by Bruce Wagner
“Yes.”
“What, then, is the problem, Michael?”
“I don’t know if it’s a problem. It’s more a concern.”
“You’re mincing words, playing with language.”
“Look, Calliope, I’m just—unsure about it. I’m wondering if I’m biting off more than I can chew here! You know I ask myself, Is this really how I want to spend my time?”
“Well, I don’t know. Is it?”
“Do I want to spend my time making another movie?”
“You’re making movies all the time. Aren’t you?”
“I’m acting in movies. I’m not producing and directing.”
“You ask if that’s how you would like to spend your time. What else would you be doing? With your time?”
“I mean, instead of with the kids, & Catherine. You know how consuming that is, Calliope. This isn’t just ‘another movie.’ I don’t even know if I can pull it off! And I worry about the content, not just for Catherine, but for Dylan and Carys. I mean, you know suddenly the old man’s making a movie but it ain’t Pirates of the Caribbean. ‘Then, what is it, Dad?’ ‘Well . . . remember when Daddy had that little health scare? Well, uh, in this movie, kids, well—y’see—Daddy dies!’”
They laughed.
She took a deep breath, & straightened her spine, readying to speak. Michael girded himself for feedback, the fingers on one hand moving like an anemone’s in a light current.
“A sensitive, talented man—a producer and director—a man who has it all is dying. Does that sound familiar, Michael? Of course, you’re not dying, not now, at least not more or less than the rest of us. Let’s just say your aptitude for both antipodes—life & death—is presently running at a higher pitch, it’s keener than most. Your appreciation of extinction has lit a fire under you; it has humbled, but not tamed. I’m sure it crossed your mind that Jazz might be too on the nose, you people in Hollywood used to love that phrase, do they use it still? Perhaps on one of your sleepless nights, I assume you’ve had many, you may have surmised there was something distasteful about the choice, the idea of it, something too flamboyant. The reachiness of it may have confused & depressed you.”
Reachiness. Jesus. Dead on.
“That, I think, is its brilliance. Is it a risk? An artistic risk? Of course it is. What isn’t? You wouldn’t seriously be thinking about it if it weren’t. So: the proof is already in the pudding. If you had sat there and told me you wanted to remake Star 80, then I’d say you had a problem. A big one. Because Star 80 is already perfect, in its own way. But I think you could do something spectacular with Jazz. Not just because it’s a goddawful movie. It’s dreadful. It’s a horror! As it happens, I watched it not too long ago & it fell flatter than a pancake. Cheap and egotistical in every wrong way. But his intentions were honorable, his intentions were brilliant. Bob was brilliant. The concept of the film is brilliant. I know what he was doing, he told me so, Bob strove to make his 8½ but all he got for his money was an ego bath, you know, flapping his wings in the water, all that chain-smoking and ‘It’s showtime!’ inanity. A tacky cabaret, a cartoon treatise on sexing & workaholism, completely uninstructive & utterly, radiantly charmless. He was frustrated with his therapy. I was too; he never worked very hard with me. Wouldn’t put in the time, not till toward the end. Jazz was ’79, Star 80 was ’83. He died in ’86 I think, maybe ’87. And because of this frustration, he wanted Scheider to die at the end, so Bob could live! Bob thought that would be enough, you see we hadn’t done our real shadow work at that time, he truly thought if he could kill himself off in the film he wouldn’t have to do the hard work of looking at his life & where he came from & why he was so hell-bent on destroying himself & those around him, those he loved—he refused for a long time to do the kind of work I did with you, the work we did together. By the time he was ready, you see it was almost too late. Now if Jazz had been a better movie, maybe Bob’s plan would have worked! Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I think I’ve been too hard on him . . . excuse me, Michael”—she looked heavenward—“& forgive me, Bob. I’m not sure I’m looking in the right direction, but do forgive me! He was brave, I will say that, oh yes, I will say that without tergiversation.
