Leaving the World (33 page)

The next day I had a phone call at my office from Adrienne.

‘Hon, hon, apologies, apologies. I have been very stupid-woopid . . .’

‘. . . and I have been so fucking stressed with all the preparations for Cannes that I haven’t gotten all the paperwork together that you not only need, but
deserve
. But I am happy to get everything couriered over to you tonight.’

‘Why spend the money on a courier when Theo can bring it all home?’

‘Didn’t Theo tell you he was off to New York with Stuart to have a meeting with Focus and New Line and a couple of other mini-majors to talk about his next project?’

‘No, he didn’t tell me that.’

‘Ooops! Me stupid again! He asked me not to tell you this. All this came up real sudden – ’cause thanks to us, Stuart is hot, hot, hot and everyone wants his new script. Of course we got in there first, giving him the money to develop it.’

‘You what?’

‘Oh, come on, don’t sound so surprised. Surely Theo told you that we’d put up some seed money for the script?’

‘What script?’

‘
Dark Woods
. It’s not as slasher funny as the last movie. More Hitchcockian. A pair of homicidal adolescent twins are living in rural Maine with their trailer-trash mom and they decide to systematically take out all of her redneck lovers. Then they turn their attention to every wife-beater in their shitty little town. It’s John Steinbeck meets
Death Wish
.’

‘So you’ve paid Stuart to write this screenplay?’

‘That is correct.’

‘And how much exactly did you pay him?’

‘One hundred thousand dollars,’ she said.

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘It’s a great price, considering how hot he is now.’

‘It’s a great price, if you have the money.’

‘We have the money.’

‘Well, I know you have, on paper, a considerable amount of money in contracts. But I don’t think Stuart agreed to write for you with nothing paid upfront, right?’

‘Of course not. He’s got studios circulating around him like vultures. He could command ten times that amount if he wanted.’

‘So you wanted to get in there first?’

‘Precisely, hon.’

‘I’m not your “hon”,’ I said and hung up.

When Theo arrived back three days later his first words to me were: ‘So you berated Adrienne about the script deal with Stuart.’

‘I see your girlfriend has been keeping you up to date with our conversations.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend – but I know you can’t stand her.’

‘I never said that.’

‘You don’t have to. It’s all over your face.’

‘And that is because the woman is toxic. And like most toxic substances she’s also dangerous.’

‘You haven’t a clue. She is held in such respect in the film business . . .’

‘If she’s held in that much respect, then what the hell is she doing in business with you?’

As soon as that comment was out of my mouth I instantly regretted it. But that’s the problem with angry exchanges. Things get said and you can’t easily take them back.

‘Fuck you,’ Theo said quietly.

‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Yes, you did. You meant every word. Just as you have always looked upon me as a loser whom you made the mistake of sleeping with a few times too often. So be it. But know this: if I had to choose between you and Adrienne, I’d choose Adrienne in a New York minute.’

He snapped his fingers in my face as he uttered the word ‘minute’. Then, grabbing his coat and his Leica, he left the apartment.

I didn’t see him again for another three weeks. Nor did I hear a word either. I tried ringing his cellphone. I sent countless emails. After forty-eight hours I called the Harvard Film Archive and was informed that Theo had taken a six-month leave of absence . . . and they didn’t know where he was living right now. So I went to his apartment. It had been sublet to a Harvard graduate student from Mumbai. He too had no forwarding address for Theo – just a post-office box. Now I tried the apologetic approach, telling Theo in several emails that I let my emotions get the better of me, that I shouldn’t have reacted so fiercely, that I truly regretted the way our conversation had turned so vile . . . and that, at the very least, we should sit down with each other and try to talk things through.

No response.

I rang Adrienne. Like him she neither answered my calls nor returned my messages. I was absolutely certain that they both saw my number flash up on their LED screens and that they had agreed to freeze me out. Just as I was also certain that they were now living together – and conspiring against me.

‘Of course he’s fucking her,’ Christy said when she passed through Cambridge a few weeks into his vanishing act. ‘I mean, he’s a guy. That’s what they do with any woman who is available and willing. The thing is – how long are you going to put up with it and, for that matter, why are you putting up with it now?’

‘There’s a child involved.’

‘But he’s not that involved with Emily in the first place. So . . .’

‘I know, I know . . .’

‘If the man you’re living with vanishes out of your life for a couple of weeks and doesn’t even have the minimal courage required to tell you where he is, then you have to ask yourself why the hell you want him back.’

I hung my head and blinked and felt tears.

‘There’s other, bigger stuff going on right now,’ I said.

That’s when I told her about the phone call I had received last week from my mother. It was the first time we had spoken since that disastrous weekend with Theo. When Emily was born I did make the point of sending her photographs – and she replied with a polite, formal letter, telling me that, of course, Emily was a beautiful girl, and she hoped she would bring me much joy. That was it. I wrote back a proper letter (Mom refused to enter the world of email in her private life, even though she was forced to do so at work), saying that life was short and that if she wanted to visit us in Cambridge she would be most welcome. Two weeks went by and I was on the verge of calling her when I got a postcard from her:

I took her at her word, and didn’t attempt to initiate any further suggestions of visiting in person, though I was still making a point of sending her new photographs of Emily every six months, with a little card tucked in between them, on which was scribbled something neutral like: ‘
Thought you’d like to see how rapidly your granddaughter is growing up
.’ Mom always sent a brief postcard in reply, commenting on Emily’s poise, prettiness, etc. But she remained steadfast in her desire to have nothing to do with me . . . until the week before Christy showed up when, out of nowhere, she phoned.

