You Think It, I'll Say It(40)
“I hadn’t gotten pregnant on purpose, but we were both really excited,” Kelsey will say. “And Scott isn’t a super-emotional person, but his proposal was incredibly sweet. He said how he was so happy he’d found someone else who was grounded and had good values and he wanted us to be a team and support each other in the crazy world of L.A. Then five weeks later I miscarried, and literally the next day he moved out. And then those paparazzi pictures show up of him with—” This time, Kelsey will roll her eyes but not say Amanda St. Clair’s name. Also, she won’t describe all the blood, and Nina will wonder if one of her handlers advised against it, or if these are edits Kelsey made on her own. For the part when Kelsey said to Nina that she swore she wouldn’t cry but she felt like she was hanging out with one of her girlfriends from high school, Kelsey will amend it to “But I feel like I’m hanging out with my favorite auntie in Michigan.” Which is tactful, given that the interviewer is probably the age of Kelsey’s grandmother.
How astonished Nina will be to realize not only that Kelsey has fucked her over but that in complying with Kelsey’s request, Nina herself was showing stupidity rather than compassion. How astonishing Kelsey’s shrewdness will be—it will elicit from Nina genuine respect, along with a predictable antipathy. Given that Nina’s career as a journalist is finished, however, does it really make a difference? Defying Kelsey could have prolonged Nina’s career, but probably not by much.
As Kelsey turns her SUV into the hotel driveway, she says, still coldly, “Did you think I’d be jealous?” Nina is about to say no, which is the truth, when Kelsey adds, “Of you?”
But cranky, suspicious, eczema-ridden Zoe—Nina loves her so much! She’s so happy to see her! Outside the hotel, perched on the sitter’s hip, wearing her undignified clothes, Zoe is very familiar and dear, and it occurs to Nina that today is the first time she’s ever had the chance to miss her daughter.
The Prairie Wife
The understanding is that, after Casey’s iPhone alarm goes off at 6:15 A.M., Kirsten wakes the boys, nudges them to get dressed, and herds them downstairs, all while Casey is showering. The four of them eat breakfast as a family, deal with teeth brushing and backpacks, and Casey, who is the principal of the middle school in the same district as the elementary school Jack and Ian attend, drives the boys to drop-off. Kirsten then takes her shower in the newly quiet house before leaving for work.
The reality is that, at 6:17, as soon as Casey shuts the bathroom door, Kirsten grabs her own iPhone from her nightstand and looks at Lucy Headrick’s Twitter feed. Clearly, Kirsten is not alone: Lucy has 3.1 million followers. (She follows a mere 533 accounts, many of which belong to fellow celebrities.) Almost all of Lucy’s vast social-media empire, which, of course, is an extension of her lifestyle-brand empire (whatever the fuck a lifestyle brand is), drives Kirsten crazy. Its content is fake and pandering and boring and repetitive—how many times will Lucy post variations on the same recipe for buttermilk biscuits?—and Kirsten devours all of it, every day: Facebook and Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest, the blog, the vlog, the TV show. Every night, Kirsten swears that she won’t devote another minute to Lucy, and every day she squanders hours.
The reason things go wrong so early in the morning, she has realized, is this: She’s pretty sure Twitter is the only place where real, actual Lucy is posting, Lucy whom Kirsten once knew. Lucy has insomnia, and while all the other posts on all the other sites might be written by Lucy’s minions, Kirsten is certain that it was Lucy herself who, at 1:22 A.M., wrote, “Watching Splash on cable, oops I forgot to name one of my daughters Madison!” Or, at 3:14 A.M., accompanied by a photo of an organic candy bar: “Hmm could habit of eating chocolate in middle of night be part of reason I can’t sleep LOL!”
Morning, therefore, is when there’s new, genuine Lucy sustenance. So how can Kirsten resist? And then the day is Lucy-contaminated already, and there’s little incentive for Kirsten not to keep polluting it for the sixteen hours until she goes to bed with the bullshitty folksiness in Lucy’s life: the acquisition of an Alpine goat, the canning of green beans, the baby shower that Lucy is planning for her young friend Jocelyn, who lives on a neighboring farm.
As it happens, Lucy has written (or “written,” right? There’s no way) a memoir, with recipes—Dishin’ with the Prairie Wife—that is being published today, so Kirsten’s latest vow is that she’ll buy the book (she tried to reserve it from the library and learned that she was 305th in line), read it, and then be done with Lucy. Completely. Forever.
The memoir has been “embargoed”—as if Lucy is, like, Henry Kissinger—and, to promote it, Lucy traveled yesterday from her farm in Missouri to Los Angeles. (As she told Twitter, “BUMMM-PEE flyin over the mountains!!”) Today she will appear on a hugely popular TV talk show on which she has been a guest more than once. Among last night’s tweets, posted while Kirsten was sleeping, was the following: “Omigosh you guys I’m so nervous + excited for Mariana!!! Wonder what she will ask…” The pseudo-nervousness, along with the “Omigosh”—never “Omigod” or even “OMG”—galls Kirsten. Twenty years ago, Lucy swore like a normal person, but the Lucy of now, Kirsten thinks, resembles Casey, who, when their sons were younger, respectfully asked Kirsten to stop cursing in front of them. Indeed, the Lucy of now—beloved by evangelicals, homeschooler of her three daughters, wife of a man she refers to as the Stud in Overalls, who is a deacon in their church—uses such substitutes as “Jiminy Crickets!” and “Fudge nuggets!” Once, while making a custard on the air, Lucy dropped a bit of eggshell into the mix and exclaimed, “Shnookerdookies!” Kirsten assumed that it was staged, or maybe not originally staged but definitely not edited out when it could have been. This made Kirsten feel such rage at Lucy that it was almost like lust.