Epilogue

Epilogue

July 5, 2005

James let me off at the bus station in Albuquerque. I think he wanted me to stick around for a while, but I couldn’t. I have to get to Los Angeles. I don’t want to end up like Mom.

I took the bus from Albuquerque to LA. I sat next to a girl my age named Meagan. She’s from Truth and Consequences down south. She’s going to LA too, but not for acting. She’s a writer. She looks like a writer too with that mousy brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and baggy T-shirt. She’s like one of those girls at school who was always scribbling poetry in a notebook and if you said anything to her, she jumped like you electrocuted her.

I asked if she wanted to write TV or movies and she just shrugged. “I’ll take what I can get,” she said. Along the way I read a screenplay she wants to get produced. It’s about a small town girl who’s raped by her boyfriend, the star player on the baseball team. The town covers up the rape so the team can win in the state championship. The girl gets so enraged at the state finals she runs onto the field and kills him with a bat. We had a good laugh when I asked if it was based on a true story.

I told Meagan about wanting to be an actress but not that I was going to see Tim Collins. It’s kind of selfish on my part I guess, but also I didn’t want to get her hopes up. I don’t even know if he’ll see me. There are probably all sorts of girls tracking him down and asking him to cast them in a movie.

Meagan and I promised to “do lunch” as the Hollywood people say when we’re both rich and famous. Maybe I’ll even star in one of her movies. I don’t really want to play a psycho killer, though. I don’t think I could get into the character. Henry always said not to take a part unless you can identify with the character, unless you really need the money. He said the last part like it was a joke, but I think he was talking from personal experience. I miss him. I should call him from Los Angeles and tell him how things go. No matter what happened, I owe him a lot. Without him I’d look like Jabba the Hutt, filling my face and watching movies on the couch. Yuck.

We drove through the desert for what seemed like forever. I dozed off at some point along the way. I hadn’t slept in at least a day and half. I think I dreamed about Frank, but it’s a little hazy now. Meagan elbowed me awake and there it was.

Los Angeles is so beautiful. The buildings are so much bigger than anything in Little Mesa or even Albuquerque. It’s almost magical, just the size of the place. I was glued to the windows like one of those Garfield things people hang in their cars. I couldn’t believe I was finally HERE. The city of angels. Right next door to Hollywood. Amazing.

The bus let us off and I asked Meagan where she was staying. She didn’t know. She figured she’d get a motel somewhere until she could find a job and apartment. I suggested we split a room to save ourselves a little money. We found a place not far away that was a real dump but cheap. It makes the Rio Rancho look like the Plaza. The door wouldn’t close all the way until we put a chair in front of it. Meagan joked we should take turns sleeping in case someone tries to break in.

The bathtub is really dirty, but I took a shower anyway. No one bothered to restock the towels, so I had to ask Meagan for one of my dresses to use instead. When she handed me the dress, I noticed her looking at me. Her face turned all red and she ran away.

After I got dressed, I went back into the room and she was on the bed, crying. She kept apologizing over and over again. I sat down next to her, just to comfort her and she kissed me. I’ve never kissed a girl before. It was weird. Not as forceful as most guys I’ve kissed. I stopped it after a few seconds and then she starting crying again.

That was the reason she left Truth and Consequences. She kissed a girl there and when her parents found out, they freaked. Threw her right out of the house. She got a friend to drive her to Albuquerque and bought a ticket for LA. How awful. I bet that’s how Aunt Esther would have reacted if she found out I ever kissed a girl. Mom wouldn’t have cared.

After that whole mess, I convinced Meagan to get cleaned up and we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant down the street. I’ve never had Thai food before. You can’t get any in Little Mesa. Aunt Esther used to say she didn’t like food with a name she couldn’t pronounce, so we never went anywhere exotic.

I’m not sure what I had. Some kind of duck I think. Meagan had something with a lot of noodles. It was kind of awkward between the two of us. We kept pointing to people who passed by and pretending it was some celebrity. I don’t think anyone like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt hangs around near the bus station. Tomorrow I’ll see someone famous.

After dinner we decided we were both tired from all the travel. The television in the room only has HBO, which was showing a boxing match. Why do people want to sit around cheer for two guys beating each other up? It’s sick.

