Being Audrey Hepburn (2 page)

See, Mom never had a “plan” either. After her party years, she never moved away like she told Nan she would. She expected Dad would make money someday, but instead he ditched us and left Mom with a ton of debt.

Eventually she had to make ends meet, so she went back to her maiden name to avoid all the creditors and spent a year in vocational school to become a nurse. We ended up in South End, which isn’t exactly Upper Montclair or even Lower Montclair. Lower Montclair, which we’re close to, was where all the hip professionals lived. They had three ice cream shops and lots of espresso bars and clothing stores like Anthropologie and American Apparel. In South End, we had the K&G Fashion Superstore and Advanced Auto Parts.

Mom worried 24-7. She worried about the dishes in the sink, about the heating bills, about Courtney stealing her last two cigarettes. Then there was my brother, Ryan. At thirteen, he had racked up so many misdemeanors that the security guards at the courthouse knew him on sight.

And
my
“plan”? Good question.

My life was mapped out. I’d always been the good girl. As much as I’d missed out on a lot of the kind of wild stuff Courtney did (binge drinking, wet T-shirt contests, and generally waking up someplace and having no idea how you got there), I was fine with following the rules. Honestly, I didn’t want to put myself out there that much. Too many friends and friends of my sister’s ended up pregnant early, drunk, addicted, or dead without ever even getting old. Maybe it was that middle-kid thing (if you consider my younger brother, Ryan, in the category of “kid,” rather than, say, devil spawn or homeland terrorist threat). I never had a rebellious phase.

But just because I was quiet didn’t mean I had no opinions. In my head I always had a witty retort. I just never had the guts to say anything out loud. I’d mumble to myself or write it down in my journal. No one really knew I had a clue about anything, except Jess. After all, I wasn’t sitting home like a shut-in licking orange dust from the last bag of Cheez Doodles or anything. I’d go out weekends just to get out of the house. I drank a little, but I never got in trouble or drew attention to myself.

Mom’s plan for me was two years at Essex County Community College to get all my requirements out of the way and then Montclair State University for a MSN or DNP degree. Mom wouldn’t have to pay my room and board because they were both close to home. The goal was to become a nurse-practitioner, which was one step below a doctor but a step above being a nurse like Mom. Mom told everybody about her plan for me whenever she introduced me to anyone.

The truth was, I’d agreed and got decent grades just to keep everyone off my back. Courtney even helped me cram for finals because she wanted me to go, too. It took the pressure off of her.

Downstairs, Courtney must have come back inside. She was still screaming, but the words sounded more muffled with my closet door closed. They were probably in the living room. But it didn’t matter where in the house they were. I knew the words by heart. In fact, I was the only one who knew
why
they fought—even though they didn’t.

Underneath it all, Mom and Courtney always argued about the same thing. My sister and my mom were like the same person at different points in time. Like
Back to the Future,
where you traveled forward in time but had to be careful not to run into your future self at the Piggly Wiggly because the space-time continuum would collapse. That space-time collision pretty much happened at my house every day.

Though Courtney was a total bitch to me, I felt for her, because Mom knew everything Courtney was going to do wrong before she even thought of doing it, like she was crawling inside her skin. I think that’s why Courtney pushed it to the limit.

Then there was my surprise baby brother, Ryan, who seemed destined to become a complete undermining tool. Dad left a few months before Ryan was born. Funny about that.

When Ryan was little, he burned through babysitters like toilet paper. It didn’t matter if they were nice old ladies, perky teenagers, a Navy SEAL or the Cat in the Hat. None of them made a difference, and none of them lasted. Mom used to joke that she felt like the devil recruiting new souls for a three-to-midnight shift in hell. Once Ryan turned twelve, Mom just gave up.

It sounds weird, but I’d been hanging in my closet since I was five. First time was when Dad put his fist through the kitchen wall, which was followed by a barrage of dining room plates Mom hurled at him. Years later, Courtney and Mom’s screaming matches sent me into hiding again

I pulled the door tight. It was pretty comfy when I was little, almost like a walk-in, so it’s not like I was a total coffin freak. Although these days, I had to squeeze. Even though we didn’t have AC, the temp in my closet was pretty cool. Mashing the pillows around me like a nest, I pushed the big turquoise body pillow to the door, blocking the light and their voices. They were still arguing.

