The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

  “I was in tears. You were brilliant.” Gentleman that he was, the helmer hastily included Clea and myself (glimpsewise) in his encomia. “I’m so glad you’re doing the show,” he said, now strictly addressing the famed guest star. “You wouldn’t believe who’s addicted to Starwatch. It’s bizarre.” The last, accompanied by a fuller glance in my direction, as I must naturally be the residing expert on the cult franchise’s global appeal.

  “I know,” said Thad. “I read somewhere that Rumsfeld’s a fan.”

  “Yes!” said Nick, gleefully. “I’d heard that! And Dylan! Dylan’s supposedly obsessed!”

  “Wow,” Thad said, without irony.

  “David Sedaris is very big on it.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh yes. And the girl who wrote—not Adaptation but . . . The Orchid Thief. And who’s the Atonement writer?”

  “Ian McEwan? You’re kidding.”

  “McEwan! Yes. Big, big fan.”

  “Well . . . I’m shocked!” said Thad, in dismay.

  “By the way, I hadn’t told you, but I thought you were absolutely amazing in Quixote. Brilliant!”

  “Thank you. Working with Terry is an ‘experience.’ ”

  “Gilliam! There’s a wild bloke!”

  “He’s very wonderful.”

  “A mad boy but a wicked talent,” said Nick. “And great good fun. We worked together ten years ago, in Scotland.” Thad didn’t bother inquiring further. “Did your father ever see the show?”

  “I don’t think so. Dad didn’t watch much TV. But you never know!” he exclaimed. “I could be wrong—Jack Michelet may very well have been a closet Starwatch fanatic! Right up there with Ben Stiller, Naguib Mahfouz, and Susan Sontag! Could’ve been”—this, à la Charlie Chan—“Numbah One Fan!”

  “I guess,” Nick conceded, “you don’t become that prolific sitting around watching the telly.”

  Thad registered the innocent comment as a dig: performing on the telly was an existentially malignant exercise. You might as well be a clown with leukemia.

  “I hear you’ve written books,” said Nick. “Novels, right? To me, that’s absolutely the toughest thing. And to write in the shadow of that man.” He grinned, shaking his head. “Bit like being a sherpa to Hillary.”

  “Our styles are pretty different,” said Thad politely, gathering his tray to leave.

  Clea’s face was like a Tornado Alley weather vane—the tremble before the wild-ass spin. “Does he mean Hillary Clinton?” she said with a fake smile, buying time so that some of us could make it to the storm cellar.

  “Rather like me having John Huston for a father—to put it in filmic terms.” Nick shoveled up peas, potatoes, and a fatty square of pork chop. “Tell me, though, didja feel a lift with his passing? I don’t mean ‘glad.’ It’s just that, well, personally, I was so competitive with me old man. Most sons are. And he was no genius, thank you—thank God for that! Not that I am. Compared to him, maybe. A haberdasher, he was. Good at what he did, worked on Savile Row. Never saw a thing of mine, not even a student film. S’pose he was competitive as well, maybe more so. What I’m driving at is: was it a lift, Thad? Is it easier now that he’s gone? In the sense of, well, d’ya find you’re doing a bit less shadowboxing?”

  “Not really.”

  “I don’t mean to psychoanalyze! Probably projecting a bit—still working out my own stuff. When I was in college, I read a book of his called Chrysanthemum.”

  Again, Clea blacked up. Noticing her mood change, Thad grew strangely perky. “Glad to hear it! It’s not one of his better-knowns.”

  “True,” said the director, matter-of-factly. “Can’t say why.”

  “There are some rather explicit passages,” said Thad. “Almost pornographic, don’t you think, Clea? A few of the libraries tried to ban it, stateside. A town somewhere in Ohio actually had a book burning.”

