by Joy Fielding
The push of a button. The scene ended. Julia’s anguished face stared at her mother from inside her fifty-two-inch prison.
“I had no idea …” Cindy began.
“How good she is?” Michael asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Yes, she’s very good,” Michael agreed. “Would you like to see it again?”
Cindy shook her head. Another viewing of the tape and they’d have to scrape her off the floor.
“I could have a copy made, if you’d like.”
“Thank you.”
There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Philip stepped into the waiting room, returned seconds later, his pale face ashen. “It’s the police.”
“You called the police?” Michael asked, clearly more amused than annoyed.
Cindy shook her head as the two detectives strode purposefully into the room.
“Michael Kinsolving?” Detective Bartolli asked, his partner right behind. Both men stopped abruptly when they saw Julia’s face on the large TV screen. Slowly, they pivoted in Cindy’s direction. “Mrs. Carver?”
“What are you doing here?” Detective Gill asked accusingly.
Michael Kinsolving shook the officers’ hands. “Mrs. Carver was hoping I might be able to be of some help in finding her daughter.”
“And were you?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea where her daughter might be.”
“We were just showing Mrs. Carver a tape of Julia’s audition,” Philip volunteered from the doorway. “Can I get anyone some bottled water or an espresso, perhaps?”
Detective Bartolli shook his head. “Detective Gill will drive you home, Mrs. Carver,” he said, his voice bristling with annoyance at her unexpected presence.
“That’s all right. I have my car.”
“I’ll walk you to it,” Detective Gill said, leaving no room for discussion.
“I’ll get a copy of the audition tape over to you as soon as possible,” Michael said.
“Thank you.” Cindy rose slowly from the chair, depositing her barely touched glass of Perrier on the director’s desk, then shuffling toward the door, her feet numb, unable to feel the floor. She paused in the doorway. “Good luck at the festival.”
“Thank you. Good luck finding your daughter.”
Cindy nodded, aware of Detective Gill’s firm grasp on her elbow.
“I’d like to have a look at that tape,” she heard Detective Bartolli say as the door to the inner office closed and Detective Gill led her toward the stairs.
SEVENTEEN
DARK clouds were gathering overhead as Cindy pulled into her driveway. She recognized Meg’s red Mercedes on the street as she ran up the front stairs to her house, fumbling in her purse for her key.
The front door opened just as she was reaching for it. “Where have you been?” Trish asked, pulling her inside, Elvis leaping toward her thighs. “Your mother’s been frantic.”
“Just like old times,” Meg said, joining Trish in the hallway and taking Cindy into her arms. “Are you all right?”
Cindy nodded against her friend’s shoulder. “I’m okay.”
“Where have you been?” Trish asked again.
“Where did you go?” Norma Appleton demanded, joining the women in the front hall.
“I went to see Michael Kinsolving.”
“Michael Kinsolving, the director?” Trish asked.
“Why’d you go see him?” Meg asked.
“Does he know where Julia is?” Cindy’s mother asked at the same time.
Cindy shook her head. “He says he doesn’t.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I don’t know.” Would you like to fuck her? she heard the director ask, wondering if he’d posed the same question to others regarding Julia. “He claimed he didn’t even remember her, that he’s seen so many girls …” Her voice faded, disappeared. But then he acknowledged how very good she was. And how could anyone forget Julia?
“Have some lunch,” Norma Appleton urged, ushering the women into the kitchen.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Your mother’s been filling us in,” Meg said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
“What do the police think?” Trish asked.
Cindy shrugged. “That it’s too early to panic.”
“They’re right.”
“I know.”
“Doesn’t help, does it?”
“No.”
Trish hugged her, sat down beside her, as Meg pulled up another chair, wrapped her arms around Cindy.
“Where’s Heather?” Cindy asked.
“Out. Said she’d be back later.” Norma Appleton swayed from one foot to the other, as if weighing her options. “I think I’ll go upstairs and watch TV,” she announced finally. “Come on, Elvis, you can keep me company. Meg,” she called from the top of the stairs, “make sure she eats something.”
“Will do,” Meg called back. Then, “Is she driving you nuts?”
“Only a little.”
“I remember when my mother came to help out after Jeremy was born,” Trish began. “What a time that was!”
“Trish,” Meg said, “that was twenty years ago.”
“Trust me, I’m still reeling.”
Cindy laughed, a tentative trickle that wobbled through the still air.
“She flew in from Florida, arrived in the middle of a giant snowstorm, the plane was like three hours late arriving, and she was angry because no one could get to the airport to pick her up, and God forbid, she had to take a limo, and she marched into the apartment complaining about all things Canadian, especially her oldest daughter, who was inconsiderate enough to have given birth in February, of all months. I can still hear her say that—February, of all months! Anyway, she proceeded to wreak havoc for the next several weeks. I couldn’t do anything right. Why had I allowed myself to gain so much weight during my pregnancy? Why was I nursing when I probably didn’t have enough milk? I was going to have one awfully spoiled baby on my hands if I insisted on feeding him each time he cried. I could literally hear her gasp with horror every time I picked him up. His head! Watch his head! Like I was this total moron. Of course, I couldn’t yell at her, so I took it out on Bill. Almost ended the marriage right then and there. No wonder Jeremy’s an only child.”
“Families.” Meg shook her head. “You gotta love ‘em.”
“Do you?” Trish asked.
“In the end, what else is there?”
“Friends,” Cindy said, reaching for their hands, entwining her fingers with theirs, trying to ignore the echo of Tom’s distant voice in her ear. Friends, he’d said dismissively. Friends come and go. Which probably accounted for Julia’s revolving door approach to friendship.
“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,” C
indy 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 t
o 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.”