Chapter 11
July 2004 - Nantucket Island
Hilary invited Stella to her home later that week for dinner. It was incredible how different times flowed when she had something to look forward to. Something that re-oriented her days. Even some of her appetite returned. In the hours before Stella arrived, Hilary made a salad, cooked fish on the grilled, and chilled a bottle of wine, wondering what she and Stella would say to one another outside of the context of two strangers meeting on a beach. It had been a long time since Hilary had hung out with someone who wasn’t completely Hollywood. It was hard to imagine someone without the ego required to “make your career work.”
Stella arrived a few minutes early. She’d made an apple pie, which felt very quaint and un-LA, and she wore a simple white dress. Her cheeks were bright red.
“This place? This is your place?” Stella sputtered as she entered the foyer and removed her shoes. “I’ve driven by hundreds of times, wondering what was on the other side of that gate.”
Hilary took the pie and led Stella down the hall. She wasn’t sure what to say. To her, the place wasn’t so ostentatious. It was just home. It still smelled like her mother.
“I always thought someone really famous lived here,” Stella went on tentatively.
Hilary put the pie on the counter and poured them both glasses of wine. She could feel Stella’s eyes on her.
“My mother bought it,” Hilary said.
Stella’s eyes were slits. She was trying to put the puzzle together.
“My mother was Isabella Helin.” It was the first time Hilary had used the past tense, and it felt like killing her mother all over again. She took a large sip of wine.
“Oh! Huh. I think I’ve seen some of her movies.” Stella pondered for a moment, then raised her shoulders.
Relief flooded Hilary’s chest. Stella wasn’t a super fan. She hardly knew Isabella Helin at all.
“She died this summer,” Hilary offered. “I came here to regroup.”
Stella furrowed her brow and touched Hilary’s arm tenderly. Empathy echoed from her eyes. “I’m so sorry that happened, Hilary.”
Hilary was immediately taken aback. In Los Angeles, plenty of people had offered her their sympathy after her mother’s death. They’d said all the right things; they’d honored Isabella and her incredible memory and her wonderful films. But each time they’d spoken to Hilary about her mother, Hilary had had the sense they felt an ownership over Isabella. It was as though because they’d seen her on screen so many times, they thought they knew her just as well, or perhaps better, than Hilary. It was disconcerting.
But Stella hardly knew who Isabella was. All she knew was that Hilary had lost her mother. And losing a mother was a devastating thing.
Hilary led Stella to the veranda for dinner. She took pleasure in serving the salmon and salad, amazed at how flavorful it tasted. It had been a while since she’d bothered to cook. Stella gushed about it, saying, “I’ve been eating frozen dinners all week. And yogurt. It’s so hard to cook for one person.”
Hilary had had the same thought. “It’s miserable,” she agreed. “I don’t want to make a recipe for six people. I want to make a dinner for one person using a single pan or skillet. And I don’t want to waste ingredients!” She chewed her lip. “It’s sad, sometimes. Eating alone.”
She had a flashing image of herself and Rodrick with ten different fast foods spread out across the bed before them. She remembered her greasy fingers and Rodrick’s eager kisses. Her heart panged.
“I usually turn on the television while I eat,” Stella confessed. “Which makes it even sadder sometimes.”
“You’re always welcome for dinner here,” Hilary said, surprising herself. “There’s no reason we can’t cook for each other. Good food is like medicine. Some philosopher said that. I can’t remember which one.”
Stella’s smile lit up her face. Again, Hilary wondered how this wonderful and beautiful creature, who’d grown up here, seemed to have nobody to call her own. No friends? No family? Of course, she had Jasper. But a dog wasn’t enough. Isabella had tried to fill the void in her heart with a tiny dog once but had ultimately given him away to one of her maids. She couldn’t take the barking.
“I’ll invite you to my place, too. It’s much, much smaller and covered in dog hair. But it’s home.”
“I’d like that.” Hilary smiled.
