Samantha Geimer - The Girl - A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski

The gravel crunched under the car, and Roman said nothing. I said nothing. What was I supposed to say? Thanks for the pictures? I stared out the window. The drive that afternoon from Woodland Hills had, for all his nervous-making questions, seemed kind of cheery. This wasn’t. Roman told me he had brought the photographs from the first shoot with him, the ones he had taken up on the hill by Flanco Road. He would show them to Mom and Bob, he said.

“Is there anything you don’t want them to see?” he asked.

Was he kidding me? He’d never have the nerve to show them the topless ones, would he? On the one hand, I thought, Well, professionals do what the photographer asks. On the other—this was my mother. I didn’t want her seeing those. But I was tired of lying. If this modeling job were to go any further, she’d have to find out sooner or later.

It was still a modeling job. Right?

“You can show them all,” I said.

Maybe if he showed the topless pictures, I wouldn’t have to say anything—my mother would get a clue. She’d know something was wrong. Then again, they trusted this man. Maybe if he showed those photos it would just demonstrate that he had nothing to hide. I couldn’t figure it out.

But what if he mentioned the asthma? Oh my God. The asthma.

For some reason this is what I obsessed about. I would get caught by the lie I had used to try to get away from him. And then I’d have to explain why I lied about having asthma, and then I’d have to tell… the Story. Oh God. He was going to ask if I took my medicine, and Mom would say, “For what?”

I felt guilty for lying, as though something I had said had made everything that followed possible. I should have known better.

There was silence, and then, “Don’t tell your mother. This will just be our secret.”

Roman’s voice startled me out of my reverie. His little eyes squinted into the darkness as we drove.

Tell my mother? Is he insane? I’m sitting here inventing ways to keep my mother from finding out, and he’s thinking I would want to tell her.

We turned down sloping Peonia Road, which delivered us almost straight into our driveway at Flanco Road. As we neared I could see the house lights on. Kim was probably there, and Bruce, soon to be my mother’s brother-in-law and my uncle. Everyone was probably waiting for me at home, hoping to hear how the camera loved me. This was the moment when a star was born.

The car stopped, and I bolted. My mother opened the door, and I rushed up to her before he could catch up and hissed, “If he asks, tell him I have asthma. I told him that because I didn’t want to get in the Jacuzzi.” This must have made about as much sense to my mother as it did to me, but I didn’t care. I ran to my room, slammed the door, and kicked off my shoes; the avocado shag pile felt good under my feet. I put on my nightgown and sat on my bed in silence. I didn’t know what to do. Roman had followed me into the house to see my parents. What would happen? Would he show the topless photos? And if he did, what then? I heard Kim yelling at the dog, and then it sounded like Roman had left. I waited until I thought Roman was gone to call Steve.

As soon as I got him on the phone I started to cry, but refused to tell him what was wrong. I asked him to come over. He probably thought this was my usual drama, that I was just trying to get attention from him since he had broken things off with me. Still, he said he would come. He knew I didn’t sound right; he was worried. I waited for him, and when the door opened I expected it to be Steve. But it was Mom. “Why didn’t you tell me about the pictures?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said.

Gently she closed the door and was gone. She didn’t want to make me feel like it was my fault, or I had done something bad. Maybe this wasn’t going be that bad after all , I thought. She seemed calm. But then, that was my mother, always her calmest when the world was collapsing around her.

When Steve finally arrived, I think I skipped the hellos. “Roman made me have sex with him,” I blurted. “He made me do it.”

“What? What are you saying? You’re making that up!”

Yeah, nothing like a clueless seventeen-year-old boy to confide in. Good choice.

“Roman. He made me do it.”

“Do what? He did not.”

“Yes he did! After I modeled. I didn’t know what to do.”

Oh, this was going great. Steve had a stammer when he was nervous—and now, he was very nervous. I was still high, and here was this guy I’d really been crazy about who had been a great friend, and he didn’t believe me.

Later, much later, after everything happened, I thought about my friend Ann. She’d gone through something much worse than this and she’d survived. But she’d been unable to say no, too. When she had a chance to just walk with me away from trouble, I couldn’t get her to move. This time, I couldn’t get myself to walk away. I couldn’t shout, Get off me! or What are you doing, you moron!

But, you know, there’s something about fame. There just is.

I mean, think about the kids who had sleepovers at Michael Jackson’s house and all the accusations that followed. Think about their parents. Were they bad or stupid people? No. They just wanted to believe that being famous made you good.

Much of what happened when I got home was told to me years later; I was too high, and too upset, to remember.

I flew into the house and into my room, but not before my mother got a good look at me. My eyes were glazed and the pupils huge; my hair was damp. Asthma? Why would Sam say she had asthma?

Polanski sauntered in, perfectly relaxed and cordial. He must have been a little high himself, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After a little small talk, he asked if they wanted to see pictures. They said sure. He went to his car and brought back an envelope of slides, a slide viewer, and a joint. They smoked together.

It’s impossible to tell, in retrospect, if Polanski assumed that because of Bob’s job at Marijuana Monthly we were a permissive family in other ways—more European perhaps? Or maybe he wasn’t thinking about it at all. Maybe, with the arrogance of someone who was lauded as a genius around the world, he just assumed that whatever he did was okay.

As Mom and Bob looked at the photos, they were surprised to find them unprofessional, unfocused, cropped haphazardly, with no regard for lighting. Some caught me prematurely, as if the photographer had snapped too soon. My mother knew test shots, and she was instantly baffled why a man of pictures like Roman Polanski would resort to shots like these. I looked more sullen than sultry, one hand on a hip, a hand slightly behind my head, now in my white lace shirt, unbuttoned. No young Marilyn here. When they saw the topless photos, Mom and Bob froze.

“Motherfucker,” my sister, Kim, mumbled under her breath. Dogs are pretty good at measuring the mood of a room: Our dog Natasha went into a frenzy, spinning in circles before she peed on the living room rug.

“What are you doing?!” Kim screamed at Natasha, smacking her and dragging her out the door, because she had to do something.

After this, Roman turned to her.

“That’s not the way to discipline a dog,” he told my sister. Kim looked at him wild-eyed. My mother felt the blood rising into her neck, choking her, her lips stretched thin.

“Get him out of here,” Mom rasped.

There was a great flurry of activity. The photographs were shoved hurriedly back into the envelope as Roman explained he had to call someone he was seeing that night. Bob, stunned, handed Roman the end of the roach and practically herded him out the door.