Girl, Unframed

by Deb Caletti

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Exhibit 59: Sworn statement of Evan Dunne

  Lila wore her sleeveless white dress, the one trimmed in gold around the neck and the hem. Her lucky dress. At least, that’s what she’d called it the last time I saw her in it, a few weeks before, when she and Jake had gone out for dinner.

  We were up early. She was driving us out to Nick’s Cove for a preproduction table read of Peyton Place, her new project. Lila had insisted I go with her. I had no clue why. I thought maybe she didn’t want me alone in the house with Jake.

  Nick’s Cove was a resort of seaside cottages perched next to the ocean, pretty much halfway between Sea Ranch and San Francisco. Most of the town scenes would be filmed in Sea Ranch, Lila said, because it was so charming and had dramatic views of the Pacific coast. They’d also use Highway 1, with its long stretches of high bluffs that fell straight into the ocean. But Connie, Lila’s character, and her daughter, Allison, would “live” at Nick’s, in one of the cove bungalows.

  They were doing the reading at the boat shack at the end of the pier at Nick’s. We were supposed to spend the night afterward at the nearby Timber Cove Resort. This was the kind of thing Evan Dunne did, Lila told me, bringing everyone out for a first read in the actual setting of the film. Compared to where he’d done this before, Nick’s Cove was nothing. For Endless Kingdom, the cast had met at the Neemrana Fort-Palace, a lush fifteenth-century fort built into fourteen tiers of a hill near Delhi.

  Jade Arcadia, the girl from Twenty Seasons, was going to play Allison, Connie/Lila’s daughter, and Terence Tate (The Dubious Trent Darby and Constantine Valentine) would be Michael, Lila’s love interest. Those were the big names, but the whole cast would be there. I was nervous to meet Evan Dunne. I knew he was important to Lila, and important in general.

  She was driving us herself, and this seemed strange. For long trips—and this one was over an hour each way—she’d usually hire a car service so she didn’t have to deal with the stress of traffic. But that morning, not only did she drive us, she also took Highway 1, the scenic route. The road hugged the coast and had high, winding switchbacks. I clutched the handrail on those blind curves.

  “Why didn’t we take a car?” I asked. Her driving was making me nervous. That road was.

  “I wanted it to be just us. We have hardly had any time together since you’ve been here. Plus, look at this incredible panorama! Girls’ road trip!”

  It was beautiful, yeah, and we were alone, but I’m sure those weren’t the only reasons she didn’t hire a service. Maybe it was money. If Jake got arrested, it was all over. His financial help, that house, her entire career. Even the project she was working on that very day. A scandal like that could destroy her. Us.

  I didn’t want to talk about it, but someone needed to.

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Where’d what go?”

  “The paintings. Crying Girl. Jacqueline. All the others.”

  “I didn’t ask. It’s not my business.”

  “Not your business? It seems very much your business. Why are you still with him after all this shit?”

  “Baby, do we have to do this now? I’m stressed enough already. I’m trying to enjoy myself with you.”

  I was so exasperated. Beyond. Tick, tick, tick, my anger grew.

  “Lila. You need to leave this guy. Everything about this is bad.”

  “Baby. I have it managed.”

  I could feel the slippage. The plates of the earth shifting and shivering.

  I stared out the window. I shut my eyes tight on those blind curves. For a few miles, she tailed an old, slow camper with the license plate CAPTAIN ED, revving her accelerator obnoxiously, clicking her nails on the steering wheel until she could pass. I texted Meredith. She’d gone mostly silent on me since she left. There’d been a few brief texts between us, several ignored phone calls, the word busy used too often. I hope you’re okay. I hope everything is all right with us.

  No answer.

  Please don’t ignore me, Mer!

  Nothing.

  I texted Nicco. Big cliffs. It’s as curvy as you said, and Lila’s driving like a maniac. When we’d talked on the phone that morning, he’d warned me that it was a nail-biting road.

  Big seat belt? he texted. Can’t stop thinking about you.