I grabbed a Coke out of the minifridge. Yes, I had a minifridge in my closet. I won it by selling more wrapping paper and chocolate than anyone in the history of my tenth-grade class. My secret weapon was to hit up old lady Conner down the street for a bundle. She smoked a lot of weed and bought my chocolates so I wouldn’t tell anyone. As if I would.

I opened my laptop and thanked God for the Internet. There was always a new Web site to check out. I think the Internet was designed for people like me, who need somewhere to go to forget where they really are.

Within a dozen clicks, I could get lost in the urgent need to know the most important details about all the stuff I couldn’t have, didn’t need, but couldn’t live without. There was an update on the hot young royals at Jezebel, Kate Bosworth’s ultrachic cocktail sheath, and red python-print heels at FabSugar, a rundown of who’s prematurely aging at TMZ for their “Celebs Without Makeup” feature, a sneak peek at Jason Wu’s unbelievable new designs for Fashion Week, and a fleeting look at Page Six, the old standby, where I saw the latest on Taylor Swift. Ugh. Did they pass a law requiring that every celebrity Web site had to have a feature on Taylor Swift’s crimped dos and her latest glitter-like-a-princess dress?

Once that was out of my system, I clicked on the DVD in my computer—
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

As the mournful first chords played over the Paramount logo, I fell into a trance. I was there on the street as the lone cab crept up Fifth Avenue, the melancholy notes of “Moon River” weaving their way through my headphones, deep into my cerebral cortex and through my entire body, like the gas they give you at a dentist’s office when your wisdom teeth are removed.

Sinking into the pillows, I melted away to be with Audrey as she stepped out of that yellow 1960 Ford Galaxie taxi wearing the exquisite Givenchy with those extravagant gloves and the four giant strands of pearls. We looked up at the chiseled Tiffany & Co. name above its Fifth Avenue entrance and gazed through the jewelry store window at those miniature chandeliers and floating bracelets, all the while sitting in my closet.

Although I was completely addicted to all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
was my total fix.

It was my IV drip bag.

3

Here’s the big secret—Audrey Hepburn is the cure for everything.

Dumped by your lifelong crush?
Sabrina
. Want to escape your life and go incognito?
Roman Holiday.
Tired of being a bookworm?
Funny Face.
Crisis of conscience?
The Nun’s Story.
Family secrets to cover up?
How to Steal a Million.
Ready for a vacation escapade with a little intrigue in Paris?
Charade.

A movie cure for every need.

Above them all is
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I loved the flat-out glamour of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
the false eyelashes, the roaring parties, the tiaras and pearls, and the “darlings.” I loved that Holly Golightly slept with a satin mask and turquoise earplugs with little tassels. I wished I could pull off a look like that.

Edda van Heemstra, Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Audrey Hepburn-Ruston were some of her names, and each one was an evolution toward the Audrey we grew to love. From hours of obsessive online research in the confines of my closet, I knew she grew up during the Holocaust and World War II and was at one point forced to eat tulip bulbs and bake bread out of grass. If Audrey could do all that during a world war, you’d think that I, Lisbeth Anne Wachowicz, growing up in South End Montclair, New Jersey, could make something out of my life. Although the bread-out-of-grass thing seemed totally out of the question.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
was the one-hour-and-fifty-five-minute version of my hopes and dreams and all the lurking dangers in-between. I’ll never forget the first time I ever heard Holly Golightly talk about what it felt like to have the mean reds. I immediately realized that there were mean reds around me all the time.

Everybody knew that you got the blues because you were stuck or you were depressed or you were being treated unfairly. But the mean reds were more unsettling, because when you have them, you don’t know what you’re afraid of, except that something bad was going to happen, and you didn’t know who to tell or what to do.

There wasn’t a time I can remember when I didn’t feel that way. Something bad was always about to happen. Mom and Dad were building to a fight. Dad was itching to leave. Mom was getting plastered, and Courtney was nowhere around. Ryan … well, who knew what lurked inside that poor boy’s soul? And me, what could I do about it all?

