Since Jack and Jill and Compromise was sold, after she was passed over, it seemed as if Sam was angry—angry not at International Studios; not at Seymore LeVine, who had promised Mary Jane the role; but at Mary Jane herself. He couldn’t bear her grief—“moping,” he called it. He’d become impatient, easily irritated. And he took it out on everyone. On her, on Neil, on Molly, on everyone. The scene last night had just been his most extreme way of showing it.
So he was going out to L.A. Big deal, she told herself. It was only for one film, his script. Sam had always said he wasn’t interested in Hollywood—he was a Broadway gypsy, too. Maybe he was frightened about going. Still, it was no excuse for last night.
She sipped at her coffee and then sighed. Her mind kept running in circles, like a rat in a trap. Well, she felt trapped. Last night especially. She had lasted through the rehearsal, then avoided coffee with him and the others, come straight home, gone to bed, and pretended to be asleep when he came in, much, much later.
She picked up her coffee mug, pulled her old terrycloth bathrobe around herself, and went into the living room. She put a disk on the CD—a recording of the sounds of the rain forest—and sat in the recliner, closing her eyes. To the sounds of a brook and bird calls, Mary Jane took the deep breaths she had learned in yoga class. I can’t let this get out of hand, she thought. Not like the other times. I must be clear about what happened, and how I feel.
As always, she felt a part of herself wanting to let it go, to chalk last night up to his enthusiasm for the show, a momentary lapse of taste, anything, so long as she didn’t have to confront him. But the hurt had been so blatant. The looks of pity on Molly’s and Bethanie’s faces flashed again before her eyes. And again she thought, How could he? Tears began to sting her eyelids. No, she had to confront him.
Sam’s voice from the bedroom broke into her thoughts. “Any coffee, babe?”
“In the coffeepot,” she called back. Let him get his own fucking coffee, she thought. I’ve spoiled him by bringing his coffee to him in bed every morning. I’m so pathetically grateful for his attentions that I serve him like a faithful dog. Not today, she told herself, and she wiped the tears away quickly. Then a thought came to her. Maybe he would apologize. All on his own. Blame stress, blame jet lag. Give her a good, contrite act of repentance and save the day.
Sam came into the living room. “Can I get you a refill?” he asked. Oh, he knew he was in trouble. Otherwise he’d never have noticed her empty cup. As Sam placed his mug down on the scratched old coffee table in front of the Salvation Army sofa, she could feel his uneasiness. Well, at least he had the decency to feel some remorse. He reached over to lift her cup.
“No thanks. I don’t want any,” she told him. Sure, she told herself. Try a little passive aggression; that’s right up your alley.
She watched him attempt to be casual. Well, clearly there would be no apology; she would have to begin. She reminded herself not to lash out at him, to talk calmly about her feelings. She didn’t want this to deteriorate into a shouting match. She hated arguments. They’d had only a few, but those had been whoppers. Each time he slammed out the door, she feared she’d never see him again. She watched him now as he picked up the newspaper.
“Sam, I need to talk about last night.”
“What about last night?” His eyes didn’t leave yesterday’s Post, which, she noted, he was reading as if it were tomorrow’s.
“C’mon, Sam. About the magic act. Jesus, that was mean. You hurt me.”
Sam looked up, his face a blank. Oh, Jesus, she thought, not the little-boy-lost routine. “Hurt you? What are you talking about? What does hurt have to do with casting? I’m trying to do a show.”
Christ. He was defensive already. She sighed. Why did otherwise normal men find it impossible to admit they were wrong? Why did they have to get so blind and stubborn? “But to hold me up to ridicule and humiliation that way…that was so unnecessary. Were you trying to hurt me?”
Sam placed his mug down with a thud. “Now, wait a minute, Mary Jane. What I did was try to put together a skit for a show. It was a funny bit. If you don’t like your part, I’ll recast it. You’re blowing this all out of proportion. I didn’t humiliate you.”
She couldn’t believe that he was going to try and stonewall. It made her even more angry, as if he were ignoring an elephant in the room with them. “I was held up to ridicule because of my looks. Tell me that’s not what happened. And tell me it’s not humiliating.” His face remained blank. He’s not going to cop to this, she thought, a sick feeling in her stomach. And if he doesn’t, we’ll have to break up.