  “Don’t fuck with Ohioans!” said Nick. “Did an Old Navy shoot there once, don’t ask me why. Lovely college, though—Wexner? Wexler? Spoke to a film class; gave me a brickload of coin. There’s money there but it was dull. Thuggish. Middle American, right? Not for me. I’m a bit of a mad boy, like Terry. I’m dying to do a feature.” He rubbed his hands together, like a hobo at a trash-can fire. “TV’s fun but you’re a bit in the box. It has grown up, with cable and such. I mean, it’s what Dennis Potter was doing thirty years ago, hunh? Hard to watch your mates pass you by. Tony Minghella and the Scott brothers—those were me mates! They threw me some commercials—they’re the kings of that world—but I won’t spend my life on cranes swooping down on a fucking Lexus. If I want to give a BMW a blow job, I’ll do it in the privacy of my garage, thank you very much! The really great thing about TV is it’s so fucking immediate—I don’t have to tell you—doesn’t drag on a year or two, like film. Still, I’m chompin’ at the bit. There’s nothin’ like the movies!” He paused to shovel in food. “But they kill you if you’re ‘askew,’ right? If that’s your sensibility. What’d they do to Orson Welles? It’s All True. Ever see that? The studio fucked him in Brazil while they mutilated Ambersons in L.A. That’s how they reward you if you’re ‘askew’! Still, I’d love to have a go at Chrysanthemum. It’s one of those pieces I dread picking up Variety to see it’s snapped up by someone who’s going to mutilate it—or worse, do it justice!”

  He laughed heartily at the last remark.

  “I’m gonna go have a cigarette,” said Clea, then left.

  “I was wondering, Thad? Have you written for the screen? Have you thought about it?”

  “Well, yes. But I don’t suppose I’ve made a serious effort.”

  “Might you consider adapting Chrysanthemum to film? I’m bloody serious, you know.”

  Thad’s face froze in a creepy smile; I chose to intervene.

  “You know, Nick, I’m pretty sure my father has the option on that.”

  “Oh yes, I know! And we’ve talked about it, Perry and I—we’ve discussed it. Casually, at first. When he found out how passionate I was about the property . . . well, that he owned the option turned out the most amazing thing. Magical, really. I mean I can’t even remember, we were talking and it just came out of nowhere. He didn’t mind the idea of attaching me to it, on a handshake—that’s how I like to do things. How your dad operates too. S’pose that’s how he’s gotten all this way, right? When I suggested Thad have a go at it, he thought: Brilliant! We were having a coffee and Perry said your agent—she’s called Miriam?—he said Miriam had already been in touch about novelizing ‘Prodigal Son.’ I thought that a tragic waste! May as well put you to work on something epic, something decent, right? Something really brilliant.”

  WHEN THAD LEARNED OF MIRIAM’S scheme, he seemed too weary and disgusted to be angry. I watched him go through the motions of confronting her at the hotel, where, like showbiz gypsies, it was our custom to indulge in a nightly room-service supper, regardless of the prevailing hunger or mood. Miriam shrank while Thad shook, rattled, and ultimately rolled the offensive, well-meaning gesture off his back with a shrug. It was my sense he knew there was a large part of Miriam that might never understand him yet would do anything to aid, comfort, and support. She was true blue and for that, he could never fault her. He was also well aware she must have been as frustrated by his miserable luck and rapid-cycling, self-defeating nihilism as he. After all, it was Miriam who’d stayed in his corner through the years, even when it wasn’t profitable, which now it seldom was. They had known each other forever—she’d been closer to his folks than any of his friends—and one of the things he appreciated most was how she had never evinced interest in becoming professionally involved with his father’s business. There had been opportunity; Jack Michelet was famously persuasive, one time suggesting out of sheer spite that Miriam become his agent too. She turned him down cold. Her allegiance was total.

