A Midnight Sun Page 20

  "Who?" He said putting a car phone back on the cradle.

  "Parker. I don´t know why but she is with me. Her perfume…I thought it was yours, and I feel nauseated…"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yes!"

  He held my hand tightly and smiled all the way to her house. We approached a row of neatly cared homes with shapely topiaries and bright green grass. Oddly in this hot weather but welcoming and comforting.

  A woman dressed in beige slacks and long wavy hair stood on the driveway of a brown house with green shutters. She held a small boy by the hand and waved us into the driveway while stepping aside. A man with graying hair stepped toward her and smiled broadly. I suddenly felt home, like a wind had swept my fears and weaknesses and my skin prickled with excitement. I squeezed Braff´s hand and delighted in his touch a moment until we opened the doors and went into the house Parker had never been into and had been into a hundred thousand times. I felt a rush of air encircle my legs and then we sat in a small dining room, brightly lit with a chandelier above, and the child hugged and kissed their parents before she stepped outside to play with some friends.

  Shelby held my hand suddenly and I jumped off the chair. In doing so, I hit my keen and burst out laughing.

  ¨So Miss Tisdale, Mister Wilkins tells me you are interested in my mother. I haven´t had a visit about her in years." She looked at her husband and slowly pressed her lips into a soft smile. Tears ran down her face and he wiped them with a soft cloth that was on the table. While she was drying them further, I noticed her hands were cleaned and polished, a fresh coat of clear varnish on short ovals which made me think of Parker. Their hands were alike and I gently touched my own thinking this was the closest I had ever gotten to a woman I had begun to love and had never met.

  "Your mother is…has been on my mind for nearly a year, I believe. Her story is interesting yet moving. Why did she die so young?"

  She sniffed and perked up. "She was addicted to a series of drugs. The studios were mostly to blame. By the time they realized she was addicted, it was too late. She died of an overdose under strange circumstances. Her doctors said she was taking too many and was also drinking when she was found. Her husband came to me and told me quietly she had passed. I was only six and remember how the horrifying notion of never seeing my mother again burst inside me and I exploded into screams and tears. My father held me but I became a tangle of arms and legs, furiously beating at him to let me go find her."

  "I´m so very sorry," I said holding back hot tears.

  Braff spoke for both of us when he noticed I couldn't. "Did she write or say anything about her life which may give you some insight? I hate to rush you into this but we are fairly rushed. My plane is taking us to Seattle tonight and I want to make sure you take us to her tomb while it is still daylight."

  I sat sharply on the edge of my seat.

  "Sure. Let me ask a neighbor to take care of Sally and we can get on our way." Her husband said. "We´ll tell you more on the way and I´ll bring her book."

  "There´s a book?"

  "Yes, we have her clippings, diaries, letters, some photos…I think you might like her medallion. Shelby is wearing it."

  I pushed back on the chair and rushed to Shelby. She stood knowingly and held my hands. "Is she with you now?"

  I nodded with my eyes welling up with tears again. She hugged me tightly and hugged her back. We stood there together a few moments before my lips parted and I heard Parker say, "I love you, chickadee." Shelby sobbed in my arms until Braff and her husband parted us and we drove to the Saint Eusebius Cemetery, about two miles away from where she lived.

  Chapter 39

  Marquee

  There´s A Light at The End of Every Story

  En route to Seattle, December 7th, 1989

  On the next plane back to Seattle, Braff caressed my hair and kissed my forehead while reading a manuscript. It was dark and I felt restless, so he turned the overhead lamp and smiled at me before kissing my lips gently. “Why so enrapt in thought, Mirim. I have never seen you as quiet as today.”

  “Just taking everything in, I guess.” I thought a moment before I spoke again. “Would it be too difficult to fly to the studio again? It would be the last thing I need to write her story.”

  “I don’t think I can make it Mirim, but I can arrange a plane for you and Taddy if you like.”

  “Taddy can’t. She’s flying to New York for a conference next week.”

  “Then, you’ll have to go on your own. You don’t have the blackouts anymore and I might ask you a favor while you’re there. It’ll be a write-up for the company.” We kissed to seal the deal and I fell asleep almost instantly.

  Memories of the cemetery came flashing across my mind, full sweeping the visions of Parker, dressed in a bright turquoise dress, and gold shoes, her lips red and partly open to a kiss that would never come. She then fell into a pool of water which smelled like liquor and I saw her impotently from the shore, as she drowned and waded in a shallow pool then a deep pool which became a tank.

  I jumped in and became her husband, dressed in a full suit like the ones Braff wears, and swam as much and as hard as I could, but I had barely touched her before she started to sink to the bottom. I saw her arms flailing and screamed which made me swallow a large gulp of gin or whiskey, I couldn’t tell.

  I started wailing “I couldn't save her…couldn't save her! PARKER!” When suddenly I saw a flash of blue and saw her swimming toward me. The water became a deep azure which lit with an invisible bulb above us. She whispered clearly to me, “Take the pearls to Sally. Let them know about me and tell them I lived my life with pain, but I was always loved. Always loved.”

