A Knife to Remember jj-5 Read online

  “Shelley, you're right," Jane said. "Now that you mention it, I recall having a pretty heated discussion with someone about how I remembered seeing her doing the weather on one of the local stations once, but I was told I had rocks in my head. I'll bet I was right. It was — oh, sixteen or seventeen years ago that I saw her doing the weather. When Mike was a baby.”

  Maisie grinned. "Watch out with that 'years ago' talk. She still pretends she's barely thirty."

  “No!" Jane exclaimed. "She's my age, at least."

  “Come on, Jane. Nobody's that old," Shelley said, with a grin. "Who else is in this movie, Maisie?"

  “The principal male is George Abington. Do you know him?"

  “I don't think so," Shelley said.

  “Sure you do, Shelley," Jane said. "He was in a spy series on television for a couple years, then he showed up on all the game shows for a few more years. Real good-looking, but seemed like an ordinary kind of guy. He was married to Lynette once, wasn't he?"

  “Jane, you amaze me, the junk you know," Shelley said.

  “They were married once. For about five minutes," Maisie said. "It was during the movie I worked on with her ages ago. She'd just married George in a big splash of publicity, then they both went off to do some potboiler that Roberto Cavagnari was directing. Before the film was even in the can, she'd filed for divorce and moved in with Cavagnari."

  “Who's Cavagnari?" Shelley asked. "Should I have heard of him, too?"

  “Probably not," Maisie answered. "He's done a ton of high-testosterone things. Terminator-typemovies. Spaghetti westerns. War stories. I can't imagine why he was hired to do this movie, but like Lynette, he's doing a great job. Far better than you'd ever expect.”

  Jane forgot herself so much that she put her cookie down where Willard could get it. "You mean Lynette Harwell is starring opposite George Abington, the man she abandoned for Cavagnari, the same man who's directing this movie?”

  Maisie smiled wickedly. "Stranger things have happened in this business."

  “Stranger, maybe. But that sounds downright dangerous," Shelley said.

  Maisie got up and started putting her layers of clothing back on. "As I said, you'll find watching the process very, very interesting.”

  3

  Vehicles and people kept arriving until well after ten o'clock that night. Jane watched, fascinated, from the back windows of the living room. An enormous piece of equipment that she later learned was called a condor, unfolded itself and lifted bright lights attached to a cherry picker — type basket high above the activity. The huge floodlights illuminated the field with harsh, heavy shadows. It was a truly eerie atmosphere, reminiscent of the scenes she'd sometimes seen on the news of nighttime catastrophes. It wouldn't have been inconceivable to discover a downed airplane in the midst of the scurrying mob of technicians. All that was missing was the wail of sirens and the flash of red lights. The noise and mob and sense of purposeful urgency were all there.

  From the moment they'd come home from school and seen the extent of the production, Katie and Todd, Jane's two youngest children, both had been enraged that Jane wouldn't let them go out and wander around in the midst of it. "Just in the backyard, Mom," Todd pleaded after a quick, early dinner. "I'll take Willard out to his pen.”

  They were all crowded around the window with the best view. "You know he's afraid to go in the pen with anybody but me," Jane said, looking at the dog with irritation. "The big sissy."

  “Poor old Willard is going to be one constipated doggy by the end of the week, aren't you, boy?" Mike said, grabbing Willard's ears and wrestling his head around — to Willard's absolute delight.

  “Mike, please don't talk about the dog's digestive tract," Jane said with a shudder. Mike had given the dog a banana a week earlier, with results Jane was afraid she was never going to be able to forget.

  “Come on, Mom," Katie nagged, tossing her hair dramatically. Katie was at the age that nearly all her conversations with her mother involved hair-tossing, flouncing, and/or door-slamming. Often all three. Jane had to keep telling herself that someday Katie would be a nice young woman and a wonderful companion to her — if they both survived her teenage years. "We won't go any farther than our own yard."

  “This week it isn't our yard. I've rented it to the movie company. Part of what they're paying for is us staying out of their way."