  It was a cheap psychological insight, but I suppose he’d transferred ambivalence toward his mother onto Miriam. While my encounter with Morga
na—tetchily ennobled by widowhood—was brief, the description of soul-killing ice queen didn’t seem to fall far from the mark. (Not that Miriam shared any of those qualities; on the contrary.) I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be despised by both dad and mom. It’d been my experience that in these United States, sons take it for granted that fathers are useless, absent, or malevolent; if not a cipher, the prototypical American patriarch is almost certain to be a disgruntled knight, jousting with underequipped offspring in never-ending phallocentric battle. (Perhaps I’ve revealed more of myself than intended.) Male progeny come to expect their martyred mom—a victim herself—to be waiting in the wings with smelling salts, hot towels, and tears of sympathy for her best and brightest. Yet, when Mother herself is hostile, a boy is in danger of becoming a kind of orphaned enemy of state. In Thad’s case, things were even worse, as he’d been scapegoated by his twin brother’s death; a kind of walking, wounded repository for Jack and Morgana’s displaced rage and sorrow. Maybe it would have been like that anyway, even if Jeremy Michelet had grown up to fulfill whatever lush promises were envisioned—some deep, chromosomal karma already in play, the acrimonious troika fated to beat the feckless pariah to death the way chimpanzees sometimes do their own—beloved alpha twin already well on his way to joining his folks in rapturous filial abomination, their formidably contemptuous blood united in sensual loathing of that dead-ringered excrescence called Thad Michelet, shat out nine minutes (upside down, no less, and blue in the face) after the Chosen One.

  It was with mild surprise that I found myself pumping Miriam for historic details re: the House of Michelet on the morning I drove her to LAX (a Thursday toward the end of the two-parter’s first week of filming; I was on hold till after lunch). I was trying to glean the look and feel, the fabric of Thad’s early life. It was uncharacteristic of me to have the energy for such a campaign—a welcome distraction from my usual self-involvement. Subconsciously, I suppose work had already begun on this very narrative, the writer in me instinctively gathering pigment to make a fireside portrait of the artist as, well . . . a man.

  “You met Jack Michelet at Yale?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought you met him through Thad.”

  “Uh-uh. I was a student there. He lectured.”

  “Right. And . . . so you—did you . . . interact?”

  “There was a Q and A, then we took him to dinner.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s with ‘right’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You keep saying ‘right, right’—”

  “So? I’m within my rights.”

  “You are such a dufus.” She laughed and lit a cigarette. “No, I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you’re crudely angling at. Which I hope you’re not because that would be really offensive.” Then, apropos of nothing: “Do you think they’re going to blow up the airport today?”

  “I think that’s scheduled for later in the week.”

  “Oh! I forgot to ask what you thought of Miss Clea’s big idea.” I shook my head. “The TV show—she didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s probably a surprise.”

  “What.”

  “Maybe you should hear it from her.”

  “Come on, bullshit. What is it?”

  “She wants to do a sitcom with Thad. Not a sitcom but more like a ‘dramedy’—is that a word? A smart improv thing, like Curb Your Enthusiasm. That’s what Clea said. About what it’s like to have a famous mom and dad. She and Thad would star but I’m not sure she meant they’d actually play themselves. That part sounded kind of too ‘reality show.’ But I think she thinks they could get away with having, like, famous fictional parents, with fictional vocations. I mean not, like, a big movie star and a famous writer but maybe famous in some other field. She wants to pitch it to the networks while Thad’s still here. I like it. I mean, if it’s done like Larry David, I think it could be really great.”

  After we finished shooting that day, I stopped by Clea’s dressing room.

  I mentioned hearing about the celebrity offspring project from Miriam. I was actually kind of hurt she hadn’t brought it up—we always hashed over dumb ideas together—but Clea prattled on, coolly ignoring my sulk. (All peevishness aside, I thought the idea was exploitative and trivially bogus.) She caught my mood but neither of us wanted to go there. We knew we’d been in murky waters of late. As a peace offering, I asked if she wanted to hit the gym.

  When Clea said she was having “sciatica” problems, I smugly asked, “Why don’t you just tell me you’re using again?”

  “What?” Her face contorted in a loony smile, as if I’d gone psycho.

  “Oh please! Please don’t bullshit me, Clea. It’s so pathetic. And really, really sad, OK? You’ve been doing so great.”

  “Don’t you fucking patronize me!” She gathered her energy before making an actor’s choice to commit to a lie. “I’ve been in pain, Bertie. If that’s all right with you. I’ve been to three acupuncturists and four chiropractors. I’ve had two MRIs”—I was wondering where she found the time—“and no one can figure it out, OK? I took one empirin codeine, OK? I was on a shitload of anti-inflammatories—nada. I can’t sleep, all right? You know what happens when I can’t sleep. I freak. I slur words. I can’t learn my lines, I panic attack. You’re lucky. You don’t have those kind of problems. You’re so fucking blessed. You know what? I may really want to. And I’m not saying I won’t. But at the current moment, I am not getting loaded. OK?”

