Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Christmas Day 2024
Los Angeles, California
S ophia Bianchi put on a pair of brand-new silk pajamas and spread out on her king-sized bed with a glass of wine. With the click of a button, an enormous flat-screen television came out of the wall and began to play one of her favorite films, 81/2 by Federico Fellini. She believed that Francis Bianchi had always professed to love it but had never really understood it. She’d never accused him of that. Had she, she imagined he would have knocked her over the head.
Of course, Francis had only hit her once or twice.
It had never been enough to report him. And Sophia had always thought she deserved it.
Why did I think that? she wondered now, so many years later.
Henry Crawford—that dashing twenty-three-year-old man, the grandson of Bernard and Greta Copperfield—had left more than three hours ago. But Sophia couldn’t get him out of her head. Her blood had boiled when he’d suggested she was lying about who wrote the scripts. But whose fault was that? Wasn’t it Sophia’s? After all, she’d agreed to decades of secrecy. She’d given her creativity away. And for what? To fade into anonymity?
Not anymore.
But was it worth it?
Sophia’s phone lit up a few minutes later.
No surprise, it was Greta Copperfield, calling from out East.
Sophia had expected this call ever since she’d told Henry the truth. Telling him to keep it between the two of them was a game. She’d known it when she’d said it.
Just before she answered it, Sophia imagined the summer of 1985. She pictured herself and Greta on the back porch of The Copperfield House, drinking glasses of wine. She remembered how Greta had never considered Sophia to be a creative equal. Although Greta had never said it aloud, Sophia had felt it. She’d been perceptive in ways Greta had never known.
Sophia had hid from Greta in plain sight.
“Merry Christmas, Greta,” Sophia answered. She made her voice seem extra syrupy. They were nice old ladies now.
Ha. Yeah, right. They’d always be themselves.
Greta was quiet for a moment. “Hi, Soph.”
Sophia smiled and wiggled under the covers. Using an app on her phone, she turned off the Fellini film and let the silence press upon her chest.
“I wanted to thank you for watching over my grandson today,” Greta began.
“It was no trouble. I enjoyed it. He’s an intelligent young man. It sounds like his mother puts too much pressure on him, though. He mentioned that he only has three years to make it in Hollywood. Does she know what it’s like out here?”
“That’s up to him,” Greta said. “His mother set those parameters. But parameters are made to be broken.”
Sophia laughed. “You were always a rebel, Greta.”
Greta let a moment pass before she answered. “And I heard a rumor you were a bit of a rebel yourself in the old days.”
“Did you, now? Who might have told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Sophia grinned.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course. We’re old friends. You can ask me anything,” Sophia said.
“Did you ever go to Paris to visit Francis after he left?”
Sophia blinked back tears, surprised at how quickly they’d come.
Greta hit the nail on the head.
It was an enormous regret.
I should have gone.
Before he died.
But Sophia made sure there was no quaver to her voice. “I never made it to Paris, no. But I’m sure Francis had a heck of a time over there. He always knew how to have fun.”
There was a dark edge to her words. Sophia regretted them immediately.
“But you never divorced him?”
“He never sent the papers,” Sophia admitted.
“You could have sent them yourself,” Greta reminded her.
Why had it never occurred to Sophia to do that?
Because she never wanted to divorce him. Or she was afraid he wouldn’t grant her one.
Sophia wasn’t sure of the truth any longer.
Greta made a soft sound in her throat. Sophia was suddenly nervous. She’d imagined this phone call happening for years, but it wasn’t going the way she’d planned.
Finally, Greta dared to ask it.
“Did you really write those screenplays?”
Sophia smiled so wide that her cheeks ached. “I wrote them.”
Sophia expected Greta to ask questions like how did you come up with your ideas? Why didn’t you ever tell me you were a writer? We could have traded notes! We could have helped each other!
Instead, Greta’s response was out of left field. It stung, too.
“How could you let him do that to you? How could you let him steal from you?”
Sophia was out of bed and pacing. She didn’t remember getting out from under the sheets.
What could she say to make Greta understand?
Internally, she cursed herself for ever telling Henry about the screenplays. Sophia was living a fine, quiet, easy life. Her messes were behind her.
