What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  “Rosemary, they won’t.”

  “What will I do?”

  “You’ll get a new job assignment at the corporation, and then when the time comes, I hope I can offer you another job.”

  “Listen, I don’t know what to do,” she said, but she sounded more pulled together.

  “Sam?”

  “It doesn’t feel so bad as it did.”

  “It’s like a bad cold. Pretty soon you won’t be able to remember why he made you feel like that.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well, stay home with your folks a couple days and cool out.”

  “I miss Albert and the office and you.”

  “I miss you too, Rosemary, and you can call Albert from out there.”

  “He’s probably still at the hospital.” Her voice sounded more buoyant.

  I felt happy myself. “I can’t wait to see you, Rosemary.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “me too.”

  When I hung up, I wanted to celebrate. These strong feelings toward other people make a whole life. Families don’t always form the way they told us in those junior high school books about the birds and bees.

  In the refrigerator, behind the ketchup bottle and the small dripping Perriers, was a botttle of good champagne that had been sitting there since a studio movie opening. I aimed the cork at a distant wall, popped it, and smoky vapors came out. I tipped the bottle and sucked two tingling cold gulps. The heat spread throughout my body. I never learned how to drink. In middle-class Jewish Philadelphia, it had no place except at seders, where my father and I always dozed from sweet syrupy red wine. My mother never set foot in a bar and was proud of it.

  I danced in a little circle, feeling light as a feather. Rocky bounced behind me. I poured three drops on his nose. He backed away, licking furiously. The label slid off the cold bottle.

  I sat down and bounced my feet while I thought about nothing, feeling my body relax, cell by cell. Then I grabbed the phone and called Sam. He let the answering machine run until he heard my voice. “Hi.” He sounded anxious. “No lectures, okay?”

  “I got a deal, take it or leave it.” I grinned.

  He was silent. I grinned. “Just forget your revenge on Rosemary, and I’ll make sure Jack Hanscomb reads your treatment.”

  “I need to talk to Jack.”

  “Deliver the treatment here and I’ll see he reads it.”

  “Swear on your mother’s life.”

  “Swear.”

  “I’m too mad at the girl.”

  “Listen, I can’t talk, just take it or leave it. Call the police and tell them to forget it.”

  I could tell he was computing everything, the chance to get Jack in his movie, our years of friendship, his fury at Rosemary, his destroyed footage.

  “You will never lecture me,” he began.

  “Can’t promise that.”

  “You wait six months to lecture me.”

  “One month.”

  “Two and you have a deal.”

  “Six weeks, take it or leave it, you did a bad—”

  “Six weeks,” he interrupted guiltily. “I’ll leave the treatment with your doorman now.”

  I hung up the phone and shouted “Yippee!” Slugged back three more gulps of champagne. Then I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. No point in courting a hangover. Then I polished off another six gulps.

  The phone rang. It was Jack calling on the other line in the bedroom.

  “Hi,” I yelled.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m celebrating.” I burped.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Rosemary, my secretary, she’s safe and I just feel good about my life.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “My office uniform.” I giggled.

  “Hey, babe, I’m lonely in your bed.”

  I yawned, feeling like champagne bubbles were popping from my ears. An ocean of pressure was rolling off me. “How lonely?”

  “Guess.” He clicked off. I picked up the champagne bottle and tapped open the bedroom door. In the dim light Jack sat cross-legged on the unmade bed, Rocky snuggling by him. He was wearing a thick navy velvet bathrobe with a price tag still sticking out of one sleeve.

  I stopped short at the sight of a silver tray heaped with bagels and lox in front of him. There were red roses in a vase surrounded by tiny black olives, cream cheese, and scallions, unevenly sliced tomatoes, and fresh tub butter.

  Unbelievable. I stared dumbfounded at my favorite food.

  “Anita liked it when you brought this stuff to Israel,” he said shyly.

  I hugged the champagne bottle. “Food’s the way to my heart. When did all this happen?”

  He shook his head sheepishly. “Just now at Zabar’s with my last American dollar. Look, the olives still have stems.”

