Dead Stars (35 page)

“All right. So. You want to do
All That Jazz
. To play the part Roy Scheider took—I'm assuming! And you plan to direct.”

“Yes.”

“What, then, is the problem, Michael?”

“I don't know if it's a
problem
. It's more a
concern
.”

“You're mincing words, playing with language.”

“Look, Calliope, I'm just—unsure about it. I'm wondering if I'm biting off more than I can chew here! You know I
ask
myself, Is this really how I want to spend my time?”

“Well, I don't know. Is it?”

“Do I want to spend my time making another movie?”

“You're making movies all the time. Aren't you?”

“I'm
acting
in movies. I'm not
producing
and
directing
.”

“You ask if that's how you would like to spend your time. What else would you be doing? With your time?”

“I mean, instead of with the kids, & Catherine. You know how consuming that is, Calliope. This isn't just ‘another movie.' I don't even know if I can pull it off! And I worry about the content, not just for Catherine, but for Dylan and Carys. I mean, you know suddenly the old man's making a movie but it ain't
Pirates of the Caribbean
. ‘Then, what is it, Dad?' ‘Well . . . remember when Daddy had that little
health scare?
Well, uh, in
this
movie, kids, well—y'see—Daddy dies!'”

They laughed.

She took a deep breath, & straightened her spine, readying to speak. Michael girded himself for feedback, the fingers on one hand moving like an anemone's in a light current
.

“A sensitive, talented man—a producer and director—a man who has it
all
is
dying
. Does that sound familiar, Michael? Of course, you're not dying, not
now,
at least not more or less than the rest of us. Let's just say your
aptitude
for both
antipodes
—life & death—is presently running at a higher
pitch
, it's
keener
than most. Your
appreciation
of
extinction
has lit a
fire
under you; it has
humbled
, but
not
tamed. I'm sure it crossed your mind that
Jazz
might be too
on the nose
, you people in Hollywood used to
love
that phrase, do they use it still?
Perhaps
on one of your sleepless nights, I assume you've had many, you may have surmised there was something
distasteful
about the choice, the
idea
of it, something too
flamboyant
. The
reachiness
of it may have confused & depressed you.”

Reachiness. Jesus. Dead on.

“That, I think, is its brilliance. Is it a risk? An
artistic
risk? Of course it is. What isn't? You wouldn't seriously be thinking about it if it weren't. So: the proof is already in the pudding. If you had sat there and told me you wanted to remake
Star 80
, then I'd say you had a problem. A big one. Because
Star 80
is already perfect, in its own way. But
I
think you could do something
spectacular
with
Jazz.
Not just because it's a
goddawful
movie
.
It's
dreadful
. It's a horror! As it happens, I watched it not too long ago & it fell flatter than a pancake. Cheap and egotistical in every wrong way. But his
intentions
were honorable, his intentions were
brilliant
. Bob
was
brilliant. The
concept
of the film is
brilliant
. I know what he was doing, he
told
me so, Bob strove to make his
8½
but all he got for his money was an
ego bath
, you know, flapping his wings in the water, all that chain-smoking and ‘It's
showtime!
' inanity. A tacky cabaret, a
cartoon
treatise
on sexing & workaholism,
completely
uninstructive & utterly, radiantly
charmless
. He was frustrated with his therapy. I was too; he never worked very hard with me. Wouldn't put in the time, not till toward the end.
Jazz
was '79,
Star 80
was '83. He died in '86 I think, maybe '87. And because of this
frustration
, he wanted
Scheider
to die at the end, so
Bob could
live!
Bob thought that would be enough, you see we hadn't done our real
shadow work
at that time
,
he truly thought if he could kill himself off in the film he wouldn't have to do the hard work of looking at his life & where he came from & why he was so hell-bent on destroying himself & those around him, those he loved—he refused for a long time to do the kind of work I did with
you,
the work we did
together
. By the time he was ready, you see it was almost too late. Now if
Jazz
had been a better
movie
, maybe Bob's plan would have worked! Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I think I've been too hard on him . . . excuse me, Michael”—she looked heavenward—“& forgive me, Bob. I'm not sure I'm looking in the right direction, but do forgive me! He
was
brave, I will say that, oh yes, I will say that without
tergiversation
.

