The Perfect Ghost (20 page)

I’d stopped taking notes. Malcolm noticed and I hastily bent to my task, the color rising in my cheeks.

“Think about what Hamlet says about his father, how he’s a ‘paragon and every virtue sits upon his brow.’ And yet Gertrude goes berserk for Claudius. Why? Is she a cliché, the woman who loves an outlaw? Is she a strumpet, a classic bad girl who values hot sex more than she values dignity or class? Is there something Hamlet is completely missing? Was his father a cold and upright man, a man who ignored his wife? And then think about Elizabeth, think of the Virgin Queen in the audience, confronted by this other Queen who gave it all for love, who dies for love.”

“How would you play Claudius?” It wasn’t the question I intended to ask.

His face split in a wide grin. “I’d make him sexy as hell. Even Ophelia wouldn’t be safe in my castle.”

I swallowed, tried to get my breath. The sun danced on the waves and glittered in my eyes. I glanced down at my notes and changed the subject. “You moved here before Claire got sick, right?”

He stared out the window at the sea. “Yes, this house, the way it used to be, was our first home. Dad was getting old. The place was all but empty, run down. The Amphitheater hadn’t been used in three, four years. I thought I’d retreat here, become my father, but then I had an idea for the movies, the Justice films, somehow I saw them taking place on this coast, right here. Because it wasn’t used much for movies, because there was the hardship of winter, one more thing to fight against. It was far away from the craziness on the other coast. Claire loved it.”

“But you broke up.”

“We couldn’t sustain it. That first-time thing; I think it was important for both of us.”

“You couldn’t sustain it for Jenna’s sake?”

“There speaks the child of divorce.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“I speculate about people. Actors do. Directors do. I can’t see you growing up in the bosom of a loving family.”

I wanted to demand why almost as much as I wanted him to shut up.

“You bite your nails. You try to seem cold. You have no idea how attractive you are. You know you’re clever, but you don’t want anyone else to know.”

“Jenna is your only child, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted her to grow up here, like you did?”

“Yes.”

I sucked in a breath. This was disastrous. I was pummeling the man with questions he could answer in monosyllables. “Tell me something about her.”

“Such as?”

I tried to smile. “Does she bite her nails?”

“Actresses tend to treat their bodies well unless they tip over the edge into anorexia. Jenna is spectacularly beautiful. I can say that because she looks like her mother, not me.”

“Would you cast her as Ophelia?”

“Not in my production. I can’t imagine listening to Hamlet yell at her, ‘Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.’ My impulse would be to keep her safe and a director can never keep his actors safe. Sometimes I wonder how Peter Hall feels when he sees his Rebecca in film and onstage, when she’s half naked, seducing some man.”

While he spoke, my eyes searched the photo wall. “Is that Jenna?”

He stood, removed the framed snapshot from its hook, and graciously handed it to me. “At the age of ten.”

“My God.”

“Does that look like any ten-year-old you’ve ever seen?”

“She’s in costume.”

“No one could keep her out of costume. She danced, she sang, she was a hell of a little actress.”

The girl was long and lithe, dressed in a gypsy-like collection of leotards and filmy scarves. Carefree and joyful, she danced en pointe in the sand. Her blond hair caught the sunshine.

“Where was this taken?”

“Lord, let me see it. She looks even more like her mother now.”

“Did you take this?”

He nodded.

“It’s a lovely shot.”

“You’re a lovely girl to say so.”

“Where is she now?”

“You are not to contact her.”

“I know. I just wondered.”

“I’m not sure whether she’s in England or Australia at the moment. Her troupe travels, and yes, she is acting. Using a different name. Someday I’ll probably agree with her, say it was for the best, that it allowed her to develop as an artist or some such claptrap.”

“So it was her idea to see whether she could make it without your influence?”

He nodded. “Some children with famous parents do fine.”

“I’m sure she will. Do you give her advice, the way your father—”

“My father was an autocrat. A dictator. Even after he died, he couldn’t let go. Remember I mentioned his will? His Shakespearean will? He didn’t rattle on about the used furniture or anything like that, but…”

It clicked in my head, almost audibly. Your scribbled note, 2nd BST BD, was no reference to a bedroom in a rented house. In his last will and testament, Shakespeare bequeathed his wife, Anne, his second-best bed. In a long and elaborate document, he’d granted her one scant sentence: “Item, I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture,” and scholars had been speculating over what he’d meant by the phrase for four hundred years. The realization made me lose the thread of Malcolm’s words.

