And so back I went, this time sliding into the long black car like someone who was used to it; the first time is luxury, the second time privilege.
The next morning Ripley and the casting director met me at a swimming pool on the lot. One of the chaise longues was occupied by a blonde in a red--and--white lifeguard tank suit. She looked up from her magazine and waved so I waved back. The water was dazzling in the sunshine. Movie--swimming--pool--water. Did studio employees swim here on their lunch break, or was this where they made movies in which people swam? Ripley and the casting director had a woman with them, older than me but not old. She was all smiles and solicitude: How was my flight? Had I gotten something for breakfast? Could I believe this gorgeous day?
“We need to see you swim,” Ripley said.
“Seriously?” Right away I wondered how cold the water was because that’s the first thing a person from New Hampshire thinks about when someone starts talking about swimming.
“Do you know how?”
I was in every sense still young and I was trying to put it all together. “Sure I do, but wouldn’t it have been easier to just call and ask me?”
The casting director laughed and Ripley nodded. “Sure, but we’ve got to see you do it. Some people don’t look good when they swim. Other people do.”
I wanted to tell them I’d been a counselor at Camp Huckins for my last two summers of high school, that I’d completed the Red Cross lifesaving course which included a half--mile open--water swim in a lake that was not warm. I taught the water safety class after that. I had the certificate though somehow I knew they could care less. “My suit’s back at the hotel.”
The woman who was with them, the one who was a little older than me, smiled again. “We’ve got plenty of suits,” she said. “Come on, I’ll take you over to wardrobe.”
“Take your time,” Ripley said. “We’ll wait.”
Of course, if some girl takes you to a room and starts telling you how cute this bikini is going to look on you, you figure it out. I thought of the sturdy navy one--piece my grandmother had bought, sitting in my duffel back at the hotel, the tags still on, and felt a surge of rage for having let myself be so duped. When I went back to the pool I didn’t say a word to any of them. I went to the diving board, bounced hard and high twice, then split the bright blue water with my hands. I did three laps with racing turns. Those fuckers wanted to see if I could swim? I’d show them how to swim.
They didn’t tell me I’d gotten the part until I was back in New Hampshire, then said I’d need to be on the set in four weeks. The plane ticket for my third trip out was first class, which, as far as experiences go, beat the limousine by a mile. I was given a union membership and a small furnished apartment. Ripley bought me a pair of sunglasses and told me to wear them whenever I was outside or I’d get crow’s feet. The girl who’d been tasked with taking me to wardrobe was named Ashby, and now it was Ashby’s job to pick me up in the mornings and keep an eye on me on the set. Ashby’s job was to make the weird new things seem vaguely normal, and she was good at it. Ashby wanted to be an actress.
Whatever talent I had for transparency, for smallness, was suited to the camera, where I channeled the memory of Veronica’s remarkable eyebrows and was subsequently praised for my subtle insight. I knew how to smile just a little and then look away while I pushed my hair behind my ears. The cinematographer couldn’t get over the fact that my ears weren’t pierced. He told me it was better than being a virgin. I didn’t tell him the only reason they weren’t pierced was because the girl in line ahead of me at the mall had fainted when they punched her earlobe with the little gun and no one thought to catch her. You never know in life what’s going to serve you; my particular magic was being from New Hampshire with hair that wasn’t dyed and ears that were unpierced. I agreed to wear a two--piece but wouldn’t take my top off, and while I understand that that can be a tough combination to find, it wasn’t exactly the same as acting.
Ripley had me sign with an agent who was a friend of his, and the agent negotiated a contract for $45,000, a fortune to a girl who had so recently scrambled to find change for the pay phone. Not long after I arrived, the filming was delayed because the famous actress who played my mother twisted her ankle while hiking down a trail in Topanga Canyon. She said she’d seen a snake. Ashby told me if anyone else had sprained their ankle this early in production they would have been replaced, but the famous actress was pretty much what this movie had going for it. There were only three weeks left in the semester so I asked if I could go back to school, but everyone agreed that I could not. If the actress’s ankle took a sudden turn for the better, they wouldn’t want to have to wait on me. People in Hollywood thought, and maybe rightly, that New Hampshire was near Mongolia. As a consolation, my agent got me a Diet Dr Pepper commercial and one for Red Lobster. They were the kind of national spots real actors would have sold their mothers to get. I drank a Diet Dr Pepper, showed off my earlobes and opened a bank account. Ripley lent me a car because directors have extra cars—-a little green MG convertible that was older than I was. If this was work, then I was made for it.
The fact that the release date kept getting pushed back wasn’t a problem as far as I was concerned. They decided they needed a winter scene, a flashback, but the famous actress was so famous by then that no one could find a place in her schedule, and even when she did have time and they found the snow they also had to find more money because the winter scene wasn’t in her contract. That threw them off at least another year, it might have been two. There was some problem with postproduction, and then a hang--up with the distribution, none of which was explained to me. Understanding what became of the film wasn’t part of my job, and I didn’t care because I liked L.A. All that sunshine agreed with me. My agent got me two seasons on a forgettable sitcom called The Finnegans along with some more commercials. I had work, a place to live. I went to parties on the beach and ran around with boys who wanted to be movie stars. I got to go dancing. I got out of New Hampshire.
Nell sits down in the grass. “I can’t stand this anymore,” she says.
Emily leans over and puts a hand on her sister’s head.
“What?”
“The whole thing,” Nell says. “That someone just knocked on your door and gave you the part in this really great movie, and when the movie didn’t come out you still got jobs. You were making money even if you weren’t making art. I mean, I understand you had to go swimming first and that wasn’t great but did you even really want it?”