by Rona Jaffe
Thinking these sanguine thoughts, proud of herself for being so mature, Susan walked past Danielle’s dressing room. The door was open, and Danielle and Mark were inside. Danielle was holding the script, reading aloud in a Transylvanian accent and cackling, pretending to be a vampire woman. “Sometimes I think you love death more than you love me,” she read. Mark laughed. “Are you actually going to say that?” Danielle asked him, making a face. “It makes me sound like a necrophiliac.” Susan walked in.
Her moment of being sanguine was over; she was angry and hurt at hearing her lines made fun of. But she was also beginning to realize that her own feelings had little to do with anything; all that mattered was seeing that these people didn’t destroy the movie. Nibble away, yes; destroy, no. Danielle didn’t even look embarrassed at having been overheard. “You’re not in love with the dead,” Susan said gently. “You’re in love with death.”
“Oy vey, poor me, I’m such a weirdo,” Danielle said. Now she was being Yiddish. Susan was starting to dislike her.
“It’s a challenge to play such an interesting part,” Susan said sweetly.
“Freak of the week,” Danielle said.
“That’s television.”
The line stayed in. The scene went without a hitch. It was Friday, and they were all exhausted. Susan and Clay spent much of the weekend listening to the background music the composer was putting together, and catching up on lost sleep.
On Monday morning they felt fine again and ready to go. Susan thought how lucky she was that Clay let her watch everything and learn, instead of sending her away the way they often did with the writer. She remembered her long-ago disastrous experience with Ergil Feather, and thought she would never want to work with anyone but Clay. They were drinking coffee and waiting for Thalia when suddenly an apparition came running onto the set. It was Danielle, and her formerly long straight blond hair was sticking out wildly in Medusa-like curls. She was excited and happy.
“Look what I did this weekend,” Danielle announced. “I got a permanent!” Clay turned pale again. “Sammy did it,” Danielle went on, oblivious. Sammy was the picture’s hairstylist. “Isn’t it nice?”
“You got a permanent?” Clay said. His voice was quiet and deadly.
“It will make my hair easier to manage,” Danielle said weakly.
“I want you to have long straight hair,” Clay said. “Meredith had long straight hair. Where’s Sammy?” He marched into the makeup room without waiting for an answer, and after a moment Susan sneaked after him to hear what was going on.
She could hear Clay’s angry voice through the closed door. “I want her to have long straight hair,” he was yelling. “She’s old and she’s fat. I want her to look eighteen. You get her hair straight and you keep it that way. Do you understand?” The answer was a vanquished mumble.
From then on Danielle’s penance was to sit with her hair in hot rollers every moment she wasn’t in a scene. She took it with surprising equanimity, munching chocolates and reading magazines.
By the end of the second week of dailies Susan could see Thalia’s vision irrevocably placed instead of her own: a strong, dominating Meredith instead of a mysterious one, a wimpy Charles who stumbled sweetly into his lover’s trap. It was not what Susan had ever meant the relationship to be, and yet it made sense in its own way. People would believe it. She wondered if she was turning into the kind of script whore Ergil Feather had been, or if she was just becoming realistic and even a bit cynical, as Clay was. You did the best you could.
But the movie was turning into the hair wars. When Danielle kept everyone waiting on the set for two hours one day after lunch it was a selfish annoyance; they all stood around bored, chafing, wondering why she was so late. And then she emerged from the makeup room, and her hair was in corn rows. Tiny, painstakingly made little braids; there was no hope of taking them out today and re-creating the long straight hair that Clay wanted. Susan had to admit she looked pretty dreadful. Danielle had her lips set in an expression that dared anyone to criticize her. For the first time Thalia didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t say anything and got on with the scene. Danielle smiled.
In the makeup room Clay was screaming at Sammy again. “I did not hire Danielle Chedere to audition for other movies! This is not a showcase for her different looks! Not on my money! She’s not Bo Derek—no way! She is going to have long straight hair, and if you ever change it again you’re fired. Do you understand?”
Clay came out looking pleased. “Why did you yell at him instead of at Danielle?” Susan whispered.
“If I yell at her she’ll get too upset to act. Don’t worry, he’ll tell her. That faggot has a big mouth.”
The hair wars. Protocol. The army. Danielle’s defiance had turned the issue into a power struggle, and whatever upset Clay made Susan furious.
He was under great stress. One day when Danielle refused to say a line that was essential for the relationship, and Thalia let her cut it, Clay faced off with Thalia. The two of them stood there for a long moment, both implacable, until he turned and walked away. When he got a cup of coffee Susan could see his hand shaking.
“I almost fired Thalia,” he said quietly. His voice was shaking too.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t have a completion bond.”
“What’s that?”
“Insurance in case we go over schedule. It’s expensive and I hoped I wouldn’t need it. It was a gamble. If I fire the director we have to go through a cooling-off phase and the movie stops dead until it’s over. Then I can hire someone else or keep her. It would take me too long to find someone else. I can’t even afford the two days for us to ‘cool off.’ I’ll tell you one thing. Thalia Perret will never work for us again.”
“Thalia Ferret,” Susan said. She was happy to see him finally smile. “Never. No more ferrets, ever.”
