Yearling - NOVEMBER 2008
The Jellyroll of Trouble comes bearing a new treat. This solo endeavor comes as a result of just the absolute weirdest thought derailment ever. It is, at its most fundamental, an overview of the nature of...friendship.
Disclaimer: The Devil Wears Prada does not belong to me. No infringement intended, no money being made. The building belongs to Lauren Weisberger and 20th Century Fox. I'm just redecorating. When finished, I will tear down the new curtains and fancy artwork, but leave the festive paint…
Rating: T
Fandom: The Devil Wears Prada
Pairing: Mirandy
AN: This story disregards the novel completely, utilizing only the movie as its base.
*** *** *** *** ***
Yearling
By Ruari
NOVEMBER 2008
“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
*** *** *** *** ***
“Mom?” Caroline spoke up from the doorway to her mother’s study. “Do you have a minute?”
Miranda looked up and over, smiling at the slight figure of her daughter as she removed her reading glasses. “Yes, Bobbsey.” She waved her closer.
Caroline approached only to lean heavily into Miranda’s side. She felt her mother’s arm wrap around her back as she slid several sheets of paper onto the desk. “I need an editor,” she groused.
Miranda’s eyes widened in surprise. Though she often proofed their math homework for correct answers now-usually over the chaotic and rushed affair that passed as breakfast at Chez Priestly-and their spelling work when they were younger, it was the first time one of her children had ever asked her for specific assistance on any of their written homework. She lifted Caroline’s work from the desktop with one hand and squeezed a delicate shoulder with the other. “Of course, Darling.” She pressed her lips to soft, red hair. “What am I reading?”
Caroline sighed in relief. Andy had told her and Cass that it’d be ok to ask for help on this type of homework, but one never really knew when it came to their Mom. “It’s my History report. Andy said you could help me once I got most of the way done.”
“Andrea said what? When?” Miranda’s brows rose high on her forehead.
Pale blue eyes blinked up into Miranda’s identical set. “When she stayed here a couple weeks ago. She was helping us come up with ideas on what to write about.”
Miranda hummed in acknowledgement. “And what was that part about my help?”
“Oh,” Caroline smiled sheepishly into her mother’s side. “Umm…she kinda explained to us what you did. You know…as your job. And with The Book.” When her mother’s features dipped into a frown of confusion, she quickly continued, “I mean…you’re mostly just our mom, you know? Cass and I sorta know what you do, but mostly we just know you’re real important in fashion. Famous. Not so much why, though. We know Runway is your magazine, but we don’t really think about your job or what you do in it. You’re just…” Caroline gave her mother a shy glance, accompanied by an adorable little shrug. “…Mom.”
Miranda quickly blinked the mist from her eyes as she pulled her child onto her lap and hugged her tightly to her chest. “May I tell you a secret, Caroline?” she murmured in her typically quiet tones.
“Sure.” A tiny hint of eagerness peppered the girl’s tone.
“One of the greatest joys in my life is that I’m just yours and Cassidy’s ‘Mom’ first and Runway’s Editor-in-Chief second. I love that about you both.” Miranda squeezed her daughter close in a heartfelt hug.
“Hey!” Caroline laughed. “Can’t breathe!” And when the embrace lessened in intensity, the diminutive redhead grabbed the papers out of her mother’s hand and held them aloft. “Help!” Her eyes beseeched dramatically.
Miranda donned her reading glasses and reclaimed the homework. “Very well. Let’s see what you have here.”
“Wait!” Caroline laid a hand across the top paper. As her mother playfully glared down at her, she cheekily exclaimed, “Remember…I’m just eleven! It only has to be good enough for the sixth grade, not Runway.”
The editor chuckled and nodded. “Yes, Darling.”
Twenty minutes later, Miranda fondly watched Caroline dash away. And as Caroline was the oldest by seven whole minutes, and thus the braver of the two, it came as no shock to the thoroughly charmed mother when, minutes later, Cassidy ran into her study with a report clutched tightly in her small hands.
Miranda quickly disguised her laugh with a cough but was unable to remove the smile from her face.
