My Life in Black and White (3 page)

I
spent the morning with my heart hanging by a thread and tried to recall how I’d dealt with being dumped in the past. The last man to kick me to the curb was a guy named Ralph. It was my sophomore year at college, and he was a visual art major who felt that my screenwriting program was a joke and that filmmaking was a commodity, unlike his performance art videos, and that made us incompatible. Ralph seemed a lifetime ago and he was ridiculous. I remember crying once, mostly because I thought I had to, and only once. This was different. This felt like drowning in icy water, trapped beneath the surface as Dean walked away leaving me to die.

In novels and films a broken heart always seems glamorous: the woman takes to her bed for days as friends and family gather around and bring her food, which she ignores. Unable to sleep at night, she walks along hallways or dimly lit streets or damp fields bathed in fog and weeps softly in a trance. I tried to live up to the image that first morning, treading the plank wood floors, stepping out onto the balcony like a forsaken Juliet. But in Los Angeles, there was no dim street lighting or fog to disappear into. Here the sun was inescapable, beaming shards of brightness into every shadow and crevice, including the ones on a forlorn face, illuminating eyes red and swollen. Los Angeles may be a city built on creating scenes of great
romantic tragedy, but it was all make-believe. Dreams came here to die, discarded like used wrapping from a fast-food joint. Surrounded by so many broken dreams, sympathy could be as tough to find as a snowdrift. My only hope was that the desert heat would bake my heart until it was so hard it could never break again.

I collapsed on the sofa and thought about the half-empty bottle of vodka in the freezer. It was only nine thirty, but wasn’t getting drunk in the morning one of life’s great remedies? Before the vodka could touch my lips my cell phone rang, and I answered because it was Sylvia, she of the high-heel mantra, my closest friend in LA and a staff photographer with
Hollywood Hush
.

“How are you on this fine morning?” she asked breezily.

“Dean left me,” I said and burst into tears.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you okay? Of course you’re not.”

By the time Sylvia arrived, I had managed to get dressed. I left the vodka out on the counter for effect.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“Sorry. But you’re wearing two different socks, and your T-shirt is ten times too big and has a giant stain on it.”

I looked down at my feet, a red one and a grey one, and shrugged. The T-shirt was Dean’s, one of the few he left. It still smelled like him.

“You smell like stale beer,” she added. I sniffed the T-shirt: Dean and beer. I grabbed the vodka and flopped on the sofa.

“Are you drunk?”

“Not yet.”

She flopped down beside me. “What happened exactly?”

I told her exactly, and when I was done, I took a swig of the vodka straight out of the bottle and began to cough.

“Easy there, Clara. You’re not a big drinker at the best of times.”

“This is the worst of times,” I said and waited for her to agree.

Sylvia was silent, which annoyed me.

“What does Marjorie say?” Sylvia asked. Marjorie is my mother, and she was a minor celebrity among my friends. Marjorie insisted everyone, including her only child, use her Christian name. Marjorie was excellent at giving advice, and many times over the years my friends would drive to her house on Camrose Drive in the Hollywood Hills for one of her famous chicken-pot-pie chats. Sort of like Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Depression, only hers included wine and dessert along with the wisdom. When it came to me, however, my mother’s advice burned like scalding-hot water.

“I haven’t told her yet.” My confession was met with widened eyes and a slack jaw.

“Why not? She lives for this type of drama!” Sylvia pointed out. “She was awesome when I ended that threesome last Fourth of July. She never judges.”

“She doesn’t judge you,” I explained. “You’re not her daughter. Wait until she hears that Dean left me for a waitress!”

“Are you sure she’s just a waitress?” Sylvia asked. “She could be a med student.”

I shot her a death-ray glare and she swallowed.

“He said she was a waitress, and that probably means she’s an actress,” I said, and then a horrible yet inevitable realization sank in. “In which case Marjorie wouldn’t blame him.”

“That’s not true!”

“You know how she feels about my career,” I argued. To Marjorie it would make sense that a producer/director like Dean would want to be with a starlet and not some hack reporter. I could hear her now: “If your screenwriting had taken off, then that would be different. You’d be in show business like he is, not merely writing about it …”

“She’d never say such a thing,” Sylvia said as though reading my mind. “She loves you.”

I shrugged. Sure my mother loved me, in her way. I supposed Dean had too, in his way. When was I going to be loved in my way?

“We were happy. I don’t get it,” I said.

Sylvia reverted back to silence. I knew she was hesitating.

“Say it, Sylvia,” I coaxed warily.

She sniffed as if what she had to say reeked like rotting fish. Then with a toss of her hair she announced, “You and Dean should never have married. You were his favourite booty call because he knew you’d always say yes. But he was never husband material. You loved him far more than he ever loved you. Sorry, but I must be honest.”

“He’s just not that into me?” I quoted the title of that inane self-help book. “He did love me. We were great together, all the movie marathons we watched, shared jokes, shared dreams.” As I listed the things that made Dean and me a perfect match she shook her head.

“You should have kept it at friends with benefits.”

“Why are you being so blunt?” I snapped. “We had a lot of great times together once we were married. After I lost the baby he was wonderful to me, and tender and caring.”

“He did take care of you, I’ll give him that. Least he could do. But before you got pregnant and married him, he strung you along for years. From what you’ve told me, he was doing it ever since you met him in film school.”

I thought back to film school. I was going to be an Oscar-winning screenwriter and he was going to be an Oscar-worthy auteur. I’d harboured my crush in silence during the first two years of university, until fate—and a student film production—threw us together.

“I’m Clara Bishop.” I remembered trying to sound like a seasoned pro, which was ridiculous since we were barely out of our teens and had never worked on a real film. I knew my hand was shaking when he shook it, and worse, my palms were sweaty and he noticed.

“You must get your computer keyboard wet with hands like that,”
he said, then beamed his trademark smile on me. I remember feeling faint, part swooning, part humiliation.

“I’m hot,” I explained stupidly and felt my face flush at what the words implied.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said and winked at me.

I wasn’t “hot.” If anything, I was what can best be described as “handsome.” I looked like my father, complete with mousy brown hair and strong jaw. My best features are my legs, apparently, and my green eyes. I also had the good fortune to inherit the maternal side of the family’s bee stung pout.

Sylvia kept talking. “You can talk a good game and write an even better one when you’re working on a story. There’s a reason
Hollywood Hush
loves you so much. You’re a smart and funny girl, Clara. But around Dean, you become this worshipping, treacly mess. You’re his biggest fan, but you aren’t his partner.”

I slugged the vodka again. The stinging in my throat kept me from crying. “I am his biggest fan,” I said flatly. “But you’re wrong. I am also his partner. We will get back together. This Amber girl is a fling.”

She nodded. From her expression, it appeared she knew she’d said enough.

“I just want him back,” I said miserably.

“Do you want me to go alone?” she asked. I tilted my head like a dog trying to decipher a command.

“Go where?”

“It’s Saturday. We have the kids.”

My eyes widened, which hurt because they were swollen. We volunteered at a weekend filmmaking program for underprivileged children. It was fun seeing what the kids came up with, and I loved spending time with them. The students varied in age from seven to twelve, before puberty turned them into cynical teenagers who knew everything.

“Well? The kids will be hurt. Today they screen their finished videos.” She needn’t have bothered with the guilt trip. I would never hurt a child. And being the reliable and predictable Clara Bishop, I wasn’t going to be a no-show.

T
he next three hours were spent surrounded by children’s laughter. It was a tonic. They adored us because we showed them movies their parents hadn’t even heard of. It was like we were part of a secret society. Plus they got to show off by playing parts in one another’s short films. The parents adored us because their children went home exhausted but happy. Sylvia and I had been doing this for three years now and had even begun to raise money to expand the program to other districts in Los Angeles.

This morning we were watching final cuts of their latest assignment, which was to recreate a scene from one of the movies they’d watched in the program, and they ran the gamut from
It’s a Wonderful Life
and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
to
The Wizard of Oz
and included loads of pets and startled siblings. Then it was my favourite student’s turn—yes, I had a teacher’s pet—a ten-year-old girl named Pilar who had been raised on the beauty pageant circuit. Sylvia shoved the disc into the DVD player and the video began to play on the large flat-screen television. Not surprisingly, given her skills on the pageant stage, Pilar had chosen to star in as well as direct her own movie. Her co-star was Estefan, a twelve-year-old boy with a raffish quality to him. Unlike the others, the video was in black and white, and not some child-friendly fare either. To my astonishment, it was a scene from
The Postman Always
Rings Twice
where Frank and Cora plot to kill her husband. Pilar wore a platinum-blonde wig and a very pretty white dress, and Estefan was in a beat-up leather jacket. The musical score was eerie and dramatic but it wasn’t from the original. It had a decidedly Latin flair to it.

