Outtakes from a Marriage (20 page)

“I don’t have an appointment, but is there any chance I can get a blow-dry?”

“Excuse me?” she said. The two women who had just checked in turned and stared at me.

“Just a shampoo and blow-dry,” I said, smiling.

“Um, this isn’t…a salon,” said the receptionist.

I looked at her and then I looked around the salon, which, indeed, turned out not to be a salon at all. It was a conference room that had been turned into some kind of Frédéric Fekkai–sponsored, women-only cocktail party. Instead of hairstyling stations and blow-dryers and sinks, there were tables with white cloths and beautiful floral centerpieces, handsome waiters walking around with glasses of wine and trays of delicate hors d’oeuvres. There was Patricia Arquette and Claire Danes and…was it? Yes! It was Jessica Lange!

“What is this?” I asked the receptionist. I was whispering.

“It’s a private party honoring Golden Globe nominees. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She was braying.

My face turned crimson. “Oh,” I said.

The two women were quietly cracking up next to me.

“Maybe I’m on the list. My husband…he’s a nominee.”

I had no interest in staying, but I knew that Joe and I were on a few party lists, and for some reason it was very important to me that the receptionist and the other two women knew this as well.

The receptionist looked me over and then said, “Your name?”

“Julia
Ferraro.
I’m
Joe Ferraro
’s wife.”

She floated her pencil tip down the list of names. “No…no Ferraro.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

I turned to leave and a woman handing out gift bags to departing guests absentmindedly started to hand one to me. When I reached for it, I heard the receptionist screech, “Tracy! She’s not a guest!” and Tracy snatched back the bag and clutched it to her chest like a baby.

Later, as I was telling Joe about it, both of us weak with laughter, I described the way I then felt compelled to back out of the room, as if, had I turned my back on her, even for a moment, Tracy would have planted her boot in my ass and literally kicked me back out into the hotel lobby.

We ordered up grilled shrimp, haricot vert salad, and roasted rack of lamb that night, Joe and me, and we dined on our terrace, and the city of Los Angeles spread out below us like a sparkling kingdom. We sipped our champagne and we even smoked a little pot that Joe’s driver had given him, and when I went inside to put on a CD, I saw that, in addition to the multitude of gift baskets that had been sent to Joe by various network executives, agents, and magazine editors, there was a new vase of large pink peonies that somebody had placed on the coffee table in our suite while we dined. Peonies are my favorite flowers, and when I pulled the card out from amid the blooms, I saw that it read: “To Julia, the love of my life, J.” I carried the flowers back to the terrace and placed them on the table. The warm night air and the plaintive chorus of car horns and distant sirens reminded me of the summer nights of my youth, and I straddled Joe’s lap like a showgirl and covered him with kisses.

[
sixteen
]

N
obody carries their own children anymore,” Karen whispered.

We were lounging by the Four Seasons pool, Karen Metzger and I, trying to get a little sun while Joe was in the gym. Karen was stirring her iced tea and peering over her sunglasses at a pair of twin babies being pushed past us in a double stroller.

“What do you mean?” I asked, blinking at the passing stroller. “What’s wrong with carrying babies in a stroller? They’re sleeping.”

“No, I mean
carry to term
. Nobody carries her own babies anymore. Those babies had a surrogate mother.”

I tried to catch another glimpse of the infants before they disappeared from view, but all I could see was the mother’s back. The straps of her black bikini top and the back of her thong trisected her perfectly toned body.

“How can you tell they had a surrogate mother?”

“You can’t tell! That was Brian Herriman’s wife. You know, Brian Herriman from Paramount?”

“Oh, yeah!” I had met Brian Herriman and his wife (Jennifer? Gillian?) at a party once.

Karen was shoulder deep in her Marni tote. When she withdrew her phone, she said, “Gillian Herriman is in my friend Rita’s book group. She tells everybody that she couldn’t conceive and that’s why she used a surrogate, but I think it was just to preserve that body.”

She flipped open the phone. “I have to check my messages. I’m waiting for a call from Shane’s play therapist.” Karen touched the number 1 on her phone and that’s how it dawned on me.

I didn’t need Joe’s code if I checked his messages using
his
phone.

Karen touched the number 1 just like I did when I checked my messages on my own phone. Apparently, 1 is the universal speed dial for voice messages. I hadn’t known that. I could hear the staccato rhythm and varying tones of the different callers on Karen’s voice mail as I pondered this new reality. It was still possible for me to check Joe’s messages.

Why would I want to do that?

Karen snapped her phone shut.

“Yeah, so anyway, they were her eggs. She made sure everybody knew that, so I’m pretty sure she could have carried them herself. Katie Winston was the opposite…”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said.
It’s not okay. It’s snooping.

“They were somebody else’s eggs, but she carried them herself so everybody would think they were hers. As if they could be at her age!”

I nodded.
He was telling me the truth.

“That’s why it kills me whenever I hear people say it’s possible to get pregnant in your mid-forties. ‘Look at Katie Winston!’ people always say, and I say, ‘Hello! Egg donor!’ Katie Winston’s eggs expired during the Clinton administration.”

