The Continuity Girl Part 27

"Fine." Meredith looked up, but her mother's face was hidden behind a cupboard door.

"He's quite a character," Meredith said.

"Ozzie? Oh, yes. Extremely strange. But not in a bad way, I hope."

"No, not in a bad way."

Silence. Meredith carried on sweeping but kept her eyes on the cupboard door that hid her mother's upper half. Slowly, apprehensively, the silk hump of her mother's turban appeared, then the brooch, followed by a tuft of hair, a furrowed forehead and, finally, a pair of startled eyes. For a moment Meredith and her mother stared at each other like this, each waiting for the other to speak.

Meredith broke the silence. "You lied."

"No, I didn't." Irma stepped off the stool she'd been balancing on and faced her daughter. She looked at Meredith but did not move toward her.

"Why didn't you tell me about Ozzie?" Meredith's voice skipped up an octave and then managed to steady itself again.

"You didn't ask."

"How could I have known to ask?"

"What exactly was I supposed to tell you?" Irma refastened the tie on her Madame b.u.t.terfly dressing gown.

"Uh, for starters, maybe the fact that he's my father."

"But he's not."

"Oh, Mother..."

"No, really, he's not. He's a friend of your father's. And he took care of you-I only mean financially took care of you-when you were little. He helped us out all along. I honestly don't know what I would have done without him."

"So Ozzie's not my father?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Who is, then?"

"I told you the story, darling. He was a director. I met him in Los Angeles. We had a romp in the pool house and he drowned in his pool the next day."

"Did he have a moustache?"

"He did. How did you know?"

Meredith shrugged. She remembered the picture. The man with the grin so big it looked like he was going to take a bite of the camera lens. "Lucky guess."

Irma resumed wiping down the stove, but Meredith wasn't finished with her. "Why didn't you tell me about the money, then? And why would Ozzie take care of me like that?"

"Let me tell you, young lady, when you were a baby I was in no position to look gift horses in the mouth. And besides, the money was none of your business."

Meredith considered the outlandish possibility that for once, her mother was right. When she was a child it had been none of her business where her school tuition or living allowance came from. She'd never thought to ask and consequently her mother had never mentioned it. She'd been a kid after all, and what was her mother supposed to say? Your father was married to someone else and unfortunately he drowned in his own swimming pool a few hours after your conception, but don't worry, sweetie, because his ex-business partner is determined to take care of you out of his own mysterious sense of guilt and responsibility?

Meredith took a step toward her mother and held out her hand. Irma seemed afraid to move. She hugged herself and pushed her hands under her armpits to try to stop them shaking.

"Mum, don't worry." Meredith put her arms around her mother. She was shocked at how breakable the old woman felt. "I'm not mad," she said. For once, she felt it was true.

"You're not?"

"No."

With this, Irma relaxed slightly. Her breath slowed. She seemed to gain weight in Meredith's arms.

"I want you to tell me the whole story."

"Right. The story. The story."

Irma produced two small gla.s.ses in the shape of tulip blossoms and handed one of them to Meredith. She poured a bit of sticky yellow fluid into each.

"Where do you want me to start, then?"

"At the beginning."

Florence came back to Meredith in flashes. Not recollections so much as relived moments-complete with smells, sounds and the aching texture of immediate physical experience. There was the smell of his breath and the taste of his mouth-savory as gin-soaked olives. His second toe, a hammertoe, half-broken and doubled over on itself. She'd lain end to end with him and taken that toe in her hand and tried to smooth it out with her fingers but it wouldn't stay flat. No matter how she rubbed it, the toe snapped back to its crooked self. He said it was good luck-the toe. She couldn't believe it. Her luck, that is.

For three days Meredith and Joe stayed in his suite at the Savoy. Outside, the city felt as if it were baking in a brick oven. Inside, their room was cool and clean. Every few hours they sent down for room service, ordering anything on the menu, no matter how ridiculous or oddly matched-cherry cheesecake with the j.a.panese businessman's breakfast, pink champagne and lasagna, oysters with mint sauce and apple cider, Tuscan bread soup followed by a whole lobster, cracked and dressed. Nothing seemed too silly or decadent. What they didn't eat they left on trays in the hall. What they didn't drink they spilled on each other.

At one point he leapt up on the bed, kneeled over her and began filming with the Super 8 camera he'd brought along to record the wedding. At first Meredith covered her face with a pillow, but after some gentle coaxing she found herself vamping for the lens like the star of a French blue movie. She pouted her lips and lifted her b.u.m in the air, waggling a pair of lacy knickers. What had gotten into her?

