Neighbors

by Danielle Steel

  “Thanks very much for taking my call,” Meredith said breezily, feeling more like herself than a diva. “I’m Meredith White, Julia Price’s grandmother. I’m in town for a few days, I’d like to get in touch with her, and I don’t have her number.” She was simple and direct and the agent was smart enough to recognize the real deal.

  “Good Lord!” she said. “It really is you. I thought it might be a joke. It’s an honor to speak to you. I’d forgotten that you’re her grandmother, although it’s in our press kit on her somewhere. I’ll get you her number right away.” She went off the line and was back in seconds. “If you have trouble reaching her, and need us to get in touch, let me know. You know how kids are these days, it’s all text, they don’t pick up their phones.” Meredith hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll give you her email address too,” which she did, and Meredith thanked her warmly. It had been a friendly welcome to the Hollywood scene, and the gatekeepers of Julia’s career. She liked the sound of her agent. She seemed young, energetic, and engaged.

  After what Sarah Gross said, when Meredith called Julia’s number a few minutes later, she expected it to go straight to voicemail. Instead, a sexy young voice answered, which Meredith thought was a recording at first, and she was waiting for the ding so she could leave a message. But instead, Julia said hello again and Meredith was flustered when she answered.

  “Julia? Is that you?” she asked. “It’s your grandmother. I’ve wanted to get in touch with you for ages.” She didn’t know what else to say for openers, but it was true.

  “Grandma?” She only had one since Meredith knew Kendall’s mother-in-law had passed away.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Meredith said, feeling silly. It was odd dropping into her granddaughter’s life nine years later. “I’ve been following your career, and I’ve watched everything I could lay hands on. You’re terrific, and I wanted to tell you that myself.”

  “Where are you? In San Francisco?” She sounded excited and thrilled to hear from her.

  “No, I’m in L.A., so I wanted to call you while I’m here.” She didn’t tell her that she was her sole reason for the trip, so as not to pressure her. “I was hoping we could get together if you’re not too busy.”

  “I’d love it! Of course I’m not too busy. Where are you?”

  “The Beverly Hills Hotel.” Meredith felt a little overwhelmed herself by the warm reaction.

  “Can I come now? I’ve wanted to call you, but Mom says you never talk to anyone, so I didn’t want to intrude on you.”

  “I’m here to see you,” Meredith said honestly. “Come on over.” She couldn’t believe how easy it had been. It felt meant to be.

  “I live in West Hollywood. I’ll grab an Uber and be there in fifteen minutes. I’m so happy you called me.”

  “So am I. See you soon.” When they hung up, Meredith looked in the mirror. Her still blondish hair made her look younger, but she felt suddenly ancient. She wondered if she should change her clothes or try to look elegant. She was wearing jeans, a black cashmere sweater, and Hermès loafers. She hadn’t expected to see her so soon. There was no time to get dressed now, and play the grande dame, and she didn’t want to anyway. She wanted to be real, down-to-earth, and accessible to Julia.

  She kept walking around the bungalow nervously, and set out some nuts and snacks and petit fours that the hotel had sent her. She was still fussing and had brushed her hair twice and put on lipstick, when the doorbell rang. Meredith opened it, and there was her spectacularly beautiful, tall, sexy granddaughter with a mane of red hair and no makeup, wearing almost the same thing she was, except that she was wearing sneakers instead of loafers. And before Meredith could say anything, Julia was hugging her and they were both crying. It was more emotional than either of them had expected, and felt as though they had seen each other yesterday.

  “I still have all the dolls you gave me. I kept them. And I wanted you to know that I’m an actress now too, or trying to be.”

  “And doing a damn fine job of it too. I loved you in the second series you did.”

  “We’re shooting another season and they’re going to make my part bigger.” There was so much to say and nearly nine years to cover. Meredith took out her file and showed her all the articles she had collected, and Julia looked deeply touched. She was staring at her grandmother. “You look the same.”

