‘It’s fucking brilliant! And don’t try to talk me out of this … and we’re both going on camera.’
‘Not a good idea,’ he said.
‘But that’s the show. You heard … and because it’s going to be Mom’s stuff. I cannot believe how fucking brilliant this is! Final Reckoning. We’ll keep it classy. This is so what Mom would want. Considering how she filmed everything else, we might want to see about taping the funeral. It could be like a Kardashian wedding.’ Not waiting for her brother’s response, she turned to Barry. ‘I’m still not sure about that old lady. Why don’t you introduce me? I mean, if this is going to be my first producing credit, I want to make sure I feel good about it. You know what I mean?’
‘I do,’ Barry said, wondering if it would be possible to bash Rachel’s head on to a tombstone and have it look like an accident. ‘I’ll introduce you.’ And, leaving Richard by the RV, he trailed after Rachel.
Ada sat on a weathered stone bench as the crew packed up their cables and equipment. The sun had pushed away the early morning chill and warmed her skin through the fabric of her dress. She’d spotted Lil off talking to a young couple she didn’t recognize, and then lost track of her.
From the few times Ada had been involved in filming ads for Strauss’s she was used to this waiting around. It gave her time to think about the past couple days, from dealing with her sixty-fifth birthday and the Medicare application to seeing Lenore’s body rolled out of the building. Then there had been that manic pitch meeting and now here she was, not twenty-four hours later, dressed for a cemetery cocktail party.
Near the sleek RV she spotted Barry with the same couple who’d been talking with Lil. The young woman in her form-hugging black dress was pointing in her direction. Something about her seemed familiar as she made eye contact with Ada and headed toward her. She watched the blonde, her head high, as she passed with a smile through the hundred or so curiosity seekers. She stopped and signed a piece of paper a woman pulled from her pocketbook, which triggered a flurry of other articles for her to sign, including a girl’s arm.
As one thing flowed to the next in this crazy day, Ada realized that this was Lenore’s daughter, Rachel. Who, after she’d finished her impromptu signing, headed straight for her.
‘You’re Ada,’ she said.
‘I am,’ Ada replied, taking in the girl who for some reason struck her as younger than nineteen. Almost like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes. ‘I am so sorry about your mother.’
‘No need,’ Rachel said. ‘Unless you shot Lenore.’
Her joking tone threw Ada. ‘Didn’t know her that well.’
‘I did,’ Rachel said. ‘Can I sit with you?’
‘Of course,’ and she slid to one end of the small bench. ‘Are you feeling OK?’ she asked.
Rachel stared back at the RV and at Barry, who’d been following her and now stood about fifteen feet away. ‘I’ve got this,’ Rachel shouted back to him. ‘Go talk to my brother. Try to calm him down.’
Barry looked at Ada. His face was flushed.
There was something he was trying to communicate. As prescient as Ada was, she’d no clue what he wanted to say, though it was clear that Rachel had upset him. ‘What exactly have you got?’ Ada asked.
‘You’re direct.’ Rachel said.
‘It cuts down on wasted time.’
‘That’s true. The shortest distance between two points.’
‘And you’ll be coming to yours …’ Ada’s words trailed.
‘Oh my God.’ And Rachel shifted to face Ada. ‘I thought you were just some old lady. Are those colored contacts?’
‘No. They’re real, how about your breasts?’ Ada shot back.
‘I paid real money for them, or my mother did.’
‘Then they’re real. So are you always this rude?’ Ada asked, trying to get a feel for this young girl whose face rested in a smile, but whose words and posture spoke to deeper layers.
‘I don’t know what I am most of the time. It’s nice here.’
‘It is,’ Ada said. ‘I always go by this cemetery and think how peaceful it would be just to spend some time, look at the headstones. But I never do.’
‘My mother was a lesbian,’ Rachel blurted.
‘OK,’ Ada said, realizing this was not general information about Lenore. And also not the kind of thing people typically share in the first few moments of an acquaintance. She felt Rachel watching her. ‘You’re telling me this because?’
