Helen Thermopolis. Helen Thermopolis, besides being my mother, is a very talented artist who was recently featured in Art in America magazine as one of the most important painters of the new millennium. Her painting Woman Waiting for Price Check at the Grand Union won this big national award and sold for $140,000, only part of which my mom got to keep, since 15 percent of it went to her gallery and half of what was left went to taxes, which sucks, if you ask me. But even though she’s such an important artist, my mom always has time for me. I also respect her because she is deeply principled: She says she would never think of inflicting her beliefs on others and would thank others to pay her the same courtesy.
Can you believe Grandmère tore this up? I’m telling you, this is the sort of essay that could bring a country to its knees.
Saturday, October 11, 9:30 a.m.
So I was right: Lilly does think the reason I’m not participating in the taping today is because I’m against her boycott of the Hos.
I told her that wasn’t true, that I had to spent the day with my grandmother. But guess what? She doesn’t believe me. The one time I tell the truth, and she doesn’t believe me!
Lilly says that if I really wanted to get out of spending the day with Grandmère I could, but because I’m so codependent, I can’t say no to anyone. Which doesn’t even make sense, since obviously I am saying no to her. When I pointed that out to Lilly, though, she just got madder. I can’t say no to my grandmother, since she’s like sixty-five years old, and she’s going to die soon, if there’s any justice at all in the world.
Besides, you don’t know my grandmother, I said. You don’t say no to my grandmother.
Then Lilly went, “No, I don’t know your grandmother, do I, Mia? Isn’t that curious, considering the fact that you know all my grandparents”—the Moscovitzes have me over every year for Passover dinner—“and yet I haven’t met any of yours?”
Well, of course the reason for that is that my mom’s parents are like total farmers who live in a place called Versailles, Indiana, only they pronounce it “Ver-sales.” My mom’s parents are afraid to come to New York City because they say there are too many “furinners”—by which they mean foreigners—here, and anything that isn’t 100 percent American scares them, which is one of the reasons my mom left home when she was eighteen and has only been back twice, and that was with me. Let me tell you, Versailles is a small, small town. It’s so small that there’s a sign on the door at the bank that says if bank is closed, please slide money under door. I am not lying, either. I took a photo of it and brought it back to show everyone because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. It’s hanging on our refrigerator.
Anyway, Grandpa and Grandma Thermopolis don’t make it out of Indiana much.
And the reason I’d never introduced Lilly to Grandmère Renaldo is because Grandmère Renaldo hates children. And I can’t introduce her now because then Lilly will find out I’m the princess of Genovia, and you can bet I’ll never hear the end of that. She’d probably want to interview me, or something, for her TV show. That’s all I need: My name and image plastered all over Manhattan Public Access.
So I was telling Lilly all of this—about how I had to go out with my grandmother, not about my being a princess, of course—and as I was talking I could hear her breathing over the phone in that way she does when she’s mad, and finally she just goes, “Oh, come over tonight then, and help me edit,” and slammed the phone down.
Geez.
Well, at least Michael didn’t tell her about the lipstick and panty hose. That would have really made her mad. She never would have believed I was only going to my grandmother’s. No way.
This was all at like nine-thirty, while I was getting ready to go to Grandmère’s. Grandmère told me that for today I don’t have to wear lipstick or panty hose. She said I could wear anything I wanted. So I wore my overalls. I know she hates them, but hey, she said anything I wanted. Hee hee hee.
Oops, gotta go. Lars just pulled up in front of the Plaza. We’re here.
Saturday, October 11
I can never go to school again. I can never go anywhere again. I will never leave this loft, ever, ever again.
You won’t believe what she did to me. I can’t believe what she did to me. I can’t believe my dad let her do this to me.
Well, he’s going to pay. He’s totally paying for this, and I mean BIG. As soon as I got home (right after my mom went, “Well, hey, Rosemary. Where’s your baby?” which I suppose was some kind of joke about my new haircut, but it was NOT funny), I marched right up to him and said, “You are paying for this. Big time.”
