Hollywood Boulevard. Janyce Stefan-Cole
I kicked the beer bottles next to the chain- link fence. I ought to have resisted the desire to arrange the pool deck but didn't. Having to arrange, needing to, possibly reflects something wrong with me. But I'm not interested; what good would it do if I learned I was a compul sive this or that, a so- and- such unable to reveal myself except through gestures like rearranging furniture, an utterly failed communicator— for an actor? I enjoy few things better than creating order out of chaos, yet my life is a study in disorder. Lurking is the awareness, faint and intermittent, occasionally urgent, that something is wrong and does need fixing. Or maybe the pool area looking a lot better now is explanation enough.
Husband number one said I only played at house. This was around the time I signed with Harry and Hollywood. That would be Harry Machin, Big Time Agent and proprietor of the very exclusive Machin Talent. Apparently with issues of his own— I mean the ex, a writer, he once hid out in a broom closet. I'd taken him to a party, not an A- list deal but sufficiently who's who. I didn't notice him missing until the hostess found him among the cleaning products and whispered in my ear to ask what was wrong with my guy. Back then I thought we would be a comfort to each other in social situations. I thought that's what couples did. Social outings are knotty anyway, on a guy's arm or flying solo. At the time of the closet incident I was better at taking cues and holding up my end, though I'd wilt at the smallest off- key passage: a casually unkind word, the bon mot landing flat. Still, I had a solid sense of what I wanted to be when I grew up, and nothing was going to stop me; I'd run over anyone who tried. I'm not saying I don't savvy the parley, flirting just enough to raise an eyebrow, playing the provocateur until my energy saps and I collapse like a diseased lung, sagging under the weight of human contact. Which, considering the assumed largeness of ego expected in my former profession, and the supposed need of an audience, makes me a candidate for problems from the start.
At a recent party here in Hollywood— no, Silver Lake, to be precise— where I knew enough people well enough to indulge in conversational back- and- forth, I left the crowd to play with the family's five- year- old, Ella. She proudly exhibited her many fairy dolls. All showy dresses, translucent wings, and long luscious hair, blond and thick like hers. After oohing and aahing appropriately, I began checking for underwear, lifting gossamer gowns, cotton pinafores, and tulip minis. "Let's see if she's wearing underpants," I said, peering at one doll's lower parts. Soon the dear little girl was checking too. "Underpants!" she'd say. "Underpants," we'd say, examining each doll. "No underpants!" she gasped. "Let's see!" I said, pulling the delinquent figurine from her small hand. Seeing the naked, rubbery flesh- colored blank where genitals ought to be, it occurred to me that I'd taught this lovely child something her parents might not appreciate. What was I thinking? Children are so unself- consciously sexual as it is, and she was just at that Freudian cusp, five, the postphallic stage, on the verge of the superego. I've perused a few pages of Freud, and he's a pessimist, if you ask me, and all wrong about penis envy. My grandmother used to say men start wars to match the heroics of women producing babies. Who knows, maybe they have the envy. That's a thorny topic, though, starting with Adam trying to shift blame onto a wily snake, quite possibly the beginning of blaming the victim, and certainly the genesis of men getting all the good lines in movies while the actresses get the great clothes. And I'm not certain there really is a victim, though I read somewhere that, according to Victorian mores, a "lady lies still" during the sex act. And what, studies the ceiling? I know it's a mixed- up ball of wax if the lady is taking it passively on her tummy or handing it out on top. Sex could be simple, lovely fun, but somehow there are always complications.
Anyhow, another guest (at the party), who happens to be a good- looking dwarf, poked his head through the doorway. "Are you hiding out in here?" he asked.
"Hiding out, yes," I said softly (trying, I think, for an effect. Why? Because he was born condensed?), realizing a split second later that he meant the little girl. He abruptly left.
There is some truth to what my ex said about how I play house. I spent time and some money nesting in the current suite. Which means I think I'll stay, though I threaten Andre from day to day to clear out back to our loft in New York. I've lived countless days and months in hotels, and I've learned it's important to claim the place, leave my mark like a dog peeing on a pole. But my ex implied it's all pretense, that things are not so clean under appealing surfaces. Dirt's not the point, I once tried to explain, but the way a space feels: harmonious or not, high or low contrast, and lighting— lighting is of utmost importance. He scoffed, "Spoken like a true actress." He told me I see things as others would, like a performance. As if light and color don't have real effect. "What's wrong with considering the effect?" I asked, apparently missing the point.
"Life," he said, "my pretty- pretty, is not an effect." (You know, I knew that.)
"Then you can be my resident reality check," I said, trying to disarm a potential fight. He frowned— set to object— but I jumped in: "Actors require reality checks; didn't that come with my instruc tions?"
Harry— this was back then— told me to cut "the hubby" loose. "Get him off the nipple; he's nothing. You're a great actress, the next Kate Hepburn."
"Harry, you know I can't stand Hepburn."
"I meant you're classy, not flimflam in a costume. Never a cheap shot from Ardennes Thrush."
That sounded like a line he might have used before. I didn't have a comeback, so I just sat there, opposite Harry at his very wide, bleached- birch desk, so wide it seemed like the deck of a small ship.
"I see what he is," Harry said to my silence. "That— what's his name again?"
"Joe?"
"Joe. Perfect. Joe Schmo. He's a moper. He'll never let you succeed. He'll tear down anything you do. Trust me on this. Guys like that prey on a woman's weakness."
I thought, isn't that what producers and the other money men do? There was an iota of truth to Harry's words, though; Joe did seem at times to debunk my growing success. What surprised me was Harry picking up on that part of Joe after at most two very brief meetings. I wondered how a deal- making manipulator like Harry Machin could have such insights. Maybe it was because Harry truly enjoyed what he did, was in it up to his elbows with all his heart.
"He doesn't have an agent, does he?" Harry added, watching me from under those heavy eyelids of his.
He didn't. I kept quiet again. Harry's phone rang. He said, "Okay," into the receiver, which meant he'd take the call. Which meant it was someone important because when Harry called you into the office he meant business and had his calls held. Harry was always telling me what to do and I was always trying to sort out for myself what I should do. Which is not to imply I knew back then what was best for me, but when I didn't know, I had my ready fall back position, which was to hold out. I was named after the Ardennes Forest, where what is called the Battle of the Bulge took place in the bitter winter of 1944. My father was a boy of twenty and he made it out alive when something on the order of 81,000 GIs were wounded, died or went missing in the last merciless thrust of the Nazis. I wasn't born then, not even close. My mother wanted to name me Autumn, after her favorite season, when she and my dad married. He was a good deal older than his second wife, just as my half- brother and -sister were to me. My mother said it wasn't a good idea to name a child, a girl no less, after a World War II battle, but I'd had a rough go of it and wasn't expected to live because of a problem in my tiny heart, a valve that they were able to reroute or something, and my dad told her I was a fighter and a survivor, like him. Maybe he figured he might not be around for me as long as most dads and wanted me to remember the young soldier who'd made it through the Ardennes Offensive. Anyhow, my mother agreed, and if I don't tell people the origin they think my name is exotically French or that I made it up as a stage name. I don't usually bother to explain.
It was probably just as well he wasn't around when I quit acting. How could I tell my dad it was the thought of quitting that kept me going? That the idea was a relief, like death, if you try to look into death's positive light, its silver lining. I don't mean to be morbid; in fact, I think it's morbid to want life to go on forever. There'd be no edge, just a soppy on and on. Maybe deep down inside everyone dreams of quitting, of being free of the task each of us supposedly has in life. I picked up that