Текст книги "Being Audrey Hepburn"

Автор книги: Mitchell Kriegman

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4

The Purple Beast wouldn’t start.

Pumping the gas pedal, I turned the key—holding it more forcefully this time. I had to show my 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville who was boss. The starter whined as it cranked. It whined again and finally turned over. The car roared. The Caddy was Nan’s, but the lavender paint job was all mine. Twice the size of a normal car, I knew it was environmentally incorrect, ugly, and ate a hole in my pocket because it took two days’ worth of tips to fill the purple monster up with gas every week. But if you asked me, it was worth it. Probably the only cool thing about me. I would have gone insane without it.

Grandpa kept the car in perfect shape all those years, so it usually ran like a dream, even if I forgot to change the oil. The only thing that didn’t work was the convertible top and the left-turn signal. Hey, nobody in New Jersey uses turn signals anyway.

I threw it in reverse. The car jerked as I backed out of the driveway, swinging narrowly past Mom’s old Corolla and rolling over the trash cans at the bottom near the street. Damn, the car had a mind of its own. Shifting it into drive, I made my way up our street toward Nan’s part of town.

Nan lived at a retirement village called Montclair Manor. When I was younger, it sounded to me like a really fancy estate with servants in black uniforms and crisp white aprons, tea and cucumber sandwiches at 3:00 in the afternoon—only it wasn’t.

The actual Montclair Manor was a dreary cluster of tiny, tumbledown, smog-gray minihouses surrounding a big parking lot and a community house. It had a lovely view of the Barclay’s Vinyl Window plant on Route 495 complete with the factory’s toxic aroma.

To hear Nan, you’d think she was living at the Waldorf, but this place was depressing as hell. I don’t think she’s ever complained about it once. She didn’t even complain about the fact that the Montclair Manor community dining room smelled like old people’s feet. She never complained about any of the aches and creepy diseases that most old people wanted to discuss. And she never complained once about the fact that I was the only one who visited her. My mom and sister hadn’t been there in years. Ryan barely knew she existed.

Mom and Nan didn’t see eye to eye. That’s the nicest way to put it. I wondered if that was something that ran in our family, like nonexistent boobs. There was totally this history of moms and daughters not getting along.

Montclair Manor was an assisted-living home, which meant that the old people were basically on their own, but there was a nurse named Betty and a couple of staffers who checked on the residents every day to make sure that no one had fallen down or, you know, snuffed out in their sleep. I wouldn’t mention it, except it happened—twice last year and three times the year before. Sometimes you got a run where these old people dropped like flies.

A crusty old guy two doors down from Nan died in his ratty plaid recliner while reading a romance novel called The Blackmailed Heiress. His name was Sarge, Army Retired. His name wasn’t actually “Sarge Army Retired.” That’s just the way he said it every time, and how Nan and I would refer to him. He was eighty-three and still trimmed what little hair he had left in a crew cut. He would drop down for fifty push-ups every morning.

Poor Sarge must have been cringing in his grave, because every one of those old ladies he worked so hard to impress with his macho push-up routine found out, in excruciating detail, about his girly Harlequin-romance-novel habit. Personally, I thought it was cute. When the aides cleaned out his place, they found tons of paperback romances everywhere, stashed under the bed, in his old army footlocker, and under the kitchen counter. Sort of like my mom with booze. Anyway, I guess he didn’t want anyone to know that there was a starry-eyed romantic hiding underneath that tough GI exterior.

Nan knew he was a softie. Sarge had a crush on my Nan; he’d tried to flirt with her in that gruff way of his. All of the old guys there did. They would ask Nan out to dinner at Mama Luigi’s or line up to dance with her on Copacabana Night. Her eyes still had a twinkle of enchantment in them. I didn’t know how she kept it going in that dreadful place.

Betty the nurse was leaving as I walked up the crumbly path to Nan’s house. I tried not to laugh when I saw her. She had to be pushing seventy herself. She wore a push-up bra, a bucket of foundation and blush, and she dyed her hair unnaturally jet-black. It shined like the coat on Black Beauty, the horse. She also must have worn an industrial version of Spanx under her uniform. Who knew how she breathed in that thing or how she worked there when she should have been an inmate herself. It was pretty funny when she walked around all day checking on “the old folks” as she referred to the residents, calling them “old dear” and “ma’am” and speaking very loudly while emphasizing every syllable: “HOW ARE YOUR BOW-ELS? DID YOU HAVE A BOW-EL MOVE-MENT TO-DAY?” Please somebody kill me when I get so old people start asking me about the last time I pooped.

