Third Girl from the Left (26 page)

“No.” I was smiling and thinking that his eyebrows were oddly light against his medium-brown skin.

“Then I guess I am.” He swung his book onto the desk next to mine and made himself at home, smiling back at me. I thought about what it might feel like to kiss him and have my tongue tease the little gap between his front teeth. I wondered how we'd managed not to meet each other before. He spoke: “I'm Colin Walsh. Which
Imitation of Life
do you like better? The Stahl or the Sirk?”

I laughed and said, “I'm Tamara Edwards and I love the Sirk. But I've only read about the other. I'm from LA. I've haven't had a chance to go to Yale and check out the Stahl.”

A slight smile crossed his lips. I'd passed the test. “Well, the Sirk's better anyway. My dad teaches at Yale. He got me into the library so I've seen the other one. Fredi Washington's all right, but . . . you gotta give it up for Doug. That boy was all that and a bag of chips.”

“Sho' you right,” I said. We grinned at each other foolishly. I didn't think he was arrogant. I don't know why.

Then as the professor came in, Colin turned suddenly stern. His eyes were the color of rocks underwater. “Have coffee with me after class.” It wasn't a question. So I did.

That coffee was the first of a thousand others we had in a thousand coffee shops. All we did for weeks was talk movies, though I never did stop looking at that little gap in his teeth. We talked about Spike Lee and Oscar Micheaux and Dorothy Dandridge and Charlie Kaufman and Martin Scorsese and Jane Campion and Robert Altman and Todd Haynes and Douglas Sirk and what was playing on Fourteenth Street. We talked about the merits of documentary versus narrative. When we weren't talking we were at the movies and then talking about the movies we went to. One night, we had just come out of
Citizen Kane
at the Film Forum and we were sitting at the bar at Brothers, nursing beers and arguing good-naturedly about the similarities of the opening shots in
Rebecca
and
Citizen Kane
. Our thighs touched under the bar and neither of us moved away. I decided not to acknowledge it. Not to move away, but not to acknowledge it. He was talking and I was watching him talk, his voice velvet in my ear, his leg warm against mine, when all of a sudden he was kissing me and I was free to inch my tongue into that little space I'd been eyeing for so long. My hand slid to the back of his neck, his hand slid gently up my back under my shirt—not too far, but enough so that I could feel him touching my skin. After a while, we stopped and looked at each other, our legs entangled. “I was kind of hoping you'd do that first,” he said. “I mean it's not the traditional way, but I don't know . . . I thought you might.”

“I don't start stuff like that,” I said. “Too risky.”

“Do you finish things like that?”

“I try to.” I traced his lower lip with my finger.
I want to finish this
, I thought. But I couldn't say it.

“Come home with me.” I leaned into him again, feeling dizzy that someone so beautiful wanted me. We kissed for a long time. Colin finally said, “Let's get out of here.” And we blew a ridiculous amount of money on a cab back to Brooklyn and made out the whole way, his hand finally, finally sliding under my bra so that I thought I might cry, and when we got in the house it was almost like a movie. He backed me up against the big
Super Fly
poster on his door and undid my pants and kissed me and did things with his hands until I couldn't stand it anymore and was grabbing at him and saying his name over and over and that's when I knew. This was someone I might love, someone who might let me love him. I was petrified.

After a while, we eased up from the floor, laughing, and he took my hand and led me into his room. His bed was made with a beautiful mud print quilt. The room was hung with framed movie posters (one of them from
Coffy
, which made me think of my mother) and smelled faintly of incense. On the bookcase were a clutter of photographs of him with his smiling brownskinned family. He had sepia and faded black-and-white photos of relatives from way back too. “Who're all these people?” I said, walking over to the bookcase and picking up a picture of him with a prosperous-looking couple, who must have been his parents. Melted-down candles sat in front of the photos.

“The clan.” He smiled and reached to turn down the sheets. “Going all the way back. I like to keep them around.”

