The Body in the Cast ff-5

by Katherine Hall Page

  Faith took a tray covered with the phyllo triangles and put it in the freezer. When she returned, Niki picked up where they had left off.

  “It's coming back to me. Roger Chillingworth moves in with the Reverend, right? And sucks his blood or something—and in the end, Dimmesdale is so eaten up with guilt, he tells all."

  “Sort of. Roger Chillingworth moves in with the minister to try to cure the illness we all know is not the common cold, but remorse and shame. The doctor's convinced the young man is hiding something, which he is. Meanwhile, Roger also haunts Hester, who makes a fair living doing exquisite needlework, and tells her his mission in life is to discover the man who has cuckolded him. If she warns her lover, Chilling-worth will kill him or worse when he does find out. Hester ends up keeping more secrets than the chemists at Coca-Cola, since she, of course, still loves Arthur. But she is not at all ashamed ofWhat they've done. It was a pure act before God, and he fellow townspeople are the ones with the problem. Max ell Reed may very well be onto something. It really is a very modern story. Hester manages to convince Dimmesdale she's right, or maybe his flesh is weak, and they decide to run away together, except Chillingworth discovers what ship they're sailing on, and the minister realizes he has to confess to everyone. He literally bares his bosom, revealing, some of the crowd swears, the letter A branded in his flesh, and thus escapes his tormentor, Chilling-worth. He dies in Hester's arms."

  “I can't wait to see the movie. If it's anywhere near as good as your synopsis, it's Oscar time”

  Still in the mood, Faith mused, "It does offer a director like Maxwell Reed a lot. Hester is a great character. Hawthorne suggests that as an outcast, Hester derives from the scarlet letter some strange power to see what people are truly Iike, as opposed to how they present themselves. But it's also a curse—she sees evil everywhere, like the husband in Hawthorne's short story `Young Goodman Brown: " Faith was having fun. American Literature 101 was coming back in full force. "Then there's Pearl, trading insults at the age of three with the goody-two-shoes village children and exploring theological issues with her mom. And the governor's sister. I forget her name, but she's later executed as a witch, Hawthorne tells us. She keeps asking Hester and Dimmesdale to go dance in the forest with her. Marta Haree is playing the role and she should be terrific"

  “I read in Parade magazine that she's into fortune- telling and tarot cards. Maybe that's why Max picked her."

  “She's been in almost all his movies, but this casting does seem particularly apt. Caresse Carroll is a little old for Pearl and she doesn't look anything like the description in the book—the scarlet letter come to life—but Reed must have his reasons," Faith mused.

  “I'll have to read the book this time, not just the Cliffs Notes. Sorry," Niki said, correctly interpreting Faith's expression of disapproval, "we weren't all English majors in the making, and as I remember, it was assigned just when we were busiest at the bakery--the week before Greek Easter."

  “It's not as though it was a long book, Niki, like Love Story or one of your other favorites."

  “Can it, boss.”

  Niki liked working for Faith.

  Two weeks later, the staff of Have Faith climbed into the canteen truck Faith had rented for the duration of the shoot. The movie crew took a break in the middle of the morning, and the truck was filled with a variety of hot and cold drinks, several kinds of muffins, fresh fruit, and bagels with various spreads. Later, lunch would be served, also on location, but inside a heated tent. The crew would return to the Marriott for dinner, where Alan Morris had arranged for Max to watch the dailies. Faith would provide dinner only if they were doing a night shoot.

  In addition, the caterers were responsible for the craft services table, which would be kept stocked round the clock with essential snacks such as pretzels, M & M's, fruit, granola bars, Twinkies, soft drinks, and oceans of coffee. This would be set up permanently inthe barn in case of inclement weather. Pix had agreed that keeping it supplied would be something she could handle. "I just have to think what I put in the kids' lunch boxes—the days I'm a g mother and thinking nutritionally and the days when the bad mother throws in a Ring-Ding because the bus Is at the door.”

  As Faith ran over all the plans the night before, she told Tom it was a job that posed a unique challenge, even though it was a relatively small shoot.

