Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

And I hate it, I thought. Right now I hate it.

“I can’t have this baby, Met,” she said dully. “I can’t look after a baby. I can’t even look after myself. Do you think I want to screw up a baby’s life the way I’ve screwed up mine? No, I thought I might go to New York. I still know some theater people there. I know I could do character parts, and the television there is always good. You know, after…I get things taken care of here. I’ll have enough money to get started. Pring was generous; he must know fifty thousand is way beyond the going rate for abortions, even in L.A.”

Her face twisted and I took both her hands.

“I can’t let you do that. You’d never forgive yourself. I’d never forgive myself. Neither would Pom. You know he’d tell you not to do it; he’s always saying you’ve got to cast your lot with the living.”

She smiled again, and it was no easier to look at than the last one.

“Met, I’d say you’re going to have a hard enough time going back without bringing a pregnant sister with you. Can’t you just see it? Maybe that horrible mother of his could babysit while you and Pom go to marriage counseling.”

I looked at her.

“I know about things up here, you and T.C.,” she said. “Glynn couldn’t wait to tell me. She jumped me the minute I walked in. Listen, I don’t care, for God’s sake. I hope it was wonderful for you. I just wanted you to know that I know about it, so you don’t feel like you have to talk around it. You’re hurting; any fool can see that. I gather it wasn’t…a small thing.”

“No. Not a small thing.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. Your time to talk now, if you want to. Listening to man trouble is one of the things I do best.”

“I can’t,” I said briefly. “Laura, what did Glynn say? I need to know.…”

“Not much, other than you’d been screwing him behind her sainted daddy’s back and she hated him and you and couldn’t wait to get home and tell on you.”

I could feel what was left of the color drain out of my face. This time she was the one to reach over and take my hands.

“I don’t think she’s going to do that,” she said. “I gave her total hell. I’m quite sure nobody has ever talked to her like that in her entire virginal little life. When I finished she was bawling like a baby. I think she retired to her room with that big old dog of T.C.’s, to lick her wounds. Not before she washed that goop off her face and out of her hair, though. I told her she looked like every other little mall tramp on the face of the planet. Among other things…My God, that nose ring! When will they learn how silly they look with them? Like cattle just waiting to be led around.”

“She said…she said she could smell it…you know…smell it on me,” I whispered. “It was a horrible thing to say. I don’t know which was worse, that she said it or that she could recognize it.”

She laughed. It was a better sound, almost an old Laura sound.

“Don’t worry that she’s been doing it, though she’d probably love for you to think she has,” she said. “That was my fault. Before I went to pick her up I stopped by to pay the guy who’s been taking care of the Mustang; he’s this beautiful kid, a real hunk, and completely gone on me; wants to be an actor, of course, and anyway, one thing led to another and I had some time, and so…I thanked him. It really had been a long time. As they say, I needed that. And then I was late, so I didn’t have time to shower. Anyway, she sniffed around and asked me, and I told her. I think I set her sexual development back at least a decade.”

“Laura, you are incorrigible,” I said, and then began, incredibly, to laugh. After a moment she joined me. We hugged each other and laughed until the laughter slid perilously close to tears, and then we stopped, and looked at each other.

“Did you?” she said. “Sleep with him?”

“Yes,” I said. “I did. Every time I could. All day yesterday. She can tell Pom or not, I’m never going to be sorry about that.”

“She won’t tell. She’s too ashamed for that. Ashamed and scared.”

“Ashamed of what? Scared of what? What on earth else did you tell her?”

“Ashamed of the way she behaved to you. Afraid she’s driven you away. Afraid you’ll leave her dad for T.C. Afraid she’s lost herself now that she’s turned herself into a perfect mall mouse. One of the things I told her was that she’d taken the most special thing she had—that real innocence and sweetness—and sold it to buy nose rings and platform shoes. I told her her looks and presence were the only reason they’d wanted her for Arc , and she’d totally destroyed those. I think she already knew that; I think she hated the way she looked and hated herself for letting her little buddies talk her into it. That’s where a lot of the anger came from. Before she even got in that car she was angry, and being angry makes you scared when you’re very young. I know. I took my anger and fright out on you for thirty-eight years. I just realized it when I lit into her.”

Tears I did not know I had left stung my eyes.

“Poor Glynn. Poor Pie. You really let her have it, didn’t you?”

“Damn straight. That’s not nearly all. I told her Arc was dead as a doornail and just what it was she’d lost by losing it—the chance to be chewed up and spit out and hardened into somebody she’d hate, somebody she’d be stuck with the rest of her life. I told her what Pring had done to me and that he and every one of the others wouldn’t hesitate a New York minute to do it to her, and that it wasn’t acting that made you special; you had to make yourself special before you could really act. I told her there wouldn’t have been a damned thing for her after Arc ; that she wouldn’t have done anything to deserve it. That acting wasn’t that easy. That it wasn’t easy at all; that you had to earn it hard, and be ready to be savaged for your pains. I said did she want it enough for that. Because that had happened to me, and I wasn’t at all sure it was worth it. I just realized that, too.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. She’d started to cry by then. I seized the home court advantage and pressed on. I told her I didn’t ever want to see her take the troubles she’d gotten herself into out on you again; that she could tell you when she was angry or scared, but she must not treat you badly. That you loved her enough to take it, but that you’d spent your whole life taking other people’s loads, and the time had come when you just couldn’t do that anymore, and I wasn’t going to let her grow up into the kind of person who took advantage of love, because that’s not growing up, is it, Met? It’s just growing older and staying the same, and what’s the point of all this shit if you don’t change into something better as you go along? That’s another thing I didn’t know I knew until I yelled it at her.”

“Pie…Laura—”

“No. I need to tell you the rest of it. Most of the rest of it is about me, and I’ve never told it to you. I’ve been a worry and a grief to you most of my life, Met, and I can’t take those years back, but I can try to see that Glynn doesn’t get started down that road. And I can tell you how much I love you for standing behind me all those awful years. I couldn’t then; somehow it just made me madder and scareder. But by God, she’s going to tell you. You should have jerked a knot in me and you should jerk one in her if she does it again. And she will, because she has finally become, God help you both, a seminormal teenager, with all the special little delights that entails. I don’t think you should lock her up, but don’t let her devalue you. Real love always runs that risk.”