Thomas Hoover - Life blood

Lou, who had not seen those eyes for several years, caught himself feasting on their rich, aquatic blue. He looked into them, but they did not look back. They were focused on infinity, adrift in a lost sea of their own making. They stared at him a moment, then vanished again behind her eyelids.

He told me all this and then his voice trailed off, his despair returning…

"Lou, it's a start. Whatever happens is bound to be slow. But this could be the beginning…"

We both knew what I was saying was perilously close to wishful thinking, but nobody in the room was under oath. For the moment, though, she was back in her coma, as though nothing had changed.

I waited around until eight o'clock, when I finally convinced myself that being there was not doing anybody any good. Lou, I later learned, stayed on till well past eleven, when they finally had to send security to evict him.

Okay, I've been holding out on the most important detail. The truth is, I hardly knew what to make of it. At one point when I was bending over Sarah's seemingly unconscious face, her eyes had clicked open for just a fleeting moment, startling me the way those horror movies do when the "un-dead" suddenly come alive. Lou was in his chair and didn't see it, didn't notice me jump.

The last thing I wanted to do was tell him about it, and I was still shivering as I shoved my key into the Toyota's ignition and headed for home. She'd looked directly into my eyes, a flicker of recognition, and then came the fear. She sort of moved her mouth, trying to speak, but all that came was a silent scream, after which her eyes went blank as death and closed again.

She knew me, I was sure of it, but she had looked through me and seen a reminder of some horror now locked deep in her soul.

Lou took the next few days off to spend by Sarah's side, but nothing more happened. I repeatedly called him at the hospital to check on her, though it was becoming clear her brush with consciousness had only been an interlude. Finally, I decided to show Carly's rushes to David (he loved them) and try to concentrate on postproduction for the rest of the week and the weekend, anything to make me not have to dwell on Sarah's ghostlike, soundless cry of anguish.

Postproduction. When you're shooting a picture, you have to make all kinds of compromises; but in post, with luck and skill, you can transform that raw footage into art. You mix and cut the takes till the performances are taut; you loop in rerecorded dialogue where necessary to get just the right reading of a line; the Foley guys give you clear sound effects where the production sound is muddy; and you balance the hues of reds and blues, darks and lights till you get just the right color tone.

All of the polishing that came with post still lay ahead. The first step was to go through the rough cut and "spot" the film, marking places where the sound effects or dialogue would need to be replaced with rerecorded studio sound- which meant several days, maybe weeks, of looping to edit out background noise and make the dialogue sound rich and crisp. For some of it, the actors would have to come back in and lip-synch themselves, which they always hate.

It was daunting, to have to work back and forth between production sound tracks and loop tracks, blending alternate takes. You had to figure on only doing about ten minutes of film a day, and then, after all that, you had to get the "opticals" right, the fade-outs and dissolves and, finally, the credit sequences.

Normally, once I started post, I would have exactly ten weeks to accomplish all that before the executive producer, David, got his hands on my picture. That was the prerogative that was part of the standard director's contract. Now, though, I figured that was out the window. With the money going fast, I had to produce a rough cut and get the picture sold to cable in six weeks, period.

But first things first. I deeply needed at least one more interview-Carly's was too much of a happy one-note- which was why I needed to shoot Paula Marks. It was now on for Thursday, today.

The appointment had taken all weekend, including a Sunday brunch, to set up, but by that time I was sure this second mother would be perfect. She was a tall, willowy woman, forty-three, who had let her hair start going to gray. Honesty, it was right there in her pale brown eyes. She wrote children's books, had never married-she now believed she never would-and had decided to adopt a child because she had a lot of extra love she felt was going to waste. Different from Carly Grove, maybe, but not in the matter of strength, and fearless independence.

We arrived around ten A.M. to discover her apartment was in one of those sprawling prewar West Side monoliths, thick plaster walls and a rabbit's warren of halls and foyers, legacy of an age before "lofts" and open spaces. Terribly cramped for shooting. But Paula agreed to let the blue-jeaned crew move her old, overstuffed couch out of the living room, along with the piles of books that lined the walls.

Another issue was makeup. At first Paula insisted she didn't want any. Never wore it, it was deceitful, and she didn't want to appear on camera looking like Barbie. (Small chance of that, I thought. A little war paint now and then might help your chances of landing a father for this child.) Eventually Arlene persuaded her that cameras lie and the only way to look like yourself is to enhance those qualities that make you you. It was a thin argument, but Arlene came from a long line of apparel proprietors who could unload sunlamps in the Sahara.

Paula's adopted daughter Rachel, who was a year and a half old, was running around the apartment, blond tresses flowing, dragging a doll she had named Angie. Except the name came out "Ann-gee." She was immediately adopted by the crew, and Erica, the production manager, was soon teaching her how to play patty-cake. Then Rachel wanted to demonstrate her new skills at eating spaghetti. In five minutes she was covered head to toe in Ragu tomato sauce.

When the Panaflex was finally rolling, the story Paula spun out was almost identical to the one told by Carly Grove. She'd spent hours with all the legal services recommended by NYSAC, New York Singles Adopting Children, listening to them describe a scenario of delays and paperwork and heartache. It could be done, but it could take years. Look, she'd declared, I'll cash in my IRA, do anything, just give me some hope. Okay, they'd replied, tighten your belt, scare up sixty big ones, and go to see Children of Light. We hear stories…

Soon after she called them, the skies had opened. A New Age physician and teacher there, a man with striking eyes named Alex Goddard, had made it happen. Rachel was hers in just four months, no paperwork.

Sure, she declared, Children of Light was expensive, but Alex Goddard was a deeply spiritual man who really took the time to get to know you, even practically begged you to come to his clinic-commune and go through his course of mind-body fertility treatment. But when she insisted she just wanted to adopt, he obligingly found Rachel for her. How could she be anything but grateful? She was so happy, she wanted everybody in the world to know about him.

As she bubbled on, I found my attention wandering to Rachel, who'd just escaped from the crew keeping her in the kitchen and was running through the living room, singing a song from Sesame Street. Something about the way she moved was very evocative.

Where've I seen her before? Then it dawned on me. Her walk made me think of Kevin. Actually, everything about her reminded me of Kevin. Were all kids starting to look the same? God, I wanted them both.

Yeah, I thought, daydreaming of holding her, she's Kevin all over again, clear as day. She's a dead ringer to be his older sister. It feels very strange.