“I thought we were taping her story simply for posterity,” Jean says.
Ben feels he’s at the precipice. He can either jump and make a calculated, fabulous landing, to the applause of all those down below—or he could slip and tumble all the way down, the laughingstock of the crowd. He gives it his best shot and leaps.
“We have a unique opportunity here, Sister,” he says. “Somebody’s going to do Flo’s life story. It’s out there now—it’s public domain. They’ll do it without any input from Flo since you’re not going to grant them access. For which I don’t blame you, of course. But they’ll do it anyway. You need to understand that. They’ll do it and get it wrong.”
He looks hard at Sister Jean, then over at Flo, then back to Sister Jean. The nun glances at Carla Ortiz, who shrugs, as if to say: He’s got a point.
“They’ll get it wrong,” Ben repeats. “If we do it—with your input, of course, and with Flo herself telling her story—then no matter what else anyone does, this will be the version that’s noticed. This will be the one that counts.”
Flo’s eyes are glistening. “Oh, Jeannie, it would be a lark to go back.” She giggles like a girl and looks around the day room. “I never thought I’d leave here. I thought this was it. That these walls would be the extent of it, that I was through seeing the world. But if Ben is right …”
She turns to him, suddenly aflame with an idea. “San Francisco,” she gushes. “Could I go back there? I’d love to see San Francisco one more time.”
“Of course, Flo,” he tells her.
“Carla?” Sister Jean asks.
The lawyer crosses her legs. She’s wearing a tight gray pin-striped suit and skirt with black silk stockings. Ben notices the fine shape to her calf, the delicate ankle, the long spiked heel on her black pump. “There would need to be certain parameters,” she says officially. “Certain areas Miss Bridgewood would not be asked about. No inferences made about them anywhere in the film.”
“Of course,” Ben says. Xerxes is nodding, too. They’ve already talked about this.
“I suppose you see this as a commercial enterprise,” Carla Ortiz says.
“Well,” Xerxes says, “I would think the public will want to see—”
“Then you need to make us an offer,” Carla says plainly.
Xerxes seems taken aback briefly; then he smiles. “Ah, so you’re acting as Flo’s agent?”
“I am.” Carla smiles, finally. “I’ve worked as an agent before. Writers. A couple of Christian rock bands. In San Juan, I even represented a few filmmakers.” She bats her eyes in a way that says she has no need to prove herself further than that. “Of course, none of my clients have been as high profile as your roster, Mr. Stavropoulous, but I think I can manage Flo’s affairs competently.”
Ben was quite sure she could at that. There was an efficiency, a confidence about her that Ben found lacking in his own agent. He couldn’t help himself—he was turned on by this woman.
There you go again, Benjamin. Mom’s voice. A pretty girl and you forget everything else.
Flo’s grinning like a little imp. “You know, I never had an agent before. Back in the old days, you just let your mother or your husband handle things.”
“So make us an offer,” Carla repeats.
“Okay, okay,” Ben says. He hadn’t thought they’d want money. He’s got about three hundred dollars in his savings account. Anita has about four. Maybe he could borrow some money from Richard or Mom. No, he didn’t think that was likely.
“All right,” Xerxes says, shifting uncomfortably. “We’ll get back to you with a figure.”
“Look,” Jean says. “I know you don’t have a lot of money to offer. I’ve explained that to Flo and Carla. And we’re not in this for money. I think you know that. But I agree with Ben: Someone will do Flo’s story, and it might as well be him.”
She turns to look at him directly. “I trust you, Ben. I think we share some common values. I know your work. One Chance, One World had a great impact on me.” She pauses. “But we’d be foolish if we didn’t look out for ourselves.”
“I imagine,” Carla says, wiggling her foot in the air, “you’ll try to sell the idea to a producer once you have our cooperation.”
Xerxes nods.
“And I imagine,” she continues, taking in a deep breath, revealing the firm outline of her breasts beneath her tight gray suit, “that should be relatively easy to do, now that the media is hot on Flo’s trail.”
Ben shifts in his chair, worried his boner might show through his pants. “I think … I think, yes, that should make our job easier,” he admits.
“Then let’s agree on a percentage,” Carla says.
Ben feels prepared to be generous. “We’ll split it,” he offers. He can sense Xerxes looking at him disapprovingly.
