The Continuity Girl

by Leah McLaren

  Early the next morning Meredith and Irma took the tube together all the way up to Kewkesbury Park. Meredith had implored her mother to be silent as she went over her notes for the upcoming day. Irma read the ads and hummed to herself maddeningly the entire way. Meredith wondered why Irma hadn’t thought ahead and brought a book. For all her mother’s literary accolades, Meredith had rarely, if ever, seen her concentrate long enough to read anything more than the captions in the social pages of Tatler.

  And speaking of concentration, Meredith had to focus on this script or she was going to be completely behind once the day started. It promised to be a long one. They had four scenes to get through, one of which was a closed-set love scene between Swain and her costar, a supple, young, semi-closeted gay actor from New Zealand who played the inspector. She wouldn’t be surprised if they went into overtime, which could mean being on set for as long as sixteen hours straight. She hoped against hope her mother wasn’t planning to hang around all day, but didn’t say so. Meredith couldn’t handle an argument this early in the morning.

  On set, it was the usual post-weekend chaos. Grips and sound technicians charged back and forth carrying spools of wire, dollies and crane weights. Meredith took Irma by the arm and gave her a cursory tour. She was careful to point out every mechanical obstacle on the floor in case Irma tripped and fell and broke her hip or something (which, Meredith thought darkly, would be just like her). When they reached the monitor station and the big black folding chair with the word DIRECTOR stitched across the back, Irma stopped.

  “Is this where you sit, Moo?”

  “No, Mother, that’s where the director sits. I would have thought that would be obvious.”

  Her mother’s face froze and then fell as if smacked. Meredith felt a familiar hand squeezing her guts.

  “Well, it is obvious. I only meant, isn’t this near where you sit? Since, isn’t it your job to sit with the director all day?”

  “Yes, Mother, sorry. It is near where I sit.” Her irritation softened into a feeling of embarrassed gratitude for Irma’s interest in her job. How surprising her mother would remember something like that. Especially when she hadn’t remembered Meredith’s ninth birthday...or her twelfth. Or her twenty-fourth.

  “Listen, Mum, I’m going to take you over to the tea cart and get you a cup of tea, and then I have to meet with the director and go over the day’s schedule. Do you think you’ll be okay on your own for a bit?”

  “Of course, dear. You know I’m famously independent.”

  “I don’t care if he doesn’t have a tri-band connection. My question is, where the hell is he? Do you hear me, Andrea? This is completely unfucking-acceptable. He was supposed to be here by now, and now they’re saying we start shooting the first scene in half an hour, which means—and I know you know what it means but let me vent anyway, would you?—Dr. Shellman says it’s good to let my emotions surface—which means I’ll be busy all day long and won’t have a free second until tonight, by which time I’ll be completely exhausted and need a drink. Did you manage to find any of that organic French vodka I asked for, by the way? That was at least three days ago, you know.... No, I told you, I read about it in Harpers & Queen not Harper’s Bazaar. Of course I don’t know what issue. Do you think I write down every fucking issue number of every fucking magazine I happen to read something in? Anyway, that is not the point. The point is, I am flying the man over here at my own expense and he isn’t here yet. Do you know if he even got on the plane in—Where was he flying from again? Right. Well, at least there’s that. Have you made sure the plane didn’t crash? Or get rerouted? Or—I don’t fucking know—hijacked? Could the plane have been hijacked? Have you made absolutely sure? Well then, how can you be sure? How can you not know? He was supposed to be here OVER TWO HOURS AGO.”

  As she reached the pinnacle of her tantrum Swain’s voice snagged and cracked into a sob. The makeup girl buried her face in her hands as Swain—half-dressed in bloomers, sports bra and petticoat—collapsed into a flood of tears that sent her eyeliner streaming down her face. Mish took a box of Kleenex from the shelf and placed it on Swain’s lap, but the actress shook her head and pushed it to the floor.

  “Silk hankies,” whispered the makeup girl, producing one from her pocket and handing it to Swain. “Better for dry skin.”

  Mish settled into restitching a bit of lace on the bottom of the petticoat. Now that Swain would need her makeup redone, there seemed no point in hurrying. Swain had stopped crying and was speaking into her cell in a hushed, girlish voice.

