The Bette Davis Club (32 page)

I tell him I’m all right.

The two of us stand there, looking at the damage: the charred armchair, the pile of ashes on the floor beside it. The
Spy Team
script is destroyed. There’s nothing left but cinders.

“Well, that’s done it,” Malcolm says. He’s out of breath. “That chair’s wrecked. I’ve ruined my jacket. Hand-sewn, don’t you know, in Milan.” He stares at the blackened coat in his hand, then drops it onto the ashes. “On top of everything else, did you notice? The bleeding smoke alarm didn’t go off. What am I paying that monitoring service for?”

He rests one hand against a column and bends over, trying to catch his breath. His breathing is labored, and an odd sound comes out of him. It’s a sort of gasp, like he’s breathing hard. But it’s also a sob, like he’s crying. The next thing you know, he’s choking with it. I’m about to call for help when I realize Malcolm’s not choking. Not gasping. Not crying.

He’s laughing. His shoulders are shaking and he’s holding his sides. He’s laughing so hard, he’s near tears. He takes off his black-rimmed glasses and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Christ, what a cock up!” he says, getting his laughter under control. “I’ve known women in my life. Innumerable women. But never, ever, one like you.” He puts his glasses back on. “Never one who incinerated the potential for half a billion dollars in worldwide box-office receipts. Lord love a duck, you must have been a willful child! No wonder the nuns gave you a hard time at that school you went to!”

He looks at the pile of ashes. “I didn’t think you’d do it.”

“I’m not sure I
did
do it,” I say.

“Well, it’s done now.”

“I know I should apologize,” I say. “But I can’t. At the moment, I don’t know what I feel.”

In a little gesture of resignation, Malcolm puts out both his hands, palms up. “A psychiatrist would tell us we’re both in a state of shock,” he says. “Though each of us for entirely different reasons.”

Malcolm motions for me to sit down on the sofa. He seats himself on a wooden chair opposite. “I’m being sacked, you know,” he says.

“Sorry?” I say.

“Let go, from my own studio. I have fallen from grace. Forty-eight years in the business, twelve as studio head, and they’re handing me my marching papers.”

“Oh,” I say. “No, I didn’t know that. Can’t you fight back?”

“Dear girl, for the last hour I’ve been hoping to—with
Spy Team
! Not sure I want to anymore. Feeling my age, I suppose. Anyway, my number was bound to come up sometime.”

He takes a cigar from a box on a table and lights it with a match. “Cleaning lady’s going to throw a fit when she sees this,” he says, indicating the pile of ashes. “She’s not a young woman.” He tosses the spent match onto the rubble.

“What will you do?” I ask. “I mean, if you have to leave the studio?”

“Oh, I’ll keep busy.” He tips back in his chair. “No less than five different publishing houses have asked me to pen my memoirs. They say it could even become a film—one of my life’s many ironies, I’m sure. Still, for the immediate future, I shall go on holiday. If I’m to be forced into retirement, then my only ambition for the next few months will be to travel, read, and perfect my knowledge of Italian cooking.”

“Sounds lovely,” I say.

“Could be. With the right companion.” Gently, Malcolm lets his chair legs drop back onto the floor. He gives me a look of great tenderness. “Miss Just—that is, Just Margo—would you like to come with me?”

“Oh!” I say. “I really, I don’t—”

He holds up his hands. “I know. Sudden and all that. But you must admit we’re simpatico. I felt it the moment we met.”

“Yes, yes,” I say, blushing. “I won’t deny I found you attractive.”

“All right then. Fact is, Georgia was right about one thing. My wife has left me. Gone off with the fellow who’s taking my job. ‘There’s glory for you,’ as wrote Lewis Carroll. So I’m a free agent. And I would never say you owe me, although . . .” He glances again at the ashes. “My sainted aunt. Half a billion dollars.”

“I agree that’s a lot of money,” I say.

Malcolm grins. “Then agree on something else—agree to come with me! I give you my word I’m capable of behaving like a gentleman. I wouldn’t bother you. Unless you wanted to be bothered. Do you enjoy—”

“Being bothered?” I say. “Yes, like everyone. I do. It’s only . . .”

