Love junkie, p.3
Love Junkie, page 3
“Are you comfortable, Mimi?”
“Yes,” I said. But something about that door made me nervous. Was it really closed? Was it locked?
“Is something bothering you?”
“No.”
There was a very long pause. The seconds ticked by. Finally Dr. Fineman spoke.
“What are you so afraid of, Mimi?”
That’s when I broke down in sobs. And they weren’t graceful and discreet; they were heaving and clutching, with snorting sounds and a sort of keening whine whenever I inhaled. It was very embarrassing. Dr. Fineman handed me a box of Kleenex and waited. It seemed ages before I was able to pull myself together, but at last I gave my nose a final blow. The time had come to explore my innermost fears, and I was ready. Unfortunately, my innermost fears had to wait while we explored the fee schedule, and how many times a week I should come, and what sort of medical insurance Boyce had. But I knew we’d get around to my innermost fears in all good time …
_______
I loved therapy from the very beginning. I loved the routine. I loved driving up to Scarsdale—all the good Westchester psychiatrists are in Scarsdale—every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and parking in the parking lot and checking my hair in the rearview mirror and going over what I was going to say. I quickly learned that etiquette demands the patient deliver the opening line, and I took particular care with my own. Some were great. “My family was held together with Band-Aids” was undoubtedly my biggest success; Dr. F. referred to it for weeks. “Last night I had the strangest dream” always works. Avoid certain words, though. Once, in prelude to the story of the short-lived religious fervor I experienced at age thirteen, I began by saying, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Jesus.” “Cheeses?” said Dr. Fineman.
Sometimes, if I got there early, I could hear muffled sounds while I sat in the waiting room. They had Muzak, though, and this made eavesdropping virtually impossible. Furthermore, they played the same tape at the same time every day. It was always the same songs in the same order. Even today I can hear them, 101 Strings arrangements of “(I’m a) Girl Watcher” followed by “Montego Bay” followed by “Kung Fu Fighting.” If everything was going according to schedule I would march into Dr. Fineman’s inner sanctum accompanied by the theme from Bonanza.
Talking about myself was enjoyable from the beginning, but soon it became positively addictive. All sorts of things poured out, insights, memories, many buried for years, like the time I cut off all my hair with fingernail scissors or the time the top of my bathing suit came off in the pool of the Lubbock Country Club. Many of the feelings I dredged up were not pleasant, but Dr. Fineman encouraged me to confront them openly, and soon I was referring to myself as a piece of human garbage. He found this quite a step forward. The only thing he liked better was when I bad-mouthed my mother. No subject was taboo, but I did use tact. For obvious reasons I rarely discussed my thighs, and naturally I kept quiet about the dream where I found myself in a train station and there was Dr. F. about to be shipped off to Auschwitz.
Even though my “big beef” was with Boyce, Dr. F. perceptively pointed out that my problems had started long before my marriage and that there were many issues—including self-esteem, compulsive behavior, failure to achieve intimacy, lack of personal growth, and the inability to communicate with my inner child—that we would have to “work on.” It seemed like the kind of thing that could take forever, and I was happily settling down for a long run. Even Boyce was delighted; my “invalid period” had been draining for both of us, although I must say that he was always very considerate and even moved into the den on a more or less indefinite basis.
But I hope I’m not giving the impression that therapy is all “fun.” It can be extremely painful. Take Dr. Fineman’s habit of giving me homework assignments, for example. (That’s what he called it—“homework.”) Some of these tasks were relatively innocuous, such as the time he made me put little blue stickum dots on everything in the house that made me feel anxious. I had to go back to the stationery store three times. But the assignment I really hated was Planned Worrying. That’s when you worry about something—in my case, dying of cancer— every hour on the hour, for three minutes. The theory is that this way you won’t worry about it the other fifty-seven minutes. But you know me—I’d keep looking at my watch and thinking, “Gee, twenty of and I’m already worried.”
