The Slow Rise of Clara Daniels

by Christy English

  Clara started to move forward, and Rich breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to have to rescue the man, after all. Clara was going to let him slip the line. “That’s very informative, Will,” she said. “I’m still not interested.”

  The little man followed at her heels. Donna drew back from him, careful to keep her bag from brushing his shoulder in the corridor, as if he were diseased and it might be catching.

  Will, lover of porn, kept talking. “But Clara, soft core porn has everything you can ask from a film genre. It has inventiveness, catharsis, athletic prowess. There’s nothing you can’t draw from it.”

  Clara stopped in mid-step. She saw a production assistant bearing down on them grimly, coming to collect Porn Will for the next segment.

  She dropped her voice to a confidential tone. “William, I tell you. You’ve made me see the light.”

  Porn Guy beamed. Donna cast a startled look at Clara and started hyperventilating.

  “When I decide to start stripping in public, Men For Porn Power will be the first to know. Until that auspicious day, let me give you a little advice.”

  Will leaned closer to hear Clara as she lowered her voice even further.

  “I happen to know that Steve Stimmerman is the man you’re looking for. Not only will he give a speech at your convention, I have it on good authority that he wants to join your group.”

  Rich started to groan, but Donna kicked him. Porn Will didn’t notice this exchange. His glowing eyes were only for Clara, and they lit up as if he were one of the Chosen and he had seen the Second Coming. He stood in breathless silence as Clara passed him.

  She landed one parting jibe over her shoulder as the production assistant came to lead Will away.

  “Ask him on the air, Will. He’ll be thrilled.”

  Rich’s voice was low. “Clara…”

  She ignored him, sending one of her one-thousand-watt smiles to Porn Guy. He looked back in awe at her as he was gently led away.

  “I’ll do that, Clara. God bless you.”

  She waved one hand to him in a casual salute, as Rich leaned over to whisper in her ear.

  “Steve is going to shit a brick.”

  Clara kissed his cheek, smoothing his tie as she did. “Then that’ll be the second time today.”

  Rich laughed under his breath. “I’ll see you later, Clara.”

  “I hope so, Rich. Watch your back. Steve’s feisty this afternoon, and now he’ll be worse.”

  He laughed. “Nothing you couldn’t handle.”

  “Never worry about me.”

  Later, in the car, Donna answered her phone. Clara rested her head against the leather seat, drawing smoke into her lungs from her hashish cigarette.

  Steve’s show had been a triumph. She loved rubbing his face in the fact that she was more popular than he was. Ever since she had refused to sleep with him two years before, she’d been a favorite target of his witless comments.

  Donna’s eyes were wide as she listened to whomever was on the other end of the phone line.

  “Hold on a minute.” Donna cupped her hand over the receiver. “Clara, it’s for you.”

  “No kidding.” Clara reached over and took the phone.

  “Clara, wait—”

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Clara.” It was Aunt April’s voice.

  Clara choked on cigarette smoke for the first time since she was twelve years old. She put out the cigarette in one of the limo’s ash trays, while Donna reached over and pounded on her back. Clara shot her a glare, and Donna stopped pounding. She poured a glass of water instead and handed it to her.

  “Clara, are you all right?” April asked.

  She blinked away tears and took a breath.

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was hoarse, and she took a drink of water.

  April sounded just as she had the last time Clara had seen her. The silence on the phone line lengthened. It had been ten years since Clara had last heard April’s voice.

  “I understand you’re in New York,” April said.

  “How did you get this number?”

  April paused for the barest moment. “I really don’t think that’s important. Do you?”

  Clara’s uncle had a lot of money and knew everyone on both coasts. His people could get anyone’s number, given twenty-four hours to do it.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “I want to see you, Clara.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  There was a long silence. She heard her aunt draw a ragged breath.

  “Clara –”

  She couldn’t read her aunt’s mind, but she could hear the pain in her voice. Ten years of resolve crumbled in the space of a breath.

  “When?”

  She heard April lay the phone down for a moment, and another silence stretched, broken only by the sound of tissue rustling. April picked the phone back up, and her voice was thick with tears.

  “Tonight.”

  “Do you still live on Park and 86th?”

  Clara felt as if she were watching herself from a distance. She almost couldn’t feel the phone in her hand.

  April’s voice was even when she spoke again. “I’ll see you at seven.”

  Clara didn’t even glance at her watch. “I’ll be there.”

  Donna took the phone back, her eyes wide. It was after six-thirty. They didn’t speak to each other, but Donna turned on the intercom and directed the driver uptown.

  13

  New York City, 2019

  Clara stood in the marble hallway outside April’s door. She heard the bell chime inside her aunt’s apartment, distantly, like a call to prayer. After only a moment, a woman in a starched black dress opened the door. Clara stood in silence, blinking at her. She couldn’t find her voice.

  The woman spoke for her, her voice low and melodious, more like that of an opera singer than a servant.

  “Please come in, Miss Daniels.”

