John Irving - Until I Find You

“Oh, look—there’s that envious young man who killed those people. One with an oar, I think,” she said, indicating Matt Damon, who was Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Not that The Wurtz made any distinction between Tom Ripley and the character Tom Cruise played in Magnolia that year. And she had convinced herself that Kevin Spacey was trapped in a bad marriage, which he periodically escaped by lusting after young girls. “Someone should be assigned to watch him,” Miss Wurtz told Jack, who understood that by watch, she meant control him.

Seeking to change the subject, Jack said he admired how thin Gwyneth Paltrow was—to which The Wurtz replied: “She looks in need of intravenous feeding.”

When you’ve seen too many movies, time stands still; no one grows old or dies. Miss Wurtz mistook Anthony Minghella for Peter Lorre. (“I thought Peter Lorre was dead,” Caroline would tell Jack the next day. “He hasn’t made a movie in years.” To which Jack could only think to himself, True! )

Looking worriedly around, The Wurtz announced that a party of this size—and with so many celebrities—should have more than one bouncer; she thought that Ben Affleck was the sole bouncer.

Judi Dench was there, which prompted Caroline to confess to Jack that she’d always thought Judi Dench would be an inspired choice to play Mrs. McQuat—should anyone ever make a movie about The Gray Ghost.

“A movie about Mrs. McQuat?” Jack said, stunned.

“You know she was a combat nurse, Jack. The trouble with her breathing was because she’d been gassed— I’m not sure with what.”

Thus Jack was doomed to think of Judi Dench as The Gray Ghost, gassed but come back to life—a troubling thought.

Jack kept giving Wild Bill Vanvleck the eye—the eye that meant, “Isn’t it time to leave?”

But Wild Bill was nowhere near ready to go. He was back in Hollywood, reborn as the director of an Academy Award–nominated film. Jack didn’t begrudge The Mad Dutchman his triumph; The Remake Monster had admirably restrained himself in directing The Slush-Pile Reader. Jack had always trusted Vanvleck as a craftsman, and Wild Bill had stuck to the craftsmanlike part of his business; this time, he’d left the parody alone.

After they finally left the Miramax party, Jack and Miss Wurtz went out to dinner with Richard Gladstein and his wife and Vanvleck and his much younger anchorwoman, whose name was Anneke. Outside the Regent Beverly Wilshire, the protesters were still chanting and holding up posters of male and female reproductive organs—penises and thingamajigs galore. Miss Wurtz became incensed all over again.

“If you don’t like pornography, stop thinking about it!” Caroline said sharply out the window of the limousine to a baffled-looking man in a lime-green short-sleeved shirt; he was holding a poster depicting a naked child, above whom the intimidating shadow of a grown-up loomed.

It was a good thing The Wurtz wasn’t riding in the limo with Hank Long and Muffy and Milly Ascheim. Jack found out later that Milly had put down her window and shouted at the protesters: “Oh, go home and watch a movie and beat off ! You’ll feel better!”

“Goodness, it’s already Sunday morning,” Miss Wurtz declared, when she and Jack were having breakfast at the pool at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. “And your story has bogged down in Oslo, as I recall. It’s probably best not to try to imitate Ingrid Moe’s speech impediment. Just tell me what she said the way you would normally say it, Jack. The speech impediment is too distracting.”

Not surprisingly, Jack would elect to tell the story in this fashion when he told it to Dr. García, too. He made no effort to render an approximation of Ingrid’s awful affliction. (Knowing Dr. García, she would have referred to any effort on Jack’s part to re-create the speech impediment as an interjection.)

Thus Jack described Ingrid Moe’s vision of Hell as if it were his personal account of an actual visit to the place. He paid particular attention to Ingrid’s lack of forgiveness for his mother, which stood in such dramatic contrast to the fact that his father forgave his mother for everything—even the Amsterdam part of the story, which Jack was a long way from getting to on that Sunday morning in Beverly Hills. He felt certain that he and Miss Wurtz wouldn’t get to Amsterdam—at least not before the Academy Awards, which would commence later that afternoon.

Having been to the Oscars once before, Jack knew they were in for a long night. Miss Wurtz, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and smeared from head to toe with more sunscreen than a naked newborn, was pressing Jack for details about Helsinki. She was clearly impatient with Oslo and Ingrid Moe, although William’s appearance at the Hotel Bristol had thrilled her. The Wurtz was especially pleased to learn that William had not cut his hair.

“William had beautiful hair. You have his hair, Jack,” Caroline said, taking his hand. “I’m so glad you haven’t cut your hair short, the way everyone else does nowadays. Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether long hair for men is in or out. If you have good hair, you should grow it.”

The Helsinki part of the story took what remained of their private time that Sunday. Erica Steinberg had thoughtfully arranged for someone to come to the hotel to do Miss Wurtz’s hair. “Whatever do means,” The Wurtz whispered to Jack, before she went off with Erica after lunch. “I’m keeping it gray—that’s all I know. It’s too late for me to be a blonde—not that there aren’t enough blondes already, especially out here.”

Jack went to the gym, which was next to the pool. Sigourney Weaver was there. (He came up to her collarbone.) “Good luck tonight, Jack,” she said.

That was when he began to get nervous; that was when he realized that it meant everything to him to win.

“It’s just possible, Jack,” Dr. García would tell him later, “that winning the Oscar was some small consolation for what you’ve lost. ”

She didn’t mean only his father. She didn’t mean only Emma, either. She meant Michele Maher, notwithstanding Dr. García’s assessment of the “unrealistic expectations” Jack had heaped upon Michele; she meant Jack’s false memories, the childhood his mother had fabricated for him, which he’d lost, too. (Dr. García also meant his mom, of course.)

Erica rode in the stretch limo with Jack and Miss Wurtz to the Shrine Auditorium. They saw the protesters from the night before—the same righteous faces, the identical posters. The limo was moving so slowly that, this time, Jack could count them. There were nine anti-pornography people altogether—not that this would prevent Entertainment Weekly, in its post-Oscar issue, from describing the “scores” of protesters ringing the auditorium.

Miss Wurtz looked wonderful. She wore a long, slender gown with a Queen Anne neckline; it was the same silver color as her hair. Jack’s all-black Armani, which included a black shirt as well as the black tuxedo and the black tie, made him resemble a shrunken gangster. He’d lost the twenty pounds he’d put on for the Jimmy Stronach role—he was looking lean and mean, as Michele Maher had once observed.

They weren’t on the red carpet more than twenty minutes before Erica steered them in the direction of the obligatory Joan Rivers interview. Jack was dreading Miss Wurtz’s answer to Joan’s predictable question regarding “who” she was wearing. But rather than say, “Jack’s father gave it to me when we were lovers,” Caroline answered: “The dress is personal, a gift from a onetime admirer.” That was perfect, Jack thought.