“Does Mommy ever mention me?”
Sam considered this for a minute and then nodded.
“Oh, yeah? What does she say?”
“You need serious help.” She even mimicked Cynthia’s self-righteous inflection. “And you’re off the rail and you’re acting out a teenage foozy.”
Gone off the rails. Shacking up with a teenage floozy. I should have stopped asking questions after the spare tire.
I bent down, scooping Sam into my arms because we’d reached the dog run, a fenced-in area along the south perimeter of the park. It was packed with romping dogs and their mute owners, who hovered around the periphery like overbearing stage parents, nervously watching, armed and at the ready with leashes, balls, pooper-scoopers, and treats.
“Okay, toots. We’re looking for a big black dog and a lady with red hair, mid-thirties. When you spot them, keep it on the down low. No pointing. No screaming. Be cool. Ya got it?”
Sam nodded, looking. Then suddenly, she squeaked shrilly and kicked me. She made a face, pointing, but only with her pinkie.
“You see them?”
She nodded again.
Sure enough—in the remotest section of the dog run, there was a gaunt woman with red hair and an old black Lab hunched on the bench beside her.
“Stellar surveillance work, honey. They could use you at Homeland Security.”
I took a moment to glance behind us, making sure there was no one watching. I’d been keeping a vigilant eye out, ever since I’d been back in the city, in case there was further sign of Theo Cordova, but I’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
I unlatched the gate, and we stepped inside.
56
I watched Sam carry out her orders with precision and poise. The girl would make one hell of a Green Beret. She actually made the whole thing look random. First, on her way around to Peg Martin, she stopped and crouched next to a white teacup Chihuahua decked in more lamé than a Newark hooker. She said hello to that dog for a minute before stepping over to the black Lab. Cynthia had clearly drilled into her that she must ask permission before she touched any strange animal, because I heard her politely ask both Peg Martin and then the dog himself if they minded her petting him.
Both must have said no, because very gently and respectfully Sam began to touch the top of the dog’s old grayed head, his eyes weary and unblinking. She started with just her pinkie, petting the quarter-inch right between the dog’s eyebrows.
I strolled past the other owners standing around the fence and moved toward them.
“It’s all right if she pets him?” I asked, approaching Peg Martin.
“Of course,” she answered, glancing at me.
“He doesn’t bite?”
Her attention was back on the dogs in front of her.
“No.”
It was Peg Martin, all right.
Her hair was thinner, dyed a synthetic shade of red, something between dying autumn leaves and beets. She’d been such a vibrant, kooky presence in Isolate 3. All these years later, she appeared muted and washed-out, with an exhaustion that seeped from her bones.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked the dog, though he didn’t respond.
“What’s his name?” I asked Peg.
She looked irritated to be addressed again.
“Leopold.”
“Leopold,” said Sam. She was petting the top of his head with her hand rigidly flat like a spatula. She might have been carefully spreading icing.
“You look familiar,” I said, glancing at Peg. “You don’t teach Sunday school at Saint Thomas, do you?”
She looked flustered.
“Uh, no. That, uh, definitely wouldn’t be me.”
“My mistake.”
She smiled thinly, returning her attention to the dogs.
I took a minute to watch them, too, so as not to appear forward. A hyper Dalmatian was the leader of the pack. That white hoochie-mama Chihuahua was making her rounds—yipping, desperate for a john—but every dog was besotted with a soggy tennis ball.
“Okay,” I said. “This is a long shot, and you’re probably going to think I’m crazy.”
She glanced at me, wary.
“Isolate 3. The maid with the broken arm. It was you, wasn’t it?”
She blinked in surprise. She was never recognized. I was certain I overplayed it, sounding a little too amazed, but she nodded.
“That’s right.”
“You were great in it. The only thing that kept me from losing my mind.”
She smiled, her face flushing.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that no actor ever tires of hearing they were brilliant in a role.
“I have to ask. What was he like? Cordova.”
Her smile vanished like a match blown out. Glancing at her watch, she grabbed the strap of her backpack, pulling it into the crook of her arm, about to leave. But then, to my relief, Sam had managed to fully woo Leopold. He was wagging his tail. It moved like a windshield wiper. Seeing this—and Sam, quietly discussing something of great importance with the dog—she hesitated.
“It’s tragic what happened to his daughter,” I noted.
Peg scratched her nose.
“But then, I’m not surprised,” I went on. “To create a body of work that twisted and visceral, the man has to be horrifying in his personal life. You have to be. Look at Picasso. O’Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.”
I figured if I steamrolled the woman with words she might not get up and leave. She was sitting back against the bench, studying me with an absorbed expression.
“Maybe,” she said. “You can never tell how a family is from the outside. But I just …”
She fell silent because that goddamn tennis ball had just rolled exactly behind her feet. She bent down, grabbing it, the dogs freezing in incredulity, mouths closed, ears perked. She threw it, sitting back again as they took off in a stampede across the gravel.
“You just … ?” I prompted quietly.
Good God, let her speak. And calm down, for Christ’s sake.