  “I’m driving here with you, so we can have some time together in this stunning place, and all you’re doing is texting that boy.”

  “I’m texting Meredith.” It was a lie, but among all the crimes happening right then, it was pretty small.

  “Jake thinks you’re too young to be ‘involved.’ ” She made the sarcastic air quotes with her voice.

  “Yeah, well, maybe he should concentrate on his own problems.”

  “ ‘She’s not a child,’ I told him. I don’t know why he’s so protective.” She glanced over at me, like maybe I did know why.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Silence, except for the little sighs that told me how badly I was disappointing her. I didn’t know what Lila wanted from me. Even she seemed to want me to be sexy and beautiful but not be sexy and beautiful. If I hadn’t known better, if I hadn’t been sure that mothers would never feel such a thing, I’d have thought that she was jealous.

  * * *

  The cottages of Nick’s Cove were so cute—red, blue, white, and green, with their little decks hanging over the water. All of the fancy cars in front looked out of place.

  Lila held my elbow. She was unsteady in her heels as we walked down the dock to the shingled boat shack at the end of the pier. Inside, the shack was rustic chic, all rough-hewn wood and open beams strung with lit white lights and charming multipaned windows looking out toward the sea. There was a stone hearth with a big drum stove, a canoe hanging upside down across the ceiling, walls hung with fishing baskets and floats. Two beautiful wood tables were shoved together. We were the last ones to get there, which was how she liked it. Everyone else was already seated in glossy red wood chairs around the tables.

  Evan Dunne, well, you know what he looks like. Hair, which he was always pushing back, swooped down over one eye; a direct gaze; jeans and a sweatshirt that looked like he’d worn them for days. Signature high-top work boots that supposedly belonged to his father, the iconic director Reese Dunne. He was clearly impatient, since they’d been waiting, and so after the hugs and introductions, he moved two flat hands in a downward motion, as if he were quieting an orchestra, and the reading began.

  It was exciting, really, to see these people and hear their voices making a story come to life. They didn’t know what I did, though, that this whole project might be doomed. As soon as word got out about Jake, boom. Finished.

  I sat in my red chair and listened. And as I did, I felt a creeping awareness. I started to feel sick. Connie was a bombshell single mother, the most desired woman in town, in a relationship with a dark-haired man who physically overpowered her. Allison, her teenage daughter, was naive. Pathetic. Alone and misunderstood, until she kissed a boy and was sexually “awakened.”

  I sat in that chair next to Lila feeling exposed. Humiliated. My face was red.

  “She isn’t six, she’s sixteen,” Terence Tate said. Michael and Constance were arguing about Allison.

  “She’s not your child, so what do you care? Keep it to yourself,” Lila read.

  It was our conversation. My humiliation turned to an ugly shame. I could barely breathe as I sat in that red chair. How could Lila do such a thing? How could she use me like that?

  I dug my nails into my own hand. I needed to get out of there, but I couldn’t move. I was a prisoner on an island, and the currents around it were too strong for me to swim to my escape.

  “Your body looks incredibly young,” Terence/Michael said to Lila/Constance. “For a woman of thirty-nine. How is that possible? You have breasts like a virgin.”

  “Close on: the hips of Terence moving against Constance,” Evan Dunne read.

  God, I
felt sick enough to vomit. I shoved my chair back. “Excuse me,” I said to no one and everyone. I hurried out of the boat shack. I could hear Lila’s voice and then laughter. She was making a joke about me fleeing, I was sure, but I didn’t care.

  I sped back down the pier, toward the restaurant at Nick’s Cove. I found the bathroom and closed myself inside. I splashed my face with cold water. I stayed in there a long while. I felt this rage building. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was building and building, the worst kind of rage, when you’re as helpless as you are angry.

  When I finally stepped back outside, Lila was there. Her arms were folded. She looked amused, not mad, which made me even more infuriated.

  “Baby,” she said. “Why did you run off?”

