By Helen Ellis
I’m in Rhinebeck, New York to compete on Dumpster Diving With The Stars. It was my best friend Amy Madeline’s idea. In the history of celebrity reality shows, there has never been a contestant who is famous for being an author. Between Amy Madeline and me, hers is the name everybody knows. Her books are pastel with shoes or purses on their covers. They are book club books. Beach books. Like some women produce babies, Amy Madeline has a book come out of her every year. I published one book, ten years ago, but it was a doozy. What they call a “cult classic.” Meaning the book was odd, but identifiable, and is now out of print.
Amy Madeline said, “You get on the show, you get reprinted. You get readers interested in what you’re working on now.”
I said, “But I’m not working on anything now.”
She said, “But you will be.”
Amy Madeline’s faith is unnerving. She’s like a double D battery pack jammed in the Baby This n’ That doll that is me. As long as I keep writing, she doesn’t have to think about how hard the writing life can be. Honestly, it’s not that hard. You just have to do it, get it published, and do it again. Problem is: my last three novels lie dead in a drawer. I’m forty-one. Maybe it’s not too late to find something else that I’m good at.
When I arrive at The Beekman Arms, the front desk clerk hands over an actual brass key with a plastic number dangling from the chain, says she googled me and bought my book off of Amazon for ninety-nine cents, and then says she’s at the part where the main character purposely flunks out of school.
She asks, “Why would she do that?”
I have no idea why she would do that. It’s been so long since I wrote that novel I’m shocked I can remember the character’s name. I give the front desk clerk my pat line to questions about my work that I don’t know the answer to. I say, “You’ll have to keep reading and see.”
My roommate for Dumpster Diving With The Stars is Mitzy Rodgers, former Playboy playmate and live-in girlfriend of Hugh Hefner. On the show, there’s always a Miss Something-or-Other or a kicked-out girl group singer or an actress who’s only known for her hot tub scene. These ladies are cast so that core middle-aged women demographic viewers like Amy Madeline and me can make fun of them. They gravitate toward fingerless black lace gloves and plastic lip phones. It’s as if they’ve had it stitched into their hair extensions that anything older than 25 is vintage.
For Mitzy, this is the first time she’ll be separated from her identical twin, Bitzy. All their lives, they shared everything from string bikinis to an eighty year-old Sweet’N Low daddy to a secret twin toddler language.
Mitzy says, “Bitzy bah-knows bah-what Bye beel be-bore Bye boo.”
I ask Mitzy if she and Bitzy believe in telepathy, but before she can answer, the cameraman and producer barrel in, apologize for being late, do not introduce themselves, clip wireless packs to my jeans and Mitzy’s $200 sweatpants, and a mike to my bra strap. They tape Mitzy’s mike to her skin because she is not wearing a bra. Her breasts sit on her torso like old-fashion alarm clocks.
The producer asks me to ask Mitzy my question again. Everyone stares as I brace myself on the edge of the floral bedspread. The last time I spoke publicly was six years ago at Amy Madeline’s wedding. Then, I was told to “eat the mike.” I lower my head like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
“Mitzy, do you and Bitzy believe in telepathy?”
Mitzy blows a grape bubble with her purple bubblegum, pops it with her finger, winds the gum around that finger, and then waggles it, play-admonishing me. “You know we’re not allowed to have cellphones.”
The cameraman and producer do not react. They are seasoned professionals and already making themselves invisible in this tiny room crowded with furniture. Cardinal Reality Rule #1: Behind The Scenes People stay behind the scenes. They let that Survivor contestant fall face first into his campfire. They let that America’s Next Top Model virgin get drunk and lose her virginity.
What Mitzy is referring to is Cardinal Reality Rule #2: Nobody gets a cellphone. Technology makes games way too easy. We all remember how un-fun it was to watch the IBM computer wipe the floor with Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. Not to mention the fact that watching someone talk or text on TV is as boring as watching someone talk or text right in front of you.
I notice the empty wall sockets. The room phone and TV are gone. For our month of filming, we’ll be entirely cut off from family, friends, and current events. I’m ashamed to admit that the last New York Times article I read was about bullfrogs. I regret that the last thing I said to my husband was: “You should read that piece about the bullfrogs.” I want to call him and say “I love you and I miss you already,” but if I break my contract I’ll be sued.
Mitzy confides in me (and the rest of the network affiliates) that Bitzy is in the hospital having corrective surgery for the reason their parents called her Bitzy to begin with. She whispers, “Navel enhancement.”
“You mean,” I marvel at Mitzy’s breasts and plump lips, “now that’s supposed to be bigger, too?”
“No, a pretty innie. Bitzy’s belly button is an ugly outie. It’s like a balled up piece of rubber cement. When we did our centerfold, Hef made sure it was under a staple. At pool parties, he makes her cover it with one of those little round Band-Aids.”
Mitzy, it turns out, always wanted to be a decorator. Her room at the mansion is minimalist. She explains, “No stuffed animals.” She pulls down her sweatpants to show me her vagina, which she bedazzled herself.
Over the whir of zoom lenses, I tell her about my themed Christmas trees that, along with Amy Madeline’s hundred thousand Twitter followers and Facebook campaign, helped earn me a spot on Dumpster Diving With The Stars. Every year, my husband and I have a big blowout party based on a new Christmas tree theme that I create from recycled ornaments bought off of Ebay. This year is Under The Big Top (all circus), last year was Motion in the Ocean (all sea life), and the year before that was Fat Hos (all Santas). As Mitzy’s eyes grow moist with amazement, I get that proud feeling I used to get when Amy Madeline made a checkmark by a sentence in a first draft of one of my chapters.
