A New Lu Read online

  “Really?”

  Damn! She must have insulted me when I wasn’t listening. That’s what I get for letting my mind drift. But I’m accustomed to dealing with a disaffected reader. “It’s an opinion column. I don’t expect to win over everyone. But while reading me, that reader is at least giving thought to a different idea.”

  “A different idea. Yes.” I swear she bats her lashes at me. One slow sweep of mascara spikes.

  She’s good. I’m on the defensive before I’ve had a chance to be really annoying or snide. I could ask the media-buzz question of the moment in the magazine world. Why did Tai Leigh leave Bling, the youth-thing magazine where she made her name? Five-O is “an age-conspicuous backwater,” if I correctly quote Vanity Fair. That is, we don’t tout consumption over quality-of-life issues. Tai was thought to be bounding for Tina and Anna territory. Gazelles don’t usually tread bayous. She must have ticked off the wrong person. I can see how that could happen.

  It’s amazing how little of three feet of space she takes up, I note as I slip behind my desk. “CUE LU! is quite popular.” I casually reach for my top file cabinet. “Perhaps you’d like to see our recent poll results.”

  Her gold mop swishes a quick left-right. Before I realize her plan, she picks up the portfolio I laid on my desk, flips it open and reads aloud the title of one of my columns. “‘The Joys of Solitude.’” She lifts the page. “Oh, dear. ‘The Middle-Age Tummy.’”

  Good. She’s entered my bailiwick. Research is my game. “Did you know that tummy tucks don’t last? In fact, for women over fifty, the results can disappear faster than the profits of a day trader. Now, that’s throwing good money after bad genes.”

  She genuinely smiles, looking at me like Trinny and Susannah on “What Not To Wear” after they’ve pushed their latest victim before a 360-degree dressing-room mirror. I am immediately aware of every bulge, roll and wrinkle. And that’s just my clothing. We’re casual at Five-O. My oversize sweater, long skirt and mules usually pass as esprit bonhomie. In Tai’s gaze I am reflected as bag lady.

  “I read your last half-dozen columns coming in on the train this morning. All that old-school feminist ambition! It’s just so—dreary, isn’t it?” She replaces the portfolio. “To be frank, your views no longer fit the profile of our readership.”

  “I am the profile.”

  “Yes. And you do write your age.”

  To my astonishment, she kicks off her sporty Ferragamo suede mules, lifts a brown leg as thin as my arm to anchor her heel over the back of the nearby chair and does a deep bend from the waist.

  “I took a poll of my own via our online service. My numbers show that while women may say they accept fifty or even seventy as reality, they still want to pass for ten or fifteen, even twenty years younger.”

  As she comes upright, pretzel-stick arms bowed over her head, she says, “Our readership wants to make age irrelevant.”

  Make age irrelevant! I wrote that column, too. She knows that. She knows I know, so—Damn! She’s pulling rank, and we both know I’m the subordinate clause.

  Then it hits me. She’s here to do some preemptive snipping. I could be numero uno on her hit list. By Wednesday, when she makes her triumphant entrance, I could be history. Unless I salute her flag.

  But I’ve had a rough few weeks. I’ve gone beyond the pale, rushed in where angels do not tread, burned some bridges and—well, I’ve made my point, and I’m woozy with cliché. Now I stand to lose a job as well as a husband in the same week. I should back down. But I feel the pressure of rising stomach acid. It perfumes my words.

  “If you think a thirty-year-old can dictate how a fifty-year-old should live, you’re mistaken. We hate being told how to dress by our children.”

  “That’s cute.” She comes up again, drops her leg and lifts the other into place. Down she bends, so limber her knee hyper-extends as she touches her forehead to kneecap. On a great day I can do three-quarters of that stretch.

  She turns her head, gazing at me from beneath an armpit. “I’m here to boost flat sales. Demographics indicate this should be easy. You Boomers are lemmings for trends! That’s why I’m going to save your butt.”

  She rises, drops her leg and slips back into her shoes before turning to me. “Perfect honesty? Readers will look at me and be reminded of the women they once were. You, on the other hand, are a known quantity, and obviously no threat.” She’s noticed not all my bulges are puckered fabric. “Therefore I propose we unite.”