  It wasn’t the time or the place for this. “Why are you out here?”

  “We’re taking a break.” I could see it was true—waiters were heading toward the shack with trays of oysters on the half shell and plates piled with french fries. The cast milled around outside. Anyone could tell by looking at us that this was a confrontation. I tried to keep my voice low.

  “How could you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The whole story. Me. You.”

  “Oh, it is not.”

  “Lila.”

  “I optioned it two years ago! There are similarities, that’s all.”

  “You used me. You used what’s happening to me.”

  “Baby, the book was written in 1956. The film came out in 1957. That was over sixty years ago! These aren’t my ideas.”

  “Well, that’s even worse, then, because it means nothing has changed.”

  “What nothing has changed?”

  “This,” I said. I circled my hand in the space between us, meaning her, all of it. Us. Men and women, women and women.

  “Mothers? Daughters? That will never change. Never, ever, ever.”

  “You. The way you keep making yourself this thing. This body.”

  “It’s my profession.”

  “Why do you do this? Why? It’s like it’s the only power you have! Like, they made you an object, so you see yourself as one.” I shouldn’t have blamed her. She probably never really had the chance to be anyone different from who she was. She’d only taken in every message she’d gotten, every message given for thousands of years, and swallowed them. God! That’s how bad things were, that even the targets of this bullshit believed the bullshit. The vampire sinks his teeth into your neck, drains your blood, and turns you into another vampire.

  Her face flushed. She looked pissed, but she was keeping her voice low too. “You don’t know anything. I’m here. Do you know what that took? Girls now will never know what it was like. You’ll never have the struggles I did.”

  She was right. But she was wrong, too. Because I did have her struggles. I did know what it was like.

  We both stood there, silently fuming at each other.

  Then, in her purse, her phone rang. She dug around for it, looked at the number.

  “I have to get this.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  She walked away, plugging one ear to hear better. She disappeared toward the front of the restaurant.

  I made my way to a dock near the boat shack, one that lay flat on the water. I sat at the edge.

  My own phone rang then. Meredith! I answered so fast. I was so glad to see her name there.

  “I was worried you were going to ignore me forever,” I said.

  “I had my phone off. I was at the dentist,” she said, but her voice sounded different. “I told you, there’s been a million things going on.”

  “Are we okay?”

  “Are you okay, that’s the question.”

  “Yes, I’m okay. There haven’t been any more fights. Please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m scared for you. For a lot of reasons.” She meant Jake and Lila, but not just. She meant the way I’d had my hands on Nicco, too. The way I was so hungry when I was supposed to order the salad.

  “I’m fine,” I said. Now my voice sounded different.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Hey, I need to go,” Meredith said. “My mom needs help unloading the groceries.”

  We hung up. My heart felt stricken and sad. When everyone returned to the boat shack to eat lunch and finish the read, I stayed where I was. I’d lost any appetite I might have had. I slipped off my sandals and took photos of my feet in the water, because this was me, drowning.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Exhibit 60: Sworn statement of Jade Arcadia

  Exhibit 61: Sworn statement of Terence Tate

  I couldn’t even imagine having to stay at Timber Cove for the night with Lila. But it turned out I didn’t have to. After the read was finished and everyone filed out, Lila waved her arm and jingled her keys, indicating it was time to go. I could feel a new tension in the air. Evan Dunne seemed pissed. Terence seemed pissed. I could see it in their shoulders and jawlines as they walked down the pier side by side, talking. I wondered what had happened in there.

  “Come on,” Lila said.

  I got into her car, and I folded my arms to make sure she knew I was still unhappy with her. My plan was to not speak to her all evening and excuse myself from dinner with the rest of them.

  But then, when the other cars turned left to go north on Highway 1, Lila turned right.

  “Lila. Wrong way.”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she was punishing me right back, silence for silence.

  “What are you doing? They all turned left,” I said.

  “We’re going home.”

