During that phone conversation with Astrid, Nina had been holding Zoe sideways in her right arm, Zoe’s head tucked in the crook of her elbow, Nina’s left pinkie in Zoe’s mouth, and whenever Astrid spoke, Nina was frantically making funny faces at Zoe because, pinkie notwithstanding, Zoe was clearly on the brink of bursting into tears.
“Le bébé is great,” Nina had said.
“Excellent,” Astrid said. “Now go to California and make me proud.”
* * *
—
Nina had planned to nurse Zoe just before leaving the hotel for the interview, after the sitter’s arrival, but Zoe won’t cooperate; she keeps unlatching from Nina’s nipple, making eye contact with Nina, and basically smirking. “Come on, Zoe,” Nina says, but Zoe continues to refuse and Nina has to leave. Riding in the taxi to Kelsey’s house, she feels the way she used to before dates: Her heart is jumpy, and she keeps checking her face in the mirror of her compact, even though she knows how she looks, which is like hell.
The interview is supposed to start at ten A.M., and the taxi driver drops her off at nine forty-seven. After confirming the address, Nina is surprised by both the house’s modesty and its accessibility. It’s a bungalow with a steep staircase leading from the street up to the front porch, a sloping lawn planted with something that looks like a cross between grass and cacti, and no hedges or fence. Given that this is L.A.—specifically, Silver Lake—the house is no doubt worth far more than its appearance suggests. (Nina then checks on her phone and finds that Sunshine Girl LLC bought the house for $920,000 in April 2012, so presumably after Kelsey had landed the role on Copacetic but before its first season aired—when she probably could feel her impending fame, which is why the purchase isn’t in her name, but before she was officially rich, which is why the house isn’t bigger.) The funny part is that, not counting the staircase, Kelsey’s house actually resembles Nina’s mother’s house in Indianapolis (estimated online value: $164,000).
Nina walks around the block once, then turns and walks around the block again in reverse, not passing Kelsey’s house either time. All of a sudden, it’s two minutes after ten. She hurries up the bungalow’s staircase. As she waits, she notices security cameras in two corners of the porch, positioned near the ceiling and pointed toward where she stands. She hears a dog barking—a big dog, from the sound of it—then the unfastening of locks on the other side of the door, and then Kelsey Adams is standing in front of her, impossibly beautiful, wearing a gardenia-scented perfume Nina can smell through the screen.
“Hi!” Kelsey says. She hugs Nina, and Nina wishes she had access to the footage in the security cameras and could post this hug on Facebook. Not really, of course—Nina tries to look at Facebook as infrequently as possible—but it’s strangely vindicating: Something Nina has for almost three years pretended to herself and others, which is that she and Kelsey Adams could have been friends, almost were friends, might be true.
The dog, a massive white Great Pyrenees, keeps appearing on either side of Kelsey’s legs, barking and sniffing, and Kelsey laughs and says, “Calm down, Chester.” To Nina, she says, “Sorry, he gets excited by visitors.”
“He’s fine,” Nina says and steps inside as Kelsey says to Chester in a tone of singsongy affection, “Can you just chill out for one minute? Can you?”
Chester barks, and Kelsey says, “I’ll put him in the kitchen.”
From the alcove inside the front door, Nina sees an impeccably decorated living room—two white couches, a glass coffee table with a vase of white tulips in its center—and beyond that a dining room and a swinging door, through which Kelsey and Chester disappear. The house is bigger than it looks from the outside, and Nina has the sense that no one is in it besides Kelsey, no housekeeper or assistant.
In Kelsey’s absence, Nina ponders whether she should enter the living room and sit down or continue standing near the front door. She opts for the latter, and when Kelsey returns, she says, “Oh my God, come on in! Make yourself at home.” Kelsey is holding two glasses of ice water, which she sets on the coffee table. She sits on a couch and tucks her legs sideways on the cushions. It doesn’t serve a purpose to think this, but since they last saw each other, Nina suspects that she has gained the exact amount of weight that Kelsey has lost, which is seventeen pounds. When Nina was pregnant, she actually gained more like thirty pounds, so she’s no longer as big as she was, but she’s still at the high end of her nonpregnant weight. All that stuff about how breast-feeding speeds up your metabolism is, she’s pretty sure, bullshit.