  She’s offering a merger. Albeit a sneaking, self-promoting, condescending merger. And here I was expecting the boot.

  “A sort of ying and yang approach?” I ask.

  She consults her watch. “I’m offering you the opportunity to be Five-O’s poster child of change. You’ve let yourself go. But I see potential.” A small smile flickers. “You’ve got good genes. Of course, you’ll need to start a genuine health regimen. With a little effort on your part, we can work miracles. You’ll need a new byline. Something like ‘A New You.’” She looks up, eyes going so wide her green irises look like kiwi slices. “No, make that ‘A New Lu!’”

  I almost laugh in relief. “You want me to hang out at a spa and write about it?”

  “I want everything.”

  Her gaze fixes on a spot behind my left shoulder, pupils expanding like black holes. “You’ll document the whole process of your middle-age rebirth, from personal trainer to nutritionist to shrink, if need be. You’ll need lipo. That middle-age tum has got to go. A face-lift, perhaps. Definitely, work around the eyes. We’ll see what the experts recommend. Perhaps you can try a chemical peel and Botox.”

  Before I can muster more than a shocked “You’re not serious,” she’s off again.

  “For the readers’ benefit we’ll need month-by-month photo documentation. Finish up with a full photo layout. Make that a shopping-spree spread! If we get going, your unveiling can be the focus of the spring issue. Think of all the opportunities for product placement and tie-ins? Advertising will wet itself over the idea!”

  She blinks, coming out of her now-famous “Tai moment” trance. She looks at me with a genuine smile. “The tab’s on us. The time off for procedures will be considered paid vacation.”

  I’m seldom at a loss for words, but Tai has just suggested that weeks of surgery and recovery qualify as a holiday. All I can think of are my aunt Marvelle’s parting words last time I visited. “You need to stop being a walking advertisement for that damn AARP and get your color done!”

  Maybe I have been carrying the gray-hair thing too far.

  The shrrrr of Babs’s motorized vehicle precedes her appearance. “There you are. Everything to your satisfaction, Ms. Leigh?”

  “In due time.” Tai turns to me. “Take a week to think it over.”

  I’m tempted to say “I quit” and stalk out, but I was born with my mother’s practical gene. I have bills. A snide comment will have to do. “When Gloria Steinem announced that she was fifty, and the disbelieving suggested she’d had some work done, she replied, ‘This is what fifty looks like.’”

  Tai smiles. “Gloria also said she’d never marry. We all have our breaking point.”

  Gone. The light tread of her shoes in the hallway is the only proof Tai didn’t simply turn sideways and vanish.

  “That went well?” Babs suggests.

  “Depends. How soon is one eligible for social security?”

  2

  “Mom! Where have you been?”

  “Stuck in the dryer with the missing socks.”

  The tiny pause on the phone line is meant to remind me how much my daughter doesn’t appreciate my humor at moments of high stress. Trouble is, lately she seems to have no other moments.

  I thumb open the pop top on my diet soda as I say, “What’s wrong, Dallas?”

  “I was worried.” The sulk of neglect seeps through in this slightly longer silence. “You haven’t returned my calls.”

  “Honey, I’m swamped.” Two new colu
mns to write before Tai reappears. “Having lunch at my desk. Can this wait until evening?”

  “You said you’d be available last weekend to help me. Lucy, Amanda and I were sampling dishes from three caterers. I sent you times and directions.”

  “Oops!” I search my mind for a memory of that promise. Lately I’m having trouble concentrating. Just now the sight of a bit of wilted spinach stuck in the corner of the plastic lid covering my lunch salad sidetracks me. It looks too much like a squashed bug for my touchy stomach to deal with. I shove the salad aside.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m sorry, Dal. I thought my presence was optional since Lucy and Amanda were there to help.” Lucy is the wedding coordinator and, I suspect, the main reason for my daughter’s heightened state of alarm these days. Amanda is Dallas’s best friend and maid of honor. “I went to Atlantic City.”