Mitzy bestows what I will come to learn is her highest compliment: “Cute!” Really, she coos it, so it sounds more like, “Cooooot!” She asks if she can come to this year’s party and when I say okay, Mitzy looks like she will burst out of her imaginary bra. She says she will wear her trapeze outfit for the occasion. She has a trapeze outfit. Mitzy herself looks like something I would hang on my tree. She is miniature, plastic, and kitschy. I wonder how someone so fake can be so pure. She might be the most undervalued thing I find on this show.
At three o’clock, all eight contestants assemble on the front porch of the oldest inn in the Hudson Valley, where George Washington slept and if he were alive today would jail Mitzy for indecent exposure.
Before us stands the host of Dumpster Diving With The Stars, Elvin Smalls, whom Amy Madeline and I call F’in Tiny because the camera never shows his feet. Like a toned, tanned, tinted troll under a bridge, F’in Tiny likes to point out competitors’ weaknesses. Last season, he told Cynthia Nixon her throat was splotchy. And then he told her those splotches were hives. F’in Tiny wears a safari hat and a canteen strapped to his belt. He asks us, “Are you ready to DUMPSTER DIVE?”
Mario Batali shouts, “Yeah!” He jumps in place when he says it, so when he lands the only sound is the reverberation of his Crocs on 245 year-old porch planks. The rest of us aren’t sure how to behave. The serious actors want to remain respectable. The sports figure is, let’s face it, too cool. I assume Mitzy doesn’t jiggle unless she gets paid. Me, when was the last time I raised my voice? Sure, I shriek when the toast pops out of the toaster, but I am not a joiner-inner.
F’in Tiny repeats, “I said, dumpster divers, ‘Are you READY?’”
Behind F’n Tiny a producer resurrects The Arsenio Hall Show dog pound fist spiral. Mitzy is too young for this reference and looks up because she thinks (as it happens on every episode of The Bachelor) that a helicopter is landing. Another producer mutely WOO-HOOs so the mikes won’t pick up sound interference. Eight cameramen look annoyed that our lack of over-the-top enthusiasm is going to make the day run long. So, I clap. And all the other contestants clap along with me. We are a mature, appropriately enthusiastic bunch.
F’in Tiny says, “For your first challenge you will have TWO hours and TWO HUNDRED dollars to scour this small AMERICAN town. The WINNER’s find will have the BIGGEST difference between what you pay for it and fair market value. With each challenge, these differences add up, and the contestant with the greatest overall difference wins the whole show. And, as always on Dumpster Diving With The Stars, you do not have to spend anything. The MORE you save, the MORE your find will be worth. Winning is a matter of PRIDE. You keep what you find and those finds will be featured in a three-page spread in Better Homes and Gardens.”
Last season’s winner, Diane Keaton, displayed her eighteenth century bowling pins on her bathroom windowsill, in a triangle shape around her Annie Hall Oscar. Amy Madeline and I poured over the photo. She’d said, “Maybe you’ll find something worthy enough to be photographed next to a Pulitzer.”
I’d said, “But I don’t have a Pulitzer.”
She’d said, “Maybe you’ll find something that will inspire you to write something great.”
F’in Tiny says, “ARE. YOU. READY? Dumpster divers?”
“Yeah!” A few of us join Mario. Me included. Except, I raise my voice to say “Yesssss!” instead of “Yeah” so it’s my ssss that lingers on the porch this time.
F’in Tiny says, “For this challenge, you will pair yourselves into TEAMS of TWO. BUDDY UP for bargaining! Starting, NOW.”
Part Two
Part of me wants to jump on John Lithgow’s back and ride him like a bull into the china shop across the street. The man is well over six feet tall and built. He smiles down at the lot of us like the mother alien at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Verbena Barber, a wily woman from NIGHTCRAWLERS (A reality show about her husband and six earthworm-grubbing sons) grabs his wrist. Lithgow nods pleasantly at the brownness of her. Her shoes, skirt, blouse, and husband’s humungous jacket look residually damp from her hill country. I’ve seen Verbena’s show and know her teeth are rotten, but today her face is scrubbed and her long hair is parted ruler-straight down the middle. She beams at Lithgow and in that split second I see him recall what I recall from her show: her teapot collection. She inherited the teapots from a rich old lady she’d done the ironing for. When that rich old lady was dying, she told Verbena to pick any one thing out of her whole mansion as an inheritance. Verbena picked her teapots because they were painted with fairies and gnomes and one was shaped like a duck. Turns out they were by British artist Lucie Attwell and each worth a small mint. As far as anybody knows, neither Verbena nor her producers ever told her husband or her grown children their value. On NIGHTCRAWLERS she’s always interviewed with the polished row of teapots sitting high on a shelf in the background of her log cabin. Lithgow knows Verbena’s got a good eye. And now we all know it because she and the Emmy winner take off running.
Mitzy and I do too. I don’t know how long she’s been holding my hand, but she’s got me and we’re going. Looking over my shoulder, I see the other contestants, cameramen, and producers running away from us into the heart of the town after Lithgow and Verbena, who are already out of sight. I hear the clap, clap, clap of Mario’s Crocs and the click, click, click of the stilettos on the size 10 feet of the tennis player with whom he’s paired himself. The married Scientology actors stick together. F’in Tiny is left alone on the porch and lights a cigarette. The fiery dot grows dimmer as Mitzy drags our crew into a ravine.
“Trust me,” she says, “the best stuff is by the train tracks!”