  “What do you mean, we’re going home? Ugh!” I exhaled in frustration. “Honestly, you don’t need to make a big deal about this in front of everyone! You don’t need to make some big point because we had a fight.” God. How humiliating!

  “You know, Sydney, everything isn’t always about you.”

  This pissed me off. SO off. Everything about me? But then I got worried. “Why are we going home, then?”

  “I got a call.”

  “A call.”

  “And I have to deal with it.”

  It was the kind of bad where you’re too afraid to ask. The sky turned a blazing orange and pink, and then the sun dropped. Rapidly, the curved road was turning dark, and Lila was going too fast.

  “Lila. Slow down.”

  She looked over at me, her face in shadows. “Hand me my purse.”

  “What do you need? I’ll get it.”

  “Just hand it to me.”

  I did. She stuck her hand in, retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  “Oh, great. Thanks for the cancer ride.”

  She ignored me. She lit one of the cigarettes while still driving. She inhaled, and then exhaled a long train of smoke, like an old movie star, older than her, from the days when people didn’t know what those things did to your lungs. She cracked her window, and the cigarette hung out there and rode in the air like a nervous skydiver in the doorway of the plane, unable to make the leap.

  The orange tip glowed, and her dashboard glowed, and her two headlights beamed into the black night. The only other lights were when a car came from the other direction. Then it was a sudden blaze of brightness, arcing around a corner. It was scary. You’d never even know that the sea was out there.

  She edged over the line because she couldn’t see. I was driving for her even though I never learned how. I was looking out for cars, my foot hovering over my imaginary brake. I didn’t know why we were in such a hurry. And I still didn’t know why we had to go home when that day was so important, when Evan Dunne was, when everyone was there and so much had been done to make it happen. But we were heading back so fast that it felt like an emergency. I watched the speedometer, the little red hand creeping up, up where it shouldn’t be. My foot pressed hard to the floor. I watched the road, navigated the winding maze of black. I was sweating, and my palms were clammy. But she sped and she smoked an
d the toxic fumes hovered around us.

  It wasn’t safe anywhere. The car wasn’t. She wasn’t. Those curves weren’t, and neither were the sheer drop-offs I could sometimes see, the straight-down plunges into the ocean. I stayed quiet, and I focused on the narrow highway.

  “Lila, shit!” I said as a semi passed and our car shuddered and shivered from its speed.

  “Would you relax?” she said. “I’ve been down this road a hundred times.” Well, I was too terrified for metaphors then, but I see it now. And it was true, wasn’t it? She had been down that road, with my father and Papa Chesterton and Roberto and Trace Williams. But she hadn’t been down this exact road. Not with these particular curves, not with a darkness this deep.

  I rolled my window down because I could feel the carcinogens eating their way into my healthy pink lungs. But I had to roll it up again. The strong wind coming in the car was another distraction, and I had to concentrate. I had to help her drive.

  * * *

  I was relieved when we reached the city. The traffic forced Lila to slow down, and there were no more blind curves. The dangers were clear, instead of horrible surprises that might come around a corner at any moment, like the highway version of an R. W. Wright novel. Still, she rode people’s asses and sped through the lights as they turned from yellow to red. Might as well bypass the whole “caution” thing. Yellow is just a suggestion, I remembered Jake saying once.

  She swerved into the drive of 716 Sea Cliff and didn’t even bother going into the garage. The car ended up at a weird angle. She yanked the parking brake and got out. I took my bag out of the back, but she was already inside. When I’d packed that bag, my big worry was what Evan Dunne and everyone else would think of my clothes. My mind had been on the heartache of being away from Nicco for a full forty-eight hours.

  “I missed you, buddy,” I said to Max, and scruffed his neck. But I was tense. I dropped my bag in my room. I expected fighting, so I wanted to get out of that house. I considered listening to Meredith and taking a flight home, but that would mean leaving Nicco. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank and a sweatshirt. I got my drawing pad and my pastels, because drawing was distracting, and it would be better than just sitting there. Maybe, too, I just wanted to remember who I was before I’d come to that place.