The History of Great Things (10 page)

B
efore I'm born, you and Dad take a trip to New York City. Fred's parents have given you an extravagant weekend in the city as a pre-baby gift; they put you up at the Essex House and have arranged for orchestra seats for a performance of
Manon Lescaut
at the Met. You have a smart suit with three-quarter sleeves, which you can still wear if you let out the skirt just a bit, and you pick up a new pair of eight-button gloves to go with it. It's your first time in the city, and at the Metropolitan Opera, and you're giddy just thinking about it. Dad pulls the Buick up to the hotel on a Friday afternoon, not sure where to park; a valet offers to take care of it for two dollars, you and Dad look at each other wide-eyed, but since the trip is all expenses paid, you shrug and giggle and Dad takes out the suitcases and hands over the keys. The frisson of a lifestyle you wouldn't hate moves through you; it's physical. Another attendant comes for the suitcases; you haven't thought about how much to tip; you whisper to Dad
Twenty-five cents a bag maybe?
He says
Let's make it fifty to be safe
, handing over a dollar bill. Your eyes widen; under any other circumstances, handing out money like this would be unthinkable. You check
in, and the bellhop escorts you to the elevator—operated by an elevator man!—then shows you to your room on the twenty-ninth floor, overlooking the park. You look out the window and put your gloved hands to your face like you're in a Doris Day movie. You need something to do, right this minute, with this energy in you.

—Okay, look, I'm stuck. There should probably be sex right here, but you understand why I don't want to imagine that, right?

—I imagined it when I was writing about you, Betsy.

—Not exactly.

—What do you mean? I've given you three sex scenes already.

—No, I've given myself three sex scenes as I imagined you would imagine them. But it's still me imagining me having sex, not me imagining you having sex. With my dad.

—Your father and I had sex, you know.

—I do know, because you told me many times.
Can't I just summarize here, or skip over it? I don't like writing sex, period.

—You have to write the sex.

—No I don't. I don't have to do anything.

—All the great books have sex in them.

—That isn't true.

—I never heard of a book without sex.

—What?

—You can do whatever you want, but you may be missing an opportunity.

—I'll take that chance.

In summary: you and Dad have sex, and it's the best sex you've ever had. It's not like anything different happens, move-wise;
it's not like anything different ever happens. But whatever was already in your body makes this time totally different. It's the first time you realize you want more. Of everything.

—I'm going to eat a sandwich now and try to put this behind me.

The performance is spectacular. Renata Tebaldi is glorious, Richard Tucker is in top form, and you can feel their chemistry from your seat. You had heard their
Andrea Chénier
on the radio, which was riveting; hearing them together live is indescribable. You weep through half the performance, along with most of the audience. The Met orchestra is absolutely, divinely masterful. Tebaldi comes out for her bow, receives a standing ovation, wild
brava
s from the audience, roses are brought out, even Tucker bows to her.

Someday that will be you.