“Not good enough,” Carla says.
“Not good en—” Xerxes barks.
Carla shakes her head. “It’s Flo’s story. It’s Flo who’s going to have to traipse around to these places, and she’s one hundred and six years old.” She pauses. “Sixty-forty, and that’s it.”
Flo puts her hand over her mouth to cover a smile.
“Fine,” Ben says. “Fine. Sixty-forty.”
Xerxes lets out a long sigh. “I’ll draw up the agreement,” he says resignedly.
“But,” Ben says, looking over at Flo, “you are aware that we may need to have you do some—well, prepublicity work.”
Flo raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t comprehend.
“That’s right,” says Xerxes. “If we’re going to be partners, you’ll have to do some legwork.”
“What are you talking about?” Jean asks.
“Well,” Ben says, “we need to make Flo a household name again. If we’re going to get the best deal we can, we have to make her a sought-after commodity.”
“This kind of talk makes me very uncomfortable,” Jean says. “Flo isn’t a commodity. She’s a human being.”
“Jean,” Carla says, “let me handle this.” She levels her black eyes at Ben. “Go on, Mr. Sheehan. What’s your point?”
God, he thinks. Catholic attorneys in tight executive suits—now there’s a fantasy he hasn’t had before.
“Well,” he says, a bit huskily, “I hate talking this way, too, and I think you know that, Sister, but one has to when talking business. Our feeling is that, if we can get Flo on a few of the talk shows, then our chances for securing the best possible offer are heightened.”
“Talk shows?” Jean looks over at Carla. “What do you think of that?”
The lawyer’s still got her eyes on Ben. “He has a point,” she concedes.
“Don’t worry,” Ben says appealingly. He widens his eyes as he looks over at Jean. “You trust me, don’t you? I won’t let anything happen to Flo. It’ll all be tightly controlled.”
Xerxes is nodding. “That’s right. We’re not talking the trash shows here. No Springer, no Jenny Jones, not even Leeza. We might have to do Ricki Lake to get the Gen-Xers, but we’ve been talking with Rosie O’Donnell. She’s the Queen of Nice. She won’t go anywhere Flo doesn’t want to go.”
“Rosie O’Donnell!” Flo says, clapping her hands the way she’d once clapped them remembering The Great McGinty. “I love Rosie O’Donnell! We watch her every morning here in the dayroom!”
“And then maybe Regis and Kathie Lee, and of course, Oprah.”
“Oprah!” Flo gushes, turning to Sister Jean.
Ben thinks she’s the exact image of a little girl—the same spirit, the same expression on her face. It didn’t matter that her hair was white or that her face was creased in hundreds of folds or that the skin on her arms was spotted and flaky and sagged. She was a little girl turning to her mother for permission to go out and play.
“I don’t know,” Jean says, clearly troubled.
“Well, I do,” Flo says. Her voice grows quiet and severe. “When does one cease being an adult, Jeannie? At eighty? Ninety?” She’s no long
er a little girl. She looks like Mrs. Maxwell again—with the same air of prerogative Ben remembers his old teacher having, telling the children it was time to put away their crayons and take out their math books, and that was simply that. No further questions.
“I want to do it,” Flo says simply, turning to look at Ben. “I had forgotten her, you see. Florence Lawrence. I’d put her far out of my mind and forgotten all about those days, those places. Who I was. But who I was is still a part of who I am, no matter how far I go or how much I try to separate it. I used to think that God had forgotten to call me home, just left me down here without a plan. But maybe I’m still around for a reason. Maybe I have to go back to being Florence Lawrence one more time.”
They’re all quiet for a moment. Finally Jean says, looking at Flo, “All right. But if you’re going back to being Florence Lawrence, just make sure you bring our lawyer along.”
It breaks the tension. They all laugh, even Carla Ortiz. Whether or not that had been Sister Jean’s intention isn’t clear, but it has the effect anyway. Later that day, Xerxes produces an agreement, and Carla comes up with a set of guidelines. They all sign both documents, and then it’s done.
