Fifteen minutes after he’d caught me snooping around in his mother’s office, Will and I pulled up in front of an extremely questionable (and run-down) shack nearly obscured by pines a few miles down the road from Gloria’s house. A flashing neon sign out front said Ba; the r wasn’t lit.
I followed him inside, thinking this place screamed more most likely to get murdered and less grab a drink with a friend. And the fact that it was mostly empty inside, save one table with two middle-aged men in leather jackets, didn’t do much to change my perception. But I was in it this far, I doubted I could easily order a car all the way out here in the middle of nowhere and, anyway, I wanted to pick Will’s brain. The fact that he’d invited me to get a drink made me think maybe he had things to share about his mother, and if that was the case, I was willing to ignore my surroundings.
“Not what you’re used to out in Hollywood, I’m sure,” Will said, laughing a little as we took a seat at the bar. “But a drink is a drink, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I murmured, unconvinced that was even remotely true.
But I ordered a glass of pinot noir after the bartender told me it was local and Will ordered a beer on tap. The drink was kind of beside the point.
“You don’t watch Seattle Med?” I asked Will, half joking before taking a sip of my pinot noir. I let it sit on my tongue for a moment before deciding it actually wasn’t half bad.
Will shook his head and looked confused, like he’d never heard of it before. I wondered if he was living under a rock. Because it seemed like everyone on earth watched Seattle Med and loved Jase’s Dr. Ryan. “I don’t watch much TV,” he said, and I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. Clearly Will was one of those people. He probably sat around at night reading. And not romance novels. Whatever it was lawyers read for fun, law briefs, or maybe if he really wanted to unwind, the New Yorker or classic literature. But I guessed that also explained why he hadn’t recognized me yesterday when we first met.
“Well, Tate told me it’s your mother’s favorite show,” I said. “They were watching the season finale tonight. I thought everyone was down there watching,” I added sheepishly. “Including you.”
“Ahh, so that’s why you broke into her office.” He took a sip of his beer and seemed to be swallowing back a smile, like catching me was now, in hindsight, more amusing than alarming.
“I didn’t break in,” I clarified. “The door was unlocked.”
“My mother would definitely disagree on that fine point.”
He was definitely right. I sighed. “If you think I was really breaking and entering then why did you bring me here? To get me drunk before you ratted me out to Gloria?” I gulped my wine. It burned the back of my throat. I’d have to take back my earlier assessment—it was not very good.
He chuckled and shook his head. “I just wanted to get out of there and you looked like you could use a drink too.” He paused and took another sip of his beer. “This is why I never come stay at her house anymore,” he added. “It’s suffocating.”
“So why are you staying at her house now?” I asked him. If he worked and lived in Seattle, he was only an hour away. And even if he wanted to attend the beginning of the shoot, that didn’t start until next week.
He frowned. It was, of course, none of my business. But I was curious. “She’s been nervous about going up to Belles Woods for the shoot. She pleaded with me to come stay with her for a few days first, to help her prepare. And she’s still my mother.” He sighed and I tried to absorb everything he was saying. Most of all, there it was again, what Tate had said too: she was nervous.
“Nervous about what?” I pressed, wondering if he’d answer the same way Tate had.
He shrugged, took a slow sip of his beer. “I guess it’s one thing to write lies about your life and another altogether to see them play out.”
“Lies?” I asked, turning to look more intently at him.
He took another sip of his beer. “You know she writes fiction for a living, right?”
“But Diamond in the Rough is based on her memoir. Nonfiction. Her real-life love story with your dad.”
Will raised his eyebrows in response, and I stopped talking for a moment, pushed the wet cocktail napkin around the bar counter with my finger.
“I’m really sorry about what happened to him, by the way,” I added. “It must’ve been hard for you.” My own dad had left, gotten remarried and moved away before I turned twelve. I wasn’t very close to him in my adult life, but we kept in touch with the occasional text every few weeks. At least I knew he was out there and okay, living across the country with his new family; he hadn’t perished in a tragic accident.
“It was a long time ago,” Will said, running his fingers through his hair. “I can barely remember any of it now.”
“So then why do you think your mother’s memoir is lies?”
He shrugged. “The New York Times review called Diamond in the Rough, a ‘portrait of a happy marriage,’ but the only thing I remember is them fighting. I have this vague memory of hiding out in the kitchen pantry while they threw things at each other.”
I let that sink in. George in Diamond in the Rough is kind, generous, loving. A quiet bookworm who devotes his life to a young Gloria. Fighting? Their son hiding in the pantry while they threw things? But memory was a funny thing, and Will had said he could barely recall his father. Maybe he was mistaken or remembering some isolated incident that had stuck with him.
“You know what,” he interrupted my thoughts. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have even said that. It doesn’t matter what I think, anyway. I’m sure you can pull off anything because you’re a great actress or whatever.” I wasn’t sure if I should be offended by his “or whatever,” if he was being serious or facetious, but I really was very good at acting. I could pull off anything if I worked hard enough to learn the part. “Seriously. Don’t listen to me. I just...had a moment after seeing that picture again,” Will continued.
