The Restoration of Celia Fairchild
Dedication
For Mark Lipinski,
my best friend forever.
And ever.
And ever.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .
About the Author
About the Book
Praise for The Restoration of Celia Fairchild
Also by Marie Bostwick
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
The stage lights were blinding, not in a metaphorical way.
When the emcee introduced me and the audience began applauding, I exited from the wings, teeth bared in what was meant to be a smile but felt more like a grimace, squinting and blinking like a groundhog emerging from hibernation. I couldn’t see a thing, including the black electrical cord that snaked from the front of the stage to the podium.
When I tripped and tumbled forward, I flailed frantically, like a cat who’d misjudged the distance from the balcony to the ground. If the quick-thinking emcee hadn’t caught me under the arms, I’d have ended up doing a face-plant in front of seven hundred people who’d paid sixty dollars a head to eat chicken marsala and hear me talk.
Well . . . they didn’t come to hear me. They came to hear Calpurnia, which isn’t quite the same thing.
Against my better judgment, I’d worn a pair of five-inch heels to the fundraiser, hoping to stave off the inevitable comments of “Somehow I thought you’d be taller” that always followed fan meet-and-greets during my infrequent personal appearances. As many times as it’s happened, I still never know what to say to that. I mean, what can you say? Sorry to disappoint you? I’ll try harder? I drank coffee as a child and it stunted my growth?
I stand five foot four in my bare feet: not tall but not short either. In fact, it’s the average height for American women. But that’s not enough for Calpurnia’s readers. They expect her to be above average in every way. And that (as well as the fact that I’m not really that famous and therefore not that deeply in demand) is why I almost never make personal appearances; after meeting me, people are bound to leave disappointed.
But how can you say no to a really good but sorely underfunded after-school program serving at-risk kids of single parents? You can’t. Besides, my therapist said it was time for me to get out there again and she was probably right. So I squeezed into my only pair of Spanx and the glittery red evening dress that wasn’t quite so tight only a few weeks ago, strapped on a pair of stupidly tall stilettos, and got out there.
Somewhere between tripping and tumbling, one of the heels broke off. After the emcee set me back on my feet, I hobbled toward the podium like Quasimodo.
A murmur of laughter rippled through the crowd. When my prayer for the floor to open and swallow me up went unanswered, I did what Calpurnia would have done: I brazened it out.
Gripping both sides of the podium, I leaned forward so my mouth hovered just in front of the microphone, and drawled, “Well. What can I say? I always did like making an entrance.”
The crowd laughed again but this time they laughed with me instead of at me. I smiled. “Guess I don’t need these anymore, do I?” I reached down, slipped off one shoe, then the next, and tossed them to a fifty-something man in the front row who, thanks to the sparkly green vest he wore under his tux, was the only person I could actually see. “Here you go, sugar. They’re just your size.”
The crowd went crazy, howling with laughter and applauding for at least a full minute. Honestly, I think that a lot of them thought I’d planned the whole thing, that this was just part of the show. And I guess it was, in a way.
But that’s why I hate these things, because it’s all a show. That’s also why—only sometimes and only a little bit—I kind of hate my fans too. Because they aren’t really mine, are they? They don’t want me; they want the show. They want Calpurnia.
After I’d made brief remarks about the important mission of the program and how the money raised today would impact the lives of kids all over the city, somebody finally lowered the stage lights so I could see the audience and take questions. The man in the sparkly vest, still clutching my broken stiletto, was first to the microphone.
“This is really more of a comment than a question,” he said. “But I’m a big fan. I feel like I know you and I wanted to say, well . . . I just love you.”
See what I mean?
How can he love me? He doesn’t even know me. And I’ve had enough of that!
Sorry. Deep breath.
Look, I get it that we are dealing with hyperbole here and that love is maybe the most overused word in the English language, the second most overused being hate. Sparkly Vest Man doesn’t love me. He likes me or, more accurately, he likes what I write. It’s a compliment. I get it. Sparkly Vest Man doesn’t love me and I don’t hate him. But I do find him irritating, more now than I would have even a few months ago.
It only took five thousand dollars and four months of counseling with a slightly cruel therapist for me to understand that the reason I keep getting my heart broken is that I am desperate, too desperate, to regain what was taken from me so many years ago. Desperation will make you do dumb things, like ignoring red flags and the warnings of too-frank friends.
But none of that was Sparkly Vest Man’s fault, so I smiled and said the only thing I could say, “Well, I love you too, sugar,” then took the next question, and the next, and the next.
