Outtakes from a Marriage (8 page)

Susanna actually lived in Los Angeles, but as Joe had explained earlier that evening, she was staying in her friend’s Central Park West penthouse apartment while she did a few weeks’ work on an independent film.

“Whose apartment is it?” I wanted to ask Joe as we rode up silently, but I hated to start with the small talk. It would seem like an apology of sorts. A surrender. Instead, I almost exploded with, “Who the hell are you fucking?” But then the elevator doors opened. They opened right into the penthouse, and there, at the far end of a marble foyer, stood Susanna.

Perhaps she got dressed in a dimly lit room and didn’t realize that dress was so see-through,
I thought, generously.

Susanna wore a dazzling, and completely sheer, floor-length gown to her birthday party that night. The party that had been repeatedly billed to me, by Joe, as “casual.” Her hair was swept up into a complicated, sexy, deliberate mess on top of her head, and on her tanned, perfectly manicured feet she wore a pair of delicate strappy sandals, for which an exquisitely marked snake had obviously been relieved of its skin. Strands of diamonds hung from her wrists. Her eyelashes appeared to have been plucked from the pelt of a lustrous mink, and while her flimsy gown was certainly eye catching, it was also somewhat awkward to look at, because when you did, your eye was naturally drawn to the body underneath it. A body that appeared flawless, and was, except for the small triangle concealed by a pink lacy thong, plainly visible to all.

I was wearing black jeans, clunky boots, and a three-hundred-dollar tank top that some half-wit at Barneys had told me was “elegant and chic.”

Susanna greeted her guests in front of a roaring fireplace. The apartment was handsome and stylish, and it occurred to me that although, as far as I knew, Susanna has no permanent place of residence, she possesses such a commanding presence that her surroundings are always, instantly, hers, no matter who the real proprietor is. The yacht she stands on in a
Vanity Fair
photo appears to be her yacht. The beach in the
Vogue
spread, her beach. This gorgeous apartment, with its gleaming mahogany floors and French antiques and illuminated artwork, seemed to have been designed solely with Susanna in mind. In fact, Susanna’s whole firelight-enhanced aura evoked a sense of wonder in me. Watching her slender, silky-smooth arms embrace her other guests, I wondered what body-hair-removal process Susanna used, and whether or not it would be appropriate for me to ask her. Her skin was uniformly tanned and I wondered whether she worried about skin cancer. Her breasts managed to stay firmly uplifted without the benefit of a bra, and I wondered how she could imagine that anybody might think they were real. It seemed wrong to stare, so I turned to say something to Joe and I saw that he, too, seemed to be staring at her in a state of wonder.

I know. Meow.

I don’t dislike Susanna. In fact, over the years, I’ve learned a secret about her that the world press, which dogs her every step, has never uncovered. Susanna Mercer is one of the smartest people in Hollywood, and when I say Hollywood, I don’t mean the place, I mean the industry. The religion. Of all its members I’ve known over the years, Susanna probably has the sharpest wit and the most discerning mind. Like many stars, she has her own film production company, but unlike most, she actually runs hers, on the sly, while pretending to be just a simple, sexy, vulnerable Aussie actress.

Susanna has no female friends, unless you count her employees (she does), and instead surrounds herself with platonic male worshippers.

“Hello, Julia. Hello, Joe, darling,” Susanna said, kissing each of us on both cheeks. “Joe, I want you to meet Martin. Remember that English producer I was telling you about? Well, it turns out he’s just received word that the financing for that project—Oh, Julia, I’m sorry,” Susanna said, as if she had suddenly realized that she was rudely speaking a foreign language in front of me. She stood on the tips of her toes, managing to obscure Joe’s face from me with her bosom. “Nikki! There she is! Nikki, will you come and take Julia over to the bar and help her get a drink, darling?”

Nikki, Susanna’s longtime personal assistant/makeup artist, approached with a giddy, ambling stride and greeted us with enthusiastic kisses to each cheek. Nikki was a short, blond, voluptuously plump British girl who had worked for Susanna for years. She was holding a near-empty martini glass that had sloshed its remains onto her short black dress with each springy step.

“Nikki…” Susanna said quietly, eyeing the glass.

“Not to worry,” chirped Nikki. “I’m pacing myself. Hello, Julia! You look thirsty, can I get you a drink?”

