Believe Me

by JP Delaney

  “I am the producer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to put it on myself. On Broadway.”

  “Broadway?”

  “Twenty-nine Sixty Broadway, to be precise. Sorry it’s such a long way from Times Square, but it’s the best I could do.” When I still look uncomprehending, he adds, “There’s a theater at the university. I’m hiring it. I don’t kid myself I’ll make back my costs, but who cares? It’s a small cast, and the reviewers will still come. And there’s nothing else I’d rather do with Stella’s money.”

  “Patrick…” I protest feebly.

  “Just say you’ll do it.”

  “Don’t you see?” I’m getting angry now. “You’re offering me the one thing I want most. A great role in a new play, premiering in one of the most important cities for live drama in the world. But I can’t. Quite apart from anything else, I’m not in shape.”

  “We’ll find a great director,” he says simply. “And great costars, of course. My pockets are deep, Claire, and without you there can’t be a play.”

  “I can’t accept.”

  “There are no strings,” he adds as if I haven’t spoken. “I hope that goes without saying.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I know I ought to say no. But another part of me is thinking, Why not? Already I can feel my energy levels coming back. The weight I put on is starting to come off. My skin is healing. And despite what I just said, I know I’m more than capable of playing this part.

  This could be the opportunity I came to America for. I wasn’t expecting it to be presented to me quite like this, but a break is a break.

  And there’s something else too. If this play is our story, putting it on together could be a chance to rewrite our relationship. For the real me, and the real Patrick, to lay our own hearts bare to each other. And this time I’ll be on my home ground. My natural métier. The stage.

  65

  I go back to Jess’s for my stuff. I hear her gasp when I say my name over the intercom, and by the time I get to the apartment she’s in the hallway staring at me, openmouthed.

  “Jesus, Claire,” she exclaims. “What the hell happened?”

  “Things got—complicated.”

  “It’s been three months. The university got in touch to ask why you’d dropped out of your classes. I had to tell them I had no idea. And your agent came around.”

  “Marcie came here?”

  Jess nods. “She was worried about you. She said you have, like, this history of going off the rails.”

  “That’s putting it a bit strongly,” I mutter. “Still, it’s nice of her to care. Can I come in?”

  “I guess,” she says, awkwardly.

  “I suppose I owe you a lot of back rent,” I say as I follow her inside. “We might have to come to some arrangement.” Automatically I glance at the door of my room. A man’s shirt in a laundry wrapper is hooked over the handle.

  “Claire, I’m really sorry,” she says miserably. “I had to rent it out. My dad insisted.”

  “Oh. Well, sure, I can see why you had to do that,” I say, although I’d been half hoping she wouldn’t. “Where are my things?”

  “In storage. I nearly gave them to your brother.”

  “My brother?” Now it’s my turn to stare at her. “I don’t have a brother.”

  “Your foster brother, John. He came here a few days ago with his fiancée, looking for you—he’d gotten the address from the university. He was hoping to see you while he’s over. They’re only in the city for a week.”

  “Oh, that brother.” No point in trying to explain to Jess that when you’re in foster care, “brothers” are just more people who happen to share your life briefly. Still, John had been one of the better ones. “What was the fiancée like?”

  “She seemed nice. Very down-to-earth. Anyway, I took his number.” She hesitates, then says in a rush, “Look, I told him about the money. I didn’t know what else to do—I mean, I gave my dad what he was owed, but I found the rest when I was clearing your room and I wasn’t sure—”

  “Oh,” I say. “You found my money.”

  She nods. “I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Maybe you thought I stole it from Stella Fogler,” I say, because I know that’s what she’s really thinking. “The money that went missing when she was killed.”

  “No,” she says. Meaning yes.

  “I was working like crazy to get your dad his rent. Eleven hundred dollars in a month, if you recall.”

  “You couldn’t work. That’s what you told me.”

  “I told you the police had warned me off working for Henry. So I got that money on my own.”

  “I don’t get it.” Then she starts to understand. “Oh,” she says. “Jesus, Claire. Jesus. Why didn’t you say something? My dad would have understood—”

  “Oh sure,” I say bitterly. “Your dad understood all right. Your dad understood perfectly.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks in a small voice.

  “He came by a few times when you were at rehearsals. Checking the fuse box, fixing the sink we’d supposedly blocked with our girlie stuff, that kind of thing. So I thought I’d take the chance to talk to him. Get myself a bit more time, maybe. He turned out to be really sympathetic.”

  “Whoa.” Jess is staring at me. “Whoa. If this is going where I think it’s going, I don’t—”

  I nod. “A special discount for services rendered. To be delivered by installments, naturally. I said no, for what it’s worth. Because that would be a bit weird even for me, screwing my roommate’s dad. Maybe that’s why he was so keen to get my stuff out of here.”

  “Oh God, Claire. I never realized—” She’s gone very pale.

  “Why should you? It wasn’t your fault.”

  Jess starts to cry. “You should have said something.”

  “I was hoping not to fuck up your family dynamic. Something I now seem to have blown spectacularly.” I sigh. “Blame it on the therapy. Sometimes I think truth is overrated. But they were pretty keen on it in the hospital.”