‘I met your girlfriend …’ Rachel’s poise faltered. ‘I was wrong about you. Do you have children?’
‘A daughter,’ Ada said, trying to piece this odd conversation together.
‘I bet she’s perfect.’
‘We have issues.’
‘Do you love her?’ Rachel asked.
‘Of course.’ Ada sensed some powerful need inside Rachel. She tried to find a word, but there wasn’t one that fit − ‘hunger’ perhaps, but vast. ‘I don’t care for her husband, and that’s made things difficult.’
‘Do you still talk to her?’
‘All the time, and I’ve got two grandchildren that I adore. My grandson Aaron is probably your age.’
Rachel’s smile faltered. ‘I never knew my grandparents. Lenore’s parents were both dead before we were born and … crap.’
‘I don’t know what to say, sweetheart.’ Ada felt something tug. ‘It seems wrong that I know so much about you from TV. You don’t know who your father is, do you?’
Rachel bit her bottom lip. Tears spilled from her eyes, but her smiled stayed.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ada instinctively pressed up next to Rachel and placed her arm around her shoulder. She was shocked at how bony she felt. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘It’s not,’ Rachel said, as tears fell. ‘Nothing’s OK. And I make things worse. It’s what I do.’
‘It is OK,’ Ada said. ‘You’re here, it’s a beautiful day. Yes, some awful things have happened. We get through those, and it’s not always happy, and sometimes we mess up. Lord knows I do.’
Rachel stiffened. ‘Maybe it’s like that for you … for other people. My mother hated me. She told me, more than once, that if she’d known how I was going to turn out, she would never have had me. And even if she’d never told me, I would have known from how she treated me. It’s just a fucked up fact of my life, and now that she’s dead I can’t do a damn thing about it.’
Ada felt the girl’s sorrow and her rage. There seemed no good response. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Rachel batted away her tears. ‘This is why I get waterproof mascara. God, you must think I’m a total nut job.’
‘I think,’ Ada said, ‘you’re going through one of the biggest losses anyone can go through. And I think …’ she hesitated, fearing the answer to her next question. ‘Is there anyone in your life who cares for you?’
Rachel stared at the ground. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Richard, but I make him nervous. My shrink, but he gets paid for that. I guess Richard’s the closest, and right now we’re fighting.’
‘About your mom’s death?’
‘About everything. And I can’t seem to stop myself from pissing him off.’
‘How’s he handling your mother’s death?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m such a shitty sister.’ She stared at her brother, who was in a heated conversation with Barry by the black RV. ‘As much as Lenore hated me, she loved him. And I love him. So he gets two helpings. Only now she’s gone and I’m being a total bitch. I should go see what’s happening. See if I can − as Dr Ebert puts it − take a bad situation and make it worse.’
Rachel shrugged and Ada pulled back her arm. As Rachel pushed up from the bench she swayed. ‘I don’t feel so good.’
Ada came to her side. ‘What is it?’
Rachel doubled over. She started to dry heave.
Ada put her hand on the girl’s back and rubbed gentle circles. ‘It’s OK.’ She turned to see if may
be Richard Parks wanted to come help his sister. As she spotted him at the RV she also noticed several cameras and cell phones pointed in their direction. She felt a surge of rage. How could people be so thoughtless? ‘Rachel, is it passing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why don’t I take you to your brother?’
‘Trying to get rid of me?’
‘No, I just think you should be with whatever family you have.’
‘I’m good,’ she said, standing up. She caught Ada’s expression, and then looked at the onlookers who were blatantly filming them. ‘I don’t even notice any more.’ She pasted on a smile and turned to the cameras. ‘This is nothing. These are just some locals who’ll Instagram pictures on Facebook and Twitter of Rachel Parks puking in the cemetery. Try getting chased down the highway at three in the morning by real paparazzi. You know,’ she said, ‘as I think about it, they didn’t come out here so much when we were growing up. Like Connecticut is off limits. It’s what I want. A whole different life. A place where kids can grow up and know their mother loves them, where someone’s not always shoving a camera in their face. You have to think about that, Ada.’