“Only monkeys,” Clay said.
“Yeah.”
For all the frustrations and worries it was still a happy time. At work, Clay flourished. Between crises he and Susan joked and teased each other on the set. He had told Laura that Susan was staying at his apartment, “to save money for the production,” and made sure to mention that the second bedroom was perfectly adequate for her needs. Surprisingly, Laura didn’t appear to mind the arrangement.
And now Nina was going to fly out to California for a week to watch them film, and stay with her father and Susan. Laura assumed she would sleep on the living room couch, and seemed to think of Nina as a sort of chaperone.
Through all these years Susan and Laura had never met, and Susan supposed they never would. But she had wanted to meet Nina. She and Clay had talked about it many times. He had always wanted them to meet someday and become friends. He kept saying that Susan would become his daughter’s role model.
Role model? Successful, independent, unconventional … that was good. Her father’s lover … that was not so good. Susan was afraid that Nina would hate her, but Clay insisted so often that Nina would love her that she finally believed him. Secretly, she had always had a bit of ambivalence in her mind about Nina; the child whose existence had been the barrier to a normal life with Clay, and yet along with the resentment was guilt, because Nina was obviously not responsible for any of this. But now Nina was an adult, and there was no longer either resentment or guilt but only a longing to have Clay’s daughter acknowledge and accept her.
After graduating from Yale, Nina had taken the Radcliffe publishing course, and was about to start her first job, at Rutledge and Brown, a small up-and-coming publishing company. She had moved out of The Dakota into a walkup on the West Side. Her parents considered it a slum and Nina said it was chic; the fact was, it was nearly a slum, but she was too young to mind. Her mother viewed the apartment with alarm, her father with amusement. His attitude was: she’ll learn; but at Susan’s insistence he bought her window bars.
Susan had been living Nina’s life at a distance, secondhand, for so long, and Nina did
n’t even know it.
Clay was calm about the meeting. He bought flowers and put them into the second bedroom for Nina, assuming that Susan would sleep in his bed as always, that they would now be a family unit. What he had told Laura had been necessary to keep peace. What Nina would see would be her own business. This was the family unit he wanted, and he was absolutely convinced it was perfectly normal and for the best.
On Saturday, Clay and Susan met Nina at the airport. The photographs she had seen had in no way prepared Susan for the reality. Nina was small, dark and delicate, with Clay’s smile. Her pale skin was translucent, almost poreless, and her eyes in a certain light were golden. She was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, a Hermès scarf, and two pearl earrings in each ear. Susan had never seen anyone so pretty in her life; she couldn’t stop looking at her. I’m besotted by that child, she thought. She knew Nina wasn’t a child anymore, and that there were only nineteen years between them, but there was something very young and breakable about Nina that had nothing to do with her size. Clay introduced them and they shook hands solemnly, Nina trying hard to appear sophisticated, which only made her seem vulnerable.
In the car she talked to Clay about her new job. “I’m the youngest assistant editor there,” she said. “They can’t give me the title for a few months because it will make the other people jealous, but the editor in chief says I’ll have it by Christmas, and by next year I expect to be an associate editor. It’s a small company so I’ll have much more of a chance to rise. Right now I’m going to do a little of everything, to learn, but soon I’ll have my own authors. I’ve already been doing book reports at home, and they bought one of the manuscripts I recommended on my tryout.”
It reminded Susan of the little voice she’d heard long ago on the phone; Nina telling her Daddy about all her accomplishments at school, trying to please him. She was still trying to impress him; the desperate earnestness in her voice gave her away. By now, Susan suspected, Nina was trying to impress everybody. Her bosses were probably thrilled.
“Nice apartment,” Nina said. Her eyes took everything in.
Clay gestured to the second bedroom and she put her bags there. “Are you tired?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then Susan, why don’t you take my daughter somewhere for lunch and a little sightseeing? I have to go to the office for a few hours, but tonight we’ll all go out for dinner.” What he meant was: Get to know each other.
“All right,” Susan said. She smiled at Nina. “I’ll take you to the Bistro Garden; it’s very chic.”
They sat under an umbrella at a small white wrought-iron table among fresh flowers, and ordered salads. Susan tried to be interesting and to put Nina at her ease; she told her stories about things that had happened during her career; anecdotes about celebrities, her travels, the aggravation and pleasures of being a journalist. While she told the stories Susan realized that it had been fun, or at least the parts of it she trotted out.
“You’ve had such an exciting life,” Nina said, impressed.
“I guess so.”
“I want to do so many things. I never want to settle down. I’m never going to get married or have children.”
“You may change your mind,” Susan said.
“Did you ever want to get married?”
Ah, you should only know, Susan thought. “I guess it was never my first priority,” she said.
“I’ve never seen anything about family life that made me want to marry,” Nina said. “You know what a strange relationship my parents have. When they’re together they’re like two people who happen to be staying in the same hotel. I have no faith in marriage. I think it’s better to be like you; always having your independence, your own identity, your career.”
I guess I seem a glamorous figure, Susan thought. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.
