Picture Perfect Page 27

  I smiled at him. "Oh?" I asked. "And what exactly am I like?"

  Herb grinned, showing the gold fillings in his back teeth. "You? You're good for my Alex."

  The lights blinked, and the guests began to shuffle into the theater. Critics flipped open their memo pads and uncapped their pens. Herb glanced around anxiously, waiting for Alex to claim me before he went inside.

  "Go ahead," I urged him. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

  "Ach," Herb said. "I already know the story. What's a minute or two at the beginning?" He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

  My eyes scanned the stream of people, wondering if Alex had forgotten me. "I don't even know what it's about," I confessed. "I was too busy to read the script this time."

  Herb raised his eyebrows. "Let's just say it's a departure for Alex. I doubt you've seen him like this." Herb started to grin. "Speak of the devil," he said.

  Alex wound my arm through his. "Sorry," he said. "Even movie stars have to take a leak every now and then." He thanked Herb for taking me under his wing, and then walked me into the darkening theater.

  I leaned toward Alex as the credits began to roll on the screen. "Herb says I won't even recognize you."

  Alex sucked in his breath, caught my hand in his. "Cassie," he said softly, "promise me you'll remember that I'm acting." He knotted his fingers with mine and squeezed, settling our hands on the armrest between us. He would not let go.

  The thing that made this film different from the others Alex had done was that here he was a villain. His other characters had had flaws of some kind, but not enough to be cast into such black relief. It took me very little time to realize whatInsufficient Grounds was about.

  Alex was playing a man who beat his wife.

  I did not realize how tightly I was gripping Alex's fingers, or that I felt so dizzy that if I had stood and run out of the theater like I wanted to, I would have collapsed. I watched the very first scene unfold in a pristine bathroom, where the counters were spotless and white and the towels were neatly folded over their racks. Alex pulled back the shower curtain to reveal the hot-and cold-water faucets, one of which was not set at a ninety-degree angle to the ceiling. Alex dragged a woman who was not me into the bathroom, forced her to see her mistake, and threw her on the tile floor.

  I was watching the story of my life.

  But on movie sets they had stunt doubles; they taught the actors to choreograph false punches. I tried to remind myself that the actress had not been hurt at all.

  Then I turned toward Alex, who was looking at me and not at the film. His eyes reflected back the characters that were going through our motions on the screen.Promise me you'll remember that I'm acting . "Why?" I asked, but Alex only bent his head toward mine and whispered he was sorry.

  AFTER THE MOVIE WAS PUBLICLY RELEASED AND ALEX WAS GIVEN glowing reviews for accepting a role that altered his image as a character actor, we went to the ranch in Colorado. Of Alex's three residences, it was my favorite. Sprawled across three hundred acres of lush fields, it was bordered by the blue swells of the Rockies. It was cut into ribbons by a clear, winding stream so cold that it numbed your ankles. I knew the facts about the elevation in Colorado, but as soon as I stepped through the gates of the ranch, I found it much easier to breathe.

  Even the stables and the main house were built along different lines from the L.A. residences. They were Spanish style, stucco and red tile roofs, geraniums tumbling over the edges of hand-fashioned window boxes. The skeleton staff that took care of the horses and the ranch when Alex was in California seemed to hide in the folds of the hills when we came to stay, making me feel that only Alex and I had access to this little sliver of heaven.

  The first few times we'd been to the ranch, Alex had taught me how to ride. It was something he'd learned years ago forDesperado . I was good at it, and I liked it.

  Alex had bought me a mare named Annie, who was ten years old but acted like a skittish filly. Two out of three times when I mounted her, she'd try to buck me off. Still, she was nothing compared to the horses Alex preferred. There seemed to be a new one every time, just green-broke, and half the thrill for Alex was keeping himself in the saddle.

  "Race you," I said, watching Alex pull back on the reins to keep Kongo stepping lightly. I danced Annie around in a tight circle. "Or are you afraid you aren't going to be able to control him?"

