"Last night I had a dream that I was sitting in my office and this creature walked in. It was somewhere between a stegosaurus and Dumbo. I mean, it was green and spiked but it had cute baby blue eyes and a trunk, and it said, 'I'm here to inquire about the new group!' " The thought of what a dream like that might mean sent her into a peal of laughter she knew by the look on Morgan's face was a little too hysterical. Then she stopped laughing and thought about what was going on in her life.
"I joined some fancy health club last month, paid the fee, and walked out after ten minutes because I couldn't handle the stress of destressing. I think after all is said and done, I'm a fraud. I keep saying I'm going to slowly cut back and take time to do nothing, but instead I keep piling it on myself. I just recited my life's schedule to you, Morgan, now you tell me, does that sound like the agenda of a woman who's looking for peace?"
Morgan took off the Benjamin Franklin glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket. "What does your mother think about the idea for the new group?''
"Are you kidding? It's so up her alley, I sometimes wonder if the real reason I'm organizing it is to please her. She thinks it's the first really important thing I've done in years."
Morgan raised his eyebrows and made a note. The walnut desk clock was ticking and she realized she'd been complaining for so long she was already halfway through the session. "Anyway, to hell with Gracie, let's get back to me. Am I taking on something so huge that I'll kick myself? The more I read about these questions the more complicated it all sounds, and I don't want to lead these people to think I have answers for them when I don't. I'll just be feeling my way
with
them. I know
how to help families with developmental problems, but this feels so much bigger than that."
"I think if you make it clear . . . that you're there to find out the answers with them, then you're not leading anyone astray."
Barbara looked across the desk at Morgan's face and thought of all the times she'd left his office certain that his sage words of the preceding hour had just changed her life. Today the whole idea of spilling out her anxieties to him felt foolish, self-indulgent, and absurd.
"Do you know who Lucy Van Pelt is?" she asked him.
"No."
"Somehow I just flashed on her. She's a character from the cartoon 'Peanuts,' a little girl who runs a psychiatry booth as if it was a lemonade stand. She dispenses advice for five cents. And I guess all of a sudden psychiatry and psychology seem very silly to me. Like a cartoon."
"Now
that
sounds just like what your mother always says."
"Please. It's bad enough when I hear myself sounding like Gracie, but when
you
tell me I do, it only reminds me it was probably gross lack of judgment on my part to have a psychiatrist who knows her."
"Or a brilliant choice," he said. "Think of all the time and money you've saved over the years not having to tell me the things I already know about her."
"Good point," she said, but only because she was fond of Morgan and sorry if she'd hurt his feelings, which was probably why she didn't do what she wanted to now, which was to stand, say "I don't want to be here anymore," and leave, the way she had the health club.
"So you think Gracie thinks this group is destined to be your finest work?"
"Absolutely."
Morgan
tsked
at that. A significant
tsk
, and Barbara wanted to ask him what it meant, only somehow they went off on another tangent before she could. Heidi and her impossible boyfriend, Jeff's impending departure for school. And it was all such a jumble of so many thoughts, that by the time she pulled up at the drive-through at Carl's Junior to get a very late lunch, she had forgotten everything they'd decided she should do to cope. It had been a hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar visit down the tubes.
"Charbroiled chicken and a diet Coke," she said to an intercom.
"Anything else?"
"That's it."
"Three dollars and ninety-six cents," said a disembodied voice.
"Thank you."
"Have a nice day."
"Likewise," she said, thinking she had no idea whether she'd just spoken to a woman or a man. Faceless communication, like her answering machine, and her fax machine, and donor insemination. If she ever pulled that group together it would be demanding on her skills and a big responsibility, but there wouldn't be a dull moment.
"Aaggh."
"Sorry," Howie Kramer muttered. She had caved and called him. She couldn't wait six weeks to be examined, and when his receptionist said, "Name your time, Mrs. Singer," Barbara wondered how she would ever be able to give up a luxury like that. So now the light, the too-bright light, was bouncing from his head again, right into her eyes, and he was rattling on about one of his famous patients.