“When they first started shooting Isolate,” she said, glancing at me, “he invited my boyfriend to spend the afternoon with his family up at the house. The Peak. He never did things like that. He was private. At least that’s what I’d heard. But his wife was organizing a picnic. They did it all the time in the summer. Billy was invited. So I got to tag along.”
He was private. She actually meant Cordova.
And Billy—it had to be William Bassfender, the boyfriend she’d mentioned in the Sneak interview. He was the muscular, tattooed Scottish man who’d played the prisoner in the Isolate, Specimen 12. If I remembered correctly, after Isolate 3 Bassfender went on to do a play on London’s West End and had been about to appear in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, when he was killed in a car accident in Germany.
I turned my gaze back to the dogs so she wouldn’t realize I was hanging on her every word.
“It was surreal. Granted, any family that was together, not shouting or stumbling-down drunk, would have been surreal to me. But even now I think there was more love and joy in that family than I’ve ever seen before or since.” She shook her head in disbelief. “They had their own language.”
I stared. “What?”
“Cordova’s son, Theo, invented a language for the family. They spoke it to each other, telling jokes and laughing, which made them even more intimidating. I remember Astrid explaining it to me like it was yesterday. ‘The Russians have sixteen words for love. Our language has twenty.’ She brought out all of these notebooks Theo had done. He’d written his own dictionary thick as a Bible, filled with grammar rules and conjugations of irregular verbs he’d made up. Astrid taught me some of the words. I’ve never forgotten them. One was terulya. It meant deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived. I
remember being shocked a teenage boy came up with this stuff. But that’s how they all were. They mopped life up with themselves. None of them were encumbered by anything. There were no limits.”
She fell silent, wistful, maybe even slightly jealous of this family she was describing. She crossed her arms, frowning out at the dogs again.
“A picnic,” I repeated, a prompt for her to keep talking.
“It was a bright day. Once you turned onto the property you continued along a long drive through woods. And at the end, the house rose up, an enormous manor commanding the hill like a castle out of a fairy tale. It was deserted. Billy and I pounded on the door and wandered around the house and the gardens. There was no sign of anyone. Finally, after twenty minutes, the massive front door opened and a Japanese man stood there. He’d just woken up and didn’t speak any English. He was wearing green silk pajamas and a sword around his waist, and he wandered out, rubbing his eyes, yawning, saying something in Japanese as he beckoned for us to follow him. He led us down to the lake. That’s where everyone was. A group sitting on white blankets under white umbrellas. Everyone was there, except Cordova. He was working that day. At least, that’s what they said.”
She took a deep breath. “It was like wandering into a painting. A dream sequence. There were movie stars, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper, but they weren’t the star attraction. There were astronauts talking about deep space. A former member of the CIA living off the grid who kept in his wallet the New York Times article reporting his death. A famous playwright. A local priest who’d wandered the world for fifteen years and come home. Cordova’s son, Theo, was there. He was sixteen and gorgeous, photographing everything with an old Leica camera, standing waist-deep in the marshes to capture shots of warring dragonflies. He was having a very intense love affair with a woman named Rachel, ten years older than he. She was there, too. I remember someone saying she’d been in one of Cordova’s films.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t remember.” She smiled wistfully. “Cordova’s set designer had built the family a fleet of brightly colored sailboats—pirate ships, everyone called them—to sail around the lake. There was a pack of dogs, half wolf. One of the guests told the story of how the Cordovas had rescued them in the middle of the night from a farmer who’d been breeding them for dogfights. These were the true stories they were telling. Cordova’s mother was there. She didn’t speak English, was dying of cancer. They were so gentle with her, folding her into a deck chair so she could sit under an umbrella, drinking Limoncello. I swore to myself if I was ever so lucky to have a family, I wanted it to be like that. It was the living experience of a fantasy. I spent most of the afternoon with a philosopher from France and Astrid, who was teaching everyone to oil paint. We all had our easels along the lake’s edge, standing in the wind, painting. When Billy and I left, the sun was going down and I felt a terrible sense of mourning, as if I’d spent the afternoon on an island paradise and now the ocean was pulling me out to sea and I’d never be able to make my way back.”
“Sounds like Shangri-la,” I said, when she didn’t go on.
She glanced at me distractedly, saying nothing, and I regretted speaking, for fear I’d punctured the spell she’d been under, recounting that day. The words had sputtered, then to my immense surprise blasted out of her like a fountain, one that’d been dry for years. Now she seemed sorry that she’d said anything at all.
“What year was this?” I asked nonchalantly.
“The year of Isolate production. Spring of ’93, I think.”
Ashley’s birthday was December 30, 1986. If this was the spring before, then she was six years old at the time.
“Did you meet Ashley?” I asked.
Peg nodded, reluctant to go on, but then, it seemed she couldn’t leave such a vibrant question dangling in the air.
“She was beautiful. Short dark hair, almost black. Like a sprite. Pale gray eyes.” She smiled, suddenly animated. “I was seventeen. Wasn’t into kids at all. But totally out of the blue, Ashley took my hand and brought me down to a deserted part of the lake where there was a willow tree and tall grass, the water emerald green. She asked me if I could see the trolls. I still remember the names. Elfriede and Vanderlye. By the time she let go of my hand and took off across the field chasing a butterfly—a butterfly that was huge, bright red and orange, like this property had their own insects—I believed in trolls. I still do.”
