They seemed deadlocked. Andrew was sure that he was phrasing these questions wrong. Or perhaps she was just being modest, or even unwilling to share with him her deepest feelings. He opened his notebook. “Let me read you something,” he said. “I was talking to Pauline. Dr. Cranston. And she said, for instance, ‘When I touched the lump it was as though all time stopped, all life stopped: my own hand, my own life, was whirling around, the way protons and electrons whirl around the atom. I knew that I had but a second to communicate that sense of a human being relinquishing herself to the ultimate motion of infinity.’ ”
Nicole didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “Did she know in advance what question you were going to ask her?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, this is strictly off the record, but Pauline gets a little hyper about things, you know?”
“Yes, yes, but that’s all right. I want to hear about what the people on the show understand that their characters are feeling. That’s the way you can best help me. I’m not interested in the sort of technical dimensions of the scene, but in what you know and how you channel it into action.”
“The other thing is,” Nicole said, “we aren’t just up there doing what we want. There’s a director and a producer, plus the script.”
“At that moment, then, did you feel so restricted that you didn’t introspect about your character, just because it was Pauline’s — Dr. Cranston’s — moment?”
“It’s hard to remember,” Nicole said. “I can’t even remember exactly what I did.”
“Well,” Andrew said, leafing through the notebook again, “for example, Pauline said about that scene that you were perfect; that when Stephanie Sykes, seeing her stepmother’s fingers freeze, realizes that time itself is freezing, and she is being frozen with it, she expresses her resistance by drinking and sliding slowly down against the bathroom door, much the way top-heavy snow slides and spills. It was as natural a gesture as that.”
Nicole shifted on the grass. “I was supposed to get out of camera range so the screen would go black at that point,” Nicole said.
“But that wasn’t what you were reacting to,” Andrew said. “You could have, uh … smashed your fist into the medicine cabinet mirror, or something, and the camera could have focused through that into blackness—”
“The show’s not that arty,” Nicole said. “That’s a good idea, though.”
“And, uh, that’s what you did, with your consciousness. For what reason did you see Stephanie Sykes doing it?”
“Well, I mean, she drinks because she’s not happy. She knows the shit’s hitting the fan again, excuse me, and that’s a drag, so she sinks down in despair.”
“You see her as being in a state of despair.”
“She’s got a lot of problems and she’s an alcoholic, so she just folds up a lot of the time. That’s what she’s supposed to do. I, with my own consciousness, feel that that is what she’d do.”
Andrew was sweating. With the sun behind the clouds, his skin felt itchy as the air cooled. The cassette player clicked off. He reached for it, then thought that he might be intimidating her, even though she had had no objection to being taped. He didn’t turn the tape over. He leaned back on both elbows. She was really just a child, after all; no doubt she felt that people in his position were quizzing her like a teacher, and she would be resistant to that.
“Just tell me some things you’d like me to know about Stephanie Sykes,” he said. “Let’s forget my questions now.”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “She’s pretty much the way she’s explained in the press kit.”
“Is it hard to play such a troubled person?” Andrew said.
“No,” Nicole said.
Andrew was looking at her expectantly. She remembered something Piggy had said. “She’s Everyman,” Nicole said. It was her own thought to add that she didn’t mean it as a sexist comment.
“Then, you don’t see her as greatly exaggerated?”
Nicole remembered something else. She wasn’t sure it would apply, but she decided to take a chance. “I see her as Jonah swallowed by the whale,” she said.
Andrew immediately rose to a sitting position. He opened the tape recorder, flipped the tape over, and said, “You see her as Jonah in the whale? What do you see the whale representing?”
“Society,” she said.
“So, uh, you see her as cut off, buried, in effect, a microcosm within the macrocosm, fighting for survival.”
“Right,” Nicole said.
“That’s a very powerful image. Is it hard to play the role of someone you sympathize with so strongly?”
“I couldn’t help her,” Nicole said.
Andrew looked at her.
“I mean me. Nicole. In real life. You can’t go around helping everybody you sympathize with. You can’t help it that you’re on top and the other guy isn’t.”
“You don’t think of her just as a victim of fate, do you?”
What else? Nicole thought. She realized that she wasn’t very good at imagining what people might be, or even what they might be doing, other than what they were and how they were acting at the present moment. She also realized that she was getting into deep water with Andrew Steinborn, and that it was better to try to end this discussion. What she wanted to say to him was that she didn’t look down on anyone, real or imaginary, who kept her from sitting in a chair in school all day long, nine months a year.
“Oh, no,” she said.
Steinborn let the tape run for another few seconds, then reached down and clicked it off.
“Thank you for your time,” he said. “I find it important not to guess about the world, not to transfer my own assumptions, but to remain open enough to ask questions. My novel will be published shortly, and I’ll send you a copy. I very much appreciate your having taken the time to discuss your role with me.”
“Sure,” Nicole said.
As they were walking back toward the house, Nicole looked up at the sky. “It’s not unheard of to have a tornado,” she said. “I wonder if we’re in for a tornado.” She was studying the sky, her face absolutely blank.
“Do they have tornadoes in Vermont?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “The one that comes to my mind is the Worcester tornado of 1953. It took ninety lives.”
“Did your family know people who died then?” Andrew said.
“No,” she said.
He nodded slowly. He looked at the sky. “You’re not one of those intuitive people who are prophetic, are you?” he said, smiling nervously.
She was tired of answering questions, and she didn’t want to ask again what another word meant. The ringing phone would save her. She held out her hand, but instead of shaking hands and letting her get the phone, he clasped her hand and looked at her soulfully. Even as he drove away, he was thinking that the writer’s life was not an easy one, but he gave himself credit for searching for truth, instead of making assumptions. He looked at the sky through the front windshield, and then at the sky behind him, in the rearview mirror. Sometimes important information came at you in the most unexpected ways. He pushed harder on the accelerator, hurrying back to Lillian, and the inn.
By the time Nicole went inside, the phone had stopped ringing.
23
WHEN Andrew got back to the inn, Lillian was out. When she did return from shopping, though, she had quite a story to tell him. She had been browsing through Sweet Sincerity, a shop that carried cotton nightgowns and bed jackets from the 1920s, fans, and other pretty, old-fashioned ephemera. Lillian and one other woman were the only customers. They were both flipping through the racks of clothes when two women came into the store, asked the woman behind the cash register whether she was the owner, then suggested that she stock useful things for the contemporary woman, such as thermal underwear, body-building devices, hiking boots, and Mace.