I don’t need to waste his time. There’s not a contract. This is retail, it’s an order I’m filling and the terms are what every designer gets the first—”
“Matt, talk to her.” And Suzanne hands the phone to my brother-in-law. When my sister has children, I will be a fabulous aunt in terms of empathizing with them on what it is like to be raised by her.
“Congratulations—you’re in a national store!”
“Thanks, Matt.”
“Now, tell me what your deal is.”
“From what I hear from other designers, it’s pretty standard for big stores so it’s not like I can negotiate. Greeley’s policy is that the first time they carry your line, it’s on consignment, then they send you checks each month based on what sells, but Linda Beckman, the head jewelry buyer, feels very confident about my line, says it’s really different from anything they have so it’s just a matter of the money coming later instead of up front.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s the catalogue.”
“The catalogue?”
“I have to pay for P and A—that’s prints and advertising, all designers do—but when you consider what I’m getting, people all over the country seeing my work, and the top-notch photographs, it’s really a good deal.”
Matt is quiet for a moment. I can hear Suzanne in the background picking up their dinner plates from the dining room table, the one from the house we grew up in that has been in the family for three generations.
“Keep your own accounting. Don’t assume they’ll report everything and on time, but it’s great news, Yvette, it’s a whole new level for your career. I’m proud of you.”
Reggie was so ecstatic over my sale that he decided we should take a day off just to celebrate. He pulls his car—late-model El Dorado, which I love because it makes me feel like I’m back in the South—into my driveway to pick me up, and when we hug, I can tell that his tummy that I never thought was a big deal, but was the reason for his diet, I guess, is completely gone. I notice my neighbor Gloria peeking around her curtain, as Reggie opens the car door for me. I am tempted to yell up to her that this isn’t a new boyfriend because I know she will ask later on.
“Santa Boo is where I’m taking you.” Reggie’s infectious cheer is in high gear, or another and the idea of leaving L.A. for a day is heavenly.
As we drive through Malibu up the PCH, we pass houses crammed next to one another on the edge of the highway like a continuous screen hiding the beach and ocean beyond. Coming down the hill past Pepperdine University, we see an expanse of coastline not blocked by development, and the surfless Pacific lies tranquilly under the November typing-paper-white sky. Reggie is playing a cassette he made just for this drive, an hour and a half ’s worth of music to carry us up the coast, then on the way back, we’ll play radio roulette, his term for pushing buttons and never knowing what you’ll get. I have a feeling that Michael’s station isn’t programmed on Reggie’s radio and that’s fine with me. I haven’t listened to Michael’s “voice,” as Kundalini-cum-collagen woman so accurately identified his station, since I stopped seeing him.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is a large two-story white stucco Spanish Mission–style building surrounded by attractive businesses against a backdrop of mountains. It is almost more compelling to stay outside and walk around in the gently sunny day, but the large purple banner hanging on the museum’s fa?ade announcing a Picasso exhibit trumps that idea.
Reggie and I step inside the charged quiet of great art on display in the gallery and read the curator’s notes on the show, “Weeping Women,” which has been traveling the country. The exhibit is composed entirely of portraits of Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter, his wife and mistress at the time the paintings were done, respectively. When the portraits of Marie-Thérèse were first shown, Dora Maar walked into the gallery, saw the work, and immediately knew Picasso was in love with his model, so infused were they with that truth.
“Prick,” Reggie says, when we finish reading the circumstances of the paintings.
“But here you are to enjoy his work.”
“That doesn’t mean I like him personally.”
“You don’t know him personally. He wasn’t Stalin or Hitler sending millions to the grave.” We both know what we are also talking about, or whom, I should say. Even though Reggie and I haven’t talked about Andrew in ages, it sometimes feels as if the subject is always there between us, sitting just under the surface.
“Look what he left the world for eternity.”
