Strange but True (13 page)

With that, she hangs up the phone and tosses it on the circular white carpet over by the sliding door that leads to the terrace. As she sits up on her exercise mat, Holly's shoulders feel lighter—so does her entire body, for that matter. Her only regret is that she didn't do it years ago. When she presses Play, the Facercise girl finishes making that vomit expression and says, “Next we're going to do an exercise that helps keep my lips pliant and prevents me from getting those skinny chicken lips that come with age. I'm sure everyone will be good at this one. All you have to do is pucker up like you're kissing someone. I'll leave it to you ladies to imagine who that someone is. Personally, I'll be thinking of Brad Pitt. So come on, show me those kissing lips. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Hold it. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Hold it. We're aiming for maximum tension here. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Hold it.”

Holly keeps watching but doesn't follow along with the exercise, if you could call it that. After all, the girl on the screen—an “international beauty expert,” as she's called on the case—is years away from getting frown lines or old-lady lips, so what does she know anyway? If Brad Pitt were to kiss her, the authorities would probably haul him off to prison for pedophilia. Holly's friend Marley had clearly lost her judgment on this one.

The phone rings again.

Holly looks over at it warily, as though it's a time bomb resting on the white carpet where she had thrown it a moment before. Since she has decided not to bother with this Facercise madness any longer, she pauses the DVD, then crawls over to the phone in her spandex and answers it, intent on giving Charlene another piece of her mind. “Hello.”

“If you ever hang up on me again, you skinny bitch, I will be on the next plane to Palm Beach. And you know what I'll do? I'll buy an apartment in your building. Maybe even right next door. And I'll torture the two of you until your dying day. So I'm going to tell you again that I need to talk to the father of my children. Because I am not calling about money as you so rudely assumed. I am calling about Richard and my son.”

Holly is about to hurl a litany of insults back at Charlene until she hears that last part. Ever since Philip was found in the alleyway behind his apartment building one month ago, Richard has been acting differently. It's nothing he's said exactly, but after he stepped off the plane from his visit to the hospital in New York, Holly has sensed a kind of heaviness about him. Especially when Philip's name comes up in conversation. What's more, he seems permanently distracted, changing his mind at the last moment, acting more indecisive and impulsive than ever before. Just last night, on the way to the event at the hospital, he announced that he didn't want to go, for no good reason at all, though Holly managed to finally convince him.

As she stands and makes her way through the condo, her bare manicured feet slapping against the marble tiles while she moves past the row of sliding glass doors, down through the hallway and on toward the bedroom, Holly drops the stern voice and asks Charlene, “Is Philip okay?”

“Not that it's any of your business, but this has to do with our other son. Ronnie. The dead one. I know you two never met, but I'm sure Richard might have mentioned him in passing over the years.”

Holly doesn't know what to say anymore—her head hurts from this conversation, and her face hurts from all that absurd stretching—so she tells Charlene to hold on while she gets Richard. When she opens the door to the bedroom, he is lying on his stomach, snoring into his pillow. She watches his tanned, freckled back rise and fall and has to shake the image of that TV movie from her mind once more. Since Richard likes to keep the curtains open in order to feel the breeze off the ocean, the room is filled with light. Holly is an early riser so she never minds, but she doesn't understand how he can possibly sleep with so much sun pouring in. She puts her thumb on the Mute button and a hand on his arm. “Richard,” she says in a quiet voice, gently shaking him. “Richard, honey, wake up.”

“Huh,” he says, lifting his head from the pillow. The part in his salt-and-pepper hair has formed a haphazard zigzag overnight, and Holly can't help but smile. It makes him look boyish in the midst of his grogginess. “What's wrong? What's the matter?”

There it is again: another sign of that heaviness about him. “Nothing is wrong. At least I don't think so. But Ms. Sunshine is on the phone.”

He squints at the green numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand. Without his glasses, they are probably a blur to him. “Who?”

“Charlene. She insists on talking to you.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon.”

