Stages (36 page)

“You know what it can be like to have the writer around?” he’d said to her. “Every little change you make, you’re violating their artistic integrity.”

“Richard and I are on the same wavelength with this one,” Veronica had replied. “If the dialogue doesn’t feel right, I want him there to throw us lines until it does feel right. He has a gut feeling for the way these people are, he
knows
what they’d say and do in any given situation. If we can have his input immediately, whenever we need it, it’ll save us all a lot of time and effort.”

In the end Mel had yielded; years of directing daytime drama had made him essentially passive, although he could always rise to the occasion when a script presented him with an auto accident or an infidelity. He’d been exactly what Veronica had wanted for the project, a director to whom the material was so foreign that he would not try to put a personal stamp on it. With Mel technically in control, the film would automatically have the look and feeling of a suburban shopping mall, which was exactly the backdrop Veronica wanted for these characters, whose limitations made the most banal of settings inexplicable and threatening.

A week after the shooting had begun, everyone on the set was aware that this picture was going to be unusually grueling. Veronica and her costar, Kevin Conners, a promising young actor from New York, were spending three to four hours a day in makeup alone. Veronica would emerge from her Winnebago actually looking like a retarded person. Her forehead would be higher and wider, her eyes would appear smaller and set further apart, and there would be invisible tapes beneath the pancake around her mouth, which made her have to struggle to form words. The stifling mask of makeup made the waiting even more intolerable, as the footage inched along, with an hour or more of setting up for every minute or two of film.

Veronica and Richard began a pattern of rising each morning at 4:00 A.M.—wide-awake even in their exhaustion—and often they would not return to Richard’s house until after midnight. Sometimes they remembered to eat. As sleep became increasingly dear to them, they basically forgot about sex. Hardly a day passed on the set, though, without a moment of passion, a sense that in this instant this piecemeal art had broken through to life. For Veronica, and for Richard, such moments were enough. The dailies became benedictions. Even Mel liked what he was seeing.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that my wife can’t edit with her hedge clippers,” he said.

At the end of eight weeks, they had reached what they all hoped would be the final day of shooting. Somewhat unusually, in a process that often started in the middle and ended near the beginning, the final day was to be devoted to the climactic minute of the film, a sequence with Margaret and Al together in their first apartment—finally out on their own.

The script had Margaret emptying a shopping bag, putting each item on the shelf with the meticulousness of someone who has had to study all the little things that others take for
granted (“My
message
,”
Richard had said). Then, the screenplay had indicated, Al would come up to Margaret, and they would hug, and the camera would take in the window beyond them, with its view of the West Side of Manhattan—the world out there, in other words, in which these two people had found their place.

By three in the afternoon it was clear that this scenario simply wasn’t working. They’d tried seven takes, and each time, at one point or another, Veronica had said, “Uh-uh. This isn’t it,” or “No way.”

Automatically Mel had turned to Richard, but this time Richard seemed stymied.

“We’re so close to a wrap,” Mel was pleading.
“
Please.
Let’s come up with something,
anything.
Just let’s bear in mind that this is the ending, and if you haven’t got an ending, you haven’t got a film.”

“It is wrong, I can see that now,” Richard said.

“Framing us with the window is too much,” Veronica said. “We might as well be riding off into the sunset.”

“I know,” said Richard. “Less is more. I can’t think what less to do, though.”

“Quiet while he tries to think,” Mel said.

“She gets everything into the cupboards, just so,” Veronica said, thinking aloud. The cupboards were silently being emptied of groceries so that she could fill them up all over again.

“And they’ve just come back from the supermarket,” she continued. “With their list that they had to keep checking and rechecking…. But they’re here now, back in their apartment, safe and sound…. They’re…
wait
!”

“What?” said Mel, all ears.

“Let me just walk through it,” Veronica said. “Kevin, could you, like, sit at the table—and be watching me, waiting for me to get through, wondering what’s next, you know?”

“Sure,” Kevin replied.

“You’re all excited,” Veronica added.

“Full of a sense of wonder,” Richard threw in.

“Yes,” said Veronica, “and you’re not quite comfortable sitting here, it’s all still new to you, a new environment and all”

“I understand,” Kevin said.

“Okay,” said Veronica. “The stuff’s all in the cupboard and—”

She turned, and then she stepped back from the shelves looking as if she had just finished putting her infant child into its crib. Kevin sat clutching the tablecloth and watching her expectantly. Veronica’s hand slipped along the kitchen counter lovingly, then she went to the window and looked out at the city, then walked over to the kitchen table. Her face was lit with joy. She touched the back of the chair opposite Kevin’s; she moved the saltshaker closer to the pepper shaker; she straightened the napkins in their holder.

Veronica gently pulled out the chair and sat down at the table. There was in her eyes all but inexpressible joy. She trembled ever so slightly, and out of her, in a thick voice, came the single word
home.

There was absolute silence.

Someone behind the lights sobbed.

“That should do it,” Richard said.

“My God,” said Mel. “It’s a wrap.”

*

That night Veronica and Richard went to Ma Maison to celebrate. They had two bottles of Dom Perignon with their dinner, and brandy with their dessert.

“Are you glad it’s over?” Richard asked over the brandy.

“I already feel kind of detached from it,” Veronica replied. “I feel like I’m floating. But I always feel that way…until I bump up against the next project.”

She expected, when they got home, that Richard would want to make love. But in bed he said, “I am totally exhausted,” and then he rolled over and went to sleep. Veronica soon dropped off herself. Finishing the picture had been consummation enough.

