Degree of Guilt Read online

  ‘It was an adaptation of a William Inge play – she was a glamorous woman from Chicago, returning to her tiny hometown, and I was the bookish sister, too scared to leave. The first scene was supposed to be in my bedroom, both of us putting on makeup for a dance while we talked about her life.’ Caldwell shook her head. ‘I knew my lines well enough, but eyeliner was beyond me. My hand shook too much.

  ‘So Laura improvised. She took the eyeliner from my hand, said, “Here, let me show you,” and applied my makeup while we finished the scene. It was instinctively perfect, just right for the relationship between the two sisters, and the lines flowed from there. The director loved it.

  ‘Afterwards, I thanked her. She gave me that funny smile she had – like she knew your worst secrets and didn’t care – and said, “If you’re going to drink like that, wait until they need you enough to clean up after you.” And then she went off to her dressing room.

  ‘That night, when I was walking to the parking lot, I felt a hand on my arm. It was Laura. “Are you at least taking the night off?” she asked. I wasn’t, of course – I’d been semi fixed up with a bit actor who I knew in my heart wanted to tell his friends he’d fucked Leon Caldwell’s daughter. Which was exactly why I was going to let him do it.’ Caldwell shook her head. ‘I don’t know why, but I couldn’t tell Laura that – it was like she knew me too well. After a moment, she said, “You’d better come home with me.”

  ‘I didn’t think about arguing. I just went.’

  To Terri, the words sounded like a fissure between one part of Lindsay Caldwell’s life and another. Caldwell turned to her. ‘Laura took care of me,’ she said simply.

  Terri hesitated. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Every way.’ Caldwell looked past her. ‘She had a beautiful house in the West Hollywood Hills, with so much luxury it was almost a spoof – a deliberate one, I think, like Laura’s film persona. But Laura herself became a different woman. Off came the dress and cosmetics, up went the hair, and Laura suddenly looked something like a home-maker. It was as if, for Laura, coming home, and having company who wasn’t a man, was a relief.

  ‘“I always wanted a sister,” she told me, “and now I’ve got one. Thanks to William Inge and Twentieth Century-Fox.”

  ‘Before I knew it, she’d fixed up the guesthouse, found me some clothes to wear, and we were sitting at a table by the pool, nibbling Caesar salad and watching the sun go down, while Laura told me all about her childhood. No drinks in sight – just iced tea.’

  Caldwell paused. ‘It was funny,’ she went on. ‘I felt taken over, like I was a blank screen on which Laura was projecting her need of the moment. But I also felt taken care of, without being judged, which my father had never made me feel. At some point in the evening, I just gave in to it.

  ‘I told Laura things I had never said to anyone.’

  Even at twenty years’ distance, Terri thought, the words sounded lonely.

  ‘And then,’ Caldwell said in a flat voice, ‘Laura lit the candles on the table and told me about her father raping her, repeatedly, until she blacked out.’

  Terri froze, staring up at her. ‘It was plain to me,’ Caldwell said. ‘Even then. What had happened with her father was more shock than any adolescent could handle, and it changed the way she felt forever. She was worthless, men were a frightening mystery, and the only thing she took from it was an instinct for pain. Which she would experience, again and again, without ever comprehending why.

  ‘When she finished, I was crying.’ Caldwell hesitated. ‘It should have been for Laura,’ she said softly. ‘It wasn’t really. For the first time, I had begun to understand myself.

  ‘When I looked across the table, I realized she thought it was for her. She stood up, came closer.’ Caldwell paused. ‘When she kissed me, I felt too selfish to object.

  ‘We went to the guesthouse then, Laura carrying the candles.’ Caldwell began walking in random circles. ‘She was very tender, not like the boys I’d known. I suppose she’d pleased so many men, wished for so much she’d never gotten, that she knew just how to be with me.

  ‘I let her undress me, kiss my nipples, do everything she wanted. That first time, it was all her, and she took care of me.’ Caldwell stopped, turned to Terri with a look of pain. ‘Just like she wanted someone to take care of her.

  ‘Afterwards, she told me she had never been with a woman before. That it was like inventing her own language instead of speaking someone else’s. And now we could invent it together.’ Slowly, Caldwell shook her head. ‘For a time, I just lay with my head in her lap, listening to her talk. Until turning my face didn’t seem very far to go.