Right now Meagan is asleep on one bed. She’s turned away from me and all wrapped up so I can only see her hair. I think she’s still embarrassed about what happened earlier. I keep telling her that it’s all right. I even tried joking that it was good practice in case I have to do a lesbian kiss in a movie. She didn’t like the word “lesbian.” I think she’s still a little confused. I hope she figures it out eventually.

Tomorrow I’m going to take a taxi out to Malibu to see Tim Collins. I should be asleep right now so I don’t look too tired when I meet him. If I meet him. He probably has assistants, security guards, and attack dogs that will keep me from getting within a mile of him.

I should stop writing now and go to bed. If anyone saw us right now they’d think I was the writer. Goodnight.

July 6, 2005

I couldn’t sleep last night. I think I only managed an hour. I thought about Tim Collins, but mostly I was thinking about Frank. I kept wondering what he was doing. Did he go out looking for me? Maybe I haven’t been fair to him about everything. He might have just made an honest mistake.

I can’t go back now, when I’m so close. Not for a man who I don’t know even loves me. A man who loves Mom more than he’ll ever love me. I have to be strong. I can’t give in or I’ll end up just like Mom.

I decided to wear the pantsuit today with a striped blouse that matches. I want to look professional for Mr. Collins so he won’t think I’m just some nut off the street. I put my hair up to complete the look. I looked into the mirror and tried some serious, businesswoman-like expressions. Then I broke out laughing. Maybe this look is too serious and dull.

I left before Meagan woke up. That way I wouldn’t have to explain why I needed to go alone. She might think it has something to do with what happened yesterday. As I wrote a note for her to promise I’d be back later, I thought about Frank again. I hope he understood the one I left for him.

The taxi driver who drove me to Malibu was so nice. His name is Rasheed. He volunteers to drive around some of the old people he goes to church with when he isn’t driving the cab. He gave me the number for his church and told me to go there if I ever needed help. I guess he gets a lot of aspiring actresses from small towns. I feel like such a stereotype.

As we drove through Los Angeles I tried not to act like a complete idiot like on the bus yesterday. But for just a second I thought I saw the Hollywood sign and I felt ready to faint. That’s when I knew I’d finally made it. I was really here.

It took forever to get to Malibu. Rasheed asked when he dropped me off if he should stick around for a few minutes to make sure. I said he could go, but he said it was time for a break anyway. So I got out of the cab and went up to the front gate of the house I hoped belonged to Mr. Collins.

I couldn’t even see the house from the gate. There was a wall and a lot of bushes in the way. I pushed the button on the intercom and waited. A woman’s voice said, “Can I help you?”

I said, “My name is Anna Swinton. I’d like to see Mr. Collins if he’s not busy.” I’m sure my whole face turned red just then. I felt like such an idiot to just show up unannounced like this.

“Mr. Collins is very busy.”

“I know. Could you tell him I’m a friend of Henry Barton.” It was like that story where the kid says, “Open sesame!” and the magic door opens. The gates opened and I waved to Rasheed. He waved back and took off. Then I went through the gates and saw the house.

It’s so big I’m sure half of Little Mesa could fit inside. It’s one of those modern types with a lot of glass, the kind you’d expect a famous director to have. There was a Durango in the driveway which I guessed must belong to one of his assistants. The front walk had to be longer than Marshall Street and by the time I got up to the door I felt like I’d done my morning run.

I didn’t even have to ring a doorbell. A woman stood there wearing a suit almost like mine, except it was charcoal. I knew right away this was Henry’s daughter because she looked almost exactly like his wife, except taller. She’s even taller than I am. She must be six feet at least.

For a second we just looked at each other, sizing each other up as they say, and then she smiles. “Hello, Ms. Swinton. I’m Stephanie Collins. Henry Barton is my father.”

“I figured that. You look so much like his wife.” She frowned at that and I guessed I’d hit a sore spot. “I’m sorry.”

“No, there’s no need to be sorry. Come inside and let’s talk.” She took me inside the house and we walked down a really long hallway with posters from Mr. Collins’ movies on the walls. I watched only one of them, on a date with Alberto Ramirez in tenth grade. It was the one about the guy who lives in an old factory and builds a machine that can make anything someone wants out of old junk. I thought it was all right, but I couldn’t concentrate very well with Alberto’s hands all over me.