Reggie’s eyes stay on mine for a moment defiantly, then he turns and looks around the gallery, as I do. The walls are filled with intense and colorful executions of remorse and desire, sadness and love. The crowds looking at the paintings appear stripped of all outer guise as they stand in their naked desire to view beauty, like babies unable to hide their needs.
Reggie takes my hand and we walk slowly through each room, looking at every portrait, saying few words, and I am struck by Picasso’s insistence for honesty. His decision to paint his mistress despite the consequences. It makes me think about the area of my life I have kept from Reggie—Andrew, namely.
At a café near the museum, Reggie pulls a chair out for me at an outside table, but before I can sit down, he gives me a hug. “Maybe we’ll make it a perfect road trip and stay over somewhere. The San Ysidro Ranch has got some great bungalows.”
“Where the Kennedys honeymooned—yeah, right,” I say, playing along with his silly idea.
He presses himself in close, more of him on me than usual. “I’m getting a woody just holding you,” he says in my ear.
I can’t believe what I just heard. Reggie? A woody? About me? Oh, please tell me I didn’t hear him right, but I know I did. And that term. Where’d he get that? The school yard? It quadruples the embarrassment I feel—a woody. Like Pinocchio. Not an association I want with sex. Nor is Reggie. Oh, good God.
I try to laugh, but it comes out like a snort, so I take advantage of that and say, “Gee, I need to blow my nose, be right back.”
As I head into the restaurant, my eyes adjusting to the lower lights inside, I try to remember the last time I used the exclamation “gee.” I decide I never have and wonder if it came out as the unfulfilled wish of what I hoped our day would be rated. I guess his suggestion of us spending the night was serious. Oh, good Christ. I mean, I love Reggie, he’s my best friend, but part of the comfort of him is that since he’s not a girl, I don’t have to deal with weird female stuff like with Suzanne or Viv, and since he’s not really straight, or has never seemed so to me, I could talk to him like a girl. And sexual tension has just never been an issue between us. Or maybe it always was and I just couldn’t see it. Or didn’t want to.
I suddenly have an urge to take out my cell phone and call…well, Reggie, actually, because he’s who I call when people behave oddly or confusingly or try to switch their role, all of which he just did. The friend I want to talk to not only isn’t home, he’s the reason I need to call, as if Reggie could somehow also be a separate person in his apartment for me.
In the bathroom, I wash my hands and put powder on my face. I hope my eyes won’t betray me when I go back to the table with their loud conveying of the no-longer-want-to-hang-out-with-him that I feel. Was I wrong to say yes to this day? Maybe I crossed some universal line for friendship that gave him a signal that that was okay. No, I’ve been behaving exactly as I always have, though now that I think about his diet and this day, maybe he’s been planning some kind of relationship change for us ever since I stopped seeing Michael. Oh, good God.
I’ve powdered my nose five times and can’t think of anything else to do to stall my appearance at lunch. Fuck. This is so weird. I make a small prayer to Mary that Reggie was being temporarily weird or got so overcome by all the beauty, sex, and love we saw at the museum that that energy just slipped out at me. But I doubt it. Finally, I join him at our table.
I can tell Reggie knows that he flipped me out because he immediately starts talking about his work, about editing a commercial he actually did like because of the director’s vision, a nice neutral topic that makes me sort of relax. “His spots are like short films, really beautiful and telling the story visually. I wouldn’t mind him shooting my script.”
“I thought you wanted to do it.” The pasta I ordered is heavier than I expected, with too much cream. The first few bites were comforting and nice, but now the richness is making me sick.
“Honey, let’s be realistic. I’ve been here too long to not know the score. First-time director without film school or a movie to his credit? Who are we kidding? I need something to happen in my life, it’s been the same for way too long. If this guy can get it going, I’d be thrilled. Let him do this one, then maybe some doors will open; otherwise, this wait I’ve been in will be my whole life.”