The next morning Veronica and Richard talked about the editing process, and when they could expect to see a rough cut. It occurred to her after her third cup of coffee that she and Richard were like a couple whose lives had revolved around an only child who was now out of the house.

Within a week Victor had called with a proposal for Veronica from Universal, and Richard had begun work on a screenplay based on an incident from his childhood. It would have a cast of eleven- and twelve-year-old boys, with minor roles for a few adults.

“There isn’t a den mother or a school crossing guard you could build up for me?” Veronica had said to him after reading three pages.

The final cut of
Independent Lives
was ready shortly after Veronica had begun shooting over at Universal. She and Richard saw it by themselves one evening. He’d arrived late, as he and his agent had been deciding whether or not to accept an option offer on his new screenplay.

The two of them sat in the screening room in silence. When it was over, they knew that they had made a great movie. All Richard said was, “I don’t think they’re going to lose money on it.” All Veronica said was, “The scene with her mother could have used a little more work, or Maureen Stapleton in the role.”

Then Richard sighed.

“Ronnie,” he began.

“Yes?” Veronica said.

“I’ve been thinking….
”

“Tell me about what,” Veronica replied, “and I’ll tell you if I’m surprised.” She was looking straight ahead, at the blank screen.

“I’ve been thinking that maybe we’ve done what we were supposed to do together.”

“That’s funny. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“You’re not surprised, then?”

“No.”

“I didn’t want to be the one to have to bring it up,” Richard said. He took off his straw baseball cap and ran his hand uneasily through his curly hair.

“We can still be friends,” Veronica replied. “We might even work together again. Who knows?”

“Were you ever really in love with me?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know,” Veronica replied. “The project. That I was sure about.”

“So was I,” said Richard, sounding relieved.

“I’ll move back to my place this week,” Veronica said.

“No hurry,” said Richard. “I’ve been thinking of buying a house, actually. I’ll probably be looking for a while. My agent knows this woman real estate broker who’s supposed to be terrific.”

“She’s probably divorced,” Veronica said. “Sometime I’ll have to get married and divorced, so I can be terrific too.”

“You already are.”

“Wait for the reviews before you say that.”

“Want to grab a bite somewhere?”

“I’m really not hungry, Richard. I’d like to just sit here by myself for a while, and let the picture settle. It’s something I’ve done ever since I was a kid. They spotted me with a flashlight ten minutes after the end of
Sleeping Beauty.
Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll see you later tonight, I guess.”

“I’m going to drive out to Malibu, actually.”

“Drive carefully.”

Richard got up, put his baseball cap back on, and sidled into the aisle.

After he was gone, Veronica sat staring at the empty screen for several minutes. She felt a little numb. Finally she stood and, holding on to the back of the velvet-covered seat in front of her, glanced around the tiny theater, at the projectionist’s window, at the eight rows of overupholstered seats, at the sign that said EXIT. Blinking back tears, she took a deep breath, and said to herself, out loud, “Home.”

Then drying her eyes, she went back to Richard’s house to memorize lines.

60

The real estate agency where Kathy began her career was, like most of L.A.’s businesses (and most of its population, for that matter) image conscious. Since Kathy was coming to the firm with her broker’s license and fluency in French and German, she was supplied immediately with a leased Mercedes-Benz 240D. She was given to understand that the more expensive the properties she sold became, the bigger her Mercedes would get. And when they ran out of Mercedes, she’d be in line for a Rolls.

Hearing that, Kathy had told her boss Nathan, who drove a Comiche, “I’d be scared to death driving a car that expensive.”

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Besides, it’ll be leased. Like all the cars out here—and three quarters of the people.”

“It’s a wonder anybody buys houses,” Kathy had said.

“The studios buy them,” Nathan had replied. “Sometimes without even knowing it. And if you don’t have a house, you don’t have any community property. Getting divorced without having community property is like getting married and not having children.”

Kathy smiled ruefully. “I know, I’ve been there myself.”

In the beginning, when Kathy was showing a house to prospective buyers, she would just stand to one side in order to let the place speak for itself. She would point out all the amenities; she would answer any questions; she would agree that anything a customer liked was wonderful and terrific, and she would always remind the customer, if there was something he didn’t like, that you could change anything except the location.

As the months passed, and Kathy grew more comfortable with her work, she became more of a salesperson. She had decided in the end to remain plain old Kathy Lowenthal rather than try to remake herself in the image of Susannah Eastlake, but Kathy was something Kathy could improve upon, like a well-located property, and she didn’t hesitate to do it. She colored her hair, she had her legs waxed, she began to buy her clothes on Rodeo Drive. Her growing self-confidence in her appearance was matched by her professionalism in doing her job.

At first, Kathy had been a little intimidated by some of the rich foreigners who were her customers. Then, before she knew it, she was looking at even the wealthiest of them as shoppers for whom you could always find something on the racks, figuring out their taste the way some experienced clothing salespeople can guess a customer’s size. After she’d been with the agency for a year, Kathy was automatically handed the fusspots and the spoiled brats. She liked the challenge of dealing with them.

One day Nathan said to her, “I think we’ve got one for you. Herr Horch, from Munich. Evelyn says he’s a man of few words, but he’s got forty million in his U.S. bank account alone.”

“Why isn’t Evelyn taking him around?” Kathy asked.

“She showed him sixteen houses in three days and on the third day she went home crying. Herr Horch has a wife back in Germany. There wasn’t a single house Evelyn showed
him
that didn’t have something about it Herr Horch knew his wife wouldn’t like.”