by Owen Thomas
There are certainly those in the psychological profession who would posit that I have carried the telltale hallmarks of betrayal and infidelity around with me in my back pocket for much of my life, holding them up to the world as a point of reference, like old family photos. I will not argue the point. I am old enough to know the magnetic pull of the familiar and to concede that most of what motivates us is hidden from our conscious understanding.
I am satisfied at least that after the failure of my second marriage, at the ripe old age of forty-three, I charted my own way in life for the first time, eschewing the matrimonial forms of love as simply too small for me. That was the point at which my own heart, that great, ennobled muscle, as Angus would call it, could no longer be contained by its historic shape. That was the point at which I began to let the past slip into its stillness; its quiet oblivion. The point at which I stopped living a life of proving myself independent of history and thereby prolonging its control over me. That was the point at which I finally began to pull the plug on the past, whether I fully knew what I was doing, or not.
Wisdom is not always conscious. Maybe rarely so.
In any event, that journey began with Brent Wilson. I reclaimed my name and my half-written novel and I moved all of my things back to the mainland, to a home I purchased outside of Bellingham, where I devoted myself to finishing what I had started. The upheaval was enough to stall my creative momentum and the project sat fallow for nearly a year. It was in the middle of that emotional languishing that I received a call from out of the blue from Blair Gaines.
It was the first I had actually spoken to him since the tossing of my engagement ring from the back of The Lady Dragonfish into San Pedro Bay. We exchanged pleasantries, but he did not beat around the bush about why he was calling.
“I want to make that goddamned movie.”
“What?”
“I’m making it.”
“When?”
“Now. Right bloody now. And I want you for Ivanova.”
“Blair…” I was nearly speechless. “You must think I’m an idiot.”
“No. I think you’re perfect for the part and I think I already have three-quarters of the damn thing made with you in it.”
“Well you can forget it. It’s dead. You’ve paid everyone a bunch of money for breaching their contracts.”
“I don’t care about the money. It’s not dead. Everyone else has lined up. Again.”
“Stewart?”
“Yeah Stewart. Everyone.”
“Have you talked to Angus?”
“Tried to. Yeah. Waste of time. He won’t have anything to do with it. I’m doing it without him.”
“I wish you luck.”
“What are you afraid of, Tillyjohn? You think I’m not over you, is that it?”
“No… I… maybe. That and the way you acted.”
“Look, I know I was a real asshole. Okay? It comes naturally to me. I’m still a real asshole, I won’t lie to you. But I can promise that I’m an equal opportunity asshole. I’ll treat you like I treat everyone else; the boys and the girls. And as for being over you, I don’t know if I am or I’m not, but we’re both married now so that ought to keep us on the straight and narrow for the couple of months it will take to wrap this picture up.”
“I’m not married.”
“I heard you were married. Read it actually. Bill Gates or somebody.”
“Divorced.”
“Already? Jesus. Sorry to hear.”
“Thanks. And it wasn’t Bill Gates. Wait. You’re married?”
“A year now.”
“Actress?”
“You remember Erica?”
“Erica … Your receptionist?!”
“She’s an executive assistant now. And a good one.”
“A ring and a promotion. That’s swell. You’re pathetic, Blair.”
“I’m aware. I give us a few good years. Then she’ll dump me for someone younger. Are you going to help me finish this movie or not?”
“Not.”
“Then my options are to either do a rewrite to kill Ivanova off camera – a space walk accident maybe – or to just recast her and start again.”
“It’s your movie, Blair.”
For the first few days after the call I vacillated from incredulous anger to incredulous mirth. Eventually I called Angus at his home in Tuscarawas County, Ohio to compare notes. I had not seen him since his last day in California, but we had spoken a couple of times on the phone. I called him when I moved. I called him when I got married. I called him when I had finished the first hundred pages of The Withering Kind. I told myself that I thought he would want to know. I suspect I was really just looking for his approval of my decisions.
“It’s not my movie, Matilda,” he told me. “It’s Blair’s movie. Always was.”
“Right. I know. I know.”
“I’m done pretending that I can control what I cannot control. That I can protect the written word from the motion picture. I can’t. I’m done. Uncle.”
“I know. I just… I dunno.”
“Let it go, Matilda.”
“I know.”
I wanted to let it go. I truly did. I spent the next week telling myself that what Blair Gaines chose to do with his time and money was no concern of mine. His world was no longer my own. Rather than working on my book, I stared at the screen of my computer, day after day, conjuring a long list of reasons for why I would be an absolute lunatic to accept Blair’s invitation. My mother was infuriatingly supportive.
“Whatever you choose, Honey.”
“Mom…”
“Either way. There’s good reasons to say yes and good reasons to say no.”
“But I really don’t want to do this. At all. Not at all.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay then. It’s settled.”
“Good.”
“…”
“Mom?”
“Unless you think you’ll regret it.”
I ultimately agreed, of course. You know that already. It was not Blair who convinced me. It was Ivanova herself. I could not bear the thought of leaving her unguarded with Blair Gaines and whatever young thing of the month he chose to cast. And it was more than just Ivanova. It was the whole story. It was Angus’ story. I did not know how I could just sit by and let whatever was going to happen, happen, without either of us there to protect it.