“I’m not what you think I am, Frank. I want to work and be something, that’s all. But you can’t do it without love. Do you know that, Frank? Anyway, a woman can’t,” Pilar pleaded, speaking the lines like she was twice her age. “Well, I’ve made one mistake. And I’ve got to be a hell cat, just once, to fix it. But I’m not really a hell cat, Frank.”

“They hang you for a thing like that,” Estefan said in a monotone. He didn’t have Pilar’s gift for melodrama, but since he really wanted to be a cinematographer when he grew up, it didn’t matter much.

“Not if you do it right,” Pilar’s Cora said haughtily.

That’s where it ended. Sylvia tried to contain her laughter. I elbowed her in the ribs, but in truth I was a little horrified and was worried that her parents would be descending on the centre at any moment to have us arrested.

“My God, Pilar! What on earth made you pick that scene?” I asked. She looked puzzled.

“You did,” she answered. “You said it was one of your favourite movies and now it’s one of mine. I love Lana Turner’s hair colour.”

Sylvia didn’t even try not to laugh. “She’s right, Clara.”

“I used my dad’s book and copied the dialogue from there,” she said proudly.

“Pilar, your parents aren’t going to be happy,” I said worriedly.

Pilar shook her head. “My father picked the music.”

“Your parents have seen it?” Sylvia asked.

Pilar nodded proudly. “They said it should get me a scholarship.”

“It’s better than a life of
Toddlers and Tiaras
,” I said to Sylvia as we drove back to the apartment. I couldn’t stop thinking of the dialogue
that Pilar had chosen. It could have come from my lips. I wanted to work and be something. And I agreed with Cora that a woman needed love to do it. Like Cora, I’d made a mistake. I didn’t give Dean what he needed and now I’d lost him. Only I doubted there was a hell cat inside me to fix it, and I hated that about myself.

“I wish I could be a hell cat,” I said to Sylvia. We’d parked the car and were walking to the apartment. She looked at me blankly. “Like Cora in
Postman
,” I reminded her.

She furrowed her brows. “You want to kill Dean?”

“That’s not what I mean. What you said earlier, about me being a treacly mess.”

She stopped at my door and waited for me to fumble about for the key. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“But you’re right. My whole life comes down to my inability to fight for anything or anyone. I just let the world have their go at me and lie down at the end of it. I’m a coward, Sylvia. And the key to happiness is fearlessness. No wonder Dean left me.”

“You really are a writer, aren’t you? Save some of that dialogue for your next script.”

Inside the apartment I tossed the keys and made for the vodka. “If only there was a next script!” I sat down on the sofa exactly as I’d done hours before and took a giant gulp of the stuff. “I haven’t written a line of dialogue in years.”

“Well, now that you’re single you have time,” Sylvia said, then seeing the hurt expression on my face, quickly added, “I was teasing. But maybe you should write about Dean.”

I shook my head. “Not until I know how it ends. And trust me, I’m going to make sure it’s an old-fashioned rom-com with a happy ending.”

“Considering your family’s past maybe you should stick to film noir.”

It was true; I came from a family with close connections to the shadowy world of noir. More of a visual style than an actual genre, the stark black and white lighting, fog, shadows, the snappy dialogue and the costumes were spellbinding. The stories were dark, paranoid almost, always containing a crime or a double-cross or both, and the leading men were detectives mostly but sometimes a cop or more routine things like an insurance agent. They always had a bad girl in them too: the femme fatale. She was tough-talking and morally ambiguous, but you always got the feeling that she was hiding or running from past hurt. Amazingly, even the smartest guy fell for her and would do anything to keep her: rob banks, steal jewels, even murder. She was irresistible.

My mother and I were addicted to these films and spent hours watching and rewatching the classics and the obscure. But of particular fascination for us was the 1950 film noir
He Gave No Answer
. It was special because it was the only movie that my grandmother, Alice Dawson, stage name Alicia Steele, was in. She played the other female film noir archetype: the good woman role, the nice girl that the brooding hero knows would make him happy only he can’t tear himself away from the femme fatale and ends up paying for it big time. It was supposed to be Alice’s/Alicia’s star-making turn, but it was her last because she got pregnant with my mother and ended up working full-time as a seamstress in the wardrobe department and never walked in front of a film camera again. She died when my mother was five years old. I think because of that my mother was obsessed with Alice. I think it was the sole reason she tried to become an actress, at least in the beginning.