Richard points at the phone and mouths, “Can she hear me right now?”

Holly shakes her head.

“What does she want?”

“I don't know. She says it's about your son.”

A flicker of something passes in his eyes then: worry, guilt, sadness, a combination of all three. “Philip?”

“No. She says it's about your other son. She says she needs to talk to you about Ronnie.”

“Ronnie?” Richard shakes his head, completely awake now. He reaches for his silver wire-rimmed glasses and puts them on, then takes the phone and says hello.

Holly turns and goes back toward the hallway. Even though she's never been the type to listen in on other people's conversations (with the exception of those times she eavesdropped on her mother's calls to various boyfriends years ago in Santa Monica), she can't help but linger outside the door. Since Richard never tells her the details of his phone calls with his ex-wife, her curiosity is piqued—this time, more than usual.

She hears Richard say, “Of course I remember Melissa Moody.”

Then, “What? What the hell kind of question is that, Charlene?”

Then, “I don't know where this is coming from.”

Then, “Charlene, Charlene, wait a minute. Back up to the beginning. Start again.”

After that, he says nothing for a long while as he listens to whatever it is she is carrying on about on the other end of the line. Holly is ready to give up and turn back toward the living room when she catches a glimpse of Richard's reflection in the mirror above their dresser. He gets out of bed, wearing nothing but his blue paisley boxers. At the age of fifty-five, he still looks more athletic than most men his age, with the exception of a slight potbelly that Holly thinks is cute.

“Hold on a second, Charlene,” she hears him say as he carries the phone into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door. “I have to, well, I have to do something. Just give me thirty seconds. A half a minute.” He pauses. “I'm not acting cagey! I have to piss, if you really want to know. I just woke up, for God's sake.”

With that, she sees him put the phone on the sink and stand with his back to her. He starts splashing into the toilet, and when he is halfway through, Richard calls out her name. “Holly!”

“Yes,” she says, trying her best to sound nonchalant, as though she was busy doing something down the hall and came only when he called.

“What the hell kind of cleaner did you put in this toilet? It reeks of chlorine. I feel like I'm pissing in the pool at the Y.”

So the bad mood has begun already, Holly thinks, and he's not even off the phone. “I didn't put anything in there. The cleaning lady did.”

“Well, tell her it's a toilet bowl, not a swimming pool. She doesn't have to use the industrial-strength stuff.”

Richard rarely snaps like this—in fact, they rarely argue at all,
except
when his ex-wife calls. As tempting as it is to snap back, she doesn't bother because it will only give Charlene too much pleasure to overhear the exchange on the other end of the line. Instead, Holly turns and really does walk away this time.

Back in the living room, the pause time has elapsed on the DVD player, so the baby-faced girl is busy poking her tongue against the inside of her mouth once more. “I do this exercise wherever and whenever I can to prevent sagging cheeks,” she says. “If I'm driving in my car down the freeway or stopped at a stoplight, I just take my tongue and poke-poke-poke the inside of my cheek, creating that little bulge right there. I don't care who sees me do it.”

“I bet you don't,” Holly says to the screen, “because I'm sure you get lots of interesting propositions from men in the next lane.” With that, she presses eject. When the DVD slides out of the machine, Holly returns it to the case, stopping a moment to read the back:

Facercises: Stretch Your Way to a Natural Face-lift™
is an easy-to-do exercise regimen guaranteed to shed years off your face. Since face muscles are smaller than most, these simple and fun exercises can produce dramatic results in no time. Plus, they will increase blood flow to the surface of the skin, giving you a healthy, glowing complexion, or your money back…

Holly lets out a sigh and wonders what she was thinking, trying something so pathetic in the first place. If her options are this limited in the battle against aging, she may as well get it over with and go under the knife like the thousands of other woman here in Palm Beach, or what she thinks of as The Face-lift Capital of the World. But she doesn't want to look like all the other Joan Rivers clones around here who have that I-just-stepped-out-of-a-wind-tunnel appearance.

