by Jane Green
“True.” She smiles. “Where did you travel from?”
“Litchfield. Do you know it?”
“I once had an affair with a movie director who had a weekend home there. We snuck up when his wife was away. What terrible things I got up to in my youth. It’s a beautiful town. I would have liked to live there, only it was so far away from New York City. Westport seemed a more sensible compromise.”
“You’ve been here a long time?”
“Forever and a day. I loved your film about the greyhounds.”
“Thank you.” Ten years ago, Billy made a documentary about greyhound racing and what happened to the greyhounds once they were retired. It won awards, was the talk of the town for just a very short while, and every now and then, like today, people will bring it up, praise him for the work.
“I thought you showed tremendous compassion, and it was beautifully shot.”
“Coming from you, that’s a tremendous compliment.”
“It’s true. I filed you away, thinking that one day I would like to work with you. What a delightful surprise to have my agent pass on your e-mail.”
“I had no idea this would happen so quickly. Thank you for being so open, and for this invitation. You haven’t done any big interviews in a very long time, and I’d love to do something. I’m seeing perhaps a feature in the New York Times Magazine or Vanity Fair. We could shoot some film too, add some digital content for online readers.”
“So you’re thinking of doing something a little more than a vanity piece?” She smiles and looks at her hand, before looking back up to Billy, who notices, for the first time, the cane leaning against her chair to one side.
“I think you have a fascinating story that hasn’t been told. Your start in England, and those early Hollywood days when you took the town by storm. I think it’s time to tell your stories.”
“Maybe you’re right. How enormously flattering at this stage of my life for you to want to do something like this.” She smiles. “But, as you can see, I’m not well.” She gestures to the cane. “I ignored it for a very long time, thinking I would wake up one day and be back to myself, but that hasn’t happened. The doctors tell me I have ALS. Do you know what ALS is?”
Billy nods, shocked.
“So you will know it’s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. You will know that it is a progressive deterioration for which there is no cure.”
“I’m so sorry.” Billy is shocked to find he has tears in his eyes. She seems so stoic, so resigned, so brave. This is the very last thing he could have imagined. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. I have done plenty of research and it seems my fate is sealed. My doctors keep raising Stephen Hawking and the fact that he has lived such a full, important, relevant life, and for so long. But he seems to be an anomaly.” She sighs. “And I wouldn’t want that life. The question is not if, but when. I hadn’t anticipated dying in my sixties, but—what’s that saying? Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”
“What can I do? How can I help?”
“Let me tell you a little about ALS. It starts for most people just as it did with me, with dizzy spells and fatigue. From there, I started tripping, and sometimes falling. As the nerves die, they twitch and jump under the skin, together with muscle cramps. As we get weaker, we get clumsy. I have lost most of the use of my left side and am only able to walk with a cane. It won’t be long before I’m in a wheelchair. As the disease progresses, the paralysis will spread until it is one hundred percent. In the end, I won’t be able to eat, drink, or speak. I will be fed by a tube until my organs are ready to pack it up. Then I die. It’s not a pretty way to go.”
Billy shakes his head, still swallowing the lump.
“And it’s not a way I choose to go. Nobody knows other than Lily, who you met when you got here. My daughters don’t know. My friends don’t know. My agent doesn’t know. My manager doesn’t know. My publicist doesn’t know. Other than Lily, you are the only person who knows. I cannot die this way, Mr. Hart. I will not die this way. And I am sorry that I brought you over here to explain why I won’t be featured in a story, other than my obituary.”
She pauses then and sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much. I haven’t seen anyone other than my housekeeper in much too long. I have been very private about this, but it is in fact something of a relief to be able to talk about it. My daughters and I are more or less estranged, although Nell is up the road in Easton. She does the occasional errand for me, but I barely see her. Lizzy is in New York, and Meredith is in London. I speak to each of them once in a blue moon, and they speak to each other even less. I was not a good mother, Mr. Hart. I was too focused on my career.” She sighs again. “I was too focused on myself. I was self-absorbed and selfish and disinterested in my children. By the time they were old enough for me to want to get to know them, none of them were interested. Who can blame them? I would have been the same. But now I have called my daughters home, and I plan on apologizing for the mother I was. I want them with me when I die.”
Billy’s eyes widen.
“Do you know how long you have?”
“Oh, I’m not going to wait for the disease to take me. I’m going to do it myself. I want my daughters with me when I do.”
Billy sits forward, alert, in the way he always is when he inadvertently stumbles upon the hidden story, the one he never realized was there. “Ms. Sunshine,” he says.
“Please. Call me Ronni.”
“Ronni, I am so sorry for all of this, and this may be entirely inappropriate for me to even ask, but if you would consider it, I would still want to write a piece. Maybe I write a piece about this, your extraordinary bravery, your choice to take your own life. You would be helping so many people, not just by telling your story, but by showing them. It would be your legacy, together with your movies, obviously, but this is so important, that people see you, and what you are choosing to do. If you would consider it, it would be my honor to be here and to capture it, in words and pictures and film.”
