by Gail Bowen
* * *
Madeleine, Lena and Taylor flew to Vancouver on the morning of Thursday, April 26. When they returned late Sunday afternoon, Vale would be with them, and she and Taylor would move into their new home on Monday.
Two full days and two half days aren’t much time to take in a city like Vancouver, but Madeleine and Lena had a list of must-sees and it tilted heavily towards visits to the set of Riverdale, home of a very different Archie, Veronica, Betty and Jughead than I remembered from my comic book days. Mieka had drawn up her own list of suggested must-sees — Stanley Park, the Vancouver Aquarium, the Seawall, False Creek and Granville Island. It must have been a stretch, but pictures don’t lie, and the pictures that kept popping up on our phones showed that the four young women had ticked off all the boxes.
At Mieka’s request we drove straight from the airport to their house. Three days of non-stop fun was catching up with her daughters, and Monday was a school day. Taylor and Vale were staying with us. I assumed they’d want to make an early night of it because they were moving into their new apartment the next morning, but when we arrived home Taylor went into the kitchen, put the kettle on and said, “We haven’t had a chance to visit. Are you guys up for some chamomile?”
Zack and I exchanged a quick glance. “Absolutely,” I said. “We need a little time to get accustomed to Vale’s new hair colour.”
Vale’s natural hair colour was auburn, and since we’d known her, her hair had been not quite shoulder length, shining and straight. Now it was longer and lighter, a satiny honey blond with platinum highlights framing her face. When she turned to me, Vale’s eyes were anxious. “The hair stylist on our movie and I went by the videos of Sally at the lake.” Vale held out a strand of platinum hair. “These micro highlights took forever, but the stylist said my hair had to be ‘summer blond,’ like Sally’s. Did we get it right?”
“You did,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
“I’ll text him,” she said. “He takes his work very seriously, and he was worried.”
“This may put me in the category of the unevolved male,” Zack said. “But does the hair matter that much?”
Vale squeezed Zack’s shoulder. “You’re not unevolved, Zack. It’s an actor thing — maybe it’s not a thing for all actors, but it’s a thing for me. Acting is all about what’s happening inside you. I need to know what’s happening inside Sally every single moment she’s onscreen, but getting there is a process. I need the externals in place. For me it starts with how my character looks, how she dresses, especially how she walks. I know that Sally was a beautiful young woman who was aware of the power of her beauty but at ease with it. The audience needs to feel that from the moment she comes onscreen. And they need to feel Sally’s passion for her work and for the people who fuel her art. They also have to understand why as soon as Sally feels someone has nothing left to give her art, she walks away. Terrible things are done to Sally, and Sally herself does terrible things, but she’s not a victim and she’s not a villain. I have to signal to the audience that no matter what the cost, Sally has to protect her art, because after Des dies, it’s all she has left of him.”
As she described her process, Vale seemed to strip herself bare. When she saw our faces, she realized her intensity had been overwhelming, and Vale smiled apologetically. “Zack, I’ll bet you’re sorry you asked.”
“Not at all,” Zack said. “You’ve become a very large part of Taylor’s life and that means you’re a very large part of our lives. Joanne and I want to come to know you better.”
“And I want to come to know you better,” she said. “Now it’s your turn. What have you guys been up to while I was in Vancouver?”
Taylor’s move to Dewdney Avenue would be a simple one. Zack and I hadn’t seen Kyle since I witnessed the argument after the table meeting, but he and Taylor had taken her clothing, books and cache of personal care items and treasures to the new place together, and Taylor said that Kyle was quiet but appeared to be calm. Cronus’s colour choices for his apartment were idiosyncratic, but the furnishings he’d chosen were tasteful and well-crafted. Kyle shipped the oversized photographs of Ava Gardner to a friend who had been enamored of Ms. Gardner since he heard her say, “Deep down, I’m superficial,” in an interview. The dozen tanned exotic animal skins mounted on the walls turned out to be the real thing, and Kyle found a buyer online who was both eager and generous. Saying “we can always use weird stuff,” Kyle took the mirror that had hung over the bed to Set Decoration. The rest of Cronus’s purchases fit smoothly into the new spaces and the new colour scheme.
