Something in her tone betrayed. I pressed for more.
“One summer, on the Vineyard — his father—” She closed her eyes and took a deep, actressy yoga breath. “We didn’t fool around… but something happened.”
“With Jack?”
She nodded, eyes shut. I was surprised, but only at my refusal all this time to see the obvious. “I was still getting loaded. Thad was being horrid. I’m not excusing it, Bertie — what I did — though nothing really happened—but it was enough, I guess. Thad was having an affair, under my nose. God, we were already living together! In Brooklyn Heights… and he was sleeping with this woman—two women. I found out about the second one by ‘mistake.’ He told me about the first. And then this thing happened with Jack, who was always inappropriate. He was just kind of out to get Thad. That’s what he was into. And flirting — he always flirted with me, he flirted with all Thad’s girlfriends. The reverse Oedipal, whatever. Is that what it is? And I was — I wanted to be punitive because I guess I knew it was over. He had so hurt me, Bertie. Why else would he have done what he did? I needed… I guess I just wanted to end it, in a definitive way. And that was pretty definitive! We didn’t fuck or anything. I didn’t fuck Jack, OK? I wasn’t even going to tell him about it — that’s what’s so funny! Jack did. Jack got drunk and told Morgana and she was so freaked out that she told Thad. It was horrible. Horrible! Oh my God, that night—fucking O’Neill couldn’t have written that night. And he never forgave me. Not that I expected him to. But when we got back together this last time — which was totally unplanned, I think it took us both by surprise… and — it seemed he’d gotten over… lots of things. He was different. I thought maybe the whole IRS stuff had… I don’t even know what I mean by that. Sorry.” She paused, to gather herself. “He never talked about — what happened. But right after Jack died, he began alluding. Especially when he got loaded. And it seemed like — well anyway, that’s what we were fighting about. Last night. I mean, this is something he brought up on the Vineyard, at the funeral. All those insinuations — you didn’t know what he was talking about, did you. On the Vineyard? I mean, did you even hear? I don’t think you were even aware. Miriam was! She heard — Miriam knew. But she also knew how crazy everyone was back then — now, too, but especially then! It was a bad time. Bad, bad, bad, bad time. And Morgana was totally freezing me out at the funeral — and it’s still about that. All about that — for her. But nothing really happened, I was a scapegoat because Jack Michelet fucked anything that moved—tuh-duh! — and Morgana knew it. It was part of their thing. She totally joined the Jack Michelet Corporation knowing what he was. That he—” She abruptly returned to the present. “But it still doesn’t make any sense, Bertie… where would he go, why would he not show up? The last fucking day of the shoot! Bertie, I’m worried—I’m really, really worried. I’m worried he might actually have killed himself.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, sorry to have said such a thing aloud to beckon supernatural forces. “Where would he have gone? Maybe he checked into a hotel somewhere and overdosed… should we start calling, Bertie? Should we try all the hotels? Do you think he could have done that?” She began to shiver and weep again, clutching onto me. “Bertie, could he actually have done that? Do you think? Maybe we should start calling the hospitals—”
“They’ve been doing that, Clea. Nothing’s turned up.”
“It doesn’t make sense he would just disappear.”
She got the unshakable idea that he’d returned to Griffith Park to dramatically do himself in. It was close to midnight and I was worn down enough to think the notion plausible. She begged me to drive us. After much stumbling in the dark, I reached the site of our previous trespass — but all we found was emptiness.
~ ~ ~
ON SUNDAY, WE HAD PLANS for brunch.
Hugo’s.
She stood me up.
I checked my voice mail. There was a message from the night before. It was Clea, saying he had called and “was fine.” She was going to see him, but didn’t say where.
~ ~ ~
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WERE a blur of work, and I was glad.
HBO wanted to move forward with Holmby Hills. They had notes; Dan and I took the requisite conference calls. I did my bible thumping (and tweaking) at night, days occupied by the new Starwatch shoot. No one heard boo from our wayward couple. With an increasing sense of dread, I resorted to Al-Anon meetings, reminding myself I was powerless over Clea — powerless over her drug intake and her romantic life, if there was any difference between the two.
I spoke to Miriam constantly. I missed her but admittedly was confused. It’d been months since I’d slept with anyone else so I longed for her, physically. Besides, the whole Thad/Clea shitstorm had left me stressed out and lonelier than hell. I guess I still wanted her to come to L.A. on my own terms. I was a walking male cliché—obsessed with getting Meerkat into bed but still ambivalent about the relationship thing. I hadn’t discussed my feelings (another male cliché) and psychotic as it might sound it just may be I was operating off the echo and reverb of my last conversation with Thad — the one where he casually implied Miriam wanted to begin some major nest building.
My inner life was crazed. I hung around newsstands, poring over health magazine articles about male hormones, male menopause, male ticking clocks. (Not to mention cutting-edge cancer-screening tests.) When Miriam finally said she was flying out, I felt instantly better. We could have the baby-thing talk—after we fucked. Might even pop the question. When I shared as much at an AA meeting, some smart-ass said, “The question is: ‘Can we have an open marriage?’ ”
A week and a half after Clea split, I got a second message on my machine. (If she really wanted to talk, she’d have called my cell.) She sounded stoned and vaguely distraught. They were all right but “in the middle of moving.” She’d “be in touch.” Around that time, someone on the crew said he saw them over the weekend, at the Palms in Vegas. The gaffer didn’t approach but said they looked “seriously fucked up.” When I called the hotel, no one was registered under either name.
Miriam arrived on Friday and stayed with me in Venice. It was comforting to play house, even under somewhat surreal circumstances. The sex was good. We used it as an anchor — and painkiller. The TV news played nonstop coverage of devastation wrought by a series of tornadoes in the Midwest. Somehow that was a comfort too: happy-to-be-alive faces smeared with dirt and tears, possessions and personal histories flung to the wind. Whenever we saw the foundations of vanished houses and the shattered vertebrae of modest Main Streets, we conjured Thad and Clea as flying Dutchmen unable to dock in whatever harbor they’d been pharmaceutically listing toward. Then came the usual stories of buried house pets found miraculously alive among the rubble. We wished as much for our friends but knew the odds were against them.