Now, she’d dragged them back up.
“Walk me through it,” Greta asked, her voice tentative. “You wrote a script. When? What year? It must have been A Cataclysm before A Sacred Fig . But back then, you were working as an actress.”
Sophia could picture herself as a young, slender, penniless actress who’d always been told she was beautiful enough to make it in Hollywood.
“I always wrote on the side,” Sophia offered.
“And you never told anyone?”
Sophia chuckled nervously. “I had a boyfriend when I first got out to LA. He was a writer, too. He told me my initial screenplays were garbage. And it’s true they weren’t great, but I was experimenting. But he made me understand what it was like to be judged so harshly for whatever I came up with.”
Sophia hadn’t thought about that particular ex-boyfriend in years. His name had been Steve, and he’d gone on to write sitcoms before dying in an auto accident in the early nineties. Sophia knew that because she had hours, weeks, months, and years to kill all by herself in this mansion in Beverly Hills. She’d googled just about everything there was to google.
“He sounds like a great guy,” Greta said sarcastically.
“Just another Hollywood wannabe,” Sophia offered. “But after that, I was really careful about who I shared my writing with. And I got a few acting gigs here and there, which helped me to introduce myself as an actress, first and foremost.”
“And that’s how you met Francis.”
“That’s how I met Francis,” Sophia said, hating how wistful she sounded. “You know, my biggest downfall was just how in love with that man I was. He made me feel as though I was in cahoots with him. He made me feel as though we were working on the scripts together. In fact, after A Cataclysm came out, I was genuinely shocked he hadn’t credited me as a co-writer or something like that. But I was listed only as an extra.”
“What a monster!”
Sophia chortled and hung her head.
“Did you ask him what was up?” Greta asked.
“I did,” Sophia remembered. “He said that the studios didn’t want to list me as a co-writer. He said he’d fought tooth and nail for it, but they wanted the Francis Bianchi name. That was that. I figured I had to hide behind him forever. And he told me I should be grateful for what I had. I was going to write scripts for the rest of his life. I was going to make things alongside him. And at least in private he called me his partner. I knew I was. I knew he couldn’t write anything like that without me.” Sophia laughed darkly. “I thought that would save our marriage.”
“Well, you never got divorced,” Greta reminded her.
Sophia cackled. “Maybe that means I really did save our marriage!”
“It was the eighties,” Greta whispered. “It was a time when women were finally making their mark.”
“I know. I should have talked to the studios myself. I should have shamed him,” Sophia said. “But I was in love with him, Greta. I would have done anything for him. Don’t you remember?”
Greta took a breath. Sophia could see the vision of herself in Greta’s mind’s eye. She could imagine drinking wine on that glowing Nantucket beach, hand in hand with the iconic director Francis Bianchi.
“Sophia,” Greta said. “I must have told you how much I hated his movies before A Cataclysm ! I must have told you hundreds of times.”
“I never wanted anyone to hate his work,” Sophia said. “I still don’t want them to.”
“Are you going to come forward?” Greta asked.
Sophia sighed. “It pains me to speak ill of the dead.”
“Don’t you think he deserves it?”
Sophia flared her nostrils. She knew what Greta was referring to, but she didn’t want to look at it too harshly or engage with the parts of her past that she didn’t really like.
She wanted to rewrite history. Was that allowed?
Sophia changed the subject back to Henry Crawford, back to his fledgling career and to stories that hadn’t finished so many years ago.
But Greta strained to take her back. “You have to claim your space in history, Sophia,” she whispered. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Much later, long after Greta and Sophia had said painful goodbyes, Sophia lay in the darkness with the blankets up around her chin. Now that Greta and Henry had her secrets, she felt as though she’d betrayed herself.
But it was better this way, she decided. Maybe it meant her life had been worth something.
Maybe finally, people would understand what she’d kept under wraps all this time: her commitment to artistry, her love of words.
Out of nowhere, she heard Francis’s voice in her head. “You broke your promise, Sophia. You’re going to pay for this. Mark my words.”
She shook it out and wondered when Francis would stop tearing her apart.