Only Taylor, Kyle and a handful of members of the Set Decoration crew had witnessed the transformation of Cronus’s masculine lair into a home for two young women with busy lives. But I was familiar with the colour scheme.
Taylor had wandered into the home office one day when I was working and spied the swathe of silk Hal Dupuis had given me as a souvenir of my first table meeting. As she picked up the fabric, her face lit with delight. “I have pored over dozens of colour charts and nothing was right, but this is it. This is the perfect colour for the walls in the living room of the new place. This shade will set off everything — that warm brownish red of the exposed brick, the white oak floors, the tan leather couch and chairs, the black lacquered room dividers and all that art we’re bringing in. Jo, this is just so right!” She examined the fabric more closely. “Where did this come from?”
When I explained, Taylor’s face grew serious. “If painting the walls Prussian blue is going to bring back memories you would rather keep buried, I can find another colour.”
“No. It’s a gorgeous colour, and you’re right, it will pull everything in the living room together. And seeing you and Vale in that room will make new memories for me — happy ones.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Taylor grinned. “In that case, I’m going to call Kyle and see how much paint we need. We’re going to have to work fast.”
Like everyone her age, Taylor was an inveterate smartphone photographer, but she was determined that no one would see the place before Vale did, so there were no photos.
Zack’s birthday was on May 1. It was a good fit for a man with a lust for life’s pleasures, and we always celebrated with a shindig, but Georgie and Nick’s wedding was on the 5th, so Taylor had suggested that we have a combination birthday party/housewarming at their apartment on Tuesday. The gathering would be small: just our family, kids and grandkids included, and Kyle because he’d been part of it all.
* * *
Monday morning when I came back from walking the dogs, Vale and Taylor were dressed and waiting for me.
“Are you taking off already?” I asked. “At least have breakfast.”
“We had juice,” Taylor said.
Vale’s blue-green eyes were shining. “And I couldn’t wait to see our new home. We said goodbye to Zack and now . . .” She held out her arms to me. “Thank you for everything, Jo.”
“We’ll call as soon as we’re settled in,” Taylor said. “And we’ll all be together tomorrow night. Now I’d better get my cats.”
“You’re taking the cats?” I said.
Taylor laughed. “Did you really think I was going to leave them?”
“Of course not. I just wasn’t thinking.”
“You were in denial.” Taylor’s voice was small and sad.
“Maybe I was, but I’m not anymore,” I said. “Round up Benny, Bruce and Bob Marley, so I can say goodbye.”
I stood on the front porch, waving until Taylor’s car turned onto Albert Street. Then I closed the door, walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table and had a good cry.
I’ve always seen the wisdom of Catharine Parr Traill’s observation that when disaster strikes, it’s useless to wring one’s hands in misery — it’s better to be up and doing. Our daughter leaving home and movi
ng ten minutes away from us hardly qualified as disaster, and I’d never been a fan of hand-wringing, so my path was clear.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, went to my office and turned on my laptop. There was a brief note addressed to Georgie and me from Ainsley. “I showed Roy’s script and your additions to Buzz. He volunteered to ‘bring it home,’ and he has. We’re sharing his complete script for Sisters and Strangers with you both in a Google Doc.”
“She let him rewrite Roy?”
As I opened the document and began to read, I felt as if my chest was being flooded with cold air. Buzz had replaced the gentle opening of the raft scene with the sounds of a woman gasping desperately for air as she dies slowly and in mortal terror from anaphylactic reaction to powdered almonds in the dessert she’d been served at a banquet in her honour. The caterer had been aware of the severity of Sally Love’s allergies and had chosen his menu with care. There were no powdered almonds in the dessert he had prepared for Sally. Nina had added the almonds and she had removed the epinephrine kit from Sally’s purse. Nina, a stickler for perfection, had ensured that her daughter and lifelong rival would never again eclipse her.