Joe’s phone was attached to the charger in our room. I had nearly tripped over it on the way out. And he was in the gym.

No! Do not do it!

“Of course, who am I to talk? Everybody knows the twins were in vitro. But at least I had the decency to carry them!”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I’m just going to run up to the room.”

“There’s a bathroom down here!”

“I know, but I need to go up to the room. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay. Good, I’ll call Shanie’s therapist, then.”

I pulled my jersey cover-up over my head, hastily pushed my feet into my flip-flops, and stumbled into the dark, cavernous hotel hallway, sun-blind and shaking. It was cool in the deserted corridor and I just stood there a moment, breathing in and out, heart racing. A long mirror ran along the wall opposite me, and when I glanced up at myself, I saw not the long-tressed beauty I had admired in our bathroom mirror just a few hours earlier, but an exhausted hag with near-jowls and dark circles under her eyes. The hair extensions seemed to actually age me in this shadowy light, and I was reminded of the “kitchen witches” sold in folksy New England shops in the 1980s with their dried-up, wrinkly apple heads and long, witch hair.

I’m just tired.

I had woken up the night before, actually in the very early morning hours, and had watched Joe sleeping and thought,
He’s telling the truth. He’s telling the truth.

And yet…

The visit to the brownstone on a night I thought he was working. The sightings that were posted on Gawker. He had been seen making out at a bar with a blonde. Perhaps the reason he hadn’t followed up with a suit against Gawker was because there were postings about him being in places he shouldn’t have been, and he would be forced to prove he wasn’t there.

It’s easy to make up stuff and post it on those sites. Who would know that better than me?

She had said, “I love you, Joe.” On his voice mail. Why would Susanna say that?

I brushed my hair away from my face and started down the long hallway to the gym. I pushed open the heavy glass door and discovered that the gym was the life of the hotel. While the pool area had been relatively empty, the gym was teeming with runners, elliptical climbers, ball squatters, and weight-machine crunchers. I scanned the robust, vigorously handsome crowd looking for Joe, and there he was, one of a long row of treadmill runners, neck and neck with the others. Joe wore headphones and was looking up at a bank of televisions—the electronic carrot that hung above all the runners, and toward which they all seemed to be pushing themselves, some sprinting madly, others slogging along at the end of a stationary marathon. I walked across the springy gym floor, and the relative quiet of the space seemed to belie the tremendous amount of human effort and energy that was being put forth. In another time and place, this amount of collective human sweat would be accompanied by the crack of a whip and the groan of oars or the resounding clang of metal upon stone. Here the only sounds were the quiet humming of the machines and the rhythmic breathing of Hollywood’s glistening movers and shakers.

I padded over to Joe’s treadmill, and when he saw me, he smiled and pulled off his headphones, still running, his shoulders rolling forward and back, his fists rising and falling.

“Hey,” he said. His T-shirt was drenched.

“Hey,” I said. “I have to go up to the room. Karen and I were going to order lunch in a little while. Do you want us to wait for you?”

Joe wiped his face with a towel that was draped around his neck and grimaced.

“I’ve…got…another ten minutes of cardio,” he panted. “Then I want to steam.”

“Okay…”

“Just order me a salad and…a banana.”

“All rightie!”

I turned to leave and then looked back with a flirtatious smile.
Last night,
I thought, remembering, and I looked to see if he was remembering, too, turned to catch the old spaniel gaze, but he had his fingertips pressed to his jugular vein and his eye on his watch.

I unlocked the door to our room and saw that the housekeepers had already worked their magic. The carpet had rows of fresh vacuum-cleaner tracks, all the damp towels and dirty breakfast dishes were gone, and the gift baskets had been attractively arranged on the coffee table and bar. I had already pulled from the baskets the few items that I thought the kids would like—an iPod, some movie paraphernalia, lots of body products for Ruby—and I had meant to leave a note for the housekeepers telling them to help themselves to the rest.

The phone was on the floor where Joe had left it. He had plugged the charger into a wall outlet in the little entrance hall and left it there. It seemed like blasphemy the way he so carelessly left the phone lying there.

I picked it up and cradled it in my palm.

I would not listen to the messages, I had decided on my way up in the elevator. I would just have a peek at Joe’s call log. I assured myself that the call log was basically public information. If I had come into the room and decided to use Joe’s phone instead of my own—something I had done dozens of times—I might have just scanned down his call log to dial home. In fact, I was sure I had done exactly this many times. In fact, I
did
need to call the kids! I snapped open the phone and was greeted by a photo of Ruby and Sammy that Joe had stored as wallpaper. It was a close-up of the two of them, their cheeks pressed together, Sammy grinning a big cheesy grin and Ruby giving a funny little fake model smile. I slammed the phone shut and when I placed it back on the floor I felt exalted. Divine. It was what Goody Proctor would have done. It was a cold, conniving witch of a wife that spied on her husband, who had cast a wicked spell on the Internet. I wasn’t that wretch anymore. I would call the kids on my own phone.

