Older

by Pamela Redmond

  Sometimes it would be seven p.m. and I’d still be lying on my bed or in the hammock in my nightgown and one of Kelsey’s cashmere sweaters, typing madly, having walked a grand total of thirty-eight steps that day.

  Kelsey spent that time working with the venerable casting director Carlotta Dunn, lured out of forced retirement after #MeToo, looking at actors for the remaining major parts: Maggie; the daughter character; and Kelsey’s own character, Lindsay.

  * * *

  Once a draft of the script was finished, Carlotta arranged a “chemistry read” at Whipple Studios with Stella and Hugo and the other prospective leads. We were already settled into the audition room when Hugo and Stella arrived. This was the first time Hugo and I had seen each other since that night. He sat down across from me, laying a dog-eared copy of Younger on the table, and flashed me a quick smile. I smiled back but kept my eyes trained on the script, hyperaware of Kelsey at the table watching my every move.

  Carlotta handed around headshots and résumés for each of the actors. First up was a young woman who was reading for the part of Alice’s daughter, Diana, aka Caitlin. Marissa was from Atlanta, where she’d been acting in local theater and commercials since she was a child. She had been in LA for a year and had already been cast in several speaking roles on TV shows and in movies.

  Marissa was small, blond, and very pretty. She was nineteen but could easily have passed for fourteen or twenty-four. She looked like she might have been the love child of long, lanky Stella and a jockey.

  She and Stella were reading one of the first scenes in the script, where Alice, fresh from a discouraging round of ageist job interviews, calls Diana where she’s studying in India and breaks the news that she’s selling the family home. That wasn’t the way it happened in real life or in the book—it was a more gradual process than that—but we’d fast-forwarded this part for the pilot:

  DIANA

  Mom, this is the third time you’ve called me this week.

  ALICE

  I wanted to let you know that I’m putting the house on the market.

  DIANA

  Mom, you can’t do that while I’m halfway across the world. I need time to say goodbye.

  Stella/Alice’s next line was supposed to be “Then come home and help me pack,” but Stella said, “Then come hope and welp me… oh, golly, I’m sorry.”

  Four times we listened to Marissa say, “I need time to say goodbye,” and four times Stella flubbed her response. Finally, she broke down laughing, shaking her head and getting to her feet. Holding out her arms to Marissa, Stella said, “Come over here and help me forgive myself for being such a ginormous idiot.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Carlotta told Marissa. Once Marissa had left the room, Carlotta picked up the next headshot in her stack. “The next Diana trained at your alma mater, Hugo, so she’ll probably be easier to work with.…”

  “Let’s come back to this character later,” said Stella.

  We moved on to the Lindsays.

  Lindsay was Kelsey’s character. Before the first actress came into the room, Kelsey leaned across the glass table and said, “I just want to establish that I went for actresses who looked as unlike me as possible.”

  The idea was to find an actress to play Lindsay who would be a physical counterpoint to Stella’s Alice, who was tall, thin, blond, and gorgeous.

  The first actress, Jenny Chin, was about the same height and weight as Stella, but Asian. Jenny looked nothing like the real life “Lindsay,” who was of course sitting at the table with us, but she and Stella looked great together. And I loved the way Jenny delivered her lines: confident, ambitious, Kelsey’s thespian soul sister.

  They were playing the scene where Lindsay and Alice meet for the first time in the ladies’ room at the fictional Gentility Publishing, after Alice lands her job, which indeed was how and where Kelsey and I first met:

  ALICE

  (fist pumps at the mirror)

  Yes!

  LINDSAY, the perfect young professional, enters the ladies’ room.

  LINDSAY

  (catching Alice’s eye in the mirror)

  What’s so thrilling?

  ALICE

  I just got a job. I’m going to be an assistant to James Churchill, head of marketing.

  LINDSAY

  Congratulations. Or maybe I should say, my condolences.