*** *** *** *** ***
A couple hours later found Miranda in a silent house, her children asleep, The Book lying open before her on her desk. Feeling the need for a break, she rose and headed for the kitchen. She returned to her study after acquiring a cup of coffee, and her thoughts drifted toward the evening just past, which, in turn, prompted her to pick up the phone. She was greeted minutes later by the dulcet tones of her former assistant.
“Good evening, Miranda.”
“Mmm, indeed.” Miranda strolled over toward the fire, warm beverage in hand, before settling down in an armchair for a lengthy chat. “A lovely, little slice of domestic mediocrity plopped itself down in my study tonight, Andrea.” A slight pause. “I wished to thank you for it.”
Across town, the bewildered journalist automatically clicked “Save” on her laptop before pushing back from her own desk. Though she hadn’t a clue what the other woman was talking about, Miranda’s tone didn’t necessarily allude to a negative experience. “Ah, sure,” she gamely replied, shaking her head in bemusement. “Care to share why I’m getting the credit?” She hesitated as she quickly considered whom she was speaking with. “Or the blame?”
An abbreviated laugh sounded from the other end of the line, and Andy could “hear” the smile in Miranda’s voice as she described her interactions with Caroline and Cassidy. As she listened, the young woman was not astounded by the easy love Miranda showed for her children. And she was no longer taken aback at being privileged enough to witness it.
Though Andy had dined at the townhouse with Miranda and the twins on several prior occasions, the week Andy stayed at the townhouse--following her fall down the subway stairs--was eye-opening in a number of ways, not the least of which was how casual Miranda was with her family. How absolutely normal and dare she even think it? Plebeian. This was further made evident after the more recent weekend she spent hanging out with Clan Priestly following the New York Journalism Association awards banquet.
A question from Miranda brought Andy’s focus completely back to their conversation. “Well,” she answered, “when I was their age, I had no idea what exactly it was my dad did for a living. So, I mean, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to suppose they didn’t quite have a grasp on what being the Editor-in-Chief of the number one fashion magazine in the world actually entailed.” Andy shrugged. “All I did was explain it in terms they’d understand.”
“When you were their age, you weren’t exactly in a position to care what your father did for a living,” Miranda gently reminded.
Andy sighed and shrugged off a memory as it made its approach. “Yeah, I suppose. But I was right about the girls.”
Miranda smiled into the fire. “You were, and I’m grateful. It was a pleasant evening.”
“Well, you know me,” Andy murmured. “I’m all about ‘making my own happy.’ Consider tonight as just…a franchise expansion.” The chuckle coming from the other end of the phone gave feet to nascent warmth which quickly traveled from the tangled crown of her head to the gaily-painted tip of her toe.
*** *** *** *** ***
Andy scowled at her monitor, trying every mental exercise she knew to tune out the racket coming from the other side of her cubicle wall. Ten minutes of futility had her grinding her teeth in frustration. Yes, it was lovely not having to stare at the face of Kevin ‘The Octopus’ Manning everyday-his absence a mysterious set of circumstances that were only slightly, disturbingly, coincidental-but his replacement in the cube next to Andy’s had some faults that had the young woman wanting to pull out all of her hair.
She made every effort to ignore him, but when a heavy bass beat eventually set their adjoining wall to vibrating, she threw in the towel. Andy jumped out of her seat to lean over the divide. “Hey,” she snapped her fingers in front of the bobbing head full of shaggy, blonde hair.
Said head jerked up, and Andy was faced with a somewhat goofy grin that she supposed was meant to be charming. “Hey! Whazzup?” was his cheery greeting.
Andy’s mouth opened in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?” She stared at his blank look and sighed. “You can’t just play your music like that in a bullpen,” she explained bluntly.
The only response to her statement was a round of steady blinking which Andy found strangely soothing, not unlike watching a goldfish blowing bubbles.
“Listen, Butch,” she groaned and rubbed her forehead in agitation in a futile attempt to remove the image of puckered lips from her conscience. Being nice all the time sucked! “All respect to your apple-bottom jeans and how Low-Low-Low you can go, but it’s distracting,” she entreated, hands clutching the wall in a white-knuckled grip. “Just use your ear buds or headphones or something, okay?”