  “You sure act like you are.” I wasn’t proud of proselytizing but the train had already left the station. “You need to be careful, Clea. People are gonna know. It doesn’t matter if the reason is legitimate.” (I gave her that.) “People aren’t going to give a shit. You’ve worked too fucking hard—”

  “Yeah, right!” she said, sarcastically. “It’s so artistically gratifying to sit in a chair for ninety minutes and have four pounds of latex glued to my face! Tell me, Bertie: what’s gonna happen if the world press finds out I’m taking a little codeine”—she spat the word out with supreme condescension, like it was a multivitamin—“to relieve some shitty, intractable pain. Is Katie Couric going to call, Bertie? Think they’ll want me on Dateline?”

  “Why don’t you lower your voice?”

  She kicked it up a notch instead. “Is your daddy gonna ban me from the dunking booth at the next Starwatch convention?”

  I backpedaled, without softening my message. “I’m just saying you have to start going to meetings again. And you need a better doctor,” I advised, indulging her fantasy of musculoskeletal alignment. “An orthopedist. Gita’s the total maven—she’ll find you one.” I took on a somber tone. “And you have to be careful, Clea. You’re with him all the time. Look: I really like your boyfriend but he’s a major addict-alcoholic. I know it’s hard not to use when you’re sleeping together.”

  “You know, you know, you know,” she mocked.

  “Yeah well one thing I do know is it isn’t great for you to be around that, twenty-four/seven.”

  She paused before blurting out, “You’re fucking Miriam.”

  “OK,” I said, with a dumb smile.

  She was trying to gain a little control. I couldn’t blame her for that.

  “So. How’s that going?”

  “It’s not really a steady thing. But fine. Thanks for asking.” I waited a beat before reasserting my point. “I worry about you, Clea. I don’t want you to disappear from my life.” The cliché was on the treacly side but I meant it.

  “Like, you mean, die?”

  I stuck to my tough-love guns. At the risk of sounding like a Brentwood shrink, I said, “That’s one way of disappearing.”

  “As if you would know.”

  A cryptic cheap shot—she was playing the dead-mother card.

  “There’s a lot I don’t know,” I said, Zen humble.

  My equanimity infuriated her. She raced around
the dressing room, throwing things into the duffel I’d bought her at Miu Miu. “As painful as it may be, Bertie, you are not my father—OK? You are not my father and you are definitely not my mother. You’re not Thad’s father, either.” I braced myself, knowing the worst was to come. “Do you want to know who else you’re not?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, Clea.”

  “That’s right, because nobody else will! No one has the balls—cause you’re the son of the great Perry Needham Krohn. I’ll tell you who you’re not, OK? You’re not your father—and that must really fucking hurt. That must fucking suck! And I know you’re really trying to be? With all your fab little HBO projects?” Her voice kept rising, Valley Girl style. “And of course no one—none of your pathetic, downtrodden friends—can even dream of having a project but you, huh, Bertie? I mean, God forbid that I, the loser queen, should come up with an idea and go pitch a network! Without your blessing!” She peppersprayed the room with saliva as she vented. “And I know you’re trying to climb out from under his shadow—and that’s so OK. That’s really OK! Cause you’re a sweet kid, Bertie, and I love you and you’ve done a lot for me, but you know what? I would never judge you. Never! Because maybe one day you’ll succeed. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I would so celebrate that! Maybe one day you’ll surpass the achievements of the great God and creator of Starwatch: The Fucking Navigators. Maybe you’ll have a bigger house than he does, right in Malibu! Maybe you’ll build it on stilts in the fucking water and block his view! Who am I to say? Who is the fucking loser queen to say? And who are you, Bertie? Who are you to say, and go judging my shit? Know what your problem is? You’re busy monitoring my life when you should be checking your own shit. OK? Do you think you could maybe do that, Bertie? Do you think you could maybe find the time to check your own shit? And leave my shit alone?”

  I FELT BAD ABOUT WHAT happened.