  Jenny delivered her lines with energy and emotion. Stella, on the other hand, sounded as if she were reporting that her dog had died.

  We tried a couple of different scenes before thanking Jenny for her time.

  “I thought she was terrific,” Hugo said.

  “Terrific,” Stella agreed. “Is there anyone else?”

  The next prospective Lindsay was a gorgeous biracial actress named Dara Fuchs, who had deep dimples and was a bit shorter and a lot curvier than Stella. She delivered Lindsay’s lines in a more sardonic, subdued way than Jenny had, but this time Stella’s acting was so over the top, I wondered whether she’d dropped a tab of speed.

  “She was awesome too,” Hugo said when Dara left the room.

  “Awesome,” Stella agreed.

  “Why don’t I try reading with both of them?” Hugo said.

  “Maybe we could see the next person,” said Stella.

  “Is something wrong?” Hugo asked.

  The rest of us held our breath.

  “Is something wrong with you?” Stella said.

  With a sigh, Hugo leaned back and swiveled in his chair.

  “Do we have anyone for Maggie?” Hugo asked.

  “I have a verbal commitment from someone I’m really excited about,” Kelsey said. “Debi Mazar.”

  I had heard this news and was equally thrilled. “I loved her in Entourage,” I said. I used to watch that with Caitlin when she was in high school.

  “Debi’s fabulous,” said Hugo. “But I didn’t know she was open to doing another series.”

  “She is since we’re shooting in New York,” Kelsey said.

  Stella stood up. “Excuse me,” she said.

  While she was out of the room, we talked about when production might start on the pilot, what we’d thought of the two Lindsays, and whether we’d seen any other actresses who might work for the daughter role.

  We needed Stella’s input on all these questions, but time passed and she did not return. Finally, Kelsey texted her. Then called her.

  “She’s not picking up,” Kelsey said.

  “Should we make sure she’s okay?” I asked, imagining that we’d check the bathroom first, in case she’d gotten sick, and then the patio, where she might be vaping or tripping her brains out. And then we’d call the police.

  I saw a glance flick between Kelsey and Carlotta. Carlotta stood up.

  “I’m going to have to talk to Fernando,” she said.

  “Hold off for a bit,” snapped Kelsey.

  “Let me try to reach Stella,” Hugo said.

  He typed quickly with his thumbs. A few seconds later, his phone chimed with a response. He held it at arm’s length and squinted.

  “Ttyl,” he read. “What’s that mean?”

  “Talk to you later,” said Kelsey.

  He typed again, something quick, and then his message whooshed out into the universe.

  “What did you say?” I asked him.

  “WTF,” he said, looking around at us. “I know that one.”

  * * *

  “We’re all very excited about Younger,” Fernando Vasquez said, his face smooth and immobile. He might have been twenty-four or, I don’t know, eighty-four. I couldn’t tell anymore, and I didn’t care. Fernando was Barry Whipple’s number two: On any major money or creative decisions, Fernando needed to be consulted. In fact, if I hadn’t actually seen Barry, I might have assumed Fernando was Barry.

  Fernando had called personally and asked Kelsey and me to come in for a meeting the morning after Stella’s disappearance. He assured us that Whipple had no intention of cancelling the show, that
in fact they had huge plans for it. They just had a few small adjustments they wanted us to make before we started shooting.

  “We adore the Liza character,” Fernando was saying now.

  “Alice,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The character’s name is Alice. I’m Liza.”

  “Oh, right,” said Fernando. “We’ll have to look at the market research on the name. We’re thinking maybe Liza’s origin story isn’t boring New Jersey housewife but some kind of executive.”

  “I wouldn’t call Alice boring,” I said. “And the whole reason she pretends to be younger is to get a job after spending years at home with her daughter.”

  “Of course, of course,” Fernando said. “We love that. I mean, ageism, grrr, right? But we were thinking, what if she was an executive, like maybe head of the publishing company, but then she decides she wants to be an actress?”

  “Interesting,” said Kelsey.