  “I know, I know. It’s just these hormones. I think they’re making me really...I don’t know...something like that. And this movie. I just feel so lonely all the time. I just want to go back to L.A. and see Joel and Evie. I miss them so much. Are you sure we can’t get around those silly quarantine rules? Yeah, I know. Oh, thanks. Oh, honey, you’re too sweet. Do you really think so? Really? I mean really really really?” Swain glanced up at Mish and the makeup artist and frowned. “Look, hon, I’ve got to go. They want me on set soon and we have some fiddling to do. Okay, I will. I promise. ’Kay, bye.”

  * * *

  Two hours later the crew was still setting up for the first shot. It was a night scene, so all the windows had to be draped from the outside. The lighting crew was moving a cherry picker around in the outside garden, attempting to nail blackout blankets into the stone facade of the house. This upset the owner, who threatened to shut down production should another nail penetrate his ancestral masonry.

  “As the custodian for the next generation, I must insist you stop that immediately,” he implored the technicians, who shrugged at him mutely as if their headsets prevented them from communicating with anyone other than one another.

  Eventually, the crew were forced instead to take down the blankets and tape black plastic garbage bags over the windows. By this time the cherry picker was stuck in the mud and had to be towed out with the help of a van, which caused the old man to begin howling again, this time in defense of his historic perennial beds. Luckily Richard Glass was as smooth as his name. Within moments of chatting at the tea cart, the poor old earl was soothed.

  “That fellow certainly has a way with people, doesn’t he?” Irma said, sipping her tea, looking at Richard.

  Meredith shot her mother a withering glance that was meant as a silent indicator that she really ought to stop talking about the director immediately in case anyone overheard her.

  “So what’s the story, then? Is he single? What’s his relationship history?”

  “I have no idea, Mother. All I know is he directed a couple of BBC literary adaptations.”

  “Ooh, really? I love those. He didn’t direct anything by Jane Austen, did he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Prime Suspect?”

  “I’m pretty sure not.”

  “Love in a Cold Climate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Forsyte Saga?”

  Meredith turned to her mother in a state of irritated disbelief. “If you’re trying to make me lose my mind at work, you’re doing a good job.”

  “Well, darling, I was just trying to—”

  Thankfully Mish whizzed over to where they were standing. Her arms were filled with half a dozen pairs of lace-up vintage boots.

  “Can you believe none of them fit her properly? Apparently the Victorians didn’t make half-sizes.”

  “Michelle, darling, how marvellous to see you again!” Irma cried, kissing Mish on each cheek.

  “And you as well, Irma. Meredith mentioned you might come for a visit. You’re looking fabulous. Love the hat.”

  Irma put a hand to her cheek and smiled. Not for the first time, Meredith noted that flattery worked on her like beef jerky on a golden retriever.

  “So did you get that e-mail from Elle?” asked Mish.

  “About what? I haven’t checked mine for a couple of days.”

  “Her little sister is getting married.”
<
br />   “Nicky? You’re kidding. To whom?”

  “Some doctor guy named Michael she met at Elle’s tennis club.”

  “She actually met someone there?”

  “I think she actually knew him vaguely from high school or something. Or Elle did—it wasn’t clear from the e-mail. But anyway, the cool thing is they’re having a really big wedding in Italy in July and we’re both invited.”

  “That’s cool. Where in Italy?”

  “Not sure. Apparently his family has a holiday place but they’re having it at a hotel in Florence. So now it’s a challenge.”

  “How so?”

  “For us to find hot dates by then.”

  Meredith snorted. “Speak for yourself. I’m not actually dating, remember?”

  “Oh, right, you’re more like...genes shopping.”

  “Exactly.” Meredith smacked her lips in a wicked way. “You might even say I’m looking for the perfect fit.” This cracked them up so badly they failed to notice that Irma had slipped away. But before long Meredith felt a creeping anxiety, as though she had forgotten something, and swiveled her head around to see her mother standing half-concealed behind a huge rack of lights, deep in conversation with (who else?) Richard Glass.

  “Oh God. I’d better go separate them before she decides to show him her scorpion tattoo.”

  “Your mother has a tattoo? Wicked.”

  Meredith started over, but Mish grabbed the sleeve of her cardigan and tugged her back. “Oh, just leave them. She’s fine. She’s hilarious. You’re way more bothered by her than anyone else is.”

