Diamond Girl (29 page)

And even though those same boys would whistle and grope us as we danced for the photographers, even though they loved having a famously bad socialite on their arms or to download on the internet in home made sex videos, we weren’t the socialites they felt comfortable marrying.

It has always been so. Every generation of Manhattan’s debutantes has had an 'It Girl', a girl so much more beautiful and full of life than her mousy counterparts that she almost can’t help ending up in the newspapers every day. The first, I think, was a drop dead knock-out named Brenda Frazier. Brenda was so ravishing that every New York paper wanted to take her picture, and eventually she even ended up on the cover of Life magazine under the heading 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World'.  Poor Brenda, she soon found out, as Milan did nearly a hundred years later, that you can be too beautiful and too famous for our blue-blooded boys. Case in point, Brenda did not go on to wed into one of our nation’s great old families and reign from a fabulous New York pied-à-terre, and marry off her daughters from an ocean front estate in East Hampton. Oh no, she ended up marrying a football player and died in her forties, drunk and obscure.

Nowadays a society beauty has better choices, or at least she has one other choice: pretend this is how you wanted it anyway, go to Hollywood and become world famous, not just New York famous, marry a series of leading men and say 'screw you, New York, New York'.
Might as well say it, possibly try to think it,  even though it’s all bullshit because if you are born at the top of the world, there is no better life.

Our ancestors knew it and the smart young society beauties of my generation know it too. Like the song says
, if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, well take Ivanka Trump as your wife or, if you are a girl, at least don’t take Brenda Frazier or Milan Marin as your role model. Beauty and fame ages out; New York is forever.

I don’t include myself in this scenario. I was out of the golden loop I was born into before I was old enough to understand the rules. No great ruling family is going to bring in old blue blood that is tainted with a horrendous disease like mine. If there are people naïve enough to think otherwise, then they should grow up.

I bet if Prince William’s family found out tomorrow that pretty Kate had a sister who suffered from juvenile diabetes or multiple sclerosis or any other nasty shit like that, well I don’t think she’d be planning the redecoration of Buckingham Palace anytime soon.

How does my theory work out with the way Masters of the Universe type guys, like my own Daddy, marry trophy wives? It fits in just fine. The heir to pretty much everything can marry whoever the hell he wants, and if he doesn’t find a hot enough girl from his own class, he can, and sometimes does, especially in the second wife go around, marry a model or Miss World. 

After all, if she fucks up and introduces some unspeakable disorder into the family, it’s not going to trash his life. He can just kick her to the curb while she wails away at her stupidity in signing a lowball pre-nup, and marry again and produce some new healthier, better heirs. It’s the kids from these unions that might suffer, kids like me.

I have the inherited money and I have the inherited beauty as the daughter of a trophy wife, but I have fucked up genes and that means I never had a shot, or a choice, about continuing on with the life I was born into.

If Daddy had cared more, or given me a better trust, I could have at least stayed home and lived out my life as an avant garde uptown beauty who my own kind called interesting. But I was rejected like one of the defective eggs that the geese laid in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
.

Milan wasn’t born
defective, she was just born without what she saw as enough. In trying to get enough, she accidentally X’d out her place in our world, and so while she might have acted like moving to L.A. and becoming super famous was what she had always wanted, I knew she was kidding herself. We had already been born to what everyone in the world really wanted and, after that, it’s all a come down.

Three lonely empty years into life in L.A., all I wanted was to go home. I was thrilled that she was there but it didn’t take my focus off my goal. So when she sat cross-legged on my bed, blue cat eyes aglow with excitement, and offered me my own chance to be a star, I wasn’t sure.

“Okay, Care Bear, you are going to love this so much. It’s really going to be a ton of fun and it’s for sure going to be a humongous hit. How can it not be? It’s all like Green Acres only, you know, for real, and live every week?”