  “How so?"

  “Well, most of the crew is pure California by way of Manhattan, so this means they know what pastrami is supposed to taste like, but they're still going to want their sprouts—plus, there will be macrobiotic types who want only sprouts. Then the people they've hired locally aren't going to want either. They think low-fat' is some sort of Madison Avenue gimmick to sell things that don't taste very good."

  “Which is partly true," Tom interrupted. "The cheese spread we had last week at the Millers, that Pix was so excited about, because it was so good for us, tasted like wallpaper paste—not that I've sampled that delicacy myself. Although there was a boy in my first-grade class who ate paste. You know that thick, gloppy white kind. The teacher had a big jar of it. I wonder what happened to him. Probably won a Nobel Prize."

  “More likely owns a chain of stationery stores," Faith said. Native nostalgia again. At the moment, she was not in the mood for reminiscences of Tom's beloved Norwell school days. If he was to be believed, his childhood in this hamlet on the South Shore, about forty miles south of Boston, was a cross between Christopher Robin's Hundred Acre Wood and Tom Sawyer's Hannibal, Missouri. Normally, her husband's stories fascinated her. Growing up at the same time in the same country, they might as well have been living on different planets, for all the similarities in upbringings. But tonight, her mind was on the present, not the past.

  “I'm not worried about the logistics or that everyone won't find something they want to eat. I'll have a good hearty soup each day for the New Englanders and plenty of fresh veggies for the rest. It's going to be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out."

  “A play within a play? And if you add what they're going to do to poor Nathaniel's masterpiece, yet another play within that."

  “I thought you liked Reed's movies."

  “I do, but I also like The Scarlet Letter—and for starters, Hester Prynne was a brunette."

  “Typical," Faith countered. "If he wasn't filming a New England classic, you wouldn't feel so protective. And in any case, you can't fool me, Thomas Fairchild. I know how starstruck you are. Play your cards right and I'll let you come and stuff some pita bread someday.”

  It was true Tom was a movie buff, but his torches were lighted by Garbo, Dietrich, Colbert, and the like. Still, Faith was sure he wouldn't mind getting a closer look at Evelyn O'Clair, blond tresses or not.

  “I would like to see how they film a movie, and I'm not planning to be in the crowd scene with the rest of Aleford. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn't be worth the flak. Half the town would applaud my participation in a community event, half would have me abandoning my congregation for the siren call of the silver screen, and half would say I was stuck on myself."

  “We'd better get some sleep, darling. Your halves don't add up. Anyway, tomorrow's going to be a long day for me and I don't know what's on your ecclesiastical plate. Besides, as soon as we close our eyes, our little bundle of joy will be calling for her morning snack."

  “Think we could train Ben to feed her, now that she's taking a bottle? You know, give the lad a sense of responsibility."

  “He would be responsible all right—responsible for restoring the natural order of things to a house with only one child.”

  Faith honked the canteen truck's raucous horn at what had to be an out-of-state driver, despite the Massachusetts plates. A native would have known that a posted twenty-five mph zone meant the local police chief had some extra signs lying around going to waste and the posted speed was in no way meant to be taken seriously. Making a sharp left onto River Road, toward the shoot, she smiled as she remembered the conversati
on the night before. It wasn't that Ben was a little monster. He might not even be terribly jealous; he had been known to let Amy grab his finger in her mighty clutch. Ben had just liked things the way they were and saw no need to change. There was some logic to his thinking. Why rock the boat?

  The truck was what was rocking now as they reached the Pingrees' long, rutted driveway. By the time they finished filming, the combination of heavy usage and possible heavy March downpours would require all-terrain vehicles. Maybe Alan Morris would have it paved before then. He seemed to pave the way for most things.

  Faith had come out several days earlier to talk about where to set up and had supervised the erection of the tent the previous afternoon, so she knew what the place looked like. She was not prepared, however, for the army of trucks, trailers, people, wires, and equipment that filled the New England landscape. She pulled up to the barn, which was a good distance from the house, and stopped. Alan had told her they would be shooting interior shots to begin with and that the noise of her arrival wouldn't disturb them. A short time later, the crew took its break. For the next forty minutes, the staff of Have Faith was frantically filling orders.

