My Life in Black and White

by Kim Izzo

“I know.”

  “I watched every one of them, more than once, mind.” Hooper grinned slyly, as though remembering a particularly graphic scene. “So did he hire you to write a screenplay?”

  I bit my lower lip. “Not exactly.”

  Hooper began tapping his foot on the linoleum floor; it made a dull thud. “Then what, exactly? And how does Niall Adamson figure into all this? Is he harassing Mr. Marshall again? Tapping his phone? If you know anything, you must tell me.”

  I shook my head and drew the trench coat around my shoulders tightly. “I’ll tell you what I know …”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There was a knock at the door and Trinity went down the steps to answer it. She returned, slightly winded, with a cream-coloured envelope in her hand. “This came for you.”

  I recognized the handwriting. “It’s from Dean.”

  “I thought as much. That’s Savoy stationery. Says so on the back.”

  “Was that him at the door?”

  She shook her head. “It was a messenger. Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  “No, please stay.” I carefully peeled open the envelope and slid out the single piece of paper. I read it twice.

  Dear Clara,

  I’m sorry for what happened today. It must have been horrible for you. But you shouldn’t have come to London. I’ve been a coward for not being more honest, but here it goes: You were right. If you hadn’t been pregnant, we never would have married. I thought I was doing the “right” thing. I was wrong. It was a mistake. I should have never proposed. I’m to blame for that, as I’m to blame for giving you hope that we could make a go of it. I am fond of you, but I never felt the same as you. I tried, but I just couldn’t. Our marriage is over. I’m never coming back to you. I love Amber and we’re pursuing a life together. You should move on with your own life and find happiness however you can. I’m sorry if this hurts you all over again but it had to be said, and I hope by putting it in writing, and not some lame email or text message, that you’ll understand that I’m serious. Take care, Dean.

  When they say the truth hurts, they aren’t kidding. I started to cry so hard and fast it was like a broken water main. Trinity led me to the sofa. Between sobs I told her at last what had happened at the set that morning—that I’d gone hoping to reconcile with Dean and instead ended up trying to confront Amber and what a fool she made of me. Trinity listened sympathetically. When I’d finished, I gave her the letter to read as a coda to my story. I mopped up the tears on my face with the back of my hand, but after reading the letter, Trinity brought me a huge bath towel in anticipation of the night’s activities.

  “Fond of me? ‘Take care’? My whole marriage was a sham. An ode to Dean Lapointe’s sense of duty.”

  “I’m so sorry, Clara.”

  “All these years I only believed what I wanted to believe, but none of it was real. You’d think I could have come up with a better fantasy than a bad marriage,” I said solemnly. “I want to go home.”

  “Of course you do. We’ll get your things back from Frederick and get you on the first plane back to Los Angeles, promise,” she said kindly.

  “I’m going to lie down for a bit,” I said. “I need to be alone.”

  She nodded and handed me back the letter. I went to my room and collapsed on the tiny bed and stared up at the red ceiling fan. It spun swiftly, round and round, and I stared at it, focusing as hard as I could, hoping it would hypnotize me. If people used hypnosis to quit smoking, then it should prove equally beneficial in helping me quit being a wife.

  As I lay there, knowing full well the hypnosis wasn’t going to pan out, I thought back to Marjorie and Alice. Being left must have been this painful for them. I didn’t remember how my mother coped when my father walked out, and I knew even less about Alice. Of course, they both had a child to look after. I could call Marjorie but couldn’t bear listening to her tell me it was the family curse again. Not for the first time, I wished my grandmother were alive. Alice would have known what to do. Seeing her in He Gave No Answer—how she could take a slap across the face and dish one out moments later—I knew she was as tough as the stage name she chose. If that car accident hadn’t ended her life, if I had had her guidance all these years, then maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess.

  You can’t bring the dead back to life, but you can wear their clothes. Marjorie said she had found comfort in wearing them, and so might I. I stood and grasped the handle of her suitcase and hauled it onto the bed. But no matter how hard I tried, it was no use. The clasp was as jammed as ever.

  Perhaps it was the frustration, anger or grief that made me shut my eyes tightly and make a wish like I was a five-year-old with a chocolate layer cake lit up with candles. “I wish you were here, Alice. I need you. And I wish I’d been there for you too. Things might have ended so differently for all of us.”

  Then, feeling foolish, I stepped back and felt something crunch beneath my foot. It was Dean’s heartfelt note. I picked it up and tossed it across the room but it didn’t get far; it swayed in the air before landing on top of my grandmother’s suitcase. I didn’t want anything of his touching anything of hers so I swiped it away like it was an insect. I must have struck the clasp in the process because the suitcase suddenly flew open, launching its contents in a spray of silk and satin fireworks. But that wasn’t all. Sheets of white paper blew through the air along with the dresses and scattered like feathers around the room. I was stunned. I hadn’t noticed any paper inside when we packed it. As the suitcase lay gaping on the bed, I saw that a thin blue “trap door” had flapped open. The papers must have been stashed inside this false bottom.

