The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  ‘I’m working as an assistant to that novelist I mentioned to you.’

  ‘The novelist?’

  I sighed inwardly. This often happened. These days, Kel would be very present in our meet-ups, enthusiastic and open – but she would not absorb all the information we exchanged, like in the old days. We used to be each other’s existential encyclopaedias, no chapter of the other not covered in notes and marginalia. But the holes in her attention had been widening since Mol was born. I didn’t usually mind; I knew it was part of our evolution, and I loved Mol, dearly. I knew we couldn’t be fourteen for ever, and I didn’t presume that the flotsam and jetsam of my life were compulsively memorable. But this oversight of hers that day bothered me. This job was really important. It signified the beginning of something new for me – a new me, potentially.

  ‘The novelist, Constance Holden?’ I said. She still looked blank. ‘The one that Dad says knew my mum. The lover.’

  Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, my god,’ she said. ‘Are you serious?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Fuck. That’s pretty meta.’

  ‘Is it?’

  She looked at me with one eyebrow firmly raised. ‘Yeah. It is. Does she know who you are?’

  ‘No. I’ve used an alias.’

  At that point, Kelly just stared at me. ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘You heard me. I’ve used another name.’

  I wanted Kelly to laugh at my audacity, my unwillingness to leave my past, my potential future, in the hands of someone else. I was taking destiny by the horns, something she was always telling her Instagram followers to do. But she didn’t say a bloody thing. She just carried on staring at me. The waiter came up to us and we both ordered tonkotsu.

  ‘Are you going to say something?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. How did Joe react?’

  ‘He wasn’t particularly enthusiastic,’ I said. ‘I want a beer.’ I got the waiter’s attention. ‘Do you want one?’ I said. She patted her bump. ‘Oh, sorry. Course.’

  ‘He’s probably worried,’ said Kelly.

  ‘I’m just a bit bummed out that nobody seems to want to support me in this.’

  ‘It’s just a bit . . . it’s a bit out there, Rose. What’s the name you’re using?’

  ‘Laura Brown.’

  She took this in. ‘Rose, isn’t this a bit of a – fantasy?’

  I swallowed the urge to snap at her. ‘That’s exactly why I’m doing it. Because everything’s been too much of a fantasy. I’m trying to get to the truth.’

  ‘But if you’re trying to get to the truth, why don’t you just tell her who you are? You’ve waited all your life for this.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I can’t go straight in there and tell her. My dad said she’s quite a strong personality, and from what I’ve seen of her, he’s right. I don’t know what happened between her and my mum, and apparently neither does he. If I tell her who I really am, Connie might kick me out. She might deny it. And then I’ll have lost that one link to my mum. For ever.’

  ‘If, indeed, she is a link,’ said Kelly gently.

  ‘They definitely knew each other. Dad was pretty adamant about that. And if she is the only surviving link, I need to get to know her. I need to keep her close. I need her to trust me.’

  ‘How’s she going to trust you if she finds out you’ve used another name?’

  ‘Because she’s not going to find out,’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. Just bloody text me when you’re there, all right? She might poison you or something.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know! You don’t know her!’

  ‘That’s just a really weird thing to say,’ I said.

  We sat in uncomfortable silence, and to our relief the ramen arrived.

  ‘How’s Dan?’ I said, taking a spoonful of the broth. ‘Oh, god, this stuff is so good.’

  ‘Working all the time,’ Kelly said. ‘How’s Joe?’

  ‘The opposite.’

  This could have been funny – it could have been an opportunity to rescue our evening, but Kelly wasn’t having any of it. ‘You can break up with him, you know,’ she said. I looked at her, my chopsticks aloft. Her jaw was set in a dangerously determined way I’d been witness to for nearly twenty-five years. ‘He won’t die, Rose,’ she said.

  ‘I know that, Kel. I know he won’t die.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you do, Rosie. I actually don’t think you do. Somewhere, deep inside of you is this . . . belief that this is it. This is the bond. That it’s better to be in this twosome of yours. Even if – you might not be happy.’