  She pushed me toward the surface and I gulped hard rushes of air into my lungs. I swam to a greying shore with Juniper berries and flowers, like the field where Parker had lain with Fitch, He was standing on the shore dressed in white and holding a silvery blue ring, I saw him mouth Will you marry me? to which Parker nodded a silent yes. They hugged and I floated toward the heavens, rushed by a cold air which dropped me right in front of my mother, “What are you doing?” She asked.

  I said, “Creating a record.” Before my mother’s smile disappeared, I woke up in Seattle with a flashing light on a dim tarmac.

  We went to Braff’s home and I took a shower before he brought me a cup of lavender tea with honey. I looked up into his eyes and saw such a tender desire, I jumped on him and we made love until we were spent.

  He fell asleep before me and I sat at my word processor to type. Nothing came at first, but as soon as I typed the first line, it all poured out with the ease of my best term paper. Parker’s story took me all night and part of the morning but I wrote it with energy and enthusiasm.

  The most complicated part to type was the way Fitch had died. I had initially seen a scene which I later understood, greatly thanks to Parker’s daughter, that although I had seen him die under a lattice, it was actually inside one of the Navy’s USS ships. Parker woke to the chaos and ran to see where he was. Her despair and desire to save him was what made her run, in her pajamas, across the Pearl City barracks where she lived and almost got her killed had it not been for a superior who was partly dressed and was running to aid others defending the Harbor. Parker had never been able to reach him and instead had to bury the uniform, cap, and other items along an American flag in an empty casket and call it her beloved husband Fitch.

  In the end, the attack ended the lives of 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, and destroyed or damaged 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships. The three aircraft carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were out to sea on maneuvers, therefore unharmed, but the devastation is believed to be one of the worst in U.S. history. It resulted in the bombing of Japan, in retaliation for the attacks, which then turned the world into a destruction zone, followed by a second World War and countless innocent lives lost.

  I felt drained from the process of writing such an atrocious story with s
o many people hurt and killed. I have begun to investigate other wartime stories in hopes to give them some well-deserved justice too, but Parker was my priority at this time.

  The next day I took it to the office and told Braff to help me publish it. The last chapter would have to wait. I had insisted on taking some time off and went to the tomb where Fitch had been buried. I sat in front of it and cried, sobs of a lonely woman who got to love her husband for such a short time. I felt her pain reside in me as a bright, hot ember burning into my soul. I had a moment of dissonance where I felt there and in the present. I pulled myself onto the edge of the tomb and dug my fingers into the ground, my knees covered in dirt from the mess I had made. I saw my tears falling into the grave and I screamed until a man with a large-brimmed hat grabbed me and pulled me from the tomb.

  I was lucky to be dismissed from the premises with a reprimand because I was obviously in so much pain. The heartache has become mine through their loss and seeing their love flourish and die in such terrible circumstances.

  Parker’s story was published and made me a well-known author. I have already been commissioned to write a fictional standalone novel based on Pearl Harbor, but I’m a romance author so they are letting me write it as a Historical Fiction novel, which my readers seem to enjoy.

  Braff and I lasted a year before we split, and I found myself on a plane to Hawaii for Christmas again, dying to see my parents and Truman, exhausted yet renewed. Parker’s story made me incredibly grateful and I want to write more now. Like her, I am disciplined and focused, driven, and try to stay on task in my career, but the heart and soul of my work came from what I felt about them, the visions and dreams made me a better writer and I loved her for it. Still do.

  On the morning of Christmas eve, I opened the door to a brimming silhouette. He was more handsome than I remembered him and sporting a crisp shirt, smelling clean-shaven and looking as important as always. “Cheeks, nothing is more becoming on you than morning dew, but I’m convinced someone needs to tell you where the mirrors are in this house. Would you care for a brush?”

  Scott hugged me and I suddenly felt like I was melting into the floor.

  Chapter 40

  Marquee

  Get Ready to Smell The Kalani & Kiss The Sun

  Oahu, December 7th, 1989

  Scotty leads me toward the patio in his house. I hear his mother chatting away on the phone in the kitchen. I catch a glance of the garden dress and sigh despite my desire to stay as silent as possible. It reminds me of our childhood when his mother baked us cupcakes and let us get on chairs over the counter to sprinkle the powdered sugared, I mostly licked with my tiny dirty fingers. She smiled at us from above the rim of her thick glasses and hummed to a tune coming from the radio.

  When she heard me sigh, she popped her head from behind the kitchen door and signaled she would bring cupcakes and tea as she always did in the summer months, while still keeping the handset cradled on her shoulder. She laughed at the person on the other end and disappeared behind the door just in time for Scotty to grab my hand to lead me outside.

  The sprinklers were turned on and he was backlit with the silhouette of the hydrangeas and palm trees swaying in the breeze. The kalanis smell as sweet as they always have, sprinkled with drops of color around the center and popping from the green bushes everywhere.

