Dec 16, 2014 | Blog - Mary Marcus
A while ago, I was thinking about giving up writing. I imagined how great it would be not to have to sit alone most of the day, not worry so much about getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, not drinking, exercising all so I’d be clear headed enough to write every morning.
I didn’t want to go back to advertising; even if I could get a job. I thought about going back to school and becoming either a teacher or a shrink. But the idea of going back to school did not appeal to me.
I was visiting my friend Lisa in New York during this time and she said, “why don’t you look in the paper?”
One ad caught my attention right away: EXECUTIVE HOUSEKEEPER, MUST LIVE IN FIVE DAYS A WEEK. Starting pay 75 thousand plus benefits.
WOW, I thought, not a bad gig. I could certainly be an executive housekeeper.
It was a 212 number. Which meant it was probably some huge apartment on the east side with a servant’s wing. I remembered when I was just out of school writing fashion promotion how the dragon lady Eleanor Lambert, the woman responsible for the BDL, had hired me to be one of her “live in” assistants. She gave one a back room in the giant apartment on Fifth, a couple of hundred cash for spending money and a limo at one’s service when it wasn’t serving her. She was compiling some encyclopedia on fashion and I was one in a long line of ingénues who did the actual writing of the book. I don’t think it was ever published.
I don’t remember much about that time, chez Lambert, except for reading The Portrait of a Lady for the first time, in the green chintz canopied bed in my room and dinner on a tray when I wanted it. There were some consultations with Lambert while she was in the tub and a few desultory rides in her limo. I also remember getting sick and her kicking me out of the back room with a curt note.
I assumed this executive housekeeper gig would be more rigorous but I was strong. I wanted to run away from LA, and live in NY. I could order groceries, cook dinner for the family if I had to, but they probably had a chef, and I could help him/her and generally run things. I had grown up in the kitchen hanging out with Aline my mother’s housekeeper during all of my formative years. And of course, I’d run my own house.
I guess I should mention, my son had just gone off to college, I was probably in a state of empty nest psychosis. I never once thought in the elaborate fantasy I concocted about this job, how I would tell him since he left home, I’d become a housekeeper, albeit an executive one with a good salary. But I do remember thinking that he could stay with my mother-in-law when he was in town, and not have to stay with his mother in the servant’s wing. And of course I never told my husband about any of this—part of the executive housekeeper appeal was disappearing one day–—no strings attached.
So I went into Lisa’s beautiful little office (she was still asleep) and dialed the number from the ad. I was imagining an aristocratic voice, Locust Valley Lockjaw or something like that. The voice that answered the phone had a nasty nasal twang and sounded more Queens than Brooklyn, certainly not to the isle of Manhattan born. Not like my husband’s parents, or my husband come to that.
“I’m calling about the ad in the Times,” I said.
She gave a little laugh, and told me she was glad I spoke English.
“Oui, oui,” I said, but she didn’t laugh back.
“So tell me a little about the job. You’re offering a lot of money for
a housekeeper.”
“I know,” she said, defensively. “The applicant must be very qualified.”
“I couldn’t be more qualified to be an executive housekeeper.”
“Do you have references?”
I didn’t have a smart phone then. So I mentally sifted through the rolodex of my mind. I knew lots of writers. Any one of whom could pretend to be Mrs. Joe Schmo Rich Person and give me a glowing reference.
Mary has worked for me for five years, her cooking is great, her kitchen cabinets are well organized and if she only ironed, she’d be the best household slave you’ve ever had. Never have to worry leaving money out and she won’t break the crystal. Good with kids and animals too.
“I can give you several references,” I assured her.
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe we should meet.”
“And I do great flowers! I’m assuming you entertain a lot.”
Indeed, I was deep into the fantasy. I would wear a long black dress like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. Or maybe all white like a California waiter. I’d been on many job interviews, but never a job interview to be a servant. Would I be obliged to enter by the back entrance?
“We go out a lot,” said Mrs. Whoever She Was.
That’s cool, I thought. Less work for me. I don’t know what made me say what I said next.
“You know, of course, I don’t do floors and toilets.”
“Well!” she fired right back. “If you work for me, you’re doing floors and toilets.”
I was totally indignant.
“You said it was an executive housekeeper. Executive housekeepers don’t do floors and toilets.”
“They do in my house.”
“I don’t want the job,” I said.
“I knew when I heard your voice you weren’t the right person.”
“Screw you, I’m a great housekeeper, you’d be lucky to get me.”