Mrs. Collins took me to a living room I swear is bigger than my whole house back in Little Mesa. She sat in a chair that must cost as much as the Durango in the driveway and motioned for me to sit on a white couch. It has to be the softest couch I’ve ever sat on.

“So, you know my father?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“About eight years.”

“How did you meet?”

“My class had to volunteer at the retirement home and I was assigned Henry—Mr. Barton—as my adopted grandfather. We just hit it off, I guess you could say.”

“Retirement community? Where was this?”

“In Little Mesa, New Mexico. That’s where I grew up.”

Mrs. Collins took in all this without an expression. I didn’t know what she was thinking. She’d make a great poker player. Then she said, “So what brings you out here, Ms. Swinton?”

“You can call me Anna.”

“Anna. What brings you out here?”

“Mr. Barton said I should come out here. I want to be an actress. He thought Mr. Collins could help.”

“Of course. You know, we get a lot of young women and men coming around here with a story about why we should help them.”

At that moment I felt just like Ingrid Bergman when she’s trying to convince the Dowager Empress she’s the czar’s lost daughter in Anastasia. How could I convince Mrs. Collins that I wasn’t just some crazy gold-digger? I thought about it for a moment and said, “I’d let you talk to Henry, but he had a heart attack last night. He’s in the hospital in Little Mesa, but they think he’s going to pull through.” I left out the part about him saying he loved me and then gave Mrs. Collins the number of the hospital.

There was a phone nearby and I waited on the couch while she called. She kept her voice low so I couldn’t make out what she asked, but I knew she was asking if they really had a patient named Henry Barton there and if it was really her father. The only thing I did hear was her saying, “Oh my God. Is he all right?” A minute later she hung up and there were tears in her eyes.

She hugged me right there on the couch and kept thanking me over and over again. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said.

“I understand,” I said.

After she stopped crying, she sat next to me on the couch and explained she hadn’t seen her father in eleven years. She was coming back from graduate school at Princeton. He was supposed to meet her train, but didn’t. He didn’t even leave a note. By that time she’d already met Mr. Collins and they looked for Henry but couldn’t find him. He’d just disappeared. “So many times I thought he must be dead. To think he’s been in a retirement home the whole time.”

She said Mr. Collins was shooting a movie in Vancouver, but he should be finished by the end of the week. In the meantime, she suggested we go out to lunch. It turned out the Durango belongs to her. She said she uses it to haul around the kids and likes the anonymity of it.

The place we went to was like something out of a movie. I imagined Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the dance floor. It was so elegant and expensive. I couldn’t afford an appetizer. I kept looking around for someone to throw me out, but Mrs. Collins didn’t pay any attention. She asked the maitre’d for a table for two and he got us one in the center of the dining room. Around us I saw actors, actresses, directors, and producers. It was like I died and went to Heaven.

Mrs. Collins was all business after she ordered a salad and mineral water for both of us. She grilled me about how I ended up in Malibu and what I wanted from her and Mr. Collins. I kept tripping over my tongue until I wanted to crawl away into the bathroom and lock myself into a stall.

She didn’t react to anything I said. When I finished telling her about how I’d wanted to be an actress since I was a little girl, she asked me about my qualifications. Did I have a head shot? What sorts of productions had I appeared in? What kind of formal training did I have? I felt like a complete idiot again as I told her I left Little Mesa in such a rush that I hadn’t really prepared. I listed the plays I’d performed in for school and explained that her father had provided most of my training. I waited what seemed like forever for her to respond.

“I hope you understand that even though you know my father, I still have to look out for my husband’s interests,” she said. “I want to get some pictures and have you do a test for me.”

That was it. The rest of the lunch went by like a blur. Then she drove me back to the city and we met a photographer she knew. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the photographer looked like the female version of Frank. While Mrs. Collins did my hair and make-up, I kept wanting to ask the photographer if she knew Frank. Even if she did, so what? I didn’t have anything left to say to him.

The photographs took a couple hours to shoot. They kept having me tilt my head one way and then the other and run through all sorts of expressions. I did my best not to look at the photographer and not to think about Frank. He was in the past, in Little Mesa.

After they took the last picture, Mrs. Collins and I went back to her house. She led me out to the deck, where I could see the ocean for the first time. It’s even more beautiful up close than in the pictures. The water goes on forever. I could float all the way to China on that water.

