The Final Act

by Joy Fielding

  “So, tell your friends exactly what’s going on,” Trish said.

  Cindy immediately recounted the details of last Thursday morning, the chaos surrounding her final moments with Julia.

  “So, you’d been arguing,” Trish said in summation.

  “We weren’t arguing.”

  “All right. You weren’t arguing. You were upset . . .”

  “I wasn’t upset. . .”

  “Okay. You weren’t upset.”

  “Maybe her audition didn’t go well,” Meg offered, as others had offered before. “Maybe she just needed some space.”

  “Could there be a new guy?” Trish asked.

  “It’s been five days,” Cindy interrupted her friends, verbally italicizing each word.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “This is Julia we’re talking about,” Trish reminded her.

  “You know how she can be,” Meg said.

  “Do you honestly think she’s that inconsiderate, that she’d disappear for this long without a word to anyone?” Had Trish always been this obtuse? Cindy found herself wondering.

  “Tom hasn’t heard from her either?” Meg asked.

  “Tom hasn’t heard from her either,” Cindy repeated, sliding her hands into her lap as a tight smile froze on her lips. She imagined her body melting into liquid and spilling off her chair, forming an unwieldy puddle on the floor, much like the Wicked Witch of the West, who dissolved when Dorothy threw water at her head.

  Meg’s question was like that water, Cindy thought. Seemingly innocent on the surface, but capable of great damage, like acid. It seeped painfully between Cindy’s ears, burning the words into delicate tissue.

  Tom hasn’t heard from her either?

  Cindy felt strangely insubstantial, a feeling she’d often experienced during her marriage, and then again immediately after her divorce, as if she were somehow less solid without Tom at her side, as if his presence was necessary to give hers relevance, as if her opinions, her worries, her observations, weren’t enough without his acknowledgment and approval.

  Tom hasn’t heard from her either?

  Cindy knew that Meg would be both alarmed and horrified to think her words had been interpreted in such a manner, so Cindy tried hard to give the question context, assign it its proper perspective. Still, the words lingered, small thorns tearing at her already bruised flesh. She smiled at her oldest and closest friend, understanding that despite Meg’s obvious sympathy for her plight, she had absolutely no idea of the turmoil raging inside her brain.

  How little we know of what really goes on in people’s minds, Cindy was thinking, her eyes traveling back and forth between the two women, the smile slowly sliding from her lips. How little we know one another at all.

  “Are you all right?” Meg asked, her hand reaching over to smooth some fine hairs from Cindy’s forehead.

  Cindy shrugged, stared toward the backyard.

  “So, tell us about Michael Kinsolving,” Trish said. “Is he as sexy as people say?”

  Cindy recognized Trish’s question for the diversionary tactic it was. Still, it felt strange to be talking about Michael Kinsolving’s sexuality under the circumstances. Bankable is fuckable, she heard him say. “His face is all pockmarked,” she answered, deciding to go with the flow. “And he’s short.”

  “How short?”

  “Tom Cruise—short.”

  “Why are all the men in Hollywood so little?” Trish asked.

  “And he didn’t remember Julia?” Meg asked incredulously.

  Cindy’s heartbeat quickened at the mention of her daughter’s name. “Not at first. But after we watched the tape . . .”

  “What tape?”

  “Julia’s audition. You should see it. She’s amazing.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Meg said.

  “She’s so talented,” Trish concurred, although neither woman had ever seen Julia act.

  Cindy recalled the director’s face at the conclusion of the viewing. “I think he was impressed. I think he’d forgotten how good she was.” Talent? Talent is the least of it. Do you want to fuck her?

  “Well, that’s great then,” Meg enthused. “It means he’ll remember her. When she comes home,” she added, her voice trailing away, disappearing into the air, like smoke from a cigarette.

  When she comes home, Cindy repeated, clinging to the words, as if they were life buoys in a choppy sea. When she comes home, I’ll buy her those Miss Sixty jeans she’s been coveting. I’ll take her to New York for a holiday weekend. Just the two of us.

  “She’s okay, Cindy,” Trish was saying. “She’ll turn up. Safe and sound. You’ll see.”

  “How can that be?” Cindy demanded, hearing her voice rise. “How can someone disappear for almost a week and then just show up, safe and sound? How is that possible? Julia’s not a child. She didn’t wander off and get lost. And she didn’t run away from home because she had a fight with her mother.”

  Had she?

  “She’s not a silly romantic like I was. She didn’t elope with some guy to Niagara Falls.”

  Had she?

  “She’s not flighty or naïve. She’s had disappointing auditions before. She knows the odds of getting cast in a major Hollywood movie.”

  Did she?

  “I know you both think she’s selfish and self-absorbed. . .”

  “No. We don’t think that.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Meg said soothingly. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” Cindy shot back angrily. “Julia wouldn’t just take off without telling me. She certainly wouldn’t take off without telling her father.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” Trish began.

  “I was just trying . . .” Meg continued.

  “She knows her actions have consequences. She knows I’d be worried sick. She wouldn’t put me through this.”

  “Of course she wouldn’t,” the two friends agreed.