By August, Hilary and Stella had fallen into an easy routine. They saw each other almost every day for a beach walk, lunch or dinner, a hike along the cliffs, or a beach day of reading and sipping sparkling water or wine. Although they knew it was terrible for their skin, they adored how glistening and brown they’d gotten.
In some ways, hanging around a girlfriend like this took Hilary back to her teenage years. Nothing really mattered. There were plenty of books and magazines to read; there was makeup and clothes to try on. It was like slipping back into an old skin.
One morning, Stella went with Hilary to the Nantucket Harbor to discuss the purchase of a brand-new sailboat, which Hilary decided to buy and call the Tigerlily. She hired a professional artist to paint the name on the side. After that, Hilary took Stella out on the boat several afternoons, teaching her how to operate the ropes and flow with the wind. Stella was a natural learner. Sometimes they took Jasper with them, and he stood with his paws on the edge of the boat and gazed out across the water, rapt and amazed. They were never afraid he would jump over, as it seemed all creatures understood the terrors of the open sea.
By the third week of August, Hilary couldn’t take it anymore. She had to tell Stella her biggest secret or it would eat her up.
“Rodrick hasn’t called me in more than two weeks,” she said, her tone flat. They were out on the Tigerlily, sprawled beneath the sun alongside a Nantucket cliff. They hadn’t seen another person in hours. Hilary was pretty sure she was getting a sunburn.
Stella picked herself up and gazed down upon Hilary, worry in her eyes. Her blond hair flailed around her. “Two weeks?”
Hilary nodded and told herself not to cry. Her eyes filled anyway.
“Is he really busy with the film shoot?” Stella asked.
Hilary raised her shoulders.
“He must be busy,” Stella repeated. “Or maybe something happened?”
Hilary cleared her throat. She’d hardly been able to think about this. It seemed easier to bring it out into the open with Stella at her side.
“I called a friend who’s also working on the film,” Hilary said. “She said they’ve been off this week because San Francisco is too foggy to film.”
Stella winced and draped her hand over her mouth. She was speechless.
“I stopped calling him last week,” Hilary said sheepishly. “It was too embarrassing, knowing that the phone in his hotel room was ringing and ringing without an answer. I imagined whoever was next door in the hotel got annoyed.”
“Has he ever done something like this?” Stella asked.
Hilary shook her head. “We’ve always been in contact. Sometimes I spent time in Nantucket, and he was in Los Angeles, or he was working on one film while I worked elsewhere on another. But we always talked on the phone at least a few times a week. Despite the charges or the time constraints.”
Even as she said this, Hilary felt as though she spoke about a very distant past—one that seemed impossible, given the current circumstances. It was like she talked about when people went around by horse and buggy. When people thought the Earth was flat.
Stella lay back on the floor of the sailboat. They remained quiet, listening to the creak of the boat as the water surged up and down beneath them. Hilary tried to imagine where Rodrick was right now and what he was up to. But all she could see was his face during the days after her mother’s death when he’d begged her to open the door of the guest room and let him in.
That night, after Hilary tied up the boat, Hilary and Stella sat in Hilary’s car for a few minutes, listening to the radio. Stella had been quiet and sensitive to Hilary’s anxious thoughts. There was nothing to say to take this pain away.
“I can’t help but think he was right,” Hilary said suddenly, surprising herself.
Stella raised her left eyebrow, waiting.
“That night, he convinced me to stay home rather than go see my mother,” Hilary sputtered. “He told me I had to stop running to her. I had to unlatch myself from our poisonous relationship. For all these months after her death, I’ve hated him for that. I’ve blamed him for not letting me go. But honestly? He knew my mother’s and my relationship far better than anyone else. He saw the poison up close. And he was so tired of watching me destroy myself.” Hilary gasped for breath. Her chest heaved.
Stella reached out to take Hilary’s hand.
“I still wish I would have gone,” Hilary said quietly. “I still wish I would have been there to save her. But the reality is, she was a sinking ship, and she was trying to take me down with her.”
Hilary blinked until tears ran down her cheeks. The world was blurry Technicolor.