“Why don’t you show me where the bar is?” I said, desperate to be away from Joe. Nikki grabbed my hand, and I followed her through the crowded room, and as I did, I looked around to see what the other women were wearing. That’s when I came to discover that, other than Nikki, Susanna, and me, there were no other women at this party, only men. Gay, straight, short, tall, some famous, some not, some gorgeous and some not—Susanna’s apartment was packed full of men, but even in their company I felt like a clod. I had left home half an hour ago feeling casual and hip and cool, and now, compared to Susanna and Nikki—in fact, compared to half the men at the party—I felt plain and manly and dull.

“I wish I’d worn something a little more…festive,” I told Nikki. “Joe told me that this was going to be a casual thing.”

“Don’t give it a thought, Julia,” Nikki said. “Susanna forgets that casual here means jeans, while casual in London, where we’ve been the past year, means ‘Leave your dinner jackets at home.’” She squeezed my hand. “So, what’ll you have to drink?”

“What are you drinking? A martini?”

“Yes, but there was something wrong with it. I really didn’t care for it at all.” She placed the empty glass decidedly on the bar. “I’m switching to a Cosmopolitan. Umm, so sorry, bartender, I’ve forgotten your name again.”

“John,” replied the bartender, smiling vacantly. He was gazing across the room at Susanna.

“Right. Johnnie. Do you want one, Julia?” Nikki asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Why not? Thanks.”

“Two Cosmopolitans please, Johnnie. Wait. Better make it just one for my friend Julia here. I have to watch what I drink tonight.” Nikki turned to me and whispered, giggling, “I got absolutely shit-faced the other night, and this morning Susanna gave me a little lecture. About my drinking.”

“Oops,” I said.

“Oh, fuck it. This is a party. Give me just one more. But make it weak please, John.”

“Hmm,” said John. He looked at the bottles before him and pondered the challenge of making a cocktail, whose ingredients are almost all alcohol, weak. Then he poured vodka, triple sec, and a splash of cranberry juice into an ice-filled shaker, shook it, and poured the contents into two glasses. He left a little room at the top of Nikki’s glass, topped it off with cranberry juice, then handed us the glasses.

“Cheers, John!” said Nikki. “Cheers, Julia!”

The vodka was smooth and the tiny slivers of ice that had made it through the cocktail shaker’s strainer sat on my tongue for a moment before they melted. I’m a wine drinker, but now I wondered why I rarely had cocktails when I went out. The effect of the crisp, citrusy drink on my raw, angry nerves was immediate. I took another sip.

Nikki led me off to a corner of the room where there were two chairs and a table, and we sat down. A tray of hors d’oeuvres had been placed on the table and Nikki’s eyes lit up when she saw them.

“Ooooh, shrimp tempura! And what’s this other little item here, all wrapped in pastry dough?” She plopped one into her mouth. “It’s heavenly, Julia, have one!” she said, passing the tray to me. We gobbled the shrimp, and the pastry thing, dripping sauce all over the table. I was pleased to see that Nikki, despite spending nearly every waking moment in Susanna’s presence, had managed to escape her boss’s devout abstemious influence. Unfortunately for me, Joe hadn’t been so lucky.

Joe first met Susanna on location in Mexico in the winter of 1998. They were shooting
Mercy Killings
(you probably haven’t seen it—it went straight to video), and Joe told me over the phone that the famous beauty was very generously sharing her personal trainer and dietitian/chef with him. The full effect of Susanna’s generosity, however, wasn’t apparent to me until the end of that shoot when Ruby and I met Joe for a week in Puerto Vallarta. When we settled in at the resort and Joe stripped down to his swim trunks, I was astonished to discover that a large percentage of my husband was missing. All the soft, fleshy stuff around his middle and the beefiness around his shoulders and upper arms—all of it was gone. Joe was now as wiry and lean as a whippet, and I couldn’t help but stare.

“I know,” said Joe, proudly giving his taut midsection a slap. “I’ve been working out a little.” Then he sauntered out to the beach.

Every day that week, around noon, Joe would say, “Hungry?” and although I was usually starving, had been since about half an hour after my morning pancakes (he had a piece of fruit for breakfast), I would casually reply, “Oh, I don’t know…maybe a little.”

Then he would say, “Let’s eat now so my food has time to digest before my workout,” and we would wander over to the restaurant to order our lunch.

At lunch, the waiter would try to give me Joe’s order and Joe would say, quite sanctimoniously, “No, the mixed baby greens salad with the dressing on the side is for me,” and the waiter would place before me the cheeseburger with fries that I had ordered. The first day, I actually offered Joe some of my french fries, to which he shook his head in disgust and said, “I don’t think I could even eat one of those anymore. Once you start cutting out the grease and the salt and the fat, you actually lose your appetite for that kind of junk.”