  I swung the champagne bottle by the cold wet neck and swallowed more foam, instantly warming my chest. He gave me an old seductive smile. “Please join me.”

  Drunk, I sniffed the scallions and fish. My mouth watered. All around me the room was tilting pleasantly from the champagne. He’d closed my copy of our shooting script lying on the night table. It was a good sign that he was reading it. Then I laughed. “Thanks for the food surprise.”

  I arranged the delicate pink fish on the fresh bagel, licking my fingers, munching and munching. I crossed my legs on the bed, Indian style, the silver tray between us. He struggled to keep smiling at me, looking downcast, as though he had arranged this treat to cheer both of us up; but he wasn’t eating.

  I felt reckless. “I hear Israel’s a great climate for curing depression.”

  “Oh, no, no fighting, we got a pact.” He leaned forward over the food and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I stopped chewing. I felt bold and loose. Our faces were close enough to kiss. Or I could bury my face in his neck. He kept right on hugging me, smelling like Israeli soap. Our eyes met. Seconds ticked by. He winked at me. Tricks, always tricks. “I have to admire your romantic skills,” I blurted.

  He dropped his arm. “You’re really upset over this movie, right?”

  “You know what this movie means to me,” I said in a rush. “It’s like turning straw into gold. I mean, it’ll portray Jews and Christians really devoted to making the quality of other people’s lives better. It’s the kind of movie that sends a good message about how we’re all part of the same human organism all over the world. I’d feel it’s been almost worth the years of bullshitting and politicking.”

  He looked guilty. “Look, excuse me, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

  My jaw dropped. He set the champagne bottle on the rug and disappeared. Yippee, I mouthed to Rocky. This man doesn’t want to collect unemployment checks.

  Rocky thumped his tail against a pillow, drooling at the bagels. I stretched for the champagne bottle, suddenly feeling bleak. “If Jack goes back to Ireael,” I told Rocky, “we’re alone again.”

  Jack came back pointing at the champagne bottle in my lap. “What are you really celebrating, a new movie deal?”

  “Nope, my secretary Rosemary’s safe and I learned something. She’s not my kid, and she’s not my sister, I’m really on my own. My life is fine and she’s part of it. I feel okay, there’s no law that I have to have children to like myself. It hit me in Israel. I never got married again and had a family because I did other stuff.”

  I paused, touched by how he was concentrating on what I was saying.

  “What about your divorce?” he asked slowly. “When did you get over that?”

  I failed at smiling. “I guess I never actually did.” I felt a pulse behind my temple. He watched me rub it fretfully.

  “Come on, I got an idea,” he said. “I’ll give you a head massage. It’s the perfect gift for the brainy lady executive who thinks she’s got all the answers.”

  He dimmed the overhead light. “Peace and quiet are the first rules.”

  I yawned. What was he really up to no
w?

  He pulled a quilt off my bed, folding it in a square on my rug. “Over here. Lie down, it’ll be fine.”

  I put down my gnawed bagel. This looked like another game. “Don’t rush me,” I said, faking reluctance.

  He pulled my sneakers off as I sat down. “Loosen your pants,” he instructed, pushing a bed pillow under my neck and another one under my knees. I blinked up at the spinning ceiling while he removed my glasses. He was rummaging around my hi-fi and soon I heard a lulling piano. My pulse was still pummeling my forehead. He disappeared and I heard water running. My mouth felt dry. “I like lying here,” I said. “It gives me an entirely original perspective on my bedroom.”

  Rocky leapt off the bed and nosed at my hand for a pat.

  I saw Jack’s bare calves go past my left ear and heard his knees cracking as he knelt behind me.