“Someone else?” Malcolm says. “Someone since Malibu? But you haven’t had time to—”

I bite my lip.

“Wait a moment,” Malcolm says. “Not the boy? Not Tully?”

He leans forward, holding his cigar between his thumb and two fingers. “It is!” he says, looking at me closely. “There you see, once again. One of life’s many jokes. Do you know, I loved his mother in a way that . . . well, when she died, something of my own self went with her. Suppose that’s why I’ve a soft spot for her son. Course my time with Elizabeth was years ago. Never found anyone to break that particular spell. For a moment there, thought you might take a shot at it, dear girl.”

“Malcolm, I—”

“Ah. Well. Not to worry.” He makes a vague, accepting gesture. “Some other time, perhaps.”

The room grows silent. The only sounds are the rumble of traffic down in the street and the wail of a distant siren.

There’s nothing more to say.

I get up from the sofa. I say good-bye to Malcolm and leave him sitting there beside the ashes, dreaming about his lost love. Dreaming about the lost millions of
Spy Team
.

I go downstairs to the street. It’s afternoon. I stand outside the building, unsure what to do, unsure about what I just did. The fire didn’t touch me, but certain words of Malcolm’s had scorched me down to my soul: “Arthur Just drank because he was an alcoholic. Everyone in the entire industry knew that about him.”

Haven’t I been saying I need money? Don’t I want to save Finn’s shop? If I want those things, then why was I so careless with the
Spy Team
script? What is it about my father, about my family—about me—that makes me feel so adrift? What is it that makes me destroy things, makes me destroy myself?

Office workers on break, shoppers, tourists, all crowd the sidewalk. I make my way through the people and over to a trash can near the edge of the curb. I reach into my bag for my cigarettes and lighter. I stand there a moment, looking at them in my hand. Then I chuck them in the garbage.

I walk on. I walk for quite a while, until it’s dark. Eventually, I figure out where it is I’m going. I dropped in once, years ago, but it didn’t take. It’s time to give it another shot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I’M MARGO

I
find the place I’m searching for, walk in, and take a seat. There’s a fellow who gives a brief introduction: old business, new business, followed by a short pep talk. Then we break into small groups.

Because we’re in the basement of a church, my group of a dozen or so ends up in the Sunday School room. We sit in a circle, perched on little wooden chairs, the kind they have in elementary school. I’m scrunched up on a chair that was designed to hold a kindergartener. My knees are more or less in my face.

We go round the circle, everybody taking turns and introducing themselves.

“I’m Margo,” I say, when it’s my turn.

“Hi, Margo,” returns a chorus of voices. Everyone smiles and nods and is generally cheerful. Naturally, I’m repulsed.

“I’m Margo,” I repeat. I’m stalling because this is it, The Moment of Truth. This is when I’m supposed to tell everyone I’m a drunk. This is when I’m supposed to admit to the world that I’m an alcoholic.

Well, I can’t do that. How can I possibly do that? Perhaps I could tell a half-truth instead. Perhaps I could start with, I don’t know, a prologue.

“My father was an alcoholic,” I say. “My mother was a probable alcoholic. My half sister, I’m pretty sure, has a cocaine habit. And my niece is . . . well, she never met a party she didn’t like.”

There’s a murmur of polite laughter. Everyone is on the edge of their seats, or at least on the edge of their tiny wooden chairs. They’re watching me. It’s like we’re all in this together and if I can just admit I’m one of them it will somehow, through some alchemy, help the entire group to heal.

“Anyway, I’m Margo,” I say. “And I don’t really have a problem with spirits. I’m a social drinker, occasionally. But I’m fine. Although alcoholism does run in my family.”

A few people exchange glances.

“Excuse me for interrupting your fellowship,” one woman says to me, “but we’re all drunks here. Were you looking for the Al-Anon meeting?”

Another woman pipes up. “Al-Anon is for families and friends of alcoholics,” she says. She sounds almost happy about it. “It’s a special group all their own. They meet next door.”

Spit it out, I tell myself. Spit it out!

“I’m Margo,” I say again.

The first woman opens her mouth in an attempt to say something.

“I believe I have the floor,” I say. “Please don’t interrupt.”