  “So, where is she?” Cindy wailed, the sound of her voice bringing Elvis galloping back down the stairs, his barking mixing with her cries, underlining and surrounding her anguish. “Where is she?”

  *

  CINDY WAS LYING in her bed, watching a peppy young woman named Ricki Lake interviewing a bunch of alternately sullen and giggly teenage girls. “Why do you think your friend dresses like a slut?” Ricki asked sprightly, pushing the phallic-shaped microphone into a girl’s face.

  Her lips aren’t too thin?

  Cindy flipped the channel before the girl could reply, watched as a handsome man named Montel Williams cast overly earnest eyes toward a trembling young woman in the seat beside him. “How old were you when your father first molested you?” he asked.

  I want women to look at this girl and think, “lost soul.” I want men to look at her and think, “blow-job.”

  Another press of the button and Montel was replaced by Oprah, then Jenny, then Maury, then someone named Judge Judy, a thoroughly unpleasant woman who seemed to think that justice could best be served by insulting all those who stood before her. “Did she ask for your advice?” Judge Judy demanded angrily of the hapless middle-aged woman in front of her. “Just because she’s your daughter doesn’t mean you can tell her how to run her life.”

  My daughter is Julia Carver.

  Cindy flipped to Comedy Central, hoping for a laugh. “My mother’s from another planet,” a young female comic was espousing. She paused. “Actually, she’s from Hell.”

  Cindy turned off the TV, tossing the remote to the end of the bed, just missing Elvis, who glanced at her with accusing eyes before jumping to the floor and skulking from the room. Downstairs, she could hear her mother in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Probably she should get out of bed, go down and help out, but she was too tired to move, too drained to offer even token assistance.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?” Cindy prayed for the sound of her daughter’s voice, braced herself for the
inevitable disappointment.

  “Are you okay?” Meg asked on the other end of the line.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I felt terrible after we left,” Meg continued. “Like we failed you somehow.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I just wish there was something we could say or do. . .”

  “There isn’t.”

  “I could come over later. . .”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m pretty tired.”

  “You need your rest.”

  “I need Julia.”

  Awkward silence.

  “Try to think positive.”

  Sure. Why not? Why didn’t I think of that? “I’m trying.”

  “I love you,” Meg said.

  “I know,” Cindy told her. “I love you too.”

  Cindy replaced the receiver, buried her face in her hands. “Think positively,” she corrected, feeling her breath warm inside her cupped palms. She lifted her head, glared at the phone. “Did I ask for your advice?” she demanded in Judge Judy’s strident voice.

  She knew she was being unfair, that Meg was only saying what she herself would probably say if their situations were reversed. She knew her friend’s concern was genuine, her love and support unwavering. She understood that both Meg and Trish wanted to be there for her, to comfort and protect her, but she also recognized that despite their best intentions, they could never really understand what she was going through. Just as they’d never wholly comprehended the sorrow she’d lived with all those years Julia spent living with her dad. Trish, with her husband and perfect son, Meg with two wonderful boys of her own. “Mothers of just sons,” her own mother had once told her. “They’re a different breed. They have no idea.”

  It wasn’t that her friends were insensitive, Cindy thought. In fact, they were kind and considerate and thoughtful and everything true friends should be. They just didn’t get it. How could they? They had no idea.

  This is Julia we’re talking about.

  You know how she can be.

  (Defining Moment: Tom across from her at the breakfast table, fingers digging into the morning paper he holds high in front of his face. “Nothing’s ever enough for you,” he says between tightly gritted teeth.

  They’ve been fighting since last night. Cindy can barely remember what the argument is about. “That’s not true,” she counters weakly, lifting her glass of orange juice to her lips, wishing he would put the paper down so that she could see his face.

  “Of course it’s true. Face it, Cindy. I just don’t measure up to your lofty standards.”

  “What are you talking about? I never said that.”

  “You said I stabbed Leo Marshall in the back.”

  “I said I was surprised you bad-mouthed the man in front of his client.”

  “His client is worth four hundred million dollars. He wasn’t getting his money’s worth with Leo. He will with me.”

  “I thought Leo Marshall was your friend.”

  “Friends.” Tom sniffs. “Friends come and go.”

  Cindy feels the glass of orange juice tremble in her hands. “So the end justifies the means?”

  “In most cases, yes. Can you get off your high horse now?”

  “Can you put the paper down?”

  “I don’t know what more you want from me.”

  “I want you to put the paper down. Please.”

  He lowers the paper, glowers at her from across the table. “There. You happy? Paper’s down. You got your way.”

  “This isn’t about getting my way.”

  “Paper’s down, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  Tom glances impatiently at his watch. “Look, it’s eight-thirty. Much as I’d love to sit here arguing issues with you all morning, some of us have to go to work.” He pushes back his chair. “I have a meeting tonight. Don’t count on me for dinner.”

  “Who is she this time?” Cindy asks.

  Tom gets to his feet, says nothing.

  “Tom?” she says, her grip on her glass tightening.

  He looks at her, shakes his head. “What now?” he says.