By God, she is right. Ten minutes later, I spot two wooden nubs sticking out of a thatch of sopping matted leaves. Who knows how many decades the rocking horse has been here. From neck to tail, it’s buried in the damp ground. Mitzy and I scavenge for empty cans and broken tree limbs to dig it out. The digging takes almost the entire allotted two hours. The rush and roar of each passing train sends us screaming away from the tracks. We slip on wet leaves every time that we run. Mitzy loses two Lee Press On nails.
With ten minutes to go, she and I carry the beast, which is large enough to take the weight of both of us, up the hill to the Beekman Arms. The other contestants have made it back in plenty of time and are sitting on the porch drinking punch spiked by our sponsor, Captain Morgan, to loosen their tongues. Picnic tables are set with cloth-covered objects, finds waiting to be revealed. F’in Tiny scrolls through his iPhone under a small open tent. Cameramen encircle the property. Producers nab hotel guests wandering through the set and get them to sign appearance waivers.
The odor of Mitzy and me stops everyone. Think of what a vase of water smells like when you pull out dead daisies. Now imagine that Mitzy and I have shoved our arms shoulder-deep into that water, knelt in that water, and run our fingers through our hair with that water. Mitzy is entirely in terry cloth, the clothing equivalent of a sponge. The rocking horse is waterlogged, but it’s held its shape and paint. My arms are breaking from the weight of it. A rhinestone slips down the inside of Mitzy’s sweatpants leg and catches the porch lights. A buzzer sounds. We’ve reached the checkpoint in time. We use all our strength and what’s left of our composure not to drop the rocking horse hard.
Lithgow breaks the stunned silence with what we all thought we’d have to wait until the end of the series for, and I’m sure the producers thought they would have to coax out of him. A variation on his catch phrase from Third Rock from the Sun: “It’s GOR-geous!”
His saying it this early must mean he’s blown away.
The local appraisers are too. The horse is from the early 1900s and valued at five grand. F’in Tiny peruses the remaining entries with the appetite he’d have for warm egg salad. He interviews the tennis player and asks if she worries her stilettos slowed down her team. She eyes his head like the dirty-looking yellow fuzzy ball that it is. Mitzy and I win.
* * *
At dinner on the glassed-in sun porch, Mario asks me why it’s been so long since I’ve written a book. I cut the head off a butter swan, put the whole thing on a torn off piece of roll, and then put that whole thing into my mouth. I let the butter dissolve, the fresh bread stick to my teeth. I chew. Hold up a finger. I’ll answer him, I’ll answer him, just let me finish this bite. I keep chewing, hoping that he’ll lose interest and ask Verbena for worm recipes, but Mario, who eats with large parties on a nightly basis, patiently stares at me until his focus draws the attention of everyone at the table. Five cameras crowd for my close-up.
I say, “I’ve been writing, I just haven’t published.”
“What’s the difference?” asks the tennis player.
I say, “It’s hitting a tennis ball against your garage door versus Wimbledon.”
“You see there!” booms Lithgow. “That’s writing!”
I want to crawl across the table and kiss him on the lips. I say, “Thank you,” and bask in the genuine warmth of his gaze. This is what a happy person looks like. He’s got his health, family, Emmys, and he’s comfortable enough to go on Dumpster Diving With The Stars. Me, I’m struggling.
My literary agent, Maxine Jaffe (70 years young and one of the biggest in the business), has been gracious enough to keep me on as a client even after she couldn’t get publishers to pony up the most miniscule of advances for my last three novels, the subjects of which she has been less than thrilled about.
She says, “Doll, you wrote a plantation book when there were two other plantation books on the best seller list. You wrote a book about kids who turn into cats, when vampires are still God help us the only thing anyone wants to read about. You wrote a book about a witch who infects her entire neighborhood with herpes. Herpes, Doll! Trust me, nobody wants to read about that. I’m telling you: three generations of women, that’s what sells. And the three As: adultery, abortion, anorexia. Will you trust me, Doll? I’m begging you. I only have your best interest at heart.”
Amy Madeline writes about smart put-upon overweight women who sit in front of black and white movies on TV and eat ice cream straight out of the carton. Sometimes, they pour Fruit Loops and milk into the half-empty carton. They have overbearing skinny mothers and wonderful drunk grandmothers. They have SPANX accidents. They learn that when they finally learn to love themselves, men will too. Amy Madeline’s books are hilarious and touching and I love that I get to read her first drafts before her initial prints runs of 100,000.
Maxine says, “All these years with Amy Madeline at your side, I’d think her ideas would rub off on you.”
That’s the problem: once my best friend puts something in her books, I feel like I’m stealing if I put the same thing in mine. So far that rules out fat girls, lawyers, anchorwomen, mistaken identity, and maids. I can’t write a book in letter format. I can’t write a book in second person.
I’ve spent the last ten years coming up with the bizarre, while my real life has grown more and more stereotypical. I greet my husband at the door with cheese dip. I watch him take off his suit and hear about his day. We watch Jeopardy and I win. We have supper. He goes to clean up the kitchen and I wave off his help. Write what I know, who wants to read that? If only our apartment was haunted or I was the tiniest bit possessed by the devil.
Part Three
The next morning, the school bus waiting to take us to our new challenge, The Annual Tivoli Yard Sale, is of the colossal Hostess Twinkie variety. After cameramen take their seats for a loading shot, Mitzy and I are the first contestants to board. As winners of the last challenge we have our choice of seats. I look to Mitzy to decide. She’s closer in age to public high school than I am, and probably sat in the most popular spot.