Mrs. Collins sat on a chair and told me to perform a scene. A scene of my choosing. Since it was so fresh, I decided to do one from Casa Verde. It seemed only fitting to perform her father’s play for her. I did the farewell scene between Rich and Elsie, but it didn’t feel the same as when I did for Frank at Crater Park. Still, when I finished, Mrs. Collins applauded.

“I can see what my father saw in you,” she said. She invited me to stay for dinner. I figured with a house this big she must have a bunch of servants, but she explained that with Mr. Collins in Vancouver and the kids at summer camp, she gave everyone the week off. We had the whole place to ourselves.

She ordered a pizza and we ate it on the deck while watching the waves. I saw a couple walking along the beach by the house next door vans and Mrs. Collins said that Rocky Carmichael had moved in along with his new wife. She and Mr. Collins planned to have them over for dinner when he got back.

After dinner Mrs. Collins went inside and came back with a bottle of wine. I told her I wasn’t old enough to drink, but she said, “I won’t tell anyone.”

So we sat there drinking white wine she’d bought from a friend of hers in the wine country and watching the sun go down. The sunset was so beautiful against the ocean that I wished Frank were there to take a picture. I imagined the two of us walked along the beach, hand-in-hand like a movie. Then I remembered I wasn’t the one he wanted to walk hand-in-hand with.

When the sun had gone down, Mrs. Collins told me about why Henry had left Hollywood. His wife died, also named Stephanie, died in childbirth. For a while Henry did the best he could to raise Mrs. Collins, but there was something wrong. The more she grew, the more she reminded him of his wife. He spent more and more time away from home, letting nannies take care of her, but eventually he sent her away to a boarding school in New Hampshire. She stayed there through high school and then went on to Dartmouth for a business degree and Princeton for her master’s degree. All those years, she and Henry hardly ever saw each other or talked to each other.

She came home for Christmas vacation her last year at Princeton and at a party Henry was throwing, she met Tim Collins. Neither one of them was really into the party, so they went somewhere to talk. Just like that, they were in love. They didn’t tell anyone, but after the party they kept in touch by telephone and letters until she graduated.

Then she told Henry that she was coming back to Los Angeles to stay. Mr. Collins was about to direct his first picture and she wanted to help him deal with the business part. After that, they planned to get married. Henry didn’t object at all. He even helped pay for the wedding, but as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Collins went on their honeymoon, Henry disappeared. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since then.

“I know he loves me. He just has trouble seeing past my mother. I don’t think he ever got over her death.” I thought of Frank and Mom. I knew Frank loved me, but he’d never gotten over Mom. And he probably never would.

Mrs. Collins took me back to the motel. “This is where you’re staying?” she said.

“Only until I can find something permanent,” I said.

“Stay with me. We have plenty of room. You can stay as long as you like.”

“I don’t want to be a bother—”

“You aren’t a bother, Anna. You’re a godsend.”

I asked if I could bring a friend with me and she agreed. I went inside to tell Meagan the good news, but she was gone. All her stuff had disappeared without even a note. I felt sorry for her. She didn’t have to be embarrassed or ashamed about who she was. She didn’t need to run away. I hope wherever she is, she’ll figure things out.

I took my bags and checked out of the crappy motel. Then Mrs. Collins drove me back to Malibu. She led me upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. It makes my bedroom in Little Mesa look like a closet by comparison. The whole room is done in a floral pattern that reminds me of the dress I wore that first night Frank came over. So much has happened since then.

Tomorrow Mrs. Collins has promised to get the pictures from the photographer and fax them to her husband. She thinks she has the perfect role for me. The female lead in an adaptation of The Scarlet Knight. Mrs. Collins says she and her husband have wanted to do it for years because his father created the show and hers starred in it. They finally have a deal with a studio and the financing to make it happen. I’m not sure about doing a superhero movie, but I think it might be a good way to thank Henry for everything he’s done for me.

Mrs. Collins has gone to bed now and I’m sitting here alone, thinking about how I got here. The last week has been so strange. I look back now and the person I was before the Meteor Days festival is gone. I’m in a new city with a new life and maybe a new family now. Mom’s journey ended in Little Mesa, but mine is only beginning.