Who says I have a fear of confrontation?
He totally tried to get out of it, going, “What do you mean? Mia, I think you look beautiful. Don’t listen to your mother, what does she know? I like your hair. It’s so . . . short.”
Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because his mother met Lars and me in the lobby as soon as we’d turned the car over to the valet, and just pointed at the door. Just pointed at the door again, and said, “On y va,” which in English means “Let’s go.”
“Let’s go where?” I asked, all innocently (this was this morning, remember, back when I was still innocent).
“Chez Paolo,” Grandmère said. Chez Paolo means “Paul’s house.” So I thought we were going to meet one of her friends, maybe for brunch or something, and I thought, huh, cool, field trip. Maybe these princess lessons won’t be so bad.
But then we got there, and I saw Chez Paolo wasn’t a house at all. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked a little like a really fancy hospital—it was all frosted glass and these Japanese-looking trees. And then we got inside; all of these skinny young people were floating around, dressed all in black. They were all excited to see my grandmother, and took us to this little room where there were these couches and all these magazines. So then I figured Grandmère maybe had some plastic surgery scheduled, and while I am sort of against plastic surgery—unless you’re like Leola Mae and you need lips—I was like, Well, at least she’ll be off my back for a while.
Boy, was I ever wrong! Paolo isn’t a doctor. I doubt he’s ever even been to college! Paolo is a stylist! Worse, he styles people! I’m serious. He takes unfashionable, frumpy people like me, and he makes them stylish—for a living. And Grandmère sicced him on me! Me!! Like it’s bad enough I don’t have breasts. She has to tell some guy named Paolo that?
What kind of name is Paolo, anyway? I mean, this is America, for Pete’s sake! YOUR NAME IS PAUL!!!
That’s what I wanted to scream at him. But, of course, I couldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t Paolo’s fault my grandmother dragged me there. And as he pointed out to me, he only made time for me in his incredibly busy schedule because Grandmère told him it was this big emergency.
God, how embarrassing. I’m a fashion emergency.
Anyway, I was plenty peeved at Grandmère, but I couldn’t start yelling at her right there in front of Paolo. She totally knew it, too. She just sat there on this velvet couch, petting Rommel, who was sitting on her lap with his legs crossed—she’s even taught her dog to sit ladylike, and he’s a boy—sipping a Sidecar she got somebody to make for her and reading W.
Meanwhile, Paolo was picking up chunks of my hair and making this face and going, all sadly, “It must go. It must all go.”
And it went. All of it. Well, almost all of it. I still have some like bangs and a little fringe in back.
Did I mention that I’m no longer a dishwater blond? No. I’m just a plain old blond now.
And Paolo didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I now have fingernails. I am not kidding. For the first time in my life, I have fingernails. They’re completely fake, but I have them. And it looks like I’ll have them for a while: I already tried to pull one off, and it HURT. What kind of secret astronaut glue did that manicurist use, anyway?
You might be wondering why, if I didn’t want to have all my hair cut off and fake fingernails glued over my real, stumpy fingernails, I
let them do all that.
I’m sort of wondering that myself. I mean, I know I have a fear of confrontation. So it wasn’t like I was going to throw down my glass of lemonade and say, “Okay, stop making a fuss over me, right now!” I mean, they gave me lemonade! Can you imagine that? At the International House of Hair, which is where my mom and I usually go, over on Sixth Avenue, they sure don’t give you lemonade, but it does only cost $9.99 for a cut and blow dry.
And it is sort of hard when all these beautiful, fashionable people are telling you how good you’d look in this and how much that would bring out your cheekbones, to remember you’re a feminist and an environmentalist, and don’t believe in using makeup or chemicals that might be harmful to the earth. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, or cause a scene, or anything like that.