I wanted to let it go. I wanted to not care. I simply did not have that luxury.
I did not contact Blair directly. I was not sure I could stomach the sound of him trying not to tell me that he had been waiting for my call. Instead, I called Simon Hunter. Simon had left the employ of Chenowith Taylor & Reid, after Milton finally retired, and started his own agency with another defector. He seemed, as always, delighted to hear from me and was full of questions about my new life as a less tanned, more divorced, aspiring writer. When I finally got to the point, he was understandably wary.
“Tills…”
“I know, I know.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But yes.”
“You haven’t got amnesia, have you?”
“No. It’s all still painfully clear.”
“Early onset of dementia?”
“Still perfectly sane.”
“And yet …”
“Right. And I want you to represent me.”
“You know I will.”
“Call him and tell him I’ll do it, but only under certain conditions.”
“Wait. Hold on. Let me pull over and get a pen. Okay. What conditions?”
“I want approval authority for any and all changes to Angus’ script. The script we were working from.”
“Interesting. Okay.”
“And I want his agreement to reshoot up to three scenes of my choosing.”
“What? What scenes?”
“Whichever scenes Angus hates the most.”
“I thought Angus was out.�
��
“He is out. I’m in.”
“You mean… you’re quality control.”
“Right.”
“Brilliant. Completely mental, but brilliant. So, any scenes at all then?”
“Not Africa. I’m not looking to break the bank. There’s nothing wrong with any of that stuff anyway. Studio set work only.”
“Okay, if that’s our opener, what’s our fall back?”
“There is none. Take it or leave it.”
“Has our friend, the notoriously prickish and particular Mr. Gaines, suffered a recent lobotomy or something?”
“He’ll take it. Trust me.”
“Do you have incriminating photos?”
“He’ll take it, Simon.”
“Okay. We shall see. Let’s talk money. Salary?”
“None.”
“Really? Points then.”
“No points.”
“No points? Tills what on earth have you been smoking? Net points at least.”
“No points.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I don’t want to owe Blair anything,” I said. It was a lie, but it made more sense than the truth.
“Well…” Simon trailed off and for a few long seconds all I could hear was the traffic whipping past him in the background. “Well to be perfectly greedy about it, Tills… if you’re not making a single dollar…”
“Simon, I’m not asking you to do this pro bono. Work it into the deal.”
“I’ll probably get sued by CTR for this, you know.”
“I doubt it. CTR and I released all claims when Brightleaf settled up for firing me. As far as I’m concerned this is a clean slate. But listen, Simon, if you’re worried about it, add a little something to the bottom line for your trouble and risk and tell Blair I said it’s a non-negotiable condition.”
“Christ, lady. Who are you anyway?”
That was the question. Who was I anyway? Not yet a writer. No longer an actress; not really. Not a wife. A daughter and sister mostly in name only since that would have taken living in Ohio and I was as much a refugee from Ohio as from Hollywood. The only thing I really knew was that I was stuck, in mid-sentence, with nothing but blank page beneath me. There was no going forward until I had gone back and understood what had already been written.
Blair took the deal, as I knew he would, without so much as a blink of hesitation. Simon accused me having taken a hiatus from acting to become a Voodoo priestess. Within a week I had packed a suitcase, flown to Los Angeles, and taken up residence in the Wilshire. I specifically asked for Angus’ old room.
When I contacted Angus and told him what I had done, he was silent for so long that I thought I had lost the connection.
“You should have let it go,” he said.
“I couldn’t. I tried.”
“You can’t change the past.”
“No. But I can do it justice, Angus. I can honor it.”
I asked him which three scenes already filmed he was the most dissatisfied with. He thought for a minute and then identified three Rhuton-Baker scenes that he thought made Colonel Ivanova seem too conflicted and Lieutenant Miller too sympathetic. When I then explained the specific terms of my engagement to finish the film, Angus made a sound that was part mirth, part surprise and, I like to think, partly admiring. I promised him that I would be his eyes and ears on the set, and while he declaimed any continuing interest in Blair’s folly, I detected a sense of gratitude in his tone.
It took us roughly two months of shooting to finish the film we had started over seven years earlier. Blair was the same man I had first met. Cantankerous. Demanding. Driven by perfection. He treated me in a manner that was neither punitive nor uncharacteristically solicitous as he had been in the weeks prior to his marriage proposal. He was a director and I was one of several actors under his direction. He was an ass, but an equal opportunity ass.
It actually helped, I think, that Erica was on the set every day, ostensibly in her role as Blair’s Executive Assistant, but really as his wife and chaperone. The intentions that I know Blair harbored to test my feelings for him, and that panned each day’s horizon for opportunities to rekindle that flame, withered and died a daily death beneath Erica’s shocking blue eyes. She was like a svelte Husky that Blair brought to work to protect him from himself. Erica’s attitude towards me was cool but respectful. She knew I was not the problem.
