Chapter 32
That night, Ingrid gets an email from Maggie.
So excited about our collab! Should we sign something, like a rights agreement?
Ingrid smiles. Look at Maggie, getting all lawyerly.
She can’t help but be proud of her mentee, even if a part of her wishes Maggie would be more patient and let Ingrid come to her instead of pushing.
But an option agreement isn’t a guarantee that the movie will get made and doesn’t cost that much.
If it’ll make Maggie happy to have it in writing, Ingrid will throw her a bone.
She instructs Joel to draft up a typical two-year option agreement, but with a much smaller fee than she usually pays.
Five thousand dollars instead of sixty thousand.
It’s not exactly a competitive situation, and Maggie’s already shown how keen she is.
That’s the price you pay for eagerness instead of patience.
Maggie enthusiastically accepts, and they spend their third transfusion discussing how to flesh out the novella. Unlike Prisha, who objected to every new idea, Maggie listens intently to all Ingrid’s suggestions.
The next day, when she starts getting pages in her inbox about the Vivian years, they’re better than she could have hoped. There’s a startling authenticity to Maggie’s writing.
This is so good! Ingrid texts her.
REALLY?
I feel like a fly on the wall. Like I’m right there…
feeling everything. And it’s FUNNY! I was laughing my head off at the part when you tell Charlotte you guys don’t have a stove and you cook everything with a hair dryer.
But I think the real kudos go to how you portray Dodge, Vivian’s husband, what a sublimely complex character…
he’s the only one who’s not mean to you, but he’s also so relaxed about the cruelty going on.
It made me want to scream! I can’t wait to read more!
Two seconds later, she gets a live shot of Maggie, teary-eyed.
Ingrid takes off her reading glasses to snap a picture of the wet corners of her own eyes. That’s when she notices…the words on Maggie’s printed-out pages appear clearer without her reading glasses.
She closes her eyes and then opens them again. She looks down at her phone without her reading glasses. Again, the words are crystal clear. She grabs a book on her desk and opens it up to a random page. That’s clear, too. She grabs a magazine. Clear, clear, clear.
What does this mean? She sits at her desk, trying to remember the exact age she first needed reading glasses.
It had to have been in her mid-forties. But that can’t be right.
She’s only had three transfusions—in theory, that’s only supposed to rewind three years.
She picks up her phone and is about to call Dr. Hayes when Charlie rings.
“Hey!” he says. “Got a sec? Bob and I were just talking about the movie!”
She answers yes while gathering more books and testing out her perfect eyes. It’s a miracle! Everything’s clear again!
“So now that we’re fast-tracking this thing, let’s talk more about the writer.”
“Absolutely.” Ingrid puts down the books and clicks into her spreadsheet of writers on her computer.
The computer screen is clear, too. She puts her glasses on for a second.
The words look weird. She takes them off and quickly rereads the other tab she has open.
The article on Deadline, just released today, could not be more glowing:
Fresh off her buzzy hit Uncharted (rumored to be an awards favorite), producer Ingrid Parker has partnered with FYC Studios to fast-track Summer Rain as part of her four-year producing deal with the studio.
Plot details are being kept under wraps, but from what we hear, the project aims to put a modern spin on the iconic book and on the romantic comedy genre.
“Who are you thinking?” Charlie asks.
“I’d love someone like Samy Burch,” she says, clicking over to the spreadsheet. “Loved what she did with May December—so thought-provoking and edgy!”
“A little dark, don’t you think? We want to keep this movie on the lighter side—”
“No, for sure.”
“But I did like the character development in May December. And I loved the whole sordid backstory. We definitely need that here, too. I keep coming back to why Isabella wants to break out of the mold so bad. What happened to her that’s making her want to make a whole new path for herself?”
“I don’t think it’s hard to understand. She’s worked all her life to get to this point.
She gets married to the perfect guy, and it’s not what she expected it would be at all,” Ingrid says, glancing out the window at Kyle.
He’s still out there measuring! It’s been a whole week of him walking around the yard, planning his precious ADU, while she’s in here paying the bills, going over their finances with their investment advisor to make sure everything’s in order for the next big payment to Maggie, and touching base with Connor to see if he needs anything.
“No, there’s gotta be a deeper reason…”
Ingrid pulls up a new tab and starts WebMDing average age of a person needing reading glasses to pass the time.
Personally, there’s nothing more boring to her than studio execs who think they know more about story than her.
As Charlie talks, she learns the onset of presbyopia typically happens in one’s mid-forties.
She texts Dr. Hayes, Can you call me? Something weird just happened.
“Ingrid?” Charlie asks.
“Sorry. I’m listening. Maybe something happened to her.
Some kind of deep-rooted trauma,” she throws out, going into her phone settings and experimenting with reducing the size of the font.
