by Dana Spiotta
* * *
After the success of Kent State: Recovered, the failed Desoto project, and the perverse satisfactions of Play Truman, Meadow decided to take some time to consider what her new project might be. She flew home to LA for the first extended visit with her parents in years. Meadow slept in her old room, and she walked through her old life as if she had never left. She wanted to, somehow. She let herself regress a little: watching videos and movies on TV, smoking on the patio in the cool desert night, drinking expensive white wine with her mother, and even going shopping. She spent hours at the flea market looking at old things. She picked up broken vintage electronics, sorted through boxes of ephemera, bought a number of obsolete devices. Whatever caught her eye and interested her. She put the things she bought in her bedroom and arranged them on a low shelf. She flipped through a box of old postcards and read the notes from long-dead people. She spent days like this.
Coming home and staying home was unsettling. It was impossible not to feel like a ghost visiting her old life, because everything in her house and the city seemed the same except for her. She was different, and Los Angeles made Meadow lonely for her grown-up self. All her friends were in New York.
“Meadow!” Carrie said.
“How are you?” Meadow spoke into the handset of her beige plastic cordless phone. She was stretched on the bed and starting a second glass of her mother’s white burgundy.
“It is so nuts right now. We are doing all the postproduction stuff. I can’t believe it is really happening.”
“Oh. Good,” Meadow said. “I am at my parents’ house doing nothing.”
“Why are you staying, then?” Carrie said. “Come back to New York.”
“I will. Soon. I just need to regroup, I think. Watch a bunch of movies and think.”
“What’s that you say? Watch a bunch of movies, you, really?” Carrie said. She laughed. “I wish I could be there. Even if you make me watch some real-time antinarrative film essay about Portuguese fishermen—”
“Actually I was thinking all screwball comedies. Bringing Up Baby, Twentieth Century, His Girl Friday—”
“Very tempting!” Carrie said.
“Why don’t you come here?” Meadow said. “We can watch whatever you want. A Peter Sellers festival. Woody Allen films. I’m up for it.”
“Meadow, I’d love to, but I can’t right now. I am working.”
“All right, all right,” Meadow said.
“Are you okay? Are you working on something new?” Carrie said.
“I’m fine. But I have to go.”
“Well, I am glad you called. We seriously need to hang out when you get back.”
“Yeah. And I really want to see that Portuguese fishermen movie.”
Carrie laughed. “The Way of the Fish, you mean?”
“No, I think it’s called Scales: Eyes.”
“Man with a Fish.”
“Triumph of the Fish.”
“Le Sang des Poissons,” Carrie said. “No, wait. F Is for Fish.”
“You laugh,” Meadow said, “but I would love to see any of those films.”
As soon as she heard Carrie disconnect, she pressed the glowing call button, waited for the dial tone, and punched in Kyle’s number. She offered to pay for his ticket, and her parents let Kyle stay in her room with her. For three days after he arrived they mostly concentrated on having sex during the day while her parents were out. She enjoyed having Kyle on her bed, in her room, surrounded by her books and posters from high school. By the afternoon of the third day, even that grew tiresome.
Meadow got up and pulled on a tiny t-shirt and some panties. She rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes, then sat in a chair by the window. She folded her long legs under her, opened the window, and lit up the cigarette.
Kyle stared at her from the bed.
“What?” she said.
“You realize this is like a full-on suite, right?” he said. Meadow burst out laughing. “It is. You have a luxurious starlet bathroom and then you have a huge bedroom and then you have like an anteroom. A suite.”
Meadow shrugged and blew smoke toward the open window.
“You act like you are from the ghettos of Bombay,” she said.
Kyle yelped out a laugh.
“I am sure,” Meadow continued, “that in the privileged cul-de-sacs of Westchester, a dedicated bathroom is not unheard of.”
“Racist,” Kyle said, smiling. “And it would be a ghetto in Dhaka, not Bombay!”
“But Westchester, in any case,” she said.
