Dana Spiotta - Innocents and Others

“Most films just flatter their audience. Make them feel good about their moral compass. Reduce things. There are clear bad guys with a veneer of complication to lend it some sophistication.” When asked if she felt that was true about her friend Carrie Wexler’s new black comedy, WACs , she shook her head. “I haven’t seen it. So I can’t say.”

Carrie knew that the journalist had baited Meadow. But still it hurt. Meadow said nothing. She just looked at her hands. Meadow had sent Carrie a short, faintly positive email about her previous film. That’s the most Carrie expected of Meadow as far as Carrie’s films were concerned, and even that hadn’t happened for this one.

“And you barely return my calls,” Carrie said. “Is it something that I’ve done or what? I want to help you if I can, you know.”

Meadow looked up at her, and her eyes were red. She said nothing. She wiped her eyes.

Carrie felt her anger melt to something else. She raced to figure out what she could do to soften the world for Meadow, make her happy somehow.

“I can help you make the movie about Sarah Mills. Your movie your way. With my production company. Let me help you.”

Meadow shrugged. Took a sip of wine. “I honestly don’t want what you have.”

“When did you become like this?” Carrie said.

“I don’t know.” Meadow shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not a good person.” Meadow’s face crunched up and she put a hand over her mouth. Carrie had hardly ever seen Meadow cry.

“Jesus. Are you kidding? You’re not different from everyone else, you know. Some good, some bad.”

“Maybe that’s why I make movies about people who have done terrible things. An apologist for moral deformities. ‘Handmaiden to Monsters.’ I don’t even mind so much that I’m not good. I would just hate not to know it, to think otherwise. That seems important.”

Carrie put her hand on Meadow’s arm. Meadow was still lean and hard, but now Carrie felt the hardness in a different way.

“That’s one of the insights in your work. No one is pure anything. Bad people are still human.”

Meadow pulled out a cigarette. Carrie eyed it. “Of course I won’t light up.” Meadow laughed bitterly. “The thing is, that’s precisely what I’m talking about. If everyone is good and bad, if everything is complicated, then nothing matters. But I also don’t think the answer is to just give people what they want, tell them what they already know. If people cheer at your films, what are you doing?”

“You’re being ridiculous. You’re just trying to push me away.”

“I’m sorry. It isn’t just you. There’s something sickening in what we all do. There is so much ego in it, and the rest is a veneer of something beyond self. A flimsy pretense that this isn’t just self-aggrandizement. It is really an advertisement for my own intelligence and quality.”

Carrie had seen Meadow do versions of this in the past. She was a woman of extreme positions. Her renunciations. This time Meadow seemed more desperate than Carrie had seen before, more rattled. Meadow kept the unlit cigarette in her mouth.

“I have to go. I am just fucked up with everything.”

“Don’t go,” Carrie said. But Meadow was up and gone.

* * *

Later that evening Meadow called to say she was sorry. Sorry she hadn’t seen Carrie’s last film, and sorry Meadow was so hard on Carrie when really she was angry at herself.

“I know,” Carrie said. She loved Meadow, and it would never change. She would find a way to the feeling she felt most comfortable with no matter what. The bad marriage made it all the more dire that her lifelong friend not leave her too. She would insist on the friendship, on the “best” friendship, no matter how shabbily Meadow treated her. Aren’t friends allowed to accept each other on any terms? Unlike a marriage, which must be fulfilling and a goddamn mutual miracle, a friendship could be twisted and one-sided and make no sense at all, but if it had years and years behind it, the friendship could not be discarded. It was too late to change her devotion to Meadow, even if Carrie hardly ever felt it returned lately.

Meadow said she did want to do the film about Sarah, who had been in jail for twenty years — since she was eighteen. “Good,” Carrie said. Meadow told her Sarah was in jail for the arson deaths of two people, her boyfriend and her daughter. But the evidence — that accelerant was found at the scene — was falsified by a corrupt DA. Sarah had confessed and pled guilty to something she didn’t do. Maybe she could even help Sarah, who knows? Make the case for her innocence. Meadow wanted it to make some difference in Sarah’s life. Not just use her, but help her. Carrie agreed to help produce the film.

After she got off the phone, Carrie wanted to make herself a grilled cheese sandwich. Will was out at band practice and she couldn’t sleep. Carrie buttered the bread on the inside and out, layered in the cheese slices and fried it in a pan. She ate the sandwich with a bowl of thick-cut potato chips. When she was done, she ate a piece of carrot cake. The more she ate, the more she wanted to eat. She knew she would feel gross afterward, her flesh already pressing against her pants, her growing stomach and thighs. But it calmed her and she needed to sleep. Later as she lay in the king-sized bed, she felt more alone than usual.

* * *

Meadow began work on the Sarah Mills film, and almost immediately it fell apart. No one else knew about the Sarah Mills film because the Sarah Mills film was aborted.

Meadow brought Kyle, who was now her friendly ex-boyfriend, as her crew, and they planned to film Sarah at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. It would be their first conversation in person, and Meadow wanted Sarah to tell her story so Meadow could get an idea of what to film next. Although she was doing postproduction on her own movie, Carrie thought she would come for the first day of filming. She wanted to meet Sarah and give Meadow some support.

Carrie rode in the car with Meadow and Kyle up to the Bedford Hills prison. It was oddly situated, tucked next to wealthy Westchester towns, which made Carrie wonder how that ever happened, but maybe a women’s prison wasn’t as disturbing to the locals as a male prison. It also surprised her that so much of it was outdoors. They went through the initial security, which was elaborate even though they had prior approval to bring their equipment in. Carrie had a twinge of anxiety as they ran the hand-wand metal detector around and under her pregnant belly. She knew, and repeated to herself, that low-frequency electromagnetic fields were safe for pregnant women. After the meticulous searches they were stamped with an infrared number and then escorted through open-air passages lined by chain-link fences. At the top were gleaming spirals of razor wire. Then they ran their hands under a light to show their numbers, went through another security check, and were finally led to an open room that looked more like an elementary school classroom than the prison visiting rooms she had seen in the movies. One wall of the room was all windows. It was a sunny day, and the bright light warmed the room. At the back was a play area for the children of the inmates. A colorful mural of various animals was painted above the toys piled in boxes. The center of the room had brown laminate tables and purple plastic molded chairs. No bulletproof glass or bars between inmates and visitors. On the near wall, next to the guard’s high desk, was a long row of vending machines.

“It’s not what I expected,” Carrie whispered to Meadow.

“It looks low-security, but that is for the comfort of the visitors. Every one of these women gets strip-searched after each visit. Can you imagine how humiliating that is? Even the elderly, honor-block inmates.”