Reunion

by Therese Fowler

  “So, Blue, I’m really curious: How did you go from being Lynn’s receptionist to being—to getting where you are today? It must be a remarkable tale.”

  Blue glanced at him, then her glance ricocheted back to Brenda, so quickly he couldn’t be sure anyone else would have noticed. He wanted to assure her it was okay, that Brenda knew about their past.

  Their past. He and Blue Reynolds had a past. He let the thought fill him up in a way he’d not allowed before, and it made him buoyant. Or maybe that was the wine.

  “Well, I don’t think anyone was more surprised by my career path than I have been.” She outlined—surely for the ten thousandth time—the path she’d taken. It began with a meeting she arranged with Morgan Cole, she said, explaining to Brenda, Lori, and Kira who Morgan was. “We’d met maybe two years previously—”

  “At New Year’s!” his mother said.

  “Yes, that’s right, at your party.”

  Mitch had the sense that this bit, the party, was not embedded in her standard story. Neither, he soon realized, was any mention of the period of time that came after his mother’s employ and before her meeting with Morgan—she skipped right over it, didn’t even look his way to see if he’d noticed that she had left a gap. Yet he was positive the omission was deliberate. Why? Clearly, now was not the time or place to satisfy his curiosity on that account. Later, though? Maybe if they got a minute or two alone he’d ask. Where had she gone when she ran away? Who was she with? A friend? A man? Someone he’d known at the time? How badly had he broken her heart? He let the questions pile up like a stack of unopened party favors you weren’t sure you were going to like.

  Blue was saying, “I had the idea, then, that I might like to be a TV reporter. Morgan took me under her wing, and that helped me get on-air much faster than I might’ve otherwise. The assignments were mostly crap. I did a lot of minute-long interviews with, you know, the fire chief, police officers on the scene of whatever crisis, the mayor’s assistant’s assistant—you name it. If there was a cat in a tree, I was there getting the story.”

  That was the most she’d said all at once since arriving. Could be the wine was working on her, too.

  Brenda, who was now so relaxed by the wine and the food that she leaned her head against her chair’s back, observed, “Those treed cat reports must have been exceptional.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Blue laughed. “My next stint, as entertainment reporter, was better. Morgan told me, ‘Anyone can look at a camera and talk. Make it personal.’ I just took her advice, and the rest followed from there.”

  Mitch knew, more or less, what “the rest” was: anchor at WLVC, then a morning talk show in Kansas City, then her own show in Chicago, then syndication and world-wide popularity. She was one of those people who seemed to have the touch. Certainly she’d had it, if in an undeveloped way, with him.

  Brenda said, “You make it sound easy, but I’m sure it took a lot of determination and effort to get where you are today.”

  “I was fortunate to be working with smart, experienced people who were always on top of the trends. TBRS was not my brainchild; I wanted to get on at 60 Minutes or Nightline.”

  Mitch couldn’t imagine that version of Blue. “But you’re a natural at what you do. People loved your show from the start—”

  “And up you went, like an Atlas rocket!” his father declared.

  “Well,” Blue said, “maybe a fast elevator.”

  “I’m hopeful Mitch can find that elevator for his new project,” his mother said.

  Mitch gave her a warning look. “Mom, really, she doesn’t—”

  “What project is that?” Blue asked, turning her gaze on him.

  A gaze like a spotlight. He blinked. “Just a little thing I’m doing, a biopic thing.”

  Brenda’s nudge told him what he already knew, that he had just undersold his idea, but he couldn’t be the aggressive self-promoter he knew he was supposed to be. Not to Blue.

  His mother said, “He’s being modest. It’s a whole series, really brilliant—he hopes to sell it to one of the major cable channels.”

  “To PBS,” he corrected, frowning at his mother. “But yes, a biopic series.”

  Blue nodded. “Featuring … ?”

  “Oh. Featuring the greatest American authors. Hemingway, of course—” That sounded presumptuous. Of course, as in, you remember. He added, “I mean, given that he was a Chicago native who later lived here, well, it seems fitting to start with him.”

