Pretty Is (33 page)

I’m having coffee and eggs at the diner when this hits me. I’ve been thinking of Mandy as a hick, more or less (and my childhood in Arrow earns me the right to use the word). But she’s a city girl, relatively speaking, and an outsider herself. The novel gives her more backstory than the movie has time for; you know that her grandparents are from the Adirondacks, and that her father returned to the mountains after he left her mother. She has one foot in the world of small towns like this one and another in Albany, an anxious, self-important city midway between New York City and the rural wilderness called the North Country.

I wonder again what Lois was thinking when she invented Mandy. Did she just want to distinguish her book from the real story in a few concrete ways? Did she think the story needed an adult female character in order to attract the right kind of readers? (Which would have been smart, I admit.) Or is it more than that: does Mandy have some significance of her own, some coded meaning, at least in Lois’s (obviously) fucked-up mind?

I can ask her, if I really want to know. She’ll be here in three days. I find it really hard to imagine this meeting—for some reason I haven’t allowed myself to think about it much—but I do believe it will happen. Lois. In three days.

Suddenly my plate blurs, and I think for a second that I might actually be sick. But no, it’s just emotion, real and raw and weirdly anonymous. There’s anger in it, and loss, but that’s not all. Its intensity reminds me of the kind of feelings you have when you’re a kid, so powerful they really can knock you out, make you puke, cause you to see red. It’s been a long, long time, I realize, since I’ve felt anything like that. Am I not a cold-hearted, unfeeling bitch after all? Or is it a question of repression?

Shut up, Chloe,
I tell myself
.

I throw money on the table, and the queasy feeling passes. The regulars nod formally to me as I go, their curiosity politely suppressed.

Only one of us can be batshit crazy,
I tell myself. I have a sneaking sort of feeling that Lois—rational, orderly Lois—might have claimed that role. That means I need to keep it together.

You too, Carly May
. My old self seems nearer than usual.
As if she wants something
. But that thought has a distinct scent of crazy, which I have just sworn to avoid.

*   *   *

When I get back to the guesthouse, one of the girls is sitting on my doorstep. By now I’ve met them, but only in passing. They don’t seem all that interested in me, and I don’t blame them. We don’t even have that much screen time together, naturally, since I spend most of the movie trying to find them and then figure out how to rescue them.

The one on my porch is the dark-haired one—the Lois girl, Natasha in real life and Hannah in the movie.

I raise my eyebrows at her and then lower them quickly, thinking of wrinkles. I wait for her to say something, since I assume that’s what she’s here for. She’s sitting on my little step, pulling the red petals off a perfectly good flower from the garden. (My father would have known the name of it.) The woods stretch out behind the little row of carefully spaced guesthouses, so thick that they’re dead dark even in the middle of the day. I haven’t so much as set foot in the forest.

“Sorry,” Natasha says when she sees me, looking up but not getting up. “You don’t really like us much, do you.”

I find myself laughing. “If that’s your idea of small talk, maybe I do. But no, seriously, why would you say that? I don’t like you or not like you. I don’t know you, do I? It’s not personal.”

“Really?” She narrows her pretty blue eyes at me, and I feel as if she’s trying to look inside my head. “It feels kind of personal. I see you watching us sometimes with a really weird look on your face. Like you can’t stand us.”

God, is she right? I hope not. “Seriously, kid, that’s just my normal expression. Ask Billy, he’ll tell you. Get used to it.”

“Actually it’s Billy that told me maybe I should come talk to you,” she says. Then, on a totally different note: “Did you just call me
kid
? That’s, like, so old-fashioned, isn’t it? Like from some old movie? You know, like”—she scrunches up her face and drops her voice, becoming a weird cross-dressing caricature of some old male movie star—“See ya around, kid.” She winks. “Or, you know, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”

“God, please, stop. I did say it. I don’t know why. So what do you want, anyway?” Conceited little monster.

“Acting advice.”

My heart warms ever so slightly. “Is this your first film?”

She lifts her sharp little shoulders in a show of modesty. “I’ve done some made-for-TV stuff and commercials. But yeah, pretty much. How old were you when you started acting?”

