Remains to Be Scene (16 page)

In the next moment, she came into the room with a silver tray on which she carried the aperitifs. She set the tray down on the coffee table and made the gesture of carefully handing a glass to Missie’s mother. “Mrs. Stembourg, I’m handing you a glass,” she said, a bit louder than was necessary. Placenta reached for Elizabeth’s hand and guided it to the cold glass. When she was certain that Elizabeth had a hold of the flute she let go. Then she offered one to Missie and to Tim. They all took sips and acknowledged that after their respective rotten days, this was their just desserts.

Tim looked at his wristwatch and made a show of craning his neck in search of his mother. “So sorry that Mom’s a bit tardy,” Tim confided. “She rushed home from wrestling with Bruckheimer. Then she had a long phoner with
The Peeper
. It may take her a while to put her face on.”

Placenta stood up. “In the meantime, while we’re waiting, if you’d like to see the rest of the house, we’d be delighted to show you around,” she said, as a prelude to ushering the guests out of the room.

Missie was overjoyed, but Elizabeth said, “I’ll just sit here and play with myself. Don’t know why I came in the first place since I can’t see the damn place.”

Immediately, the gracious host that emerged from Tim whenever a guest had even the slightest problem, came to the fore. “I’m so inconsiderate,” he said. “Placenta can show Missie around. You and I will sit here and chat. Okay?”

Elizabeth harrumphed and took another sip of champagne. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m used to being alone. I’ll just sit here and wait for the mistress of the manor to put in an appearance. Don’t worry that I might get bored out of my skull, or that I’ll have to use the bathroom and have no idea where it is.”

Missie sighed heavily. “Mother,” she said as patiently as possible, “I don’t have to have a private tour of Pepper Plantation. It’s not that important. I can look at the magazine pictures in my scrapbook when we get home.”

“Don’t play martyr!” Mrs. Stembourg snapped. “Go! You too Mr. Docent. I’ll sit here quietly and listen to…it sounds like Peggy Lee.”

As Tim and Placenta led Missie out of the room, they could hear Elizabeth make a long sigh of resentment, as if she were a spoiled child being forced to sit in a corner as punishment. “She’s in a mood,” Missie whispered an apology to her hosts.

Tim dismissed the problem. “She’ll be cool once Polly arrives and takes over.”

Alone in the living room, Elizabeth became aware of how vast the area was. For a moment she concentrated on Peggy Lee’s voice emanating from hidden speakers and vibrating throughout the room. From the distance she could distinguish the giddy sound of her daughter and her escorts moving off to a farther area of the house. She could hear ambient sounds coming from the second floor, presumably from Polly’s boudoir. After a moment, already bored from sitting alone, she stood up, removed her dark glasses, and moved around the room. Elizabeth closely examined the paintings, framed autographed pictures of Roddy MacDowell, Virginia O’Brien, and Valerie Harper, and other
object d’art
. She drained her glass with one swift swallow and set it on the sofa table among a heard of antique elephants collected from the many locations around the world to which Polly had traveled.

Elizabeth stealthily prowled around, opening the drawers in the side lamp tables, and then the tall hutch. She sniggered at the mess she found inside the cabinet—a stark contrast to the everything-in-its-place order of the rest of the room. She let her fingers wade through a pewter plate, that seemed to be a catchall for coins, keys, mismatched earrings, an assortment of pins, and several small gold ornaments for a charm bracelet. She came across one, which was the icon of the Academy Award. “Oscar,” she said in a whisper. “In your dreams!” she spat. “Missie will have hers by the time she’s twenty-one if it kills me.”

As her mind flashed on a recurring image of seeing Missie accepting an Academy Award and thanking her mother for making her life possible, Elizabeth was startled back to reality by a sound at the top of the stairs. Then the sound of Missie’s distinctive laugh approaching from the opposite direction down the corridor toward the living room made her quickly close the cabinet door and hurry back to her place on the sofa. When Tim, Placenta, and Missie returned, she tried to appear annoyed that she’d been left alone for the ten minutes that it took to tour the first floor of the mansion.

Tim immediately noticed that not only was Elizabeth’s drink glass empty, it was on the sofa table among Polly’s collection of pachyderms. “More champagne, ladies,” he said, which was Placenta’s cue to return to the kitchen, open another bottle, and signal for Polly to make her entrance.

Placenta collected Missie’s and Tim’s glasses before spotting Elizabeth’s. Without a word, Placenta moved out of the room to fulfill her duties. She returned with a tray of five filled flutes and passed them about. Then, just as the guests took a single sip of their champagne, Polly Pepper appeared in the doorway, as if conjured up by a magician.

