The Disappearing Act(9)

I know George will see these photos but for the few minutes we shoot them it’s not about him. It’s about me. How I feel. How I want to be. Marchesi is grinning like a kid, which he pretty much still is, when he hands me back my phone. The pictures look fucking great.

I post one of me looking slightly off camera, hair partially obscuring my profile. I’m leaning, longer and thinner than I actually am, against the side of the car. The only indicator of where in the world I am is the In-N-Out beverage cup hanging loosely by my side, although the morning light has given everything that unmistakable California glow. I click share. Fuck you, George.



* * *



—

Two hours later, on the other side of LA, I’m standing in an almost empty office space, the room devoid of furniture save for: eight metal-and-fabric office chairs holding eight seated CBS executives, a large camera tripod, and a harassed-looking casting director quickly shuffling through different character scripts.

“Well, thank you for asking me to come in to read.” I direct my attention to the only executive who has acknowledged me since I entered the room. “It’s a great script.”

He gives me a magnanimous half-smile, seeming to agree with my good fortune on being here at all, before he dives back into his iPhone.

The other seven execs, two of whom I’m thrilled to see are women, are still completely ignoring me. I stand and wait as they talk among themselves, leafing through photos or tapping away at laptops and phones. Luckily any dignity I may have had wore away about five years ago while I auditioned for adverts. I stand, invisible, awaiting direction.

The harassed casting director, in a final flurry, roots out the correct script scenes, tuts, adjusts his camera, and finally looks up at me, almost surprised to see I’m still here. He flaps his script pages, triumphant.

“Okay. Shall we just go ahead then, Mandy?”

“Mia,” I correct, cheerfully.

“Sorry, what?” He looks genuinely confused at my meaning. A couple of executive heads rise from their separate endeavors too and stare at me—it’s almost as if the wall had started talking.

I try incredibly hard not to giggle. “No, nothing. That’s great. Yes, let’s go for a take. Ready when you are.” Equilibrium is restored.

I give my shoulders a quick roll, crick my neck, and try to put myself in the body of an overworked and exhausted female cop in the middle of a grueling investigation. Officer Bethan O’Neill. I let my limbs loosen, my face slacken, and I stop trying to cover my jet lag and the frantic emptiness I’ve been, almost successfully, ignoring since Andy arrived on my doorstep three days ago. I simply let my weariness become visible.

The casting director, oblivious, takes his reading position next to the camera tripod and presses record. A red light flashes on. He gives me a nod. In the brief silence that follows a couple of executives look up and finally I feel eyes on me. I start talking.

The first scene is easy, station banter with my loudmouth Boston-Irish cop partner, McCarthy. A chance to see my character’s fun side but also the toll the job takes on her as one of the only women in a male-heavy environment. The irony of my present executive-ratio-ed situation is clearly visible to no one but myself.

The casting director, standing in as McCarthy, delivers one of his lines and I wait a beat longer than I should to reply. Executive eyes rise again, I give my McCarthy standin a well-timed look, and a couple of the executives involuntarily laugh.

I chase their laughs with a couple more and the remaining dipped heads start to grudgingly lift. And suddenly everyone is listening. I win. The next scene is trickier. I take a position kneeling on the scratchy office floor while the casting director adjusts the camera angle for the next setup. This one is a scene from the final episode of the whole series. Everything has come to a head and we find Officer O’Neill’s husband pointing a gun at her having just shot McCarthy in the chest in a desperate standoff. O’Neill’s husband has reached the end of the line; backup is on its way but right now she is all that stands in the way of his escape. As the scene starts, O’Neill dives to administer first aid to a wounded McCarthy as her husband levels his gun at her.

The camera’s red light flicks on.

With shaky hands, I administer first aid to the prone body of an invisible McCarthy as he slips in and out of consciousness, blood pumping from his wound. I look up at my husband standin and start to talk.

The scene is going fine until I hear something raw in my voice. There’s an almost imperceptible crack in the way I tell my husband that I still love him. And the full force of the words I’m saying hits me, the sadness of them, because after everything the man I love has done, I do still love him. It’s pathetic but it’s true. I do still love George. Even though he’s deliberately hurt me, even though he left me for dead, I still want him so much. I miss him so much. And suddenly I’m talking to my George. The barriers between O’Neill and me disappear and this is my chance to talk to George, even if George looks like a forty-year-old gay casting director. And suddenly all the script’s lines, as hackneyed as final-episode lines can be, are eloquent and fluid and exactly the questions I long to know the answers to—but I know can never really be answered.

Why did you do it?

Why did you lie to me, for so long?

When did things change between us?

He tells me he’s not the man I thought he was. But I never thought he was anything but himself. He tells me he tried for too long to be something he wasn’t.