Normal Girl: A Novel - Couverture souple

Chapter 1

I think it was Donna Rice or Donna Reed or maybe it was Diana Ross who said Andy Warhol's funeral was like a night at Studio 54. In that vein, Jeff's funeral is the equivalent of a night at Planet Hollywood. But it's all the same really: fast food, cocaine, and disco music. Nothing ever really changes, not around here anyway. Maybe disco has become techno, promiscuous sex has morphed into cautious promiscuous sex, and cell phones have replaced religion as the opiate of the masses, but our relentless obsession with The Next Best Thing-ism (T.N.B.T.-ism) remains the same.

If only it was as simple as me, the out-of-it-never-really-It girl, trying to snort a bump in a speeding taxi. Brushing the cigarette ash off my black tunic, I catch sight of a buttoned-down grandmother and her wiry granddaughter in her school kilt. Flying past them on Park Avenue, I have a brief moment of that there-is-something-really-wrong-with-my-life feeling. It passes before it can take me. The driver and I argue about which park crossing to take. Ignoring me, he turns abruptly, knocking my little pile of cocaine onto my suede boots. I run my fingers up and down my boots until I've wiped, sucked, and licked every particle of cocaine from within the grains of suede.

Call me an antisocial socialite, but this is my fifth funeral in September and I can't even keep my shoes clean. My grandmother, my aunt, three friends, and a distant cousin have died in the same ninety-one days, making funeral attendance my new profession. I have worn black more in the last three months than I did during my entire Pablo Neruda reading phase. But all this goes with the territory, or so I assume--it's not exactly as if they tell you how to behave when you've murdered your boyfriend. And there's certainly no chapter in Emily Post's etiquette book on the how-to's of attending your victim's funeral.

The temple grows out of the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, a giant monument to rich Jews. The face of the building is slick, built with white bomb-shelter brick strong enough to withstand the Nazis. There is nothing that could ever affect its structure, not the multitude of deaths mourned here, not the anorexia that wastes the female congregation, not the Prozac that makes them comfortable, not even acid rain. I've been to lots of funerals at this temple; this is the first for someone I've murdered, though.

It's one of those rare hot, sticky, overcast days in September. The kind of day where your thighs stick to the vinyl taxi seats. It's been an exhausting week of hangovers, clumpy mascara, and working at the dreaded gallery. But it's over because it's Thursday and that's when my workweek ends. My plan is this: make an appearance at the funeral; mourn; spend no more than seven minutes alone with my mother; leave; go to Greenwich with some people I find at the funeral; when in Greenwich stay in mother's shrine to herself, raise my liver count, suppress my red-blood-cell count, deaden some nerve endings, and try to have a good time in the process. But I'm flex, except for the seven-minutes part.

Funerals are the cotillions of the nineties, where the young people meet and mingle. All this might seem abnormal to you--the fact that this congregation mourns the teenage sons of bankers every day.

Filling the sidewalk with chatter from their cell phones, these glossy blow-dried mourners shine like they've never had a problem in their perfectly choreographed lives. They aren't like us. The difficulties we normal people suffer slide right off their publicists' backs. Never having had an awkward phase, they live busy lives, adjusting their sunglasses and making sure their unborn children have a place on the waiting list for the Dayton School. Some of them half turn to look at me (maybe it's my dirty fingernails that make me not merit a full turn). I am the living embodiment of an awkward phase. But I must seem vaguely familiar to them--after all, I've been mentioned on Page Six sixteen times, and I'm only nineteen.

I barely have room to move at this movie premiere masquerading as a funeral. There's a paparazzi line and everything, leaving me to wonder who they got to cater the shiva. I really like chocolate rugelach. I noncalorically enjoy the smell of it.

My mother waits for me outside. She is clad in a high-waisted vintage Halston pants suit that's a little too tight for someone of her advanced age, somewhere in the ballpark of forty-five to sixty. Her almost invisible cellulite bubbles in a little bump around her waist. I love her small, doll-like features and her soft voice. I love her littleness. She is thin, in that willowy, dehydrated way all socialites are thin. Her short brown hair may have seen one too many hair dryers, but it still does the job of covering the scars behind her ears. She got her work done in Brazil, early eighties, hence the scars behind her ears. I lean down and kiss her forehead. Because both of us were calculating on the other's lateness, we have nearly missed each other.

"Are those my black burned-velvet pants?" Holding up the back of my shirt, she inspects my butt for a confirmation that they are indeed her pants. "Just making sure you've taken my favorite pants, the only pants that fit me, the ones with the green metallic lining and the feather attached to the back pocket."

"No, hello. No, how are you doing at this tragic time?"

"Sorry, sweetie." She takes my shoulders in a forced hug. I step back, choking on her sickly sweet perfume.