He was saying, “… almost succeeded, inadvertently, in disinheriting his own much-beloved granddaughter.”

“What? Who?”

“My dear father. With his utter stubbornness. He insisted on modeling his will after Shakespeare’s. As he had modeled his life, you know? And he gave unto said son, heir of his body lawfully issuing, namely me, all his lands, tenements, and heriditaments whatsoever, to have and to hold, et cetera, during the term of my natural life, and then unto the first son of my body lawfully issuing, et cetera, hardly taking into account that an heir of my body might happen to be a child of the female persuasion. Thank the lord the lawyer who set up the trust intervened after Jenna was born.”

“The land trust?” I remembered what the hairdresser had said, about his plan to set up a trust to lower his property taxes.

“You mean the conservation trust? No, no, that’s something the board is looking into now, since local property taxes have gone berserk. God knows, the board wants me to do it, but Darren’s keeping them away from me till I get this
Hamlet
off my plate. No, I’m talking about back then. My father called it a dynasty trust, but the lawyer used initials, a GST, some arcane lawyerly thing, a generation-skipping transfer, I think. Dad wanted to protect his theater, land, and fortune from the government, from the federal estate tax, so he effectively skipped a generation. This house is mine, but most of the land is technically Jenna’s.”

“Was your father—?”

“Sorry? Was Dad taken aback by the fact that he almost disinherited Jenna? Not he. No, he was quite convinced that my subsequent heirs would be male, and what was all the fuss about? Because even if I didn’t have male children to rule the stage, Jenna would breed boys. Claire had no patience with the old dictator.”

“Your actors say you’re a dictator. Would you say you’re like your father?”

“Christ, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s the nature of the beast. Look, I have to get down to the Amphitheater. My assistant says I’m spending way too much time with you, and it’s a fact, the time goes by very quickly.”

“Can we meet again tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure. You’ll have to check with Darren.”

“Before you go, one more question.”

“No. Honestly I don’t have time.” He leaned over and placed his index finger over my lips. “Enough.”

His touch shocked me to the extent that I don’t remember gathering my recorder and notebook, or following him down the hallway. I know he said something about the possibility of meeting for a drink later that evening. I know I refused. I could only imagine that he was trying to mock me, make fun of me. Then I found myself outside, gulping a lungful of salt air.

CHAPTER

twenty-nine

I could still feel the touch of his finger as a warm imprint on my lips. Was the invitation to have a drink some kind of test to determine whether every girl in the universe, no matter how unprepossessing, how plain, mousy, or ordinary, would succumb to his charm? As I drove I ran my fingers across my lips and caressed the lingering dent.

I might never see him again. He hadn’t guaranteed another interview. I’d need to speak to his PA, and who knew whether Kalver would see fit to squeeze me into Malcolm’s busy schedule? If Malcolm had time for a drink, couldn’t he make time for an interview?

You must have gone for drinks with Malcolm, patronized some bar where he’d regaled you with the story of Ralph’s Shakespearean will. You’d jotted a few notes, meaning to bring it up in a later interview or to instruct me to research the document. I was happy to know I was on the same trail you’d blazed before me.

I’d manage, even if the PA shut me out, even if Malcolm shut me out. I had the tapes, the films, the voice. My lip tingled where he’d touched it. I drove blindly and, instead of heading to the highway, I took the turn that led to the Old Barn, not that I needed or wanted anything at the barn, but because I knew I could sit there and ponder in the quiet oasis of the parking area.

Voices had been enough, Teddy. Transcribing, writing, hearing the clock strike the hours of each unremarkable day, had been enough. But now I felt empty, a shell of the person I’d been before meeting Garrett Malcolm. How could I return to my tiny apartment, to the quiet clock-ticking minutes of listening and writing, the drab view of the brick façade across the alleyway, after the glowing hearth of shared conversation with such a man? I debated entering the barn, inhaling the sawn-wood silence, reviewing the ranks of ordered gowns, the shelf of wigs.