I laughed. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I was just so happy she was there, here, with me. Despite having my first hangover in three years, and despite Milan’s obvious disdain at my tacky three bedroom house decorated by my middle-aged assistant, Clara, I was feeling like my old self, like Carey Kelleher again that morning.

Milan had arrived the previous afternoon and, after ecstatic greetings at the airport, I had hired a limo. She had said that she was going to stay with me for the night before moving to her parents' place. After seeing my situation, she changed her mind and told me she was staying for as long as it took to 'fix me'. Then she went through my closets, screamed in horror at my three year internet wardrobe, and helped grease me into a pair of her sevens. Grease really was used because three years in bed had left me a hideous puff ball. Grudgingly, she let me wear a long gray cashmere tunic to hide my fat rolls, and off we went to a club she’d heard about called Les Deux.

It was a fabulous night, just like old times. Milan was surrounded by a horde of photographers and adoring club goers, me basking in her limelight. We’d drunk two bottles of Keitel One and held up each other’s hair later in my bathroom while we threw up. Early in the morning, about eleven, when we had woken up after Milan discovered to her horror that I still hadn’t bought a car, she stomped out into the living room looking for Clara, found her, and ordered her to find a nearby Starbucks and hurry up.

When Clara returned, Milan told her she could go home for the day and, holding our lattes, she came back into my bedroom and crawled in beside me, tickling me until I gave up, sat up and asked her to tell me all about her new show.

Her initial explanation and my hangover confused me. Squinting blearily at her I asked. ”So you’re going to do a remake of Green Acres, only live? How is that going to be cool? It sounds kind of stupid.”

She sighed dramatically, shoving back her mane of blond hair. I’d forgotten how beautiful she was, how she sucked up all the air in the room just by being in it. I shivered with pleasure at having her near me again.

“Gawd no, you are so not listening to me. I said it was
like
Green Acres, not a remake. Gawd no, see, it’s a reality show. It’s going to be called
The Natural Life
, and it’s all about me playing myself, naturally.” We both laughed. “And in the show I’ll be like living with this, you know, regular blue collar family in their barn, or I guess house, if they have one, somewhere in the middle of bumfuck nowhere like Nebraska or Texas. You know, one of those places. Anyway, I’ll be like doing farm stuff and it will be really funny and, oh Gawd, I don’t need to explain it 'cause you need to read this.” 

She jumped up off the bed and went over to her spilled Vuitton carry-on, rummaging through it for a few minutes. Finding what she wanted, she brandished a pink folder at me and got back on the bed. Nearly knocking my latte out of my hand, she tossed me the folder. I looked down. It was a pink leather binder, and embossed on the front in gold were the words '
The Natural Life
, starring Milan Marin and Carey Kelleher'.

Stunned, I looked at her for an explanation. She flashed me her feline grin. “Yup, it’s real. I wanted to surprise you. See, the thing that’s
going to make this a ginormous hit, and us ginormously rich and famous, is how much fun people will have seeing two crazy, beautiful heir heads like us milking cows. When Fox told me I could have anyone I wanted as my co-star, I didn’t even think about anyone else. I knew it was going to be me and my gorgeous little Careybeary.”  She threw her arms around me, squeezing tightly. “Isn’t this the best, Cares? Aren’t we going to have so much fun? OMG, I promise you’ll love this and make bags of your own money, then you can ditch this icky house and we’ll buy twin mansions or something. Oh, I almost forgot, I fired Clara for you after she brought back our coffees. She sucks and you’re a mess, and so is this house. I’ll find you a cool assistant. OMG, can you believe all this is happening?” 

I closed my eyes and leaned against her. I couldn’t believe it. I felt alien happiness and excitement returning into my deadened body.

Milan was with me again. I was going to be famous on my own, not just for who I had been born as. I was going to have my own money that no one could take away from me if I disappointed them. I was going to make Daddy so proud of me and I was only twenty-four and Milan was right, anything and everything good was ahead of me.

