“My God,” said Ezra.
Helen spoke. Her voice sounded painful to produce, grating, like a broken wind instrument.
There is an understanding you get about people, that maybe many people know, but that I didn’t. The love of some people is immense, as is the hatred. I feel that for many years I was swimming along the top of such things, that I didn’t understand them, because I had no cause to understand them. There is a current beneath, and it is strong in both directions.
Helen stopped for a moment. The camera panned out to show her full body. A hand from off screen reached over and held hers.
There is no room for modesty now. I would never have said this before: I was beautiful. It would have been better had I not been beautiful. Or at least it would have been much simpler.
Helen paused for a moment and took her hand back from whoever was offscreen.
This? she said, meaning her face. This threatens people, as did how I looked before. There are many different kinds of power.
Sybil paused the clip. They were silent. “What do you feel?”
She watched as Ezra took a deep breath from the couch. He leaned over his crossed legs and rested his cheeks in his hands. He was still staring at the screen. “I don’t even know.”
When Grant had seen it, he was affected, but with disgust. There are some reactions you can’t hide. And when she’d pushed him on what else he felt, he became angry and made her feel as if she was accusing him of something. You can’t spring this sort of thing on me and expect me to be a certain way, he’d said. And she’d replied, I forgot. Only you’re allowed to do that.
Sybil clicked shut the browser and shut the laptop. “There are three story lines. The first, of course, is the woman, Helen. Her thread will focus on the power her beauty gave her, and what she was able to experience because of it, and what she could not. How the fact that she was beautiful kept her relationships at a particular tenor. She said that she floated on top. If she’d just stayed home and accepted her life, would she have been happy? Perhaps ignorant, but genuinely happy?”
Ezra leaned back.
“The second story line is the guy who proposed to her. His power is inherited, but because his family is dependent on his future success and standing for their current and future wellbeing, he also has a firm destiny to follow. So, we’ll outline the slow degradation of his independence as an individual, and the formation of his identity as a person groomed to act not in his own interest, but his family’s. He didn’t want to do it, the acid. And in fact, if there was any envy in him, it wasn’t over some other man that might one day have her. He was envious of the fact that Helen could act so freely. He didn’t want to have her as much as he wanted to be her.
“The final thread is the American doctor. She’s beautiful, white, well-educated, and from an affluent background. But she’s miserable. She could have made millions doing plastic surgery but she’s always had this nagging sense that she didn’t deserve what she had. So now she lives in a foreign country making next to nothing at a nonprofit. But years have gone by, and the tragedy of the women she helps doesn’t mean to her what it used to. She’s grown numb; plus, she’s terribly lonely. Men aren’t comfortable with her and women are threatened by her. What makes her such a powerful woman, what allows her to rise, are also the things that keep her from any real intimacy. And now she’s grown envious of the women she treats, of their tragedies. She pities them but she’s also jealous. And she hates that as well. But most of all, she’s haunted by the fact that her own story isn’t a story anyone would ever want to hear. The story of power, privilege, and the loneliness it has caused.”
Ezra tapped his finger on his lips.
“Here’s how it ends. After the tragedy, many of these women give up. They can’t come to terms with all that they’ve lost, all they’ll never have again. Helen—the woman you saw—ended up being one of those women.
“But there are others. Some of the women, once they’ve been stripped of their external beauty, develop these intimate, affectionate relationships, the depth of which they’d never come close to experiencing before. Some of them even confide that it might have been a deliverance, what happened. They feel free.”
“But is that freedom?” asked Ezra.
“Exactly,” she said.
Ezra sat there in silence. He closed his eyes and nodded, then gave her a small smile that told her he understood.
She felt warm, and shrugged. Embarrassed, but in a good way.
“And you’re doing this movie?”
She took a deep breath. “No. It’s locked up with Grant. Has been now for years. I wrote the screenplay and I’m supposed to have the part of the doctor, as well as direct. I never had the chance to meet Helen before she passed. But I’ve met multiple times with her family, and they’ve read it. They’re waiting too.”
Ezra paused. “So—”
“I don’t know what to do.” She looked down at her hands and began spinning the ring around on her finger. “There’s really not much I can.” She’d given Grant the rights in good faith. Back then they were a team, so she’d thought nothing of it. But in the time since, he’d done nothing. With this movie, she figured she’d finally be able to segue from starlet back to serious actor, as well as a director of serious films. All the interviews, the red carpet galas, the parties . . . she would no longer have to fake it and pretend that her roles were interesting, meaningful, anything other than shallow moneymakers for her and the studios and the investors.
But it was more than just her career. It was the opportunity to do right by Helen’s family, by Helen. To feel as though what she was doing meant something other than just the usual hope for profits and acclaim. To feel good about herself. It was everything, dovetailed together.
“What’s Grant waiting for?” Ezra asked.
She shrugged. In her mouth were the excuses she could make for him. Ones he’d made. Ones she’d repeated to herself like mantras. How the timetable for the movie wasn’t perfect. Or that the script needed revising. Or that this actor’s schedule or the situation at whatever studio wasn’t right. And so on. She’d gone along with the delays, at first because she wanted to. Back then her star had been so bright that she didn’t need him—or this movie—like she did now.
“He could make it happen,” she said. “But he won’t.”
“And he knows what it means to you?”
She said nothing.
“That’s bullshit.”
“Yes. But I’m trapped.”
“Couldn’t you just—”
“—You don’t know how it works.” She felt like kicking Ezra. She’d been obsessing over possible answers for years and what, he was going to snap his fingers and conjure some solution out of nowhere? “I’m tied to him. No worthwhile producer’s going to touch a project of mine without his nod, and I’m not going to let it die on the festival circuit.”
They sat there for a moment. She felt his arms around her. At first she stiffened at them. She felt angry. But she slowly relaxed. Ezra cared. That’s why he’d tried to offer help. He just didn’t understand. And it felt so good to be held. She felt free to cry, and began to do so in earnest. The more you wanted something, the more that yearning hurt, and the more difficult it was to trust people with the knowledge of that burning desire in your being. People praised desire and ambition, but sometimes it felt like an affliction, or even a disease.
She remembered the moment she’d caught it. She was driving home from her opening night performance at the community theater, away from that caustic drama department at her high school, where at eighteen she’d just finished playing Masha in Three Sisters. And she’d killed it. Killed it!
On the way home, all of the streetlights seemed to turn green upon her approach, the neon signs in the shop windows seemed to shine just for her, and even the jerk who cut her off at the intersection must have been, in her mind, on his way to something important. She kept the stereo off and drove in silence because her
insides still hummed with a pleasure she didn’t wish to dampen. It wasn’t just the sound of the applause, but also the look of people applauding once the house lights went up. Even now, years later, she could remember hoping the warm feeling would never wear off.
The words they’d used about her performance: impressive, amazing, stunning. The words they’d used about her: beautiful, gorgeous, magnetic. These were the women, of course—the men blushed, maybe nodded in agreement, their manner expressing what words couldn’t.
She felt it would sound trite to admit how much the reception meant. She’d downplayed it then, as if the performance itself was everything and it didn’t matter if people were even there. The truth? She was won over at that theater, both by the rush of performing and the praise she received afterward. And the email she received from an agent a few days later, asking her to fly to Los Angeles to meet, made every last taunt by the idiots at her high school feel silly and desperate.
But it was strange, and perhaps this was the real cost that Grant could never understand: she could never remember anything of her performances themselves. It was as if they were erased from her memory. She came to the conclusion that the act itself must be some sort of sacred space. When entering into someone else’s skin, even someone imaginary, you were only allowed that present feeling of the moment. You could get lost in it, but you couldn’t return to it afterward and experience it again. It stood alone, the time.
“What are you going to do?” Ezra asked.
Could she really leave it behind? The shitty roles, yes. But that wasn’t what he was asking. Could she really leave behind the possibility of doing Helen’s movie? Could she leave behind the possibility of losing herself in a part that meant something to her? That would provide for her the admiration of an audience she’d been yearning to receive for so long? The gratefulness of a family who’d lost their daughter, and yearned to see the tragedy of her life teach others? A possibility to begin directing and acting in meaningful films on a regular basis?
She looked at her phone in the trash. Silent, except for the occasional annoying prod by a cold husband who’d long ago ceased finding value in his wife. She exhaled. “We need to pack.”
He shook his head. “This is so unbelievably strange.”
“I know.”
He blinked. “Yes, all of this, of course, but there’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I have one more story about my mother. I hate to put it on you, but it’s . . . I don’t know.”
“It’s okay. Just tell me.” She rubbed his shoulders.
“When I was fourteen, my mother burned herself alive.”
ELEVEN
By morning the bliss of the night before had faded into a surreal anxiety. The further into the city Sybil drove, the more the sun seemed to glare. She palmed the wheel and guided her convertible into the parking lot of the offices of her agent.
She didn’t know what to make of what little Ezra had managed to tell about his mother’s self-immolation, and she hadn’t the heart to push him for details of the event itself. But she did ask how it had affected him all of these years. Instead of answering, he began speculating about why his mother had done it. She felt trapped. Ashamed. Cursed. She was tired of hiding—so many years of being the Prophetess had worn on her. She wanted the world to know her pain. She wanted the world to know her. So she tried to tell them, the only way she felt she could.
In short, he’d divulged what little he could bear to—and it was far more than she had a right to expect. For that, she was grateful. More and more, this insane trip seemed to make sense for them both—they could get away and talk through all of this shit, carry each other’s burdens, and maybe come out from it less fearful and inhibited.
