A. Homes: In A Country Of Mothers

J ody was already dialing when Harry came up from behind and put his fat thumb down on the hook, disconnecting her.

“No spy reports,” he said.

“I was making a shrink appointment. You’re driving me crazy.”

“I’m flattered,” Harry said, plucking the quarter from the coin return, dropping it into her open palm. “Try again.”

Once more Jody put the quarter in and dialed. She turned to face Harry. The short metal phone cord pulled close against her throat. Later, she would notice it had left a thick red mark like a scar across her neck, as though someone had tried to strangle her. But then, waiting for the call to go through, she ignored the pressure at her throat and fixed on Harry. Fat, swollen up like a dead whale, Harry’s stomach started at his collar and went down to his knees, jutting out in front of him in one solid lump. His thick, pink lips were pulled down by age and too many years of pretending to pout. She imagined his skin was cold and clammy to the touch.

When Claire Roth’s answering machine finally beeped, Jody smiled at Harry and left the following message:

“Hi, this is Jody Goodman, you don’t know me. I’m having some trouble making career decisions.”

Harry’s face curled into a scowl.

“Barbara Schwartz gave me your number. I think I should make an appointment. I can’t be reached at work, but my number at home is 555-2102. Thanks.”

“Taking to the couch over me?” Harry asked when Jody hung up. “How wonderful.”

“You’re an asshole,” Jody answered, loud enough for the crew hovering around her to hear.

“And you, good girl,” Harry said, blushing, “are an angel.” He kissed her forehead and drifted back onto the set.

Jody dropped another quarter into the phone and called the office.

“Michael Miller Productions, can you hold?”

“It’s me,” Jody said. “Is he there?”

“Hold, please.”

There was a buzz, then the clattering of Michael Miller picking up his prized Lego phone.

“What?” Michael said.

“‘What?’? No ‘Hi, hello?’” Jody asked.

There was silence. After spending two years as Michael’s assistant, Jody was often spoken to in a kind of small talk that was sometimes no talk.

“Fine,” Jody said. “I guess when you’re losing millions of dollars, the little niceties are the first thing to go. Well, he knows I’m checking in. He just kissed the top of my forehead. A saliva ball remains in my hair. I think I can feel it.”

“Aside from your personal injury?”

“He’s taking his time. Going over everything again and again. There’s no way he’ll finish on schedule.”

“Let me know more as soon as you can. I may have to try and bring in some new money. Speaking of which, where did you put that European check?”

“In the production account. By the way, I think I’m on to something. I just called Harry an asshole and he blushed.” She hung up quickly before Michael could respond.

“Lock it up,” the production assistants screamed down the street. Within minutes traffic was stopped, pedestrians held behind barricades, and a rented police car, sirens wailing, raced up a side street past the first camera position, turned wide onto Broadway, spinning a little in front of a bank of lights and a second camera, then came to a screeching halt in front of Zabar’s, third position. An actor dressed as a cop jumped out of the front seat, opened the back door, and a woman in a thick wool coat, played by the legendary Carol Heberton, stepped out.

“Do you want anything?” Jody said, mouthing Heberton’s lines in synch with the action. “I won’t be more than a minute.”

“Cut,” someone shouted into a megaphone. “Once more, positions.”

Jody pushed her way through the crowd, mentally calculating the cost of another take. Film was money; cost was associated with everything.

As she started to duck under one of the barricades, a real cop stopped her. “You’ll have to cross on the other side.”

“I don’t think so,” Jody said, and went forward.

The cop caught her by the shoulder and held her until a production assistant came to the rescue. “She’s okay,” he said. “She’s okay, she’s one of us.”

Jody dusted herself off.

“Harry’s been asking for you,” the PA said, “barking ‘Good girl, good girl,’ into someone’s walkie-talkie.”

“Great,” Jody said, turning to look at the crowd of hangers-on, thinking the whole thing was ridiculous. Michael Miller Productions — a.k.a. Forgettable Films. She’d taken the job with the idea that if she wanted to be a filmmaker she ought to learn something about the business. For the entire two years she’d been there, Michael had been scraping money together so that old Harry Birenbaum, creator of hybrid, sweeping, pseudo-European romantic epics, could try his hand at a new kind of movie, one that had commercial potential, and ideally would earn back all the money Michael had begged, borrowed, and worse. If the film failed, Michael Miller Productions would probably become Michael Miller Lawn Service: WE CLEAN GUTTERS.

A homeless man appeared out of nowhere and scurried up to the food table. Jody watched him pile bananas, oranges, and apples into the crook of his free arm. He was almost at a dozen when a technician startled him—“And don’t come back!” The last orange fell, bounced on the sidewalk, and rolled into the street.

Michael had talked Jody into loaning herself out to Harry during the New York location work by describing it as a unique opportunity to see one of the masters in action. So far, all she’d learned from watching the great one was that maybe she should have applied to UCLA’s law school instead of the film department.

Jody knocked on Harry’s trailer door, marked COSTUME to deter celebrity maniacs.

“Please,” Harry called.

The door opened and Karl, Harry’s assistant, came flying out as if he’d been fired from a cannon.

Harry himself was sitting sideways at the table, too fat to fit in facing front. “Come and have lunch with me,” he said.

Jody didn’t answer.

“Well, come on. Can’t leave the door open like that. Someone might see.”

Jody climbed in and sat across from Harry at the dinette.

“What do you think — A or B?” He aimed a remote control at a television set built into the wall and played two video versions of a scene they’d shot the day before. The A sequence was neither here nor there, acceptable but boring, definitely not the stuff of Academy Award nominations. The B shot was classic Harry, so tight that the images overflowed the frame. Instead of Carol Heberton from fifteen feet, it was Heberton’s left eye, a subtle shift in the pupil, a dilation that registered her having seen something, consciously or unconsciously. Playing the known against the unknown, that was Harry’s strength.

“A or B?” Harry asked again.

She didn’t want to answer. Harry really was one of the great filmmakers, but he was slumming. His last three films had lost fortunes, his shooting style of rehearsal, take, and retake was so expensive that producers wouldn’t go near him. Regardless, he wasn’t someone you pictured behind the wheel of a cop-and-robber flick.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “You want to be a director? Directors make decisions.”

“B,” Jody said.