“But you—
you—
I
know
your courage, Michael, I've
seen
it. It's
real
. My
God
, you're a long-distance runner. With everything you've been through, you have
earned
the right to bargain with the Angel of Death. Even if she's your wife,
especially
if she's your lovely wife. And don't underestimate our Catherine. Don't you dare, you know better than that. You know how tough that girl is. You've
both
earned the right. To bargain for a little more time, time to watch your kids grow, time to be together. Time to make a
movie
, which is a fair portion of what I believe your purpose is on this planet, what you're meant to be doing. What
I
think you're meant to be doing, from all the
years
, & everything that I know, everything that I feel & know about
you.
You've earned the right to bargain for a little more time to make sense of your
life
. Because all you need is a
little more time
, to
see—
that there
is
no sense in life but
the doing of what you love
, & the
loving
of those you love. That clarity will come, Michael, it's
right around the corner
for you. You see, your gift is that you
captivate
people. You have marvelous
energy
, people love to
look
at you, to
listen
. Lord
knows
what you'll do when you make that terrible film your own! Now
that's
a challenge. You'll
captivate
us all!

“This fear you have is
not
in depicting yourself as a dying man—& who, by the way, says the
All That Jazz
Michael Douglas must die?—no. That's not what you're afraid of. That is distinctly
not
your fear. You've flirted with death so much lately . . . the world was practically shouting at you two to ‘get a room'! Michael, you are an
artist.
I believe that has always been your central drama. ‘Am I an artist?'
That
is the question that arises during your hour of the wolf. No? Do you remember we used to talk about the hour of the wolf? That terrible time between 3AM and 4AM when we are
completely alone
. ‘Am I an artist?' Well, I'm going to give you the answer. I'm going to answer that question, and all you need to do is
accept it as truth
. As gospel. Because I know something about it. I know a
lot
about it. And I have never lied to you, ever. Not even once. Not even a
white
lie. Well, maybe I overbilled you now and then, but nothing too serious . . .
ha!
So here's the answer, like it or not:
Yes.
You, Michael Douglas,
are an artist.
And I say that before God. You have my one hundred percent
guarantee
.

“Every artist I've ever known has the same fear, I call it the
If I jump into the abyss, will I die?
fear. And do you know what the answer to that is? If you
don't
jump, you'll die.”

The phone rang, and she broke away. Which was good because he needed a moment. When the old woman hung up, she turned to him and smiled. He knew that was the image of her he would carry with him into both their eternities.

“Thank you. Thank you, Calliope.”

“Make this wonderful project a journey—for
you
.”

Her eyes got mischievous.

“Can you dance?”

“I've been known.”

“But can you cut a rug? That's what we called it when I was a girl.” She reached to touch his arm. “I seem to have
opinions
lately.”

“You
always
had opinions, girl.”

“Maybe so. But I have even
more
of them today. It apparently comes with the territory of being
very,
very old.” She took another deep breath. “I have one final piece of advice.”

He girded himself again, a protective reflex he'd acquired during a lifetime of counsel from his straight-shooting mentor—and friend.

“Fire away.”

Her eyes flared.

“I would
love
to see you do a turn on
Dancing With the Stars
. It's my favorite show! I think it'd be
marvelous preparation
for your movie. The sooner you begin cutting a rug, Michael Douglas, the better!”

CLEAN

[Gwen]

Falsies & False Positives

Across

town, Gwen saw her own therapist, the one she met at Our House, the grief center she'd gone to for support when her husband died. She felt blessed that Phoebe was already in her life when her daughter
became ill
(Gwen now choking on those words), because she really helped, & really helped Telma too.

“Have you cried yet?”

Gwen hated that question.

“No. Not really. I'm too angry.”

“It's good that you're angry, you should be. I'd be worried if you weren't.”

Silence, then again:

“Gwen, have you been able to cry?”

“No!”

The repetition some sort of therapist's ploy.

More silence.

“I'm afraid to. I'm afraid to.”

“And why is that?”

“Because if I cry”—tremulous voice—“the anger might go away, & without the anger—”

Silence.

“Without the anger . . .” The shrink cued her to fill in the blank. The patient remained quiet. “Without the anger, you're afraid you'll fall apart. That you won't have the strength you need to see justice done.”

. . .

Gwen wasn't really sleeping; she took sleep when it came, like coins being dropped into a half-conscious beggar's palm. Under siege, she spasmed awake with little starts & yelps, reacting to whatever movie flickered behind fitful shutlid eyes. It was one of the hellish cruelties human beings were subject to—to be unable to use sleep to escape from a waking nightmare, to find oneself in a place where nothing worked, there was no comfort, no alternatives, no let-up, like a person burned and tortured in such a way they cannot sit or stand or lie down without excruciating pain. She told her lawyers she needed time to think. Gwen couldn't
act
until certain things were handled.

Until Telma had been told . . .

She haunted the Internet's vast trove of horrific misdiagnoses & wanton, wrongful surgeries. A woman in the UK lost a breast by hospital blunder, something they knew right away but didn't tell her for nine years. In a ghoulish twist, she became a counselor to those with breast cancer. Her ballroom dancing pastime was no more; the beloved strapless dresses retired to the closet, a murdered raft of pretty girls, carefully, quietly hanged. She went through menopause without hormone replacement therapy because if you've had breast cancer, HRT is
out
. Insurance paid £100,000.