She’d bought the plane tickets. One way. The feel of clicking the purchase tab was both thrilling and heavy. The earliest reasonably direct flight would leave in three days, which felt like an eternity to wait, though she realized it was still nowhere near enough time to tie up loose ends and pack. But when you made a decision like this, the last thing you wanted was more time to stew, because there was always something pulling you back to where you were before. People who ask why nothing ever changes, she thought, don’t recognize the power of the familiar. So quiet, so subtle, yet always coercing you back to where it started.
She’d had a stress dream the previous night, a variation of one she’d had many times, before big auditions, meetings, premieres. In the dream, she soared high above the coastline, arms like wings, wind stiff and hot and dusty against her belly and face, making her eyes and mouth parched. She was up north in wine country, following the coastal highway south along the water. Acres of parched canyons flanked her left side, their folds peppered with vineyards and the occasional pathetic tree, slouching up from the ground like a knobby finger. The whole of it threatening to burn.
But to her right swirled the ocean, an impossible richness of water for thousands of miles, getting deeper every day with each melting glacier. Every shade of blue and green, waves curling around points, lines of swell appearing out of the deep, kelp out past the breakers, seals bobbling, humpbacks slapping their tails.
That the desert and the ocean could be so near each other, so close, touching even, yet never really mix—it made almost no sense.
She soared over Grant’s property on the coastline, and soon the city began to appear, first as a denser scattering of houses, then more, until finally it was a thick, relentless storm of commerce. The scene reminded her of the time as a kid when she’d gone to a museum to see a steam engine—the pipes, the tubing, the gears, all of it so thick and precise and beautiful that she caught herself holding her breath while watching it work.
She flew over a golf course, over an interchange, over palm-lined streets. She neared her neighborhood and could see the streets branching off from the main causeways, each diminishing until they were only small tributaries, climbing up hills into larger estates with pools. Then there was the rental home, that sixteenth-century manor house on the hillside, and she was flying down, descending. Suddenly she spotted a body on the patio, laid out like a chalk drawing, and before she could identify it, she woke.
It was Ezra. She could feel it in her heart. And not only that, she’d done it.
But it had only been a dream. It occurred to her that the body made perfect sense, in light of her stress. She had reason to be worried about him. For one, worry was one of the many prices you paid for love. Second, Grant at some point would find out, if he hadn’t already.
Not that she had any reason to believe that Grant would do anything violent. But there was always a threat about him. You couldn’t be or stay in his position without it. That sense of being above the political skirmishes—that when it came down to it he would do what he had to do, no matter what stood in the way.
Regardless, would Grant really care, as in care about her, as in be angry at the affection she and Ezra had shared? Would he be protective of their marriage because, say, he valued it outside of how it served his personal ambitions? She felt silly that even just yesterday, after Ezra revealed Grant’s proposal to spy on her, she’d let herself believe it. Even felt flattered by the prospect.
She’d seen Grant furious with envy, but only toward people who were in some regard more powerful than him. This affair? There was a category for this, an obvious one, and Grant loved categories, because they allowed him to dismiss the urges behind people’s motives as common and therefore of little interest. He’d call Ezra the cabana boy and her the tragic starlet and have a good laugh at how predictable they both were, and feel more powerful because of it. He would wrap the affair in old newspaper, place it inside a packing box, and store it away, perhaps only occasionally bringing it out as an anecdote to share at luncheons to prove how little even the most personal of relationships meant to such a big man like him.
Then again, he might hide it even tighter than she had! Making it into a big deal
could make him appear weak, and Grant would rather die than have that happen. To preserve his ego and machismo in business dealings, he might even out one of his mistresses, inform the press that he and Sybil had been seeing other people for quite some time, that they’d been in a de facto open relationship for years, that they’d always admired the French for their lack of puritanical hang-ups.
But no, he wouldn’t even do that, because philandering could stand in the way of a future election. If he couldn’t bury it, he’d talk about it in passive, political terms. Irreconcilable differences. Opinions were made clear. Goals were diverging, so decisions were made. Paths were taken.
Whatever it took to stay above the fray.
Likely, it would be anticlimactic, Sybil told herself. She and Ezra would be fine. Still, she was having trouble catching her breath and her hands were shaking as she sat in the car outside her agent’s office, and the AC just couldn’t break through the heat because the top was down and the smoked glass of the office doors reflected the sun onto her face.
It would be fine. This wasn’t about what Grant thought, what the press thought, social media, her parents, her fans, her critics. It was about what she knew, which was that she needed something different.
She stepped out of the car into the dry, hazy sun.
A few paparazzi rushed through the hedges from the sidewalk. They began snapping pictures. “Sybil, we hear your marriage is on the rocks. Care to comment?”
She hurried past them and up the steps in silence. She briefly wondered if they knew something, imagining that perhaps someone had snuck onto the property and photographed her and Ezra together. But she dismissed it as just a stupid paparazzi tactic to get her to engage. Either way, who cared? It was over now, wasn’t it? She didn’t owe anyone anything.
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