She stares at him. “I’m flattered. At any other time in my life I would have been thrilled, but I have much work to do. I have been a terrible mother. Typical actress,” she says with a wry smile. “Selfish, self-absorbed. And not there for my children. And it took this diagnosis to make me realize the damage I have done, and the things I have to do to fix it so they have each other to lean on when I’m gone. I think being filmed, or having you here, may be a huge distraction.”
“But that’s exactly what the story is.” Billy can’t hide the excitement in his eyes. “Your redemption. That you and your family come together in your final days.”
Ronni looks at him. “Forgive me. I’m dying, but I’m not dead yet, and if we were to do this, and I’m not saying yes, but if we were, there are certain things that would be important to me. Would you show what it is like to have a debilitating disease, and why euthanasia is the only option for a vain old actress like myself? Would you be kind when you explain that this is as far as I want to progress? I want to die still being able to walk. I want to die still beautiful. I want to leave with the same passion I have lived my life. And I want my children to forgive me. Can you capture all that? Are you up to the challenge?”
She pauses, but he is patient and waits for her to go on. “Maybe you could interview me, alone. Maybe I could talk to you about my daughters, leave them something to remember me by. Something that will help them remember me in a different light.”
She trails off, as Billy nods, trying to take it all in. He wasn’t planning on this kind of story, this kind of film, but Ronni Sunshine choosing to take her own life is—as grim as it sounds—exactly the sort of story he would have jumped at when living in New York. The sort of story that might make his name important again.
The whole project is bigger than
he expected when he sent that e-mail. It would mean uprooting his life, living here for a while, getting to know the family, being part of everything. It wasn’t what he imagined for himself these next few months, but what a story. What a privilege. What choice does he have?
“So you will allow me to interview you, and to film you?”
“Yes.”
“And you know I would need to be here all the time? You know that’s how I work? The fly-on-the-wall documentary. I would fade into the background, but I would have to be here always.”
She smiles. “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what this entails. My daughters are all on their way home. They know nothing, and I’m almost ready to tell them. I have been hoping for some change, some cure, but it is clear there is nothing to be done. I need the girls to try and find a relationship with one another again. Once they have settled back in here, I will tell them. And you should probably be here, yes?”
Billy nods. “I should. And thank you. It is an honor that you are allowing me to do this. Do you think your daughters will be okay with it?”
“I imagine they will be. My whole life has been about me, and all my self-centered mess has done is push the girls away from me, and away from each other. I have three daughters I barely see, barely speak to; and worse, they barely speak to each other. If I can do one last thing for them, it will be to try and bring them back together. As soon as they know I’m dying, it will be all about me again. So I am going to try and wait.” She meets his gaze. “What do you say?”
Billy thinks. “You said I could interview you about your daughters, leave a legacy. I have a camera in the car. Would you be willing to talk to me this afternoon? Allow me to film you a little as you talk about your daughters?”
“Yes,” says Ronni. “But first let’s have Lily bring us some lunch.”
twenty-one
There are many things Meredith feels she is not allowed to do since she has been with Derek, and some of them are things she really, really used to enjoy.
Meredith used to smoke. Derek was appalled when he found a packet of cigarettes in her nightstand, even though she explained she really didn’t smoke regularly, only when she’d had a drink, and only late at night on her own.
Derek’s mouth squeezed into a tight little knot as he shook his head. “You won’t be doing that again,” he said, taking her cigarettes and crunching them in his hand into a ball as tiny flecks of tobacco floated down onto the carpet. Meredith vacuumed them up later.
She doesn’t eat shellfish anymore, because Derek doesn’t eat shellfish, and every time she mentions thinking about ordering it in a restaurant, he sneers and asks how she can eat such filthy creatures, bottom-feeders, disgusting things that aren’t fit for human consumption. Meredith doesn’t point out that there is growth hormone injected into the spare ribs he gnaws on, and thick brown sauce smeared all over his face, every time they go out to his favorite restaurant for dinner. He would just tell her she was being overdramatic and ridiculous.
Meredith has learned to keep very quiet about her politics. Derek describes himself as a true Tory, with a fascination for American politics. When Derek rails on about the left-wing media collaboration, Meredith says nothing. She tries to leave the room. She doesn’t engage in the slightest.
Meredith used to love watching what she always thought of as popcorn TV. Mindless, delicious, and easy to digest without even thinking about it. She could sit for hours watching the American shows she downloads: The Voice, Real Housewives, Catfish.
Now she watches the news with Derek. Or Poldark or Downton Abbey. The only thing they vaguely agree on is Law & Order: SVU on cable, but within the first five minutes of every show it always dawns on her that she has seen this one before. As has Derek, except he never remembers until the very end, when he will frown and say, “You know? This is very familiar. Have we seen this before?”
When her mother phoned and said she needed Meredith to come on Friday with her sisters, Meredith knew, immediately, she had to go. Almost as quickly she thought, why not take a day off on Thursday and have a day to herself with no one making demands on her? Hell, why not even leave Wednesday? Why not turn it into a mini vacation? God knows she hadn’t had a mini vacation by herself in years. Just the thought of being alone in a hotel room filled her with joy.
