Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“I’d like it fine,” Tommy said.

“Sure, he’d like it fine. Eight years old, the little cockeh, and already he’s casting my pictures for me. You’re going to do a test together. Is that okay with you, Mr. Kazan?”

“That’s fine,” Tommy said.

“Okay. Sound stage three. They’re waiting for you now. Be good, you little vontz, and don’t make Miss Burke nervous, you hear me?”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Floren,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, you better. And you,” he said to Gillian, “stop worrying. Such a nervous girl I never met in my life. You remind me of my daughter, you know that? I got a nervous daughter like you.” He smiled and extended his hand. “Don’t worry, you hear? You’re a good actress. I got starring in this movie a klutz she couldn’t act her way out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , me, I got stuck with her. Forty thousand dollars a week. Learn your lesson, Miss Burke, never sell yourself cheap.” He grinned again. “I like you. Go. Go take your test. Do a good job, or I’ll never talk to you again.”

“Thank you,” Gillian said. “Thank you very much.”

“Thank your agent. Thank yourself. Go. Take the test.”

She joined Tommy in the reception room outside.

“He’s a nice guy,” Tommy said.

“Yes,” she answered softly. “He’s very sweet-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

He held the door open for her. They went into the corridor together and began walking toward the elevators.

“Didn’t we work together once?” Tommy asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“On Beaver? Did you ever do any Beavers? ”

“No. Never.”

“ Father Knows Best? ”

“No. Not that either.”

“Hey, what’s the matter with you? You look as if you’re about to cry.”

“I’m all right,” Gillian said.

“It’s only a part,” he told her, and he shrugged and pushed the button for the elevator.

She could not remember afterward what she did or said during the test. Floren’s little crew, which had been waiting since two o’clock, consisted of a cameraman, an assistant cameraman, an operator, a director, an assistant director, a boom man and a mixer, a recorder, three grips, a make-up man, a hair stylist, a wardrobe mistress, four electricians, three prop men, a handyman, and a script clerk, who handed her a mimeographed script the moment she entered the sound stage. She tried to memorize her lines while a lipstick brush traced her mouth, everything seemed hazy and blurred, a pencil touching the edges of her eyes, a comb being pulled through her hair, someone dusting her jacket, someone else asking her to take her jacket off, lights being moved into place, the assistant cameraman stepping in front of the camera with the synch sticks, raising the diagonally lined clapper, the words TEST, GILLIAN BURKE scrawled onto the slate in chalk, and beneath that TAKE #1, SOUND #27, and beneath that the date and the name of the cameraman, and the name of the director, and the name of the producer. “You ready, Miss Burke?” the director asked. She nodded. “Okay, quiet and roll!” the assistant director said. One of the sound men, earphones on his ears, waited for word from the recorder and then said, “Speed,” and the cameraman said, “Mark it!” The sticks came together, the black-and-white lines met, the assistant cameraman said, “Test, Gillian Burke, Take One,” and that was all she remembered. The rest was truly a blur. She had a vague notion that they were stopping too often, that she heard “Cut!” shouted too many times. She thought someone asked her to laugh on the next take, thought someone else asked her to cross her legs, but she could remember none of this clearly, could only remember feeling awkward and clumsy beneath the blazing lights, could remember how professional little Tommy had seemed in comparison.

And when it was over, she was certain she had done badly, was certain there was a sickly smile on the face of the assistant director, was certain the electricians and the cameraman were laughing at her. She put on her jacket, thanked them all, and walked through the stage and pushed open the door, and saw the red light still burning outside and the sign forbidding entrance when the red light was on, and walked slowly toward her sister’s car, feeling despondent and foolish and rejected, and knowing she had thrown away the first real opportunity she’d ever had.

She wondered why things never seemed to work out for her, wondered why the underwater television show had lasted only a season and hadn’t been picked up for reruns anywhere, wondered why the Johnny Thunder pilot had never even got off the ground, wondered why the few decent things she’d done never seemed to get the notice she hoped they’d get, wondered why today she had suddenly become all arms and legs, tripping over herself, barely able to speak, allowing herself to be outacted by an eight-year-old boy, what the hell was the matter with her, anyway?

She could not go back to Malibu that night. She ate dinner in a small Italian restaurant in Hollywood, and then went to a movie. She took a room at the Hollywood Roosevelt afterward, ordered a double Scotch, and went directly to bed. She slept until two o’clock the next afternoon, dressed listlessly, and then went down to check out and pick up the car. The day was suffocatingly hot. She drove out to the beach in a fog of despair. She never failed to respond to the fresh breeze blowing off the open water as she came down the hill from Santa Monica onto the Pacific Coast Highway, but today she sat lifelessly behind the wheel of the car, hating the sun-bronzed bodies cluttered about the hot-dog stands, the girlish shrieks from the beach, the sun blazing on the water, the breakers rolling in against the high wooden pilings under the shore-front houses. When she reached the Mexican restaurant near Castle Rock, she looked at her speedometer. Seven point four, she thought, and then watched it steadily, knowing her sister’s house was six-tenths of a mile past the restaurant, all those damn little Malibu houses crouched behind their highway fences and all looking exactly the same so that you couldn’t tell one from the other without clocking the mileage on your speedometer. She made a screeching turn across the highway in the face of an approaching trailer truck and almost knocked over the garbage cans in front of the house.

The gate was locked. She pulled the cord on the hanging bell out front and waited.

“Monica!” she called.

There was no answer.

She went to the house next door and leaned into the open Dutch door of the gate.

“Anybody home?” she yelled.

A man in a brief yellow-nylon bathing suit was sunning himself on the slatted wooden terrace. He lifted a pair of sun protectors from his eyes, blinked, barely turned his head toward the gate and said, “She’s down on the beach, Gilly. Want to hop over the fence?”

“Thanks, Lou,” she said. She reached over the bottom half of the door, unlatched it, walked past him to the fence separating his house from Monica’s, climbed onto the bench resting against it, and boosted herself up, legs flashing.

Lou sat up and said, “How’d it go?”

“They tested me.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm,” she said, and dropped to the terrace on the other side of the fence. The door of the house was open, thank God for that. She went in, walked clear through the house to the ocean side, walked out onto the deck, and scanned the beach for her sister. She was nowhere in sight. Annoyed, she came back into the house and threw her jacket onto the couch, hating the California modern and the Japanese look of everything in the house, hating the way the house shook each time a new wave crashed in against the pilings, rushing across the beach and striking the wooden logs with force and power, washing up clear under the terrace on the highway side of the house. She went into the bedroom. A fly buzzed against the windowpane. She threw open the window, and the fly escaped. The bedroom was very hot and sticky. She could hear the sound of the surf booming under the house, and far off down the beach, where the expanse was wider and the tide had not yet completely engulfed the sand, the sound of people laughing. She took off her sweater and her bra and cupped her breasts, massaging them for a moment, and then throwing herself full length on the bed, kicking off her shoes, rolling onto her side, and staring at the wall. She could see the small card tacked over the dresser, telling when the grunion were running. She had been on a grunion run only once in all the time she’d been in California. She had been tested for a picture only once in all the time she’d been in California.