Aftermath of Dreaming(98)
But thinking about this is making me more revved up, not less, so I turn on the television for some barbiturate channel-surfing. If anything will put me to sleep, it’s dead-of-night TV. I flip past eighties sitcoms, cable access shows, a John Wayne film my father loved, cop shows, stand-up comics, and…
“Well, there he is.” The words came out automatically as if they were too large to be contained. On the screen is Andrew. Full color, gorgeous, and close-up. In a classic, quintessential seventies film he did that defined many things, socially and in the movie industry. As I sit watching his face in my living room, with me but not real, like the dreams I’ve been having, I realize that when he made this movie, he was just a few years older than I am right now. Seeing what he looked like then, it is as if the image of him from back then is reaching toward me now where our difference in age is so much less. His body is moving, walking in his slow panther strides, the same way he walked me to his bedroom all those times. I breathe in and wait for the dull pain in my gut to appear. But it does not. I watch more of the movie, and still the throbbing of anguish doesn’t come.
Okay, this is a first. Maybe I’m really done. Maybe seeing him at the theater and all those memories of him were exactly what I needed to get rid of him because here I am watching him, loving how he looks, remembering him gazing at me that very same way, his hand on me that way, smiling at me that way, and no big reaction is coming up. I’m just—okay.
Wow, I am clearly so completely over this man. But in a nice way, like seeing a picture of my favorite teddy bear when I was kid, the one I was sure I could never live without, definitely could not sleep without. Teddy was his name. He was purple and gold, which is a curious choice for a bear, and had only one eye. I loved Teddy. What I loved the most was that in the depths of his softness there was this really hard, solid object. And it would move, so I’d have to search for it in his down each time I held him just to find it. This secret inner core, totally belied by his countenance, that only I knew about. Eventually I realized it was the detached mechanism for a music box. He had been a wind-up toy, and the key must’ve broken off years before I was even born when my sister had him. But I still knew about his real inner core and no one else did, and what mattered was what he was, not his past, and I was the only one willing to find that part each time.
I pull the tapestry from the back of the couch over me as Andrew’s voice moves through my living room surrounding my body, resting in my ears, floating in my head. I fall asleep with his face near, the light behind it illuminating my dreams.
27
I went through three different outfits this morning deciding what to wear to Greeley’s, and even called Suzanne for her opinion because Reggie is useless in that area. I needed critical truth about how best to project the creative-yet-business vibe that is essential for this sales call. The outfit Suzanne and I came up with—me describing clothes over the phone, her asking questions about hem lengths and necklines—felt so right that I didn’t even feel the need to change in my truck into the backup shirt that I brought along.
In the sales office of Greeley’s department store, an older thin-haired receptionist who looks as though she has seen decades of trends and designers come and go tells me to have a seat, she’ll buzz Ms. Beckman. I sit down on the low-slung couch. The office is done in peach with touches of chrome, soft but modern. Full-blown photographs of accessories and jewelry from the store’s catalogue are framed on the wall like modern art. I suddenly think of Tory. Of waiting in the gallery for her to get off the phone on that day I first met her so long ago in New York, and of Andrew setting the whole thing up. It feels like a memory I’ve only heard about, like things that happened prekindergarten during that age of not knowing how to do things that in ensuing years were easily learned.
The receptionist tells me I can go in and waves her hand to a door on the left. Linda Beckman is sitting behind her desk in an all-cream room. Her blond hair and pale suit perfectly complement her softly made-up face. She would not be described as beautiful, but has made the most of what God gave her on a level that most women only dream about.
She puts her hand out to me and offers me a seat. “Is that from your new line you were telling me about on the phone?”
She has noticed the necklace I am wearing, as I hoped she would. It is a thin chain of braided eighteen-karat gold from which hangs a large green-gray Tahitian pearl that has an even thinner band of braided gold encircling it with a spray of green peridot dangling on a short chain underneath it. I do what I do with women in their homes; I take the necklace off and hand it to her. I have found that it has the same effect as when a little girl lets a new friend play with her favorite doll. Linda looks surprised for a split second, then I see her eyes light up when the pearl is in her hands. She stands up and moves across the room to put the necklace on in the reflection of the glass of a framed photograph from the store’s catalogue.
When she comes back to her desk still wearing my necklace, I pull out the trays of pins and necklaces and bracelets and rings from my faux Vuitton bag, and Linda picks up and plays with or tries on almost everything. She glances through my press kit as she tells me that she wants the order in for January, and I try to contain my euphoria as she explains the terms.
Driving home on Wilshire Boulevard, I pass the other department stores that dominate this section of Beverly Hills, and I can barely believe what’s just happened. My jewelry is going to be in one of these, on display and for sale in a national store. And in Greeley’s catalogue, The Style Journal, a renowned quarterly that years ago set the bar for all other high-end retail. I have to get the samples of my entire new line of South Sea pearls held with braided gold while peridot, tourmaline, and citrine dance around them to a photography studio next Monday for them to be included in the spring catalogue. Talk about tear sheets for my press kit. The shoots they do are notorious for being beautiful, yet exotically decadent. I can’t wait to see my work immortalized that way. I silently bless Suzanne and her wedding for inspiring me to work with pearls.