The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (70 page)

Although she’s not one of our nearest and dearest Mariel is a masterpiece of self-control; without turning a hair she dropped her own voice six feet to wherever Ashley Famous keeps hers and said, “Yes.”

We all know you don’t cry along, it’s hypocritical. Mariel just sat there and Ashley Famous just sat until she got over it and sprang up like a cat after a shower. She went skipping back to the house in her pink sneakers, calling back so carelessly that Mariel couldn’t believe her ears. “Come again.”

Mariel did not gush, “Oh, thank you.” We’re better than that. She put on our best Schuylerton River Club drawl, “But never without calling first.”

So we were in. Well, not all of us and not that minute, but this was the start. Mariel waited a good long time and then she dropped by the boathouse and asked Ashley Famous to the River Club for brunch this Sunday after church, don’t dress up, we’re just country people here.

We’ll all drift into church the way we do every week but we’re a little twitchy: what to wear, what to wear? In addition to his duties at the Episcopal college, where nobody knows what Ashley Famous will be doing for all that money, Bill Anthony is the rector here. When we told him she was coming he said of course, she’d already promised because it was his loaves-and-fishes sermon this week. So we could have seen her up close anyway, and without being beholden to Mariel, but who knew?

Besides if it hadn’t been for Mariel, we wouldn’t know that Ashley Famous and religion are … how did she put it? “Boy, is that a contradiction in terms.”

When she dropped by to invite (“I would have called, but I went off without your number …”) she scoped the boathouse interior, and she’s not part of our foursome but Mariel is very good at detail. Tacky was only the beginning, she moved on to “neo-Goodwill.” Patchwork quilts covering a multitude of sins, she said, inspirational motto painted on velvet, nicely framed and hanging
over the fireplace and, oh my God, a pillow needlepointed with the praying hands. Plus, she told us, for an icon, she doesn’t dress very well. She wore more or less what we wear except in all the wrong colors, Mariel said, borderline shabby, who would have guessed? Nothing went with anything else, and that was the least of it.

She positively exuded pheromones, how did Mariel put it? “She may be all about God but she talked like a sailor rolling into a bordello after years at sea, all that with her nice husband sitting right there!”

Indeed, we have to wonder. That tight T-shirt and flowered jeans she wore to church and to the club after, never mind the straw cartwheel hat and pink lizard clutch. She’s the kind who can’t tell when she’s pitifully underdressed, and the husband was cute. Younger, in that obvious way, with a sensitive mouth and cultivated hair. There were so many people on the lawn around Ashley Famous that day, half my friends and all our men fetching this, offering her that, that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the husband, so I sat down next to him on the porch.

It didn’t take much to draw him out.

A poet, he told me, smoldering nicely, he’s one of those sandy boys who tan so fast that the body hairs shimmer, no question what she saw in him. He’s adorable. I probably shouldn’t have asked where to buy his books but when I saw his face I made up for it by reading the one poem he had tucked in his shirt pocket. Something to occupy him while Ashley holed up in the loft because, he said, and he wasn’t complaining, she needs to get with God before she can face church. It’s clear he adores her but I could see how hard it is for him to write with that big old shadow of greatness looming over him. At the end he invited me to come over and he’d read to me and I promised I would. His name is Archbold, from some fine old family, which is interesting because now that we see her up close it’s clear that Ashley Famous comes from somewhere south of quality. Arch, he said, just call me Arch. Sweet boy, but who knows how soon she will tire of him, or what he will do then.

We think certain thoughts about handsome young men but we always go home to bed with our husbands, most of us, even so. But among our tennis foursome, I alone had been invited, even though it was by Arch and not his first-ever and only wife, at least so far. Whatever happens, he’s entitled, the woman has been married four times.

In fact, Gloria was next to visit, and she wasn’t even invited. Of course Gloria thinks of herself as a fellow professional, which gives her the right. She just bellied up to the door and introduced herself to Ashley Famous, writer to writer as it were, as though they were equals and Ms. Famous had to ask her in.
In Schuylerton, maybe they are equals; in local matters Gloria has the edge, but otherwise, no. The prizes alone, money, passionate fans in droves, but it wasn’t very kind of Ms. Famous to point it out.

