Beautiful(34)

“It’s Ulla,” she said exuberantly, and Véronique was sorry she’d answered. They had never been friends. “How are you? I’m finally working again. I had twins, but I’m back now. I just thought I’d say hello. Are you very busy?” She was a nice enough girl, but Véronique had never been close to her and had no idea why she had called her.

“Actually, I’m not modeling anymore. I took some time off.”

“Pregnant?” she asked, laughing.

“No, I just needed some time off. I just got back from New York.”

“I’d love to see you. My mother is keeping the twins for two weeks, so I could take some jobs here. I missed Fashion Week. How was it?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.” She had been, but she’d been hiding.

“I had to have my breasts done after the twins. Nursing is a disaster. I won’t make that mistake again. And it took me a year to lose the weight. But it was nice being at home in Sweden with my mother.” Véronique assumed that Ulla wasn’t married to the twins’ father. “I couldn’t have done it without her. I’m going to have some work done on my face when I’m here. I need fillers, and I’m doing Botox shots now. I’ve been doing some fantastic electro massages on my face in Sweden. It’s almost like a facelift.” Ulla was twenty-nine years old, and was approaching the end of her career. Already, before she’d left, she’d been getting fewer calls, and the demand for her had dwindled. She had been spectacular looking at seventeen, but twelve years later less so.

They talked for a few minutes, and Véronique got off the phone as gracefully as she could. The conversation reminded her of what Doug had said about how tired he was of girls obsessed with their weight and their age, getting Botox shots at twenty-two, and fillers, and surgery, enlarging or reducing their breasts, starving to keep their weight down, and terrified they would get a line or a wrinkle. It seemed an insane way to live, and totally narcissistic. It was all that most of them talked about. Véronique was twenty-two and had been at the height of her career, but in five years that might not be true. She missed the fabulous jobs for Dior and Chanel, walking in their shows, being on the cover of Vogue, photographed by every famous photographer in the world. But how long did it last and what did it mean? And what happened to all of them when it was over?

Only a handful of the very famous ones lasted into their thirties. The others were considered old at twenty-five, and were competing on the runway with fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds who were hired because of their coltish looks and had no curves yet. It was an express train you couldn’t chase and still climb aboard. And when it was over, the editors and the agents and photographers were heartless.

Véronique wondered if maybe she had been spared the embarrassment of a career that would end suddenly one day when a line appeared somewhere and her body was no longer flawless. Hers was intensely flawed now, and battered and wounded beyond belief. She had been blown to bits by the bomb that had ended her career instantly. But the slow death of rejection because she was considered too old at twenty-six wouldn’t have been pleasant either.

It was a crazy business, and the standards they set weren’t human. Real humans and normal women didn’t look that way, they didn’t starve the way models had to, or take drugs to lose weight, have their feet superglued into shoes so they fit even if the size was wrong, and then have their feet bleed when the shoes were torn off. Véronique had lived through all of it in the early years at eighteen and nineteen, and then the rocket-ship ride to stardom at twenty, until she was the most successful model in the business. But at what price glory?

She hated the way her career had ended, and she would have gone back if she could have. But she wondered now when she would have tired of it, and how it would have felt when they stopped begging her agent for her for magazine covers and shoots in exotic places. It all seemed so ephemeral, and made her ponder again what she was going to do now. She needed some kind of job eventually, but with a face as severely damaged as hers, who would hire her, even for an office job? She had no experience with children and her face would terrify them. And unless Phillip Talbot could create a miracle in New York, she’d have to find a job hidden away somewhere, where no one would see her. She no longer met anyone’s standards for beauty.

She was feeling sorry for herself, crushed by her mother’s absence in the apartment that afternoon, when Doug called her. He wasn’t sure if she was back yet, but decided to try. He was still in Paris for a few more days.

“How was New York?” he asked when she answered the phone. “Did you see your father?”

She sounded peaceful. “He was amazing. He really is a nice man, and it’s too late now, but he says he regrets the choices he made. He never got where he wanted in politics. I guess he had his eye on the presidency when my mother was with him. He gave up everything for that, including the love of his life, and stayed in an empty marriage. He’s very old now, and he’s pretty sick. He was really nice to me, though, and we spent about three hours together.”

“I’m glad for you, Véro. At least you met him, and heard his side of the story.”

“My mother didn’t like to talk to me about him, but she always said nice things about him when she did. She didn’t hate him for leaving us. Maybe she figured that if he gave up his dreams to be with us, he’d wind up hating her for what he missed.”