With her hands on her hips and displaying her radiant smile Polly bellowed, “I’m completely ashamed of myself! Do forgive me, please! You can ask anybody and they’ll tell you that I’m never tardy! After years of starring on television every week, it’s simply not in my nature to keep even the lowliest production assistant waiting just for little ol’ me! Please! Accept my sincere apologies!”

Polly swirled into the room, wearing a form fitting, magenta-colored ruched taffeta top with turned back cuffs, and a black column skirt, cut and darted with an off-center slit along the left leg. This flattered her still amazingly well-preserved figure. “I should have greeted you at the gate! But I’m confident that my darlings Tim and Placenta have made you both feel right at home. Yes?”

Polly then made the rounds of kissing Missie and Elizabeth on their cheeks. “Heavenly scent,” she said to Elizabeth as she grazed the air next to her face. “Lilac?” And in the same rhythm she swiped a glass of champagne from the tray. Polly raised her glass and said, “To reunions and long-lasting friendships. We’re so delighted that you could join us for the evening at Pepper Plantation.” With that she drained her glass and the evening officially began.

“…and that’s the last time that Mother Theresa ever appeared on a musical/comedy variety show,” Polly said triumphantly telling one of her favorite behind-the-scenes show business stories. “I guess after starring as my special guest that week, and having such a blast playing Bedpan Bertha’s unlucky patient, she knew she’d never have more fun in Hollywood. So she skipped town. Back to Calcutta. Poor dear!”

“Too bad, ’cause after those incredible ratings she could have booked Merv and Johnny and Dinah Shore,” Tim added to the story he’d heard a gazillion times. “The network suits wanted her to host a fashion awards special. She could have healed NBC!”

Polly sighed. “Mother Teri had a mean streak though. She really irritated dear Bob Mackie. Something wasn’t right about the bugle-beaded life-size crucifix designed especially for her to drag in the sketch about The Virgin birth of Liberace.”

After a half hour of anecdotes and noshing on hors d’oeuvres, Polly looked at her watch, stood up and trilled, “Ding-dong! Soup’s on. Follow the leader to the dining car, please.”

As Polly led the conga line, Missie walked beside Tim, still chatting about the new Pavarotti documentary, “Belly and the Beast.” Placenta held Elizabeth’s arm and carefully guided her behind the others.

From the moment Missie arrived at Pepper Plantation, she was wide-eyed with wonder at every amenity in the big house. As she entered the formal dining room, she was completely overwhelmed when she spied the genuine Rembrandt around which the entire room had been decorated. She examined it closely before Polly pooh-poohed the period in which it had been painted and criticized brush strokes that prevented it from being acquired by the Getty. Then she called out, “You sit here. You sit there,” speaking to her guests and pointing out the seating arrangement.

The long mahogany table could easily accommodate twenty, but tonight it was set for five and only at the near end, closest to the kitchen door. “This is like a state dinner at the White House,” Missie marveled. “Or high tea at Buckingham Palace!”

“You’ll get to Buckingham Palace eventually,” Elizabeth said.

“In my dreams,” Missie smiled. “I’ll probably have to be a tourist standing in a long line. But this is darned close. And Miss Pepper is the queen.”

Polly agreed, then took her seat at the head of the table. To her left and right her two guests took their assigned seats. Tim sat next to Missie, and Placenta sat down for a brief moment beside Elizabeth before realizing that someone had to serve the dinner and Polly was not about to share the agreed upon duties. Placenta graciously excused herself from the table and glared at Polly as she picked up the plates at each setting and left the room. She returned with the dinners on a serving cart.

“You sit,” said Tim, “I’ll serve.” He rose and set the meals before the guests, then served Polly and Placenta, before finally laying a plate at his table setting and returning to his chair.

“What have we here?” Polly beamed, pretending to be surprised and impressed, as Tim praised Placenta for outdoing herself in the kitchen (although the food was delivered).

“Same thing we always have on Wednesday nights,” Placenta bluffed, “Kofta balls in tomato sauce and spicy vegetable pilaf.”

“And nary a face in the crowd,” Polly added, touching Missie’s forearm as a subtle knock to her vegan friend. She looked up at Placenta. “I see you’ve garnished with a few prunes to give it a sort of Middle Eastern flavor,” Polly said and turned up her nose.

“Fiber,” Placenta said, ignoring Polly’s obvious dissatisfaction with the meal. “You need the extra push.”

Once Placenta had seated herself and draped a napkin across her lap she called out “Dig in, folks!”