“Nan, I’m here,” I yelled. I stepped into the living room and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of rose oil and Joy perfume, which I loved—Nan’s patented antidote to wallowing in your own worries.

“On my way, Lisbeth,” Nan said. She was precariously balancing a giant cheesecake on a silver platter from the kitchen. “Grab forks and plates, will you please, dear?”

My phone buzzed. It was Mom. I hit IGNORE and stuck the phone back in my pocket.

I dropped my backpack on the dilapidated gold velvet slipper chair by the front door. Nan’s place was the same as always—time-warped and tidy. Most of her furniture dated around the 1960s—an eclectically elegant mix of things from her life with Grandpa and the graceful Park Avenue furnishings she inherited when my great-grandmother and great-grandfather died, way before I was born. The rich burgundy embroidery was now yellowed and the silk draperies were probably older, maybe from the forties—and totally oversize for the tiny windows they now framed. But Nan made it all work.

“What is this?” I asked. Nan’s eyes twinkled mischievously as she set the giant cheesecake down in front of me on the coffee table.

“I was thinking, if you don’t mind, we should skip dinner tonight and go straight to dessert?” Nan was my kind of girl.

I nodded and contemplated the cheesecake, which was smothered in chocolate and caramel and pecans. “It does have nuts on it…” I said.

“Yes, and pecans are a good source of protein,” Nan added.

“Totally, and you can’t beat chocolate for antioxidants!” I said.

“Just what I was thinking!” Nan said, delighted. “It’s practically health food.”

I gave Nan a hug, and she squeezed me tightly.

You have to understand what it was like to be hugged by Nan. You didn’t just hug Nan, you melded with her. It felt like your heart and her heart found each other, all perfectly lined up, and they started to beat together. As she hugged you, you noticed her tiny heartbeats grow stronger and stronger with every beat. It was total bliss.

She was petite, as Nan would say, probably five foot five, maybe shorter. Nan did yoga and Aquacise and tap, plus she went ballroom dancing every Thursday. She was as fit as she could be. Once she actually did a headstand right in the middle of her living room. I could hardly believe it. It’s not every day you see an octogenarian upside down.

But lately every time I saw her, it seemed as though she was shrinking a bit. I think that really happens—old people just get smaller because they’re so wrinkly. You know like how your shirt looks when you take it out of the dryer after a couple of days?

“May I?” I said, cutting us each slices and delicately placing them on two small china plates, giving the biggest one to Nan. Nan always ate on china, even if it was just moo goo gai pan from Ping Chong’s Chinese. According to Nan, every day she had left on the planet was a special occasion. She certainly made it feel that way. She was leaving the china to me in her will, probably because I was her favorite and the only person in the family who wouldn’t pimp it on eBay.

“Dear, do you prefer milk or champagne with your cheesecake?” Nan asked as she headed toward the kitchen. I laughed.

“What are you having?” I asked, grabbing a couple of napkins from the veneer antique sideboard.

“Personally, I think a little rosé champagne couldn’t hurt,” she said. She brought in two flutes of pink bubbly. “Everybody says wine is medicinal, and drinking champagne is like sipping starlight.” Her mischievous grin widened, and she whispered, “I want you to have some of the good stuff.” We clinked glasses, and the bubbles went right up my nose. And that’s when my phone buzzed.

There was a text: “SOS @ the Met MMB☺”

It was Jess. She was working late at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that week. They were always giving her impossible projects to finish by dawn, like cataloging dirty and dusty dioramas or making hundreds of labels for every single jar, lid, bowl and floral collar that ever existed in the pharaoh’s funeral tomb. She impressed them every time, but sometimes she was desperate for help or she’d never get out of there. I don’t know how she did it—it was kind of like the worst middle school project ever times a thousand, so not my thing. Lately, Jess had resorted to bribery to get me to come.

I quickly texted her back that I was with Nan.

“Hug Nan for me !! But you need to see this !!”

“Is everything okay?” Nan asked.

“Jess says hi,” I told Nan, and she blew back a kiss. “Uh, Nan…,” I began.

“Go! Have fun with your friend in the city,” she said. She was smiling, waving me to leave and picking up the plates before I could say another word.

“Another hug?”

“Certainly, dear.” I didn’t know who was squeezing tighter, Nan or me.

Jess was texting me on the way out the door to hurry up.

“What’s up ?!” I typed as a pleasant champagne buzz kicked in.

“U won’t believe it !! ☺”

5

The forty-five-minute train ride was boring. I searched my phone for texts I hadn’t answered. I texted everyone and their dog, but no one texted back.

