“Maybe it’s a little ego boost. Like, if you aren’t getting what you want from the world, fuck it, because being myself is more important anyway?”
“Maybe... Anna, he’s making noise about moving back to St. Louis.”
“Really? Why?”
“To be with his family, to have that support, to settle down—to leave behind all the hassles of trying to make it in LA.”
“Do you want him to move back to St. Louis?”
“No,” Jane answered without hesitation. “But—I also don’t want to ask him to stay.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s asking a lot. And implying a lot.”
“You can ask him to stay, Jane—it’s not the same as a marriage proposal.”
“Are you sure? It’s a big move, and—I have no idea what is best for him, or for me.... What do you think I should do?”
Anna gave Jane an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? I have no clue.”
Jane was grateful that Anna hadn’t presumed to have the answer. It wasn’t math; there wasn’t one correct solution.
This morning, staring at the blank page of her diary, she was musing aboutTo thine own self be trueagain. What if one were sort of a mess—dyspeptic, surly, anhedonic? Why would you want to be true to that?
Jane took a hearty slug of coffee. She was feeling increasingly frustrated. She had all these resolutions to get her new year kicked off, but she felt thwarted, indecisive, even afraid. She sighed, then wrote in her diary:
HAVE A NICE DAY.
That seemed like a very good objective, less onerous thanTo thine own self be true.Maybe the tattoo meant Teddy was drowning in self-regard, and if so, good for him. That was probably why he was so innately kind and generous. For herself, she needed an attainable goal, something she could control.
If only she could figure out what a nice day was, and how to have one.
Benedict Canyon, another jumbled Los Angeles neighborhood, was snaky and furtive, out of the way yet in the middle of everything, sprawling in the hills above the mostly flat, meretriciously named Beverly Hills. It was one part stately old Hollywood, one part gauche Beverly Hills bourgeois, with a dash of Laurel Canyon funk.
Jane turned off Mulholland onto Benedict Canyon Drive and started downhill, battling the hordes of Valley-dwellers cutting through the canyon, often at maniacal velocities. Since Waze and other navigation apps had democratized the roadways, even the sleepiest streets had become thoroughfares, so enclaves were no longer enclaves.
Jane needed to mitigate her apprehension about what kind of traffic nightmare awaited her each day. It was pointless. She should be grateful that she wasn’t spending hours each day sitting in backed-up traffic on the exact same street, which wouldbe a Kafkaesque nightmare. At least she got to spend her hours in traffic on different streets, with different scenery.
Her destination was not far from the intersection of Benedict Canyon Drive and Mulholland, and once she turned onto the side street, everything became quiet and calm. She parked in front of a stately Hollywood Regency house, white with black trim. Cypress trees in giant stone urns framed the front door.
It was archetypal, and made perfect sense, because today’s client was Julie Robin, an old-school entertainer, a triple threat: an actress, a singer, and a dancer. In the fifties, Julie Robin had started singing and dancing in nightclubs, sometimes with last-gasp burlesque acts, until she was discovered and signed to a studio contract and became, in the sixties, a starlet. She performed mostly in fluffy musicals and frothy comedies but turned in some dramatic performances as well. Julie Robin somehow managed to be sultry and wholesome at the same time; because she could play either the sex pot or the girl next door, she vied with both Ann-Margret and Doris Day for roles. Julie also recorded a few albums, mixes of American Songbook standards and contemporary tracks. She sang with a honeyed, purring soprano, and an ease that belied her technical skill. In the seventies, when she was no longer a sex-kittenish ingenue, she managed to get parts in a few prestige films and finally garnered acclaim for her acting chops, while at the same time, rather incongruously, she was doing stints in Vegas with her glitzy nightclub act. By the late seventies she had a short-lived variety show. When that ended, she continued to work consistently in both television and movies, but in parts that got smaller and smaller, from mother to grandmother, from sexy divorcée to grieving widow.
Jane liked watching Julie because she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself when she sang and danced, which was infectious, and her acting was unfussy and grounded. Jane realized she hadn’t seen Julie pop up in anything for a number of years. She must be in her eighties by now.
Seeing Lindsey pulling up behind her, Jane went to greet her. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Jane!” Lindsey gushed, beaming. This girl seemed to know how to have a nice day.
“How was traffic for you?”
“A nightmare, but I’m here and basically on time, right?”
“I think you’re right on time, Lindsey.”
“Oh good! Before we go in, I need to tell you something so, so exciting!” Lindsey was practically squealing.
“What?”