Still and all, I was most pleased by the inner journey I had embarked on. Except for one thing. As June turned to July, and as the days grew warmer, I could sense from certain things Dr. Fineman was saying that there was trouble ahead. He asked me to describe my day, and after I did so he said, “That doesn’t sound very taxing.” Then he gave me a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? Yes, I could see it coming closer and closer. I just knew what was going to happen next, and I didn’t like it one bit.
He was going to make me go out and get a job.
CHAPTER THREE
One morning in early August I was standing in the kitchen mashing up Baby’s Dilantin—he suffers from canine epilepsy—with the bottom of a spice jar when it occurred to me that if I left the house immediately I could be in Saks by noon. Now to really appreciate the significance of this thought you must bear in mind that I hadn’t been in Saks for over six months. Not since I’d gotten sick, in fact. This meant not only all new merchandise, but something even more important—I was back to my old self.
I’ve always loved shopping. I can’t even remember when it started. It’s always been there. It was even the cause of my one and only brush with the law: arrested for shoplifting an eyebrow pencil from Woolworth’s with Cheryl Skaggs at age thirteen. When I’m in a new city, shopping is by far the most important activity. Museums are fine, but they’re number three on the list. (Number two is driving around the fancy neighborhoods.)
Even in Tehran my passion never waned, and you have to understand that Tehran has the worst shopping in the world. Imports are strictly controlled in ways to enrich the politicians, which leads to a poor selection and those horrible Bulgarian fruit preserves that are the bane of existence for anyone who has ever lived in the Third World. As for the fabled Eastern bazaars, forget it. Strictly Fourteenth Street. Sony cassettes, electronics, juice glasses. A couple of good antique shops could be found on Radafih Street, on the same block as that extremely odd gymnasium where the men lifted weights while chanting prayers. But the inventory was way too expensive, although they did have some fabulous deals on camel saddles that just cried out to be recovered in ponyskin and grouped amusingly around my fireplace.
Tehran had only one halfway decent department store (in a city of three million people!). It was called the White Duck, which is an ancient Persian good-luck symbol. The original White Duck was downtown, across the square from the post office, and it was known popularly as the Old Duck. The newer branch on Murahni Avenue near the palace was known as the New Duck. There was another one across from the French Hospital; it was called the Sick Duck. Everybody was mad with curiosity to find out what the newest branch would be nicknamed. It was out past the university in a part of town called Korbhinah where they have a lot of fancy new apartment buildings. Several suggestions were put forward in the popular press—the Rich Duck, the Smart Duck—but nothing really caught on. Then, on the very day the store opened, a terrorist bomb went off in the coffee bar, killing five shoppers and maiming several others. From then on it was known as the Dead Duck.
The only reason I wasn’t included in the death toll is that I had already left. So starved for novelty was I that I showed up at nine A.M., waiting in what the newspaper referred to as “a queue of fashionably dressed women.” By the time the bomb went off at three P.M. I had been home for hours. Still, something like that makes you stop and think. When the American embassy said that Americans should avoid shopping in any of the Ducks I went along with it—at first. Then I started thinking: that’s what the terrorists want. Am I going to let myself be pushed around by these people? So I went shopping. It was a political act.
_______
At nine minutes before noon I pushed open the heavy bronze door to Saks Fifth Avenue and a rush of perfumed air hit me and I all but swooned against the glove counter. I remember reading somewhere about a French writer who accidentally smelled a cracker and all of a sudden his whole life came flooding back to him. One whiff of Saks and I had much the same reaction. God, the time I spent in department stores! And I don’t regret any of it. I love it all. The sounds. Those wonderful echoes on the first floor. The click of high heels. The little bells. Imagine—two hours of bliss staring me right in the face. I couldn’t even remember getting here. The train ride, the walk over from Grand Central—it was all a blank. I had actually found my way to Saks by instinct.
A museum is full of beautiful objects, to be sure, but you can’t own any of them. That’s what I like about department stores: you can actually buy all this stuff. All those cosmetics—I could buy them all. I could get one of those stylishly made-up saleswomen to demonstrate her line. Then I could make a selection. I could get perfume, accessories, things for the home. I could get one of those sequined Bill Blass sweaters they had in the Times yesterday. I could get it all!