  “Aw, Mom. Let them go," Mike said. "They've got a security guy to keep people out. He won't let them get in the way.”

  Instead of being grateful for his older brother's help, Todd turned on him furiously. "Stop being so. . so. . big!" Todd sputtered. Jane suspected he'd rejected a number of adjectives that were popular among sixth grade boys, but wouldn't have gone over well at home. "Just 'cause you don't have to go to school tomorrow and the next day! Mom! Please can't I please stay home, too?"

  “Todd, you know you can't. But they'll still be working when you get home from school anyway. You'll get to see plenty."

  “Mom, it's just not Fair!" Katie whined. Jane gave her a look.

  “Yeah, yeah," Katie said. She raised her hands like a conductor and the boys joined in the chorus of Jane's oft-repeated line, " 'Life isn't fair.' “

  The argument sputtered on throughout the evening and became more wide-ranging. Jane was accused of being an insensitive mother, obsessive about meaningless academic considerations at the cost of her children's social and intellectual development. Not that Todd had the vocabulary to put it that way, but that was the point.

  Katie tried a pity ploy, not having caught on yet that crying didn't dissolve her mother's hard heart, but merely drove her to a frenzy of irritation. Then Katie moved on to guilt, working up an imaginary scenario in which Jane, unreasonably favoring her firstborn, had somehow suborned the school district in advance to let the high school be off for the exact day filming was to start, therefore deliberately slighting her two youngest children, whom she probably never wanted to have anyway.

  Jane found herself actually wondering what had made her think it was a good idea to have three children. But she held firm, not because she believed that missing school would have been such a bad thing, but because she knew they'd inch closer and closer to the production if they were allowed to stayhome and eventually get in trouble for which she'd be held responsible.

  It didn't help that Mike was really being insufferably smug and adult about the fact that he'd been promised some kind of job, however menial, on the set.

  Jane finally escaped her bickering progeny by pleading mending that needed to be done so that she could go hide from them in the minuscule guest room where she kept the sewing machine. When she looked out that window around ten-thirty, the floodlights had been turned off, vans full of workers were just pulling away, and a security guard was standing in her backyard talking on a mobile phone.

  She already felt exhausted from having the movie filmed in her backyard and the filming hadn't even started yet. She sighed, remembering that she'd meant to get Katie aside sometime this evening and break the news that she and Mel were going to New York for the weekend.

  But she hadn't the energy left for another confrontation. And teenage girls, like dogs, could sense fear and use it to their advantage. No, this wasn't the time.

  Mike was up at the crack of dawn and woke Jane to ask which jeans he ought to wear.

  “Jeans?" Jane asked blearily, trying to get her eyes open far enough to discern some difference between the two pairs he was showing her. "It's still dark. What time is it?"

  “Almost six," Mike said. "I think the ones with the pocket torn off, don't you? The ones with the hole in the knee don't look serious enough.”

  Jane sat up in bed, shielding her eyes against the vicious glare of the bedside lamp. "Mike, I'd put those in the trash. They're both awful. You have a new pair in your top drawer. Wear those.”

  He looked at her with surprise. "I can't do that, Mom. They're new."

  “Yes. And outrageously expensive, I might ad
d.”

  Mike knew she was still half-asleep and was dreadfully patient with her. "Mom, I'd look like a kindergartner on the first day of school in those. Too eager. Like a. . a. . kid.”

  Jane shook her head, trying to clear it. "Okay, okay. The one with the pocket gone. Take the cats with you—" she called out as he headed for the door.

  Max, a gray-and-black tabby, and Meow, a yellow butterball, were not happy at being scooped up and removed from her bedroom. They felt it important to be on the scene when she got up in the morning, just in case she'd been sleeping with a can of cat food that she might open any second. The fact that this had never happened didn't deter them from believing that it might.

  They muttered behind the closed door while Jane got dressed and they twined themselves around her ankles as she headed for the kitchen. She'd just plugged in the coffeemaker and started the can opener when there was a knock at the door. The cats howled protests at this interruption of her activities.

  Maisie was at the door. "Good morning," she chirped.

