Making Amends to Those Who Deserve It
Damian
It’s our last day of filming. I’ve personally set back production by about three weeks: a personal best.
Things are starting to turn around, though. With Ben finally remanded, Emma’s doing a lot better. With Danna planning to move back in tonight, a lot of crap is finally off my mind.
Danna’s decision to move back came as a bit of a surprise. She had, like she said she would, sent someone to pick up her things and her stuff was gone, all of it. Then, out of the blue a few days ago, I get a call from her saying that she’s had a change of heart, and if I’d still have her, she’d be happy to move back in with me.
My sister, my twin—she can be quite the handful, and she has mood swings like nobody I’ve ever met, but she’s always been there. Even when we weren’t together, we were always talking, and being completely out of contact with her, even for such a short time, was more difficult than I thought it would be.
Maybe it’s a twin thing, maybe it’s a dead parents thing, but when you’ve been through a certain kind of chaos for long enough, you really start to value the things that don’t change and the people that stick around. I’m just glad that Danna decided to remain one of those people that stick around.
Before I get to the set, I stop by Ed’s hospital room. We’ve been getting along a little better now that he’s dying.
I’d love to be able to put it less bluntly than that, but I’m pretty convinced that if the old rotten bastard wasn’t dying, we’d never have been able to bury the hatchet as much as we have.
“Shit,” he says as I walk into his room, “it’s you.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “It’s me.”
“Haven’t I told you never to come back here?” he asks.
“Every time I’ve come to visit,” I answer.
“Stubborn,” he says. “I guess I can respect that.”
“You’re calling me stubborn?” I ask. “You were supposed to die weeks ago.”
“True,” he says, “but I’ve never been that good about keepin’ to a schedule.”
“Have they found a heart for you yet?” I ask.
“Nothin’ yet,” he says. “Mine’s hanging in there better than the doctors thought it would, though. Son,” he says, “I think there’s something we need to talk about.”
Son? That was a bit unsettling.
“What?” I ask.
His mouth moves like he’s trying to move a bad bite of food into his cheek.
“I loved my daughter,” he says. “I loved that little girl since before she was born and I love her even now that she’s been gone all these years. Do you know what it’s like for a father to see his daughter look at another man like he’s going to solve all of her problems?” he asks.
“No,” I answer, “I don’t.”
“Well, it pisses ya right off,” Ed says, and has a small coughing fit. “That’s the look she’s supposed to have reserved for her father, but that’s not the way it works out. One day, the little girl becomes a young woman, and there’s someone else she thinks can take on the world in her honor, and when you started coming around, I saw that look going to you more and more. That’s why I didn’t like you while the two of you were dating.”
The only thing I can think is that he knows he’s going to die and he’s just trying to clear his conscience before he goes, because despite the fact that we have made some pretty huge progress since that first visit, we’ve never been anywhere near this.
“After she died,” Ed says, “I knew it wasn’t your fault, but I wanted somebody to blame and you were custom tailored for the role. Penelope and I’ve had a long, good life together and I love my wife, but Jamie was the light in both our worlds. When she was gone, I felt like hurting someone else the way that I felt hurt, and because we’d never gotten along and because she was pregnant with your child, I made that someone you. For that,” he says, “I really am truly sorry.”
This isn’t what I was expecting when I came here.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “That really means a lot to me.”
“All that said,” he continues, “I still think you’re a pompous idiot who gets paid way too much to do something a reanimated corpse with a decent set of teeth could do.”
Given the nature and number of our conversations to date, that’s still on the list of nicest things he’s ever said to me.
We talk for a while until he starts to get tired, and I excuse myself with plans to see him again sometime in the next couple of days, and I walk out of that hospital feeling pretty damn good.
I leave the hospital, drive straight to the set, and it’s not long before I’m in wardrobe, getting ready to do my last scene. I’m wondering if I’m going to miss this set like I’ve missed others in the past. This is where I met Emma, so I’m sure it’s going to have a certain significance to it, but with everything else that’s happened while this movie’s been getting made, I’m not sure that significance is going to be all positive.
“Are you nervous?” Tammy from wardrobe asks.
“Not really,” I tell her. “It’s just another day on the set. It’s just another scene.”
“Yeah,” she says, “but it’s the last one of the movie. That’s a pretty big deal.”
“I guess,” I tell her.
She hands me my clothes for the scene and I quickly change into them. I’ve still got makeup to go through, but in less than an hour, assuming I don’t totally blow the scene repeatedly, they’ll call a “wrap on Damian Jones,” and after that comes the wrap party, and after that comes a few weeks’ peace before I have to start making the rounds promoting this thing.