But Mitzy isn’t moving past the rubber threshold of the accordion door. The smell of pleather seats, slit and juiced with 9th grade boy dip spit is transporting her back in time to when she was not the centerfold of attention. And now I remember: cheerleaders don’t become Playboy bunnies. Knock-kneed, brace-faced, flat-chested, brunette band geeks become bunnies because they want everyone to know that after hocking their trombones for rhinoplasty, they are just as beautiful as the girl who dates the quarterback.
F’in Tiny is in the front seat usually reserved for teachers, chaperones, and mentally handicapped kids. He says, “Mitzy, one foot in front of the other, my dear. Maybe if you swallow your gum, you can walk.”
Bless her heart, she swallows it.
Behind me, the Scientologists are getting restless and I feel a 20-million-dollar-a-movie hand on my back. I coax Mitzy up the bus stairs and into the belly of the sense-memory beast. She stumbles forward, glancing over her shoulder for approval. I nod for her to sit three rows back, but don’t follow her. I realize that I am at an age where I don’t care about who I sit by or what the person I don’t sit by thinks of me or what anybody else thinks of me either. I am the author of three unpublished novels. Failure. Failure. And one to grow on. My worst nightmare has repeated itself every two years. And you know what? Life goes on with or without your book in print. Life will go on if I don’t sit by Mitzy. I am genuinely fond of her, but for this challenge we are dumpster diving on our own. I need every advantage I can get. I want to be the first one off this bus. I want to win.
I plop down next to F’in Tiny, who pops up like a whack-a-mole when my weight hits the cushion. He pops up so high that his head goes out of frame and a producer makes us reenact the big moment. Oh. Great. I do care what people think. I feel terrible as I break Mitzy’s heart in slow motion this time. I ease down next to F’in Tiny, who’s braced himself as if I am a high dive donkey and his seat is a kiddie pool. Everyone else piles onto the bus and streams past Mitzy, who studiously presses at her replacement Lee Press Ons. I’m relieved when John Lithgow asks if he can squeeze in next to her. As the bus pulls onto the road, I expect he’ll soon have us singing rounds of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes!”
Directly behind me are the Scientologists. The wife taps my shoulder. She says, “Nice move, girl. Good seat. You got gump.”
“Gump?” I ask.
“Yeah, girl, gump. Gumption. We’ve been watching you. We’re impressed.”
By “we” the Scientologist wife means her and her husband. I’ve seen them interviewed on TV and they always refer to themselves as a unit. She didn’t support Hillary Clinton, they did. He didn’t choose to make the move from comedies to action/drama and biopics, they did. They chose to have twins through fertility treatments and then they chose to battle her postpartum depression without drugs or psychotherapy. They chose to send her off to a yurt for two months. When she came home, they got her a supporting role in a movie in which she bared her stretch marks under overhead lighting. The part earned her a Golden Globe nomination. And then they decided that she would stay at home with the kids. For the last fifteen years, she hasn’t done more than cameos in his blockbusters. So, I’m guessing – now that the twins are practically grown – she’s done her time and they are here for her comeback.
I ask, “Which one of you is the collector?”
The actor opens his mouth, but his wife puts her hand on his arm. She stops him. From saying what? Another we? What’s wrong with we? We’s their thing. Aren’t they on Dumpster Diving With The Stars to get we a TV series starring we as a mortician with great arms in a man’s world?
She tells him, “Take it easy, baby.”
He chuckles what I’m guessing is his marriage chuckle. All we marrieds have a marriage chuckle. A marriage chuckle is a fake laugh you bring out when your spouse does something dumb that you have to pretend is charming. My marriage chuckle is for when my husband tells our new friends that he doesn’t believe in brunch. The Scientologist husband’s must be for when his wife preempts his dumb thing.
Speaking of dumb things, F’in Tiny has perked up. He’s on his knees, arms draped over the back of our seat, leaning deep into the Scientologists’ personal space. He asks the wife, “Are you worried that if your husband exposes his love for antiquing, his fans will no longer see him as a leading man?”
Camera lights burn down upon us. Only one cameraman has stayed at the back of the bus to film Verbena, who is hanging her head out a window, flying her freak flag of long brown hair, and pumping her arm to get semi truck drivers to honk their horns. John Lithgow looks like he’s giving good fatherly advice to Mitzy (this could be the moment when she decides to go to community college) but the producers don’t care. F’in Tiny is off his iPhone and onto something. And, by God, they will capture it. Cardinal Reality Rule #3: Strain relationships. Ask uncomfortable questions. Put one member in physical danger. Split ‘em. Viewers like to see other couples more miserable than themselves.
The Scientologist wife knows this and she is not having it. She says, “Weren’t you an actor once, Elvin? You love antiquing. You’re on the show.”
“I’m the host.”
“There’s a difference?”
F’n Tiny says, “Antiquing is one thing, parading a wife around to stay number one at the box office is quite another.”
The Scientologist wife says, “The secret to why our marriage works is that everybody helps everybody. We’re a team. At home and on this show.”
“But this isn’t a team show,” says F’in Tiny.
He’s right. This is not The Amazing Race. For the rest of filming, the Scientologists will have to compete against each other. It’s not something I would ever do with my husband, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that people do things I don’t.
F’in Tiny prods, “Teamwork. Really? Teamwork is your big secret?”
I know what F’in Tiny is inferring because whenever he is interviewed reporters infer the same thing about him. They ask about his string of chiseled personal trainers, who change every time he’s on a private plane. They say, “Because you were a fat kid. Really? Because you were a fat kid is why you are so body conscious now?”
The Scientologist actor looks to his wife for an answer. She is stoic. She maintains eye contact with F’in Tiny. She doesn’t blink. Her stare dares him to ask his inane question again. On TV, this will read as confident, but up close I can see that she is frozen because she’s scared.
