Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  The woman in the shop spoke perfect English; everyone in the world seems to speak perfect English except Americans. Wow. Was I crabby!

  “We need to get her dressed in some appropriate clothes,” I said.

  The woman understood the problem immediately. She pulled dark purple and black tops out of cubbies. The fabric was thin, but it would conceal Victoria’s Secrets. Amy went behind a curtain and I handed in baggy pants and tops. She picked three sets. Lots of sequins, but so what? I was getting into those myself. Then we draped various scarves across her front. She kept trying to skinny them up, but we struggled them back on her until she gave up. We added a few more for color; they were a whopping one-dollar each. We swirled one around her head and the woman showed her how to put it up and down. I’ll give Amy credit; she caught on fast. Maybe I could foist her off onto wardrobe. I paid the woman and we were away in half an hour. We got back in the car and headed for the location.

  “Do you have sunglasses?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Wear them. No more staring into men’s eyes unless you want them to grab your crotch. That’s what you’re asking for.”

  “But I think we’re all just one people.”

  “Listen Amy, I’m busy and borderline insane with exhaustion. I don’t want to have this conversation more than once. We may be one big human race, but does this look like Los Angeles to you?”

  “No.”

  “Does it even look like South Central?”

  “No.”

  “Because it’s not. The people in Malibu and South Central don’t even live in the same world. These people are so far removed from your world it’s unbelievable.”

  “I just think we need to all try to be together.”

  “Would you sashay down the streets of South Central with your bra showing?”

  “Of course not, I’d get raped and murdered.”

  “Well don’t trip yourself up with your all-one fantasy, that’s not off the table here either. Women need to be careful. Besides that, it’s rude to insist on staring at people and to keep running around half dressed. And stop hugging people. These people don’t hug strangers. You need to respect their culture. Look around you, pay attention, do what you see. Blend in.”

  She started crying. Oh god. I can be such a scold. Maybe I was being mean to her. I didn’t think so. I was just telling her the rules. Apparently no one had done that.

  I remembered myself at her age; no one told me until I ran into Margaret. I was on my first project with her. She was a lot nicer about it, but I wasn’t dressed like a hooker and getting my breasts grabbed with an uncle looking on. Though I still think the Swiss hot pants deserved a comment.

  What I did have was quite a sob story working about my hard life. My alcoholic mother. My dead father. I had rats in the attic that had carried in red chicken mites that bit me all over. I was covered with itchy bites. I spent hours standing neck deep in a friend’s pool for relief. My reading glasses broke. I was being audited with my estranged husband and he was copping an attitude with the IRS and writing them absurd letters. My new car wouldn’t run. A close friend was dying of cancer. There was more.

  Margaret let me run on for quite a while before she pulled me up short. She smiled at me one night and asked if I was going to keep going on with that same old litany. It was the gentlest rebuke I’d ever felt, and the most powerful. I never said another word about any of it. Sometimes it’s a huge relief to just shut up.

  It all got solved. The exterminator came. The lotion my friend used on her dog’s hot spots knocked out the itching. The California lemon law kicked in and they fixed my car in a day. After the third indignant letter from my estranged husband about how he’s an American citizen, the auditor said I had enough to worry about and, literally, emptied the file into the trash. I dropped the whole glasses thing. I didn’t even need them. I just thought they made me look smart like Margaret. My friend died gently and in the end it was a relief to see her out of pain. My father didn’t come back to life, that would have been weird, speaking of parallel universes; but apparently Mom had stopped drinking for now. Life just keeps coming. The trick is to figure out what on your to-do list doesn’t really need doing. Yapping like a Yorkie is never on the list.

  Amy looked out the car window, “I don’t even know why I’m here. I think my mom just wanted to get rid of me.”

  “Yeah well. All moms want to get rid of us at some point. Can you blame them? You might as well change your mind about this and learn something.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “We’re at crunch time now. We’re going to be moving fast. The best I can do is let you follow along. When I put my finger to my lips for quiet, I mean it. Neither Margaret nor I can think with a lot of static.”