She’s had to increase the size several times in the last decade.
Now, as she moves the dot, the giant A gets smaller and smaller.
“Yes!” Charlie says. “Like what?”
Ingrid leans back, considering her own upbringing.
“Maybe her dad was a serial philanderer, always cheating on her mom. And her mom was so wrapped up in what people would think that she never even thought to leave. She felt this insufferable pressure to be perfect for her mom. She convinced herself she could make everyone happy if she just worked hard enough. But she never once asked herself what she needed to be happy…”
“That feels a little dated. Do people work that hard to keep their families together anymore? Most people’s parents are divorced these days.”
She blows at her hair in frustration, trying not to take it personally.
“OK, fine, then she got recruited to join a crypto pyramid scheme. Is that modern enough for you?”
“C’mon,” Charlie says.
She throws five more ideas out, all of which are rejected. She’s rolling her eyes, trying to figure out how to get off with Charlie, when another call comes in. It’s Dr. Hayes calling her back. “Charlie, I’ve got to run.”
“But wait, we have to figure this out—”
Out of sheer frustration, Ingrid tosses out, “OK, how about her parents farmed her out to an abusive family they met at church?”
She said it mostly for shock value, just to shut him up. But Charlie doesn’t laugh. Instead, he says, “Now, that’s good.”
“No, I was just kidding! That’s not—”
“Well, I love it. And I think Hailey’s going to love it, too!” he says.
Ingrid feels the gravity in her study shift. She leans forward and gives Charlie her undivided attention. “Hailey Jane Madison?” She lets Dr. Hayes go to voicemail.
“She called me as soon as she saw the news on Deadline,” Charlie says. “Ing, I know you have your heart set on Camila—”
“I don’t have my heart set on Camila. It’s just we promised her the role. That was the condition for her not talking on late night about how she was so underpaid—”
“You promised her,” Charlie reminds her. “And she hasn’t said anything. So I think we’re good. With Hailey attached, we’d get our pick of directors and writers. It would be a better movie. And if I recall correctly…you said yourself…you wanted to tell the best story that can be told.”
Her face tightens at this reminder of their Zoom. Well played, Charlie.
“Please, will you just talk to Hailey?”
“Yes, of course,” Ingrid says.
She leans back in her chair, sucking in cold air after Charlie hops off the call.
She pulls up Camila’s headshot. She wanted so badly to give the role to her.
To carry through on her promise and not ever have to worry that Camila would paint her in a negative light.
But now, with Hailey leaning in, if she still insists on Camila, she’ll look weak.
And if she wants to keep her deal, she can’t look weak.
That much is clear, with or without her reading glasses.
There’s only one play here.
—
“Hailey!” Ingrid greets the actress later that day. She clutches the phone nervously.
“Ingrid, how are you? I was so excited to hear the news about Summer Rain! Congratulations!” Hailey gushes. “You know that’s my mother’s favorite book?”
“Really? I didn’t know that!”
“I still have her dog-eared copy of it! It just meant so much to her! I always promised her I’d audition for it if it ever became a movie.”
“That’s exactly why I was calling. Hailey, you know I’d die to do a movie with you.
But I just don’t know if this particular movie is the right one for you,” Ingrid says, picking her words carefully.
“We’ve changed so much. The character Isabella, she’s not the same woman as she is in the book.
She doesn’t want the same things! She doesn’t want to find a guy—”
“I know! I heard you’re reinventing the whole rom-com genre! So what does she want?”
“To figure herself out? And find companionship?” Ingrid says. She’s purposefully unconfident, like she doesn’t know if the new direction is going to work at all. “She’s had this…silly trauma from her past…it’s really random.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“This is going to sound ridiculous…but her mother couldn’t really take care of her, so she sort of just dumped her onto a random woman she met at church? And the woman was very psychologically abusive…”
She squeezes her eyes shut, hoping what she said sounds god-awful and unappealing to Hailey.
“Ingrid, I’ve never told anyone this,” Hailey says, taking a deep breath. “But I was abused by someone from my parents’ church growing up.”
“You were?” Ingrid asks, floored.
“Not sexually. But one of my mom’s friends made me do her hair every week.”
“Oh.”
“It was a lot of hair.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ingrid offers, swearing inside. Fuck, now what?
“Can we talk schedules? I have a tiny opening next spring to shoot. Sounds like you guys are pretty close with the script. Maybe it could work!”
As Hailey rattles on about her schedule, Ingrid tells herself maybe she can find something else for Camila. Something even bigger once her deal gets renewed. Which, now that Hailey’s on board, it definitely will. She’ll be a hero to the studio. Charlie will once again owe her.
This isn’t personal. It’s just business. And she tried. So, so hard. What more could anyone possibly have done?