Once Upon a Day (31 page)

Lucy agreed that the only thing to do was put that day behind her, even though secretly she worried she’d never be the person she used to be. She still had headaches, and she was using her pain pills again since she’d stopped asking Charles to rub her head, knowing he’d only use it against her in the next argument about making her movie. Her right leg still went numb, though she’d denied this to both Charles and her neurologist, and now she was also feeling pain if she walked too far, especially around the shin, where it had been broken in two places. Even her back hurt sometimes, though there was no reason it should, according to the doctor. The grafts had worked so beautifully that Lucy was able to choose a backless gown to wear to the Academy Awards.

Charles was with her when she met with the dress designer, but he was adamant that there was no point in going to the Oscars. He’d never liked industry “VAP festivals,” as he called them, where VAP stood for vanity, avarice and pride. He and Lucy had gone to the awards two years ago, when
Helena
was nominated for several technical awards, and the producers asked her to be there, thinking the extra press might help with foreign distribution deals. She enjoyed the whole experience, especially the moment when Charles got Best Screenplay for
Main Street.
He hadn’t prepared a speech, but he gave a good one anyway. First he thanked the cast and the crew, the studio and Walter, her and the children—and then he talked about the recent decision by an English judge to throw out a highly publicized
obscenity case against a director for the National Theatre. The entire crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was expecting a free speech argument, but Charles talked instead about the responsibility artists have to their audiences. “The true obscenity,” he said, “is accepting the cynical view of what we’re doing. Yes, movies are a business, but movies also represent the chance to communicate with the largest number of people in the history of the world. Rather than be concerned about sexually explicit material, let us be concerned about having something to say that enriches human life.”

Parts of the speech had been replayed the next morning on the
Today
show. Lucy remembered holding Dorothea on her lap and laughing when her baby pointed at the screen and said, “Daddy!”

Maybe it was only nostalgia that made Lucy want to go so badly this year. In any case, she had no intention of backing down, and finally, on Monday morning, the day of the ceremony, Charles agreed to go with her.

It actually turned out to be a very good night for them.

They’d hired a limousine, but Charles still complained on the long ride there, especially when they hit the traffic mess around the Music Center, where it took more than an hour to crawl the last mile. Once they arrived though, he was surprisingly pleasant, and Lucy remembered how socially engaging her husband could be. He easily charmed the red carpet reporters by deflecting their questions about
Master of Dreams
with his claim that he was here tonight only as an escort for his beautiful wife, joking that he hoped they wouldn’t mar any photos of her by including him. Lucy was so grateful he was there, smoothly guiding her through the crowds of people and blinding flashes of hundreds and hundreds of cameras. It was her first public appearance since the attack, and stupidly, she hadn’t thought how it would feel to have so many curious eyes on her, to know that she was being whispered about.

Once they were inside, Charles held court at the bar with Walter and the studio bigwigs, but again he didn’t focus on his movie, but instead graciously turned the subject of conversation to the work
of whoever was talking to him, especially all the actors and crew he’d worked with over the years, who would beam with pleasure when he mentioned a project they’d done recently, impressed he’d kept up with the progress of their careers. Of course most of the people who came over had some new project to discuss, and Charles listened with interest and responded in a way that made them feel he thought the idea was worth discussing, though he didn’t add the usual “call my office tomorrow” encouragement/blow off. Lucy admired him for that. She herself ended up telling a dozen people that they could send Pam scripts, even though most of the parts were completely wrong for her. One producer thought she’d make a good sixty-two-year-old Brazilian nun.

There was one person Charles wasn’t pleasant to, but at least he didn’t make a scene when Brett Marcus came over to talk to Lucy during one of the commercial breaks. A public scene, that is. Nobody but Lucy heard him whisper, “If anything happens to my wife on your set, I’ll kill you.”

“Did he forget to call you Godfather?” Lucy quipped, as Brett walked away.

Charles laughed. Lucy couldn’t believe it. “I’ve always liked that movie,” he said, with his lips on her ear, “though perhaps it is a little violent.”

Even the awards didn’t bother him. Rather than be upset with the results he didn’t vote for, he concentrated on being glad that Bob Duvall and Horton Foote, a writer he’d always admired, had won for
Tender Mercies.
He didn’t even say anything about Gordon Willis not winning cinematography, though Lucy knew how much he respected Gordon and remembered how he’d gone on and on about the fabulous job Gordon did in
Zelig.

They were invited to the ball and several parties afterward, including a big studio bash in Bel-Air and a smaller party on Mel-rose with a young crowd of Brett’s friends. Charles said they would go wherever she wanted. She was dumbfounded, but she told him she was too tired to go anywhere but home.

Her husband was so much more like his old self that by the next morning, Lucy had come up with a theory. He needed to work again too.
Master of Dreams
should be made.

When she told him this, he surprised her again by saying he agreed. In fact, he said, he’d been thinking the same thing for weeks. The cast had been hired and the dream sets built, and if he didn’t commit to start soon, Walter would have to get another director. Charles said if they could work out their filming schedules so the children were taken care of, he would do it.

Lucy thought it was a miracle how much better things seemed after that. For four full months while Charles was working, they almost had their old lives back. Later, she realized she’d been lulled into a false sense of optimism by how perfectly lovely everything was. Dorothea didn’t have a single breathing episode. Jimmy was so much like his old self that Charles didn’t object when Lucy went to the school and had their son tested so he could start first grade in September, even though he hadn’t gone to kindergarten.

And then the loveliest thing of all happened. She found out at the end of July that she was pregnant. She felt like this really was a miracle because, though she’d never admitted it to anyone, she’d been worried ever since the attack that something fundamental had gone wrong with her and she’d never be able to have another baby.

