This was the way Gloria’s story began: I found George Forrester, the love of my life, on a Saturday in the fall of 1981. I would lose him less than ten years later.
I held my copy of her memoir in my lap the next afternoon, my finger nervously tracing the dust jacket on the book, my eyes falling on that line, as I waited for her on the couch in the library.
After my walk last night, I’d gone up unnoticed to my room. And I’d spent this morning sitting in there, trying to prep for the role and my meeting with Gloria today by watching old interviews I found with her online. She was a totally different person in those interviews: warm, magnanimous, sparkly. In a one-on-one with Oprah from the mid ’90s, Gloria was svelte, tan and practically drenched in diamonds from head to toe: shoulder-length earrings, a large diamond choker and a diamond-encrusted gold sweater. Oprah asked her about her own love life and Gloria laughed warmly and touched Oprah’s arm before saying that the love of her life was gone, but that he lived on in her books. Oprah shook her head, called Gloria magical, and Gloria practically beamed.
The thump of Gloria’s cane jolted me now, and I glanced at my watch. Precisely one o’clock. Of course, it was. I opened the notebook on my lap and jotted down: Exactly on time.
I looked up and she was in leggings and a baggy sweatshirt, similar to how she was dressed when I’d arrived yesterday. Casual writing clothes? I jotted in my notebook, thinking about how they were very different from her dinner clothes and of course, her Oprah clothes. She sat down across from me, and I smiled hoping to ease her nerves. “Thank you again for taking this time to talk with me. How was your writing this morning?” I asked her.
She frowned, and I imitated her, trying to match her expression. Was this the real, unvarnished Gloria Diamond? Oprah-Gloria had had a totally different, happier look. A bright full-faced smile that I’d been trying to practice in my bathroom mirror before I’d walked down here. If I was going to play her, I needed to understand this dynamic—her private versus her public self.
“We’ll start at the beginning,” Icy-Gloria said now, ignoring my question about her writing. She was still frowning as she eyed the book in my lap. I wondered what her face looked like when she was at her desk, creating a story, wrapped up in another world, a love story. I imagined that relaxed, softened her. At least I would hope it did.
“The beginning,” I repeated, my eyes glancing over the first line of her book again. “When you met George?”
“Amelia, do you define your own beginning with a man?” She arched her thin, penciled eyebrows, and I almost thought she looked amused.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, not exactly sure what to say. Her memoir literally began with a line about her meeting George. Finally I said, “Okay. So what’s the beginning, then?”
“I was born in Ohio as Mary. Mary Franklin. But everyone called me Mare.” I nodded. Wikipedia had told me that much before I’d even stepped on the plane at LAX. She was Mare Franklin, then Mare Forrester after she married George. Gloria Diamond was a pen name—but after several years of using it, she supposedly made it her legal name too. Twenty-eight years later, everyone seemed to call her Gloria, on and off the page.
“Do you ever go by Mare anymore?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Mare disappeared that night George died.”
That seemed to contradict what she’d just said about not defining herself with a man, but I nodded anyway.
It was Jase who had first suggested I should have a stage name, an acting name: Amelia Grant sounded beautiful and sophisticated and perfect. She didn’t spill beer on the sticky counters of dark West Hollywood bars, and she certainly didn’t trip into puddles when her entire life was falling apart.
But I’d come up with the name myself. Become Amelia myself. I wasn’t about to take it back because we broke up. My mother had been the last person left to still call me Annie. Now it felt almost foreign whenever I’d see my real, given name on my credit statement each month: Annie Gaitlin. I was no longer that woman without even my mother to claim her existence out loud every Sunday at brunch in the garden. And it occurred to me that maybe that was what Gloria was saying about George too. That after he died, there was no one left who remembered who she was before, who she used to be.
Her memoir mentioned George’s death only briefly, as if even all these years later it was too painful for her to write about it. He’d died at the age of thirty-two of carbon monoxide poisoning. Gloria and Will fled to a rural estate in the Pacific Northwest immediately after it happened. She wrote her first novel. Will grew up a feral child. And her love story with George lived on in her work.
“You must’ve loved him a lot,” I finally said, figuring that was safe territory. It was, after all, the claim of the entire biopic, that her brief period loving George had become the inspiration for every single one of her thirty bestselling romance novels.
Gloria didn’t say anything for a moment, and she turned and looked out the window. It had started raining again, hard drops rattling the glass, obscuring the woods beyond into a blur of brown and green. “I didn’t let go of Mare because of George,” Gloria finally said. “I just became a different version of myself after him. A better version.” She paused for another moment. “Mare never knew how to get exactly what she wanted.”
“And Gloria did?” I asked.
“Gloria does,” she corrected me.
Gloria ended our session abruptly at two, as she’d promised the night before. And I’d gotten only a page of scribbled notes that didn’t tell me much beyond what I’d already read in the script, her memoir and Wikipedia.
“You look confused. An hour with my mother will do that.” I looked up and Will stood in the doorway now. I was surprised he was still here. I’d googled him last night and found he was a trial attorney in Seattle, and I’d decided that explained his immediate jump to me breaking the law. An occupational hazard—maybe I wouldn’t hold it against him.
In the light of day now, he was not unattractive, creepy nor even slightly mean-looking. He leaned against the doorframe easily, smiling, exposing an endearing dimple in his left cheek.
“Maybe a little confused,” I finally said. “Or, not exactly sure what to make of her yet.”
He laughed. “That sounds about right.” He had a gentle, kind laugh, and he struck me as the opposite of his mother in every way. If she was ice, he was warmth and light. “Sorry about last night,” he continued. “My mother failed to mention that the lead actress would be staying with her a few days before filming began, and she’s had some crazy fans in the past. I thought you were one of them.”
I closed my notebook and stood, walking to the doorway and holding out my hand. “Apology accepted. Let’s start over, shall we? It’s nice to meet you, Will.”
He took my hand, shook it. Held on to it a beat longer than was necessary while he stared at me, examining my face as if wondering how I could possibly become his mother.
“I’m supposed to take her up to Belles Woods for the beginning of the shoot next week,” Will explained. “And she asked me to come stay here and help her get ready for a few days first. Of course, she neglected to mention she had other company until after I arrived. Then she promptly ordered me to stay away from you.”
I could hear her saying it again, Don’t touch my things. Did shaking Will’s hand count? I took a small step back, gently extracting my hand from his. “Pretend I’m not even here.” I paused. “This was all arranged last minute when I quickly stepped into the role after Therese Hadley quit, and I’m really just observing for a few days, anyway. Studying for the part. I’ll try not to get in your way.”
Our hands were no longer touching but Will’s eyes hadn’t moved from my face. “You’re assuming I listen to her,” he said. There was a hint of something in his voice, but I couldn’t read him well enough to tell if he was annoyed with his mother or simply curious about me.
He finally averted his eyes from my face, and he was no longer smiling. So what he said next was completely serious, stoic even. “Just do me a favor. Play the real her. Not that bullshit romance queen version of her she presents to the world.”
“And who exactly is the real her?” I asked. The words icy bitch sat on the tip of my tongue, but I wouldn’t dare utter them out loud.
Will didn’t say anything for a moment and then finally, he shrugged. “I sure as hell don’t know.”