“Your not worth all the money I’m paying—“
“I’m worth far more than that!”
Believe it or not, it went a little further from there until we finally banged down our respective phones.
I guess I sort of knew I wasn’t going to give up writing…
by 
Dec 8, 2014 | Blog - Mary Marcus
The other day I found a hundred dollar bill plus a five and a few ones balled up on the grass in the Palisades Park on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I’d gone down there because it’s Henry’s favorite place to walk, and mine too. Palm trees, the ocean, lots of other dogs, and now I was a hundred dollars richer.
I’ve found money before.
A fifty once, in front of my apartment; a twenty in front of the Condé Nast building when it was next door to Brooks Brothers on Madison. But never a windfall that size. I looked around and no one appeared distressed. I told myself that if someone were frantically searching for this wad I would return it. I suspect it was a minor dope deal and the dealer dropped the cash.
When we got home, I put the bills in a little bowl I keep for loose change in the top drawer of my desk wondering what to do with it. Alas, a hundred dollars wasn’t as exciting as it used to be.
When I was 18, my rich Uncle Herman threw a hundred dollar bill at me and when I bent to pick it up he laughed and told me he wanted to see me grovel. Not exactly an elegant avuncular gesture but pretty much in character for him to want to mess with my head like that. Still, the hundred-dollar bill was way too powerful for me to resist. I could wait tables all night and only come home with twenty-five bucks. I was a practical person even back then in my idealistic days, and I have never wished I hadn’t picked up the bill.
This is beginning to sound like a Frank Sinatra song. When I was twenty I had a job working in the summer for a friend of the family as his secretary. I’d known the guy my whole life. He ran a publicity firm and I was his only employee. There weren’t very many clients. And though I could type really fast, I couldn’t do anything useful like take dictation. One afternoon he called me into his office and offered me a hundred bucks to take off my shirt and bra. He said he wouldn’t touch me, he was just going to take a picture of me. And I complied. It’s one of the filthiest memories I have, though he kept his word and didn’t attempt any sort of contact, just a steely-eyed gaze. He photographed me and once again I was a hundred dollars richer. He told me I had nice shoulders. I realize now he didn’t say I had nice tits. Was he too trying to mess with my head?
Flash forward a few years later. I’m working for Condé Nast. My present husband, who was my boyfriend, had dumped me and gone back to his old girlfriend. I was heartbroken, but very young, and not exactly waiting by the telephone for him to call. I met a very sexy much older man at work. He was one of our clients. Right away I found out he’d been in a concentration camp though he wasn’t a Jew. The concentration camp part intrigued me I have to say.
He said things in his thick accented sexy voice like, “Sometimes ze smell of shit is good. At least you know you are alive.” He was married, of course. And after he left the first night, I found a hundred dollar bill in my sugar bowl. Is that why they call older men sugar daddies? Was the old guy paying for sex? Obviously, he had a lot of experience in this area. Did he think I turned tricks on the side when I wasn’t writing for Vogue? Not a bad idea considering how little they paid us. But the hundred was a bit of a mind f— also. I saw him again several times after that, and he never repeated the gesture. I bought a pair of shoes with the money. A few weeks later, my husband broke up with his old girlfriend and we’ve been together ever since.
I don’t know how to get off this train of thought. I’m thinking of more and more things involving hundred dollar bills. Like the boyfriend who once gave me his poker win, or the time my husband offered our little boy a hundred dollars to cut off the sweet curly tail he had carefully grown down the back of his head for two years and he took the bait. I don’t know where the tail is; I lost it during one of our moves.
I opened up the drawer again and looked at the hundred. I’m sure it was a dope deal. It seems a long time ago that someone with a foreign accent slipped me a hundred for a wild night. Or being that young and vulnerable that some “deeve” friend of the family could pull strange head-trips when my mother wasn’t looking, though honestly when was she ever looking at anyone but herself? But that’s another story….
by
Dec 8, 2014 | Blog - Mary Marcus
You see a lot about unconditional love and dogs and I don’t say that’s not a wonderful thing. But unconditional hate (and a lot of dogs have that) is something I value as well. My little Henry who can be absolutely angelically sweet when he wants to be, lying his silky little head against your leg, or wagging his tail ecstatically when you walk in the door, absolutely hates certain people and will never ever fake it like I will. He doesn’t have a hypocritical bone in his little body. If he hates you, he’s going to hate you vigorously, vociferously, and everlastingly, tail down, ears alert, long nose peering suspiciously, he’s going to jump up and down and bark like a crazy dog, he’s going to bark so long and so loud, the next door neighbor is
going to call you and say, “shut the fucking window, your dog is driving us nuts!
