This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

“I’ll tell him to play more quietly,” said Claudia, backing away. Purple shadows were creeping up the canyon as the sun dipped behind the hills. It was growing late; they would need to leave soon if they were going to beat the traffic into town. “I’m very sorry, but I have to go now.”

  As she fled, Dolores traced her path with her cigarette. “Espero que el terremoto les asuste a todos,” Claudia heard her muttering, “y que me dejen en paz.”

  Entering through the front door, Claudia heard Jeremy swearing under his breath. “I need help,” he called, at the sound of her footsteps.

  He was wrestling with his painting, which had jumped off the living room wall and lodged itself face down across the couch and coffee table. Of course. They had hung the artwork poorly. Claudia had known this even as they put it up three years earlier; perhaps it was antipathy for the unwieldy thing that had kept her mouth shut when Jeremy was fumbling with molly bolts. Claudia had always thought that the handyman gene was innate in men until she met her husband, in whose hands a hammer and nails were as useless as a mascara wand and eyelash curler. Her own skills were by no means expert—gleaned from afternoons working in her father’s hardware stores, mostly—but somehow they’d struck an unspoken bargain that in this marriage she would be the fix-it girl while he took care of bills and cooking. Except for that painting. When it came to hanging that painting, she’d let him take the lead, and he’d botched it.

  As she watched, Jeremy staggered backward under the weight of it and looked balefully at her. “Am I entertaining you?”

  “Absolutely. Fantastic show. I give it two thumbs up.” But she ran forward and grabbed the other edge, and together they righted the picture and lifted it back onto its nail. The enormous portrait—the only notable possession that Jeremy had brought to their marriage—was a violent field of greens, slashes of paint in hues of puce and fern and kelly, and in the very center a splintering male torso, naked and disembodied, rendered in pulsating shades of scarlet. The piece was entitled Beautiful Boy, and the naked Boy was Jeremy himself: Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend, Aoki, an artist of repute in New York, had painted it at the height of Jeremy’s success as the lead singer for the (now-defunct) indie rock darlings This Invisible Spot. When she first met Jeremy, the fact that he had been a high-profile artist’s favorite subject had given Claudia a kind of thrill—as if the glamour might rub off on her by sheer proximity—but her enthusiasm for the portrait quickly wore thin. She found herself comparing herself, unfavorably, to the notorious ex-girlfriend; she spent late nights Googling the names Jeremy and Aoki and agonizing over the fawning Village Voice profiles and eventually had to place herself on a permanent Aoki blackout, both for her own sanity and the good of their burgeoning relationship. Since their wedding, Aoki’s name had rarely come up, and Claudia had managed, through impressive self-restraint, to immediately discard any magazine or newspaper that threatened to mention her, thereby erasing the woman’s existence from her life entirely. Except for that painting. She remained plagued by its existence—not just its artistic merits (she’d never much liked abstract art) or that, at eight feet across and six feet high, it completely dominated their living room, but also, secretly, by the fact that it was physical proof of the elusive and possibly more exciting life that Jeremy had led before he met Claudia. Troubling evidence that he might, once, have been just as happy without her.

  Even the adjacent wall of family photographs that they had selected and framed and hung as a kind of counterbalance to the presence of Aoki were completely dwarfed beside that painting. A fading snapshot of Claudia’s parents back in Wisconsin, positioned in front of a smoking barbecue packed with grill-hatched wieners. A Sears studio portrait of her older sister’s kids, unnaturally posed with teddy bears that did not belong to them. An otherworldly black-and-white photograph of Jeremy’s mother, Jillian, her face stretched thin and luminescent over slashing cheekbones—the most haunting of a set of pictures that Jillian’s photographer boyfriend had taken after her cancer diagnosis, a photo series Jillian had casually referred to as “the last sitting.”

