Universal Harvester(49)
“What are you doing?” demands Jeremy from his chair. Lisa cocks her head to one side, regarding him with what looks like pity or scorn.
“I’m trying to find my mother,” she says, locating her inner balance again, the center from which she tries hard not to stray.
*
“Jeremy Heldt,” he says. The light is hot on his face.
“Your full name.”
“Jeremy James Heldt.”
“Ever ‘JJ’?”
“No, just Jeremy.”
“Simple Jeremy.”
“That’s right,” he says.
“Why are you here?”
“Like I told you. After I saw the place earlier—”
“You were here earlier.”
“Well, you know I was, you were here too.”
“Please tell the camera that you came here earlier today.”
If you rented one of the two copies of A Civil Action that stood, for several years, on the shelves of Movies & More in Tama, you may already have seen and heard Jeremy’s response. It was edited into one of the scenes toward the end of the movie, after the class action suit gets dismissed. Unlike Lisa’s earlier work, this edit feels natural; there’s no way to make real sense of it in the context of the movie, but you might imagine some mix-up further up the line—something gone wrong in mastering, maybe, a documentary scene cut in by accident. Removed from the greater context of the interview within which they were made, Jeremy’s remarks seem cryptic, and it’s hard to account for the severity of his tone.
“I was here earlier today,” he says. There’s a silence, and a possible edit. “I came out here earlier to say I’m starting a new job and it’s full-time. On the way here I saw Ezra in the road and I pulled over. I didn’t know he was coming out here. I helped clean up the road and I drank a glass of water and then I went home, and I called Stephanie after I woke up because when I saw the driveway of your house, I recognized it.”
Lisa’s voice, offscreen, sounds suddenly warm now; it’s hard to account for it. “How did you recognize my driveway?” she says.
“From the movies,” says Jeremy.
*
“I’m calling the cops right now,” Stephanie said in the car. Out on these country highways late at night the stars ripple like great sparkling banners overhead. Jeremy headed steadily for the brighter lights: Ames in the distance.
He reached over from the driver’s seat, putting his hand over Stephanie’s cell phone. “Don’t,” he said.
“I am calling the police!” she said. “You can’t be OK with this!”
“We’re not hurt,” he said. “Don’t.”
“You are so weird!” She was yelling, frustrated by how he kept his eye on the road while he argued. “You’ve always been weird! You’re sick like her!”
“I’m not sick. We’re not hurt,” he said again. “There’s something wrong with her. She can’t help it. Don’t.”
Stephanie stared at Jeremy, trying to understand his apparent calm. It would be morning soon. They’d been kept there all night. How could he stand it?
“How can you stand it!” she said.
“Put yourself in her shoes,” Jeremy said evenly, and it felt like a knife pushing through his chest from the inside, because he knew Stephanie would not be able to understand—Stephanie, whose mother and father lived together in a house less than a mile from the apartment she rented, whose parents would grow old together and someday be buried next to each other in a plot in the Nevada City Cemetery, their children and grandchildren gathering to honor two lives well lived.
“Try to put yourself in her shoes,” he repeated when she gave no response, leaving it out there in the opening silence, the spring night air.
*
Lisa in mid-frame; a voice offscreen: Sarah Jane Shepherd, sounding steady and confident, sure of her purpose. She has never considered herself a religious person, but this morning—as they prepare, on short notice, to leave the house in Collins, each to their own errands: Sarah Jane back to Nevada, Lisa to parts unknown—she feels a vague sense of kinship with former coworkers from back when she worked retail; people who used to tell her, on their lunch breaks together around a tiny table in a supply room, that God had a plan for everybody.
“Are you ready?” she says.
“I think so,” says Lisa.
“Whenever you’re ready,” says Sarah Jane.
“It helps if you ask questions.”
“OK.” There’s a beat; birds chirping nearby somewhere, greeting the day. “Where did you grow up?”
“A couple of places.”
“Where were you born?”
“Down in Tama.” Lisa smiles. “You already know all this stuff.”
“OK.” A silence. Lisa looks at the lens, waiting. “OK, then. Why do you make these movies?”
Over the years, she has taken great pains to hide the face of the child she once was. She does it by trying to feel older than she is. She began this practice when she was young; it made her feel better the first time she tried, so she kept at it. Over time it has been a great comfort, this discipline of imagining herself alive and intact, safe on the other side of years she might otherwise have had to live through, uncertain of where they would lead. The camera catches her out now; there’s a part of her that never left Crescent, that still waits there for someone.