  “No, I don’t,” Meredith denied it, “but thank you. I’m sorry we haven’t talked in so long.”

  “I know, me too.”

  “It’s my fault.” Meredith took responsibility for it, but Julia knew better.

  “No, it’s not. Not entirely. It’s Mom. She makes everything so difficult. Nothing is ever a straight line with her. It has to be complicated and convoluted and dark, and you have to jump through hoops of fire to get to her. That’s why I’m here. I just couldn’t do it at home anymore. She hates my wanting to be an actress. She hates everything to do with Hollywood. Grampa got me a few jobs, and she had a fit at him. He does what he wants anyway. My dad is an angel, I don’t know how he deals with her. She overthinks everything, and she’s so bitter. It’s sad. She’s poisoned our relationship,” Julia confided in her. It was similar to what Meredith had experienced with Kendall.

  “She hardly ever returns my calls,” Meredith admitted. “She goes for months without calling me. She’s still angry about things that happened fifteen years ago, or when she was a little girl. For some reason, after he was gone, she decided that I loved her brother more than I loved her. It’s hard to cut through all that and have a connection with her. I just let her call me when she wants to, and call her occasionally and hope for the best. But I lost you in all that,” Meredith said sadly.

  “I told her I wanted to see you when I came out here, and she acted as though I was abandoning her. I think underneath that ice-cold exterior, she’s a very jealous person. She’s pissed that I’m out here and enjoying it. She keeps telling me that I’m just like you, as though that’s a crime. It’s a compliment.” Julia smiled at her. “Grampa says you’re the greatest actress that ever lived, and it’s a tragedy that you stopped working. My dream is to be in a picture with you one day,” she blurted out, and Meredith knew that was never going to happen, but she wanted to know all about Julia now, and it was comforting to know that she had the same kind of problems with Kendall.

  “She blamed me for our divorce, and I wasn’t the one who left, your grandfather did. And she blamed me for being too hard on Scott, when your uncle died.” It was odd to think of Justin that way, since he had only been fourteen at the time, but he was Julia’s uncle.

  “I don’t know,” Julia said. “Mom’s been angry all her life, and my dad is so patient with her. He’s the one who let me come out here, and she was furious with him. She says she hated Hollywood growing up, and she wants nothing to do with it now.”

  “I was gone a lot then, but Scott and I took turns going on location, so one of us was always with her. She’s forgotten that.”

  “She has selective memory about everything, and nothing is ever her fault, although I have to admit, we were talking about you a couple of years ago, and I asked why she didn’t make an effort to reconnect with you, and she said it was too late, she had been terrible to you, and you can’t repair that.”

  “Oh my God, she said that?” Julia nodded, and helped herself to a petit four. “I’m amazed.”

  “She’d rather be miserable and angry than fix anything. She’s still furious with me for being out here. She considers it the ultimate betrayal, that I’m not in New York, still in college and dating who she wants me to, her friends’ sons. I would die of boredom, and that’s not me. So now she never calls me. And sounds like an iceberg when I call her.”

  “She forgets that she did the same thing.” Meredith smiled nostalgically. “She dropped out of college after she and your father met in Florence. I did everything t
o keep her in school, and she quit anyway, and got married. But I have to admit, it worked out well. I don’t see how she can be so hard on you about what you’ve done. You have real talent, Julia,” Meredith said proudly.

  “She’s hard on everyone, Grandma. It’s her way or the highway. I’m telling you, my dad is a saint. And she can hold a grudge for centuries.” Meredith knew it firsthand, Kendall had never forgiven her anything. “I don’t know why she’s so tough, but she is. It ruined our relationship years ago. Grampa is the only one who doesn’t pay any attention when she gets that way. Maybe he’s like that too, because you certainly don’t seem to be that way, or we wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

  Meredith smiled. “How is your grandfather, by the way?”

