The Comeback

by Ella Berman

  “Once she’s won, Sienna destroys the entire galaxy because it’s become so corrupt, and greedy, you know. She literally kills everyone, including herself, leaving only this one couple and their dog, who are left with the entire future of civilization in their hands. It’s this incredibly important comment on what we’re doing to the planet, but you don’t realize that until this shot at the very end of the movie. I’m telling you—it’s subtle, but it’s brutal. Nobody is going to forget how it made them feel. It’s going to be one of those. Like Titanic.”

  I find myself nodding along with him, and by the time he’s finished talking and said the word Titanic, I realize that I actually want to be in this stupid movie. I want to be Queen Sienna of Euron. I know that, as dumb as it is, it’s the exact kind of thing I would need to seal my freedom from Able. I sit up straighter in an attempt to appear more regal.

  “That sounds amazing. Inspiring. I’m very into the environment too—saving the dolphins and whales,” I say, nodding seriously. John seems pleased, waiting for me to elaborate. Ugh, Grace, why haven’t you done anything good in your entire life?

  “I actually volunteered at the sea-life center near my parents’ place when I was home this year,” I say, willing him not to ask me where they live. If he does, by my count, it would only be the third question he’s asked me after “How much weight have you put on?” and “Are you single?”

  “That sounds great, Grace,” he says, clearly thinking about something else. He taps his fingers on his knee before leaning forward. “Do you know what? I’m doing some reshoots over the next few days on location downtown. Could you drop by tomorrow to screen-test?”

  I pause. “Screen-test tomorrow?”

  “Sure. You’re okay with that, right? It’s an insurance thing, everyone we cast had to do it,” John says, and I feel weirdly grateful to him for lying to me.

  “Sure, okay,” I say, trying to smile in the way that doesn’t weaken my jawline.

  “How about I also take you out for dinner tonight? To talk about the project some more?” he asks, pursing his lips as if to show me how serious he’s being.

  “Why don’t we get the screen test out of the way first,” I say smoothly. “Then we can go for dinner with Nathan and Kit in the New Year.”

  “Sounds great, Grace,” John says good-naturedly, and I’m sickeningly relieved that he’s not going to make a big deal about being turned down. He stands up, stretching a little.

  “So I’ll get Nathan to email you later about the screen test?” I ask as he walks me through the house, and I try not to notice that he moves like a man who is used to people getting out of his way. I repeat my question again in my head, without the question mark, for next time.

  “Sure, we’ll get it booked in for the morning. I assume I’ll also be seeing you at the Globes?”

  “Undecided,” I say vaguely, because I haven’t been invited. “I usually only go when I’m nominated. And sometimes not even then.”

  John laughs as he opens the front door for me. He kisses me good-bye on the cheek, leaving a warm, wet residue that I have to resist the urge to wipe.

  “I’m excited about the project,” I say, one more time, before I leave.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Grace. Send my regards to Emilia if you speak to her.” John leans in again, this time to speak quietly in my ear. “Paparazzo by the black Jaguar.”

  I nod and walk down the steps, holding my head up high so the photographer catches me sliding gracefully into my car and driving away.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I ring the doorbell of the peach house, and the twins answer it together. They seem disappointed when they see that it’s me, and I figure I should bring them a present next time, since that seems to be what sustains them.

  “That was a great play the other day,” I say, smiling. “Hands down the two best menorah candles I’ve ever seen.”

  Silver ignores me but Ophelia smiles back at me shyly. Emilia walks into the hallway to greet me, wearing a pair of glasses I didn’t know she needed.

  “Darling, thank you for coming! Come on in,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  I follow her into the kitchen and take a seat at the table. Emilia immediately puts a plate of shortbread in front of me.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Emilia says, gesturing to three shopping bags sitting in the corner of the room. “I’m so pleased that you’re here. Girls, do you want to move into the playroom?”

  The twins, who are playing a game on their phones, ignore her. They chat loudly and unselfconsciously, telling each other what they have achieved in terms of gold rings or makeover points in their game. Emilia raps her knuckles on the table, and Silver stands up and runs out of the kitchen in one movement while Ophelia hangs back.

  Emilia puts her arm around her. “Can you make sure your sister doesn’t get too worked up? You know what she’s like.”

  Ophelia nods and follows Silver out of the kitchen. Emilia pulls up a seat opposite me, tilting her head to one side as she watches me.

  “Tell me everything,” she says, leaning toward me, and for a moment I forget that she’s asking about my meeting with John.

  “It went well . . . I think, although obviously you never really know,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “John seems like a very interesting man.”

  Emilia lets out a loud peal of laughter and she claps her hands together as if I’ve just said something utterly charming, as opposed to paying her dear friend a disingenuous compliment.

  “He’s not as bad as he seems, I promise,” she says. “We all know that there’s worse out there, particularly in this industry.”

  I take a bite of shortbread so that I don’t have to comment, but my stomach turns when I realize it’s the exact same kind that Able used to give me when I was younger.