Mom called, but I didn’t pick up. I just couldn’t deal with her tonight. I tried to slyly read the story on the back pages of the People magazine the lady directly across from me held in front of her. Something about Kim Kardashian on a shopping spree in Beijing. But the lady kept shifting, so it was pretty hard to keep my place.

As she turned the page, she caught me leaning forward and gave me the stink-eye, like I was stealing her gossip news. Everyone around me silently turned and glared at me. I shrugged “sorry,” and they went back to what they were doing.

I stared mindlessly out the window at the southern view of highways and wires while the train sped its way to the city. I noticed another dirty scowl from the lady with the People magazine and zoned out. What was she so cranky about?

*   *   *

I opened my eyes, surprised I was at Penn Station. I hated falling asleep on the train and waking to find everyone gone and me just sitting there. Crap.

Bumping my way through the closing doors, I sprinted up the stairs to catch the bus to the Met. I checked the time on my phone. I could still make it by eight.

I got off the bus and made my way toward the employee entrance of the Met on the left side of the building.

“Here !!” I texted, but rounding the corner at a sprint, I slammed into a wall of people crowding the sidewalk in front me, so I stepped out into the street. I heard a screech and turned to see a limo skidding to a stop behind me. I jumped.

“Sorry,” I said. The limo driver drove by, yelling at me. A real New Yorker would have flipped him the bird. There was a flash of light, and I was startled as cameras flashed everywhere around me. I was wearing my favorite jeans and a plaid boyfriend shirt from American Eagle because I don’t have one, so I knew I wasn’t the focus of their attention.

Through the blinding flashes, an unbelievable vision of wealth and fashion rose up before me. A perfect Bergdorf-blonde trust-fund baby, wearing a short gold shift dress with a plunging neckline and puff sleeves, posed for the cameras. Was she wearing Roberto Cavalli or even Christian Siriano? No matter, the Met was having a huge gala, and I was standing smack in the middle of a photo op. The perfect blonde was followed by a Tory Burch sequin tunic dress on a girl with the skinniest legs and a six-hundred-dollar haircut. To the right of me, a drop-dead-gorgeous guy rose out of a nearby limo.

He flashed a megawatt smile with this amused twist like he was laughing at everybody for admiring him. He spun around to find someone and turned to look at—me. I couldn’t pull myself away. My heart slowed, thumping louder and louder. Time seemed to shift into slo-mo. He seemed oddly alone. I was so close, I could see that his eyes were hazel green with gold flecks. He was at least six feet tall, and his dinner jacket fit him as if he were an Emporio Armani model or, better, an underwear model for Abercrombie. I closed my eyes and imagined him in his underwear. When I opened them again, I swear he was still staring right at me.

A long pale leg, and one spectacular stiletto (Louboutin, judging by the red on the bottom) stepped out of the limo, followed by a low-cut V-shaped formal dress exposing almost every part of a lithe, tan young body. Was she wearing Versace? Mr. Underwear-Man reached down and helped her out of the car. It was Dahlia Rothenberg, the princess of all celebutantes, totally famous mostly because she was skinny, blond, notoriously promiscuous, and due to inherit half the real estate in Manhattan.

The cameras went crazy as she posed with Mr. Underwear-Man, then alone. God, I couldn’t stop staring at her body. I bet she never ate. Linking her arm in his, they sauntered down the red carpet, smiling and chatting as they moved toward the museum entrance with the other young fashionistas. Dahlia made her way up the museum steps in those sky-high heels with elegant, tiny steps. If it were me, I’d have tripped and fallen already.

I said a little prayer that Mr. Underwear-Man would look back at me. Of course, he didn’t. He disappeared inside the museum doors. Turning to leave, I found myself blinded by a bright light that beamed steadily in my eyes. It was the light from a camera crew. A scruffy, unassuming guy held the camera as a slick Ryan Seacrest type in a tux with a microphone searched for people to interview. The cameraman noticed me shielding my eyes and moved the light away, and I could see again. He shrugged an apology, and I nodded thanks.

Ohmygod—Tabitha Eden stepped out of another car! Yes, the Princess of Pop, the fave of teenyboppers everywhere. And despite my being way older than her audience, I LOVED HER! She was wearing a supershort silver dress. Completely awesome, by the way. She was totally going to make FabSugar’s best dressed. And she managed to get out of the car looking like the star that she was without pulling a Britney.

