The young man came forward from where he'd been lurking. He had a camcorder. "Well, we'll need all the promotional clips we can get and I told "Entertainment Tonight" that I'd get some casual shots before their crew gets here. That was a great story, sir, and people will love seeing you tell it."
“I did not authorize this taping!" Cavagnari shouted. "I will not have it on my set!"
“But, Roberto, people like seeing the cast out of character," Lynette said softly. "I think it's a good idea.”
Jane looked at the beautiful star and guessed that she alone had noticed the faint whir of the camcorder and had been eating so daintily because she realized that it was being filmed.
“No, no! I authorize filming!" Cavagnari shouted. "Nobody else!"
“I'm sorry, sir," the young man said. "But that's not quite right. The producers authorize—”
Cavagnari stood up, green poncho swirling, flung his chair aside, and lunged for the camera, wrenching it from the startled young man's grasp. Cavagnari pushed a button and popped the tape out. "The producers? The secret, chickenshit, afraid-to-showtheir-faces producers? This is what I think of your producers!”
His accent had been pure Bronx for a moment. He strode to the trash container by the craft service table and dropped the tape into it with a flourish.
Then he thought better of that. Accent back on track, he said, "Ah-hah! I see your look! You think when my back is turned, you will come back and remove it!" He fished the tape back out and looked around for a means by which to destroy it on the spot.
“I'll throw it away if you like," Jane said. "Who are you!" Cavagnari demanded.
“This is my yard. I live in this house," Jane replied sweetly. "I'll put it in the trash inside." Maybe, she thought to herself. Or maybe she'd just keep it as a nice little souvenir of having had lunch with a bunch of famous people. She noticed that Mike was smiling at her, making her wonder if her son could read her mind as well as she read his.
Cavagnari lobbed the tape at her, which she managed to catch before it hit her. Jane felt her face reddening with anger and embarrassment. This man needed to go back to preschool and learn manners from the ground up. She slipped the tape into the kangaroo pouch on the front of her sweatshirt.
The producers' representative was muttering fiercely to himself and studying his recently assaulted camcorder for damage.
“If I see you use that again, I'll smash it to bits," Cavagnari said to him.
A tense silence fell over the group. Only Lynette Harwell seemed immune. She was still eating; slowly, delicately, relentlessly finishing everything on her plate. Perhaps this was why Olive Longabach insisted on serving her, Jane speculated. Knowing Lynette's appetite and her need to stay slim, Olive probably chose precisely the number of calories Lynette could afford to eat.
Jane was still seething with anger at Cavagnari's rudeness, but she had come out of the scene with the tape and was feeling an odd hostessy urge to make conversation. After all, they were all eating in her backyard, even if she hadn't invited them. "I understand you're originally from Chicago, Miss Harwell," she said.
“Oh, hundreds and hundreds of years ago," Lynette said with a coy laugh, which was presumably meant to cue somebody to say that it couldn't have been so long ago.
Nobody did.
“From this part of town?" Mike asked.
Cavagnari fell to eating his lunch, having ignored it while telling his endless story. Jake was studying a script with notes in the margins. George was making conversation with two people at the far end of the table who Jane hadn't even noticed were there until now.
“No, we lived much closer in," Lynette said. "I was in my last year of high school and didn't know a soul. It was very lonely for me." This with an attractive little moue of sadness. "But I kept myself very busy. I did some modeling and community theater. And I studied privately with a very great old actress who had retired to the area and took only a select few students who she knew had great potential. Isn't that right, Olive?”
Olive, still on guard behind Lynette, merely nodded.
Lynette smiled at Olive. "Poor darling Olive would find me up fearfully late at night, going over and over my lines. Making sure I had it perfectly right. And she'd have to absolutely force me to sleep.”
Olive finally softened. "You always did work too hard."
“But it was worth it, wasn't it, darling Olive.”
To whom? Jane wondered. To Lynette surely, but to Olive? All that Olive had gotten out of it was a hard life on film sets and locations. Sleeping in strange hotels, having no life of her own, waiting hand and foot on a spoiled, aging seductress?
“Mom," Mike said suddenly. "I wonder if maybe I ought to take a few acting lessons. Just to see if—"
“Oh, my dear! You must! You might be terribly, terribly talented," Lynette gushed, putting her hand over his. "You certainly have the looks for screen work. In fact, you remind me of a great love of my life! I met him just before I left Chicago. He was such a handsome man and I adored him, but he was married. Such a tragedy! I always thought he should have thrown away his dreary little wife and his dreary little job and joined the great pageant of the acting profession. I was always saying to him, `Steve, you're wasted here—' "
“Steve?" Mike repeated.
Jane's heart was in her throat as she leaped up. "I think somebody's calling you to the set, Miss Harwell."
“Steve who?" Mike asked, his voice husky. "The only person I look like is my dad.”
Jane was already around the table, pulling on Mike's arm. "Honey, I need your help inside with some—"
“Steve Jeffry was his name. My, he was a good-looking man, and so romantic," Lynette went on, oblivious to Jane's attempts to shut her up.
Mike had stood, but he shook off Jane's hand and looked down at Lynette. "Are you saying you had an… an affair with Steve Jeffry?”
Lynette looked up, finally realizing something was wrong. "Yes. Why do you ask?”
Mike looked at Jane and said very quietly, "Because he was my father.”
He turned and strode toward the house, pausing only to give a vicious kick to the barbecue grill.
“Oh, dear… perhaps I shouldn't have said…" Lynette was saying as Jane ran after Mike.
8
Mike was already in his room, slamming things around when Jane caught up with him. At her knock, he came out and barged past her, red-eyed and white-faced with anger.
“You knew!" he shouted, galloping down the stairs.
“No, Mike. I didn't know.”
He stopped at the bottom and looked back up at her. "Yes, you did! You were trying to stop her. You knew what was coming!"
“I didn't know. I suspected. But not until it was too late."
“You knew! And you let me make an ass of myself, following her around, doing her errands, thinking she was—"
“Mike! What are you saying? I wouldn't do a thing like that to you."
“I'm going out!"
“Mike, I'm sorry…”
But she was talking to herself. The front door had slammed so hard she feared for the hinges.
She went to her bedroom and sat down on the bed. Of course Mike was furious at his father'sbetrayal. She'd felt the same way when she discovered that Steve Jeffry had been a philanderer. She'd felt anger, grief, humiliation, and a lot of other ugly emotions that didn't even have names. And she'd worked hard at hiding it from the children, knowing they would be devastated. Since Steve wasn't around to take the brunt of Mike's anger, it had come down on her. It wasn't reasonable, but it was understandable.
Jane felt chilled through and vaguely "dirty." She was still shaking and trembling and decided maybe a hot shower might help her calm down. As she headed for the bathroom, the videotape, which she'd stuffed into the front of her sweatshirt, fell out and hit the floor. She looked down at it with distaste. She'd meant to keep it as a memento of a remarkable luncheon, but she knew she could never watch it without remembering what had followed the taping. She kicked it under the bed. She didn't even want to touch it now. When she felt better, she'd pull it back out and destroy it.