“But you—you—I know your courage, Michael, I’ve seen it. It’s real. My God, you’re a long-distance runner. With everything you’ve been through, you have earned the right to bargain with the Angel of Death. Even if she’s your wife, especially if she’s your lovely wife. And don’t underestimate our Catherine. Don’t you dare, you know better than that. You know how tough that girl is. You’ve both earned the right. To bargain for a little more time, time to watch your kids grow, time to be together. Time to make a movie, which is a fair portion of what I believe your purpose is on this planet, what you’re meant to be doing. What I think you’re meant to be doing, from all the years, & everything that I know, everything that I feel & know about you. You’ve earned the right to bargain for a little more time to make sense of your life. Because all you need is a little more time, to see—that there is no sense in life but the doing of what you love, & the loving of those you love. That clarity will come, Michael, it’s right around the corner for you. You see, your gift is that you captivate people. You have marvelous energy, people love to look at you, to listen. Lord knows what you’ll do when you make that terrible film your own! Now that’s a challenge. You’ll captivate us all!
“This fear you have is not in depicting yourself as a dying man—& who, by the way, says the All That Jazz Michael Douglas must die?—no. That’s not what you’re afraid of. That is distinctly not your fear. You’ve flirted with death so much lately . . . the world was practically shouting at you two to ‘get a room’! Michael, you are an artist. I believe that has always been your central drama. ‘Am I an artist?’ That is the question that arises during your hour of the wolf. No? Do you remember we used to talk about the hour of the wolf? That terrible time between 3AM and 4AM when we are completely alone. ‘Am I an artist?’ Well, I’m going to give you the answer. I’m going to answer that question, and all you need to do is accept it as truth. As gospel. Because I know something about it. I know a lot about it. And I have never lied to you, ever. Not even once. Not even a white lie. Well, maybe I overbilled you now and then, but nothing too serious . . . ha! So here’s the answer, like it or not: Yes. You, Michael Douglas, are an artist. And I say that before God. You have my one hundred percent guarantee.
“Every artist I’ve ever known has the same fear, I call it the If I jump into the abyss, will I die? fear. And do you know what the answer to that is? If you don’t jump, you’ll die.”
The phone rang, and she broke away. Which was good because he needed a moment. When the old woman hung up, she turned to him and smiled. He knew that was the image of her he would carry with him into both their eternities.
“Thank you. Thank you, Calliope.”
“Make this wonderful project a journey—for you.”
Her eyes got mischievous.
“Can you dance?”
“I’ve been known.”
“But can you cut a rug? That’s what we called it when I was a girl.” She reached to touch his arm. “I seem to have opinions lately.”
“You always had opinions, girl.”
“Maybe so. But I have even more of them today. It apparently comes with the territory of being very, very old.” She took another deep breath. “I have one final piece of advice.”
He girded himself again, a protective reflex he’d acquired during a lifetime of counsel from his straight-shooting mentor—and friend.
“Fire away.”
Her eyes flared.
“I would love to see you do a turn on Dancing With the Stars. It’s my favorite show! I think it’d be marvelous preparation for your movie. The sooner you begin cutting a rug, Michael Douglas, the better!”
CLEAN
[Gwen]
Falsies & False Positives
Across
town, G
wen saw her own therapist, the one she met at Our House, the grief center she’d gone to for support when her husband died. She felt blessed that Phoebe was already in her life when her daughter became ill (Gwen now choking on those words), because she really helped, & really helped Telma too.
“Have you cried yet?”
Gwen hated that question.
“No. Not really. I’m too angry.”
“It’s good that you’re angry, you should be. I’d be worried if you weren’t.”
Silence, then again:
“Gwen, have you been able to cry?”
“No!”
The repetition some sort of therapist’s ploy.
More silence.
“I’m afraid to. I’m afraid to.”
“And why is that?”
“Because if I cry”—tremulous voice—“the anger might go away, & without the anger—”
Silence.
“Without the anger . . .” The shrink cued her to fill in the blank. The patient remained quiet. “Without the anger, you’re afraid you’ll fall apart. That you won’t have the strength you need to see justice done.”
. . .
Gwen wasn’t really sleeping; she took sleep when it came, like coins being dropped into a half-conscious beggar’s palm. Under siege, she spasmed awake with little starts & yelps, reacting to whatever movie flickered behind fitful shutlid eyes. It was one of the hellish cruelties human beings were subject to—to be unable to use sleep to escape from a waking nightmare, to find oneself in a place where nothing worked, there was no comfort, no alternatives, no let-up, like a person burned and tortured in such a way they cannot sit or stand or lie down without excruciating pain. She told her lawyers she needed time to think. Gwen couldn’t act until certain things were handled.