“Mary Jane, get a grip. I needed to cast a ‘Before’ and an ‘After.’ It was a classic old gag. And you were there, could do for the ‘Before.’ Hey, this is no discovery. You weren’t passed over for Jill because you resemble Michelle Pfeiffer.”
Mary Jane felt her stomach cramp—as if she’d been punched in the gut. Sam picked up the paper again. “I don’t want to have to take the rap for your feeling bad about your appearance. I’ve told you, you look fine to me. We’ve been through it a hundred times. Own up to your own feelings, and don’t project them onto me.” Sam got up and went to the kitchen. She heard him pour himself more coffee but could barely look up as he returned to his spot on the couch. She took a deep, shaky breath.
“I’m not projecting, Sam. I’m hurt. Everyone there last night either laughed at me or pitied me. And I can’t stand either.” But that was nothing compared with this. Compared with his pretending it hadn’t happened, and throwing the blame back on her. She felt her eyes fill, her throat close. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry. Not now.
Sam stood in the doorway, looking in at her. “You know your problem? You’re paranoid,” he said, and walked to the bedroom.
She got up and followed him. “Paranoid? What are you saying, Sam? That you weren’t insensitive? That I wasn’t hurt?” Mary Jane was raising her voice, her anger pushing back the lurking tears.
Sam turned to her, standing in the doorway, and looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling. “Okay, Mary Jane. Now you’re not paranoid. Now you’re getting hysterical. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Calmly he pulled on a pair of socks and struggled into the black sweater that lay on a chair next to the bed. “I’m going out until you’ve cooled down.” He tucked his T-shirt into his jeans, and pushed into his cowboy boots. Grabbing his black leather jacket from the closet, he turned back to her. “And don’t play the misunderstood martyr, Mary Jane. That doesn’t work anymore.”
“Sam, don’t go. Not till we’ve sorted this out,” she said, her voice raised.
Sam strode to the door and put his hand on the knob. “It’s not my issue. You do the sorting. Then stop screaming like a banshee,” he told her.
“You bastard!” Mary Jane cried. “You always do this. How did it start out being a discussion about my feelings, and wind up with me being the shrew who chases you out of the house?”
“Maybe because I have feelings, too,” he said calmly.
“And you’re not understood here, so you’re going to take them to Bethanie, right?”
Sam stopped, stock-still, at the door, his hand still on the knob.
“That does it, Mary Jane. Now you’ve gone too far. You are a fucking paranoid.” He went through the door and slammed it behind him.
Mary Jane stared at the back of the chipped old fire door, the Fox police lock jerked out of its slot on the floor by the violence of Sam’s slam. “Oh, shit,” she wept, her voice too low for anyone else to hear.
9
Lila opened her eyes, straining to see the clock in the gloom of the heavily draped guest room. The small green number said 11:17. She squinted and saw the even smaller “A.M.” She couldn’t have known that, because the fabric over the windows shut out the light. The entire room was swathed in silk, and looked like some kind of tent from the Arabian Nights, complete with camel saddles and brass lamps.
She lay st
ill, trying to get it together. The dream lurked behind her eyes. She strained for a moment to bring the images back, but could only feel the horror, so she willed the pictures away.
The days and nights had merged into one long searing burn, broken only by the blessed blackness of sleep. It was when she first moved her head that she realized the pillow was damp. She must have been crying in her sleep, she thought. She turned her head to avoid the clammy spot, as she raised her hand to her forehead. What day was it? Tuesday? Wednesday? How long had she been here?
Seven, maybe eight—no, nine days. Nine days ago, she had come running here to Aunt Robbie’s from her mother’s house. The picture of Kevin bent over the potting table snapped into place. The headache sprung full-grown again. The memory of the animal sounds curling from his lips accompanied the picture. The scene brought spasms of nausea to her stomach. She swallowed hard against the urge to retch.
A low whirring sound came from the other end of the one-level contemporary house Aunt Robbie had built in Benedict Canyon. The sound, familiar to her, grew louder as it neared. Then it stopped, and Lila heard Aunt Robbie fiddle with the door handle before swinging it in. It had to be Robbie. José, Aunt Robbie’s houseboy, normally left her breakfast tray outside the door.
