Chapter 29 2012
“Right,” Orson says. “Not the beach then.”
They couldn’t go today even if they wanted to. Viola hardly remembers getting home yesterday, the small coast guard boat that picked them up, helped her breathe. One of their rescuers had taken a photo of Orson, and already People is circulating a story about the “Damsel in Distress.”
Orson launches a stream of profanity that startles even the birds. “Weasels,” he spits. “Fucking shameless.”
The article speculates on her identity (local girl? summer romance?). In the photo she looks bedraggled and weak, and of course it was her body that did this, that ruined their perfect isolation. Tenderly, he had carried her back to the house, stuck her in bed, made her large mugs of herbal tea.
“Come on, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, you had a panic attack.”
The article goes on to talk about Orson’s fall feature, the alleged sparks between him and his costar. It turns her stomach. She hates that love is his trade; that he can produce it so easily for anyone.
She scrolls. The Orson Grey fan club is trying to identify her, posting all of the ridiculous things they would do to get him to rescue them.
i would turn into a giant trout if he would hold me like that
i would sell my voice to an octopus sea witch
full ophelia vibez
“Stop reading that,” he snaps. They look at each other gravely. He is growing long, ugly sideburns for a period piece he will start filming at the end of fall. It’s uncanny; his face no longer quite the face she fell in love with. “Sorry,” he says. “But Vi, we need to be ahead of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re going to be on the lookout. If we don’t control the story, they’re going to control it for us.”
“Well, what if we don’t give them anything to see?”
His face falls and this is the wrong suggestion.
“Come on, let’s do something nice,” she says, sitting up, touching his chest. It was her fault, and now it’s her responsibility to fix this, to reconjure the magic of the two of them, a world without judgment.
But they cannot go for a walk down Main Street.
They cannot go to the beach or the ice cream shop.
“We could play some cards,” she suggests. “We could play some music.”
Orson places his head against the wall. “This was supposed to be about getting to know your places,” he says. “We could go up and talk to your family. If that’s the thing.”
“It’s not the thing.”
But it is. One of so many things.
“Look, I don’t know your dad. But I know he can be difficult.”
“No, you don’t know him,” she snaps. What is he trying to say? It’s unfair enough that he knows her mother—he cannot claim her father too.
“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think it’s good for you. For us. All this hiding. I mean, it’s been wonderful, being a grinch with you. But you’ve got your whole life, Viola. I mean, you hardly see your friends. You hardly even run anymore. I feel like—I don’t know. I’m just worried.”
Outside, a robin is singing. Love, she has discovered, is entirely unlike film.
In film, love is beset with external obstacles: good-looking rivals, warring families, natural disasters.
Real love manufactures its own obstacles: needs, strains, arguments lost and unspoken. Orson taps his foot against the floor.
“You know,” he says, “when your mom was pregnant, she didn’t want to tell anyone at the studio.”
Viola sighs and gathers herself. Imagines her mother, hiding her. “God. Why?”
“She thought she’d get fired.”
“Wow. It’s a jungle out there.”
“It was mad. But she loved her work.”
“I mean, they were going to find out, obviously, eventually.”
“Don’t you think that sounds familiar?”
She has never welcomed the future. Too inevitable. Too full of endings. “Yeah,” she admits softly.
Is she too familiar? Even now, Viola feels dizzy, like she is falling into her. Does he take pleasure in it, their similarity? Stay vigilant, don’t lose sight of yourself. Bleach your hair. Keep your edges sharp. Don’t be shaped by denial.
“Why don’t we go for a bike ride?” she suggests, a concession. No one will recognize them on the move.
The cycle path is an abandoned railway line that weaves through the forest in the center of the peninsula. The day is glorious and sunny, bright enough almost to evaporate the day before. They pass roller skaters, lawn mowers, women on horseback, families towing small, unwilling children.