I say, “The secret to our marriage is separate bathrooms.”
The Scientologists laugh, real laughter because they’ve both been holding their breath. F’in Tiny cuts me a look. I’ve broken his spell. He turns and slumps in his seat. He pulls out his iPhone and thumb-flicks the screen. The cameramen know all is lost and retreat. As I face forward, I get a 20 million dollar squeeze on the shoulder.
Part Four
When our bus rolls into a church parking lot in Tivoli, New York, a cameraman slips out the emergency exit and rounds to the front of the bus to set up a shot of our mass exodus. Through the windows, about a quarter mile in the distance, I see that residents have chalked off squares of pavement along Main Street and piled card tables high with boxes and trunks hauled down from their attics. I reapply my lipstick, snap my purse shut, and smooth my starched skirt. This is supposed to be a less down-and-dirty event.
F’in Tiny climbs over me with a tight straddle to reach the aisle. The engine idles as he dons a new hat for this segment. The Indiana Jones fedora is too large and the brim tips over one eye without any assistance. He holds his whip like a jump rope.
He says, “For this challenge you will have FIFTY minutes and FIFTY dollars to scour this small AMERICAN yard sale. The WINNER’s find will have the BIGGEST difference between what you pay for it and market value. And, as always on Dumpster Diving With The Stars, you do not have to spend anything. The MORE you save, the MORE your find will be worth. Currently, Mitzy and THE WRITER are tied for the lead. ARE. YOU. READY? Dumpster divers?”
Now we know what to do. Mario drums his Crocs on the floor and we shout, “Yes!” John Lithgow shouts, “Tally-ho!” He’s got his arm around Mitzy’s shoulders and gives her a hearty squeeze. He’s rooting for her. He’s rooting for all of us. If only I’d sat by Mitzy, maybe I too would feel his warm hand on my back. But I sat in the front because I wanted a head start.
“On your mark.” F’in Tiny raises his arm, a stopwatch in his grip. “Get set.” The bus driver cranks open the accordion door. The bus rocks with our eagerness. Contestants rock in their seats. To add to our anxiety, F’in Tiny stands firm, blocking the aisle. He takes a deliberately long breath. Holds it. Then stage-whispers, “Go!”
Contestants and cameramen surge forward. F’in Tiny hops out of their way, but back into my seat blocking only my escape. He smirks. He’ll teach me not to butt into his interview.
I vault over the seat barrier.
The Scientologist shrieks like one of his fans who have stumbled upon him in a grocery aisle when I drop down in front of him, cutting him off at the door. Ha HA! I’m the first one on land. The dew smells good. I’m running, running, running! But I slip. I fall flat-out, grass-burning my knees and undersides of my wrists. I recover! I’m on my feet, charging the sale, maintaining my lead, clutching my purse like a football, fueled by the humiliation that when I fell my skirt flipped over my head revealing what the cameras will not lie about: beige cotton underpants with a waistband as thick and wide as a ruler.
The Scientologist and his wife easily overtake me, but Berkshire Theatre fans slow Lithgow, and the tennis player gets her heels stuck in the lawn. Mario and Verbena chug ahead and blend into the crowd. When I finish eating Mitzy’s dust, I catch up to find her lingering at the entrance to Main Street. She is stalled at the mouth of the yard sale just like she was when boarding the bus.
It’s the smell and sight of books that has her in its clutches this time. Books are everywhere: hardbacks, paperbacks, mass market, trade; books with leather binding; embossed gold leaf titles; it’s a maze of spines. The bookshelves that the books are sitting on are for sale. One card table has a heap of paper grocery sacks with a sign that reads: “Pack a bag for a buck!”
Mitzy says, “Bitzy’s the reader.”
I nudge her forward into the thicket of yard sellers. For every yard seller, there are forty shoppers. While there are plenty of knickknacks (figurines, taxidermy, marble fruit), they are buffered by books. It’s hard to know where to dive in. Once again, Mitzy has clamped onto my hand. I wriggle free to point out an antique car and bike area at the far end of the market. Surely she knows from auto shows. I lock my eyes on a row of overpriced Nancy Drews. I try to get my gump up to barter, but Mitzy’s still a shadow.
She says, “Bitzy took three books to the hospital for her recovery. They’re supposed to be funny, but I don’t feel her laughing. When she laughs, I get the hiccups.”
F’in Tiny says, “Wouldn’t we all like to see that!”
I swear he must have tunneled here.
Mitzy asks him, “Have you heard from Hef? Is Bitzy okay?”
F’in Tiny brandishes his stopwatch. “The show, dear. The show.” I hear the stopwatch ticking. Mitzy shouldn’t be asking about her sister on camera. He’s not going to answer her. Unless World War III breaks out and Bitzy’s been elected commander in chief, Mitzy and the rest of us signed contracts to dumpster dive in the dark. So, she’s just slowing our segment. He says, “You’re working, dear. Get to work.”
From deep within the yard sale, comes the fan-like shriek of the Scientologist. F’in Tiny jerks in its direction. He tamps his hat on his head and elbows through browsers. Mitzy drags me along. It’s a middle-aged mosh pit. But then a cameraman gets in front of us and folks clear a path as if he’s an ambulance.
The Scientologist is trying to contain himself. He’s got his arms crossed and has the worst fake frown I’ve ever seen. The booth he’s in borders the auto area and is run by a gentleman with a braided beard who sells spare parts. The man’s wife sits on a stool by a cashbox, where she’d been reading until the Scientologist asked to buy the book out of her hands.