I was silent. The only photo in my room was a still from
Sweet Smell of Success
. No clan. No history. And I never made my bed. Colin came over and embraced me from behind. My stomach hit my shoes. This wasn't a moment to talk about our families. He kissed me, hard and longingly. I had never been so happy. Isn't that corny? It was the happiest moment of my life.

T
AMARA KEPT HER HAIR IN A SHORT, BUSINESSLIKE
natural. She got it cut at a barbershop. She didn't talk much. And she hated, hated, hated it, when Colin asked her questions. Especially about her family. She had this way of just disappearing. He saw it whenever he asked her a question she didn't want to answer or asked her to do something she didn't want to do, like meet his mother or father. She'd close her mouth, that pretty full mouth, and her eyes would grow black and distant and she'd stuff her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and she'd turn into a wall. Colin never understood what she was running from. But he ran after her. He'd never met a woman who knew more about film. After he was with her for a while, though, he didn't care about that so much. He loved her mind; she was always making connections that startled and pleased him. He loved to stand behind her in movie lines and breathe her in, the softly sweaty odor of her. He loved to make her laugh. He always felt as though he'd won a prize when he succeeded. He loved her. But he didn't tell her for the longest time. He thought she might run away for good after that.

She didn't have the money to do what she was doing. She was getting most of her degree on sheer will and extensive loans. He loved that about her too—she was so damn stubborn. They were in bed at his apartment, talking about their movies, which was all they ever talked about anymore. At least they were talking. When he found out about her mother a week ago, he thought she was going to dump him. It wasn't even something to be ashamed of. But she was so mad. He found out when he came home one night with the DVD of
Coffy
. He knew it was crappy filmmaking, but he loved its energy—and he didn't mind Pam Grier too much either. Tam came over and they made dinner. Afterward he held the DVD up to her, grinning. “I ain't seen this in years,” he said. “Let's check it out tonight.” He thought he saw her stiffen, saw her eyes go briefly black, but she didn't say anything, just sat down on the couch, ready. The silence roared from her side of the couch until it was halfway over. He thought maybe she was offended because it was so sexist, but then the fight scene came on and she said, “That's my mother.”

Colin laughed and turned toward Tamara. He didn't understand what she was saying for a minute. “Right. Pam Grier's your mother and you never told me.”

“No, not her. The third girl from the left. That's my mother.” Tam's face was coated with tears. He'd never ever seen her cry before. He wanted to reach out and rest his hand on the back of her neck, but something told him not to.

“What?” he said.

“That's my mother. She was in a lot of these movies.”

Colin pressed a button and froze Pam's image in midspeech. “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

He wanted to comfort her, to tell her she didn't have to be afraid of him. But she also looked so angry that he didn't want to move closer unexpectedly. And he had the undeniable impulse to go back a few frames and see the naked image of his girlfriend's mother in a movie. The impulse to ask a million questions. He couldn't help it. So what he said came out all wrong. “Really. Really? That is cool. Very cool.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, think of what she saw. Think of what she
did
. Did she ever talk to you about it? About working in the movies back then?”

“No, not much.”

“She doesn't like to talk about it, huh?” The image on the DVD was frozen and silent. It was very loud. “You should ask her. You might want to know sometime.”

“Maybe.”

He was silent a moment. Then he took her hand reflectively, looked down at it for a moment. “What other movies was she in?” he said.

He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as the words left his mouth. The look on her face hit him like a kick in the chest. She yanked her hand back and stood up. “You know, that's why I never told you. Because I knew you'd just want to know all about her. And it would be like she was practically living with us. I came to New York so I wouldn't be living with her. I . . .” She ran out of the room. Colin followed her. They talked for a while that night. She cried a lot but didn't say anything he understood. He didn't see what she had to be ashamed of, or angry about. He loved her. He wanted to know where she came from. And she wouldn't tell him.