On the bedside table was a small bottle of Jack Daniel's stripped from the now nearly empty minibar the night before. She picked it up and began running its hard cold surface over her abdomen, encouraging every mammalian hair on her body to rise. Joe began crawling toward her, across the bed. She took a slug of whisky and pa.s.sed the bottle back to him, but he waved it away, encouraging her to keep playing. She felt a little silly, but aroused all the same, so she began to experiment: taking the neck of the bottle in her mouth and moving her lips over it suggestively, taking a too-large swig and letting it run out the side of her mouth, dipping her fingers in and rubbing the bourbon on her nipples-the astringent liquid buzzing on her flesh. Feeling sly and s.e.xy, Meredith inclined the bottle between her legs. She slipped a finger into her panties. (Yes, panties, that was the word for them. She was now a woman who could say the word panties without cracking up.) She teased and taunted, fingering the lace and sliding the neck of the bottle nearer to the spot. Joe lowered his head slightly and opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, she raised her eyebrows and-uh-oh-poured whisky between her legs.

The pain! Before she knew it she was up and running around the room, clutching her crotch and howling like a woman on fire (which, in a sense, she was). Joe flew into action, and before she knew it he was on top of her again, pinning her to the bed like a wriggling insect specimen and pressing a cold, wet facecloth to her crotch.

"You okay?"

He said this very seriously. So seriously she wanted to cry, before she noticed her cheeks were already streaked with salt.

"Mmm." She nodded, trying to imitate his seriousness in the hope of drawing out the moment of rescue. It was so nice to be taken care of. She pressed her face into the crook of his shoulder and started to laugh-a slow, rocking laugh so much like a sob that he comforted her for a moment by stroking the hair at the nape of her neck before he realized his mistake.

He could be a bit serious-it was his one flaw. She loved him for it.

The day of the wrap party Meredith booked a ticket back to Toronto. She didn't fly for a week, which gave her plenty of time to tie up loose ends in London, mainly in the form of actually getting to know her mother for the first time. Their relationship, which had never been particularly comfortable, now appeared to be on the verge of reaching an uneasy truce. At moments, they seemed almost related.

They went to the movies and saw a play-a bad translation of an even worse French farce-and Meredith cooked a proper dinner of roast lamb and potatoes.

She was feeling unusually flush (Ozzie had sent her a big fat check for her work on Avalon-enough to tide her over for the next few months at least), so she took her mother out for lunch.

They never mentioned the story Irma had told Meredith the afternoon she came home from Florence, but it sat between them like an armrest-providing a comfortable distance as well as a point of contact. For the first time, their shared history became their emotional buffer.

Before the wrap party, Irma's date arrived for a drink. He was an old man, the sort you'd call a "chap." He turned up on the front stoop wearing a corduroy day suit with a bright yellow ascot. Meredith stuck out her hand, which he took and kissed in a dry, unprovocative way. He introduced himself as Jeffrey. There was something familiar about his face.

"Irma has told me ever so much about you," he said.

Meredith gave a skeptical smile. "Oh, sure."

"No, really, I tell you, she has. Quiz me."

"Pardon me?" Meredith was removing his jacket at this point and taking the champagne from him. Her mother had yet to appear.

"Really, do ask me. Anything you like. I know almost everything about you. When Irma told me she had a daughter, I made her tell me everything so I could get to know you in a sense before I met you. So now, you see, I feel like I already do."

Meredith laughed. "Okay, then, what's my shoe size?"

"Seven and a half. Narrow."

"Okay, you win. Can I get you something to drink? Unless she's converted you to the vile yellow stuff as well."

"No, no. Not yet. Scotch on the rocks for me, please."

He settled into the squashiest chair in the room and crossed his legs at the knee. Meredith saw he was wearing yellow socks to match his neckerchief.

The apartment had been scrubbed, purged and generally made over. Boxes of old junk disposed of and eons of grime and dust wiped off walls and shaken from the curtains and upholstery. Instead of looking like an overused landfill, the small flat now had a shabby coziness about it. Underneath all the detritus Meredith had been pleased to find her mother had quite a few "nice pieces," as Irma called them. One was the inlaid mother-of-pearl coffee table on which she placed Jeffrey's Scotch. Jeffrey had picked up an ancient copy of the Canadian Literary Review, which contained a rave review of one of Irma's books of poems from the late sixties. (Meredith was planning to take it back to Toronto and have it framed and sent to her mother at Christmas.) Irma appeared, swathed in brown velvet, at the top of the stairs.

"Darling!" Jeffrey leapt to his feet and ran over to her on his tiptoes like a ballerina dashing across the stage.

