Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls by Rae Lawrence Read Free Book Online

and already people were dancing. In the dining room, furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and an old Junior Walker song was playing. Lyon was holding court in the living room, telling stories from his early days on Broadway. In the kitchen, the caterers were packing up the remains of dinner and laying out dozens of rented champagne flutes on silver-toned serving platters.
    By the time Lyon had come home, the party staff had arrived and Anne was busy checking on details. They hadn’t had a moment alone all night, which was just fine with her. She hadn’t decided what she wanted to say or do. She hadn’t signed the papers. She supposed Lyon would want to sell the house in Southampton, her beautiful house, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.
    Anne wandered from room to room, chatting with guests. The party was more crowded than usual; who were all these people she didn’t know? She felt her problems following behind her, like a little shadow she didn’t have to look at or even really think about.Ah, Valium. Drug of valor. She had tucked four yellow tablets into the cuff of her glittery silver sweater before the first guest arrived, just before the maid had gone around to all the medicine cabinets, packing the pharmaceuticals into a shoebox that was now hidden under the bed.
    In the study, four women with European accents were discussing the difference between Americans and the French.
    “But American mothers tell their daughters nothing about marriage,” someone was saying. “American girls think marriage is all about orgasms!”
    “American girls are not very practical, which is why they are always so disappointed.”
    “American girls are practical, but about other things.”
    “Such as?”
    “Shoes and underwear. You see them wearing running shoes right on Madison Avenue! And then the cotton underwear, the white cotton underwear!” Everyone laughed.
    “But I’m serious. My American niece, she has no idea how to choose a husband. They sent her to Princeton, where there are plenty of nice rich boys from good families. Did she find a husband? No, of course not. And did my sister-in-law ever encourage her? No, of course not. So now the girl is thirty, and she lives in a little apartment on Third Avenue with three cats. Hopeless!”
    Anne went into the bathroom and unfolded the cuff of her sweater. Fabulous, how small pills were now, how much easier they were to hide. The pills had little V-shaped holes in the middle, and the first time Anne had seen one she had mistaken the hole for a heart. Just like me, she thought now, something small with its heart cut out.
    In the guest bedroom, Stella was comforting a woman who looked as if she had just finished having a good cry. Stella patted the bed beside her and offered Anne a cigarette.
    “He’s a shit,” said Stella. “It’s really that simple. You could go into therapy for ten years if you wanted, but I’m telling you in the end that’s all it is. It’s not your fault. You married an asshole.”
    “I’m forty-five!” Marianne said. She turned to Anne. “I hope you never turn forty-five. You have no idea what it’s like. No one warns you.”
    “You don’t look forty-five,” Anne said, “Really, not at all.”
    “Well, I am. Do you know any forty-five-year-old single women? Do you have any idea what it’s like? I’ll be dating grandfathers with bad breath and potbellies. You know what I am? I’m some old geezer’s third-wife material.”
    Stella shook her head. “You’re getting all worked up. You told me years ago you wanted a divorce.”
    “That was years ago, when everything was different! And I should have left him years ago. I knew someday he’d have a fucking midlife crisis and dump me, I don’t know why I waited. I could have left him when I was still in my early thirties. I’d be remarried by now, I’d have found some nice guy and had a couple of children and started over.”
    “Men,” Stella