Even though both she and Orson are wearing all black (sticking out like sore metropolitan thumbs), she notices the patches of sweat that grow on his lower back and under his armpits.
She has always found his sweat surprising.
She remembers the revelation of seeing it for the first time, realizing that she hadn’t considered him capable of sweat.
He rides with his face up, nodding at everyone they pass, inviting interaction, charmed by small-town pleasantries.
“Good morning!” he says in his cheerful brogue.
Shut up, she thinks. Surely some of these people recognize him.
As he passes she can see them turning off to whisper to each other—wasn’t that…
?… I heard he was here! But somehow, more nervous-making is the idea of her own recognition, which, here in this place, is far from impossible. Aldwych people summer here.
She keeps her distance, at first purposefully, but before long she is falling quite far behind, her legs paddling hard on the rental that is slightly too large for her, the pedals annoyingly sticky, unable to find a gear that feels like the right amount of work.
It’s the kind of activity that should be effortless but somehow has created a tide of irritation.
The bike is designed to look good, not to ride.
She sits all too upright, annoyed by everything sacrificed for the sake of the picturesque.
There, up ahead, he has stopped. Waiting for her? She pedals harder, wind catching her body like a sail. Oh no. A man, slowing, pointing, clapping a thick hand on his back. She imagines the inevitable conversation: I loved you in… would you mind? Just a quick photo? For my daughter, she—
But as Viola pedals slowly closer, Orson grips the man’s elbow like an old comrade. He is older, the man, with watery eyes and a pouchy stomach. Fervently they are speaking about Los Angeles, the neighborhoods they have homes in, projects and restaurants and anecdotes and people.
“… and the funniest part was she was at that place where everything on the menu is just an attitude—you know that one—and she had fucking ordered ‘the fortunate one’!” The man is dying with laughter, waving his hand at Viola, sputtering, “Sorry—please—pardon my language.”
“Oh God, I’ve been rude. Mark, this is Viola,” Orson says, wiping tears away, opening his palm to her.
“Hello, Viola,” says Mark, pouchy eyes wandering over her. “Do you live in LA as well?”
For Viola, California still only exists in sunny scenes with convertibles and palm trees and sweeping coastline. There is nothing real about it to her. Even the love there is two-dimensional, waiting to get blown over by a big wind. “London,” she says.
“Ah, London-town!” Mark says, naming a few places he loves that she has to go to. She nods and smiles. He carries himself like a person who was once attractive and hasn’t yet figured out that he isn’t anymore.
“She’s Susie’s daughter,” Orson says, as though it is some kind of explanation. As though it was prompted naturally by some invisible subtext, some question of Why are you with this child? “Remember Susie Byrne?”
“Oh—”
(she is gaining control of herself)
“Oh, of course—Susie, my God, what a darling, such a shame, and you look just like her, how could I not see it. Have you two…”
(processing, processing)
“Have you two kept in touch?”
He just said it. He did, he just put the fact of it right out there. Not Viola, my partner. Viola, the child of this woman we used to know. She feels sick, like somehow it’s all been a setup.
“You could say that,” Orson says, oblivious. “Come, shall we go have a drink at our house? It’s this gorgeous modernist thing…”
They walk quickly back to Mark’s car, tossing their bikes in the oversized trunk.
They have never before been in a car with another person, but without much discussion, Orson sits in the front seat, and Viola takes the back.
When Mark turns on the radio, she can hardly follow, and Viola has the strange feeling of being underneath the conversation, like a child.
After three large whiskeys, Mark is describing in detail the recent removal of a kidney stone.
“They wanted me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten.”
“Christ, what did you say?”
“Eleven.”
They find this hilarious in the way that only old men could find this hilarious. Dinnertime has come and gone, replaced by trail mix and cheese. Viola sips slowly, trying to stay sharp.
“It’s not childbirth. It’s not losing a limb.”
“Well, it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt.”