  “I have to audition for the part,” I say. “It’s been a while.”

  “Oh no, I think that’s perfect,” Emilia says, sounding pleased. “It means that you’ll be able to silence all the people saying you’re not up to it, in one go. Nobody can deny that you earned the role.”

  My discomfort at her words must be obvious, because Emilia immediately puts her hand over mine.

  “I just meant . . . Look, try to think about it this way . . . At the moment, however brave they think you are, however much they respect what you said in the interview, however much they may like you, they are still just waiting for you to slip up again, because that’s how it works. They don’t want you to win. And I don’t just mean John, I’m talking about the industry as a whole, the press, even the public. But what you’re going to do is take that negativity and turn it into something you can use, let it become the thing that fuels you. And if you do that, then you’re not only going to win the part, but you’re going to win everyone’s hearts by the time this movie is finished. You’re going to be America’s sweetheart, darling.” Emilia says the last sentence in a Katharine Hepburn mid-Atlantic accent, satisfied that she has put my mind at rest. I struggle to swallow the lump of shortbread still in my mouth.

  “That reminds me, actually, we need to talk about the IFAs,” Emilia says as she pushes her glass of water across the table to me. “I meant to ask you about your decision the other day, but it must have slipped my mind somewhere during the story of the Maccabees, as told through interpretive dance.”

  “What does Able think?” I ask after I’ve dislodged the thick biscuit coating the back of my throat. My armpits start to prickle with sweat.

  “We want it to be a surprise,” Emilia says, looking lost for a second. “Do you think he’ll hate it? He hates surprises.”

  “I don’t know,” I say uncomfortably.

  “You must let me know if you’re not up to it,” Emilia says, watching me closely.

  “Why wouldn’t I be up to it?” I ask quietly, and as the words come out of m
y mouth, I realize that I’m giving Emilia the chance to tell me that she knows something was wrong. With a force that nearly stuns me, I understand what this has all been about: I want to believe that Emilia already knows what Able did, because if she can forgive me, then I will have all the proof I ever needed that none of it was my fault. I blink back hot tears that sting my eyes as I wait for my friend to answer my question.

  “You know, I tried to explain something the other day, but I think I wasn’t entirely honest with you,” Emilia says, and I can hear the sound of my blood rushing in my ears.

  “You asked why I wanted to help you, and, the truth is, I do feel responsible for you. I was the one who promised I’d look after you at the beginning. I was the one who went to your parents’ house to get you to sign up for Lights. At the time, I thought it was the best thing for you, but now I’m not so sure. You would barely talk to me after that, and I just let you drift away. Then when Able didn’t sign you up for the next one . . . I don’t know, it must have felt like we abandoned you.”

  “I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate,” I say, my voice tight.

  “Gracie, I know that you ended up in the hospital. After you . . . overdosed,” Emilia says softly, embarrassed for me. “Able told me about your . . . issues with your mental health. I knew they were working you too hard and I felt so guilty for not having said so at the time.”

  I don’t know why I’m so surprised by her words. I’ve never owned my own story.

  “We actually sent a gift basket when we heard . . . Did you get it?” she asks now urgently.

  “I never went back to the house in Venice,” I say, my voice strange sounding.

  “Oh, darling, I’ve upset you,” Emilia says, looking stricken herself but recovering quickly because she doesn’t like to think about sad things for too long. “You’ve come so far since then, it really is so incredible to see.”

  I stare at a framed photo on their wall that wasn’t up last time I was here. It’s a picture of Able standing in between two beautiful chestnut horses with Silver and Ophelia sitting proudly on top in full dressage outfits.

  “You’re angry at Able,” she says then, and I feel instantly dizzy, unspooled by the unexpected accuracy of her words. “I realized it when Camila asked you about him the other day. He hurt you.”

  I swallow hard because now that the moment is here, my throat feels as if it’s closing up.

  “You know there was a time when I was jealous of you. You and Able always had that connection that nobody else could get near. Not that I’d have even wanted to be involved, it wouldn’t have been healthy. It just seemed unfathomable to me that there was this huge, important part of his life that I couldn’t be a part of,” Emilia says, thoughtfully. I study the chipped black nail polish on my hands, trying to shield myself from her words. The light behind Emilia warps slightly as she struggles for the right words.

  “What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we forget that we can never really know someone else, you know, all of them. And that’s okay, we’re all allowed our secrets, but it does mean that occasionally we mistake our own perspective, our own narrative, for theirs. All it took was Able explaining that he saw you like a daughter and that you were the one who asked him to guide you, to nurture your talent where your parents couldn’t seem to, like his grandmother did for him all those years ago, and my jealousy just . . . shifted.”

  I swallow, unable to meet Emilia’s eyes as her words float into me instead, settling in even the darkest places I’ve worked so hard to protect. I search for some secret subtext in them but all I hear is that Emilia has no idea about anything that happened to me. She has no clue who I really am at all, and how could she when Able had already started his campaign against me years ago?