There were a lot of similar cases, closer to home. An L.A. woman had a double mastectomy & reconstructive surgery as the result of a misread biopsy. She was awarded $110,000 for each shorn tit.
Was that because she couldn't afford the right lawyer?
Gwen's counsel said Gwen needn't worry because her daughter's case had “unique & compelling attributes,” and they believed a settlement of around $15 million was feasible. They also believed that a proviso of any settlement would be the hospital's insistence that the records of the case be sealed forever, as St. Ambrose would have trouble surviving the primal rage that such a bogus mutilaton of a child would engender, not to mention a child as charismatic as Telma; not to mention that child having become a beacon of hope for other children thus afflicted, & for their parents too; not to mention that Telma would become a poster child—an electronic billboard!—of the hospital's malfeasance and cynical desecration of the Hippocratic Oath. The calculus of the $15 million figure of course included restitution for the physical & emotional travails of reconstructive surgery that Telma would eventually endure in the relatively near future. If the records
weren't
sealed, the original error would never fade in public consciousness, to the contrary, it would compound yearly,
monthly
, as the press nurtured & obsessed, the maimed darling growing up under their exploitative sponsorship into a lovely young woman that
another
surgical team (the reconstructivists) would pounce on in the name of closure and healing, but the
people
wouldn't see it that way, the
people
would see it as Frankenstein redux.

It could be worse . . .
in erratic, restless fits, Gwen joined the accursed orgy of the Web, Single Mom Seeking Stories Worse Than Mine. She read about a woman in Brooklyn who lost her husband & two daughters in a fire. She returned to the apartment the next day to retrieve the only thing she was afraid had melted: a silver urn containing the ashes of another daughter, dead of leukemia at 15. For a day, Gwen's mantra became
she lost three daughters my baby's alive she lost three daughters my baby's alive
the distraction made her feel better by the smallest of increments but it didn't sit well that it was on the back of that poor woman, at her expense. The feeling never lasted anyway.

“I just feel crazy, Phoebe. Completely crazy. The not-sleeping doesn't help.”

“Are you taking the Xanax?”

“During the day, Seroquel at night.”

“I want you to be careful with that.”

“It doesn't
work,
Phoebe. It doesn't matter how much I take.”

“I hear you, Gwen—but we need to talk about this at the end of our time today, OK? Because we really need to. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Then:

“I've sent blood & tissue samples to
three
different labs
. Telma thinks it's for something routine.”

“Do your lawyers know you're doing that?”

“No.”

“Didn't you agree you wouldn't—”

“Her name's not anywhere on it.”

“You don't want to do something foolish that jeopardizes your settlement.”

“It's all going through the office of a good friend. He was my husband's oncologist.”

“Just be careful. What are you looking for?”

“Cancer.”

“I don't understand.”

“We've got some early results saying the likelihood is slim. Slim to none!”

“Your thinking is that if she
did—
if you can find out that she
does
, then
—”

“Yes! Then at least what they did won't be for
nothing
. If they fucked up thinking she had it, maybe they fucked up thinking she
doesn't
. You know, I play this game, this
things could be worse
game in my head, I'm
trolling
the Internet—that evil woman in Massachusetts who had an autistic son with non-Hodgkin's. She wouldn't give him his meds because she couldn't stand caring for him anymore, she wanted him to die. And the housewife who got staph, one of those weird catastrophic infections, while she was in a coma the doctors told the husband she was going to die unless they chopped off her arms and legs & the husband had to decide right there. He finally said
Yeah,
you know,
let's do it.
And when she woke up, she was
so
grateful, she said all she wanted was to watch their baby grow!

“Phoebe! That woman had
kids
, she'd been
sexual
. She'd given boys & babies & men her breasts . . . she'd been suckled &
felt up
. Every girl remembers the first time she was felt up. Do you? Do you remember the first time you were felt up? Telma won't. Telma won't remember because Telma won't ever
have
that experience—my baby's never going to be felt up! She'll never be able to put on a bikini in the summer, I don't care what kind of fucking surgery they do, Phoebe, she will
never
be able to know what it's like when you finally get tits & you walk across the sand & all the eyes are on you, the boys are looking, that time of your life when you catch yourself in the mirror and you
love
what you see . . . I used to get
hickies
on my tits, Phoebe! Do
not
talk to me about prosthetics & fucking skin flaps! It's like fucking Auschwitz, like they're
experimenting
———[crying now]———cutting
into
her again! It isn't
FAIR.
It isn't—————[screams, then]————they went in there, Phoebe, I'll never forget that day, they went in there &————took her little————took her little titties & all the lymph nodes . . . those
assholes! Mutherfuckers!
Making themselves
saints
, everyone kowtowing & worshipping,
O God Bless you, doctor, you saved her life, you're helping all the children—
to live! . . . to live! To LIVE with the scars of your fucking sick
torture—
God Bless and may God
fuck
you and
YOUR
children, may God turn your babies into
monsters—
butchering my baby, it's a fucking
freakshow
over there! O Phoebe! What a fool I am! I didn't get a second opinion, why didn't I, I should've gotten a second opinion———”