"Where did you get that perfume? It smells ... hum ... more dead cat than flower." She frowns and I realize I've hurt her feelings. "I'm sorry. It's nice, very nice and floral. Very floral." I'm trying to behave like nothing is wrong, but the chatter in my head about Jeff, perfume, and the fact that I'd love another bump makes me feel otherwise. A family tree that reads like other people's resumes should guarantee some peace of mind. But I have this feeling where the peace of mind should be, and when I get this feeling ...

"Miranda, go like this." She points a rounded pink nail in my direction.

"What? Could you not stick your finger in my face?"

"You have something in your teeth."

"Oh, where?" She points to my two front teeth.

"Right there." She sticks her fingernail into my teeth.

"Is it gone?" I look around to make sure that no one's looking at me, the tooth-picker. I have porcelain fronts on all my teeth, making it a challenge to extract things from in between them.

"Here." She pulls the piece of green foliage out. God knows how it got there. I haven't eaten solid food since the advent of Kate Moss, at least I think I haven't. "There." She smiles proudly. She's done with me, finished with her motherly moment. "Let's go."

We walk down the paparazzi line, like sad people at a funeral. Cameras flash but promptly stop when we pass in front of them--after all, an old socialite and her daughter, there's hardly a scandal in that. If they only knew.

"Should I smile?" I whisper. I just want to look normal. There is nothing wrong with me, no internal crisis that a Xanax couldn't reconcile.

"No, people don't smile at funerals. Keep your head down and look sad."

Mom vogues for the cameras. Like someone who knows how to stick out her neck so her jowls, the jowls of an aging socialite, are stretched out, obscured by her damaged brown hair.

"Right, yeah, sad." I'm not a shrink or anything, but I can say with some authority that it's been a long time since I've had a feeling that hasn't been a direct result of some drug I've taken. So the word sad just seems like another word that rolls down my tongue and out of my mouth.

"Come on, Miranda." She sounds agitated, fidgety; she needs a nice stiff vodka tonic. "I'd think you'd be good at this by now."

"I'd think so too, but . ."

"Yeah."

"Miraaandaaa!" I feel a shock run through my hair follicles from a voice that could make me bald. I turn, pulling my arm away from Mom's.

James Wool looks like a newspaper reporter but isn't. He talks like he's smart, which he also isn't. And he's natty, like his tweed jacket. His lips are so far from my cheek when he air-kisses me, he's still in the 718 area code.

"Well, well. How is everybody's little vixen?"

"Hi James."

"Wasn't he young? Isn't this sad? Horrible really? Didn't you see this coming? I didn't, but you must have. Didn't you? Can you believe he was so young?" James doesn't engage in normal conversation; instead he shoots questions in the general direction of the person he's talking at. Doesn't he know I was trained as a charming dinner companion, not as an intellectual?

"No, yes, yes, yes ... yes, no, well, twenty-nine isn't that young, but it's young to die. I guess." Personally, I can't imagine why anyone would want to live past twenty-one; after all, doctors recommend standard colonoscopies every year after turning fifty-blah. Gastroenterology aside, most people don't die three months after turning twenty-nine. I almost reach for his hand, but then I remember we Wokes don't do that kind of thing. People push past us. James doesn't move. I need him to go away.

"So, Miranda. Tell me, what are we up to these days?" James lived in England for one semester in college. Ever since then his speech has been plagued with annoying Euroisms.

"Nothing. I'm working at the gallery two days a week now, which is really interfering with my martini schedule ... and I'm supposed to be involved in this group show for women. But I just can't get inspired. So I've decided to go to parties until the inspiration hits me."

"Brilliant, brilliant." Even his chuckle is patronizing as he plays with his glasses, as if to say he finds inanimate objects more interesting than me. "I mean, how many times does one get to be nineteen?"

"Right. But James, most people here think I'm twenty-two, so don't tell them I'm nineteen." He looks at me as if to say this is exactly what he expects from someone like me. "Do you swear?"

"I wonder why everyone doesn't just drop out of college and paint. I wonder why everyone doesn't do exactly what they want to."

"Gee. I don't know. They should. Come out of the closet much?"

"I must find my wife. Ciao. Ciao." He walks away, thank God. I watch his feet until I can no longer differentiate his baby-blue Hush Puppies from anyone else's.

People file in--socialites, models, and various uptowners. You know this is either a funeral or a fashion show, because there aren't enough seats. I slide onto the wooden bench, wedging myself between Mom and the armrest that ends the bench. Mom sits next to Jeff's leathery mother, who clocks enough hours at Capri Tanning Center to be considered more handbag than woman.

I survey the population, like the social scientist I am--behind me is the Southampton, Upper East Side crowd, on my right is the rich and old, Upper West Side communist-turned-capitalist contingent. To my left is the "I want to be an editor, so buy me a magazine" group. Eurotrash is in the back left corner, defrocked royalty in the back right. The group has sorted and divided itself in minutes.

