But it never ends there, does it, when everything is alright? At least not with me, not lately. During intermission, I go upstairs to get another bowl of Evelyn’s homemade vanilla ice cream with shaved chocolate bits and swirls of caramel. The woman is a genius.
I’m spooning softball-sized scoops of ice cream into a mixing bowl when I see two figures pass the French doors. One is bent over, moving slowly as if injured.
“Roy.” I sprint through the kitchen and open the door. He’s home early. Afraid, happy, crazed with worry, I run right in front of them. Only when I’ve stopped and impeded their path do I realize it's Proctor bent over like he’s in pain. “What happened?” Immediately I go to his side and lift his arm over my shoulder.
“Ma’am,” the other man urges, “I wouldn’t do that.”
Why not, I think, he needs help. Why isn’t he helping? “Come on, let’s get him inside.”
“You’re touching me.” Proctor’s flat tone is barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, I am.” Finally, the other man moves instead of gawking at us and opens the French doors. “What happened? Was it Mr. Stanwyck?” No that can’t be right, he’s too old to cause this much damage. “He had one of his henchmen go after you, didn’t he? I have half a mind to go over there and tell him where he can go.” In my defense, I have been watching The Thin Man, and Nora Charles is one of my heroes. I guess, in retrospect, I was a bit too forceful.
“Nae, girl.” Gavin is suddenly beside me, taking the weight, and I shift to the side while Proctor sits at the kitchen table. “Tell her you’re all right or she’ll be yammering about it the rest of the evening.”
I don’t yammer. “What the hell is yammering?”
Proctor lifts his head. One eye is swollen shut, his lip is split, and from how he’s bent over I think his ribs are hurt. “I asked for this.” He closes his eye for a moment like he’s concentrating on how to breathe. “Needed this.”
I look at the man who was helping him. “You beat him?”
“No ma’am.” He cuts his eyes to Gavin, looking for help. “Just helping him to his cottage.”
“Let them be on their way.” Gavin’s got his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest. “Scott’s waiting on them.”
Scott? Oh, right, the medic who stitched up Roy’s back. “Why do you need this?”
“Leave us,” Proctor wheezes out and gives Gavin a bone-chilling glare. “Touched me…”
He let me touch him? Why wouldn’t he when he needs help? Because he’s Proctor, remember, super soldier experiment number did-not-come-out-right.
“You alright, girl?” Gavin asks. I nod, and he grabs a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “We’ll be waiting.” He communicates something to Proctor with his eyes and leaves.
While my back is turned, the other man also leaves. My excitement/sugar rush has ebbed a bit, and I sit to hear what Proctor has to say.
“Closer.” His monotone voice is barely above a whisper. “Broken rib.”
I’m less than a foot away from him. His open eye is too bright and intense and focused. It’s like dark amber, gold and brown with flakes of black and other colors I have no names for.
“Wrong.” He struggles to breathe. “My assessment…wrong.”
I thought he was going to tell me why he wanted to be beaten to a pulp. “Let me get you some water.”
He shakes his head. “You were right.” He holds up two fingers.
I’m not following until, suddenly, I understand. Oh, the giver of the ring is not who gave the previous gifts.
“Blackmail.”
“Why would anyone want to blackmail me?”
In frustration, he grabs my wrist and pulls me inches away from his face. “Stanwyck’s afraid. Think he’s being blackmailed. The ring was a…warning.”
“He told you this?”
Proctor tries to take a deep breath and ends hunched over in pain. “No.” He lifts up to meet my gaze and taps his nose. “Smell it.” He wheezes and lets my hand go.
“Intuition.” He nods. “Wow.” I haven’t moved, still inches from him. “Does he think I’m blackmailing him?”
“No.”
I grab a napkin off the table and press it against his lip. His talking has caused it to bleed. He sits there almost like a lost child. “You don’t need to be hurt like this.”
Proctor leans back, holding the napkin in place, and tilts his head to the side. “Have to get the rage out.”
