Chapter Twelve Lauren #2
Jane read that Lauren had sent a bunch of her flowy dance dresses to Afghanistan and Syria—possibly in an attempt to keep up with Reese Witherspoon, who was being aggressively “charitable” with her new clothing line.
All these “charitable” acts generated an inordinate amount of publicity for the stars’ ventures.
Did the end justify the means? If publicizing charitable endeavors moved product, was that okay, as long as a meaningful portion of the incoming profits were actually donated to charity?
It seemed so cynical. But maybe Jane was the one who was being cynical.
Apart from her business ventures, Lauren was actually a remarkably talented and engaging actress.
She had almost won an Oscar for a prestige film she had done—a real departure from her America’s Sweetheart roles—in which she played a drug trafficker who rode hogs with the Hell’s Angels.
She had gone on a liquid diet and lost twenty pounds to mimic the emaciated, hollowed out look of a meth addict and was the Oscar frontrunner until a dark horse competitor emerged at the eleventh hour in a grim indie film about a woman with trichotillomania: this actress, who’d shaved her head for the part, had a five-minute crying jag with rivulets of actual snot trickling from her nose.
This was unimpeachable and won the prize.
Jane wondered why Lauren, who had accrued so much fame and fortune from her acting career, felt the need to launch all these businesses.
Was it a way to get out in front of the inevitable, and possibly precipitous, decline in acting opportunities once she turned forty?
Hadn’t she already made enough money for a lifetime?
Lauren seemed smart and savvy, so more power to her.
Also, her husband—her second husband, and the father of her youngest child—had no discernible career and was entirely dependent on her.
Life didn’t seem to ever imitate art with the romantic comedy heroines: in real life, these demigoddesses usually ended up picking losers.
Jane scanned the half-dozen cars in the courtyard—probably a housekeeper, a cook, a trainer, an assistant—until she spotted Esmé sitting in the driver’s seat of her Prius. Jane hadn’t partnered with Esmé since she accused Jane of pilfering the Spellbound DVD box set, a claim that still irked her.
Spotting Esmé’s ponytail, which was aberrantly static, Jane resolved not to let any of this bother her.
“Hey, Jane!”
“Good morning, Esmé. That’s such a pretty top.”
Esmé was in her uniform of jeans and a mock turtleneck, but the color of the turtleneck—a vibrant shade of orange—was a noticeable departure worthy of praise.
“Aw, thanks. I try to snazz it up a bit when I know I’ll be working with you, because you always look impeccable.”
Jane stifled the impulse to demur and reminded herself to accept the compliment. “Thank you.”
As they headed for the front door, a man strode out of the house. Jane stifled a gasp: he was Peter Miller, her repellent former boss, the one who’d derided the idea of a movie version of Villette . He seemed tense and preoccupied.
Jane felt compelled to greet him.
“Hi, Peter.”
He took in Jane for a second before it clicked.
“Jane! Jane Brown!” he exclaimed, quickly shifting gears into slick, impersonal collegiality. “What are you doing here? Are you working with Lauren on something?”
“No, I left the business. Now I’m a professional organizer.”
“Good for you! I remember you were very organized.” This sounded like a backhanded compliment.
“Are you working with Lauren?” Jane asked, thinking how improbable and ridiculous that would be.
“Well, not yet—we had a great meeting, she’s looking for someone to head up development for her, so—we’ll see!”
“Oh great, good luck! She’s so talented.”
“Yes, she is! Have a good one, Jane, great to see you.”
As he walked off, Jane turned to Esmé.
“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you, but he was my boss, like, a million years ago, and he’s a raving asshole and a total misogynist.”
“Yeah, the vibe was super skeevy. I did not want to have to shake that hand.” Esmé chuckled as they walked toward the entry.
Lauren’s assistant, Kirsten (“Not Kristen!” she cheerfully chided them), greeted them at the door and offered drinks: the expected water and fresh-pressed juice options, as well as coffee with chicory, a New Orleans specialty very on brand for Lauren.
Kirsten’s friendliness seemed strained; being a celebrity assistant was a high-wire balancing act over a fiery pit of fame-induced narcissism, which often afflicted even the most “grounded” celebrity.
While Esmé deliberated (so many options), Jane tried to ascertain if Kirsten was wearing one of Lauren’s branded dresses. Esmé finally decided on the coffee with chicory. Jane said ditto. She’d go with the flow.