  The biggest photograph, the one right in the middle, was their wedding portrait, the one with Claudia—her freckles masked by makeup and her brown curls for once tamed into something shiny and smooth (she had paid $200 for that privilege and never managed to replicate it)—giggling so hard she’s slipping sideways in Jeremy’s arms. In the photo, she looks like she’s about to explode out of her white lace dress, her broad shoulders offended by the delicate fabric she has bound them in. Next to her, Jeremy has a sly, secretive grin, most likely due to having just poked Claudia in the side to make her laugh. He is wearing an eye-popping polka-dot bow tie and Converse with his tuxedo, a wardrobe choice that Claudia had willingly endorsed at the time but now somewhat regretted. During the frenzied months preceding the wedding, Jeremy had joked frequently about “buying their shares in the wedding industrial complex,” and despite her agreement in principle—hadn’t she suggested that they ask for donations to a breast cancer charity rather than crystal from Bloomingdale’s? Hadn’t she nixed the priest in favor of Jeremy’s Universal Life Church–ordained godfather?—the closer they got to the ceremony the more she found that these jabs upset her, as if he wasn’t taking any of this seriously. And so, at the altar, she had bitten her lip, waiting for the tradition-mocking surprise she was sure he had prepared for their vows. Instead, she had been shocked by how serious he had suddenly become, how achingly raw. “You took care of me when I needed it the most,” he told her, his eyes wet, his throat closed with emotion. “I can think of nothing that will make me happier than to spend the rest of my life taking care of you too.”

  Now, as Jeremy fiddled with the painting, adjusting its tilt, Claudia flipped on the television. The newscasters on every station were speaking in stiff baritones to inflate the urgency of the anticlimactic news they were conveying. A biggish quake but not catastrophically big, 5.8 on the Richter scale, they said. No deaths reported, no injuries, not even a collapsed building. She scanned the channels, hunting for wreckage or panic in the streets, but the worst the news crews could locate was a wall of old bricks that had fallen off the side of an automotive dealership downtown. Pedestrians were walking around the pile in an orderly fashion, talking on cellphones. Sanity had reigned, despite the game doomsday face of the on-the-street reporter.

  She picked up a copy of Entertainment Weekly that had slid off the coffee table to the floor. It was still folded open to the review of her film, and her eye immediately dropped to the summary paragraph, which she’d read so many times today that she nearly had it memorized:

  Spare Parts’ disaffected twenty-somethings tackle their relationship malaise with hilariously blunt banter and a few unexpected narrative turns, lifting this refreshing independent film clear of your standard romantic comedy clichés. Claudia Munger’s witty prose and eye for the absurd hint at a gimlet-eyed auteur with a promising future.

  Claudia glanced at the wall clock—it was past six. She jumped up. “We’re going to be late to the premiere!”

  Jeremy jerked back from the painting, which still listed to one side. “Already? Give me five minutes,” he said, and then paused to examine her. “You’re wearing the dress I gave you for Christmas.”

  She looked down at the cocktail dress, a draped purple silk with a daring neckline that had to be held in place with double-stick tape. “Is it overkill?”

  “No. You look amazing. I’ll wear my suit,” he said, “so we can match.”

  But Claudia had already started to second-guess herself. “Maybe by dressing up too much, I’ll jinx it,” she said. “No one will show up, and then I’ll look ridiculous standing around in a sexy cocktail dress in a movie theater all by myself.”

  Jeremy laughed. “Everyone shows up when there’s free booze involved. Stop worrying. You’re going to be huge.”

  Claudia ducked her head to hide her smile, letting her ego momentarily pave a thoroughfare over premiere-night jitters. Ev
en at her most self-assured, she didn’t like to speak her hopes out loud; the one, say, where her modest independent film became a blockbuster, leading the way to a bigger film, and then another, a whole career’s worth, until eventually her name actually meant something to audiences and industry alike. Carter, her agent, seemed to think this was already a done deal, and signs so far had been positive—the effusive meetings with studio executives, the deal on the table for her next script, the glowing advance reviews for her film. Up ahead, just within reach, she could see the red carpet at Cannes, the appearance on Charlie Rose, the Oscar nominations, the million-dollar paydays, and the irrevocable personal validation that would come with that coveted gilded seal from Hollywood’s elite. Maybe only a handful of directors could claim this kind of career, but on days like today, she believed she was capable of being one of them.

  “There’s a lot riding on this,” she said. “Can you blame me for being jittery?”

  “Well, I say it’s your premiere. Wear whatever you want and don’t worry about it.”