‘I’ll be brief,’ she said, sounding all businesslike. ‘There’s a growth inside me that has gone funny and the doctor wants me to go into the big hospital in Stamford for a bunch of tests. I just thought you should know.’

‘How serious did he say it was?’ I asked.

‘Now don’t you start sounding all concerned, Jane . . .’

‘That’s not fair and you know it. I’ve always remained concerned. It’s you who’ve put up the brick wall between us.’

‘That’s a matter of interpretation.’

‘Well, can I come down and see you while the tests are happening?’

‘I don’t see the point.’

‘If you don’t see the point, then why tell me about all this?’

‘Because I may be dying – and as my daughter you should know that.’

She hung up. I called her back an hour later – my rage and guilt in competition with each other. She didn’t answer the phone, so I left a message. Twenty-four hours went by. Still no word from her. I called her home again, left another message and then phoned the library and talked to one of Mom’s colleagues. Mom had been checked into the Stamford Medical Center and her colleague hinted that things looked bad.

‘How come we haven’t seen you around here for a while?’ she asked me.

‘Long story,’ I said.

I immediately phoned the Stamford Connecticut Medical Center and asked to be put through to her room. Mom answered on the second ring.

‘I figured I’d be hearing from you, what with all the messages you left me. Feeling bad about having abandoned me all these years?’

‘How are you doing?’ I finally asked.

‘My oncologist, Dr Younger, keeps running these damn tests. And they all end up telling him the same thing: The cancer is everywhere.’

‘I’m coming down tomorrow.’

‘Now why would you want to do that?’

‘You’re my mom . . .’

‘It’s so nice that you finally realize this fact after all these years.’

‘That’s not fair and you know it.’

‘What I know is this: I don’t really need your company right now, Jane.’

I toyed with the idea of dropping everything and rushing down to see her, but my class schedule – and being without night-time child cover – mitigated against it. Then on the morning that Christy showed up I received a call at my office from a Dr Sandy Younger.

‘Your mother gave me this number,’ he said, ‘when she started chemotherapy a few weeks ago. She told me to only call you if things were beginning to look “final”.’

That caught me short. Even though I knew – from what little information she had imparted – that she was terminal, hearing it directly from her doctor was like having a bony cold hand placed on the back of my neck.

‘How long does she have exactly?’ I asked.

‘Maybe a month, no more. I would think about getting down here as soon as possible. At this stage of the cancer the situation can deteriorate very quickly. And excuse my intrusiveness, but as I gather that you are somewhat estranged from your mother—’

‘Her choice, not mine,’ I heard myself saying.

‘There are always two sides to these stories. My one piece of advice is this: make your peace with her now. You’ll find it far easier to cope later on if you’ve achieved some sort of . . .’

I knew which word was coming next: closure. A word which drove me apoplectic – because it posited the idea that you could actually get over certain things; that the sense of damage and hurt could suddenly be put on a shelf and filed away under: ‘Been there, done that.’ Closure was for closets, not people.

‘. . . closure before she passes on.’

‘All right, I’ll get down there tomorrow,’ I said.

When I related all this to Christy she immediately said: ‘Don’t worry about having someone covering for you at night. I’ll stay with Emily until you get back.’

‘I was thinking Mom might like to finally meet her granddaughter.’

‘When my dad was in the last throes of his cancer he was so out of it he hardly recognized me. Anyway, if your mom hasn’t shown the slightest interest in wanting a relationship with Emily before now, why drag a little girl into the horrors of a terminal ward? That’s an early childhood memory you can definitely spare her.’

I concurred with that, and set off the next day alone to Stamford. On the three-hour drive south I felt nothing but dread – not just at having to see my mother in the last stages of terminal cancer, but also at the immense waste of all our years on the same earth. We could never make each other happy, could never cross that threshold which separated disaffection from affection. It was always wrong between us. We both knew it –
always
knew it – and were never able to figure out a way of making it better.

And now . . .

Mom was in a three-bedded room in the oncology wing. I kept my head down as I passed by her roommates, all of whom were swamped by wires and cables and tubes and electronic monitors and all the other paraphernalia of life support. Mom, on the other hand, was relatively free of such high technology – just two lines running into each arm and one monitor
blip-blip-blipping
the metronomic rhythm of her still-beating heart.

Her appearance stunned me. Though I was prepared to see her in death’s clutches, nothing really readied me for the appalling change she had been put through. Not only had she lost all her hair, but she had shrunken in size, her ashen skin drawn tight across her now-tiny skull. When she opened her mouth, I could see that only a handful of teeth remained within. The cancer had triumphed, denuding all her features. But when I sat down beside her and took her still-warm, emaciated hand, I was immediately informed that her vitriol towards me had not dimmed.

‘So . . . you arrive for the final curtain,’ she said.

‘I arrived to see you, Mom.’

‘And you didn’t bring your daughter with you. My one and only chance to see her, and you deny me this . . .’

‘You’ve never been denied access to her,’ I said quietly. ‘You’ve denied yourself access to her.’

She withdrew her hand from mine.

‘That’s a matter of interpretation,’ she said.

‘I simply didn’t think this would be the right moment to bring Emily into—’

‘Your father called me the other day,’ she suddenly said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Your father called me. Told me that walking out on me was the worst decision he ever made in his life and that he was planning to come to Stamford in a couple of days and remarry me right here in this hospital.’

‘I see,’ I said, trying to sound neutral. ‘And where did Dad call you from?’

‘Manhattan. You know he’s now the CEO of a very big metals company. All that bad stuff you revealed about him – well, it was all proven to be the lies I knew it to be. Not just lies, Jane –
slander
. But the truth will out and your father is now top dog again. He’ll be here tomorrow to retake his vows with me.’