“That treelooksperfect, but it’snotperfect. That supports my point, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does. It’s driving me crazy, though. I used to make the best lemon pie from these lemons.”
“Mimi’s recipe?”
“You know it. Lemon filling so tart it’s on the border of being too much. The first bite makes your brain get its sweet and sour signaling mixed up.”
“That sounds fantastic.”
“There’s nothing stopping me from buying lemons and making that pie, but it feels like a comedown. But I should do it. It’s just atree. What do you think about lemon pie for Thanksgiving? No, don’t answer that. I’m vetoing it. Lemon doesn’t go with Thanksgiving.”
She came back, but this time she left an empty chair between them. He wondered why.
“I think today really helped,” he said. “With the book, I mean. It was good to get out.”
“Toldya.”
“You remember the night I arrived, you asked me if I wanted the desk to look out at the pool or be against a wall? You asked me if I was the kind of writer who was inspired by looking at stuff or if I needed to cocoon.”
“Yeah, and you said you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t. I still don’t, not really. But not cocooning today was nice. It’s funny, my dad was an extreme cocooner. Still is, I’m sure. He used to write a book every two or three years, and there would always be a stage where you weren’t allowed to talk to him. When those times coincided with my visits, he would have Mary the librarian come over and bring me dinner, or he’d send me to this friend’s house who also lived on the lake, which was fine—he had a daughter my age and we were tight. But why even have me stay with him if he was going to be so absent? I wasn’t even allowed to knock on the door to his office.” Ugh, he sounded like a boy talking about his hurt feelings. “I didn’t get it then.”
“But you do now?”
“I guess I do. He did what he had to do.”
She snorted.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking that his so-called cocoon method sounds very male. I imagine women writers wouldn’t have that luxury.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, I imagine they can’t just abandon their domestic responsibilities. If they were to do that, they’d be monsters, whereas men who do that are quirky geniuses. Same with Method acting.”
He was aware that he sounded like a broken record, but all he could do was ask the same question. “How do you mean?”
“Method acting—where you immerse yourself so fully in your character that you live as them full-time. I mean, that’s actually a bastardization of the Method, but that’s what it’s come to mean for a lot of people. So for example, if you play a psychotic villain, you become a psychotic villain. You treat everyone on set like crap and swan around demanding people not make eye contact with you or whatever.”
“Really?” He’d known what Method acting was, but he’d never thought about how it played out in practice.
“Yes. I was only ever in fluffy rom-coms, but I have a friend who was—is—a bigger star, and you should hear her stories. She once had a costar send a dead rat to her trailer. It was all wrapped up like a present, and it scared the heck out of her when she opened it. When she tried to call him on it, he said it was just part of his Method. But couldsheget away with something like that?”
“I’m guessing no.”
“No,” she said emphatically. “Not if she ever wanted to work again. No one casts ‘difficult’ women. There’s a reason Meryl Streep isn’t sending roadkill to her costars.”
“And yet Meryl Streep is widely considered the best actor of her generation.”
“So you don’t need roadkill and bad behavior to be successful is the takeaway, I guess.”
“Is this a parable?”