We had planned to go to the
Entertainment Weekly
party with the Metzgers that night, so Joe and I decided to drive to their house in Bel-Air and then ride with them to the party. There were a lot of paparazzi around the hotel, due to all the celebrities booked there for the awards show, and they caught us as we climbed into the tiny convertible roadster, my short skirt riding up on my thighs, my ridiculous long locks blowing wildly. A small crowd gathered around us and a woman pulled a beautiful silk scarf from around her neck and handed it to me. “Tie it around your hair,” she said in some kind of elegant European accent. “I’m staying here at the hotel—you can just leave it at the front desk later.” I tied the scarf around my head, and with my black sunglasses and all the makeup I had put on, I felt a little like Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn, so I gave the crowd a very dramatic wave. Joe also waved to the crowd. He put the car in gear, revved the engine, the crowd cheered…and then he popped the clutch and we stalled out violently, our upper bodies rocketing forward like a couple of test-drive dummies.

“
Ease
your foot off the clutch,” I mumbled through my aching grin.

“I know, I know,” Joe sputtered, starting the car again with a series of growling curses, and then we were off. The crowd cheered us on again, and as we pulled away from the curb, Joe reached for my hand and squeezed it tenderly. The afternoon sun cast a blaze of gold on the buildings around us, and we sailed down those gleaming, palm-lined avenues, Joe and me, smiling merrily, merrily, merrily….

There was a red carpet and a long press line outside the
Entertainment Weekly
party. When we pulled up to the curb in the Metzgers’ Town Car, we saw that a huge battalion of photographers had been stationed on one side of the roped-off red carpet, and on the other side were hordes of fans being carefully watched by large men wearing earpieces.

“You guys get out first,” said Karen.

I was on the side of the car closest to the red carpet, which was unfortunate. It’s better if the star gets out first. It always is.

The driver hopped out of his seat and opened my door. The fans pushed and shoved and craned their heads and cheered. The photographers cocked their cameras.

I placed one Jimmy Choo out on the sidewalk. Then the other.

The crowd roared with applause. Somebody yelled “Angelina!” and the whole street went berserk.

I stood up and turned toward the crowd. The screaming stopped and the clapping petered out like the sudden end to a much-needed summer rainstorm. The photographers lowered their cameras and resumed their conversations with one another, and then Joe stepped out of his side of the car and all hell broke loose. The crowd erupted in applause and cries of “Joe! Joey Ferraro!” rang out into the evening air.

The photographers were in full cry: “Joe, over here!” “Right here!” “Can you and the wife stand here?” “Here! Joe!” “Joey, over here!” “How about one alone, Joe?” “Without the wife!”

The first time I heard a photographer call Joe’s name, I thought he must have been an old friend of his—perhaps somebody Joe knew from school. This was at the first L.A. film premier we ever attended. It was for
Siren Song,
the film Joe had done when we took the fateful bus ride across L.A. Joe only had a small part in the movie, but it turned out to be a breakthrough performance, with all the critics singling him out.

When the film came out, we were in L.A. again. Joe was working on his second mob film. He had a new agent by that time, a man named Scott Lendel, and we also had Ruby then, so Joe had told Scott that we wanted a car big enough to accommodate Ruby and her car seat. When we arrived in Los Angeles and were transported to the house that had been rented for us in Santa Monica, we were thrilled to find a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car parked in the driveway. When I told my dad that we were driving around L.A. in a Town Car, I think I heard him weep with joy for us. He drove a rusty pickup truck. Always had. We strapped Ruby’s car seat into the back and we spent an entire weekend exploring Los Angeles in our luxurious chariot.

Soon after we arrived in L.A., we had dinner with the film’s director, Jason Cummings, and his girlfriend the supermodel. They happened to arrive at the restaurant just as we did, and when we got out of the car to greet them, Jason burst out laughing. “That’s too much,” he said. “That’s perfect.”

We smiled stiffly. “What?” said Joe.

“The car,” Jason said, and he laughed uproariously as he followed us into the restaurant.

We found that everyone we met in L.A. had one of two reactions to the car. Some, like Jason, would laugh conspiratorially as if they got the joke. Others would ask in all seriousness if we were driving my parents’ car. One night we had dinner with Joe’s agent, who, upon seeing the car, flew into a rage and started madly dialing numbers on his cell phone. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll sort this out.”

We told Scott not to worry, that we loved the car. And then we drove it to the premier of
Siren Song.
When we pulled up to the red carpet that night, we were just following all the other Town Cars, not really cognizant of the fact that the passengers in the cars ahead of us were all being dropped off. When we arrived at the entrance, a uniformed man bent down and opened the door to the backseat of the car, which he found to be empty. He quickly recovered from the shock of seeing Joe and me in the front seat, all dressed up.

“What’d you do, rub out your driver?” he asked, laughing loudly. Then he directed us to a nearby parking lot. We parked the car and it was on the shameful walk back to the red carpet that a photographer stepped in front of us on the sidewalk and said, “Mind if I take a quick photo, Joe?” and started shooting away. We finally stepped onto the red carpet to flashes of lightbulbs and cries of “Joe! Joe!” from all directions.