“I want you to know that it’s been a real honor to work with you,” Tammy says. “You’ve really helped open my eyes to a lot of things.”
That’s kind of weird, but okay.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I tell her. “Where are you going from here?”
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “I’m going to miss this set, though.”
“Yeah,” I agree mindlessly. “I’m not.”
“Well,” Tammy says, “I know that a lot’s happened since filming started, but you can’t let that be the only thing you take away from this. After all,” she says, “people get whatever they get. You can fight it, but you’re going to go crazy trying.”
She gives my outfit one last once-over, and with a smile, she waves and bids me farewell.
Me, I’m stuck in place. I can’t move and I have to make a very conscious effort to breathe.
“People get whatever they get,” she said. “You can fight it, but you’re going to go crazy trying.”
I remember those words.
I remember using those words.
That’s something I told Rita that night on the phone. I haven’t told anyone about that conversation, much less any direct quotes from it.
Tammy is Rita. Rita is Tammy.
Part of me just wants to let her go, but I don’t know for a fact that she’s not going to just keep doing what she’s been doing if I don’t stop her, so I get out of that room and I find Trey. I ask him if he’s seen Tammy, but he hasn’t.
She’s been quiet since that phone call, but she’s unpredictable. As much as I’d love to pretend that my sage advice must have simply changed her entire character and demeanor, I’m not that stupid.
I ask Trey to have security stop Tammy and bring her back to the set when they spot her, but even before I go in to do my scene, I know she’s already gone.
Either I’m going to have to deal with her for the duration, or something did change, though I don’t know what, and she’s going to leave me alone now.
It would be great to know which.
The scene I’m scheduled for right now—my last scene of the movie—is one of the first shots in the film and it’s just of me sitting in a room, correcting English homework. There’s really nothing to screw up here, but I thought the same thing before the scene with the towels and the hotel room.
This is going to be part of the opening montage, and though it’s likely this scene isn’t going to put up more than a total of 20, 30 seconds at the most, despite what I told Tammy, I am nervous.
I’ve been nervous before, during, and after every scene I’ve ever done.
That’s just the way it goes when you take what you do seriously.
I talk with Dutch a moment and then I sit in the chair in front of Emma’s character’s stepdaughter’s homework, and I start looking over it as if I am the tutor and this is the work that I love.
While I’m looking through the pages, “correcting” this and that as I go, Dutch yells action, and apparently he’s yelled cut because everyone’s cheering and Dutch is saying, “That’s a wrap on Damian Jones.”
There are still more scenes to be shot before the movie’s done, and then there’s effects and editing and everything that comes with postproduction, but as far as I’m concerned, the making part of this movie is over.
Looking back, I don’t know that my performance has been worthy of the Oscar I told Emma I was going to win from doing this film, even if everything inside and outside the walls of the set had gone smoothly, but that never really mattered. To be honest, I think I’d just be embarrassed if I got a nomination for this movie.
It’s right around there that I finally decide to decide what I’m going to do with my career. Maybe I’ll stick with the fluff; maybe I’ll take on something more serious, more demanding. I’m not going to decide now, but I’m finally ready to think about what it is that I really want and stop treading water.
Emma is supposed to come over tonight for our own personal wrap party before the official one in two days when she’s done with her scenes, and I’d really like to get home before she shows up. Danna’s coming back tonight, and I’d really love to keep the two of them separated as completely as I can for as long as I can.
Danna says she has some things to talk about and some things to apologize for, but she gave me free reign over when that happens.
It’s for that and many other reasons that I’m surprised at what I find when I get home.
Emma’s car is parked out front, but that’s not the strange thing. As I drive over the fading scrawls of one of Tammy’s many professions of love and at least temporary psychosis, I spot Danna and Emma sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea together.
I park the car and get out, walking with a certain caution toward the pair, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.
“Hey, little bro,” Danna says.
“Hey, Damian,” Emma says.
“Hey, you two,” I answer, and look back and forth between them. “What’s going on here?”
“I got here a little early,” Emma says. “I tend to do that. Anyway, Danna was here when I pulled up and we’ve just been talking.”
“Okay,” I answer, and look to Danna for her explanation, as I assume her need to oppose everything Emma will skew the report a bit one way or another.
“Yeah,” Danna says, “we’ve just been talking a bit.”
“Should I be worried?” I ask.
“No,” Danna says. Even Emma seems to be in a good mood, a rarity for anyone when they’ve spent a few minutes with Danna. “I’m glad that you’re back, though,” Danna says. “There are a couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about, the both of you.”
“Okay,” I say, and sit down in one of the empty chairs on the porch. “What did you want to talk about?” I ask.
