Page 7 of Dirty Diana
“I don’t know which is more depressing, a fifty-seven-year-old man trying to be twentysomething, or a twenty-four-year-old who still lives at home.” L’Wren sighs and swerves into the highway’s carpool lane. She’s terrible at talking while driving. I grip the side of the beige leather seat.
“This is my family but they’re likeroommates,” L’Wren says. “Plus Halston. My baby girl is six-going-on-sixteen. She keeps asking me to google ‘Harry Styles, no shirt.’ ”
“L’Wren! Don’t make me laugh!” Jenna shouts from the back seat. “My filler will mess up.” She presses her hands into her cheeks as if to hold them in place.
L’Wren peers at Jenna in the rearview mirror. They have beenfriends since high school, and now we all have daughters the same age. “You’re allowed to laugh after you get Botox.”
“It’s not Botox, it’sfiller.The derm said don’t exercise or move your face too much for twenty-four hours or the filler could shift.”
“Jesus. Are you getting your filler in the H.E.B. parking lot?”
“No. Stop it.” Jenna almost snorts. “Dr. Laredo. She did Raleigh’s lips that you loved so much.”
At the mention of Raleigh’s name, the three of us go quiet. We sit in the hum of the air-conditioning as L’Wren speeds down the highway. We’re on our annual trip to Roundtop, a massive antiques show south of Dallas. Our first trip was five years ago when we were all in the same Saturday morning Mommy and Me class. L’Wren surprised Jenna and me with a babysitter. She suggested we ditch class and take a mini road trip instead.
Jenna clears her throat. She pokes her head between us, blond curls bouncing. “You could have worse roommates. At least Liam’s like a live-in babysitter, right? He must help y’all out.” Liam is L’Wren’s stepson and is usually too stoned to be of any real help. He’s more of an affable presence. “And at least your husband still has all his hair.”
“Oh, that’s so cute, do you really believe that?” L’Wren asks. “That Kev hasn’t lost hair? Do I need to remind you about last summer? The hair plugs?”
I stifle a laugh.
“Diana, donotfeel bad for laughing.” L’Wren turns to me, fully taking her eyes off the road. “True, he can’t help that he’s losing his hair. But.Nobody made him wear that beret.”
“Ohh,” says Jenna. Things often occur to her a few beats late. “I forgot about the beret. Huh. I thought he was going through like a European midlife crisis.”
“What the fuck is a ‘European midlife crisis’?” L’Wren asks.
Last summer, L’Wren’s husband, Kevin, wore a hat for every occasion. Oliver and I even spotted him wearing a hunting cap while taking an outdoor shower at their Memorial Day pool party.
“He did kind of made it work,” L’Wren says, tenderly. “But, poor thing, he had to change the bandages on all the little follicles all the time.”
I flip my mirror down and look at my face in the morning sun, studying the skin beneath my jaw, something I’ve never paid much attention to. There are circles under my amber eyes, but at least my hair is cooperating in long, tamed waves. I pull my skin tight to my ears like a homemade facelift and imagine painting a smoother version of myself with a shiny strip of forehead and a pair of newly puffed apple cheeks. I crinkle my nose, smiling at my own ridiculous expression, then drop my hands, but not before Jenna catches me. I pretend to check my lipstick, dabbing a finger across my mouth.
“And nowgood luckgetting Liam to cut his,” L’Wren says.
I flip up the mirror. “Who cares how long Liam’s hair is?”
“I think it’s why he got fired.”
“Who got fired?” Jenna asks.
“Liam,” says L’Wren. “Honestly, I didn’t even know youcouldget fired from an internship. Don’t they have to pay you something before they can fire you?”
I happen to know Liam wasn’t fired. He just stopped showing up. But I don’t say this. I shift in my seat and feel the recorder still in my pocket. I quietly slip it into my purse as L’Wren continues to vent.
“I thought, it’s an ad firm, it’s creative, maybe he’ll like it? He was miserable. But, lord, we all hated our jobs at some point, right? That’s why they call it ‘the Sunday Scaries,’ right?”
When Liam moved in with them a year ago, I thought L’Wren’s head might explode. For someone like L’Wren who has a habit of collecting strays—cats, rabbits, lizards—having her stepson move back into the house was remarkably disruptive. But L’Wren quickly formed a deep affection for him. He confuses her, but in a way she seems determined to decode.
She sighs loudly. “I want him to be an artist, if that’s what he wants. I just want him to be an artist withambition,you know?”
A red Maserati cuts us off. L’Wren lays on her horn but doesn’t slow down. “Maybe I’ll just buzz that head of hair in his sleep…”
Out the windows, gentle rolling hills covered in bluebonnets and dotted with grazing horses give way to fields of towering sunflowers and I’m only vaguely aware of my friends talking around me. My mind drifts to the old canvases I’d found in the closet. Those poor bluebonnets I tried to paint. They really looked like something had chewed on them. Then I think of the box of tapes and the sketches I’d found. I can’t remember if I’ve ever shown the drawings to anyone. Even Alicia. For a while, both she and Barry would ask how the new book was coming every time we spoke. But eventually they both seemed to forget about it too.
As if her ears were burning, my phone rings and it’s Alicia. I hit decline and send her a quick text.
Call you tonight!
