Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

by Juliann Garey

  “Is he sick?” she asked.

  “Well, kind of.”

  “What does he have? Is it catching?”

  “No, sweetie, it’s not contagious.”

  “Why does he look like that? Why do you have to feed him? Why is he crying?”

  She started to shred her napkin and stopped eating and I knew it was time to go. And when we got back to my place, the last thing I wanted to do was pick up the phone but it was the first thing I did.

  “El?” I had only meant to ask her to come pick up Willa—to spare her having to witness any more of this.

  “Grey? Hello?”

  But when I heard her voice, all I could think of was everything I really wanted but hadn’t dared to ask for. There was too much to say. I wasn’t allowed to say any of it. So nothing came out. It had begun as such a simple request.

  “Greyson? What’s wrong? Is Willa hurt? Is she sick?”

  “No. No, no, God no. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Well, then what? You sound …”

  I sighed. I started to speak and my voice broke. I cleared my throat to cover it. “Shit. It’s Ray, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I opened the door to let her in a half hour later.

  “Jesus, Grey, how many times do I have to say it,” she said, hugging me. “Your father is not your fault.”

  “Say it again?” I whispered into her hair.

  “He’s not your fault and you’re not him.”

  “Thank you. Again.”

  “Anytime.”

  After seventeen months, Ellen let me come home. Just in time for Christmas. I made sure it looked like something out of a Bing Crosby movie. I bought an enormous tree, strung lights across the roof and in the trees outside, and bought out half of Saks and most of Toys “R” Us. Other than the fact that there was no snow and it was seventy-eight degrees, it was a perfect white Christmas.

  Things at work were less than perfect. I was constantly being disappointed. By my team, by everyone. Assholes. I was surrounded by assholes.

  “No, Marvin, the problem is that you’re someone’s nephew with a degree in business from Cal State who doesn’t know shit about movies. Making them, marketing them, or watching them for that matter.” I paced a straight line the length of my office, back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto Burbank—olive trees and gargantuan billboards advertising the studio’s latest movies. “The problem, Marvin, is that you have no taste. Uh … Huh. Huh. Well, you go right ahead and tell your uncle if you feel you need to. Oh … okay, Marvin, I don’t think you want to threaten me, you two-faced conniving little shit.”

  I slammed the phone down. Who the fuck did that little cock-sucker think he was? More to the point, how could he not know who he was dealing with? Hanging up on Marvin Jacobs didn’t make me feel any better. Just caged. I rifled through the carefully constructed piles of scripts on my desk, scattering them.

  My secretary, Rene, came in and closed the door behind her. Stood there with her arms crossed. “Well, that was special. What was your strategy? Bad cop, bad cop?”

  “Not worth my time or breath.”

  I walked over to the door and yelled down the hallway to Christine, my VP of Production. “Where the hell is Zantaugh’s rewrite?”

  She walked briskly out of her office. “Uh … Grey, it’s not in yet.”

  “What? Why the hell not? Lean on him.”

  “Well, it’s not due for another week.”

  “Fucking writers. Whiny, overpaid. What do they have to do except sit in front of the goddamned keyboard?”

  Christine laughed. I thought I saw Rene shoot her a look.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “You always say you could get offered the biggest box-office draws in town and you still won’t make the movie unless the script is there. You sort of need writers for that.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t hate the pasty-faced, sensitive, artistic assholes.”

  The smile fell off Christine’s face. “Jesus, Grey. You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just tired of being the only one who’s getting anything done.” I yelled down the hallway again. “Zach, when am I going to see a first cut of Comes a Stranger?”

  Nothing.

  “Zach!”

  The young creative executive came jogging into my office. “Sorry. I was on a call. I—”

  “Comes a Stranger. I should have seen first cut weeks ago. I’ve been too fucking indulgent at staff meetings. And you’ve been too fucking vague.” I ignored the terrified look on his face. “Do we have a problem? Is it Leland?”