“Older than you,” I say, and my heart is cold again. “So? What is it?”

“I don’t get it,” says Natasha. (Hannah. Not Lois.) “I mean I don’t get the story, exactly. I don’t see why we
like
the kidnapper guy. Why don’t we think he’s a pervert? Why don’t we run away? And why does he want us, anyway? Since he doesn’t seem to want to—you know—molest us or anything. Honestly. I just don’t get it.” She looks genuinely glum.

How to answer? I sit down on the porch beside her. “People are complicated,” I say slowly. “You like him because he likes you. Because he’s handsome and intelligent and mysterious. Because you’re bored. Because he thinks you’re special, he thinks you’re incredibly smart and pretty, and you’re vain and shallow enough to be a total sucker for that. Which isn’t your fault, because you’re twelve, and you can’t help it.” I ignore the look of protest on her face. “Because it’s an adventure, and he’s in charge. Because you’re so lonely at home you could die. Because being kidnapped is like being in a book, and you’ve always wanted to be in a book, because you’re the kind of nerdy shy little girl that reads all the time.” She looks thoughtful, though also skeptical. I can see that she’s a skeptical girl. Good for her, I guess.

“Besides,” I say, standing up again. “He’s Billy, remember. If Billy kidnapped you, would you run away?”

Natasha giggles in spite of herself.

“I didn’t think so,” I say, and pointedly turn to unlock my door.

Lois

I find the film location easily enough, following the map some lowly production assistant sent me. I drive past the dirt road turnoff and park by the side of the road a few yards down. Shooting hasn’t begun yet, but there are people around, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I stroll along the road like a local woods-dweller taking a constitutional, glancing innocently around, and then I turn down the narrow road as if by chance, as if nothing but idle curiosity guides me.

Just for a second, my heart stops.

They have done a good job,
I think, straining for objectivity, for distance. The cabin is nearly a perfect replica of the one I described in my novel, and it’s eerily similar to the original, at least as I remember it. I focus on the differences—the angle of the second-story roof, the cars in the driveway, the carefully weathered Adirondack chairs—in order to ground myself in the present.

I can hear hammering from within the cabin and reassure myself that the people belonging to the cars are most likely inside, putting the finishing touches on the sets. I venture a little farther down the driveway, the trees stretching endlessly above me, blocking the sun. I hear birds and the breeze that politely disturbs the treetops without bothering to descend to the ground. I could be in my little bedroom, mine and Carly’s, and those could be our trees, our birds, the ones outside our window, the ones that reminded us where we were, told us we were all right. Without warning, three figures emerge from behind the house, running: a man in a plaid flannel shirt and two young girls—one dark-haired, one fair. They are chasing him, grabbing at the tail of his shirt, his belt loops.
Why is it light? It was always dark when we were outside. The ground was cool and damp at night when we stretched our sequestered limbs. Mosquitoes feasted on us, and we tried not to mind. Only at night were the mountains our own.

The girls are shrieking with glee, which Carly and I would not have dared. They are more forward than we were, more confident, a little in love with themselves. And he is permitting them to catch him, to drag him down, which Zed would never have done; he would have made us catch him for real. Everything was for real with him.

They’ve seen me. They stop playing and turn curious gazes my way. I feel like a ghost; I’m irrationally surprised that I am visible to them. I feel as if we exist on separate planes, and only I am privileged (or cursed) to see across the misty distance that separates us.
You’re doing it wrong,
I want to cry.
Let me explain.

Instead I wave casually and turn back, retracing my steps. I feel as if I’m fleeing.

Chloe

Two nights before the shoot begins, Billy doesn’t show up for happy hour in the pub, so I’m back to drinking alone. Everyone’s here now, from the director on down, but I haven’t connected with anyone except maybe the wardrobe woman, and she seems to be staying somewhere else. I’m sitting at my usual corner table, reading a book—another detective novel, with a lurid blood-smeared knife on the cover; it reminds me of the books Lois and I used to read, and feels like a connection. A shadow moves briskly across my table and I look up, bracing myself to be pleasant, which is not really what I feel. My mood has been getting darker.

