Beautiful Ruins (106)

A chip off the old block—Debra shudders at the description, at the threat she senses but can’t quite make out yet (What exactly does he want?), and at the way Michael Deane is taking over this room, watching her son with that old dead-gazed purposefulness, that hunger, a half-smirk on his surgically implacable face.

Pasquale senses her discomfort. “Mi dispiace,” he says, and he reaches a hand over the counter between them. “Era il modo unico.” It was the only way to find her.

Debra feels herself tense, like a bear protecting a cub. She concentrates on Michael Deane, addressing him as evenly as she can, trying to take the edge out of her voice, not entirely successfully. “Why are you here, Michael?”

Michael Deane treats this as if it were an honest question about his intentions, an invitation to unpack his traveling salesman bag. “Yes, I should get right to that, after disturbing you so late in the evening. Thank you, Dee.” Having transformed Dee’s accusation into an invitation, he turns now to Lydia and Pat. “I don’t know if your mother’s ever mentioned me, but I am a film producer”—he smiles with humble understatement—“of some repute, I suppose.”

Claire reaches out to take his arm—“Michael . . .” (Not now, don’t ruin this good thing you’re doing by trying to produce it)—but Michael can no more be stopped than a tornado now. He uses Claire’s gesture to pull her in, patting her hand as if she’s just reminded him of his manners. “Of course. Forgive me. This is Claire Silver, my chief development executive.”

Development executive? He can’t possibly mean that. Still, she’s speechless—long enough to look up silently, to see them all staring at her, Lydia especially, sitting on the edge of the counter. Claire has no choice but to echo what Michael said: “It really was a great play.”

“Thank you,” Lydia says again, blushing with gratitude.

“Yes,” Michael Deane says, “great,” and The Room is all his now, this rustic cabin no different than any conference room he’s ever pitched. “Which is why Claire and I were wondering . . . if you might be interested in selling the film rights—”

Lydia laughs nervously, almost giddily. She shoots a quick glance to Pat, then back to Michael Deane. “You want to buy my play?”

“The play, maybe the whole cycle, perhaps everything—” Michael Deane lets this hang a moment. “I’d like to option all of it,” working hard to sound casual, “your whole story,” subtly turning to include Pat, “both of you,” avoiding Dee’s gaze. “I’d like to buy your . . .” and he trails off, as if what comes next is mere afterthought, “life rights.”

We want what we want.

“Life rights?” Pat asks. He’s happy for his girlfriend, but he’s suspicious of this old man. “What’s that mean?”

Claire knows. Book, movie, reality show, whatever they can sell about Richard Burton’s train wreck of a son. Dee knows, too. She covers her mouth and manages just a single word, “Wait—” before her knees give and she has to grab the counter for support.

“Mom?” Pat runs around the counter, arriving just as Pasquale gets to her, too. They reach for her at the same time, as she buckles, each taking an arm. “Give her some space!” Pat yells.

Pasquale doesn’t understand this phrase (Give her space?), and he looks across the counter at his translator, but Shane is a little drunk and a little desperate and he chooses instead to translate Michael Deane’s offer for Lydia. “Be careful,” he leans forward and says quietly. “Sometimes he only pretends to like your shit.”

Still shocked by her recent promotion, Claire takes her boss by the arm and pulls him toward the living room. “Michael, what are you doing?” she asks under her breath.

He looks past her, to Dee and the boy. “I’m doing what I came to do.”

“I thought you came to make amends.”

“Amends?” Michael Deane looks at Claire without understanding. “For what?”

“Jesus, Michael. You completely fucked with these people’s lives. Why did you come here if it wasn’t to apologize?”

“Apologize?” Again, Michael doesn’t quite understand what she’s saying. “I came here for the story, Claire. For my story.”

Behind the counter, Dee has regained her balance. She looks across the living room at Michael Deane and his assistant; they seem to be arguing about something. Pat has come around the counter, and is supporting her weight. She squeezes his hand. “I’m okay now,” she says. Pasquale is holding her other hand. She smiles at him again.

There are only three people in the world who know the secret she’s carried for the last forty-eight years, a secret that has defined her since she left Italy, this thing that grew each year until now it fills the room—a room that contains the other two people who know. There were so many reasons for the secret back then—Dick and Liz, and her family’s judgment, and the fear of a tabloid scandal, and most of all (she can admit it now) her own pride, her desire to not let a prick like Michael Deane win—but those reasons fell away over the years, and the only reason she has continued to keep the secret is . . . Pat. She thought it would simply be too much for him. What movie star’s kid ever stood a chance? Especially one with Pat’s appetites? When he was using he was so breakable, and when he was clean his salvation seemed so fragile. She was protecting him, and now she knows what she was protecting him from: this man she has loathed for almost fifty years, who has come into her house and threatened all of it by trying to buy their very lives.