“Countin’ on it. Bankin’ on it. Nobody goes to see movies like this otherwise.”
At which point they were interrupted by two young women who wanted a selfie with Nick. They were oblivious to Andrew, the far more powerful, talented man. (Perhaps Andrew was relieved at his generational anonymity.) After the women retreated, Andrew said, “Or maybe some people will see it no matter what, pretty boy.”
Nick no longer denies it: that he’s the object of fantasies, crushes, minor obsessions—and not just by women. His agent alerted him, regrettably, to the website addictedtonick.com. This sort of fandom (“fanzy,” Si calls it) comes as a surprise to him, however. Even when he landed his first decent roles, he was gawky more than lean, wan more than fair, a skinny boy-man who could easily play five or eight years younger. Not that he didn’t have his followers, his autograph hounds.
What had changed? Was it Taormina, the place as well as the film? Seeing himself in the first dailies had been more unsettling to Nick than the very first time he’d seen himself on-screen. Did he really, all of a sudden, look so much older, or was it the weight of the character? Had he broken through to a deeper level of transformation? Or was it merely the sharpening effect of the strong southern light in all those exterior scenes? Fretting about it isn’t wise, because if there is any kind of “magic” to his work, he mustn’t question the enchantment. He has little patience (or is it discipline?) to adhere to any method. Acting, when it succeeds, feels to Nick like crossing a membrane or swimming underwater. The passage might be unpredictable, even sudden, but the otherness of where you arrive is real.
Tomasina comes into the kitchen, in her arms an exuberance of peonies. “You’re tall. Would you mind grabbing that jar?” She nods toward a high shelf.
It’s a jar that looks to have held jam for a giant. He takes it to the sink and puts it under the tap. “Magnificent, those,” he says as he watches her trim off excess leaves. “Aren’t they everybody’s favorite flower?”
“My mother liked sunflowers best,” she says as she places the jar on the table.
“And I suppose mine liked heather. There you go. White heather. Supposed to bring luck,” he says. “Didn’t bring her much.”
Tommy thinks, But she had you.
She recalls his speech at the Oscars, the tears; it might be prudent to steer clear of talk about mothers.
Too late. He says, “She worked too hard and she died far too young.”
“I’m sorry.” Tommy hesitates, then says—what the hell—“My mother died young, too. Or younger than she should have.”
“I know,” says Nick. “Breast cancer, just like mine. Not a terribly exclusive club, is it? Children orphaned by that disease.”
“?‘Orphaned’ is a bit dramatic. I mean, we weren’t children anymore,” says Tommy. How does he know about her mother? She sees him read her face in a flash.
“I’m sorry. I get obsessive with my research. Turn over more stones than I should. If I weren’t an actor, perhaps I’d be a detective. Except that I’m not all that sneaky. And I’m rubbish at keeping secrets.” (Bugger, why did he say that?)
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I am sorry about your mother. Both our mothers. Here—I’ll set the table.” She needs a task, a way to reorient herself, yet as she arranges the forks and knives, the napkins, puts the salt and pepper in their customary places, it’s all as if in a dream—come to think of it, not unlike those dreams with Ben Stiller and Woody Harrelson. “How long ago? Did you lose her, I mean.”
“Five years. I was twenty-nine. Not so young to lose a parent, I know. But maybe since I never had a dad, I felt I was owed twice as long with a mum.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Oh blast—” He turns to the stove, grabs a mitt, hastily opens the oven.
The eggs are perfect. Tommy sees the pleasure on his face. He might be ten. Thinking of him as a child, she realizes that she might be just the age his mother was when she died—though of course she hasn’t been obsessive about her research.
“I saw your movie last night. Taormina,” she says when they are seated.
“God, talking of mothers. Please say you didn’t feel you had to watch it.”
“Of course I did. And I see why you won all those prizes. You’re amazing. And the actress who plays your mother—”
“Is a miracle. Right? She ought to have taken every trophy in the bloody book.”
“But…you die. Your character. I wasn’t expecting that. I’m not sure I felt it was right. It was too much. Morty used to talk about how too much drama can crack the beams of a plot. Threaten to pull the house down. The story.”
Nick is nodding emphatically. “That story’s quite baroque. It is. But I came to feel that the idea, the weight of the drama…” He’s stopped eating for the moment. Tommy watches, fascinated, as he runs both hands along the edge of the table, then grasps it firmly, leaning toward her. “It’s the only way the mother can break into reality again, the way she surfaces from the lagoon and looks everywhere for Francis. She knows, before they even find his body, that she’s lost him. That it’s her bloody fault. And by the time she gets to San Francisco, she is fully inside her senses again. There is no escape, no avoidance. No way to atone, really.”
“So her life is over.”
“No, no,” says Nick. “It’s not. When you see her together with Conrad—the boyfriend, the fiancé—you know she sees her son in him. And he sees Francis in her. They mirror each other. And then you find out about the adoption, the child who would have been mine.”
“But would you forgive your lover’s parent for putting him through all that—leading him to his death? Literally?”
Nick waves his fork in the air. “Remember, Conrad doesn’t know half of what went on in Taormina: the horrific bathtub scene, the attempted seduction, the circumstances that led to the jump from the cliff….”
“All the same, it’s devastating.”