“‘Suffering was the only thing made me feel I was alive.’” The words were sung by Rob’s deep basso voice as he rolled into the room, Chinese-red lacquer breakfast tray held chest-high before him. Aunt Robbie came to an abrupt stop at the low hammered-brass table. He put the tray down and reached up to pull the drapes back from the windows, suddenly flooding the room in a bath of sunlight. Again he sang Carly Simon’s line from the song: “‘Suffering was the only thing made me feel I was alive.’”
“Shut up an’ go away,” Lila growled.
“Come on, Sister Miserere—novena’s over. Nine days of pissing and moaning over a man is all the good Lord allows.” With surprising grace, Robbie sat down on the camel saddle, his mauve-trimmed flowered satin caftan billowing around his feet, hiding the roller blades he wore. “Makes me feel light on my feet,” he had once explained to Lila. Now he grinned; “Come on, I had José make this especially for you.” Robbie poured thick black coffee from a small antique Russian samovar he swore had been given to him by his first John—who was most assuredly one of the deposed Romanoffs.
“Lila?” he asked, and paused. When, after a few moments, there was no response, he leaned over and picked up a mallet and banged the brass temple-gong to which it was attached. She jumped. “Listen, girlfriend, get the fuck over here this minute.” He slapped the filled Limoges coffee cup onto the brass tray.
Her head ached with the echoes of the gong. “Don’t do this to me, Aunt Robbie. Please,” Lila begged.
“Now, now. No whining. It’s time you and I had a little chat.” He patted a stack of cushions beside him. Robbie’s voice softened. “Come sit next to your old but ever-so-attractive auntie.”
Lila sighed, sat up, and moved with effort to the cushions. It was exhausting, so she dropped down, then put her face in her hands and began to cry. “Robbie, I can’t bear it another minute.” She cried soundlessly, and he let her until she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the peignoir he had given her the day she arrived. After a few more minutes, she looked up and took a sip of the coffee Robbie handed her. “What am I going to do?” she asked for the thousandth time in nine days.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. Aunt Robbie reached across the table and touched Lila’s chin with his stubby, crimson-nail-tipped fingers. Lila knew that he loved her as much as he had loved her father, though she shrank from his—or anyone’s—touch. Still, his gentleness and soft voice showed his concern.
“Honey-girl, I know how hard this is on you, how confusing. But you can’t let yourself just melt away. I’m serious, now—nine days is long enough.” Robbie stood up and rolled again to the window, touching Lila’s arm lightly as he passed. “You haven’t been out of this room since you got here.”
“I hate her,” Lila said.
Robbie turned from the window and faced her.
“She was the one who set up the marriage. My own mother. She said he’d never bother me. But she didn’t tell me why. I didn’t know until I walked in on them that he was…” Lila’s voice trailed off. She didn’t want to offend Aunt Robbie, although she knew she could always be honest with him. “Well, you know,” she continued. “Not only was it disgusting, it was deceitful. He said he loved me.”
“Well, maybe he does. There are different kinds of love, you know.” Robbie was standing at the full-length mirror now, patting his red-dyed hair in place. “If I curled up in bed every time one of my boyfriends dipped his wick in another inkwell, I’d be a fat mental case by now.” He made a full spin on his skates, then considered his reflection once again. “Actually, I am a fat mental case now, but you get my point.”
Lila got up from the low cushions with what felt like an immense effort and sat on the chair in front of the vanity table. She stared into the triple mirrors. She picked up the Victorian silver-backed brush, and began to run it through the accumulation of knots at the back of her usually silky red hair. “What I don’t understand,” she said, as she strained against a tangle, “is how my own mother could have absolutely no regard for my feelings. She manipulated me into this engagement, but she didn’t do it for me.” Lila dropped the brush, helpless against the snarls, and turned to Aunt Robbie, who was now sitting on the end of the bed, legs crossed, one skated foot swinging slowly.
“It’s called narcissism!” Robbie said. “I’ve known your mother a long time and I love her, but I can’t say I’ve always liked her. Still, Lila, you have to try to remember there are reasons why people are the way they are.” Rob’s foot stopped moving. “Do you know anything about her childhood?” he asked.
“Oh, give me a break! Are we going to start that bit about how she went to her first audition in L.A. through the snow without shoes?” Lila snapped.