  Zach looked quickly at Christine and then Rene, who both stared at the floor.

  “They don’t know the answer, Zach. It’s all you. Do we or do we not have a problem?”

  Zach spoke softly. “Editing is taking longer than we thought. Leland sits there and agonizes over every frame. I mean the movie’s great but it’s long. Too long. And he won’t let the editors do their jobs.”

  “Apparently you haven’t been doing yours either, have you?” I snarled. “You told me you could handle Leland. You should have come to me weeks ago. And I should have known better.”

  The kid looked pale, sweaty.

  “I’m sorry, Greyson. I thought if we could just get past this one section …”

  “Where’s he working?”

  “On the lot. In one of the editing suites in the Bogart Building. But he’s gone for the day.”

  “Good.” I grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair. “Call the picture and sound editors back in. And show me.”

  Christine, Zach, Rene, and two or three of my other executives who were still in the office struggled to keep up with me as I zigzagged across the lot, cutting through buildings, past the commissary, the soundstages on which America’s favorite sitcoms were filmed, and through the streets of a permanent set that was made to look like Anytown, USA.

  “Do you want me to show you what we have so far?” Zach asked. His voice was trembling a little as Jerry Nunez, the picture editor, arrived with a key and opened the door to Comes a Stranger’s editing suite.

  “No. You can go. All of you. Jerry and I are going to finish this goddamned movie.” But no one left. They just stood there, watching as Jerry and then Bertram Doyle, the sound editor, and I sat at the Steenbeck, expertly making the cuts I demanded.

  “Greyson, you can’t do that!” Christine hurled herself between me and the massive flatbed editing machine. “Leland has final cut. You can’t just go in without his permission and cut his picture.”

  “Watch me.”

  “But … Leland’s … he’s the director. That’s like—”

  “Leland works for me. If he can’t get it done, I’ll do it myself.”

  “But you don’t know what he wants.”

  “It’s not about what he wants anymore. This is business. Besides, I know this script inside out. I can do this.”

  “He has a contract. He could sue and he’d probably win.” She knelt down beside me and tried to take my hand, but I shooed her away. “Greyson, you’re not thinking clearly. This isn’t good business.”

  “Go to hell,” I told her.

  The next morning, I found a cease and desist letter on my desk. Leland threatened to sue me if I didn’t hand over his movie, and the studio said contractually I had to. Their fucking loss. If you want to get anything done you’d better damn well be prepared to do it yourself.

  And even then, the assholes will bring you down.

  In February, Taysen said my blood test showed my lithium was below the therapeutic level. So he increased my dose. And within a week I became a lumbering, inarticulate idiot who nodded off in any meeting that started after 2:00 P.M. In the mornings, my hands shook so badly I had to hide them under my desk. I told everyone I had hay fever.

  After I burned my hand pouring coffee because I couldn’t hold the pot steady and then dropped the mug and the rest of the coffee on m
y bare feet, Ellen decided she was going to have a word with the doctor.

  “He can’t live like this! He can’t do his job like this!”

  If I’d known she was going take my side, I would’ve poured coffee on myself weeks before.

  “Ellen, the tremors, the fatigue, most of the side effects will probably dissipate.”

  “Probably?” She looked at him incredulously.

  “What about my memory?” I asked.

  I’d had a reputation, ever since I was an agent, for knowing every deal point word for word after reading through a contract just once. Now every negotiation became another test, another minefield. I was a fraud and it was only a matter of time before I got caught. Last week I’d been heading out to a lunch with the ridiculously large entourage of agents, publicists, and lawyers that represented a young actor with whom I wanted to do business.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” Rene asked me.

  “Lunch with Giordono’s people at … at … shit, where again?”

  Rene looked concerned. “That was pushed to next week. We had a long conversation about it yesterday. You’re having lunch in the commissary with the producers on Sleepwalkers.”