“No. I had one at Yale, but he wanted to marry me and I wouldn’t, so we broke up. I’ve never really dated much. I’m too shy, and boys don’t like me; they think I’m cold. I’ve spent my whole life studying and trying to get good marks.”
“You’re so pretty I’d imagine you had lots of boys after you.”
“I don’t think I’m pretty,” Nina said.
“You’re beautiful!”
“Well, thank you, but nobody else seems to think so.”
“They’re just afraid of you. They think you wouldn’t want to be bothered with them.”
“I think it’s my destiny to be alone,” Nina said.
“I thought the exact same thing when I was around your age,” Susan said. “I thought it was a curse put on me for being different, for not conforming, for wanting other things.”
“You did? You felt that way?”
“Yes.” And for a moment the long-ago youthful pain came back and she remembered everything about that moment when she knew she was doomed.
“But you’re not alone,” Nina said matter-of-factly. “You have my father.”
So here it was, out in the open. “You don’t mind?”
“No. I did years ago when I first heard about it. It’s a shock for a kid—even if your parents aren’t happy you still think it’s going to work out. But when I saw my father today he looked so comfortable. I’ve never seen him look that way before; he always looks irritated.”
“He’s really very sweet,” Susan said, feeling a wave of warmth and love for him.
“Tell me something—who put the flowers in my room, you or he?”
“He did,” Susan said.
Nina smiled, a grin of pure pleasure. “That was so cute,” she said.
After lunch Susan showed her Rodeo Drive, and then drove her around Beverly Hills to see the alleged homes of movie stars. Nina had been here when she was so young that she didn’t remember anything. Then they went to the production office to pick up Clay. “That was a long lunch,” he said.
He took them to Chasen’s for dinner. They all had a lot of wine, and under the table Clay held Susan’s hand. In the car driving home he said: “This is the monkey.”
“Monkey?” It was obvious Nina thought it was an awful name.
That night the three of them slept in the apartment. In bed Clay held Susan in his arms for a few moments, but it was understood without words that they would have no sex. It would feel too strange in the midst of this tentative little family. She was disappointed but accepted it. And then, holding her, Clay changed his mind. He made love to her, silently, passionately, almost defiantly. After all, the door was closed, and they all had their own lives.
Nina came to the set with them every day that week. Susan explained things to her, but Clay ignored her: he was upset again. It had become apparent from the dailies that Thalia was not giving them enough coverage, and when they had to put in the station breaks the cuts would be too abrupt. In order to get the picture finished ahead of schedule, her claim to fame, she never held the camera on anyone for an extra second.
“Don’t worry,” Susan said. “The people at home are watching on a tiny little screen, and they probably have bad reception, and the minute it’s a station break they run to the kitchen to get food. For this we kill ourselves.”
“The network people watch the cut on a big screen,” Clay said. “Then they never watch it again. For this we kill ourselves.”
At the end of the week Nina left. “Maybe when you come back to New York we can have dinner together sometime,” she said to Susan.
“I’d love that.” They exchanged phone numbers.
“Good luck with the picture.”
As it turned out, a great deal could be fixed in the editing. Film could be slowed. Badly spoken lines could be dubbed. Clay did all this after Thalia handed in her director’s cut. Susan wondered why he had been in such a state of agitation when he knew that all along, and why he had never bothered to reassure her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“I wanted you to learn.”
Did he think that being scared would make her do her be
st? But a little voice inside her mind said: He wants power. She didn’t quite understand what that meant, or how it applied to what had happened, but she also didn’t want to examine it too closely.
The Romeo and Juliet Murder got excellent reviews, with Thalia’s direction singled out for special praise. And although it did all right, it didn’t get nearly the great ratings they had been expecting. Susan was surprised. She had thought it would be the other way around.
19
1982—HOLLYWOOD
Bambi and Simon had been in Hollywood for two years, and Simon Sez was a success. It was always full, and Simon reveled in it; the new congenial customers, the new acts, his same cozy womb. Except for more money, nothing in their lives had really changed. And because of this, for Bambi everything had changed.
She remembered her vision on the mountaintop, her certainty that she would make it here—and she saw her life slipping away from her along with her twenties, her vitality and her youth—and she felt angry and cheated. She watched Simon lying on the living room sofa eating an apple and watching television, content and calm, and she felt a strange new depression, a subtle new irritation with him. She watched him in Simon Sez and saw him running everything efficiently and happily, and realized that he was only an innkeeper.
It was not enough.
He thought she was talented and wonderful, but what good did it do when he had no ambition to help her realize her dream? She was special to him, his coffeehouse star; he thought that was all they needed. Sometimes, in the middle of the evening, she felt herself choking and had to run outside to the steps beside the kitchen to get some air. The kitchen overlooked the parking lot. She saw the cars pulling in, and with each one she wondered if it was the one that contained the person in the business who would discover her, the contact who would change her destiny. But it never happened. She was only the innkeeper’s wife.
It was not enough.
She was tired of gliding around being the good greeter, the co-owner, the civilian outsider. She wanted to learn, to be an actual part of those earnest or boisterous groups who filled the booths and talked shop. She deserved to be more than just an entertainer for people who treated her as if she were Muzak. It was time to start a different approach.