Barbara wasn't listening. She was worrying about Scottie Levine and how when she'd asked Ron Levine to come in alone so they could talk, he said on the phone, "That little kid is a mess. Don't you think I see it? Who wouldn't be, living with that shrew? And it breaks my heart because you know my son is my top priority."
"When can you come in?" Barbara asked him.
Silence. Then he said, "Let me look at my calendar.'' Silence. "You know what? I'm going to need to get back to you." Poor little Scottie. How could she help him?
"In a few years that kid will be in intensive therapy,'' Howie Kramer was saying as he scraped her inside with no grace at all. Barbara, startled at what seemed to be a mind-reading comment, wondered how he knew what she'd been thinking.
"What kid?" she asked as Howie removed the metal instrument from inside her. He was in the middle of rattling on with some story that she could tell by the look on his face he considered quite juicy. And though she hadn't been listening, now when she tuned in, it seemed it was, as always, about one of his famous patients. This time it was a woman who had a fear of getting pregnant.
"The baby's due next month. I mean she's one of those people who should just forget about motherhood. To begin with she didn't want to mess up her great body, which is why she figured out a way that she didn't have to. You know her. You've seen her on "Dallas," or maybe it was "Knots Landing." Anyway, she had her husband inseminate her sister. So now the baby's mother is her aunt and the baby's aunt is her mother. Kind of like that old song, 'I'm My Own Grandpa.' Remember that one?" Now Howie was inserting rubber-gloved fingers into Barbara, pressing down on her
abdomen and at the same time laughing a red-faced wet-eyed laugh at his own joke.
"I'll tell you something, I could write a book, because I've seen it all," he said. Gracie was right, Barbara thought. In this town alone there were probably thousands of people having their babies in unusual ways.
"Well, everything seems okay," he said. He had finished the exam and was removing the gloves. "I'll call you if there's anything wrong with the lab report." Then he looked at her absently. "Did I do a breast check?" Of course going from examining room to examining room, body to body, he probably forgot whose what he had checked, and she was tempted to lie and say yes, but then she'd have to go home afraid there might have been something which had gone undiscovered because of her lie.
"No," she confessed and revealed her breasts, putting her arms behind her head so he could roll his hands around on them to examine her, a process that always made her nervous and one which she was certain required concentration, but not for Howard Kramer, who just continued to talk through it all.
"My wife knows her very well. They go to the same hairdresser. Sandy says she's had every kind of plastic surgery possible. There's a guy over in Santa Monica who specializes in breast augmentation, and he's the one who did her breasts and they are extraordinary. One night we ran into her at Jimmy's and she was wearing—"
"Howie!" Barbara said sharply. "What about mine?"
"Your what?"
"My breasts. Anything unusual?"
"No. They're fine. When was your last mammogram?" he asked, reaching for her chart.
"Nine months ago," she said, making as ladylike a slide from the table as she could, considering her top was wrapped in a paper gown, her bottom was sporting what felt like a paper tablecloth, and she was filled with K-Y Jelly.
"You're in great shape," Howie said. "You check out like a young woman."
"Thanks," Barbara said, as she disappeared behind the curtain of the tiny dressing area and winked a conspiratorial wink at her reflection in the small mirror on the wall, congratulating herself on the fast escape. Then she heard Howie say, "You know, I'm looking at your chart here, and I'm thinking that next time you come in, we should discuss a tubal ligation."
"Great," she replied. "Next time I come in, we'll discuss it in depth."
"Give my best to Stan," Howie said as he exited the examining room and closed the door.
"Only there ain't gonna be any next time," Barbara promised herself out loud.
"Oh here, Mrs. Singer," the receptionist said as Barbara signed the MasterCard charge slip to pay the bill. "Before you go, if you address this card to yourself we'll mail it to you when it's time for your next checkup.''