  “Really?” Suddenly there’s butterscotch in my daughter’s tone. “Another weekend with Dad?”

  “No.” Why Jacob told her about our getaway weekend I’ll never know. His response is in the opened manila envelope lying at the corner of my desk—which I’m left to deliver. “It’s official, Dallas. The papers came today. The divorce is final.”

  “Oh.”

  After a year I still haven’t found a way to speak without wincing to my grown children about the implosion of their parents’ marriage. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom.” Her tone is now empathetic, solicitous. Got to admire her variety of emotions, as well as the whiplash shift of them. “He’s not serious about the divorce. There isn’t even another woman. I checked.”

  “You what?”

  “Nothing as demeaning as a private detective.” She goes on as if my squawk of disapproval has no merit. “There are signs, if you know how to look for them. Be patient. Men get stupid at your age. I sent Dad several books on the subject. I know he’s read them because I asked questions. It’s just taking longer than I expected for him to admit he made a mistake.”

  “You could try to get him on Dr. Phil,” I offer in annoyance.

  “Thought of that.” She didn’t skip a beat! “But as you know, one of his sponsors has a contract with our agency.”

  I can’t count the ways I’m appalled by the last minute of this conversation. I almost feel sorry for Jacob. No wonder he spilled our beans. He must have felt against the ropes with a daughter who never pulls emotional punches in the clinch. With a writer for a wife he had something of a chance. Sometimes I need a week to perfect the perfect comeback.

  “So, Dal, about the caterer—”

  “A complete fiasco. Lucy asked for the unpredictable, and what do we get…?”

  Dallas is a marketing dynamo at McCann Erickson. A force of nature, according to her boss. Fast on her feet, never at a loss for words. With bonuses, she makes in a month what I not so long ago made a year. Thanks to Lucy, the wedding coordinator, Dallas was encouraged to approach her wedding with a fervor heretofore reserved for a really big client. I fault media with their constant barrage of high-end celebrity knot-tying, those Good-Morning-America weddings designed by online voters, and cable wedding shows starring ordinary people who want, for once in their lives, to be the stars in their own Blockbuster moment. But Dallas, who is usually a sensible person, has allowed her natural competitiveness to be overlaid by a kind of giddy neurotic enthusiasm one usually sees only in Oscar nominees.

  For weeks last fall, my desk was regularly papered with Polaroids of her posed in every high-end wedding gown available in the tri-state area. Once I made the mistake of asking the price of a particular confection. While I recovered from a near swoon, she stood over me with the look of a disgruntled five-year-old. “I’m paying,” she said when my eyeballs stopped rolling around.

  “Everyone will be looking at me,” is her strongest argument anytime I try to insert a vein of reality into the white-fondant monstrosity that threatens to be her wedding day.

  So, I listen to the disaster of pairing asparagus au gratin with spinach pesto—who knew?—and why ancho chilies in raspberry infusion won’t work as a dressing for both cold salmon and grilled tuna, and cluck in sympathy. I keep telling myself if I offer no opinion, advice or help, I cannot be held accountable for the outcome.

  “By the way, Dad’s going to Kosovo for a few weeks. I’m sure that when he gets back he’ll have a different perspective on things.” Finally Dallas takes a breath.

  I guess this is as good a time as any to mention my own plans. “I’m going to put the house on the market.”

  “Going to or have?” The professional is back.

  “We already discussed this.”

  “But you promised you’d think about it. Do nothing rash.”

  I love my daughter dearly, but her parents’ divorce has completely undermined her opinion of us as wise and mature beings. We failed to hold up our end of her need for us to exist as a united example of wedded bliss and traditional family structure on the eve of her own foray into eternal commitment. My motives are all suspect.

  “No matter what, Dallas, your dad and I will walk down the aisle hand in hand on your wedding day.” That is usually the mollifying statement in these conversations.

  “There’s one other thing, Mom.”

  Time makes my mom nerve endings tingle. The sensation is usually a prelude to news that has included such things as, “The kitchen is on fire,”“The dog ran into the street,” and “How was I to know he wouldn’t see the car parked there?”