We walk on the beach together after lunch, and the sun, the sea, the sky, the sand are so encompassing of our senses that we are content not to talk. As we stand at the surf ’s edge watching the winter sunset’s early decline, I wonder how long Reggie’s transformation has been going on. Was it a sudden moment of change or an on-going one that started with the protein shakes that made Reggie lose weight and wait diligently?
“I’m going home to visit my father for the weekend,” Reggie says on the drive back to L.A. as we head south into the night. We have yielded onto the freeway, becoming one of many commuters, but without the day’s work.
“Yeah? Are you looking forward to it?”
“You know, he’ll call me ‘son.’ He’s done that for so long, I think he thinks it’s my goddamn name. Ever since Mom died, he’s called me and my brother ‘son’ for what, twenty years now, like he needs to reinforce the family bond for fear it’ll disappear like she did.”
“You’re probably right. If so, it’s sad and kind of sweet.”
We ride along in silence on the rhythm of the miles. Reggie was a godsend when my momma died, flying down to Mississippi to be at the funeral with me and letting me spend the night with him that first week back in L.A. so I wouldn’t have to be by myself when the darkness of night came down and I had to adjust my thoughts of Momma being not in her bed but in the ground. He’d known what that was like.
The first time Reggie and I got together after we met, he showed me a black-and-white picture of his mother. She was twenty-one when it was taken, a lovely, young, open-faced woman wearing a gingham shirt. “Ain’t she a tomato?” he’d said loudly, causing the other people in the café to all turn and look. He was so comfortable in his exuberance about her, so resolved with her absence in his life that he didn’t notice the public reaction, just kept on showing me pictures of her. Riding in his car on the freeway, watching lights speed up close and away, I long to have that about my father, though I know that it’s easier when the parent is dead and not just gone.
“I saw Andrew on TV a few weeks ago.” I pause for a moment to see if Reggie is receptive, but he is quiet, just smoothly moving into the fast lane. “Spontaneous was on, and it was nice, really, just to see him, but especially from that time, L.A. in the seventies. He was so much a part of all that, and I always felt like I got to experience that period by being with him, through him in a way. So it was nice, but the best part was that I felt so okay about him and me. ’Cause, you know, he stepped into my life not long after Daddy was gone, and Andrew was really there for me, like a father to me those years I lived in New York, so it was nice, just to sit there and see him.”
Reggie changes lanes again through the steady traffic. The car is moving fast and the highway is streaming past.
“Goddammit, Yvette, you are out of your mind.” His voice is at such a pitch and his words so unlike what I thought I’d hear that I almost say, “What?” But his diatribe is spewing on. “He wasn’t your father, okay? He was just some man who had sex with you and didn’t care enough to do anything more. He probably doesn’t even remember your name.” Fuck you, I start to say, but Reggie is continuing, his voice filling the car. “You’ve got to let go of this. You’ve been dragging him around for years and where has it gotten you? Stuck in the past and ignoring what’s in your life today.”
Like him trying to make a pass at me? Is that the thing in my life that I’m missing?
“Reggie, I have let Andrew go, that’s exactly what the fuck I was saying, if you would listen instead of having a goddamn fit that I mentioned his name. And fuck you, by the way, he was like a father to me, and whether you believe that or not doesn’t change anything. What is your goddamn problem about him anyway? Christ, you’re the one who’s so worked up about this, not me. I’m fine. I have moved on. I’ve dated a lot since him. It’s not my fault none of them have been the one.”
I glance over at Reggie and his features look smaller on his face. We pass a few mile markers in silence.
“I just want you to be happy, honey, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I am.”
“Good.” Then he turns the radio on loud.
A couple of days after the Santa Boo excursion with Reggie, I am beginning to wonder if this friendship is going to have to end. Not that I want it to, but if I can’t tell him what’s going on in my life…And not even an honest-to-God encounter, just a movie on TV. Christ, I guess he’d really flip his lid if anything real with Andrew happened. Reggie is in Kansas seeing his dad, so we haven’t talked much and that’s probably for the best. But it’s Saturday afternoon, and I can’t stay in my apartment thinking about all this another second, so to distract myself I find a matinee to go to.