And I kept telling myself, She’s only doing this because she loves you. My grandmother, I mean. I know she probably wasn’t doing it for that reason—I don’t think Grandmère loves me any more than I love her—but I told myself that, anyway.
I told myself that after we left Paolo’s and went to Bergdorf Goodman, where Grandmère bought me four pairs of shoes that cost almost as much as the removal of that sock from Fat Louie’s small intestines. I told myself that after she bought me a bunch of clothes I will never wear. I did tell her I would never wear these clothes, but she just waved at me. Like, Go on, go on. You tell such amusing stories.
Well, I for one will not stand for it. There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. I even have fingernails.
But I am not happy. I am not a bit happy. Grandmère’s happy. Grandmère’s head over heels happy about how I look. Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which, by the way, don’t even come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. It certainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis.
She’s turning me into someone else.
So I stood in front of my father, looking like a human Q-tip in my new hair, and I let him have it.
“First she makes me do homework. Then she rips the homework up. Then she gives me sitting lessons. Then she has all my hair dyed a different color and most of it hacked off, makes someone glue tiny surfboards to my fingernails, buys me shoes that cost as much as small animal surgery, and clothes that make me look like Vicky, the captain’s daughter in that old seventies series The Love Boat.
“Well, Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m not Vicky, and I never will be, no matter how much Grandmère dresses me up like her. I’m not going to do great in school, be supercheerful all the time, or have any shipboard romances. That’s Vicky. That’s not me!”
My mom was coming out of her bedroom, putting the last touches on her date wear, when I screamed this. She was wearing a new outfit. It was this sort of Spanish skirt in all these different colors, and a sort of off-the-shoulder top. Her long hair was all over the place, and she looked really great. In fact, my dad headed for the liquor cabinet again when he saw her.
“Mia,” my mom said as she fastened on an earring, “nobody is asking you to be Vicky, the captain’s daughter.”
“Grandmère is!”
“Your grandmother is just trying to prepare you, Mia.”
“Prepare me for what? I can’t go to school looking like this, you know,” I yelled.
My mom looked kind of confused. “Why not?”
Oh my God. Why me?
“Because,” I said, as patiently as I could, “I don’t want anyone at school finding out I’m the princess of Genovia!”
My mom shook her head. “Mia, honey, they’re going to find out sometime.”
I don’t see how. See, I have it all worked out: I’ll only be a princess in Genovia, and since the chances of anybody I know from school ever actually going to Genovia are like none, no one here will ever find out, so I’m totally safe from being branded a freak, like Tina Hakim Baba. Well, at least not the kind of freak who has to ride in a chauffeured limo to school every day and be followed by bodyguards.
“Well,” my mom said, after I’d told her all this. “What if it’s in the newspaper?”
“Why would it be in the newspaper?”
My mom looked at my dad. My dad looked away and took a sip from his drink.
You wouldn’t believe what he did next. He put down his drink, then he reached into his pants pocket, took out his Prada wallet, opened it, and asked, “How much?”
I was shocked. So was my mom.
“Phillipe,” she said, but my dad just kept looking at me.
“I’m serious, Helen,” he said. “I can see the compromise we drew up is getting us nowhere. The only solution in matters like these is cold, hard cash. So how much do I have to pay you, Mia, to let your grandmother turn you into a princess?”
“Is that what she’s doing?” I started yelling some more. “Well, if that’s what she’s doing, she has it all screwed up. I never saw a princess with hair this short, or feet as big as mine, who didn’t have breasts!”
My dad just looked at his watch. I guess he had somewhere to go. I bet it was another “interview” with that blond anchorwoman from ABC News.
“Consider it a job,” he said, “this learning how to be a princess business. I will pay your salary. Now, how much do you want?”