  She said, “And are you still teaching his work?”

  “Some. I do a series of American authors—Williams, Wharton, Twain, Faulkner. You know.” He felt his cheeks growing hot.

  “Hence this biopic series idea,” she said, smiling in that way she did, that way she’d used to whenever she saw him coming into the office. I’m so glad you’re here.

  His mother said, “Mitch, show her the prospectus you showed Dad and me.”

  He loved his mother, but she was a steamroller. “Mom. You’re putting her on the spot—”

  “No, it sounds really interesting. I’d be happy to take a look.”

  “I appreciate that, thanks, but—”

  His mother said, “It can’t hurt for her to take a peek. Maybe Blue will have some good insights.”

  He looked at Blue, and she nodded.

  His father thumped the arm of his chair. “Oh, get it over with,” he said.

  Mitch retrieved the prospectus from his bedroom, returning to find his father telling Blue about the aftereffects of his stroke.

  “Lynn keeps saying I’ve taken on a new persona, but I think she’s the one who’s addled. You tell me: do I seem any different to you?”

  “Not a bit,” Blue said. Her expression was fond. Mitch might even say wistful.

  He handed her the prospectus. The five-page, plastic-sleeved document looked flimsy in her hands, more a brainstorm than a plan. “It’s really mostly a sketch at this stage …”

  “You’d be amazed at how often producers buy a project based on a sentence,” she said, reading the intro, then opening to the next page. “Comparatively, this is a book.”

  “All right, then,” he said, though it didn’t feel all right. It felt pushy. He sat down again, wishing the air-conditioning would kick on.

  Brenda said, “Are you a fan, Blue? Of Hemingway, I mean, or any of the authors in the prospectus?”

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve read a single one of them since high school, or thereabouts.”

  Thereabouts. Mitch remembered.

  Blue read with obvious concentration while the chatter flowed lazily around her. Brenda, next to Mitch on the loveseat, took his hand in hers. “She seems interested.”

  “She’s being polite,” he said. Everything he’d eaten this evening sat now like a lead ball in his gut. He couldn’t look at Blue. Instead, he watched Brenda watch her.

  “Impossible to tell for sure. She doesn’t give much away, does she?”

  Annabelle drew his attention as she toddled after one of the brindle cats, a hand extended forward as if certain to catch the cat’s tail in due time. The cat allowed her pursuit, equally certain he would evade her hand. One of them had to be wrong, and yet across the room they went.

  “Well,” Blue said, laying the pages on the coffee table. “This is ambitious.”

  He nodded, certain he knew what was coming next: The project was too big in scope, not interesting enough to attract viewers outside academia—

  “I love it.”

  “What?”

  “I do, it’s really timely, and I think you’re the perfect sort of host.”

  “You do? I—er, thank you.” He was stunned.

  “But if you don’t mind me giving you some advice …” she said.

  His mother said, “He doesn’t mind at all.”

  “There’s lots of interest in the literary classics at the moment—which is why we’re doing our own Hemingway piece on Friday. Given the production cycle, y
our best chance to get this picked up is now. It’s almost April, and the networks will be buying shows in June.”

  “I’m really only interested in PBS,” he said.

  “Well, even just PBS, then. So, what I’m thinking …”

  Everyone watched her, hung on her words as though all their fates were tied to them. She might as well have a wand in her hand, poised for spell-casting. Or had the spell already been cast? He would have to say so. Or was that only the wine?

  “How close are you to having the pilot ready?”

  “Not until fall,” he said. “But you’re saying that might be too late.”

  “Less ideal, let’s say.”

  Suddenly, what had seemed like a careful plan felt flimsy and amateurish. Doubt flooded him. He knew nothing about production cycles, nothing about filming or funding—he knew literature, and authors, neither of which qualified him to run a TV series. He said, “There’s no way I can do the pilot before September. My son, you might remember, Julian—he’s a documentary filmmaker now, and a photographer—”

  “Most of what you see on the walls here is his work,” his mother told Blue.