  ‘Kelly.’ I could feel my hackles rising.

  ‘He doesn’t even have a job,’ she said.

  ‘He’s got the burri—’

  She held up her chopsticks as if to ward off evil. ‘Oh my gosh. Do not even say that word to me again.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And what about the sex?’

  ‘What about the sex?’

  ‘Well, from what you’ve told me recently, it’s not been great. I mean I’m not one to talk, ’cos I’m not even having sex right now. We’re just too tired.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know, Rosie. It’s just – you don’t look at him after nine years and think, “be the father of my children”?’

  I stared at her. ‘Wow,’ I said, my voice rough, my face hot. I knew there was some sense in what she was saying, but I wasn’t going to give up. ‘What have children got to do with this?’

  ‘I just – someone needs to tell you this. I’m trying to help. Really. I’m sorry. And the thing is – you always seem to think that everyone else is in a better boat than you. And it’s bullshit.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ Kelly said. ‘I am more tired than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I sometimes feel like I’m carrying all of us.’ Her voice started to break. ‘And Dan’s just lapping up the rewards of it. He goes off to work every day and doesn’t see even a quarter of what I do. And I think so much that I can hardly sleep. And this baby is cracking up my skin all over me, and I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready.’ She stopped, breathing heavily. To my astonishment, she was crying. Kelly never cried.

  I shot my hand out towards hers. ‘Kel,’ I said. ‘You’re right. Oh, god, I’m so sorry.’

  She took my hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I get it. It’s OK.’

  1982

  16

  Barbara had developed a habit of telephoning Connie and Elise’s bungalow on a regular basis. It irritated Elise the way Connie leapt up like a girl on prom night whose date has rung the doorbell. She would carry the telephone into the bedroom, and it was understood between them that Elise should not follow: this was work, this was important. Elise loathed the curling cord that stretched like a dead snake up the hallway. To compound her frustration, there was so little for her to do. She could have picked up her own notepad, of course, but she felt overwhelmed by a sort of stupor in this place. The activity and bustle and fast-talking of the other people she had met made her feel as if her limbs were clay.

  She and Connie were lying side by side at the pool, immobile on their sun loungers, when the telephone rang again. Connie jumped up.

  ‘Did you know that Lowden isn’t really Barbara’s surname?’ Elise called after her. ‘Born Betty Sheinkovitz.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ said Connie, but she didn’t stop to hear the answer.

  It was Matt, in fact, who had told Elise. Matt who had told her that it was no wonder, with a name like that, that Barbara had wanted to escape the South. Does anyone in this town use their real name? she had asked, and he’d laughed.

  *

  About fifteen minutes later, Connie returned. ‘Barb wants this film to win her an Oscar,’ she said, grinning.

  Elise grimaced. ‘That was why she was calling?’

  ‘Yep.’ Connie sounded defensive. She plonked herself dow
n on her lounger.

  ‘And will it?’

  ‘I’ve no clue, darling. But that’s what Barb wants. She says Don will make healthy box-office figures, so it’ll definitely sell tickets.’ Don Gullick was the actor who had been cast to play Frederick, opposite Barbara. He was, alas for Barbara, more on the meathead side than the sensitive Hamlet type. For all Eric’s protests of agreement with her, they had turned out to be platitudes.

  ‘Barb says there’s no way she and Lucy can pull off receipts like his, even as a pair,’ said Connie. ‘Can you believe that?’

  Barb, Barb, Barb. If she wasn’t so annoyed, Elise would have smiled at the painful irony of Barbara’s nickname in her side. ‘Well, it’s not Barb’s film,’ she said. ‘It’s not a one-woman show.’

  ‘It is, in a way,’ said Connie. ‘I feel for her. I don’t know if Don can actually act.’

  Connie cared about the film; that was understandable. She was alive inside it: invested, important. But Elise felt lost. She was trying very hard not to feel like the odd one out, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘Do they all know we’re together?’ she asked Connie. ‘I mean, Shara and Matt know – but does Barbara? Do the rest of them? Do they . . . understand?’

