Marta was next to him. She took a handkerchief from her purse and handed it to him. She looked terrific in a beautifully cut tuxedo with a skirt slit up the side instead of pants. Her hair was piled up on top of her head. Caresse and her mother were on the other side of Marta.
“When are they going to get started?" Caresse whined. She was not happy at Max's insistence she wear a duplicate of the film's dumb red velvet dress he'd had made for her. She thought it made her look like a baby.
Her mother smiled nervously. The rows behind and in front of them were filling up. People could hear—the ones who didn't have their cellular phones glued to their ears, that is.
“Any moment, darling. And your category will be early!"
“I told you not to mention it!" Caresse wanted the award so badly, she had barely been able to concentrate on anything else since the nominations had been announced. She'd told her mother not to talk about it to her. She didn't want anything to jinx her chances.
Jacqueline flushed. Max had been urging her to take a firmer hand with her daughter. She'd agreed. She'd agree to anything the man said, slit realized. When he'd taken off those ridiculously thick glasses the first timethey'd made love and looked at her with his persuasive blue eyes, she just said, "Yes"—and "Yes" again.
There was an empty seat beside Max. Alan had left it for Cappy. He knew the game. The star arrived next. The producers, Kit Murphy and Arnold Rose, after that, and then they were all there.
All except Evelyn.
Billy Crystal strolled onstage to wild applause. These things had improved since he'd started hosting them, Alan thought to himsef. Crystal told a few jokes he wouldn't tell on-camera and then they were off and rolling.
Caresse didn't win. The Oscar went to a legend, who had unaccountably never won the award before, for an admittedly lackluster cameo in a disaster film. The Academy was nothing if not sentimental.
“That old hag," Caresse fumed.
“Shut up," her mother whispered in her ear. "You're on-camera!”
Caresse shut up and smiled. A gallant little trouper, the press would say.
Next time. Next time. Next time, she chanted to herself.
It was late and they were getting to the good stuff. Alan didn't know whether he wanted the picture to win or not.
It was time to announce Best Actor and a clip from each film was being shown. There was Cappy, much bigger than life, in his final scene. Max had constructed a platform just like the scaffold on the village green and set it in the middle of a busy downtown L.A. intersection. He had Cappy make Dimmesdale's final confession to a crowd of commuters—Everyman and Everywoman, Max had called them. At the climax, Cappy rips open his shirt, showing his gorgeous chest, which the director had agreed to oil a little, with a hideous, scab-encrusted letter A carved over his heart. It was always one of those "O000h" moments in theaters across the country. The audience at Dorothy Chandler didn't "ooh." Most of them had seen it before, but they clapped loudly. Cappy didn't have too many enemies.
I wonder if he was in Evelyn's pants? Alan thought as the two presenters played cutesy games with the envelope. Max thought so; he could barely tolerate working with the guy. Evelyn must have told Max. She liked doing things like that.
“And the winner is: Caleb Camson!”
Max and Cappy hugged like blood brothers. Up on the stage, Cappy captured a few more million hearts with his self-deprecating ways. He thanked his parents, Max, the producers, on and on, even Alan. Then he paused. "And I'd like to take a moment to remember someone who is not with us tonight ..
“Evelyn, of course. I wish he'd said something about Sandra Wilson. I'm sure the studio never had a service for her, either. Then there's poor Corny. I'll bet Max has completely forgotten about her. She told me she'd invited him to the wedding and didn't hear from him. Alan Morris called to say Max couldn't make it. I wonder what he sent for a present?”
Cornelia Stuyvesant's family had taken a dim view of an industry in which employees were rendered unconscious by trophy-armed lunatics, and they'd whisked young Cornelia straight from the hospital to Bermuda. Not at all coincidentally, the eminently eligible son of dear friends happened to be sailing there. It was love at first tack, and if Cornelia was watching tonight'shoopla, it was on a wide screen TV in Connecticut.
“Oh, come on, after the commercial, it's going to be Best Picture. You can't not watch!" Tom was reading Larry Bird's Drive: The Story of My Life.
“Yes, I can or can't. Whichever means I'd rather read my book." Tom had been ready to go to sleep an hour ago and had trouble understanding why Faith was so insistent on watching the rest of the tedious show. "You can find out tomorrow," he'd said.
“It's not the same. Besides, I like to see what people are wearing," she'd replied. And here they were, still up in front of the tube.
“All right, if it means so much to you." He put the book away and slung his arm around his wife's shoulders. "At least can we neck?"
“After, I promise."
“That's what all the girls say."
“Sssh, here it is.”
A few minutes earlier, the screen had been split to show the reactions of the nominees for Best Director. Along with the viewers all over the globe, the Fairchilds were able to catch Max's joy at winning. Now the screen was divided again. Max was holding Marta's hand.
“I'm sure it's going to get Best Picture, since Max got Best Director," Faith told her uninterested husband.
“Millicent never had any doubts. You could have trusted her and we'd be in bed by now.”
Much of Aleford had been quietly taking credit for the picture's success during the last months. It had been tacitly assumed that of course their movie would win. And Aleford was right.
Max's acceptance speech was brief. He opened by saying, "There is someone who should be on this stage with me, and if I didn't think Billy would kill me for getting us off schedule, I'd have him up here."
“Him?" Faith said. "I thought it was going to be Evelyn again. Oh, I know, he's going to thank Nathaniel Hawthorne."
“I'm sure Nate would have appreciated that," Tom said sardonically. "And, by the way, would you mind telling me how Hawthorne would join Max onstage?"
“Sssh! I can't hear what he's saying!"
“He's my right hand." Max flung his whole arm out dramatically. "Maybe even the right side of my brain. All I know is, this picture could never have been made without him. Alan Morris, my assistant director.”
Alan was floored. Cappy jabbed him to stand up and he did, bowing slightly as the audience applauded wildly. For him. Maybe just one more picture with Max. Love and hate.
Clutching this best of all Oscars, Maxwell Reed closed by acknowledging the town—as was only fair.
“Some of those watching know that we went through a few tough times on this film and the good folks of Aleford, Massachusetts, were there for us. I'd like to thank them for their generous help and for providing the perfect landscapes." He chuckled and waited for the slight laughter to die down. "The individual people are too numerous to mention.”
The camera was panning along the faces of A's cast as Max spoke these last words. Alan Morris had tears in his eyes. Cappy looked relieved. Caresse smiled her famous smile. Jacqueline had moistened her lips. It lingered on Marta, who looked directly into the lens—directly at Faith.
“But," continued the director, "you know who you are.”
And Marta winked.
EXCERPTS FROM
HAVE FAITH IN YOUR KITCHEN
BY Faith Sibley Fairchild
A WORK IN PROGRESS
It was marvelous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him; not in anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual.