In the scene, Ben lay sleeping in the hospital bed. Cherie was supposed to enter the room and drop the chart on the floor, in turn waking him. The chart’s metal cover hitting the floor would startle him awake, causing Cherie to pretend concern. She was supposed to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” in a half-serious, yet intentional way. And then add, “Did I wake you?” with a hint of insincerity. But this girl, like all the others, simply apologized and nothing more.
Roxanne had seen enough. “No…no!” She hopped off the stool. “Cherie isn’t really sorry. She drops the chart on purpose, but in a playful sort of way.” Deciding to show them how the line should be read, she said, “It’s like…” She paused, preparing herself. “Oh I’m so sorry. Did I wake you?” she said halfheartedly, on the verge of laughing.
At that moment, the light bulb went off in Lyle’s head, as well as the director’s. After some gentle persuasion, they cast Roxanne Simon in the role of Cherie Baker in The Secret.
With production already in progress, and Roxanne too pregnant to hide, they made plans to film her scenes after her baby’s birth.
In celebration, Roxanne and Candy joined Kirk and Sara for lunch. They’d chosen a booth for the added privacy, with Roxanne and Candy on one side and Kirk and Sara on the other.
“Listen,” Roxanne said to Kirk and Sara, “since you both know I’m pregnant…I’m going to ask you not to say anything to anyone.”
“Not say anything?” Kirk didn’t hide his confusion. “About what?”
“My pregnancy,” Roxanne said.
“If that’s what you want,” Sara agreed.
“Believe me…the fewer people who know…the better.” Roxanne choked back thoughts of Frank finding out.
“How long do you think you can hide it?” Kirk asked, staring at her swelling tummy.
“As long as I possibly can,” Roxanne showed fortitude, but she knew she couldn’t hide it forever.
By the time Roxanne reached her eighth month of pregnancy, her delusions about Frank Garrett were emerging frequently. At any given time, her fantasies convinced her to believe that she wasn’t in New York at all. In her mind, she was still in Florida and she and Frank were still together. She didn’t care about the present because she was quite happy living in the past. She may not always know where she was or the year, but she always knew who she was.
During production of the movie, Roxanne, Candy, and Kirk often lunched at a nearby café. On this day, the three of them talked about and discussed the roles of Ben and Cherie. Things moved along fine until Roxanne reverted back into the past.
“Well…” Candy dropped her napkin into her plate. “I’ve got to get going.”
“I’ll see you later.” Roxanne watched her leave and then turned to Kirk. “You’d better go, too. Frankie will be here any minute. He gets kind of jealous at times.”
Typically, that would’ve been enough to scare off the average guy—especially with the increasing frequency of these episodes—but not Kirk. She needed a friend, and he was determined to be that for her.
~ ~ ~
Frank laid the manuscript down on the desk and massaged his forehead. After a moment, he looked at her. “Is all this true?”
“Every word.”
“Does anybody know why this happened to her?”
“Only in theory,” she said. “Jerry can only suppose that she couldn’t let go of you.”
“I should have been there for her.”
“It’s kind of hard to be there for someone when they won’t let you.” Her precise words pierced his ego.
“There’s been more than one opportunity for me to be there for her. I should have been…but I wasn’t.”
Candy gave him a challenging look that was quickly followed by a short, saucy smile. “Tell me about when you guys went out to California and recorded the first album?” she suggested, effectively changing the subject. “How did you write your songs anyway?”
“How did I write my songs?” That earned a soft chuckle.
“Well, yeah. For instance…Without Her…how did you come about writing that song? What exactly was it that prompted you?”
“How do you think we came about writing it?” he said snidely. “You and Roxie left. We got drunk and wrote the song.”
“We?” Candy asked, surprised.
“Yes…we. Rich and I wrote that song together.”
“Really?”
Apparently, Frank was telling her something she didn’t know. But with all the things she did know about Garrett-Hollander, it only seemed logical that she would’ve known that Rich had co-authored many of the band’s songs. Frank was surprised she didn’t.
“Tell me about that?” she asked with eager affection.
Thinking back on the night they were on that infamous drunk, Frank could remember it so clearly, as if he were back there, once again…
~From the autobiography
After hours, the bar was locked up tight. Only Frank, Rich, and the club’s manager remained inside. Even the waitresses had taken off, after a few failed attempts at throwing themselves at Frank and Rich. While the manager settled the evening’s business, Frank and Rich had seized a table near the bar, bringing with them a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses.