  ‘It was like that for a week.’

  Caldwell looked away again, her gaze following a lone gull that had swooped down on the beach. ‘We would go to the studio together, come home and cook dinner, drink nothing but milk. Every night, we would swim together, in the nude. Afterwards, she would towel me off and help me practice my lines. Almost as if I were a child.

  ‘She asked for very little. Just to take care of me, as she wanted to be taken care of, and to get affection in return.’ Caldwell paused. ‘For that one week, I gave that to her.’

  Terri was silent. How many lives, she thought, have their painful private moments, too intimate to be shared with strangers, too powerful to forget. Finally, she asked, ‘Is that what Ransom knew?’

  Caldwell watched the gull. ‘Part,’ she said. ‘Perhaps not all.’

  Terri hesitated. ‘What did he want from you?’

  Caldwell’s eyes grew cold. ‘A private interview. In his hotel suite.’

  ‘What did you think that meant?’

  ‘Some private indignity. Something far less tender than occurred with Laura.’ Caldwell’s voice was quiet. ‘If I had any doubts about that, they ended with Mary Carelli.’

  ‘Were you going to go?’

  ‘I was going to listen and then deal with him somehow.’ Caldwell’s tone grew crisp. ‘I have two children now, a husband whom I very much love and don’t care to hurt. I’m sure they’d try to understand, but still . . . And what about the others, who see me as a symbol of the women’s movement, pro and con? Did you catch the furor when the president of NOW admitted being bisexual?’

  Terri nodded. ‘Yes. I did.’

  Caldwell paused. ‘Twenty years ago, I learned that at any given time, some people can be one thing or another. But that’s harder for a lot of other people to understand than equal pay for equal work, and I don’t want to help some yahoo like Jesse Helms confuse the two – as cowardly as it may be to skip this chance to educate the public.’

  Terri was silent, sensing something left unsaid. ‘What else,’ she asked quietly, ‘did Ransom know?’

  Caldwell’s searching gaze became a stare. ‘What makes you ask?’

  ‘Because you wanted Ransom to tell you something that you didn’t know.’ Terri watched her. ‘Just as you’ve hoped that I can.’

  Caldwell’s face seemed to pass through a series of changes, from surprise to resignation to a deeper level of anguish. Then she looked at Terri again, even more closely than before. ‘You have a kind of gift,’ she said. ‘A silence, almost a stillness, while someone talks to you. You’ve drawn them out before they learn how much you see.’

  Terri felt her own surprise; what Caldwell said sounded true, and yet she had not quite known it. ‘It’s not meant to harm,’ Terri answered.

  Caldwell studied her in silence. Finally, she said, ‘Let’s walk, all right? I feel like a prisoner.’

  Terri kicked off her heels. They followed the redwood steps down to the beach and began walking on the sand, Caldwell looking like a woman on vacation, Terri like a yuppie on a lunch break. They would have been an amusing pair, Terri thought, except for the look on Caldwell’s face.

  ‘It was during that week,’ Caldwell began, ‘that Laura told me about James Colt.’

  Terri glanced over at her, surprised.

  ‘How long was that before
she shot herself?’

  Caldwell knelt, rolling up the bottom of her jeans. Quietly, she answered, ‘Ten days or so.’

  From her tone, Terri knew that she need ask no further questions. They resumed walking, both silent.

  After a time, Caldwell spoke again. ‘I had heard the rumors, of course. About how she and Colt would meet in secret, even how she fantasized about becoming First Lady – which was impossible, of course. But it was still strange to hear Laura talk about making love to “the future leader of the world,” as she mockingly called him, the blond handsome man we saw on television talking about courage and sacrifice and social justice.’ Caldwell looked over at Terri. ‘Somehow, knowing made me feel lousy. James Colt was a hero to me – I wanted him to be a little better than the last six guys I’d slept with. Too good to be taking advantage of Laura’s weaknesses like some sleazy producer banging her on the couch and then going home to his wife and son.

  ‘But what was worse, I realize now, was how Laura talked about him.