Until Telma had been told . . .
She haunted the Internet’s vast trove of horrific misdiagnoses & wanton, wrongful surgeries. A woman in the UK lost a breast by hospital blunder, something they knew right away but didn’t tell her for nine years. In a ghoulish twist, she became a counselor to those with breast cancer. Her ballroom dancing pastime was no more; the beloved strapless dresses retired to the closet, a murdered raft of pretty girls, carefully, quietly hanged. She went through menopause without hormone replacement therapy because if you’ve had breast cancer, HRT is out. Insurance paid £100,000.
There were a lot of similar cases, closer to home. An L.A. woman had a double mastectomy & reconstructive surgery as the result of a misread biopsy. She was awarded $110,000 for each shorn tit. Was that because she couldn’t afford the right lawyer? Gwen’s counsel said Gwen needn’t worry because her daughter’s case had “unique & compelling attributes,” and they believed a settlement of around $15 million was feasible. They also believed that a proviso of any settlement would be the hospital’s insistence that the records of the case be sealed forever, as St. Ambrose would have trouble surviving the primal rage that such a bogus mutilaton of a child would engender, not to mention a child as charismatic as Telma; not to mention that child having become a beacon of hope for other children thus afflicted, & for their parents too; not to mention that Telma would become a poster child—an electronic billboard!—of the hospital’s malfeasance and cynical desecration of the Hippocratic Oath. The calculus of the $15 million figure of course included restitution for the physical & emotional travails of reconstructive surgery that Telma would eventually endure in the relatively near future. If the records weren’t sealed, the original error would never fade in public consciousness, to the contrary, it would compound yearly, monthly, as the press nurtured & obsessed, the maimed darling growing up under their exploitative sponsorship into a lovely young woman that another surgical team (the reconstructivists) would pounce on in the name of closure and healing, but the people wouldn’t see it that way, the people would see it as Frankenstein redux.
It could be worse . . . in erratic, restless fits, Gwen joined the accursed orgy of the Web, Single Mom Seeking Stories Worse Than Mine. She read about a woman in Brooklyn who lost her husband & two daughters in a fire. She returned to the apartment the next day to retrieve the only thing she was afraid had melted: a silver urn containing the ashes of another daughter, dead of leukemia at 15. For a day, Gwen’s mantra became she lost three daughters my baby’s alive she lost three daughters my baby’s alive the distraction made her feel better by the smallest of increments but it didn’t sit well that it was on the back of that poor woman, at her expense. The feeling never lasted anyway.
“I just feel crazy, Phoebe. Completely crazy. The not-sleeping doesn’t help.”
“Are you taking the Xanax?”
“During the day, Seroquel at night.”
“I want you to be careful with that.”
“It doesn’t work, Phoebe. It doesn’t matter how much I take.”
“I hear you, Gwen—but we need to talk about this at the end of our time today, OK? Because we really need to. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Then:
“I’ve sent blood & tissue samples to three different labs. Telma thinks it’s for something routine.”
“Do your lawyers know you’re doing that?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you agree you wouldn’t—”
“Her name’s not anywhere on it.”
“You don’t want to do something foolish that jeopardizes your settlement.”
“It’s all going through the office of a good friend. He was my husband’s oncologist.”
“Just be careful. What are you looking for?”
“Cancer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ve got some early results saying the likelihood is slim. Slim to none!”
“Your thinking is that if she did—if you can find out that she does, then—”
“Yes! Then at least what they did won’t be for nothing. If they fucked up thinking she had it, maybe they fucked up thinking she doesn’t. You know, I play this game, this things could be worse game in my head, I’m trolling the Internet—that evil woman in Massachusetts who had an autistic son with non-Hodgkin’s. She wouldn’t give him his meds because she couldn’t stand caring for him anymore, she wanted him to die. And the housewife who got staph, one of those weird catastrophic infections, while she was in a coma the doctors told the husband she was going to die unless they chopped off her arms and legs & the husband had to decide right there. He finally said Yeah, you know, let’s do it. And when she woke up, she was so grateful, she said all she wanted was to watch their baby grow!