  I was teasing Alex; I knew that if he felt confident enough to set himself in the saddle, he'd manage to bend the horse to his will. But Kongo was a monstrous stallion, eighteen hands and black as pitch, and he showed no inclination to do anything Alex wanted. "I think you ought to give me a handicap," Alex said, grinning, and as if he understood English, Kongo turned and started trotting in the wrong direction.

  "Not on your life," I said, and I dug my heels into Annie's flanks, flying through the gate toward the valley where the stream took three hairpin turns to a little grove shaded by aspen trees, whose silver leaves tinkled on the wind like the bells of a tambourine.

  Alex made it to the grove a full four lengths ahead of me, and then broke down to a trot, circling to cool off his horse. He slid off Kongo's back and tied him to a low branch of a tree, then helped me off Annie. He lowered me slowly down the length of his body, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. "What I like about you," he murmured, smiling, "is that you're not a sore loser."

  We let the horses graze and sat at the edge of the stream, dangling our bare feet in the frigid water. I stretched back, leaning my head in Alex's lap.

  I woke up when my skull thumped against the stones at the edge of the water. Alex had vaulted onto Kongo's back. "Annie just tore loose," he said. "I'm going after her."

  I knew that Alex would be able to overtake Annie. I wondered how she had gotten free. It was possible that she'd chewed through her reins; with her temperament that wasn't out of character. But it was just as possible that I'd done a shoddy job of tying her up, and that when Alex came back, there would be hell to pay.

  By the time I saw Alex thundering toward me, I was standing very still. He stopped the horses three feet away, panting, not looking at me. Then he dismounted and knotted Annie's reins and Kongo's around the trunk of a different tree.

  He hadn't said a word during this entire prelude, and I knew that he was taking his time before he dealt with me. He turned around, but I couldn't read his expression. When he took a step closer, I instinctively backed away.

  Alex's eyes opened wider. Then he held out his hand, the way you would to a dog that is unsure of your scent. He waited until I placed my palm against his, and then he jerked me into his arms. "Jesus," he said, smoothing my hair. "You're shaking." He stroked the side of my neck. "Even if I hadn't caught her, she would have made her way back to the stables. You had nothing to worry about." But I couldn't stop shivering, and after a moment he gently pushed me away, still holding my arms. "My God," he said slowly. "You're afraid of me."

  I lifted up my chin and shook my head, but I was trembling, which ruined the effect. Alex sank to the ground and bowed his head. I sat down beside him, miserable that I had ruined what had been a perfect afternoon. I realized that it was up to me to bring us back to center, so I took a deep breath. I stood up and waded into the stream again, bending at the waist and reaching my fingers into the water. "Rumor has it," I said, "there are trout in this stream."

  Alex's head lifted, and he smiled at me gratefully, running his eyes appreciatively from my hair to my bottom to my bare feet. "Yes," he said, "I've heard that."

  "And rumor has it," I continued, "that you can catch a fish with your bare hands." As I spoke, a skinny spotted trout slipped between my palms, making me gasp and splash backward.

  Alex came to his feet, stepping into the water behind me. "Assuming you wanted to learn," he said, fitting his thighs to the backs of mine, "the first thing you'd do is stop moving around so damn much." He bent over me, so close that his lips brushed my ear. His arm
s pressed the length of mine, down into the water, where my hands rested in his. "The next thing you'd do is stay perfectly still. Don't even breathe--a trout'll run away if it eventhinks that you're here. And now you close your eyes."

  I turned in his arms. "You do?"

  "That way you can just feel the fish."

  I obediently closed my eyes, letting the cool air fill my lungs, enjoying the sensation of Alex's body cradling mine at so many different points.

  When the trout slid over the palm of my hand, a quick silver tickle, Alex's fingers tightened. He jerked back our arms and the fish slapped against my chest, thrashing in the hollow between my breasts. Together we fell backward onto the banks of the stream, laughing.

