“The principal male is George Abington. Do you know him?"
“I don't think so," Shelley said.
“Sure you do, Shelley," Jane said. "He was in a spy series on television for a couple years, then he showed up on all the game shows for a few more years. Real good-looking, but seemed like an ordinary kind of guy. He was married to Lynette once, wasn't he?"
“Jane, you amaze me, the junk you know," Shelley said.
“They were married once. For about five minutes," Maisie said. "It was during the movie I worked on with her ages ago. She'd just married George in a big splash of publicity, then they both went off to do some potboiler that Roberto Cavagnari was directing. Before the film was even in the can, she'd filed for divorce and moved in with Cavagnari."
“Who's Cavagnari?" Shelley asked. "Should I have heard of him, too?"
“Probably not," Maisie answered. "He's done a ton of high-testosterone things. Terminator-typemovies. Spaghetti westerns. War stories. I can't imagine why he was hired to do this movie, but like Lynette, he's doing a great job. Far better than you'd ever expect.”
Jane forgot herself so much that she put her cookie down where Willard could get it. "You mean Lynette Harwell is starring opposite George Abington, the man she abandoned for Cavagnari, the same man who's directing this movie?”
Maisie smiled wickedly. "Stranger things have happened in this business."
“Stranger, maybe. But that sounds downright dangerous," Shelley said.
Maisie got up and started putting her layers of clothing back on. "As I said, you'll find watching the process very, very interesting.”
3
Vehicles and people kept arriving until well after ten o'clock that night. Jane watched, fascinated, from the back windows of the living room. An enormous piece of equipment that she later learned was called a condor, unfolded itself and lifted bright lights attached to a cherry picker — type basket high above the activity. The huge floodlights illuminated the field with harsh, heavy shadows. It was a truly eerie atmosphere, reminiscent of the scenes she'd sometimes seen on the news of nighttime catastrophes. It wouldn't have been inconceivable to discover a downed airplane in the midst of the scurrying mob of technicians. All that was missing was the wail of sirens and the flash of red lights. The noise and mob and sense of purposeful urgency were all there.
From the moment they'd come home from school and seen the extent of the production, Katie and Todd, Jane's two youngest children, both had been enraged that Jane wouldn't let them go out and wander around in the midst of it. "Just in the backyard, Mom," Todd pleaded after a quick, early dinner. "I'll take Willard out to his pen.”
They were all crowded around the window with the best view. "You know he's afraid to go in the pen with anybody but me," Jane said, looking at the dog with irritation. "The big sissy."
“Poor old Willard is going to be one constipated doggy by the end of the week, aren't you, boy?" Mike said, grabbing Willard's ears and wrestling his head around — to Willard's absolute delight.
“Mike, please don't talk about the dog's digestive tract," Jane said with a shudder. Mike had given the dog a banana a week earlier, with results Jane was afraid she was never going to be able to forget.
“Come on, Mom," Katie nagged, tossing her hair dramatically. Katie was at the age that nearly all her conversations with her mother involved hair-tossing, flouncing, and/or door-slamming. Often all three. Jane had to keep telling herself that someday Katie would be a nice young woman and a wonderful companion to her — if they both survived her teenage years. "We won't go any farther than our own yard."
“This week it isn't our yard. I've rented it to the movie company. Part of what they're paying for is us staying out of their way."
“Aw, Mom. Let them go," Mike said. "They've got a security guy to keep people out. He won't let them get in the way.”
Instead of being grateful for his older brother's help, Todd turned on him furiously. "Stop being so. . so. . big!" Todd sputtered. Jane suspected he'd rejected a number of adjectives that were popular among sixth grade boys, but wouldn't have gone over well at home. "Just 'cause you don't have to go to school tomorrow and the next day! Mom! Please can't I please stay home, too?"
“Todd, you know you can't. But they'll still be working when you get home from school anyway. You'll get to see plenty."
“Mom, it's just not Fair!" Katie whined. Jane gave her a look.
“Yeah, yeah," Katie said. She raised her hands like a conductor and the boys joined in the chorus of Jane's oft-repeated line, " 'Life isn't fair.' “
The argument sputtered on throughout the evening and became more wide-ranging. Jane was accused of being an insensitive mother, obsessive about meaningless academic considerations at the cost of her children's social and intellectual development. Not that Todd had the vocabulary to put it that way, but that was the point.