Richard and Rex have made the trip up to Chicopee on this chilly gray November day because they know they’ll be in California for Thanksgiving—and possibly Christmas—and Richard wants to make sure he sees his mother before the holidays. Rex has gotten a great gig to perform Broadway Royals at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. It’s great exposure, and they could be out there a month. So Richard has promised Mom a special preholiday brunch.
Yet convincing her to leave the house hadn’t been easy. “Oh, but I’ve got a headache,” she’d protested. “I’ve nothing to wear.” But after Richard announced neither he nor Rex would move from the living room floor until she agreed, she finally wrapped an old white cardigan sweater around her enormous form, letting it drape down the front. She didn’t even attempt to button it.
Now she settles into the front passenger seat of Richard’s Saab. The car creaks and sags under her weight. Rex squeezes in back.
“This is a nice car,” Mom’s saying. “Ben’s got that little car. What’s it called?”
Richard snorts. “It was a rental, Mom. Ben’s never owned a car.”
“Poor Benjamin.” Mom sighs, looking around the street as they back down the driveway and head down the road. “Oh, look. The Piatrowskis have new siding. Horrible color, though. Gosh, I haven’t been out of the house in ages.”
“I thought it would be good for you, Mom,” Richard tells her.
She grins, her cheeks pushing her eyes shut. She reaches over and grabs Richard’s chin. “That’s my boy.” She chuckles. “Always looking out for his mother.”
A military aircraft booms overhead. Its shadow passes over the car.
Downtown Chicopee doesn’t offer much in the way of Sunday brunch, Richard discovers. There are a few boarded-up old shops, a couple of video stores, a Spanish market, and several bars. Looming over the street are the rusty spires of the abandoned factory where Richard’s father once worked, where Richard once feared he himself was destined.
Even if Dad hadn’t left the money to escape this place, I’d still have had to go elsewhere to find work, Richard thinks. The factory is all bricked over now, rotting away on the edge of the river.
Richard is very grateful that he’d made it out of here. He’d left Chicopee and its decaying brownstones far behind. He thought of his old friends from high school. Last he heard, Teddy Gluck was working as a cashier at Wal-Mart. Gio Bonelli was in jail. And Mary Kay Silenski—who once had dreamed of marrying Richard—had been a two-time divorcée with a couple of kids when she’d stuck a pistol in her mouth and sent a bullet down her throat.
Oh, yes. He was extremely fortunate to have made it out, driving back now in his turbo Saab to survey the damage.
So what if he was up to his cranium in debt? So what if he lived with a pesty little nag at the back of his mind at all times, a frantic little voice that told him it could all come crashing down at any minute? Sure, he had bills up the butt, but he hadn’t gone completely under yet. And maybe he never would. Although with Rex’s increasingly grand plans for the redesign of their house, he was beginning to think it was inevitable.
No, he promises himself, I’ll get through it. I always have. Even in the dark days right after I went freelance, I managed to find a way. I was able to buy this car. I bought a gold membership at the gym. I kept my monthly tickets to the Met. I took Rex to Spain to celebrate our five-year anniversary.
Credit cards were wonderful things, weren’t they? And the cash advances they gave even better. So what if they charged outrageous finance fees and interest? He’s always gotten what he wanted, hasn’t he? And now he was making better money, writing for places that paid five grand or more per story. No more nine cents a word. He could get out of debt—slowly, maybe, but he could eventually pay it all off.
Sometime in the mid-twenty-first century.
Unless, of course, things took a turn for the better.
“Mom,” he says, “this Florence Lawrence story could mean paydirt for me.” He maneuvers the Saab into a parking space on Main Street. “My ship may be coming in.”
“That’s what Benny said, too,” she tells him. “Are you boys going to work together on this?”
Richard turns off the ignition. “Ben’s a weasel, Mom.”
She sighs. “Oh, Richard. You’ve got to make allowances for Benjamin. I always told you that you’d have to take care of him.”
“He’s trying to steal this idea from under me, and I’m not going to let him.” He hops out of the car. Rex joins him as they each take one of Mom’s hands and pull her out. She struggles to get steady on her feet, but she’s out of breath from the effort.
“Richard,” she manages to say, “maybe you can find something for him. Maybe he can be the cameraman or something if you sell your screenplay.”
He ignores her. “I think there’s a diner around the corner,” he says. “We used to eat there with Dad.”