  We stared at each other, inches apart, Alex's hands still holding mine. Where his wrists pressed against me I could feel his pulse, a simple steady match to my own. We did not try to extricate ourselves from the knot made by our bodies, not even when Alex reached over to set the trout into the stream again. Together we watched it navigate a rocky shore, disappearing as quickly as a doubt.

  WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR FIGHT WAS NOT WHAT had caused it or even how Alex came after me. I just know that it happened in the big bedroom at the house, and that one of us hit the dresser during the struggle. So the image that stayed with me was not the heat of Alex's words or the sting of his palm across my shoulder; it was the moment that the jar of snow Alex had brought me in Tanzania rolled from the dresser and shattered on the smooth wooden floor.

  It was an accident that could have happened long before if a maid had been clumsy or if I had turned around too fast when getting dressed. But it hadn't. For two and a half years, the little glass jar had stood, tightly capped, between my hairbrush and Alex's, as if it were the link that held them together.

  Alex stood over me, breathing heavily, watching the water spread across the floor. I sluggishly wondered if it would leave a stain, and I found myself hoping it would, just so there would be something left.

  Instead of apologizing or gathering me to him, Alex knelt down and began to pick up the larger fragments of glass. One of them cut his thumb, and I watched with fascination as his blood swirled in the puddle of water.

  I think that was the thing that put me over the edge. "If you touch me like that again," I said softly, staring at the water, "I'll leave."

  Alex did not stop what he was doing. He picked up those pieces as if he truly thought he'd be able to put them back together. "That," he said quietly, "would kill me."

  I took my purse and a jacket and walked down the stairs, shaking my head when John asked if I needed a ride. I wandered down the streets of the neighborhood, gulping in the stale, processed air.

  When I came to St. Sebastian's--yes, our church--the first thought I had was that I could seek refuge. I could hide inside and never come out again. Maybe if I sat long enough in the cool, dark pews, tracing the shadows cast by stained glass, the world would go back to the way it had been.

  I wanted desperately to be a Catholic, or any denomination, really--but I could not honestly say I believed in anything. I had my doubts about a merciful God. I closed my eyes, and instead of praying to Jesus, I prayed to Connor. "I wish you were here," I whispered. "You don't know how much I need you."

  I sat on the pew until the unforgiving wood cut into the backs of my thighs, and by that time the only light in the little church came from the glowing white candles that sat on a table toward the rear. I stood up, dizzy, and understood that I still believed in one other thing. I believed in Alex and me. In spite of this cycle, I believed in us, together.

  I slipped out the heavy door of the church and hailed a taxi to take me home. When I touched the front door, it swung open. The parlor was pitch dark. Alex was sitting on the bottom stair, cradling his head in his hands.

  I realized two things that night: that Alex thought I'd left for good, and that no matter what I had said in the heat of the moment, it had only been an empty threat. From the very second I'd walked out that door, I'd simply been making my way back.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PILED beside me was a stack of slush screenplays. It wasn't my responsibility, but I liked reading through them. I'd close my eyes and try to imagine Alex moving through the written direction, Alex speaking the words on the page. Most screenplays I put aside after the first couple of pages, but the ones that looked more promising I passed on.

  I was in Alex's office on the Warner Brothers lot. On days when I was not teaching or not in the mood to do research, I'd curl up on the overstuffed sofa, waiting for him to finish whatever it was he was doing that day, so that we could go home together. Today Alex was in the sound studio, dubbing his latest film. It would be several hours before he came for me. Sighing, I picked up the script on the top of the pile and started to read.

  Two hours later I threw down the screenplay and raced across the main thoroughfare of the Warner Brothers lot. I had a vague idea of where the sound mixing was done, but I barged into three different rooms before I found the one where Alex was working. He was bent over an electronic board with a technician, and when he saw me he pulled the headphones from his ears.

  I ignored the tight set of his mouth at the interruption, the look that promised I'd be lectured later. "You have to come with me," I said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "I have a movie for you."

