“Not if my daughter, our daughter,” she corrected with a smile, “is unhappy.”
“She's not unhappy. She just needs a lot of attention. Meeting her needs is a full-time project, if you let it. No one can stop everything they're doing and focus all their attention on a child. When we were married, I'd have wanted some of that myself. Yes, you were busy when they were small, but you paid a lot of attention to both of them, especially between films. There were a couple of rough years, right around the time you won your Oscars, when you were making movies back to back. But even then you took them with you. You made an epic in France, and had them with you the whole time. Carole, if you'd been a doctor or a lawyer, it would have been worse. I know women who have normal jobs, some of them on Wall Street for instance, who never spend time with their kids. You always did. I think Chloe just wanted a full-time mom, who never worked, stayed home baking cookies with her on weekends, and did nothing else but drive car pool. And how boring would that be?”
“Maybe not so boring,” Carole said sadly, “if it was what she needed. Why didn't I give up acting when we got married?” It sounded sensible to her now, but Jason laughed and shook his head.
“I don't think you understand yet how big a star you are. Your career was skyrocketing when I met you, and it just got hotter. You're way up there, Carole. It would have been a shame for you to give up a career like that. It's an incredible accomplishment to achieve what you have, and you even manage to support causes that are important to you, and the world, and put your name to good use. And you still managed to be a good mother. I think that's why Anthony is so proud of you. We all are. I think Chloe would have felt she got short shrift no matter what. It's just the way she is. Maybe it's how she gets what she wants, or needs. Believe me, neither of your children was ever neglected or unloved. Far from it.”
“I just wish Chloe felt better about it. She looks so sad when she talks about her childhood.” It made Carole feel guilty even though she didn't know what she'd done, or hadn't.
“She goes to a therapist,” he said quietly. “She has for the past year. She'll get over all that. Maybe this accident will finally make her realize how lucky she is to have you. You're a four-star mother.” And even now, with no memory, she was worried about her children, and grateful for his reassurance. As she listened to him, she was wondering if Chloe would like it if she went to London for a few weeks, once she was better. It might show her that her mother truly cared about her, and wanted to spend time with her.
She couldn't recapture the past or rewrite history, but she could at least try to do things better in the future. It was clear that Chloe felt she had been cheated as a child. And maybe this was Carole's chance to make it up to her, and give her what she felt she'd never had. She was willing to do that. She had nothing more important on her agenda. The book she'd been trying to write, if she could ever get back to it, could wait. Her priorities were different, since the bomb. It had been one hell of a wake-up call, and a last chance to do things right. She wanted to seize that opportunity while there was still time.
They talked about a variety of subjects for a while, and then she looked at him quietly as he sat in the chair where Stevie had sat the day before, telling her about her life. She wanted to know his part too.
“What happened to us?” Carole asked, looking sad. Their story obviously hadn't had a happy ending, if they got divorced.
“Wow… that's a big question …” He wasn't sure she was ready to hear it all, but she said she was. She needed to know who they had been, what had happened to them, and why they had gotten divorced, as well as what had happened since. She knew about Sean now, from Stevie, but she knew very little about her life with Jason, except that they had been married for ten years, lived in New York, and had two kids. The rest was a mystery to her. Stevie knew none of the details, and Carole wouldn't have dared to ask her kids, who were probably too young at the time to know what had happened anyway.
“I'm not sure, to be honest with you,” he answered finally. “I tried to figure it out for years. I guess the easiest answer is that I had a midlife crisis, and you had a major career. Both of those elements collided and blew us up. But it was more complicated than that. It was great at the beginning. You were already a star when I married you. You were twenty-two and I was thirty-one. I'd been lucky on Wall Street for about five years by then, and I wanted to back a movie. There was no great financial benefit to it, it just sounded like fun. I was a kid myself, and I wanted to meet pretty girls. Nothing much deeper to it than that. I met Mike Appelsohn at a meeting in New York, he was a big producer then, and had been acting as your agent since he discovered you. He still does.” He filled her in. “He invited me to L.A., he was putting together a deal. So I went, put my name on the dotted line to finance a film, and I met you.
“You were the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life, and on top of it, you were nice. You were sweet and young and innocent. And still very southern then. You had been in Hollywood for four years, and you were still this adorable, innocent kid, and already a big star. It was like all that stardom and fame hadn't touched you. You were the same decent, warm, honest person you must have been growing up on your dad's farm in Mississippi. You still had a southern accent then. I loved that too. And then Mike had you get rid of it. I always missed it. It was part of the sweetness I loved about you. You really were just a kid. I fell head over heels in love with you, and so did you, with me.
“I flew out a dozen times while you were making the movie, just to see you. We wound up all over the tabloids and the trades. Wall Street Whiz Kid Courts Hollywood's Hottest Star. You were the real deal. You were about as glamorous as it gets.” He smiled at her then. “You still are,” he said generously. “I just wasn't used to it then. I don't think I ever got used to it. I used to wake up in the morning and pinch myself, unable to believe I was married to Carole Barber. How much better could it get?
“We got married six months after we met, when you finished the film. At first you said you were too young to get married, and you probably were. I talked you into it, and you were honest. You said you weren't ready to give up your career. You wanted to make movies. You were having a ball, and so was I being with you. I've never had so much fun in my life as we did then.
“Mike flew us to Vegas one weekend in his plane, and we got married. He was our witness, along with some girlfriend of yours at the time. She was your roommate, and I can't for the life of me remember her name. She was the bridesmaid. And you were the most gorgeous bride I've ever seen. You borrowed a dress from Wardrobe from some nineteen-thirties movie. You looked like a queen.
“We went to Mexico for our honeymoon. We spent two weeks in Acapulco, and then you went back to work. You were doing about three movies a year then. That's a hell of a lot. The studios had you cranking them out one after the other, with big stars, big names, major producers, and turning down scripts as fast as they came in. You were an industry unto yourself. I've never seen anything like it. You were the hottest star in the world, and I was married to you. We were in the press constantly. That's heady stuff for two young kids, and I guess it gets old eventually. But it didn't for you. You loved every minute, and who could blame you? You were the darling of the world, the most desirable woman on the planet … and belonged to me.
“You were on location most of the time, and between pictures, we lived in New York together. We got a great apartment on Park Avenue. And whenever I could, I'd fly out to see you on location. We actually saw a lot of each other. We talked about having babies, but there was no time. There was always another film to do. And then Anthony came along. He was kind of a surprise, and we'd been married for two years by then. You took about six months off, as soon as it started to show, and went back to work when he was three weeks old. You were doing a movie in England, you took him with you, with a nanny. You were over there for five months, and I came over every couple of weeks. It was a crazy way to live, but your career was too hot to put a damper on, and you were too young to want to quit. I totally understood. You actually took a few months off when you were pregnant with Chloe. Anthony was three years old. You took him to the park, like all the other moms. I loved it. Being married to you was like playing house, with a movie star. The most beautiful woman in the world was mine.” He still had stars in his eyes when he said it, as Carole watched him from her bed, wondering why she hadn't slowed down. He didn't seem to question that as much as she did. Her career didn't seem as important now, to her anyway. But it had been then. He made that clear.