NO SIMPLE REMEDY
Roger would come and go whenever it suited him. He was always flying from either New York, to London; or New York to California. Whenever he was in London, he’d make the trip out to Italy and stay with us before he had to leave for New York again. He’d been with Mother from the very genesis of her career—his words, not mine—helping guide her through many of my father’s scandalous affairs—reassuring her that no stain would mar her sovereign persona—arranging interviews that kept her in the public eye, of late. She was often referred to as a widow, but he’d somehow managed to change the wording of that, so much so that no one spoke of my father dying behind the wheel of his car anymore, nor his killing three other people while stinking of alcohol.
Scandal averted, or, as he liked to say: “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”
He was a short man, closer to my height than anyone else, and was what people call squat, which Mother said was a polite way of saying that he was fat. “Round Roger,” Richard used to say. He smoked cuban cigars that stunk up the house, drank vodka tonics, and was always checking and rechecking his datebook. I didn’t know if he was married or not, because he never spoke about himself; if he had children, we never knew. All we knew was that Mother’s name was often in the entertainment section of the newspapers he brought with him from New York and London.
He arrived with news.
“I have an interview set up,” Roger said, slouched in the chair and drinking his vodka tonic. Uncle Charlie shook his head, looking at him with a scowl.
“You can’t be serious?”
“Why not?”
We were sitting out on the balcony, overlooking the valley. Vineyards were full, waiting for festivals and the late summer harvest. It was still September, the temperature warm—not hot like it had been through the summer—but warm enough. Fall was slipping into the valley; I could see it. Some of the trees were starting to turn, their leaves brilliant with colour. The fields woke up wet, with dew and mist most mornings, before the sun came up over the hills and lit up the mist, reminding me of the footlights Mother stood in front of when she was on stage last year.
“How about the fact that she’s dying?” Uncle Charlie said, looking at Mother who was sitting in her chair with a blanket Barbara had tucked around her legs.
“Charlie, don’t you think it’s time we told the world the truth?” Mother asked.
“The truth? No. Why does the world have to know?”
“You’re not making my job any easier, are you, Charlie?” Roger smiled, puffing on his big cigar.
“And why should I?” Uncle Charlie snapped back.
“Just because you’re not her agent any more doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a responsibility to her fans.”
“Her fans? Do you think her fans want to see what she looks like now?”
“I didn’t say it was a photo-op,” Roger smiled. “That’s the last thing I want.”
“What you want? Since when is her career about what you want?”
“It’s always been about what I want,” Roger said. “I want her to be the darling of both stage and screen. Who do you think made her what she is today? Who cleaned up that mess with David? I don’t recall you doing anything about it. Come to think of it, weren’t you there that night? You let him leave, even though you’d been drinking with him all night.”
“Roger, please,” Mother said. “We were both there. So were Dennis and Richard.”
“And a lot of good it did them being there to witness that,” Roger said.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Uncle Charlie asked.
“Are you going to say that it didn’t affect them?” Roger said, looking at me.
“It didn’t affect them,” Uncle Charlie said, his voice flat.
“Richard? Are you still fighting your way through school?” he asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Uncle Charlie said before Richard had a chance to answer.
“It has everything to do with it. You weren’t fighting your way through school before the accident, were you Richard? He wasn’t withdrawn, and hiding from the world, either,” he added.
“How did this get to be about Richard? What business is it of yours?”
“Everything that happens in this house is my business. It’s up to me as to what stories go out to the press. If she doesn’t do this interview, they’ll write whatever they want—that her son is out of control, or morose—and I won’t be able to control it. At least this way, I can control what goes out.”
“I don’t agree.”
“But you have no say, Charlie,” Roger smiled, puffing his cigar.
“When?” Mother asked, and Roger turned to look at her, still smiling as he took another puff of his cigar.
“How about next month?”
“Isn’t that a little late in the year? It’ll be October. Were you planning to do it inside? How about she sit in her bed? Maybe we could have Barbara there, fussing about like she does?”
“If it were a photo-op, maybe it would matter. But it’s not. So what difference does it make? Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, I say.”
“Because she’s vulnerable,” Uncle Charlie said, looking at Mother. I could see a sheen of tears in his eyes.
“Oh, Charlie,” Mother said, shaking her head.
“And you never remarried?” the woman said, as much a question as it was a statement. I watched her cross her legs and scribble Mother’s answer down in her oversized steno pad. She was pretty though, I’ll give her that, with a nice smile, her hair cut in a short bob, and not too much make-up. But she was young, and said coming in that she was hoping this article would be the one that put her name out there.
“I didn’t do a lot of things,” Mother replied, shifting herself in the bed with a pained grimace, trying to reach for her glass of water, but unable to; I picked it up, helping her to take a sip.
“Your son’s very attentive to your needs,” the woman said with a smile, watching me.
“He’s a Godsend,” Mother said, “and I tell him that as often as I can. I tell all of my children that.” She smiled up at me, letting me take the glass and put it back on the night stand.
“You have three children, don’t you?”
“Yes. My oldest just turned eighteen last weekend. I suppose that makes her a woman now,” she smiled. “Well, at least according to the law in most countries.”
There was another grimace, and I looked to see if the woman noticed it, but she was busy scribbling in her steno pad again. “She’s usually the one that takes care of me, but she went to Rome with Charlie and her brother, as well as Roger.”
