“Except I didn’t know it. And I know I shouldn’t care. Not like I deserve something in return, but I’ve always felt…” Dani sighed. “It’s so stupid.”
“It sounds too important to be stupid,” said Merry, although she was confused. How was the sister involved in all this?
Carefully, coaxingly, she got him to tell her the whole story.
“But what the hell does he owe me, really?” Dani said at the end.
“I think the problem,” said Merry, “the thing that makes us angry, even if we don’t have the right, is that we know he didn’t feel like he owed anything to anyone.”
She realizes she’s been standing in the driveway for nearly ten minutes. But she swore she wouldn’t enter the house until Dani—or his sister—emerged to invite her in. At least she can wait in the shade. She wanders across the grass to stand beneath a tree by the studio. Too curious to resist the temptation, she presses herself between a pair of shrubs and peers through one of the windows. Papers and files are lying about everywhere; it looks like a burglar’s been through. Somebody’s already packing things up. “What?” she mutters aloud. Isn’t it far too soon to take such drastic measures? Where is everything headed?
She steps back, careful not to snap any branches, and when she pivots, she nearly collides with a strange man, except that—
“Yikes,” she says. “Hello.” She knows him, though he’s clearly out of context.
“Yes, hello,” he says tersely. His smile is more like a grimace.
“We know each other, I know we do.” Merry extends her hand.
“I’m afraid not.”
“But…” Merry brushes pine needles off her skirt. She now wishes she had worn jeans. Her skirt and blouse make her look like the kiss-ass she’s desperate not to be—though who would she be fooling?
“Nick,” he says, holding out his hand just as she’s withdrawn hers. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She realizes she’s peering at him, as if he’s not in focus.
“Nicholas Greene,” he says.
“Oh…oh Christ—oh sorry—I mean, of course you are. God, I’m an idiot.” And then the picture does come into focus. “You’re playing Mort. In the movie. Oh my God.”
“Yes,” he says. “And you’re not…some skulduggerish gal reporter, chasing me into the woods, Diana the Media Huntress.”
“No,” says Merry. “I don’t think so, at least.”
What is he talking about? And does anybody really talk like that? And why is he roaming around outdoors, by himself? (Well, what is she doing?) “No,” she says again. “I’m just a jilted museum curator, here to beg for alms.”
Now she’s the one talking like that: blather is contagious. “Right. My name.” She introduces herself. They shake hands again, too forcefully.
“All square then!” he says. “Should we go in? Are you here to see Tomasina?”
“Yes. Or I hope so. Wow, that was a lot of talk to figure out next to nothing.”
All Tomasina can do is tell her to leave. She’s endured worse.
Tommy opens the door before they reach it. “I’m thinking lunch,” she says, looking straight at Merry. “I’m putting on canned soup and I’m making a salad, and I think I’m opening a bottle of wine.” The actor slips past her while she speaks.
“I know I owe you a call,” she says, grasping Merry’s outstretched hand. “Only now I guess I don’t. Come in.”
When Tommy closes the door behind her, she sees beyond Merry that Dani is staring, openly astonished, at Nick.
“Everybody, will you please just sit for a minute?”
Like children in a game of musical chairs, Tommy’s three guests immediately reach for the nearest chair, pull it out from the table, and sit—even her brother.
“Well,” says Tommy. “Something in my life goes according to plan.”
Nobody laughs. Nick’s phone buzzes from one of his pockets. The others stare at him. He holds his hands aloft. “Not answering.” He then reaches inside, pulls out the phone, and disarms it.
“You’re not my hostages,” says Tommy. “I’m just not sure how to…” She turns to Dani, perhaps because he’s the one person over whom she has an established authority, however dated, and says, “I wish you had called,” as kindly as she can.
They are all silent now, as if chastised. For a few beats, Tommy feels calm—until something catches her eye in the oblique view she has through the doorway to the dining room, the windows beyond. She leaves the kitchen, to get a better view. When she returns, she glares at Nick.
“Did you invite a photographer here? Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
Twelve
2010
The cancer, too swiftly, wheedled its way into her bones, her spine first of all.
He was in Bucharest when Annabelle rang, hardly able to speak through her sobbing. “All for bloody nothing, the slash and burn. Now it’s too fucking late for the chemo.”
Nick had just returned to his hotel room and wrapped himself in the cheap duvet, exhausted and chilled from hours of shooting outdoors in the morning mist and afternoon rains, sore from horseback riding in ersatz medieval armor, sick of soggy sandwiches by day and meaty, cabbagey stews by night. (It felt as if, even off set, the meals were meant to evoke Arthurian England.) He did not want this news, but he craved a reason to catch a break.
The director gave Nick a three-day leave; they would shoot around him.
“Don’t you dare get up,” he called into Mum’s flat as he let himself in with his key. He threw his bag and his mac on the floor just inside the door, nearly tripping as he made his way to her bedroom.
She was sitting up on the bed, dressed in jeans and a thick jumper, a book laid aside on the coverlet.
He sat next to her, carefully; Annabelle had described how merciless the pain could be, how cunningly unpredictable, how hard it was for her to sleep.
“Will it hurt if I hug you?” he asked.
“Hug me, sweetie,” she said. “Hug me no matter what.”
He pulled himself up against the headboard, so they sat side by side. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and leaned in. She smelled medicinal. He willed away tears. (How much harder, he couldn’t help noticing, it was for him to hold them back than, if required, to summon them.)
“I saw you in the magazine,” Mum said.
“Oh, that frothy bit about my show.”
“I love the thought of you as Sir Gawain. My noble knight.”
“It’s pretty daft, really. I mean the whole plot. I don’t know how long it’ll last.”
“Be optimistic, Nicky. I didn’t impress that on you, any of you, I see that now.”
He wanted to give her the same advice, but it would be insulting. She had asked the doctor not to soft-pedal anything.
He picked up the book. “Iris Murdoch.”
“Plot like a maze. Keeps me occupied.”
“You have visitors, don’t you?”
“Your sister’s here too much. I couldn’t stay here without her, so I let her come. Selfish, I know. Weekends, your brother takes over.”
“High time you were selfish, Mum.”
“If only because there’s not much of it,” she said quietly.
“Of what?” he said, realizing in an instant what a dolt he was.