When the mean red panic light inside me flashed, I found myself further and further away from who I was or could hope to be. It all just made me want to put everything on hold, keep to myself, and be quiet as a mouse.

I loved Holly Golightly’s Tiffany cure. It wasn’t about the merchandise. Even Holly said that—she didn’t give a hoot about jewelry. “Diamonds are for old elegant white-haired ladies,” she said famously.

Have you been to Tiffany’s? I don’t mean the mall stores like the ones in Short Hills or Hackensack. Fifth Avenue is the only one that will do. Just walk in sometime and experience its tranquility, harmony, and splendor. You don’t have to buy anything. Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend, they’re a sparkling tonic for the soul, like summer rain, gazing at the Milky Way, or snowflakes that land on your tongue.

Tiffany’s was a state of mind, exquisitely removed from fear and panic. That’s what made it medicinal. When Holly Golightly took me on my first Tiffany’s tour, I realized that I’d finally found someone who felt what I felt.

Pretty much since my ninth birthday, I’d been watching
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
continuously. That’s when Nan gave me my first VHS tape of the movie.

I watched the first one nonstop until the tape became hopelessly entangled in our secondhand VCR. The replacement copy lasted longer, but I was limited by family viewing time, which meant I couldn’t watch when Ryan was mainlining
SpongeBob
and
Fairly Odd Parents
. Thank God for laptops with DVD drives—my closet became my own personal multiplex, my ticket to a world that I lived in more than this one. And it was really all because of Nan.

Nan was my grandmother, my mom’s mom. She was so different from Mom; it was hard to believe they could possibly share the same DNA.

Nan laughed all the time and had a totally wicked-smart sense of humor. Tiny and elegant, everything she wore was from the 1960s. She never left her house without a touch of rouge, lipstick, and her classic double strand of pearls—a look she’d been wearing since her debutante days—though she worried about the punks on the street trying to snatch them.

Oh crap! Nan!

I grabbed my phone and checked the time—5:04. Crap, crap, crap. I was supposed to have been at Nan’s at five. Yanking off my headphones, I scrambled out of the closet on my knees and dug through the piles of laundry in my room for my favorite pair of jeans, a blouse, and shoes. I slid my laptop into my bag, tossed the bag over my shoulder, and bounded down the stairs toward the kitchen. How was I going to make an exit without getting stuck?

As I tiptoed into the kitchen, I saw Mom at the table in the breakfast nook, her face puffy and red from crying. No sign of Courtney. I couldn’t just ignore her, could I?

“Mom, uh, are you okay?” I asked.

Big mistake. She turned full bore on me.

“You better not turn out like your sister.” I nodded my head no.

“Good. There’s leftover lasagna. Make us something to eat,” she said and walked over to the paper towels, wiping her nose. “I’m too upset.”

Shit.

I forced myself to say something.

“I have to go.”

“What?” She was inspecting me, in that way of hers, like I was under a microscope. Mom has this method of picking on people’s sensitive points. Like in second grade, when I used to invite Sarah Policki, our next-door neighbor, over to play, and we’d ask for a snack, Mom would laugh and say that Sarah looked like she’d had too many snacks already. Just like she made fun of my bony knees. Eventually Sarah stopped coming over. Mom wasn’t exactly great for your self-esteem, especially when she was drinking.

I saw the wheels turning in her head. There was still too much fight in her.

“Mom, I’m already late for Nan’s.” I hated that I sounded like I was begging. She paused for a second, probably debating whether she should strike and go for the kill. I hoped that the mention of Nan had thrown her.

“Nan’s waiting, Mom. I’ve gotta go,” I said. Seizing the moment, I pushed open the kitchen door.

“We need to have that talk,” Mom yelled after me.

I didn’t know and didn’t
want
to know what “that talk” was.

But what I did know was that she hadn’t found out yet.

You know my “plan”? The whole thing I told you about, the one thing Mom was counting on and Courtney almost as much? The Mama’s “good girl going to school at Essex and becoming a nurse-practitioner” plan?