“This is a different level of wealth.”
Meadow looked around, imagined the house from the eyes of someone else. It was opulent, partly because her mother had larded the place up with sumptuous, decadent decor: velvet pillows, silky carpets, chandeliers.
“I’m going to make bacon and eggs now,” Meadow said.
Later she took a long run through the hills of Bel-Air, followed by a swim in the pool with the view. Then her parents came home, and as usual, there were guests over for dinner. At first Meadow thought this was for her benefit, or that her parents were showing her off to their friends. But then she realized that this was what they had been doing since she left: entertaining. On the previous evenings, Meadow and Kyle drank too much wine and slipped away after the main course was over to watch movies in her room.
But tonight Meadow lingered because one of her father’s guests mentioned a mysterious woman, “Nicole,” who used to call men in Hollywood.
“It wasn’t just me. She called a number of men in the industry. We all used to talk about her,” said Jeremy, a screenwriter who was also her father’s client and friend.
“I think I remember hearing about her,” her father said. “She seduced men on the phone, right?”
“But no phone sex,” Jeremy said. “That was the thing. It was very personal and even erotic, but it wasn’t explicit. I mean, that’s what I heard. I only talked to her twice. I didn’t see the appeal, and I guess she felt the same way because she never called me again. But some people became obsessed with her.”
“Did she call you?” her mother said to her father. Her father shook his head.
“I believe she only called ‘creative’ types,” he said. “The snob.” They all laughed.
“Wait, wait. So she would cold-call these men?” Meadow said.
“Yes, but not really. She knew your friends. She knew everyone, somehow. She had a lot of confidence, and she was persuasive without it ever feeling that way. Jack Cusano was one of the guys.”
“Hey, do you remember Jack Cusano? We had him over a couple of times. The Robert DeMarco guy,” her father said.
“Of course I remember him. He was very cool. He told me all about working with DeMarco. And we talked about John Cassavetes, about our love for Love Streams. So Jack Cusano spoke to her?” Meadow said.
“I heard that he was really into her. For a couple of years,” Jeremy said.
“That’s surprising. He doesn’t seem like the type,” her father said.
“Did anyone ever meet her in person?” Meadow said.
“No. People tried, and she would stop calling them. And then she stopped altogether. She just disappeared a few years ago,” he said.
“I wonder why,” she said.
There was a pause at the table. Everyone looked at Meadow.
“Uh-oh,” her father said, smiling.
“What?” she said. “It’s interesting.”
* * *
Meadow hung up the phone after “Nicole” had finally agreed to meet with her. Their talk made Meadow feel a bit uneasy. It was undeniable that Nicole was reluctant; yet she sounded almost happy to hear from Meadow. She was impressed that Meadow had tracked her down. One of the men, Jack Cusano, had given her Nicole’s phone number. She took it as a sign of fate that it was a Syracuse area cod
e, just a couple of hours from her place in Gloversville. The number didn’t work, but the phone company (once Meadow explained to them it was an urgent family matter, she was looking for her sister) was able to look up the name of the woman who had the number in the past. With the real name, Amy Anne Thomas, and the city, Syracuse, it was simply a matter of looking in the phone book.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Nicole?” At the last second, Meadow decided to use Amy’s phone name, just to see how she would respond. There was a pause.
“Yes, I am Nicole.”
The minute Meadow heard the woman’s voice, she knew she had to make the film. It was a very appealing voice. And the perverse idea of doing a film about the power of a voice excited her. Meadow could feel herself drawn in right away. Meadow tried to persuade Nicole to let her interview her for a film. She listened to Meadow and then politely refused.
“I think you are a fascinating person—you captivated all these big power guys in Hollywood. And then dropped out of it altogether. You are a legend.”
“That’s very flattering, but I am not that fascinating in real life. I think.”
“I doubt that. I really do. You are mysterious, and no one can resist that.”