Pouring the whiskey, Frank said, “Everybody thinks they know what’s good for us, but they don’t know shit.” He passed a shot to Rich. “Everybody says, forget about her, Frank.” He held the glass in his hand while naming all the well-intended lines of advice everybody had been giving him. “You’re better off without her. She wasn’t the right girl for you. Now you can concentrate on your music.” He mocked them all bitterly, then sucked down the shot. “What we need, my friend,” he said, banging the glass against the table, “is another drink.” He waited for no confirmation from Rich, just grabbed both glasses and poured two more. “Here…” He pushed a refill toward Rich.
They gulped down the shots.
“What are we gonna do?” Frank welcomed suggestions since he had no idea where to go from here.
Rich thought about it for a second. “We’re gonna have another drink,” he decided and banged his shot glass on the table.
Frank poured two more shots, and they proceeded to drink their troubles away.
Everybody’s got their own opinions
And they all know what I can’t seem to see
They tell me to shake it off and carry on
They downed another shot. “I just don’t understand it,” Frank said, bewildered. “Where did I go wrong?”
“You’re going to have to learn…” Rich’s thought trailed off as he held his empty shot glass out to Frank. “More please.”
“Learn what?” Frank poured two more.
“How to live without her.”
“Yeah…well,” Frank said with a slight snicker. “If I could just forget about her, then maybe I could learn how to live without her.”
And I can’t go on without her
Although I’ve tried
And I can’t forget about her
“We’re on our way though,” Rich said. “Straight to the top.”
“Yeah. But is this the way it’s supposed to be?”
“We’ll get girls!” Rich said melodramatically. “Lots of girls. Gorgeous girls.”
“Pretty girls.” Frank joined in the fun and poured two more shots. “That’s good.”
“But it’s her face that keeps coming back to me,” Rich said sadly.
I go out and discover new places
But this isn’t the way it was suppose to be
And I try to replace her with new faces
But it’s her face that keeps coming back to me
I can drink away my sorrows
But my loss will stay
For the rest of my tomorrows
They downed another shot and Frank discovered the bottle was empty. “Not only do I have to learn how to live without her,” he said. “But all the damned whiskey’s gone, too.”
&nbs
p; “Without her.” Rich paused, deep in thought. “That’d make a nice song.”
“Let’s get a bottle to go,” Frank suggested. “And let’s go write ourselves a song.”
~ ~ ~
Frank looked at Candy. “And that’s pretty much the way it happened.”
“You guys got drunk and wrote that song?” She found that notion amusing.
“Sad, but true.”
“I’m surprised that either of you remembered the conversation,” she said, “much less turned it into a song.”
Once again, Frankie’s sobbing woke his father in the middle of the night. Frank lumbered out of bed and stumbled toward the boy’s room. To his surprise, Frankie was sitting up, wide-awake.
“Hey, buddy.” Frank entered his room. “What’s up?” He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Daddy,” Frankie said between sobs. “Why won’t you go get my Mommy?”
“Frankie, we’ve been through this before.” Frank was a bit too tired tonight. “Mommy’s in the hospital.”
“She’s not in the hospital, Daddy.”
“She is in the hospital, Frankie.”
“No she’s not. She’s at the water,” Frankie’s tears continued to fall. “She is. I seen her, Daddy.”
Frank pulled his son into his arms. “I know how much you miss your Mommy. You want her to come home. So do I.” He wished there was something he could say that would make Frankie feel better. But there wasn’t—nothing short of a lie, anyway. Frank wasn’t going to go there. “She can’t come home. Not right now. And what you think you saw was just a dream.”
“No…Daddy!” Frankie refused to give in. “She’s at the water.”
***
Chapter 27
Candy was sitting at Roxanne’s desk, typing away on the computer. The knock at the door didn’t break her concentration. “Come on in,” she called out over her typing. She expected to see Frank, but was pleasantly surprised when Rich appeared in the doorway.
He smiled at her.
She pushed back from the desk. “I’m glad you’re here. I want to talk to you.”
“What’d I do now?” he wondered with a sharp laugh.
Candy giggled. “I want you to help us.”
“Us?”
“Frank and me. We’re trying to finish Roxanne’s book, and we’ve decided to put you guys in it too,” she said. “I figured it’d be wise to get a second opinion about what happened to you guys.”
“This is a book about you and Roxie.” Rich eyed Candy skeptically. “Who cares what we did.”
“Who cares?” she questioned him aggressively. “I care. Whether you like it or not, we’re all a big part of each other’s lives. And if we don’t talk about you and Frank in the book, then we’re not telling the whole story.”
Rich couldn’t argue with that. How could Roxanne tell her story without discussing Frank Garrett? It’d be impossible.
“So…” Candy handed him a batch of typewritten pages. “Read this.”