“You know, Lila, the only training for being a good parent is having a good parent. She didn’t, so she raised you the same way she developed a career—by the seat of her pants.” Lila angrily stood up and started walking toward the door. “No, wait, you’ve got to hear this,” Robbie continued. “Do you think you could do any better raising a child than she did, Lila? Given the way you were raised?”
“I’m not having children.”
“But if you did?”
“I’d like to think I would do better,” Lila said.
“That’s my point. So did Theresa. And she did do better than her folks did to her.” Robbie got up.
They both stood in silence for a moment; then Aunt Robbie skated back over to the open window. He looked out at his lover, Ken, who was cleaning the pool wearing only a tiny chartreuse Speedo swimsuit. Suddenly Robbie shouted to Ken: “Mary, what did I tell you about wearing that marble bag? You look ridiculous!” He turned back to Lila as if there had been no interruption.
Lila had to smile and look, too. She could see Ken moving the pole of the pool vacuum slowly up and down on the sides of the pool, as if he hadn’t even heard Robbie’s voice. Someone else was with him, she could see.
“Look at this, Lila.”
“Like I haven’t seen Ken in his bathing suit before,” Lila said, more grumpily than she felt. “Why don’t you leave him alone? You know he never listens to you.” Lila paused, looked at Robbie’s getup, and then laughed. “And how can you say he looks ridiculous?”
“No, I don’t mean Ken. Do you see that girl sitting on the chaise longue talking to Ken?”
“You mean the little black kid?” Lila asked.
“That’s Simone Duchesne, the star of the TV show Opposites Attract. And she’s no kid. She’s twenty-two.”
“That’s Simone Duchesne? But I thought Simone was the same age as her character—about six or seven.”
“Yeah,” sighed Robbie. “So does everyone else. She only looks like a kid. She has a benign tu
mor on her adrenal gland. It stunted her growth. It could have been removed by simple surgery when it was first discovered, but her parents—who, by the way, managed her—decided against it. Now it’s too late.”
“Why?” Lila asked, though the feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she already knew.
“They say they were too poor. But, hey, if she’d grown normally, she would have outgrown the TV role. The parents chose the money instead.”
“Poor kid. I mean, woman,” Lila said and shivered. “So is she after Ken?” she asked.
“Oh, no, she’s asexual,” Robbie said. “Her parents robbed her of that, too, when they wouldn’t allow the surgery. No, she’s just become attached to Ken, follows him around like a puppy dog. You know what a good listener Ken is. They met on the show. Ken did the lighting for it.” Robbie came away from the window. “She’ll never get hired for anything else. What a life, huh, Lila?”
Lila couldn’t answer, allowing the silence to speak for her.
“Some things are worse than being the child of a star. Like being a child star. Robbed of her stature and sex life and money by her greedy parents. Ken tells me Simone sees a shrink five days a week, and has started a lawsuit against them. But, no matter how the lawsuit turns out, she’ll still wind up the loser.”
“I know how she must feel,” Lila whispered.
“Tsk, tsk. Do you. Miss Self-Pity? Look in the mirror. I don’t mean at the puffy eyes and pale face—that’ll go away in a couple of hours. I mean, look at you. What do you see? Not a black female midget.”
Lila studied her reflection for a moment. “I know I’m beautiful, Aunt Robbie, and that men want me. But I don’t want them. Then my mother picks the only man that doesn’t want me. And I don’t really want him, either.”
“Do you want girls, then?” Robbie asked, gently.
Lila shuddered and turned her head quickly, as if slapped. “No! I hate women.”
Robbie tsked again. “Doesn’t leave much choice, do it? Well, if it’s any consolation to you, you come from a family with a long line of gender confusion. Your father was the only man I ever loved—nothing personal against Ken—but your father didn’t know if he was coming or going. He spilled his seed all over Hollywood. ‘Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke,’” Aunt Robbie sang. “Theresa was the one who wore the pants in the family. You might take a lesson from her. As fucked up as she is, she did make one good decision in her life, once she realized that he would always make her unhappy. I don’t like what that decision did to you, but it saved her sanity. She decided, since her love life wasn’t going to be her career, then she would make her career her love life.” He paused. “That was what she wanted, and she went for it. What about you, Lila? What do you want?”
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