"Thanks very much," Barbara said, taking the card, finding a pen on the counter, and starting absently to fill it out. The doctor's phone rang and the receptionist answered it and spoke animatedly to the person on the other end of the line. Barbara took a moment to reconsider, put the pen back on the counter, slipped the blank card into her purse, waved a thank you to the distracted receptionist, and left Howie Kramer's office. Alone on the elevator she tore the card up, and as she exited into the parking lot, she threw it into the first trash can she saw.
The hospital corridor was bustling and she was hurrying to get to her office to get her phone calls out of the way before the staff meeting. She waved a hello to Louise Feiffer, who put up a hand to stop her.
"A woman left this in my office. I think she was interested in the new group. She said she saw the ad."
Barbara opened the envelope. In it was a piece of personalized stationery with the name Elaine De Nardo at the top.
My name is Lainie De Nardo. I saw the ad about your group. I need to talk to you first though, alone if it's okay. If so, please call me, but don't say why you're calling unless you reach me personally. I'd appreciate your confidentiality. Thank you.
Barbara sat at her desk and called Lainie De Nardo, and as she listened to as much of her story as the woman could tell her on the phone, she knew that this was someone who needed the new group in a desperate way.
14
L
AINIE COULDN'T BELIEVE that one of the customers actually came all the way from La Jolla every few weeks in a chauffeur-driven limo. And while the woman tried on dozens of outfits, the tall, black, uniformed driver leaned against the car reading a newspaper, where everyone in the store could see him through the big front window. After the woman was dressed again in her own clothes, fishing around in her wallet for her American Express card, she always said the same thing to Lainie: "I'll bet with what I spend here, I could put every one of your kids through college."
Lainie placed the woman's gold credit card on the imprint machine, slid the bar across and back over the card and the receipt, then wrote the word
merchandise
on the slip. Next to it she wrote the amount the woman had spent that day, usually in the neighborhood of six
or seven thousand dollars. "Mitch and I don't have any kids," Lainie reminded her.
"Oh, what a terrible shame," the woman invariably said, looking at Lainie with sad eyes as though she'd never heard that information before. Lainie covered the woman's hanging merchandise with white garment bags splashed with the Panache logo, placed the sweaters and accessories in tissue paper, which she laid carefully into white Panache shopping bags. Then she and the woman exchanged pleasant good-byes as the chauffeur, who could see through the glass front door of the store that the transaction was complete, hurried to carry the packages to the car.
Long after the limo pulled out of the parking lot, Lainie would find herself still staring out the front window, remembering the look in that woman's eyes when she said how sorry she felt for Lainie and Mitch. She had seen that same look in the eyes of more people than she could count. "It's the way people probably look at lepers," she'd once said laughing to Mitch. But soon a customer would interrupt her thoughts to ask if Lainie could order the Donna Karan suit in pink, or if she had the white open-toed Bruno Magli shoe in a six, and she'd stop thinking about the leper look until the next time someone gave it to her.
Business was extraordinary. Women were driving to Encino from Santa Monica, Malibu, Brentwood, and Beverly Hills to shop at Panache. Studio designers were making appointments to come in and buy wardrobe for television shows. Sometimes they would bring well-known actresses along, whose glittering presence caused a big stir among the other customers.
Of course there were plenty of things going wrong all the time too. Little fires to put out, Mitch called them. A few weeks ago he'd caught one of the salesgirls stealing a large purse full of sweaters and had to fire
her. And the other day a gorgeous transvestite came in, wearing a Valentino dress, and when the salesgirl who was helping him stepped into the dressing room and realized he was a man, she ran screaming out of the store. The salesgirl called from home later that day to say she'd never deal with anyone like that again, and Mitch said, "We'll miss you," because the transvestite had spent eight thousand dollars buying up a number of their size twelves.
Some customers tried to return clothes after they'd worn them. Usually it was a woman who could afford anything she wanted who had the gall to bring back a dress still reeking with the odor of her perfume, her deodorant, even her cigarettes. She would insist that she was bringing the dress back for a full refund because there was something wrong with it. When Mitch told her firmly, "Sorry, we can't take this back, you've obviously worn it out, and we don't take evening clothes back," the customer would go mad.