“Mystery only lasts until I am exposed. I don’t want to be exposed, and I don’t want to be filmed,” she said. “I mean, you can see that was the point of using the phone, right?”
Meadow laughed. This woman was smart.
“Of course,” Meadow said. “Maybe no filming. Maybe we can just do voice recording then? Hmmm. Even film your apartment, your world, but not you? It’s such a good story. And you deserve credit for doing a brilliant deconstruction of male desire, a brilliant confidence game, a great hoax.”
“I don’t think of it that way, a hoax.”
“Maybe that is too hard a word, too public. How would you describe it?”
Meadow proceeded slowly. They agreed to speak again in a few days. Meadow didn’t push her. She talked about her previous films and sent Nicole her videos. She had credibility and would only make something interesting and sympathetic. She flattered the woman but meant what she said.
“I get you,” Meadow told her. “We are alike. You know how to read people. You are an inventor, a story conjurer.” She reassured her that the process was collaborative. Meadow also said (which Meadow of course didn’t mean as a threat but as a statement of fact), “I respect your feelings. It’s fine if you don’t want to do it. I can make a film about it without interviewing you.” Nicole didn’t seem to mind Meadow’s interest, in fact she liked to talk on the phone with her about it, but she would not say yes to the film or even to meeting in person. Meadow’s instinct told her that Nicole didn’t have a lot going on in her life. She knew that there was a good chance if she spent some time with this woman in Syracuse, if she expressed a profound interest in her and her life, she would come around. But Nicole kept saying no. Then the key came: Meadow mentioned that Jack Cusano had agreed to be interviewed.
“You spoke with Jack?”
“Yes, a few times.”
And then Nicole told Meadow she would meet with Meadow in person, if not yet go on camera.
CHILDREN OF THE DISAPPEARED
When she had finished Inward Operator, Meadow felt uncomfortable with the outcome: it wasn’t that things had gone badly for her subjects, but more that she had orchestrated so much of it. She worried that it was too contrived, too forced, too cheesily consequential. So she quickly started something new. In her next film, she wanted to be invisible and not make anything happen.
Meadow and Kyle plunged into researching and planning a new film. They worked from the apartment she had rented in Washington Heights. It was a large and very affordable place, with two bedrooms, a living room, and a dining room. She could see the George Washington Bridge from her living room window if she stuck her head out and looked to the far left. The reason it was so cheap was that it took a long ride on the A train to get anywhere, and the neighborhood was devoid of other people like her, which was fine with Meadow. It didn’t feel like Manhattan at all, it felt like an outer borough with young Dominicans and old Italians. Plus the striving middle-class families that needed more space but refused to leave the city for New Jersey or the suburbs. Meadow felt she had privacy, as though she were in New York and not in New York. She could even park her car on the street and heading upstate was easy: over the bridge and onto the turnpike and 87. She could be in Gloversville in three hours.
She read the tabloid papers looking for things that interested her, and one day she read about the children of the desaparecidos, the people who were disappeared during the Argentine junta’s Dirty War. Meadow was hungry for real stakes beyond trivial American concerns. She didn’t want to have to gin up any drama; she wanted to make a film about life and death, lies and deception. She wrote down the names of the young people interviewed in the article, the ones who discovered that they had been adopted by the very people who had executed their parents. Several of them were attending boarding school in the United States, and she contacted them. All were trying to come to terms with what they had learned about their parents, understanding it but not quite believing it. One girl, Maria Suárez, was willing to be interviewed. She wanted to defend her “father” although Meadow knew a paternity test said he was not her father, and the records showed she was part of the mass abduction of babies. Meadow filmed her as she went about her life, in class, in the dorms, and out with friends. She sometimes talked about her father and his work against the subversives, but Meadow didn’t push it. As she was doing laundry and eating, Meadow stayed with her. She wanted her to forget there was a camera. Meadow did this for a few weeks until the girl trusted her. Then Meadow sat her in a room and gently asked her to speak about the paternity test and what it meant. The girl conceded that her father had done something terrible, and he had lied to her her entire life. She said, tearfully, that you can’t undo a life all at once, and that it was also true that he loved her. Her helplessness and confusion made for a vivid piece of film, her emotional dilemma poignant. After filming her and watching the video, Meadow realized what she was really interested in. Not the poor children, the victims. She wanted the parents. The perpetrators. She had to talk to the parents.