  Meredith emitted a closed-mouth growl.

  “Which is perfectly natural, since you’re her daughter and it’s your job to be insanely irritated by every single thing about her. Besides, I want to talk about this wedding thing. Do you think I should invite the key grip?”

  Meredith reached for a baby carrot on the snack cart but then decided against it. She had read somewhere recently that baby carrots were made from the shaved-down innards of blackened, rotting full-size carrots. It made sense. How could they all be the same shape like that? She took a broccoli floret instead.

  “Depends. Where do you stand at this point? Has he asked you out?”

  “No. But he rubbed against me in the lunch line,” said Mish.

  Meredith sniffed the broccoli. It smelled like vegan fart. “So see how it goes. And try not to fast-forward.” Fast-forwarding was their private term for the dangerous habit of fantasizing futuristic relationship utopias with a person you’d just met.

  “Who me? Fast-forward? It’s not like I’ve picked out our china pattern or anything.” She shrugged. “I’ve always preferred stoneware anyway. It’s more modern.”

  Meredith stared at her with half-amused disapproval.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s been so long since I had hopes, I doubt I’d have the muscle to raise them if I did.” Her cell phone rang. She flipped it open and looked at the screen. “Her Highness calls. I better get back to the wardrobe trailer and start cramming the wench into her corset,” she said, and rushed off.

  Meredith could not believe her mother was still talking to Richard. He leaned down and whispered something in her ear and they erupted into laughter. What on earth could they be on about? She hoped beyond hope it had nothing to do with her, though she probably needn’t have worried. Her mother almost never spoke about her to other people. Half the time when she met new acquaintances of her mother’s they seemed surprised to find she had a daughter at all.

  While it provided Meredith with some relief to know her mother didn’t spend hours fretting over the dormant state of her personal life (the way so many other mothers with unmarried daughters did), it also filled her with childish resentment. As in all matters concerning her mother, Meredith felt she was on the receiving end of far too much or not nearly enough. With Irma there simply was no in-between.

  She sat down, uncapped her pen, opened up her continuity log and began revising the day’s schedule to account for the delay. But before she could make a single note, she was interrupted by Richard.

  “Meredith! Put down that binder and come over here for a moment and explain yourself. Why on earth didn’t you tell me your mother was a famous poet?”

  They’d offered to put him up somewhere fancier—price, the movie star’s assistant had said, was not an issue—but he had requested Hazlitt’s, a small hotel on Frith Street just off Soho Square. He liked its cockeyed charm, and he had chosen to stay here again because it was located in one of the only areas of the city he knew his way around.

  London had always seemed an impossible tangle of roundabouts and hidden alleyways and he needed all the help he could get. At least, that’s what he had tried to tell himself. But as soon as he had opened the heavy blue-painted door and spoken to the tiny Scottish girl at the front desk, the past had charged into the present, bellowing like an uninvited drunk. This is where they had stayed on their honeymoon.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago when he had made the reservation, but as the girl led him up the ancient staircase to his fourth-floor room—the very same room he had stayed in before—he was overwhelmed by how little had changed. He tipped the girl and closed the door. Not a seam on the upholstery was different. This was one of the things he loved about the English: their inherent understanding of the comforts of permanence. It appealed to his sentimental side, the part of him that wanted everything to stay the same forever and ever. But as he looked at the crooked little room with its lopsided floor and canopy bed, he was reminded only of how astonishingly his life had changed since the last time he stayed here.

  He picked up the phone and dialed home. Voice mail picked up. It was a new message recorded by Livvy in her most serious voice. “Hello. You have reached the Veil household. Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

  He left a short message for Livvy saying he missed her, and asking her to remind Katia, the occasional housekeeper, that the roofers would be coming by on Wednesday afternoon. Then he unlaced his shoes and sank down on the bed. Fatigue overwhelmed him and he lay back, feet still on the floor, remembering the last time he was in this room.