She fell silent, seemingly embarrassed by her zeal. Sam, I noticed, was staring at Peg, listening intently.
It was dark now in the park, the strangers standing along the fence, faceless. The giant elm trees with their outstretched limbs were sinking deeper into the darkness, slipping away. The pack of dogs was still going strong, a white-and-brown blurry squall of panting and flying gravel.
“I’ve held on to that day,” Peg continued in a thin voice, “like some faded postcard. Something you put in a scrapbook to remind yourself of perfect happiness—that it does exist, for one moment, like a sudden streak of lightning through the sky. When I read what happened to Ashley, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know her at all, but … it seemed so sudden. And wrong. If you have a family like that and you still can’t withstand this world, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
She smiled sadly, looking away.
“What was he like to work with?” Silently I cringed at the probing question. Thankfully, she just shrugged.
“I had such a small part. I was only on the set for two days. I understood nothing that was going on, really, because the crew was Mexican and Cordova’s assistant gave them all their directions in Spanish.”
“His assistant—you’re talking about Inez Gallo?”
“Yeah. But the crew all called her coyote.”
“Coyote? Why?”
“No idea,” she answered.
“Do you still keep in touch with Cordova? Or anyone from that time?”
Peg shook her head. “After he’d gotten your performance, extracted what he wanted like a surgeon harvesting organs, he was done with you. After my two days of shooting, that was it.”
She turned away from me to unzip her backpack, taking out a dog’s leash, clipping it to Leopold’s collar.
“I actually have to get going.”
She was seconds from walking away. I wanted more time, was tempted to throw caution to the wind and keep riddling the woman with questions, anything to get her to keep talking, to tell me more. Yet I sensed her candor was fleeting, the moment already gone.
She stood up, stooping over to help her dog off the bench. He moved like an old man with arthritis. She actually picked up his back legs for him, placing them on the ground, and turned to me with a perfunctory smile.
“Take care.”
“You, too,” I said.
And then she and Leopold were walking away, two slow-moving figures impervious to the pack of dogs charging past them.
“Is she a nice lady?” Sam asked me, wiping her curls out of her eyes.
“Very nice.”
Sam climbed up onto the bench beside me, sitting close, staring fixedly up at my face.
“Is she sad?” she asked.
“No, honey. She’s lived-in.”
Sam seemed to accept this. It was one of the things I loved about her. I could make some ambiguous observation about human beings, about their failings or hypocrisies, their deep-seated pain—and she took in the comment like an old diamond dealer handed a raw stone, turning it over in her palm, then pocketing the gem to be examined and cut later, moving on.
Sam scratched her cheek and interlaced her fingers in her lap—copying the way my fingers were interlaced—and we watched them go in silence.
Leopold waited at the gate as Peg unlatched it, and he ambled through. The dog then paused, turning his head to watch as Peg locked the gate behind them, shoving her hands into her pockets—all of it, a slow choreographed movement only the most longtime of couples could do, only after years.
&
nbsp; They strolled out into the park, and the farther they went, the more they had nothing discernible about them except the fact that they were together. And even at the greatest of distances, when they were just two dark shapes moving away, side by side, you could still see they were a remarkable pair.
57
“Ms. Quincy is coming down,” said the doorman, hanging up the phone.
I bent down to Sam. Her ballet slippers were scruffy and her tutu was slightly crushed, but otherwise she looked all right.
“I’m proud of you, toots,” I told her.
The elevator doors opened, Cynthia emerging in a crisp white blouse, jeans, dazzling swish of gold hair, Tod’s suede driving loafers. I could see from her smiling face that she was furious.
“Hi, love,” she said to Sam. “Go wait for Mommy by the elevators.”
Sam blinked up at her and padded obediently across the marble lobby.
Cynthia turned to me. “I said six.”
“I know—”
“She was auditioning for The Nutcracker.”
“I worked it out with Dorothy. She’s going to make the party scene.”
She sighed, heading back across the lobby. “Just don’t forget Thursday,” she added over her shoulder.
“Thursday?”
She turned. “Bruce and I are going to Santa Barbara?”
“Right. Sam is staying with me for the weekend.”
Shooting me a warning look—Don’t mess this up—she took Sam’s hand and they stepped into the elevators. I held up a hand, waving, and Sam smiled just as the doors closed.
58
The afternoon Peg Martin had described at The Peak sounded almost too idyllic to be real. But she’d been only seventeen at the time, doubtlessly insecure and impressionable, so it was possible she’d taken creative liberties with the memory without even realizing it. Given Cordova’s terrifying subject matter, for his home and workplace to be such a blissful paradise seemed unlikely. How close was an artist’s real life to his work? Doctoral students wrote dissertations on the subject. Yet when Peg had described Ashley leading her down to the lake where the trolls lived—there was something undeniably honest about the episode, also when she’d described Cordova as a surgeon harvesting organs, leaving his actors for dead.
Night Film: A Novel Page 26