  “A large tea, no sugar, and cream, not milk," demanded a voice accustomed to being obeyed. `And one of those muffins—warm, but not hot."

  “Corny!" cried Faith in sudden recognition.

  “Cornelia," the voice replied automatically, and its owner pushed aside several underlings to get a better view of the individual using the much-loathed moniker of her adolescence.

  “It's Faith. Faith Sibley, only I'm Fairchild now. Your old Dalton friend. My company is catering the shoot."

  “Faith! Of course, how delightful to see you. So you decided to be a cook." Having pushed Faith finely "downstairs," Cornelia added a hasty, "So much catching up to do. Perhaps a word tomorrow? Today is just too-too." Her eyes conveyed the enormity of her responsibilities—responsibilities that words could not begin to describe.

  “What is your job on the film?" Faith asked. She wasn't going to let Corny get away without learning this vital piece of information.

  “Max's production assistant," responded her old schoolmate in a tone of voice, similar, Faith later told her sister, Hope, to the one an apostle might have used to describe washing Christ's feet or passing Him the matzos at the Last Supper.

  Faith was tempted to reply, "Oh, a gofer?" after the "cook" business, but they were grown-ups now, so she had to be satisfied with saying, "That's terrific, Corny—oops ... Cornelia. See you tomorrow, then”

  And with that, Cornelia took her statuesque self away to minister to her master's needs.

  Cornelia Stuyvesant had been in school with Faith since kindergarten and came from an old-money New York family, as her name implied—or rather, declared. She had always been an athletic girl and played a fierce game of tennis—also a fierce game of lacrosse, a fierce game of field hockey, and so on. She moved beautifully, with the confidence good health and a healthy portfolio supply. She had never bothered much with her appearance, still sporting, Faith noticed, the same shoulder-length brown hair cum headband of yore. Yet the tortoiseshell glasses—in the past, usually held together with a paper clip at the side—had been replaced somewhere along the line with contacts. Slim-hipped, flat-chested, tall, Cornelia was made for Armani, but she stuck resolutely to Brooks, with an occasional wild fling at Lauren.

  Of course the first thing Faith wanted to do when she got home later that afternoon was call Hope, one class behind them in school and possessing a seemingly in-exhaustive memory for detail. But what with baths, supper, quality time for Amy, Ben, and Tom, it was nine o'clock before she was able to pick up the phone to call her sister.

  Hope came through with flying colors. Faith wouldn't have been surprised to discover her sister had a right frontal Rolodex implanted in her brain. In this instance, however, Hope's recollections went beyond where Corny lived, family income, phone number, and what she had worn to the 1974 Winter Cotillion. "She hated you, Faith. How could you forget that?"

  “Don't you think hate is a little strong? I do remember some friendly rivalry, but hate?"

  “Come on! She started the Faith Sibley Hate Club in second grade and even made up membership cards, but she could only get poor, sad Susan Harvey to join—you know, I'll buy you an ice cream if you'll be my friend, Harvey—and when everybody sided with you, it simply made Corny madder. Then the teacher heard about it and made her apologize in front of the whole class. I don't know how you lived to reach adulthood."

  “I do remember that! Maybe I've just wanted to forget it all these years. But Corny seems to be in a good place now and I'm sure that's all in the dim, dim past."

  “What's dim is you, sis. Corny was always the green-eyed monster personified. What about the time in ninth grade when you took her boyfriend away and she set off a stink bomb in the bathroom and told the headmaster she saw you do it."

  “She really wasn't cut out for that type of thing—too transparent. You could always tell when she was lying. Her face would get all red.”

  The scene in the headmaster's office flashed on a screen in front of Faith's eyes and she blinked, protesting to Hope, "Besides, she had no reason to be jealous. I didn't take her boyfriend away. Bobby Conklin never even looked at her. She just told everybody they were an item."

