I'll Be There
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Cee Cee flitted in and out of the makeup trailer to see how Nina was, and she seemed much more nervous than Nina had ever seen her when she was going to shoot a scene herself. “You okay?” she kept asking Nina, but not waiting for the answer. Nina was glad her first scenes weren’t with Cee Cee so Cee Cee could watch and tell her how good they were. Just as the hairdresser had the last stray hair sprayed down, Martin’s cologne wafted into the trailer followed by Martin,
who looked a little shaky when he took Nina’s hand.
“How do you feel?” he asked her.
“Great,” she said. “How doyou feel?” That made him laugh a funny little laugh and relax a little. People made too much of a big deal about acting. Probably to make themselves chink they deserved all the zillions of dollars actors got paid, because this was a snap. All she had to do now was go out there, sit at that table with handsome Michael Nouri, and say the words she knew so well she could say them backwards if she had to, and then the worst part of this would be over. And soon the summer would be over and she could go back to school and wait for the picture to be released. And everyone in her school would come to the premiere and faint at how good she was. In fact, maybe she would get an agent and get jobs in other pictures, or maybe just be in ones that Cee Cee made.
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“All right, people, we’re going to have a rehearsal,” Martin said, and he sat next to Nina in the seat where Michael Nouri would sit when they started shooting, and he took Nina’s hand. The crew was moving around quietly, and Martin spoke softly to her in what was ncarly a whisper. “Nina, I want you to remember all the things we talked about, how deeply this girl is feeling her pain, how enormous a loss it is for her to have her father leave the family.” Then he took a deep breath and moved forward in his chair so he could be closer to her and spoke confidentially, “Now,” he said, “you probably remember some of your own losses,” then he paused as if he was summoning the next part of his speech and said, “Like when your mother died. I know that you were there with her when she did, so you remember what it felt like to suddenly be left alone in the world, to know that you would never see your mother again. To feel her being ripped away from you, don’t you?”
The crew was turning the lights on now, trying different ones and moving them around, and overlaid on the already humid morning, it was blasting hot where Nina sat unable to look at Martin’s face, so she stared at the gold chain around his suntanned neck and chest, through his open Hawaiian flowered shirt. She knew that he was trying to get her to feel sad so that she would be able to cry. Trying to get her to use an emotional memory, that was what Chelsea had called it, because his words were cutting into her chest and making her feel sick. Up until this minute she had forgotten about emotional memory, and what she had done at all of the rehearsals was just to imitate the way Chelsea looked when she did it. But Martin was telling her now to use her own life.
“Remember the specifics. How she looked lying in that bed on that last day, feelings of fear and rage and need that you had, because that’s what Stacy is feeling when she talks to her father and begs him to keep the family together. He’s abandoning them just the way you must have felt your mother was abandoning you, and she’s longing for a family the way you probably had your whole life.” He was still whispering, and she knew that the usual noisy crew were tiptoeing around at his request so that he could do what he was doing, getting her in the mood, the saddest possible mood so that when he slid out of the seat and Michael Nouri slid into it, she would be hurting and sad.
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Martin kept talking to her in his whisper, but she wasn’t listening anymore. She was thinking about her mother in that bed in Carmel, how it felt to walk into that room and see her there, the searing pain of her mother’s last day on earth when she lay there so gray on the bed, tubes coming from every part of her, not even looking human anymore. And then Martin was no longer next to her, he had slipped away and Michael Nouri was sitting in his place, and Nina’s mind was in the sickroom with Bertie, and she sunk low in the chair as there was a bell, a clacker, and from very far away she heard Martin say, “Action!”
“You know what’s going on, don’t you, baby?” Michael Nouri said to Nina.
My turn. It’s my turn, Nina thought, so hot that she was sure her face was sweating, because her upper lip felt wet. Medicine bottles, hypodermic needles, the intravenous being pumped into her mother.
“Yes, Dad, I know, and I want you to love Mommy.” There. She said it. But Michael Nouri looked different to her now as she looked into his eyes. Worried or something.
“I do love her, but I can’t live with her anymore. There are problems. Insurmountable problems that someday you’ll understand when you’re old enough to have a relationship of your own and when you’re an adult and…”
Something was wrong. That wasn’t the cue she remembered, and her mind was racing trying to figure out why not. Oh, God. She was supposed to have interrupted him after he said “someday you’ll” only she had forgotten, so he went on and now she wasn’t sure if she should …
“Cut.” Mercifully a fan came on and a few of the lights were turned off and Martin was back at the table now, leaning over the two of them whispering directions Nina could barely hear; she knew her crying line was coming up and then she was going to have to use her emotional memory and she was afraid because remembering the details the way Martin wanted her to didn’t work for her the way it worked for Chelsea. These were memories she had spent years trying to shake off. Memories she wished he hadn’t made her think about again.