Which—we finally got it out of Gloria, who is livid—she did. She told it like a sad story, but Gloria knew. Oh, Ashley Famous was dripping with self-pity, but Gloria knew.

She’d have to be drunk out of her mind or beaten senseless not to know. She says a little of both. Too much wine in strong sunlight bouncing off the river, it put her off her guard. She let herself imagine they were friends. Gloria is a giving person so she said kindly, “My contact at Valley
TV
would love to come talk to you, he’s doing a show on writers living on the Hudson and I thought …”

Then wasn’t she surprised. Gloria was knocking herself out to be helpful, and Ashley Famous rose right up and bit her in the ass.

“I don’t like being famous,” she said, sudden as a slap in the face.

“It’s only local
TV
.”

It was too late. This Ashley’s voice went back to that deep place. Her face got all pink and she went on like an angry kindergarten teacher explaining to a stupid child. About that time Arch, who had been hovering, faded away like a painter’s wet wash of a failing sky. “I don’t like it at all,” Ashley Famous said to his back, and there were tears standing in her eyes.

Gloria tried for a snappy comeback but all she managed was, “I just thought.” Then she read that face and gave up.

“People keep writing books on me, they’re making a whole movie about my life, they want me to narrate the Bible on
PBS
; they won’t leave me alone! Everybody wants to send me presents and force me to take their prizes; they all want me to bless them or something, when all I want is to be left alone!”

Gloria was about to go there-there when Ashley Famous got all holy and condescending. “But you wouldn’t understand.”

Gloria blinked the way you do when a strobe light flashes and you have no idea where it’s coming from.

“You wouldn’t know,” she said to Gloria. Unfortunately, that’s true, but she didn’t have to rub it in. “You would have no way of knowing how very, very hard it is to be as famous as me. The things people tell you, the things they ask you to do.”

By the time she was finished laying out the tribulations of a literary icon, she had Gloria backing away on her hands and knees, anything to get out of there. She clamped the insides of her mouth until they bled so she didn’t accidentally apologize for something she hadn’t done, and when she could manage, she stood up. “Oh,” she told Ashley Famous when she could bring herself
to speak without screaming, “I would never give him your number without permission.” Then she more or less tugged her forelock and left without ever once losing her temper and telling the truth, which was that she only said it to be nice.

Gloria says that behind all that sacred, holy stuff Ashley Famous is not a nice person, but of course Gloria is biased. People say mean things about Mother Teresa too.

Beth and I are here to tell you that Gloria is wrong. Ms. Famous is an inspiration, as we discover as soon as we and Ashley start spending quality time. I personally have been invited, and I take Beth along to ride post so Arch won’t get in trouble for inviting me.

I just don’t want Ashley to think there’s anything funny going on between her husband and me and there isn’t, attractive as he is. Even though she isn’t expecting us she’s glad to see us because naturally any friend of her Archie’s is a friend of hers but as it turns out, her Arch just left for a reading in New York.

She waves us inside with an industrial-strength smile. It’s bright enough to be seen from the back of any hall and Beth and I can’t help thinking,
No wonder everybody loves her
because this time, it’s shining for us.

Then we get inside and it’s:
Hasn’t she ever heard of
IKEA
?

I
mean
, Mariel barely scratched the surface here. It’s all about vintage shag rugs in bad colors and milk crates stuffed with magazines and board-and-brick bookcases like kids make in graduate school, which makes me wonder whether all her taste is in her mouth or if she downplays the decor to make Archie feel at home. Jacket photos notwithstanding, Ashley Famous is no kid either, now that we see her up close. But she ushers us in glowing as though she is completely unaware. Then dear God she says, “Things of this world are only things of this world so why bother,” so we know she knows.

She sits us down and brings us steaming cups of cambric tea which our grandmothers remember vaguely and used to offer when we were small.