“Now, I’m terrified that I’ve pushed away the only person who wanted to save me from her,” Hilary said. “Rodrick loved me. He always loved me. He always wanted the best for me.” She let out a sob and then found herself weeping loudly, like a child. Stella wrapped her arms around her as best as she could, which was awkward from the passenger side of the vehicle, and pressed her nose into Hilary’s arm.
They sat like that for what felt like ages until Hilary cried herself out.
As Hilary came to after sobbing, she couldn’t figure out where she was. Who was this strange blond woman? Why wasn’t she in California? Where was the life she’d built?
“Listen to me,” Stella said very quietly. “You didn’t push Rodrick away. You didn’t cause this. He should be answering his phone. He should be here for you. You just lost your mother for crying out loud. This is one of the single-biggest horrors of your life, and you’re supposed to do it alone?”
Hilary sputtered. “He has a job. A film.”
“There is no film in the world more important than your wife,” Stella said. “He should be here.”
There was a tremendous amount of wisdom behind Stella’s words. But Hilary was having trouble making sense of them. She’d been born and raised in the film industry. Films were always more important than life. Weren’t they?
It wasn’t so very long after that that Stella appeared at Hilary’s gate. Her face was the color of paper. When Hilary opened the door, Stella hugged her for so long that she knew something was wrong. She took Hilary’s hand and led her out onto the veranda, then wrung her hands and said, “We’d better have a glass of wine.”
Hilary was terrified. She returned to the kitchen, Stella following her around as though she were Jasper, and filled two glasses, then ordered Stella, “Come on. You have to tell me. I’m going crazy.”
Stella unzipped her backpack slowly and placed a magazine on the table. It was People. The cover showed photographs of Britney Spears, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira. Hilary raised her shoulders. There was no sign of Isabella Helin. The media circus had gone on without her.
Stella flicked through the magazine to find an article called “Shakespeare Retelling Wrap Party: Who’s Who?” Hilary’s heart sank into her stomach. It couldn’t be. Oh, but it was. There beneath the heading was a photograph of three actors from the film, two actresses, and Rodrick, the director. Rodrick had his arm slung around one of the actress’s shoulders, and he was pressing his lips against her ear. She was smiling so beautifully, with such youth and vitality. It looked like she only drank green juices and did yoga during her free time.
“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” Stella sputtered. “I thought maybe they were just friends at work. Maybe they just got a little too close. But then, I saw this.” Stella flipped forward in the magazine to the style section, where the same actress was photographed at an intersection in Manhattan. She wore a pair of short shorts and a baseball hat, and she held hands with a man ten years older than her. It was Rodrick.
Even Hilary had to admit they looked great together. Trendy. Rodrick was probably always meant to be with someone younger. An actress. Finally, he’d found someone who could star in all his films rather than hide away in the costuming department.
A split second after Hilary had this thought, she was on her knees on the veranda, sobbing. She felt her youth drifting out of her. She felt the lines on her face getting deeper. She felt rotted out and half dead. She was thirty-five going on one hundred. She was finished.
Stella did her best to nurse Hilary back to health. She made soups and gin and tonics. She played good albums—happy ones—and stayed over at Hilary’s place most nights that first week, just in case she was lonely or needed anything. Jasper came, too. The maid ended up falling in love with the dog so much that she took him out for walks and threw the Frisbee around. Hilary was grateful for that. She’d been worried the maid would hate all the extra dog hair to be swept up.
When September came, Hilary breathed a sigh of relief. The air was cooler, and there weren’t as many tourists in the harbor or out at restaurants. One night, she and Stella were out at a wine bar with Jasper panting beneath the table, watching as the sky dimmed to a lavender blue. Hilary was suddenly overwhelmed with the events of the summer. Before she could stop herself, she said, “I don’t know what I would have done without you, Stella. This summer should have killed me. But I’m still here.”
Stella had tears in her eyes. She reached for Hilary’s hand and squeezed it. “I was thinking exactly the same thing.”