“Seeing it again?” I asked. “So you do know who the man is in the photograph?”
He shook his head, then hesitated for another minute. “No, I don’t know him. But I’ve seen that picture before. Once. The night my father died.”
Will was my age or maybe a little bit older. The picture seemed like an oddly specific memory from that night, especially since he said he couldn’t remember much from that time in his life. “You must’ve been what...five years old at the time?” I asked him.
“Seven,” he said. “But that picture is one of the few things I remember from that night.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“My mother went back inside our house right before it exploded. Not to save him. Not to save me. She went back inside for that damn picture.”
It made no sense. How could a photograph be more precious than her husband or son? But Will’s expression was drawn, his face pale. Seeing the picture again had shaken something in him, this much I fully believed. “Why do you think she would’ve done that?” I asked him. “And how come you never saw the picture again until now?”
He laughed a small bitter laugh. “Why? Well, I would guess that she loved him, whoever he was. More than me. More than my father.” I shook my head, confused. How could that possibly be right? “As for why I didn’t see it until tonight... Do you think I was ever allowed in her office? And unlike you, I am a rule follower.”
“I’m a rule follower!” I insisted. But the truth was, maybe I wasn’t anymore. I used to be. Now, after losing so much, I wasn’t sure I still saw the point in playing it safe.
I looked up again and Will was staring at me, tracing my cheekbones slowly with his eyes.
“I really am a good person,” I said, but my voice floundered a bit. Was I? Or could I only play one on TV?
“I’m not sure who you are yet, Amelia Grant,” Will said softly.
“I am Gloria Diamond,” I said, projecting with a stony coldness in my tone, forcing a confidence I did not at all feel.
He smiled a little and shook his head. “Jesus. You actually did sound like her just then. That’s actually pretty fucking creepy.”
“Amelia, how dare you get my son drunk while I was watching Seattle Med,” I continued in her voice.
Will laughed, a full-bodied laugh that shook across the width of his shoulders and made his left-side dimple appear again.
I finished off the last of my terrible wine. I had never made it to Tate’s salad; in fact, I hadn’t eaten anything since the bag of popcorn I’d taken from Tate’s snack pantry for lunch, and I suddenly felt tipsy enough that Will’s face spun in dizzying waves. I gripped the edge of the bar counter to keep myself upright.
Will stopped laughing and put his hand on my arm to steady me. “Right. You’re definitely the one who got me drunk.” He gently grabbed onto my elbow. “One glass of wine. Total lightweight. I’m cutting you off.” He maneuvered to help me stand. “Come on, I’ll sneak you in the back before Gloria finds out you were gone.”
After saying good-night to Will and inhaling Tate’s salad in the kitchen, I managed to sneak back up to my room before Seattle Med concluded. Will had promised he wouldn’t tell his mother about my snooping in her office if I promised not to go in there again without her permission. If you have questions, Will had told me, ask me.
It was a kind offer, but I still wasn’t sure whether Will was a true ally. And besides, he’d already admitted he didn’t know his mother very well. Did anyone? The man in that picture probably did. Whoever he was.
Lying in bed, it was all still running through my head. I thought about everything Will had told me and imagined the tiny boy-sized version of him, curled up inside the kitchen pantry while Gloria and George screamed. And it made me feel sad for him. For Gloria too, who built an entire life, a career, on her love story with her tragically dead husband when clearly there was another man who’d captured her heart.
I closed my eyes and tried to switch my brain off. Maybe none of it mattered. If Gloria’s whole biopic was based on lies, then why couldn’t I just portray that version of her? Why did I really need to know the truth, anyway?
Because I wasn’t even sure how to begin to play a character I didn’t fully understand. If I wanted to truly become Gloria, then her secrets would have to become my secrets.
And that was the last thought I had before I fell asleep.
That night I had the strangest dream.
I was young again, a little girl, sitting on the floor in the dark of a closet, holding on to a little boy’s arm. The smell of gas was so strong, I started to gag. I stood and cracked open the closet door, and all I could see were hazy waves engulfing an unfamiliar kitchen, running up the top of the stove, through the cabinets to the ceiling, hot and wild and free.
Annie? Where are you? I heard my mother’s voice, calling me from somewhere very far away. She was so close, but I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hold on to her.
The little boy could barely keep his eyes open, hold his head up right. I tried to shake him to stay awake.
Don’t worry, I said, grabbing onto his arm. I’ll save you, Will.
Will?
His name, the thought of him, awoke me, suddenly. And in the middle of the night, the dream felt so vivid; my nose still burned from the smell of gas that didn’t exist.
I did some deep yoga breathing—the kind I used to calm myself before an audition—and tried to soothe myself. But my head ached from the bad wine, my mother calling for me, and I couldn’t get the haunting sound of her voice out of my head.
I lay there in the dark for a long while, unable to fall back to sleep, tossing and turning for hours, sweating and unsettled.