So Close (17 page)

“I know.  I got up at four am to get here.”

Jeanine crossed her arms over her black blouse, her oversized bag not pulling her posture off-kilter even a millimeter, even though I had moved it around more than a few planes and knew it weighed nearly more than she did.  “This is an important moment.  A potentially defining moment.”  She and Lindsay were probably the same height, yet it felt like she was looking down at her.  

“Which is why I am on my way to Bergdorf’s right now.”

We went straight to the evening section where I kept my eyes on the colors, avoiding the price tags like a tightrope walker avoids the drop.  “What can I do for you today?” a young woman in a sleeveless white cashmere dress asked us—the kind of thing one would see on a rack at T.J. Maxx and think, ‘Well, of course, it ended up here, what season is that for?’  It’s for the woman who works in air-conditioning set at: sleeveless white cashmere. 

              “Yes, thank you, I need a dress for a red-carpet event tonight.”

              The woman’s face tried to pinch against whatever she’d had injected into it.  “I’m so sorry, I won’t be able to help you.”
              “Pardon?”

              “We don’t carry your size in the store.”

              Slapped, punched, whatever you want to conjure—that’s what Lindsay looked like.  I stepped in.  “Surely you must have clients who eat,” I tried to make a joke of it.  “Or who fly in to the city to shop.”

              “Well, of course.  But they always give us advance notice so we can have things ready.  That takes a day or more.”

              Lindsay’s eyes unfocused. 

              “Where should we go?” I asked.  “We have four and a half hours.” 

              “Well.”  She tilted her head.  “Saks has a mother-of-the-bride department.  I think they carry bigger sizes.  Or you could try Lane Bryant?”

“She is not fucking walking the red carpet in some god-awful sequined old lady dress!”  I thought Jeanine’s tongue was actually going to come out of my cell.  “Send her back to the hotel and I will pull every fucking string I can.  What size
is
she?”

              I passed the phone to Lindsay.  “Sixteen,” she acidly told Jeanine.  “Maybe eighteen.  I have had three children.  I have gone through menopause.  Send me a postcard when you get there.”  Lindsay hung up. 

Back at the suite Lindsay placed a defiantly large room service order and then sat silently in her bathrobe while her hair and makeup were done.  The dress selection was to be the last thing.   One of Jeanine’s unhelpfully-thin assistants arrived with what looked like Bloomingdale’s entire Spanx department. 

              “No, I hate those things.  I can’t breathe.”

              “You can breathe when you get to the White House,” was Jeanine’s answer as she walked in the door with an armful of garment bags. 

              “Where’s Tom?” Lindsay asked as she re-dialed his number while we unpacked the dresses—and the compression garments.  She squeezed into the first gown—a navy sleeveless floor-length. 

              “Now I wasn’t sure what she has that’s nice,” Jeanine said right in front of Lindsay, “So I have a little of everything.  Okay, next.”

              “Nice?” I asked.

              “Like, does she have nice ankles, or nice shoulders.”

              Tom walked in.  “She has lovely knees,” he said, smiling.  “I fell in love with her knees.”  He kissed her and she visibly relaxed.

              After trying on all six contenders she ended up back in the navy sleeveless—with a wrap to hide her ‘tharms’, short for arms-that-look-like-thighs in pictures—something that apparently kept Jeanine awake at night.

As soon as the limo pulled away I crossed Columbus Circle.  In the end I hadn’t told Brian that he’d been invited to join us because when I’d played through this moment—a stroll at dusk through the southern end of Central Park—his was not the hand I kept picturing, which only made me angry with myself.  I dialed Billy for my weekly check in before I allowed myself to admit that I was probably about to break up with the hardwood floor I could stand on because I couldn’t shake the memory of a fur rug that got ripped out from under me.

              “Mandy?”

              “Grammy?”  I sounded equally confused.  “Is Billy over for dinner?”

              “You could say that.”

              “Grammy,” I heard him grumble.  “You really don’t need to answer my phone.”

              “So long as you are under my roof I’ll answer anything I please.”

              Seventh grade.  Tommy French putting a slug on the back of my neck.  That was the feeling that went through me—cold and wet and scary.    “Billy?”

              “Yep.”

              “What’s going on?”

