Salary at scale. No participation in the gross rentals. Stuff like that.'
'Stop looking for rusty nails in your soup,' he said exasperatedly.
'I'm not eating soup.'
'Don't get cute.'
'I'm drinking champagne.'
'You know what I mean.'
She stared at the bubbles bursting in her glass of Dom Perignon.
She felt as if hundreds of bubbles were rising within her, too, chains of tiny, bright bubbles of joy: but a part of her acted like a cork to contain the effervescent emotion, to keep it securely under pressure, bottled up, safely contained. She was afraid of being too happy. She didn't want to tempt fate.
'I just don't get it,' Wally said. 'You look as if the deal fell through. You did hear me all right, didn't you?'
She smiled. 'I'm sorry. It's just that ... when I was a little girl, I learned to expect the worst every day. That way, I was never disappointed. It's the best outlook you can have when you live with a couple of bitter, violent alcoholics.'
His eyes were kind.
'Your parents are gone,' he said, quietly, tenderly. 'Dead. Both of them. They can't touch you, Hilary. They can't hurt you ever again.'
'I've spent most of the past twelve years trying to convince myself of that.'
'Ever consider analysis?'
'I went through two years of it.'
'Didn't help?'
'Not much.'
'Maybe a different doctor--'
'Wouldn't matter,' Hilary said. 'There's a flaw in Freudian theory. Psychiatrists believe that as soon as you fully remember and understand the childhood traumas that made you into a neurotic adult, you can change. They think finding the key is the hard part, and that once you have it you can open the door in a minute. But it's not that easy.'
'You have to want to change,' he said.
'It's not that easy, either.'
He turned his champagne glass around and around in his small well-manicured hands. 'Well, if you need someone to talk to now and then, I'm always available.'
'I've already burdened you with too much of it over the years.'
'Nonsense. You've told me very little. Just the bare bones.'
'Boring stuff,' she said.
'Far from it, I assure you. The story of a family coming apart at the seams, alcoholism, madness, murder, and suicide, an innocent child caught in the middle.... As a screenwriter, you should know that's the kind of material that never bores.'
She smiled thinly. 'I just feel I've got to work it out on my own.'
'Usually it helps to talk about--'
'Except that I've already talked about it to an analyst, and I've talked about it to you, and that's only done me a little bit of good.'
'But talking has helped.'
'I've got as much out of it as I can. What I've got to do now is talk to myself about it. I've got to confront the past alone, without relying on your support or a doctor's, which is something I've never been able to do.' Her long dark hair had fallen over one eye; she pushed it out of her face and tucked it behind her ears. 'Sooner or later, I'll get my head on straight. It's only a matter of time.'
Do I really believe that? she wondered.
Wally stared at her for a moment, then said, 'Well, I suppose you know best. At least, in the meantime, drink up.' He raised his champagne glass. 'Be cheerful and full of laughter so all these important people watching us will envy you and want to work with you.'
She wanted to lean back and drink lots of icy Dom Perignon and let happiness consume her, but she could not totally relax. She was always sharply aware of that spectral darkness at the edges of things, that crouching nightmare waiting to spring and devour her. Earl and Emma, her parents, had jammed her into a tiny box of fear, had slammed the heavy lid and locked it; and since then she had looked out at the world from the dark confines of that box. Earl and Emma had instilled in her a quiet but ever-present and unshakable paranoia that stained everything good, everything that should be right and bright and joyful.
In that instant, her hatred of her mother and father was as hard, cold, and immense as it had ever been. The busy years and the many miles that separated her from those hellish days in Chicago suddenly ceased to act as insulation from the pain.
'What's wrong?' Wally asked.
'Nothing. I'm okay.'
'You're so pale.'