  “Okay, I’ll be quiet.”

  “And Amy, just a heads up. Do not, and I mean do not, sleep with anyone right away. You need to really slow that down.”

  “I haven’t slept with anybody.”

  “I don’t care if you do down the road, I’m not your mother. But I’ve spent a lot of time around crews; go slow. This is like moving with an army, you don’t want to be the camp whore. Most of these people have relationships elsewhere and they will go back to them. They all have experience with this scene; you need to feel your way carefully. Plus, no one will take you seriously. It’s one of the many burdens of being a woman. It’s a road littered with regrets.”

  “Okay.”

  Dilip pulled up to the guesthouse location and we got out. I gave her a hug.

  “Come on. That outfit looks cute on you. I’m in love with sequins too. Let’s go to work.”

  Margaret was talking to Chahel on the bedroom set. She looked up into a mirror and watched Amy and me walk in the door. Amy still had on her sunglasses. She was probably afraid to take them off without my permission. Margaret smiled. I stuck out my tongue. She laughed.

  Chahel looked at Amy and beamed beatific; he even threw in a greeting bow. He was greeting someone who had joined the real world, his world. She gave him a hesitant smile and bowed back. Good man, and good girl. For the moment at least, she’d heard me. She went out again with her new friend Claire while Margaret and I allowed ourselves to be stuffed with bland food by the boys downstairs. We missed Ed’s cooking.

  “So what did you say to her,” asked Margaret.

  “Basically I told her to shut up, cover up, and don’t fuck the help.”

  “Good advice.”

  I ran downstairs and emailed Jon the Amy story. I told him the advice I’d given her. He’d enjoy that; it sounded like something he could use at the restaurants, although I didn’t think he’d really press the cover up part. I wondered how he was doing with that. I was living in a world of mystery-keeping women who showed a little belly, and teased with bangles, and anklets above bare feet, while surrounded by lush big-breasted goddess images and frank sexuality, and the threat of crushing shame. He was in a showy world of living big breasts, plumped lips, and asses sticking out, with a chaste Virgin Mary and scolding Puritans in the wings.

  I woke up every morning to the sound of a blowing conch shell at the Buddhist center right outside my door. It reminded me of Hawaii, and filled me with such longing for him. I wrote him that too. I could see his smile. I could see the top of his head on my belly. I was having some mornings lately when I was disoriented by the conch sound. I was so tired I was confused about where I was when I woke up.

  Amy showed up the next morning in a proper outfit. She was smart and a fast learner. She followed along; she kept quiet. I sent her with Chahel and she learned how to negotiate the streets by tuk-tuk, rickshaw, and mule cart.

  She was shocked the first time she watched the volunteer vets pull a black trash bag knot out of a skinny cow ass. I forgot to tell her to not look a monkey in the eye if its mouth was in an ‘O’. Her screams had called a cavalry of boys with monkey bats. She was smart enough to dive into the center of a family group and take cover.
She gave the boys some rupees and felt sheepish about it. I explained that rupees in exchange for services was expected and allowed.

  She took direction and started showing some sparks of creativity. I had to hand it to her, that first outfit did take comic book creativity. I thought her real calling might be in wardrobe. She was becoming good friends with Claire; they were having some great adventures. One afternoon they got a hair-brained idea to swim in the Ganges, not a river I’d go in if you put a gun to my head. Amy grabbed what she thought was a log, when it rolled over it was a half-burned corpse grinning at her. We thought we heard her scream, but who can tell? It could have been a water buffalo singing along with the music screeching from a temple loudspeaker.