“First off,” she says, “Emma, I know I’ve already said this, but I want to apologize for the way I’ve behaved toward you. I think a lot of it was that I didn’t want to see someone taking away my time with my brother. I think part of it was that I was trying to protect him from what I saw to be a dangerous situation. I think there’s still another part of me that just didn’t want to have to take the risk and get attached again—you know that I was very close with Jamie, right?”
“Yeah,” Emma answers.
“Anyway, I get that I was acting like an idiot and I’m very sorry,” Danna says.
“You’re forgiven,” Emma says immediately.
Danna looks over to me. “Are we good, little bro?” she asks.
I narrow my eyes. “You know,” I tell her, “I think I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re planning something bad, but I’ve been proven wrong on that one in the past—”
“I’m not planning anything bad,” Danna laughs. “I don’t even know what you think I would plan. I’d just like it if all of us could patch things up and get along.”
“What changed your mind?” I ask. “Whatever it was must have been pretty extreme. I mean, you actually moved out over all this.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘all this,’” Danna says, “but what changed my mind was Emma.”
Emma asks, “How so?”
“It was that interview you did on Ida,” Danna says. “That’s what finally stopped seeing you as the ghost of Damian and my past, but as the person you are.”
“Really?” Emma asks. “I never saw the tape, but I would have thought there would be nothing but partially veiled contempt for pretty much everyone in the room.”
“Oh no, that came through pretty well in a lot of places. Not gonna lie,” Danna says, “hilarious. That’s not what did it, though. It was your smile and what you said about it in those pictures. I see pictures of myself all the time after our parents died and after my diagnosis and I want to just tear every last one of them up. I know they’re different things, but I always felt the same way about those pictures of me. Seeing that smile on my face made me feel like a liar. When you described that in your own life, I don’t know if it was just the knowledge that we had something in common or what, but I finally started listening to you as you were speaking. You may be a bit of a scandal magnet, but I think you’re someone I’d like to have around. Besides,” Danna says, “I heard about how you broke that fucker’s nose when he tried to confront you after the show. That is just so fucking hardcore, you have no idea.”
Emma laughs, and though I’m still skeptical about my sister’s newfound pair of angel wings, I permit a smile to come over my face.
We sit and we talk for hours, and it not groundbreaking or particularly important for any reason other than the fact that it’s happening. The words themselves don’t matter so much; it’s just the fact that they’re being spoken at all.
After a while, the moving truck carrying all of Danna’s crap arrives at the house and they lug her shit into her room. She goes off to unpack while Emma and I sit down to dinner.
Things are quiet for the most part. We’re just enjoying each other’s proximity.
Dinner comes to an end and Emma helps me with the dishes. It seems like things are starting to wind down when Emma asks if I’d like to go for a ride in her car.
I shrug and give my consent, and so we drive, Emma at the wheel, me looking for reasons why this moment isn’t just about perfect and only coming up with a few.
“I have some news,” Emma says.
“Yeah?” I ask. “What’s that?”
“My dad left town,” she says. “He gave me a call today to let me know that he’s back in Illinois, safe and sound, and that I don’t have to worry about him coming around anymore. Do you happen to know anything about that?”
“Me?” I ask. “How would I even know how to find your dad, much less convince him to go home?”
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Danna was staying at that same hotel and she denied even knowing that my father was in town, or for that matter, living.”
“There are a couple of possibilities,” I tell her. “One possibility is that he realized what he was doing was wrong and he decided to stop before he made things any worse.”
“Try again,” Emma says.
I chuckle. “Okay,” I tell her. “Maybe he caught wind of what you did to Ben and he decided that if he didn’t get the hell out of Dodge, he’d be next.”
“As great a fantasy as that is, I really don’t think that would do it, either,” she says. “I think he’d have gone on a killing spree before he’d admit, even to himself, that he was scared of his daughter.”
“Well, it’s a mystery then,” I tell her.
She doesn’t need to know that I ran into the guy one night after Danna started staying there and I asked him what it would take for him to leave and never come back.
Maybe I should have learned from Emma and maybe he’s just going to end up coming back for more, but I may have intimated that if we had any further trouble from him, I had some “friends” who would happily “deal” with the situation.
That seemed to do the trick.
We pull onto Emma’s street and her motivation to take a drive becomes clear.
“You know,” she says, “things taking a turn for the better after they’ve been bad for so long has a way of making a person feel pretty damn alive.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I’ll give you a choice,” she says after entering the code for her gate, “car or front lawn.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t seem to be joking.
“Front lawn?” I ask.
“It’s not totally private,” she says, “but it beats driving for three hours only to end up with ants all over your body. I’m asking you to choose between the car and the front lawn, because honestly, I don’t think I can make it much further than that.”