And I almost did. Within five minutes I had spent $120 and wasn’t even fifty feet into the store. I bought a pair of stockings, some gold earrings designed by Hattie Carnegie, and a silk scarf. Its label read “Mad in Italy.”
Only by sheer force of will did I manage to get myself out of the building and onto the sidewalk in front of the Fiftieth Street entrance. “Get a hold of yourself,” I kept repeating. “Calm down.” The sanctuary of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was staring at me. I crossed the street and entered its cool, dark nave. I come here now and then. It’s very quiet. The pews are comfortable, and it’s great people-watching. But at the moment I was too upset to watch any people. I’d just bought costume jewelry at Saks. What was wrong with me? And besides, hadn’t Hattie Carnegie been dead for twenty years?
Maybe it was just the excitement. Yes, that must be it—the excitement of being “back on the streets.” Although I am a Presbyterian, I said a silent prayer to the Virgin, whom I could just make out in an alcove, surrounded by candles.
After ten minutes or so I was feeling much better. As I left the cathedral I checked out the little souvenir shop in the rear, which sold mostly tacky religious items, but every once in a while you could find a nice cross. Then I walked slowly up Fifth Avenue. What I needed was someplace where I could go shopping but not buy anything. That pretty much narrowed it down to two places: FAO Schwarz and Hunting World. And since the thought of a grown woman wandering around a toy store pricing the doll dishes was not a side of me I wished to encourage, my decision was an easy one.
Do you know anything about Hunting World? I regard it as my own personal find. No, it’s not an outlet for NRA members; it’s a very expensive store that sells safari gear to the carriage trade. Their totes hang from the arms of some of the best-dressed women on Madison Avenue.
The trick at Hunting World is to look like you are actually in the market for a five-hundred-dollar canteen. This is a trick I have yet to master, so what I do is sneak in and head for the back of the store, where they have a rack marked “Clearance.” Here I stood, examining some elephant-hair jewelry that wasn’t moving and surveying my surroundings.
It was business as usual. Two Japanese women—my, they had nice hair!—were wandering around babbling incomprehensibly with their Gucci shopping bags. The saleswoman was demonstrating a rifle case with a tricky clasp to a distinguished-looking white-haired gentleman. She was about my age, very efficient in manner, with glasses on a chain and a voice you get from sucking on Kools all day. I wondered where she lived. Tudor City, maybe. I wondered how much she made. I wondered if maybe I could get a job like this. It would be fun to be intimidating for a change. But who would hire me?
The door opened, and a man walked in. He gave the place a quick once-over and made a beeline for a table on which were arranged a selection of shoes and boots. Without hesitation he picked one up and stared intently at its laces.
It was Tom Potts, the man from the party.
My first impulse was to edge along the wall and slink out. I hate awkward situations like this. But for some reason I just couldn’t take my eyes off the shirt he was wearing. It was just a plain, simple short-sleeved shirt—Perry Ellis, I later found out—but it was the most beautiful shade of blue imaginable. It was like those ads for the US Virgin Islands, with the brilliant turquoise water. I had never seen a shirt in that color before. And his pants were nice, too: khakis, cut rather full with pleats in the front, washed and faded to perfection, and perfectly set off by a thin snakeskin belt. On his wrist was a black watch with a black band. Its face was orange.
I was mesmerized. Never before had I seen such raw fashion authority. Simple, yes, but infinitely sophisticated. I was riveted— so riveted that he started staring back.
“Hi!” I called out. “Remember me?”
Clearly he did not.
“I’m Mimi Smithers,” I said, rushing over with my hand extended. “You came to my party in Bronxville. With Mrs. Rockefeller.”
“Oh, yes!” he exclaimed. “The dykes ate all the food!”
I blushed furiously, but no one seemed to have heard.
“And Black teenagers,” he went on. “I seem to remember vicious Black teenagers.”