It is to our joint credit that Blair and I were able to put away the past and devote our energy to the process of filmmaking. We collaborated on revising the script for several scenes and completely reworked the three scenes that Angus had identified as his least favorite. Blair honored our bargain, providing his opinions and lobbying for his preferences, even vigorously at times, but giving me the final say when it was clear we could not agree. He did not try to pull rank and I did not try to rub his face in the unusual authority I had reserved for myself. To be fair, it was not our maturity so much as our mutual love of the original work that gets the credit for our emotional restraint. We both wanted the best and truest film possible. And if we trusted nothing else about each other, we at least trusted that much.
When the last take was, as they still insist on saying in that quaint little town of Hollywood, in the can, we both felt satisfied that we had made the movie we wanted to make and that we had respected its literary origins. Blair, of course, knew nothing of its biographical and emotional origins and I did nothing whatsoever to enlighten him. But I did my best in all of the ways I could – from editing, to acting, to wholly impertinent directorial suggestions – to keep the needle of Blair’s movie always pointing True North.
I tried to keep Angus apprised of our progress on roughly a weekly basis. More or less frequent contact proved excruciating for him for different reasons. Somewhere deep inside, in places Angus did not permit ready access to others, he was desperate to know what was happening to his characters; what they were being made to say and how. To wait longer than a week for this information was more than he could take. On the other hand, Angus’ revulsion for all things Hollywood was still so strong that bi-weekly exposure to the details of our efforts was like subjecting him to a powerfully obnoxious odor that wafted through the holes in his telephone and caused him to become very irritated and short. It was not unusual for him to simply hang up the phone when he had reached the limit of his tolerance. I knew better by then than to take it personally.
I took my leave of The Lion Tree production, along with its cast and crew and director, at the wrap party hosted by the studio. To avoid the maudlin farewells, I skipped out in mid-celebration, after the speeches were over and the champagne had more than dulled everyone’s perception, and went back to my hotel to pack. The next morning I was up early for a last run through Griffith Park. I stopped to catch my breath at the observatory and watched the city boil off its early morning shroud. For all of my uncertainty about coming back to finish the movie, I was certain then it would be the last time I ever thought of myself as a part of Los Angeles. I said my goodbyes from up there. To the city. To Orin Twill. To Rufus Einemann. To Peg Entwistle. To a part of myself I would never meet again. A few hours later, I was in the air headed back to Bellingham.
In the weeks that followed, I found that I was able to reestablish my old routines. I had few friends beyond those whom I had borrowed from Brent and few demands on my time beyond walking, biking, buying books and reading them, canoeing a nearby lake, and writing. The Withering Kind came unstuck without much effort and I worked on it with devotion every day until, after many months, it was finished. I have written forty-two books since. Forty-one of them are novels. One of them is a biography. Some are good enough. Some are mediocre. Most have been well received. A couple suffer from what one of my favorite editors called an excessive sanguinity; not a mistake for which I am generally known.
But in every case, I can say that the act of finishing a book felt the same. A feeling that, I must imagine, is akin to giving birth. There is a cert
ain emotional and physical exhaustion, to be sure. And some relief. And pride. And more than just a little trepidation at not knowing what this creative product will mean in twenty years. What I will think of it. Whether it will do me justice. Whether it will one day tell the truth about who I am.
I wrote and published two more books in Washington before I moved to Telluride, Colorado, the site of several more novels inspired by crisp dry air and blue skies punctured by snowy granite spires. Eagles nested and keened in the tall pines outside my home. The rain was light and crystalline. This was a land of clean lines and simple choices. Not coincidentally, it was also the land of my second husband, who, as a former World Cup skier, the general manager of a downhill resort, and with a sculpting hobby to keep him occupied in the evenings, turned out to be one of the simplest choices I ever made. I will spare the gory details. It was his simplicity that was our undoing.
I suppose what I thought I needed was an elemental sort of man; the basic stuff of masculinity without the complications of extra intellect and refined sensibilities and obsessive little routines that only served to distract from some hidden dysfunction. Ryan “Racer” Greer certainly fit that bill, relaxed and happy in his modern cowboy groove.
The marriage, unfortunately, was considerably less happy and relaxed than I had imagined. At least for me it was. Within two years, what had once been refreshingly simple became stultifying. I languished in simplicity, longing for companionship worthy of my own depth. Racer was a big, muscle bound man. He had my father’s shoulders and legs and that pervasive wistfulness of aging athletes. And yet, as big as Racer was, he was easily two sizes too small for me.
I took some solace in the company of a local architect Racer had hired to design the new home we were building. Too much solace, actually. In the space of one terribly ill-considered afternoon, when Racer was supposed to be in meetings at the resort, Weston and I fell into a debate about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Leo Tolstoy. Weston had majored in Russian literature at Rutgers and still carried those books around in his head. I not only conceded the debate, but also I succumbed to the temptation to become the very thing I loathed. It was like standing on a ledge at the top of a towering building and feeling gravity pulling at the bottom of your heart, as if all of the people below looking up expected it of you and held invisible strings tied to your ribcage. The weight of all of that string is like iron and you know that it is in your power to take one tiny step and change everything. I took the step.