“Phoebe! That woman had kids, she’d been sexual. She’d given boys & babies & men her breasts . . . she’d been suckled & felt up. Every girl remembers the first time she was felt up. Do you? Do you remember the first time you were felt up? Telma won’t. Telma won’t remember because Telma won’t ever have that experience—my baby’s never going to be felt up! She’ll never be able to put on a bikini in the summer, I don’t care what kind of fucking surgery they do, Phoebe, she will never be able to know what it’s like when you finally get tits & you walk across the sand & all the eyes are on you, the boys are looking, that time of your life when you catch yourself in the mirror and you love what you see . . . I used to get hickies on my tits, Phoebe! Do not talk to me about prosthetics & fucking skin flaps! It’s like fucking Auschwitz, like they’re experimenting———[crying now]———cutting into her again! It isn’t FAIR. It isn’t—————[screams, then]————they went in there, Phoebe, I’ll never forget that day, they went in there &————took her little————took her little titties & all the lymph nodes . . . those assholes! Mutherfuckers! Making themselves saints, everyone kowtowing & worshipping, O God Bless you, doctor, you saved her life, you’re helping all the children—to live! . . . to live! To LIVE with the scars of your fucking sick torture—God Bless and may God fuck you and YOUR children, may God turn your babies into monsters—butchering my baby, it’s a fucking freakshow over there! O Phoebe! Wh
at a fool I am! I didn’t get a second opinion, why didn’t I, I should’ve gotten a second opinion———”
“Remember that word ‘should,’ you know we need to be careful when we use that word. When I hear should—”
“I’m sick of hearing that! Should should should should should! Everyone gets so fucking militant about should & should have, everyone wants to fucking punish you for using the word! Well should have is probably the single most important word or phrase or whatever in the English Language! I’m going to use it until I die!———I remember when they said she didn’t need chemo or radiation I was crying I was thanking them! What an idiot . . . [crying now for two full minutes, then] & they were right, Phoebe, they were right, she didn’t need chemo, she didn’t need radiation, she didn’t need anything! All of those dinners, those $500 a plate benefits, at the Hilton, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Telma even performed, everyone on the medical team honored, one by one, year by year, the dinners & the standing ovations! The smug smiles of those high-flying butchers! That Michael Jackson Conrad doctor looks like fucking Dr. House next to those sick mutherfuckers! And it’s my fault this happened—————don’t you try and tell me it isn’t, Phoebe! Don’t you dare! Because I should have just pulled her out of there. I’m not a mother, I’m as bad as them! I have no maternal instincts, if I had maternal instincts, I would never have let this happen! Never! I’m as sick and fucked as that woman who withheld the medicine from her son! To kill him! Do you want to know how fucked up I am? How selfish & fucked up? The last few days I’ve actually been worrying what people will think of me when this comes out, & you better believe it’s going to come out, I’ll make sure of that because I’m going to bring them down. I’ve actually been worrying that people will think I’m a terrible mother, I know how people are, they’ll go on the internet & blog about how it could have been prevented—if the parent—the MOM—had only done her homework . . . & they’ll be right! I’ve even been worrying what Telma is going to think of me too, you know, she’s going to HATE me———don’t you try & tell me she won’t, Phoebe, it’s her right, don’t take away her right———or worse, what if she goes into this whole resentment thing, which will be her right, but she never really mentions it because she’s that kind of kid, such a good, sweet kid, but it’s there, her mommy let her down, her mommy let them remove her breasts, her mommy let them steal her youth, her mommy stole her youth, the doctors & her mommy stole her beauty . . . you know what she’s being set up for? She’s being set up to be a drug addict. A maimed drug addict . . . at 18, the surgeries begin . . . how many surgeries will it take to make her whole again? How many, Phoebe! A million fucking surgeries will never make her whole—————don’t ask me how I know, Phoebe, don’t you ask me that! And there she is, with the skin graphs not taking, or maybe infections—‘complications’—whatever—& she’s angry, angry at me as she should be, angry at the world, they give her pain pills for the surgeries, she’s depressed anyway, she’s being set up, these stories do not end well——”