Meredith half-expected him to pick up her mother and twirl her around, but instead he placed a gentle kiss on each of her rouge-smeared cheeks. They murmured stuff to each other for a while and Meredith tried not to watch or listen. She'd never seen her mother in such a state.

"I see you've reacquainted yourself with my daughter." Irma turned and smiled. "Meredith, you remember Jeffrey." She completed this sentence with one of her unsubtle wide-eyed looks that said, And even if you don't, you'd better pretend you do.

"Sorry," said Meredith. "Mother tells me you were involved with the movie."

"Ah, yes." Jeffrey coughed. More of a pause than a cough. "My house, more than I was."

"Oh my G.o.d, of course. You're the Earl of Dorgi!" Meredith clapped her hands in recognition.

"Meredith," Irma warned.

"No, no, that's quite all right, Irma, really. Is that what they called me on set, then? I think it's a rather becoming name. I'm not actually an earl, you know. Not that it matters where pet names are concerned."

Irma took a sip of her Limoncello, which had magically appeared in her hand (she was rarely without it), and placed a hand on Jeffrey's knee. "And how are the dear dorgis, then, darling?"

"Much better now that they have their house back. Now, my duck, we'd better hurry if we're to make our dinner reservation. Meredith, I do hope you'll come with, and then on to the party afterwards?"

"I wasn't invited," Meredith said.

"Nonsense, darling." Irma jumped up and began running around the room opening drawers. "Now where did I put that d.a.m.n thing anyway?" She pulled open the refrigerator, flipped open the b.u.t.ter tray and took out an envelope. "Ah, yes, here it is. Now, look, you're most certainly invited. Sorry I hadn't made it clear earlier."

She handed the invitation to Meredith, who scanned down past the "You and a guest are cordially invited" part to an ink scrawl at the bottom. Ozzie's handwriting. "Dearest Irm," it read. "Do come. And bring Mere as well."

She looked up. "Ozzie's coming?"

"One of his rare public appearances," said her mother.

"Who is this mysterious Osmond Crouch anyway? I've been hearing about him for years and look forward to finally meeting him," Jeffrey said, draining his Scotch. "Are we off then?"

Meredith shrugged. She hadn't planned on it, but then, what had she planned on lately?

Ozzie stepped into the booth, pulled the curtain shut and sighed as he contemplated the still life laid out before him. On the small Formica counter sat a stack of plastic specimen bottles, a bottle of generic-brand water-based lubricant, a box of Kleenex and a pile of dog-eared s.m.u.t mags-Brit p.o.r.n, he noted sourly. The sort of publications that featured naughty schoolboy cartoons involving bishops and pictures of girls with thin lips in cheap lingerie. Figured that after a lifetime of mild disdain for the English, he would end up conceiving his only child in a London fertility clinic after an imaginary encounter with a fake-t.i.tted page-three poppet named Shirlee. But if he was going to do it, he might as well do it right. The Canadian fertility doctor Kathleen had in for a consultation at Vogrie said the procedure would benefit enormously if the specialists in London had a "full range of specimen" to work with, so here he was: offering up whatever he could.

He took his bifocals out of his jacket pocket and peered at the t.i.tle topping the pile. t.i.ts 'n Bits. He shook his head. Too depressing for words.

The truth was, he couldn't believe he was even here. After all those years of evading the bonds of fatherhood-all the girlfriends he had escorted to abortion clinics (including Kathleen), the countless tearful breakups, the condoms, the last-second withdrawals, the paranoid nightstand searches for evidence of birth control pills, the secret stockpiles of morning-after antidotes-after all that, here he was, jerking off into a cup.

He chose a magazine from the middle of the pile and opened it to a random page. There was a photograph of a topless redhead in a suede miniskirt and cowboy boots. She sat on some sort of countertop, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and looking down in surprise as if she had only just discovered them for the first time. Like most former p.o.r.nographers, Ozzie was fairly inured to the sight of naked women, but something about this girl moved him.

It was the skirt. Kathleen had worn one exactly like it the night he first saw her. He remembered it like it was five minutes ago. Him sitting at his regular bar stool scarfing free salted nuts. Her leaning over the bar in a low-cut chiffon blouse, reaching for a gla.s.s, which she (thinking no one was watching) spit into and polished with a white cloth napkin. G.o.d, she'd been gorgeous. Still was. As fierce and exciting a creature as he'd ever known (and he'd known many). And while his feeling toward her was not exactly love, it was something far more certain: a belief that no matter what happened, their fates were linked. He owed her this baby, but that was not the only reason he was here in this phoneless phone booth, c.o.c.k in hand, pumping away (well, okay, more squeezing and pulling, at this point), trying to draft a few million able-bodied DNA servicemen. No, the truth was, he wanted a child as much as she did, but for entirely different reasons. Not for the cutesy clothes and pureed carrot stuff, which was as frightening as it was a turnoff, but for the continuation of the larger narrative.