  I twisted around to watch him rubbing his fingers. “Can’t be cold,” he explained softly. Then he straightened my head down again on the pillow and covered my forehead with his open palms. Under his hands my eyes closed. His hands barely moved. They seemed to be listening to the tissue and bone of my skull. I felt protected, sealed from harm. Then my lids relaxed. I loved it. I felt my tension furrows vanish. I felt calmed. I never wanted it to end. The lower half of my face sagged. He lifted his hands and I felt desolate. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Shush.” He pressed his warm thumbs at the center of my brow. I closed my lips and felt him pull the skin gently across my hairline and down to my temples. Tension I had never acknowledged flowed out of my head through his thumbs. It was magic. I closed my eyes again, hesitantly. His thumbs circled my temples at both sides of my head, and lifted to press the middle of my forehead again.

  He dragged his thumbs across my forehead again.

  I pictured him bent over me, the weight of his body suspended over his thumbs, like I was doing a master shot of my bedroom.

  “Too slow?” he asked, pressing my eye sockets and moving all his fingers out to my temples.

  “No, perfect.” It was like he was rocking me in a hammock and singing me a lullaby. “What are you doing?”

  “Shush.”

  I thought, he’s massaging all the pains and worries out of my brain. A small smile twitched my mouth.

  His fingers rubbed my closed eyelids and inched down to circle my temples again. Then he pressed my cheekbones next to my nose until they hurt. When he made circles by my ears, the pain disappeared. He pinched quickly all around my earlobes, brushed my hair up, and then massaged behind my ears. My whole head tingled as he dug circles in my scalp with his knuckles. I felt more alive and more calm than I ever remembered. I was letting muscles go that I didn’t know existed.

  “I’m going to put my hands over your ears. Just listen to your breath and don’t pay attention to anything else.”

  I closed my eyes and heard my breath, distant, and a rushing of my blood inside my skull.

  When he picked up my chin and began to pull slowly along my jawbone, my face felt like it was floating a few inches above the pillow. Then he placed both his palms over my face. I saw bits of light through his oiled fingers and smelled the sweet fragrance. He slid his palms slowly over the sides of my head and lifted them off.

  When he began kneading my neck muscles, the flush tickled down my spine, as though I was being lowered into a pool of warm water. I sank back into the pillow. “You feel weightless?” he asked.

  “You’re a genius at this.” I stared up at him in a stupor.

  He leaned back, rubbing his hands. The insecurity had returned to his face. “I better be good at something.”

  I blinked. My eyelids moved slowly. “Don’t forget your work.”

  “I’m just another pretty face,” he sputtered, sitting back and circling his arms around his knees. “I been trying to parlay the movie star crap into acting jobs for years. My life is a failure.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  I tried to sit up. He put his hand on my throat and held me down. “Don’t get up right away. You can just listen to a failure talk for a while.”

  “Oh.” I rubbed my eyes. “You managed to have that relationship for years.”

  “Look, I screwed around the entire eight years. But it’s not that. It’s my dad. He died last spring, and I know I’ll never be mated like him,” he said, pulling the hair off my brow. It relaxed my brain more, I had to really focus on his words. What he was saying really surprised me.

  “They were married fifty-six years,” he said.

  “Sometimes those relationships are very distant,” I murmured.

  “My parents were so close that my mother talked Dad into death. She slept for a week in a chair next to his bed in the hospital waiting.”

  My lips felt heavy. “Think of how bad you feel when your lifetime mate dies. Nothing’s easy.”

  “But they shared their lives. I’ll die like I live, on my own.”

  “Were you in the hospital too?”

  “Yeah, and I heard her pretending she wasn’t afraid, telling him he wasn’t going far from her.”

  “Do you look like your dad?”

  “I don’t look like anybody in my goddamn family.” He was kneeling behind me without speaking. I almost fell asleep.

  “What happened with that actress?” I blurted. I felt jealous. It was obviously bugging him.

  “She gave up on me.” He laughed harshly. I opened my eyes. His face was squeezed in pain.

  “When?”