              “Nothin’.”

              “What did she mean by roof over your head?”

              “We’re staying here.”

              “We?”

              “Me, Ray Lynne and Mom.”

              “Fuck.  What happened?”

              He sighed.  “There are some new guys passing through—building that Motel Six.  Anyways they were in the bar and they started making fun of Slow Eddie and Mom told ‘em off and they fired her.”  It sounded so good, so righteous, Mom sticking up for the guy who liked to get a beer on his way home from his janitor shift.  But really, probably, what had happened, is these guys had been pushing her, pinching her, being gross, and she’d been letting it all slide with a tight smile until they did something she could take them on for and I bet she went off until their eyebrows singed.  Perry liked her—he wouldn’t have fired her unless she left him no choice.  “Anyways, she didn’t realize it takes a few weeks for the unemployment checks to start coming and we owed for the last month on the trailer . . .”

              “Mom was finally faced between sleeping in her car and asking Grammy for something herself.” 

              “Her back’s hurting her pretty bad.”

I heard Grammy in the background. 

              “Yes, Ma’am, I’ll wash up in a minute!” he called, the phone muffled to his chest.  “Jesus,” he muttered to me.

              I looked up at the fountain, knowing as Delilah had, that the hotel room the campaign was paying for me to stay in could cover the rent on the trailer for a year. 

              “You be patient with Grammy and helpful and wash your hands a hundred times if she asks.”

              “Yeah.”

              “How’s Ray Lynne?”

              “She broke one of those stone flowers and Grammy tried to spank her and mom lost her shit.”

              “So it’s going great.”  I rubbed my temples.  “I’m in New York, but I will drive down as soon as we get back—okay?”

              “New York?” he asked in a voice that suddenly sounded younger than his thirteen years. 

              “Yep.  I’m working my ass off right here in the heart of it all.  I ate a thirty-dollar cheeseburger yesterday.  And I promise you, Billy, you hang in there and you will be here, too, someday.” 

              “Uh huh.”  There was a crackle on the line, as the satellite struggled to keep Columbus Circle and Grammy’s kitchen in its sights.  “Go fuck yourself.” 

              I stood in the rapidly deepening dusk, dizzy with uncertainty. 

She hadn’t told me.  She hadn’t asked me to step in and send her money.  She hadn’t looked to me to rescue her. 

I should have been relieved. 

Should have been.  But so, so wasn’t.  If I knew Delilah—and I did.  She was saving up for a much bigger ask. 

The next morning I drank my second espresso to jump me over the slight minibar hangover I’d given myself.  We were all gathered in Tom and Lindsay’s suite to review the press covering their evening and see how Project Future FLOTUS was shaping up.  Tom was just back from the gym and guzzling orange juice.  Despite forgetting her Lactaid Lindsay had gamely eaten the fettuccini Alfredo served at the post-screening dinner because she was seated next to Mario Batali, whose food forced her to spend the night making hot compresses out of washcloths.  Still white, she reclined on the white bed linens in her white bathrobe.   

Jeanine sat by the window, carefully scanning the society pages on her laptop.  In another black sleeveless silk blouse, this one with ruffles down the front, she looked like a caricature of a naughty secretary—severe ponytail, glasses, platform heels, glossy red lips.  Tap tap tap.  Frown.

“Well?” Michael asked.  Michael was always rumpled.  I was sure he had arrived yesterday with that suit in a dry-cleaners bag and yet he still looked like he’d slept in it. 

“Not good.”

“What did they say?” Lindsay asked. 

“Spit it out,” Tom said, grabbing a piece of bacon from the table.

“Nothing,” Jeanine explained, closing the lid. “That’s just it.  Not even the people who promised me coverage said anything about Lindsay—it’s like you weren’t even there.”  She was mystified. 

“I wish,” Lindsay moaned.

Tom sat hard on the end of the bed.

Lindsay grimaced from the motion.  “Really?  This is what you made me leave my sick son for?”

“Our sick son.” 

Lindsay sidled away from him on her Sitz bones.  “I don’t think our sons could pick you out of a lineup, Tom, but okay.”

Tom glanced awkwardly around the room.  I’d never heard her talk to him like that. 