Yet despite wanting to surpass Alice’s one-film-wonder legacy, my mother’s acting career was even less successful. She had to make due with walk-on parts and extra work before she met my dad and then decided she would raise a great actress rather than become one. Such is the fate of a single child like me.

As a little girl, I felt all her hopes and dreams of becoming a star foisted on me. She tried in vain to get me into ladylike dresses and curl my hair, but it was no use. An inner bombshell wasn’t struggling to come out. When I emerged from my adolescent cocoon, I was the same tomboy with dull hair and square features, only taller and with firmer opinions. But the lack of interest in my appearance wasn’t the main reason I was a disappointment to my mother. I never wanted to be an actress. I skipped the acting classes she signed me up for as a teenager. I didn’t like being in front of a camera. I didn’t wear makeup. This was a bone of contention between us. My saving grace was that I chose to become a screenwriter. At least I was in the “family business.” She still asks me how my writing is going. I refuse to answer because it isn’t going anywhere.

“Like I said, I’m no hell cat. I doubt I can write a noir script any more than I could write a rom-com. I should stick to what I’m good at: penning detailed accounts of what Justin Bieber had for breakfast.”

She grunted. “So you’re not a hell cat. What woman is these days? Is this Amber girl one?”

“Don’t give her that much credit!” I snapped.

“Just asking. Who is she, then?”

I shrugged and drank more vodka. Sylvia got busy on her iPad and it didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for. She held the tablet up for me to see. It was a Facebook page belonging to a girl who was young and blonde and gorgeous.

“Clara Bishop meet Amber Ward,” Sylvia said darkly.

I cringed. “Why did you have to show me that?”

“You need to know who the enemy is,” she said and scanned Amber’s photo album. “Even if she’s not a hell cat. Christ, she’s only twenty-one!”

“Are you serious?” I asked. It made my mood sink further.

“Typical twenty-one-year-old too, loads of drunken and practically naked shots of herself. Looks like she’s in Vegas.”

“Vegas?” I asked. “Dean was in Vegas last week. He said he went with Jerome.”

“Yup, he did,” Sylvia said, trying not to sound alarmist. “There’s a shot of Jerome here with Dean … and Amber.”

“What?” I howled and grabbed the iPad. Sure enough, there was my husband with his arms around a scantily clad Amber, his friend and our best man, Jerome, on the other side. Then I couldn’t stop. I kept looking at photo after photo of this blonde girl, smiling, cavorting and partying, with my husband and a slew of others. Mostly there were images of her doing shots with her friends, other nubile girls with bare midriffs and big hair. And yet there was something about her …

“She looks familiar,” I said.

“Do you know her?” Sylvia asked incredulously.

“No, but I’ve definitely seen her,” I said, scowling in concentration, trying to remember. I continued to flip through her Facebook photos and stopped at one of Amber in a tight little black dress with a tray of drinks in her hands. Then it hit me.

“Oh my God,” I drew out the words slowly. “I have seen her.”

“Where?”

“She was there last night.”

“What? How?” Sylvia asked, horrified.

Like in a time machine, I was back at the wrap party, walking through the crowd, when that nasty little appetizer came from nowhere and hit me. “She was a waitress from the catering company.”

“Holy shit!” Sylvia gasped.

“She was the one who dumped that beet thing on me. No wonder she looked so smug.” I placed my fingers on the iPad and expanded the photo of Amber so that her face filled the screen. There was no doubt. “She didn’t even apologize.”

“I can’t believe it. Did Dean know she was there?” Sylvia asked. “He must have,” I admitted. “No wonder he didn’t want me to come to the party.”

“That motherfucker!” she snapped.

I was reeling from the thought of Dean’s mistress being there, watching me and throwing food at me, all the while I didn’t know who she was. He had given her the advantage. Then I remembered Kiki.

“Kiki knows something,” I said.

“Kiki? The girl who won the show?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes. I’m going to send her a text.” I relayed to Sylvia what Kiki had told me at the party. Within minutes my iPhone bleeped. It was Kiki willing to spill it to me over a cocktail.

“Where you meeting her?” Sylvia asked as I scrambled to my feet.

“Where dreams come true,” I said flatly. “Hollywood.”