Instead I reimagined the conservatory, the comfy chairs, the sun beating down through the glass ceiling, the shining windows, the faint aroma of pine needles and good whiskey. I shut my eyes, reached for my notebook, penned a quick list of the photos on the wall. I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about any of them except Jenna’s, not the old ones that showed the Big House before it grew so large, or the framed genealogical chart that hung near the center, surrounded by a cluster of photos that looked like Malcolm, yet not like him, old-fashioned romantic poses that might have been publicity stills of Malcolm’s father when he’d played Hamlet. Positioned next to these was a famous shot of Malcolm in his Broadway
Hamlet
. Photos of Claire were interspersed with pictures of other beautiful actresses Malcolm had directed. And then, the award photos: Malcolm in his tux, thanking the members of the Academy; Malcolm at the Directors Guild ceremony, a breathtaking beauty on each arm.

In a day or two, he wouldn’t recall my name. I should have junked my prepared questions and used the wall as a lead-in. What could be more personal than the images a man chose to keep in the small private room where he worked?

I was surprised, considering his fatherly pride, that Malcolm didn’t display a more recent photo of Jenna. How lovely she was and how lucky to grow up here, the exquisite image of her adored mother. But then, she hadn’t grown up here, not really. She’d spent her childhood on the beach, but then she’d moved, sharing Claire’s exile from the kingdom.

I recalled that gypsy shot of Jenna, saw again the wooden beams, the small structure behind the dancing girl. I was certain I’d seen it before, Teddy, but when and where? The answer, stuck in the basement of my mind, stubbornly refused to ascend. Possibly the same setting served as the backdrop for a scene in one of the Justice films.

Each had been shot locally, a revenue and recognition boost for the Cape. Tourists still made pilgrimage to Wellfleet’s town center, scene of an intense chase sequence through Town Hall, an adjacent Episcopalian church, and a moss-covered cemetery. I opened the car door and swung my legs out. I could stroll the property, spot locations from the films, use that first-hand knowledge in the book.

“All my lands, tenements, and hereditaments whatsoever, to have and to hold.” The language had rolled off Malcolm’s tongue like thunder. Some said his magnificent voice resembled his father’s, but I’d heard recordings and Ralph Malcolm’s voice was heavier on the bass. What an inheritance Garrett Malcolm’s father had given him. “Terrific times,” his cousin James Foley said on tape. “Fed on hot and cold running Shakespeare,” and even if the Amphitheater was a wreck and the house in disrepair, there was the land, the coastline, the view.

The memory of Foley’s transcript brought me up short. What was wrong with me? If I were home, dealing only with words, I’d have made the connection immediately. Foley said he kept in touch with Brooklyn Pierce. That would explain how you’d made contact.

The sun, high in a cloudless sky, grappled with the cool ocean breeze and managed to turn the air surprisingly warm. The urge to stroll along the water’s edge, to play hooky, in Malcolm’s words, was strong. I told myself I’d get a better sense of the estate by walking it, experience the environs in which the master director had matured, the place where he chose to live and work, because the man who’d directed the Justice films could easily live in Paris or Hollywood or Manhattan, but had consciously selected this Cape Cod site over likelier locales.

Maybe I’d find it while pacing the grounds, that moment when I better understood his longings and his life. And even if the walk didn’t lead to inspiration, I’d enjoy it. It would inoculate me against resisting the rest of the day’s indoor work, bent over the keyboard.

I left my car out of sight of the main road and marched downhill toward the ocean. I told myself that when I finished this book, when it had been completed to acclaim, when my career as a solo writer was well and truly launched, I’d take a true vacation, here or maybe farther up the Cape in Truro. I’d buy beach shoes, venture unafraid onto pebbly beaches, swim through swelling waves. It seemed possible, frighteningly possible, as solid as the earth beneath my feet.

Why stop with the Cape? Authors routinely traveled to far-off destinations. You took Caroline to Portugal and Hawaii. You showed me photos of black sand beaches, beaches that made this one seem like a country cousin. Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Patagonia; the names breathed adventure.