  She goes to the fridge and, shakily, pulls out a bottle of wine. “I think we’d better open this.”

  * * *

  —

  After that, of course, she wants to know everything that’s happened since I left her apartment one morning with Frank Durban and a travel bag. She listens disbelievingly as I tell her about the undercover operation, my breakdown, Greenridge. But it’s the bit where I tell her I’m now living with Patrick and I’m going to be acting in his play that reduces her to stunned silence.

  “So,” I conclude, “I seem to have fallen on my feet. In love, in work, and still in the good ol’ US of A. Triple word score.”

  She finds her voice. “You’re in love. With a man who may have murdered the last woman who tried to leave him.”

  “That was just Kathryn’s bullshit.”

  “I saw the press conference,” she reminds me. Her voice has grown shrill. “We both did. That man was a suspect.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Says the woman whose only other experience of love was with a married philanderer on a movie shoot. Says the woman who just sprang herself from a psychiatric hospital. Jesus, Claire. You were safer when you went out and picked up random strangers in bars.” She stares at me, shocked. “Or is that it? Do you secretly like the fact you might be sleeping with a psycho?”

  “Patrick didn’t kill Stella.”

  “Then who did?” she demands.

  I don’t have an answer for that, of course.

  66

  “I think it’s great. Properly staged, it could be spectacular. But a spectacle that poses a serious question: What responsibility do we have, as artists, for the effect our work has in the real world?”

 
; Patrick has set up a meeting with Aidan Keating, a hot young director known for making risky subject matter his own. Last year he won a Tony for his revival of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. I’m trying hard not to be starstruck.

  “With such a small canvas, though, casting really is everything,” Aidan adds. Under his frizzy blond hair, his eyes flick in my direction.

  I know what he’s thinking. If I let the writer cast his girlfriend, it’ll be seen as a vanity project.

  Patrick says calmly, “Of course. That’s why I immediately thought of Claire for Apollonie. She’s an alumnus of the Actors Studio.”

  “I’m doing the Actors Studio course at Pace,” I mumble. “I haven’t actually completed it—”

  “I know,” Aidan interrupts. “No disrespect, Claire, but to make this play a commercial success, we need actors whose names are a draw. There’s quite a trend at the moment for film and TV stars to take time out to do theater. This could be an attractive vehicle.”

  “Of course. I understand.” I try not to let my disappointment show. “Whatever’s best for the play.”

  “Claire’s part is a given,” Patrick says coldly. “I thought I’d made that clear. You’ll have freedom over the rest of the cast, and the budget to lure big names if you need it, but if you can’t accept my preconditions, you’re not the right person for the job.”

  For a moment the two men lock eyes. Although neither moves a muscle, they both seem to grow more menacing—some subtle, subconscious adjustment of body language and breathing.

  Aidan says challengingly, “And what about the script? I have notes, particularly about the second half. I loathe the Hollywood ending. Some of the dialogue creaks. Jeanne, in particular, descends into cliché every time she takes her clothes off. No self-respecting female actor will touch that part as it stands.”

  “As writer, I’ll address any changes you ask for,” Patrick says.

  “I’d want job security built into my contract. I can’t have you firing me because we disagree over the artistic direction of the play.”

  “That’s hardly standard.”

  “These aren’t standard circumstances. If you give me full control, a script I can work with, and a proper budget, I’ll see Claire’s audition. That’s all I can promise.”

  “Audition her first,” Patrick says curtly. “If you like what you see, we have a deal.”

  67

  I don’t really want to see my foster brother and his fiancée, but halfway into the bottle Jess had started nagging me about him and, having spilled the beans about her dad, I didn’t want to look like I don’t care about my own family, even though I don’t. So I promised I’d contact them.

  Plus I was feeling a little guilty about the whole dad thing. The fact is, it might have been as much my fault as his. That is, it had occurred to me that having her dad make a pass at me, and me turning him down, might be useful leverage in our coming negotiations over the rent. I hadn’t intended to tell Jess any of that, of course. I was just angry when I heard how he’d insisted she kick my stuff out. One moment the words had flashed into my mind, the next they were coming out of my mouth.

  I seem to have become a more impulsive person since Greenridge. An angrier one, too. Volatile and manipulative even, to quote Dr. Banner’s list of symptoms.

  Or maybe it was just to do with the fact that Jess at least had a dad. Someone to buy her an apartment, to worry about her safety, to make a fuss over her.

  Anyway, being Jess, she’d made me text John there and then, and now here I am waiting for him and his fiancée at a steak house just off Times Square. Next to me is Patrick. I didn’t ask him to come, but he said he wanted to meet what little family I had. And I’d realized that, for my part, I wanted to show him off. To let John see he’s not the only one who’s been successful in love.

  “Claire!”