“You’re doing fine,” Martin told her. “We have lots of time, Nina. Don’t worry about that. You just concentrate on all the things that are
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going through your mind and Stacy’s mind, and we’ll go again.” Then he squeezed her hand and backed away into that other land on the far side of the cameras and again the fan went off and the lights were
shining so hot and bright on her they made it impossible to see. “All right, people, we’re rolling.”
“Action.” The way Martin said that word, leaning hard on both syllables, made it almost sound like a sneeze, and for months after this day Nina would hear it over and over in her dreams.
“I guess you know what’s going on, don’t you, baby?” Michael Nouri said to her again.
“Yes, Dad, and I want you to love Mommy.”
“I do love her, but I can’t live with her anymore. There are problems. Insurmountable grownup problems that someday you’ll —”
“Understand?” Nina said, dredging into her mind a picture of Her tie lying on her deathbed, trying to remember those mornings when she would open the door to the room where Bertie lay dying and see Cee Cee fat and pale and drained sitting there holding Bertie’s lifeless bony hand, trying to put on a face for Nina’s benefit that said, “It’s okay, honey. You can come in,” when she saw Nina at the door. An emotional memory. But it didn’t bring tears. It brought a frozen numbness, which was how Nina always reacted to emotion, the way she knew her mother had and her grandmother too, and according to everything she knew about her father, the man had never shed a tear in his life. And there was no way she was going to cry.
Her body felt weak and her mind was a blank, and she had no idea what to do next, so she stood. “I can’t,” she said standing, and it wasn’t a line from the script. “I can’t.”
“Cut.” Fans went on, people started moving around.
“I can’t do this.”
The hot lights were turned out and Michael Nouri put an arm around Nina, and now she could see beyond the camera where Cee Cee who must have just arrived stood with a look of unmistakable disappointment on her face, hesitant to come forward. But after a moment she did, only Martin was ahead of her, and when he got to Nina he started whispering again, his director’s whisper. Telling her that now she was in the exactly
right frame of mind. That if she could take the frustration she was feeling about not being able to play the part and bring it to the character, it would take her in exactly the right
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direction, and as he spoke he tried to gentle her back into the chair, but she woaldn’t move.
“Martin,” Nina managed to tell him, “I really can’t do this. I won’t do it. We all made a mistake thinking I could and I’m sorry. No, I can’t, and I’m sorry.”
Then she walked off the set past him, past Cee (See, past the handsome crew members, careful not to trip on any of the cables, out of the hotel dining room and back to the suite where she sat in the airconditioned living room on the sofa, hurting so badly she couldn’t move.
I’m gonna make it to heaven Light up the sky like a flame I’m gonna live forever
Baby, remember my name.
In a matter of minutes she felt Cee Cee come in and sit on the sofa
next to her. “It’s my fault,” Cee Cee said. “I thought you wanted it,
so I pushed it, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“You told him about me and my mother and what to use, didn’t you?” Nina asked.
Cee Cee felt sick with guilt. “Yes, and I hate myself for it.”
“It’s okay,” Nina said her face a mask of pain and shame.
“Martin says he’s willing to take the whole day just to work with
you on this hard scene, because he thinks you have a nice quality and maybe you could —”
“No. I don’t know how. And I don’t want to. No,” Nina said, never raising her voice.
Cee Cee sat with her for a long time, during which neither of them
said anything. The phone rang several times but neither of them moved to answer it. Nina was about to walk into her own room to get away from Cee Cee when Cee Cee said, “Neen, remember that story I’ve told you a million times about the day your mother and I met? We were kids in Atlantic City and there was a guy there who —”
“I know,” Nina said, weary of the story she’d heard a million times.
“A guy from Hollywood. And my mother came with you and you auditioned for a part and so did some other girl and the guy picked the other girl to get the part.”
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“Exactly. But the reason I’m reminding you about it again is that on that day I thought my life was over. Destroyed. But now I’m a big star, and nobody’s ever heard of that girl. Even though she beat me for the part. So you get my point?”
“No.”
“The point is that you’re like I was then. Thinking it’s over, but you’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not, Cee Cee,” Nina said looking at her. It was an uncomfortable moment because they both knew Cee Cee was vamping, saying anything she could think of to ease her own guilt and to save Nina’s shattered ego.
“I’m not like you in that story, and I’m not like you in real life either. The person I’m like in that story is my mother, who sat backstage and watched you out there, and was happy doing that. You see, you may not believe it, Cee Cee, but some people are actually happy doing that.”
For the next few days Nina rarely left the suite. She was too embarrassed to look at anyone from the cast or crew of the film. When she heard from Cee Cee that Chelsea Bain was back, she thought about going over to the set, but she was afraid that if she went over and watched Chelsea doing the scene she had blown, it would make her feel horrible, so she didn’t.