  We perched over the railing in the wraparound porch and he fell silent for a minute looking into the distance. The moment seized me and I became entranced with memories of us, every smile and every moment of truth, his friendship and how good it felt to be by his side, the way his hair sparkled in the sunlight, and how I always remembered every nuance, every word, every moment had been laced around his presence until we both left for college.

  I slid closer to him and he instinctively wrapped his arm around my shoulder. Without a thought other than his soft eyes, wrinkling around the edges, I kissed him softly and he fell back, possibly surprised from my kiss. He stared at me a moment longer and said, “Why did this take so long?”

  I shrugged and was the one surprised when he pounced on me to kiss me longer. When he finally released his grip I said, “Maybe you needed the summer light to help. Maybe you showered today, maybe it was the breeze, maybe it was your mother in her cute flowery dress and not seeing you for so long, maybe it is the rising sign in our house or yours. Who knows why things take so long? All I know is that it felt so RIGHT!

  I pretended to faint, and he squealed to catch my fall. When I laughed, he slaps my bottom and hissed at me.

  “I guess some things never change.”

  I thought he wanted to kiss me again, but instead, he handed me a mitt he had been hiding behind the waist of his pants. “Playball?” He smiled and then kissed me again.

  The End

  AFTERWORD

  I simply cannot afford to end this novel without thanking all those who shaped the way it became a story about an industry formed from people who choose to perform. My love for a time where Hollywood seemed grand and glamourous is among my earliest memories. I don’t recall when I decided I wanted to write about the actresses especially those who suffered great losses and ultimately with their own lives for being pushed too far, too early, and gone too soon. But I remember the day I told my mother with the greatest of sincerity I wanted to be like Judy Garland, on a scene where she sang about a boy next door in a striped dress with a large bow and the loveliest gaze through a lace curtain.

  Later in life, I learned Garland was a Hollywood baby, grown and bred to perform, kept working with various medications which brought her up to speed, and forced her to take psychotropics or opioids to sleep and rest, uppers and downers as they called them, which as you may well know by now led her to abuse drugs, alcoholism, and ultimately, death. Marilyn Monroe, another one of my idols, followed in similar footprints to her death in a lonely bungalow. She is largely the inspiration for this novel. Jane Mansfield, Elvis Presley, and many others fell victim to abuse. Michael Jackson and Corey Feldman, though not from that same time, come to mind. Survivors are rare, like Drew Barrymore and Robert Downey Jr., who were likely addicted to drugs in early their careers, which could have resulted in a catastrophic end had they not swerved away from tragedy just in time. Glad they did and we get to see them again and again.

  All these tragic deaths beg the question, do we direct them straight into the arms of death because we idolize people who are talented and willing to go to any depth for the sake of a performance?

  I know I go full into a character and perform at my own risk, but would never back out of a project if it is good enough, despite risk and sacrifices, but I also know I wouldn’t want to precipitate somebody’s death for the sake of my entertainment.

  Does our willingness to watch actors and other artists perform make us participants, but does it make us responsible? Does it mean by being a willing participant I’m granted a shovel to pave the way toward their demise?

  More importantly, who do we blame for such tragedies? Are audiences in charge or are the studios?

  I don’t have those answers, but I know this. Every actor and performer will relate to the fact we are willing to participate and sometimes do not know how far the circus will take us. Some stories are scarier than others, but the interest I had in Judy Garland at the age of six has become a career and my career made me wonder, always curious and questioning the status quo. I wrote professionally and choose my words to be honest and candid, yet I feel I have left behind the realness of what we are, despite my efforts to commit fully to my career and never look back, and but cannot depart from the notion I am first and foremost an artist with a heightened sensitivity for human strength and suffering. Our history is our strength if we know where to look.

  It teaches us to be brave and to forge through. It led me here and my story into your hands, hopefully, possibly changing someone’s life, or perhaps affecting an industry which neglects to care for its own, our artistic community which turns its back on its fellow pe
ers and allows this to keep happening. The love we feel for starlight needs to be transformed into a genuine kind of love, a love which represents why we started to work as actors in the first place.

  While writing this novel, as I explained in the introduction, I was struggling in my life in late 2017 and early 2018. Before writing it and as the idea was beginning to take shape in my mind, I was watching Kurt Russel talking about his career, and what he said struck a chord. He mentioned Albert Schweitzer speaking about the power of film. I reference the paragraph at the beginning because it made perfect sense for me as well. Schweitzer said that “In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

  I’m grateful this novel rekindled the magic in my soul to write anew, to venture into the familiar yet unknown realm of Hollywood studios and their stories. Yet, it gave me another notion I was not anticipating. I realize we have a perception of fame and fortune, which may seem the culprit in most cases, but I saw Russel with his family by his side, supportive and finding in his happiness their own. His motivation, I believe, is his career and his safety net is his family, but he shone another light for me -those who come before us change us and lead the way, but it is ultimately us, and the fact we are responsible for changing lives and seeking a higher calling, what gives me the impulse to forge through. Russel helped me understand the importance of my career choices. I was able to reach those who would come after me, and mostly, I was not alone.