  “Stephen’s mother has a really good friend, Mrs. Lake-wood—practically family. She wants to throw a party for the mother of the groom and her friends the week before the wedding.”

  “You’re concerned that I’ll be offended if I’m not included. Don’t be.”

  “You are, Mom. It’s a sort of spa day.”

  “You mean I am invited, but it’s going to cost me a fortune to get a pedicure?”

  “I’ll cover the expense. It’s a Botox party.”

  Now I read the paper, watch TV, and magazines are my life, but I still have to ask, “What, exactly, do you mean?”

  “Mrs. Lakewood thought it would be fun to go as a group and get a ‘freshening up’ before the big day. Everybody’s doing it. Since the injections last three or four months, she’s alerting the invitees well in advance, in case they already have a schedule with their own doctors. That way, they can pace themselves if they want to be included.”

  “In the stick-me-in-the-face-with-poison party?”

  “See, I knew how you would react. I’ll decline for you.”

  “No, no, this is my day for just such invitations.” I begin to stutter with the laughter bubbling up within me. “I—I must get a better bathroom mirror.”

  Long silence. “There is one other, small thing.”

  “Optional chemical peels?”

  “Do you know anyone who might give them a good deal on a group rate?”

  “Dallas, why would you think I would even know a Botox doctor?”

  “I didn’t,” she admits. “Still, you are in the image business.”

  “I’m in the business of aging gracefully.” I glance up at the door, half expecting to see Tai standing there with a sneer on her face. “For the time being.”

  “Well, it was just a thought.”

  After we hang up, I stare at the salad I don’t want, and wonder why I ordered it. Yet I know the answer.

  As contemptuous as I am of Tai’s opinion that the pursuit of ageless longevity is a valuable use of one’s time, energies and money, a tiny bit of me would like to know what it’s like to live in a body like Tai’s.

  Not worth thinking about! You have to be born that long and lean, with a bird-size rib cage and knees two-thirds up your legs. No amount of salads will buy me back a single worn-out cell. It will keep those still operating working awhile longer.

  I reach for the plastic box, rip off the lid and toss it into the wastebasket without glancing again at the suspect splat. At my a
ge it’s about not giving up ground recklessly.

  “Whatever happened to pedicure parties?” I murmur to myself.

  The moment the words are out, I shove the questionable salad out of my sight and turn to my computer. There’s a column in that thought. Even an old-school feminist can appreciate shell-pink toes!

  About 2:00 p.m. a pale face topped by a thatch of dyed-black hair pokes in through my doorway. “Grab a cup below?”

  I nod and wave him off as I am inputting the final paragraph of my new column.

  Curran MacAdoo is the only full-time staff photographer, and male, at Five-O. For major photo layouts we hire out. He does the day-to-day and in-office photos. This is only a phase for him, he assures me. Curran has a master’s in fine art from the University of Iowa. He abhors gloss work, on principle. Yet New York City is an irresistible lure to certain psyches. Women’s-magazine work across the Hudson was as close as he could come on a first try.

  He’s been here a total of nine months, trying his damnedest to develop an urban veneer. The learning curve has been steep. He lost a camera, a bike and a goldfish his first week on the East Coast. Now he locks up everything, even to take out the trash.

  I warn him that it takes longer than that for Iowa to wear off. After fifteen years in New Jersey, I still often feel like a Virginian interloper. At least he gave up trying to sound like outtakes from The Sopranos.

  “There really is a mafia in New Jersey,” he confided after a scary run-in with a neighbor not long after he arrived. I related my experience when we moved here. We were told that while trash pickup is private, you couldn’t hire any service but the one the “organization” has assigned to your neighborhood. Just to test it out, Jacob called another service. We were told not to call there again. He was impressed. Me, too. Forget the Christmas envelope and you will pick up your own trash twice for months, once inside the house, once outside.

  When I show up in the bagel shop ten minutes later, Curran pops up from his chair and fans a pair of tickets before my eyes. “Belle Du Jour! Catherine Deneuve. Treat me nice and one of these could be yours.”