As for Kelsey, she’s now as thin as she could be without her thinness seeming alarming, or maybe it is alarming. Maybe in real life it’s alarming, but she still looks good on-screen. Her hair is white-blond, her eyes big and blue, her skin creamy—as creamy as a baby’s, or so Nina might have thought before giving birth to Zoe, whose eczema often causes her to scratch her own forehead while wailing, especially at bedtime.
As Nina sets her bag on the white carpet and sits on the other couch, Kelsey says, “This is so fun, right? How have you been?”
It seems safe to assume that, just as Nina and Kelsey have gained and lost inverse amounts of weight, Nina knows the exact amount about Kelsey that Kelsey doesn’t know about her—that Kelsey believes, insofar as she’s given it any thought, that Nina still lives in New York and works full-time at Gloss & Glitter. This interview was arranged via approximately forty emails among Nina, Gloss & Glitter’s executive editor, Gloss & Glitter’s on-staff celebrity wrangler, Kelsey’s publicist, and the publicist’s assistant, whom Nina imagines was also communicating with Kelsey’s assistant. The outcome of all the emails was that on Thursday, October 23, 2014, for the cover story of Gloss & Glitter’s February issue, Nina would interview—is interviewing—Kelsey from ten to eleven A.M. at her home, followed by a forty-five-minute walk around the Silver Lake Reservoir, after which Nina and Kelsey will immediately part ways because Kelsey has an important call at noon. (No fudge-making workshops for anyone this time.)
“Oh, please,” Nina says in what she hopes is a breezy tone. “Who cares about me? Congratulations on all the amazing stuff that’s happened to you.” As Nina pulls her digital recorder from the blue leather satchel she hasn’t used since she lived in New York and sets the recorder on the coffee table, she adds, “Your house is gorgeous.”
“I’m moving next week,” Kelsey says. “I’ll miss this place, though.”
“Where are you moving?”
When their eyes meet, Nina sees Kelsey’s wariness. “Up into the hills,” Kelsey says and gestures vaguely. “West.” Nina wonders if Kelsey has stalkers.
“Have you been back to Michigan lately?” Nina asks.
“I went for the Fourth of July, which was really nice and relaxing. But my schedule has been so insane lately that it’s easier for my family to come here. My new house has a mother-in-law suite, and I’ve told my family they’re welcome anytime. My parents are terrified of driving on the freeway, but even that, I’m like, You can Uber everywhere.” Kelsey smiles, and really, she’s so outrageously pretty that it would have been a waste for her not to appear on-screen. This is what Nina is thinking when, in her pocket, her phone vibrates. She’s sure it’s the sitter—in normal life, no one texts her anymore—and she’s also sure that she shouldn’t interrupt the interview just when it’s starting. Besides, isn’t Kelsey too famous for Nina to check her phone in front of her? Kelsey fondly adds, “As if Bill and Barbara Adams of Traverse City, Michigan, even grasp what Uber is.”
Nina fake-laughs, and her phone vibrates a second time. “So all the Oscar buzz has to feel good,” she says, and again Kelsey’s smile is guarded.
“Obviously, it’s really unpredictable how things will play out,” Kelsey says. “I mean, the film is still six weeks away from release. But it’s thrilling that people are responding to it so positively. And working with Ira Barbour was a
dream come true. Walking onto the set every day, I had to pinch myself.”
“Are there any moments from the shoot that really stand out for you?”
Kelsey pauses before saying, “I’m guessing you know Scott and I broke up recently?”
What a surprise, what a tremendous relief, that Kelsey has broached the topic on her own. It’s actually a double surprise, because Scott is her TV costar; he has nothing to do with the movie. Nina strives not to sound pleased as she says, “Yeah, I did hear about that. How are you doing?”
Without warning, Kelsey bursts into tears—her beautiful face crumples in on itself, and rivulets cascade from her blue eyes.