  “He’s running the technical end of the project, and our schedules don’t match up until then.”

  Blue was looking at the photographs around them. She pointed to a large matted and framed print. “That looks so familiar—was it published?” The image was a close-up of two young girls, five years old at best, staring out from between the limbs of some fallen trees. Mitch had a copy on his office bulletin board.

  “It’s the one we call ‘The Orphans’; it was a Newsweek cover,” his father said. “Indonesia, after the tsunami.”

  Lori said, “Haunting, isn’t it?”

  Kira settled Annabelle on her lap with a bottle. “The boy’s got an eye.”

  Blue watched them, seemingly captivated by the toddler’s wide green ones. She said, “He does …”

  She stood up, then, to take a closer look at one of Julian’s bird photographs. A Red-billed Tropicbird, Mitch had been told, cruising at about fifteen feet above Sugarloaf Key as the sun was going down in the opposite sky, behind the photographer. The contrast of the large, white bird, its bloodred bill and foot-long pair of tail feathers set against the blue-violet sky, made for a kind of artistic drama Mitch had not appreciated when Julian was younger.

  “You know,” Blue said, “if your only hold-up is technical… maybe I can help.” She turned to face him, looking so much like her younger self that he blinked twice, to verify his vision. She said, “We’re here, we have all the equipment and technicians—what would you say to shooting the pilot this weekend?”

  “I …” What could he say? He’d love to. But he didn’t have a finished script, he didn’t have permits, he didn’t have a real clue what he’d do with the footage after, nor who he’d go to with it when it was done. All these were details he was still working on, or leaving to Julian.

  “That’s awfully generous. I’d take you up on it if it wasn’t so important that Julian be involved in the project.” Which wasn’t a lie after all.

  “Mitch,” his mother said, “Julian’s getting ready to leave Afghanistan—he might be able to rearrange his plans and join you.”

  Blue turned back toward him. She smiled, and he felt suspended in a bubble of pleasure. Surely they all felt it, it was irresistible. “Now that sounds worth a try,” she said.

  “Yes, but… Julian is … well, he’s not exactly difficult…” Mitch paused.

  His mother said, “He can be a little rigid at times.”

  “Right,” Mitch said. “Stubborn—which can be useful. He’s accomplished a lot.”

  Daniel agreed, adding, “Gets it all from his grandfather.”

  “Well,” Blue said, putting an end to the digression, “you won’t know if you don’t ask him. What do you say?”

  Mitch glanced at Brenda, whose expression mirrored the one worn by the calico cat sitting in the windowsill across from him. Not a bit helpful, and secretly judging. She would advise him to wait, he was sure. Blue’s expression, however, was soft and encouraging, taking him back to a winter afternoon at his apartment, when she was lying on his couch, and …

  “You have to try,” Lori said. “You can’t pass up your best shot.”

  It pained him to answer. “I can’t put him out that way.” This was a ship that was going to have to sail without him. “Thank you Blue, but I can’t see it working out.”

  ow,” Brenda said later, sitting next to him on the edge of their bed. “That sure was an interesting evening.”

  He was still trying to process everything, with a brain that was aswim in wine and nostalgia. He said, “Yes, yes it was.”

  “Nice of Blue to make that offer. Imagine what a sellout you’d be branded if you’d taken her up on it.”

  “I don’t see,” he said, taking care to enunciate clearly, “how using her equipment and such would be selling out. Do you?”

  “I’m certain it would lead to further involvement, which I suspect is what your mother has in mind.”

  “My mother,” he said, scooting back onto the bed and stretching out. The pillowcase was cool and smooth against his neck, perfect. “She is a businesswoman through and through. She makes things happen.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I keep telling her Lions is meant for PBS, not, lord, MTV.”

  “There is some middle ground, you know.”

  He sat up on his elbows, suddenly compelled to ask, “Did you like her? Blue, I mean?”

  Brenda looked surprised. “I—sure. She’s lovely.”

  Yes, yes she was.