  He leaned in, and she felt his lips grazing her hair. “This is a big deal,” she muttered into the warm flesh of his shoulder, still slightly tacky from their kitchen encounter.

  “Of course it’s a big deal,” he said. “It’s the beginning.”

  She squirmed away from him and examined herself in the mirror over the fireplace: Curls were already springing free from her hair clips and there was a smudge of dust across the front of her skirt. The girl in the mirror was all soft cheeks and wide doe eyes, the features of an overgrown baby, someone you might want to cuddle with but not someone you would take seriously as a gimlet-eyed auteur. She stared hard, trying to spy this woman. Instead, she saw a sporty, anxious elf.

  “You look great,” Jeremy said, behind her. “Don’t-fuck-with-the-director great.”

  She turned back to Jeremy. “Wear the suit,” she said. “And hurry.”

  They followed klieg lights across the city, their excitement growing as they drove toward the beams, only to discover, once they drew closer, that the lights were actually parked in front of a new sushi restaurant where a string of valets attended to a parade of luxury SUVs. Claudia’s premiere, located at an aging movie theater a few blocks farther west, merited no light display, no tabloid television reporters, no screaming fans lined up for autographs, no limousines triple-parked in the street. Still, there was a red carpet flung across the sidewalk and a cluster of photographers standing by a logo wall; a table of pretty young publicists was handing out will-call tickets to a line of guests. Someone had arranged a brace of groomed shrubs at the foot of the carpet, and metal crowd-control barriers had been set up to keep out the desultory riffraff. A cluster of anonymous industry insider types, mostly in jeans or suits fresh from work, stood schmoozing outside the theater entrance. The atmosphere outside the theater crackled with anticipation and possibility, and the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard clotted as passing drivers slowed in the hopes of spotting Someone Significant.

  Frankly, Claudia was grateful that there was a premiere at all. These days, with Hollywood still reverberating from last winter’s strike, the lavish parties were limited strictly to lent–pole films with hundred-million-dollar marketing budgets. Claudia’s was a low-budget movie with a small distributor—no Angelina or Jennifer or Will in a lead role, just an ensemble cast of semirecognizable indie-cinema stalwarts and television actresses. But her distributors, buoyed by advance reviews and a handful of Sundance awards and smelling the possibility of a breakout hit (“The next Juno,” Claudia had heard them say more than once, in recent weeks, occasionally swapping in Lost in Translation or Garden State), had ponied up the money for the free cocktails and the Mediterranean buffet and the rented carpet, so here she was, at her very own Hollywood premiere. Having attended so many of these events as a guest, where officious publicists typically funneled her straight past the red carpet toward the “nobody of importance” entrance, she found it hard to accept that this time the press line was waiting for her.

  They parked a few blocks away and walked back toward the theater. Claudia’s phone chimed persistently as congratulatory text messages and voice mails arrived from her parents and older sister back in Michigan, who had attended the Sundance festival in January but were forgoing the premiere. The evening air was soupy with late-July humidity; sweat dripped down the nape of her neck as they approached the red carpet. She reached out for Jeremy’s hand, and Jeremy gripped hers back with a damp palm. By now, she could see her investors waving at her, the publicists smiling toothily in her direction. For a brief moment, as she stepped into the turning crowd, she remembered the sensation of walking down the aisle at her wedding, of a hundred eyes turned in her direction and the realization that this one day was inviolably hers; then she and Jeremy were swallowed up by the heat-seeking crowd, which had pinpointed Claudia as tonight’s fuel source. There was her producer, grabbing her in a bear hug; and the stars of her film, doing interviews with a reporter from a film magazine; and a clutch of her friends, smiling from the sidelines as the flashes popped off around her. The rest was a blur, just as her wedding had been three years earlier: a series of high-voltage encounters, each spinning off from the last, each one landing her at the next, as little by little she made her way across the red carpet and into the lobby and down the aisle of the theater; until finally she found herself sitting in a seat in the center of a crowded room as the lights went down and her own name floated up on the screen in four-foot-high letters: Written and directed by Claudia Munger.

