Dirty Diana

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

—

The next weekend, I spend most of Saturday catching up at the office. I join Oliver and Emmy at the kitchen table for an early dinner. Emmy is eating buttered noodles and Oliver is scrolling on his phone.

“What’d I miss today?” I ask.

Emmy sighs. “Errands. Grandma’s house. More errands.”

Oliver says, “Ice cream. Tea party. More ice cream.”

Emmy grins and finds the box of paints I bought for her. Her eyes light up. “For me?”

I nod, and Oliver shoots Emmy an impressed look. “Your mom finds you the coolest stuff.” He does this a lot lately, complimenting me to Emmy, but never looking right at me. He kisses the top of her head.

I pick up Jasper’s photograph, which has been leaning against a wall since I brought it home, and try to find a place for it. “I thought maybe for the living room?”

“Nice.” Oliver hasn’t even really looked at it. Or even noticed it sitting there all week.

This annoys me, and now I’m annoyed at myself for feeling this way. Why do I want Oliver to admire Jasper’s photograph?

“I spent more than I should have,” I say. He looks up. “But it can be my birthday present.”

“Well, we do have an early birthday surprise for you,” he says.

“Really?” My birthday isn’t until tomorrow.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

Emmy climbs onto my back and covers my eyes with hands that smell like butter. “No peeking!”

They lead me upstairs, stopping at the door to the overflow room. Emmy removes her hands and I open my eyes.

The room has been cleaned. It’s nearly empty. No baby swings piled on the thick carpet, no more plastic storage bins marked for donation. It’s not a room full of junk anymore. And it’s not a work space either. It’s a guest room, the way the house’s layout always intended it to be. Oliver has even pulled our old bed from the garage and hung my painting of bluebonnets above it.

“No sheets on the bed yet or anything like that,” he says.

“Wow.” My heart plunges toward my stomach.

“My mom took Emmy most of the day, but she did ride with me to the Goodwill.”

“Two times,” Emmy says.

I try to swallow my rising panic. The plastic bins. I stuffed that old shoebox full of minicassettes into one of those bins. I never got it back out. All those interviews. “You took everything?”

“All of it,” Oliver says proudly. He scratches his arm, looks around. “Except for the air mattress.” He opens the closet. “That seems in good shape still.”

My throat is closing with rage. “Oliver.” What do I say? “My stuff…”

Oliver looks confused. “Are you upset?”

“You should have asked me—”

“We’ve been trying to get rid of this junk forever.”

“No, I know. But maybe there was something we wanted to save. I haven’t checked in so long—”

I want to scream at him, but I shut down. It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault. My level of upset takes my own breath away. I can’t look at him, I can’t speak. But how is he supposed to know what those tapes mean to me? I’ve never played him a single one. I think of how I shoved the shoebox so carelessly into a bin, and now all the cassettes are gone. Hours of interviews and stories from years ago that I’ll never be able to replicate.

“Diana,” Oliver says and puts an arm that might be made of lead around my shoulders. I could topple backward. “All that stuff is off to a better home.”

My smile is obviously pained. He has no idea that he threw out years of my life—years of other women’s stories. Oliver looks hurt and confused. Of course he can’t understand what he’s thrown out. “Diana, I don’t even know what I did wrong here.”

Over his shoulder I see that Emmy is studying us, her fingers twisting in the hem of her pajama shirt. I smile at her. “Let’s go brush teeth, okay, bear?”

“I haven’t had dessert yet!”

“Diana,” Oliver says, softer this time. “What’s going on?”

I try to sound bright. “You know me and old junk. I get nostalgic.”

Oliver wrinkles his forehead and looks like he wants to say something more, but he lets me go.

—

“Damn, Diana. Try taking a little heat off that serve. Give a girl a chance.” L’Wren is laughing but I can tell she means it. She hates to lose, and I just beat her in straight sets. I should probably have let her win the last one, but it’s my birthday and it feels good to push myself to total exhaustion. I think about reminding her that it’s my birthday just so she doesn’t realize later and feel bad, but that seems even weirder? I’m forty-one. This birthday should float quietly by.

We’re zipping up our rackets and heading to our cars in the parking lot of Rockgate’s public park. This is where we spend most weekends—either at the playground or the tennis courts or the town pool. Some mornings, Emmy and I stop here before school so she can watch for the deer that graze on wild strawberries at the park’s edges.