"Miranda." Someone's hand is on my shoulder, invading that invisible barrier of what is mine versus what is yours. I flinch; there are two people who can touch me. One of them is dead, and the other is not Whit. I know it's Whit because I can hear the drag of his umbrella on the tile and I can smell him--even from thirty feet away the subtle mixture of Halston cologne, cigars, and vodka permeates the membrane. Since I've known him, he's always carried an umbrella. It's possible that even if it were to never rain again, he'd still carry an umbrella. I brush his hand off my shoulder as if it were dandruff.

"Whit, what are you doing here?" I whisper, "You didn't even know him."

"We can't all be friends with the A-list. But it's a free country; I can surely attend anyone's funeral." Whit and I met through Crown Princess Marie of Kona (before she died of a mysterious form of pneumonia, aka AIDS). He felt familiar to me, something Harvard in the way he lectured me, something impressive in his vast knowledge of all those books longer than a thousand pages that I hadn't even started. I had a rare moment of good judgment and didn't let him seduce me. I think that won his respect.

"Whit, you look so handsome," I say, flirting, lying.

"You think? How's life in the art world treating you?"

"Use the word life lightly."

"Well, how is it?" he says, fishing for a problem to solve.

"You know, the usual. Answering the phone, staring into space, checking my voice mail, keeping one eye out for the future Mr. Woke." I look around trying to find someone cute to make eye contact with to rescue me from this conversation. "So, tell me about how busy you are?"

"What do you mean?" He's so obnoxious.

"I'm sure you're very busy, right?" Something busy that will never materialize into a paycheck or even a mention.

"Hiiiiiiiii. Whit, you look so handsome." Clearly Mom and I have reviewed the same social manual, The Woke Way for Wakes, Shiva, and Funerals.

"Hello, Diana." Whit hates my mother, for a number of reasons. Reason number one: He is appalled by her fifty-by-fifty-foot closet filled with enough Manolo Blahnik shoes to bring a Third World country out of famine.

She puts her arm around my shoulder, and I shake her off. "Mom." She senses my annoyance. Maybe I could get high from smoking my boots--there's probably enough cocaine in the suede, but I can't imagine smoking suede is that much fu n.

"Well--" Her cell phone rings, and with this she descends into the level of hell reserved only for dermatologists who advertise on subways and socialites who talk on cell phones at funerals. "I'm sorry, darling."

"What are you sorry for?" I snap at her.

A few manicured nails dismiss me with the "I'm talking on my cell phone at a funeral" sign. And yet another mortifying mommy moment has taken place.

"What is she saying?" Whit leans a little too close to me. I shake my head as if to say I don't know.

Lucy Sunningdale winks at Mom as if to say, "Hey, comrade of the mutual admiration society . . ." That should make Mom happy, if she notices. Whit is dressed in layers--blue shirt under gray vest, under brown jacket, under plaid scarf, all under a bowler hat. I wonder how long it takes him to pile on all that clothing in the morning.

"So, Whit, what are you working on these days?"

"I'm working on a project with Mary Westheimer. You must know who she is?"

I do. "No."

"Miranda." He looks at me like I've never had a thought in my life. "She's the pinnacle, the most famous, most important female artist in the world, and I am doing her next piece."

"But you're not an artist."

"Miranda, you need to listen, that's your problem. I didn't say that, I said I was doing her next piece. You're cripplingly literal. That's your problem: black-and-white, literal thinking. You kill me."

I hope not. I can only handle being responsible for one person's death.

He looks at my shaking left hand. I try to hold it still with my right hand. "What?" He looks at me with that I-know-what-your-problem-is-because-I-took-psychology-in-college look. "What?"

"You have been seeming the tiniest bit odd lately. I mean, not that odd but a little ... a little bit off."

I try to move away from him. "Is it hot in here or what?"

He moves his face closer to mine. "Really. I just think you might ...

"Randa, what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing. I mean, I'm a crazy cocaine addict with a hankering for heroin, but other than that, I'm just a nice Jewish girl from the Upper East Side with Prada shoes. How could anything be wrong?"

Molly Jong-Fast's Normal Girl is striking-and as funny as it as real. Inspired by her own experiences growing up in the decadent, fast-paced netherworld of New York City's jet set, Jong-Fast's debut novel is a hilarious, hard-edged walk past the velvet rope.

At just nineteen, Miranda Woke seems to have it all. Her parents are famous socialites, she's already been written up on Page Six sixteen times, she's on all the right invitation lists, and drugs and alcohol are never in short supply. But while her image screams "It girl," she'd rather be a normal girl, and the A-list feels even more uncomfortable than her Manolo Blahnik shoes. In fact, she's become the "living embodiment of an awkward phase" with "more issues than Harper's Bazaar." Neither Xanax nor Deepak Chopra tapes help. And now that her junkie party has trashed her parents' house, she has to liquidate her trust fund to pay Mom's decorator for a quick fix. But worst of all, Miranda thinks she just murdered her own boyfriend.

In an all-too-glamorous world where the cell phone is always ringing, Miranda sees no escape other than a downward spiral of cocaine, Valium, and heroin. It takes friends who offer more than air kisses to force Miranda to look in the mirror and get some help.