Christ, this is hard! “I’m Margo,” I repeat, and by now the entire room is convinced I suffer from aphasia. They’re worried they’ll have to listen to me repeating my name over and over for the rest of their lives. I pause, searching for the right words.

“I’m Margo,” I say one more time, getting into the rhythm of things. “And there’s something I’d like to say.”

A man near me mutters, “Not her name again, please.”

“I’M MARGO!” I shriek. “MARGO! MARGO! MARGO!”

I have their attention. “AND . . . I . . . AM . . . A . . . FUCKING ALCOHOLIC!”

Now I
really
have their attention.

“There, I’ve said it! All right? Everybody happy? Let me spell it out for you. I’m a drunk, a sot, a boozehound. A dip-so-maniac! Gin, gin, gin! I can’t get enough of it! I wish it came out of the water faucet, so I could brush my teeth with it. I’d pour it on my breakfast cereal if only Kellogg’s sold something with green olives and vermouth.”

The lady who told me they were all drunks gapes at me, dumbfounded. I glare at her.

“Not only that,” I toss in, “for years, I was unlucky in love. And did I mention I recently GAVE UP SMOKING?”

I swear she physically recoils.

“So now the whole lot of you know what I am,” I say. “For once in my life I’ve told the actual bloody awful truth. And telling the truth—especially to you pitiful, tippling, red-nosed juiceheads—sucks beyond belief. It burns like I’m on fire, like I’m covered in hot, molten lava. I’ve told you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Gin! Do you hear me? Gin is what I’m saying!”

Another woman is watching me. She has this expression like she feels sorry for me, like she knows what I’m going through. Oh God, it’s pity. Someone is pitying me. I’m pathetic. I feel woozy, and the room begins spinning. Even so, words fly from me like battery acid.

“And now,” I say, “if you think I’m going to tell you the story of my life, if you think I’m going to open up and share my troubles with you all, admit to you I’m at the end of my rope, that I need your help because I have nowhere else to turn, that I’m hoping you’ll throw me a lifeline. If you think I’m doing that, well, you’re in for a rollicking big disappointment because—”

They’re all staring at me. “Because I’m not opening up! I’m not sharing my troubles with anyone. I’m not!” Like a woman possessed, I twist wildly in my chair. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!” I cry like a toddler. “Never, never, never!”

I glare across the circle and see that woman again, the one with the sympathetic face, a face that reminds me of the kindheartedness of my own dear mum dead and gone these many years. And it’s then that something in me shifts. Years and years of stiff upper lips, and I’m all right, don’t worry about Margo. For once, it all comes to a head, the hurt comes spilling out like apples rolling madly from an overturned cart.

I crack.

I crack like an ostrich egg dropped into a giant, sizzling pan. I crack like a thousand-year-old sequoia hit by lightning. I crack like Mount Vesuvius erupting all over those poor people in ancient Pompeii.

“God in heaven, help me!” I cry. My body is quaking so hard, I look like I’ve been strapped to an industrial-grade paint shaker. People around me are poised as if on starting blocks, as if ready to leap up and race to my aid. “Please!” I say. “Are you blind? Can’t you see? I’m falling apart! I need a drink!”

There’s a man sitting near me, his eyes gone big as saucers.

“Call 911!” I scream at him. I hold out my arms, pleading. “For the love of God, I’m begging you. Call a liquor store! Call a distillery! Call the people at Gordon’s gin!”

A smiling Middle Eastern man clears his throat. “We have several tasty varieties of diet soft drink,” he offers.

I ball up my fists and beat them against my thighs. “I’m in agony!” I cry. “It feels like I’m being eaten alive by tiny insects. Somebody, please, please,
please
—GET ME AN EMERGENCY MARTINI!”

For a moment, no one moves. The room is silent.

I glance around the circle at everyone. Everyone stares back. I release a long, frustrated moan. Still moaning, endlessly moaning, I slide off my kindergarten chair and onto the floor, where—not unlike a kindergartener—I dissolve into a puddle of tears and helplessness.

A gray-haired woman looks down at me. I lie there, curled up and sobbing by her feet. “Thank you for sharing,” she says.