Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“Why are you talking about it in the past tense, then?” I said gently.

“I wasn’t, really,” she said, and smiled again. This time it was a strained smile that did not reach her eyes, and I damned myself for speaking. But I wanted to know more about this man, about his capacity to hurt Laura. What I already knew did not endear him to me.

“You were. Look, Pie, if he really loves you and means all this, nobody in the world is going to be happier for you than me. But if there’s even the remotest chance that he could hurt you—”

“Pring would not hurt me,” she said. But she did not look at me.

“Then why hasn’t he called you? Why didn’t he let you know about the screening?”

“Oh, Met, he just gets so totally involved when he’s got a new movie in this stage, with everything up in the air and all the ends flying loose—it’s like he’s all swallowed up, hypnotized, or something. Stu said he was in the middle of courting this Margolies for money; you know, you heard what Corky said. Or he could be up at the mountain place. There’s not a phone up there except in the caretaker’s place.”

“A hermit with a phone?” I smiled, hoping to divert her. The anxiety in her voice was too painful to hear. I was very sorry I had brought up Caleb Pringle.

“Well, he’s not really a hermit. He’s a writer and I think he does something about earthquakes, too; he’s got all this equipment and stuff up there, Pring says. It’s just that he almost never goes down into any of the towns. But Pring has to have some way to tell him when he’s coming up and what he wants done, and all that. I don’t think he’d go up there and use the phone in the tower. He doesn’t much like this guy, or rather, he thinks he’s nuts, or something. Obsessed, he says. But he keeps him on because he does a pretty good job and he doesn’t pay him anything. Pring lets him live in the tower in exchange for keeping the place up. The guy has some money, I think.”

“Terrific. A rich hermit with a phone. Just who you want peeping in the windows in the middle of a mountain idyll.”

“He doesn’t come around the place. Pring says it’s like being alone in the middle of a primeval wilderness up there. Oh, Met, nothing ever sounded so wonderful to me as that—”

“Well, I hope you spend years and years up there, baby,” I said, reaching over and kissing the top of her head. The strange platinum hair, flying free today, felt like the pelt of an animal, glossy and strong and a little rough. She smelled, as she always did, of her signature Opium.

“You’ll love him when you meet him,” Laura said into my shoulder. “He should be at the screening. He always is. I’m so glad you and Glynn are coming.”

“Moral support?”

“No. More like prizes to show off. Let him see what an impeccable gene pool I come out of.”

“I’d rather think he was going to carry you off to the mountains than count your teeth and breed you,” I said, laughing.

She stiffened, then relaxed.

“Well, come to that, we would have absolutely gorgeous children, Met. Someday, I mean. Although I have to say my clock is definitely ticking.”

I pulled back and looked into her face.

“You’re not serious.”

“No. It was just a thought. He’s crazy about kids, though. And he’s wonderful with them. There’s this little kid in Right Time ; you’ll see tonight. When we started shooting nobody would have given you any odds at all on getting a decent performance out of the little cretin. But after Pring got ahold of him he changed completely. It’s a remarkable performance. In front of Pring’s camera he’s just magic.”

“Well, I look forward to the little cretin and everything else,” I said. “Now. What shall I wear that won’t embarrass you out of your wits? Not, I suspect, the faithful pantsuit and the Hush Puppies?”

She rolled her eyes at me and got up, stretching.

“God forbid. Follow me. I know just the thing.”

Just before we left for the screening I called Pom again. I got answering machines both at home and the clinic. The morning’s worry crept back, stronger this time.

“For God’s sake, don’t spoil this night stewing about Pom and that old woman,” Laura said. “If there’d been anything wrong he’d have called you here. You gave him the number, didn’t you?”

I nodded. The phone had not rung all afternoon. I was particularly aware of that because every now and then Laura would look at it as if willing it to speak. Damn Caleb Pringle, I had thought. If he had any feeling for her at all he’d call her. Nowhere is that far away from a telephone.

“Pom’s punishing you, is what it is,” Laura said, tilting her head at the bedroom mirror. We were all three in Stuart’s bedroom, finishing dressing. Once again I thought of college: date nights, proms, fraternity parties. The strident, embattled seventies seemed to have skimmed LSU without leaving any stigmata at all.

“Pom doesn’t punish people,” I said. “He wouldn’t even think to do it.”

“How do you know? Have you ever run away from home before?”

There was a combative note in her voice, and I did not answer her. I knew that she was nervous about the evening; more than nervous. The shimmer that always hung about her when she was keyed up was nearly visible, and she had been pacing and smoking all afternoon. Not, I was grateful to see, the homemade marijuana cigarettes, but far too many unfiltered, stubby ones. They smelled powerfully, and when I asked her what they were she said, “Players. I know. They’re awful for you. Pring got me started on them. I really don’t smoke much, but I’m giving myself permission today.”

I studied her in the mirror, smiling a little because she simply looked so wonderful. She had brushed the platinum hair straight back and plaited it so that a fat, glossy braid hung down her brown back, and she wore the short black minidress she had worn the day before. It bared her arms and back and much of her breasts, and the only other adornment besides her golden skin was the very high-heeled black sandals. She wore no stockings and, I could see through the fabric of the dress, no bra. She wore no lipstick, either, but had made her tawny eyes up heavily. A faint scattering of the family freckles showed on her scrubbed cheekbones. She looked so much like the young Brigitte Bardot, all sensuality and insouciant innocence, that I could not help staring. I never tired of looking at her, this beautiful chameleon who was my sister. She could be, literally, whoever she chose at any given moment. I wondered if very beautiful people ever simply got tired of the beauty, ever found it a barrier between them and life. I had heard actresses and models bemoan their beauty as burdensome on assorted talk shows, but I had always put that down to cloyingly false modesty. You had to wonder, though. When you looked like Laura, did people expect far more of you or far less? I thought it was a question I might ask her soon.

“Well,” she said, turning to inspect Glynn and me. “The Mason women can hold their heads high tonight. Lord, but we’re something, aren’t we?”

Abruptly, my introspection fled before a gust of the giddy laughter that had bubbled in my chest for the two days I had been in California. She was right. We really were something. I had sleeked my hair back and gelled it the way I had done the night of Pom’s party, and she had found a huge, tawny artificial tiger lily in a drawer, and stuck that over one of my ears.

“Don’t even ask where he got it,” she said.

She had done my makeup: bronze cheek blusher, matte gold eyeshadow, thick strokes of inky liquid eyeliner and mascara, some sort of pink-gold powder on my cheekbones, only a hint of coppery gloss on my mouth. The effect was startling, bold and rakish. Only my own freckles, unmasked by foundation, softened the theatricality. I never would have allowed it to be done to me at home, but I was far from home in more than miles this night. I wore the faded jeans, the boots, and the jacket to a tuxedo she found in the back of Stuart’s closet.