Tom Lake(15)

“Because you’re putting together the whole picture,” Nell says. “Telling us everything you previously kept from us.”

“You need to go back and get a hat,” I say to Nell.

She touches the top of her head, surprised. She was still half--asleep when she left the house. “I will at the first intermission.”



What Ripley wanted to convey on that phone call, which cost me seven dollars and eighty--five cents in change and made me late for American History, was that he was worried about his niece finding out that he was asking me to audition. “My sister doesn’t know about this particular movie. She wouldn’t be happy to find out a part for someone Rae Ann’s age had been given to the girl standing next to Rae Ann onstage.”

Had he given me a part? I didn’t ask.

“So when you leave town it would be better if you said you had a family emergency, a funeral or something. Tell her your grandmother died.”

I felt like he had stuck me with a pin. “I’m not going to tell her my grandmother died.”

“Think of someone else then.” Ripley’s voice was incapable of concealing boredom.

Ripley--Believe--It--Or--Not asked for my parents’ phone number, which I gave him, and while I was adding up how many skirts I’d have to sew to pay for the trip, the production company bought me a ticket. I was twenty years old but Ripley’s assistant made the arrangements with my parents because I didn’t have a phone. My parents assumed Ripley had told me that, but Ripley wasn’t a man to deal in itineraries. When I called my grandmother and asked if I could borrow the money from her, I found out the problem had already been solved. My family thought it was a wonderful idea for me to leave school in the middle of the semester to go to California at the behest of a man I didn’t know. I thought it was pretty swell myself, not because I dreamed of being an actress—-that part of the equation was still inaccessible to me—-but because it felt like I finally had a direction to go in, and that direction was west. All of New Hampshire sinks into despair in March anyway so no better time to leave. As soon as my grandmother heard the news she kicked her sewing machine into overdrive, putting together what she referred to as my ingenue’s trousseau: dresses, skirts, a swimsuit coverup to match the swimsuit she ordered me from L.L. Bean. She saved this from being the chapter in which I arrived at LAX in a pair of duck boots and my dark--green Loden coat with the barrel toggles.



The buckets around our necks hang from canvas straps, and when they’re full we empty them into the lugs. When we have filled enough lugs, Joe heaves them onto the flatbed of the green John Deere Gator and drives them to the barn.

“So, California,” Nell says, nudging. This is the part of the story she’s invested in.

I worry she’s getting too much sun and give her my hat, which she tries to bat away. “It’s too late for me. Save yourself.” I drop it on her head.

Nell accepts it because, unlike her sisters, she doesn’t like to argue. “I want to hear about the audition and then I want to hear about the movie.”

She thinks I have something to teach her but I don’t. Nell doesn’t dominate a room or stand on a chair to sing. She is the one who watches. She has the kind of naturalness Ripley often accused me of having, an ability to be so transparent it’s impossible to turn your eyes away. She works at her craft constantly. Even picking cherries, I swear I can see her thinking about how other people might pick cherries. And that is the difference between us: I was very good at being myself, while Nell is very good at being anyone at all.

“It wasn’t interesting,” I say.

“Humor us,” Emily says. “We’re working.”

I try to explain. “I learned how to act from a State Farm agent in New Hampshire when I was in high school. Other people did too much, so by doing very little I stood out. Mr. Martin needed an Emily because all the Emilys were awful. By not being awful, I looked pretty good. I think Bill Ripley was in a similar situation. Every actress he’d auditioned had been acting up a storm and he needed someone simple in the part. Simple was my specialty.”

“Why are you selling yourself short?” Emily asks, throwing a cherry at me. Maisie leans over and parts the grass with her hands, and when she finds the cherry she pops it in her mouth. We do not waste sweet cherries. “If one of us said that you’d smack us in the back of the head and make us do positive affirmations in front of the mirror.”

“I made you do positive affirmations one time, one time,” I tell her, “and it was good for you.”

“Maybe it would be good for you, too,” Emily says.

“But I’m not being self--deprecating. I’m telling you, I had a genuine talent for being myself, and for a while it worked. In fact, it probably worked better in film than it did onstage.”

“You’re talking like we haven’t seen the movie a hundred times,” Nell says. “You were really good.”

I shrug. “It’s like being able to sing one song perfectly. It’s a great trick, but it’s only going to get you so far.”



Go back to New Hampshire, to Bill Ripley sitting in that darkened university theater beside his sister. Ripley wasn’t new to the game, and when he saw me he understood what he was looking at: a pretty girl who wasn’t so much playing a part as she was right for the part she was playing. Unlike his niece, I knew how not to ruin things.