‘Do I what?’
‘Do you want to have children?’
‘I don’t know, Con.’ This was true.
‘You’re too young, anyway,’ Connie said.
‘I’m not.’
Connie sighed, which irritated Elise more. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that to me,’ she said. ‘That I’m too young. You say it a lot. I’m nearly twenty-three.’
Connie looked like she was going to say something, but stopped herself. Then she said: ‘You are young, but you’re not too young. I’m sorry,’ she added, and went back to her notebook in the shade.
12
They decided to stay on in West Hollywood whilst all the interior shots for Heartlands were being filmed. Another fortnight had passed; they had now been in Los Angeles for six weeks. In that time, they’d spent three days in San Francisco and a long weekend in Monterey, including a trip to Salinas because Connie wanted to see where Steinbeck had lived. ‘Are you going for inspiration?’ Elise asked.
‘No, I’m going because I’m nosy,’ said Connie.
The places they saw were mind-blowing. The size of the redwoods, the clifftop ocean views, the sun a July goddess, gilding the tips of waves and human shoulders, before the night fell and the owls and other creatures came calling. Elise wanted to stay longer in the woods, but they followed a motor route, staying in motels, and Connie drove them everywhere, fast. Elise imagined they were a pair of frontierswomen, panning for gold despite the opprobrium from the menfolk who’d also come to make their fortune.
Sometimes, when Connie was writing, Elise would take out a notebook too, and try to write. Nothing came. This fact almost physically hurt. How did Connie do it? She was doing so well here, writing all the time, probably about that green rabbit, but she’d never say. She’d even become actual friends with Barbara Lowden. The two women would meet – to discuss Barbara’s character, Connie said. She intimated that it was, at times, exhausting, but when Elise said she didn’t have to pander to the film star’s every whim, Connie said she wasn’t pandering at all.
‘Don’t you find it weird,’ Elise said. ‘Looking at her?’
Connie laughed. ‘No. She’s a human being. A very funny one. She’s been so famous for so long that she behaves differently to other people. I find that fascinating.’
They had not yet agreed as to whether they would decamp with the film production to the Catskills, but the stay in Los Angeles, in America as a whole, certainly seemed open-ended. They often went out to Malibu to see Shara and Matt. The four of them would sit round a fire, their faces warm from the flames, shawls round their backs as the stars pricked the sky, and Elise would watch the married couple, imagining their secret pain.
It was Matt who suggested that they make an overnight outdoor stay in Joshua Tree Park. ‘It’s only three hours,’ he said. ‘You wait for those stars. And the rocks.’
Elise listened with admiration as he spoke about the shapes they formed, their colours changing in the setting sun.
‘No way,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t want to die in the jaws of a coyote.’
‘Don’t you like the tranquillity of forests, Con?’ asked Shara.
Connie made a face. ‘It’s like space. No one will hear you screaming if you die.’
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ said Matt.
‘There’s nothing to do in nature, essentially,’ said Connie. ‘Except be horribly aware of how easily you get bored.’
‘I’d love to go,’ said Elise. But the conversation had moved on, and no one seemed to hear her.
*
Elise had noted that Connie and Matt barely talked as a pair – when they did, it was never frosty or difficult, as such, but Connie seemed to cauterize his attempts at generating conversation.
‘Have you got a problem with Matt?’ she asked Connie, on the way home from Malibu one day. They’d hired a car on a long-term basis by this point, and the footwell carpet was full of sand that shook off Elise’s soles and seemed impossible to get rid of.
‘Matt? He’s fine,’ said Connie. ‘I just don’t think Shara should have married him.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s mediocre.’
‘He is?’
‘Don’t you think? What does he ever talk about except places we should visit, or that he’s visited himself? I hate that.’
‘He wants to share it, Con.’
‘He wants to show it. I can go to bloody Joshua Tree without him.’
Connie, Elise thought, had become more unforgiving in their new social situations: impressive and dazzling, yes, but too critical of others’ foibles. Maybe it was the other company she was keeping – some sort of confidence transplant from Barbara Lowden, via osmosis. Or possibly it stemmed from Connie’s belief that Matt didn’t support Shara enough after the miscarriage. Perhaps she was right, thought Elise: perhaps peace was not to be found in the centre of the peyote plant, but rather in looking after your wife. But what about Matt? What had he felt, during that time? Had anyone bothered to ask him?
‘Did you know that Shara’s name is actually Sahara, but she took out the first “a” to annoy her hippy mum and try and seem more normal?’ said Connie, laughing. ‘She was a shock to Manchester as an undergraduate, I can tell you.’
‘Why the hell did she go to Manchester to do her degree?’
‘Her dad’s work. She grew up half the time in England. But here is where she belongs.’
‘And does Matt belong here?’
Connie gave her a wry look. ‘You tell me.’
Connie hadn’t needed to spell it out. There was a tangible fracture line between Matt and Shara – Elise could see it, as the child of a difficult marriage so often can. Shara was hard and fixed, and Matt seemed restless, forcibly eager, over-invested in plans that ranged from watering their cacti under a full moon to planning road trips. Then he would become moody, meditating on the unfairness of the world, of the difficulties in being alive. Elise could sympathize; she felt Matt was out-smarted by Connie, like she herself often was – and neither could she connect much with Shara. She liked Matt’s enthusiasms, and the fact he made an effort with her when so few did.
One day, Shara invited Elise and Connie into her studio to see her paintings. The women walked in with some trepidation. The space was large and light-filled, and canvases were propped up everywhere around the walls. They were large, abstract in the main, often covered with a semi-tangible amalgam of circles.
‘These,’ said Shara, pointing. ‘I wanted to make a comment on the immanence of motherhood.’
Elise didn’t know what to say, but Connie nodded. What the fuck does Connie know about the immanence of motherhood? Elise wondered, but then remembered that half of Connie’s job was to be curious and the other half was to give the appearance of authority.
‘That one, Shar,’ said Connie. ‘I love that one.’ She pointed at one of the largest pieces. Elise stared at the endless shading of the circles, like eyes staring back at her, but avoiding her scrutiny at the same time: a void luring her in.
‘Have it,’ said Shara.