That afternoon when she opened the door in answer to a knock, she didn’t bother to ask who it was because she was sure it was room service bringing the club sandwich she had ordered earlier, but it was Chelsea, looking fattened up and healthy though the rosy cheeks were due to Frank the makeup man’s blusher.
“Hey, girl,” she said. “I finished working for the day. Want to go body surfing?”
Nina felt as if the sun had just come up, even though she was sure Cee Cee had sent Chelsea over to help lure her out of the hotel room. “I just ordered lunch,” she said. Now she could see behind Chelsea the room service waiter who was coming up the steps carrying a tray.
“Excuse me,” the waiter passing Chelsea asked Nina, “do you want this on the table outside on the terrace?”
“She does,” Chelsea said, and she walked ahead of him into the suite and held the door to the terrace for him, then both girls followed
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him out to the tile patio overlooking the placid aqua sea beyond the pale beige .and beach. After Nina signed the check, the waiter left,
and both girls sat, Nina with the large sandwich in front of her. “C’n I have half?” Chelsea asked her.
“Sure,” Nina said, putting one half of the sandwich and half the potato chips, half the cole slaw, and the entire dill pickle on an empty bread dish and pushing the dish toward Chelsea.
“You can have the whole pickle. I hate pickles.”
“My morn says after this picture we’re probably gonna hafta move to L.A.,” Chelsea said, picking up the pickle and biting into it, then wincing a little from the sour taste. “Only I’m scared, because I don’t want to leave my friends and my school.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Nina said, “you can call me and I’ll show you around.” A warm breeze picked up a paper coaster from the tray and blew it to the tile floor. Nina picked it up and put it on the tray and put her water glass on it. “Oh, and Chels,” she said grinning. “This time remember not to drink the water.”
Chelsea laughed a blush of a laugh, and the two girls sat back to eat their lunch.
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Michael Barron
Barron, Malamud and Stern
1600 Golden Triangle Way
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Michael,
This is letter number I don’t know how many, but the time has come for me to cut the crap and get directly to the chase. After your daughter was born I swore to high heaven if you ever tried to see her, I’d personally take her out of the country and go into hiding forever.
As you know, since Bertie’s death I have been her guardian and since she has come to live with me I have gotten to know her very well. Now what I feel has changed. I am writing this to tell you that I will do whatever it takes to get you to see her even for a day. Not for me, because as far as I’m concerned my feelings remain the same, but because this girl who is coming into her womanhood needs it. She knows you’re out there and I can tell it would help her to see you and to ask you questions and just look at your face and get some idea of where she comes from.
I have heard that you’re sometimes in Los Angeles on business, and I am asking if you, on one of those trips, would spend one or two hours with her. It won’t hurt you and it could change her life.
Please, Michael, please. Meet her. I swear to God, nobody wants your money, nobody wants to trap you into anything, all we ask, or I should say I ask because I would never tell her I am trying for this, so she won’t be disappointed if you should refuse, is for you to give her a few hours of your time. Michael, this is just a personal appeal. Not legal or business or anything like that. If you can only find it in your heart.
Cee Cee
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MA’FI-HERS, KENDALL AND SIVITZ
Ms. Cecilia Bloom
29 Malibu Colony Road
Malibu, California 90265
Dear Ms. Bloom,
I am in receipt of your recent letter to Michael Barron. Please be advised that this office represents all of Mr. Barton’s legal interests, and that in the future, any questions you have regarding Mr. Barton’s paternal obligations, i.e., child support, should be addressed to me.
Sincerely,
Ronald J. Sivitz attorney to Michael Barton
MAUI, HAWAII
1989
A SMALL PLANE flying very low over the water takes you
from the Maui airport to the airport at Hana, and the hotel sends what they call a limousine, which is really a van, to pick you up. Cee Cee was so glad to be out of Los Angeles on a vacation with Nina she didn’t care what they sent, or even that two other families were being herded into the van behind them. One of the families consisted of an older couple with a daughter in her thirties who had the same sour expression on her face as her mother. The other family was a tanned, blond, robust preppy-looking couple with three towheaded children all under the age of ten.
As the van took off through the rich green tropical foliage, Cee Cee watched Nina watching the family with children wistfidly. Their togetherness had a brochure dazzle, and an unreality about it that was made even more pronounced by the fact that all five of them were dressed exactly alike in white shorts, yellow-and-navy-striped rugby shirts, and brown Topsiders. Later at the beach they all wore matching red bathing suits and ran out of the surf holding hands with the water splashing symmetrically on either side of them as if the scene of their emerging from the water had been staged for a commercial.
The hotel suite where Cee Cee and Nina were staying was a twobedroom cottage overlooking the ocean. It was furnished with tan wicker-and-bamboo chairs and couches and headboards, and bright floral-printed fabrics on the pillows, bleached wood floors, white walls, and a ceiling fan that made clanking noises, but neither Cee Cee or Nina could locate the switch to turn it off. Nina searched
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