Once Upon a Day (15 page)

Her husband, Peter, knew about this, but Janice had no intention of telling Lucy herself. For one thing, she figured it might seem a little weird, even for a movie star like Lucy, to discover that a former friend had been so interested in your life. And even if she took it the right way—as a sign Janice had never stopped caring about her—it could still lead to trouble if Lucy asked Janice what she’d thought of any of the things she’d read. Not surprisingly, Janice still had her opinions. No matter how much Lucy and Janice had changed, the one thing that hadn’t changed was how strongly Janice reacted to certain facts of Lucy’s life.

This was how the problem between the two friends had begun: Janice had reacted, and Lucy had called out of the blue and fired her from the wedding. At the time, Janice told herself she didn’t care, she’d always hated weddings anyway. She also told herself she would ignore the big day completely, but the morning after the wedding, she found herself irresistibly drawn to the papers and she sat down and read it all, from full articles to brief mentions to everything in between.

It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that it had gone well, from the point of view of the reporters, true, but Lucy and Charles certainly looked happy in the pictures. Too bad nearly every article focused on him. Janice nearly gagged when she flipped to the entertainment section of one Santa Monica newspaper:

“An Old-fashioned Wedding for an Old-fashioned Man: Director Charles Keenan Weds in Front of Hundreds at Home in Beverly Hills.”

Where was Lucy Dobbins in this? The third sentence. The third sentence of her own wedding! And another thing. The eighth sentence down, in a quote from the great man himself: “my sweet bride.” Why did he have to call Lucy “sweet” every damn chance he had? Wasn’t he a writer? Couldn’t he come up with “dear” or “darling” or “honey” or something, anything, else?

In the only close-up of Lucy, she did look a little lonely. She had no maid of honor or any bridesmaids at all. She had nobody to give her away either (a stupid tradition, Janice thought, but still). He had his mother and the people from the studio and all the women he’d dated, most of whom were at the wedding, according to Sunday’s gossip column. And who did Lucy have? No one.

And whose fault was that? Janice thought. Her own. Why the hell had she said that about Charles’s eye? But she had no intention of apologizing. Lucy was off honeymooning on some exotic island, while she was sitting alone in an ugly coffee shop on Wilshire, with her fingers turned so black from newsprint there were smudges on the brick-hard bagel she hadn’t been able to finish.

Deep down, Janice felt sure that eventually Lucy would apologize to her. After all, which was worse: making a dumb comment about his weird big eye (which even Lucy herself had joked about once or twice) or dumping your closest friend? How could Lucy live with herself after not even sending a small note when they sent some flunky to pick up Lucy’s things and give Janice a check for Lucy’s half of the rent until the Venice lease expired? Where was the female loyalty here?

When Lucy returned from her honeymoon, she did call. Janice was right, though the call didn’t work out the way Janice hoped. If only Lucy hadn’t handed the phone over so quickly to Charles. Janice was both happy and incredibly relieved to hear Lucy’s voice, but the next thing she knew, Lucy said, “Hey, Charles has an idea. He wants to introduce you to a friend of his who’s starting a production company,” and then she was gone. If only Charles hadn’t made her so angry with his Great Man routine. Like she would be oh so
grateful to have a job working for his producer friend. “Assistant,” Keenan called it, but Janice knew that meant glorified secretary. And even if it didn’t, what made him think she wanted to be in production? She’d gone to a lot more auditions than Lucy ever had. She’d even taken acting classes for months. The fact that she’d never even had a speaking part and Lucy was about to become a star was just another sign of what she’d always thought: that the world was profoundly unfair.

By the time Lucy got back on the phone, Janice felt so humiliated that she didn’t want to talk anymore. When Lucy asked if she wanted to get together, Janice said she’d have to check her work schedule. “Should I call you?” Lucy said, and Janice said no, she’d do the calling. Lucy was moving into her new house, and she gave Janice the number, but somehow Janice managed to misplace it. Later, she couldn’t remember if she’d even written it down. It didn’t matter since she probably wouldn’t have called Lucy anyway. She sensed that this was some kind of mercy meeting, and the last thing she wanted was Lucy’s pity. She also didn’t want any of the furniture Charles and Lucy were giving away, stuff from his Beverly Hills house that wouldn’t fit with the decor of their new place. When Lucy called about that a few weeks later, Janice laughed harshly and reminded Lucy that an eighteen-foot couch wouldn’t fit with her decor either, since it wouldn’t even fit through the front door. Lucy said the couch was only one of the things they didn’t need, but before she could name the rest, Janice said she had to go.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” Lucy said quickly. “I was really just trying to help.”