  ‘He was this mysterious force she didn’t understand. Laura wanted to believe in him, but she felt a deep resentment too – she referred to him as “God almighty” as often as she used his name. The one thing that was clear to me was that Laura was at his beck and call. Even her jokes about him were the wisecracks of a slave.’ Caldwell paused, shoulders hunched forward. ‘It made me think about my life.’

  Terri looked over at her. ‘Then Laura taught you something.’

  ‘More than you can imagine.’ Caldwell looked away. ‘I was there the night James Colt asked her to meet him in Palm Springs.’

  Surprised, Terri said nothing. Simply watched her.

  Caldwell turned toward the water, standing where the waves, dying at their farthest ebb, met the sand. The wind rippled her honey hair, glistening in the sun. The ocean lapped at Terri’s feet.

  ‘We were in the guesthouse,’ Caldwell said in the same quiet tone, ‘in a pink bedroom with mirrors on the ceiling one of her husbands had installed. I was lying with my head on her shoulder, watching my own reflection as Laura stroked my hair.’

  For a moment, Caldwell’s voice had a dreamlike quality. ‘I was neither happy nor sad. I felt peaceful and at the same time sort of lost. Like this wasn’t really me, just sort of a space I was occupying until something changed in me and I started on a different life than the one I’d brought to this house.

  ‘Then Laura began to talk.’

  The rhythm of Caldwell’s speech changed again, quickening. ‘What was so good between us, Laura said, was that it was so gende. There wasn’t any taking, only giving to each other, because all we wanted was to love and be loved. I had given her something that she’d never had before.’ Caldwell’s voice grew lower. ‘In the mirror, I saw that Laura’s eyes had filled with tears.

  ‘I turned to her then, confused and somehow frightened.’ Caldwell paused. ‘She thought I was turning out of love. So she smiled, even with the tears, and then kissed me.

  ‘When the telephone rang, she was saying, “I love you too.”’

  For a moment, Caldwell’s voice had caught. Terri tried to imagine the moment: Lindsay Caldwell lost at nineteen, Laura Chase reaching out to her. To her surprise, what she felt most clearly was how overwhelmed Caldwell must have been.

  ‘It was Senator Colt,’ Caldwell said. ‘Laura held the phone out so I could hear his voice.

  ‘It was so strange. I was lying naked in bed with another woman, perhaps the most famous actress in the world, listening while someone who might become the next President asked her to spend the weekend in Palm Springs.’

  Caldwell looked down. ‘He talked for a while – I couldn’t hear him clearly. In the mirror above me, Laura’s face got very clouded, and then I felt her draw up her knees.

  ‘“Who are they?” she asked.’

  Caldwell shook her head. ‘She didn’t have to say anything more – I could see her eyes reflected back at me. No matter how he’d put it, Laura knew what he had in mind for her, and I knew she knew.

  ‘Suddenly my skin felt cold, and then Laura reached for my hand.

  ‘“I’m not sure,” she told him. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  ‘He started talking again. As she listened, her fingers clasped mine tighter. Just before she hung up, Laura said, “Suppose I’m not available. Just suppose, Senator Colt, that I’ve found someone else.”’

  Caldwell knelt to scoop up a sand dollar, inspected it in silence. ‘It was a moment before I realized,’ she said at length, ‘that Laura was talking about me.’

  Terri glanced at her again. As the path of her story moved toward its end, Caldwell’s voice seemed to be losing resonance. Even her steps had slowed. ‘When Laura hung up,’ Caldwell said, ‘I felt as if I’d made a commitment.

  ‘I should have been glad for her – that she hadn’t said yes right away. But what I felt was this kind of suffocating pressure. That Laura might reject James Colt for me. That if she stayed away from men, or drinking, it would be for me. That it all depended on me.

  ‘I’d given myself over to Laura, and now, suddenly, I wanted to be away from Laura.’ Caldwell paused. ‘And while I was lying there, thinking that, Laura laid my head between her breasts.

  ‘That night I almost ran away.’

  Caldwell shook her head. ‘I couldn’t,’ she added softly. ‘When Laura fell asleep, her arms were still around me.’

  Terri gazed ahead, walking in tandem with Caldwell at the edge of the water. The sun was in midflight now, the sky winter blue, the light-streaked water aqua gray as it reached the whiteness of the sand. But Caldwell’s story of Laura Chase made it all seem surreal, a dream.