“Oh no,” Nina says. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Kelsey sobs, says, “I’m just—” and then waves her left hand instead of speaking. She stands and walks to a shelf, where she pulls a tissue from a box between artfully arranged books. She blows her nose and, as she walks back to the couch, says, surprisingly coherently, “I swore to myself I wouldn’t cry. But when I talk to you, I feel like I’m hanging out with one of my girlfriends from high school.”
“Well, being upset about a breakup is natural,” Nina says. “You are human.”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Kelsey says. “Scott and I were secretly engaged. Also, I was pregnant.”
Oh, Astrid, Nina thinks. You’re welcome.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Kelsey is saying, “but we were both really excited. And so he proposes, and Scott isn’t a super-emotional person, but the proposal was incredibly sweet. He said 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. Five weeks later, I miscarried, and literally the next day he moved out. I’m not even exaggerating. Then those paparazzi pictures show up of him with Amanda St. Clair, and you can tell they were staged because they’re totally dressed up, practically smiling at the camera while they make out, and it’s like, What the hell? Fine if he didn’t really want to be with me, but I have no idea why he had to rub it in my face.” Kelsey makes an enormous sniffing noise. “At some point, he’s being such a sociopath that I really am better off without him. But when he proposed, it felt real.” Kelsey has been gazing into the middle distance, but she turns her head to the left, making eye contact again with Nina and says, “The baby was due in early March, and that’s why whenever someone brings up the Oscars, all I can think about is stuff with Scott. I would have been majorly pregnant for awards season.” She frowns a little before adding, “Is it weird I’m telling you all this?”
That Kelsey will retroactively declare everything she just said off the record is a possibility so terrifying that Nina almost can’t breathe. Not that it will be exactly, explicitly binding even if Kelsey does, but it would be kind of shitty of Nina to take advantage of Kelsey’s naïveté, plus Gloss & Glitter will want to maintain its friendly relationship with Kelsey’s publicist and agent and the rest of her professional constellation. Of course, Gloss & Glitter—Astrid—also will be disgustingly thrilled to break the news of Kelsey’s miscarriage, which is why Nina must proceed very, very carefully.
In a light but sympathetic voice, she says, “It’s not weird at all. What you went through—that sounds so hard.”
Kelsey says, “Not to be, like, too personal, but have you ever had a miscarriage?”
Nina shakes her head.
“They’re brutal,” Kelsey says. “I used to think of them as not such a big deal, but they’re completely awful. My ob told me I could have a D&C in his office or I could wait at home and pass the fetus naturally, and he made it sound like six of one, a half dozen of the other, but I definitely should have had the procedure.”
“I’m sorry,” Nina says again. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s like going through labor. You have real contractions that are super-painful, and you even have to push, but all that comes out is tons and tons of blood. And, you know, the gestational sac. My bathroom looked like a murder scene. Scott is really squeamish, and I swear that if he hadn’t seen all that blood, we’d still be together.”
For several reasons, Nina thinks, Kelsey needs to stop—for one, because the more detail she goes into, the more likely it is she’ll want to retract everything. Also, the readers of Gloss & Glitter will be enthralled/concerned to learn of Kelsey’s miscarriage but concerned/grossed out to hear about its effluvia. And finally, listening to Kelsey is making Nina feel an urgent need to check the sitter’s texts and confirm that Zoe is okay.
“That does sound awful.” Nina furrows her brow—kindly, she hopes. “I can’t even imagine. Are you and Scott in touch at all?”
Kelsey shakes her head.
“But filming for season three of Copacetic starts next week, right?”
Kelsey shrugs. “I know. And what can I do but cross that bridge when I come to it, right?”
“Sorry to—” Nina hesitates, then says, “Is it okay if I use your bathroom?”
Kelsey’s guest bathroom looks nothing like the guest bathroom in Nina’s mother’s house—Kelsey’s is very clean, with lots of white marble surfaces (surely, the bathroom where she bled so voluminously is nearer to her bedroom). Nina sets down the lid of the toilet, sits, and pulls her phone from her pocket.
She has been crying since you left, reads the first text.