Because Mr. Stanwyck jabbed him in the chest? Cause he hates to be touched? “Who were you fighting and where is he?” No response. Did he kill them? No, no not possible. Or maybe it is. “Tell me, and I’ll go see to them.” They must have been in Roy’s gym. I’m halfway to standing when his hand wraps around my wrist in an iron grip and pulls me back to sit in a chair.
“Already,” he wheezes out, “already gone.”
The door slams and we both turn to see Scott. His eyes widen and his mouth hangs open at the two of us huddled together. “I can come back.”
“No.” I stand. “No, he needs help.” I point toward Proctor, who’s looking up at me. “Cracked ribs and his lips are bleeding, and his eye.”
Scott hustles over. “I was waiting at the cottage.”
Proctor holds out his arm, keeping Scott at arm’s length, and slowly rises like he’s a hundred years old, shuffling toward the door. He turns back, looking at me with the one eye.
“Let me know if you need anything.” I follow and stand in the doorway, watching the two of them creep along the path until there’s nothing left for me to do but go back inside to the kitchen and get my ice cream.
Halfway to the basement stairs, I’m caught between the sounds of laughter floating from below and the thought of Proctor fighting someone to get rid of his rage and Roy, maybe fighting too, and Mr. Stanwyck and Bobby rambling around in their big house, hiding their secrets. No matter what I find out about the gifts, I won’t let it harm me, or let me harm myself because of it. Whatever I need to do, I won’t cut myself anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
“I have lines,” I whine to Vincent.
We’re in the makeup trailer, getting ready for our scene together.
“You have three words.” Vincent crinkles his nose. “There. He. Is. I’m sure you can manage.”
“It’s not the words, it’s the emotion. I’m supposed to be scared for my life.”
I agreed to be in the picture to get back at Roy. I couldn’t stand how sure he was I wouldn’t do this. Now, I think the only thing I accomplished was to punish myself.
“You’re making way too much out of this.” Vincent shrugs. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“I know, and you won’t.” Vincent cuts his eyes to Gavin, who’s sitting behind us and next to the door.
His hair and beard freshly trimmed. His impressive chest and biceps hugged tightly by a white shirt. His lower half covered by a kilt. I’ve never seen a man wear a kilt before and, I have to say, he rocks it. On him, it’s manly and powerful, and the makeup crew—both men and women—can’t keep their eyes off him. Poor Vincent is going cross-eyed trying to look nonchalant but not fooling anyone.
“Any word from Roy this morning?” I ask Gavin like I do every day.
“Nae,” he answers, his Scottish accent thicker than usual.
“He’s still scheduled to be back in two days, right?”
Gavin nods his head and goes back to his crossword puzzle.
“I spoke to my mum last night.” Vincent gets up from the chair. He’s dressed in a Confederate soldier’s uniform. “She doesn’t recall any Elizabetta Fitzgerald. The ring, though.” He taps his temple with his forefinger. “That she remembers. Mum’s always had an eye for the jewels. Back in the day Mr. Stanwyck, his wife, and Bobby hosted a lot of parties at Willoughby. There was a painting of old Mrs. Stanwyck, their mother, in the parlor. Huge, massive thing above the fireplace. She’s wearing the
ring.”
It would explain why it was familiar to Travis. He probably sees the painting every day. “Instead of saying his mother’s name, Bobby said Beth.” I crane my head around and ask Gavin, “How and why did I end up with the ring?”
Without looking up from his crossword, he responds. “Because someone’s stirring the pot.”
“On the bright side”—Vincent rubs my shoulders—“it might not be an old leech slobbering after you.”
“Eww.” I shake him off.
Gigi, the hairdresser, scurries off in search of another can of Aqua Net. My hair is already hard as a rock, and I’m sure it’s flammable. Vincent stands in front of me with his back to the mirror with his eyes on Gavin. “Mum said Bob, as he was known then, and Whitcomb….Seriously, why would anyone name their child Whitcomb?”
I roll my hand for him to continue with the pertinent information.