Katie tried a pity ploy, not having caught on yet that crying didn't dissolve her mother's hard heart, but merely drove her to a frenzy of irritation. Then Katie moved on to guilt, working up an imaginary scenario in which Jane, unreasonably favoring her firstborn, had somehow suborned the school district in advance to let the high school be off for the exact day filming was to start, therefore deliberately slighting her two youngest children, whom she probably never wanted to have anyway.
Jane found herself actually wondering what had made her think it was a good idea to have three children. But she held firm, not because she believed that missing school would have been such a bad thing, but because she knew they'd inch closer and closer to the production if they were allowed to stayhome and eventually get in trouble for which she'd be held responsible.
It didn't help that Mike was really being insufferably smug and adult about the fact that he'd been promised some kind of job, however menial, on the set.
Jane finally escaped her bickering progeny by pleading mending that needed to be done so that she could go hide from them in the minuscule guest room where she kept the sewing machine. When she looked out that window around ten-thirty, the floodlights had been turned off, vans full of workers were just pulling away, and a security guard was standing in her backyard talking on a mobile phone.
She already felt exhausted from having the movie filmed in her backyard and the filming hadn't even started yet. She sighed, remembering that she'd meant to get Katie aside sometime this evening and break the news that she and Mel were going to New York for the weekend.
But she hadn't the energy left for another confrontation. And teenage girls, like dogs, could sense fear and use it to their advantage. No, this wasn't the time.
Mike was up at the crack of dawn and woke Jane to ask which jeans he ought to wear.
“Jeans?" Jane asked blearily, trying to get her eyes open far enough to discern some difference between the two pairs he was showing her. "It's still dark. What time is it?"
“Almost six," Mike said. "I think the ones with the pocket torn off, don't you? The ones with the hole in the knee don't look serious enough.”
Jane sat up in bed, shielding her eyes against the vicious glare of the bedside lamp. "Mike, I'd put those in the trash. They're both awful. You have a new pair in your top drawer. Wear those.”
He looked at her with surprise. "I can't do that, Mom. They're new."
“Yes. And outrageously expensive, I might add.”
Mike knew she was still half-asleep and was dreadfully patient with her. "Mom, I'd look like a kindergartner on the first day of school in those. Too eager. Like a. . a. . kid.”
Jane shook her head, trying to clear it. "Okay, okay. The one with the pocket gone. Take the cats with you—" she called out as he headed for the door.
Max, a gray-and-black tabby, and Meow, a yellow butterball, were not happy at being scooped up and removed from her bedroom. They felt it important to be on the scene when she got up in the morning, just in case she'd been sleeping with a can of cat food that she might open any second. The fact that this had never happened didn't deter them from believing that it might.
They muttered behind the closed door while Jane got dressed and they twined themselves around her ankles as she headed for the kitchen. She'd just plugged in the coffeemaker and started the can opener when there was a knock at the door. The cats howled protests at this interruption of her activities.
Maisie was at the door. "Good morning," she chirped.
“It's only six-fifteen! How can you say that?" Jane exclaimed.
“Oh, I've been here for a half hour already. Is your son ready? I have some things he can do. Send him along.”
Jane bellowed up the stairs for Mike and got him on his way, then got the cats fed and a cup of coffee inside herself before rousting out the other two kids. As soon as she heard movement upstairs, she took Willard out to his new dog run. He cowered and groaned in protest at first, but when he discovered that someone had tossed a half-eaten donut into the run, he settled in as if it were a home away from home.
Todd accepted the inevitable and went off to school without much fight. Katie tried to claim a horrific case of cramps, cramps that might well go down in medical history, but decided she didn't feel that bad when Jane made clear that staying home from school would mean staying in her own bedroom, which faced the front of the house, all day. Jane went back outside to drag Willard back indoors while Katie was reluctantly getting ready for school.
When she had her car pools done, Jane returned to the house, put on a minimum of makeup, brown corduroy slacks, and a peach-colored sweatshirt before strolling into the backyard. Shelley was sitting on a lawn chair next to Maisie. They'd situated themselves next to a snack spread of epic proportions.
“Help yourself," Maisie offered as Jane goggled at the long plywood table and the coolers beneath it.
There were drinks of every description: milk, buttermilk, skim milk, orange juice, pineapple juice, apple juice, coffee, cocoa, a dozen kinds of tea in bags. There were donuts and fruit bars, little plastic bags of sunflower seeds and peanuts and candy bars. She counted six kinds of chips and four kinds of bread besides bagels, donuts, and sweet rolls. There were fresh fruits and vegetable crudités, cookies, cheeses, spreads, dips, and all the makings for every kind of sandwich imaginable.