She was still young, but she was even younger then, only eighteen and pretty sure that even getting on that set was somebody else’s major fuckup that would soon be discovered, and so she had better take advantage of it quick, because if she messed it up she’d have taken something away from not only her own future, but her family’s future, too. (But, no pressure.)
And the most unbelievable part was that she’d pulled it off. Like, she’d fooled convinced a lot of people to believe that she was some sort of beautiful hick-town prodigy, some rare, talented bird they’d discovered in the wilds of Montana. It was too Hollywood to be believed.
And of course, that was Hollywood, exactly.
Only weeks before that first film, that first set, she’d been sleeping on her uncle Rob’s couch and right on the slippery edge of a life that might have ended up eventually looking a lot like the one her mom had long been living: get fucked up to escape your days until you don’t really give a shit about your days—and no one else gives much of a shit about them, either. (But only because you’ve made it so they can’t—because if they do, you’ll con them or pull them under with you.)
It was a life that Harper knew some of her friends (were most of them ever really her friends?) were living right now, in towns not far away from the deck on which she stood. In fact, if not for the smoke, she could’ve seen some of those towns’ windows wink in the setting sun, or flash like cameras against the dark mountainside. She was that close.
But instead of that life, here was chic Annie pulling off her embroidered cover-up so she could climb into the Jacuzzi while Ethan ran to get a water gun from inside the house where their so-happy and steady and sober (for now) mother was napping.
And here was Harper Harper* herself, standing on the deck of the house she’d just bought, documenting her success one post after the next.
In Rhode Island, Merritt Emmons looked at the black rim of woods in the distance and shivered. Her brain lit up with a Henry James line as she did, one from The Turn of the Screw: “It wasn’t a scene for a shudder.” Not that she’d shuddered, really, she’d shivered, but in either case, it wasn’t the scene for one, not with the popping firepit before her and Elaine roasting a marshmallow—roasting a fucking marshmallow!—next to her. Still, it couldn’t be helped: Merritt shivered again. The breeze off the water was almost always cold at night. She’d been chilly enough to pull on her sweater earlier and now both it and her hair—thick with natural curls and her one physical vanity—were steeped in wood smoke and salt mist. In the shower the next morning the ghost-smoke would rinse down her body and swirl the drain. She’d always liked that aftereffect.
Merritt had what she thought was the latest draft of the Happenings at Brookhants script there on the seat beside her. She’d read the thing maybe seven times already, and it’s not like she was even in it. She didn’t need to learn the lines. (Though she had learned them.)
She’d brought the script outside, to the terrace, to read aloud the most obnoxious sections to Elaine, but Elaine had stopped being amused several lines earlier and Merritt had quit her performance. This was, after all, Elaine’s home. She was the one to be deferred to.
Really, the fact of Merritt even having that script could be traced back to Elaine’s involvement. That she, Merritt Emmons, rapidly aging wunderkind writer from collegetown Connecticut, would soon be getting on an airplane bound for Hollywood, where she would be assisting in preproduction work on the film being adapted from her first book, her only book, was still as unreal a thing to her as the things she’d written about in that book.
The literal ghosts of Clara Broward and Florence “Flo” Hartshorn Merritt did not think she believed in. But the story of their thwarted teenage love affair and all the weird and terrible things to come at Brookhants: those things were documented fact. Those things were verifiable. And Merritt was someone who very much liked to have things verified.
She also happened to have had access to the best in primary-source material—diaries and yearbooks and newspaper clippings—because Elaine, the woman now so carefully building a s’more next to Merritt on an oversize outdoor sectional, was Elaine Elizabeth Bishop Brookhants, and certainly one of those names should ring a bell for you, Readers, if you’ve been paying attention. She owned the estate, her family’s estate, where what was left of the Brookhants School for Girls still stood. It was the same massive parcel of land that this, her historic ocean house, Breakwater,* was built upon.
But then, that’s Elaine Elizabeth Bishop Brookhants money for you.
Merritt had been visiting the property since second grade, the year her mother received a grant from Elaine’s research foundation, which kicked off a friendship between Professor Emmons and Elaine that lasted still. This happened back when Merritt’s father was still alive.
He wasn’t anymore.
The truth is, were Merritt’s father still alive it’s doubtful that she would have written her book in the first place. What happened, or at least what she told herself about what happened, was this: her father killed himself and as soon after as she could stand to, she threw herself into doing a thing to distract herself from that fact. That thing was writing the book The Happenings at Brookhants. Elaine had encouraged her relentlessly. In fact, for a long time, the intensity of Elaine’s belief in her was far greater than Merritt’s own belief in the book.
“So you aren’t happy with any of it?” Elaine now asked, fishing a peanut butter cup from the bag. Elaine claimed the earthiness from the peanut butter was a component so necessary as to outweigh any flimsy arguments from s’more traditionalists. She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about. Merritt loved this about her. Usually.
She was asking about the script and no, Merritt wasn’t happy with it, but it’s also true that her standards were both high and fickle. So many things felt so routinely disappointing to her that it seemed a shame to waste this evening on that mild unhappiness, one that she could admit to herself possibly wasn’t deserved.
“It’s just that it seems so blunted. But they also say you can’t really tell anything from a screenplay.” Merritt repeated this thing she’d heard and read and even said herself, though she did not believe it as fact when applied to her own work.
“I think it has its moments,” Elaine said, offering Merritt half of the now-finished s’more. Only Elaine could manage to break a s’more so cleanly. Where were the crumbs? Where was the gooey mess of marshmallow all over her pressed black capris or the smear of melted chocolate across the collar of her white linen shirt? Elaine went on, “And it’s really most useful to consider it as a means to an end, isn’t it?”
“Useful how?”
“Well, if you add up the performances, the costumes, the sets and the sound effects and the score—on and on—and then all the months of editing besides, the screenplay suddenly feels quite small, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know if small is the word I’d use,” Merritt said. Her fingers were sticky and a few graham cracker shards were already down her shirt.
“Merritt, don’t you think it’s maybe a tad precious to be so constantly disagreeable about your success?” her mother asked from the other end of the couch, a laptop propped on her knees so that its screen lent a ghoulish cast to her face.