  ‘Of course they do.’

  ‘And what do they think about it?’

  ‘I should think they couldn’t care less. Why on earth do you ask?’

  ‘I just – I don’t know. You never actually introduced me as your girlfriend.’

  ‘I didn’t think there was a need. I thought it was perfectly obvious who you are.’

  ‘So who am I?’ Elise said, sitting up.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Who am I?’

  Connie lifted her sunglasses and squinted, before quickly putting them back on her face. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  Elise didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to need anything, or anyone. But it was too late: she wanted Connie – her strength, her love and the giddy pleasure of being the central object of such a person’s affections. She slapped her sun lounger with both palms. ‘Why am I here?’

  Connie, alarmed, sat up and swung her legs round to face Elise. She swiftly changed sun loungers and embraced her. ‘You’re here because I love you,’ she said. ‘Because I need you. Because you’re special. No one I’ve ever met has made me think these things.’

  ‘So I’m here for you.’

  Connie thought about this. ‘Well, yes. I suppose you are. But you’re more than welcome to make of the experience what you will. I didn’t drag you here, El. I want you to enjoy it.’

  ‘But you never say those things to me any more,’ Elise replied, mumbling into the top of Connie’s arm. ‘The things you said at the beginning.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘That you needed me. That I’m special.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Connie said, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head. ‘I do need you. You are special.’

  *

  The storm between them blew out of the garden without breaking over their heads. Elise felt both vindicated, and chastened. Connie was neglectful at times, it was true, and Elise didn’t want to be pitied like Shara. Nevertheless, she still felt that the expression of any autonomy, of self-confidence or demand, would make her position precarious. When she expressed what she wanted – Connie’s attention, which really meant Connie’s respect and love – she sounded childish, and felt as if she was being indulged. Elise stared at the water. She did not want to be a mermaid any more. She wanted to feel part of the earth.

  *

  Connie took her to a day of filming. Inside the hangar, Barbara strode towards them in a billowing kimono, a cotton bonnet tied tightly over her head. Elise’s heart sank. Only weeks before, she’d been so excited to meet Barbara, but now it was as if the woman approached her and she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She was too much. Barbara was wearing no make-up, but her skin was perfect, giving her the appearance of a luminescent boiled egg. Her breasts had been spectacularly trussed together in a corset. ‘I know,’ said Barbara, pointing to them. ‘I should wear this get-up every day. But any higher and I’d have problems getting cutlery in my mouth.’

  Through the open doors, Elise saw a crocodile of lumpen extras being walked along the side of the road, all of them in Hollywood’s peasant palette; dun, a little cranberry, shifting shades of dirty cream. ‘Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re making a film about the founding fathers,’ Barbara snorted as Connie craned her head to watch them go. ‘Welcome to the New World. Come and wait in my dressing room, ladies. I’ve got ages before my scene.’

  Out in the July sunshine, Barbara hoicked herself up onto a waiting golf buggy, and Elise and Connie sat on either side of her. Her kimono was so enormous that it crept over Connie’s and Elise’s laps, mushrooming over the sides of the vehicle. The hem shimmered under the sun like the edge of a gigantic manta ray. Barbara reached down into the line between her breasts, accidentally elbowing Elise in the ribs as she pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, jamming the cigarette in her mouth like a cowboy, a clash with her Calvinist hair-protector.

  ‘My emergency smoke,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you feel it, Elise?’

  ‘Feel what?’

  Barbara dragged on her cigarette and blew out a grey plume. ‘The beginning. I love beginnings.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Connie.

  Barbara prodded Connie’s forearm. ‘It’s the middle and the end that are the fuckers.’

  Connie laughed, squinting up at the cerulean sky. ‘Maybe just the middle.’

  Barbara shaded her eyes as they trundled along. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be alone to prepare yourself?’ asked Elise.

  Barbara sniffed. ‘No, no.’ She paused. ‘My ex-husband is being a total bastard,’ she said, out of nowhere. Her voice was raw, her hands quivered in her lap before she stilled them. She looked at Connie. ‘He came round again at one a.m., Con.’

