Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“What under it?” I said, when she hauled it out.

“Nothing,” she said matter-of-factly, and in the end that was what I wore. The jacket was a single button shawl collar, and fit tightly enough so that it did not gap open. But you could see my freckled chest all the way down to my diaphragm.

“I can’t wear it like this,” I gasped, looking into Stuart’s mirror. “I’m all knobs and bones and freckles. What boobs I have have vanished like the morning dew.”

“If you had any you couldn’t wear it, but it looks wonderful, very chic and go-to-hell. Come on, Met. I dare you. What do you care? You don’t know anybody who’ll be there tonight.”

“I know my daughter, who in one moment is going to groan, ‘ Motherrrrr ,’” I said, looking at Glynn. She was grinning in pure delight.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “You look great. Totally cool.”

“Oh, well, then of course I’ll wear it,” I said. “That’s the ultimate accolade. Not at all what somebody’s middle-aged wife and mother has come to expect.”

I spoke lightly, but I was absurdly pleased.

“You can be those and other things too,” Laura said. “Out here, you’re the other things. It’s about time.”

Flying on the crest of the laughter, I did not stop to examine that. I looked at Glynn and said, “Speaking of other things, who is this waif? Kate Moss?”

“Better than that,” Laura said, studying Glynn fondly. “Way, way better than that.”

Glynn wore the silky tunic that had escaped the fire simply because she had been wearing it. She wore it over tight leggings the color of burlap, and on her narrow feet were soft suede ankle boots in a slightly darker shade. She had folded the tops over to make a wide cuff, and Laura had brought out a wide, aged brown leather belt from Stuart’s closet and looped it loosely around her waist, so that it just rode the top of her hipbones, and bloused the tunic over it. Glynn’s hair fell straight to her shoulders from a central part, like a pour of molten vermeil, and she wore no makeup at all except a faint stroke of the coppery blush, to further hollow her cheekbones. She looked younger by far than her sixteen years, and more than ever, to me, like a creature of centuries-old alabaster and dim golden light from high, arched stone windows. It was such an otherworldly effect that for a heartbeat it gave me a small, terrifying frisson , as if I had looked upon my daughter in her coffin. But at the same time she seemed literally to burn with life. I shook my head and the image faded.

“I feel like I’m Cinderella, going to the ball with two total strangers that I’m supposed to know,” I said. “Come on and let’s get out in the air and light, otherwise we’re all three just going to vanish into thin air.”

“Beam us up, Scotty,” Glynn laughed, and we went out into the twilight that was spilling down the canyons onto Sunset Boulevard.

We were late to the screening, because the traffic on Santa Monica and La Cienega was at a virtual standstill.

“It doesn’t matter; nobody gets to these things on time,” Laura said. For the moment, it was pleasant simply to sit in the stopped Mustang, the top down, the late sun gleaming off the red lacquer, and see, from behind our dark glasses, eyes in all the other cars turn to us. Again I felt the simple urge to preen and flirt and toss my hair that I had felt in those long-ago college convertibles, streaking toward the sea. I knew I would not feel this way again; it would not be possible back in Atlanta, no matter what open-top car I sat in. Atlanta knew me for what I really was. This feeling was born of strangeness, mine and my context, or lack of it. I did not care. This moment was sweet.

By the time we had parked the car in a labyrinthine underground parking lot and made our way up in an elevator to a middle floor in a white building identical to the ones in the cluster around it, it was nearing six-thirty.

“It’s all offices,” Glynn had said in disappointment. “It looks just like downtown Atlanta. I can’t imagine Rocky MacPherson in a place like this. Do you suppose we passed his car?”

“No, I imagine Rocky came in a limo if he came at all,” Laura said. “He alternates between those and his Harley. If he’s to be believed, the last time he rode in a car he was coming home from his christening. They look like offices because they are; the money stuff gets done here. The glamour stuff is done either on location or at a studio. This is a movie theater owned by a chain that does sound mixing; production companies rent it or one like it when they need to screen something. There’ll be music and dialogue, but it’ll still be considered a rough cut. Never mind, everybody who is anybody connected with this movie will be here. This is the first time anybody’s seen this version but Pring.”

We got off the elevator and were in a vast, low-lit lobby furnished in large steel and tweed pieces, with a few towering plants and a terrazo floor and a wall of windows curtained now against the fierce glare from the west. The lobby was empty except for a catering crew setting up a bar against one wall. A ticket booth held a young woman reading a magazine. From behind double swinging doors came a blat of sound that became music.

“Shit, we’re late,” Laura said, taking our tickets from the bored young woman, she took a deep, shuddering breath and we went inside, and stood for a moment, blinking in the darkness. The movie had not started, but there was sound coming from speakers on the walls, a hard-driving, atonal rock beat, and blank white film flashed by. There seemed to be no seats at all left.

“I see two down front,” Laura whispered. “You and Glynn go on down and take them. There’s a row here in back empty. I’ll meet you in the lobby when it’s over.”

“No, you sit with Glynn and tell her what’s what,” I said. “I won’t know anything about anything. I’ll see you after.”

They went down the aisle. Heads turned to follow them. I saw Laura nod and smile at people she knew, and watched my daughter glide behind her with the airborne gait she used when she was acutely self-conscious and trying to hide it. Pride rose in my throat, bringing with it a slight prickle of tears. My daughter and my sister. My beautiful girls. They were the focus of every eye in the theater. I heard a slight buzz of conversation follow them, saw them slip into two seats down front, and found my way to a back row where no one else sat. Sliding into the low, cushioned seat I let my breath out gratefully, and realized how nervous I had been about seeing my sister’s performance in her presence. This was much better. In this anonymous darkness I could suspend my knowing of her, give myself totally to the movie and the woman she would become.

Looking back, I can remember scarcely any of The Right Time . It was as Laura had said, dark both in content and technique. While I was watching it I was mesmerized; I could tell that the acting was excellent, and the cinematography and lighting and sets were arresting. The sly aura of corruption was overpowering, yet affecting. I had the odd sense that it was every contemporary film I had seen, and yet was none of them; Stuart Feinstein had said Caleb Pringle’s trademark was the derivative made new by art, and I recognized both the derivativeness and the art. I knew from the outset that it would win awards, and there was certainly enough sex and violence, both beautiful, to assure its box office appeal, but later I could not have described it to anyone. Partly, I suppose, it was because I was so focused on waiting for Laura to appear that I missed much of the film’s context. Partly, but not all. Somehow The Right Time did not speak to me.

About fifteen minutes into the film a small group of men slipped into the seats next to mine. I nodded and they did, too, and we all fastened our attention on the screen. I did not notice them particularly, except to note almost subliminally that the man next to me wore a dark suit and a tie and had tiny, pointed highly polished shoes on small feet that almost dangled above the floor and that he smelled powerfully of something I could have sworn was Old Spice. Every boy in my high school class had worn it for dates and proms. But that could hardly be true out here, in this time, and so I tuned out the scent and lost myself in the images on the screen. Surely, any moment now, Laura would appear.…