“Oh, that’s long gone,” Mom says. “It burned down about six years ago and nobody’s ever bothered to rebuild.”
“There’s a Chinese place across the street,” Rex points out.
Another plane booms overhead. They wait for it to be gone before they continue.
“We could get some General Tsou’s chicken,” Mom says. “That’s my favorite. I haven’t had that in ages.”
Richard thinks it’s too high in fat for himself, but doesn’t say so. “All right,” he says, settling. Chinese food wasn’t how he imagined brunch. He wanted to take Mom out to a classy place, buy her a fabulous brunch with mimosas and eggs Benedict and Belgian waffles. It wasn’t often she got a chance to eat out.
They cross the street. A couple of teenaged boys are leaning against a closed, iron-gated pharmacy. One’s tall with sharp features, wearing a backward baseball cap. The other looks younger, maybe twelve or thirteen, with acne-riddled skin and baggy jeans, the waistband down around his thighs, his Tommy Hilfiger underwear showing.
The taller kid eyes Mom as she waddles past. “She be breakin’ the sidewalk,” he says in a low voice.
Rex stops in his stride and jumps back at him. “What did you say?”
The younger boy pops a knife seemingly from the palm of his hand. “He said she was fat,” he tells him calmly. “Disgusting. Gross.”
Richard comes up behind his boyfriend. “Hey, chill,” he says, taking Rex by the shoulders. Rex’s ears are bright red—a sure sign he’s angry. Richard eases him away, raising his hand to the youths in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, we don’t want any trouble,” he tells them. “We’re just going in the restaurant to eat.”
The knife disappears back into the boy’s hand. The two of them just stare steely eyed at Richard.
“You see what happens when I go out of the house?” Mom says. She doesn’t appear frightened or offended or hurt,
just resigned to the wisdom of reclusivity. They move off toward the Chinese restaurant.
There would have been a fight if I hadn’t stopped it, Richard thinks. Rex is so impulsive—like Ben. Ben would’ve jumped them, too. Ben would’ve gone after them for insulting our mother.
Well, Richard tells himself, that’s because he’s the hot-tempered one. He would’ve gotten us stabbed in the street. I’m the levelheaded one. I’m the one to provide the protection, the guidance. It’s always been that way. That’s why I’ve gotten ahead and Ben hasn’t.
But he slips his arm around his mother’s broad waist anyway. He looks down at her tiny little eyes, puffed up by overfed cheeks. His heart breaks. He leans in and gives her a kiss on the forehead.
Sixteen years ago he’d felt the same way toward her. His heart had splintered in half. She was standing in front of him in the kitchen, a few weeks before his last day of high school. And she’d said to him, “I don’t imagine you’ll be wanting to have a graduation party.” It was the saddest thing he’d ever heard her say.
In just a year she’d ballooned—from a hundred and sixty to two hundred and twenty to a walloping two hundred and eighty pounds. The house was a mess. She rarely vacuumed anymore, never washed the kitchen floor. So much had changed since Dad died. Once, Richard had enjoyed having his friends over. They’d play Dark Shadows in the basement, with Richard scrunching himself up to fit in Mom’s old hope chest, then sitting up and raising the lid like the vampire Barnabas Collins emerging from his coffin. But Mom was right: Now, neither he nor Ben wanted a graduation party. They didn’t want their friends in the house, in that dump, seeing the monstrosity that once had been their mother.
Ben had readily admitted not wanting a party. But Richard hesitated, seeing the look on Mom’s face. She knew why they’d probably defer. She saw the shame they bore in their eyes. “Well,” Richard said, “maybe just a couple of friends.” She looked surprised. “I’ll bring a couple of friends by and we’ll have some cake,” Richard promised.
How Mom had brightened. For the next few weeks, she got up early, even began fixing her hair. She cleaned the kitchen as best she could and baked a cake from scratch. On graduation day, a headache kept her from the ceremony. Richard knew she was just too embarrassed to be seen by all her old friends. But she’d been busy while they were all pomping and circumstancing in the school auditorium. When Richard got back to the house, he discovered she’d strung crepe paper across the living room, securing it with thumb tacks in the plywood. Mom stood there glowing, wearing lipstick and a dress actually buttoned down the front, her hair done up in an Ogilvie home perm.
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