Being Audrey Hepburn (41 page)

It was time to go back to New Jersey.

66

I should have told them right away. Nan, Mom, Courtney, and Ryan were all sitting there waiting for me. I couldn’t imagine how unbelievably fast Dahlia had put her plan into action.

“Pinched Givenchy!” was the headline on the front page of
The New York Post
lying on the kitchen table in front of them.

My face was on the cover.

I was wearing the dress.

And the tiara.

They had cropped out ZK and Dahlia.

“I’ve done something terrible,” I said, which at the time seemed like a massive understatement. I waited for Nan or Mom’s reaction, but there wasn’t one.

When the NYPD detectives picked me up for interrogation, they asked if I had a lawyer. I knew we couldn’t afford one, so I was given a public defender, who seemed even younger than me, like he was just out of law school. He seemed more terrified than I was of the press and was no help at all.

Without any prior criminal record (I hadn’t even had one day of high school detention) and my name and face plastered on tabloids, I wasn’t considered a flight risk, so they sent me home to Jersey. After all, they didn’t have formal charges—yet.

I had read the article on the PATH train home.
The Post
gave me the full tabloid treatment, I guess because it was a slow news day in a slow news week, and because their venerable Page Six had been victimized as part of the fraud.

Dahlia slipped the whole story to some intrepid society reporter for
The New York Post,
who did his best to uncover the sordid details about me and Nan. It hadn’t taken long to search through their photo archive. I should have known that evidence of my Givenchy napping would surface.

Pretty much everything in the article was true: how I had faked and photobombed my way among the Upper East Siders, freeloading in their world of conspicuous consumption—limousines, personal shoppers, weekends in the Hamptons—passing as one of them when I was a wannabe South Ender from Jersey.

It featured a teary-eyed Tabitha Eden with a quote beneath her picture: “I felt devastated and betrayed. She wormed and manipulated her way into every aspect of my life. I regret every moment I knew her.” I assumed someone had written that line for her, but it made me sad regardless. How Dahlia persuaded Tabitha to be in the article I’ll never understand. The reporter discretely kept Dahlia’s name out. No one would have known she arranged the whole thing.

Back home in the kitchen everyone seemed stunned, except smart-ass, smirking Ryan. All the color drained out of Nan’s face when I got to the part about Sammy. And when I admitted how I let the bracelet get taken away from me, I couldn’t stop sobbing and threw myself at Nan’s feet. I hugged her legs, hoping she wouldn’t hate me, afraid to meet her eyes.

“Wow,” Courtney finally said over my sobbing, “and I thought I was the bad girl in the family. Totally beats me.” Everyone laughed a little at that.

“So is it true about Dad?” Mom asked, turning to Nan.

Nan ran her hands through my hair. Her head trembled a little as she spoke.

“I knew they would find out eventually,” Nan said almost in a whisper. “I’m just glad Sammy’s not around to see it.”

“Can I tell my friends at school?” Ryan asked. Mom laughed a little.

“Typical Ryan,” she said. “Just keep a lid on it, okay?” Then she turned to me.

“Come here, Lisbeth,” she said. When I got up, I was surprised to see that she was holding out her arms for me. We hugged and I just kept sobbing. I don’t think my mom and I had hugged since I was tiny. Her arms were kind of flabby because she had lost so much weight, but her skin hadn’t shrunk. It felt good to feel close to her. I couldn’t help thinking that for the first time she didn’t smell of cigarettes and booze.

There’s nothing like having your personal problems and the worst situation you’ve ever been in in your life put on national media for everyone to slice, dice, and dissect. As soon as
The Post
article came out,
that very day,
we clocked at least twenty-six threats on our phone at home. Unsurprisingly, my e-mail and phone number leaked out pretty quickly, but it took a little longer for them to find Lisbeth Dulac’s Facebook. The mere success of my blog, Limelight, was my undoing. And it happened almost instantly.

Trolls are angry monsters who live under a bridge and eat goats by snapping their necks and drinking their blood while venting their inner rage on Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook. I shut off my phone and stopped opening my e-mail account, but Limelight was a mess.