“I absolutely do not understand why this happened.  But we can fix this,” Jeanine jumped in.  “You’re on the ground now.  I’m going to schedule lunches with journalists every day until the Alzheimer’s event—get you on the radar.  And get you a stylist.”

“I just want Mylanta.” 

“
I
can get you that,” I said.  I wanted to reach out and touch her ankle, like I would’ve Billy, but knew that would be weird.  She’d clearly disappointed Tom and I was sure she was feeling embarrassed. 

“Are we ready to get to work?”  Jeanine asked, waving away the croissant her assistant, Margo, held out to her as if it were a used Kleenex.

“She’s ready,” Tom answered. 

We had five days between events and they were, as Jeanine promised, filled with journalist meet-and-greets.  New York could only have been a romantic sojourn for Tom and Lindsay if they considered Jeanine barking talking points foreplay.  Tom was taking advantage of being there to meet with U.N. delegates from countries with progressive policies on the economics of aging so his days were as full as Lindsay’s.  And every night they courted donors. 

              I was only asked to attend the one dinner where Tom made a PowerPoint presentation so I could manage the equipment.  As I stood on the side of the gold-leafed dining room I watched Lindsay pick at her plate, even though on the way over she said she was starving.  The potential donor’s wife sat beside her, artfully moving her food around without consuming a thing.  We agreed this past week, as the schedule cycled us among three restaurants (Blue Ribbon Sushi where the women around us ordered raw fish and arugula, Michael’s, where they ordered the Cobb salad without bacon or cheese, and Bergdorf’s where they could relax their vigilance because the entire menu seemed to consist of broth and foam) that the New York power wives looked like greyhounds.  “And I’m the chubby pug,” Lindsay had laughed on the first day.  But I could see the competitive starvation was starting to get to her. 

              As soon as we got back in the car Lindsay reached under her shantung blazer and unzipped the side of her dress, trying to slide down her girdle. 

              “Lindsay,” Tom said impatiently, a hint of disgust hardening his voice.  “Can you just keep it together until we get back to the room?”

              “Oh, I’m sorry, are your balls in a vice?” 

              He adjusted his seat belt.  “I told you I’d support you if you wanted to do that cleanse Jeanine suggested.  Did you even read the brochure?”

              She turned to the window.  The town car continued down Central Park West, me seated between them, trying to curl my shoulders into each other, like a hedgehog.  “I am not living off algae shakes for a month.”

              “Fine.  Then what about coming to the gym with me?”

              “Since the twins pinched that nerve it hurts to walk most days, Tom.  You know that.”

              “I know, I know, I’m sorry.”  He tugged his shirt cuff from under his blazer.  “But your image matters as much as mine and you might need to suck up doing some things you don’t want to do.” 

              “And
you
completely lost people in the middle,” Lindsay retaliated.  “I keep telling you that bit about pension funds doesn’t work.”

              “Michael likes it.”  His jaw set.

              “He’s never in the room.  It doesn’t play.  You can’t deliver it right and it makes you sound stupid.”

              I thought of that artist—the one who paints himself into backgrounds.  Maybe I could pull my blazer over my head and they would forget I was ever here for this?

              We swung up in front of the hotel and the bellman let us out.  Without a word to either of us Tom went straight inside, but Lindsay hung behind under the awning.  “Lindsay?” I ventured, not daring to follow it up with asking if she was okay because that would mean I knew that she wasn’t.  The lights changed and traffic halted at the corner.  She looked past me.  We stood like that, me waiting on some instruction, some summation.  The taxis surged again.

              “There’s a PinkBerry around the corner,” she said and walked away.  Only if you knew to look would you have spotted that, beneath her shimmering wrap, her dress was still unzipped.

For the Alzheimer’s benefit the next night, Zach Posen had measured every inch of Lindsay and whipped up an “Oprah special” as Jeanine referred to it—three quarter-length sleeve grey silk, scooped neckline, with invisible expanding side plackets that allowed for her lungs to operate as God intended.  Spanx-free she looked relaxed, allowing her natural regality to shine as they headed out the door, Tom’s introductory remarks in the breast pocket of his tux.   For a moment I imagined they were some bride’s proud parents.  I wonder if Lindsay thought the same thing as they waited opposite the mirror for the elevator.