The Perfect Ghost (3 page)
Taking a break from action/adventure, Malcolm cowrote and directed two comedies starring Claire Gregory,
Rip Tide
(1995) and
Still Moon
(1996).
The Savage Place
(1998) won Malcolm his second Academy Award, this one for Best Director.
Heartbeat
(2002) brought another nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
He was recognized as one of
People
magazine’s Most Beautiful People in 1998, 1999, and 2000. He has a reputation for publicity avoidance and has clashed with paparazzi on his secluded estate.
In 2007, he won an Emmy Award for his televised version of Eugene O’Neill’s
A
Moon for the Misbegotten
.
CHAPTER
three
I got the contract, Teddy; I got it.
I was dredging through the e-mail when Jonathan called. Henniman’s forwarded seventy-eight messages, most of them old and originally addressed to you, but others, mainly condolences, for me. There were e-mails from condolers I’d never heard of, famous names I’d never met. They made me blink back tears, although none of them got to me the way Marcy’s did, the card she sent; she absolutely adored you, Teddy. Jonathan hadn’t weeded out the junk mail, so I read ads for male-enhancement products and online-only prescription drug sales, as well as a cryptic message from
An online dating Web site, Teddy? One of those?
Henniman’s also sent information on media events, which made me swallow convulsively. Did Jonathan imagine I’d do the same TV talk shows you handled so splendidly, so nonchalantly? I was pondering the question when the phone shrilled.
As Jonathan spoke the golden words, I relaxed my death grip on the receiver and the scraggy lawn behind the apartment building blazed Technicolor green. Tap dancers and a marching band materialized; a shaft of sunshine pierced the soggy gloom. Alas, Jonathan didn’t know when to quit. He kept on talking until a massive wave of thunderclouds gathered on the horizon. Henniman’s would stand by the contract, but there would be
no deadline delay
, no delay at all, period. Jonathan had gone ahead and reserved a slot for me to meet with Malcolm
tomorrow,
which I would need to confirm
as soon as possible.
We needed to move with all due haste because the PR campaign was set in concrete,
which was definitely a lie
. The powers that be believed I couldn’t possibly make the deadline. They were setting up hoops for me to jump through and the minute I failed, they intended to drop me a page of legalese from the executive suite, stating that I was heretofore in default of contract, which they therefore wished to cancel forthwith, and would I please promptly remit a check in the full amount of the advance?
I scribbled the phone number for Malcolm’s personal assistant on a scrap of paper. Jonathan could have fought for me, fought for more time. He could have, but he didn’t, the slime-covered beast, the utter bastard. Why would he? No one ever fought for me but you.
What would have become of me without you, Teddy? To say I was scared when I started college is to minimize the boundaries of terror. My vocal cords wither at the memory of my first day at BU, me, the homeschooled hermit who’d chosen lectures held in vast halls where I planned to meld with the seat cushions. I never so much as considered a seminar because if you were one of a dozen, they noticed you. They expected you to engage, and I rarely spoke then; I hardly breathed. Small and drab, I’d become skilled in the art of disappearing, invisible as a stick insect on a branch. Neat, orderly, and mechanically minded, I was easily disregarded; I counted on that. If anything broke, I fixed it. I didn’t make trouble and I never looked to others for help. It never occurred to me to seek guidance when I selected classes. Instead, I picked them by their scheduled time. The safest, most studious, least popular grinds attended classes early Monday mornings and late Friday afternoons. I was so nervous my eyelashes trembled, never mind my hands.
I imagine you knew from the way I held myself that I was different. If you’d spoken to me during your introductory Survey of Western Lit, I would have bolted like a frightened foal. You wrote instead, brief notes on graded assignments, and your words dropped like manna from heaven. I read them a hundred times, interpreted them as though they were obscure and meaty hieroglyphics. I decided to be the best student you’d ever had, the best you’d ever have. I inhaled your every adverb.
You challenged me while everyone else ignored me. What did I think about the motif of disguise in the
Odyssey
, the symbolic blindness in
Lear
? You endorsed my ideas about the whiteness of the whale and the double-consciousness of Katherine Anne Porter’s heroines. You said I had a thoughtful voice, insight, an original mind. You declared my prose lively when I was only half alive.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, stared at the clock, and stumbled into the bedroom. Who would bring in the snail mail while I was gone? What on earth would I wear out in the real world? I started hauling items from the closet, tossing them helter-skelter on the bed.
You called me the champion chameleon, the adaptable one, the writer who listened with a secret inner ear, who captured the soul of the subject, made him sound exactly like himself but more so. I’d become a master of disguise at the keyboard, but what blouse or skirt would disguise me best, display and proclaim me a qualified interviewer? I knew what you wore for interviews, but as a man, you had it easy. I knew every detail of your wardrobe. Even when you were only my professor, I studied you.
I memorized you while you lectured, your shaggy hair and wide grin, your slightly off-center mustache. There wasn’t a posture or a facial tic I didn’t know. Model, mentor, connection, you were everything to me then. Of course, you had other acolytes, and it seemed to me that they were the pretty girls, the alluring, brightly dressed, chattering girls. But they couldn’t work the way I did. Their devotion was nothing compared to mine.
I owed you. If I knew how to interview, it was because I knew how you interviewed, what kind of questions you asked, the way you inexorably urged your prey toward the water hole.
I stared over a field of beige sweaters and slacks. You’d have dressed casually, neatly pressed jeans, sweaters. Ties, even vests, but no jackets. Or maybe you’d have worn something flashier, more in key with a show-business celebrity. Garrett Malcolm was a movie star, after all, not a business tycoon, although of course, he’d made millions. I refolded a faded cardigan, stood on tiptoe to shove it onto the shelf at the top of the closet.