 

They made up. They didn't have time to keep fighting anyway. That was the other thing between them; the money and the time. They never talked about it. He was able to get enough money from his parents to hire a professional cinematographer. And she couldn't. She didn't have anyone to shoot for her. She had grubbed every grant possible, begged for every loan imaginable. Nothing had come through. She could not afford a crew. They were talking about it again on this night. Colin knew she was upset, even though her eyes were resolutely dry. He sometimes had the feeling that she had decided not to cry in front of him anymore since that awful evening with
Coffy
.

They were silent for a long time. But finally, he thought of how he could reach her, how he could love her. “I'll do it,” he said.

“What?”

“I'll shoot your movie. Mine's just about wrapped. I can edit at night. I want to help you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“But you know how people fight when they do this together. Even friends.”

“We'll work it out.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure.” He stopped. “I love you.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. “Thanks,” she said. They kissed. He hoped she would say something more. She didn't. They started shooting two days later.

Colin was surprised by how Tam acted on the set. She was so stubborn in class and in life, he'd thought she'd be the same way on her film. But she was petrified—you could smell it on her. He imagined that if he placed his hand on her heart while she was directing, he'd feel it beating like a hummingbird's. Sometimes he saw her making mistakes, doing things that were too expensive or weren't going to come out or mishandling the actors. But he didn't dare say anything. After the
Coffy
thing and a few days of shooting, he knew his safest course was to keep his head down and his camera up. She didn't even ask him to come over anymore at night. And while he still loved to watch her hands move as she worked, he found himself reluctant to push. She was so scared, and he couldn't help her. One time, when she left her backpack open at his feet as she went to go talk to the actors he spied an old battered copy of
Spike Lee's Gotta Have It
in there. He had to swallow hard and wipe quickly at his eyes with the backs of his hands. But there was no time for crying, or making love, or talking about anything. They were losing the light and he wasn't even done setting up. He ran through his check of the lenses very quickly. The magic hour was almost over.

T
HE LAST DAY OF SHOOTING MY THESIS, EVERYBODY
was late, and Evan, a second-year who'd been doing the lights for me, had trouble setting up, and Colin ran through his lens check really fast, and my actors Sherry and Raymond had an argument over some dumb-ass thing, and we were losing the light. I thought my head would explode. Evan desperately screwed the base into the heavy light once more. He swore nonstop. I struggled to hold it for him as he tried again to mount it properly. My arms shook. Sherry and Raymond sat anxiously on the curb, trying not to look panicked and not succeeding. Finally, Evan let go and the light was steady on the stand. “OK, OK, places, everybody.” I lowered my screaming arms, hoping I could stop shaking. “OK, let's do this. You ready, Sherry, Ray? Give it all you got.” Sherry did an actressy head roll and up-and-down of her shoulders. Raymond just looked at me coolly. I looked through the viewfinder. It looked all right. “Action!” I yelled. Colin started the film. Sherry and Ray started. Sherry messed up halfway through. I reassured them and started again. The sun continued its gradual descent. “Once more. We can do it once more.” They made it through the scene this time. They were not brilliant. They weren't even good. But the light was gone and I was at the end. We were done. After we stowed the equipment, we all went out for a beer and I tried not to act as glum as I felt. I got very drunk. I wouldn't let Colin come home with me. He didn't try very hard to get me to change my mind.

I got home at 3:00
A.M.
I picked up the phone and called Mama. I got the machine: her and Sheila in chorus. “You know what to do. So do it.” So goddamn cutesy. They were so goddamn old. Why did they have that cutesy message? “It's me, Mama. Everything's all fucked up. This movie sucks. Why'd I do this, anyway? Mama? Mama?” I hung up. I couldn't stand how pathetic I sounded. I knew she wouldn't call me, back anyway. She never did. Whenever we spoke, it was on my dime. She always said she was happy to hear from me, but it was on my dime. And don't let me call when I was sad. That never worked. She'd just say to go see a goddamn movie. I wanted to call Colin, but I didn't dare. I got in bed with
Spike Lee's Gotta Have It
. I pressed it close to my face. The paper smelled old. Some of the pages were about to come out. Did Spike ever feel this way? I moved the book away from my face a little so I wouldn't ruin it with my tears.