Seeing Meredith again had convinced him of the importance of leaving a legacy. Frank may have died the night of her conception, but a part of him lived on through the daughter he never even knew existed. Now that Avalon was finally finished Ozzie felt emptied out, his imagination overfished. He was overcome with the need for someone else to take over the story. Perhaps it was vain and sentimental, but he wanted a child with the hooded Cruchinsky eyes, whom he could set on his knee and to whom he could tell the story of his own tormented boyhood, of his mother's ceaseless toil in the sweatshops, of his father's flight from the pogroms of Europe and know that this small someone was a living, breathing continuation of...oh Christ. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l. This was not the right mental track at all.

Ozzie squeezed another daub of lube into his right palm and began again. He closed his eyes and ran through a series of mental photographs from his past. Two Kenyan airline stewardesses rolling around in a four-poster hotel bed...nothing. Okay, next. A grubby young hitchhiker whose name and age he forgot to ask. Nah. Too dirty. He began to flip through the mental picture book faster and faster, searching for something on which his brain could alight and find purchase. Kathleen-yes, it was appropriate he thought about Kathleen.

In his mind's eye he opened the photo alb.u.m with her name written across the cover in girlish gold cursive. Kathleen in a hot tub, drunk, squeezing together her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and smiling up at him. Kathleen prancing down a runway in a transparent teddy and high-heeled slippers. Kathleen getting mock-f.u.c.ked from behind on set by a large black man. Were these the right thoughts for a conception? He thought of that crazy night more than thirty-five years ago. The night Meredith had been conceived. The night Frank died. The same night Ozzie got the script that made his career. The script he didn't write but took the credit for anyway. Frank's legacy and Ozzie's darkest secret.

He remembered the party in snapshots, and the one that came to him most reappeared nearly every day. Even now, in mid-w.a.n.k, it winged its way from the back of his brain to the front.

His old friend Frank-on the brink of death and about to father his only child but oblivious to either possibility-answered the door to his house. He, Ozzie, jumped out from behind a laurel bush holding six bottles of champagne wedged between his fingers like bowling pins. They embraced, Frank delivering several hearty backslaps that nearly knocked the wind out of him.

"Ozzie! You shouldn't have. Come in, come in." Frank ushered him in, led him past the sunken living room done in the citrus and brown of the day (Ozzie recalled the strong presence of macrame wall hangings and varnished twig furniture) and into the kitchen, replete with state-of-the-art avocado-hued appliances.

Once he had poured them each a Scotch, Frank sat down in front of Ozzie and regarded him seriously.

"What's up?" Ozzie asked, feeling suddenly apprehensive.

Frank dropped his head into his hands, rubbed his face and looked up. "Look, buddy, I invited you here early-before the other guests arrive-because I wanted to give you something. It's real important."

Ozzie raised his eyebrows and c.o.c.ked his head. "I'm all ears."

Frank crossed his legs and nervously wiped a bit of sand off the pointed toe of his snakeskin dress shoe. He had always been fastidious, both in appearance and surroundings. Hated the thought of a hair out of place, let alone a shot. He lit a cigarette, drew in hard and then got up and began pacing the kitchen.

"So ever since Annabel and I got married I've been thinking. She wants to have kids soon and this directing thing's not so stable. It's fine for now, but there's no way I'm raising a family doing soft p.o.r.n, right? I need to make some cash. Regular, clean, nine-to-five-type cash." He paused to suck his smoke. "The truth is, I've been thinking of getting in on the other side. Maybe becoming an agent. Or even taking a job with Annabel's father's company-oil filtration."

Ozzie opened his mouth, but Frank stopped pacing and raised his hand. "Wait. Hear me out. So basically I'm at the end of my rope. I figure it's make-or-break time and I'm giving myself one year."

Frank took a breath and before he had a chance to exhale, turned around and pulled open a kitchen drawer. It was the sort of drawer you'd expect to contain a can opener, a corkscrew or maybe a Danish b.u.t.ter-cookie tin filled with rubber bands. Instead he pulled out a thick file folder and tossed it in Ozzie's lap.

Ozzie didn't touch it. He raised his hands in the air, palms up. "What's this c.r.a.p about 'one year'? You're talking about abandoning everything we ever worked for. You were born with a gift, my friend, a gift-"

Frank cut him off. He'd heard this speech before. "Just shut up and look in the folder, Oz."

"What's this?"

"It's a script. A script I wrote."