Dec 3, 2014 | Blog - Mary Marcus
S is in the air: HBO is making a movie about her and Robert Durst (NYTimes).
Photo from COURTTV, murdpedia.org
I had another nightmare last night about S who wasn’t really a friend, but someone who wanted to be friends and whose overtures I resisted; something that felt mildly bad, then horrendously bad, because S was murdered not long after I began ducking her phone calls. She was shot through the head at her house in LA at point blank range on a cold night in December. There was no sign of a forced entry. It was in the papers both New York and LA, and lots of articles were written. There was even a movie made in which S was a peripheral character. They made her witty and chatty and slightly glamorous. By the time I met her, she was still witty and chatty but her teeth were bad, and she needed a dye job.
In my dream she was old and in tatters and when I looked at her she looked away.
S was murdered just after my son left for college, but for the brief time when she was in our lives he was still living at home. He liked S and her lap dogs, but not even his approbation made me want to be friends with her. It wasn’t that she took the dogs with her everywhere, I love dogs. They were always shaking and she was always shaking. Maybe she knew she was in danger. Even the first time I met her on the terrace of this very grand house owned by a famous rock star, she was shaking. When she took to dropping by unexpectedly in the afternoon if my son was at home, he would make her a cappuccino, which she’d praise lavishly. So lavishly he kept making her more cappuccinos. Until she was on caffeine high which she seemed to be on anyway.
The reason they found her sooner rather than later was on account of the barking. The cops broke down her door and found her with the gunshot wound in her head.
As I mentioned, we met on the terrace of some fancy joint in Malibu. We were the guests of a record mogul who was in his uber mogul days. Once upon a time he and S went out. S always made catty remarks about the mogul’s wife. And told me that she didn’t understand why the mogul had married her not S.
She was the daughter of a Jewish gangster and had grown up as a princess in Las Vegas. She had written a memoir and had a movie deal at one point. Like a lot of people born to wealth and privilege, S acted like the world should operate according to her desires. She would invite herself to dinner, or stay so late after one of her drop-ins, I had to invite her. She was allergic before it was fashionable. And seemed to subsist mostly on chicken, broccoli and cappuccino. She was partial to the nasty chicken from the KooKooRoo, which I’m allergic to on principle. But that’s what we had for dinner when S dropped by. She insisted on it.
“Here I am,” she’d say, and kiss the air. She couldn’t hug because the little dogs were in her arms.
I’ve never minded strays dropping by at dinnertime. My husband almost always works late and it was lonely around the house. I felt sorry for her. Or maybe she made me feel guilty. But guilty for what? Still, she was funny, she was smart. She pronounced “Chili” “Che-lay” and molestation with the emphasis on the MO in the word. People who have elaborate ways of pronouncing words often can be a pain in the ass, and she was that. But there was something else too.
Back then, I was renting a room to write in from a Russian graduate student with a terrible stutter. I don’t remember telling S about the room, but she kept turning up, waiting for me on the bench in front of the bagel store when I’d be walking home with my lap top from the Russian’s.
It happened once. Twice. Three times. The first time I took her home, the second time I didn’t. The third time I told her I was in a hurry. And then I started walking home by different routes. She turned up at the house and I pretended I wasn’t home.
The last time S called, she told me, “You hurt my feelings I haven’t yet recovered from it and I wanted you to know.”
I don’t tend to be rude to anyone other than my husband, so I was curious.
“What did I say?”
“You said you couldn’t talk because you were working. You were too busy for me. I looked forward to our visits. And I missed you.”
“I’m so sorry, I said, and in a way I was. I hate hurting people’s feelings. Even people like S who don’t seem to get how intrusive and inappropriate they are.
But, I didn’t try and talk her out of being hurt, or tell her I wasn’t working that hard. I’m sure I was trying to work hard, but I remember that period of time as being one where trying was the chief description of what was happening at the Russian’s.
Anyway, I have to go, she said, and I heard the dogs bark and a doorbell ring.
“Someone’s at the door,” she shouted, “Don’t forget me!”
And I haven’t and I won’t. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I often think of poor S and her last cold night on earth when the dogs barked and the doorbell rang again and she opened it up and that long, last terrifying moment before whoever it was, shot her in the head.
by