  I needed some time alone, so I took a bicycle rickshaw to the Buddhist temple. It’s a huge peaceful space carved out of the din. A wall surrounds it and a placid moat filled with tiny waterleaves of brilliant green undulates like a blanket. Inside it’s dark, full of incense, and might feel foreboding if you scare easy. There were wild and ferocious protection deities on the walls. One of them looked like my father’s face in the mirror. Well, except my father hadn’t had fangs or a red horn sticking out of his forehead. All these years, and maybe I was just learning that he was there to protect me, not scare me.

  Dede came over to check on things in person. She was talking to the Director when Amy and I arrived on the set. She paused to take in Amy. I sent Amy with Chahel to get some fresh flowers and fruit for our next set up.

  “What did you say to her?” asked Dede. The Director was watching me with those huge eyes.

  “I just told her she needed to show respect for the culture. I took her shopping.”

  “And to not fuck the help?”

  Margaret! They were both smiling.

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t making any headway with the subtle approach.”

  “Good work. If I could get away with it, I’d have it printed on cards to hand out. Her uncle will probably buy you a new car for getting his sister off his back.”

  “Tell him I want an Audi.”

  We talked over the schedule for the last month. She was concerned about Margaret, but Margaret was refusing to go home. She was trying to talk some sense into her. Good luck with that. Margaret might feel crappy but I knew for a fact, she felt it was her last big adventure. I told her I had it covered; Amy had turned into a real assistant. We just needed to get through the month. Dede already had a few people down with Dengue Fever. She’d set up a small private ward at one hotel. It was not a good omen to lose people so soon after getting to the location, and hard so close to the end.

  Dede stayed for a few days, then headed back to Los Angeles. She was getting the editing rooms set up at home. The Director would be in Los Angeles, staring down the suits with those big eyes. I had no doubt she was up to the job. An MBA can’t prepare you for the full force of a gifted mind and a third eye, shrouded in a mystery of silk.

  Dede was prepping a new project. It was scheduled to start in six months in Eastern Europe. She offered me the job. She wasn’t talking to Margaret about it, she was going to wait and see about her health. She even wondered if I’d consider taking Amy. I needed to talk to Jon; it was beginning already. I didn’t know if six months was enough time for us to sort things out. But in our business of short memories, if you drop out, you can’t just drop back in.

  Dede left and Margaret stopped bothering to put in an appearance on the set. I walked by her room on the way to a dawn shoot, she was already up and reading. Chahel had brought her chai and had hung a mosquito net over her bed as he had in all our rooms.

  “I wish you’d go home, or at least to Delhi to see a good doctor, get some real tests run,” I said. “You’re really scaring me with this. I have it covered here; we’ll be fine. We’re almost done. We’re going to murder the wife next week, pay off her family with gold, burn her up, and go home.”

  “I’m not worried about the work. I have total faith in you getting this wrapped. You’ve turned Amy into a real assistant. You two remind me a little of us years ago. Though I don’t think Amy is really cut out for our end. I think her home will be in wardrobe.”

  “I think we both knew that when she got out of the car.”

  We smiled at each other at the memory of the arrival of crazy Amy.

  “I need to get to the set,” I said. “Will you consider going to the city at least?”

  “I’ll think about it. You better get going. Chahel won’t be able to keep the tourist boats at bay for long.”

  “Chahel said he has something else to do. Any idea what’s going on with him?”

  “No. His daughter wants to get married; he’s worried about the money. Maybe that’s it. We’re going to help him.”

  “Call Ed. At least do that.”

  “I talked to him last night. He understands.”

  We had moved to the water and were wrangling boats so our lovers could take a sunrise boat ride, still a big draw. I sent Amy out in a boat with Dilip to get the people in safari hats, camera vests and matching sandals, to move along. They thought they were witnessing exotic lovers in real time. Amy was getting good. Her mix of bossy wheedling hit an effective note for crowd control.

  We were very close to the end; things were being shipped back. We had started breaking down sets and packing up. I had already sent the bulk of our production notebooks. They included chips of paint from every set, silk, even incense, plus copious notes and photographs. If needed, we could recreate the whole thing in Los Angeles.