Chapter 32

“No, Carolyn, I’m afraid that you accepting a part in a reality show
is not going to be possible.” So spaketh Herbert from on high, well from his thirtieth floor office in Manhattan. He really is on high. I should know, I used to have views like that, and it does tend to give you a feeling of looking down on everyone else, literally and figuratively. Instantly angry at his call, I didn’t respond like I was supposed to. During the three years of a pathetic loneliness in which I had barely existed, I had usually agreed with Herbert when he rang with his various edicts on spending etc., I had let his horrible underling, Amanda, pick out and install me in a crappy house I hated, I had endured the bossy presence of the fat judgmental personal assistant they had saddled me with, I had let time and events pass me by, and if I thought or hoped for anything during that time, it was that I wouldn’t wake up again ever from my medicated sleep.

Milan coming had changed everything. Seeing her reminded me that I was still young and beautiful, that if I was living a life I hated I could change it. She had made me look at myself and I had woken up to my surroundings, and she had offered me a chance to have something of my own, to be famous and busy and happy, and I wanted to take it. Herbert’s blanket refusal made my blood boil and, in its own way, that felt good too.

I lashed back. “Oh my God, no way, Herbert. You can’t tell me whether I can do this show or not. I am so fucking sick of you running my life, or I should say my non-life? Here’s a news flash for you Herbert. I hate L.A.. I hate this crap fest house your firm picked out for me. I hate the furniture. I hate Clara and, well anyway, I’m not happy but I’m going to get happy. Daddy will back me up so you can just ...”

“Oh I don’t think you will find your father is going to back you up as you say, Carolyn. And I am truly sorry if you are dissatisfied with your life in California, dear, and sorrier yet that you have chosen to blame me or my office for your unhappiness, since I can assure you that neither I nor my law firm enjoy wasting our time and talent on setting up the equivalent of a nursery, or maybe I should say 'nursing home', for a young woman with every possible advantage. If you’re not pleased, Carolyn, I suggest you sell your present home, purchase one more to your liking, and make the effort to furnish it yourself. Find a new assistant if you feel you can’t manage the important daily details of your life, such as where to obtain lunch and medication, and while you are at it, you might also go about finding something, anything to do with your time
...” 

“Stop
it, stop talking to me like this. You can’t, I …” As always I lost control and the tears came and I was sobbing when I spoke. I could almost see him at his desk in Manhattan rolling his eyes. “I
have
found something to do with my time and it’s something I want to do. And if you know so much about how I’ve lived the last three years, then Clara must have been your filthy spy. You say 'get a house, sell a house, fix it  the way you want it, Carey', well thank you, Herbert, thank you for your fucking permission but I don’t know how to do any of that stuff and I … I … well, I will figure it out … you’ll see, and I am going to take the part on
The Natural Life
… I am.”  I finished weakly.

His return response was given laconically as though I wasn’t hysterical and he wasn’t angry, but he was, he was very angry. I could hear it, the rage just underneath his careful voice. “I certainly can’t stop you if that is what you choose to do. I hope the production company is giving you a large advance. Tell me, Carolyn, just how much are they paying you? I do hope it’s a great deal. It should be a great deal as its going to cost you a great deal. I’m surprised you are so anxious for this part since you surely can’t flatter yourself that it’s you they want.”

“What do you mean? Of course it’s me they want. Otherwise how come I got the offer, and what do you mean, 'what it’s costing me'? Jesus, Herbert, stop being so fucking cryptic all the time and just say what you mean.”

He cleared his throat. “Fine, Carolyn, lets dispense with the pretense that I have one other thing to do with my time besides deal with your juvenile nonsense.”

“Oh yeah, let's, Herbie, let's dispense, but before you unload the big guns on me, can I ask you something?” 

“Go ahead.”

“Fine, I will. I wanted to ask you, Herbie, isn’t dealing with my juvenile nonsense or dealing with Daddy’s latest whore, or maybe calling a plumber for one of our backed-up toilets your job? Isn’t taking care of my family’s shit the only thing you do with your stupid hundred year old degree from Harvard?”