The book is an Amy Madeline.
“Come on,” says the Scientologist. “You’re not even ten pages in. I’ll double your money. How much did you pay for it?”
The woman says, “Fifty cents.” She closes the book, saving her place with a finger. She studies the glossy rose-colored cover. She asks, “What’s it to you?”
F’in Tiny says, “Yes, tell us all. What is it to you?”
I know what it is. It’s a rare first edition with a typo the size of Texas. A copy editor got fired over that typo. A hundred thousand copies were recalled because of that typo. Riding the surprise hit of Amy Madeline’s first novel, her rose-colored second novel was rushed to print. Her main character was a pastry chef and an autocorrected joke wasn’t reversed so that every time the nice lady stuffed her face with cake, she performed fellatio. Reprints were published with a lilac cover. Finding a rose-colored cover is as hard as finding a real life 60-hour-a-week pastry chef who’ll do what Amy Madeline’s character did with the frequency and gusto that she did it.
The Scientologist wife tells the lady, “He’s just joking with you, girl.”
Disappointment flashes across the Scientologist’s face, but he masks it with a marriage chuckle. He must be a closeted fan of Amy Madeline’s: a Mad Hag. Only Mad Hags know about this particular book. I wonder if he knows that this book is dedicated to me. I wonder if the producers know. I wonder if they planted it for me to find. Judging by their interest in the auto area, where Mitzy is riding a rusty tricycle like a sexy toddler, they didn’t. I am as invisible as I am at Amy Madeline’s readings where I sit in the front row, holding her purse. In literary circles, I’m not known as Amy Madeline’s peer anymore. I’m Amy Madeline’s wing woman. As a Mad Hag, I’d think the Scientologist would know about her campaign to get me on the show, but he hasn’t mentioned it. Nobody else on this show had mentioned it either. To Dumpster Diving With The Stars, I’m just the writer. I could be any writer. I could be Amy Madeline. They don’t know Portnoy’s Complaint from Pet Semetary. Cardinal Reality Rule #4: Appeal to a new audience. I’m a novelty (like a disabled veteran or a little person). Cast as a new way to breathe new life into an old show.
I say, “I’ll buy it.” And I whip out my fifty. The biker’s wife snaps up her quick hundred percent profits and hands me the book, which turns out to be worth six hundred dollars more than I paid.
Mitzy’s trike is worth seventy-five. John Lithgow suffers a thirty-five dollar forgery penalty because Herman Melville never signed a book with a ballpoint. Mario Batali’s music box is worth a hundred. The tennis player breaks even with her “folk art” of three stuffed animals sewn together like a googly-eyed totem pole. Verbena comes in a close second to me with a cigar box full of matchbooks. The Scientologist wife comes in third with a vase.
She pouts about her loss, but throws a tantrum about her husband’s low score. She demands that local appraisers get a second opinion on his Harley Davidson bicycle crank. “I mean,” she says directly to the camera, “it’s a Harley. We know it’s got to be worth more than that.”
The Scientologist says, “Baby, let it go. Enjoy your own score. We’re cool.”
“We are?”
He says to the camera, “Hey, all we can do is buy what we like.”
What they’ve bought is extra camera time to show the world that the Scientologist millionaire movie star is just a “regular” guy. Just like a regular guy, he passed up six hundred dollar chick lit in favor of something he can slather in grease. But I know he’s a Mad Hag. And I know that he knew the value of the rose-colored book. So I figure, he threw this challenge. As he is going to every future challenge to look like a regular guy. No wonder his wife’s face doesn’t have a line on it. It’s not Botox that’s kept her young-looking, it’s lying. The Scientologists aren’t here to revive her career. They are here to disprove gay rumors about him. So, why would he come on a show that promotes the most stereotypically gay pastime? Easy. It’s like me writing a novel called How I Murdered My Husband and Got Away With It and then murdering my husband.
* * *
As a reality game show fan, I understand that I’m manipulated to root for certain contestants. Cardinal Reality Rule #5: Play favorites. Producers make nice people look nice and not-so-nice people look evil. You think you don’t have a foul mouth? Well, here’s a reel of the twenty-three times you called your wife a bleeping slowpoke. When my season of Dumpster Diving With The Stars airs, I’m guessing that the Scientologist will be cast as the handsome dope, his wife as the smother mother, Verbena as the grown woman gone wild, Mario and Lithgow as good sports (aka themselves), and the tennis player as the bitch. The tennis player is a lovely woman, but our entire cast is lovely, so our producers are scrambling. In my one-on-one interviews they’ve asked me what I think about the tennis player’s four suitcases, one of which is entirely filled with red-soled Christian Louboutins. They’ve asked me to compare her loud voice to some type of machinery that is equally loud. When I answer that her shoes are her business and her tone of voice is fine by me, the producers are annoyed.
“We thought you were supposed to be the writer.”
“I am a writer.” My voice cracks on the “am.” Damn. As soon as I say it, I know this will be the audio clip they play over my ravine water-stained face or big beige panty-reveal every week in the opening credits. I say, “There’s more to life than writing.” And wish they’d pick that audio clip. But, they won’t. I feign traveller’s diarrhea and excuse myself from the interview before I start to weep and am cast as the pre-menopausal washed up emotional wreck.