Butch’s eyes widened, his stupid smile reappearing. “Ah! Gotcha, dude!” he pointed at Andy. “No problem.”
It was with great relief that Andy watched him pull a set of ear buds from a backpack hanging on the back of his chair. ‘Dude.’ Unbelievable. She rolled her eyes and retreated to her side of the wall. She’d love to discuss good ole Butch’s shortcomings with Miranda, but the suspicious disappearance of his predecessor nixed that avenue rather effectively. With a wry twist of her lips and shake of her head, Andy dove back into the research for her latest article.
*** *** *** *** ***
Several hours passed before Andy emerged from a place of deep concentration, a mental plane where the outside world simply disappeared for her. It was as close to a meditative state as it was possible to be without actually meditating. It was there she could focus totally and completely on any particular idea or concept, where she worked on laying out articles or dissecting personal issues. Blocking out bad memories or shoring up good ones. It was a place that was just hers. One she’d created for herself as a preteen-when living inside her head was, conversely, both expected and discouraged. Where privacy was merely an illusion propagated by those in positions of authority, who acted under the mistaken belief that adolescents had no rights to such.
And there was often a hesitance and momentary disorientation that came with leaving it. So it took Andy several moments to realize her cell phone was ringing and to react accordingly. A quick check of Caller ID had Andy’s brows furrowing as she answered. “Miranda? I thought you had a dinner-thing with Karl tonight? Isn’t that why we rescheduled?”
“Andy? It’s Cassidy.”
Andy held the phone away from her ear and frowned as she verified the call was, indeed, coming from Miranda’s cell. “Hey, Cass,” she replied hesitantly in concern. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” the girl’s voice had an odd tone to it Andy couldn’t place. “We’re not sure.”
Confusion momentarily overrode the concern. “Who’s ‘we?’ You and Caroline?”
Cassidy sighed into the phone. “Yep.”
“Okaaaay,” Andy drawled. “What aren’t you sure about, Little Miss?”
“Mom’s acting weird, but we aren’t exactly sure there’s anything wrong.” Sounding very much like the little girl she was and not the teenager she wanted to be, Cassidy continued, “She keeps talking to you like you’re here.” Her voice got very small. “But you’re not. So we didn’t know what to do.”
Concern returned as Andy stood and began tossing papers and folders into a satchel, with little regard for order. Her mind churned with possible reasons for Miranda’s behavior as she gathered her things together. “Alright, I’m coming over. You and Caroline just kind of, I don’t know, keep an eye on her. But kind of leave her alone, too. You know what I mean? I’ll sort it out when I get there.”
“Think so,” the girl mumbled and hung up.
Andy wasted no time in rushing out of the newsroom.
*** *** *** *** ***
The front door opened as Andy climbed the last step to the townhouse. She didn’t see worry or alarm on the twins’ faces as they stood before her, but they weren’t exactly broadcasting contentment and acting like everything was normal, either. “Hey, guys.” Andy moved around the girls to deposit her bag in the closet, subconsciously noting the lack of any dry cleaning. She turned back to Miranda’s children and crossed her arms. “Ok. Tell me what’s been going on.”
“She wanted dessert!” Cassidy blurted out, her disbelief etched vividly across her features.
Andy frowned. “Ok, unusual. I’ll grant that. But not a huge deal, right?”
Caroline shook her head. “She tasted it and then decided she didn’t want it because she said it tasted like plums.” Small, auburn eyebrows scrunched together as she continued, “It was banana pudding, Andy!”
“Wow.” Andy scratched at her forehead in bemused fascination. “Yeah. Odd.” She glanced from one girl to the other, brows raised high. “Anything else?”
Caroline threw her hands up dramatically. “You mean besides her cancelling dinner with some designer and talking out loud to nobody?”
“She’s in her office.” It was Cassidy’s turn to shake her head in bewilderment. She waved Andy toward the stairs. “Good luck. You’ve been having a conversation with her for over an hour.”
Caroline nodded, eyes wide, her expression indefinable.
