Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (43 page)

Jill greeted him pleasantly, but as they sat down to eat, she didn't feel like she was making a good impression. She was hardly saying a thing. Then she realized that she didn't have to. Doug and the Lynx had been teammates, and that brought a certain way of thinking. Doug loved her; that was all the Lynx needed to know. Everything else would come in time.

She picked at an egg, but it seemed tasteless after the newly laid eggs they had eaten all summer. The men ate everything, even the parsley off the platters. Then they decided to go horse around in the Lynx's private gym. They invited Jill, but she begged off, offering them her car as a substitute for herself. "The hotel has it garaged."

The men grabbed her keys eagerly and, fighting about who was going to drive, left the bungalow. The Lynx had to duck his head as he went through the door.

Jill drifted through the day, sleeping a little bit, lying on the chaise on the secluded patio, hoping that the sunlight would restore her spirits, but the California light seemed harsh and straw-colored. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the Valley's soft light, its gentle colors. She had grown up near a pounding ocean, but in the early days of this summer she had given her heart to the narrow silver river.

The hotel staff had tried to make her bungalow welcoming, and it was comfortable, much more comfortable than Aunt Carrie's house had ever been. But Aunt Carrie's house was home.

And if it were ever carried away by the mud, if blue-coated Yankees ever burnt it down, Jill would now have the sense to mourn.

Late in the afternoon Doug called, wanting her to meet them for dinner.

"Are you having a good time?" she asked.

"I'm having a glorious time. After dinner we're going to meet some guys the Lynx knows. Just because you got a good pro contract doesn't mean you don't mind being cheated of an education in college. The Lynx says a lot of guys are really pissed off about it, now that they see what they missed. He thinks we can get them to say something, and with their reputations, then..."

Jill let him go on, and when he finally remembered why he had called, she told him she'd stay at the bungalow. "It sounds like you two will want to talk shop."

He laughed. "Yes, but when we're done, I promise I'll read a dorky self-help book or two. You're right. I spent the summer looking for the wrong thing."

She was in bed when Doug and the Lynx came in, and drifting in and out of sleep, she listened to their voices. She heard words:
press conference, those bastards, what they deserve.
Doug was going to come out of the corner slugging.

She woke sometime later to silence. Doug must have gone to sleep in the other bedroom. She peered at the illuminated numbers of the digital clock. It was nearing three. Awake, she sat up against the headboard, pulling her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. After a bit she switched on the lamp on the night stand and looked for something to read.

And realized that, for the first time since his death, she had forgotten to pack her father's picture.

The top of the nightstand looked empty without it. She felt very, very distant from him.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, resting her chin on her hands. It had probably been necessary, this distance. Idolizing her father had kept her from loving a man as she now loved Doug, and her love for him was better, lighter, truer.

But the cost had been high, and it need not have been. That was what was so sad. There was a middle ground between the idolatry she had once had for Cass and the feeling that she had now, the feeling that she no longer knew who he had been, the feeling that she could no longer trust him.

She leaned back against the headboard and let her thoughts wash over her—troubled, tumultuous thoughts, coming even with a little spurt of anger that she should have to feel this way.

She watched the blinking digital clock: 3:12, 3:12, 3:12, 3:13, 3:13...

This was the time of night that people called her, desperately needing her help. No one would call tonight. No one knew that she was here.

3:13, 3:14, 3:14...

She swung her legs out of bed, fumbling for her robe. Tying it as she walked, she crossed the bungalow's living room. The door to the second bedroom was half-open; she could hear Doug's breathing. Only it wasn't breathing. It was snoring; he and Lynx had been drinking. Doug always snored if he drank right before going to sleep.

She whispered his name.

He sat up, instantly alert. She came into the room and sat down on the bed next to him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't know.... yes, I do." She took a breath. "Doug, I need to go on looking for that footage."

"But I thought—"

"I know, I know," she interrupted.
"You
don't need to, but I do."

"Your father?" he asked.

He understood.

It was true that this whole matter had nothing to do with his father's love for her, but it did suggest what kind of man he was, if his first big opportunity had come from deceit and conspiracy. She felt like she had to know.

It was too early to go to the studio, but they left the bungalow anyway, driving out to the beach, walking up and down, hardly speaking, feeling the damp wind in their hair, listening to the ocean, peaceful in its endlessness, frightening in its power.

As it grew light, they drove back into town, Doug stopping to buy coffee and doughnuts for the guards. The same ones were on duty, and even though Doug and Jill's names had not been left on the day's roster, they were let in.

There was no point in going back to the nitrate vaults. Jill knew that. Rather at random, she chose the vault under Sound Stage D.

Only it wasn't at random. This was the vault where most of the miscellaneous printed matter was stored. This was the vault where John Ransome had found the flashback sequence that Cass had reluctantly cut out of
Nancy.

As only safety film—film that was not so flammable— was stored in this vault, it was one cavernous space, more than an acre in area, lit by bare bulbs dangling over the dusty concrete floors. Bank after bank of metal shelves formed narrow aisles. Again the movies were in aluminum-coated cans, marked by fraying adhesive labels. But no archivist had come in to reorganize them. They were simply in the order in which they had been sent into storage.

Jill groped through the racks, finding the films made during the seventies. It took her a while, but she found
Nancy,
the film of her father's that was her second favorite. The labels on the cans had started to fade, but they were informative.
Nancy, 1973—outs; Nancy. 1973—Reel
#3,
trims; Nancy, 1973—costume tests; Nancy, 1973—flashback, answer print, Do Not Discard or Destroy.
Other movies had the title slapped on the side, usually without a date, sometimes even with the title misspelled. But Cass had left things in order. She went to find
Mustard Lane.
It was the same.

Doug's voice came from the end of the aisle. "These don't seem to be in any order. Where should we start looking?"