But just as Polly, Tim, and Placenta’s forks were simultaneously poised at their lips, Missie asked in a small voice, “Shall I say grace?” Three pairs of eyes looked at her in momentary bewilderment before Tim said, “We nearly forgot.”

Missie cleared her throat and reached for Tim’s and Polly’s hands. Polly intuitively knew to take Elizabeth’s hand, then Missie began her prayer. And when Missie finally got to the last “bless this, and thank you for that,” the five voices joined in with a simultaneous, “Ah-men.”

“Allah, be praised,” Placenta added as a tease. “Hey, I’m just practicing…in case,” she justified her comment. “You read
Daily Variety
, and I’ll scan the
Qur’an
. The way things are going with Washington’s foreign policy I’m expecting a pop quiz from an Ayatollah one of these Ramadans.”

Polly sighed with a tone of dissatisfaction then turned and complimented Missie on how lovely she performed her prayer ritual, and that she completely agreed that they were all inordinately blessed people. “And blessed to have you both at our table,” she added, raising her glass.

After the initial, nonverbal expressions of satisfaction with their meals, Polly skillfully launched into the topic for which she’d summoned her guests. “And speaking of being blessed,” she said, “glory be that Sedra’s killer has been apprehended. Believe me, I sleep better. But I would never in a gazillion years have guessed that the lovely and talented Dana Pointer was the sinister henchwoman behind such an atrocity. What do you suppose got into her pretty head?”

Missie shrugged her shoulders and said, “Pride. Envy. Lust. Greed. You name the sin and Dana has transgressed.”

For the first time since being seated, Elizabeth spoke out. “I warned my Missie to stay away from Dana Pointer, and that Lohan girl, too. Trouble! But did she listen to me? No! I can spot a bad seed a mile away, and the moment I laid my eyes on that kid, I said to myself, there’s Jezebel. She’ll be eating rats in hell.”

Shocked by Elizabeth’s medieval thinking, but not wanting to jeopardize her evening’s plan of action, Polly simply said, “It’s a mother’s duty to protect her little darlings from ruining their reputations and getting engraved invitations to an eternal vacation at the lake of fire. You’ve done an amazing job of raising a perfectly delightful and talented daughter. Just as I’ve raised the ideal son. More prunes, dear?”

Elizabeth waved away Polly’s offer. “The way that Dana dressed—wearing such revealing outfits that showed her navel!” Elizabeth looked at Polly, as if finally becoming comfortable and taking her into her confidence. “Did you see her hideous tattoo of a tongue? Like the logo of that satanic group, The Rolling Stones.”

“Mick still has that indefinable sex appeal, doesn’t he?” Placenta beamed. “He can still light my fire. Oh, I’m getting him confused with Jim Morrison. Now there was a real rocker.”

Elizabeth was now nearly maniacal. “As a Christian woman, such sinful body decorations naturally made me rebuke that unsaved creature.”

“Mick, or Dana?” Polly asked. “Or Jim?”

Elizabeth had to think for a moment. “She’s certainly being punished now, in the constant company of Satan,” Elizabeth said, making clear that it was Dana Pointer about whom she was speaking.

With a large and completely forced smile and an exaggerated lilt in her voice, Polly said, “What I adore about organized religions is that they’re all so perfect and tolerant and forgiving! Every last one of them. And which practice do you follow? Catholicism? Protestantism? Nepotism? Have another ball,” she said removing a Kofta from her plate and passing it over to Elizabeth.

“I was born again the day Missie’s father died and finally left us alone,” Elizabeth said.

As Tim sniggered softly at his mother’s own intolerance for the intolerant, Missie diplomatically agreed with both Elizabeth and Polly. She added, “Mom has had a difficult time, but she definitely knows what’s best for me. Thank you, Mommy dearest,” she said, reaching across the table to take Elizabeth’s hand in a show of support and affection. She held her mother’s four fingers for a moment while slowly giving them a bone-crushing viselike squeeze, which brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes.

Tim chased a bite of Kofta ball with another sip of champagne before musing, “Indeed, Dana is certainly being punished. In a Beverly Hills gulag, no less! I wonder if they let her have video privileges?” He waited a beat then turned to Missie. “We’re completely out of the loop,” he lied, dabbing his lips on his linen napkin. “We haven’t a clue about what’s going on with this case and it’s driving us nuts. All we know is what Anderson Cooper is saying about the crime, not much more. What have you heard? Have you talked to Dana, or anyone else on the crew? Are they saying anything about this?”