It was a riveting opening, but it wasn’t Roy’s tender pointillist introduction to Sally and Joanne as girls on the cusp of adulthood, and the structure and tone of the story had been radically altered. Rosamond Burke, who cared deeply for Sally, had asked to play a role in the series, and Roy had created a character loosely based on Ben Bendure for her. The new character, Margaret Nightingale, shared Ben’s affection for the Love and Ellard families but was clear-eyed about their weaknesses and strengths individually, and about the complex dynamics of their relationships.
In addition to her onscreen presence in the lives of Sally and Joanne in middle age, Rosamond would provide the voice-overs, her splendid contralto deepening the audience’s understanding of the story and offering them a narrator they could trust to convey knowledge and judgment.
In Wells’s script, the audience learned the details behind Sally’s death through police interrogations and flashbacks narrated by a character who Buzz describes as “seeing the main characters in bitingly satirical terms.” The lines he wrote for Margaret Nightingale showed a condescension towards the characters that I found chilling, and when my phone rang and I heard Rosamond Burke’s beautifully modulated voice, I wasn’t surprised.
“This can’t be allowed to happen,” she said. “That script is an abomination, and it’s a betrayal of Roy Brodnitz as an artist and a human being.”
“I agree,” I said. “It’s nine a.m. here. I’ve only had a chance to read episode one, but I’ve read enough to know that you’re right. What time is it in London?”
“A tick after four in the afternoon,” she said.
“Let me talk to Georgie Shepherd,” I said. “I know she’ll feel as we do about what Buzz has done with the script. To be honest, I can’t understand why Ainsley would send it out.”
“Ainsley is too knotted in her grief to think clearly,” Rosamond said. “I spoke to her after I heard the news about Roy. She was an automaton. When we worked together on The Happiest Girl, Ainsley and I had a fine relationship. She’s a superb director, and I know that what this man Wells has written does not reflect her vision of Sisters and Strangers.”
“No, it doesn’t, Rosamond. Georgie and I work here, at my house. I’m expecting her soon. After we’ve talked we’ll call you and the three of us can come up with a way to respond.”
“Excellent. I’ll fix myself a gin and Dubonnet while I wait.”
“Queen Elizabeth’s favourite.”
“It’s a pleasant drink for an afternoon,” Rosamond said, “but the Queen and I both prefer something more robust after the sun goes down.”
* * *
By the time Georgie arrived, I’d read episode two, and I was gnashing my teeth.
Georgie took my measure and gave me a fraction of a smile. “I see you’ve waded into the steaming pile of doo-doo Buzz produced.”
“I have, and Rosamond has already called and said, ‘This can’t be allowed to happen.’”
“Rosamond has given us our mission statement,” Georgie said. “So where do we go from here?”
“I guess we read the rest of Buzz’s script.”
We read the script aloud and without comment. When we’d finished, Georgie yawned and stretched. “So what do you think?”
“You mean once I put aside the fact that Buzz ripped up our script to make his own creepy collage?”
Georgie laughed. “Yeah, once you’ve cleared that hurdle.”
“I hate it,” I said. “It’s slick, it’s derivative, it’s generic, it’s forgettable, and it will probably get great ratings.”
“That’s pretty much my take,” Georgie said. “I think we should forget we ever saw it.”
“The Bobby Kennedy strategy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Georgie frowned. “When the Soviets were going to launch missiles at the U.S. from Cuba, and the U.S. set up a naval blockade to prevent more missiles from reaching Cuba.”
“A classic case of brinkmanship,” I said. “Khruschev blinked first. He sent a letter to Kennedy saying that if the U.S. pledged never to invade Cuba, Russia would remove the missiles. The next day Khruschev sent a second letter adding another condition: the U.S. would also have to withdraw their missiles from Turkey. Bobby Kennedy ignored the second letter, embraced the proposals in the first letter and Khruschev went along with it.”
“That’s a great story,” Georgie said.
“It is. History has sandpapered the facts a bit, but that said, I think we should treat Buzz’s script as the second letter and carry on as if it didn’t exist.”