  ‘Oh, god. I’m sorry,’ said Connie.

  Con. Con and Barb. Barbara seemed so at ease spilling herself out to Connie – or maybe it was just because Barbara was so used to reading about herself, seeing herself outside of the immediate, intimate circle of her life – outside of herself, in fact – that she did not think talking so openly in this way would ever harm her. Elise thought Barbara’s life experiences under public exposure would have sealed her mouth by now, but perhaps you forgot how to live any other way.

  ‘He wants money,’ said Barbara. ‘He knows I’m doing this film so that’s when he comes truffling.’

  ‘Did you give him any?’ asked Elise, trying to keep inside the flow of conversation.

  Barbara swivelled to face Elise. ‘Never get married, honey. If that’s the one piece of advice I’ve got for you, that’s it.’

  ‘Why would I get married?’ Elise said.

  Barbara did not reply. Elise reflected that Barbara, with her four ex-husbands, had never seemed to heed that particular nugget of advice herself. Barbara and Connie talked on and on, and Elise tuned out, her eyes closed in the sun.

  Privately, she considered the idea of marriage – in which you became one joined person, one new person – to be utterly irresistible. To think: you could annihilate yourself like that, and everyone approved! It was so hard to continually be a person. Imagine finding a better self of thoughtfulness and kindness, your own heart transformed in the night, just by lying next to theirs! Imagine letting them take the lead in a way that still felt as if you were shoulder to shoulder! That it could be so easy!

  With Connie these days, it was not that easy.

  Elise thought as the buggy still trundled: I could get a plane to New York City. She’d never been, but she did not need to ask Connie about New York City as she had enquired about LA – because everyone knew what New York was: yellow taxis, Greenwich Village, bagels and Tiffany’s. The blue of Hockney’s swimming pool dissolved into a vision of the russ
et leaves of Central Park. Elise thought of The Great Gatsby, and the song ‘I’d be rich as Rockefeller!’ and pizza cooked by immigrants from Naples, like Bill Gazzara’s father. She willed herself there like Dorothy, but when she opened her eyes again, the three of them were on the golf buggy, still trundling the lots.

  *

  Barbara’s dressing room was surprisingly spare in terms of furniture; a long shelf attached to the wall, surrounded by a huge mirror lined with many little glowing lightbulbs, a low-slung red velvet sofa, an incongruous wooden farmhouse chair, and a clothes rail, upon which hung the outfits for Beatrice Jones. On the shelf Elise saw make-up brushes, pots and potions, a heavily folded and pencilled script, a bottle of water, one of vodka, three used glasses and a smattering of good-luck cards. Next to these, a huge bouquet of lilies, a fruit basket and an overflowing ashtray. A small fridge hummed in the corner.

  Barbara delicately scrunched the cellophane of the fruit basket with her forefinger and thumb. ‘You girls want an apple?’

  They both declined.

  ‘They always send me fruit but the acid’s such a bitch. A beer, then? Take a seat.’

  Connie and Elise sat on the sofa. It was deceptively uncomfortable. This all felt strange. Again, Elise didn’t think it was normal for a star of Barbara’s status to invite them into her inner sanctuary. Surely such a person should be guarded and dismissive? Why was this happening? Barbara rustled to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. She opened them with a sharp blow and handed them over. Bewildered, Elise took hers and sipped. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Connie was already drinking hers.

  Barbara collapsed on the wooden chair. ‘So are you two decided yet whether you’re gonna come with us to the Catskills?’

  Neither woman said anything, and Barbara laughed. ‘Oh, jeez. It’s like that, is it?’ Elise wanted to hit her. ‘Lucy’s right.’

  ‘Lucy Crenshaw?’ said Connie. ‘What’s it got to do with her?’

  ‘We were just wondering,’ said Barbara, looking at Elise. ‘We thought you might have had enough of it here.’

  Connie took another swig of her beer. ‘Why would you think that? We’re staying.’