I decide to wear something upbeat and happy; maybe it will affect my mood. As I put on a deep red sweater, I remember reading somewhere that red cars get hit more than other ones, but only during daylight hours because at night they look gray. I wonder how drivers’ eyes under streetlights can transpose vibrant red to dull gray. Self-preservation, maybe, to not be drawn into a nocturnal crash. Then what happens to that instinct during the day?
I arrive at the theater early, so I decide to go to a store three very long blocks down La Brea to try on vintage Levi’s that I will never buy. Not because I don’t want to buy the Levi’s, but whenever I see the way they look on other women I always think, “How do those jeans fit like that on you? That has never happened for me.” But still I persist in trying, certain that there is one pair out there that will fit great; it’s just a matter of finding it. As I walk the three very long blocks to the store on the empty sidewalk of the busy street, I feel very pioneering to be a pedestrian in L.A.
Half an hour later I emerge from the store jeans-free, but consistent at least. As I head back to the theater, hurrying so I won’t be late, I keep thinking about a pair of Levi’s I tried on that finally actually maybe did fit but that I still didn’t buy, because I was sure that the minute I left the store they suddenly would not, so I’m not noticing very much except that there is a man on the sidewalk—tall, almost young—coming toward me from the other direction. Or veering toward me really. Not drunk, he definitely is not drunk, he’s clean looking actually, but just walking diagonally, like San Vicente to Pico kind of. Anyway, I think about moving which is hard. It’s a sidewalk, for God’s sake, public—moving is such a statement and, other than running into the traffic, where would I go? Then next thing I know, he’s near me, in front of me, his arm pulls back, and he punches me hard, right on my left breast.
I am completely shocked. I stand there holding myself and staring at him as the word “clobbered” flashes in my head. Finally, I say, “But I’m a girl.” I have no idea why, he clearly can tell that I am. Not that he should be beating up men, but what the hell was that for?
He just looks at me and smiles. With his whole body. Luxuriating, really. I half expect him to light a cigarette and ask how it was for me. Then he does this odd little chuckle and strolls away like he could not be happier with himself if he tried.
The cars on La Brea are blithely driving by. No one has noticed this daylight public bashing. No masked savior has flown down from the sky to stop my perpetrator. It is just me. Walking alone in what should be harmless territory, a sidewalk on a commercial street in a good neighborhood. An activity that appears to be safe, but isn’t.
Before I even realize what I am doing, I pull out my cell phone, following my instinct to call Reggie, then I remember the weirdness we are in and that he’s out of town, so I hang up. I could call the police. Should probably, but I don’t feel like it. I can always do it later, say I was in shock. Frankly, I want to catch the movie and just not think about it.
Driving home in my truck from the movie—which was distracting, but not completely—through the descending darkness of the late afternoon, I think about that guy walking up to me on the sidewalk and hauling one off. And so casually. Easily. As if I had been walking there for the express purpose of letting him take care of his need to express anger. Fuck him. I suddenly am reminded of Reggie blowing up at me in his car on the way home from Santa Barbara. The way his anger came out so completely and unexpectedly. Not that I didn’t know he doesn’t like hearing about Andrew, but for Christ’s sake, yelling at me? What is it with these guys? I realize that I don’t want some masked hero coming down from the sky to save me. I want the person who’s always there no matter what. Me.
And suddenly I decide to learn how to box. Not that kick-to-get-fit version, I’m talking traditional, in the ring, Ali-is-still-God boxing. So that I’ll never be at the mercy of someone like that again. Someone’s hands altering my body, hurting me. I wonder what the emotional equivalent to boxing is. But maybe doing it physically will give that to me. The minute I get inside my apartment, I pull out the Yellow Pages and begin calling gyms.