"I don't know."

It wasn't going to be possible to look at every title on every can. All they could do was walk through the aisles, their eyes swinging back and forth, hoping they would subconsciously hone in on key words. They split up, Jill starting at one end of the vault, Doug at the other. They met in the middle, neither having found anything. Each then paced through the aisles the other had searched. Again nothing. Then they just roamed.

Jill's eye kept catching similar titles, drawing her to
The Living Dead, Two Long Streets, A Grey Wedding,
and
The Old Millstream, The Long Journey, Living Hearts,
then
Two Long Streets
again, and
Grey Wedding.
It was pointless, useless, yet utterly necessary.

She kept coming back to
Nancy,
and at last she stopped, exhausted, letting her eyes fall shut and her face drop forward, her forehead resting against the cool metal of the shelving that held material from the film that had won her father his first Academy Award. She felt Doug's hands close around her shoulders.

There really was no one else she could stand to do this with except him.

She stared at the cans in front of her. That's what mattered, she told herself.
Nancy.
As it had been filmed during the summer, she had been on the set much of the time, traveling with her father to the locations. She had known even then that this story of a widower and his daughter was their story. Nothing that she and Doug had learned about
Weary Hearts
could take that away.

Yet for some reason—no, it was impossible, it couldn't be—she thought she smelted nitrate decay.

She looked at the cans in front of her.
Grey Wedding,
which her eye had been drawn to so often, was right next to
Nancy.
It had two kinds of labels; half had a blue stripe, the others were plain. Peeking out from under the plain labels were the corners of older labels; the cans had been used before. Idly Jill slipped a fingernail—one of the indestructible almond-shaped nails she had inherited from her mother—under one of the corners of the newer labels. The label easily peeled off the metal of the can, then more slowly where its adhesive had adhered to the label underneath.

Jill dropped the top label and rubbed her finger across the lower one, gathering the adhesive into little balls, blowing them off, working idly at first, then more quickly, urgently, feeling suddenly that something was at stake. Her hands almost shaking, she pulled the can out of the rack and held it up to the light.

WHEREVER GREY IS WORN.

She squeezed her eyes shut and looked again. The label was tattered, parts of it having been ripped off with the outer label, and the ink was faded, but it could be read.
Wherever Grey Is Worn.

In her father's handwriting.

Instantly everything was confirmed. There had been a cover-up, a conspiracy to destroy every trace of Bix's script, but Cass had been a reluctant part of it. He had secretly saved the cut footage, storing it under a false name. He had meant it to be found. She had understood him completely, she had looked in the right place. Someone else had mislabeled the cans, had put them in the wrong vaults, but Cass had certainly sent the footage into storage, intending that someday it would be found.

Daddy, did you know it would be me?

She tried to open the can. She couldn't. Doug took it from her, his knife already out of his pocket. He used the can-opener blade to pry open the can. The lid popped and clattered to the concrete.

But that he needed the keys already told her the bad news. Film cans should open easily. The goo of decaying nitrate film seals them shut.

The gas odor was stronger now. Jill looked down at the can in Doug's hand. The film was a mass of gooey bubbles. A sticky brown froth covered everything that had been stored in the can.

He looked down at it and then back up at her. "It's ruined, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Oh, Jill, I am so sorry."

She was too. But Cass had saved the film. That was what mattered to her. She would never know why he had had to resort to subterfuge, but at least he was still the man she had always known. She would no longer idolize him; he was not perfect. But he was her daddy.

She watched as Doug snapped the lid back in place and put the can back on the rack. It looked out of place, the tattered
Wherever Grey Is Worn
label in the middle of the
Grey Wedding
cans, but the
Grey Wedding
label was a little white ball on the dusty concrete floor; there was no way to put it back on.

"I suppose we ought to look at the rest of the cans," Doug said. There were perhaps ten more of the plain-labeled cans. That seemed like a lot to Jill. A whole movie was about eighteen cans.

Doug struggled with the next can. Its contents were in worse shape. The bubbling goo had dried into a fine brown powder. Looking down at it now, Jill could scarcely imagine that this gritty dust had once held the lush images of Bix and Alicia, Booth and Pompey, Mrs. Reynolds's chestnut trees, the rolling white fences marking off the pastures. Now it was dust.

She felt a tiny spurt of anger. Not just about this film, but for the nitrate film everywhere that was deteriorating, all the glorious movies that had shaped the culture and the consciousness of the nation, and that was now decaying. The silent movies, the newsreels, the World War II public service announcements, the cartoons—these shouldn't be allowed to turn to dust. Half of the movies made before 1950 were already lost.

She felt her anger stir, and Jill, relentlessly even-tempered Jill, wanted to kick a shelf. She wanted to hear the cans rattle against each other; she wanted to see some of them clatter to the floor. She wanted to pound her fist on the uprights.

Then she remembered what Doug had done with his anger. He hadn't vented it in violence. He had acted, he had done something.

So, if she was angry about this, she could raise money for film restoration. This would be her own project, not one that a friend had called her in on; she wouldn't be doing it because someone else cared about it. She would be doing it because she cared about it, because it mattered to her.

And in this dark dusty vault Jill felt the tide coming in, the edge of the lake curling around her toes. The rats were gone and she was going to splash in the water.

She looked at Doug gratefully, enraptured, feeling like she owed this to him. What a good life they were going to have together, marrying, living wherever his job took them, but with the Valley always at the center, the kind of life she had never dreamed of having.

She wasn't going to make her father's mistake. She wasn't going to tell her children how beautiful the Valley was; she wasn't going to tell them how fine it was to be a Virginian. That wasn't enough. She would take them there; every summer they would go there, to the land that had been in her family since before the Revolution. They would have family there—cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, Ringlings and Caslers, all driving Chevys.