Director's Cut by Alton Gansky

Author:Alton Gansky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Array
Publisher: Zondervan

Chapter 18

The script meeting lasted longer than planned. West and Duffy’s presence had caused everything to grind to a halt. An exasperated Charles Buchanan finally called an end to the meeting. West spoke to the group for a moment, gathering names and addresses. Catherine and I slipped out as soon as we could. We were already an hour behind our planned departure time and Catherine had to be at the theater early.

Traffic was uncooperative and as thick as mud. I pressed on, doing the vehicular equivalent of throwing elbows. My frustration grew as two cars conspired to move side by side at the same speed, becoming a bone in the throat of forward progress.

“How do you do it?” Catherine asked.

Since leaving Hollywood she had barely spoken. I was giving her time to decompress. I have learned that fears can compound. Even small things in sufficient quantity could press a person to the ground. A ton of feathers still weigh a ton. Catherine didn’t have feathers on her mind; her issues were large and hard and unrelenting.

“How do I do what?” I shifted lanes again.

“Remain so together, so confident when things go wrong.” She paused, then continued before I could respond. “I visited Mom and Dad last month. My mom had been talking to yours. I know about the attack in your home and about the death of your friend.” She looked out the side window. “Yet you keep going forward, running for congress, managing the city . . . taking care of me.”

A tiny tear crawled down her left cheek. A black sadness oozed into my soul. I kept my eyes forward, partly because of the dense traffic, partly because I knew that her anguish was contagious.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “You’ve gone through all of this with unbelievable strength.”

“It’s a facade,” she said. “I’m a mess, Maddy. What you see, what others see, is just an act. I’m an actor, it’s what I do. Inside . . .”

I let a moment pass. We both needed a few seconds of silence to gather our wits. “I think most people are actors, Catherine. I know I’ve spent a good deal of my life putting on airs. That’s not so bad. Sometimes we begin to feel the way we act, not the other way around. Other times the mask we wear doesn’t matter. We can fool others, but we can’t fool ourselves.”

“So you just keep going regardless of how you feel?”

“I used to.”

“Used to?” She turned to face me.

I moved to the far right lane where the traffic was slower. I couldn’t duke it out with other drivers and tell the story at the same time. I needed the slower pace. Catherine didn’t object.

“As you know, my husband Peter was killed in a carjacking. That was a long time ago, but the shock and pain never fully goes away. All time can do is quiet the sorrow; it can never extinguish it.” I took a deep breath.

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