“Remember that word ‘should,' you know we need to be careful when we use that word. When I hear
should—
”

“I'm sick of hearing that! Should should should should should! Everyone gets so fucking militant about
should
&
should have
, everyone wants to fucking
punish
you for using the word! Well
should have
is probably the single most important word or phrase or whatever in the
English Language!
I'm going to use it until I
die!———
I remember when they said she didn't need chemo or radiation I was
crying
I was
thanking them!
What an
idiot . . . [crying now for two full minutes, then]
& they were
right,
Phoebe, they were
right,
she
didn't
need chemo, she
didn't
need radiation, she didn't need
anything!
All of those
dinners,
those $500 a plate
benefits
, at the Hilton, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Telma even
performed,
everyone on the medical team honored, one by one, year by year, the dinners & the standing ovations! The smug smiles of those high-flying butchers! That Michael Jackson Conrad doctor looks like fucking
Dr. House
next to those sick mutherfuckers! And it's
my
fault this happened—————
don't you try and tell me it isn't, Phoebe! Don't you dare!
Because I should have just
pulled her out of there
. I'm not a mother, I'm as bad as them! I have no maternal instincts, if I had maternal instincts, I would never have let this happen! Never! I'm as sick and fucked as that woman who withheld the medicine from her son! To kill him! Do you want to know how fucked up I am? How selfish & fucked up? The last few days I've actually been
worrying
what people will think of me when this comes out, & you better
believe
it's going to come out, I'll make
sure
of that because
I'm going to bring them down
. I've actually been
worrying
that people will think I'm a terrible mother, I
know
how people are, they'll go on the internet & blog about
how it
could have been prevented—
if the
parent—
the
MOM—
had only done her
homework
 . . .
& they'll be right!
I've even been worrying what
Telma
is going to think of me too, you know, she's going to HATE me———don't you try & tell me she won't, Phoebe, it's her
right
, don't take away her
right———
or
worse
, what if she goes into this whole resentment thing, which will be her
right,
but she never really
mentions
it because she's that kind of kid, such a good, sweet kid, but it's there, her mommy let her down, her mommy let them
remove her breasts
, her mommy let them steal her youth, her
mommy
stole her youth,
the doctors &
her mommy stole her beauty
 . . . you know what she's being set up for? She's being set up to be
a drug addict
. A maimed drug addict . . . at 18, the surgeries begin . . . how many surgeries will it take to make her whole again? How many, Phoebe! A
million
fucking surgeries will
never
make her whole—————don't ask me how I know, Phoebe, don't you ask me that! And there she is, with the skin graphs not taking, or maybe infections—‘complications'—whatever—& she's
angry
, angry at me
as she should be
, angry at the
world
, they give her pain pills for the surgeries, she's depressed anyway, she's being
set up
, these stories do
not
end well——”

Gwen had exhausted herself, & Phoebe called for her to be calm. She told Gwen she was glad she had cried, but now she wanted her to take some deep breaths. Which Gwen did.

“You know, I don't see Telma as an addict.” It was the only thing Phoebe could grab hold of; the rest was just too big. “I've worked with many, many children, & I don't see that for Telma.”

“You don't
know
what can happen, you don't
know,
how
could
you,
no one
knows . . . O! Did I tell you what the woman said when they handed her the urn with her kid's ashes? She said, ‘God is good.'
God is good.
That's what she said, Phoebe.”

“You're right, Gwen. I
don't
know what will happen to Telma. None of us have a crystal ball.”
Whenever she talked about crystal balls, Gwen recoiled inside.
“I can only hope for the best for her, the very best. That's all we can
ever
do, Gwen.”

“You're right. How about rainbows and roses and whiskers on kittens . . . Do you want to hear
another
sick thing I've been thinking? I lay there in bed imagining Telma's 18. And she goes and gets her implants. They say some women get
breast cancer
from their implants, & the
sick
part is, I'm lying in bed
imagining
that when they're in for a few years—you know, she turns 21 or 22 or 23—
that's
when she gets cancer! Because of the implants!
That's
how fucked up I am, Phoebe! It's like now part of me wants her to get cancer! It's so
sick
.”