“Well then the exercise is dumb,” says Orson. “Pain isn’t objective. If the most pain you’ve ever felt is breaking a toenail, and I’ve been stabbed with an ice pick, you can’t compare that on a scale of one to ten.”
“That’s what they asked me to do,” Mark says.
“It’s such an American thing,” Orson protests, “all this crap about ‘How much does it hurt?’ You all just want to feel good all of the time, don’t you?”
“What’s so wrong with feeling good all of the time?” Viola smiles.
“Nothing, if you want to live in Disneyland,” Orson says, unexpectedly flippant.
He shoots her a look and somehow they are talking about the cello, even now throbbing in the closet.
They are talking about her mother. Is that how he perceives her irritation, her denial—as a desire to feel good? Is that what it is?
Turning to Mark, Orson adds: “Viola is a philosopher.”
“Not an actor?” he asks. His eyes give her a wet, unpleasant feeling. “That’s a shame.”
“Did you ever think about it?” Orson asks.
“No, I…” Hadn’t she? Ever? “I don’t think I really did.”
“Well, call me if you change your mind.”
Orson inches closer to her on the couch, as if to say, You should never call this man. His fingers brush hers. “My point was, I’m sure she can enlighten us on the nature of pain.”
She can’t, really. She’s a logician at heart, it’s not her thing.
But Niamh would certainly have something to say.
It’s the kind of existentialist minefield she loves to wander around in, waiting to get blown up by the possibility of none of it mattering.
But Orson is looking at her expectantly, as though she ought to give them a joke or a sparkling witticism.
“Well,” Viola says. “Pain is as much in the mind as it is in the body. When you hurt yourself, the pain is in a very specific part of your body. It’s caused by an objective physical condition.
But the way you experience it is private and subjective.
So, there’s a conflict there. Is it real or is it perceived? ”
Orson looks disappointed by her assessment. Maybe she was too clinical. He bites his top lip with his famously crooked bottom teeth, a face she has never seen him pull in a film. Not that she can watch his films anymore. It’s unnerving now, the way his work distorts her sense of who he really is.
“Real or perceived. She’s too clever for me, Mark. Not sure I understand the difference. But either way, kidney stones, best avoided?”
The drink is surfacing something provocative in him. It is strange that she cannot ask what he wants from her. That the presence of this other person—the first real person other than Jen—is preventing her from saying: Are you angry with me?
“Remember that whole storyline, Mark, with One-Eye Stokes and the phantom eye?”
“Oh God. What was it again? A fork?”
“Can opener. Still not sure about those mechanics. But Vi, basically, he kept experiencing this pain where his eye used to be even though he hadn’t had it for years. Very symbolic, naturally. But I don’t know, could be fun to rewatch that, the three of us? Surely we could find it online?”
“Not sure I’m up for TV,” she says.
Orson looks disappointed and turns, decisively changing the subject. “Where’s your little lady?” he asks Mark. “I thought you were seeing that writer.”
“Yeah, oh yeah. Ha ha. Still trying to work out if she’s marriage material.”
The conversation bends away from her into meaningless names and references, dealings that she has no currency in. The men take little notice when she puts the kettle on, fills a mug of green tea, and steps out through the sliding doors onto the raised wooden porch.
From the other side of the long glass panel, the room becomes a muted sitcom set, the two of them on the couch, oblivious to the audience and the laugh track.
She adds voices in her head: Well, you see, Orson, the thing about Glendale…
Any moment now the main character will walk in and the audience will erupt into applause.
Her mother, probably. That’s who everyone really wants to see.
Or maybe Susan would have felt outside it too. Stood here looking up at the glimmer of the moon, her mind elsewhere. After all, she never lived out there, not fully. How many hours of her short life did she spend flying back and forth?
Why?
It was strange, now that she thinks about it, what Orson said about her father. I know he can be difficult. Had her mother said that? Or was it just a feeling Orson had?
Had it really been Al, all that time, holding her back?