“I’ll buy you a lemonade at the snack bar? I have an hour before Emmy’s swim class.”

“You owe me something stronger than lemonade to make up for whipping my ass. Seriously, Diana, how many lessons a week do you take?”

“Just two,” I say. I don’t add that one of those lessons is two hours long. I never thought I was a competitive person but tennis brings it out in me.

L’Wren’s phone starts ringing. “Liam?” she says. “I can’t come pick you up, I have an appointment…. Yes, a hair appointment.”

“What’s wrong?” I whisper.

She puts her hand over the phone. “Liam’s car broke down. His father is in the middle of eighteen holes of golf and isn’t picking up.” She mouths, Why me?

“I’ll go get him,” I say. “Where is he?”

“Oh my god, Diana, you’re a literal angel.”

—

Liam is standing in front of the gas station when I pull up. He’s dyed his hair a deep midnight blue. “Thanks,” he says, climbing into the passenger seat. “I owe you.”

“Consider it payment for driving our stuff back from Roundtop. Where to?”

“You can take me back to the park with you and I’ll wait for Pops. He likes it when I heckle him from the greens.”

“Is that your car? The gray one?”

“Yeah. That’s Rosie. I left a bagel with cream cheese on the roof a few months ago and it stuck. It’s easy to identify now.”

“Liam. Gross.”

“I know. I kinda just do it to see L’Wren’s face when I pull up next to her.”

“Have you ever asked them to help you out with a new car?”

“L’Wren’s offered. She hates seeing Rosie parked in her driveway. But once again…It’s kinda nice to see her face.” He grins. “I know, I’m a dick.”

I pull onto the road heading back to the park. “She loves you, you know.”

“You don’t have to say that, Diana.”

“I’m not just saying that. It’s true.” Why does my voice sound so hollow? “Maybe there’s something you can do together sometime? Just the two of you.”

“Sure. Maybe I’ll book a his and her Fraxel.”

I try not to laugh. “What about helping her cook dinner?”

“Dad cooks dinner.”

“I know she likes to walk in the morning. You could go with her?”

“She calls that her ‘me time.’?”

“Fine. But you get what I mean. Because what’s the other option, really?”

“To be the black sheep of the family permanently?”

“Come on, Liam. You’re not the black sheep.”

The car is quiet for a long minute. Liam cracks his knuckles, then finally speaks. “When I was a senior in high school, I was supposed to go to my mom’s for the weekend but she ended up going to Florida so I had to turn around and go back to Dad’s. When my cab pulled into the driveway, Dad and L’Wren and Halston were in front of the house dressed in red and green, taking the family Christmas card picture. Even my racist grandma who tried to poison our gardener was invited. My dad pretended he knew I’d be coming back and told me to get in the picture, but it was obvious they had scheduled it for when I’d be gone. It’s dumb even talking about it. I didn’t want to be in the stupid Christmas card picture…”

“But you wanted to be in the picture.”

“Ha. Clever, yes.” He smiles. “I still want to be in the picture. I guess. I don’t know, it’s dumb. Besides, I almost have enough saved to move. So…soon.”

We pull up to the golf course, and I park in the same spot as before. “Want to hit some tennis balls?”

“Very funny,” he says.

“Just with me.”

“Diana. Never.” He looks at me in earnest. “Not even for your birthday.”

—

When I was eleven, this would have been my dream—to lie by a glistening pool in a well-fitted, two-piece bathing suit. Instead, my mother and I lived in a dumpy apartment at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills, where we’d moved after her last breakup. She had been in community theater productions before she met my father, and once he left, when I was three, she decided it was time to pursue her dream of becoming a working actor.

Most afternoons, while my mother was at an audition or working behind the Clinique counter at the mall, I would knock on our landlord’s door and ask him again when the pool in the building’s courtyard would be filled. He was a tiny man named Chad with a thick head of sandy-blond hair and he always shrugged the same answer, “I called about the leak.” I knew he was lying, that the pool would most likely never be fixed, but I asked anyway. Then I’d sit at the edge of the deep end in my bathing suit, the sun beating against my back, and let my bare legs dangle over the murky water at the pool’s bottom. I’d swing my legs back and forth and say a quiet prayer for my mother’s audition. I prayed to the patron saint of Los Angeles for callbacks and booked parts.