  They’re here. I jump up and hug John a little overenthusiastically, then shake hands with his girlfriend, whom he introduces as “our Alice.” I introduce Patrick, who congratulates them on being engaged. John gives Alice’s shoulder a proud squeeze. She looks okay, I decide. I understand why Jess used the phrase down-to-earth. She’s dressed for a hike in the country—sensible walking boots, jeans, North Face anorak, fanny pack—while John’s carrying a backpack and wearing cargo shorts, despite the fact it’s almost the end of September. He always wore shorts, I remember, even when it was snowing. Instantly I regret making so much of an effort. Patrick’s told me to borrow any of Stella’s clothes I want until I can get mine out of storage, but they’re all a bit upscale for me.

  “Eh, it’s good to see you,” John says as he sits down. He hasn’t lost his Yorkshire accent, even though he tells me he’s been working in London for the past three years.

  “You sound like a Yank, though,” he adds. “With some right posh English mixed in.”

  “The cabdrivers here mostly think I’m Australian.”

  “There you go—cab. That’s how American you are. And how posh. Back home we say bus.” He grins at his own joke.

  Patrick tries to draw Alice into conversation but doesn’t get much of a response. At first I think she’s just quiet, but then I see her glance at John and I realize she’s holding back, waiting for him to say something.

  Eventually he comes out with it.

  “It were Alice said I should try to track you down, Claire. She’s got to know Ross and Julie quite well since our engagement, so she’s part of the family now.”

  I try to place Ross. Then I remember that Julie, our foster mother, remarried.

  “The rest of us—Julie’s foster kids—have a WhatsApp group. Well, there’s some who’ve fallen through the cracks, like you, but eight of us keep in touch, plus her birth kids of course. It’ll be her sixtieth in a couple of months, so we’re organizing a reunion. She’s an amazing woman and we want to do something special for her. There’ll be press and everything. Mebbe you’d think about coming home for it.”

  I stare at him. Even if I could go home—if I could afford the flights, if I could be sure of being allowed back into the United States—the idea that I would voluntarily go and spend time with that woman and my other foster siblings is, frankly, nuts.

  John sees my expression and misunderstands. “She doesn’t bear you any ill will, Claire.”

  “She doesn’t bear me ill will?” I repeat incredulously. “After what her husband did to me?”

  John glances at Patrick, as if he isn’t sure whether he should say more. But he was always direct, even as a teenager.

  “I meant, she doesn’t bear you any ill will for lying about it,” he says quietly. “Kids in care act out, she always says. Particularly when they’ve come from a bad place before. It’s social services she blames, for taking the word of a foster kid over her husband.”

  “So you think I was lying too,” I say bitterly. “Just like she always did.”

  Next to me, Patrick has gone very still. Recognizing the warning signs, I put a hand on his arm. I can handle this.

  “When you made that complaint about Gary,” John says bluntly, “you made up a load of stuff that hadn’t really happened. You know that, Claire. It were all part of your campaign to get into that stage school.”

  I glare at him.

  “Do you really not remember what it was like?” I say. “How every summer, we were packed off to another foster home so Julie and Gary could go on holiday with their own kids ‘as a family’? How they’d tell us not to leave our things in the living room, in case we forgot them when we left?”

  “They had to have boundaries,” John says. “At least they took us in.”

  “Oh sure,” I say bitterly. “With the unspoken threat that, if we didn’t behave, we’d be thrown out again.”

  You got used to that feeling, I remember, until it almost became a part of you. However welcoming people seemed, so
oner or later they’d disappear, or break the news you were moving on. Inside, you were always waiting for the invisible sirens to go off and the formal procedures of separation to kick in.

  John sighs. “So you won’t come to Julie’s party, Claire?”

  “Wild horses wouldn’t drag me there.”

  “Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve changed. You were always a bit over the top, but you were fundamentally a decent person. What happened, Claire?”

  I put my arm through Patrick’s defiantly. “Yes, I have changed. I’ve got a new life. Things are going well for me here. As far as I’m concerned, none of that other stuff ever happened.”

  * * *

  —

  “I’m sorry you had to witness that,” I say as we leave.

  “Thank you for letting me be there,” Patrick says. I look at him to see if he’s joking, but he’s serious.

  “We obviously had very different experiences, growing up,” he adds. “But we have this in common: However hard it was for us, at least we get to choose. We can choose our families, our hometown, our origins…We can be whoever we decide to be. And, even though it may be harder for us to give our trust to someone, when we do, we give it absolutely.”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding. “It’s one of the reasons I came to New York. It’s the city where everyone’s from somewhere else, isn’t it? Where people reinvent themselves. And I certainly choose not to be part of that family anymore.”

  Patrick squeezes my hand with his arm. He doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s thinking.

  You have me, now.

  68

  Aidan auditions me at a small casting studio in Chelsea. He sits stony-faced behind a table with a casting director I don’t know, a woman he introduces only as Mo. There’s no chat, just a polite “What are you doing for us today, Claire?” and “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Ignoring the fact that I want to throw up with nerves, I breathe, center myself, and begin. I’ve prepared Jenny’s Epilogue from Leslye Headland’s play Assistance. It’s a loud, raucous monologue that has a bit of everything—drunkenness, dancing, pathos, comedy—so I figure it’ll be a good showcase for my talents.