  I thought about my own home, what I had stored for the future. What had been blown to smithereens. My father’s box with the raw interior filled with old photos of my sister before she went crazy with the frustration of her life.

  I wondered who had my father’s white coat now, and why. It couldn’t mean anything to Sam or Sam, even if they knew why their mother had kept it. Only realized dreams live on.

  I’d kept the air-conditioned tee shirt full of holes that still had my father’s cells woven into the cotton. I understood why I’d kept that. It was my defense against getting sucked into my mother’s vision of things. Her partially realized dream, the one she wanted her daughters to complete. I’d kept the raptor Richard had made to help me overcome my fear. As soon as he had given it to me, I was better. I’d survived Jon’s relentless pursuit of me through my fury and fear and screaming.

  I had needed it all, I thought. I’d spent years worrying that I’d be left again without any clues. I hadn’t lost the memories I needed; they were in me. I hoped my mother could get to that place, and not keep cycling back to the past like it was fixable.

  There was no salvation in trying to recast a past that had never happened in the first place. It was the dream parallel universe of a happy, intact family. Not the one I had found myself in, with a dead father and an alcoholic mother. I realized a big part of my father had never died. And my mother was more than just an alcoholic. India really was doing a number on my head. I felt my forehead to see if I had a fever. We were all freaking out at the slightest sign that we’d been hit by a badass mosquito.

  I emailed my family. I emailed Ted and told him I hoped he was finding happiness and that I thought he’d been a good and decent man to my sister. I thought, but didn’t say, that it wasn’t his fault she didn’t listen to herself, anymore than it was my ex-husband’s fault that I had married him to avoid having to hold myself together on my own.

  I emailed Eric that it had been okay to lose it all. That maybe the shit can end, at least the surprises. But I wasn’t really sure about that. I thought he should have the watch repaired. That he should wear it. It could keep his race times. I teased him for the first time. I said he could time his spinach and cheese casserole. I knew he’d hate me saying that, but I’d heard from Anna that he was big on making casseroles.

  EIGHTEEN

  Someone knocking on the door gentled me awake at 6:00 in the morning. I opened the door a crack; it was Chahel. He becko
ned me out onto the terrace. I could see the ghats over his shoulder. They were quiet and steaming; probably the residual heat from thousands of humans washing and praying; from smoldering bones. The conch shell had already called. His face was a map of worry.

  “What is it Chahel?”

  “Miss Margaret isn’t opening her door.”

  We went down to her room. He unlocked the door and stood aside. She was lying in bed. I opened her shutters a little bit and looked down at her; she was breathing softly.

  “Margaret?” I whispered.

  She slept on. I closed the netting around her and told Chahel I’d sit with her. He came back a few minutes later with chai and toast. I pulled the chair over by the window and picked up the book she was reading. It was Joan Didion’s, The Year Of Magical Thinking. It seemed like a strangely melancholy New York choice here on the banks of the Ganges. It felt like cabs and martinis, like soft focus grey wool over stockings and black pumps; not rickshaws, chai, and brilliant fluttering silk glimpsing brown bare feet and sun glinting anklets ringing tiny bells.

  I had finished my tea and toast and was reading when she finally woke up.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Chahel couldn’t wake you. I was reading and lost track of time. This is some depressing stuff. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, just tired. Playing host to worms is tiring.”

  “That’s revolting, yech. But this isn’t just tired. I know the real just tired, and the alcoholic just tired, this isn’t either one. I know you’re not telling me the truth; you’d be the first person on the crew to not purge the worms with that nasty pill they sell on every corner. It’s time for you to go home, get this over with.”

  “You’re right, Hannah. Do you realize how bossy you’ve gotten?”

  “I’ve gotten bossy?”

  “It’s about time. I thought you’d never fire me.”

  I started laughing. “You’ve been waiting for me to fire you? If only I’d known. I would have fired you months ago, you slacker. And then sticking me with Amy; I thought we were friends.”