“Liar,” “Fraud,” “Poseur,” “Hoax,” and the most troubling, “Con Artist,” were just some of the non-four-letter words I was called in the various news outlets, although liar and hoax
do
count, if you’re being technical. On the blog the words were much worse, the kind of sexually violent, unprintable words that only anonymous commenters can get away with.

Misogynists, stalkers, serial harassers, and cyberbullies came to the site in waves. I learned the art of triage and skimmed to find out if there was any actual personally threatening data or just your normal everyday nasty invective. When our address on Pine Street popped up, I knew we were in deeper trouble and stopped looking.

We changed our number a bunch of times, but stuff just happened. Someone using a falsified Uber account thought it was funny to send twelve limos to show up at our house all at the same time between 11:30
P.M.
and 2:00 in the morning.

It was raining the morning the police, wearing blue raid jackets, stood outside our house.

“We’re here to execute a search warrant,” the agent said as Mom let them inside. The search warrant gave the government authorization to seize “fruits of a possible crime,” even though I hadn’t been charged with anything. It made me wonder what the “fruits of my crime” were.

Wearing blue nitrile gloves, they basically ransacked my bedroom and seemed pretty happy when they found my closet and all the Audrey Hepburn posters. They neatly rolled up the posters as evidence, tagged them, and put them in big plastic bags. I couldn’t help thinking what Jess would have said about their curatorial techniques. They took my computer and all my VHS and DVD copies of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday,
and the other Audrey Hepburn movies. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have been able to watch them anyway.

News trucks and reporters started crowding up the streets as another group of agents arrived and Mom let them in. What else was she supposed to do?

When a woman wearing a dark blue business suit and dark blue blouse flashed her FBI medallion, we all knew they were here for Nan.

Nan asked permission to use the bathroom, and they made a big show of checking out the downstairs bathroom before she entered, even stationing an agent outside the little window and ventilation fan in the back with another agent in front of the door. As if at eighty-one she was going to make a mad dash for freedom. Nan just wanted to tidy up her makeup and look nice for when they took her away. She didn’t even try to avoid the cameras as the feds walked her out of the house in handcuffs, head held high and smiling as bright as ever, wearing her patented double strand of white pearls.

I couldn’t believe I had caused all these horrible things to rain down on my family.

I climbed back upstairs, crawled into my empty closet, and cried.

67

“Lisbeth was the quiet one,” Mrs. Walker, my biology teacher from Montclair High, was quoted saying in a
New York Magazine
piece. The article compared me to JT Leroy, the literary hoaxer who famously fooled Carrie Fisher and Asia Argento, and to Esther Reed, a con artist with multiple identities, both of whom were caught for masquerading as someone they weren’t for fame and profit. “I would hardly have ever expected her to steal a world-famous dress,” Mrs. Walker added condescendingly. I think they talk the same way about serial murderers.

The piece went on to assume that I was the latest example of social anxiety disorder, appropriately abbreviated as SAD in the DSM-5, where psychiatrists catalog all forms of mental illness. Also known as social phobia, it is considered the most common anxiety disorder: 12 percent of Americans have experienced it in their lifetime. It’s also a disorder that is frequently associated with crime. They analyzed me as being withdrawn, introverted, and characterized by intense social fear, theorizing that I lashed out at society by pretending to be someone else. I was kind of insulted by their theory.

The article made Mom consider moving away, and I think we would have if Nan weren’t still under threat of a federal indictment. And then what happened to Mom made it impossible.

She woke up vomiting, and if Courtney and I hadn’t rushed to Mom’s bedroom and turned her on her side, Mom would have drowned in her own puke. Stuff was up in her nose and everything. It scared the shit out of us. Even after we turned her over, she still wasn’t breathing, so I stuck my fingers down her throat and desperately tried to clear her airway. Finally Mom coughed up more stuff, and I got her to sit up while Courtney called an ambulance.

At the hospital, her liver tests were alarming: ALP—186, GGT—455, MCV—111, and a platelet count over 96,000. I didn’t really know what all that meant—even though the doctors and nurses kept talking about it. Finally I found Dr. Newton to find out what was going on.

