Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

We had almost finished our drinks, sitting in silence, when the door to the ladies’ room opened and Laura came out. I leaped up and ran forward. A tall man in blue jeans and a tweed sports coat over a T-shirt walked beside her, arm around her. His head was bent to hers. His hair was dark and curled over his ears, and his face was snub-nosed and freckled and attractive in a boyish, unfinished sort of way. He seemed very young. He looked up at me and I saw that he had hazel eyes with laugh lines fanning out from them, and a network of tiny, dry creases about his mouth and on his forehead. Not so young, then, just seeming that way…

I knew instantly that this was Caleb Pringle. I could feel my teeth clench. My eyes moved, almost reluctantly, to Laura’s face, and I realized that I had been avoiding looking at her. Her face was red and swollen, and still damp from tears and undoubtedly a scrubbing with paper towels, but she was smiling, a misty, full smile. Her head nestled into the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.

“Oh, poor Met,” she said tremulously. “Waiting to pick up the pieces. Oh, I’m so sorry you had to be here for this. It’s all right, Met, I promise it is. I understand now. It was Margolies who made Pring cut the part; he cut two others, too. He wanted the emphasis to be all on Lorna’s part. She’s his new patootie. I should have known that. Pring couldn’t argue with him on the cuts, not and save the picture. Not and get Margolies’s backing for the new one. Margolies made it clear that if he didn’t like Right Time he wasn’t going to put any money into Arc , and oh, Met, Pring’s got to make Arc . It’s going to be by far the best thing he’s done, and there’s already a script, and several parts cast, and Pring will lose the actors if he has to go back to the drawing board on money, and there’s this absolutely wonderful part in it for me, better than Right Time , better than anything I’ve ever done, the lead, really…”

She stopped for lack of breath, and laughed. It was a carol, a lark’s song. I smiled, in spite of myself.

“This is Caleb Pringle,” she said. “I forgot you didn’t know him.”

Caleb Pringle smiled. The pleasant, ordinary face bloomed into something extraordinary.

“This is my big sister, Merritt Fowler, Pring,” Laura said. “Of whom you’ve heard more than you probably ever wanted to know. To whom I owe everything. Be nice to her. I think she’s probably mad at you.”

“As well she should be,” Caleb Pringle said. His voice was wonderful, deep and smooth as dark honey. “I could kick myself for not making sure she got my message about the part. I called from Margolies’s place several times but by that time he was so paranoid about the way Right Time was going that I think he was bugging my phone calls. I couldn’t get Laura, so I called Stuart and told him to tell her, but apparently he forgot. I should have made sure—I know HIV gets to the brain eventually—but I didn’t. And believe me, I am terribly sorry, both for Laura and this big sister I have, indeed, heard so much about. I apologize to you both. I feel like a worm about Right Time , but it’s over and I can’t do anything about it, and Arc is going to be a very important picture for a lot of us. I hope…I think…it’s going to mean a lot more to Laura than Right Time ever could have.”

He stopped and looked at me, still smiling. I did not know how to respond. I was not ready to let go of my anger over Laura’s humiliation tonight; I did not want it tossed aside lightly. But I wanted to be happy for her if indeed this new opportunity meant so much more, and I realized that I knew less than nothing about her world and Caleb Pringle’s. It felt important to me to be fair. If he really had tried to get a message to her.

I saw Stuart Feinstein’s wrecked face and heard his voice: “I called in a lot of chips for her on this one.” And “There’s nothing more I can do for her but hold her hand and pray.”

Not the words of a man who would forget a phone message of such import. Not a man to let a cherished friend be ambushed by pain.

But I knew that HIV did indeed, in many cases, affect memory and reasoning. I did not know what to say. And then I looked at Laura’s radiant, ravaged face, and did know.

“As long as you take care of my little sister you don’t owe me any apologies at all,” I said.

“I’m certainly going to try,” Caleb Pringle said. He leaned over and kissed Laura on the top of her head.

“Laura told me everything about you except what a stunning woman you are,” Caleb said. “If there are any more of you at home I could cast a whole movie around the Mason women.”

I smiled politely, not wanting to be complimented just now. It would be very easy for my tremulous liking for this man to slump back into anger.

“There are, and here she comes,” Laura said, just as Glynn got up from the bench and walked toward us.

“This is my niece, Glynn Fowler,” Laura said. “Isn’t she something? Look at that face; wouldn’t a camera love those bones, though?”

Caleb Pringle didn’t speak, only looked at Glynn. He stood very still, and his face did not change expression. He did not move. He did not speak. Then he said, “I imagine it would, yes. Hello, Glynn. I’m Caleb Pringle, the director of this debacle, and I want to assure you, as I have your mother, that I meant no harm to your Aunt Laura, and that I have found a way, I think, to make it up to her. I hope that you will forgive me. I’d like very much to be in your good graces.”

Glynn did not blush or drop her eyes or stammer. She looked at Caleb Pringle for a long moment, an adult’s whole, measuring look, and then said, “I love Aunt Laura very much. I hope you will be good to her.”

She said it in a soft, grave little voice, a near whisper, and he smiled. It was a smile of quick, pure delight. It had been an extraordinary thing for a very young girl to say, and I was flooded with pride in her.

“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he said. “And for a start, will you three be my guests at dinner tonight? It’s at Spago, and the food is really very good. I expect you’ve heard of it. I want Laura to show the flag, and I’d love to show you two off. Most leading ladies’ relatives are fat and wear aqua polyester pantsuits.”

Glynn giggled, a soft little snort.

“Mom has one of those,” she said, grinning. “She almost wore it tonight.”

“I do not, and I did not,” I said.

“Well, she would have lifted the taboo on aqua polyester pantsuits forever, but I like her just like she is,” Caleb said. “You, too. You look just like a new young star on her way to Spago. The paparazzi will fall all over you. Will you come?”

Glynn looked at me, her face luminous with hope, and I looked at Laura.

Okay? I asked with my eyes.

Oh, yes, hers said.

“We accept with pleasure,” I said, and he nodded and said, “I’ll have my car brought around. We can pick up yours later. I’ll tell you a little about the movie on the way over. Oh, by the way, weren’t you sitting down the row from us, Merritt? Next to Margolies?”

“ That was Margolies?”

“Aka the penguin. They tried to get him for Batman . How did he seem to be liking the movie?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He left before I did, just after you.”

He was silent a long moment. Then he said, casually, “Was he smiling, do you know?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe he was.”

“Shit,” Caleb Pringle said softly, almost savagely. And then, “Well, he will. Come along. Your carriage awaits without.”

The carriage was a stretch limo of such length and dazzling, sepulchral whiteness that I was embarrassed to get into it. Laura, however, slipped in without even looking at it, and I heard Glynn give a little gasp of joy. This would be incendiary stuff with her small crowd at home. The driver, a diminutive Hispanic in correct livery, nodded and bowed and smiled us into the car.