“Who left vicious black heel marks all over my floors.”
He let out a whoop of laughter. “Great delivery! You’ve got great delivery! I love you already!”
I may be overdoing the exclamation points, but I think you get the picture. We were hitting it off. Sparks were flying in Hunting World.
“Tell me,” he said, thrusting the shoe he had picked up at me. “What do you think?”
It was half leather and half canvas, the sort of thing that would be appropriate for the Serengeti Plain during rainy season. “I love it,” I said. “And when you get home you can always use it for an umbrella stand.”
“Huh?” he said, and I decided to cool it with the witty remarks.
It seemed perfectly natural that I should accompany him to the cash register as he paid for the shoes. There was a mix-up with the credit card; he made faces at Miss Kool behind her back, and it was all very hilarious. We were still giggling when we got out to the sidewalk.
“Well!” he said. “What’s the next stop?”
“I was heading over to Rizzoli’s.”
“Rizz—oli’s.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rizz—oli’s. It’s pronounced Rizz—oli.”
“Oh. Well, that’s where I was headed.”
“Good. Me too.” He took my arm and we dashed across Fifth Avenue against the light, laughing madly as the cabs honked and our shopping bags flapped in the breeze.
_______
I learned more than the correct pronunciation of “Rizzoli” that afternoon. (By the way, “Bulgari” is pronounced the same way.) Tom Potts was a veritable fountain of the sort of information I had been searching for all my life. He knew whom to call to get into the Calvin Klein showroom where you can get the merchandise at half price. He knew where to buy Hermès scarves and bags at discount. He knew Judith Leiber, the purse designer, personally. He knew a man who sold stolen haute couture. He knew all about restaurants—which one was hot and which one was not. Clubs, movies, plays, the whole spectrum of New York nightlife. Clovis Ruffin was a close personal friend. So was Eddie Rosenberg, the doorman at Studio 54. They had once shared a summer house “right in the middle of the Pines.” Lainie Kazan came to visit. In fact, she came to visit so often they called her “the boarder.”
I heard all this and more as we strolled up Madison Avenue, which Tom referred to as “the best shopping street in America.” Under his tutelage I could certainly see why. We stopped at various exclusive boutiques along the way, places I had been much too terrified to enter alone, and saw some truly exquisite things, such as a majolica plant stand, circa 1920, shaped like a giant stalk of celery. In many of the shops Tom was greeted by name. The woman in Primavera kissed him. And the man who ran Mädderlake (the florist) was obviously a very close friend. We spent twenty minutes there while he and Tom discussed mutual acquaintances. I browsed around, drinking in the mossy smells of that heavenly place and occasionally peeking in the back room, where an assistant was forcing a bulb.
I had never met anyone like Tom Potts, that much was certain. He was not exactly what you would call handsome. He was tall—six foot three, in fact—with sloping shoulders and one of those heads that tall men often have; it looked a size too small for the body. I found out later that his friends often referred to him as the Camel. I assume this was due to the odd, loping walk he had. When he got nervous his pace would accelerate and pretty soon he’d be running around like Groucho Marx.
I usually don’t like red hair or pale skin or freckles, but he managed to carry them off, and that beard certainly helped. And he wasn’t the first man who was sensitive about going bald. He managed to camouflage this by an unusual method of combing; it was quite effective except in a breeze.
Not that I cared one iota what he looked like. It was our rapport that so entranced me. We had so much in common. He was nuts about furniture, even worse than me. He had a co-op down in the Village that was “filled with antiques.” He described some of his more notable pieces—a Louis Seize bureau plat, an Austrian “schtitzletoffer,” some important Depression glass, and a mirrored coffee table that once belonged to the legendary Mrs. Byron Foy.
And he was in the Arts. That was his business. He had his own PR firm and advised clients like the Metropolitan Museum, Jazzmobile, and the International Center for Dance Notation on a whole raft of issues from grantsmanship to signage. He knew Henry Geldzahler. He knew Kitty Carlisle Hart. “I have her in my pocket” was how he put it.