  Probably it is the now, and not the fact of another woman that gets her. “This,” she says simply, then hurls the contents of the glass at his face.)

  That moment was the end of her marriage.

  Although she and Tom remained together for several more years, the minute that orange juice left her glass, divorce was inevitable. It became strictly a matter of time, a gathering of energy.

  It was the same with Meg and Trish, Cindy realized now, an ineffable sadness seeping through her pores, settling into her bones.

  This is Julia we’re talking about.

  You know how she can be.

  Maybe it hadn’t been as dramatic as a tossed glass of juice, but another defining moment had quietly, yet inexorably, slipped by. Yes, Meg and Trish were her dearest friends. Yes, she loved them and they loved her. But unforeseen circumstance had intervened, and their friendship had been subtly and forever altered. Try as the three friends might to pretend otherwise, Cindy understood that their relationship would never quite be the same again.

  Another woman had come between them.

  Her name was Julia.

  EIGHTEEN

  Cindy opened her eyes to find Julia staring at her from across the room.

  She pushed herself away from her pillow, holding her breath, watching as the familiar photo of her daughter enlarged to fill the entire TV screen. Cindy lunged toward it, straining to hear the announcer’s voice, but the words failed to register. She reached for the remote control to raise the volume, but it wasn’t beside her. “Where are you, damn it?” she said, frantic hands pawing at the folds of the blue-and-white-flowered comforter. She vaguely remembered having tossed it toward the end of the bed earlier in the day. How long ago? she wondered, glancing at the clock, noting that it was just minutes after 6 P.M., that despite the bleakness of the sky, darkness was still several hours away.

  She must have fallen asleep, she realized, as the back of her hand slapped against the remote, knocking it from the bed. It shot into the air and plummeted to the floor, landing with a dull thud on the carpet, before bouncing out of sight.

  Instantly, Cindy was off the bed and on her hands and knees, the carpet’s stale scent pushing into her nostrils as she pressed her cheek against its soft pile. She lifted the white dust ruffle and poked her head under the bed, her hands fumbling around in the dark until they connected with the stubborn object. “Damn it,” she said, bumping her head as she struggled to her feet, aiming the remote at the television screen, as if it were a gun, increasing the volume until the announcer’s voice was all but shouting in her ear. Except that he was no longer talking about Julia. Her daughter’s picture had been replaced by an aerial view of Canada’s Wonderland, where the announcer intoned solemnly, a little boy of eight had been sexually molested only hours before.

  Cindy changed the channel. A farmer’s field popped into view. It took Cindy several seconds to realize she was looking at an old, dilapidated barn in a sea of swaying cornstalks. “Oh no.” Cindy clasped her hand across her mouth to still the screams building in her throat. They’d found Julia’s body in an abandoned barn off the King Sideroad. Sean’s story had led them to her torn and battered remains. “No. No. No.”

  “Cindy!” her mother was yelling as Elvis began barking from somewhere beside her. “Cindy, what’s wrong?”

  Her mother was suddenly beside her, sliding the remote control unit from her daughter’s hands, returning the TV’s volume to a normal level. It was only then that Cindy was able to digest the announcer’s words, to understand that the cornfield in question wasn’t anywhere near the King Sideroad, but rather somewhere outside Midland, that the story concerned bumper crops of corn and had absolutely nothing to do with Julia.

  “I thought. . .”

  “What, darling?”

  “Julia. . .”


  “Was there something about Julia?” Her mother began flipping through the channels.

  “I saw her picture. They were talking about her.” Were they? Or had she just dreamed it?

  And then there she was again: the tilted head, the dazzling eyes, the straight blond hair falling toward her shoulder, the knowing smile.

  “Turn it up, turn it up.”

  “Police are searching for clues in the disappearance of twenty-one-year-old Julia Carver, daughter of prominent entertainment lawyer, Tom Carver. The aspiring actress was last seen Thursday morning, August twenty-ninth, after leaving an audition with noted Hollywood director Michael Kinsolving.”

  Julia’s photo was instantly replaced by one of Michael Kinsolving, his arms around two voluptuous blond starlets.

  “Police have questioned the famed director, in town to preview his latest film at the Toronto International Film Festival, and to scout locations for his next movie, but insist he is not a suspect in the young woman’s disappearance.”

  The newscaster’s bland face replaced Michael Kinsolving’s, while Julia’s picture reappeared in a small square at the right top of the screen. “Anyone with any information regarding Julia Carver’s whereabouts is urged to contact local police.”

  “I guess that makes it official,” Norma Appleton said, collapsing on the end of the bed, her face ashen, her eyes wide and blank.

  Immediately Cindy was at her mother’s side. “Oh, Mom,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so consumed with my own worry. I haven’t even thought about how this might be affecting you.”

  “The last thing I want is for you to start worrying about me.”

  “You’re her grandmother.”

  Her mother lowered her head. “My first grandchild,” she whispered.

  “Oh, Mom. What if she doesn’t come home? What if we never find out what happened to her?”

  “She’ll come home,” her mother said, her voice strong, as if the sheer force of her will could keep her granddaughter safe, bring her back home.