  I picked up a few of the loose pages off the floor and skimmed them. The format of dialogue and scene descriptions was a dead giveaway; it was a screenplay. But for what? I gathered all the scattered papers and clumsily put them into the right order according to the page numbers. When I found the first page, I’d hoped it would have a title, a writer’s name, anything to give me a clue as to what it was, but there was nothing. The type itself was uneven; the letters “t” and “s” were slightly higher than the others. It had been years since I’d seen a script that was typed on an actual typewriter. It had yellowed slightly over time, but otherwise there were no tears or folds or stains; it was pristine. I felt as though I’d unearthed an ancient artifact. There were only fifty typed pages in total, about half a movie script. I read the first scene.

  EXT. HOLLYWOOD SIGN—DAY

  A dark-haired man, ROD SLATER, is sitting in a grey sedan. He’s smoking a cigarette and waiting for something to happen. Then it does.

  POLICE SIRENS are coming up the hillside towards him. Rod steps out of the car.

  SIRENS getting closer. Rod stamps out his cigarette.

  TWO POLICE CARS pull up in a flurry of dust.

  A UNIFORMED COP and a DETECTIVE in plain clothes exit one of the cars.

  ROD

  You took your time getting here.

  DETECTIVE

  Just like you to be in a hurry. Who is it this time? Another blonde?

  ROD

  You’re a real sentimentalist, aren’t you?

  The two men walk down the steep incline of the mountain, the loose earth slipping beneath their feet so that they have to look down as they move, lest they get swept away.

  DETECTIVE

  (shrugging)

  You never were one for blondes, unlike me. I’d take a blonde a minute if I could keep up. You still wasting time with that redhead?

  ROD

  (coolly detached)

  Red makes all the difference.

  I smiled at the wisecracks. The tone was clear. Whatever the title, it was a film noir. But the comment about the blonde made my blood boil. Dean was like that detective, a blonde a minute, or at least Amber for now. I’d rather be anything but a blonde. Maybe red did make the difference. Marjorie seemed to think a change of colour would do the trick. Just exactly what the trick was, I couldn’t say.

&n
bsp; I put the script down and checked the suitcase to see if the rest of it was tucked inside. There weren’t any more pages, but there was an old photograph stuck face down to the false bottom. I gently pried it off. And when I turned it over I gasped. It was a full-length black and white photo of Alice, one I’d never seen before. From the clapboard at her feet, it was obvious that it was from a screen test. Probably for He Gave No Answer but I wasn’t sure. The dress she was wearing looked familiar, but it wasn’t one she wore in the film. It could be from a screen test for the untitled script I’d just found. It seemed strange to think that even though the photograph was black and white I knew the dress was bright green. And I knew that because it was the bottle-green dress I’d first tried on in Marjorie’s closet. I quickly fumbled around in the pile of dresses and found it. Sure enough, it was the exact dress.

  I continued to study the photograph like a director lining up a shot. Alicia Steele looked great in the photo—sultry and sexy—and her hair was definitely not blonde. It might have been red.

  I squinted to make out the writing on the clapboard at Alice’s feet. There was a title written in chalk but it was barely legible. The date of the photo was easier to make out, December 7, 1952. I stared hard at the date. There was something about it … Then I remembered. My grandmother died on December 10, 1952. The photo was taken three days before the end of her life. I double checked the date on my watch. Today was December 1. I couldn’t help thinking that if it were still 1952, my grandmother would be alive.

  I didn’t even know she was still trying to act then; Marjorie always told me Alice quit trying after she was born. But this proved she hadn’t given up her dream after all; maybe she would have gotten the part had she lived. I wanted to imagine she was close to being happy at the end, before her life got snuffed out. Though I knew Alice felt as alone as I did when that picture was taken.

  I walked over to a small oval mirror that hung on the wall above the dresser. My mousy hair rested on my shoulders, its normal lifeless self. That wouldn’t do any longer. I resented my mother’s opinion but not my grandmother’s. The photo was telling, and it seemed to be telling me what to do.

  I went into the living room, where Trinity was watching a reality show. She quickly switched the channel when she heard me, but it was too late. She was caught.

  “I just flipped by it,” she said shamefully.

  “Where would any of us be without our guilty pleasures?” I waved her off and wondered where those words had come from. They didn’t quite sound like me. Then again, what happened next wasn’t exactly standard-issue Clara Bishop either.

  “You ever dye your hair?” I asked.

  She twirled one of her pigtails in her fingers. “Do you think this caramel colour is natural?” She winked. “Why?”

  “I feel like a change,” I announced.

  It was as if Trinity had conspired with Marjorie because as soon as I’d said it, she clapped her hands together and leapt off the sofa. “Most women get a new look when they’ve been dumped.”

  “Is that so?”

  I followed her into the bathroom, where she opened up the vanity cupboards beneath the sink. I saw at once that asking if she dyed her hair was a dumb question, for there were loads of boxes of drugstore hair dye.

  “What colour are you thinking? Ash? Chocolate? Black?” she rattled them off, placing each box on the vanity for my inspection. But there was only one choice for me.

  “Red.”

  She stopped her search and looked up, examining me. I must have passed because she reached into the very back of the cupboard and blew the dust off a box. “I bought this a year ago for an audition but didn’t think I could pull it off. Redheads need a lot of attitude.” She said it like a warning.