Followed almost immediately by: She will not take any food
Nina’s heart, which had slowed on entering Kelsey’s house, begins hammering again. She texts back, Did you try jar of pears?
The response is instantaneous: I have tried everything
Nina types, Maybe go outside with her? She likes looking at birds.
The fact that so many things displease Zoe—Nina doesn’t entirely fault her for it. Many things displease Nina, too, and she has far more control over her life than Zoe has over hers.
Keep me posted, Nina texts, then stands and, in case Kelsey is listening, flushes. She feels the first ache of fullness in her breasts, an ache that very possibly is psychosomatic and babysitter-text induced. She should have worn breast pads in case she starts leaking, she thinks, but she forgot to even bring any to California.
Back in the living room, Kelsey smiles sheepishly and says, “Now that I’ve totally derailed things, do you want to go get breakfast? Are you hungry?”
Nina hasn’t eaten since the granola bars and banana almost seven hours ago in her hotel room; she’s ravenous. She says, “Breakfast sounds perfect.”
* * *
—
They go to a place that’s a diner except that their omelets are, respectively, twenty-two and twenty-seven dollars. The restaurant is a couple miles from Kelsey’s house, and Kelsey drove them both there in, as Nina dutifully jotted down in her notebook, a black Porsche Cayenne hybrid. As Nina also dutifully jots down, Kelsey’s omelet is egg whites only, with spinach and mushrooms, and she eats a third of it and doesn’t touch her toast or potatoes; not that the world will care, but Nina’s omelet is yolks-in, with tomatoes, sausage, and cheese, and she eats all of it, plus the toast and potatoes. They discuss Kelsey’s TV show and her movie, which was shot in Kentucky and South Africa, and another movie she’s about to star in, and actors and directors Kelsey would like to work with. Even though Nina knows that after she returns to Indianapolis, Kelsey will again seem glamorous, the truth is that, as they sit inches apart, Nina agrees with her own impression from three years ago: Kelsey isn’t particularly bright or interesting. Neither of them brings up the topic of Scott. Nina can feel some of the restaurant’s staff and other patrons registering an awareness of Kelsey’s presence, can feel Kelsey feeling it, and she plans to ask what this phenomenon is like.
It is while Kelsey is explaining why a particular romantic comedy is her favorite movie that Nina’s phone vibrates in her pocket, three times in a row.
&n
bsp; “Literally, I’ve watched it a hundred times,” Kelsey says. “The part at the end where he tells her he’s dreamed of her every night since they last saw each other? So swoony.”
“Sorry, but I need to use the restroom again.” As Nina stands, she gestures at her empty plate and Kelsey’s mostly full one and, in an excessively cheerful voice that reminds her of her mother’s, then makes her sad because her mother has now been dead for a year, Nina says, “Delicious!”
She has not stopped crying, the first text from the babysitter reads.
I tried taking her outside it did not work
She does not have fever but do u think she’s sick
There is a part of Nina—say, 15 percent of her—that thinks, For Christ’s sake, what am I paying you for? The sitter works for an agency that charged Nina a two-hundred-dollar fee to join, before the twenty-eight dollars an hour she is paying the sitter herself. This is roughly four times the going rate in Indianapolis, not that Nina has ever used a sitter back home. And, of course, Gloss & Glitter isn’t covering the expense—the magazine wouldn’t have regardless, but Nina didn’t tell Astrid she was taking Zoe to Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the other 85 percent of Nina cannot bear listening to Kelsey Adams prattle as her daughter cries in the care of a seemingly incompetent stranger. It’s not that she symbolically can’t bear it, it’s actually physical—she feels like jumping out of her skin. Plus, Nina’s breasts are now so swollen that she’s tempted to manually pump them, but where? And into what?
On the phone’s screen, Nina sees that it’s eleven-fifty, which means the interview is about to end, apparently without the walk around the reservoir. Nina considers trying to FaceTime the sitter and Zoe from the bathroom, but, like manually pumping, this idea seems like it could create more problems than it solves.
Nina rejoins Kelsey at the table but doesn’t sit. “I know you have a call at noon,” she says. “It’s great hearing about everything you’ve been up to.”