  “Last movie I did she found a love letter from my leading lady on location in Orlando, and so she gave me back my gold bracelet and ran home to England. A month later, I was pissed off and run-down, and I called her in Wales and begged her to come and hold my hand. She flew back to Florida as a favor, but everything was changed. She lay like a lump in my hotel room. She’d gotten off the merry-go-round. I begged, I even got drunk on bourbon sours and tried to get her to marry me. Did we have waterworks in Florida once I mentioned marriage. I was worried about her. She said I broke her spirit, not just her heart.” He laughed harshly again. “It took me eight years of screwing around to even propose.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “It’s too fucking late. I can’t bother her anymore.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?”

  “Escape,” he shouted, and pounded the side of my mattress with both fists.

  “You’re having a nervous breakdown,” I muttered, rattled. He shouldn’t shout in my ear about another woman after he gave me that incredible massage.

  “Let’s understand a couple things,” he said, crawling around so he could look me squarely in the eye. I tensed up. “I really owe you for taking care of me. I like you. But I don’t have to go back to work because of you.” He tapped his fingers on my chin. “I agree we shouldn’t sleep together, because you’re scared and at best I’m on the unstable side.”

  No movie, no Jack. “You don’t get to make all the rules,” I said.

  “No, but I been listening, and I know what’s buzzing around in that brain of yours.”

  I stood up and my knees buckled. “We’ll negotiate when we’re both awake,” and I closed my eyes against him.

  “I’ll take a solitary shot at the guest room,” he said, “you deserve your own bed.”

  “Both these beds are mine.” I smiled weakly, stretching my elbows high above my head.

  He picked up a quilt and folded it, looking at me. “You know, my liking you is like money in the bank.”

  I tried to ignore the flush on my back. “I’m afraid I’d want more than a loan.”

  “Right, because I’ll never settle down, you know that.”

  “I know,” I said as he flopped the quilt on my bed without turning to me. I watched him smooth my quilt. “Let’s just agree on one thing, let’s not torture each other, this business does enough of that, okay?”

  He laughed and we sat down facing each other on the side of my bed. I was still conflicted. My leg fell agains
t his knee. It warmed me.

  “I’m a little retarded in these departments,” he said, leaning over suddenly to kiss my eyebrow. Something changed in his eyes, and I realized how honest he was being. I patted his shoulder awkwardly, and slipped my hand down his arm. I was stroking his fingers. Then before I knew it, I was kissing his lower lip. His beard rubbed a little. His mouth was soft. He tasted familiar. Startled, I pulled my face away. He swallowed hard, looking vulnerable.

  “I’m not ready to let you go,” I said.

  “It’s not that simple.” He squeezed my hand.

  I sat closer. “Maybe I’ll take advantage of your weakened state.”

  He was nodding his head. I figured he was thinking the same thing I was. It wasn’t going to be easy to make love and then separate. “I guess we’re both here, we’re not hurting anybody else,” he said, guiding my wrist toward him.

  “Okay, pact,” I said, restraining him. The night was quiet and I was sealing a bond. “Nobody’s seducing, nobody’s a conquest.”

  He gave me a bear hug. Something inside me burst into sparkles. He turned on the lamp, and when I put my hand over my eyes, he draped a wrinkled purple shirt over the shade.

  I buried my face in his shoulder, smelling Israeli soap. I liked his scratchy undershirt on my mouth. It felt electric between us.

  “Boy, was I feeling blue,” he said in his crackling voice.

  He flung open the bedsheets. I slid down next to him. The bed felt warmed under the sheet and quilt. “You hug the dog a lot?” he whispered, his warm breath tickling my ear. Suddenly I was so scared. I wanted to shout at him to stop. But I also wanted to press my body against his.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I can tell by the way he’s always leaning on my leg or licking my hand.”

  He seemed to know me. I cupped my hands around his face and kissed his eyes, his nose, his forehead, little quick kisses. He smiled, brushing my lips slowly with his mouth until my lips tickled like crazy. “We’re a funny pair.”

  “I don’t think so.” I slid my arm under his head. The rushing behind my eyes felt like happy tears, bright sunlight. We lay still, listening to the waves of traffic and our breathing. I wanted to savor every minute. My arm tingled under his neck. I pulled it away and began smoothing his new blunt hair.