  “What do you suppose she’s really like?” Brenda said. “You know, when she isn’t being fawned over by zealous fans like the neighbors—and your dad.” She laughed. “Did she seem anything like you remembered?”

  More. She was everything she’d been as a young woman—engaging and intelligent, always upbeat, always generous—but with the appealing patina of wisdom and experience, like copper after a few seasons of exposure. He said, “Kind of.”

  “Mm. Well, I don’t know that I’d trade places with her. I have enough on my hands with our bunch at the university.”

  He closed his eyes while Brenda went to use the bathroom, musing over whether she was right, that Blue’s offer would have, if he’d taken it, been only the start. Taking advantage of providence, as his mother had put it, was not akin to selling out. You only sold out if you gave up control for money—which he wouldn’t do.

  Too bad the timing was off. He liked the visions now swirling through his imagination, visions of a successful start, enough funding to craft a show that people really loved. Immersion in the books, in the research. When he’d done all the great Americans, he could expand into British literature—not his field, but he’d be delighted to learn. Visit London, take trips into the countryside—he could do walking tours just as Shelley and Coleridge and … and … and his memory of British literary trivia was failing him … and, well, as they’d done with the others, whoever they were.

  He called toward the bathroom, “Who went walking with Coleridge and Shelley?”

  Brenda answered, “Coleridge and Wordsworth. And his sister, Dorothy. How much did you have to drink?”

  Enough to make him think he should at least call Julian and feel him out.

  He heard Brenda come back into the room. “Hey,” he said, opening his eyes, “I think I’m going to—” He stopped. She wore a different nightshirt from the one she’d had on last night. Shorter. Lacier. Her thighs were bare, as were her shoulders. A tantalizing scent of something floral and spicy caught his attention as well.

  “You’re going to what?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in that other way she did.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  12

  ell?” Marcy asked, when Blue found her seated with Stephen on the balcony of Hot Tin Roof, the Ocean Key’s restaurant and lounge. On the pie
r below, a three-piece band played reggae music. The breeze was lighter than earlier in the day, barely stirring the bits of hair that had escaped Blue’s ponytail during the short taxi ride back from the Forresters’.

  Blue nodded to the people gawking at her from the tables nearby, and sat down. Another ship had put in, taking the Enchantment’s place, its lights adding to the waterfront’s inviting glow. She felt a bit glow-y herself—the effect of the wine, the company at dinner, the prospect of the new house, everything.

  “Well, it was a really nice time.”

  “Excellent. Let’s get you a drink.” Marcy signaled a waiter.

  “Just one, then I’ll leave you guys to your beautiful, romantic evening.”

  Stephen said, “Hey, congratulations on the house deal! It would be so great to live here. If you’re feeling generous …”

  “She’s already paying for your transportation, your room, your food, and your martinis,” Marcy said. “Now you want a house, too?”

  “Yeah, why not?” He laughed. “What I ought to do is find some work here.”

  “As long as Marcy remembers where she works,” Blue said.

  “I remember that there’s always vacation.”

  The waiter came by and Blue asked for Chardonnay “Which would you like?” the waiter asked, holding out a wine list. He looked frightened when Blue waved it off and said, “You pick.”

  “She’s easy, really,” Marcy said, grinning her dismissal. “Now, tell me everything.”

  Blue inhaled deeply, exhaled. Where to start? “Well… I wasn’t the only dinner guest. In fact, Mitch answered the door.”

  “No shit.”

  Blue shook her head.

  “Who’s Mitch?” Stephen asked.

  “Old friend,” Marcy said. “Did he say anything?”

  “No, and he didn’t pass me a note, either,” she laughed. “He’s here with his girlfriend. And the neighbors were over too. We had lobster and conch fritters and salad—”

  “None of which I give a damn about.”

  “Really, I don’t have a lot to report. It was just nice to see the Forresters again.” Surprisingly nice, where Mitch was concerned. Not at all how she would have imagined it, if she’d been willing to indulge that sort of possibility.