“More brinkmanship.”
“Yes. And you can discreetly let the department heads know they should continue working on the draft of Roy’s script that you and I’ve been writing.”
“You do realize that can’t go on forever.”
“I do, but at the very least it will buy us enough time to get our script finished and give Ainsley a chance to realize that Roy would hate what Buzz Wells has done to his last project.”
“Okay, let’s call Rosamond and tell her we’re going with letter number one, and then I’ll go to the production studios and skulk around.”
“I hate that you’re having to go through this,” I said.
“I hate it too, but Roy deserves an advocate, and it seems you and I are it.”
“One way or another it will be over by June 11.”
Georgie’s gaze was probing. “Joanne, if Ainsley insists on going with Buzz’s script, are you prepared to pull the plug on Sisters and Strangers?”
“Between you and me . . . probably not,” I said. “Last night Vale talked about what she wanted the audience to learn about Sally through her performance, and the thought and effort she’s putting into preparing for the role touched me. Everyone at that table meeting on Friday has committed him or herself to making something beautiful and true. We have to believe that even if Ainsley goes with Buzz’s script, we can salvage something.”
“So I should let people know that no matter what happens, you’ll let the project go ahead.”
I paused. “No, our message is that we’re working on Roy’s script, and we won’t compromise. We’re saying Sisters and Strangers will honour Roy’s vision or it won’t get done at all. We may have to bend later, but no one needs to know that now.”
After Georgie left, I was weighing the pros and cons of calling Charlie D and filling him in on the latest in the Buzz saga when Charlie D himself arrived at my door.
“The power of positive thought,” I said. “I was thinking about calling you.”
“Think no more,” Charlie said. “I’m here. But not for long. People get anxious if I’m AWOL this close to airtime.”
“Do you have time for
coffee?”
“No, but a glass of ice water would be nice. Can I get one for you?”
“Please do, and let’s go out to the back patio. A family of ducks appeared on the creek this morning. I’m hoping they’ll stick around.”
We walked to the bottom of out property that gave us the best view of the creek. Charlie D scanned the water. “No ducks in sight,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Buzz Wells,” I said. “Since his flame-out at the table meeting, Buzz has been a busy boy.”
When I’d finished the story of the script, Charlie D groaned. “I don’t get this at all,” he said. “From what you say, Buzz not only ran roughshod over what you and Georgie wrote, he changed everything, including the episodes Roy created. Why is Ainsley Blair going along with this?”
“Rosamond Burke says Ainsley is ‘too knotted in her grief to think clearly.’ That’s as good an explanation as any.”
“Are you and Georgie just going to roll over and play dead?”
“No, we have a plan that will buy us some time. Georgie and I are counting on Ainsley to eventually see that Buzz is using her. We’re just hoping that happens sooner than later.”
“I may be able to kick-start the process,” Charlie D said. “Georgie sent us the CV of everyone working on Sisters and Strangers to check for a connection with Buzz Wells. Jo, you’re not going to like this, but Kyle Daly worked on a series called Broders’ Annex that Buzz Wells executive produced. We know that Buzz was getting information from someone working on Sisters and Strangers. Kyle Daly is the most likely possibility. This may mean nothing, but I don’t think we can disregard it.”
“No, we can’t,” I said. “I’ve had concerns about Kyle myself. After Roy’s death, Georgie asked him to clear Roy’s things out of the main floor of the duplex he and Ainsley shared. Kyle brought me something that has nagged at me ever since.” I went to the mudroom, retrieved Taylor’s book about the life and art of Ernest Lindner and brought it back to Charlie D. “Kyle said he found this on Roy’s desk,” I said. “When Roy was struck with the idea of seeing Sisters and Strangers through the lens of magic realism, he called Taylor and asked if he could borrow her book about Lindner. At that point, Roy had withdrawn from all of us and Taylor hoped Roy’s request meant he was ready to invite her back into his life. It didn’t work out that way. She took the book to his place, he thanked her and closed the door.”