They asked me about finances and fiancés, former wives, wished-for careers, and thwarted dreams. But really, they were all looking for the same thing, hope and a way forward. As they came up to the microphone to tell their stories, irritation gave way to tenderness, and then to admiration. Their vulnerability was touching and, as I thought about it, really kind of brave.
If I were as brave as they were, maybe I would have lifted up my hand, stopped them mid-question, and told them what a mess my life is, what a mess I am. But I’m not
that brave. Even if I were, how does knowing that help them?
I did my best. I listened to what they were saying—and what they weren’t saying—and tried to be the Calpurnia they were counting on, pointing them in the right direction. It’s crazy that talking should be so exhausting but it is. I was grateful when the emcee said that we’d run out of time. The audience started to applaud once more. I smiled, and waved, and walked into the wings in my bare feet with the hem of my glittery red evening dress dragging behind me, carving a dusty trail on the black stage floor.
Backstage, the executive director of the program found me a pair of flip-flops, the thin, flimsy kind you wear for pedicures, then put me into a cab for the ride back to my apartment. The driver was kind of chatty but I deflected his questions and closed my eyes, making it clear I wasn’t up for conversation. The only thing I wanted to do was get home, take off the glittery gown with the dirty hem, extricate myself from the boa constrictor death-grip of the Spanx, and go to bed.
I was tired, so tired that I thought about letting the call go to voicemail. But no matter how hard I try, even when the screen says “Number Unknown” or even “Possible Spam,” I cannot ignore a ringing phone. There’s this part of me that always thinks, or maybe just hopes, it’ll be good news. Or bad?
Either way, I can’t stop myself from wanting to know.
Months would pass before the verdict was in on Good vs. Bad. But from the moment I answered that call and a voice said, “Ms. Fairchild? This is Anne Dowling. I’m an adoption attorney,” my life would never be the same.
Chapter Two
The almond croissants looked tempting. So did the chocolate. But I’d made up my mind. Today I would order a plain croissant. Why? Because Anne Dowling had called and it was a new day, with heretofore unimagined possibilities. And because, as my slightly cruel therapist kept pointing out, enough was enough.
When it comes to food and grief, there are generally two types of people: those who are so emotionally ragged that they can hardly force a morsel between their lips, and those who go in the entirely opposite direction.
I am the second type.
In the three months since my divorce, I’d gained nine pounds. Well, eight and a half after I stepped on the scale a second time, minus my socks and underwear, on the morning after the fundraiser. But half a pound didn’t alter the fact that I had to change into yoga tights before leaving the house because I couldn’t button my regular pants.
It’s not that I’d been grieving the end of my marriage per se. In my long history of spectacularly bad relationships, Steve represented a new low—five affairs in three years of marriage, the first with the justice of the peace who performed our wedding ceremony.
Seriously, who does that?
Steve Beckley, that’s who. My husband. Now my ex-husband.
If I’d been advising me instead of being me, I’d have seen it coming a mile away. My whirlwind courtship with Steve was a parade of red flags, all flapping like crazy. But “do as I say and not as I do” is kind of a theme with me, the irony of which is not lost on anyone who knows me. Marrying Steve felt like my last chance for the life I wanted desperately. Too desperately.
Look, I understand that the events of my childhood definitely played a role in my less-than-wise decisions about Steve. But no matter what my therapist says, not everything about my longing for motherhood is tangled up with my family issues; there’s this little thing called biology, you know? The desire to procreate is a normal, natural, and powerful urge. I mean, it’s not like I’m the only mid-thirties single woman in New York who wants to get married and have kids, right? We can’t all be neurotic, can we?
The point is, I’ve done the career thing. I’ve even done the celebrity thing, albeit in a small way—I’m a D-list celeb at best, maybe even E-list—and it’s fine. I’m grateful for the opportunities that have come my way. But . . . it’s not enough. Being well-known to a lot of people who admire the person they think you are, the role you play, isn’t the same as being important to a few people who truly know you and love you anyway, even if you’re not perfect, or don’t have all the answers, or do as you do instead of as you say. That’s what family is: the people who love you anyway. That’s what I long for. Is that so terrible?
But when Steve left, he took my last chance at that life with him. Or so I thought, until Anne Dowling called.
I quit writing “Dear Birth Mother” letters almost a year ago. By then, it was obvious the marriage wasn’t going to last, and even I knew that bringing a baby into a family that was on the verge of falling apart wasn’t a good idea. I also knew that trying to adopt as a single parent would be even tougher, so I gave up on motherhood altogether.
But a few of those letters must have still been floating around, because after reading through a pile of “Dear Birth Mother” missives, Anne Dowling’s client, an unwed mother from Pennsylvania, narrowed the pool of potential parents who might adopt her baby down to three couples. Steve and I were at the top of the list.