  Okay. Though the word I might have used was absurd.

  “And so she starts going to auditions,” Fernando said, growing more excited, “and people want to cast her because they’re like, Oh my God! You’re so young and beautiful! But then they see her résumé and they go, Ew, dude, she is crusty!” Fernando slapped his black leather desk chair as if he were trying to spur it into a gallop.

  “That kind of thing certainly happens a lot in the business,” Kelsey said. I did admire her diplomacy.

  “Right?” said Fernando. “And wouldn’t it make more sense for her to be discriminated against in an industry that was all about youth and beauty?”

  “But in a way, how old you look can be a bona fide qualification for an acting job,” I said, trying to mimic Kelsey’s even tone. “Ageism is more outrageous when your job performance has nothing to do with age or looks.”

  “We’re concerned that the stakes could be higher,” Fernando said. “She wouldn’t have to be an actress. She could be a model. Or a rock star.”

  I burst out laughing, then clapped my hand over my mouth. “That is a hilarious idea,” Kelsey said, as if she were clarifying.

  “And about the fortysomething,” Fernando continued, “we were thinking that maybe she’s in her thirties.”

  “Thirty-eight or thirty-nine?” I said.

  “Or thirty-three.”

  “The story doesn’t work unless the heroine is being discriminated against because of her age,” I pointed out. “There isn’t much ageism against thirty-three-year-olds.”

  “There is if they want to be rock stars!” Fernando exclaimed. “Or models.”

  “Or actresses,” Kelsey said. “Or even showrunners, haha.”

  Was she actually agreeing with him?

  “Liza’s daughter is supposed to be in college,” I said.

  “We’re thinking maybe the daughter is younger,” Fernando said.

  “You mean, high school younger?” I said.

  Certainly plausible, and a teenager would be old enough to be at home alone while her mom worked, but was Liza going to be honest with her daughter about her age charade, or was she going to change clothes on the train to and from the city every day? I was trying to be accommodating, but I was having trouble envisioning how the whole thing would work.

  “Or grade school,” said Fernando. “Or kindergarten. Or even younger, haha.”

  “Maybe Alice only wants to have a baby,” said Kelsey.

  “Interesting!” said Fernando. “Maybe she’s knocked up and she doesn’t know whether Josh or James is the baby daddy!”

  “There’s no more Josh,” I said.

  “Whaaaaaaat?” said Fernando. “I love Josh.”

  “Stella made us get rid of him and create James so Hugo could be in it,” I said. “You signed off on that.”

  “Which was a brilliant idea,” said Kelsey.

  “So if you’re going to want a big baby daddy drama, it’s going to have to be between James and some guy she meets in an alley,” I said.

  “Oooooh, edgy,” said Fernando.

  “I wasn’t serious!” I cried. “It’s a terrible idea to make her want a baby! This whole thing is about a woman trying to reclaim her independent life after she’s raised her child. That’s the drama. It’s not: Which highly insane coupling produced this completely ill-advised pregnancy? It’s not: Will Liza be able to balance work and family? She will not! She will quit her job and stay home with her kid, and twenty fucking years later, she’ll try to get back into the work world and find out the world doesn’t want her!”

  I was panting. Possibly sweating.

  “Alice,” Kelsey said.

  “What?”

  “You said, Will Liza be able to balance work and family? I think you meant Alice, the character. Will Alice be able to balance work and family,” Kelsey said.

  “Alice, that’s right. Alice the character,” I said, “who was a forty-four-year-old mom of a college-age daughter living in New Jersey and trying to get back into the publishing business in New York. Just like me.”

  “We have a New York set that looks totally like the real thing,” Fernando said. “Unless we decide to go with the actress or rock star idea and move the setting to LA.”

  “Are you saying you’re shooting this in LA?” I asked.

  “I swear, you’ll never know the difference,” said Fernando.

  “We can make that work,” said Kelsey. But she wasn’t looking at me. Because she knew that was where I drew the line.