Charles was working on audio, but when she called to tell him, he left his assistant in charge and came home to celebrate. She stopped taking her pain pills and prayed that this pregnancy would be just what they needed to keep them close through the next few months. She would be done with
The Senator’s Wife
before she started really showing. It was perfect timing, just like when she got pregnant with Dorothea at the beginning of filming
Helena.

Unfortunately, it was nothing like when she was pregnant with Dorothea because within days, she was sick as a dog. It was more like being pregnant with Jimmy, and she told Charles it must be another boy.

Knowing she was sick, he was more anxious about her working,
but he didn’t start any of the old arguments. If anything, he was nicer than before, though he did insist on driving her to and from location, but that wasn’t a problem, since he’d finished his own shoot and already had a rough cut in the can. He even coached her a little on the drive, suggesting tiny changes in her lines that Brett usually proclaimed brilliant.

On Monday, the third week of filming, Charles noticed that Lucy was rubbing her neck on the way home. She had a blinding headache, but she told him it wasn’t too bad and there was a flu going around the crew. Maybe she’d picked it up.

He seemed to understand. He rubbed her neck and the back of her head for almost an hour that night, while they watched one of his favorite old John Wayne movies.

The next morning she woke up at 10:50 in a panic. She’d set her alarm for five o’clock, the way she always did, to make it on set by six-thirty. How could she have overslept like this? Why hadn’t Charles come in to tell her? Why hadn’t Dorothea or Jimmy made any noise when they got up? They could never get up without making noise, even when she was desperate to sleep in when she had a day off.

She punched the intercom and yelled for her husband because she was honestly worried that something had happened to them. She was even more scared when she heard him running down the hall and then the loud bang of the door as he pushed it open.

He rushed into the room and over to the bed. “Are you all right?”

The frightened look on his face brought tears to her eyes. “Where’s Dorothea? Jimmy? Tell me!”

“They’re right downstairs.” He sat down and took her hand. “They’re fine, my sweet. They’re finger-painting a picture for you with Susannah.”

“What?”

“A get-well picture,” he said gently. “It seems it’s already working.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You look so much better than you did last night.”

“I can’t believe I slept through my alarm clock. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I knew you weren’t up to working today. You cried out in your sleep at least a dozen times. But don’t worry, I called Marcus and explained and he was more decent than I expected. He said they’d shoot around you until—”

Lucy wasn’t keeping up. “You called Brett?”

“Yes, but as I said, he was understanding.”

She thought for a minute. “When did you call him? What time?”

Charles cleared his throat. “This morning.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” she said, pulling her hand away. “What time?”

When he didn’t answer, she knew that he’d called at the beginning of the day: six-thirty, maybe even before. No matter how Charles felt about Brett, he would consider it part of professional ethics to let another director know as early as possible. It was far too costly to sit around and wait for actors.

“You turned my alarm off?” She was reeling with surprise.

“I did.” He stood up and closed the bedroom door, as though he expected an argument. But his voice was matter-of-fact. “I’ve told you many times that I have no intention of letting anything happen to you. Especially now, when it’s you and our baby.”

She sat quietly for a moment, trying not to feel whatever this meant. “We can talk about this later,” she said, standing up. “Right now, I have to get a shower and get to the set.”

“There’s no point,” Charles said. “I told Brett you wouldn’t be back today or tomorrow. I’m sure he’s already made the appropriate adjustments to his schedule.”

Lucy slumped back down on the bed. She knew the last part was probably true, but she also knew what a pain it must have been. Today they were supposed to film the New Year’s Eve ballroom scenes where Adele confronts Martin about his self-destructive drinking and a suspected affair. There were hundreds of extras involved, and sure, they could do coverage of the dancing in the
ballroom, but they’d still need the extras again to film the master shot for Martin and Adele.

“What did you tell him I had?” she said, when she thought about Charles saying she wouldn’t be back tomorrow either. “The flu?”

“No, I told him the truth: that you’re having a difficult pregnancy and you’re still having headaches from the brain contusion you suffered that put you in a coma.”

Lucy hadn’t even told Brett she was pregnant. It was none of his business, and she was afraid he’d worry that she’d have trouble meeting the schedule. Of course lots of actresses got pregnant. The brain contusion thing was a million times worse. It was too close to brain damage, which made her sound one step away from a drooling idiot.

She stood up and went to her closet, pulling out her largest suitcase. When he asked what she was doing, she said, “I’m going to take the children and stay in a hotel until the filming is over. I wish I didn’t have to, but you’ve left me no choice.”

He walked over next to her. She was still in her bare feet and he was so tall and, she thought, intentionally intimidating. “Lucy, be reasonable.”

“Why should I? Was it reasonable for you to turn my alarm off without even asking me? Can you imagine me ever, ever doing this to you? We could have talked about it. I might have even agreed to stay home today, if you were worried. But instead, you had to bully me into doing what you wanted. You had to be the director, except you aren’t like this when you are a director. You listen to your actors and your crew because you know it takes collaboration to make a film work. Well, guess what? It takes collaboration to make a marriage work too.”

“I only did it because I love you.”

“No, you did it because you’re afraid.”

She set the suitcase on the floor by her middle dresser. She opened up the top drawer and started grabbing underwear and bras, throwing them into the suitcase. Charles was still standing right next to her. Maybe five minutes went by while he watched her pack. She
was only taking a few outfits. If she needed more, she could buy something. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

When he finally spoke, his voice was firm. “You’re not going to do this.”

“How are you going to stop me? Chain me to the bed?”

“No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. “But if I have to, I will lock you in this room until you come to your senses.”

Their bedroom door could be locked from the outside; Lucy had forgotten that. The lock had been put on years ago, when Charles was worried toddler Jimmy might wander in alone and swallow perfume or walk into the corner of one of the tables.