  The crowd applauded warmly; a few crew members whooped in the back of the room. As the opening sequences spun across the screen, Claudia found herself suppressing a hiccup of hysteria: It was all so bizarrely surreal. Really, if you’d told the other ninety-two members of Claudia’s graduating class at Mantanka Senior High that their classmate would someday become a filmmaker who would attend her Hollywood premiere accompanied by her famous-on-college-radio husband, they would have laughed in your face. Not just because people in Mantanka didn’t tend to stray far from the confines of Kallington County, but because Claudia was not the likeliest candidate for even minor celebrity. Prematurely tall, slightly plump, and suffering from a vicious overbite (the result of a childhood car accident), adolescent Claudia had suffered as the target of the mean girls in her class, a gaggle of acid-jeans-wearing, Whitesnake-listening, Sun-In-lightened featherbrains who used her as the butt of every joke. Claude the Clod. The torturous orthodontic headgear she wore throughout her junior and senior years—a byzantine contraption that encased her entire head in reflective steel—didn’t help matters. Crippled by self-consciousness, Claudia spent the better part of high school locked in her bedroom, losing herself in classic movies that she watched on the VCR her parents had given her to compensate for their guilt about her dentistry.

  But her orthodontist knew what he was doing. By the time she arrived at university, as far from Mantanka as she could imagine—which, at that point, was still only Madison—Claudia had lost the extra weight and the oral accessories and had, in their place, a perfect set of gleaming white teeth and a new understanding about the power of reinvention. She dyed her hair black, got a lizard tattoo on her ankle, and immersed herself in Alterna-Culture (Lite Version). What she wanted to be, she eventually decided, was a filmmaker. Not an actress—she didn’t have that theatrical bent, and she would never be mistaken as the prettiest girl in the room—but the person behind the camera, the one who controlled what you saw on the screen. The visionary. To imagine an entire world and then just will it into being: That was power.

  She’d thrown herself into college with the thrilled abandon of a prisoner released from long incarceration, joining every college film club she could imagine, becoming the president of the Cinema Society and the director of the university’s StudentTV and finishing with a straight-A transcript that qualified her for the UCLA film program—even if it didn’t get her the scholarship she needed to afford school. That
she managed by living with her parents for two torturous years after college, working three jobs, and saving every cent until she could climb on a plane for Los Angeles with enough money in her pocket to pay for subsidized housing and a steady diet of burritos.

  By any measure, her early years in Los Angeles were a success, a blur of well-received student films and house parties and love affairs with interesting if generally unavailable guys. But at the center of every accomplishment was always the fear that this Claudia, the attractive ambitious confident one, was somehow a fraud—that the real Claudia was the brace-wearing outcast hiding in her bedroom back in Mantanka. Hollywood was a town built on judgment—your body, your finances, your credentials, all were constantly on parade—and there were moments when she felt she couldn’t bear the scrutiny: She was sure that if they really looked hard she would inevitably come up short. Even after she finished film school with a student Oscar for her experimental short and entered into a coveted (if humiliating) job as assistant to a narcissistic director of blockbuster supernatural thrillers, she felt she didn’t quite belong here in the land of bluster and self-righteousness. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for a life of perpetual anxiety.

  Still, she churned out three earnest little scripts, passion projects that because of their so-very-edgy subject matter (prostitutes in North Dakota; suburban parents who murder their kids; a nonlinear drug addiction redemption story) were doomed never to be made. Her film-school friends told her she was crazy to be writing this sort of dark, arty fare. “Are you trying to defeat yourself? Do a broad comedy, get yourself established with the studios, and then go for the fringe indie stuff,” her best friend, Esme, advised her. But she wanted to be successful and an artist; was that so unrealistic?

  By the time her doctor diagnosed her with an ulcer, she had shown the drug-addiction script to a half-dozen film finance companies and received vaguely positive responses, a handful of rewrite suggestions, but no offers. They are trying to kill me with encouragement, she realized. Burned out, dead broke, and still single, she seriously began to consider packing it all in and going back to Wisconsin. Maybe the life that awaited her there—a conventional sort of job, marriage, kids, the whole middle-America Apple Pie package—wasn’t so bad after all. At least she wouldn’t be living a life of incessant rejection.