~From the autobiography
Garrett-Hollander wrapped up their first album, and Frank tried his damnedest to replace Roxanne. He’d gone through girl after girl, but all of his efforts ended in vain. He’d even gone to the extreme of trying to personify Roxanne in other women. If their hair wasn’t the right shade, he had them dye it until it perfectly matched the color of Roxanne’s light chestnut-brown hair. If their eyes were the wrong color—which they always were—he had them purchase violet-colored contact lenses in a hopeless effort to duplicate Roxanne’s unusual eye color. If the girls were too thin or too heavy, he tried to readjust their weight accordingly. And for all his time and trouble, his plan proved useless every time because he couldn’t teach any of them to act like Roxanne.
Without Her claimed its place as the first single released from the album. Shortly after the song’s debut, and before the album’s actual release, the song sailed up the charts.
Frank decided to acquire himself an image that was befitting a rock star.
He entered the California motel room wearing his newly purchased Vaurnets. “So what do you think?” he asked, looking at Rich from behind the shades.
“About what?” Rich was lounging on the bed, watching TV.
“The Vaurnets. Aren’t they great?”
“Yeah.” Rich gave him a passing glance. “I suppose they are.”
“It’s my new image.” And his new way of protecting himself. Roxanne had peered into his soul through his eyes. That’s how she’d gotten to him. He had to prevent that from happening again. The best way he could think of was to cover his eyes. That’s where the shades came into the picture.
Meanwhile, in New York City
Roxanne was due to give birth any day. It was just after the first of the year and she was miserable. She and Kirk were rehearsing scenes when she went into labor. Kirk took her to the hospital and immediately called Sara.
“Sara, I don’t know what to do,” he told his wife over the telephone.
“Did you reach Candy?”
“No, I can’t find her. But I did leave messages all over town.”
“Then you have to stay with Roxanne. She shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I’d always thought that the first child I’d see being born would be ours.” Maybe Kirk didn’t realize it, not at that point anyway, but a part of him truly didn’t want to leave Roxanne’s side.
“Well you don’t have to actually watch her give birth,” Sara said dryly. “Just stay with her until Candy gets there. Or until they take her into delivery.”
They said their goodbyes and Kirk went back to Roxanne’s hospital room. Somehow, being there with her didn’t seem right. Probably because the baby wasn’t his. Maybe, just maybe, deep down inside, Kirk secretly wished Roxanne’s baby was his, even though he hadn’t realized it yet.
“Hey…” Kirk smiled and took hold of Roxanne’s hand. “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” Roxanne said weakly. “Except for those contractions that keep coming around.” She tried to laugh, but it was hard.
“Things are a little uncomfortable, huh?” Kirk took the wet towel from the stand and swabbed her forehead.
“Did you find Candy?”
“No, not yet.”
Feeling another pain, she tightened her grip on his hand.
“Go ahead,” he said, “squeeze my hand if it helps.”
Roxanne tightened her grip on his hand as the contraction peaked. She tried to stifle a moan, but it escaped anyway. Thoughts of Frank Garrett flittered through her mind. Frankie, where are you? She needed him to get through this.
The pain subsided and Roxanne loosened her grip on Kirk’s hand.
“You handled that one like a pro,” Kirk said, dabbing her forehead with the cool moist towel.
“So how many more do I gotta go through before I prove myself?” She tried to laugh, but didn’t have much luck.
“The fewer the better, right?” he said. “Believe me, I understand about pain.”
Roxanne was tired. And she just wanted to sleep. Knowing the pain-free interval would be brief, she closed her eyes. She could almost see Frank standing over her. Even though, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t real…still, the thought of him being there offered her a measure of comfort.
Another contraction squeezed her belly like a vice grip. She opened her eyes and saw Kirk’s sparkling brown eyes gazing down at her. But Kirk’s eyes weren’t the ones she wanted to see. She desperately needed to see those captivating, hypnotic baby blues. “I think you’d better get the doctor.” The pain ripped through her. “I can’t handle this anymore.”
Frankie where are you? She needed him now more than she’d ever needed anyone in her whole life. If only Frank were there. He’d make it all okay.
Kirk stood by as the hospital staff rushed Roxanne away. He couldn’t do anything for her. He knew that. He’d seen it in her eyes. He wasn’t the one she wanted or needed.
In the
delivery room Roxanne was alone and frightened as one horrific pain after another ripped through her body and soul. She’d have given anything if Frank were there.
“Okay,” the doctor coached her, “here comes the head, Roxie.”
“Don’t you call me that!”
“Okay, Roxanne…” the doctor corrected himself. “Push… push!”
Roxanne didn’t know what to do. It’s like she was in the dark. And Frank was the only one who could shed any light.
“One more time, Roxanne,” the doctor said. “Just once more. Push hard. Give it all you’ve got.”
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