She was disappointed that nobody was in the gallery browsing, and although the glass door was unlocked, there wasn’t even a shop girl behind the sleek Danish modern desk—which was Katie’s favorite thing in the room and the one thing that most assuredly was not for sale. The place and the feeling it evoked in her right now reminded her of a moment when she was eleven and she and her mother went to see a Wednesday matinee of one of her friend’s shows. It was at a small, down-at-the-heels theater in the West Village that Katie had never been to before, and the seats were ragged. She counted, as she did always to the best of her ability, the number of seats in the venue. This one was easy. There was no balcony and no mezzanine. There were a total of seventy. Seven rows of ten. The theater, even though it was a legitimate off-Broadway venue and the usher had handed them traditional playbills, was depressing and sad. There was not a single soul in the house for that performance other than the two Stepanovs, and when Katie had met her friend backstage after the show, a grown-up in the cast who had been in the wings that moment as well said, “Nothing like disappointing two people. Tonight, we should disappoint twice that many.” The show closed the following week.
But that afternoon, Katie had hugged her friend and told her how amazing she was, all the while thinking to herself that she couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have found it inside herself to put on a show for an audience of two. And suddenly both she and her friend were weeping in each other’s arms. Their mothers were confused, and later that night Katie would explain to Glenda why she had started to cry. Why her friend had started to cry. At dinner she asked her father to find a role for her friend in a better, bigger show, but it never happened and Katie went to Hollywood and lost touch with the girl. She’d heard her friend was married and living in Westchester and had two little kids.
Now she was about to call out for someone at the gallery. Perhaps shout “hello” into the hollow air. But then David emerged from the small office he kept in the back, and there was another man with him. The fellow was a decade or so older than he was, and he was wearing a black suit and carrying an attaché case. Katie felt a little rush of joy at the idea this might be a client who had just spent gobs of money on one of the monster birds.
David was unwrapping a stick of Fruit Stripe gum and putting it in his mouth, and he stood a little taller when he saw her: happiness did this to people, and more times than not, her presence simply made people happy. “Well, this is a surprise,” he began. “Katie, this is my accountant, Cal Lemont. Cal, this is Katie Barstow.”
The accountant smiled at her and for a beat said nothing. He looked at her like she was a Martian. Or she was an alligator walking upright on its hind legs. Or one of the monster birds come to life. It happened. This was as common a reaction as was the adulation of the autograph seekers. Then he looked at David, the realization dawning on him that he had just heard David Hill call this movie star by her first name and they were, at the very least, friends. She extended her hand to Cal so he could shake it.
“Really love your work,” the fellow said, gathering himself. “So does my wife and so do my girls.”
“Thank you,” she said. “How old are they?”
“Missy is forty-three—”
“I just meant your children. Your daughters.”
Cal put down his briefcase on the Tuscan tile floor that David had added to the gallery and shook his head good-naturedly at his own awkwardness.
David laughed, and that diminished everyone’s embarrassment. “You have three girls, right, Cal?”
“I do,” said the accountant. “They’re sixteen, fourteen, and nine.”
“You have a handful,” she told him. “Or, at least, I was a handful at all of those ages.” But was she? No, she wasn’t. It was her parents who were the handful. Their demons and the way they quite literally tortured poor Billy and would have continued to torture her if she hadn’t served a more important purpose: a public affirmation of their genetic theatrical talent.
“Oh, she knew precisely how to drive her older brother crazy,” David said, as if he had started to read her mind but only intercepted a part of the thought. “Her brother and I have been friends forever.”
Cal took this in and looked back and forth between David and her. “So, you two have known each other since you were children?”
“I knew Katie when she was six years old and singing ‘Come On-A My House’ from the window seat in the family dining room. She used a soup ladle as her microphone. She would stretch the neck hole of her modest little sweater over her shoulders so much it ripped—so it looked like a strapless gown.”