Every minute I kept watching made me feel like a lowly tourist in a country of fabulousness, but I couldn’t tear myself away. The women were stunning, and the men were all graceful and handsome. I couldn’t imagine being with people like that. I personally didn’t know any boys who didn’t burp the alphabet. Maybe I could track down my father and ask him to set me up with a million-dollar trust fund, a good trick considering he’d never paid child support. Besides, money alone wasn’t enough to hang with this crowd.

Limousines, personal shoppers, and weekends in the Hamptons—these kids were just so not like me with their thousand-dollar handbags, designer drugs, and life options. It was sick—just another club that I’d never get into, waiting at the ropes as usual. They had all the wealth and glamour in a world where a lot of people I knew were forced to choose between groceries and rent, where kids graduated college with crippling student loans and no job prospects, and where my greatest opportunity in life was to be a nurse-practitioner. I felt like a troll. You’d never know my world existed while gazing at these beautiful and carefree creatures.

I glanced at my watch and realized I had been standing there for over ten minutes. Jess was probably annoyed already waiting at the back door, but I was sort of stuck. There was no direct route to the other side of the building, which meant I had to either cross the red carpet (um, yeah, that would go over well) or go back across the street to get to the other side.

Being a good girl, I opted for the street and made my way up Fifth Avenue. Another limo (or was it the same guy out of spite?) nearly clipped me as I stepped off the sidewalk. Walking halfway up the block, I crossed back to the museum.

“Where r u ?!” Jess texted

Running across the street, I couldn’t stop thinking about the gowns, the shoes, and Mr. Underwear-Man’s golden-green eyes. As if I’d ever go to a party like that.

At the door, Jess gave me a quick hug. She looked her usual cool—short Halle Berry hair dyed dark blue tucked behind her ear with a pencil and her museum key card hanging around her neck. She wore five or six chunky necklaces, one made of dozens of weird old antique buttons and a black Ramones T-shirt over a tiered skirt with a sort of iridescent blue lining. It must have been one of her own creations—it was way too cool to be off the rack in our price range.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“You know, the paparazzi were blocking my entrance as usual,” I said.

Jess laughed. “Happens to me all the time, dahling.”

“What’s going on here tonight?” I asked, images of Mr. Underwear-Man on the museum steps wistfully replaying in my mind.

“It’s the Millennial Social Register Gala, sorta like prom for Park Avenue Princesses and Moguls in Training with a few pop stars thrown in to make things interesting,” Jess said. “Got to admit, it is one hell of a fashion show.”

As we walked through the back entrance, Joe, the security guard, buzzed us in as Jess nodded and I waved. Following Jess down a series of hallways and up the stairs to the large, very cold room where she worked, I wished I’d brought my hoodie. Even though it was summer, I was shivering. Jess said that the reason it was so effin’ freezing in there all the time was that it helped preserve the artifacts. After ten or twenty minutes, I felt like a frozen turkey—so I guess it worked.

The long metal tables were always covered with whatever project Jess had been tasked with. That night, fragments of an Egyptian sculpture—hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of noses, ears, faces—were everywhere. Jess was wearing a pair of blue nitrile gloves and threw some my way.

“Jeez, did a tourist go nuts and smash up one of the pharaoh statues?” I asked, putting on the gloves.

“Yeah, didn’t you hear?” Jess asked. “It was a big deal—three-thousand years ago.” She chuckled.

“Ha, sorry, I’m so clueless.”

“This is what’s left of Queen Hatshepsut, the great female pharaoh who ruled Egypt during Dynasty Eighteen, approximately 1473 to 1458 B.C. Her son did it. Thutmose the Third. He must have been a total dick. When she died, he destroyed all the images of his mom in existence. Thankfully he missed a few. These are the smashed pieces of the funerary temple.”

“Maybe he was pissed about that name … Thutmose—that had to really suck in middle school.”

“For sure. But, lucky me, I get to bar code and enter each of these little fragments into the collection management system. Fun, huh? And you get to help.”

“This will make for a thrilling night,” I said. “Why do I let you rope me into this drudgery?”

“I guess you must like me,” she answered and gave me a goofy grin.

“Hey, didn’t you say there was something I had to see?”

“Oh yeah, I have a little surprise for you.” With a mischievous look, Jess lifted up a large box from under the table.

“Apparently it was recently logged in on loan from Hubert de Givenchy’s private archive, no less,” she said. “I came across it in my last plunge into the frozen depths of the Met’s Costume Institute archives. I’ll have to put it back right away.”

She gently opened the box and pulled back the paper. I felt my breath catch short as I realized what was inside.

I could hardly believe it.