I was born into the wrong family; simple as that, complicated as that. Oh, Teddy, the inventory of what I didn’t know about the world when you first met me could have filled volumes in an encyclopedia. You never realized the extent of my isolation or the depth of my ignorance. You can’t imagine what it was like. Commercial jingles were the closest I got to poetry. I never saw a book till I blundered into the public library. Other students learned calculus in college; I learned to brush my hair and teeth, file my fingernails. I want to keep what I have, what you gave me. What I earned. I know it’s not art, Teddy. What we did, what I did, has little to do with the whiteness of whales, but it’s writing. It’s work, a bold answer to the inevitable question
What do you do?
It’s a way to support myself beyond mere and meager subsistence. It’s a life. It’s my life.
God, if you were here, you’d tell me to stop dithering and get on with it. I visualized items on a list. Confirm the appointment, set a schedule, make the deadline. I’d need to make snap decisions, pack quickly. But I hadn’t been to the Cape since I was a child; I was getting nervous and damp-palmed just contemplating the journey. It seemed like I’d gotten back from New York only ten minutes ago.
I did twenty minutes of deep-breathing exercises before phoning. Afterward, I made actual lists on lined yellow paper. The first read: bus ticket, rental car, maps. The second: underwear, socks, shoes, pajamas, pants, shirts, jewelry, pills, Maalox, makeup, toothpaste, toothbrush, alarm clock, deodorant. You would have laughed and said it was just like me to make a packing list when everything I owned looked the same, when I could fit most of my wardrobe into a single suitcase. The third list was divided into two parts.
A.M.
: take pills, shower, put on makeup, get dressed, eat, brush hair, brush teeth.
P.M.
: charge cell phone, take pills, wash face, set alarm clock. A ridiculous list for a twenty-six-year-old woman, but I was terrified I’d forget to do something.
I eliminated from consideration the shoes I’d worn to New York, got on Weather Underground and reviewed the forecasts for Chatham and Provincetown. I’d need a sweater, a warm jacket, a scarf.
After jamming the duffel tight and wrestling the zipper shut, I reviewed key scenes from Garrett Malcolm’s films, made notes, and prepared to squeeze the last drops out of him. I’d use the same outdated recorder you used, carry backup batteries, but I’d think of the recorder as a prop rather than a necessity, as a badge of the profession, use it even though I didn’t need it, not with my memory, and I’d behave the way you behaved, relaxed and forthright. You and Malcolm would have gone out on the town, shared a drink, but I didn’t think I could manage that; I’d drop the glass or something. Oh, I wished I could do the interviews by phone. I come across better on the phone. I can talk on the phone. People can’t see me, can’t peer into my eyes.
I know, I know, you’d say I’m not overly clumsy, maybe you’d say I’m not clumsy at all. You’d say, get a grip. But I have this image of myself and it isn’t the same as the woman reflected in the mirror. The mirror girl has flat gray eyes in a pale oval of a face, an unlined face, almost a child’s face. She’s no great beauty, but her soft brown hair is nice enough, chestnut-colored, really. She’s young and painfully thin, but not unattractive. When I consider myself, in my mind’s eye, it isn’t the mirror-woman I see; I see the waif in Salvation Army cast-offs, the girl with dishwater eyes, lank hair, and bad teeth, the chunky, gawky adolescent. That’s the true me.
I watched Malcolm’s films late into the night, Teddy. You’ve seen the early action thrillers, the ultra-successful Brooklyn Pierce greats, as often as I have, but the responsibility of painting the small existential comedies, the likes of
Still Moon
and
Rip Tide,
for people who haven’t seen them, loomed like a giant hurdle. Then there were the modern noirs, filled with sin and redemption. Most of the people who buy the book will have watched the thrillers, the Academy Award winners, over and over, so making them fresh for Malcolm’s fans will be a massive challenge, too.
I never imagined I’d get to meet him: Garrett Malcolm, actor, director, producer, screenwriter. I felt like I knew him from his films, his voice, the word-pictures you sent back, and the photographs.
I recalled the laughter on your tapes and his deep, soft voice. “Director” conjured images of a demagogue who yelled his head off, but Malcolm’s films were different, so why wouldn’t he be different, too? He must have an amazing mind. And what a colorful life; no wonder the publisher paid so well. And I was going to meet him, share the same room with him, sit and talk with him. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
Remember that baggy blue sweater you left here? I stuffed it into the bulging duffel. Since I’d never wear it to an interview, it wouldn’t matter how wrinkled it got. Your scent still clung to its woolly fibers; I could pat it the way that lady patted her fur on the train, like it was a lover, a boon companion. I could wear it to bed. If I felt a panic attack coming on, I could press it to my nose and breathe.
CHAPTER
four
Teddy, just as I was bumping my duffel down the stairs, who should appear, like an unholy spirit haunting the vestibule, but Caroline? I’d padded my timetable for every conceivable delay: tardy cab, Storrow Drive traffic, sudden snow, unexpected detour, but I hadn’t anticipated Caroline. How could I?
Diva that she is, I’d have pictured her in head-to-toe black, but she wore the kind of jeans that cost hundreds of dollars instead, plus knee-high suede boots and a shearling coat with a hood that framed her face. She carried a brown Bloomingdale’s bag and poked impatiently at the doorbell as I flattened myself against the wall.
I could have retreated, rushed upstairs, and locked myself in. The cab would wait five minutes, honk a wistful note, and depart. The bus would leave without me; the opportunity would pass me by; life would pass me by. My breath rasped in my throat as I forced myself away from the sheltering wall and thumped the suitcase resolutely down the remainder of the stairs. Caroline glared at me through the glass till I unlocked the inner door.