“Nice,” Andy muttered, taking the steps two at a time. Though she had a vague suspicion as to what was going on with Miranda, it wasn’t until she stepped into the darkened doorway of her friend’s study that she was fairly certain her theory was correct. She felt an unfamiliar bit of agony pierce her heart at the sight.
Signature white coif decidedly mussed, the older woman was pacing in front of her desk, rubbing the side of her head and muttering to herself. Or, rather, she was muttering to Andrea. And as it sounded like she was answering a question, it became painfully, and awkwardly, obvious it was an Andrea only Miranda could hear. The small, table-top lamp in the far corner provided the only illumination in the room, casting ominous shadows into a situation already fraught with Hitchcockian flair.
“Miranda.”
The downcast head whipped toward the door, hazy blue eyes squinting against the light coming in from the hallway. “Did you find him?” she asked, her voice laced with fatigue and tight with pain.
Andy eased her way forward. “No,” she murmured quietly, playing along. “I didn’t.” She gently grasped Miranda by the elbow and led her to the sofa. Once she got the other woman to sit, Andy knelt down in front of her and laid a soothing hand atop Miranda’s. “But I really don’t care to talk about him right now.” At Miranda’s weak glare, Andy just shook her head. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is your headache?” she demanded softly. “The truth, Miranda.”
Miranda pursed her lips and looked away.
*** *** *** *** ***
“Ok,” Andy muttered to herself. “You’re Miranda Priestly, and you have two young, curious children in the house.” She started randomly opening cabinets in the master bathroom. “Where do you hide the injectables?” Several minutes of rifling through drawers and cabinets had her coming up empty. She walked back into the pitch black bedroom, hands on her hips, her searching eyes quickly fighting through the darkness to glance around the room. She definitely didn’t want to traipse all the way to Runway to get the woman some medication. With a sigh of exasperation, she crossed the ocean of deep carpeting and entered Miranda’s expansive closet. After flipping on a light, it took another couple minutes for her to find the wall safe and another dilemma. She groaned and performed an immediate about-face. Andy left the closet and quietly approached the motionless figure curled up on the bed.
“Miranda,” she whispered. She placed a hand lightly on the miserable woman’s shoulder. “I need you to focus for just a minute.” She waited for some sort of acknowledgment and sighed again, this time in relief, when Miranda’s eyes blinked open. “I need the combination to the safe. I’m guessing that’s where you keep the Toradol®?”
Miranda stared blankly through barely cracked lids at the slight figure perched on the edge of her bed. Andrea. Her eyes drifted shut. Good. She heard the question repeated, concentrated very hard and then mumbled a series of numbers. She never noticed the young woman disappear from her side. She also never noticed her return several minutes later. And paid absolutely no attention as Andrea unbuttoned her blouse, pulling it off only to replace it with sleepwear moments later. Miranda gave no heed when Andrea unbuckled her Gucci belt and tugged off her trousers.
She flinched only slightly at the prick of the needle to her thigh.
And just before the wonder of oblivion descended, Miranda felt only a blissful coolness upon her forehead and the brush of utter softness to her cheek.
*** *** *** *** ***
Andy quietly pulled the door to Miranda’s bedroom closed behind her and sighed deeply as she leaned back against it. She took a brief moment to wonder at the true challenges inherent to this situation. Did they lie in attempting to care for someone habitually resistant to every effort to do so? Or in digging through a past which wasn’t hers just to fight an unseen foe she’d never met in a battle which was only vaguely familiar?
She groaned and ran her hands through her hair before heading off in search of Miranda’s daughters. She found them flipping through flashcards on Cassidy’s bedroom floor. Andy leaned against the doorjamb and cleared her throat to get their attention.
“Did you fix her?” Cassidy cut to the chase as she casually tossing the cards in her hand over her shoulder, and fixed intent blue eyes on Andy.
“Yeah, and what was wrong with her?” Caroline demanded, turning to face the door and leaning back on her hands, just assuming her mother’s friend had resolved the issues surrounding her odd behavior.