  ‘How did you leave?’ Terri asked.

  Caldwell gave her a sidelong glance. ‘In the only way possible,’ she said at last. ‘I told the truth.’

  Terri said nothing. After a time, Caldwell continued as if she had not stopped. ‘Sitting at breakfast, with Laura holding my hands. Not because I was honest. Because I was selfish, and scared, and couldn’t think of any other way.

  ‘“Why?” she kept asking, with tears running down her face, sobbing, until I told her everything.’ Caldwell’s speech quickened, as she was drawn back into the moment. ‘That I was confused. That she frightened me. That I was too much like her. That being secret lovers was no life. That I had to find my own life.’ Caldwell paused, drew in one sharp breath, and then finished quietly: ‘That I could never love her as she wanted to be loved.’

  There was silence, and then Terri realized that she was walking alone. Caldwell had stopped behind her, touching her forehead. ‘It was like if I told her everything,’ she murmured, ‘Laura would let me go.’

  Terri waited a moment. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘I got my wish.’ Caldwell looked up, face ravaged with pain. ‘It was as if I’d shot her.

  ‘She dropped my hands. Just looked at me. Mouth half open, no sound at all. Only her eyes moved.’ Caldwell paused, voice slowing for emphasis. ‘I’ve experienced a lot before and since, including things my father said or did that were crueler than people can imagine. But I have never seen a face that wounded.

  ‘I don’t know how long we were sitting there, a few inches apart, saying nothing. And then she whispered, “I’ll have to go with him now.”’

  ‘“No,” I said. “It’s not about me. I don’t want it to be about me. Don’t go for you. Because you don’t want anyone to treat you like that.”’

  Caldwell gave a humorless smile. ‘Great advice, right from the self-help library – I was ahead of my time. But I was the only one who heard it. For Laura, I could have been speaking Swahili.’ Caldwell’s voice became bitter. ‘And, of course, I knew that.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ Terri said. ‘You can’t supply some other adult with something they don’t have. Any more than you can sustain a relationship by offering up your sense of yourself as a kind of bribe. In the end, everyone loses.’

  Caldwell gave her a complex look
of irony and understanding. ‘Are you talking to me, Teresa, or to yourself?’

  Terri hesitated. ‘To you, at least.’

  ‘I see.’ Caldwell paused, searching Terri’s face. ‘Well, then, if you’re talking to me, then there’s a little more to the story, and the ending is a little more dramatic.

  ‘The night Laura died, she called my apartment.’

  Caldwell turned toward the water. ‘It was an hour or so before she shot herself. I hadn’t needed to be on the set, hadn’t seen Laura at all, had tried not to imagine her weekend in Palm Springs. I was thinking about going out and picking someone up.’ Caldwell paused. ‘To prove to myself that I was straight.

  ‘Somehow, I knew it was her.

  ‘She was drunk, and alone.’ Caldwell folded her arms. ‘As people will when they’re drunk, she kept repeating herself. And what she said, over and over again, was, “I need you tonight.”’

  A tremor seemed to move through Caldwell’s body. ‘She scared me. Her voice was like a child’s. It made her sound so insatiable.

  ‘“Please,” Laura said. “I went with him.”

  ‘The way she sounded – I just didn’t want to hear. I didn’t know who I was more frightened of: Laura or myself.

  ‘All I knew was that I had to stop her from saying “I need you.”’ Caldwell’s eyes shut. ‘I told her I had a date.’

  Inwardly, Terri winced.

  ‘After I said that,’ Caldwell went on quietly, ‘Laura began sobbing. Hurt, almost animal sounds. It was like I could feel her shiver through the telephone.

  ‘There was only one thing I could think to do. I told her goodbye and hung up.’ Caldwell had begun pacing in half circles, as if confined by the apartment she was remembering. ‘Then I turned out the lights. As if I were afraid that Laura might find me.’

  Caldwell stared down at the sand. ‘The telephone rang, again and again. I sat there in the dark perhaps an hour or so, afraid to answer. Just listening to it ring.

  ‘Then it stopped.’

  Caldwell turned to Terri. ‘I’d never known that silence could be so profound. Perhaps it was the darkness. For I’m not sure how long, I couldn’t move. Then, without realizing why, I got up and drove to Laura’s.