  The foyer of her aunt’s penthouse was paneled in mahogany, and the mahogany floor gleamed. Soft light came from electric sconces along the wall, and flowers stood a table in front of the door, giving off the sweet scent of hyacinths and gladioli. The maid took Clara’s coat, drawing it from her body and folding it carefully over one arm as if it were priceless. The woman could see Clara was in shock, and she spoke gently to draw her out of her stupor.

  “Please come this way.”

  Clara followed mutely down the hallway from the foyer to a wide door that opened into her aunt’s sunken living room. White carpet stretched in an almost endless expanse. Clara wondered if she bent down to touch the carpet’s whiteness, if it would come off on her hand. She knew then that her mind was wandering, and she forced herself to raise her gaze from the floor, to look at her aunt for the first time in ten years.

  Aunt April stood by the fireplace against the far wall, wearing a cobalt blue gown. The silk caught the light from the fire, and the color seemed to shift as she moved, so one moment the folds of the gown shimmered cobalt, the next moment a deep indigo, the next a light blue-gray. Clara lost her breath as her aunt turned to face her. In the years that stretched between them, she had forgotten how much April looked like her mother.

  The silence seemed endless, and Clara found that she couldn’t bear to let it continue. She knew she was wearing her heart on the planes of her face, and she schooled her mouth into the lines of indifference, the hard-earned indifference she’d learned during the years Darren had lived in her mother’s house.

  “I didn’t dress for dinner.” Clara forced herself to speak, and found that her voice was steady, almost cool.

  She looked down and away from her aunt, smoothing the front of her faded jeans, drawing her cashmere sweater tightly around her shoulders.

  When she looked up again, she avoided the sight of Aunt April, and instead looked over her shoulder at the mantel behind her. There Clara saw a photograph of herself in a silver frame. A recent photo, taken at the Shout! premiere. Nic
k wasn’t in the picture. Clara was looking over one shoulder, laughing. She wanted to know which photographer her aunt had bribed to get it, but she didn’t ask.

  April met her gaze, unblinking. Clara saw that her aunt had been crying, and her first instinct was to move to her side and offer comfort, as April had always comforted her when she was a child. Before she took a step forward, Clara remembered vividly the first lonely days after her mother’s marriage to Darren, how she’d waited in vain for even a phone call from her aunt, and how no call had ever come. Remembering this, Clara found herself thrust back for a moment into the horror of those painful days, during the first year of April’s desertion. Clara didn’t move to comfort her aunt but stood watching her in silence.

  April crossed the room to stand just a few feet away from her sister’s daughter. Her ash blonde hair was swept up in the twist that Clara remembered from her childhood. Diamonds and sapphires winked at her ears, catching the light from the lamp on a nearby table, transforming that light into prisms of fire. April’s voice was just as Clara remembered it—soft, just as she always heard it in her dreams just before she woke.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral,” April said.

  “We didn’t expect you.”

  “No, I suppose you didn’t.”

  April reached out as if to touch Clara’s arm, but stopped mid-motion. She drew her hand to her own hair instead and fiddled with the sapphire in her earring.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “A vodka and soda, no ice.”

  April nodded to the maid, who moved to a bar at the other end of the room. The mahogany bar stood by a window that led out onto the balcony. Central Park lay below, and the skyline of New York. Clara didn’t look at the view. She kept her eyes on April’s face.

  She accepted the glass the maid handed her.

  “Thank you, Mary. That’ll be all.” Her aunt’s smooth voice didn’t betray any of the emotion that Clara could see simmering under the surface of her composure. She still knew April well enough to see the tension in her hand as she fiddled with her earring for the third time in two minutes.

  The maid was silent as she walked away. Clara found herself wondering, as she always did, where good servants learned that quality of silent motion.

  April faced her niece then, not flinching from her gaze. “You look beautiful, Clara.”

  “Thank you.”

  Clara moved to sit on one of the plush white sofas that faced each other in the center of the room. April moved with her and sat on the opposite sofa. Somewhere deep within the penthouse, a clock chimed seven.

  “I’m early,” Clara said.

  “I’m glad.”

  She looked away from her aunt, raising her drink to her lips. The liquor burned as it hit her tongue, spreading a pattern of warmth as it slid down her throat. She swallowed twice, her eyes not leaving the white carpet under her feet.

  “How are you?” April’s tone was deceptively calm.

  Clara met her gaze and felt tears rise. She blinked them away before she spoke, wondering if her aunt had seen them. Clara’s eyes didn’t seem to realize that she had stopped mourning this woman years ago.

  “Why did you ask me to come here?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “Why?” Clara took another burning sip of vodka.

  April looked away and took a deep breath. As always, her aunt’s mind was closed to her, but Clara could see the pain in her face. Her aunt reached again for her sapphire earring but stopped herself before she touched it. She watched her aunt’s battle to place her hands in her lap and leave them there.

  “I tried to call you at home and at the studio,” April said. “I was never put through.”

  “I told them I wouldn’t accept your calls.”

  Clara knew herself to be a hard woman, but she rarely thought of herself as cruel. She did now, as she looked at her aunt’s crumbling face.

  “You accepted my call today.”