“They were naughty boys.” He gives Gavin a lift of his eyebrows, only to receive a snort from the Scotsman. “The female staff, under a certain age, was like a revolving door.”
It’s the same now in some households. Was Elizabetta involved with one of the Stanwycks? Was she pregnant? Maybe the ring was to buy her off? Though why give their mother’s jewelry? “Mr. Stanwyck was married at the time.”
“Love, I hate to break it to you but married people cheat, and it doesn’t mean he didn’t have a taste.”
Gavin chuckles. “A slice off a cut loaf is never missed.”
“Right.” Vincent agrees. “He knows what I’m talking about.”
Gigi, armed with a fresh can of Aqua Net, giggles and shoos Vincent away from her worktable.
I’m left muddling out what a cut loaf has to do with anything when the trailer door is yanked open by a tall, thin man, who pokes his head in. “They’re ready.”
I take a deep breath.
“Hold your pecker. We’ll be there in five.” Gigi shakes up the hairspray can like a graffiti artist.
My hair is braided into sections and entwined together to form a bun in the back, with two braids draped over my ears. Not the most attractive hairdo, but Gigi insists this is period-correct. I have no idea how I’ll get all this spray out of my hair.
“We’ll be watching to see if you need more spray.” She pulls the cloth from my shoulders like a magician performing the tablecloth trick. “Go break a leg.”
I’m corseted and fitted out in a hooped skirt so broad I can barely squeeze through the trailer door, while Vincent glides down the stairs and onto the ground offering his arm like the gallant Southern gentlemen he is.
“Why do you look so damned comfortable?” I ask.
“Love, you’re a woman.” Vincent slides his arm around my cinched waist. “Beauty is pain.”
“Well, I’ll take homely.”
A man wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard walks up to us. “You, now, come with me.”
“Abrupt bunch of savages,” Vincent whispers.
I cut him a look and struggle to catch my breath. “I can’t walk this fast,” I manage to get out. My corset’s too tight to talk and walk, much less trot along at the pace the headset guy is going. I pull out of Vincent’s grasp to stand and, hopefully, inhale air back to my lungs.
“Girl.” Gavin appears by my side, making me jump. Both he and Roy have the unnerving ability to move almost silently. “What’s the trouble?”
“Can’t breathe,” I wheeze out, and place my hands on my stomach encased in a steel cage.
“Look at me,” he orders. “Still got color in your cheeks. Take shallower breaths.”
Easier said than done.
He continues, “You don’t have to do this.”
I shake my head and take another breath and, at a slower pace, follow behind Vincent, who’s already getting direction from a woman in jeans and a Beatles t-shirt.
“Right.” She eyes us up. “You do look like brother and sister. Good. You.” She points to Vincent. “You’re protecting your sister.” She stands in front of me, miming an aggressive stance with a sword. “You’re a deserter. Come back home to protect her from the Yanks. Your home is being overrun by Union soldiers.” She points in the direction of a man holding up a sign with Look Here written in large letters. “He’s a yank colonel come to take your sister as spoils of war.”
There’s something comical about pretending a sign-wielding man in shorts and an In-N-Out Burger t-shirt is any sort of threat.
“I thought there’d be more people here.” Vincent looks around the pasture. “We’re the only actors.”
“We cut the extras in later.” Lady Director, who hasn’t given her name, says, “Right.” She claps her hands, and men pushing cameras on tracks get into place while she stands off to the side. “For now, mouth the words.”
“Oriana.” She snaps her fingers at me. “Are you paying attention? I have to get this shot before lunch.”
Oriana is the name of my character. At least I have a name; poor Vincent doesn’t. The script refers to him as a brother to Oriana.
“On the ground are your marks,” she says. “We’ll do a couple runs before we shoot with sound.”
I know our parts are minuscule and this is probably a big waste of time since I can’t see how we’ll ever make it in the final product, but do they have to be so abrupt and rude? At least annoyance has subjugated my nerves. The first few takes I barely move as the multiple cameras whirling around are distracting. By the third take, I kind of get what to do. Vincent is perfect as ever. He should be the one talking.