  “Anyway, be careful, Faith. Think of Comy's famous temper as one of those inactive volcanos that suddenly erupts and wipes out a village or two with no warning. On the surface, she may look like a reasonable adult—and sure, she has a good job. Being a production assistant on one of Reed's movies is something people would kill for. Still, I'm sure you were the last school chum she wanted to run into—during this lifetime, for a start—and puffs of telltale steam may start to escape."

  “You're waxing very metaphorical for a business major. And I think you're exaggerating more than a tad. It was all years ago. She was quite cordial, and we're going to get together tomorrow. It will be fun to find out all about everybody in the movie. And I'm going to make a conscious effort to avoid calling her Corny, which was not the greatest nickname. Parents should think of these things."

  “Speaking of parents, her mother hated you, too. How could you forget Corny's birthday party when Mrs. Stuyvesant—"

  “Enough!" Faith shrieked in protest. Sometimes Hope's memory was a little too good.

  As she hung up the phone, Tom mumbled, "Who or what is Corny?" from his side of the bed, where he'd been drowsily reading Paul Tillich.

  “An old school friend who's working on the movie. Her real name is Cornelia."

  “Were you and Hope the only ones at that school to have normal names? What was with those people Buffy, Kiki, Dede, Muffin?"

  “Well, dear, they'd already used up the good names for the dogs," Faith countered archly, and turned off the light.

  It wasn't until the following week that Cornelia and Faith were able to get together. Faith had reluctantly risen a little earlier to give herself some leeway to change her mind a few times about what to wear for the reunion. Sure, she'd told Hope bygones were bygones, but that didn't mean she wanted to be caught in last year's hemlines, no matter what Anna Wintour said about anything goes.

  She settled on a charcoal Anne Klein knit turtleneck, an oversized matching cable-knit cardigan, and black wool crepe pants. Serviceable and chic. She was going to be working and so it wouldn't do to show up in silk. Over this, she'd wear her gray-and-white large-checked blanket coat today, instead of the Eddie Bauer down parka she'd reluctantly adopted as the indispensable, albeit ungainly, mainstay of her Aleford winter wardrobe. And she was still usually cold. Corny looked her best in jodhpurs and the like, Faith remembered, and had worn something similar the other day. Faith already had a million questions for her, starting with what Maxwell Reed was really like. But she'd phrase it in such a subtle way that Cornelia wouldn't realize it was a question she'd been asked hundreds of times before.

  Alan Morris had introduced
Faith to the director the first day, and Reed had come into the tent for lunch once; other times, he ate from trays reverently fetched by one of the PAs. The day he ate with the crew, faithful Cornelia at his side, he'd complimented Faith extravagantly on the meal, adding that if he wasn't careful, he'd gain a lot of weight in the next few weeks. "But of course I won't be," he'd said in chagrin, then turned away with sudden intensity—as if he'd finally realized how he wanted to end the ‘film and had to write it down before he forgot.

  During the shoot, Amy was spending mornings with Arlene Maclean, where Faith picked her up after lunch, taking her back to work for the afternoon. She didn't want to bring the baby in the canteen truck, and what if she suddenly started screaming during a scene? Not that Amy was much of a screamer, more of a mewer, but motherhood had taught Faith one or two things, the most important of which being that all children are innately unpredictable. It wasn't anything to do with nature versus nurture. It was fact.

  There was a baby on the set—or rather, two. Pearl as an infant was being played by twins from Natick, pretty pink-and-white babies who were even more docile than Amy. "The mother must sedate them," Faith told Niki, "the old `gin in the milk' trick." Whatever the cause, little Hillary and Valerie Phillips—" `Hill' and `Valley' we call them," Mrs. Phillips, warming up a bottle between takes, confided to Faith—were perfect.

  Evelyn and Max's baby was, by coincidence, exactly the same age as Hawthorne's Pearl at the start of The Scarlet Letter—three months. But little Cordelia was installed in a lavish nursery with her own nanny at the house Max had rented for them in North Aleford. Faith wondered who had picked the baby's name: Cordelia, King Lear's good daughter. It would be interesting if it had been Max's choice. Another thing to ask Corny.