“Her liver isn’t functioning,” he said. “We can stabilize her for a while, but we’re not sure what we can do at this point.”

“But she stopped drinking,” I said, feeling hopeless.

“Which is a good development, but the damage was already there,” he said.

“What about a transplant?” Courtney piped up. “She’s on the list, right?”

“We’ve already moved her to the top of the list. And we’ll even go outside our designated area, but there are no guarantees that an organ will be available or that your mom will be able to endure the long hours of surgery,” he said.

Courtney and I silently held hands in the waiting area, alone with the ferns and the rows of mauve chairs with the endless, repetitive voices of cable news filling up the empty space.

After Mom’s condition stabilized, we were allowed to visit her. Every nurse, doctor, and orderly watched as we came in. I couldn’t help feeling that their opinions about me had changed, as if I had caused this terrible thing to happen to my mother. I certainly didn’t feel like the good girl anymore.

“Your lovely daughters are here,” Nurse Brynner said. She was just as warm as ever. Unlike my mother, she seemed healthier than before. As we entered, she whispered to me, “Maybe you can talk some sense into her.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

When she saw us walking in together holding hands, Mom looked pleased. We sat down by her bed. She seemed to be resting well and no longer in pain.

“It’s mostly just dehydration,” she said, as if that was an explanation for her condition. “I’ll get back on my feet soon.”

“Dr. Newton doesn’t think so,” I said. I guess I had lost all my reticence in talking to Mom the way I used to. Courtney was horrified.

“Don’t speak to her that way,” she said.

“I’m just saying there’s more going on than that,” I responded, defending myself.

“Well, you don’t have to talk about it now!” she demanded. I thought she might start screaming at me, and I winced a little. I could see Mom knew what was going on. It was like she always knew what went down between Courtney and me but was just so messed up in her own life she couldn’t acknowledge it.

“No Court, sorry, Lisbeth is right,” she said. “There is something we need to talk about.” I braced myself, terrified at what she might say next.

“I told the doctors and the nurses and everybody that I don’t want a transplant.”

“Are you crazy?” Courtney said. Now she was really angry.

“I don’t deserve it, Court. They shouldn’t waste an organ on me,” she said. I could tell she had been thinking about it for a long time. “A transplant isn’t like other operations. I’ve seen the patients that need them and how difficult the surgery is. There’s a terrible shortage of organs, and many people who are a lot more worthy than me are waiting for them. I’ll just do the best I can.”

The wind seemed to go out of Courtney. I was devastated, too. We didn’t know what to say. I listened to the various medical monitors beep and whirr, making a symphony of sadness in the room.

Slowly, I found myself trying to unravel the logic of what Mom was saying. I knew she was trying to do something noble. It seemed selfish of me, but I was starting to get mad that she was bailing on us. Sure, it was the “good nurse” in Mom who was trying to do the right thing, but she was giving up on us, too.

“It’s not fair,” I said determinedly. “You’re saying that
we’re
not worthy. I know I fucked up royally. But I need you more than ever—Courtney and Ryan, too. Nan for that matter, not that you ever think of her.”

Mom looked at me astounded. Courtney didn’t know what to make of it. I’m not sure Court understood what I was trying to say. She was so used to being left behind, and although she was always mad about it, in some way she expected it.

“I can’t sit here with you,” I said. “If this is the way it’s going to be, I’ve got to go.”

68

I expected Jess, but I hadn’t dreamed that Jake would show up with her.

I mean, Jake was an effin’ rock star practically. I was surprised that the press wasn’t following
him
. Of course, by now my story had been replaced with other headlines, like the one about Kim Kardashian dancing with Kanye at a Miami disco even though she’s eight months pregnant with another baby. The TV news vans and reporters’ cars were no longer hanging outside the house.

Jess and Jake sat down on the couch in the living room. I couldn’t help realizing that when I was younger we never sat in the living room. I never spent anytime downstairs if I could help it.

Jess was wearing all black. Since the runway show, she had dropped out of FIT and become even more devoted to her fashion line, if that was possible. Judging by her clothes she had definitely made the transition to being a city dweller. After all, in New York City black is always the new black.