The thing is, we’ve got one more challenge to go and I’m winning. By a lot. When we were let into Tori Spelling’s convoy of moving vans (to coincide with the start of her new reality show in which she and her husband try and get their kids into private school in Manhattan), I picked the oil painting of her mother Candy in a Halston dress because I knew the frame probably once held a Renoir. When we spent the night in a colonial haunted house, I bagged the doll that wouldn’t stop staring at Mario. Sure, I lost challenges to Verbena’s thousand-dollar bill that she fished out of a cuckoo clock, and John Lithgow’s confederate sword, and we were all shocked that the Scientologist’s motorized Barcalounger was worth fourteen hundred, but I am way out in front. And the producers aren’t happy about it. Looks like, unless we’re raging drunkards, writers are boring. Who’s going to root for me, a woman who, in her down time, reads fat Russian tomes under the low lights of B&B sitting rooms?
Mitzy, a much more desirable champion for the show (little girl lost turns family-friendly decorator, and think of all those slow motion running shots), had an equal chance of maintaining our original rocking horse lead, but her enthusiasm has waned. She’s left a trail of Lee Press Ons along the Atlantic seaboard. She is the youngest among us, but the last into barns and doublewides. She stoops. She’s put on weight. She has night terrors about contracting Legionnaires’ disease in the Playboy mansion grotto.
She tells me, “It happened to Bitzy. She says you feel like you’re a hairless dog in an mohair sweater trapped in a car.”
I say, “That’s so specific.”
Mitzy says, “My sister’s smart like that.”
I say, “I’m sure she’s okay.”
But, I’m not. Producers still haven’t told Mitzy how Bitzy’s surgery went. If it were my husband who might be lying somewhere comatose from anesthesia complications, I’d have quit this show a month ago and risked a lawsuit to find out. But, I’m a middle-aged woman with savings, mutual funds, and property in my name. All Mitzy has is a room and her looks.
For our final challenge, which takes place at the Pennsylvania estate auction of Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III, F’in Tiny saunters into the dead widow’s ballroom wearing a smoking jacket and an ascot. He holds his pipe to his face like monocle. He (or the costume department) is under the impression that old money dresses like Professor Plum.
He says, “For this challenge you will have FOUR hours and FOUR HUNDRED dollars to bid during this small AMERICAN estate auction. The WINNER’s find will have the BIGGEST difference between what you pay for it and market value. Currently, THE WRITER has the lead. But, an estate auction like this is full of surprises. Any one of you could pull ahead and win. Even you, Mitzy. Mitzy! Hello?”
Mitzy is huddled in a back row auction chair, cupping her stomach as if her belly button might pop off like a turkey timer. The girl is sick with worry about her sister. And we contestants are sick with worry about Mitzy. We sit in front and to the sides of her protectively. If there is such a thing as twin sensory perception, it is radiating off Mitzy like a third-degree burn.
“ARE. YOU. READY. Dumpster divers?”
We are not ready.
“I SAID — ”
Part Five
From the front of the ballroom, which is packed to the stained glass Tiffany windows (each available at starting bids of $150,000) with antique dealers and stay-at-home mom bloggers, the auctioneer taps his gavel. He directs his gaze at F’in Tiny. Dumpster Diving With The Stars is a guest in Mrs. Giles Everett Preston’s III’s palatial home. The auctioneer is the gentleman with his name in the catalogue, which means that he is the host, not F’in Tiny. With his tap, the auctioneer is giving F’in Tiny and his band of interlopers one and only one do-over to get what will surely be our bridled enthusiasm on tape.
F’in Tiny clears his throat and slips his pipe in his pocket. He ignores a boom microphone that a producer has ordered to be dangled above his blonde highlights. He asks, “Are you ready dumpster divers?”
We nod like a secretary’s desk edge of bobble-heads. With respect to Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III and for Mitzy’s sake, we are not going to whoop it up.
The auction begins. Verbena is the first dumpster diver to raise her paddle. She thrusts it up like the Day-Glo flag she waves to signal worm pits in the woods on NIGHTCRAWLERS. She wants Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III’s mismatched sugar bowl and I think she may go so far as to stand on her chair and jockey across the heads of other bidders to get it.
The auctioneer says, “Do I have a hundred? One-twenty-five? One-fifty? Two?”
He most certainly does. And how! The sugar bowl is snatched from Verbena’s grasp and sells for three thousand, two hundred bucks. Turns out, the sugar bowl has a story behind it. As the auctioneer drove up the price, he revealed that the reason it is mismatched is because it is the only piece from its set that Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III did not hurl at her husband when she found him under the dining room table “clotting the cream” of the then Earl of Sandwich.
As the auction continues, we discover that everything has a story. Lithgow is outbid for a Cole Porter Playbill because Cole Porter composed one of the musical’s numbers on Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III’s grand piano, and while he composed it she pretended not to hear her husband cry out from a maid’s room for his heart medication. Mario loses a ceramic soup tureen shaped like a pumpkin because Mrs. Giles Everett Preston III used it to mask the lime green hue of the vichyssoise she poisoned when her husband gave her HPV for Thanksgiving. Suffocating needlepoint pillows, bludgeoning candelabras, and a typewriter used to fake a suicide note are all lost (along with three-fourths of the lots) because bidders with more money to bid with than us want to own something that belonged to an eccentric.
F’in demands the producers give us bigger allowances. He says, “I’ll dub over the intro in post. You know: ‘UNLIMITED TIME and FOUR THOUSAND dollars. Give it to them.”
The producers agree.
Four grand opens up more of the small remainder of the catalogue. We flip through the back quarter inch of stiff high quality gloss pages we hadn’t dog-eared. We sneak peeks at what other contestants are pausing to look at. The auctioneer never stops auctioning. The rest of the audience never stops raising their paddles. We are awash in the anxiety of new possibilities. But these possibilities grow fewer and farther between and with every passing moment they are going, going, gone! We squirm in our seats. F’in Tiny paces behind us. A potbellied cameraman tries to keep up with him. Other cameramen circle the room. Producers grip and gripe into iPhones. Their finale is more frenzied than they’d expected. Only Mitzy is as motionless as she’s been since the start.