“Awesome! Lauren loves them. She might be launching her own lines of chicory coffee, in fact, so watch her Insta.”
Jane wondered if she would ever become completely inured to this relentless world of marketing via the curation of self.
The cottage aesthetic of the exterior carried over to the inside of the house: open and bright, lots of comfy chairs and sofas, copious amounts of flowers carefully arranged to look like they’d just been cut in the garden and thrown into vases.
With their chicory coffees in hand (in homey sunflower-yellow Fiestaware mugs), Kirsten ushered Jane and Esmé to their workplace for the day: the “living space” of Lauren’s five-year-old boy, Prescott.
“Scotty is at school at the Center and won’t be home until the end of the day, so he’ll be out of your way.”
The Center for Early Education was the learning citadel for Hollywood tykes.
Most of the parents were movie stars or TV stars or pop stars or studio moguls or producers or agents or lawyers.
Despite its exclusivity (more than one toddler had a personal security detail, and one was known to have been helicoptered in when traffic was bad), the school was aggressively progressive and made a point of admitting a small, assorted selection of the children of lumpen.
It was in West Hollywood, quite a commute from the Palisades, but someone on Lauren’s staff could ferry her kid to school each day. Perhaps the husband.
“Lauren will drop in as soon as she can and discuss what she wants.”
“Discuss what she wants” sounded more like an issuing of edicts than a discussion. It made Jane feel like the help.
Prescott’s “living space” was a huge bedroom, the size of a generous primary bedroom suite.
The centerpiece was a bed with a frame that was a cherry red race car, the scale of an actual car, replete with headlights, an upholstered headboard, racing tires with gleaming rims, and a personalized license plate that unimaginatively spelled out PRESCOTT .
The shelves were laden with toys of all kinds, and Jane saw at least three iPads and two MacBooks lying around.
“So Lauren thinks of this room as Scotty’s space, and wants him to feel agency in here, also responsibility, so this isn’t what she would like you to work on. What she wants you to help with is his wardrobe, which is through here.”
They followed Kirsten into a closet the size of a small room. On one wall, dowels were loaded with clothes, and on the facing wall, cubbyholes were stuffed with shirts and pants and belts and underwear and socks and shoes.
“Scotty has a reputation for being a bit of a clotheshorse, so people have been giving him outfits since he was a toddler.”
Jane looked over at Esmé to try to gauge what she was thinking, but she was impassive. Jane hoped her poker face was as good as Esmé’s. A five-year-old clotheshorse? This was parental projection of the grossest kind.
“The thing is, he has outgrown so much of his wardrobe, and also, a lot of it feels dated. So some of this is a fashion call, which Lauren will probably want to make. She’s very specific about style, but you can sort and winnow as you see fit—she knows how you work and is totally comfortable with it. ”
Jane wondered how the staff at Buckingham Palace dealt with their distant queen every day. And if they ever hocked loogies into her afternoon tea.
Esmé said, “Well that’s great. We’ll do what we can.”
Jane added, “It’d be helpful to know what size he is now, so we can put all the stuff he’s outgrown into one pile.”
“Oh boy,” Kirsten said with a smile, “I have no idea how children’s sizes work. Maybe just sort by size and then I’m sure Lauren will have an opinion.”
An opinion? About Scotty’s clothing size? Wasn’t that an objective fact?
“Awesome!” Esmé exclaimed as Kirsten scurried off.
As soon as Kirsten was at a safe distance, Jane and Esmé looked at each other, then simultaneously burst out laughing.
By now, Jane was soothed rather than ruffled by Esmé’s bobbing ponytail, which was definitely a marker of personal growth.
After a couple hours, they had almost every item categorized, though the sorting was complicated by the European sizes.
The child had an unnerving amount of couture: Jane didn’t realize that Comme des Garcons and Kenzo and Moschino and Fendi and Gucci all made clothing for kids.
He had five tuxedos: two black (one with a notched lapel and one with a shawl collar), a white dinner jacket, a red one, and a jaunty one in a houndstooth-pattern.
How often did a child need to get dressed up?
Of course, this one was frequently on the red carpet with his mother, and when he was, he was an ambassador of her brand.
Jane’s mother had shopped for her clothing almost exclusively at GapKids, which was inexpensive and pragmatic, and Jane remembered resenting this—but now, she appreciated it and credited it with giving her a desire for simplicity and order.
Esmé held up a little Tom Ford ensemble, whispering, “I have a very hard time believing a five-year-old boy cares about any of this stuff.”