S
o you come back from Los Angeles after eleven days and move back in with us. Nobody's too happy about it, but because you are both depressed and humbled by this adventure in cross-country problem solving, we refrain from getting on your case about moving out, at least for the time being, and you find a new apartment soon enough, a one-bedroom on Eighty-Fifth and Riverside. It's one of those old buildings that doesn't have much to say from the outside (or from the lobby, or from any of the grim, mud-green hallways), twelve stories so they wouldn't have to worry about whether or not to have a thirteenth floor, neither prewar nor post-. It's not as nice as the brownstone you lived in on Seventy-Third, by a lot, but it's cheap enough that you don't have to take a roommate. You've reached the point where the money from waiting tables is hard to walk away from, but the tables themselves, not so much. You're just done, though you have no idea what's next. Victor introduces you to the lady from human resources at the talent agency where he works, hoping you can get some work there while you figure it out. You don't envision, from the get-go, that your destiny is to be a talent agent. You don't envision an office of any kind being your destiny. You thought you were
going to be a writer, which you still mention occasionally; you even tell people you've been writing, like it's not something you've just been contemplating but something you actually do, which is true, though you admit you're nowhere near ready to let anyone read it. It's just not good enough. It's not that you've totally let go of the famous-writer fantasy, or even the published-writer fantasy; you say you're satisfied enough by the writing itself, though admittedly that's kind of a cop-out. It's not untrue that you enjoy writing. It's the level of satisfaction in writing for no one but yourself that's in question. Meanwhile, you have no health insurance, which at twenty-five seemed like nothing you would never need—
Why should I pay money for nothing
was once the totality of your big argument against it—but even three years later, when you learn how insurance works, and when your tiredness is hardly at elderly alert levels but ever-so-slightly hints that you may have need of medical care at some time or another, or like maybe it would be nice if you didn't have to go further into debt to go to the dentist, and it is also pointed out to you that sometimes insurance even covers mental health (although in this case it doesn't, which is a major oversight on the part of this talent agency, because the longer you remain in this job, the more you are certain that mental health care could be of great use to everyone employed there, especially you).

You're hired as a receptionist, and you're good at it. (A marginally bright twelve-year-old could also be good at it, you're sure, but whatever.) You're friendly, efficient, and well-liked. It's not a challenging job, but right now that's a plus. You have plenty of challenges outside work. You have nothing but challenges outside work, no additional challenges are needed, thanks. The receptionist on the seventeenth floor has been there
for years and seems perfectly content, clocks in at eight, out at four, goes home to her fourteen-year-old Yorkshire terrier, has a sizeable pension at this point, and for the next few months as you settle in, this isn't unappealing. You're sitting down. You like sitting down. You like not being accused of serving regular instead of decaf, you like not being given a twenty-five-cent tip and spending the entire rest of the shift wishing you'd given the twenty-five-cent tipper back his quarter along with a
Norma Rae
–style speech about how hard you work and why doesn't he just put his quarter in his own piggy bank. You like not sleeping through the entire day and going to work at night and missing all the fun your friends are having going out to dinner and parties without you. You like meeting movie stars. Your movie star dating pool has expanded, and it's just fun telling people that you met Susan Dey, and that Captain Kangaroo (two of very few celebrities with the power to render you giddy) has an office down the hall. You like getting free passes to screenings and theater openings, and sometimes there's even a little time to write. All you need is a dog of your own.

You sleep with more actors. Look, you just do. I don't have to go into the details, but let's call it like it is. You work at a talent agency and you're young and you're a knockout—and you're not an actress, which is a plus for quite a few of these guys—and they're handsome and plentiful and this is a perk to take advantage of. Additionally, because you are so well-liked, every department in the place clamors to pull you off the reception desk and have you come work for them. Bored beyond belief after nine months on reception, you agree to take a “permanent” position as an agent's assistant. You are warned that it will be a boatload of work, that there will be overtime, that you will be expected to go to even more screenings and
theater openings and parties, to take the calls of fragile actors and convince them that their agent is not dodging their calls even though that's exactly what she's doing. You are also told that if you do this well, you can move up the ladder in no time. This is not a draw. You see it as a drawback. You have a well-developed lack of interest in ladders. You are perilously close to needing that suit after all. You have no interest in representing people, some interest in being represented. You have some vague interest in the idea of security, though this is nebulous for you as a concept, something you're not sure can exist for you anyway, certainly not via any job you'd be interested in. If they could write “emotional security” into your benefits package, that might sweeten the offer. Why couldn't you become someone who desires only to do a job well and keep that job until retirement when they give you a Tiffany watch and wish you well? Isn't that still an honorable thing? Couldn't that be a satisfying thing? Does everyone have to want the same thing? Does everyone have to know exactly what they want? Is there a cutoff date for knowing what you want? And if you go beyond it, what then?