  There was a real difference, after all, between me and Alice in the book. Alice was fictional and I was real. They could do whatever they wanted with Alice and it didn’t change anything for me or affect my life at all. It didn’t have to, I meant. I didn’t have to let it.

  Maybe that was why I kept clinging to the fiction that the book was fiction: Because if I turned those years of pretending to be younger into a story, I could cut them loose from my life. Go be a TV show, I could tell that whole lying, faking part of me. And I, the me who looked and acted like the same person I really was, would be free to live my real life in the here and now.

  The real me, the almost-fifty-year-old me, knew it was time to let my book go, just as it was time to let that part of my life go. Staying here, continuing to battle, was not good for the show, was not good for Kelsey, and was not good for me. I knew what I had to do, and I knew how to do it because I had quite recently seen it done by a master.

  “Excuse me,” I said. Then I left the room.

  fourteen

  From the Uber, I texted Kelsey. I apologized for slipping away and said I didn’t want to continue arguing, but I also didn’t want to work on the show as it had developed. I thanked her for giving me a chance to be involved, said I was looking forward to seeing the finished product, and that I’d get in touch with her when I was back in New York.

  Kelsey immediately began texting me back. First she was confused. Then she was demanding. And in the end she was angry, which might have been what she’d been feeling all along. I ignored her as best I could. I made my plane reservation for a flight four hours from now, but given LA traffic, I was not going to get to the airport that early. My Uber had not even made it to the 405 when Hugo called.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “How do you know I’m going?”

  “Stella called,” he said.

  “How does Stella know?”

  But as soon as I said it, I realized that while I’d been thinking I’d learned how things really worked in Hollywood, I’d missed what was most obvious.

  “Stella was behind all this, wasn’t she?” I said.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said. “She likes to play games. Really, you can’t go. I don’t want to do the show without you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? You’ll stay?”

  “No,” I said. “Okay, don’t do the show.”

  “How can you let it go like that? This is your baby.”

  “It isn’t my baby anymore. It’s Kelsey’s baby. And
Stella’s and Fernando’s and yours, I guess. The baby I care about now is the real one my daughter is having in a few months in New York.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “All right,” he said finally, quietly. “I understand. But please come over to say goodbye? For a few minutes. Then I’ll take you to the airport.”

  I hesitated. “You can’t try to talk me out of going or tell Kelsey I’m there or make me feel guilty.”

  “I just want to kiss you goodbye,” he said.

  * * *

  Hugo’s house was surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall covered with lush vines. At the entry was a tall and shiny red door studded with heavy black nails. Had this been a fairy tale, I would have been on the lookout for poison apples or wicked stepmothers. Above the door was a large brass bell from which dangled a long knotted black cord. I yanked and practically blew out my eardrum.

  “Sorry, sorry!” came Hugo’s voice from behind the door.

  And then his beaming face appeared. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, his hair sticking up every which way, his beard thick but not furry. He was wearing bagged-out gray sweatpants and a frayed gray tee shirt that read After Cacciato.

  “I took a writing class with Tim O’Brien,” I said, pointing to his shirt. O’Brien wrote the Vietnam novel Going After Cacciato.

  “That was the name of my older brother’s band,” said Hugo.

  He reached out and pulled me inside the red door. It was like stepping into an enchanted land. The yard looked like Eden after the gardener had come through, with bright green neatly trimmed grass and manicured rosebushes. It was lush with trees dangling lemons from every branch and hydrangeas as big as your head and butterflies flitting over babbling fountains. His house looked like the kind of cottage where a hunky woodsman might live, all rough brown clapboards and leaded-glass windows and dark green shutters with clovers cut into them. The wicked stepmother vanished and in her place arrived whistling elves and dancing princesses.

  “I can’t believe this place,” I said.

  “I bought it when I first came to LA and thought I’d only be staying for a few months here and there, and now I hate to leave.”