“What makes you think I need your help?” Janice sputtered. “Because you’re rich? Or is it that you’re married and I don’t even have a boyfriend?”

“No,” Lucy said softly. “It’s not like that.” She waited a moment. “I really miss you. It’s kind of hard being pregnant and—”

“You know you can come over here any time.” Janice’s voice was curt, but she was looking at the wedding present, still wrapped and
sitting on her kitchen table. It was an enormous vase, intricately cut glass, the kind that splayed light on the walls if you placed it in the sun. Janice had planned on giving it to Lucy before the wedding; she wanted to be alone with Lucy when she opened it because it had a special significance. Whenever the two women had gone shopping together, Lucy had invariably pointed at something like the vase, large and heavy and beautiful, and said she wished she were the kind of person who could own that. Janice would ask her what she meant, and Lucy would mumble something vague about moving too much. Janice bought the vase because she thought she finally got it. Even if she didn’t understand anything else about this marriage, she knew it had to be important to Lucy that her days of living on the street were over. She’d have a settled life now, a real house of her own.

“How about if we have lunch tomorrow?” Lucy said, ignoring Janice’s comment about coming to their place in Venice. “There’s a great new Japanese restaurant in Brentwood. I think you’d—”

“So he still won’t let you come over here,” Janice snapped. “That’s just great. Well, give me a call if you ever decide you’re tired of being told what to do. Okay? Now I really do have to go. I have to get to work.”

Before Lucy could say anything else, Janice hung up. And a few weeks later, she shipped the vase to her mom in Wisconsin. When she moved out of the Venice house at the end of the month, she wasn’t worried that Lucy didn’t have her new number. She knew she’d blown her chance; Lucy wouldn’t call anymore. And really, maybe it was inevitable since their lives were going in completely different directions, especially now that Lucy’s movie had been released.

The film came out on the last Wednesday in February. Janice thought it was so ironic. She’d just walked out of what she’d decided would be her last audition—since it was obvious she didn’t get the part; she was blonde and tall but not the big-boob beach type the TV pilot casting director wanted—when she picked up the newspaper and saw the first article about
The Brave Horseman of El Dorado.

Over the next few weeks, Janice read everything about the movie. Most of the articles still focused on Charles, but it wasn’t as irritating as in the wedding pieces. He was the director and writer, after all. He was the big ego, the auteur, the whatever the hell they called it.

Nearly all the reviews were positive. What surprised Janice was how happy she was for her friend—most of the time. Even if the world was unfair, which it obviously was, Lucy deserved this luck as much as anyone.

Of course some of the headlines were easier to take than others.

“Charles Keenan’s Latest a Luminous Tale of the ‘New’ Old West,” “Horseman Delivers as Both Adventure and Spiritual Journey,” “Keenan’s Joan: Bold Portrait of the Hero as Heroine.”

Wait a minute here. Keenan’s Joan? Excuse me, but wasn’t that Lucy’s Joan who everyone saw up on the screen saving the poor and bringing justice and slowly walking the gallows to a death that made half the audience break down in audible sobs?

Naturally, Janice had seen the film several times. Actually, her first date with Peter was to
The Brave Horseman.
She liked him immediately when he said he’d never seen a Charles Keenan picture. “Didn’t he make
Star Wars
?”

Over drinks at the marina, she told Peter that Lucy had been her roommate. She also told him Lucy was the only good friend she’d ever broken off contact with, though she couldn’t help emphasizing how they met, because she wanted him to know that she’d helped Lucy, that a lot of their relationship was based on Lucy needing help since she was young, poor, new to L.A. She wanted to make sure Peter knew there was nothing pathetic about her own position in this failed friendship. Unfortunately that meant she couldn’t tell him how bad she felt, a few months later, when she had to rely on a newspaper article to find out that her former friend had become a mother.