Andy raised an eyebrow at their tones and stared them down until their expressions became a bit more conciliatory. When they became more receptive and less imperious, she focused her gaze on Caroline. “She has a really, really bad type of headache called a migraine.” She turned back to Cassidy. “She’s not broken, but I’m working on it.” She walked a few steps into the room and pulled the chair out from under Cassidy’s desk. She sat before them with her elbows resting on her knees. “You guys ever heard of a migraine?”
Caroline frowned and looked at Cassidy who was shaking her head. “No. It makes people talk to invisible people?”
Andy’s lips twitched in amusement. “Kind of. But not for everybody who has ‘em.” She absently rubbed her hands together as she pondered how much to tell them. “Most times when your Mom gets a migraine, she knows its coming and takes something, some medicine, before it gets really bad. I guess she was taken by surprise today.” She shrugged and continued, “From what I understand from previous conversations with your Mom, she got them all the time when she was younger. They don’t happen very often anymore. But when they do,” she shot pointed glances at both children, “that stuff you witnessed tonight is like a huge neon sign, ok?”
Cassidy crinkled her nose in confusion. “You mean the talking to nobody and the dessert?”
“Yeah…but more than that.” Andy’s head wobbled back and forth. “It’s not so much that she wanted dessert-because you know she does sometimes-but the ‘thinking it tastes completely like something else’ thing that’s the big, fat clue.” Andy rolled her eyes. “You guys see that again, especially with any other unusual behavior, and you’ll know what’s going on.”
Cassidy looked down at the floor and began to absently tug on the carpet nap. “Is she gonna be ok?” she asked softly, peeking up at Andy through short, red lashes.
Andy smiled gently. “Yeah, she’s gonna be fine. I gave her some medicine, and she just fell asleep a few minutes ago. When she wakes up, she’ll probably be back to normal.” She watched the relief cross over their young faces. “But remember,” she cautioned them both. “Your Mom is really private about this kind of stuff. Right?”
Caroline nodded. “Yeah, we know. We won’t bug her about it. Or say anything to anybody.” She looked at her sister. “We never do.”
At Cassidy’s nod of agreement, Andy clapped her hands together. “Fantastic. Now…” she grinned mischievously at the pair of redheads. “Where are the extra blankets?” She stood up and headed for the door. “I’m about to turn your house into an igloo, so you’re gonna need ‘em!”
*** *** *** *** ***
“Right. I must officially be in hell,” were the first words out of Emily’s mouth when she entered the townhouse later that night, dry cleaning and The Book in hand, and saw Andy descending the stairs.
Andy smiled sweetly at her former co-worker as she relieved the obviously exhausted woman of part of her burden. “Hey, Em. Where’s Anna?” she greeted and moved to tuck the dry cleaning away in the closet. “You ok?” She took a moment to assess Miranda’s first assistant. “You look a little tired.”
Emily rolled her heavily shadowed eyes. “Oh, my God!”
Andy winced. “One of those days?” She watched Emily’s gaze cautiously dart around and guessed the woman was trying to figure out Miranda’s location. “Easy, Em. She’s not around to hear.”
Much like the strings of a puppet being cut, Emily collapsed against the table which now held The Book. “Like you won’t believe,” she hissed, the inherent paranoia that comes from working for Miranda so ingrained that she continued to furtively search corners and doorways for a lurking editor queen just waiting to pounce on the unfortunate worker bee.
“She fired Anna this morning for a reason I have yet to figure out,” she exclaimed dramatically. Warming to her subject, she continued to rant for another few minutes, blithely unaware that Andy was merely using it in an effort to elicit clues as to what could have caused Miranda’s migraine. Several minutes of dissertation on the Day of Disaster finally led to Emily revealing what Andy considered to be absolutely crucial information. “And, of course, that twit of an assistant over at the new fashion house, Marseilles, had the bloody nerve to send Miranda a bouquet with freesias in it! Can you believe that shite? Thank God I got rid of them before she got back from her meeting with Irv. Can you just imagine how much worse it could’ve gotten? I shudder.”
Andy simply could not prevent her eyebrow from rising. Well. That certainly explains a lot.