  He had spent the day at a conference at a hotel in Earls Court while she had wandered the Tate alone. He imagined her now, walking from white room to white room staring apprehensively at the Warhols and the Bacons. For all her type-A perfectionism as a doctor, she had never been particularly independent and resented having to do even the smallest things alone, often appealing to him to accompany her to the corner store to buy milk. When they met back at the hotel at the end of the day to dress for dinner, she was snippy with him, asking about his day in a voice that suggested she was interested in anything but. It was all so transparent and predictable. He found himself irritated by her insecurity and childish resentment, but resisted accusing her of any of these things and turned the subject around to her day instead. At first she was shruggish and quiet, but once they were out, with an open bottle of wine on the table, she relaxed and described to him the inside of the main room of the gallery—an industrial space so inconceivably huge, she said, it was like being in TV. And he loved her again—just like that.

  It had always been that way between them: jagged, never easy, but rewarding all the same. Like hopping across an ever-widening river on a series of wobbly rocks. But that didn’t seem quite right. He would have to think of a better metaphor. Maybe if he had time on this trip he would take a notebook to a restaurant and write for an afternoon. It had been ages since he’d written a word—about anything other than fertility-related issues, that is—and the thought of attempting it again filled him with a kind of queasy longing. All through his wife’s illness he had promised himself that when she died he would start writing again for pleasure, but somehow that hadn’t happened.

  Here, in this very room, he and Debra had first begun trying for a baby. Other people might have thought of it as newlywed sex, but Debra was far too prag
matic for that. Everything with her was an efficient means to a desired result. But making a baby, they soon found out, was not as easy or straightforward as other tangible, attainable things in life. When things did not transpire as planned in the first year of marriage, there were clinics to be visited and tests to be taken. At first Debra was convinced the problem was her own, and while Joe decried this suggestion out loud, privately he agreed. She hungered for a baby so badly, it seemed impossible that her state of wanting would ever end. Somehow her fears and frantic desire had conspired to make her infertile.

  What a surprise it was, then, to find out the problem lay with him. A twenty-seven-year-old man (Debra was a few years older), just embarking on his graduate studies with a new wife, and yet he couldn’t perform this most basic of marital chores. Something in the combination of them both proved toxic. Her womb, they had been told at the time, was a “hostile environment” for his sluggish sperm. The exact cause could not be determined, the doctors said. The only certainty seemed that pregnancy was impossible. He quit social smoking, beer and red meat, but after months of trying, nothing gave. He was, as they say, shooting blanks, a Jaffa orange—for all intents and biological purposes, more gelding than stallion. Ashamed that he was unable to give his wife what she wanted so terribly, Joe agreed to adoption as soon as they could afford it.

  A year and twenty thousand dollars of her parents’ money later, they were flying home from Cambodia with Livvy, a serene, black-eyed Buddha of a baby. That was eighteen years ago. In the fall she would enter university and major in literature. It seemed incredible to Joe that he and Debra—two head-down scientists—could have raised such an artsy, free-spirited girl. All he could do now was offer guidance and refuge.

  It was Livvy who had inspired Joe in choosing his specialty. While Debra was on maternity leave, Joe changed his major from oncology to fertility. If he couldn’t get his own wife pregnant, the least he could do was help some other women achieve the pregnancies they so desperately desired.

  What a bitter irony it had been when cancer killed Debra a decade and a half later. At the time he had felt like a failure not only as a husband but as a doctor. But rather than sending him into a downward spiral, this blackness spurred him forward. When Debra died, Joe did the opposite of fall apart. Instead, he became a super--functioning baby-maker and miracle worker. He submerged himself in other work—research, papers, lectures, conferences, book contracts, office hours and a doubled patient load—and in the midst of it he barely found time to spend an hour with Livvy (by this point an emotionally remote adolescent) in the evening before returning to the office. His life felt full to bursting and yet at the same time devoid of meaning. The thought of taking on another project seemed im-possible. All his friends had expected him to collapse for a time after Debra died—that’s what people were supposed to do, after all, wasn’t it? Retreat to the country and wound-lick for six months while keeping regular phone appointments with a psychologist who implored one to “not be afraid to let it all out.” Friends had offered their cottages and Hawaiian time-shares, presuming that what he needed was an escape. But instead, he’d stayed in Toronto, in the same semidetached Victorian in Parkdale they had bought with help from Debra’s parents the year Livvy arrived. He had thrown himself into his research—something he had always been somewhat ambivalent about before, preferring instead the humane routine of the clinic.