“I do,” he said. “When you act like this, I see exactly what F. Scott Fitzgerald found so painful but so energizing at the same time. If you have any doubts, I can erase them.”
“Order another drink.”
“I’d rather go back.”
“I’m not going to make it a contest of wills,” she said. “If it’s so important to you to go back, we’ll go back. Do you mind getting the bill?”
“You get it,” he said. “Really put me down.”
“For one thing, Andrew, it’s not a put-down in 1984 if a woman picks up the check. You’ll have to think of something better.”
“I can think of something better,” he said. “Let’s go back to the Birches.”
She had a sudden image of the room: the wallpaper, the cherry writing desk with the straight-back chair facing the window. The postcard, envelope, and letter opener in the drawer. The big bed with the white spread, the inappropriately modern goose-neck lamps on the night tables.
“On the way back to Boston, huh? We had a fight, and you met a man on the plane.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Come on,” he said. “I deserve it. Who am I but some unheard of writer. Don’t you wonder why I think I deserve you?”
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m the one who should be embarrassed. I’m always telling you what’s going on below the surface, and I conveniently forget that you’re complex, like everybody else.”
She got the waitress’ eye and motioned for the bill.
“Put me down,” he said. “I deserve it. But I want you to know that I can prove myself to you.”
He was back to being F. Scott Fitzgerald, but suddenly it occurred to her that the routine had never quite been what she thought it was; he wanted to pretend that she was a bitch and only a bitch. Simple, like silly Zelda.
22
NICOLE was sitting in the living room of Lucy’s house, discussing the future. Work was important to her. Work kept her centered. That was what she was telling Andrew Steinborn.
“What do you think?” Steinborn asked, moving the conversation away from her to Stephanie Sykes. “Does Stephanie feel a victim — does she realize that she’s living in that house because she’s useful? That in alleviating her suffering, Dr. Cora Cranston has mitigated her own, as well?”
“What does mitigated mean?” Nicole said.
“When something is made less,” Andrew said.
“I don’t really see it that way,” Nicole said. “She got picked up by the doctor, sure, but what does it matter that the doctor ends up happier and she ends up about the same? I guess it depends on whether you think doctors are more important people than the rest of the world, and saving one doctor is more important than saving an alcoholic.”
“But Stephanie Sykes has depth,” Andrew said. “You think her salvation is important, don’t you?”
“I guess so,” Nicole said, “but look — not everybody’s going to be saved.”
Andrew cocked his head.
“I haven’t read anything except the first two scripts,” she said. “I don’t really know how it’ll go this season.”
St. Francis ran down the stairs and stopped at the front door, whining. Nicole got up and took the sock out of his mouth and opened the door. He ran out onto the lawn and turned and barked. When he was sure that he had lost both the sock and Nicole’s attention, he stopped and walked over to his gully by the rhododendrons.
“Chain the dog,” Lucy called from upstairs.
“Excuse me,” Nicole said.
Andrew followed her outside. The day was bright and breezy. The dog raised his snout and sniffed the air. Lillian had decided to sleep late. Andrew sat on the lawn and bumped onto one hip, pulling a piece of grass and chewing it. Nicole came over to where he sat on the lawn and sat down beside him. He thought that he must have challenged her too much with his questions. It was important to let her know that he cared what she thought and that he was not particularly interested in what was scheduled to happen on the program.
“How do you get inside your character?” he said, starting over.
“Oh, that’s not hard,” Nicole said. “She’s young, so she’s pretty easy to figure out.”
“But you’re both fourteen, aren’t you?” Andrew said.
“Yeah, but I mean, she’s young. She hasn’t really hardened into being who she’s going to be, so I sort of approach her thinking that nothing I do can really be wrong, because she’s changeable, right?”
“Can you give me an example?” Andrew said.
“Well, like in the scene where she’s in the bathroom, and Cora Cranston discovers the lump on her breast? I mean, there’s only one way to react if you find a lump, but somebody like Stephanie, just watching, can really do any number of things. So I thought that at that point she’d really harden herself. I’d try to show her getting hard, because she has enough of her own pain, right?”
“So you see her as very self-protective?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Well, how do you get into that? I mean, as an actress, what thoughts go through your mind?”
“That there can’t be two people hogging the camera at the same time. I mean, if I had had more of a reaction than Pauline, I mean Dr. Cranston, that would have scooped her scene, and I didn’t really have the right to have the camera go to me, you know?”
“But leaving aside the technicalities of how the show is filmed: it was a conscious decision to have your character freeze just then?”
“If I hadn’t decided it, Pauline would just have made a scene.”
“Is that what you think about?”
“That’s just manners. I mean, when I’m stumbling blindly around the bathroom, Pauline lets me have that. If she threw herself against the door because she suspected what was going on, that wouldn’t be appropriate, you know? She’d be trying to get the camera during my scene.”
“I see. But leaving aside what seems to be a question of … manners … I mean, leaving aside whose scene it is and all that, what does Stephanie Sykes feel at such a moment?”
“What moment?” Nicole said.
“When you looked out and saw Dr. Cranston open her mouth in horror when she found the lump in her breast.”
“I felt that it was Dr. Cranston’s moment.”
Andrew looked past Nicole, at the heavy clouds blending into each other. He was not communicating well with Nicole.
“I understand that,” he said, “but I’m interested not in the way the scene should be filmed but in what you felt at that moment.”
“You mean what Stephanie Sykes felt?”
A bee buzzed past. Andrew jumped back. The sun disappeared behind the clouds.
“You lose yourself when you’re acting, don’t you?” Andrew said, a little annoyed that she had called his error to his attention.
“What Stephanie Sykes would do doesn’t have a lot to do with the way I’d act,” Nicole said.
“Aha! But as you understand her character …”
“She’s half sloshed all the time. She’s not all there. You know?”
“Yes. Right. But she’s been an abused child, torn between loyalty to her mother and the relief of being taken out of that situation, and suddenly she sees that her new life is threatened. Does this make her feel alone? Sad? Angry?”
“I guess she’s all of those things,” Nicole said.
“And so, in a split second, you decide that she’ll look a particular way, or make a particular gesture.”
“Right.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out: how you intuit what she’s feeling and translate it.”
“You know,” Nicole said, “I don’t get that many CU’s.”