I slide my catalogue into the space between her lap and bowed head. I flip and lift photos of jewelry. See? Here’s a ladybug ring that can hold a teaspoon of cyanide. See? Here’s a charm bracelet of lab test subjects, or as the lady of the house called them: her babies (Chihuahuas). It kills me that Mitzy doesn’t respond. There are so many things that should make her say, “Cooooot!”
F’in Tiny leans over her and lifts her paddle from her lap. He says, “Your arms don’t work, Mitzy? There’s nothing you want of Mrs. The Third’s?”
John Lithgow says, “Let the poor girl alone. So what if she doesn’t bid?”
F’in Tiny says, “This is a game, John. Mitzy signed a contract for the love of the thrift. She needs to participate. She needs to be active. The game’s almost over. She plays, and then she gets to go home.”
John Lithgow says, “And what exactly will she find when she gets home, sir? Will she find everything as she left it?”
“Her room at the mansion is waiting for her.”
“And will everyone be there waiting for her?”
“What do you think, John? It’s a twenty-room mansion with a hundred birds on the property.”
I say, “Birds aren’t family.”
“That’s right,” says John Lithgow. “What’s important is family.”
F’in Tiny says, “Mitzy’s family needs her to win.”
A tear appears in the corner of Mitzy’s eye and that tear is shinier than any sequin she’s ever affixed to her body. F’in Tiny offers her a handkerchief, pulled out of his pocket like a magician’s bottomless supply. Mitzy won’t take it. She doesn’t want anything more to do with him or this show. She shakes her head and her tear is let loose. It plummets. F’in Tiny presses in. The velvet knot of his smoking jacket rubs against the back of her head. He puts his cookie hands on her shoulders. I cringe because I can feel his fingers sinking into her hoodie. I want his hands off of her. And so my hand, gripping my paddle, shoots up and sideswipes his ear.
The auctioneer says, “One thousand dollars from the lady in the cardigan!”
I have no idea what I’m bidding for, but it must be good because F’in Tiny ignores blood pulsing out of his ear.
He says, “Mitzy, you’re going to let her get away with it? The writer?” He says the word with such venom that I fear he’s poisoned the whole room. But what he’s done is draw everyone’s attention.
I say, “I’m a dumpster diver. And I’m onto you. You only want Mitzy to win so Bitzy’s surgery will sell your show. If Mitzy wins, people will watch until she wins because they’ll want to see her poor, sweet face when she finds out what you’ve been keeping from her because whatever it is, it must be God-awful. Cardinal Reality Rule #6: Tug heartstrings. The only thing better than a favorite to root for is a winner with a sob story.”
F’in Tiny says, “Cardinal Reality Rule? What are you talking about? Why are you talking like that?”
Oh dear me, look what I found: “I’m writing.”
“Well, do it on your own time. This is TV.”
Mitzy asks, “Is it true what she said? Is Bitzy bad off?”
F’in Tiny says, “I can assure you that your sister is in the very best hands.”
John Lithgow says, “Shameful.”
The tennis player says, “That’s messed up.” It is, but it doesn’t stop me from worrying that when the opening credits roll each week, this audio clip will be run over a loop of Mario Batali eating a corndog. Verbena frowns. We all know NIGHTCRAWLERS would never pull something as manipulative as this.
“One-thousand-one-hundred, ladies and gentlemen?” The auctioneer is going on with his show. “Do I have one-thousand-one-hundred for this lovely fishplate by Louis Strauss and Sons?”
He does not. Wait, fishplate?
“One-thousand-one-hundred? It has a lovely painting of a fish on it.”
That’s the best story he can come up with?
F’in Tiny says, “Mitzy, bid, I beg of you. None of you have won anything of this crazy old bag’s. The auction’s almost over. If the writer wins the plate, she’ll win the whole show. We can’t have that. Nobody knows who she is. She’s never been in Playboy. She’s never been in – what’s Playboy for writers?”
Mario Batali says, “The New Yorker.”
“Does she show her tits in The New Yorker?”
The auctioneer holds his gavel extra high for the cameras. “One-thousand-one-hundred going once.”
F’in Tiny shouts, “Come on!” He’s on his tiny feet in tiny shoes with tiny lifts, wriggling his way between two un-tiny cameramen. He charges the auctioneer, who won’t give up his gavel despite the fight he’s being given.
“Going twice.”
F’in Tiny shouts, “I knew bringing a writer on this show was a mistake! She’s like those Telenova Mexicans they keep bringing on Dancing With Stars, but without the abs. This writer has no abs! Mitzy! Somebody! Anybody! One of you dumpster divers bid!”
John Lithgow wraps his arms around Mitzy who sobs into his chest. Mario Batali and the tennis player cross their arms in disgust. Verbena bows her head so that her long hair shields her face. Ever camera ready, the Scientologist says, “Sorry, Smalls, no can do. I had my sights set on that secretarial desk.”
His wife chuckles.
“Wait, that’s not right?”
She says, “It’s fine, baby.”
And it is fine. It’s all going to work out just fine. The Scientologists’ marriage, the tennis player’s rep, Verbena’s return to hill country, Batali and Lithgow’s continued success, Mitzy’s life after Playboy, and my new novel that will begin, Cardinal Reality Rule #7: Forge unlikely friendships. I keep my paddle raised until I hear, “Sold.”