“Really?” I said. I was sucking a fry. I had started sucking them to make them last longer, to savor the grease and the salt and the fat.

“Your body’s like a machine. Like the engine of a car. Eating too much fat is like putting sludge in your engine….”

“Right, right,” I said, nodding seriously. I was trying to look like I was taking it all in, but what I was thinking was,
Give it a rest, Gandhi.

I thought that Joe’s new fitness mania was a fad, and that once we returned to New York, his zeal for health would, like his boyish crush on Susanna, fade away. But I was wrong. Joe had changed. Gone was the man who ate, with gusto, whatever I put on the table. In his place was a salad-obsessed exercise nut, and although Joe no longer ate carbs, he loved to talk about them. Preaching about the benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet actually sent him into a sort of ecstatic reverie, and it was difficult to get him off the subject once he was on it. My friend Lindsey came to visit us at the beach one weekend around that time, and soon after she arrived she asked Joe if he had lost some weight. I frantically tried to signal to her the danger of that line of questioning, but I was too late and soon she was treated to a lecture on the uselessness of carbs, the benefits of protein, and the joy of a daily two-hour workout. Throughout the speech, I sat on the kitchen counter eating handfuls of carbs and staring dully into space. Finally, much later, eyes glazed and stomach rumbling, Lindsey was able to escape to her room, where she spent the better part of the weekend.

Here’s the thing: Before Joe got fit, I was fit. Not because I worked out or counted calories. I just didn’t eat too much. Food had never been an issue for me. Once Joe started making food seem shameful and naughty, however, I couldn’t get enough of it, and for the first time in my life I started to put on a little weight. My ass started to get a little fat, and while I knew that it was still not technically a fat ass by most people’s standards, it was getting to be a fat ass by New York standards, and I put the blame squarely on the sculpted shoulders of Susanna Mercer.

Take that, Susanna,
I thought as I popped the last fried shrimp into my mouth.
And that!
I thought, washing it down with a gulp of my Cosmo.

Nikki was gleefully telling me about how a certain famous musician and his wife had given up bathing with soap (too many chemicals) just around the time they’d taken up tantric yoga, and how they were now quite infamous among their friends for their horrific combined reek.

“Susanna won’t have them in the house,” laughed Nikki. “The last time the odor lingered for days!”

There’s nothing better than a tipsy personal assistant, really. With very little encouragement I was able to get her talking about Cate Blanchett, another friend of Susanna’s. I nodded and smiled at Nikki as she described Cate’s eating habits, but my eye was on Joe now. He was across the room, on a long chocolate-brown suede sofa, sitting next to Susanna and surrounded by many of her other guests. Susanna was lolling back on the oversized throw pillows, smoking a cigarette and laughing languorously at something Joe was saying. He began making broad, flapping movements with his arms, and I knew that he was telling his story about the day, last summer in Amagansett, when he hit a wild turkey with his car.

“There I am, going sixty miles an hour,” he was saying, “and suddenly my windshield is covered with turkey!” I couldn’t hear his exact words from where Nikki and I sat, but I had heard the story a few times before, and it was both frightening and funny the way he told it—the awkward flapping of the giant bird, its panicked expression the moment before it collided with the windshield, the way its wingspan completely obscured Joe’s view, causing him to spin off onto the side of the road. I saw Susanna and the others watching him and laughing, and then I saw Joe as they must have seen him: handsome and funny and raffishly charming. Joseph Ferraro standing on a sandy roadside, his Porsche covered in feathers and entrails, signing an autograph for the state trooper who had stopped to help. Not the awkward, shy, borderline dork I had met in college—the one I had taught to drive a stick shift and to shoot pool and, really, how to dress. The Joe Ferraro I first met in 1986 wore Levi’s corduroys and oxford shirts and Adidas. After a couple weeks with me, Alison, and Beth, I’m not kidding, he looked like one of the Ramones, only handsome. Now the warm, blinking glow of the fireplace altered his profile slightly, highlighting his cheekbones and pale blue eyes and the whiteness of his smile, and I saw, in that moment, the Joseph Ferraro you’ve seen in magazines and on the side of buses and on billboards. On
Letterman
and
Leno,
with Barbara Walters and Katie Couric, and maybe just walking down the street with his gaze fixed just past you, but his slight smile revealing that he knows
you know
who he is. Joe Ferraro, the star.