  “That was an accident.”

  There was a long silence. April sat motionless across from her. Clara could see that she had hurt her again. She didn’t want to hurt her aunt, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  April’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. “I miss you.”

  Clara took a sharp breath. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Tell you that you’re my only living family? That I love you? That I’m sorry?”

  April’s voice shook, and Clara found that she couldn’t take her eyes off her aunt’s face, though she desperately wanted to. She wanted to deny the pain in April’s voice and the pain in her own heart, but there it was, as crushing as a vise that wouldn’t loosen its grip.

  Clara felt a tear run down her cheek. April kept speaking, and Clara could see it was an act of courage, not bravado. Her aunt hadn’t planned to speak so plainly, but now she couldn’t stop herself. Clara listened as the words flowed unchecked, like the torrent of a swollen river.

  “I do love you. I am sorry. I regret that I let that bastard run me off when you needed me. I’m sorry that I was weak. That I am weak.”

  April stopped speaking, and Clara looked down. Tears clouded her vision, making the white carpet blur.

  When April spoke again, her voice was devoid of pain. It held resignation, and the realization that the damage couldn’t be undone.

  “I know what I did is unforgivable. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I only wanted to see you again.”

  Clara’s tears kept falling. She didn’t wipe them away. She didn’t look up, but sat in silence, listening to April’s soft voice.

  “Are you happy, Clara? I know I don’t have the right to ask that, to ask anything of you. But tell me anyway.”

  Clara laughed at that, startled, her throat thick with tears. She had no handbag to pull a Kleenex from, no servant at her elbow to offer her one. She used the back of her hand to wipe her nose, the way she had when she was a child, before she had learned restraint.

  “You want to know if I’m happy?”

  “Yes.” April sat poised on the edge of the sofa, her drink untouched on the table in front of her, her eyes riveted on Clara’s face.

  Clara sniffled, taking a sip of her vodka. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been happy. I’ve got what I want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Clara opened her mouth to speak of her career, of her attempts at acting, of her adoring public. She found that no sound would come. She closed her mouth and swallowed convulsively.

  “Are you in love?” April asked.

  Clara blinked at the abruptness of the question, at the desperate way her aunt seemed to wait for her answer.

  Clara found herself considering the question seriously. She didn’t laugh it off as she would have if anyone else had asked it. She looked into her own mind and found that she couldn’t lie to herself about this anymore than she could lie to herself about anything.

  She took a deep breath, searching the feelings that she spent most of her life denying she had. Her aunt’s question brought an emotion to the surface of her thoughts that had been buried deep and jealously guarded.

  Clara was surprised to discover within herself a tiny flame of secret passion that she’d been harboring without knowing it. She wanted to squelch it. She wasn’t a woman given to romantic leanings of any kind. Love wasn’t a word in her vocabulary any longer.

  Then Clara looked into her aunt’s face and saw love for her shining in her eyes, mingled with pain. April was waiting patiently for an answer. Clara told her the truth.

  “I love a man. His name is Fred.”

  “Does he love you?”

  Clara didn’t have to search for this answer. It came to her lips almost before she had a chance to form the word in her mind.

  “Yes.”

  April smiled then, a sheen of tears in her eyes. “I’m glad.”

  Clara smiled back, and for the first time looked at her aunt without a stab of pain. The older woman reach
ed across the glass table to take Clara’s hand. She did not pull away.

  14

  Los Angeles, 2015

  The air in the trailer was stale. The air conditioner was working overtime against the July heat. Clara shifted in her folding chair. Though the air was cool, she still felt like she was suffocating.

  Clara ordered herself to stop complaining, even in her own thoughts. She was studying film making, and this stifling trailer was part of her apprenticeship.

  Three other girls sat at their own vanity tables. One girl tried to ignore the others, as if they were beneath her. The other two whispered together in their shared corner, alternately eyeing Clara and the silent girl. Clara wondered if they were plotting the start of World War III, their faces were so serious.

  Clara had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing at that thought. To laugh outright would be rude, but it would also draw attention. That was part of her apprenticeship, too. Learning as much as she could without drawing too much attention.

  A production assistant knocked on their door. “Clara, we need you on the set.”

  “No problem.”

  She got up, checking her makeup quickly before moving toward the door. The PA waited for her with a clipboard in hand. Clara had two weeks’ worth of work on this feature film, so she got an honorary escort to and from the set. She smiled, straightening her leather miniskirt.

  She was playing a friend of the best friend of the lead, so her scenes were numerous, though banal. They were all playing happy hookers, which Clara knew was a laugh. She never understood where Hollywood got their plots or why the public kept buying them. She shrugged one shoulder. That wasn’t her concern. Whatever the public wanted was fine with her.

  Her blonde hair was spiked out from her head like a crown of thorns. When she got to the set, the makeup and hair women descended on her, checking to see if she’d mussed anything while she waited. Of course, she hadn’t. She was a professional.

  She waited patiently while they gave her the once-over. Just to assert her authority, the head hairdresser applied more hair spray before letting Clara onto the set.