  “Anyway, I didn’t want to make this about me, but maybe you should talk to Able, see what he has to say. He will have his reasons for whatever happened between the two of you after Lights. You just might not have been able to understand them at the time.”

  I nod, slowly.

  “We were, close, you know,” I start, my heart hammering in my chest. “Able and I. We were always close.”

  “Of course you were, anybody could see that. I don’t think you could have done the work you did if you weren’t,” Emilia says, then she stops abruptly and something in her face changes.

  “What are you saying, Grace?” she asks, and I swallow hard, understanding that this is my final chance to tell her what happened while still protecting myself. To brush over it now would be to deliberately lie to her for the first time, and if the truth ever came out, we would both always remember the moment in her kitchen when she left me room to tell her my story.

  Emilia’s pale eyes hold mine as I think of everything I could say, both now and onstage at the IFAs, how even if I somehow managed to say the right words out loud, each one would only ever bind me tighter to Able. When I think about him, it’s as if I’m being dragged back down to my knees, only this time I’m pulling everyone around me down with me. For the first time since we met, I am the one with the power to threaten his happiness, but the power is all wrapped up in that threat, and as soon as I actually say the words, that power will be released into the world for others to claim, fight over, apportion blame. After that, I would never be anything more than Able’s victim, to the rest of the world too.

  I think about another type of revenge—the quieter, less explosive kind I could inflict just by living my life in spite of him. And what could be more galling for Able than watching me become happier, more successful without him? To know that I always held the power, I just never believed I could do anything without him. I could work again, maybe even on Anatopia, and this time it would be without any of Able’s conditions. Maybe I could learn to relax around Emilia, could learn to accept some of her small acts of kindness toward me, and maybe the way Dylan occasionally still looks at me, as if I am someone good and important, wouldn’t have to change beyond recognition.

  “Nothing,” I say after a moment. “Just that maybe it’s too soon. I’m not sure I’m ready to be back in public just yet.”

  Emilia nods without meeting my eyes, and I’m relieved when she changes the subject after that, telling me that Silver has been begging her for a retired greyhound for Christmas. She turns away from me as she talks, changing the water of a vase of exotic, fleshy flowers that have wilted in the heat. This is enough, I tell myself as I pick up a fallen petal from the table, scrunching it up in my hand until it’s unrecognizable. This has to be enough.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I’m sorry to interrupt, but could you move your hair out of your face?” the casting director asks, not unkindly. “It’s obstructing your words.”

  “Sorry, yes, of course,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears. I want to point out that it’s more likely the sound of hundreds of cars rushing down the freeway underneath the parking structure that is obstructing my words, but I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors if I did. I’m already on the back foot, clearly having held everyone here for longer than they expected.

  “And can you direct your dialogue more to me?” the producer says, folding his arms across his chest. He is standing slightly to the left of the camera. I look at John for confirmation, and he nods encouragingly.

  “Sure,” I say, wiping my damp hands on my jeans. Even though it’s my first screen test in nine years, I think it’s unusual for the director, casting director and producer to all be here in person instead of watching the tape at a later date. I’m not sure if that means they’re taking it more seriously or they just happened to be on set today for the reshoots, but for the first time in years, I feel sickeningly nervous. Even though I memorized the lines last night, I’m still gripping the script in my hand, my fingers leaving damp marks on the paper.

  I start over again but the entire time I’m trying to concentrate on the lines, I can already hear his v
oice in my head telling me how badly I’m fucking it up, that I’m too much of a liability, too fat, too broken to be given the job, that I lost my light years ago and the whole thing is a waste of time.

  “I never asked for any of this, don’t you understand that?” I read, but this time the producer puts his hand up for me to stop.

  “I’m sorry, something still isn’t working. Can we take the makeup off?”

  “Sure,” I say as an assistant appears to hand me a face wipe. I can tell by the slight grimace on his face that his empathy levels are too high, that he probably feels things too strongly for this industry.

  I turn around and wipe my makeup off, trying to compose myself. I know this is the thing I can do, the one thing that always came naturally to me. The assistant holds his hand out, and I drop the dirty face wipe into his palm.

  “Do you mind if I go to the bathroom quickly?” I ask, and John checks his Rolex before waving me in the direction of the public toilets. I walk past him, ignoring the crew setting up on my way, some of whom stop what they’re doing to stare at me.

  The toilet seat is yellowing, cheap, but I never actually learned to squat, so I unzip my jeans and sit straight onto it. I try not to cry out when my skin gets caught in one of the cracks in the seat. I feel like I can’t get enough air into my lungs, and I wish I’d listened in all those meditation classes Laurel made me do, but I could never seem to get the right parts to expand when they were supposed to.

  While I’m peeing, two women walk in. One is wearing a red latex bodysuit and a tiny matching mask over her eyes, and her hair is scraped back into a ponytail heavy with extensions spilling down her back, nearly to her waist. The other one is dressed normally, and from the way she hovers around the first woman, I figure she’s probably her assistant or an old friend from school she brings with her for support.