Picture Perfect (29 page)

“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 arms 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 even
thinks
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.

 

W
HAT
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.

P
ILED
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.”

 

T
HE VERY FIRST IMAGE IN
T
HE
S
TORY OF
H
IS
L
IFE
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 exposé 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, which 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
. H
E 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 reading
The 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.

“I didn't go to my father's funeral,” Alex said, and I started a little at the timbre of his voice. True, there was no one else in the house at this time of night, but some things were better whispered. “My
maman
called me up and told me he was a sorry son of a bitch but that it would be the Christian thing to do.”

I closed my eyes, picturing in my mind that scene from the screenplay that you are left with, of a father lifting his son into the air. I pictured Alex sitting beside his father's hospital bed. I saw the cameras rolling as he got his second chance.

“Course, I figured since he was the devil himself, Christian charity didn't quite apply to him. I've never even seen his goddamn grave.” Alex's hands ran up and down my ribs, over places he had hurt hours before. “I'm going to direct it and co-produce,” he said quietly. “This time around, I want to be the one in control.”

 

J
ACK
G
REEN SAT NEXT TO ME WHILE A MALE STAND
-
IN HIS APPROXIMATE
size had cameras and lights arranged around him. He was a veteran actor who'd done everything from comedy in Marilyn Monroe vehicles to the dramatic portrayal of an alcoholic that had won him an Oscar in 1963. But he could also whistle “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” through his armpit and shuffle a deck of cards with more finesse than a Vegas dealer, and he knew how to shoot the heads off the cattails that grew in the tall Iowa grass. Next to Alex, he was my favorite person on the set.

He was playing the role of the father, largely due to Alex's persuasion, since Jack hadn't made a film since 1975. At first, it had been fun to watch the people scurrying around on the set, unsure whether they should kowtow first to Jack, the legend, or to Alex, the god. And no one could be sure how Jack would take to direction from Alex. But after seeing the first batch of dailies, Jack had stood up and turned to Alex. “Kid,” he had said, offering his hand, “by the time you get to my age, you may just be as good as me.”

Now Jack raised his eyebrows, asking me if I wanted another card. We were playing blackjack, and he was the house. “Hit me,” I said, tapping the top of the book we were using as a lap table.

Jack overturned the ten of diamonds and grinned. “Blackjack,” he said. He shook his head appreciatively. “Cassie, you got more luck than a three-titted whore.”

I laughed and jumped off Alex's chair. “Don't you need to get ready or something?”

Jack lifted his head and scanned the flurry of activity. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could try to earn my keep.” He smiled and tossed me his script, which to my knowledge he hadn't cracked since he'd stepped on the set ten weeks ago, although he'd yet to miss a line. He moved off toward Alex, who was gesturing to the director of photography.

I hadn't talked to Alex all day, although that wasn't unusual. During the weeks he'd been filming
The Story of His Life
in Iowa, Alex had been busier than I'd ever seen him. There was always a line of crew people waiting to ask his technical opinion about something; there were reporters trying to get advance press interviews; there were backers to meet with about financing. In a way, Alex thrived on the stress. His career was on the line: not only was he attempting a film in which he wouldn't be seen as a traditional romantic lead, he was directing for the first time. But all the pressure seemed to take his mind off the fact that the movie he was making and the emotions he was calling forth in front of a camera were hitting very close to home.

Alex had insisted on filming the confrontational scene between the father and son last. He'd allowed two days of filming for it, today being the first, because he wanted to catch the scene during the gloaming, when the hills and the cornfields in the distance were purpled by the sun. I watched a makeup artist step up to Jack and dampen his back with artificial sweat, ring his neck with something that looked like dirt. He looked up from her ministrations and gave me a wink.

“It's a good thing he's forty years older than you are,” Alex said from behind me, “or I'd be jealous as hell.”

I pinned a smile on my face and turned around, not quite knowing what I would see when I met Alex's eyes. I think I was more nervous about this particular scene than he was. After all, I had just as much resting on it as he did. If it was a success, it was going to make this film a masterpiece for Alex. But it was also going to change my life.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him lightly. “Are you ready?” I asked.

Alex stared at me for a moment, and I could see all of my fears mirrored back at me. “Are
you
?” he said gently.

When the assistant director called for silence, and the sound tape was up to speed, I drew in my breath. Alex and Jack stood in the middle of the field leased from a local farmer. They were backed by a transplanted row of corn that was much higher than it should have been for this time of year, but that was the way the prop department had turned the reality of April into the illusion of September. The first assistant director called for action, and I watched as a mask neatly dropped over Alex's features, turning him into someone who was only vaguely familiar.

The wind whipped across the tall grass as if it had been cued, and Jack turned his back on Alex and leaned on a shovel. I watched Alex's face mottle with anger, and heard him choke on his rage until he had to speak or be suffocated. “Turn around, goddamn you,” he yelled, laying one hand on Jack's shoulder.

As it had been rehearsed, Jack slowly pivoted toward Alex. I leaned forward, waiting for Alex's next line, but nothing came. The color drained out of Alex, and he whispered “Cut,” and I knew that in Jack's face he had seen his own father.

The crew relaxed, rewinding and repositioning while Alex shrugged and apologized to Jack. I inched closer to the scene of the action, until I was standing next to the cameraman.

When the film began rolling again, the sun had dropped, cradled by the sky before night fell. It made a beautiful picture: the vivid resentment written across Alex's face, and Jack silhouetted by the fading light, looking more like a memory than a man.

“You tell me what I'm supposed to do,” Alex shouted, and then suddenly his voice cracked, making him sound like the teenager berated by his father in the flashbacks already filmed. During the rehearsal, Alex had had his character yell through this entire scene, hoping to provoke his father. But now his voice softened until it was a whisper. “For years I figured, the bigger the better. I kept saying this was going to be the one time you noticed.” Alex's voice broke. “I wasn't even doing it for me, after a while. I was doing it for
you
. But you don't give an inch, do you, Pa? What did you want from me?” Alex swallowed. “Just who the hell do you think you
are
?”

Alex reached out and grabbed Jack, another move that hadn't been rehearsed. I sucked in my breath, seeing Alex's tears, noticing the way his fingers flexed on Jack's shoulders. You couldn't be entirely sure if Alex was planning to throw Jack to the ground, or if he was clinging to him for support.

And Jack, just as surprised by Alex's action, simply stared into his face, seeming to challenge him for a second. But then he stepped out of Alex's reach. “Nobody,” he said, his scripted answer, and he turned and walked out of the range of the camera.

I ducked out of the way as the high boom the camera was mounted on swept suddenly to the left to catch Alex in profile. He stared out at the fields of corn, seeing, I knew, a muddy bayou with clinging vines, a trap of crawfish on the porch of a rotting restaurant, his father's chiseled face—a more dissolute double of his own—the image he'd fought and, ironically, had still grown into.