  It was all news to me.

  “Greyson?” Rene felt my forehead. “Maybe you should sit.”

  “What? No! I just wrote it in my book wrong. It’s nothing.” I pulled off my tie and changed gears, heading for the commissary.

  “I wrote it in your book,” I heard Rene say, “—correctly.”

  Rene would keep her mouth closed. Out of loyalty. But she knew something was up. One more slip like that and she’d go to Ellen.

  “I’m afraid the memory issue will likely stick around,” Taysen said. “It’s hard to know to what degree. Everyone’s different.”

  I stood up and walked over to the window. His office overlooked the UCLA campus.

  Ellen stared at Taysen, shaking her head. “Jesus, what a fucking nightmare.”

  “We’ll monitor the level,” he said. “Keep it as low as we can. But there’s a very fine—”

  “Line between the therapeutic dose and the toxic,” Ellen cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  “In time, some of these side effects will dissipate or at least become tolerable,” Taysen said.

  “So you’re saying they won’t go away,” Ellen said flatly.

  “Some might. I don’t know. We just have to wait it out.”

  Ellen nodded silently. After a moment she leaned forward toward Taysen. “Dr. Taysen, do you understand what would happen if …”

  “If what, Ellen?”

  Ellen looked at me like she was asking my permission.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “It’s not like we haven’t talked about it. Ad nauseam.” I went back to the window. The grass looked incredibly green and the brick-and-sandstone buildings—many of them domed with gentle curves—were in a way friendlier, more welcoming than their colonial and Gothic Eastern counterparts.

  “Well?” She threw up her hands.

  “I understand Greyson’s position requires discretion.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Do you understand what would happen if anyone found out? Anyone? They don’t let people with … this run studios.”

  “I understand the stigma is … a tremendous burden to bear,” Taysen said. “But the fact is, untreated manic depression gets worse. One in four commit suicide.”

  Fourteen floors down, there were coeds biking to class along the wide path that cut through the center of campus.

  “So,” Taysen said firmly, “do you want a medicated studio executive with side effects that may or may not go away or do you want a dead studio executive? Because one in four is not a bet I’d be willing to make.”

  Still more kids were lying on the green, green grass. Eating pizza. Reading. Playing Frisbee.

  I wondered if the windows opened.

  Ten days later, on a Monday morning, I was sitting at my desk going over memos for the weekly meeting with my core staff—the six men and two women I’d handpicked to head up the Production divisions, Domestic and International Distribution, Marketing, Accounting, Development, Casting, Postproduction, and In-house Packaging. They were my cabinet advisors. They gathered the intel. I made the decisions.

  I willed myself to memorize every tiny detail. Production costs, coverage of the scripts up for discussion, replacement options for an actor whose drug habit might make it necessary to replace him a week before shooting began—I wouldn’t even have to look down or turn a page.

  “Meeting in five, Grey,” Rene said, setting a stack of scripts down on my desk. Rene had been with me, or, more accurately, had put up with me, for fourteen years—ever since I first got my own desk at Franklin Morton. At the time she was a single mother in her thirties working a full-time job and taking care of two young children. And me. Now her kids were in college. Now it was just me.

  I picked up a yellow legal pad and the Montblanc pen Ellen had given me and walked out of my office.

  “Grey,” Rene said, rushing up behind me and handing me a file, “the meeting memos. Your notes.”

  “Don’t need ’em,” I said, waving her off. “But I’d love another cup of coffee.”

  “Good morning,” I said cheerily as I made my entrance into the conference room where my staff was already assembled. I took my seat at the head of the table. “Okay, we’ve got a lot to get through,” I said, writing the date in the upper left corner of my blank yellow pad. “Shall we get started?”

  I looked up at the people seated around the table and froze. I couldn’t remember a single one of their names. I began to perspire and suddenly it was as if I were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. I had to get out. I smiled weakly at the group of familiar-looking strangers, stood up, and immediately fell onto the floor.