  THE VERY FIRST IMAGE IN THE STORY OF HIS LIFE WAS OF A MAN watching his father die. In a hospital room twisted with tubes and wires and beeping machines, he leaned toward the paper-thin cheek and whispered, "I love you."

  The screenplay was about a father and son who have never communicated, because that was their personal definition of what it meant to be a man. Having lost touch with his father, who has always been overbearing and critical, the son comes home when his mother is killed in a car accident. He is now a well-traveled photojournalist; his father is what he has always been, a simple, uneducated Iowa corn farmer. The son sees immediately how little he has in common with his father, how old his father has become, how difficult it is to live in the same house when the woman who served as a buffer between them is gone.

  For complicated reasons, the son begins to do a photo expose of his father versus the government, objectively portraying him as an independent farmer victimized by price ceilings and no longer able to survive on his crops. Flashbacks show the events that built up the wall between the father and son; the rest of the film follows the gradual tearing down of that wall, as the son lays down his camera and works at his father's side in the fields, beginning to understand him firsthand, not just as an observer.

  The climax of the screenplay involves a stunning scene between father and son. The son, who has repeatedly reached out to his father, has still been kept at arm's length; in fact, the only times they've seemed to connect are when they move side by side through the rows of corn. Rebuffed by his father's criticism of what he's grown up to be, he finally explodes. He yells that he's given the old man every chance to see him for what he really is; that any other father would be proud of how far his son has come; that he'd never have had to run halfway around the world to find his place if he'd been accepted in his own home. The father shakes his head and walks away. When the old man isn't standing before him, the son notices the view--a sweep of land that his family owns. And he realizes that when he was little, he'd stand there and see the rolling green of the fields only for their boundaries, only for what lay on the other side.

  But he also realizes that the reason his father hurt him as a child was because it was easier for him to let his son view him as a strict, demanding tyrant, instead of seeing him for what he really was--a farmer who'd never made anything of himself. Even being cast as a bastard was better, in his mind, than being seen as a failure.

  There is a quiet reconciliation in the film that takes place at the harvest without any words, because in the past words have only driven them apart. And then at the end of the screenplay, the son publishes the photo-essay, whi
ch he spreads over his father's hospital bed: emotional images not of a victim or a failure, but of a hero. The direction calls for a fade to white, and then comes a final scene in which the father, decades younger, lifts a smiling infant in his arms. We have come back to the beginning. "I love you," he says, and the screenplay ends.

  I knew when I read the screenplay that Alex had to do it. I also knew that I was playing with fire. To act the role of the son would mean bringing even more anger to the surface. To work through the confrontational scenes would mean facing his own rage. And Alex would leave the set and come home and ease the new, raw pain by hitting me.

  But I knew that he never meant to hurt me. And I knew that it all pointed back to the part of Alex that still believed he wasn't good enough. If Alex was forced to look at that side of himself, maybe it would be exorcised forever.

  I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO KILL ME . HE WAS STANDING OVER ME in the bathroom, kicking me again and again, his face shaking with fury. He pulled me up by my hair, and as I wondered what else he could possibly do, he threw me back against the toilet and stalked away.

  Trembling, I stood up and splashed water over my face. This time he had backhanded me across the mouth, which was surprising--bruises were hardest to hide on my face, and he didn't usually lose control enough to strike me there. I pressed a wad of toilet paper against the blood at the corner of my lips and tried to recognize the woman who looked back at me from the mirror.

  I didn't know where Alex was going and I didn't particularly care. I had been expecting this. Alex had finished readingThe Story of His Life today, and I knew he'd feel this way afterward. It was the first step he'd have to take to healing; the second step would be his commitment to making the film.

  I pulled on a nightgown and slipped between the covers, turning away from Alex's side of the bed. A while later he came soundlessly into the room and began to strip off his clothes. He got into bed, pulled me into his arms, and looked out the window at the same stars I was trying to put into patterns.