The thrower of the shadow is a tall, striking, strong-featured woman with outrageous red hair, long and wild and curly. She sticks out one handsome, man-sized hand. “Hi!” she says, her green eyes springing at me like stalking cats while her mouth smiles broadly. “Chloe Savage? Fiona Pearson. I hear you’ve been keeping my husband out of trouble. So sweet of you. Someone has to do it. You’ll be glad to know I’m here to relieve you of your duties.” Under her gaze I feel almost guilty. I remind myself that my dealings with Billy have been shockingly sexless. This crazed warrior queen has no business staring at me that way.

I force myself to return the pressure of her hand, lowering my book partway to the table to make it clear that she offers only the mildest of distractions from my reading. “You’re welcome,” I say. “But the girls have pretty much taken him off my hands since they arrived.” I nod my head toward the doorway, where Natasha and Justine (the Carly-actress, the me-actress) are making their entrance. “They adore him already,” I add. “They’ve been doing a lot of bonding. So important for their performances, don’t you think?” The girls are actually thirteen, not twelve, and they’re both looking particularly lovely tonight, in the awkward, kittenish, fetching way of thirteen-year-olds, just on the verge of everything. Fiona’s eyes follow mine. “Pretty, aren’t they? God, I wouldn’t be that age again for anything in the world.” I feel strangely torn between the impulse to intensify her jealousy by transferring it to Natasha and Justine, and actually trying to be pleasant to her; there’s something sort of compelling about her.

But the Fionas of the world have never liked me much. She suggests with glaring insincerity that I should stop by their table for a drink later, and sails across the room toward the young actresses just as Billy enters, a small boy trundling along with him, his cherubic mini-Billy face framed by Fiona’s wild red curls.

Poor Billy doesn’t even glance my way.

I have a salad and another glass of wine; more and more people have stopped by my table. The whole scene seems to be getting much more social suddenly. But I’m not in the mood; I feel vaguely pissed off at everyone. I slip out when I think no one’s looking, an extra bottle of wine under my arm recklessly charged to my room. Before I get to my guesthouse, I hear multiple feet pattering behind me and a breathless chorus of “wait up!” I’m surprised to see Natasha and Justine running after me, dragging the little Pearson child between them.

“We’re babysitting,” Natasha explains when I let them catch up to me.

“
Fiona
asked us to,” Justine adds darkly.

“She didn’t ask, really. She
ordered
.” I can’t help smiling at their undisguised bitterness. “She said, ‘Why don’t the
children
run and play.’” Natasha scowls at the boy.

“What’s the kid’s name?” I ask. I’m sure Billy mentioned it a thousand times, but it’s not the kind of thing I tend to remember.

“Liam,” Justine says, grudgingly. I find myself fascinated by the intense expressions that flit quickly across her face. Love, vengefulness, despair. Was I like that once? There’s something familiar about her, a kind of echo. It’s there with Natasha, too, but not as strong.

The truth is I can’t stand girls their age, as a rule. Maybe it’s because of the echo; I couldn’t really stand myself at thirteen, either.

“Liam!” says Liam, enthusiastically. I look at him critically. “Is he about two, do you think?”

“Probably,” says Justine. “Terrible two.”

“Two!” says Liam.

We all contemplate him in silence. Condensation from my bottle of sauvignon blanc soaks through my thin dress. “He really is a cute little fucker, isn’t he?” I don’t mean to say this. It just comes out. But it’s true.

The girls giggle and agree, suddenly my conspirators. They grab his fat little hands and swing him back and forth between them a couple of times, a little more cheerfully, while he sputters inanely, “Liam whee!”

“So why did you follow me?” I ask finally. “Fiona didn’t make me an honorary child, did she?”

They laugh again, as I knew they would. They’re so vulnerable! So manipulable! I have a weird impulse to hug them. Protect them? I shrug it off. I think of my bottle of wine, warming.

They shrug in sync. “We’re bored,” says Natasha.

“You seem kind of cool,” Justine adds. “By comparison.” I admire the way she undermines her compliment. I’m almost flattered. “The other adults are acting kind of like assholes.”

“Language,” says Natasha, as if she can’t really help it, and I think of Lois, trying so hard not to be prim.