I smile and laugh, and because I’m a little worried about ants myself, I answer, “Car.”
The gate’s closing behind her and Emma’s parking in her garage. She’s barely pressed the button to drop the garage door before her seat belt is off and she’s halfway out of her seat, kissing me.
I manage to unfasten my own seat belt before Emma’s halfway out of her seat and into mine, tearing my shirt open as she moves from one side of the car to the other.
“You’re in a good mood today,” I tell her.
“I told you I was,” she says between hot, hard kisses.
She’s ripping her own shirt from her body, and I’m undoing her bra, allowing her perfect breasts to breathe.
I coyly tongue her nipples, and she’s lifting her body to allow herself better access to undo my belt and my pants.
Before I even know it, she’s facing away from me, sitting on my lap, and she reaches over to the side of the seat and leans it back all the way.
“There,” she says and turns back around to face me with more ease than one would think possible given the limited amount of space we have to work with, “that’s better.”
“You know,” I tell her, “you could have just asked.”
“I know,” she says, “but I was trying to stay in the moment.”
That seems fair enough.
“Put your hands flat on my sides, fingers pointing down just above my waistline,” she says.
I tease her specificity, but I do as I’m told. Emma unbuttons her pants and unzips the zipper.
“Slide your hands down my legs,” she says. “My pants should come right off.”
“You’ve done this before,” I muse, and per her instructions, I slide my hands down the sides of her legs, taking a moment to grasp that movie star ass of hers.
I slip her pants down as far as I can and she kicks her legs out from there. When she moves her bare gorgeousness toward me again, she places one knee on the outside of each of my legs, and without another moment’s hesitation, she lowers herself onto my hard and waiting erection.
Instinctively, I grab my shaft, and as I slip out of her just a little, I start working my tip over her already swollen bud when she grabs my hand and stops me.
“I think we can spare the upholstery a deluge,” she says, and replacing my hand with hers on my penis, she puts me back at the mouth of her entrance and lowers herself onto me again.
We kiss and our bodies writhe together, every intentional and unintentional touch of her skin against mine only taking me more completely into the sensuality of right now.
She presses her body into mine, and I hold her close, running my fingertips over her upper back as she rides me.
Her hips are churning over me and I lift my butt just enough to add that extra bit of momentum as she falls completely onto me.
“That’s it,” she tells me. “Now, grab my hips,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of room to move, so you’re going to have to help me if you want me to fuck you harder.”
“I can’t believe I used to think you were a prude,” I tell her, putting my hands on her hips.
“All right,” she says. “Do it hard and with my rhythm,” and I let my hands move with her body to familiarize myself with her pace before I strengthen my grip enough to guide her body with greater drive up and down my erection.
Glancing out the rearview mirror, I see how the car is rocking, and I chuckle with a pretty decent amount of immaturity.
Emma kisses me on the mouth, and although I’m not sure whether it’s because she’s in the moment or because she just want me to shut up, I’m happy to focus my attention back on her.
I move my hands from Emma’s hips and place one hand across her back onto the opposite shoulder and the other around her lower back, my hand resting just above her hip on the other side, and I pull her even closer as I continue bringing her down faster and harder onto me.
“Oh God,” she says, “oh yeah. I’m going to come, baby,” she says, and a moment later, she’s quivering in my arms.
We’re kissing and there’s not a sliver of air between us as the tempo increases and the feeling begins to crescendo and it’s all I can do to keep enough air in my lungs.
“I’m going to…” she trails off, and the next sound from her is a loud, enthusiastic moan that seems to stretch on forever as a single note of the most perfect symphony.
I’m getting close myself seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting this woman. She’s immaculate, and that’s when she says it.
She’s still coming hard on top of me and her hips are moving furiously, though the rest of her body is comparatively still, and in a long whisper, she says, “I love you.”
A few seconds later and Emma’s slowing her pace, and she opens one eye to look at me because I haven’t said anything yet.
After another half minute, Emma’s motionless with me still inside her, and she’s looking at me with those wide eyes, saying, “I love you, Damian,” and I could swear that before she says the words, I had the ability to speak, to respond, to say something, but that’s gone now and getting only further away with every breath that passes with me not saying anything.
More seriously now, Emma looks hard into my eyes and repeats, one last time, those words, “I love you.”
I know the worst thing I can do here is not answer, but I’m incapable of anything else at the moment.
Whether it’s that so much has happened over so few months or whether it’s all that stuff Danna said about Emma still rattling around in the back of my head or whether I’m still a little resentful that she didn’t say it back to me that first time, I haven’t a clue, but she’s starting to lose her patience and I’m just sitting here.