One hot summer day, after an audition that didn’t go her way, she stormed past me, snapping, “Come on, move. Move. ” I hurried to stand, my bathing suit peeling off the hot concrete like Velcro.

Inside our apartment, Mom yelled for Chad, something about there being fleas, and he made his slow way upstairs and sprayed something on the carpet, then gave us instructions on when to vacuum. The entire time he was there, my mom complained about how difficult it was to get anything done—she couldn’t even run lines, the fleas were too distracting. With a blank expression Chad told her, “Try to use the pain in your process,” then winked at me as he left. Our apartment building was teeming with out-of-work actors.

The fleas persisted, but we were also out of money and overdue on the rent, so Mom stopped calling Chad to come back, and I quit asking him about the pool. Most days we stayed inside and pretended not to be home whenever he knocked on our door looking for our rent check.

But today, here I am, my nails are painted pink and I have a glass of iced tea in hand, from a snack bar only ten feet away. And on the other side of my cold drink is my handsome husband, and together we have a perfect, healthy, brilliant daughter who is standing at the edge of the pool, watching her instructor demonstrate a dive.

“Look at her,” Oliver says, his eyes wide with pride. “She’s so strong. When did she get those muscles?”

“I know!” I say. “Maybe we should get her into gymnastics. A lot of Olympic divers start out as gymnasts.”

Oliver looks at me with a grave face. “That won’t distract from her pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize?”

I laugh. It’s Emmy’s turn to dive and Oliver gently squeezes my hand. I squeeze back, tighter. Emmy steps to the very edge, her arms stretched over her head. Then she gets up on her tiptoes and launches into the deep end.

We’re not supposed to clap for individual kids—this is just a class, it’s not competitive—but Oliver lets out a hoot as Emmy climbs from the pool. Other parents laugh, because Oliver is too nice and too popular to be chastised for cheering on his daughter. Emmy beams at us and then slaps on wet feet back to her classmates.

Oliver and I sit in silence for the rest of the class. Times like this are what I try to remember when I feel lost. I’m forty-one and I have finally let my guard down. I’ve outrun the chaos. I’m not worried about being evicted from a crappy apartment or avoiding debt collectors. I have a job, a beautiful daughter, and a husband who makes me laugh. When I check out at the grocery store, I don’t worry they’ll ring me up and I’ll have to put things back. I have days, like today, when the quiet feeling of being loved and feeling safe washes over me. This is a kind of desire, too, I tell myself.

Class ends, and I stand to take Emmy a towel. Oliver puts out a hand to stop me.

“You’ll see,” he says, pulling his shirt over his head. He takes a Bluetooth speaker from his bag and presses play. Now Stevie Wonder is singing “Happy Birthday,” loud enough for the whole pool deck to enjoy. Oliver dives into the pool and then motions to Emmy, who cannonballs in after him.

“On three, Ems!” he shouts. Other poolgoers gather around me and we watch Emmy and Oliver do an incredibly clumsy father/daughter synchronized happy-birthday swim. Lots of jazz hands and popping up to the surface at mismatched times. Notice the way the water holds them up. See the way they look at each other, trying to remember the moves and laughing when they can’t. My face hurts from smiling and tears sting my eyes. Such a sweet gesture. I try not to let myself wonder why I’m instructing myself to enjoy it.

Emmy finishes the routine with a flip off Oliver’s shoulders and I clap loudly.

—

On the way home from dinner, Emmy falls asleep in the car. Oliver carries her upstairs and while he gets her settled, I quickly get ready for bed. I wash my face and brush my teeth and hurry under the covers. By the time Oliver comes in, the lights are off and my eyes are closed. I’m just so tired, I tell myself. From the sun and the wine at dinner. It’s okay to just want to sleep. Oliver sits down on his side of the bed, and I can sense his disappointment. Here is where I should reach for him. Initiate a moment of closeness. Once we get started I’m sure I’ll find it pleasurable. The more I tell myself what to do, the less I want to do it. So instead I pretend to be asleep and avoid “birthday sex” until finally we both drift off to sleep for real.