  “It's only six-fifteen! How can you say that?" Jane exclaimed.

  “Oh, I've been here for a half hour already. Is your son ready? I have some things he can do. Send him along.”

  Jane bellowed up the stairs for Mike and got him on his way, then got the cats fed and a cup of coffee inside herself before rousting out the other two kids. As soon as she heard movement upstairs, she took Willard out to his new dog run. He cowered and groaned in protest at first, but when he discovered that someone had tossed a half-eaten donut into the run, he settled in as if it were a home away from home.

  Todd accepted the inevitable and went off to school without much fight. Katie tried to claim a horrific case of cramps, cramps that might well go down in medical history, but decided she didn't feel that bad when Jane made clear that staying home from school would mean staying in her own bedroom, which faced the front of the house, all day. Jane went back outside to drag Willard back indoors while Katie was reluctantly getting ready for school.

  When she had her car pools done, Jane returned to the house, put on a minimum of makeup, brown corduroy slacks, and a peach-colored sweatshirt before strolling into the backyard. Shelley was sitting on a lawn chair next to Maisie. They'd situated themselves next to a snack spread of epic proportions.

  “Help yourself," Maisie offered as Jane goggled at the long plywood table and the coolers beneath it.

  There were drinks of every description: milk, buttermilk, skim milk, orange juice, pineapple juice, apple juice, coffee, cocoa, a dozen kinds of tea in bags. There were donuts and fruit bars, little plastic bags of sunflower seeds and peanuts and candy bars. She counted six kinds of chips and four kinds of bread besides bagels, donuts, and sweet rolls. There were fresh fruits and vegetable crudités, cookies, cheeses, spreads, dips, and all the makings for every kind of sandwich imaginable.

  “There's enough food here for a hundred starving people," Jane said in wonder. Her stomach growled.

  “That's about what we've got today," Maisie said. "Dig in. You can't make a dent."

  “Is this normal?" Shelley asked. "All this food?”

  Maisie nodded. "It's one of the best things about the job. The food. You should have seen breakfast."

  “You mean this isn't breakfast?" Jane asked, biting into a sweet roll.

  “No, the caterers' truck just left. Breakfast was a hot meal for everybody a couple hours ago. I'd weigh three hundred pounds if I worked very often.”

  They chatted with Maisie about her job and discovered that she was a military wife and an actor's daughter. She had combined the two with her nursing degree and had worked on many movie sets over the years as she followed her husband's postings. "Fortunately he was assigned to desk workin L.A. several times back when nearly everything was done in the studio. I worked a lot then," she said. "And now that so much work is being done on location, the number of jobs elsewhere in the country is increasing."

  “You mean you live here in Chicago?" Jane asked. "Is anybody else local?"

  “Oh, yes. Quite a few. Transportation, extras casting, all the extras, catering, craft services," she said, rattling off individuals by their jobs instead of names. "All local. Even Jake there is local now."

  “Who's Jake?”

  Maisie popped a donut into her mouth to free a hand and pointed to a tall man in his early forties who was leaning against a piece of fake building, obscuring their view of the set. He had shoulder-length maroon-red hair. As they looked at him, he made some semaphore-like gestures to somebody with his arms, then turned toward them as if he'd sensed their gazes. He was very fair-skinned, with lean, distinctive features that would have made him seem more likely to be in front of the cameras than behind them. He wasn't handsome in a traditional sense, but he was striking-looking and sexy in a bizarre, hazardous way. He looked like the sort of man who, in another age, might have come over from Ireland and led labor revolts.

  — and cheated on his wife, Jane thought as he approached them with a dazzling, wolfish grin.

  4

  In spite of her better judgment, Jane was flattered at the interested look on Jake's face — until she realized it wasn't meant for her.

  “Baby, you're killing me with those sexy outfits!" he said with a laugh.

  Jane turned around to find a young woman approaching from behind. She was in her twenties and extremely pretty, but dressed and made up as a turn of the century escapee from a fire. Her long chestnut hair was deliberately disordered and there were sooty smudges on her face and arms. She wore a baggy gray dress with what Jane assumed were artificial sweat stains and ragged tears in the skirt and sleeves. "You old flatterer!" this young woman said, blowing a kiss at Jake as she went by.

