Being Audrey Hepburn

Have you been to Tiffany’s? I don’t mean the mall stores like the ones in Short Hills or Hackensack. Fifth Avenue is the only one that will do. Just walk in sometime and experience its tranquility, harmony, and splendor. You don’t have to buy anything. Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend, they’re a sparkling tonic for the soul, like summer rain, gazing at the Milky Way, or snowflakes that land on your tongue.

Tiffany’s was a state of mind, exquisitely removed from fear and panic. That’s what made it medicinal. When Holly Golightly took me on my first Tiffany’s tour, I realized that I’d finally found someone who felt what I felt.

Pretty much since my ninth birthday, I’d been watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s continuously. That’s when Nan gave me my first VHS tape of the movie.

I watched that one nonstop until the tape became hopelessly entangled in our secondhand VCR. The replacement copy lasted longer, but I was limited by family viewing time, which meant I couldn’t watch when Ryan was mainlining SpongeBob and Fairly Odd Parents. Thank God for laptops with DVD drives. My closet became my own personal multiplex, my ticket to a world that I lived in more than this one. And it was really all because of Nan.

Nan was my grandmother, my mom’s mom. She was so different from Mom; it was hard to believe they could possibly share the same DNA.

Nan laughed all the time and had a totally wicked-smart sense of humor. Tiny and elegant, everything she wore was from the 1960s. She never left her house without a touch of rouge, lipstick, and her classic double strand of pearls—a look she’d been wearing since her debutante days—though she worried about the punks on the street trying to snatch them.

Oh crap! Nan!

I grabbed my phone and checked the time—5:04. Crap, crap, crap. I was supposed to have been at Nan’s at five. Yanking off my headphones, I scrambled out of the closet on my knees and dug through the piles of laundry in my room for my favorite pair of jeans, a blouse, and shoes. I slid my laptop into my bag, tossed the bag over my shoulder, and bounded down the stairs toward the kitchen. How was I going to make an exit without getting stuck?

As I tiptoed into the kitchen, I saw Mom at the table in the breakfast nook, her face puffy and red from crying. No sign of Courtney. I couldn’t just ignore her, could I?

“Mom, uh, are you okay?” I asked.

Big mistake. She turned full bore on me.

“You better not turn out like your sister.” I nodded my head no.

“Good. There’s leftover lasagna. Make us something to eat,” she said and walked over to the paper towels, wiping her nose. “I’m too upset.”

Shit.

I forced myself to say something.

“I have to go.”

“What?” She was inspecting me, in that way of hers, like I was under a microscope. Mom has this way of picking on people’s sensitive points. Like in second grade, when I used to invite Sarah Policki, our next-door neighbor, over to play, and we’d ask for a snack, Mom would laugh and say that Sarah looked like she’d had too many snacks already. Just like she made fun of my bony knees. Eventually Sarah stopped coming over. Mom wasn’t exactly great for your self-esteem, especially when she was drinking.

I saw the wheels turning in her head. There was still too much fight in her.

“Mom, I’m already late for Nan’s.” I hated that I sounded like I was begging. She paused for a second, probably debating whether she should strike and go for the kill.

“Nan’s waiting, Mom. I’ve gotta go,” I said. Seizing the moment, I pushed open the kitchen door.

“We need to have that talk,” Mom yelled after me.

I didn’t know and didn’t want to know what “that talk” was.

But what I did know was that she hadn’t found out yet.

You know my “plan”? The whole thing I told you about, the one thing Mom was counting on and Courtney almost as much? The Mama’s “good girl going to school at Essex and becoming a nurse-practitioner” plan?

I wasn’t going.

I hadn’t told Mom or Courtney yet. Mostly because I was chicken. But also because I had no idea what I was going to do instead.

I just knew I wanted out. Out of that house, out of that life, out of New Jersey.

As much as I loved my closet, I couldn’t do another four years in there.

“I know, Mom. We’ll talk later for sure,” I shouted back, already out the door.

“I mean it, Lisbeth,” she said. “You can’t avoid this forever!”

Maybe not.

But I could try.

I ran out the door and headed toward my car as fast as I could.

4

The Purple Beast wouldn’t start.

Pumping the gas pedal, I turned the key—holding it more forcefully this time. I had to show my 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville who was boss. The starter whined as it cranked. It whined again and finally turned over. The car roared. The Caddy was Nan’s, but the lavender paint job was all mine. Twice the size of a normal car, I knew it was environmentally incorrect, ugly, and ate a hole in my pocket because it took two days’ worth of tips to fill the purple monster up with gas every week. But if you asked me, it was worth it. Probably the only cool thing about me. I would have gone insane without it.

Grandpa kept the car in perfect shape all those years, so it usually ran like a dream, even if I forgot to change the oil. The only thing that didn’t work was the convertible top and the left-turn signal. Hey, nobody in New Jersey uses turn signals anyway.

I threw it in reverse. The car jerked as I backed out of the driveway, swinging narrowly past Mom’s old Corolla and rolling over the trash cans at the bottom near the street. Damn, the car had a mind of its own. Shifting it into drive, I made my way up our street toward Nan’s part of town.

Nan lived at a retirement village called Montclair Manor. When I was younger, it sounded to me like a really fancy estate with servants in black uniforms and crisp white aprons, tea and cucumber sandwiches at 3:00 in the afternoon—only it wasn’t.

The actual Montclair Manor was a dreary cluster of tiny, tumbledown, smog-gray minihouses surrounding a big parking lot and a community house. It had a lovely view of the Barclay’s Vinyl Window plant on Route 495 complete with the factory’s toxic aroma.

To hear Nan, you’d think she was living at the Waldorf, but this place was depressing as hell. I don’t think she’s ever complained about it once. She didn’t even complain about the fact that the Montclair Manor community dining room smelled like old people’s feet. She never complained about any of the aches and creepy diseases that most old people wanted to discuss. And she never complained once about the fact that I was the only one who visited her. My mom and sister hadn’t been there in years. Ryan barely knew she existed.

Mom and Nan didn’t see eye to eye. That’s the nicest way to put it. I wondered if that was something that ran in our family, like nonexistent boobs. There was totally this history of moms and daughters not getting along.

Montclair Manor was an assisted-living home, which meant that the old people were basically on their own, but there was a nurse named Betty and a couple of staffers who checked on the residents every day to make sure that no one had fallen down or, you know, snuffed out in their sleep. I wouldn’t mention it, except it happened—twice last year and three times the year before. Sometimes you got a run where these old people dropped like flies.

A crusty old guy two doors down from Nan died in his ratty plaid recliner while reading a romance novel called The Blackmailed Heiress. His name was Sarge, Army Retired. His name wasn’t actually “Sarge Army Retired.” That’s just the way he said it every time, and how Nan and I would refer to him. He was eighty-three and still trimmed what little hair he had left in a crew cut. He would drop down for fifty push-ups every morning.