Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

“That’s great,” I said. I didn’t want to let on that I hadn’t heard from her. I started to feel more hopeful — if Veronica had said yes, maybe Sophie was out meeting with her. Maybe she’d be back, and we could start brainstorming locations. I’d been thinking about beaches, and I remembered a private one where we could film the Columbus scene. It had a little cove we could use as the Spanish harbor, cormorants on the rocks and whales in the winter. I’d already checked to make sure there were cormorants in Spain.

“And I wanted to thank you,” Steven went on, “for setting the whole thing up. I’m just really jazzed about it on a personal level. I’m actually heading out to New York in a couple of weeks to look at locations with Sophie.”

I thought he was confused; I was glad to have something over him.

“Actually,” I said, “we’ll be filming here.”

“Oh,” said Steven, and his voice got tight the way it always did when he was saying something he knew was going to make someone else uncomfortable. “Maybe there’s been a miscommunication. It’s just — I talked to Sophie, and it sounds like she’s been planning to shoot in New York with her crew.”

“You talked to her about this?” I asked.

“Well, yes.”

My stomach went cold. “You talked to her today?”

“We’ve touched base a couple of times since we met. I’m sorry, I assumed you were in the loop.”

I tried to remember if Sophie and I had ever actually agreed to shoot in L.A. or if I’d just assumed we had.

“Right,” I said. “Okay. Well I’ll be coming out to New York too then.”

“Of course,” said Steven. “This is your baby. Like I said, it sounds like she’s got everything pretty well figured out, but obviously we totally welcome your input.”

I realized then I wouldn’t be going to New York. I’d assumed Sophie wanted to work with me. Now it looked like she’d only needed me to introduce her to the people she wanted to meet and give her a place to stay while she made the deal. I could take the script back, insist on a director who’d give me more control. But I didn’t want to work with another director on Isabella . I wanted to work with Sophie.

“Thanks for calling,” I told Steven.

“See you in New York!” he said.

I hung up the phone.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I didn’t do much. I just watched and rewatched old movies— Vertigo and Edward Scissorhands and I Shot Andy Warhol , the kind of movies I’d always loved but never made. Two days after Sophie left, I watched Daniel . I’d forgotten how amateurish it was — the muddy sound, all the misframed shots. I’d also forgotten how good it was. When I finished it, I watched it again from the beginning. At the end, when Sophie stood in the bathroom with her shaved head, I watched her face — her crooked mouth, those giant eyes. I remembered how she’d looked on my couch the night before she left. I thought there might be a human thing inside her, trying to get out.

The next day I found the note. It was underneath my box of Pop-Tarts, now empty. It said, “Thanks and sorry. Talk soon, Sophie.”

I was surprised by the last part, coming from her, and I half took it seriously. For months I expected her to show up at my door again, hoping to be fed. I didn’t know if I would let her in.

THE MONTHS RIGHT BEFORE SOPHIE CAME BACK TO ME WERE some of the happiest of my life. After Marianne some other young directors called me, but I didn’t want to be in movies anymore. I didn’t like the feeling of someone else being in charge of me. At least onstage what I did was what they saw — no cuts, no tricks, no surprises. That summer I had a part in an off-Broadway play about a family whose dad was a donkey. I thought the play itself was kind of silly, but I liked my role as the mean, moneygrubbing youngest sister, and I liked that the director and the rest of the cast respected me and treated me like a real actor. We were friends and we went out together after the show. During the day I worked at a coffee shop in Chelsea that was clean and not too crowded, and my boss paid me on time and never tried to grab my ass. I lived in Prospect Heights with my boyfriend, Abe, who was kind and funny and who I loved, but not enough to keep me awake at night or make my chest hurt with wanting. On the night Sophie showed up, he and I were re- watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind , and he was rubbing my feet. It was fall and raining hard, and she stood at my door soaking wet, no umbrella, in this little ugly dress that looked like it cost a lot of money. I could’ve punched her.

“I’m sorry I came here,” she said.

“Why are you sorry?” I said. It still knocked the wind out of me, seeing her, even though it had been over three years. “I never said I didn’t want to see you.”

Actually, I’d tried to get in touch lots of times — I’d called and e-mailed. I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate her on Marianne , but I’d sent her a long e-mail when Woods came out. She never responded to any of it. I assumed she was mad at me, and I got mad at her for being mad.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you all those times, and now I’m talking to you because I need to.”

“Okay,” I said. “Jesus, come in.”

I was surprised she’d made it anywhere in such heavy rain — she’d always hated water. At first she made it sound all mysterious and existential, but later she told me the older kids had held her head underwater at the pool one time and she almost drowned. It was easy to forget sometimes that Sophie wasn’t always Sophie, that she used to be just a weirdo kid the other kids made fun of.

Now she was dripping on the living room carpet. Abe stared at her, and as I introduced them, I had this terrible feeling of dread. She did that thing she used to do when she met people she didn’t care about, where she just looked right through them like they didn’t exist in her universe. I thought about how I’d apologize for her later. I told myself Abe and I would be in bed together and we’d laugh about how crazy she was. I walked her to the bathroom, where she immediately took her dress off. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

“Jesus,” I said again. I shut her in the bathroom and stood outside trying to act like I wasn’t remembering every time we’d ever fucked, every time she’d thrown me down or held my wrists back or pinned me to the bed so hard I thought her little body must be made of iron — and that I wasn’t also having this protective feeling I’d never had before, like I wanted to wrap myself around her and dry her off with my skin.

“What?” Sophie said from the bathroom. I didn’t even answer. After some time she must’ve figured it out, because she said, “Okay, I’m dressed now.”

I was worried Abe might’ve heard, so I rolled my eyes at him like. Who knows what the fuck is going on with this girl? But he just looked confused. I went back in the bathroom.

Sophie was sitting on the edge of the tub. She was swimming in my sweatpants and Abe’s old Virginia T-shirt. She was looking down at her feet.

“You know how people say you can tell your health by your toenails?” she said. “I think my toenails mean I’m unhealthy.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” I told her. “Are you okay? Are you on drugs?”

I hated myself. I sounded like some suburban mom I’d only seen on TV. Sophie smiled at me. I’d forgotten how tiny and perfect her teeth were, how sharp the canines.

“I’m not on drugs,” she said. “I just need help.”

I put down the toilet lid and sat on it. “Help with what?”