  The studio publicist called it food poisoning and managed to keep it out of Variety.

  That night, I cut my dose in half. After a week, most of the side effects were gone. Ellen and I celebrated having dodged a disastrous bullet.

  After that, every night before my monthly blood test, I would simply triple my dose. Taysen and I celebrated my miraculous progress. And everybody was happy.

  Even the studio.

  New York, 1994. It is difficult, I am finding, to make friends on the psych ward. Certainly we all have something in common. But usually, I find, it’s just the one thing. And mutual insanity is not a good foundation for a friendship. Or maybe I’m overly demanding. But I am more delighted than a grown man should be when I discover that the beautiful and maniacal Glenda loves movies almost as much as I do—that she can quote dialogue from The Maltese Falcon, North by Northwest, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Last Tango in Paris. The difference between us is that, for the time being anyway, I have a grasp on where the movie ends and reality begins. But no one is perfect. Glenda may be certifiable but she knows her cinema and she has earned my respect. And so we have become friends. And then some.

  The then some really started because of Basic Instinct.

  Glenda is not the only patient with issues that might induce the staff to monitor our viewing a little more closely. But despite the various pathologies wandering the ward, they let us watch virtually anything on TV—sex, violence, the abuse of small animals—particularly on the weekends, when group activities are pared down to a minimum and the depressive doldrums kick in.

  And so, one bleak Saturday afternoon, eight or ten of us—patients and staff members alike—found ourselves watching Basic Instinct, a film which Glenda has seen thirteen times.

  “I fucked Michael Douglas,” she blurted out at one point. “But he disrespected me so I broke it off.”

  Five minutes went by.

  “He begged me to take him back. Practically stalked me.”

  “Shut up, Glenda. You’re full of shit and we’re trying to watch,” said Esther, an Orthodox ECT patient who, on top of everything else, had to suffer the indignity of wearing
a bad wig. I wondered, though, if for Esther watching movies like Basic Instinct was the next best thing to eating lobster.

  “I don’t appreciate that coarse language, Esther,” Glenda said, twisting her long, wild, dark hair into a bun. “And I’m not full of shit. I had to get a restraining order against Mr. Michael Douglas.”

  “SSSSHHHHHHHHHH.” Eight people simultaneously shut Glenda down. I smiled at her.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Not at all,” I said, “I believe you. One hundred percent. I’ve worked with Douglas. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  She dragged her folding chair so that she sat directly across from me. “You have?”

  “It was years ago.”

  By the time Catherine Tramell was getting interrogated by Detective Nick Curran, Glenda had slipped off her underwear. Using a crayon as a cigarette and reciting Sharon Stone’s dialogue word for word, inflection for inflection, she let her hospital gown ride up and her paper-white thighs fall apart until I was staring directly into her pussy.

  She left her mark on the vinyl-covered chair. After that, the ball was in my court. But it is not easy to have an affair on a psych ward. It may be even harder than killing yourself.

  ELEVENTH

  I can’t help wanting to fight back when they try to put me under. Because as much as I want to padlock what is left, I know I can’t. I know they will creep in and steal more. What I ate for dinner last night, the name of the first girl I kissed. And I do not know how much is left. What I remember now mostly are words—the ones they say endlessly, the ones that make me want to do something that would get me thrown in the Quiet Room: “Most likely,” “Eventually,” “We don’t know,” “Wish we knew more,” “Wait and see.” Failed attempts at reassurance, they are empty, meaningless, insubstantial, placeholders for what is missing.

  I feel the pinch of the first needle. Pot roast, I think, and tuck the memory away in a dark corner. I hide Emily Sachs away someplace I’m sure they’ll never look. I won’t know for sure until I wake up. But for now it’s the best I can do.

  New York, 1992. “Sir?” I open my eyes and see the Pakistani cabbie looking at me in the rearview mirror.