‘About what?’ Surprised to hear the girl use her name.
‘You’re going to be on TV, and this show is going to catch a lot of buzz. People will want to know about you, about your girlfriend. If you get famous enough, it goes further. Nothing is private, just what’s inside your head.’
‘So that’s it,’ Ada said softly, as they headed toward the RV. ‘That’s why you smile.’
The side of Rachel’s mouth twisted up. ‘You’re quick. I bet you could give Dr Ebert a run for it. So let me ask you this. My smile is my armor; do you know what I’m protecting?’
‘Rachel,’ Ada said, as Richard left a flustered-looking Barry by the RV to join them. ‘We’ve just met, so I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not. So take what I say with many grains of salt. But what I sense beneath your smile is suffering, and I’m very sorry that you have to go through that.’
‘What’s going on?’ Richard asked. He looked from Rachel to Ada.
Ada couldn’t help but stare at the handsome young man, his emotions hot and on the surface. The two of them like polar opposites, her with a smiling facade and him flushed, angry and possibly scared. That’s odd, she thought. Scared of what?
Rachel’s smile for her brother seemed a bit bigger than the one for the camera-toting locals.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘Were you sick?’
‘I’m fine. You look like your head’s about to explode. What just happened?’
‘I was having a talk with that producer.’
‘You mean Barry,’ Rachel said. ‘And considering I’m going to insist on a producing credit for this myself, you should let me know what your concerns are.’
Richard’s mouth opened and then shut. He reminded Ada of a fish gasping for air.
‘Just spit it out,’ Rachel said.
‘He had no right to do this!’ Richard said. ‘None of this was approved. This Barry Stromstein decided to take advantage of … the situation and green-light his own show.’
‘So,’ she said. ‘You and I both know it’s a weird enough idea to catch on. And if we’re talking about Mom and the situation … for God’s sake just say it. A day after our mother is shot dead, we’re in a cemetery filming a new reality show. The media is going to scoop this up. Now stop, Richard, and think about Mom. Just ask yourself: what would Lenore do? And you know the answer.’
He stared at her.
‘You really loved her and she really loved you. Now, I’ll tell you something she loved more.’
He nodded. ‘I know … this.’
Ada was fascinated by the rapid shift in his demeanor. Like his sister had stuck a pin in his anger, it all ran out and was replaced by grief.
‘I don’t want to do this here.’ He sank to the stone bench.
Rachel rested her hands on her brother’s shoulders. ‘You see,’ she said to Ada. ‘This is what’s coming.’ She looked at their camera-phone-toting audience, who were maintaining the seventy-five foot perimeter the film crew had set. ‘Mom thrived on this. She didn’t exist if she wasn’t being filmed.’
‘But this?’ he said. ‘Rachel, it’s in bad taste.’
‘So? Our mother was the queen of bad taste. That was Lenore’s shtick. And I know you don’t like to hear this … she taped our inseminations. Our mother was a pioneer in tasteless TV. Her talent was that she made it all look elegant.’ Rachel looked at Ada. ‘“On today’s show”’ – her impression of Lenore was chilling, from how she held her head to her carefully clipped syllables – ‘“we’ll examine how to get knocked up using common items found in your kitchen, and then later we’ll practice the art of ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement.”’
Richard snorted.
‘You know I’m right.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No maybe about it. So stop ripping that Barry a new one and wrap your head around this, because no matter what you think, Mom would fucking love this.’
Richard Parks’ tirade played in Barry’s head. Intellectually, he knew the man was right and that his mother had just been murdered. Still, having to stand there and take it as the twenty-two-year-old chastised him, and within earshot of the crew: ‘You had no approval, no authorization. What the fuck were you thinking?’ And, twenty-two years old or not, the man lasered in to his deepest fears: ‘You think this will save your job when over twenty producers and their staff will get their marching orders on Monday?’
He climbed into the RV, grateful to find it empty. Through darkly tinted windows he watched Rachel and Richard. They’d probably already told Ada she was too old and off the show, essentially what they were telling him. The crew were packed and waiting for directions from either him or Melanie. They knew something was going down and no one wanted to make a move. Not like him. He’d taken his shot … it had been a long one, and now it looked like it would fall short of the hoop.