  “He’s fine, working like crazy. He had some health issues last year, but he’s fine now. I think he gets bored whenever he’s not working, so he sits still for about five minutes and then goes back to work.”

  “He was always that way,” Meredith said, remembering.

  “And Silvana is pretty boring. She spends a lot of time in Italy, he bought her a house there. She eats pasta at every meal, and she’s gotten fat,” Julia said evilly, and Meredith laughed. Silvana was very close to Kendall’s age, and too young to let herself go. “You look way better than she does,” Julia said, and Meredith was more than twenty years older. She remembered distinctly.

  “I haven’t talked to your grandfather in a long time.” It was odd too how Kendall had forgiven her father for breaking up their family and marrying a girl her own age, but had never forgiven her mother for any of her perceived crimes. Kendall had always been partial to Scott, and apparently still was. And it was interesting that she acknowledged to Julia that she had treated Meredith “terribly.” Julia had given her a lot to think about.

  Julia lay down on the floor while they talked. She had been there for three hours when Charles came back and let himself into the bungalow, and Julia looked up in surprise. His face lit up when he saw her and she stood up to her full height to meet him.

  “Are you married, Grandma?” Her mother hadn’t told her, if she was.

  “No, this is my very special friend, Charles Chapman.” They shook hands, and Julia giggled with her red mane stretching out.

  “I love it. You have a boyfriend! You’re so cool!” All three of them laughed, and Meredith blushed a little.

  “We met during the earthquake.”

  “Good for you. I want to come up and visit you!”

  “You are welcome anytime. You can have your own room, and come and go whenever you want,” she said generously. “You can bring a friend too, if you like.”

  Julia cocked her head to one side, thinking about it. “Mom is going to think we’re conspiring against her. That’s the sad part. She can’t just be happy for us that we found each other; she’ll take it as a slight of some kind, but I don’t care. I’m coming to see you.”

  “Whenever you want,” Meredith reiterated.

  Charles poured himself a glass of wine, and the three of them chatted for another hour, and then Julia said she was meeting friends for dinner and had to go.

  “How long are you here for?” she asked her grandmother.

  “Two more days.” Meredith had allotted three days, in case it took a long time to connect with her, but it hadn’t. It had been instantaneous. Meredith had loved her as a little girl, full of spice and bright ideas, and this was even better. They could get to know each other as adults. Julia brought a lot to the table.

  “Can we do lunch tomorrow?” Julia asked her. “I have an audition in the morning, and I’m getting paid to go to some fashion event tomorrow night. But I’m free for lunch and all afternoon. They wanted to do my hair and I won’t let them. This is me.”

  “Good for you,” her grandmother said, hugged her when she left, and kissed her. They made a date to meet at the Polo Lounge for lunch the next day. She was smiling when Julia left.

  “Well, that looked like a major success. No one would have guessed that you hadn’t seen each other in nearly ten years.”

  “It was a success,” Meredith confirmed, and then looked serious. “She has the same problems with her mother that I do, a lot of the same complaints. And apparently, Kendall has admitted to her that she treated me ‘terribly,’ but she never fixes it. She told Julia it’s too late. It’s never too late. And now she has alienated her daughter the way she did me. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose her too. Kendall is so hard and unforgiving, and she sets the bar so high for everyone, no one can live up to it.”

  “It’s sad for her,” he said. Meredith nodded and kissed him.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Meaning Julia.

  “She’s stunning. Actually, she looks a little like you. The red hair distracts you, but the fine features are very similar. You could be her mother.”

  “I hope she comes to San Francisco to see me, she said she would.”

  “She seems very excited to reconnect with you.”

  “I am too.” Her eyes were sparkling and she was smiling. This was why she had come to L.A., and it had been a resounding success. Her only regret was that she hadn’t done it sooner. She said it to Charles, and he pointed out that Julia wouldn’t have been old enough. She was the right age to have her own relationship with Meredith now, and they had a career in common, which was a bond too.

