put down the steaming mocha lattes I’d picked up while checking out the amazing abs on this man who works out every day at 6 a.m. like clockwork. ‘I’m… well, confused.’
‘Join the club. You’re going through a big transition. Like me.’ He punched the bag and the sweat rolled down his face and made his bare chest shine bronze and gold under the hot lights. I’m not immune to his appeal. I just don’t go there in my mind. I don’t want to be another groupie.
Ridge is a legend in the world of stunt work and the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions to the industry and high-risk stunts. He doesn’t talk about himself, but it pains me to see how he’s struggling to accept the fact that at forty, time is catching up with him. I’ve watched him perform on the set and the man is a warrior-god in action. When it’s time to go to work, his head is in the game and he never gives up.
Last year he cut back on his stunt work to focus on his future (he’s been in the business since he was sixteen). He’s quick to admit you can only get set on fire or die by the sword so many times.
I couldn’t believe it when he told me he had a new gig as a film archivist. It’s been his dream for a long time to ensure the films highlighting the greatest stunts from the early silents to the present aren’t lost, but preserved for the next generation of stunt performers.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my problems with Maman, I didn’t realize I’d gone into a strange shell of my own.
Which was why I’d showed up this morning. I needed a pep talk.
‘For years, I ignored my fears,’ Ridge continued, ‘let the adrenaline override everything else. Pushed forward and got the job done.’ He punched the bag so hard the sweat on his face spurted into the air. ‘Then I got hurt and reality hit me like a steel drum. It took me a while to come to terms with my vulnerabilities.
‘I’m not afraid to jump out of a plane or leap onto a moving train. I am afraid of letting down my team… and that means you, Juliana. You’re always there for me when I do something stupid, or how you make me talk about something that happened on a shoot I don’t want to talk about.
‘I won’t let you down now. You talked about how you’ve been avoiding letting go of the past, moving on. Don’t run from your past, embrace it. The hardest part about doing a stunt is that moment before you make the jump. If you think too much about it, you’ll make a mistake. If you get nervous, that’s when you get hurt. Just do it… make your decision and go with it.’
My talk with Ridge about finding the courage to move on has fueled my energy in a new direction. I’ve put this off too long. So why not start on a rainy afternoon? I’m working on the designs for a show that takes place around the time Maman was a teenager. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration from her for the uniform for my friendly skies attendant. I smile. I like that idea. As if she’s helping me move on.
I push down the deep ache in my chest, heave out a big, cleansing breath. Then I put down my coffee cup and get to work.
It’s time, Maman.
My mother, Madelaine Chastain, was just a baby when Paris was liberated in 1944, but the demure Frenchwoman always put off talking about her family when I asked her, waving her hand about like she was signaling someone unseen to go away lest they spill the beans. A ghost, perhaps. To my knowledge, Maman’s family were all killed in the war. That didn’t excuse her lack of une famille in my eyes. When I asked the faculty staff who came down for the funeral if she ever mentioned any relatives in France, they shook their heads. I admit I was too distraught over her death and exhausted from the toll caregiving took on me to go searching any further. I wonder if I should have. She must have someone I can write to, talk with about my mother’s last few years, her downward spiral into a deep depression that made her believe she was a burden to me. She once said something I tucked away in my mind.
That I’d have enough to bear if I ever found out about ‘her’.
Who she was talking about, I never figured out.
Maman never spoke about my grandparents, insisting they died in the war. As a teenager, I spent hours conjuring up a fantastic tale of them being Resistance fighters, brave partisans fighting the Nazis but making sure their daughter was safe with the nuns since they’d most likely be killed before their country was free again. I’d come up with various ‘looks’, but my favorite was a sketch of my grandmother outfitted in partisan chic – pencil skirt, silky cream blouse, knee-high, brown suede boots, and a bomber jacket cinched in at her waist. A deep navy beret pulled down over one eye, her lips bright with a sizzling red lipstick.
So unlike my mother. I often tried to get Maman to add a necklace or earrings to her ensemble, but she always pooh-pooed the idea, saying she was a convent girl at heart. After all, glam is my business. Giving actresses the right cut on a dress, the fit of a pair of jeans, the angle of a hat. The retired art history professor never deviated from her black suit, crisp white blouse, low pumps, and square glasses.
These memories of Maman and fantasies of my grandmother are all I have to cling to. I realize now I avoided a lot of things in my life because I was too busy following my dream of making it in Hollywood. In college, I was picked as the model for the movie studio tour ads, though I never saw myself as an actress or beautiful. The only thing I can lay claim to as anything interesting about my face is the deep dimple on my left cheek.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved to draw… stick figures in my mother’s textbooks, making clothes for my Barbie, working on costumes for school plays. I do visual storytelling, designing costumes specific to that character and give it the cinematic flair to work on the silver screen.
Maman didn’t understand my love for design or the movies. She loved her history books and her students and rarely talked about anything else. I never pressed her about where we came from and she seemed happy I didn’t. My mother was such a private person, so careful with saying and doing the right thing, even her handwriting was precision perfect. I never wanted to look behind the curtain and see otherwise. No wonder I feel empty inside when it comes to knowing my roots. I suck in a sharp breath and take the plunge to find out.
Let the unpacking begin.
I take my time and rearrange the boxes I’ve kept stored here in my study. I do the smaller ones first, blowing off the dust coating the brown cardboard. Cutting the tape with scissors with a reverence that doesn’t surprise me. Taking my time with each packed box as if Maman is watching me, nodding her head in approval.
I go through her possessions with a careful eye, my heart pounding, looking for clues about my roots in each box. Nothing yet… no wild revelations, but with every box I open, every memory I find helps me cope with her loss. Still, my curiosity tugs at me to find out more about her, to fill in the gap of where I came from. I’m delighted when I find a sealed box of letters written by my parents – I never knew it existed.
Maman told me years ago my father was American, but my parents never married. How they had this long-distance love affair that culminated when my mother came to America to have her baby. Me. After skimming several letters, I wipe away a tear, feeling the deep love between them, but there’s no hint of my mother’s family, like she was born without a past.
I find photos of me as a baby, then from my childhood since I grew up in a time before everything went digital. First communion, dressing up for Halloween, teenage angst years where I shied away from the camera. I love handling these glossy four-by-six prints, the color as vibrant as a scene out of Oz. Then I find old movie camera tapes I gave her of my trips to San Francisco and New York for location shoots, cities Maman loved to visit with me. Nothing here that says anything about her life before she settled in California except for a few letters in French. Letters from the convent where my mother lived until she met my father, signed by a nun named Sister Rose-Celine.
I