Her father bought her a plane ticket to Argentina and a Mini DV camera she would use by herself (no crew). She filmed the parents in their homes. No interviews, she assured them. Just the house and the stuff and the faces. She showed up each day and quietly filmed everything. But they knew why she was there, why she was interested. So sometimes they did talk, they alluded, they justified themselves to her. Meadow discovered that she didn’t need to ask questions. The camera on a person was itself an interrogation. She stayed with them, and they grew more comfortable. They wanted her to understand. She accrued hours of footage. It was creepily banal, the kids in New York and the “parents” in Argentina talking about ordinary things: the daily routine, plans for holidays, memories of family vacations. Or not talking. Maria’s false father, Colonel Raúl Suárez, who was rumored to have been involved in the infamous “death flights,” showed Meadow his woodworking studio. He was making a bookshelf. He appeared to be an affable, harmless fifty-year-old father and husband. As he worked, he would sometimes speak in slow, careful Spanish, which Meadow mostly understood. He told stupid jokes. He recited poetry. And he talked about how to make perfect dovetail joints. She indulged him, appeared to find him fascinating, and eventually, after many hours of this, he talked about the war years. Obliquely: “that time” and “those people.” Pronouns not names. His sound reasons. His long-cultivated justification. His unimpeachable actions and his unstained conscience. He was free to speak, as the Ley de Punto Final had cleared all but the top junta actors from prosecution. Then came an almost confession, right into the camera: he was proud that the junta had cleared the country of insurgents, and the children of those people
got a second chance, a chance to be raised by patriots. Suárez was so calm about it all, and he believed in his own righteousness. She found no gap in his story, no niggle of regret or guilt. He said he was a loving father. He looked the part, acted it, believed it. He could point to the good he had done. Meadow found it riveting: what machines of comforting delusions we humans are. Our language, our words, our ever treading minds and interior thoughts, all of these to make an architecture of lies that even we almost believe. No wonder the world is such a mean place, each of us judging one another without seeing our own terrible cruelties.
Back in New York, Kyle and Meadow watched the footage, and Meadow felt a bit sickened by it. Her movie, Children of the Disappeared, was coming together in a most peculiar way. Not didactically essayed. She inflected nothing, judged nothing. The problem, she felt, was that documentary filmmakers could watch their subjects the way an American watched the distant world’s traumas on television. Watching but not engaging. Very happy with the distance between, very happy with the power and privilege of not getting too involved. Content with pointing out the horrors of people so far from each of us.
To overcome this problem, she thought she should be unobtrusive and flat, not pointed, no obvious juxtapositions of Dirty War statistics with bland home life. No easy ironies so we can hate the perpetrators from a great distance. She did this not because she had been given the trust of these monstrous people, these cold-blooded murderers and kidnappers. But because she wanted the human everydayness, their non-monstrousness to come through. She wanted the contradiction, the tension, to be clear: they participated in a horrible regime and they loved their stolen children. This made her feel very uncomfortable, which she thought was the right feeling. She let Kyle do a lot of the work as she started to feel numb toward the film. Inured to all of it. She hadn’t felt that way making a film before.
One afternoon she slipped off to Union Square. She walked to the Village East Cinema by herself, and she bought a ticket to see Girl School, Carrie’s feature film. It had been out for weeks and Meadow hadn’t seen it yet. She was catching the second show of the day on a Monday. Only a few people were in the audience, but she gathered that the film was doing very well. The “funniest film of the summer” was what the Times said. Or at least that was what was quoted on the poster outside.