Page 16 of Dirty Diana
“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 legsback 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 weretoo 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.
Chapter 6
—
The first time Oliver and I had sex, it didn’t feel like fucking. It wasn’t the kind of sex that made you wonder, while you were having it, if this person was going to call afterward, or if you’d evenwantto see them again. It wasn’t performative. I didn’t move my body to put on a show and neither did he.
Two days after we met and he had shown me the apartment, Oliver called to tell me my credit was indeed terrible, but by that point I’d found a room in a two-bedroom with a friend of a friend who was in dental school and very quiet. A week after that, Oliver called again, this time to tell me that his father’s company was hiring a new front-office person. “It’s a lot of answering phones, but the hours aren’t too bad. I’ve managed to survive it,” he said. I could tell he felt bad about the apartment falling through. He mentioned he knew of a unit in hisgirlfriend’s building that might be free. I told him again that I’d already found a new place. I was pretty sure he was mentioning a girlfriend to convince me there was nothing creepy in his job offer.
“How do you know I’d be good at the job?”
“You answeredmyphone call pretty well.”
“Ha ha.”
I started work the next Monday. It was an easy job at his father’s wealth management firm. I sat up front and answered the phones, “McKinnon, Wood, and Bloom.” I circulated mail to each of the three named partners by dividing it among their female assistants. Two of the senior executives—Messrs. McKinnon and Bloom—were ancient-looking, gray-faced men and were mostly indistinguishable to me, holed up in their offices behind closed doors at the other end of the hallway. Oliver’s father, Mr. Allen Wood, was the second name on the masthead, and of the three men, the only one I ever saw outside his office among the assistants, making an effort at social interaction.
When the phones were slow, I used sharp No. 2 pencils and every other free office supply at my desk to draw new sketches for my old friends Barry and Alicia—mostly of the irritated, very wealthy people Ipictured on the other end of the calls. This time I signed themD$rty D$anato make Alicia laugh. And instead of sending me sponges, Alicia sent me back a tightly rolled joint, which I quickly stashed in the back of my desk drawer. She couldn’t believe I was working with finance people. Then, years later when I became a financial planner, she said she knew I could do it and that it was good to have one in the family.
Other times when I drew at my desk, I tried to picture Oliver’s girlfriend. I imagined her with a chestnut bob, an oval face, and rosy cheeks. In my drawings she said things like,Y’all are too cute!while looking at Oliver with large watery eyes. Every night, Oliver would exit past reception, sometimes letting his hand linger on my desk, and wish me good night. And every night, over that first two and a half months, my crush blossomed.