I started yelling even more about personal integrity and how I refused to sell my soul to the company store, that kind of thing. Stuff I got from some of my mom’s old records. I think she recognized this, since she sort of started slinking away, saying she had to go get ready for her date with Mr. G. My dad shot her the evil eye—he can do it almost as well as Grandmère—and then he sighed and went, “Mia, I will donate one hundred dollars a day, in your name, to—what is it? Oh, yes—Greenpeace, so they can save all the whales they want, if you will make my mother happy by letting her teach you to be a princess.”
Well.
That’s an entirely different matter. It would be one thing if he were paying me to have my hair color chemically altered. But paying one hundred dollars per day to Greenpeace? That’s $356,000 per year! In my name! Why, Greenpeace will have to hire me after I graduate. I practically will have donated a million dollars by that time!
Wait, maybe that’s only $36,500. Where’s my calculator????
Later on Saturday
Well, I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is, but I sure know who she isn’t: my friend. I don’t think anyone who was my friend would be as mean to me as Lilly was tonight. I couldn’t believe it. And all because of my hair!
I guess I could understand it if Lilly was mad at me about something that mattered—like missing the taping of the Ho segment. I mean, I’m like the main cameraperson for Lilly Tells It Like It Is. I also do a lot of the prop work. When I’m not there, Shameeka has to do my job as well as hers, and Shameeka is already executive producer and location scout.
So I guess I could see how Lilly might kind of resent the fact that I missed today’s taping. She thinks Ho-Gate—that’s what she’s calling it—is the most important story she’s ever done. I think it’s kind of stupid. Who cares about five cents, anyway? But Lilly’s all, “We’re going to break the cycle of racism that has been rampant in delis across the five boroughs.”
Whatever. All I know is, I walked into the Moscovitzes’ apartment tonight, and Lilly took one look at my new hair and was like, “Oh my God, what happened to you?”
Like I had frostbite all over my face, and my nose had turned black and fallen off, like those people who climbed Mt. Everest.
Okay, I knew people were going to freak and stuff when they saw my hair. I totally washed it before I came over, and got all the mousse and goop out of it. Plus I took off all the makeup Paolo had slathered on me, and put on my overalls and high-tops (you can hardly see the quadratic formula anymore
). I really thought, except for my hair, I looked mostly normal. In fact, I kind of thought maybe I looked good—for me, I mean.
But I guess Lilly didn’t think so.
I tried to be casual, like it was no big deal. Which it isn’t, by the way. It wasn’t as if I’d had breast implants or something.
“Yeah,” I said, taking off my coat. “Well, my grandmother made me go see this guy Paolo, and he—”
But Lilly wouldn’t even let me finish. She was in this state of shock. She went, “Your hair is the same color as Lana Weinberger’s.”
“Well,” I said. “I know.”
“What’s on your fingers? Are those fake fingernails? Lana has those, too!” She stared at me all bug-eyed. “Oh my God, Mia. You’re turning into Lana Weinberger!”
Now, that kind of peeved me off. I mean, in the first place, I am not turning into Lana Weinberger. In the second place, even if I am, Lilly’s the one who’s always going on about how stupid people are for not seeing that it doesn’t matter what anybody looks like; what matters is what’s going on on the inside.
So I stood there in the Moscovitzes’ foyer, which is made out of black marble, with Pavlov jumping up and down against my legs because he was so excited to see me, going, “It wasn’t me. It was my grandmother. I had to—”
“What do you mean, you had to?” Lilly got this really crabby look on her face. It was the same look she gets every year when our PE instructor tells us we have to run around the reservoir in Central Park for the Presidential Fitness test. Lilly doesn’t like to run anywhere, particularly around the reservoir in Central Park (it’s really big).
“What are you?” she wanted to know. “Completely passive? You’re mute or something? Unable to say the word no? You know, Mia, we really need to work on your assertiveness. You seem to have real issues with your grandmother. I mean, you certainly don’t have any trouble saying no to me. I could have really used your help today with the Ho segment, and you totally let me down. But you’ve got no problem letting your grandmother cut off all your hair and dye it yellow—”