His cell buzzed. He saw Jeanine’s number. He’d gotten home late and left before she was up. His last image her gorgeous profile and flaming hair fanned against white linen. He’d peeked in on Ashley in her thousand-shades-of-pink bedroom. His beautiful girls safe and snug, having no clue as to how tenuous their lives really were. ‘Hi babe.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘That bad?’
‘Barry, the day you can hide how you feel from me is the day we’re done. The shooting’s not going well?’
Ever since he’d met Jeanine on the set of Model Behavior, a show that played with people’s expectations of beauty, he’d struggled to feel worthy of her. From the moment he first saw her at the contestant auditions, he knew this farm girl from Iowa was different. Her head-turning beauty reflected a strong and loving woman. Throughout the taping of Model Behavior he’d waited and watched. No one could be that perfect. She’d never stooped to the back-stabbing shenanigans that were fueled by his team to boost ratings. On screen, she moved with the grace of a ballerina. When people naturally asked how much dance training she’d had, she’d reply ‘None, unless you count mucking stalls, riding horses and hunting down stray cattle.’
As the season had progressed, he’d fallen in love. He remembered the moment that he knew. It was during a challenge where the models had to do a photo shoot with Arabian stallions. The stable they had used had assured him that the selected animals were docile and that the models/contestants had nothing to fear. The day had been a farce of high-strung young women pitching fits about the smells and the oppressive heat. But not Jeanine. Unbidden, she had attached herself to the trainers and coached the other contestants in how to work with the animals. When it was her turn, she was the only one to put a horse through its paces, her long hair unbound, her impractical gown billowing across the animal’s flank. As she’d passed him at a full gallop on the black stallion she’d turned, smiled and blown him a kiss. In that moment he’d known.
; Since then, everything he did was for her, and then for her and Ashley. How could he admit that it was falling into the crapper?
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Connecticut.’
‘OK. Were you planning on coming home tonight?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Barry, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?’
Perched on the edge, his career about to tank, he knew this moment had to come. The moment where it all turned to dust and Jeanine would realize she’d married a loser. This was like the contrived situations they ran the models through on Model Behavior to see if their outward beauty matched their inner morals or if it was all just on the surface. ‘I think Richard Parks is going to pull the plug; I made some decisions, and … Jeanine, it’s not going well and we need to brace for the worst.’ He waited, hearing only silence.
‘Then I need to be there,’ she said.
It was not what he expected.
‘I don’t see what—’
She interrupted, ‘I’m grabbing Ashley. Just give me an address. I need to be with you, Barry. Please.’
With a numbness in his belly he looked toward the cemetery. Richard, Rachel and Ada were heading back toward the RV. Everything felt wrong. How did he wind up, at thirty-eight, in a cemetery in Connecticut with his future, and that of his family, in the hands of a pair of spoiled socialites? ‘It’s a town called Grenville, just south of Lenore’s place in Shiloh. There’s really no reason to come. Whatever’s going to happen—’
‘Barry, listen to me. Don’t let them get to you. You are an extraordinarily talented man. They are lucky to have you. You are a wonderful father and the man I love. Do not let them get to you. I’ll be there as fast as I can.’
Her words helped, but in his head he heard the theme music for Model Behavior that got played when a contestant was eliminated. He knew the score. Women like Jeanine didn’t stick with men like Barry when their careers flew apart. That was just the way it was.
THIRTEEN
‘We’re going to the Parks’ mansion in the morning,’ Ada said from the dining room table. It was eight o’clock and they were only now sitting down to dinner. She was still in the skirt and blouse from her last outfit of the day, a 1970s green Chanel suit. The pumps which had caused her ankles to burn for the last three hours were now replaced with L.L. Bean Wicked Good slippers. Across from her sat Rose. And on the end was Ada’s grandson, Aaron, who’d arrived unexpectedly.
Done to Death Page 9