  I grabbed the box. The colour was called “Vivacious Red,” which made me snicker; “vivacious” was the last word anyone would ever use to describe me.

  “You’re not trying to please Frederick Marshall, are you?” she asked pointedly.

  That was the last thing on my mind. “Don’t be ridiculous. What I’m doing has nothing to do with him.”

  She shrugged.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Trinity nodded solemnly, as though colouring my hair was akin to a baptism.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An hour later the damage was done. But colour wasn’t enough for Trinity. She had to blow-dry and set my hair too. Then she began to spray it like she was trying to kill it. “That stuff smells!”

  “Just cover your eyes,” she said as the onslaught of mist continued. I did as I was told.

  “You look beautiful!” she exclaimed, proud of her work. “Now go have a look.”

  Cautiously, I went and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I wasn’t sure who the woman in the reflection was entirely. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she looked more like Alicia Steele than Clara Bishop.

  “What’s wrong?” Trinity asked, sensing that I was spooked.

  “Let me show you something.”

  I grabbed the photograph. The resemblance was unsettling, disturbing even. But why shouldn’t we look alike? She was my grandmother, after all; we shared the same gene pool.

  “Is this who I think it is?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Alicia Steele.”

  “Blimey. You’re her spitting image.”

  “It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” I said proudly. “I never thought I looked like her. Amazing what a little box of dye can do.”

  “Is her hair red? It’s hard to tell.”

  I looked at the photo once more. It had to be red.

  “Where did you get it? And what film is it for?”

  I showed her the open suitcase and the script pages. “But there’s no title page, so it’s all a mystery.”

  Trinity walked to the edge of the bed closest to the window and bent down to pick something up from under it. “I think these are more script pages,” she said and held them out to me. I practically tore them from her hands. One glance said it was far more than another page of dialogue; it was what I was searching for and then some. The title and the byline were crystal clear: The Woman Scorned: An original screenplay by Alicia Steele.

  I was speechless. My grandmother had written the screenplay. Then I looked at the other page Trinity had uncovered. It was lined foolscap with handwriting on it. I studied the shape of the letters, the flowing penmanship. I’d never seen Alice’s handwriting before; it was lovely and uniform like calligraphy and far from my chicken scratch. It appeared to be notes on how the story ended, and each line was a scene intent to build suspense towards the climax.

  Clara vows to get even for what her husband and his mistress did to her.

  Clara enlists Rod to kill her husband.

  They get close, up on High Tower Court, but Rod changes his mind—can’t do it.

  The hoodlum, Edgar, will have to do. Clara cuts a deal with him—he wants her all to himself.

  Then it all goes wrong. She is double-crossed.

  Clara has lost everything … she gets into her car and drives into the hills to end things once and for all. She can no longer control what happens in her life, but she can control her death …

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Trinity said, alarmed.

  “Not seen. But I may have just received a message from one.” I handed her the pages.

  “Oh my God,” she said after reading them.

  “I know. Not only did my grandmother write this, her main character is named Clara.”

  That was plenty to shake anyone, but it was the last plot point of the outline that shook me hardest—she can control her death. Alice never got to write those scenes because she was dead before she could finish it. Was the note in my hand the secret to her death? That instead of an accident my grandmother had controlled her death by killing herself. My grandmother, grief-stricken over her failed marriage and failed career, must have become so embroiled in writing the script that reality and
story got intertwined. That must be what caused her to have the accident; she was half out of her mind. Otherwise, she would never have killed herself and left Marjorie behind. And Marjorie had always insisted that Alice had died from a broken heart. She must have known more than she let on.

  “Have you read it yet? What happens?”

  “I only read the first scene, and Clara wasn’t in that. Though Alice did write a line about redheads making all the difference,” I admitted.

  “Is that why you dyed your hair red?” she asked tentatively.

  I shook my head and felt the alien curls land on my face. “I don’t know, maybe, probably. What’s going on, Trinity?” I began to panic.

  “There, there,” she soothed me like a baby. “It’s perfectly reasonable to want to change your hair at a time like this, as I said before. And you read that bit about redheads and saw the photo of Alicia and it inspired you.”

  “Fine, but what about the name Clara?”

  “Ask your mum. She probably read it years ago and named you after it as an homage to Alice,” she said. Her explanation made complete sense. And perhaps Marjorie simply forgot about the script, which irked me because all these years it would have been nice to know I wasn’t the only aspiring screenwriter in the family. Then I remembered.

  “This may sound crazy, but I made a wish for Alice to help me, and then I found all of this,” I said, making a sweeping gesture across my room.

  She pursed her lips as though summoning patience. “Wishes don’t come true, darling. Not like that, anyway, not birthday cake–type wishes.”

  “Maybe,” I conceded.

  “You must get some rest. You’ve had a shock with Dean and now this script,” she said soothingly. “But you mustn’t worry that the ghost of Alicia Steele is haunting you, or that you’re becoming her creation, some sort of femme fatale Frankenstein.”

  I nodded, even though that was precisely what I was thinking.