You don’t exactly talk to Ashley Famous, you listen, which is how we find out why people fall down and worship her and follow her anywhere. It’s a foregone conclusion,
voilà, tout de suite
, when she starts going on in that thrilling voice. Actually, although it’s a little embarrassing, we follow her upstairs into the loft. It’s her meditation room, she says, and somehow the three of us end up sitting on that hard, hard floor in lotus position—or something like it for Beth and me—it’s a little harder for Beth as certain parts of her have begun to spread. We sit facing the new Sheetrock wall Arch put up for her and we meditate, or Ashley Famous does, while Beth and I stare at the wall as instructed and try to empty our minds and see into the beyond, which is what she seems
to expect. It’s not easy to do when you’re wondering if she’s gone out of her mind and into the Presence while you’re still sitting there worried about how long you can be on this floor in a fixed position without screaming and offending her and whether if you got up and tried to leave, she’d know.

Can you really meditate with us watching?

Still, it is an honor to be hunched in a row like this, contemplating eternity. Imagine, contemplating. Us!

Just being here makes Beth and me feel special, and definitely close to the source—although of what—well, it’s pretty ineffable. We’re only beginners, after all. I guess we’re expected to stare at that wall until we’re cross-eyed, which if you do for long enough actually does move you to a higher plane unless that’s all the blood leaving your head and pooling in your butt. Whatever it is, I could swear that
something
happened, so when Ashley Famous says, in hushed tones, “Can you feel it?” Beth and I both manage a breathy, “Yes” and for the moment and after we go limp and it stops hurting, we believe.

Then she kind of flows up while Beth and I creak and groan miserably and struggle to our feet, humiliated because we’ve failed. But, how glorious. Whatever we are suffering, Ashley Famous must be mysteriously transcending, because she says, “Wasn’t that wonderful!” and rakes us with that white-light smile.

Ergo, voilà, mirabile
, we are friends. We’re invited back tomorrow, Ashley says she sees great promise in us, which is borderline divine. I’m sitting right down and reading every one of her books as soon as I get home.

When we come back on Wednesday Arch is there; I can’t help hoping he’ll come up in to the loft with us because once I get the hang of this, maybe we can meet on some astral plane. Failing that, I’ll have something good to look at while our minds are traveling out and beyond. But when she asks him, “Are you?” his face shuts up shop, so I know I’m right about them, although Beth doesn’t pick up on it.

Then Arch goes off wherever he goes to write and we’re back on that wretched floor maintaining fixed positions until I think I see paisley lights, unless I’m on the first step to the next level as Ashley promised and my life is about to change. I can’t help it, I have to peek.

Surprise, Beth is peeking too and if you believe in that kind of thing, Ashley Famous looks pretty much transfixed, unless we’re both giddy with hunger because she didn’t give lunch before she sat us down to meditate. It’s like seeing one of those intricate Chinese ivories with the light bulb inside, my God! She looks lit from within, but only for a second. In the next she yips and hits the floor like a felled log. Beth and I are gnawing our knuckles and reaching
for our phones when she sits up with her eyes blazing and asks, “Did you see it? Were you there?”

We don’t know what to say, exactly, so we don’t.

“Well,” she says in that breathy tone that enchants thousands, “there you are.”

Who are we to say otherwise?

On the way home Beth says, “Did she just … “

“I don’t know.”

“Did we?”

It’s amazing, I am thinking
not really
but I have to say, “I don’t know!”

“I don’t either,” Beth says, “but wasn’t it grand.” Her voice drops so it’s more a statement than a question, and we leave it there.

We get out of the car feeling somewhat exalted, and go back to our lives. I’d love to tell Richard, but there’s no way to explain it so he’d understand. Instead Beth and I go around feeling special,
special
, whether because of the experience or because of all Schuylerton society we alone are designated friends of Ashley Famous, it’s hard to say. We don’t talk about it because this is precious and we owe it to Ashley not to tell. Also, it pisses certain people off. Mariel and Stephanie of course, but they were never part of the inner circle. Jeannie because she wasn’t invited, and Gloria for sure.