  He watched her, then reluctantly turned back to Maisie, ignoring Jane and Shelley as if they were no more than inanimate objects. "You don't happen to have seen Bobby's fancy watch, have you?" he asked.

  “By 'Bobby' I assume you mean Roberto? The director?" Maisie said coolly. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Maisie wasn't crazy about Jake. "If he hears you call him that, your ass is grass."

  “Oh, Bobby wouldn't mind. He and I are old chums. Seriously, he's lost his Rolex. He thinks he took it off when you bandaged up his finger this morning."

  “If he did, he just put it in his pocket. I didn't pay any attention. I think he got some coffee after I was through with him. Maybe he set it down over there," Maisie said, gesturing to the loaded-down craft service table.

  Jake wandered off, looking around the table and taking nibbles of half a dozen things.

  “The director hurt himself?" Jane asked.

  Maisie started laughing. "It was, honest-to-God, a hangnail. He's just a raving hypochondriac. Oh, dear. .”

  A pair of young women were approaching them, one head down, crying. The other had her arm around her and was muttering to her comfortingly. Maisie got up to meet them and as the sobbing young actress raised her head, Maisie said, "Oh, you poor dear. It's chicken pox, you know."

  “I can't have chicken pox!" the girl wailed. "I'm not a kid and I've got my first line today! I've never gotten to say a single word in a single movie and I'm supposed to do a whole scene with Miss Harwell this afternoon!" She'd gotten so pale that the telltale spots stood out even brighter.

  “I'm sorry, honey, but you're not going to get to say a word in this one either.”

  Her friend spoke up. "I talked to Carl in makeup. He said they can cover the spots."

  “Maybe so, but that's not the point. Chicken pox is a disease. A highly infectious disease that can be very tough on adults like you who missed having it as kids. I can't let you stay and pass it on to the whole crew — if you haven't already. Thank God we'll be wrapped before the incubation period is over!”

  A crowd had gathered around them by this time, clucking curiosity, sympathy, and surprise. But Jane noticed that Jake, standing at a little distance, looked pleased. He suddenly dropped the roll he w
as munching on into a trash barrel and abruptly plunged between the fake buildings onto the set itself.

  A young man with earphones standing by the table suddenly raised a bullhorn to his lips. "Quiet on the set!" he bellowed.

  The unexpected blast of sound nearly flung Jane and Shelley out of their chairs.

  “Quiet on the set!" they heard echoed two or three times from various distances, then another bullhorn voice squawked, "Rolling!”

  A complete and stunning silence fell over the entire production. It was so quiet, Jane realized, that if she'd closed her eyes, she wouldn't have believed another human being was anywhere near. And yet there were probably a hundred people milling around chatting only a second before.

  The girl with the chicken pox was led away, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs, and Maisie came back to join them. Jane started to whisper a question, but Maisie hushed her with a finger to her lips.

  Everyone stood frozen. Most of the snackers, under the fierce eye of the boy with the bullhorn, had even quit chewing. Finally, after what seemed like five minutes of suspended animation, the distant bullhorn bellowed, "Cut!" and everybody came back to life. Conversations were resumed mid-syllable, a held-back sneeze erupted, the sound of hammering was resurrected, and everyone was once again in motion.

  Shelley was bright-eyed. "I should have let the kids stay home to see this! And then I could have gone out and bought my own bullhorn and they'd have taken me seriously!”

  A mob of people in tattered, burned clothing suddenly came crowding through the little space between the fake buildings and headed for the food like a swarm of locusts. A few gathered around a coffee can with sand in the bottom that sat on the ground a few feet away. They, the smokers, avidly lighted up.

  Jane watched and listened with fascination to an ethereal, pious-looking girl who was dressed as a nun and was saying, ". . so I told him I wouldn't ball a baldheaded guy if all my girlfriends swore he was the biggest stud in the world.”