Emily groaned and stood upright. “And to cap an absolute crap day, she cancels one dinner for a last minute meet with Lagerfeld only to cancel that three hours later!” She shook her head and turned to the door. “I’m so bloody tired I’m not even going to ask what you’re doing here.”
Andy smiled at the hapless Brit, affection warm in her voice as she murmured, “Goodnight, Em.” She watched the other woman walk out the door and hummed to herself as she locked up after.
And the light at the end of the tunnel grew ever brighter.
*** *** *** *** ***
Six o’clock the following morning found Andy once again perched on the side of Miranda’s bed, a narrow beam of light from the bathroom was the room’s only illumination. She raised a gentle hand to tuck a lock of hair behind the slumbering woman’s ear only to be startled by a set of watery, blue eyes looking back at her.
“Oh!” Andy smiled in relieved pleasure. “I see Her Royal Highness has decided to return to us from her stay in the Land of Nod.”
Miranda frowned sleepily in consternation. “Her Roya--? Have you been speaking with Nigel?” she rasped grumpily, her voice rough with disuse.
Andy stared down at her friend with eyes full of warmth and sympathy. “Not enough to alarm you,” she teasingly murmured. She ran a hand soothingly up and down the older woman’s arm. “Do you remember what happened?”
The older woman grimaced. “Migraine.” Her gaze shot back to Andy’s, it just having occurred to her to question the other woman’s presence. “How did you know?”
“The girls.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. She tried frantically to remember everything that’d happened the previous evening, knowing it was hopeless. She started to sit up. “They must think I’m-“
“Hey now,” Andy pressed Miranda back into the bed. “Stop it. I know what you’re going to say, and you’re wrong. They don’t think you’re crazy.” She sat back and muttered, “I made sure of it.”
Miranda only marginally relaxed at Andrea’s reassurance. “I don’t…what did I-“ her voice trailed off in defeat.
“Take it easy,” Andy consoled. “They called me.” Andy tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know, 7:30? 8:00? Something like that. Cassidy said that they weren’t sure anything was wrong. Just that you were acting, and I quote, ‘weird,’ unquote.” Andy shrugged. “So I came over.”
“I don’t remember much,” Miranda softly admitted.
Andy leaned back on her hands and looked at the scattered bed covers. “Well…first, I brought you in here and dosed you with Toradol®.”
Miranda looked surprised at that revelation. “Excellent memory, Andrea.”
Andy rolled her eyes. “It was only two years ago, Miranda.”
The older woman absently waved a hand. “Yes, yes.” She peered up through pale eyelashes, in a manner not unlike her youngest daughter, and quietly asked what she most wanted, needed, to know. “What did you tell them?”
Andy shook her head and smiled gently. “I just told ‘em you had a type of headache called a migraine and what some of the symptoms were. Talk to ‘em, Miranda. If you think you behaved the way you usually do when caught with a migraine…well, you’re right. You did. But now isn’t then. They don’t think any less of you.”
“I suppose.” It was her turn to shake her head as she fidgeted with the top sheet. “I’m getting too old for this,” Miranda sighed.
“Oh, please!” Andy scoffed. “Age is just a number, and you know it. I mean…look at us.” She held her hands out in disbelief. “We felt seventy when we were twelve. Twelve, Miranda! But you know what? We made it through. And now? Now…the more I age, the younger I feel.” She thumped her chest in exclamation. “Because the further away I get from that,” she gestured out toward their invisible history, “the freer I become.”
Miranda didn’t know how to respond to Andrea’s impassioned rebuttal. She was incapable of disagreeing with it. She reached out and grasped a calloused hand and said the only thing she could possibly say in response. “Thank you, Andrea.” She looked up and met the other woman’s questioning eyes. “For caring.”
“You’re welcome.” Andy shrugged and rolled her eyes, suddenly bashful under Miranda’s scrutiny. “I just took care of that, though,” she pointed toward Miranda’s head. “You do pretty well with the rest of it, all on your own.”
Miranda nodded, and her lips twitched in amusement. “You can help with that, and my Ice Queen image, by turning the heat back on. It’s damn cold in here!”
*** *** *** *** ***
NOVEMBER 2008
“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
(December)