“We’re filming,” Frau Director shouts. “Oriana, say one, two, three.”
I comply, and everyone seems happy with the results.
“Now,” she orders.
The man with the sign is manically waving it, and for a split second I want to laugh, but I see another man behind him. It’s Jason, and I’m not even acting when I grab Vincent’s shoulder and point toward him, saying the line, “There he is.”
“Cut,” the director yells. “Stay in place.”
“That was good, love.” Vincent beams with excitement. “I almost believed you were afraid.”
I catch Gavin’s eye, and he follows mine to Jason. He nods and makes his way to the actor.
“What’s your name?” The director walks toward me.
“Daisy,” I say, trying to watch the interaction between Jason and Gavin.
“Not bad. I’m Cathy, the second-unit director. We’ll do one more.”
The cameras are moved back into place. This time, Cathy is seated on one of the large camera platforms placed directly in front of me. I can’t see anything of Gavin or Jason. I’m breathing too shallow, and my heartbeat pounds in my ears. I’m woozy when I say my lines, and when I grab onto Vincent it’s for support.
“Cut. Hold.”
“Are you alright? Too hot?” Vincent wraps his arm around my waist.
“Corset too tight,” I wheeze.
“Great, better than before. The director will look over the rushes this evening. He might want to add a few scenes for you.”
I hear her words, but my head is spinning and a roaring has sprung up between my ears.
“For the love of Christ, get those laces loosened.” Gavin moves in front of me, unbuttoning the delicate fabric with his thick fingers.
Cathy is speechless.
“Stop.” The wardrobe woman tries to swat Gavin’s hands away.
He turns on her. “Are you daft, woman? She’s going to pass out if we don’t get her out of this contraption.”
I let them both unbutton and spin me around to loosen the stays. The air tastes sweet when I inhale freely, and I slump into Gavin’s arms.
“Well, that was some drama,” Cathy mutters, then leaves.
“Are you alright, girl?”
I’m standing in the middle of a pasture with my corset hanging loose, exposing the thin linen underdress. “I am now.” I give him a weak smile.
“Jason, how did I do?” Vincent waves him ov
er.
“I need to go,” I whisper to Gavin.
“No, love.” Vincent is smiling and waving at Jason. “You must stay and meet him. He’s utterly charming.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms.
Jason is different than I remember him. His eyes aren’t glazed from alcohol, and he has the air of a repentant schoolboy about him.
“Vincent,” Jason purrs, “you must introduce me to your lovely costar.”
“Jason, this is Daisy, soon to be a star.”
“Yes, I can see she has potential.”
I want to smash his face in. Better yet, I think Proctor should work out his anger issues on him. It’s infuriating how easily he acts like he’s never seen me before, instead of the drunken lout who assaulted me. I want to claw his eyes out and all but snarl, “I don’t think I’m cut out to be an actress.”
“You aren’t the first to realize the reality is far from glamorous. I’m sorry this hasn’t been a better experience for you.”
I don’t buy his act for one moment. He’s going to be allowed to go on-and-on, assaulting women because he has lots of money and power. I hate him. I hate what he did to me. And I hate the tentacles of my compulsion traveling up my spine.
Vincent isn’t stupid, and he knows something more is going on between us. “Right,” he says. “Party still on for tonight?”
“You know it. Why don’t you bring Daisy?”
The bastard! Like I would ever go near him. I should let Roy break his damned legs.
Another man with another clipboard walks up and whispers something in Jason’s ear. Who knew clipboards were so essential to the movie industry? “Another retake.” Jason sighs like he’s so put upon. “See you tonight.” He smiles at Vincent and leaves with assistants trailing behind him like baby geese.
Vincent levels a serious gaze on me. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“I don’t like him.”
“No shit, donut. I think we all got that loud and clear.”
My dress catches in the tall grass, and I have to lift it up to walk back to the trailer. “Jason is your friend, not mine,” I say. Guilt gnaws at me for not telling him the truth.
Secrets In Our Scars Page 21