“Charlie?” she asked, looking up.
“My brother. Do you know him?”
“No. But he was your agent, I understand.”
“Yes.”
“But not anymore?”
“No.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Well, I’m no longer acting, am I?” Mother smiled.
“I heard Jean-Luc Goddard was considering you for his new movie?”
“Was he, now? I’d not heard that.”
“That’s because he refused to deal with your brother. Can you tell me why?”
“I’m sorry, that’s news to me,” Mother said, shaking her head before looking up at the woman. “I don’t deal with that side of things. That’s why I have Charlie and Roger.”
“Would you do another movie if you were asked?”
“That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. Some days are better than others—”
“Is this one of those days?” the woman interrupted.
“Today? Are you asking me if I’m in pain now? Is that what you mean?” Mother asked.
“I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. But yes, I guess that’s what I’m asking you. Is the pain bad today—compared to other days, I mean?”
“The pain never goes away. But yes, today’s better than yesterday.”
“In what respect?”
“Yesterday was a bad day,” Mother said, forcing a smile. I looked at the woman, wondering if she could see how good of an actress my Mother really was. I could see the pain as it flitted across her face. I suppose it wasn’t something you could see if you didn’t know her—and the woman didn’t know her—but I could see it in her eyes. They were a cold blue. Striking, they used to say about the colour of her eyes. With her jet black hair and pale complexion, hers was a beauty that was unrivalled in her day.
“How so?” the woman asked.
“How so what? My pain? Is that what you’re asking me? Do you think your readers want to hear about that?”
“You have ovarian cancer?” the woman said, turning the page of her steno pad and uncrossing her legs.
“Yes.”
“When were you first diagnosed?”
“In January.”
“Has it spread?”
“I haven’t asked. And they haven’t told me, so I guess that would be a no.”
“Have they told you how long you have before you—” and then she paused, looking at me as though she realized what she was about to say. I sat on the edge of the bed without reacting. I could feel Mother’s hand under the sheets, reaching out toward me.
I’m a natural born actor, I told myself.
I turned and smiled down at Mother. I hoped it was reassuring.
“I prefer not to know the answer to that,” Mother said, turning away from me and looking at the woman; she sounded thoughtful.
“But why?”
“Why? Do you know when you’re going to die?” Mother asked, catching the woman off guard.
“I don’t have cancer,” she said, perhaps thinking that would be the end of it.
“I didn’t ask you that,” Mother said. “Given the choice of knowing when you’re going to die—or not knowing—would you take it? You could die in fifty years—or it could be next year; next week. Tomorrow, even. You could be hit by a bus, or a drunk driver. Do you think those people in that car my husband hit knew they were going to die that day? No. Of course not.”
“Maybe I could avoid it if I knew when it was coming?”
“No. There’s no avoiding death. That’s not your choice to make. We all die. What’s the advantage of knowing when?”
“You could get your affairs in order.”
“My affairs are in order. I have a lawyer who takes care of that for me. You see, dying’s the easy part; we all die. If you know how long you have left, even if you have the date, it doesn’t change anything. You still die. It’s better not knowing.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Oh? Why not? You’d rather know when, is that it? So you can get ready for it? You can never be ready for something like that. There’s no simple solution—no simple remedy; not when it comes to dying. You just do it.”
“So you’re saying that you’re ready to die?” she said.
Again, it was more of a statement than a question, and I wondered if there was an honest answer to a question like that; I wondered if I was ready for her death. It wasn’t something I liked to think about—it was something I refused to confront—but it was a lot easier accepting it because I knew it was coming. I’d been devastated with my Father’s death, but I think that was because it was so unexpected, rather than inevitable.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Mother asked, and I looked at her, wondering what she meant.
“Answers, I suppose.”
“To what?”
“Well, your fans want to know what happened to you. I think they have a right to know, don’t you? Everyone knows that your husband died. Not many know that he died behind the wheel of his car after drinking all day with you and your brother, or that he killed three innocent people. They want answers.”
“Answers? Answers to what? Do you think I have the answer? Nobody has the answer to a question like that. There’s no one to blame, except him. Am I to blame? My sons? They were there as well. Or are you looking to blame it on my brother?”
“He might have stopped him from leaving,” she pointed out.
“Charlie? The thing you have to understand about my brother is that he’s a drunk. I know it, and he knows it. We all have reasons for the things we do though, don’t we? My brother spent most of the war in a German POW camp. I suppose—like a lot of people—he drinks to forget. My husband might not have been a prisoner of war, but he was a prisoner of his own war. He was with the Special Forces. They sent him out to kill people. He used to have dreams, though—well, they were nightmares, to be honest. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, weeping. Is that what you want to hear? I can see the headlines now. ‘David Hedley: tortured by memories of the men he killed.’ Our whole generation is tortured, just like the generation before us. They were called the Lost Generation, and for good reason. What do think they’ll call ours?”
“The Greatest Generation,” she said.
“Are you serious?”
She nodded.
“Whatever for?”
“We survived the Depression; we fought in the war; we defeated Nazism, and Fascism. We saved the world.”
Mother nodded. I don’t think she was expecting an answer.
I heard the door opening, as well as voices.
“Mother!”
“It seems my children have returned,” she said with a smile.