Up until recently, none of this had been a concern to her, because Holly had been lucky enough to go through life looking younger than her age. When she was first trying her hand as an actress in L.A. in her thirties, every part she landed was as a teenager (in two straight-to-video movies,
Psycho Keg Party 2
and
Psycho Keg Party 3
, plus as Shannen Doherty's friend in five episodes of
Beverly Hills 90210)
. Her young looks also came in handy when her agent got her the gig in Vegas doing after-hours stand-up at conventions. The casting call was for “a pretty, fresh-faced girl with a filthy mouth.” Holly had the look, and delivering the material was easy, since it was written by a group of writers to fit the different crowds at each convention. Whether it was musicians, fashion editors, botanists, computer geeks, or a bunch of doctors like the ones at the convention where she met Richard, the jokes always matched. She was surprised at how easy it was for the writers to take the lingo from any profession and create a dirty joke around it. They had even given her one or two about plastic surgery that she still remembers.

Last month, I went to my plastic surgeon, who's a little hard of hearing. I told him I had a deviated septum, so he put me under and went to work. When I woke up and looked in the mirror, my nose was exactly the same. I asked him if he had touched my deviated septum at all. “Septum?” he said, “I thought you told me you had a deviated
rectum.”
So now my asshole is twice as small as before. I've been on a juice diet ever since. My boyfriends love it, though. When they say I have a tight ass, I know they mean it…

The things people will laugh at if they have a few cocktails in them, Holly thinks as she puts the DVD in a bag by the door so she'll remember to give it to Marley at lunch later today. Just the memory of that joke reminds her of how grateful she is to have those days behind her. It's enough to shake her out of her Charlene-induced bad mood. She decides to go to the kitchen and squeeze some fresh juice for Richard and herself. Even though he snapped at her about the toilet cleaner, Holly is determined not to let it ruin their day. After all, she can't say she blames him, having to deal with that lunatic of an ex-wife.

As she sets about slicing the oranges, the kitchen fills with the sweet smell of citrus, and she starts planning their afternoon. When he hangs up, she'll suggest a walk on the beach before lunch with Marley and Tom. Maybe later, they'll play tennis if they can get a court on such short notice. She is about to plug in the juicer when Richard's voice bellows down the hall. For a moment, she thinks he is calling for her again, but then she hears him yell, “Charlene, this conversation is going nowhere! I'm not going to keep answering the same question over and over until you get the answer you want to hear!”

Holly puts down the plug to the juicer and does something she hasn't since those days in Santa Monica when she lived with her mother. She leaves the kitchen and goes to Richard's office on the other side of the apartment, where she carefully and quietly picks up the receiver. She clasps her hand over the mouthpiece and listens.

“Charlene, do you want me to come there? Is that what you want?”

“No, I don't want you to come here! Why the hell would you even suggest such a thing? What I want is for you to stop acting so cagey.”

“I'm not acting cagey. Stop saying that.”

“I know you, Richard, and I can tell when you're hiding something. You know, at first I thought this girl was nuts, and believe me, I told her so. But then Philip said something that got me thinking. And it occurred to me that this is just the sort of freak stunt my husband—”

“Ex-husband.”

“Ex-husband! I know that part. Believe me, I thank God for it every day. It occurred to me that this is just the sort of stunt my
ex
-husband would pull without telling me. And now we've been on the phone for what, fifteen minutes, and you are still hiding something from me. I know it. I was married to you for almost thirty years, so I know.”

“Charlene, I'm a heart surgeon. Not a mad scientist. You are being ridiculous.”

“If I'm being ridiculous, then why were you stuttering before, the way you always do when you lie?”

“What do you mean the way I always do? Like when?”

“Like when you first joined the Bimbo-of-the-Month club after our son died. Like when you first met your funny lady friend from Vegas and denied that something was going on.”

“Charlene, I've told you. She's not from Vegas. She worked in Vegas.”