James Joseph Keenan was born on July 9, 1978, at 11:27 p.m. at an undisclosed Los Angeles–area hospital. He weighed eight pounds,
eleven ounces and was twenty-three inches long. In perfect health, and a beautiful baby, the reports said, though there were no pictures, and never would be if Charles had anything to say about it. “I don’t want my son to grow up in the glare of Hollywood,” he said, in an interview about four months after the baby was born. “We’re a normal family who happens to make movies. Lucy and I spend most of our time together, taking care of our little boy. His grandmother helps, so Lucy and I can have some time to ourselves. It’s all very ordinary and quite boring, I’m sure, to an outsider.”

There were no pictures of Lucy, either, in any of these baby stories. Janice wondered if she was still rail thin, and suspected she was. Now that Janice had started her social work classes, she was learning more about the kind of poverty Lucy had grown up with. Lucy had always said she couldn’t gain weight, but Janice had never wondered if this had anything to do with the fact that Lucy had almost starved when she was a kid. A lot of things hadn’t occurred to Janice then: like how attractive it must have been to her friend that Keenan wanted to protect her. Like why Lucy went along with him about having kids so soon, even though she was way too young to be a mother. Lucy’s own mother was dead and she’d never even known her father. Charles’s weird obsession with having a family probably seemed like a relief to Lucy, after all those years of having no family at all.

Janice thought about sending a baby gift, but she couldn’t imagine what Lucy didn’t already have. One of the articles had talked about (but not shown) the elaborate furnishings in the nursery
wing
of the house. “When you have a wing,” Janice told Peter, “a rattle or blanket just won’t cut it.”

Peter loved her sarcastic sense of humor. She loved the way he laughed: a big hearty sound that filled her apartment and made her feel like the whole place was smiling with them.

The closer the two of them became, the more she trusted him with everything about herself, including her strange continuing interest in Lucy. She thought it was really sweet when he came to
the door one evening holding a stack of papers announcing what she already knew:
The Brave Horseman
had been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture, and, yes, Best Actress.

It was the first of Keenan’s movies to get any nominations, and it helped make a box office smash out of what had already been called a surprise hit. Now, Janice thought, surely she would see her friend—ex-friend—at the awards show. Walking down the red carpet outside, arm and arm with ole Charlie.

How old was he now anyway? Her own boyfriend Peter was her age, twenty-six. Lucy was only twenty-one. But Charles had to be what, thirty-seven, thirty-eight? That old fart, thought Janice.

Her attitude about Sir Charles was apparently never going to change. Especially since she didn’t see her friend at the awards show, and she figured it had to be his doing. At least he wasn’t there either. She didn’t have to see his big eye leering at some model while poor Lucy sat at home with a squalling kid.

Why didn’t they go to the Academy Awards though? Did this mean there was trouble in paradise? No, Janice finally discovered, according to the only interviewer that got through to a “representative for the couple”:

“Charles and Lucy are very grateful to the Academy for recognizing
The Brave Horseman of El Dorado.
They regret that they were unable to attend due to an illness of their son.” (Oh shit, thought Janice, the poor little guy. But no.) “Thankfully, the baby has recovered completely now. The couple sends a hearty congratulation to all the award winners and their families.”

Maybe they didn’t expect to win anything themselves. Certainly the oddsmakers hadn’t expected them to win or even be nominated.

“
Brave Horseman
Takes Oscar for Best Director: Longtime Producer and Friend Walter Urig Accepts Award for Keenan.”

The only award the movie received was the big prize for him. Figures, thought Janice, although the truth was she would have been shocked if Charles had lost. Like Peter said, it really was a brilliant
movie: probably too odd for best picture, but a shoo-in for director. Lucy did a wonderful job, but Charles had created the entire world. Plus, according to Peter, it was a great example of a truly feminist Western. “He’s no feminist,” Janice snapped, but when Peter asked what made her so sure, she really didn’t have a good answer. Even her insistence that he wouldn’t let Lucy work wasn’t something she could prove.