“She’s stable.”
“I can be stable.”
“She’s in the same place all the time.”
“And that’s what you want? Some little mouse who will do everything you say?”
“You don’t know Susan. She’s very independent.”
“She’s dependent. That’s the real reason why you want to marry her. At least be truthful about your motives.”
“We’re getting married on September twenty-sixth.”
“Where?”
“I won’t tell you. I don’t want you to crash the wedding.”
“I’m not going to crash it. Why are you so worried? I bet you’re getting married in her parents’ backyard.”
“Their country house, actually. In East Hampton.”
She did crash the wedding by enlisting Billy Litchfield to help her. They hid in the hedges surrounding the property. She watched Philip in a white linen suit say “I do” to another woman. For months afterward, she justified her behavior by claiming Philip’s marriage was like a death: One needed to see the dead body in order to believe the soul was really gone.
A little over a year had passed when she heard from an agent that Philip was getting divorced. His marriage had lasted fourteen months. But by then it was too late. Schiffer was engaged to the English marquis, an aging glamour boy who turned out to have a vicious drug habit. When he died in a boating accident in Saint-Tropez, she went back to L.A. to restart her career.
There was no work, her agent told her—she’d been away for too long, and she was over thirty-five. He said she ought to do what every other actress did and start having children. Being alone in L.A. without work to distract her from her husband’s death slammed her into a deep depression, and one day she didn’t bother to get out of bed. She stayed there for weeks.
Philip had come to L.A. in that time, but she’d made excuses not to see him. She couldn’t see anyone. She could barely leave the house in Los Feliz. The thought of driving down the hill to the supermarket exhausted her, it took hours to work up the energy to gather her things, get in the car, and back it out of the garage. Steering the car along the hairpin turns, she looked for places where she might drive off the road and into a steep ravine, but she wasn’t sure an accident would result in death, and it might leave her worse off than she already was.
Her agent forced her to lunch one afternoon at the Polo Club. She could barely speak and picked at her food. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. She shook her head, murmuring, “I don’t know.”
“I can’t send you out like this. Hollywood is a cruel town. They’ll say you’ll never work again, if they’re not saying it already. Why don’t you go to the desert? Or Mexico. Even Malibu, for Christ’s sake. Take a couple of weeks. Or a month. When you come back, I can probably get you a part playing someone’s mother.”
When the interminable lunch was over and she was back in her car driving down Sunset, she began to cry uncontrollably and couldn’t stop for several hours. There was the unaccountable despair, but the shame was the worst of it. People like her weren’t supposed to be depressed, but she felt broken and didn’t know how to fix herself. Out of pity, her agent sent her a script for a TV series. She refused to meet the writer for lunch but allowed him to come to the house. His name was Tom, and he was younger than she and eager and sensitive and wasn’t put off by her weakness. He said he wanted to help her, and she let him, and soon they were lovers, and shortly thereafter, he moved in. She didn’t take the part in the series, but it was a hit, and Tom made money and stuck with her, and then they were married. She started working again, too, and made three independent movies, one of which was nominated for an Oscar, putting her back on the map. Things were good with Tom, too. He made another TV show, and it was a hit as well, but then he had to work all the time, and they became irritated with each other. She took nearly every part she was offered in order to get away from him and their marriage. They continued like that for another three years, and then she found out Tom was having an affair, and it was easy. They’d been married six years, and not once in those six years did she stop thinking about Philip or what her life would have been like if she were with him instead.
5
Lately, sex was weighing heavily on Mindy’s mind. She and James didn’t do it enough. In fact, they didn’t do it at all. Looking at it optimistically, they did it once or twice a year. It was terrible and wrong and made Mindy feel like she was a bad wife, not doing her duty, but at the same time, it was such a relief not to do it.
The problem was, it hurt. She knew this could be an issue for women as they got older. But she thought it didn’t happen until well after menopause. She’d never expected it to happen so soon. At the beginning, when she’d first met James, and even into their fourth or fifth year of marriage, she’d prided herself on being good at sex. For years after Sam was born, she and James would do it once a week and really make a night of it. They had things they liked to do. Mindy liked to be tied up, and sometimes she would tie James up (they had special ties they used for this practice—old Brooks Brothers ties James had worn in college), and when James was tied up, she would ride his penis like a banshee. Over time, the sex started to dwindle, which was normal for married couples, but they still did it once or twice a month, and then, two years ago, the pain came. She went to her female gynecologist and tried to talk about it, but the doctor said her vagina wasn’t dried up and she wasn’t going through menopause and she should use lotions. Mindy knew all about sex lotions, but they didn’t work, either. So she bought a vibrator. Nothing fancy, just a plain slim tube of colored light blue plastic. She didn’t know why she picked light blue. It was better than pink or purple, she supposed. On a Saturday afternoon when James was out with Sam, she tried to put the vibrator in her vagina but could get it no farther than an inch before the pain started. She began avoiding sex altogether. James never asked her about it, but the lack of sex in their marriage lay between them like a sack of potatoes. Mindy felt guilty and ashamed, although she told herself it didn’t matter.
Now it looked like James was going to be successful, and it did matter. She wasn’t stupid. She knew successful men had more choices. If she didn’t give him sex, he might get it somewhere else. Arriving home from work on Tuesday evening, Mindy was determined to do it with James that night no matter how much it hurt. But real life intruded.
“Are you going to the funeral?” Roberto asked her as she came into the lobby of One Fifth.
“What funeral?” Mindy asked.
“Mrs. Houghton. It’s tomorrow at St. Ambrose Church.” Roberto, who was always smiling, laughed. “I hear it’s private.”
“Funerals aren’t private,” Mindy said.
“This one is. I hear you need an invitation.”
“Where did you hear that?” Mindy said.
“I just heard, is all,” Roberto said and laughed.
Mindy was furious. Instead of going to her apartment, she went up to Enid Merle’s. “What’s this about Mrs. Houghton’s funeral?” she said.