  She and Charles had dinner at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica that night, and people recognized her as she walked into the restaurant. Some just stared, but they knew who she was. No one had forgotten her. And one of the older headwaiters almost cried when he greeted her.

  “Welcome back! Are you working again?”

  “No.” She smiled and shook her head. “But my granddaughter is,” she said proudly.

  “You must make another film. You are still beautiful!”

  “I agree with him,” Charles said when they sat down. “You are beautiful.”

  “You’re blind, but I love you,” she brushed off the compliment.

  * * *

  —

  Julia and Meredith met for lunch the next day and spent another three hours talking, and made a date for breakfast the day after. Meredith was going back to San Francisco on a five o’clock flight, and had to leave the city at three. On her last day, they went for a walk, and she went to Julia’s tiny apartment in West Hollywood. It reminded her of her own beginnings, although her career had shot into the stratosphere very quickly. Things were different then, when they “discovered” someone and put them in movie after movie with big stars, and spent a fortune on publicity. The studios were in control then. That had all changed, but she could see Julia becoming a big star herself in time. She was already on her way at a steady pace, and she had the talent that would keep her at the top once she got there, if she worked hard.

  Meredith left her at her apartment with a pang of regret, and hugged her for a long time. “I love you, Julia. Come home to me whenever you want. Do you have a boyfriend, by the way?” She had forgotten to ask her, they had spoken of so many things, their careers, Kendall, Scott, Silvana, and mostly Julia’s dreams for her career. She had big dreams.

  “No. I had one last year but we broke up. He was a jerk. There’s an actor I sort of like, but he’s kind of a jerk too.”

  “There’s a lot of that here.” Meredith smiled. “Just have fun, and work hard. And, Julia, don’t give up on your mom yet. I know how hard she is, but you only have one mother.”

  “I know. I love you, Grandma.” It was music to her ears. It was the relationship she would have loved to have with her daughter, but never had, and probably never would. She had accepted it. And now here was Julia, like a big shining star in the sky, and a remarkable gift.

  “I love you too,” Meredith said again.

  Meredith took a cab back to the hotel. Her trip to L.A. had
been a resounding success. She and Charles talked about it all the way home on the flight, and Julia called her when they landed, to thank her. Meredith was smiling when she hung up. It had taken a long time, waiting for her to grow up, but her granddaughter had been worth the wait.

  Chapter 14

  Meredith told Tyla all about her trip to L.A. and the time she had spent with Julia.

  “She sounds fantastic. I can’t believe you haven’t seen her in that long. And you’re so good with kids. Your daughter was crazy not to let you be with her for all this time.”

  “Kendall is a hard woman. She remembers everything and forgives nothing. She sees it all through her own lens, whether true or not. I’m sorry for Julia that her mother hasn’t softened over the years. Julia’s given up on her for now. And Kendall never humbles herself, nor admits it when she’s wrong.” Meredith was amazed that her marriage had lasted. George really must be a saint, as his daughter said.

  Meredith coasted on the joy of their L.A. visit for days, remembering things Julia had said and smiling. She called Meredith twice, to tell her what she was doing and maintain the connection and the bond they had forged. It was something Kendall had never learned. Maybe it had killed something in her when her brother died. But Kendall was already twenty-six then, and a mother herself, which should have made her warmer, more forgiving, and more compassionate. It was as though there was a piece missing in her, a link that didn’t exist to connect her to others.

  Meredith thought about it all week after she saw Julia, and made a decision that weekend. She didn’t think it would make a difference, but that didn’t matter. Kendall was never going to reach out to her. She had said so to her daughter. Meredith wanted to show her that it was never too late. Broken hearts mended. They had scars but they didn’t have to be broken forever. Life was a patchwork of pieces and broken bits that became beautiful when you wove them together. The beauty is in the tears and the embroidery you put over them. It’s the rents and the tears and breaks that make us who we are. Kendall had never understood that.