Unfortunately, once you accept one of these offers, these questions are moot at this particular desk. You become exhausted to the point of nervous breakdown, exhausted to the point of calling me crying about it, and I know by now that if you call me crying, it has to be bad, because this has happened maybe two times in the past, and the last one wasn't that long ago, when you were in LA. You say you don't think you can do it, this isn't what you want, though the question
What
do
you want?
is apparently not the right one, because you hesitate before you answer.
I want things to be easy
, you say.
Well, things aren't
, I say.

Still, you have just enough hope—just one small ember of hope in you that hasn't gone out yet—that somehow all of this, waiting tables, answering phones, dating actors, will add up to something meaningful someday.

You try this a few more times with a few more agents in different departments, and always end up back in reception, and this plays on repeat for four pretty miserable years.

N
ear the end of your time at the talent agency, you start to think about some type of teaching as a leading candidate for your next line of work. You don't know why this didn't occur to you sooner. You love kids. Your therapist encourages you to take the necessary steps: applications for grad school, GREs, things like this. This seems overly time-consuming; is this really what you want, enough to spend a few more years in school? You're supposed to study for the GREs, which in and of themselves seem irrelevant to the work you're looking to pursue. You think: You should study so you can study? Is that a commitment you can make for a lifetime, being a schoolteacher? Not likely. You were never a rest-of-your-life kind of person. You're a person whose longest commitment is to not owning a suit.

As good fortune has it, it comes to your attention at exactly the right time that child stars need education too, and you have a few contacts in this area who help you get a job as a location tutor, and in a matter of about a week after first realizing this (speed has always been your preferred method for making work choices), you get on a plane to Canada—and this time the job seems to be a good fit. The money is good, you're good at it (it
helps that your student is in third grade, at which level you can still check the math and come up with correct answers), and the perks include nice hotels and meals, all expenses paid, a schoolroom trailer with a TV, a stocked fridge, and a sofa for naps, and still more movie stars to possibly date. Sometimes there's even a little downtime when you can write in your trailer.

For weeks, you flirt with the lead actor, who plays the father of your student. This escapes the notice of absolutely no one on set. He himself is currently best known for being newly divorced, two-days-ago newly, from an Academy Award–winning actress, this split currently on the cover of
People
magazine, and
The Star
and all the rest of those, covers with the fake tear down the middle and the box on the side with a paparazzi photo of the alleged other party with her head down. In this case, the gossip is that she may have she left him for someone more famous, which is technically true, if not the actual reason. Your lead actor has not yet worked this out for himself. Right now, any and all attention from attractive women is welcome, and on this set, in Toronto, you are at the top of that list. There may be other attractive women here, but you have positioned yourself in his line of sight, and the fact that you are not an actress is a major plus right now. He is smitten, and you are smitten, and this may not be a career, but it is a thing you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life, so that's something. Romantic words are said. Neither of you is thinking about the fact that he is so not over his ex-wife, though you spend some good time thinking about the fact that you are stepping in the shoes of America's current sex goddess. Drinking helps with that a good bit, though you haven't technically had full-on sex yet, as you have decided that though you like trailers for most purposes, and might even like a trailer for sex purposes if you were say,
camping, but on a movie set, sex in a trailer is more like a storyline from the third sequel to
Valley of the Dolls
.

But what you have or haven't done in your movie star's trailer really doesn't matter when the second AD sees you coming out of it. Storylines will be cooked up, embellished, styled, reworked, revised, and retold by third cousins who were there, and these storylines will be gobbled up like the snacks from craft services. For reasons still unknown to you now, you are grateful that this gossip never makes it to the tabloids, like the way everyone knew Rock Hudson was gay but it didn't get printed until the end. You'll forever be known in the movie business as the woman who busted up that guy's marriage, but you'll be none the wiser.

—I'm not sure how this is helping my story at all. There's like one sentence about writing.

—In my mind you're just making notes for a tell-all memoir.