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Mom’s plan for me was two years at Essex County Community College to get all my requirements out of the way and then Montclair State University for a MSN or DNP degree. Mom wouldn’t have to pay my room and board because they were both close to home. The goal was to become a nurse-practitioner, which was one step below a doctor but a step above being a nurse like Mom. Mom told everybody about her plan for me whenever she introduced me to anyone.
The truth was, I’d agreed and got decent grades just to keep everyone off my back. Courtney even helped me cram for finals because she wanted me to go, too. It took the pressure off of her.
Downstairs, Courtney must have come back inside. She was still screaming, but the words were hard to hear with my closet door closed. They were probably in the living room. But it didn’t matter where in the house they were. I knew the words by heart. In fact, I was the only one who knew why they fought—even though they didn’t.
Underneath it all, Mom and Courtney always argued about the same thing. My sister and my mom were like the same person at different points in time. Like Back to the Future, where you traveled forward in time but had to be careful not to run into your future self at the Piggly Wiggly because the space-time continuum would collapse. That space-time collision pretty much happened at my house every day.
Though Courtney was a total bitch to me, I felt for her, because Mom knew everything Courtney was going to do wrong before she even thought of doing it, like she was crawling inside her skin. I think that’s why Courtney pushed it to the limit.
Then there was my surprise baby brother, Ryan, who seemed destined to become a complete undermining tool. Dad left a few months before Ryan was born. Fu
When Ryan was little, he burned through babysitters like toilet paper. It didn’t matter if they were nice old ladies, perky teenagers, a Navy SEAL or the Cat in the Hat. None of them made a difference, and none of them lasted. Mom used to joke that she felt like the devil recruiting new souls for a three-to-midnight shift in hell. Once Ryan turned twelve, Mom just gave up.
It sounds weird, but I’d been hanging in my closet since I was five. First time was when Dad put his fist through the kitchen wall, which was followed by a barrage of dining room plates Mom hurled at him. Years later, Courtney and Mom’s screaming matches sent me into hiding again
I pulled the door tight. It was pretty comfy when I was little, almost like a walk-in, so it’s not like I was a total coffin freak. Although these days, I had to squeeze. Even though we didn’t have AC, the temp in my closet was pretty cool. Mashing the pillows around me like a nest, I pushed the big turquoise body pillow to the door, blocking the light and their voices.
I grabbed a Coke out of the minifridge. Yes, I had a minifridge in my closet. I won it by selling more wrapping paper and chocolate than anyone in the history of my tenth-grade class. My secret weapon was to hit up old lady Co
I opened my laptop and thanked God for the Internet. There was always a new Web site to check out. I think the Internet was designed for people like me, who need somewhere to go to forget where they really are.
Within a dozen clicks, I could get lost in the urgent need to know the most important details about all the stuff I couldn’t have, didn’t need, but couldn’t live without. There was an update on the hot young royals at Jezebel, Kate Bosworth’s ultrachic cocktail sheath, and red python-print heels at FabSugar, a rundown of who’s prematurely aging at TMZ for their “Celebs Without Makeup” feature, a sneak peek at Jason Wu’s unbelievable new designs for Fashion Week, and a fleeting look at Page Six, the old standby, where I saw the latest on Taylor Swift. Ugh. Did they pass a law requiring that every celebrity Web site had to have a feature on Taylor Swift’s crimped dos and her latest glitter-like-a-princess dress?
Once that was out of my system, I clicked on the DVD in my computer—Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
As the mournful first chords played over the Paramount logo, I fell into a trance. I was there on the street as the lone cab crept up Fifth Avenue, the melancholy notes of “Moon River” weaving their way through my headphones, deep into my cerebral cortex and through my entire body, like the gas they give you at a dentist’s office when your wisdom teeth are removed.
Sinking into the pillows, I melted away to be with Audrey as she stepped out of that yellow 1960 Ford Galaxie taxi wearing the exquisite Givenchy with those extravagant gloves and the four giant strands of pearls. We looked up at the chiseled Tiffany & Co. name above its Fifth Avenue entrance and gazed through the jewelry store window at those miniature chandeliers and floating bracelets, all the while sitting in my closet.
Although I was completely addicted to all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my total fix.
It was my IV drip bag.
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Here’s the big secret—Audrey Hepburn is the cure for everything.
Dumped by your lifelong crush? Sabrina. Want to escape your life and go incognito? Roman Holiday. Tired of being a bookworm? Fu
A movie cure for every need.
Above them all is Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I loved the flat-out glamour of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the false eyelashes, the roaring parties, the tiaras and pearls, and the “darlings.” I loved that Holly Golightly slept with a satin mask and turquoise earplugs with little tassels. I wished I could pull off a look like that.
Edda van Heemstra, Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Audrey Hepburn-Ruston were some of her names, and each one was an evolution toward the Audrey we grew to love. From hours of obsessive online research in the confines of my closet, I knew she grew up during the Holocaust and World War II and was at one point forced to eat tulip bulbs and bake bread out of grass. If Audrey could do all that during a world war, you’d think that I, Lisbeth A
Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the one-hour-and-fifty-five-minute version of my hopes and dreams and all the lurking dangers in-between. I’ll never forget the first time I ever heard Holly Golightly talk about the mean reds. I immediately realized that there were mean reds around me all the time.
Everybody knew that you got the blues because you were stuck or you were depressed or you were being treated unfairly. But the mean reds were more unsettling, because when you have them, you don’t know what you’re afraid of, except that something bad was going to happen, and you didn’t know who to tell or what to do.
There wasn’t a time I can remember when I didn’t feel that way. Something bad was always about to happen. Mom and Dad were building to a fight. Dad was itching to leave. Mom was getting plastered, and Courtney was nowhere around. Ryan … well, who knew what lurked inside that poor boy’s soul? And me, what could I do about it all?
When the mean red panic light inside me flashed, I found myself further and further away from who I was or could hope to be. It all just made me want to put everything on hold, keep to myself, and be quiet as a mouse.
I loved Holly Golightly’s Tiffany cure. It wasn’t about the merchandise. Even Holly said that—she didn’t give a hoot about jewelry. “Diamonds are for old elegant white-haired ladies,” she said famously.