Missie, now comfortably filled with champagne and camaraderie, nodded her head. “Of course, it’s all anyone’s talking about,” she said of the other cast members and the film crew. “They’re all furious. Poor Ben the screenwriter is trying to figure out a way to rework the ending
without
Dana and me.”

Polly, attempting to sound optimistic said, “I’m sure they’ll figure something out and we’ll all be back on set in a few days.”

“I rather hope not,” said Missie, sending a sudden wave of distraction through the room. “I’m too busy now.”

Elizabeth smiled with satisfaction. “Missie’s going into a new film, starting on Monday.”

A stream of guarded “Congratulations,” and “Marvelouses,” and “Awesomes,” filled the room as Missie lowered her head in false embarrassed appreciation. “Oh, it’s a tailor-made role,” she said. “But we were stuck in
Detention
and we thought I’d miss the start date. And if the studio makes us go back to work…”

“I’ll be damned if I let that happen,” Elizabeth said with a serrated edge to her voice.

Polly sat silently for a moment, thinking about the possibility that if Missie and Dana were both out of the film, production could be held up for months—if not permanently. Where would that leave her and the rest of the cast and crew, she wondered. “But we’ve got a job to finish,” Polly said. “Can’t your director hold off until you’re out of
Detention
?”

“Not a chance,” Missie said. “The start date is firm. Anyway, I don’t care if I never go back to that crummy teen movie. I have another role and it’s everything an actress could want. Comedy, tragedy, music, dance…”

“I have a role, too,” Polly said, trying to make sense of the fact that one way or another, even if by some Hollywood miracle the production got back underway again, she was screwed out of a job because all of her scenes were with either Dana or Missie. “Perhaps they can shoot without you two. If Adam positions the camera just right, I can play to the stand-ins.”

Missie didn’t give more than a moment’s thought to Polly’s idea. “Fine with me,” she said. “You’d be playing right into Lauren Whatshername’s hand,” she said. “You know Lauren. She’s that crazy stand-in who’s always hanging around the star. If Dana hadn’t killed Sedra, I would have suspected Lauren.”

Then Missie went on about her own new film assignment. “We’ve got John Cusack! I’ve been in love with him ever since I was a little girl. Is he married? Haven’t heard that he’s gay or anything. Doesn’t matter. He’s totally cuddly, don’t you think so, Tim?” Missie’s mouth was running like a radio commercial announcer stating the rules of a free checking account and that certain restrictions may apply. “I’ve kissed him so many times in my dreams, I know exactly what he tastes like.”

Tim shrugged his shoulders and said, “Frankly, I never thought about him one way or another. Sure, I guess John Cusack’s ‘cuddly,’ but he’s not hot like Jack Wesley. Wouldn’t you prefer to be working with an up-and-coming sex symbol? You two looked perfect together.”

“I hate window shopping,” Missie said, almost petulantly. “If I can’t have something, I don’t even want to look at it. And I can’t have Jack.”

“A lovely girl like you can have practically any man she wants,” Placenta suggested.

“Right now Missie’s too busy to think about boys. She’s got a thriving career. After this new film project, she’s booked as the voice of the cute mutant virus Sal Monella in the Disney animated musical comedy feature,
Guess Who’s Coming With Dinner?
And there are tons of other offers on the table.”

“John Cusack’s a good actor,” Tim backtracked, siding with Missie.

“He’s a star,” Elizabeth shot back. “He can make Missie a bigger star! I’ve already had my talk with that Jack Wesley loser. His fifteen minutes are just about up. Ding! There goes the timer on his career.”

“Mother, you said the same thing about Matthew McConaughey,” Missie politely reminded. “He seems to be doing just fine.”

“And what’s the film about?” Polly asked.

Missie smiled apologetically. “I’ve been asked not to discuss it with anyone. You understand.”

Although neither Polly, Tim, nor Placenta did understand they agreed it was nobody’s business.

As Placenta finished her dinner she poured another round of drinks for all. “From what I’ve heard, Jack dumped Dana,” she said baiting Missie. “In fact, rumor has it that Jack and Sedra were fooling around.”

Missie laughed. “No way!” she said, trying to stifle her amusement. “He spreads himself around,” Missie declared. “I doubt that he has long-term plans for anyone except…”

“But he was about to elope with Dana,” Polly lied, interrupting to plant a kernel of doubt in Missie’s mind. “I have it on the best authority.”

“Must have been Sedra who told you that,” Missie said. “She spread tons of rumors. Made herself believe that she was young enough to attract him, if she simply removed all other obstacles.