But where to go? Not Westport, not until the weekend. Before that, she would go somewhere she didn’t know anyone. Somewhere with a spa, perhaps, that was quiet and peaceful. She Googled “best spas in Connecticut” and lingered over one in Washington. She had been to Washington Depot, years before, and remembered it being beautiful and quiet. It was perfect. It was also a small fortune, but . . . why not, she thought. How often did she do this? This would be a night to remember. Or nights.
She told Derek her mother had summoned her (he was starstruck enough by the fact of Ronni Sunshine being Meredith’s mother that she knew he would never question her being called back to Connecticut) and she had to leave early afternoon Wednesday. With a combination of excitement and guilt, she booked herself into the spa for two nights, with a massage each day. Why the hell not? What she really wanted was to stretch out on crisp white hotel sheets all by herself. She wanted to pick up a phone and order room service breakfasts, price be damned. She wanted giant American omelettes oozing with cheese, bread rolls and Danish pastries she could slather with butter if she felt like it, platters of fruit arranged so artfully they resembled abstract paintings.
She wanted to stay in her pajamas all day and watch hours and hours of television. She wanted to catch up on her favorite shows in real time; to find out what Ramona and Bethenny were up to this season, and what work Brandi had done to her face.
She wanted to leave the hotel only if she felt like it, and only if she felt like going to a gas station and buying armfuls of peanut M&M’s, Reese’s Pieces, and Almond Joys. She hadn’t indulged her eating, her stuffing of feelings, for years. Not until she met Derek. Then she began to find, once again, her solace in food. Derek noticed, disapprovingly. The more he disapproved, the more she wanted to buy the food she felt like eating and she wanted to eat it all, without anyone frowning at her or criticizing or telling her, like a naughty little girl, that she wasn’t allowed.
And if she felt like it, she wanted to wander the town. Maybe find an art gallery.
She wanted to be on her own.
She wanted to be able to breathe.
• • •
Here she is, luxuriating in the crisp white sheets she imagined, waking up again after the second sleep, after the big breakfast she gleefully ate in bed. Derek does not allow breakfast in bed, heaven forbid a lone crumb may jump off the tray and into the sheets. Now there are toast crumbs everywhere, which she brushes off the bed with a nonchalant sweep of the hand.
She has a massage later, and hours to kill. Too many hours to spend watching television, she thinks. It is sunny, but there is a cool wind. I’ll go shopping, find a wrap, she decides. One of those boutiques on the green is bound to have something pretty. Maybe I’ll wander. It has been so long since I have been back in the States.
And so she gets up and dressed and walks out to the green. She does not find a wrap but a crocheted cardigan. She happily bundles herself into it and continues walking around the town, nosing along, remembering there is a bookstore close by, a bookstore she has been into, a bookstore she loved.
And there it is. The Hickory Stick. She smiles as soon as she walks in. It makes her happy, shuffling among the shelves, pulling out whatever strikes her as interesting, standing and leisurely reading a few pages, adding it to the pile in her arms, or placing it carefully back. She had forgotten how happy this made her, for the only bookstores she has easy access to in London are large and impersonal, and it’s impossible to just browse. She doesn’t want to. They don’t make her happy in the way this small bookstore does.
“That’s great.”
>
She looks up to see a youngish man with glasses looking at her. She closes the book she’s holding to see the cover, not even sure what it is she’s reading.
“I read it a couple of months ago,” he says. “You should buy it.”
“Okay. Thanks. Anything else you recommend?”
“Depends. What do you like?”
“I don’t really know. I have a couple of days off and plan to spend them watching crappy TV shows and reading. Maybe my reading fare ought to be a little more substantial than the crappy TV.”
He smiles. “Have you read this?” He turns and pulls a thick book off the shelves, one that got rave reviews from everyone. But Meredith worries it is too serious, that she will not be able to finish it.
“I haven’t. I’m worried . . .”
“. . . it’s too heavy?” He finishes her sentence off for her and they both laugh. “I thought that, too, and the first three chapters are a bit slow, but after that you won’t be able to put it down. Cross my heart, this is the best thing you’ll read all year.”
He hands it to her, with a slight bow, then gives her a squinched-up sort of smile and a wave as he wanders over to the other side of the store. He looks nice, thinks Meredith. Cute. Probably her age, maybe a little younger. He has the sort of baby face that makes his precise age hard to guess.
He’s dressed like a typical bookstore clerk in an old, faded, pinkish T-shirt and blue jeans, leather sneakers on his feet. Nice sneakers, actually. Trendier than she would have expected.
He has cool Elvis Costello–ish black glasses, and hair that sticks up. And crow’s-feet when he smiles. Not handsome. But boyishly charming, she thinks, casting another glance his way.
Maybe she should ask him advice on something else. But what for? she sharply reprimands herself. To continue the conversation? With what end in sight? Stop it. You are engaged to be married to a wonderful man. This is what she often tells herself when she finds herself talking to a man her age who seems to be reasonably attractive, when she finds her mind wandering into all kinds of directions it shouldn’t be wandering.