A baby! After all these years, after the disappointments and dashed hopes, someone was actually thinking about letting me adopt a baby! At that moment, all the things that my therapist and I had agreed upon, the stuff about my desire for a child stemming from a deep-seated and probably unhealthy compulsion to recreate the family I’d lost, went right out the window. There was a baby and I wanted it. The therapist could just go pound sand.
But when I explained the change in my marital status, Ms. Dowling said, “Ah, I see. I’m sorry, Ms. Fairchild, but my client prefers to place the baby in a two-parent home,” and my heart plummeted back to earth and crashed onto the rocks. I was desperate, really desperate. To have the thing I wanted most in the entire world just inches from my grasp, only to see it snatched away because Steve was a pathologically adulterous, card-carrying asshat was unendurable. And so I did what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t: I played the Calpurnia card.
“You’re kidding,” Ms. Dowling said, laughing. “You’re Calpurnia? My mother loves you. She sends me clippings from your column at least once a month.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. I say the kinds of things people want to tell their adult children but can’t.
“Really? I hope you won’t hold it against me.”
Ms. Dowling laughed again, sounding almost giddy, which didn’t surprise me. Unexpected celebrity encounters, even when the celebrity in question is as minor as I am, fill people with a strange delight. I was counting on that response, hoping it would help tip the scales in my direction.
“It doesn’t seem fair to exclude you just because your husband walked out,” she said once the laughter subsided. “After reading your columns, I know you’d be a great parent, single or not. Let me talk to my client and get back to you.”
The next morning, she did. Even without Steve, I was still in the running. There were no guarantees, Ms. Dowling explained; there were two other families under consideration, as well as background checks to pass and hoops to jump through, the biggest being the home visit in the middle of August.
Still, I had a one-in-three chance, and a little over three months to get my act together. And that is why, even though the chocolate croissant was calling my name, I would order plain. A small step, perhaps, but an important one.
Starting tomorrow, I would forgo croissants entirely. I would go shopping for vegetables and join a gym. I would lose those nine pounds and six more besides. I would eat clean, possibly do a juice cleanse. I would start taking my own advice. I would become self-actualized. I would avoid cruel, selfish men and take note of flapping red flags. I would love myself, and live in the moment, and smell the roses, and seize the day.
l would wear smaller jeans and find a bigger apartment. They say it takes a village to raise a child. I needed to find one of those, and quickly. So I would join a church and the PTA and a book club. I would buy a crib and a stroller and those plastic things that you stick in wall sockets so kids can’t electr
ocute themselves. I would purchase life insurance and make the maximum contribution to my 401(k).
I would do all of this. And more! In the next three and a half months I would transform myself into ideal parenting material and a completely different person.
But to make it happen, I needed more money.
As if my world hadn’t been rocked enough already, Steve had been awarded significant alimony payments in the divorce settlement. I had to move out of our Upper West Side apartment with the doorman and peek-a-boo view of the park, and into a studio in Washington Heights with a shared laundry and view of the alley. It’s fine just for me, but I couldn’t raise a child there. I had to find a nice two-bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood with good schools, preferably near a subway stop, and definitely within walking distance of the park. Apartments like that don’t come cheap in New York, and so today I would ask for a raise.
That is why I was going to order a croissant, albeit a plain one. Because, in spite of all the things I’ve written about knowing your worth and not settling for less, I was dreading the conversation. (Do as I say, not as I do.) Anxiety consumes even more calories than grief and so I needed a croissant, badly. And a latte, with whole milk.
Ramona, who works at The Good Drop, a bakery and coffee shop four blocks from my office, spotted me examining the pastry.
“Hey, Celia. What can I get for you?”
“Large latte and a plain croissant.”
“Plain? You sure?” She picked up a pair of tongs but made no move to retrieve my selection. “Guillermo tried a new filling today, pistachio with a touch of cardamom. Everybody who’s had one says they’re real good.”
“No thank you, ma’am. I’ve got—”
Ramona laughed and I rolled my eyes. Why do people find this so hilarious?
“Celia, how long have you been in New York? Fifteen years? You don’t have a Southern accent anymore, but after all this time, you’re still ma’aming people?”
“It’s a habit. It’s how I was raised.”
Ramona picked up the tongs again. My eyes drifted toward a tray of flaky, buttery pastry dusted with powdered sugar and sprinkled with pale-green pistachios, chopped fine as sand. I thought about my upcoming encounter with my boss, pictured myself sitting across from him in that desk chair, the one that always wobbles, and saying, “Dan, I want a raise.”